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More "Gab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called out Lester. "We'll have plenty of time for a gab-fest when we get to Milton. We want to ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... fine gentleman of a supercargo. He is just like any mortal: he has taken a drink of their Lethe up there, and forgotten to come back to us. He'll be wrestling with the lads, or playing on his lyre, or giving his precious gift of the gab a good airing; or he's off after plunder, the rascal, for what I know: 'tis all in the day's work with him. He is getting too independent: he ought to remember that he belongs to ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... and shifted his quid and spoke. "Tell ye what 'tis, all of ye," said he—"it's mighty easy talkin' an' givin' away gab instead of dollars. I'll bet ye anything ye'll put up that there ain't one of ye out of the whole damned lot that 'ain't got any money that would give it away ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I should plen it, I could git boosted into th' House or Sennit,— Nut while the twolegged gab-machine's so plenty, 'nablin' one man to du the talk o' twenty; I'm one o' them thet finds it ruther hard To mannyfactur' wisdom by the yard, An' maysure off, accordin' to demand, The piece-goods el'kence that I keep on hand, The same ole pattern runnin' thru an' thru, An' nothin' but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the general, with an air in which authority and supplication were equally prominent, "you've told an awful sight of lies in your time. Don't deny it, now—nobody that ever reads the papers will b'leeve you. Now's yer chance to put yer gift of gab to a respectable use. The lady's bothered, and wants to say somethin' or ask somethin', and she'll understand your lingo better'n ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... better reason, chile. Folks cyarn' stan' too much er de gab nohow, en' dey sez dat he 'ouldn't let up, but kep' up sech a racket dat dey couldn't git ner sleep. Den at las' ole King George over dar in England sent de hull army clear across de water ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... him Heliogabalus," said the doctor; "but he is generally known by the name of Gab, which is a more convenient appellation for ordinary use. I picked him up on the road to Santa Fe. I have no great faith in his honesty; but as I wanted an attendant, I engaged him—though I strongly suspect he is a runaway, and very likely may ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... GOB. The mouth. Gift of the gab; a facility of speech, nimble tongued eloquence. To blow the gab; to confess, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... sergeant's back-flung, guarded growl, "quit your gab there! We're gettin' nigh, bhoys—here's th' brush forninst his place . . . must go mighty quiet an' ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... above, p. 4. Regarding Lessing he made this remark to Eckermann (February 7th, 1827): "Bedauert doch den ausserordentlichen Menschen, dass er in einer so erbaermlichen Zeit leben musste, die ihm keine bessern Stoffe gab, als ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... ain't got a silver one to bless myself with," laughed Mrs. Wilkins. "I guess I will go, then, ef you don't mind, as it's only acrost the street. Like's not settin' quiet will be better for you 'n talkin', for I'm a dreadful hand to gab when I git started. Tell ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... wanting to my work. It is not I that am to blame, but our fine gentleman of a supercargo. He is just like any mortal: he has taken a drink of their Lethe up there, and forgotten to come back to us. He'll be wrestling with the lads, or playing on his lyre, or giving his precious gift of the gab a good airing; or he's off after plunder, the rascal, for what I know: 'tis all in the day's work with him. He is getting too independent: he ought to remember that he belongs to us, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... run off the track, turned upside down and its wheels making a thousand revolutions a minute. A kite in the air without a tail. A ship without a rudder. A clock without hands. A sermon that is all text; the incarnation of gab. Handsome, vivacious, versatile, muscular, neat, clean to the marrow. A judge of the effect of clothes, frugal in food and regular only in habits. With brains enough in his head for twenty men all pulling different ways. A man not bad—a practical ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... lady was seized by great bitterness of mind," Irish ro gab etere moir. The translation of etere ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... so; you don't see the matter in its proper light. You shall go to see her, and, with your honeyed tongue and the gift of the gab that nature has bestowed upon you, you will put some resignation into her soul, and leave her consoled for your departure; and if you tell her, in addition to this, that you love her, and that it is only for the sake of God you ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... habitually took his meals, the people round him had taken to taunt him with the remissness of the police. More than that one of his pals, a man he'd always looked up to, because the young fellow had the gift of the gab, had actually been among those who had spoken at the big demonstration in Victoria Park, making a violent speech, not only against the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, but also against the ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... said the delightful stranger, "let's you and me have a talk. There's a nice cool spot under these laurels; I'll stake out Pepita, and we'll just lie off there and gab, and not care if school keeps ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... stood on the carronade—first lieutenant, says he, Send all my merry men aft here, for they must list to me: I havn't the gift of the gab, my sons—because I'm bred to the sea, That ship there is a Frenchman, who means to fight with we. Odds blood, hammer and tongs, long as I've been to sea, I've fought 'gainst every odds—but ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... replying. He was perfectly aware that the milkman was a rare one with his jokes. He had heard him. The way girls fell for anyone with the gift of the gab—that was ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... gab!" snarled the navvy. "Here's the rum all gettin' loose." Picking up the bottle he took a pull of what was left in it. "Here's the bag, parson," he whispered, pulling a black linen bag from his pocket. "We haven't made much ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which was dangerous, and reminded him of his mother-in-law. He was a baby in public affairs, of course, as yet; but as soon as he once got going, the intensity of his convictions, together with his position, and real gift—not of the gab, like Harbinger's—but of restrained, biting oratory, was sure to bring him to the front with a bound in the present state of parties. And what were those convictions? Lord Valleys had tried to understand them, but up to the present he had failed. And ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... argument. Time after time I've missed scoring a point because the other man has had the gift of the gab and I haven't. Oh, I ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... fer the ranch mail," began Lloyd, "an' Nick Porter was crookin' his elbow a-plenty. And talking a heap, too. In front of the Red Light he had a feller in flashy clothes with a sandy mustache, and the two was goin' it some in the gab line. I was leanin' against the front of the Red Light, at the time, a-readin' a letter, an' I couldn't help hear a little of what them two said. 'Sam'll put down a hole an' blow out a bag o' samples,' says Porter, ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... It is worth coming a thousand miles by stage coach and flatboat, to meet so droll an adventure with such a nondescript amphibian. He has a prodigious gift of gab, plain and ornamental. Did you take note of his metaphors? 'Rose of Sharon' is good.—By the way, we can't be far from the Bower of Bliss. We must tie up our Argo there as Brackenridge recommended, and go in quest of those exotic and ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... he had recourse to his old expedient, and unburthened the tumult of his thoughts to his confidential friend. "This," cried he, "is a new artifice of the fellow, to prove his imagined superiority. We knew well enough that he had the gift of the gab. To be sure, if the world were to be governed by words, he would be in the right box. Oh, yes, he had it all hollow! But what signifies prating? Business must be done in another guess way than that. I wonder what possessed me that I did not kick him I But that is all to come. This ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... said Dumbiedikes, 'I were as young and as supple as you, and had the gift o' the gab as weel.'"—Heart of Midlothian. ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... commun" in "Romanische Forschungen", xxiii. 401-413). These names are mentioned here in connection with the brave exploits which Christian knights, while in their cups, may boast that they will accomplish (F.). This practice of boasting was called indulging in "gabs" (Eng. "gab"), a good instance of which will be found in "Le Voyage de Charlemagne a Jeruslaem" (ed. Koschwitz), v. ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... time, is there? There's time for everyone to give out their chat and their gab, and to do their business and take their ease and have a comfortable life, only the King! The beasts of the field have leave to lay themselves down in the meadow and to stretch their limbs on the green ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... shall hyeah his thundah, Lak a blas' f'om Gab'el's ho'n, Fu' de Lawd of hosts is mighty When he girds his ahmor on. But fu' feah some one mistakes me, I will pause right hyeah to say, Dat I 'm still a-preachin' ancient, I ain't ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... he shall,' replied Fagin, 'and we'll have a big-wig, Charley: one that's got the greatest gift of the gab: to carry on his defence; and he shall make a speech for himself too, if he likes; and we'll read it all in the papers—"Artful Dodger—shrieks of laughter—here the court ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... hour or so to talk, Mr. Philander, sir?" he asked. "I've got a couple of ideas I'd like to gab with you about, that I think might speed ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... quos collegit E.F. Badenhaupt, Berol, 1773, 8vo. The pithy bibliographical notes which are here and there scattered throughout this catalogue, render it of estimation in the opinion of the curious.——BALUZE. Bibliotheca Balusiana; seu catalogus librorum bibliothecae D.S. Baluzii, A. Gab. Martin, Paris, 1719, 8vo., two vols. Let any enlightened bibliographers read the eulogy upon the venerable Baluze (who died in his eighty-eighth year, and who was the great Colbert's librarian), in the preface of the Bibl. Colbertina ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... with my voting on that day," the bishop declared, with grim emphasis. "We must dispose of this fellow's pretensions once for all. It is preposterous that a professional baseball player and street-car conductor should aspire to become mayor of Warwick. An orator? Nonsense! Just a paltry gift of the gab. Balaam's is n't the only ass whose mouth the Lord in his inscrutable wisdom has ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... scientific branches of amputation, from the scalp-lock to the heel-tap, upon Emperors, Kings, Queens, and common folks; but upon his science in the dental way, he spread and grew luminous! In short, Dr. Wangbanger had not been long in Rockbottom before his "gift of gab," and unadulterated propensity to elongate the blanket, set every body, including poor Bill Whiffletree, in a furor to have their teeth cut, filed, scraped, rasped, reset, dug out, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Una especie de batalla campal! Oh! (Prestando atencin, como si oyese algn ruido, y mirando otra vez muy sobresaltado hacia la puerta del foro.) No, nada. Se me ha colgado de los faldones del gabn..., de la corbata, que si tira algo ms me ...
— Ms vale maa que fuerza • Manuel Tamayo y Baus
... some winter fruit that in December grew; My mither has a silk mantil the waft gaed never through; A sparrow's horn ye soon may find, there's ane on ev'ry claw, And twa upo' the gab o' it, and ye ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Kinder nach unserem Willen nicht formen, So wie Gott sie uns gab, so muss man sie lieben und haben, Sie erzielen aufs best und jeglichen ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... had sech a gift o' gab," said Shif'less Sol. "He stirs me all up, he makes me want to hev some lady buy a ship fur me an' start me out to discoverin' continents. Do you think, Paul, thar's any lady who would sell her earrings an' finger rings fur me ez that ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it would serve you right," Gerald responded, slightly impatient. "You girls have no right to treat us this way. We brought you with us to give you a good time, and it seems that you might respect our wishes a little. No one can catch fish with a regular gab-fest going on on ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... I'll hae aneugh to do if I am to stand up for a' my friends' wives," said the old gentleman. "But, however, Archie, you are to blame: Leddy Maclaughlan is a very decent woman—at least, as far as I ken—though she is a little free in the gab; and out of respect to my auld friend Sir Sampson, it is my desire that you should remain here to receive him, and that you trait baith ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... mir Treu' versprochen, 5 Gab mir ein'n Ring dabei, Sie hat die Treu' gebrochen, Mein ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... had taken too much to drink,—which he did, after the Danish fashion, far oftener than the rest of Baldwin's men,—he grew rude, boastful, quarrelsome. He would chant his own doughty deeds, and "gab," as the Norman word was, in painful earnest, while they gabbed only in sport, and outvied each other in impossible fanfaronades, simply to laugh down a fashion which was held inconsistent with the modesty of a true knight. Bitter ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Walker answered, 'there's some hev a talent fer sawin' wood, but we don't count that. It's war an' speakin', they are the two great talents of the Yankee. But his greatest talent is the gift o' gab. Give him a chance t' talk it over with his enemy an' he'll lick 'im without a fight. An' when his enemy is another Yankee—why, they both git licked, jest as it was in the case of the man thet sold me lightnin' rods. He was sorry he done it before I got through with him. If we did not encourage ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... flosserfize About the ocean an' the skies; An' gab an' gas f'um morn till noon About the other side the moon; An' 'bout the natur of the place Ten miles beyend the end of space. An' if his wife she'd ask the crank Ef he wouldn't kinder try to yank Hisself out-doors an' ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... though. Look at them there Labour members of Parliament—a lot of b—rs what's too bloody lazy to work for their livin'! What the bloody 'ell was they before they got there? Only workin' men, the same as you and me! But they've got the gift o' the gab and—' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... to do that," said the delighted Bailie, "for it's a fact. Ye're a fine laddie and have a fearsome power o' the gab (mouth); I expect to see ye in the pulpit yet; but keeps a' it's time I was at the Black Bull, so ye micht juist slip in and tell the Rector I'm at the door—Bailie ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... Wakefield is a born leader. Of course a leader must have the gift of gab. She's a great talker, isn't she? Takes the conversation right into her own hands and keeps it ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... Miss. The bunch here reckoned as I, bein' gifted with the knack of gab, it fer me to speak for 'em. They're tongue- tied when there's a woman ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... leader," replied Dunkirk. "Roebuck is far too shrewd for that. No, he has put forward as the decoy my colleague, Croffut,—perhaps you know him? If so, I needn't tell you what a vain, shallow, venal fellow he is, with his gift of gab ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... "Well, there's quite a gab-wireless operating along-coast and sailors don't always keep their yawp closed after they have taken a man's money to keep still," stated Captain Wass, pointedly. "I wouldn't blame you for grabbing ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Jock was in arms at once against any suspected criticism. "He's got more sand than many a blasted heavyweight. You ought to hear his gab—it's the newest thing in soul-saving. Sort o' homeopathic doctrine. Tastes good, but bitter as pisen under the coating. Real stuff inside, and all that. Get's working after it's taken, and the sweet taste lasts in your mouth while your innards are ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... ceremonious reserve of the severest old patriarch in the whole Greek Church, and completely carry him by storm; while I could only sit by and smile feebly, without being able to say a word. Great is "the gift o' gab." ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... eyes and tight throats. It seemed a cruel and awful thing to see one of our number disappear forever, and Holy Joe's words, spoken so softly and clearly, were of a kind to squeeze the hearts of even bad men. That parson had the gift of gab; he was a skilled orator and he could play upon our heartstrings as a ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... he could stagger under; a disposition fiery, mercurial, sanguine, witty; he was made, according to Billy Fairfax's dictum, of "wire and brass tacks," and he possessed what Honey Smith (who himself had no mean gift in that direction) called "the gift of gab." He lived by writing magazine articles. Also he wrote fiction, verse, and drama. Also he was a painter. Also he was a musician. In short, he was ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... isn't easy to tackle, and Mrs. Biggs was there with her gab, if she is my niece, and said ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... acknowledgin' Him, deacon, only—I'm not the man to talk out much before them that I know is my betters. I ain't got the gift o' gab. I couldn't never say much to the fellers in the saloon along around about election-times, though I b'lieved in the party with ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... made his Latin lesson, de scientia media, and sustenit the disputt thairupon, and was approven in both. The following ministers were present, Mr. Patrik Gillespie, Mr. David Dicksone, Doctor Jhone Strang, Mr. Zach. Boyde, Mr. George Young, Mr. Hew Blair, Mr. Gab. Conyngham, Mr. David Benett, Mr. Matthew Mackill. Mr. Wm. Young, Mr. Arch. Dennestoune, Mr. Jhone Carstaires, Mr. James Hamilton." The presbytery "ordaines Mr. Hugh Binnen to make ye exercise this daye fyfteen dayes, and the rest of his tryels to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... choose. Them ez hez, must lose. Them ez knows, won't blab. Them ez guesses, will gab. Them ez borrows, sorrows. Them ez lends, spends. Them ez gives, lives. Them ez keeps dark, is deep. Them ez kin earn; kin keep. Them ez aims, hits. Them ez hez, gits. Them ez waits, win. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... heil'gen zehn Gebot', Die uns gab unser Herre Gott Durch Mosen, seinen Diener treu, Hoch auf ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... his race he possessed the gift of gab, as the silver in the tongue and the gold in the full or thick-lipped mouth are oftentimes contemptuously characterized. And like many of his race he was a devoted student of the Bible to whose interpretation he brought ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... your scarf, Jim,' said Murgatroyd. 