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More "Fussy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't lay my arrest up against Cavanagh. I'm ready to pass that by. And as for this other business—this free-range war in which the old man is mixed up—I want you to know that I'm against it. Dad knows his day is short; that's what makes him so hot. But he's a bluff—just a fussy old bluff. He knows he has no more right to the Government grass than anybody else, but he's going to get ahead of ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... me. But still my own impressions incline me rather to represent the Earth as a fine noble young woman, full of the pride which is so becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that, at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come across one of those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper liberties. These Comets, by the way, are public nuisances, very much like the mounted messengers of butchers in great cities, who are always at full gallop, and moving upon such an infinity of angles to human shinbones, that the final purpose of such ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... which I do not believe. And I may be the more emboldened in my refusal, when I consider how mixed, or how selfish, are often the motives of those who solicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of a feeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving for preferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of their activity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed. There is, moreover, an important consideration, connected with this subject, which often escapes notice, namely, the ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... definite,' said Crowther, returning to his grievance. '"Substitute some athletic pursuit involving less danger to the general public: something more conducive to the preserving of law and order,"' he quoted, bitterly, with a clever imitation of the fussy little Doctor's pompous manner. 'Fancy giving up hare-and-hounds for some "pursuit" like croquet, or ping-pong,' ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... is not absurd. It is insignificant. It is absolutely insignificant—absolutely. The craze of an old woman—the fussy officiousness of a blundering elderly Englishman. What devil put him in the way? Haven't I treated him cavalierly enough? Haven't I just? That's the way to treat these meddlesome persons. Is it possible that he still stands behind ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... to be seen; the little rivulets glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac, with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window; the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had lately melted off it; and, most of all, the raw, odorous air and radiant sunlight—all spoke to me, clearly and unmistakably, of something new and beautiful, of something which, though ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... day's toil was done, but Ella would not hear of housekeeping. To be sure, it would be very pleasant to keep up a grand establishment and give splendid dinner-parties, but she knew that Howard, with his peculiar notions, would expect her to do just as his "dear, fussy old mother did," and that, she wouldn't for a moment think of, for she really "did not know the names of one-half the queer-looking things ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... full of hope and happiness and victory and joy! He did not sing like this to the masters in the church yesterday; not even to the shoemaker this morning did he sing like this. It is not hard to see the reason. Yesterday he tried to be a master, and when he sang he was wondering how these fussy old fellows would measure his song with their rhyme-gauges and their foot- rules. How could anybody sing when he was thinking of that? Even then it was not a bad song and the goldsmith's daughter would have known it if she had been the ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... indeed enter where Angel and Devil alike fear to tread. At least, that is the old and orthodox conception of the clerical profession, and although it might be sometimes foolishly and conceitedly pushed to extremes by other men, there was nothing in Ringfield of the mere fussy moralist and pulpit egoist. After all, as he entered the house and, guided by the voice of its owner, found his way to the room looking on the dusty country road, he saw nothing very terrible, only a thinnish, fair, middle-aged man, wearing a black skull-cap and clad in a faded and greasy but ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... nothin'," he says; gettin' an attack of modesty. "I'm kinda fussy about my food and I been figurin' out different ways of cookin' up stuff to get the best outa it, for years. That's the only amusement I got. I ain't so much as a cook, but you oughta see ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... my quarters in the chapar-khana, a party of Persian travellers appear upon the scene, and with them a fussy little man in big round spectacles and semi-European clothes. Scarcely have they had time to alight and seek out quarters than the little man makes his appearance at my menzil door in all the glory of a crimson velvet dressing-cap and blue slippers, and beaming gladsomely through his ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... more, for it so happens that Colonel Fitz-James is known to be an epicure, to be fussy and finical about all things pertaining to the table, and what is worse takes no pains to disguise it, and in consequence is considered an undesirable dinner guest by the most experienced housekeepers ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... speak of as "sensitive." For every machine would be perfectly educated, that is to say, would have the suitable molecular adjustments, which would act not the less infallibly for being free from the fussy accompaniment of that consciousness to which our prejudice gives a supreme governing rank, when in truth it is an idle parasite on the ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... caught it and bears it on horizontally. It does not sink plumb. You have been deceived. Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shallow little brook, that you can ford all the year round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is a fussy little tormenting river, that won't and can't sail a sloop. What are you going to do about it? You are going to wind up your lead and line, shoulder your birch canoe, as the old sea-kings used, and thrid the deep forests, and scale the purple hills, till you come to water again, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... stages to Switzerland. A festive journey, yes; but the expression regards the mental progress rather than the apparent. Mr. Dillwyn, being an old traveller, took things with the calm habit of use and wont; and Lois, new as all was to her, made no more fussy demonstration than he did. All the more delicious to him, and satisfactory, were the sparkles in her eyes and the flushes on her cheeks, which constantly witnessed to her pure delight or interest ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... next morning Alaric and his new companion met each other at an early hour at the Paddington station. Neverbend was rather fussy with his dispatch-box, and a large official packet, which an office messenger, dashing up in, a cab, brought to him at the moment of his departure. Neverbend's enemies were wont to declare that a messenger, a cab, and a big packet always rushed ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... were not merely a cruel practical joke. Or was he yearning for the simpler and more natural life which he had led until two years ago? We had many an expensive meal together, and often, as he ate, he would say: "Oh, it's all nonsense, Mr. Levinsky. All this fussy stuff does not come up to one spoon of my wife's ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... dear. I've got my own ways, you see. I'm a fussy old fellow. And I've got my servant—my blackamoor. He'd frighten all the neighbours. And you'd fuss yourself, thinking I wasn't comfortable. I'll come up to-morrow afternoon and stay on to dinner, if you like. And just leave ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... was Mr. Weatherley who appeared. Mr. Weatherley was distinctly fussy and there was some return ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more or less fussy, and this old gentleman seems to have been one of the more fussy ones. Being maintained at the public expense, he had ample leisure, and not content with limiting his attention to the rights of ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... people with a fussy conscience, a nervous fear of wrong-doing, who are without intelligence and imagination, but you never meet the noblest, and serenest, and largest examples of goodness without ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... something like pleasure to the final settlement of the Home Rule question by the ordeal of battle. In the meanwhile he and Dan Gallaher by no means hated each other, and were occasionally in full sympathy when the police or some ridiculous Government department made trouble by fussy activity. ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... Gilmour. "She's got spinal complaint, and we saw her lying on the sofa in the queer little parlour crammed with curiosities that Nell took such a fancy to. She seems a very nice girl, so happy and contented although in such a helpless state! Her old mother, whom I know you thought fussy and selfish, ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... perception, —want of tact,—coarseness of nature,—utter lack of power to understand you. Were you ever sitting in a considerable company, a good deal saddened by something you did not choose to tell to any one, and probably looking dull and dispirited enough,—and did a fussy host or hostess draw the attention of the entire party upon you, by earnestly and repeatedly asking if you were ill, if you had a headache, because you seemed so dull and so unlike yourself? And did that person time after time return to the charge, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... showman. Read in the original, as a revelation of the writer's character, the very reverse is the impression; he is there presented not in any ludicrous light but rather in a good-humoured and fussy way. He met his friend the Rev. John Macaulay, one of the ministers of Inverary, who accompanied them to the castle, where Boswell presented the doctor to the Duke. 'I shall never forget,' quaintly adds the chronicler, 'the impression made upon my fancy by some of the ladies' maids tripping ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... heard the outer flap of the airlock open, then someone pounding on the inner door. Habit of curiosity conquered, and his eyelids blinked. He looked up to find a strange man beside his bed. The man was fat, fussy, pompous. But he looked prosperous, and ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... butted into real society when you went outside, Casey. If she has all that money she's apt to be pernickity. I hate fussy ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... wretched companies have ceased to pay a dividend— All these and other worries, though they're very near the limit, I Maintain that I can face with philosophic equanimity; But, when I by my family and fond and fussy friends am asked To trot about in public with my features influenza-masked, My sense of humour wrings from me (or possibly a lack of it) The protest of the camel at the straw that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... time, and in his house retained his cheerfulness and good-humour.... In matters of business he was an easy master to serve, and the duties of his private secretary were light as compared to others in the same position. He never made work and never was fussy, and even at the busiest times never seemed in a hurry.... Large matters he never neglected, but the difficulty of the private secretary was to get him to attend to the trifling and unimportant ones with which he had ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... or sent into exile in consequence of their duels, when M. de Bouteville, of the house of Montmorency, who had been previously engaged in twenty-one affairs of honor, came to Paris to fight the Marquis of Beuvron on the Place Royale. The Marquis's second, M. de fussy d'Amboise, was killed by the Count of Chapelles, Bouteville's second. Beuvron fled to England. M. de Bouteville and his comrade had taken post for Lorraine; they were recognized and arrested at Vitry-le- Brule ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... prepossessingly white and clean, ushered her into the little drawing-room, which was furnished with more simplicity and individual taste than is usual anywhere in New York, cursed of the mania for useless and tasteless showiness. There were no messy draperies, no fussy statuettes, vases, gilt boxes, and the like. Mildred awaited the ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... small sallow man, with rather an agitated fussy manner, and eyes that never seemed to be looking at you. He was neat, almost dapper, in his dress, and was rather like the ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the other hand, was a fussy and rather pompous individual, who delighted in brass buttons and gold lace and invariably presented a magnificent appearance. But, like Taylor, he was an excellent officer and thoroughly competent to handle ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... all Frankfort was not to be found among the mighty who ruled the Empire, or among the merchants who trafficked therein, or among the people who starved when there was no traffic. The most anxious man was a small, fussy individual of great importance in his own estimation, cringing to those above him, denouncing those beneath; Herr Durnberg, Master of the Romer, in other words, the Keeper of the Town Hall. The great ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... two forms mean exactly the same thing. And here, again, "The Logicians" seem to me to take much too humble a position. When they are putting the final touches to the grouping of their Proposition, just before the curtain goes up, and when the Copula——always a rather fussy 'heavy father', asks them "Am I to have the 'not', or will you tack it on to the Predicate?" they are much too ready to answer, like the subtle cab-driver, "Leave it to you, Sir!" The result seems to ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... was far more interested in the winks and flatteries of the grocer's boy and the milkman than in any conquest of the fussy little fat man, who ate whatever she slammed before him and never raised ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... was not a man of ideas, his merits as a creator—as a realiser of types—were supreme. Many of his dramatis personae no doubt became old-fashioned in a sense; but who can deny the truth to life of the Kirk Elder, the slavey, the policeman, the fussy City man, the diner-out, the waiter (did he not invent "Robert"?), the cabman, the hen-pecked husband, the drunkard, the gillie, the Irish peasant, the schoolboy, and the Mrs. Brown of Arthur Sketchley's prosaic muse? The wealth of his limited fancy, and his power of resolving it into well-ordered ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... these things, quietly, without parade or press-agenting, all the energy in her, and she had no reserve left for play. War work seemed to mean something to Sophie besides write-ups in the society column and pictures of her in sundry poses. These things besides, surrounded her with all sorts of fussy people, both male and female, and through this cordon Thompson seldom broke for confidential talk with her. When he did Sophie baffled him with her calm detachment, a profound and ever-increasing reserve—as if ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and Alice Robinson the next. Mrs. Simpson wanted I should have her first because I've had so much experience in babies. Come in and look at her sitting up in my bed, aunt Jane! Isn't she lovely? She's the fat, gurgly kind, not thin and fussy like some babies, and I thought I was going to have her to undress and dress twice each day. Oh dear! I wish I could have a printed book with everything set down in it that I COULD do, and then I wouldn't get disappointed ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... antiquated and very dull sermons, for the delivery of which he would excuse himself to his private friends by saying that his salary was but four hundred dollars a year, one third of which he took in No. 2 mackerel no one would buy of him. He was excessively fussy; and if he advocated temperance to-day, he would to-morrow take a sly smash, never forgetting to add that it was recommended by his physician, who was likewise a man of great learning. Under the influence of this medicine, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... without charm, though approval may have been lacking here and there, and at the first crossing Alice suffered what she might have accounted an actual injury, had she allowed herself to be so sensitive. An elderly woman in fussy black silk stood there, waiting for a streetcar; she was all of a globular modelling, with a face patterned like a frost-bitten peach; and that the approaching gracefulness was uncongenial she naively made too evident. Her round, wan eyes seemed ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... music?" asked his mistress, knitting as she spoke. "He came from Germany; there's where you get the best singers. Some canaries won't sing before company and some won't sing alone; they are fussy,—I call it pernickitty. Why, I had one with a voice like a flute; but I happened to buy some new wall-paper, and she didn't like the looks of it, and after that she never ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... about the serrated edges of masses, like those of trees seen against the sky. These are very difficult to treat, and almost every landscape painter has a different formula. The hard, fussy, cut-out, photographic appearance of trees misses ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... proud and happy when you girls say you like my home. To me it's just the loveliest place in the world. I wouldn't change it for anything modern. Sometimes Auntie Gibbs gets fussy and says it's ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... messed up and candidates ruined just because the women got wrought up over tenement-house an' fire laws an' truck like that. Yes sir, they're out seein' Whitewater this minut, or will be if you can't divert their minds. Call 'em off, George, if you can. Get 'em fussy about sumpen else." ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... suspicion and attract attention from his person, He took his ticket, and rushed on to the platform, to find the porter and the box at the door of the guard's van. Dobson was not there. With the vigour of a fussy traveller he shouted directions to the guard to take good care of his luggage, hurled a shilling at the porter, and ran for a carriage. At that moment he became aware of Dobson hurrying through the entrance. He must have ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... and the perfect symmetry of its saloons and galleries. There is a garden a-making, projected by Mr. Evelyn, a great authority on trees and gardens. A crowd of fine company had assembled to see the newly finished hall and dining parlour, among them a fussy person, who came in attendance upon my Lord Sandwich, and who was more voluble than became his quality as a clerk in the Navy Office. He was periwigged and dressed as fine as his master, and, on my being civil ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... still remains to be noticed. It is this: Our principles ought to be strong enough to govern our habits. Habits may make us disagreeable and fussy; principles make us broad, far-seeing, sympathetic, and independent. Success in life depends upon having the principle of order. Always do the important thing first; for that is what order means. Some boys and girls are orderly about their rooms, ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... other, a muse, with the brow of one and the slenderest hand and foot, whom he and others were hopefully piloting towards a second class at least—possibly a first—in the Honour Classical School, had broken down in health, so that her mother and a fussy doctor had hurried her away to a rest-cure in Switzerland, and thereby slit her academic life and all her chances of fame. Both had been used to come—independently—for the Master was in his own, way far too great a social epicure to mix his pleasures—to tea on Sundays; to sit on one side ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... marked contrast to the bluebottles and flies that seemed to choose their point of alighting with a sham intentness which did not disguise their lack of any definite purpose. Now and again a feral, domineering wasp would join the crowd, coming up with the air of a fussy, inquisitive overseer. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... rendering aid to America, which Franklin would not believe, or could not see. Nor were the relations of Adams very pleasant with the veteran Franklin himself, whose merits he conceived to be exaggerated, and of whom it is generally believed he was envious. He was as fussy in business details as Franklin was easy and careless. He thought that Franklin lived too luxuriously and was too fond of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... returned and loitered about, ostentatiously waiting until Miss Leavitt should be free to serve him. Win was showing dolls to a fussy woman who could not be satisfied with the most beguiling porcelain or waxen smile. At last, having looked at several dozens, she flounced away, announcing that she would go to Bimgel's. This threat, being uttered ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... with short side whiskers, a chunky, fussy, and hot-tempered man, but whether Madge Pemberton had managed him, or whether he'd worn her out, I couldn't make up my mind about the likelihood. I sat a while talking with him, and watching Madge McCulloch, his daughter, lay the ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... the children. Here the different reactions of a man and woman—e.g. to a boy's pranks—causes a taking of sides that is disastrous to the peace of the family. Usually the American father believes his wife is too fussy about his son's manners and derelictions, secretly or otherwise he is quite pleased when his son develops into a "regular" boy,—tough, mischievous, and aggressive. But sometimes it is the overstern father who arouses the mother's ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... stenciled "Ship Southern Cross, U. S. South Polar Expedition." As fast as a gang of stevedores, their laboring bodies steaming in the sharp air, could handle the muddle, the numerous cases and crates were hauled aboard the vessel we have noticed and lowered into her capacious holds by a rattling, fussy cargo winch. The shouts of the freight handlers and the sharp shrieks of the whistle of the boss stevedore, as he started or stopped the hoisting engine, all combined to form a picture as confused as could well be imagined, and yet one which was in reality merely an orderly loading of ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... have a right to do so I have fully satisfied my own conscience, an exceptionally fussy one. Of the four joint authors, he whom I call "MacShaughnassy" has laid aside his title to all things beyond six feet of sun-scorched ground in the African veldt; while from him I have designated "Brown" I have borrowed but little, and that little I may fairly claim to ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... had to admit that probably all these things were really good for me. But it got to where everything I did was something that was good for me—and that was bad. Hell, it isn't natural for a young fellow just out of college to live like a fussy old man of seventy with a grudge against the ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... army as inextricably bound up with Highcastle prestige. But our Government departments knew better: their problem was how to win the war with Augustus on their backs, well-meaning, brave, patriotic, but obstructively fussy, self-important, imbecile, ...