'When Venables comes he will soon find a way to check his gab. Yes,' he continued, looking at the back of my papers, 'it is marked, as you say, "From James the Second of England, known lately as the Duke of Monmouth, to Henry Duke of Beaufort, President of Wales, by the hand of Captain ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he was still a young man—a callant, the folk said—fu' o' book learnin' and grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi' nae leevin' experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi' his gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o' the moderates—weary ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the whole delegation. The mouth may be opened for two purposes, viz., speech-making and swallowing; and it never appeared to us that there was any lack either of Bolting or Bellering in the House of Representatives. However notably Honorable Gentlemen may play the game either of Gab or Grab, it isn't so clear that their constituents are much benefited by these accomplishments. If all they want is an open-mouthed Member, why don't the Massachusetts men import a first-class crocodile, and send him to the National ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... (here and there), as the sway of my affection carries me, and perhaps stumble upon a yeoman-feuterer, as I do now; or one of fortune's mules, laden with treasure, and an empty cloak-bag, following him, gaping when a gab will untie. ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Uncle Gab. (out of temper, on the hearth-rug). Seven minutes past the hour, MONTY—and, if there's a thing I'm particular about, it's not being kept waiting for my dinner. Are you expecting somebody else? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... could only know the tricks played on poor Father Chevrel by that Monsieur Noverre, by the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and especially by Monsieur Philidor! They are a set of rascals; I know them well! They all have a gab and nice manners. Ah, ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... enough trouble with our telephone even with Carrie to supply discretion for the whole town. Party lines and rubber ears are the source of all our woe. You know what a party line is, of course. It's a line on which you can have a party and gab merrily back and forth for forty minutes, while some other subscriber is wildly dancing with impatience. Most of our lines have four subscribers apiece, and it's just as hard to live in friendliness on a party line as it is for four families to get along good-naturedly ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... to him—which indeed it was, as he was born not twenty miles from Cork, in the neighbourhood of which is situated the far-famed "Blarney stone," that is supposed to endow those who kiss it with the "gift of the gab;" and Charley must have "osculated it," as a Yankee would say, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... never stand tall, unless its stones and lime are slaked with thy blood—the blood of a fatherless man." "Lord God," cried Merlin, "believe not that my blood will bind your tower together. I hold them for liars who told over such a gab. Bring these prophets before me who prophesy so glibly of my blood, and liars as they are, liars I will prove them to be." The king sent for his sorcerers, and set them before Merlin. After Merlin had regarded ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... bandied these words, every one in the whole room burst out laughing, and even dowager lady Chia broke out in laughter while she observed: "Do you listen to that mouth? I myself am looked upon as having the gift of the gab, but why is it that I can't talk in such a wise as to put down this monkey? Your mother-in-law herself doesn't dare to be so overbearing in her speech; and here you are ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... den pfaffen raten an den triuwen min, So spraeche ir haut den armen zuo: se, daz ist din, Ir zunge suenge, unde lieze mengem man daz sin, Gedaehten daz ouch si dur Got waeren almuosenaere. Do gab ir erste teil der Kuenik Konstantin, Het er gewest, daz da von uebel kuenftik waere, So het er wol underkomen des riches swaere, Wan daz si do waren kiusche, und uebermuete laere. Hagen, Minnesinger-Sammlung, Leipsic, 1838, bd. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... now, fellows," called out Lester. "We'll have plenty of time for a gab-fest when we get to Milton. We want to ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... much talk nowadays and too little thinking. Some persons start their gab carburetors and they talk and talk mechanically, without any effort on any thought, just like walking, the motion just ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... sadly deficient in what is called the gift of gab, had no soothing words at his command, full as his heart was of compassion. And after sitting some time by the unhappy boy, patting him softly on the shoulder, he arose, and went away; concluding that his absence would be a relief to one so ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... in its cauld hand held a light, By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murderer's banes in gibbet airns; Twa span-lang, wee unchristen'd bairns, A thief, new cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape: Five tomahawks, wi' blude red-rusted; Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled; A knife a father's throat had mangled, Whom his ain son o' life bereft, The grey hairs yet stack to the heft Wi' mair o' horrible and ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... moving-picture house and burn people to death in the rotten old fire-trap. And if you don't raise your hand, when I come to you fair and square, with an honest story—if you dare to order me out of here, because you've got to gab a lot of your charity drivel to a board of directors, instead of taking the interest any real man would take in something that was real and vital and eating into the very heart of New York life, I'm going to ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... listen—here's the sum and substance of Mr. Insarov. No talents, none, no poetry, any amount of capacity for work, an immense memory, an intellect not deep nor varied, but sound and quick, dry as dust, and force, and even the gift of the gab when the talk's about his—between ourselves let it be said—tedious Bulgaria. What! do you say I am unjust? One remark more: you'll never come to Christian names with him, and none ever has been on such terms with ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... practice. Does not this indicate that the intellect of the American woman is equal, if not superior, to that of the men? American women are good conversationalists, and many of them are eloquent and endowed with "the gift of the gab". One of the cleverest and wittiest speeches I have ever heard was from a woman who spoke at a public meeting on a public question. They are also good writers. Such women as Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Mrs. Mary N. Foote Henderson, Mrs. Elizabeth Towne ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... were drinking the Duke's health, singing and speechifying with vociferous applause, shouting, and clapping of hands. I never knew before that oratory had got down into the servants' hall, but learned that it is the custom for those to whom 'the gift of the gab' has been vouchsafed to harangue the others, the palm of eloquence being universally conceded to Mr. Tapps the head coachman, a man of great abdominal dignity, and whose Ciceronian brows are adorned with an ample flaxen wig, which is the peculiar distinction of the functionaries ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of his race he possessed the gift of gab, as the silver in the tongue and the gold in the full or thick-lipped mouth are oftentimes contemptuously characterized. And like many of his race he was a devoted student of the Bible to whose interpretation he brought like many other Bible students, not confined to the ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... scientia media, and sustenit the disputt thairupon, and was approven in both. The following ministers were present, Mr. Patrik Gillespie, Mr. David Dicksone, Doctor Jhone Strang, Mr. Zach. Boyde, Mr. George Young, Mr. Hew Blair, Mr. Gab. Conyngham, Mr. David Benett, Mr. Matthew Mackill. Mr. Wm. Young, Mr. Arch. Dennestoune, Mr. Jhone Carstaires, Mr. James Hamilton." The presbytery "ordaines Mr. Hugh Binnen to make ye exercise this daye fyfteen dayes, and the rest of his tryels to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... heard of what you did, an' you don't talk much. I'm glad of that. I can do all the talkin' that's needed by the three of us. The Lord created me with a love of gab." ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... us ask him to show us the scold's, or gossip's, bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the vestry. It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that all moral suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote, that fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure ('t is all nonsense to try to quench ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... have not considered this circumstance languages have frequently appeared to be quite different which in reality are closely assimilated. Two instances will explain my meaning. The natives in the vicinity of Perth generally use the word gab-by, or kuyp-e, for water, but those inhabiting a district only twelve or fourteen miles distant from Perth adopt the word kow-win; the word used by the natives in the vicinity of Adelaide in South Australia for water is kauw-ee. Now, on comparing these words it might have ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... a servant wench, my girl, and much Too full of gab, and too impertinent And free with ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... ARE a genius then,' said David. 'I always knew you had the gift of the gab, of course; but I never believed you were half the man ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... spat, and shifted his quid and spoke. "Tell ye what 'tis, all of ye," said he—"it's mighty easy talkin' an' givin' away gab instead of dollars. I'll bet ye anything ye'll put up that there ain't one of ye out of the whole damned lot that 'ain't got any money that would give it away if ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... From gab of jay and chatter of crake The dusk wood covered me utterly. And here the tongue of the thrush was awake. Flame-floods out of the low bright sky Lighted the gloom with gold-brown dye, Before dark; and a manifold chorussing Arose of ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Seligkeit und ein Meer von bitteren Leiden Die Italienerin gab—Seligkeit, Seligkeit nur Laessest Du mich entzuendend, begeistert, befaendig empfinden, In der Spanierin fand Liebe und ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... a game as it used to be. It means more particularly, swindling a greenhorn out of his cash by the mere gift of the gab. You know if it were not for the flats, how could the sharps live? You can 'mag' a man at any time you are playing cards or at billiards, and in various other ways. As for 'mag-flying,' that is not ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... on the eccentric rod of a steam-engine for fitting a pin in the gab-lever to break the connection ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... nothing," sais I, "but two Frenchmen ashore a jawing like mad. One darsen't, and t'other is afraid to fight, so they are taking it out in gab—they ain't worth listening to. How do they tell ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Gab[)a]li, an ancient people of Gaul, inhabiting the country of Givaudan. Their chief city was Anduitum, now Mende, G. vii. 64; they join the general confederacy of Vercingetorix, and give hostages ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... "I am going to make a balloon excursion to-morrow. I didn't mention it to the society because these fellows gab so. There'd be a great crowd round, and I'd only have been hampered. When you mean work, the less you say about it beforehand the better. That is what I have always found. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... The 'gift of the gab' is in this case, as in many others, a very great resource. A striking remark or bon mot will easily mystify the spectators, and attract their attention from what you are DOING. Hence all prestidigitators are always ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... I, wandering near the Brighton shore, Straining my very eye-balls from my Cab; First came two "ten-horse" laughs—and then a roar, "Be off, queer Chap, or I'll soon stop your gab!" ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... the scientific branches of amputation, from the scalp-lock to the heel-tap, upon Emperors, Kings, Queens, and common folks; but upon his science in the dental way, he spread and grew luminous! In short, Dr. Wangbanger had not been long in Rockbottom before his "gift of gab," and unadulterated propensity to elongate the blanket, set every body, including poor Bill Whiffletree, in a furor to have their teeth cut, filed, scraped, rasped, reset, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... war mir noch ausserdem das Werk von der groessten Bedeutung, indem es mich an das Miterlebte theils erinnerte, theils mir manches Uebersehene nun vorfuehrte, mich auf einem unerwarteten Standpunkt versetzte, mir zu erwaegen gab was ich fuer abgeschlossen hielt, und besonders auch mich befaehigte die Gegner dieses wichtigen Werkes, an denen es nicht fehlen kann, zu beurtheilen und die Einwendungen, die sie von ihrer ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... gentlemen?—he'd walk across t' valley up there to Whitcliffe and stop an hour or two, enjoyin' hisself. Well, now, as you're no doubt well aweer, Mr. Eldrick, he were a reight hand at talkin', were yon Parrawhite—he'd t' gift o' t' gab reight enough, and talked well an' all. And of course him an' me, we hed bits o' conversation at times, 'cause he come to t' house reg'lar and sometimes o' week-nights an' all. An' he tell'd me 'at he'd had a deal o' ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... in what is called the gift of gab, had no soothing words at his command, full as his heart was of compassion. And after sitting some time by the unhappy boy, patting him softly on the shoulder, he arose, and went away; concluding that his absence would be a relief to one ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... that way," she cried. "But from what you tell me I imagine that all a man needs is a front and plenty of punch. You've got the front all right with your looks and gift of gab, and I leave it to Young Brophy if you haven't got ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... elocution, eloquence; rhetoric, declamation; grandiloquence, multiloquence^; burst of eloquence; facundity^; flow of words, command of words, command of language; copia verborum [Lat.]; power of speech, gift of the gab; usus loquendi [Lat.]. speaker &c v.; spokesman; prolocutor, interlocutor; mouthpiece, Hermes; orator, oratrix^, oratress^; Demosthenes, Cicero; rhetorician; stump orator, platform orator; speechmaker, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Mr. Stephenson?" asked Sir Robert Peel, enjoying the dean's discomfiture. "Why," returned George Stephenson, "I only say this, that of all the powers above and under earth, there seems to me no power so great as the gift of the gab." This is the story. But there are facts which contradict it. The only visit paid by George Stephenson to Drayton Manor was made in the December of 1844, not the January of 1845. The guests (invited for Dec. 14, 1844), were Lord Talbot, Lord Aylesford, the Bishop ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... knapsack a' in order; His doxy lay within his arm; Wi' usquebae an' blankets warm She blinkit on her sodger; An' aye he gies the tozie drab The tither skelpin' kiss, While she held up her greedy gab, Just like an aumous dish; Ilk smack still, did crack still, Just like a cadger's whip; Then staggering an' swaggering He roar'd ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Berol, 1773, 8vo. The pithy bibliographical notes which are here and there scattered throughout this catalogue, render it of estimation in the opinion of the curious.——BALUZE. Bibliotheca Balusiana; seu catalogus librorum bibliothecae D.S. Baluzii, A. Gab. Martin, Paris, 1719, 8vo., two vols. Let any enlightened bibliographers read the eulogy upon the venerable Baluze (who died in his eighty-eighth year, and who was the great Colbert's librarian), in the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... much s'pose, hows'ever I should plen it, I could git boosted into th' House or Sennit,— Nut while the twolegged gab-machine's so plenty, 'nablin' one man to du the talk o' twenty; I'm one o' them thet finds it ruther hard To mannyfactur' wisdom by the yard, An' maysure off, accordin' to demand, The piece-goods el'kence ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... but a fool or a scoundrel would ca'c'late he could hang ontew a piece o' prop'ty that had been stole, or traded for what had been stole. Talked, of course, just t' other way from what he did when he talked to you. Truckman didn't mind his gab, but when he was satisfied the hoss he put away had been stole, he guv up Peakslow's, and the fifteen dollars to boot. Now, how in the name of seven kingdoms Peakslow's gwine to turn it about to make anything more, ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... insensitive nature, he was not the man who in new surroundings would be quick to every whisper of opinion. But he had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen—oh yes, he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab, and could never be Provost, or Bailie, or Elder, or even Chairman of the Gasworks! Oh, verra well, verra well; let Connal and Brodie and Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town's affairs (he was damned if they should manage his!)