— Augustus Does His Bit • George Bernard Shaw
... wandering little creek whose shallow waters flowed through lovely meadows where boneset plants were white with bloom and giant eupatorium lifted its rosy heads. A red-headed flicker flew screaming from a field as they passed, and a fussy wren scolded at ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... novelist's characters, no two clergymen, no two British matrons, no two fussy spinsters, no two men of fashion, no two heavy fathers, no two smart young ladies, no two heroines, are alike. And this variety results from the absolute fidelity of each character to the law of its own development, each ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... I came to Wilson's, I was shown up, and found that he was sitting with Miss Penclosa. For half an hour I had to endure his fussy talk about his recent research into the exact nature of the spiritualistic rap, while the creature and I sat in silence looking across the room at each other. I read a sinister amusement in her eyes, and she must have seen hatred and menace in mine. I had almost despaired of having speech with ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stream in, and pounce eagerly on chairs and telephones; the usual Fussy Family waste precious minutes in trying to get seats together, and get separated in the end. Undecided persons flit from one side to another. Gradually they all settle down, and stop their ears with the telephone-tubes, the prevailing expression being one of anxiety, combined with conscious and apologetic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... you are mistaken. She is too fussy; she irritates people. But for the old admiral she would often get into difficulties. Beechhurst has taken to ladies' meetings and committees, and all sorts of fudge that she is the moving spirit ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... that no matter how fussy a fello was when he wore a vest as soon as he begins to call a coat a blouze no one thinks he knows whats what. If you got any old magazenes what was old before the war started send em to the soldiers. They wont know the difference. Some wimen sent our regiment the Baptist Review for three ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... them, unless I inspect them personally. These are the patients who try one's soul, Babe. I would rather deal with Asiatic cholera than with one fussy old woman with a digestion. They eat hot bread and fried steak, and then ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... take care of," said Bel. "Not fine, nor fussy; but real sweet and pleasant. Sunny windows and flowers, and a pretty carpet, and white curtains, and one of those chromos of little round, yellow chickens. A best china tea-set, and a real trig little kitchen; pies ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of his famous trabucos,—"upon my word, I can't guess; if some great reverse of fortune befell him, and he had to work for his livelihood, or if some other direful calamity gave a shock to his nervous system and jolted it into a fussy, fidgety direction, I dare say he might make a splash in that current of life which bears men on to the grave. But you see he wants, as he himself very truly says, the two stimulants ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... isn't as old as papa. He used to come here a lot, and we children like him first-rate; but now he's in Europe. Well, to come back to Nora: she likes to be called Eleanor, but we don't do it; she is so fussy and so very proper that Felix has nick-named her Miss Prim, and we do call her that. Miss Marston thinks Nora is the best behaved of us all; and sometimes, when Nannie is in papa's study, she lets her go ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... come to the right conclusion, for the very next day a dog-cart was driven to the Cove, stopped at the Colonel's gate, and a little fussy-looking gentleman, with sharp eyes, a snub nose, and grey hair, which seemed to have a habit of standing out in pointed tufts, came up to the door, knocked, and ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... sighted at 1,500 yards by the quartermaster first class on duty; general quarters rung, the executive officer signals full speed ahead, the commanding officer takes charge and manoeuvres for position—and then something happens which the censor may be fussy about mentioning. At any rate, oil and other things rise to the surface of the sea, and the Germans are minus another submarine. The chief machinist's mate, however, comes in for special mention. It seems that he ignored the ladder and literally fell down the hatch, dislocating ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... good. She is feeling a false security. She would have been restless and fussy else—it is the way of her sex when danger is about. As she was making no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... steps on the gravel walk, a fussy, fidgety little woman appeared from the room beyond, and stopped in astonishment at sight of the giant coming up the steps. Before she had a chance to express her surprise, however, he spoke, addressing the panting child fanning ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... BARBARISM.—Amid the fussy pomposity of the Queen's jubilee, the voice of the thinkers has not been entirely silent. The utter failure of her reign to present a single noble thought or impulse, a single evidence of sympathy with the immense mass of suffering, has been sharply commented on, not only in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... a lot of other places, stopping at most of them, for I was still rather weak, and the mater was fussy about my overdoing it till we settled down at Sorrento. That's a place on the Bay of Naples, and just the loveliest bit of it—oranges everywhere. It's ten miles from Castellamare, the nearest railway-station, but the drive along ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... it," said Arthur. "Mobs of any kind are rare in the Southern country. We are not (in spite of the bad qualities ascribed to us by the Abolitionists) a fussy people. Sometimes, when an Abolitionist comes along, we have a little fun with him, the negroes enjoying it exceedingly. Slaveholders, as a general thing, desire to live a peaceful, quiet life; yet they are not willing to have their ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... 'Ah!' said the fussy and half-distracted little man who represented the great foreign house so neatly defrauded, 'Ah! if I had not come down this morning, not one othair would haf know. I am the one only expairt. See! I am praisant ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... free from effort, or chatter about food, is admirably adapted to rendering them agreeable. I am clearly of opinion that no one ought to give any entertainment that has not the means of making it pass off as a matter-of-course thing, and without effort. I have certainly seen a few fussy dinners here, but they are surprisingly rare. At home, we have plenty of people who know that a party that has a laboured air is inherently vulgar, but how few are there that know how to treat a brilliant entertainment ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... portion of her letter to a young man whom she indiscreetly though innocently adores, nothing very serious comes of his machinations, and our interest in the book is mainly confined to the emotional relations between Sir Charles, a fussy elderly martinet, his too young wife, and Maisie, her seventeen-year-old step-daughter, who varies from deeper moods to those of a silly and self-willed child. Then there is Captain Mayhune himself, a man of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... sketch, or draft of just what a revolution might be for once, and what it would have to get over being afterward, as soon as possible, never seems to have occurred to many people. One sees them rushing about the world trying to get up exact duplicates, little fussy replicas of a revolution, and of a kind of revolution that the real world put quietly away in the attic seventy years ago. The real world, and all the men in it who are facing real facts to-day, are getting ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... which she had been showing to the ladies on each side of her; for, in fact, neither she nor any one else could, without the greatest difficulty, refrain from laughing at the monkeyfied appearance of Titmouse. The alderman was a stout, stupid little man—a fussy old prig—with small angry-looking black eyes, and a short red nose; as for his head, it seemed as though he had just smeared some sticky fluid over it, and then dipped it into a flour-tub, so thickly laden was it with powder. Mr. Deputy Diddle-daddle was tall and thin, and serious and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... and quietly, found his Prayer-Book somewhere in the far depths of his kit-bag, and ran down to sit on the sea wall and wait for Akela and the last Cub or two (the ones whose boots had got lost, or who were so fussy about parting their hair, etc., that dressing ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... his motoring outfit, was still an unprepossessing figure. He wore a pince-nez; his manner was fussy and inclined to be a little patronizing. He had the air of an unsuccessful pedagogue. He was obviously regarding Burton with a new interest. During tea-time he conversed chiefly with Edith, who ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fussy than careless," said Chowne, "because life cures a chap of being fussy, if he's got a brain and a sensible outlook; but the careless and slack sort go from bad to worse, and I ain't here to keep my constables in order: they be here to strengthen my hands and keep the ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... His host, very fussy as he always was on the morning of his big shoot, came bustling towards Peter, Baron de Grost, with a piece of paper in his hand. The party of men had just descended from a large brake and were standing about on the edge of the common, examining cartridges, smoking a last cigarette before the ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lock-gates sever. What does it matter, friends, after all? The slow, the skilful, the dull, the clever, The snake-swift "swell" and the splashing 'ARRY, the puffing launch, and the trim outrigger, The calm canoest who hugs the timbers, the fussy punter who toils like a nigger, All will anon be well out in the cutting, the old gates shutting slowly behind them, And where are those who so shoved to the front? At the tail of the race you may presently find them. The G.O.M. (with his collars for sails), that jaunty ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone with Claude. Now they were a menage a trois. She recalled the beginnings of her married life. How fussy, how anxious, how unstable they had been! Now the current flowed strongly, steadily, evenly. The river seemed to have a soul, to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... crowd were several students that my old readers have met before. They included a hot-headed lad named Tom Thornton, a fussy fellow called Puss Parker, and Fred Flemming, Willis Paulding, Andy ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... time no one was listening to Gadabout. Any further fussy complaining of this little craft was drowned by the Commodore reading aloud. He had bethought him of a book containing some chapters on Brandon that we had got from the manor-house. And reading made us hungry; and there were two ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... are hearty eaters; but they are not, like the French, fussy and finicky over their food. Their stomach is not their God; and the cook, with his sauces and pates and ragouts, is not their High Priest. So long as the dish is wholesome, and there is sufficient of it, they ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... because they needed people to look after them and direct them and control them. We're as different from working people as a race-horse is from a cart-horse. Things that are quite natural to us are simply finicky fussy things to them. I wish to God talking like this didn't make a fellow feel like ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... as big a fool of me, my dear, as you choose," said the prospective bride to the fussy little girl who fluttered about her. "It's only for a ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... glancing over his spectacles to see if she by any possibility could be amusing herself at his expense—good, old, fussy, fault-finding Veritas; but indeed Francesca's eyes were so soft and lovely and honest that the more he looked at her, the less he could do her the injustice ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tavern, where a lovely barmaid in white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn Church. There ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... servant of all work. Mr. Mearns is a calm, rather bilious- looking, elderly man. There is nothing bewitching in his appearance; he looks like what he is—a quietly-disposed, evenly-tempered, Methodist minister. He is neither fussy, nor conceited, nor fond of brandishing the sword of superiority. He goes about his work steadily, and is as patient in harness as out of it. He has northern blood in his veins which checks impulsiveness ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Christ is not merely the just man, innocent, silent before his accusers. The stationary, white-draped figure, raised high above the agitated crowd, with tranquil forehead slightly bent, facing his perplexed and fussy judge, is more than man. We cannot say perhaps precisely why he is divine. But Tintoretto has made us feel that he is. In other words, his treatment of the high theme chosen ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was a fussy little person in a shiny black coat and a soft hat that was too big for him. No matter how much paper he stuffed inside the brim, the hat never seemed to fit right. Peering through glasses that were always threatening to fall off, he moved away from the Star Institute ...
— Be It Ever Thus • Robert Moore Williams
... do in preparation for making them is to prepare the design. Simple designs work out better than fussy ones and are more likely to be within the ability of the amateur. Having determined the size of the tray, draw on paper an oblong to represent it. Inside this oblong, draw another one to represent the lines along which the metal is to be bent up to form the sides. Inside this there ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... caretakers: there was nothing they were not capable of doing—except taking reasonable care of their invalids! They either fussed about too much, or else they did not fuss about at all. They all began by doing the right thing: they all ended by doing the wrong. The fussy ones had fits of apathy, when the poor irritable patients seemed to get a little better; the negligent ones had paroxysms of attentiveness, when their invalids, accustomed to loneliness and neglect, seemed to become rather ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... said Trimmer. "They listen more out of habit than anything else. If you're fussy ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... tears. Lucy, however, came to her relief, and said she was feeling blue because Harry would not be present! Just before the hour for the party Lucy descended to the parlor, where her father was reading, in order, as she said, to let him see whether her dress were fussy enough to suit him. He approved her taste, and after asking if Lizzie, too, were dressed in the same manner, resumed his paper. Ere long the covered sleigh stood at the door, and in a few moments Lucy and Lizzie were in Anna Graham's ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... two thousand years old; but she carelessly lost track of her age a few centuries ago and skipped several hundreds. She's a little fussy, you know, and afraid of growing old, being a widow and still ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... look at a guard. He found our one and only T. B. Ponks doing sentry. "Turn out the guard," was the order. "Eh?" was the response. "Where is the guard?" asked the flushed suite. "A dunno," said T. B. The suite was inclined to be fussy, but our Brigadier is essentially human. "Where are the other lads?" he asked genially. "They 'm in theer," said T. B., pointing to the entrance with no particular enthusiasm. The Brigadier and his staff made as if to enter. "'Ere, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... cough, and seemed dull and had headache. Of course I laughed at my mother's fears, took my football jersey from before the fire—she had washed it, and was just as particular about airing as your mother is—fussy, you would say—and off I ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of interest had sparkled in her eyes when Gordon's fussy little attorney had mentioned the name of his client, but it had been Dick's genial manner of boyish comradeship that had really warmed Miss Underwood to him. She did not like many people, but when she gave her heart to a friend it was without stipulations. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... (the authority for Godfrey's being 'master of a dangerous secret') did expect to meet Godfrey at dinner, and, knowing the fears to which Godfrey often confessed, might himself have originated, by his fussy inquiries, the rumour that Sir Edmund was missing. The wild excitement of the town might add 'murdered by Papists,' and the rumour might really get into a letter from London of Saturday night, reaching ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... course covered with mould, he was none the worse; and those who were well enough enjoyed his discomfiture immensely. Going into Salle III where there were shouts of laughter (the convalescents were sent to that room) I saw a funny sight. One little man, who was particularly fussy and grumpy (and very unpopular with the other men in consequence), slept near the stove, which was an old-fashioned coal one with a pipe leading up to the ceiling. The concussion had shaken this to such an extent that accumulations of soot had come down and covered ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... such that one had to hold on by the banisters. He was a dear, good beast, and a splendid body-guard for Marty in her solitary woodland rambles—never left her side for a second. I have often watched him from a distance, unbeknown to both; he was proud of his responsibility—almost fussy about it. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... China Cat," said her sister Angelina. "She is so white that the least speck shows on her. Real white cats are very fussy about keeping themselves clean, so I do not see why a white China Cat should not be treated the same way. You dust the Nodding Donkey, Geraldine, and I'll dust ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... was dated the day before yesterday, the second had come yesterday, and the last that day, an hour before. Their contents were quite trivial, and all referred to Karmazinov and betrayed the vain and fussy uneasiness of Varvara Petrovna and her apprehension that Karmazinov might forget to pay her a visit. Here is the first one dating from two days before. (Probably there had been one also three days before, and possibly another four days ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was dull, with an incipient drizzle as we started out at six o'clock. The fish were now rising, at any rate, in my pool. At the very entrance to it, which was, in fact, the connecting run from The Rocks, I killed, after a fussy tussle and plenty of leaping out of the water, a grilse of 4 lb.; and we had barely rowed out into the stream when a fish of 6 lb. or 7 lb. leaped head and tail out of the water at my fly without touching it. The overcast character of the evening suggested ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... It was surely a great step in advance when all the Elohims were combined into one Supreme Elohim that was everywhere present and ruled the world. Instead of dozens of little gods, jealous, jangling, fearful, fretful, fussy, boastful, changing walking-sticks to serpents, or doing other things quite as useless, it was a great advance to have one Supreme Being, dispassionate, a God of Love and Justice, "with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Folkestone, and all the people on the pier smiled at us. We scuttled ashore and shook ourselves for delight. There was a policeman, a postman. Who are these fussy fellows with badges on their arms? ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... rarely disturbed by anything, showed on this occasion a fussy solicitude about his trunks and boxes; nor was he appeased until he had seen them all on a truck, waiting for the inspection of the customs officers. Mr. Hawker, slouching along the pier with his ulster ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Lieutenant, or, as he was called in courtesy, Captain Whittier, the officer in command of the coast guard station between Poole and Christ Church; his principal station being opposite Brownsea Island, the narrowest point of the entrance to the harbour. He was a somewhat fussy little officer, with a great idea of the importance of his duties, mingled with a regret that these duties did not afford him full ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... his years. There is danger, and very real danger, lest we should take for granted what the "Grad-grinds" tell us, that the only thing which matters is that we do work, and are not idle. Work for its own sake is not enough. It may turn men into machines—all clatter and monotony; or it may make them fussy nuisances. "A soulless activity," says Canon Ainger, "may save a man from vagrancy only by turning him into a thing; or it may keep him from idleness by making him an egotist." There is the man who, to use the common ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... "but he had a sort of fussy irritable way that old gentlemen sometimes have and I somehow got it fixed in my mind that he was old. As a matter of fact, he was about forty-five, he may have ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... is just how it is," repeated Ivan Ivanovitch; "and isn't our living in town, airless and crowded, our writing useless papers, our playing vint—isn't that all a sort of case for us? And our spending our whole lives among trivial, fussy men and silly, idle women, our talking and our listening to all sorts of nonsense—isn't that a case for us, too? If you like, I will tell you a ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the payment of an exorbitant rent in advance, and the receipt of innumerable letters from a restless and fussy steward whom he had not yet seen, went as evidence, he knew himself to be the tenant in possession of a great shooting in Morayshire. He had several photographs of what was called the lodge, but looked like something between a mansion ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... that I must have been a very stupid child most of the time, and that the befogged state of my mind was certainly a pity and perhaps a shame. Yet there was a sort of advantage in it: fogs choose with much good sense what they will emphasize; and the intellect bereft of fussy clearness may have a startling grasp that reminds one of occult methods. My observations could not pretend to so much, but they caught truths not very often stared into capture by a little girl; and my father interested me more, and was more ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... and take every opportunity to put a crimp in the business for the owners. I envied the owners (we've all got a touch of that in our system), because they were rich and were making profits. I knew what their profits averaged. By calling fussy little strikes often enough I could have kept the profits close to the zero mark. Thus the men would be making wages out of the business and the owners would be making nothing. But I declined to let my actions be governed by envy. The Ten Commandments forbid ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... reminded me of some mothers of a larger growth, she was so fussy, so careful that her charges did not go too fast for their strength, while her spouse made it his business to see that she did not keep them tender by over-coddling. He allowed her to brood them for fifteen minutes; longer than that he would ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... reached the offices of the law firm, Mr. O'Brien, a short, fussy, albeit comfortable-looking little person, greeted all the members of the family and the various heirs and assigns with a hearty handshake. He had been personal counsel to Archibald Kane for twenty years. He knew his whims ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... to do all that was required and applauded my friend's self-control and good sense; indeed, I could not help contrasting the conduct of this busy, indefatigable man, cheerfully resigning himself to most distasteful inaction, with the fussy behaviour of the ordinary patient who, with nothing of importance to do, can hardly be prevailed upon to rest, no matter how urgent the necessity. Accordingly, I breakfasted alone, and spent the morning in writing and despatching letters to the various persons who were expecting visits ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... darkness, and caused the damp, grey foliage to smile once more with aniseed and red raspberry, and to sparkle with the gold of their mildew. Also, there came hovering about us goldfinches with their little red-hooded crests, and fussy tomtits in their cravats of yellow, while a nimble, dark, blue woodpecker scaled the stem of an apple tree. And everywhere, yellow leaves fluttered to earth, and, in doing so, so closely resembled birds as to make it not always easy to distinguish whether a leaf or a ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... I had the best—were beefy members of their dinkey colonial Government or fussy, timid barristers I had to carry on me mouth. Seldom it was I carried a good pair of hands and a cool head in me nine years' runnin' with the Quebec and Montreal hounds. And lucky the same was for me, for it forced me to take the bit in me teeth, ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... child of the family, born and bred in it. He remembered how the old servants used to smile as they opened the door to him; how the familiar butler would say, when he had been absent a few hours longer than usual, "A sight of you, Mr. Harding, is good for sore eyes;" how the fussy housekeeper would swear that he couldn't have dined, or couldn't have breakfasted, or couldn't have lunched. And then, above all, he remembered the pleasant gleam of inward satisfaction which always spread itself over ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... captains I ever knew," he said largely, "were a fussy lot—dressed to kill, and navigating the boat from the head of a dinner-table. But I suppose you know. I was only regretting that she hadn't seen you the way you're looking now. That's all. I suppose I may regret, without ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blue waistcoat with birds'-eye spots, came bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and grazier, well known for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal patron of sport in the Riding. "Well, well," he grunted, in a thick, fussy, wheezy voice, "you have come, then. Got ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... [bitterly.] — A nice thing is it? A nice thing to hear a woman making a loud braying laugh the like of that? Ah, she's a great one for drawing the men, and you'll hear Timmy himself, the time he does be sitting in his forge, getting mighty fussy if she'll come walking from Grianan, the way you'll hear his breath going, and he wringing ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... else the great lords forgot they never forgot that it was their business to stand for the new things, for whatever was being most talked about among university dons or fussy financiers. Thus they were on the side of the Reformation against the Church, of the Whigs against the Stuarts, of the Baconian science against the old philosophy, of the manufacturing system against the operatives, and (to-day) of the increased power of the State ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... call bein' desput keerful, an' sailin' pooty consid'able close to the wind. 