—he, for his part, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... delegation. The mouth may be opened for two purposes, viz., speech-making and swallowing; and it never appeared to us that there was any lack either of Bolting or Bellering in the House of Representatives. However notably Honorable Gentlemen may play the game either of Gab or Grab, it isn't so clear that their constituents are much benefited by these accomplishments. If all they want is an open-mouthed Member, why don't the Massachusetts men import a first-class crocodile, and send him to the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... bunch here reckoned as I, bein' gifted with the knack of gab, it fer me to speak for 'em. They're tongue- tied when there's ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... expressing an anxious desire that I should attend one of these conclaves, I consented, on ascertaining that I should be afforded the opportunity of parading the gab with which I have been gifted in an ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... shall,' replied Fagin, 'and we'll have a big-wig, Charley: one that's got the greatest gift of the gab: to carry on his defence; and he shall make a speech for himself too, if he likes; and we'll read it all in the papers—"Artful Dodger—shrieks of laughter—here the court was ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... protest very forcibly. Nine Boers were shot down; three on the British side were injured. Meanwhile the force under Major Peakman was protesting at Carter's Farm. The enemy there made a bold effort to silence Peakman. But a Maxim gun has a remarkable gift of the gab; the Major had one with him, and he let it do all the talking—with results that quickly drove the Boers beyond the range ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... talk, March," answered Remsen, "that makes a good lawyer. Brains count some. If you get where you can conduct a case to a successful result you will never miss the 'gift o' the gab.' Talking's the little end of the horn in ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... way?" Ferdy Hillman, who was walking with Hugh and Pudge, demanded angrily. "We may not be so hot, but we're a damn sight better than these guys that work in offices and mills. Jimmie Henley gives me a pain. He shoots off his gab as if he knew everything. He's got to show me where other colleges have anything on Sanford. He's a hell of a Sanford ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... you hear me? You'll be puttin' in your gab, an' me spakin'? How-an-iver, as I was sayin', our house was the first ye came to, an' they say there's a great blessin' to thim that gives, the first charity to a poor man or woman settin' out to ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... bright, but I don't know that we want brightness. A bright financier is the most dangerous man in the world. We've had enough of that already. Give me sound common sense, with just enough of the gab in a man to enable him to say what he's got to say! We don't want more than that nowadays." From which it became evident that Sir Cosmo was satisfied with the new political ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... an occasional box of salve, and in an emergency pulled teeth, in addition to the compensation which he received for what was designated privately as his "gift of gab." But the Major, nevertheless, had his dark moments, in which he contemplated the day when age should force him to retire to private life. Since the wagon containing his patent leather valise was his home, the Major ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... saloonkeeper, or turn it into a moving-picture house and burn people to death in the rotten old fire-trap. And if you don't raise your hand, when I come to you fair and square, with an honest story—if you dare to order me out of here, because you've got to gab a lot of your charity drivel to a board of directors, instead of taking the interest any real man would take in something that was real and vital and eating into the very heart of New York life, I'm going to show ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... has some winter fruit that in December grew; My mither has a silk mantil the waft gaed never through; A sparrow's horn ye soon may find, there's ane on ev'ry claw, And twa upo' the gab o' it, and ye ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... and his rough companions! What did all that gab about M'neer Kopperlith mean? There were other questions too; but—Femke had called him brother; and that was one thing which with him was as firm as ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... "Stow the gab, you big Finn! I'm through. Pay me off and help yourself to another second mate." And Matt put on his coat and whistled to the winchman to steady his slingload while he climbed out of the hold. Kjellin followed and Matt preceded him to ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... Ballarat, that he's drivin' at: what'ull you bet me there isn't a woman in the case? Fact! 'Pon my word there is. And a devilish fine woman, too!" He shut one eye and laid a finger along his nose. "You won't blow the gab?—that's why you couldn't have your parleyvoo this morning. When milady comes to town H. O.'s NON EST as long as she's here. And she with a hubby of her own, too! What 'ud our old ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... do that," said the delighted Bailie, "for it's a fact. Ye're a fine laddie and have a fearsome power o' the gab (mouth); I expect to see ye in the pulpit yet; but keeps a' it's time I was at the Black Bull, so ye micht juist slip in and tell the Rector I'm at ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the delightful stranger, "let's you and me have a talk. There's a nice cool spot under these laurels; I'll stake out Pepita, and we'll just lie off there and gab, and not care if school keeps ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... He had gone all on a sudden as cool as Dick, and nothing but his stertorous breathing hinted of the rage which filled him. 'That's it, is it? Then, if you're finished, hear me. I ain't got the gift o' the gab as free as you, but I can mek plain my meanin', p'raps. I'd rather see her a-layin' theer '(he pointed with a trembling hand at the ground between them); 'I'd rather lay her there, dead afore my eyes, an' screw her in her coffin a'terwards, ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... opinion, too," he agreed; "but a fellow needs some help sometimes, if he ain't over handy with the gift of gab." ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... could! Say, Mister, lemme put it to you on the level. You buy in with me on this Great Australian Hippodrome, a half int'rest for twelve thou cash, leave me the transportation and talent end, while you do the polite gab at the main entrance, and if we don't lug away the daily receipts in sugar barrels I'll own the boxin' kangaroos for first cousins. Why, it's the chance of a lifetime! What ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... captain stood on the carronade—first lieutenant, says he, Send all my merry men aft here, for they must list to me: I havn't the gift of the gab, my sons—because I'm bred to the sea, That ship there is a Frenchman, who means to fight with we. Odds blood, hammer and tongs, long as I've been to sea, I've fought 'gainst every odds—but I've gained ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "Stow ye gab!" growled the man Tom. "Gi'e him one for 'is nob, Jimmy." But as his nearer captor raised his cudgel, I ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... haven't you had something else then? what've you been doing with yourselves for 'long while'? what d'ye mean, coming here starved to death, making a fellow sick to look at you? Hold your gab, and eat up that pork," pushing over his tin plate, "'n' that bread," sending it after, "'n' that hard tack,—'tain't very good, but it's better'n roots, I reckon, or berries either,—'n' gobble up that coffee, double-quick, mind; and don't you open your heads to talk ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... everything to you, at the risk of being scolded, or censured, or misunderstood. Your silence and seclusion in the country, at the time when you might be in Paris enjoying all the Parliamentary honors of the Comte de l'Estorade, cause me serious anxiety. You know that your husband's "gift of gab" and unsparing zeal have won for him quite a position here, and he will doubtless receive some very good post when the session is over. Pray, do you spend your life writing him letters of advice? Numa was not so far removed ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... "an' so tha'rt th' new rector, art ta? I thowt as mich as another ud spring up as soon as th' owd un wur cut down. Tha parsens is a nettle as dunnot soon dee oot. Well, I'll leave thee to th' owd lass here. Hoo's a rare un fur gab when hoo' taks th' notion, an' I'm noan so mich i' th' humor t' argufy mysen today." And he took his pipe from the mantelpiece and strolled out with an imperturbable air. But this was not the last of the matter. The Rector went again and again, cheerfully persisting ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... against it!" And then the other would begin to pour out some tale of misery, and the man would say, "Come have a glass, and maybe that'll brace you up." And so they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently wretched-looking, or good enough at the "gab," they might have two; and if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had lived in the same city or worked at the same trade, they might sit down at a table and spend an hour ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... who had the gift of what is called "the gab," and was fond of exercising it,—"yes; it knocked me flat ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sergeant's back-flung, guarded growl, "quit your gab there! We're gettin' nigh, bhoys—here's th' brush forninst his place . . . must go ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... at them there Labour members of Parliament—a lot of b—rs what's too bloody lazy to work for their livin'! What the bloody 'ell was they before they got there? Only workin' men, the same as you and me! But they've got the gift o' the gab and—' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... day before sailing, and she reproached one of the lads for keeping bad company. "Avast, there, granny," interrupted another, who took the chiding to himself. "None of your slack, or I'll put a stopper on your gab." The old woman sprang erect. Levelling her skinny finger at the man, she screamed, "Moon cursers! You have set false beacons and wrecked ships for plunder. It was your fathers and mothers who decoyed a brig to these sands and left me childless and a widow. He who rides the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... will be all the breakfast he wants," Elizabeth's uncle said, with his meager chuckle. "David's as big a donkey as any of 'em, though he hasn't the gift of gab ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... to me about knowing," said the other, rather contemptuously. "Sure I gev in to you that he has a power o' prate, and the gift o' the gab, and all to that. I own to you that he has the-o-ry, and che-mis-thery, but he hasn't the craps. Now, the man that has the craps is the man for ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Heribrands Sohn: 30 "Das wisse Allvater oben im Himmel, Dass nimmer du Worte bis heute gewechselt Mit so nah gesipptem Mann." ... Da wand er vom Arme gewundene Ringe, Aus Kaisermnzen[5] gemacht, wie der Knig sie ihm gab, 35 Der Herrscher der Hunnen: "Dass ich um Huld dir's gebe!" Hadubrand erhob das Wort, Hildebrands Sohn: "Mit dem Ger soll man Gabe empfahen,[6] Spitze wider Spitze. Ein Spher bist du, Alter Hunne, (heimlich)[7] lockst du mich ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... be gone over an hour, children," said Curly. "Cards don't draw me like a good gab round the fire. And Diana's our ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... I'll look up this business of securities, and then if the young feller's talked straight, we'll try to work it through him, if we can get to him, and I guess we can, so long as I ain't lost the gift of the gab in twenty years. We'll be as good, sorrowing heirs as ever Jimmy Brunell ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... have you been, old lady? Where are you going? We know, we know! She's been to gab with spirits. Look at the old fool! getting ready to cry! What have you got in an envelope, old lady? A lock of hair? An eyelash from ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... is the real Hotspur did not talk much, but Shakespeare had the gift of the gab, if ever a man had, and Hotspur was a mouthpiece. It is worth noting that though the dramatist usually works himself into a character gradually, Hotspur is best presented in the earlier scenes: Shakespeare began the work with the Hotspur of history and tradition clear in his mind; ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... you don't see the matter in its proper light. You shall go to see her, and, with your honeyed tongue and the gift of the gab that nature has bestowed upon you, you will put some resignation into her soul, and leave her consoled for your departure; and if you tell her, in addition to this, that you love her, and that it is only for ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... quite a gab-wireless operating along-coast and sailors don't always keep their yawp closed after they have taken a man's money to keep still," stated Captain Wass, pointedly. "I wouldn't blame you for grabbing in. You're good-looking ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... koennen die Kinder nach unserem Willen nicht formen, So wie Gott sie uns gab, so muss man sie lieben und haben, Sie erzielen aufs best und ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... swear to be [1] True to this fraternity; That I will in all obey Rule and order of the lay. Never blow the gab or squeak; [2] Never snitch to bum or beak; [3] But religiously maintain Authority of those who reign Over Stop Hole Abbey green, [4] Be their tawny king, or queen. In their cause alone will fight; Think what they think, wrong or right; Serve them truly, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... he prepared to leave, "to look sharp if you see a forty-five-year-old damsel, with a little bright red face, all ears an' no chin, like the ace o' hearts. That'll be Miss Pickett. She'll have with her, like as not, a stout married lady, all gab an' gizzard, like a crow, an' a mouth like a new buttonhole. That'll be Mrs. Pennycook. Look out for 'em both. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... 'Stow this gab,' roared Hook, and the spokesmen were dragged back. 'You, boy,' he said, addressing John, 'you look as if you had a little pluck in you. Didst never want to ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... to, aren't they?" demanded Darrin. "And now, Danny boy, we simply must stow all gab and get busy with our lessons. We've a recitation between now and ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... we must get our business finished, and we can talk after. I am offerin' three hundred pounds, twenty acres of land, five cows, six sheep, three clockin' hens, and a clutch of ducklin's, and want to know without any palaverin' or old gab, whether or not yourself and Sir Denis ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... is there? There's time for everyone to give out their chat and their gab, and to do their business and take their ease and have a comfortable life, only the King! The beasts of the field have leave to lay themselves down in the meadow and to stretch their limbs on the green grass in the heat of the day, without being pestered and plagued ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... "Es gab aber im Alterthum noch einen erlaubten Ausweg fuer die Verbindung vorneluner Maenner mit geringen (freien und selbst unfreien) Frauen, den Concubinat, der ohne feierliches Verloebniss, ohne Brautgabe und Mitgift eingegangen wurde, mithin ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... about 'm, Tom—cut your gab an' finish 'im," and here came the clatter of chairs ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... in children who have difficulty in speaking before the first year of life, or soon after, they will be cured of stuttering and made to speak well. To a man or woman who does a good deal of talking, who has "the gift of the gab," the expression Em (ehr) is de keekelreem gut snaden "His (her) frenum has been well cut," is applied. In some parts of Low Germany the operation is performed for quite a different reason, viz., when the child's tongue cannot take hold of the mother's breast, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... hyeah his thundah, Lak a blas' f'om Gab'el's ho'n, Fu' de Lawd of hosts is mighty When he girds his ahmor on. But fu' feah some one mistakes me, I will pause right hyeah to say, Dat I 'm still a-preachin' ancient, ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... called on me to-day. One, who had shown himself very friendly, began to enlarge on the dangers of the Soudan route. I immediately observed, "God is greater than all the Touaricks." This stopped his gab, and was applauded by the rest. A Ghadamsee bawled out, "Oh! it requires a great deal—much, much, much money to go to Soudan." "How much?" I asked,—"Oh! much, much, much!" was rejoined. "What is much?" ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... on," growled Bennie. "On to more than you'll ever be. You have to empty the gab from your head to leave room ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... off and gave us warning that the Shark was coming round upon us the day Kennedy was done; and he told us how Kennedy had given the information. The gipsies and Kennedy had some quarrel besides. This Gab went to the East Indies in the same ship with your younker, and, sapperment! knew him well, though the other did not remember him. Gab kept out of his eye though, as he had served the States against England, and was a deserter to boot; and he sent us word directly, that we might ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... declared, with grim emphasis. "We must dispose of this fellow's pretensions once for all. It is preposterous that a professional baseball player and street-car conductor should aspire to become mayor of Warwick. An orator? Nonsense! Just a paltry gift of the gab. Balaam's is n't the only ass whose mouth the Lord in his inscrutable wisdom ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... mopping his forehead. "How be you, Keziah? What? You ain't all alone! Thought you'd have a cabin full of gab machines by this time. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... dangerous, and reminded him of his mother-in-law. He was a baby in public affairs, of course, as yet; but as soon as he once got going, the intensity of his convictions, together with his position, and real gift—not of the gab, like Harbinger's—but of restrained, biting oratory, was sure to bring him to the front with a bound in the present state of parties. And what were those convictions? Lord Valleys had tried to understand them, but up to the present he had failed. And this did not surprise him exactly, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said Endicott evasively, "that Michael has a great gift of gab! Would you like to stop and have ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... of a school could not manage the gab, they being exceedingly contumacious. Beat them, he dared not; so he hit upon an expedient. He made a very strong decoction of wormwood, and for a slight offence, poured one spoonful down their throats: for a more serious one, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... He's the boy! He can gab, canna' he? He's the boy to tell us what to dee!" he continued in ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... hearing, these Americans are certainly the most singular set of men I ever met with. The man who had been confined, was allowed to come from his confinement, and speak for himself. He had "the gift of the gab," and a species of forcible eloquence that some of our lawyers might envy. He would have distinguished himself in any of our town meetings; and with cultivation, might have shown in history. He, however, committed ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... his first characteristic. A spirit of lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism imbued the whole people. Young girls cut off their long golden hair to be sold for the Fatherland. Jewels were given by all who possessed them. "Gold gab ich fuer Eisen" (I gave gold for iron) became a saying based on the readiness with which the rich made sacrifices to the cause of country. And with this patriotism, and with this penury, came into every home a more intimate family life, a greater earnestness, ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... any comfort to Ivory. I guess Aaron 'n' Jake Cochrane was both of 'em more interested in savin' the sisters' souls than the brothers'! Aaron was a fine-appearin' man, and so was Jake for that matter, 'n' they both had the gift o' gab. There's nothin' like a limber tongue if you want to please the women-folks! If report says true, Aaron died of a fever out in Ohio somewheres; Cortland's the place, I b'lieve. Seems's if he hid his trail all the way from ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... your shoulder, making trouble far Haughton and his friends. And now they're going to bust you wide open and scatter your remains all over the country. They're going to fix you so that you'll never shoot off your gab about conditions in the state again. Governor—hell! you'll be a bum before that gang ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to the devil for you or any woman if I can help it; and I—but where's the good of saying IF you refuse. I know I don't express myself properly; I'm a bad hand at sentimentality; but if I had as much gab as a poet, I couldn't be any fonder of you, or think more highly ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... their necks, and seduced others to do the like, threatening some if they did not," with a thousand such; as you may read in [6572]Austin (for there were fourscore and eleven heresies in his times, besides schisms and smaller factions) Epiphanius, Alphonsus de Castro, Danaeus, Gab, Prateolus, &c. Of prophets, enthusiasts and impostors, our Ecclesiastical stories afford many examples; of Elias and Christs, as our [6573]Eudo de stellis, a Briton in King Stephen's time, that went invisible, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... man—a callant, the folk said—fu' o' book learnin' and grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi' nae leevin' experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi' his gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o' the moderates—weary fa' them; but ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hey!" roared Mr. Pawket, with sudden severity. "None of that talk here! You mind your own business, young man. Don't you give us none of that gab." He turned to Mrs. Pawket: "What did I say about that new young feller that's come to teach school? He ain't here for no good—that's what I said!" Mr. Pawket studied the face on the envelope with a sort of curious horror, concluding, "Ef she's what you say she is, see to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... damned!" cries he. "It's the Campbells, man! You'll have the whole clanjamfry of them on your back; and so will the Advocate too, poor body! It's extraordinar ye cannot see where ye stand! If there's no fair way to stop your gab, there's a foul one gaping. They can put ye in the dock, do ye no' see that?" he cried, and stabbed me with one finger in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... worthy, Vasily Karlych? Have we not labored for you? We are much satisfied with our late mistress—may she enjoy eternal life!—and we are grateful to the young Prince for thinking of us," began a red-haired peasant with a gift of gab. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... half hour or so to talk, Mr. Philander, sir?" he asked. "I've got a couple of ideas I'd like to gab with you about, that I think might speed up ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... myth, or some of the men of the Icelandic Sagas. But he is an adventurer with something strange and not altogether safe in his disposition. His youth was like that of the lubberly younger sons in the fairy stories. "They said that he was slack." Though he does not swagger like a Berserk, nor "gab" like the Paladins of Charlemagne, he is ready on provocation to boast of what he has done. The pathetic sentiment of his farewell to Hrothgar is possibly to be ascribed, in the details of its rhetoric, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... these words, every one in the whole room burst out laughing, and even dowager lady Chia broke out in laughter while she observed: "Do you listen to that mouth? I myself am looked upon as having the gift of the gab, but why is it that I can't talk in such a wise as to put down this monkey? Your mother-in-law herself doesn't dare to be so overbearing in her speech; and here you are jabber, jabber ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... You look as if you had a gift of the gab. A successful life insurance agent will make a good deal more than ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... district and San Francisco's Chinatown. For a matter of two or three blocks the street was given over to an impromptu form of public assembly, a poor man's debating ground, an open forum where any citizen with a grievance, a theory, or even merely the gift of gab might air his views and be reasonably sure of an audience. In the evening there was always a crowd. Street fakirs plied their traffic under sputtering gas torches, dispensing, along with a ready flow of glib chatter, marvellous ointments, cure-alls, soap, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... faces. A son of his, one of the children he was making faces to when my comrades entered his door, is at present a barrister, and a very rising one. He has his gift—he has not, it is true, the gift of the gab, but he has something better, he was born with a grin on his face, a quiet grin; he would not have done to grin through a collar like his father, and would never have been taken up by Hopping Ned and Biting Giles, but that grin ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... That a man of few words like him should have succeeded as a salesman was a riddle to me. I subsequently realized that his reticence accentuated an effect of solidity and helped to inspire confidence in the few words which he did utter. But at the time in question I was sure that the "gift of the gab" was an indispensable element of success in ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... my impartiality, listen—here's the sum and substance of Mr. Insarov. No talents, none, no poetry, any amount of capacity for work, an immense memory, an intellect not deep nor varied, but sound and quick, dry as dust, and force, and even the gift of the gab when the talk's about his—between ourselves let it be said—tedious Bulgaria. What! do you say I am unjust? One remark more: you'll never come to Christian names with him, and none ever has been on such terms with him. I, of course, as an artist, am hateful to him; and I am proud ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... stones and lime are slaked with thy blood—the blood of a fatherless man." "Lord God," cried Merlin, "believe not that my blood will bind your tower together. I hold them for liars who told over such a gab. Bring these prophets before me who prophesy so glibly of my blood, and liars as they are, liars I will prove them to be." The king sent for his sorcerers, and set them before Merlin. After Merlin had regarded them curiously, one by one, "Masters," ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... ambles along, saying nothing, and his fellow, the speaker who links jest to jest, saying little more, are both of them unabashed in the presence of an audience. They are devoid of all shyness. They are well aware that they have "the gift of the gab"; they rejoice in its possession; they lie in wait for occasions to display it. They have helped to give foreigners the impression that every American is an oratorical revolver, ready with a few remarks whenever any chairman may choose to pull the trigger. And yet there are Americans ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... but at the end of that time it fell, and Victor Amadeus took up his headquarters there, while Eugene marched on to Gab. He had been preceded by the Ravens, who, in imitation of their enemies, had driven the people from their houses, and had set fire to whole villages, cutting ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... off the track, turned upside down and its wheels making a thousand revolutions a minute. A kite in the air without a tail. A ship without a rudder. A clock without hands. A sermon that is all text; the incarnation of gab. Handsome, vivacious, versatile, muscular, neat, clean to the marrow. A judge of the effect of clothes, frugal in food and regular only in habits. With brains enough in his head for twenty men all pulling different ways. A man not ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... after she commenced her miserable gift of the gab, that Lyddy used to be free to admit she had a fiery tongue, for all they were such friends. And I'm all for peace myself. I guess, on the whole, ma' be she ain't the one for me, perhaps, and it is as well to look further. Why! what in the world! Well, there! what have I been thinking of? There ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Some people have the gift of gab! Some people have no tongues at all To trip them up and make ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... meanwhile, Joshua Daunton grew more and more sleek, and pale, and fat. He throve upon our miseries. He played his part at length so well, as to avoid thrashings. He possessed, in perfection, that which, in classic cockpit, is called "the gift of the gab." He was never in the wrong. Indeed, he began to get a favourite with each of the individuals over whom he was so mercilessly tyrannising, while each thought himself the tyrant. All this may seem improbable to ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... reserve of the severest old patriarch in the whole Greek Church, and completely carry him by storm; while I could only sit by and smile feebly, without being able to say a word. Great is "the gift o' gab." ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the ranch mail," began Lloyd, "an' Nick Porter was crookin' his elbow a-plenty. And talking a heap, too. In front of the Red Light he had a feller in flashy clothes with a sandy mustache, and the two was goin' it some in the gab line. I was leanin' against the front of the Red Light, at the time, a-readin' a letter, an' I couldn't help hear a little of what them two said. 'Sam'll put down a hole an' blow out a bag o' samples,' says Porter, 'an' bring 'em round about to Mac's. Turkeyfoot'll take the perfesser ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... face close to the others, his eyes burning, his breath hot in Garth's blanched face, "you queer this deal with your infernal gab ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... defensive, her chin thrust out, her features convulsed, said nothing, not having yet acquired the Paris gift of street gab. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... with Uncle Peter, though, of course, Aunt Flora didn't make good with that 'You betcher sweet!' monologue of hers. How could she? Even at that, she stands better with me than some conversational queens I know who get so busy with the gab they ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... ey hadn," replied Ashbead. "Theawst hear aw abowt it if t' will. Ey wur sent be t' abbut down t' hill to Owen o' Gab's, o' Perkin's, o' Dannel's, o' Noll's, o' Oamfrey's orchert i' Warston lone, to luk efter him. Weel, whon ey gets ower t' stoan wa', whot dun yo think ey sees! twanty or throtty poikemen stonding behint it, an they deshes at meh os thick os leet, an efore ey con ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... indulgence in its own wretchedness.' His hustings appearances would appear to have been at least marked by fluency, for Burns, his junior by eighteen years, declares his own inability to fight like Montgomerie or 'gab like Boswell.' ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... I don't see why my chance shouldn't be as good as another's. I'm not such a bad-looking chap when I'm dressed and my hair's greased. I can do tricks with cards like winking. I can ride a bit, shoot a bit—'specially pigeons—dance a bit, and make love to 'em no end. I've got the gift of the gab, I know, and I stick at nothing. That's what the girls like, and that's what will pull me through when I find the one I want. Another station, and not there yet! What a ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Bradley-Martin ball—all the preachers and teachers, editors and other able idiots pouring forth voluminous opinions. A tidal wave of printer's ink has swept across the continent, churned to atrous foam by hurricanes of lawless gibberish and wild gusts of resounding gab. The empyrean has been ripped and the tympana of the too patient gods ravished with fulsome commendation and foolish curse, showers of Parthian arrows and wholesale consignments of soft-soap darkening the sun as they hurtled hither ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... forlore:* *lost For this vengeance thou shalt have therefor, That if thou wraye* me, thou shalt be wood**." *betray **mad "Nay, Christ forbid it for his holy blood!" Quoth then this silly man; "I am no blab,* *talker Nor, though I say it, am I *lief to gab*. *fond of speech* Say what thou wilt, I shall it never tell To child or wife, by him ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... ejectment from his little dwelling the tailor would brood day and night. Folks said he was going crazed about it. None the less was Sim's distress as poignant as if the grounds for it had been more real. "Haud thy bletherin' gab," Wilson said one day; "because ye have to be cannie wi' the cream ye think ye must surely be clemm'd." Salutary as some of the Scotsman's comments may have been, it was natural that the change in his manners should excite surprise among the dalespeople. The ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... earliest period, Die Lehre (vol. iii. p. 276), published in Hamburgs Waechter, 1817 (Strodtmann, op. cit. i. 54), does seem to show it. In this the young bee, heedless of motherly advice, does not beware of the candle-flame and so "Flamme gab Flammentod." We at once recognize a familiar Persian thought, and are reminded of Goethe's fine line, "Das Lebend'ge will ich preisen das nach Flammentod sich sehnet." (Selige Sehnsucht, ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... two extracts which find a place in this collection are models of what simple dialect-poems should be. Above all, Mrs. Tweddell has the gift of humour; this is well illustrated by the song, "Dean't mak gam o' me," and also by her well-known prose story, "Awd Gab o' Steers." Her most sustained effort in verse is the poem entitled " T' Awd Cleveland Customs," in which she gives us a delightful picture of the festive seasons of the Cleveland year from " Newery Day," with its "lucky bod," to "Kessamus," ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... Lekain, and the late Monsieur Noverre. Oh, if you could only know the tricks played on poor Father Chevrel by that Monsieur Noverre, by the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and especially by Monsieur Philidor! They are a set of rascals; I know them well! They all have a gab and nice manners. Ah, ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... after gang of rebels have been sent us—Independents, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchy men, dour Scotch Whigamores—dangerous fanatics all! Many are Naseby or Worcester rogues, Ironsides who worship the memory of that devil's lieutenant, Oliver. All have the gift of the gab. We disperse them as much as possible, not allowing above five or six to any one plantation, we of the Council realizing that they form a dangerous leaven. Should there be trouble, which heaven forbid! they would be the instigators, restless mischief-makers and overturners of the established order ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... snarled, "you'd better just stow your gab. You're lucky to be here yourself, let alone botherin' your thick head about anybody else, and you can kiss the Book on that! Do you know why you ain't with them carrion?" He jerked his thumb toward the beach. "It's because Solomon ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... said the doctor; "but he is generally known by the name of Gab, which is a more convenient appellation for ordinary use. I picked him up on the road to Santa Fe. I have no great faith in his honesty; but as I wanted an attendant, I engaged him—though I strongly suspect he is a runaway, and very likely may ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... for him to gab all he wants to about his cars and things. By the time we go back to the Post to-night, if we see him again, I'll bet you he tells us what his father is worth and just how many gold chairs they ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... perceptions and conceptions, to the most indefatigable industry and perseverance, and the most accurate knowledge of the phenomena of nature as they affect his peculiar labors, this man joined an utter want of the "gift of the gab;" he could no more explain to others what he meant to do and how he meant to do it, than he could fly; and therefore the members of the House of Commons, after saying, "There is rock to be excavated ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Scott. "I'm not a preacher or a Mormon. I haven't got the gift of gab. Charleton is a good ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... Orlando, Reinaldo leading Ganelon, Oliver, Didier; two herses, one with Eldegr. & Gab., the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... show us the scold's, or gossip's, bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the vestry. It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that all moral suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote, that fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure ('t is all nonsense ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... misunderstood. Your silence and seclusion in the country, at the time when you might be in Paris enjoying all the Parliamentary honors of the Comte de l'Estorade, cause me serious anxiety. You know that your husband's "gift of gab" and unsparing zeal have won for him quite a position here, and he will doubtless receive some very good post when the session is over. Pray, do you spend your life writing him letters of advice? Numa was not so far removed from ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... ein Meer von bitteren Leiden Die Italienerin gab—Seligkeit, Seligkeit nur Laessest Du mich entzuendend, begeistert, befaendig empfinden, In der Spanierin fand Liebe und Leben ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... ich den pfaffen raten an den triuwen min, So spraeche ir haut den armen zuo: se, daz ist din, Ir zunge suenge, unde lieze mengem man daz sin, Gedaehten daz ouch si dur Got waeren almuosenaere. Do gab ir erste teil der Kuenik Konstantin, Het er gewest, daz da von uebel kuenftik waere, So het er wol underkomen des riches swaere, Wan daz si do waren kiusche, und uebermuete laere. Hagen, Minnesinger-Sammlung, Leipsic, 1838, bd. i. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... here too, as well as there. Slavery speeches are all Bunkum; so are reform speeches, too. Do you think them fellers that keep up such an everlastin' gab about representation, care one cent about the extension of franchise? Why no, not they; it's only to secure their seats to gull their constituents, to get a name. Do you think them goneys that make such a touss about the Arms' Bill, care about the Irish? No, not they; they want Irish ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... in argument. Time after time I've missed scoring a point because the other man has had the gift of the gab and I haven't. Oh, I believe in ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... later, while members of the squadron were engaged in the usual after mess gab fest, an orderly entered with a summons for McGee and Larkin to report to Major Cowan. Larkin had just that day secured a misfitting regulation issue uniform from the Supply Officer, Robinson, and the group had been having a great deal of fun at ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... shifted his quid and spoke. "Tell ye what 'tis, all of ye," said he—"it's mighty easy talkin' an' givin' away gab instead of dollars. I'll bet ye anything ye'll put up that there ain't one of ye out of the whole damned lot that 'ain't got any money that would give it away ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his forehead. "How be you, Keziah? What? You ain't all alone! Thought you'd have a cabin full of gab machines by this time. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... many tongues, (All over tongues, like rumor) This tributary verse belongs To paint his learned humor. All kinds of gab he knows, I wis, From Latin down to Scottish— As fluent as a parrot is, But far more Polly-glottish. No grammar too abstruse he meets, However dark and verby; He gossips Greek about the streets And often Russ—in urbe. Strange tongues—whate'er you do them ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... last dresses, And, by some devilish cantraip sleight, Each in its cauld hand held a light: By which heroic Tam was able To note, upon the haly table, A murderer's banes, in gibbet-airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns; A thief, new-cutted frae a rape— Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted; Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled; A knife a father's throat had mangled, Whom, his ain son o' life bereft— The grey-hairs yet stack to the heft; Wi' mair of horrible and awfu', Which even ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... was by far too long-headed and witty for him. After now in vain endeavouring to find something to say, the old man buttoned up his coat in a great passion, and looking fiercely at Varney, he said,—"I don't pretend to a gift of the gab. D—n me, it ain't one of my peculiarities; but though you may talk me down, you ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... responded, slightly impatient. "You girls have no right to treat us this way. We brought you with us to give you a good time, and it seems that you might respect our wishes a little. No one can catch fish with a regular gab-fest going on on ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... Vasily Karlych? Have we not labored for you? We are much satisfied with our late mistress—may she enjoy eternal life!