'T's like old Deacon Skillins's hoss, down to Mudville, that was so dreffle conscientious he couldn't eat oats. No accountin' for tastes. Free country, anyhow. Ef anybody likes to be fussy an' ructious 'n little things, why, there's nuthin' to hender him from hevin' his own way. But it don't exackly hev an hon'able look ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the evening. Again it was dull, with an incipient drizzle as we started out at six o'clock. The fish were now rising, at any rate, in my pool. At the very entrance to it, which was, in fact, the connecting run from The Rocks, I killed, after a fussy tussle and plenty of leaping out of the water, a grilse of 4 lb.; and we had barely rowed out into the stream when a fish of 6 lb. or 7 lb. leaped head and tail out of the water at my fly without touching it. The overcast character of the evening suggested ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... come to the Carsons in the fulfilment of an aspiration. Mrs. R. Gordon Carson bored him. Her fussy conscious manners bespoke too plainly the insignificant suburban society in which she had played a minor part. He came because Dr. Lindsay had told him casually that Louise Hitchcock was in town again. He arrived late, when ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... my old arm-chair and watch the brawling Wissahickon Creek, its banks draped with snow, while overhead the sky seems so friendly and blue. I am at Dussek Villa, I am at home; and I reproach myself for having been such a fool as ever to wander from it. Being a fussy but conscientious old bachelor, I scold myself when I am in the wrong, thus making up for the clattering tongue of an active wife. As I once related to you, I recently went to New York, and there encountered ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... telephone," he snickered, and then hurried away to finish packing. Curtis, whose belongings were locked and strapped hours ago, remained on deck, and watched the preparations for bringing the great liner alongside the Cunard pier. When her engines were stopped in mid-stream a number of fussy little tugs began nosing her round to starboard. It seemed a matter of sheer impossibility that these puny creatures should move such a monster; but faith can move mountains, and in half an hour, or less, the tugs had moved the Lusitania to her ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... this happened within a mile of home where help was handy. Such accidents happening several miles from home may have far more serious consequences, and every Ski runner, who scoffs at the precautions of people more fussy than themselves, may very likely have the life or limb of someone else on their mind when, had they been a little more fussy, they might have ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... be one solely in appearance. It may well happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped social surfaces of life, the ignorance—really, the happy and hieratic ignorance—of what "people" in the fussy sense, are supposed to be saying and doing, may actually help the poet to come more fruitfully and penetratingly to what lies under the surface, to what is essential and permanent and notable in the solid earth of human character. Hence, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... creditors was called, at which H. H. Rogers was present, representing Clemens. For the most part the creditors were liberal and willing to agree to any equitable arrangement. But there were a few who were grumpy and fussy. They declared that Mark Twain should turn over his copyrights, his Hartford home, and whatever other odds and ends could be discovered. Mr. Rogers, discussing the matter ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and somewhat annoyed. In her disgust with her father and her anxiety to attract David's notice, she had so entirely forgotten his religious delinquencies, that it seemed fussy and intrusive on Dora's part to make so much of them. She instinctively resented, too, what sounded to her like a tone of proprietary interest. It was not Dora that was ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you say, good neighbour, is certainly true, and my plan is Always to think of improvement, provided tho' new, 'tis not costly. But what avails it in truth, unless one has plenty of money, Active and fussy to he, improving both inside and outside? Sadly confined are the means of a burgher; e'en when he knows it, Little that's good he is able to do, his purse is too narrow, And the sum wanted too great; and so he is ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... and soon were making their fussy way in and out among the hundreds of launches, yachts and craft of every ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things—one who, moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for certain labours—once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all that, was ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... trees of the night darkness, and caused the damp, grey foliage to smile once more with aniseed and red raspberry, and to sparkle with the gold of their mildew. Also, there came hovering about us goldfinches with their little red-hooded crests, and fussy tomtits in their cravats of yellow, while a nimble, dark, blue woodpecker scaled the stem of an apple tree. And everywhere, yellow leaves fluttered to earth, and, in doing so, so closely resembled birds as to make it not always easy to distinguish whether ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... party was good enough," said Mr. St. Clair, "you're too fussy about trifles, Isabel. Come, children, scurry off to bed, you'll get no beauty ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... fact emerges that the important factor in the problem of the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the false image of the traditional parent has been created in the schoolmaster's mind by that fussy and ill-informed individual who is always "writing to complain." Now, he who pays the piper does not necessarily call the tune. That would be too absurd. But he has a veto on any tune he too positively dislikes, and it is well ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... little home—to take care of," said Bel. "Not fine, nor fussy; but real sweet and pleasant. Sunny windows and flowers, and a pretty carpet, and white curtains, and one of those chromos of little round, yellow chickens. A best china tea-set, and a real trig little kitchen; ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Reform? Oh! just a fad,— Its advocates, in fact, as bad As those who want Cremation. A set of foolish, fussy fools Whose misplaced ardour nothing cools— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... repeated it while she paused. "Laura—it has a jolly sound—and upon my word I haven't seen a woman in years who has had so much to say to me before I've met her. Do you know, I already like her—I like her smooth black hair, without any of your fussy undulations; I like her strong earnest look and the strength in her brow and chin; I even like the way ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... German missionaries in the country, doing good work in a funny, fussy, rigorous fashion of their own. They'd raise a dickens of a hocus-pocus back in Germany if they once suspected their government of playing that game. No. But Germany intends to stand off the other powers, while Turks tackle the Armenians; ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... that confounded hen was thinking of crossing the road," said Mr. Britling. "Instead of which she's gone through the hedge. She certainly looked this way.... Perhaps I'm a little fussy this morning.... I'll warm up ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... got so fussy I had to start sleepin' in another room. I was still sick, so one day he brought me some medicine he said he got from Dr. Traylor. I tried to take a dose 'cause I knowed if it was from Dr. Traylor it was all right, but that medicine ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... for she was charming and gracious, but Midget felt she was a nervous, fussy woman, and not calm and capable like her ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... Major and Mrs. Rogers, their daughter Sheila, their guest Carmel, and a chauffeur. Major Rogers was still suffering from the effects of wounds, and was more or less of a semi-invalid, a condition which made him fussy at times, and too independent at others, for directly he felt a trifle better he would immediately begin to break all the rules that the doctors had laid down for his treatment. He was an amusing, humorous ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... Stella, you can have a right good time first, anyway, if you keep away from ugly things and fussy people. And I reckon you really go to Heaven afterwards if you ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... is the tiny second hand. It rushes around, jumping, hurrying, fussy, as though it were doing the whole job. But you cannot tell time by the second hand. Knock it off and the watch goes right ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... of this hole, we might arrive at something definite,' said Crowther, returning to his grievance. '"Substitute some athletic pursuit involving less danger to the general public: something more conducive to the preserving of law and order,"' he quoted, bitterly, with a clever imitation of the fussy little Doctor's pompous manner. 'Fancy giving up hare-and-hounds for some "pursuit" like croquet, or ping-pong,' ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... don'tcherknow.' Yah! Gimme silver, that's all. Gimme a butterfly buckle to make, or a monogram to saw out, an' I wouldn't call the Pope my uncle." His eye lifted from his work and rested on a broken gold brooch, beautiful with plaited hair under a glass centre. "An' that fussy old wood-hen'll be in, first thing to-morrow, askin' for 'the memento of my poor dear 'usband, my child, the one with the 'air in it'—carrotty 'air. An' those two bits of 'air-pins that want them ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... dare," thinks the Britannic Majesty;—yes, and of daring there is a plenty: but, "In which direction? What, How?" these are questions for a fussy little gentleman called to take the world on his shoulders. We suppose it was by Walpole's advice that he gave her Hungarian Majesty that 200,000 pounds of Secret-Service Money;—advice sufficiently Walpolean: "Russian Partition-Treaties; horrible to think of;—beware of these again! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... which I have to overcome are just little fussy woman things—but they are big to me because I am breaking away from family traditions. All the women our household have followed the straight and narrow path of conventional living. Even Grace does it, although ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... off. He was a fussy little person in a shiny black coat and a soft hat that was too big for him. No matter how much paper he stuffed inside the brim, the hat never seemed to fit right. Peering through glasses that were always threatening to fall off, he moved away from the Star Institute ...
— Be It Ever Thus • Robert Moore Williams
... and gave one the idea of a set of fussy individuals who were superintending, or even bullying, their new neighbors, who appeared from amongst the ruins and debris of the ant city, carrying in their mouths certain oval bodies of a dirty-white color, and measuring each about one-third of an inch in length. Each ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... crushes"; they never pinned on their audacious hats to go home at night without speculating as to possible romantic adventures on the car, on the street, everywhere. They were not quite approved by the rest of the Front Office staff; their color was not all natural, their clothes were "fussy." Both wore enormous dry "rats," that showed through the thin covering of outer hair, their stockings were quite transparent, and bows of pink and lavender ribbon were visible under their thin shirt-waists. It was known that Elsie had been "spoken to" by old Mr. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... that nobody cares. You are modern enough to laugh at it; I am not; and I still continue faithful to my Classons and Cuyps and Vetchens and Suydams; and to all that they stand for in Manhattan—the rusty vestiges of by-gone pomp and fussy circumstance—the memories that cling to the early lords of the manors, the old Patroons, and titled refugees—all this I still cling to—even to their shabbiness and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... The surgeon, a little, fussy man, but I believe with some skill to justify his pretensions, now entered the room, carrying his case of instruments, and followed by servants bearing basins and water and bandages of linen. He relieved our doubts by instantly assuring us that 'the patient' was still living; and at the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and horseback in gaudy dresses and shining armor, mingled with the busy crowd, like peacocks and gaudy cocks among the fussy swarm of hens in a farm yard; lordly courtiers, in holiday dresses of showy red, blue and yellow stuffs, were borne by slaves in litters or standing on handsome gilt chariots; garlanded priests walked about in long white ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... some glad ter git away from these here fussy old hens fer a spell," he grumbled, as he slammed the vial back on the bureau; but Angy looked so reproachful and grieved that he felt ashamed of his ingratitude, ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... to other functions, the decent performance of which was utterly beyond the range of an illiterate man. Many of our readers may be acquainted with the witty satire in which, with a perpetual side glance at the fussy self-importance visible in Bishop Burnet's History, Pope writes 'the Memoirs of P.P., Clerk of this Parish.' With what delightful complacency this diligent representative of his class speaks of taking rank among 'men right worthy of their calling, of a clear and sweet voice, and of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... case (without Mr. Mortmain's opinion) was laid before a young conveyancer, who, having much less business than Mr. Mortmain, would, it was thought, "look into the case fully," though receiving only one-third of the fee which had been paid to Mr. Mortmain. And Mr. FUSSY FRANKPLEDGE—that was his name—did "look into the case fully;" and in doing so, turned over two-thirds of his little library;—and also gleaned—by note and verbally—the opinions upon the subject of some half-dozen of his "learned friends;" ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... together with four or five strong, silent shareholders, with whom Soames could sympathize—men of business, who liked to keep an eye on their affairs for themselves, without being fussy—good, solid men, who came to the City every day and went back in the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to approve of his new mistress, who was not fussy, seemed kind, and had given his beloved Mr. Allan nearly three hours of unbroken sleep. Allan had been a little better ever since. Wallis had told Phyllis this. But she was inclined to think that the betterment was caused by the counter-shock of his mother's death, which had ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... Christians, you will never be happy ones, until you make conscience of the study of God's Word and 'continue steadfastly in the Apostles' teaching.' You may produce plenty of emotional Christianity, and of busy and sometimes fussy work without it, but you will not get depth. I sometimes think that the complaint of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews might be turned upside down nowadays. He says: 'When for the time ye ought to be teachers, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... a touch of manliness. A feeble, and fussy, and finicking little proctor, who happened to be on the bank, was pompously endeavouring to assert his dignity, and make himself attended to. He was just beginning to get indignant at the laughing contempt with which his impotent efforts were received, and was asking ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... and does have the best of it, in the mere physical part of the strife; but in the more moral, if such a word can be used, the quiet ascendency of better manners and ancient recollections is very apt to overshadow the fussy pretensions of the vulgar aspirant, who places his claims altogether on the all-mighty dollar. It is vain to deny it; men ever have done it, and probably ever will defer to the past, in matters of this sort—it being much ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... crowd was gathered at the New York end of the Brooklyn Bridge waiting for trolley-cars. An elderly lady, red in the face, flustered and fussy, dug her elbows into convenient ribs ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... fast as a gang of stevedores, their laboring bodies steaming in the sharp air, could handle the muddle, the numerous cases and crates were hauled aboard the vessel we have noticed and lowered into her capacious holds by a rattling, fussy cargo winch. The shouts of the freight handlers and the sharp shrieks of the whistle of the boss stevedore, as he started or stopped the hoisting engine, all combined to form a picture as confused as could well be imagined, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... her pier. Beside the towering flanks of the sea-monster, newest and biggest of her species, they seemed absurdly inadequate to the job. But they made up for their insignificance by self-important and fussy puffings and pipings, while, like an elephant harried by terriers, the vast mass slowly swung outward toward the open. From the pier there arose a composite ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... matter," the fussy man said. "I think it is wrong to chase dogs or to tie tin cans on ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... fine noble young woman, full of the pride which is so becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that, at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come across one of those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper liberties. These Comets, by the way, are public nuisances, very much like the mounted messengers of butchers in great cities, who are always at full gallop, and moving upon such an infinity of angles to human shinbones, that the final purpose of such ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... The colonel will very likely be some fussy individual who magnifies his own importance, and who will send a squad of volunteers to escort me, and I want to avoid that. These officers always stick by each other; they're bound to. I want to go alone with Stoliker. I have a score to settle ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... shining hour. The fond mother was now sorely disappointed in her boy, and made remarks to the effect that if she had looked after his bringing up instead of entrusting him to an indulgent grandmother, affairs at this time would not be in their present state. Parents are apt to be fussy: ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... as he had me feelin' like I ought to be led out and shot at sunrise, the old Major comes bustlin' in fussy. I could have ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the one to blame," Mrs. Tolman admitted. "You see, if I am to keep pace with my big son and daughter I must look my best; so I have not only brought the extra suitcase but I am going to be tremendously fussy as to where ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... was laughing above her inclination to cry. "I do believe you are right. I'm going to pay particular attention to the little fussy things. Dear knows! if I do them all well, I'll have little time for discontent." She stood up—she and Davy were in the living room, while Mark was doing duty aloft—and flung her strong, young ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms, over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to be a noticeable thing as the minutes went on, and nobody else appeared, and not a soul moved. The rattle of the quarter-jack again from its niche, its blows for three-quarters, its fussy retreat, were almost painfully abrupt, and caused many of the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... satisfactory by the fussy old tradesman, and they went out. Baptista nervously conducted him in an opposite direction to her walk of the former day in other company, showing on her wan face, had he observed it, how much she was beginning to regret her sacrificial step for ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... slowly on toward the Aquarium, both of us watching the ships as they came into the bay from the North river. The fussy, spluttering little tugs, the heavily laden ferries, the lazy fishing boats, the dredges and scows—even the least of them was made beautiful by its setting of clear winter sun and ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... be plain—tailor-made is the best—walking length, and of good material. "Fussy" styles should not be chosen for street wear, and the hat or bonnet should be rather plain and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... needlework, and look after her when I'm not about. So I want a lady, young, and English; and I should like her to be a bit of a sportswoman, don't you know. I mean," he added in careful explanation, "I should like her to be cheerful and good-natured, and not fussy about the ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... his narrow shoulders. "I haven't found that girls have many, anywhere. When we Canadians were training in England, we all had our week-end wives. I believe the girls in Crystal Lake used to be more or less fussy,—but that's long ago and far away. You won't have ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... be incapable of an heroic action. He hesitated. The policeman hesitated. Fortunately, the plight of the doting oldest Sunday School teacher in the Five Towns had been observed from the platform, and two fussy, rosetted officials bustled up and offered to take charge of him. And Hilda, dissolving in painful pity, bent over him softly and arranged his disordered ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... visionary thoughts of a confession, of staymaking, of so many dollars a week regularly. But she remembered the time when some fussy, good women had put her in charge of a fashionable Kindergarten. There was a fat salary! The house was luxurious: the teachers did the work. But one night she had broken the finical apparatus to pieces, left a heap of bonbons for the children, scrawled a verse of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... find it the opinion of most of my men friends that such half-concealed encouragements, such evasions and drawings back are a necessary part of the love-play—the woman's unconscious testing of the fussy male. There is one friend, a doctor, who tells me that the woman's dissimulation of her own inclination has come to be a secondary sexual characteristic, a manifestation of the operation of sexual selection, diluted, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... carefully to these directions, and a host of others I cannot now recollect, poor Mr Stokes being as fussy and fidgetty as he was fat, and in the habit of unintentionally worrying his subordinates a good deal in this way, and the three of us again started on our way upwards, the old chief leading, as before, and Mr Fosset and I bringing up the rear very slowly, so as to prevent accident, when all ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Lorenzo is also a doubtful piece of sculpture. It has been attributed to Verrocchio, Donatello and Rossellino. It has least affinity to Donatello. The detailed attention paid by the sculptor to the floral decoration, and the fussy manner in which the whole thing is overcrowded, as if the artist were afraid of simplicity, suggest the hand of Rossellino, to whom Albertini, the first writer on the subject, has ascribed it. Donatello made the Marzocco, the emblematic ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... solicitor reminds us of the cruel answer given by another great lawyer to a country attorney, who, through fussy anxiety for a client's interests, committed a grave breach of professional etiquette. Let this attorney be called Mr. Smith, and let it be known that Mr. Smith, having come up to London from a secluded district of a remote country, was present ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... having begun badly, threatened to end worse. Master Vallance chewed the cud of country-side gossip. He reminded himself that not so very far away the King had set up his standard at Nottingham and summoned all loyal souls to his banner; that not so very far away in Cambridge, a fussy gentleman, a Mr. Cromwell, member for that place, had officiously pushed the interests of the Parliament by raising troops of volunteers and laying violent hands upon the University plate. Master Vallance tickled his chin and tried to count miles and to ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that, even