—and we are grateful to the young Prince for thinking of us," began a red-haired peasant with a gift of gab. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... right, I suppose, for him to gab all he wants to about his cars and things. By the time we go back to the Post to-night, if we see him again, I'll bet you he tells us what his father is worth and just how many gold chairs they have ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... 'there's some hev a talent fer sawin' wood, but we don't count that. It's war an' speakin', they are the two great talents of the Yankee. But his greatest talent is the gift o' gab. Give him a chance t' talk it over with his enemy an' he'll lick 'im without a fight. An' when his enemy is another Yankee—why, they both git licked, jest as it was in the case of the man thet sold me lightnin' rods. He was ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... devil haven't you had something else then? what've you been doing with yourselves for 'long while'? what d'ye mean, coming here starved to death, making a fellow sick to look at you? Hold your gab, and eat up that pork," pushing over his tin plate, "'n' that bread," sending it after, "'n' that hard tack,—'tain't very good, but it's better'n roots, I reckon, or berries either,—'n' gobble up ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... labor unions, and the strikes, and more trouble. These labor unions were started by a couple of smart, yellow niggers from Chaldea, one of them a sort of lay preacher, a fellow with a lot of gab. Before I got wind of them, they had gone so far it was almost impossible to squelch them. First I tried conciliation, but it didn't work a bit. They made the craziest demands you ever heard of—a holiday every ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... mouth. Gift of the gab; a facility of speech, nimble tongued eloquence. To blow the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... we have enough trouble with our telephone even with Carrie to supply discretion for the whole town. Party lines and rubber ears are the source of all our woe. You know what a party line is, of course. It's a line on which you can have a party and gab merrily back and forth for forty minutes, while some other subscriber is wildly dancing with impatience. Most of our lines have four subscribers apiece, and it's just as hard to live in friendliness on a party line as it is for four families to get along good-naturedly ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... know who I mean. Why, she's even taught me to cut out slang. Say, Bobby, I didn't know how much like a rough-neck I used to talk. I never opened my yawp but what I spilled a line of fricasseed gab so twisted and frazzled and shredded you could use it to stuff sofa-cushions; but now I've handed that string of talk the screw number. No more slang for your ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... 'I were as young and as supple as you, and had the gift o' the gab as weel.'"—Heart ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... with him. He sees him drunk, gets into the cab with him, and tries to get what he wants. The dead man resists, upon which the other kills him by means of the chloroform which he had with him, and being afraid that the Gab will stop, and he will be found out, snatches what he wants out of the pocket so quickly that he tears the waistcoat and then makes off. That's clear enough, but the question is, What was it he wanted? A case with jewels? No! It could not have been anything so bulky, or the dead man ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... don't act up to it theirselves, though. Look at them there Labour members of Parliament—a lot of b—rs what's too bloody lazy to work for their livin'! What the bloody 'ell was they before they got there? Only workin' men, the same as you and me! But they've got the gift o' the gab and—' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... die heil'gen zehn Gebot', Die uns gab unser Herre Gott Durch Mosen, seinen Diener treu, Hoch auf dem Berg ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... will, stranger," he said sadly, "with that gift o' gab o' yourn." He turned without another word or nod of good-by and started back up the creek whence ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... flock together over the same carcass. "Oh, I have heard something rich! Sit down and let me tell you all about it." And the first guffaw increases the gathering, and it has to be told all over again, and as they separate each carries a spark from the altar of Gab to some other circle, until from the coal-heaver in the cellar to the maid in the top room of the garret all are aware of the defamation, and that evening all who leave the house will bear it to other houses, until autumnal fires ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... to save that covey's life, you'd better make him hold his gab, and get him off the ground as soon as possible," an English soldier said, stopping for a moment to examine our old companion's wound, and then passing on with as much indifference as it ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... canvas. Honest, we could! Say, Mister, lemme put it to you on the level. You buy in with me on this Great Australian Hippodrome, a half int'rest for twelve thou cash, leave me the transportation and talent end, while you do the polite gab at the main entrance, and if we don't lug away the daily receipts in sugar barrels I'll own the boxin' kangaroos for first cousins. Why, it's the chance of a lifetime! What do you ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... s'pose, hows'ever I should plen it, I could git boosted into th' House or Sennit,— Nut while the twolegged gab-machine's so plenty, 'nablin' one man to du the talk o' twenty; I'm one o' them thet finds it ruther hard To mannyfactur' wisdom by the yard, An' maysure off, accordin' to demand, The piece-goods el'kence that I keep on hand, The same ole pattern runnin' thru an' thru, An' nothin' but the customer ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... fellow's pretensions once for all. It is preposterous that a professional baseball player and street-car conductor should aspire to become mayor of Warwick. An orator? Nonsense! Just a paltry gift of the gab. Balaam's is n't the only ass whose mouth the Lord in his inscrutable wisdom has seen fit ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... "Gibbery, gibbery gab, The women had a confab And demanded the rights To wear the tights. Gibbery, gibbery ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... wants, must choose. Them ez hez, must lose. Them ez knows, won't blab. Them ez guesses, will gab. Them ez borrows, sorrows. Them ez lends, spends. Them ez gives, lives. Them ez keeps dark, is deep. Them ez kin earn; kin keep. Them ez aims, hits. Them ez hez, gits. Them ez waits, win. Them ez ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Tom Ross had sech a gift o' gab," said Shif'less Sol. "He stirs me all up, he makes me want to hev some lady buy a ship fur me an' start me out to discoverin' continents. Do you think, Paul, thar's any lady who would sell her earrings an' finger rings fur me ez that Spanish one ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... commenced her miserable gift of the gab, that Lyddy used to be free to admit she had a fiery tongue, for all they were such friends. And I'm all for peace myself. I guess, on the whole, ma' be she ain't the one for me, perhaps, and it is as well to look ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... smoked glass, to watch her sail 400 Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps Of one another's ears between their teeth, To catch the coming hail of comfits in. You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab, Make them a solemn speech to this effect: 405 I go to put in readiness the feast Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine, Where, for more glory, let the ceremony Take place of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... father has some winter fruit that in December grew; My mither has a silk mantil the waft gaed never through; A sparrow's horn ye soon may find, there's ane on ev'ry claw, And twa upo' the gab o' it, and ye ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... this gab," Mr. Gibney roared. "My patience is exhausted. I'm dog-tired an' I'm goin' to have peace if I have to fight for it. Me an' Bart stays aboard the steamer Maggie until she gets back to Frisco town or until we're hove overboard in the interim by the weight of numbers. An' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... to be non-commissioned officer! That everlasting chatterer, who only owed it to his gift of the gab that he had been able to boast of himself as confidential agent ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... remark," said his mother, "that fools spake mighty sinsible betimes; but their wisdom all goes with their gab. Why didn't you take a betther grip of your luck when you had it? You're wishing you wor a gintleman, and yet when you had the best part of a gintleman (the property, I mane) put into your way, you let it slip through your fingers; ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... de batalla campal! Oh! (Prestando atencin, como si oyese algn ruido, y mirando otra vez muy sobresaltado hacia la puerta del foro.) No, nada. Se me ha colgado de los faldones del gabn..., de la corbata, que si tira algo ms me ahoga. ...
— Ms vale maa que fuerza • Manuel Tamayo y Baus
... roared Mr. Pawket, with sudden severity. "None of that talk here! You mind your own business, young man. Don't you give us none of that gab." He turned to Mrs. Pawket: "What did I say about that new young feller that's come to teach school? He ain't here for no good—that's what I said!" Mr. Pawket studied the face on the envelope with a sort of curious ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... light, - By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murderer's banes in gibbet airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns; A thief, new-cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape; {150g} Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted: Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted; A garter, which a babe had strangled; A knife, a father's throat had mangled, Whom his ain son o' life bereft, The grey ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... exaggeration to say that since the tremendous enlargement of the American colony, the whole pace of London drawing-room talk has enormously improved. We British are not by nature a sprightly and speechful race, with the gift of gay gab, but under the American woman's cheerful influence we are ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... scalp-lock to the heel-tap, upon Emperors, Kings, Queens, and common folks; but upon his science in the dental way, he spread and grew luminous! In short, Dr. Wangbanger had not been long in Rockbottom before his "gift of gab," and unadulterated propensity to elongate the blanket, set every body, including poor Bill Whiffletree, in a furor to have their teeth cut, filed, scraped, rasped, reset, dug ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... for you. Look here, I'll give you the tip: this move, you know, to Ballarat, that he's drivin' at: what'ull you bet me there isn't a woman in the case? Fact! 'Pon my word there is. And a devilish fine woman, too!" He shut one eye and laid a finger along his nose. "You won't blow the gab?—that's why you couldn't have your parleyvoo this morning. When milady comes to town H. O.'s NON EST as long as she's here. And she with a hubby of her own, too! What 'ud our old pa ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... and lowering herself upon the kitchen couch, the springs of which squeaked complainingly under her weight, "Wa-al, 'tain't scurcely wuth doin' the dishes now. Jason'll stop and gab 'ith some one. It takes him ferever an' a day ter git a pail o' water. You go on about your play, Niece Janice. I'll git 'em done ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... within the Gab-ri[1] wild, A seer is resting on a rock; exiled By his own will from all the haunts of men, Beside a pool within a rocky glen He sits; a turban rests upon his brow, And meets the lengthened beard of whitest snow. This morn an omen comes before his eyes, And ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... rouse him up, and see if we could bring any thing out of him by speering cross-questions. Tommy and Benjie trembled from top to toe, like aspen leaves, but fient a word could we make common sense of at all. I wonder who educates these foreign creatures? it was in vain to follow him, for he just gab-gabbled away, like one of the stone masons at the Tower of Babel. At first I was completely bamboozled, and almost dung stupid, though I kent one word of French which I wanted to put to him, so I cried through, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... The crew of a certain brig came to see her on the day before sailing, and she reproached one of the lads for keeping bad company. "Avast, there, granny," interrupted another, who took the chiding to himself. "None of your slack, or I'll put a stopper on your gab." The old woman sprang erect. Levelling her skinny finger at the man, she screamed, "Moon cursers! You have set false beacons and wrecked ships for plunder. It was your fathers and mothers who decoyed a brig to these sands and left me childless and a widow. He who rides the pale horse ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... began coming to my place of a Sunday evenin', d'ye see, gentlemen?—he'd walk across t' valley up there to Whitcliffe and stop an hour or two, enjoyin' hisself. Well, now, as you're no doubt well aweer, Mr. Eldrick, he were a reight hand at talkin', were yon Parrawhite—he'd t' gift o' t' gab reight enough, and talked well an' all. And of course him an' me, we hed bits o' conversation at times, 'cause he come to t' house reg'lar and sometimes o' week-nights an' all. An' he tell'd me 'at he'd had a deal o' experience i' racin' matters—whether it were true ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... utter collapse they've been building their books on. How now, my spry veteran? Only a boy On a three-legged crock? Well, I own you are older, And watching your riding's a thing to enjoy; There isn't a Jock who is defter and bolder; Your power, authority, eloquence—yes, For your gift of the gab is a caution—are splendid; But—the youngster may teach you a lesson, I guess, As to judgment of pace ere ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... that way," the captain warned, "so jist shet yer dirty mouths. I've heard sich gab before, and it doesn't jar me ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... de lan' shall hyeah his thundah, Lak a blas' f'om Gab'el's ho'n, Fu' de Lawd of hosts is mighty When he girds his ahmor on. But fu' feah some one mistakes me, I will pause right hyeah to say, Dat I 'm still a-preachin' ancient, I ain't ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... deficient in what is called the gift of gab, had no soothing words at his command, full as his heart was of compassion. And after sitting some time by the unhappy boy, patting him softly on the shoulder, he arose, and went away; concluding that his absence would be a relief to one ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... born leader. Of course a leader must have the gift of gab. She's a great talker, isn't she? Takes the conversation right into her own hands and keeps it ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... den Wilhelm Meister uebersetzt und gab sodann vorliegendes Leben Schillers im ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... demeanor of the Evangelicals, especially of Melanchthon and Brueck, had made it impossible to rouse the Emperor to such a degree as the exigency of the case demanded. (Plitt, 63.) Luther wrote: "For that shameless gab and bloodthirsty sophist, Doctor Eck, one of their chief advisers, publicly declared in the presence of our people that if the Emperor had followed the resolution made at Bononia, and, immediately on entering Germany, had courageously ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... experiences were trying and some were amusing. Discussion was often relieved by rare bits of eloquence and surprising use of language. Pronunciation was frequently original and unprecedented. Amazing ignorance was unconcealed and the gift of gab was unrestrained. Nothing quite equaled in fatal facility a progress report made by a former member soon after his debut: "We think we shall soon be able to bring chaos out of the present disorder, now existing." ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... as if you had a gift of the gab. A successful life insurance agent will make a good deal more than ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... cam first into Ba'weary, he was still a young man—a callant, the folk said—fu' o' book learnin' and grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi' nae leevin' experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi' his gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o' the moderates—weary fa' them; but ill things are like guid—they baith come bit ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that," said the delighted Bailie, "for it's a fact. Ye're a fine laddie and have a fearsome power o' the gab (mouth); I expect to see ye in the pulpit yet; but keeps a' it's time I was at the Black Bull, so ye micht juist slip in and tell the Rector I'm at ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... jaw with your scarf, Jim,' said Murgatroyd. 'When Venables comes he will soon find a way to check his gab. Yes,' he continued, looking at the back of my papers, 'it is marked, as you say, "From James the Second of England, known lately as the Duke of Monmouth, to Henry Duke of Beaufort, President of Wales, by the hand of Captain Micah Clarke, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you assassinate,— Murder's the word for you, Barney McGee! Bold when they're sunny and smooth when they're showery,— Oh, but the style of you, fluent and flowery! Chesterfield's way, with a touch of the Bowery! How would they silence you, Barney machree? Naught can your gab allay, Learned as Rabelais (You in his abbey lay Once on the spree). Here's to the smile of you, (Oh, but the guile of you!) And a long while of you, ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... fool or a scoundrel would ca'c'late he could hang ontew a piece o' prop'ty that had been stole, or traded for what had been stole. Talked, of course, just t' other way from what he did when he talked to you. Truckman didn't mind his gab, but when he was satisfied the hoss he put away had been stole, he guv up Peakslow's, and the fifteen dollars to boot. Now, how in the name of seven kingdoms Peakslow's gwine to turn it about to make anything more, beats all ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... anxious desire that I should attend one of these conclaves, I consented, on ascertaining that I should be afforded the opportunity of parading the gab with which I have been gifted in an ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... him, I vow and swear," cried the ruffian, in a piteous tone; for bullies are almost always cravens; "he was lent to me by Johny Groves—some call him another name; but that don't signify.—He lent him to me, to come up here, to stop your gab with the old woman, Mother Danty; and mayhap to give you a good basting into the bargain. But I didn't steal the horse no how; and there he is, running away over the hill-side, and I shall never catch him; for this cursed fellow has well nigh ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... The bunch here reckoned as I, bein' gifted with the knack of gab, it fer me to speak for 'em. They're tongue- tied when there's a woman on ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... Noverre. Oh, if you could only know the tricks played on poor Father Chevrel by that Monsieur Noverre, by the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and especially by Monsieur Philidor! They are a set of rascals; I know them well! They all have a gab and nice manners. ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... and stow the gab," called Buckrow from the head of the companion, but in suppressed tones. "Keep yer lip shut, the afterguards are on deck here and I don't know where Thirkle is. Slip along and give us a hand with a knife or a gun. Looks like we'll ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... circumstance of such a state of mind is that it rejects consolation; it feels an indulgence in its own wretchedness.' His hustings appearances would appear to have been at least marked by fluency, for Burns, his junior by eighteen years, declares his own inability to fight like Montgomerie or 'gab like Boswell.' ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... not do so; you don't see the matter in its proper light. You shall go to see her, and, with your honeyed tongue and the gift of the gab that nature has bestowed upon you, you will put some resignation into her soul, and leave her consoled for your departure; and if you tell her, in addition to this, that you love her, and that it is only for the sake of ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... five minutes, with the assistance of a little vodka, he would break down the ceremonious reserve of the severest old patriarch in the whole Greek Church, and completely carry him by storm; while I could only sit by and smile feebly, without being able to say a word. Great is "the gift o' gab." ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... snakes which bromide won't make chase themselves back to the woods,' says he as he plunked 'em down on the table. 'I ain't got your gift of gab, but money talks and I've got this pile to say that you can't tell the truth to save your neck. Just stack up your pile alongside of that and then trot out your snakelet.' I was feeling pretty sore ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... he had taken too much to drink,—which he did, after the Danish fashion, far oftener than the rest of Baldwin's men,—he grew rude, boastful, quarrelsome. He would chant his own doughty deeds, and "gab," as the Norman word was, in painful earnest, while they gabbed only in sport, and outvied each other in impossible fanfaronades, simply to laugh down a fashion which was held inconsistent with the modesty of a true knight. Bitter it was to her to hear him announcing ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... The master of a school could not manage the gab, they being exceedingly contumacious. Beat them, he dared not; so he hit upon an expedient. He made a very strong decoction of wormwood, and for a slight offence, poured one spoonful down their throats: for a more serious one, he made ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... protested Lucius, holding back. "What I'm scared of is I'll murder one or two of these pesky women—that Banks woman, fer instance. It's gittin' so I can't stick my nose outside the door 'thout her droppin' everything an' runnin' out to gab with me. I don't get a minute's privacy. If it ain't one, it's another. You'd think I was Napoleon Boneparte, the way them women act. I don't ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... on the defensive, her chin thrust out, her features convulsed, said nothing, not having yet acquired the Paris gift of street gab. The ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... on the carronade—first lieutenant, says he, Send all my merry men aft here, for they must list to me; I haven't the gift of the gab, my sons—because I'm bred to the sea; That ship there is a Frenchman, who means ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... preacher—to talk glibly, and with proper unction, in the stereotype phraseology of the profession—was no difficult matter to a clever young lawyer of the West, having a due share of the gift of gab, and almost as profoundly familiar with scripture quotation as Henry Clay himself. But there was something awkward in the idea of detection, and he was not unaware of those summary dangers which are likely ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... get that way?" Ferdy Hillman, who was walking with Hugh and Pudge, demanded angrily. "We may not be so hot, but we're a damn sight better than these guys that work in offices and mills. Jimmie Henley gives me a pain. He shoots off his gab as if he knew everything. He's got to show me where other colleges have anything on Sanford. He's a hell of ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... blessed restoration, gang after gang of rebels have been sent us—Independents, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchy men, dour Scotch Whigamores—dangerous fanatics all! Many are Naseby or Worcester rogues, Ironsides who worship the memory of that devil's lieutenant, Oliver. All have the gift of the gab. We disperse them as much as possible, not allowing above five or six to any one plantation, we of the Council realizing that they form a dangerous leaven. Should there be trouble, which heaven forbid! they would be ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... trust they will, by all Christian means and measures, support Her Majesty's Government in Canada. May the Holy and Blessed God give us peace, and good government in our day. I have been a little vexed with the travelling gab of one of our own former friends, who is pleased to inform the people that you were the sole cause of the late rebellion. I must tell him, the first time I meet with him, that the meaning of his sing-song is not understood, and that if he will explain his hidden meaning, it will be, that he is ready ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the Ancient, "shut thy mouth, lad hold thy gab an' give thy poor old feyther a chance—I be tellin' 'im so fast as I can! As I was a-sayin', Peter like a fur'us lion were Jarge wi' they keepers—eight on 'em, Peter—like dogs, a-growlin' an' growlin', an' leapin', and worryin' all round ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... not I that am to blame, but our fine gentleman of a supercargo. He is just like any mortal: he has taken a drink of their Lethe up there, and forgotten to come back to us. He'll be wrestling with the lads, or playing on his lyre, or giving his precious gift of the gab a good airing; or he's off after plunder, the rascal, for what I know: 'tis all in the day's work with him. He is getting too independent: he ought to remember that he belongs to us, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Mr. Hew Binnen made his Latin lesson, de scientia media, and sustenit the disputt thairupon, and was approven in both. The following ministers were present, Mr. Patrik Gillespie, Mr. David Dicksone, Doctor Jhone Strang, Mr. Zach. Boyde, Mr. George Young, Mr. Hew Blair, Mr. Gab. Conyngham, Mr. David Benett, Mr. Matthew Mackill. Mr. Wm. Young, Mr. Arch. Dennestoune, Mr. Jhone Carstaires, Mr. James Hamilton." The presbytery "ordaines Mr. Hugh Binnen to make ye exercise this daye fyfteen dayes, and the rest of his tryels to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... as he said himself, 'like a horse;' spent his mornings in the schools, his afternoons in the cottages; preached four or five extempore sermons every week to overflowing congregations; took the lead, by virtue of the 'gift of the gab,' at all 'religious' meetings for ten miles round; and really did a great deal of good in his way. He had an unblushing candour about his own worldly ambition, with a tremendous brogue; and prided himself on exaggerating deliberately both ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... collegit E.F. Badenhaupt, Berol, 1773, 8vo. The pithy bibliographical notes which are here and there scattered throughout this catalogue, render it of estimation in the opinion of the curious.——BALUZE. Bibliotheca Balusiana; seu catalogus librorum bibliothecae D.S. Baluzii, A. Gab. Martin, Paris, 1719, 8vo., two vols. Let any enlightened bibliographers read the eulogy upon the venerable Baluze (who died in his eighty-eighth year, and who was the great Colbert's librarian), in the preface of the Bibl. Colbertina (vide post), and in the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... property to a saloonkeeper, or turn it into a moving-picture house and burn people to death in the rotten old fire-trap. And if you don't raise your hand, when I come to you fair and square, with an honest story—if you dare to order me out of here, because you've got to gab a lot of your charity drivel to a board of directors, instead of taking the interest any real man would take in something that was real and vital and eating into the very heart of New York life, I'm going ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... useter flosserfize About the ocean an' the skies; An' gab an' gas f'um morn till noon About the other side the moon; An' 'bout the natur of the place Ten miles beyend the end of space. An' if his wife she'd ask the crank Ef he wouldn't kinder try to yank Hisself out-doors an' git some wood To make her kitchen fire good, So she c'd bake her beans ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... said uncle Jacob, as he saw the dominie retire; "you have beaten the minister holler. Ha! ha! ha! I am really glad you silenced his gab, for he is 'tarnally blabbing about his religion; though I think he hain't much of it himself, except counterfeit stuff, like a bad bill,—ha! ha!—that ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... Literarischer Sansculottismus. See above, p. 4. Regarding Lessing he made this remark to Eckermann (February 7th, 1827): "Bedauert doch den ausserordentlichen Menschen, dass er in einer so erbaermlichen Zeit leben musste, die ihm keine bessern Stoffe gab, als in seinen ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... thou glib of gab and fair of face, ignore not my case and men's fear of me; and well thou weetest how I assault the strongly walled place and uproot the vines from base. Wherefore, do as I bid thee, and stand before me even as the thrall standeth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... hand first, and I think I can promise that the day-boys will shake it. Bah! I know I can never talk you round; it's no good attempting to. I'm not in a comic mood, and can't make you laugh, like Cadbury, and I haven't Vickers's gift of the gab. But wasn't last Friday's lesson enough? Wasn't ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... has to toil at that and really to know things. But a Prime Minister should never go beyond generalities about commerce, agriculture, peace, and general philanthropy. Of course he should have the gift of the gab, and that Plantagenet hasn't got. He never wants to say anything unless he has got something to say. I could do a Mansion ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... sketches, and the two extracts which find a place in this collection are models of what simple dialect-poems should be. Above all, Mrs. Tweddell has the gift of humour; this is well illustrated by the song, "Dean't mak gam o' me," and also by her well-known prose story, "Awd Gab o' Steers." Her most sustained effort in verse is the poem entitled " T' Awd Cleveland Customs," in which she gives us a delightful picture of the festive seasons of the Cleveland year from " Newery Day," with its "lucky bod," to "Kessamus," with ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... Endicott evasively, "that Michael has a great gift of gab! Would you like to stop and ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... about knowing," said the other, rather contemptuously. "Sure I gev in to you that he has a power o' prate, and the gift o' the gab, and all to that. I own to you that he has the-o-ry, and che-mis-thery, but he hasn't the craps. Now, the man that has the craps is the man ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... every one in the whole room burst out laughing, and even dowager lady Chia broke out in laughter while she observed: "Do you listen to that mouth? I myself am looked upon as having the gift of the gab, but why is it that I can't talk in such a wise as to put down this monkey? Your mother-in-law herself doesn't dare to be so overbearing in her speech; and here you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... limelight and blank verse. He had the "gift of the gab" all right. Old Cassius referred to it later on in one of those "words-before-blows" barneys they had on the battlefield where they hurt each other a damned sight more with their tongues than they did ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... talked 'im over. Those Frenchies, I've 'eard it said, 'ave got the gift of gab—and Mr. 'Empseed 'ere will tell you 'ow it is that they just twist some people round their ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... race he possessed the gift of gab, as the silver in the tongue and the gold in the full or thick-lipped mouth are oftentimes contemptuously characterized. And like many of his race he was a devoted student of the Bible to whose interpretation he brought like many other Bible students, not confined to the Negro ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... should have succeeded as a salesman was a riddle to me. I subsequently realized that his reticence accentuated an effect of solidity and helped to inspire confidence in the few words which he did utter. But at the time in question I was sure that the "gift of the gab" was an indispensable element ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... good speaker, in the south and southwest, is to be everything. Eloquence implies wisdom—at least all the wisdom which is supposed to be necessary in making lawyers and law-makers—a precious small modicum of a material by no means precious. I was supposed to have the gift of the gab in moderate perfection, and my hearers were indulgent. My name obtained circulation, and, in a short time, I discovered that, in a professional as well as personal point of view, I had no reason to regret the change of residence which I had made. Business ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the veracity of which no one present could doubt, they were entertained for some time by their loquacious Host, who, having the gift of the gab,{1} would probably have continued long in the same strain of important information; when dinner was placed on the table, and they fell to with good appetites, seeming almost to have made use of the customary grace ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... good place to look for a reward for a fugitive from justice," snapped the big fellow. "Now cut out the gab!" ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... good deal in him, I believe! I dare say he's not very bright, but I don't know that we want brightness. A bright financier is the most dangerous man in the world. We've had enough of that already. Give me sound common sense, with just enough of the gab in a man to enable him to say what he's got to say! We don't want more than that nowadays." From which it became evident that Sir Cosmo was satisfied with the new political ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... his rough companions! What did all that gab about M'neer Kopperlith mean? There were other questions too; but—Femke had called him brother; and that was one thing which with him was as firm as the ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... with the arrow-heads hired a chap with a gift of the gab to tell the others how wrong it was to want things someone else had collared. That was the first lesson in morality, and the preacher, seeing there was money in the game, started the first priesthood. Yes, morality owes its existence to the fact of the well-to-do ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... got into you?" he hissed. "You're cross-grained lately. You're sore. Any more of this and I'll swear you're a disorganizer.... Now, Budd, you keep your mouth shut. And you, Cleve, you pay no heed to Budd if he does gab.... We're in bad and all the men have chips on their shoulders. We've got to stop fighting ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... old lady? Where are you going? We know, we know! She's been to gab with spirits. Look at the old fool! getting ready to cry! What have you got in an envelope, old lady? A lock of hair? An eyelash from ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... the excitement had subsided, Gab Rauchad rose slowly to his feet. He was a wiry little half-breed, with a cunning, fox-like face. He spoke in French, and he addressed himself chiefly to his own people. He took them back to the expulsion of ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... brave boy. I've heard of what you did, an' you don't talk much. I'm glad of that. I can do all the talkin' that's needed by the three of us. The Lord created me with a love of gab." ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... say, any one respectable—who does. They came to me to lend my name. 'No,' I said, 'gentlemen; I feel much honoured, but I do not like extremes;' and they went away. They are making a little more noise now, because they have got a man who has the gift of the gab, and the people like to go and hear him speak. But as I said to a friend of mine, who seemed half inclined to join them, 'Well; if I did anything of that sort, I would be led by a Lancashire lad. They have got a foreigner to lead them, a fellow out of Berkshire; an agitator—and only ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... March," answered Remsen, "that makes a good lawyer. Brains count some. If you get where you can conduct a case to a successful result you will never miss the 'gift o' the gab.' Talking's the little end of the horn in ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... that my tower may never stand tall, unless its stones and lime are slaked with thy blood—the blood of a fatherless man." "Lord God," cried Merlin, "believe not that my blood will bind your tower together. I hold them for liars who told over such a gab. Bring these prophets before me who prophesy so glibly of my blood, and liars as they are, liars I will prove them to be." The king sent for his sorcerers, and set them before Merlin. After Merlin had regarded them curiously, one ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... "Why, Uncle Cornelius was the hit of the season with Uncle Peter, though, of course, Aunt Flora didn't make good with that 'You betcher sweet!' monologue of hers. How could she? Even at that, she stands better with me than some conversational queens I know who get so busy with the gab they make ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... replied Fagin, 'and we'll have a big-wig, Charley: one that's got the greatest gift of the gab: to carry on his defence; and he shall make a speech for himself too, if he likes; and we'll read it all in the papers—"Artful Dodger—shrieks of laughter—here the court ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... It's the gift of the gab, nothing more and nothing less. What has your knack of fine talking to do with the truth, any more than playing the organ has? I've never been in your church; but I've been to your political meetings; and I've seen you do what's called rousing the meeting to enthusiasm: that is, you excited them ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... him to register his protest very forcibly. Nine Boers were shot down; three on the British side were injured. Meanwhile the force under Major Peakman was protesting at Carter's Farm. The enemy there made a bold effort to silence Peakman. But a Maxim gun has a remarkable gift of the gab; the Major had one with him, and he let it do all the talking—with results that quickly drove the Boers beyond the range of ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... sure to do that," said the delighted Bailie, "for it's a fact. Ye're a fine laddie and have a fearsome power o' the gab (mouth); I expect to see ye in the pulpit yet; but keeps a' it's time I was at the Black Bull, so ye micht juist slip in and tell the Rector I'm at the ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... "you'd better just stow your gab. You're lucky to be here yourself, let alone botherin' your thick head about anybody else, and you can kiss the Book on that! Do you know why you ain't with them carrion?" He jerked his thumb toward the beach. "It's because Solomon Anderson's your friend. Thrackles ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to my work. It is not I that am to blame, but our fine gentleman of a supercargo. He is just like any mortal: he has taken a drink of their Lethe up there, and forgotten to come back to us. He'll be wrestling with the lads, or playing on his lyre, or giving his precious gift of the gab a good airing; or he's off after plunder, the rascal, for what I know: 'tis all in the day's work with him. He is getting too independent: he ought to remember that he belongs to us, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... lan' shall hyeah his thundah, Lak a blas' f'om Gab'el's ho'n, Fu' de Lawd of hosts is mighty When he girds his ahmor on. But fu' feah some one mistakes me, I will pause right hyeah to say, Dat I 'm still a-preachin' ancient, I ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... dab! Some people have the gift of gab! Some people have no tongues at all To trip them up ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... entitled Literarischer Sansculottismus. See above, p. 4. Regarding Lessing he made this remark to Eckermann (February 7th, 1827): "Bedauert doch den ausserordentlichen Menschen, dass er in einer so erbaermlichen Zeit leben musste, die ihm keine bessern Stoffe gab, als in ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... ladies, we must get our business finished, and we can talk after. I am offerin' three hundred pounds, twenty acres of land, five cows, six sheep, three clockin' hens, and a clutch of ducklin's, and want to know without any palaverin' or old gab, whether or not yourself and Sir Denis ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... she commenced her miserable gift of the gab, that Lyddy used to be free to admit she had a fiery tongue, for all they were such friends. And I'm all for peace myself. I guess, on the whole, ma' be she ain't the one for me, perhaps, and it is as well to look further. Why! what in the world! Well, there! what have I been thinking of? ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... young man—a callant, the folk said—fu' o' book learnin' and grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi' nae leevin' experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi' his gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o' the moderates—weary fa' ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... not so good a game as it used to be. It means more particularly, swindling a greenhorn out of his cash by the mere gift of the gab. You know if it were not for the flats, how could the sharps live? You can 'mag' a man at any time you are playing cards or at billiards, and in various other ways. As for 'mag-flying,' that is not good for much. You have seen those blokes at fairs and races, throwing up coppers, or playing at ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... an hour, children," said Curly. "Cards don't draw me like a good gab round the fire. And Diana's our ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... you been, old lady? Where are you going? We know, we know! She's been to gab with spirits. Look at the old fool! getting ready to cry! What have you got in an envelope, old lady? A lock of hair? ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the vestry. It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that all moral suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote, that fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure ('t is all nonsense to try to ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... noch ausserdem das Werk von der groessten Bedeutung, indem es mich an das Miterlebte theils erinnerte, theils mir manches Uebersehene nun vorfuehrte, mich auf einem unerwarteten Standpunkt versetzte, mir zu erwaegen gab was ich fuer abgeschlossen hielt, und besonders auch mich befaehigte die Gegner dieses wichtigen Werkes, an denen es nicht fehlen kann, zu beurtheilen und die Einwendungen, die sie von ihrer Seite ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... precious brother," said Graham, irreverently. "She knows as well as you and I do that he's a selfish sort of brute, in spite of his good looks and his gift of the gab. I say, Clara, when are these folks ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... man, Paddock, making the deuce of a row at the smoking-room door. Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... with your scarf, Jim,' said Murgatroyd. 'When Venables comes he will soon find a way to check his gab. Yes,' he continued, looking at the back of my papers, 'it is marked, as you say, "From James the Second of England, known lately as the Duke of Monmouth, to Henry Duke of Beaufort, President of Wales, by the hand of Captain Micah Clarke, of Saxon's regiment of Wiltshire ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... another; an' none of it would 'a' been any comfort to Ivory. I guess Aaron 'n' Jake Cochrane was both of 'em more interested in savin' the sisters' souls than the brothers'! Aaron was a fine-appearin' man, and so was Jake for that matter, 'n' they both had the gift o' gab. There's nothin' like a limber tongue if you want to please the women-folks! If report says true, Aaron died of a fever out in Ohio somewheres; Cortland's the place, I b'lieve. Seems's if he hid his trail all the way from New Hampshire somehow, for as a usual thing, a man o' book-larnin' ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... call him Heliogabalus," said the doctor; "but he is generally known by the name of Gab, which is a more convenient appellation for ordinary use. I picked him up on the road to Santa Fe. I have no great faith in his honesty; but as I wanted an attendant, I engaged him—though I strongly suspect he is a runaway, and very likely may ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... right," Gerald responded, slightly impatient. "You girls have no right to treat us this way. We brought you with us to give you a good time, and it seems that you might respect our wishes a little. No one can catch fish with a regular gab-fest ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... Karlych? Have we not labored for you? We are much satisfied with our late mistress—may she enjoy eternal life!—and we are grateful to the young Prince for thinking of us," began a red-haired peasant with a gift of gab. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Cuffin, swear to be [1] True to this fraternity; That I will in all obey Rule and order of the lay. Never blow the gab or squeak; [2] Never snitch to bum or beak; [3] But religiously maintain Authority of those who reign Over Stop Hole Abbey green, [4] Be their tawny king, or queen. In their cause alone will fight; Think what ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... to register his protest very forcibly. Nine Boers were shot down; three on the British side were injured. Meanwhile the force under Major Peakman was protesting at Carter's Farm. The enemy there made a bold effort to silence Peakman. But a Maxim gun has a remarkable gift of the gab; the Major had one with him, and he let it do all the talking—with results that quickly drove the Boers beyond ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Brandt's men, who rode into Pitt just before we left, that you had new friends here by that name. This fellow was a handsome chap, no common sort, but lordly, dissipated and reckless as the devil. He had a servant traveling with him, a sailor, by his gab, who was about the toughest customer I've met in many a day. He cut a fellow in bad shape at Pitt. These two will be on the next boat, due here in a day or so, according to river and weather conditions, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... mind-reader. I'll look up this business of securities, and then if the young feller's talked straight, we'll try to work it through him, if we can get to him, and I guess we can, so long as I ain't lost the gift of the gab in twenty years. We'll be as good, sorrowing heirs as ever Jimmy Brunell ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... all this queer gab?" he asked. "An' you're takin' some liberty with Miss Hammond, who never seen you before. Sure I'm makin' allowance fer amazin' strange talk. I see you're not drinkin'. Mebbe you're plumb locoed. Come, ease up now an' ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... the Gab-ri[1] wild, A seer is resting on a rock; exiled By his own will from all the haunts of men, Beside a pool within a rocky glen He sits; a turban rests upon his brow, And meets the lengthened beard of whitest snow. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... name. 'No,' I said, 'gentlemen; I feel much honoured, but I do not like extremes;' and they went away. They are making a little more noise now, because they have got a man who has the gift of the gab, and the people like to go and hear him speak. But as I said to a friend of mine, who seemed half inclined to join them, 'Well; if I did anything of that sort, I would be led by a Lancashire lad. They have got a foreigner to lead them, a fellow out of Berkshire; an agitator—and only ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... time ago, keeper of a public- house, which he had been enabled to take from the profits of his faces. A son of his, one of the children he was making faces to when my comrades entered his door, is at present a barrister, and a very rising one. He has his gift—he has not, it is true, the gift of the gab, but he has something better, he was born with a grin on his face, a quiet grin; he would not have done to grin through a collar like his father, and would never have been taken up by Hopping Ned and Biting Giles, but that grin of his caused him to be noticed by a much greater person than either; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... centers in an abduction which, by the time it is used in the third novel, begins to pall as a device and to suggest paucity of invention. The novel has the prime merit of brevity; it is much shorter than "Clarissa Harlowe," but long enough, in all conscience, Harriet being blessed with the gift of gab, like all Richardson's heroines. "She follows the maxim of Clarissa," says Lady Mary with telling humor, "of declaring all she thinks to all the people she sees without reflecting that in this mortal state of imperfection, fig-leaves ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... "speech-band." If it is cut in children who have difficulty in speaking before the first year of life, or soon after, they will be cured of stuttering and made to speak well. To a man or woman who does a good deal of talking, who has "the gift of the gab," the expression Em (ehr) is de keekelreem gut snaden "His (her) frenum has been well cut," is applied. In some parts of Low Germany the operation is performed for quite a different reason, viz., when the child's ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... written by Graupner to Mattheson, the former, after mentioning that he studied the clavier and also composition under Kuhnau, says:—"Weil ich mich auch bei Kuhnau, als Notist, von selbsten ambot, u. eine gute Zeit fuer ihn schrieb, gab nur solches gewuenschte Gelegenheit, viel gutes zu sehen, u. wo etwa ein Zweifel enstund, um muendlichen Bericht zu bitten, wie dieses oder jenes zu verstehen?" ("As I offered myself as copyist to Kuhnau, and wrote some long time for him, such a wished-for opportunity enabled me to study much good ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... her, as he prepared to leave, "to look sharp if you see a forty-five-year-old damsel, with a little bright red face, all ears an' no chin, like the ace o' hearts. That'll be Miss Pickett. She'll have with her, like as not, a stout married lady, all gab an' gizzard, like a crow, an' a mouth like a new buttonhole. That'll be Mrs. Pennycook. Look out for 'em ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... marche.]—Funeral sounde. Enter Orlando, Reinaldo leading Ganelon, Oliver, Didier; two herses, one with Eldegr. & Gab., the other Richard. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... die Kinder nach unserem Willen nicht formen, So wie Gott sie uns gab, so muss man sie lieben und haben, Sie erzielen aufs best und jeglichen ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... bloody good care they don't act up to it theirselves, though. Look at them there Labour members of Parliament—a lot of b—rs what's too bloody lazy to work for their livin'! What the bloody 'ell was they before they got there? Only workin' men, the same as you and me! But they've got the gift o' the gab and—' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... hae aneugh to do if I am to stand up for a' my friends' wives," said the old gentleman. "But, however, Archie, you are to blame: Leddy Maclaughlan is a very decent woman—at least, as far as I ken—though she is a little free in the gab; and out of respect to my auld friend Sir Sampson, it is my desire that you should remain here to receive him, and that you trait baith him and ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... salesman was a riddle to me. I subsequently realized that his reticence accentuated an effect of solidity and helped to inspire confidence in the few words which he did utter. But at the time in question I was sure that the "gift of the gab" was an indispensable element ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... gift of the gab, nothing more and nothing less. What has your knack of fine talking to do with the truth, any more than playing the organ has? I've never been in your church; but I've been to your political meetings; ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... hows'ever I should plen it, I could git boosted into th' House or Sennit,— Nut while the twolegged gab-machine's so plenty, 'nablin' one man to du the talk o' twenty; I'm one o' them thet finds it ruther hard To mannyfactur' wisdom by the yard, An' maysure off, accordin' to demand, The piece-goods el'kence that I keep on hand, The same ole pattern runnin' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... xxiii. 401-413). These names are mentioned here in connection with the brave exploits which Christian knights, while in their cups, may boast that they will accomplish (F.). This practice of boasting was called indulging in "gabs" (Eng. "gab"), a good instance of which will be found in "Le Voyage de Charlemagne a Jeruslaem" (ed. ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer and go into politics? I still think I might have made a go of it. I've kind of got the gift of the gab—anyway, I can think on my feet, and make some kind of a spiel on most anything, and of course that's the thing you need in politics. By golly, Ted's going to law-school, even if I didn't! Well—I guess it's ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... was standing by, and amongst whose good qualities that of silence was not considered to hold a conspicuous place; "a famous cure for lockjaw, from whatever cause it may come on. There was Miss Trowlop—she had a very handsum' mouth and a considerable gift of the gab—was goin' to be married to Mr Shaver, run a hickory splinter through her prunella shoe into her foot—jaw locked as fast as old Ebenezer Gripeall's iron safe. If she'd a-had my Palmyra sarve she'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... agent. You look as if you had a gift of the gab. A successful life insurance agent will make a good deal more than ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... nature, he was not the man who in new surroundings would be quick to every whisper of opinion. But he had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen—oh yes, he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab, and could never be Provost, or Bailie, or Elder, or even Chairman of the Gasworks! Oh, verra well, verra well; let Connal and Brodie and Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town's affairs (he was damned if they should manage his!)—he, for his part, preferred ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... bibliographical notes which are here and there scattered throughout this catalogue, render it of estimation in the opinion of the curious.——BALUZE. Bibliotheca Balusiana; seu catalogus librorum bibliothecae D.S. Baluzii, A. Gab. Martin, Paris, 1719, 8vo., two vols. Let any enlightened bibliographers read the eulogy upon the venerable Baluze (who died in his eighty-eighth year, and who was the great Colbert's librarian), in the preface of the Bibl. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... some tale of misery, and the man would say, "Come have a glass, and maybe that'll brace you up." And so they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently wretched-looking, or good enough at the "gab," they might have two; and if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had lived in the same city or worked at the same trade, they might sit down at a table and spend an hour or two in talk—and before they ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... to talk that way," the captain warned, "so jist shet yer dirty mouths. I've heard sich gab before, and it doesn't jar me ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... Them ez hez, must lose. Them ez knows, won't blab. Them ez guesses, will gab. Them ez borrows, sorrows. Them ez lends, spends. Them ez gives, lives. Them ez keeps dark, is deep. Them ez kin earn; kin keep. Them ez aims, hits. Them ez hez, gits. Them ez waits, win. Them ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... here reckoned as I, bein' gifted with the knack of gab, it fer me to speak for 'em. They're tongue- tied when there's a woman on ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... is, all the same," said the baronet. "There's a good deal in him, I believe! I dare say he's not very bright, but I don't know that we want brightness. A bright financier is the most dangerous man in the world. We've had enough of that already. Give me sound common sense, with just enough of the gab in a man to enable him to say what he's got to say! We don't want more than that nowadays." From which it became evident that Sir Cosmo was satisfied with the new political ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... long-headed and witty for him. After now in vain endeavouring to find something to say, the old man buttoned up his coat in a great passion, and looking fiercely at Varney, he said,—"I don't pretend to a gift of the gab. D—n me, it ain't one of my peculiarities; but though you may talk me down, you sha'n't ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... knew him," said he. "You were all having such a love feast gab-fest when I blew in. This is Mr. Orde, who bosses this place—and most of the country around here. If you want to do good to humanity on this meadow you'd better begin by being good to him. He controls it. He's ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... did not," with a thousand such; as you may read in [6572]Austin (for there were fourscore and eleven heresies in his times, besides schisms and smaller factions) Epiphanius, Alphonsus de Castro, Danaeus, Gab, Prateolus, &c. Of prophets, enthusiasts and impostors, our Ecclesiastical stories afford many examples; of Elias and Christs, as our [6573]Eudo de stellis, a Briton in King Stephen's time, that went invisible, translated himself from one to another in a moment, fed thousands ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... promoted to be non-commissioned officer! That everlasting chatterer, who only owed it to his gift of the gab that he had been able to boast of himself as confidential ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... media, and sustenit the disputt thairupon, and was approven in both. The following ministers were present, Mr. Patrik Gillespie, Mr. David Dicksone, Doctor Jhone Strang, Mr. Zach. Boyde, Mr. George Young, Mr. Hew Blair, Mr. Gab. Conyngham, Mr. David Benett, Mr. Matthew Mackill. Mr. Wm. Young, Mr. Arch. Dennestoune, Mr. Jhone Carstaires, Mr. James Hamilton." The presbytery "ordaines Mr. Hugh Binnen to make ye exercise this daye fyfteen dayes, and the rest ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and speechifying with vociferous applause, shouting, and clapping of hands. I never knew before that oratory had got down into the servants' hall, but learned that it is the custom for those to whom 'the gift of the gab' has been vouchsafed to harangue the others, the palm of eloquence being universally conceded to Mr. Tapps the head coachman, a man of great abdominal dignity, and whose Ciceronian brows are adorned with an ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... little dwelling the tailor would brood day and night. Folks said he was going crazed about it. None the less was Sim's distress as poignant as if the grounds for it had been more real. "Haud thy bletherin' gab," Wilson said one day; "because ye have to be cannie wi' the cream ye think ye must surely be clemm'd." Salutary as some of the Scotsman's comments may have been, it was natural that the change in his manners should excite surprise among ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... phrases that have come directly to us from England may be mentioned "throw up the sponge," "draw it mild," "give us a rest," "dead beat," "on the shelf," "up the spout," "stunning," "gift of the gab," etc. ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... whom observed to another, in my hearing, these Americans are certainly the most singular set of men I ever met with. The man who had been confined, was allowed to come from his confinement, and speak for himself. He had "the gift of the gab," and a species of forcible eloquence that some of our lawyers might envy. He would have distinguished himself in any of our town meetings; and with cultivation, might have shown in history. He, however, committed that very common fault among our popular orators,—he talked too much. The President ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Germany. For now, said he, procrastination and the conciliatory demeanor of the Evangelicals, especially of Melanchthon and Brueck, had made it impossible to rouse the Emperor to such a degree as the exigency of the case demanded. (Plitt, 63.) Luther wrote: "For that shameless gab and bloodthirsty sophist, Doctor Eck, one of their chief advisers, publicly declared in the presence of our people that if the Emperor had followed the resolution made at Bononia, and, immediately on entering Germany, had courageously attacked the Lutherans with the sword, and beheaded one after ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... subjected him. To play the part of a mere preacher—to talk glibly, and with proper unction, in the stereotype phraseology of the profession—was no difficult matter to a clever young lawyer of the West, having a due share of the gift of gab, and almost as profoundly familiar with scripture quotation as Henry Clay himself. But there was something awkward in the idea of detection, and he was not unaware of those summary dangers which are likely to follow, in those wild frontier regions, from the discovery of so doubtful a personage ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... guarantee. And to prove my impartiality, listen—here's the sum and substance of Mr. Insarov. No talents, none, no poetry, any amount of capacity for work, an immense memory, an intellect not deep nor varied, but sound and quick, dry as dust, and force, and even the gift of the gab when the talk's about his—between ourselves let it be said—tedious Bulgaria. What! do you say I am unjust? One remark more: you'll never come to Christian names with him, and none ever has been on such terms with him. I, of course, as an artist, am hateful to him; ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... Chinatown. For a matter of two or three blocks the street was given over to an impromptu form of public assembly, a poor man's debating ground, an open forum where any citizen with a grievance, a theory, or even merely the gift of gab might air his views and be reasonably sure of an audience. In the evening there was always a crowd. Street fakirs plied their traffic under sputtering gas torches, dispensing, along with a ready flow of glib chatter, marvellous ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... said, "I am going to make a balloon excursion to-morrow. I didn't mention it to the society because these fellows gab so. There'd be a great crowd round, and I'd only have been hampered. When you mean work, the less you say about it beforehand the better. That is what I have always found. Ever up in ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... and 'broke,' and you're twenty-five and pretty. He evidently, being a newspaper man, has that peculiar gift of gab that we call romantic expression. So I guess I'm not blind. You both think you've ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... a lion, more brain than he could stagger under; a disposition fiery, mercurial, sanguine, witty; he was made, according to Billy Fairfax's dictum, of "wire and brass tacks," and he possessed what Honey Smith (who himself had no mean gift in that direction) called "the gift of gab." He lived by writing magazine articles. Also he wrote fiction, verse, and drama. Also he was a painter. Also he was a musician. In short, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... eccentric rod of a steam-engine for fitting a pin in the gab-lever to break the connection with the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... taken too much to drink,—which he did, after the Danish fashion, far oftener than the rest of Baldwin's men,—he grew rude, boastful, quarrelsome. He would chant his own doughty deeds, and "gab," as the Norman word was, in painful earnest, while they gabbed only in sport, and outvied each other in impossible fanfaronades, simply to laugh down a fashion which was held inconsistent with the modesty of a true knight. Bitter it was to her to hear him announcing to the company, not for the first ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... of his earliest period, Die Lehre (vol. iii. p. 276), published in Hamburgs Waechter, 1817 (Strodtmann, op. cit. i. 54), does seem to show it. In this the young bee, heedless of motherly advice, does not beware of the candle-flame and so "Flamme gab Flammentod." We at once recognize a familiar Persian thought, and are reminded of Goethe's fine line, "Das Lebend'ge will ich preisen das nach Flammentod sich sehnet." (Selige ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... a born leader. Of course a leader must have the gift of gab. She's a great talker, isn't she? Takes the conversation right into her own hands and keeps it there, ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... kind, the veracity of which no one present could doubt, they were entertained for some time by their loquacious Host, who, having the gift of the gab,{1} would probably have continued long in the same strain of important information; when dinner was placed on the table, and they fell to with good appetites, seeming almost to have made use of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... There's time for everyone to give out their chat and their gab, and to do their business and take their ease and have a comfortable life, only the King! The beasts of the field have leave to lay themselves down in the meadow and to stretch their limbs on the green grass in the heat of the day, without being pestered and ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... whne ich mehr, dass er wandelt auf Erden." Hildebrand erhob das Wort, Heribrands Sohn: 30 "Das wisse Allvater oben im Himmel, Dass nimmer du Worte bis heute gewechselt Mit so nah gesipptem Mann." ... Da wand er vom Arme gewundene Ringe, Aus Kaisermnzen[5] gemacht, wie der Knig sie ihm gab, 35 Der Herrscher der Hunnen: "Dass ich um Huld dir's gebe!" Hadubrand erhob das Wort, Hildebrands Sohn: "Mit dem Ger soll man Gabe empfahen,[6] Spitze wider Spitze. Ein Spher bist du, Alter Hunne, (heimlich)[7] lockst du mich 40 Mit deinen Worten, willst mit dem Speer mich werfen, ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... agreed; "but a fellow needs some help sometimes, if he ain't over handy with the gift of gab." ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... a lady doctor, somehow," mused Mrs. Cobb. "Her gift o' gab is what's goin' to be the makin' of her; mebbe she'll lecture, or recite pieces, like that Portland elocutionist that come out here to the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... trained ability, and of clearness in expressing what they wish to say, will—if we except the dozen leading men on each side of the House of Commons—compare with that of the more august assemblage. Nine-tenths of the Victorian members possess at least the gift of the gab. In the excitement of the moment, grammar goes to the winds, and h 's fall thick as leaves in Vallombrosa, but they neither hesitate nor falter in their speech, and are nearly all possessed of a good deal of useful practical information. Their behaviour is certainly open to ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... cries he. "It's the Campbells, man! You'll have the whole clanjamfry of them on your back; and so will the Advocate too, poor body! It's extraordinar ye cannot see where ye stand! If there's no fair way to stop your gab, there's a foul one gaping. They can put ye in the dock, do ye no' see that?" he cried, and stabbed me with one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was seized by great bitterness of mind," Irish ro gab etere moir. The translation ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... the gab, anyhow," said the other. "I still distinctly remember him at the great lock-out. He could make you think you were no end of a fine fellow, he could! Well, that's all past and gone! ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... wisdom—at least all the wisdom which is supposed to be necessary in making lawyers and law-makers—a precious small modicum of a material by no means precious. I was supposed to have the gift of the gab in moderate perfection, and my hearers were indulgent. My name obtained circulation, and, in a short time, I discovered that, in a professional as well as personal point of view, I had no reason to regret the change of residence which I had made. Business began ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... this toil. My councillors tell me that my tower may never stand tall, unless its stones and lime are slaked with thy blood—the blood of a fatherless man." "Lord God," cried Merlin, "believe not that my blood will bind your tower together. I hold them for liars who told over such a gab. Bring these prophets before me who prophesy so glibly of my blood, and liars as they are, liars I will prove them to be." The king sent for his sorcerers, and set them before Merlin. After Merlin had regarded them curiously, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... of amputation, from the scalp-lock to the heel-tap, upon Emperors, Kings, Queens, and common folks; but upon his science in the dental way, he spread and grew luminous! In short, Dr. Wangbanger had not been long in Rockbottom before his "gift of gab," and unadulterated propensity to elongate the blanket, set every body, including poor Bill Whiffletree, in a furor to have their teeth cut, filed, scraped, rasped, reset, dug out, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... conceptions, to the most indefatigable industry and perseverance, and the most accurate knowledge of the phenomena of nature as they affect his peculiar labours, this man joined an utter want of the 'gift of gab;' he could no more explain to others what he meant to do and how he meant to do it, than he could fly, and therefore the members of the House of Commons, after saying 'There is a rock to be excavated to a depth ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... know," said Endicott evasively, "that Michael has a great gift of gab! Would you like to stop and have an ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... glib of gab and fair of face, ignore not my case and men's fear of me; and well thou weetest how I assault the strongly walled place and uproot the vines from base. Wherefore, do as I bid thee, and stand before me even as the thrall standeth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... my place of a Sunday evenin', d'ye see, gentlemen?—he'd walk across t' valley up there to Whitcliffe and stop an hour or two, enjoyin' hisself. Well, now, as you're no doubt well aweer, Mr. Eldrick, he were a reight hand at talkin', were yon Parrawhite—he'd t' gift o' t' gab reight enough, and talked well an' all. And of course him an' me, we hed bits o' conversation at times, 'cause he come to t' house reg'lar and sometimes o' week-nights an' all. An' he tell'd me 'at he'd had a deal o' experience i' ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... wilds of Upper Canada, and I trust they will, by all Christian means and measures, support Her Majesty's Government in Canada. May the Holy and Blessed God give us peace, and good government in our day. I have been a little vexed with the travelling gab of one of our own former friends, who is pleased to inform the people that you were the sole cause of the late rebellion. I must tell him, the first time I meet with him, that the meaning of his sing-song is not understood, and that if he will explain his hidden ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... irrevocably gone. Six o'clock, six-thirty, six-forty-five and even seven sped by and still there came no summons to join the soldier master. There had come instead, when Nixon urged that he be permitted to lead forth both his own troop horse and Deltchay, the brief, but significant reply: "Shut yer gab, Nixon. There's no horse goes till the captain ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... edition, I, 250: "Nachdem Murmelthier herzlich fUer diese Geschenke gedankt hatte, sagte Frau Else: 'Nun, mein Kind! kAemme mir und Frau Lurley die Haare, wir wollen die deinigen dann auch kAemmen'—dann gab sie ihr einen goldnen Kamm, und Murmelthier kAemmte Beiden die Haare und flocht sie so schOen, dass die Wasserfrauen sehr zufrieden ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... Joshua Daunton grew more and more sleek, and pale, and fat. He throve upon our miseries. He played his part at length so well, as to avoid thrashings. He possessed, in perfection, that which, in classic cockpit, is called "the gift of the gab." He was never in the wrong. Indeed, he began to get a favourite with each of the individuals over whom he was so mercilessly tyrannising, while each thought himself the tyrant. All this may seem improbable to well-nurtured, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Ba'weary, he was still a young man—a callant, the folk said—fu' o' book-learnin' an' grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi' nae leevin' experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi' his gifts an' his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, an' the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hatte schon den Wilhelm Meister uebersetzt und gab sodann vorliegendes Leben Schillers ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... wide enough for the whole delegation. The mouth may be opened for two purposes, viz., speech-making and swallowing; and it never appeared to us that there was any lack either of Bolting or Bellering in the House of Representatives. However notably Honorable Gentlemen may play the game either of Gab or Grab, it isn't so clear that their constituents are much benefited by these accomplishments. If all they want is an open-mouthed Member, why don't the Massachusetts men import a first-class crocodile, and send him to the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... never hyern ner better reason, chile. Folks cyarn' stan' too much er de gab nohow, en' dey sez dat he 'ouldn't let up, but kep' up sech a racket dat dey couldn't git ner sleep. Den at las' ole King George over dar in England sent de hull army clear across de water jes' ter ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... meeting his pastor, who had just returned after a considerable absence on account of ill health, congratulated him on his convalescence, and added, anticipatory of the pleasure he would have in hearing him again, "I'm unco yuckie to hear a blaud o' your gab." This is an untranslatable form of saying how glad he should be to hear his minister's voice again speaking to him the words of salvation and of peace ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... along and stow the gab," called Buckrow from the head of the companion, but in suppressed tones. "Keep yer lip shut, the afterguards are on deck here and I don't know where Thirkle is. Slip along and give us a hand with a knife or a gun. Looks like we'll ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... batalla campal! Oh! (Prestando atencin, como si oyese algn ruido, y mirando otra vez muy sobresaltado hacia la puerta del foro.) No, nada. Se me ha colgado de los faldones del gabn..., de la corbata, que si tira algo ...
— Ms vale maa que fuerza • Manuel Tamayo y Baus
... said musingly. "Must 'a' been something mighty important, but it's slipped my memory, sure. I do ricollect, though, hearin' Sam Amos say to old Squire Bentham, 'What's the matter, anyhow? Ain't Kentucky politicians got enough gift o' gab, without sendin' down to Tennessee to git somebody to help ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... und ein Meer von bitteren Leiden Die Italienerin gab—Seligkeit, Seligkeit nur Laessest Du mich entzuendend, begeistert, befaendig empfinden, In der Spanierin fand Liebe und ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... said it was damned nonsense, and that you must be awfully spoiled to want such a thing. 'You get your pay, Dexter,' says I, 'for what you do, don't you?' 'I guess I do,' says he, and then he winked. 'None of your gab,' says I. I do believe that man is a cheat and a rascal, I vow I do. But they are ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... twa fauld as he dow, [limps double, can] Wi' his teethless gab and his auld beld pow, [mouth, bald head] And the rain rains down frae his red bleer'd e'e— That auld man shall ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... deeply on the German as to make thrift his first characteristic. A spirit of lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism imbued the whole people. Young girls cut off their long golden hair to be sold for the Fatherland. Jewels were given by all who possessed them. "Gold gab ich fuer Eisen" (I gave gold for iron) became a saying based on the readiness with which the rich made sacrifices to the cause of country. And with this patriotism, and with this penury, came into every home a more intimate family life, a greater earnestness, ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... with an air in which authority and supplication were equally prominent, "you've told an awful sight of lies in your time. Don't deny it, now—nobody that ever reads the papers will b'leeve you. Now's yer chance to put yer gift of gab to a respectable use. The lady's bothered, and wants to say somethin' or ask somethin', and she'll understand your lingo better'n ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... eh?" jibed the slattern. "Well, before you get out of here you'll be tickled enough to shoot off your gab. Bah! You an' your airs! If you want any grub this mawnin' you'll come down an' grab it yourself, I'm ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... lived in New York a long time—what kind of a song-and-dance does this old town give you? What I mean is, doesn't the gab of it seem to kind of bunch up and slide over the bar to you in a sort of amalgamated tip that hits off the burg in a kind of an epigram with a dash of bitters and a ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... drinking the Duke's health, singing and speechifying with vociferous applause, shouting, and clapping of hands. I never knew before that oratory had got down into the servants' hall, but learned that it is the custom for those to whom 'the gift of the gab' has been vouchsafed to harangue the others, the palm of eloquence being universally conceded to Mr. Tapps the head coachman, a man of great abdominal dignity, and whose Ciceronian brows are adorned with an ample flaxen wig, which is the peculiar distinction ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
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