before this era, when "old maids" were open to all kinds of insult, there were women brave enough to refuse to barter their souls for the animal comforts of food and shelter. Speaking about "old maids," by which term we mean now a prim, fussy person, it is well to remember that there are male "old maids" as well as female who remain so all through life; also that many "old maids" marry, and are ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... had gone well on board. Randy was much amused by the passengers, especially those who were peculiar in their manners. There was one fussy old gentleman who went up and down the river twice a week. He always wanted to sit in a corner in the shade and asked a dozen times a day ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... would, I suppose, be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last night, I had to write, on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain ungainly, foolish gentleman who keeps back from him, with all the fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad feeling, alas! for that we could deal with) a certain MS. letter of Cromwell's which completes the collection now going to press; and this long-ears had to be 'dear Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I said (to use a mild word) 'commend ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... have liked a house where something had happened. I should have liked, myself, a blood-stain—not a fussy blood-stain, a neat unobtrusive blood-stain that would have been content, most of its time, to remain hidden under the mat, shown only occasionally as a treat to visitors. I had hopes even of a ghost. I don't mean one of those noisy ghosts that doesn't seem to know it is dead. A ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... chattered away the old man, not without some slight compunction. "But in my opinion she's too dark for such somber dresses. I've told her so a score of times." Then as he watched the woman before him rolling up the goods he proceeded to ask with fussy importunity what she thought the express charges were likely to be, for he wanted to pay the whole bill ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... the first time—and how careful we were about our clothes, and our amateur barbering. Terry, in particular, was fussy to a degree about the cut of his beard, and so critical of our combined efforts, that we handed him the shears and told him to please himself. We began to rather prize those beards of ours; they were almost our sole distinction among those tall and sturdy women, with their ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... object odious, almost obscene. In truth, she had little mercy on old men in general, who as a class struck her as fussy, ridiculous, and repulsive. And beyond all the old men she had ever seen, she disliked Councillor Batchgrew. And about Councillor Batchgrew what she most detested was, perhaps strangely, his loose, wrinkled black ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... banisters. He was a dear, good beast, and a splendid body-guard for Marty in her solitary woodland rambles—never left her side for a second. I have often watched him from a distance, unbeknown to both; he was proud of his responsibility—almost fussy about it. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... habits, or spreading opinions which I do not believe. And I may be the more emboldened in my refusal, when I consider how mixed, or how selfish, are often the motives of those who solicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of a feeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving for preferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of their activity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed. There is, moreover, an important consideration, ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... the trainer. "Albert. He's a honest hoss is Fo'-Pound-the-Second, only that fussy as to who he has about him. That's the way with bottle-fed uns. They gets spoiled and gives 'emselves airs. Albert's his lad, and Monkey's been about him since he was a foal. Sometimes he'll work for one, and sometimes for ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Opportunity's bald spot, now does she?" said Uncle Neil, admiringly, as the busy, fussy lady made a leap and caught a grain of corn, in mid-air, while another hen was watching for it to fall ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... spinal complaint, and we saw her lying on the sofa in the queer little parlour crammed with curiosities that Nell took such a fancy to. She seems a very nice girl, so happy and contented although in such a helpless state! Her old mother, whom I know you thought fussy and selfish, is quite ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... crosses in silence, or was as cold-blooded as a fish and as heartless as a statue. He found the father the exact antithesis of the daughter, a nervous, fretful, irritable individual (gout had him by the heels at the time), who was as full of "yaps" and snarls as any Irish terrier, and as peevish and fussy as a fault-finding old woman. Added to this, he had a way of glancing all round the room, and avoiding the eye of the person to whom he was talking. And if Cleek had been like the generality of people, ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... to appear fussy, Hood," Deering began good-naturedly, "but would you mind telling me what's ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... hunger and fatigue. Our enthusiasm infected even our three men, though they had no idea what the sphere was for. Through those days the man Gibbs gave up walking, and went everywhere, even across the room, at a sort of fussy run. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... one does, always," he remarked placidly. "I sometimes think that accounts for a good deal! There's a man, now—see that fussy little fellow getting out of his motor ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... indicated in the above advice for man to act toward woman, and she would be all but omnipotent; for man, in a manner, would move heaven and earth to serve her, and would do unspeakably more for her than can ever be done by all the fussy croakers, old maids, and woman's rights associations and lectures in creation. Love in the family is the one thing needful to regenerate the earth and cause the wilderness to become as Eden and the desert to blossom as the rose. Reversed, love ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... have a good time!" her grandmother answered. And then settling back comfortably, she added with her kind, fussy superiority, "Well, Kate, I've wondered where you were hiding yourself all this time! Let's have the business. But first I want to say that I appreciate your turning to me. If it's money—I've got it. If it's something else, Chris Liggett is one of the cleverest ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... fresh from the stables being put to. A great many vehicles—some private carriages, others, like mine, of that public class which is equivalent to our old English post-chaise, were standing on the pavement, waiting their turn for relays. Fussy servants were to-ing and fro-ing, and idle ones lounging or laughing, and the scene, on the whole, was ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her side, even to this pere prodigue, obeyed the summons promptly, with the full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... antidote for getting to be a fussy old bachelor with queer notions in my head. And the cure worked to perfection. When my ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... charily, however, or rather with principle. He quietly insisted on his rights; but as he granted hers without a word, and never irritated her by small, fussy exactions, good-breeding prevented any serious clashing of wills, and their married life had passed in comparative serenity. As time elapsed her will began, in many ways, to defer to his quieter and stronger will, and then, as if life must teach ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... here that the doctor had indeed understood from Mrs Willis that she had somehow lost a granddaughter; but being rather fussy in his desires and efforts to comfort people in distress, he had failed to rouse the sympathy which would have drawn out details from the old woman. I therefore merely gave him to understand that the business which had called ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... about some things. There was a grocery shop at one end of the street, kept by a respectable woman, but Beth refused to go to it because the respectable woman had a fussy little Pomeranian dog, and allowed it to lick her hands and face all over, which so disgusted Beth that she could not eat anything the woman touched. It was in this shop that Beth picked up the moribund black beetle that kicked out suddenly, and set up the horror of crawling ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... large enough for any one under a bishop. Besides, I don't think he is fussy about anything ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... as a mental quicksand. There is something in the atmosphere which makes the most industrious man contentedly idle. Here the nervous, irritable, fussy individual, who for years has never known what rest meant, and who has fidgeted when he could not work, finds himself relaxing, against his will, into a condition of what a celebrated statesman ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... "Father is a little fussy at times, so perhaps it is just as well. You see I should not have been at Severndale at all if he had not been called to Mexico on business. So I'd better be thankful for what fun I did get. But there goes the first bell. Better get down toward the dining-room, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... me, if you plaze, where I'll find the Blackrock tram?' asked a fussy little old woman of a policeman, busily engaging in manoeuvring the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... morning of mutual complaints, as if everybody were against everybody, agreeing in nothing but in appealing to the elder sister. First, there was Alda's story. Never had there been such a miserable time—with Geraldine interfering, fussy, fretful, fault-finding; Clement intolerable in primness and conceit, only making the children worse when he pretended to keep them in order, and making such a fuss about Geraldine, when nothing ailed her but change of weather, incurring the expense of the Dearport doctor, and ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... guard. He found our one and only T. B. Ponks doing sentry. "Turn out the guard," was the order. "Eh?" was the response. "Where is the guard?" asked the flushed suite. "A dunno," said T. B. The suite was inclined to be fussy, but our Brigadier is essentially human. "Where are the other lads?" he asked genially. "They 'm in theer," said T. B., pointing to the entrance with no particular enthusiasm. The Brigadier and his staff made as if to enter. "'Ere, you," called T. B., now galvanized into activity, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... some sort of acquiescence. He was gazing steadily out over the spruce belt which covered the lower slopes of the hillside. His keen deep-set eyes were on the shipping lying out in the cove, watching the fussy approach ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... place, we hooked the cable: up it came, was tested, and lo! another complete break, a quarter of a mile off. I was amazed at my own tranquillity under these disappointments, but I was not really half so fussy as about getting a cab. Well, there was nothing for it but grappling again, and, as you may imagine, we were getting about six miles from shore. But the water did not deepen rapidly; we seemed to be on the crest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the hall stood Mr. Wigglesworth, important, fussy and unctuously impressive, welcoming, directing, introducing and, incidentally but quite ineffectively, seeking to inspire with respect for his august person a nondescript crowd of small boys vainly seeking entrance. With an effusiveness amounting to reverence he welcomed McNish and directed ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... the offices of the law firm, Mr. O'Brien, a short, fussy, albeit comfortable-looking little person, greeted all the members of the family and the various heirs and assigns with a hearty handshake. He had been personal counsel to Archibald Kane for twenty years. He knew his whims and idiosyncrasies, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... there were subtle intimations of a delight in a freedom of body she had never before known, of an exhilaration in action that made her hot and made her breathe, of a sloughing off of numberless petty and fussy and luxurious little superficialities which she had supposed were necessary to her happiness. What she had undertaken in vain conquest of Glenn's pride and Flo Hutter's Western tolerance she had found to be a boomerang. She ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... considered that the methods he pursued in the management of the house were the outcome of a naturally malignant disposition. This was, however, not the case. There is no reason to suppose that Mr Kay did not mean well. But there is no doubt that he was extremely fussy. And fussiness—with the possible exceptions of homicidal mania and a taste for arson—is quite the worst characteristic it is possible for a ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... made fussy, with a real fancy waist to for afternoons. You can go anywhere in a handsome ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... and Hsi Ch'un interposed with an ironic laugh, "what's the use of the hurry-scurry you're in the whole day long! Even when you're having your meals, or your tea, you're in this sort of fussy helter-skelter!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... She was a fussy old person who believed herself to be much worse than she really was, and it was, therefore, not until past one o'clock that I smoked my final pipe, drained my peg, and retired to bed, full of recollections of ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... everything. He did not spare her his reproaches on a multitude of subjects; all day long he was worrying her about small trifles with which he should have had nothing to do. It is a mistake to suppose that a man can not be brutal and fussy at the same time. M. de Talbrun ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... aside, which the testator declared on his death-bed was null and void; who refused to come and keep house for a childless old man, who would have treated her in every respect as an honored guest; who flew off like a fussy little wren, when her affluent cousin offered to provide for her; and who, last of all, rejects one of nature's noblemen—the best match in the city—the deuce knows for what; I consider non compos mentis, and quite unable to ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... old madeira he keeps on his sideboard. No. I can't quite explain why I am anxious to speak of this matter so soon, so hastily. I only want to ask one or two impertinent questions which you will forgive in a man who has grown, as to certain matters, as fussy as an ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... state of general excitement. A corpulent colored man, dressed in the garb of a beadle,—a large staff in his right hand, a cocked hat on his head, and broad white stripes down his flowing coat, stands midway between the parlor doors. He is fussy enough, and stupid enough, for a Paddington beadle. Now Madame Flamingo looks scornfully at him, scolds him, pushes him aside; he is only a slave she purchased for the purpose; she commands that he ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... finished that sentence, for at that moment there came running into the airship shed an elderly, short, stout, fussy gentleman, followed by an aged colored man. Both of ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... weddings that he wanted one himself, and felt drawn to me I was so sympathetic. That means a good nurse and cook, my dear. I understand these invalid gentlemen, and will be a slave to no man so fat and fussy as Mr. Mac, as my brother calls him. It's not respectful, but I like to refresh myself by ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... it was enchantment enough. It was a good afternoon for the shoe business, Mr. Beebe having two customers. One of them was a very fussy woman who had a small boy in charge. Joel was in high glee at being called upon to help lift down ever so many boxes, until pretty near every shoe in the stock was tried on. Mrs. Beebe kept coming out of ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... that sort of scrupulousness is very ill-bred, if you'll excuse my saying so, Rose. We are not supposed to know anything about fastness, and wildness, and so on, but to treat every man alike and not be fussy and prudish," said Emma, settling her many-colored streamers with the superior air of a woman of ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... right conclusion, for the very next day a dog-cart was driven to the Cove, stopped at the Colonel's gate, and a little fussy-looking gentleman, with sharp eyes, a snub nose, and grey hair, which seemed to have a habit of standing out in pointed tufts, came up to the door, knocked, and sent ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... 1852, early on the morning of the 21st of April, that the stout English discovery ship Resolute, manned by a large crew, commanded by a most manly man, Henry Kellett, left her moorings in the great river Thames, a little below the old town of London, was taken in tow by a fussy steam-tug, and proudly started as one of a fine English squadron in the great search of the nations for the lost Sir John Franklin. It was late in the year 1855, on the 24th of December, that the same ship, weather-worn, scantily rigged, without her lighter masts, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... wading, and at holiday time will take them boat-riding. If she permits as much activity in these respects as possible, her refusal when it does come will be respected; and the child will not, unless perhaps in the first bitterness of disappointment, think her unfriendly and fussy. Above all, he is not likely to try to deceive her, to run off and take a swim on the sly, and thus ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... informed by the officer whose wards we were. He was a fussy, quick-tempered, withal kind-hearted little fellow, and kept dashing in and out of the room, really perplexed over housing accommodations for the night. The spy-hunters had been successful in their ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... general he did upon what he was striving to accomplish; he could not otherwise have mastered one half the work he designed; and we are able to form an opinion, more just now for ourselves than it might have seemed to us then from others, of the weight and truth of such self-judgment. The fussy pretension of small men in great places, and the resolute self-assertion of great men in small places, are things essentially different. Respice finem. The exact relative importance of all our pursuits is to be arrived at by nicer adjustments ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... us. On we go, now at the top of our speed, past the dingy brick warehouses that lie under the shadow of St Paul's, whose black dome looks down upon us as we scud along. Then Southwark Bridge, with its Cyclopean masses of gloomy metal, disdains to return the slightest response to the fussy splashing we make, as we shoot impudently through. Then come more wharfs and warehouses, as we glide past, while our pace slackens, and we stop gently within a stone's-throw of London Bridge, at Dyers' Hall, where we are bundled out of the boat ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... "duties" which the World's voices make so clamorous! It may be that our sense of their greatness and remoteness produces a certain "humility" in us, and a certain mood of "waiting on the Spirit," not altogether encouraging to what this age, in its fussy worship of energy, calls "our creative work." Well! There is a place doubtless for these energetic people, and their strenuous characters, and their "creative work." But I think there is a place also for those who cannot rush about the market-place, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... Delhi and elsewhere at that time need not be referred to here; for he himself has related them in clear, life-like, homely terms which reveal one of the sources of his personal influence. Englishmen admire a man who is active without being fussy, who combines greatness with simplicity, whose kindliness is as devoid of ostentation as his religion is of mawkishness, and with whom ambition is ever the handmaid of patriotism. The character of a commander perhaps counts for more with ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... only unnecessary but hindersome. Autosuggestion succeeds when Conscious and Unconscious co-operate in the acceptance of an idea. Coue's long practice has shown that we must leave the Unconscious, as senior partner in the concern, to bring about the right conditions in its own way. The fussy attempts of the intellect to dictate the method of processes which lie outside its sphere will only produce conflict, and so condemn our attempt to failure. The directions given here are amply sufficient, if conscientiously applied, to secure the ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... still more, for it so happens that Colonel Fitz-James is known to be an epicure, to be fussy and finical about all things pertaining to the table, and what is worse takes no pains to disguise it, and in consequence is considered an undesirable dinner guest by the most experienced housekeepers in the regiment. All ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... take the risk of having her three servants desert in a body. When she had unwisely complained to Oliver, he had remarked impatiently that he couldn't be bothered about the housekeeping, and Lucy had openly accused her of being "fussy." ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Angora cat, was now established in a comfortable basket in a corner of the scullery. There she lay, looking like a ball of ermine, with her two ten-days old kittens snuggling up close to her. Josephine was a nervous, fussy mother, but she was devoted to her master, and he could do with ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... practical joke. Or was he yearning for the simpler and more natural life which he had led until two years ago? We had many an expensive meal together, and often, as he ate, he would say: "Oh, it's all nonsense, Mr. Levinsky. All this fussy stuff does not come up to one spoon of my ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... including his own—and including mine. He refuses manuscripts, though he did accept one of mine. He tells authors what they ought to do and ought not to do. He is marvellously and terribly particular and fussy about the format of the books issued by his firm. Questions as to fonts of type, width of margins, disposition of title-pages, tint and texture of bindings really do interest him. And misprints—especially when he has read the proofs himself—give ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... The Narrows, we enter the Inner Bay. New York, Brooklyn and Jersey City are in full sight to the northward, with the Hudson stretching away in the distance. The bay is crowded with shipping of all kinds, from the fussy little tug-boat to the large, grim-looking man-of-war. As we sail on, the scene becomes more animated. On the left are the picturesque heights of Staten Island, dotted thickly with country-seats, cottages, and pretty towns, and on ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... visitors settlin' right down on you for a six months' visit, some on 'em smart and high headed, some not knowin' putty, some good-natered and easy to please, some quarrelsome, some awful petickular and fussy about their vittles, some that will eat dogs, some too dressy, some that will go most naked, and hundreds of millions comin' and goin' all the time, and more than thirty millions of your own folks complainin' ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... is a good road, and almost hidden by the long grass outside the tall trees that line the canal on each bank, runs the steam tramway to Cabourg and the coast to the west of the Orne. Except when the fussy little piece of machinery drawing three or four curious, open-sided trams, is actually passing, the tramway escapes notice, for the ground is level and the miniature rails are laid on the ground ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... I'm sorry to have to say it, but you're becoming shockingly fussy. I never thought you would have grown into a fidgety, worrying person. How bright you used to seem in the old days! And of course the whole thing about the accounts, and so on, must have arisen through your want of management. ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... vicarious hostility. Why, even that old man was a complication! Nay, he was the worst thing of all! But for him, she could drop out! There was no getting away from him! He was as much permanently there as the chair upon which he was drowsing. She saw him as an incubus. And then Emmy being so fussy! Standing on her dignity when she'd give her soul for happiness! And then Alf being so ... What was Alf? Well, Alf was stupid. That was the word for Alf. He was stupid. As stupid as any stupid member of his immeasurably stupid ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... danger, lest we should take for granted what the "Grad-grinds" tell us, that the only thing which matters is that we do work, and are not idle. Work for its own sake is not enough. It may turn men into machines—all clatter and monotony; or it may make them fussy nuisances. "A soulless activity," says Canon Ainger, "may save a man from vagrancy only by turning him into a thing; or it may keep him from idleness by making him an egotist." There is the man who, to use the ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... one of these fussy functions I was dodgin'. I'd had my dinner at home, peaceable and quiet, while Sadie was dressin', and at that there was plenty of time left for me to tow her into town and land her at the Twombley-Cranes', where they had the ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... barmaid in white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so interesting. A ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... really amusing to see the old maid, how she skirmished and hit out gaily, like an old jaunty free lance: and to see the old bachelor, how prim he was, and nervy and fussy and precious, like ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... stroke, and Mary Lou wept unaffectedly at the thought of poor Ferd's grief. She said she couldn't help hoping that some sweet and lovely girl,—"Ferd knows so many!" said Lou, sighing,—would fill the empty place. Susan, with an unfavorable recollection of Ferd's fussy, important manner and red face, said nothing. Georgie, Mary Lou reported, was a very sick woman, in Ma's and Mary Lou's opinion. Ma had asked the young O'Connors to her home for Christmas dinner; "perhaps they expected us to ask the old lady," said Mary ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... at the homestead had a calf, about which she made a great deal of fuss. She was ordinarily a quiet, docile creature, and, though somewhat fussy after calving no one ever dreamed that she would injure anyone. It happened one day that the squatter's daughter and her intended husband, a Sydney exquisite, were strolling in a paddock where the cow was. Whether the cow objected to the masher or his lady love's red parasol, or whether ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
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