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More "Mincing" Quotes from Famous Books



... well paid, and you have promised him a bonus besides. If he, with his Captain Kidd crew, gets you on that yacht, you will only step ashore by giving him every penny you possess. That's his object. He knows you are starting out to commit a crime— that's the word, Dorothy, there's no use in our mincing matters— you will be perfectly helpless in his hands. Of course, I could not allow my daughter Kate to go ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... wild, ignorant Irish girl, bound for a strange land among strange people! Would those fine English girls laugh among themselves and jeer at her untamed ways? Would they imitate her brogue in their thin mincing voices, and if so, how, oh, how would Pixie conduct herself in return? Bridgie was barely twenty years old, but since her mother's death she had grown into a woman in thoughtfulness and love for others, and now it weighed on her mind that it was her duty to speak seriously ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... masts. While some of the men were down in the blubber-room cutting the "blanket-pieces," as the largest masses are called, others were pitching the smaller pieces on deck, where they were seized by two men who stood near a block of wood, called a "horse," with a mincing knife, to slash the junks so as to make them melt easily. These were then thrown into the melting-pots by one of the mates, who kept feeding the fires with such "scraps" of blubber as remain after the oil is taken out. ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne

... lively, but deficient in judgment. She pleases no one, and it gives her no pain. She fancies the renown of her uncle and the gallantry of her father are every thing. Teach her, but teach her plainly, without mincing, that in reality they ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... afterwards Hotspur's defence of Mortimer shows the poet Shakespeare rather than the rude soldier who hates nothing more than "mincing poetry." The beginning is ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... unprotestingly. He lay on his face, his arms outflung, and from the gaping hole between his shoulders a dark stream welled. The indifferent earth, the uncaring grass, received it. The wind came out of the swamp on mincing feet and danced over him, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... mincing peacocks. It was so fair here out of doors. The scent of the may hung in the air. The flame of the sunset bathed the facade of the stately house. No doubt it would be interesting to see new people, new relations; ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... toward Leah. As he watched the progress of that slight gray-haired figure Gordon refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes. The thing was too utterly absurd—yet Gordon was positive that the strong oak floor of the dancing space was visibly swaying and creaking beneath the stranger's mincing tread! ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... figure, of the Fribble tribe, Which heart can scarce conceive, or pen describe, Came simpering on—to ascertain whose sex Twelve sage impannell'd matrons would perplex. Nor male, nor female; neither, and yet both; Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth; A six-foot suckling, mincing in Its gait; Affected, peevish, prim, and delicate; Fearful It seem'd, though of athletic make, Lest brutal breezes should too roughly shake 150 Its tender form, and savage motion spread, O'er Its pale cheeks, the horrid manly red. Much did It talk, in Its own pretty phrase, Of genius ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... builds her nest, and each dancer comes forward at a mincing trot, in his hands a few twigs and leaves, which he deposits in front of the "orchestra," and, having built his nest, retires. And so they go on mimicking with laughable accuracy the more common beasts ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... he leaned over the engine, and gave it a turn. Tommy, Miss Pipkin's black cat, was mincing contentedly at some scraps when the chug-chug of the exhaust shot from the side of the boat. Tommy shot from the cockpit. He paused on the upper step, a startled glare in his eyes. He forgot the tempting morsels; he forgot his rheumatism; he was bent on flight. And fly he did. With ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper

... take that part back—they do pay something in return; a full measure. They pay by the beauty of their presence, and they are surely very beautiful, with their dainty mincing pink feet and the sheen on the proudly arched breast coverts of the cock birds; and they pay by giving you their trust and their friendship. To gobble the gifts of dried peas, which you buy in little cornucopias ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... it blends well enough with the style of the face, is rather pleasing than captivating. It marks the peculiar beauty of the grisette, who, with her little cap, hands stuck in the pockets of her apron, mincing walk, coquettish eye, and well-balanced head, is a creature perfectly sui generis. Such a girl is more like an actress imitating the character, than one is apt to imagine the character itself. I have met with imitators ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... dampt, a while restrain Her hasty course, and a pause remains; Till working a return t'her wonted post, She seeks her self, and to her self is lost. The herd of fops the frantick humour take, Each keeps a capon, loves its mincing gate, Its flowing hair, and striving all it can, In changing mode and dress, t' appear a man. Behold the wilder luxury of Rome, From Africk furniture, slaves, tables come, And purple carpets made in Africk loom. Thus their estates run out, while all around The sot-companions in their wine are ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... the morning he filled in with tales of cattle-musters tales of stampedes and of cattle rushing over camps and "mincing chaps into saw-dust" until I was secretly pleased that the coming muster was ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... lasses. I'm not to be left here to feed in solitude, and without e'er a portfolio or picture. You little geese, it is two good hours to the exhibition. Are you to be frizzing, and painting, and lacing, and mincing, and capering for two mortal hours, and your poor country uncle left to spoil his digestion for want of something else to do than eat? Is that your gratitude, when here have I come against my will to introduce you to the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... strap, when Joqard was brought, the hamari scrupled not to give the brute a hearty cuff, whereat the fishermen shook the sails of the pavilion with laughter; then, standing Joqard up, he placed one of the huge paws on his arm, and, with the mincing step of a lady's page, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... attired in a fancy dress of green and silver. Twirling his richly chased dirk with one tiny white hand, and at the same time playing with a pet curl which was picturesquely flowing over his forehead, he advanced with ambling gait to Miss Gusset, and, in a mincing voice and courtly phrase, summoned her ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... sicken and disgust a man, it is the affected, mincing way in which some people choose to talk. It is perfectly nauseous. If these young jackanapes, who screw their words into all manner of diabolical shapes, could only feel how perfectly disgusting they were, it might induce them to drop it. With many, it soon becomes such a confirmed ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... I force you to; we understand that. But tell me! Bluntly, without mincing matters, if necessary. You know that I have no objection to that sort of thing, so go on. Do not keep me in suspense like this. I am burning with curiosity. What ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... cried Miss Deborah; taking little mincing steps as she tried to run after him. "You won't mention it? You won't speak of it to any ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... be shot out of the school," said Jasper desperately; "there's no use in mincing matters. Mr. Faber has utterly lost patience; and the other ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney

... slightly mincing voice of Sir Francis denoted such detachment, such politeness, such kindliness, that the opinion it emitted seemed to impose itself on G.J. with extraordinary authority. There was a brief pause, and ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... Aunt Betsey, you fool! Aunt Nancy used to—she has been dead these eighty years, so there is no use in mincing matters—she used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had been tasting a drop out of the bottle the stick used to come off the shelf and I had to taste that. And here she is made a saint of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that did ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... enough your play Till next sun-shine holiday: Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades, On the lawns, and on ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... exploits of the morning, the Prince turned towards the Princess's ante-room, bent on a more difficult enterprise. The curtains rose before him, the usher called his name, and he entered the room with an exaggeration of his usual mincing and airy dignity. There were about a score of persons waiting, principally ladies; it was one of the few societies in Gruenewald where Otto knew himself to be popular; and while a maid of honour made her exit by a side door to announce his arrival to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... brought in, and Derues was ordered to put them on, which he did readily, affecting much amusement. As he was assisted to disguise himself, he laughed, stroked his chin and assumed mincing airs, carrying effrontery so far as to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... was a pattern of town prettiness and smartness. So trim her waist, her cap, her dress—I wondered how they had all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent which in its mincing glibness seemed to rebuke mine as by authority; her spruce attire flaunted an easy scorn to my ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... Also, Finn brought a baffling mixture of scents with him, including those of men and of wild creatures such as the stallion had never seen and did not wish to see. So he continued his threateningly mincing progress toward Finn, and whinnied out a declaration to the effect that this could be no resting-place for dingoes, however huge and diversified in their smells. Finn was not in the least like a dingo; but, on the other hand, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... had taken "a leap in the dark," they had staked the fortunes of the party on the dice-box, and events were to decide the issue. When the blow came Mr. Disraeli's reputation for sagacity fell to zero. At last the hollowness of his pretensions was detected, and there was no mincing of epithets for the man who had befooled and destroyed a great party. The Dukes left him to himself, and, according to our present informant, their flight was the harbinger of reviving fortunes. The heart of provincial conservatism warmed to its deserted chief. The patriotic ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... discovered {129e} by a stretched out Neck, and by mincing as they go. For the wicked, the Proud, have a proud Neck, a proud Foot, a proud Tongue, by which this their going is exalted. This is that which makes them look scornfully, speak ruggedly, and carry it ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... apparently because she was tired of us, but really because she was full of a new and original idea, and wanted an audience. Once she puzzled the nursery community who had not been visiting the bungalow, by mincing about on pointed toes, with shoulders shrugged like a dancing master in caricature. The babies thought this a very nice game, and for weeks they played ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... Indies, it's been a sad place. Not a sailor's wife but is crying 'Give, give,' like the daughters of the horse-leech; and every woman must drive her husband out across seas to bring her home money to squander on hoods and farthingales, and go mincing with outstretched necks and wanton eyes; and they will soon learn to do worse than that, for the sake of gain. But the Lord's hand will be against their tires and crisping-pins, their mufflers and farthingales, as it was against the Jews of old. Ah, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... and ardent zeal for setting the world to rights, together with that high sense of the poet's calling which put lasting force into his work. He poured contempt on those who frittered life away. He urged on the poetasters and the mincing courtiers, who set their hearts on top-knots and affected movements ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... Square is ever so much pleasanter than Mincing Lane," Bertie replied. "Why, if you were in our office, Eddie, I don't know what would become of you! You would have to sit on a high stool all day, copying things into big books, or else copying things out of them. Then you have to add up columns ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... all very honorable, but you are a graceless intruder. Your credentials are rejected on sight." I saw the difficult task I had undertaken. "Mrs. Pinkerton," I said, mustering all my forces, "it is no use mincing the matter, or beating about the shrubbery. I am in love with your daughter, and Bessie is in love with me. I believe I can make Bessie happy, and am sure nothing but Bessie can make me happy. I have come to ask your consent to our marriage." Then ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous

... continued he, as they turned the corner rather short; in doing which, somewhat animated by the description he had just been giving, Tom's foot caught the toe of a gentleman, who was mincing along the pathway with all the care and precision of a dancing-master, which had the effect of bringing him to the ground in an instant as effectually as a blow from one of the fancy. Tom, who had no intention of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... adventuress instantly assumed a most ladylike and mincing air which ill assorted with the cigarette that she held between ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... vengeance, and, above all, by his wish to see his darling Lydie married, made the Champs-Elysees the end of his walks as soon as he heard from Contenson that Monsieur de Nucingen's mistress might be seen there. Peyrade could dress so exactly like an Englishman, and spoke French so perfectly with the mincing accent that the English give the language; he knew England itself so well, and was so familiar with all the customs of the country, having been sent to England by the police authorities three times between 1779 and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... Montreal," said the servant—"to Montreal, you know, sir," she repeated, in a mincing tone, bridling and blushing ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... I," said Sir Eric. "He knows their mincing tongue better than I. He were the best to go with the poor child, if ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge

... said he, "I am only too familiar with them. In childhood I learned the words of the prophet: 'Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet; therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... well lay that kind a' financerin aside, Colonel. What's the use of living in a free country, where every man has a right to make a penny when he can, and talk so? Now, 'pears to me t'aint no use a' mincing the matter; we might a' leaked ye in for as many thousands as hundreds. Seein' how ye was a good customer, we saved ye on a small shot. Better put the niggers out: ownin' such a lot, ye won't feel it! Give us three prime chaps; ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... pleasant names of Moggs and Snoggs, were employed as junior clerks by a merchant in Mincing Lane. They were both engaged at the same salary—that is, commencing at the rate of L50 a year, payable half-yearly. Moggs had a yearly rise of L10, and Snoggs was offered the same, only he asked, for reasons that do not concern our puzzle, that he might take his rise at L2, 10s. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... humours of the city dames well; to eat cherries only at an angel a pound; good: to dye rich scarlet black; pretty: to line a grogram gown clean through with velvet; tolerable: their pure linen, their smocks of three pound a smock, are to be borne withal: but your mincing niceries, taffity pipkins, durance petticoats, and silver bodkins—God's my life! as I shall be a lady, I ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... now for remembrance of blessed Saint Stephen, Let's joy at morning, at noon, and at even; Then leave off your mincing, and fall to mince-pies, I pray take my counsel, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... stood uncertain whether to brave them or make a bid for escape. I heard the negress cry aloud in a foreign tongue, at the same time flinging up her hands; but the other pushed past her and walked straight down upon me, albeit with a mincing, tripping motion, as if she was pacing ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... was a man hidden somewhere in Edward Bulwer's perfumed clothes and mincing attitudes, else the world had long since forgotten him. Amidst his dandyism, he learned how to speak well in debate and how to use his hands to guard his head; he paid his debts by honest hard work, and would not be dishonorably beholden to his mother or any one else. He posed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... her coming; and what d'ye think she'd gone back for? By the powers, for her doll, which she held in her hand! And just as she came to the chaise, who should come round the corner but her father, who had walked from Mincing Lane. He caught my mincing Miss by the arm, with her doll and her bundle, and bundled her home, leaving me and the postchaise, looking like two fools. I never could see her again, or her ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... has always been a plain-speaking country, and the Poles, expressing themselves in the roughest of European tongues, a plain-spoken people. They spoke so plainly to Henry of Valois when he was their king that one fine night he ran away to mincing France and gentler men. When, under rough John Sobieski, they spoke with their enemy in the gate of Vienna, their meaning was quite ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... tight as possible. One cut from the body of a man twenty-seven years old measured only sixty-five centimeters.[398] The women of the Barito valley wear the sarong around the thighs so tight that it restricts the steps and produces a mincing gait which they think beautiful.[399] The Rukuyenn of Guiana have an ideal of female beauty which is marked by a large abdomen. They wind the abdomen with many girdles to make it appear large. "The women ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... perverted from every natural impulse, and curdled into one dubious thing of effeminacy and art—a singular thing was it to see this Lepidus, now all eagerness, and energy, and life, patting the vast shoulders of the gladiators with a blanched and girlish hand, feeling with a mincing gripe their great brawn and iron muscles, all lost in calculating admiration at that manhood which he had spent his life ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... years after gaining the prize Sarasate remained a salon violinist, of amiable disposition, a ladies' virtuoso, with a somewhat mincing style, who played only variations on opera motives, and who was an ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... would have qualified, but that the sudden death of his father compelled him to abandon the hope and to assume the responsibilities of the head of the house of Morford & Morford, tea importers, of Mincing Lane." ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... true," he says, "that the Author is any thing but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious. There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope however that there is not so much as there was. Indeed can we ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... had an opportunity of observing at my leisure the king and queen. The king was of medium height, and though not strictly handsome had a pleasant face. His nose was very long, his voice high-pitched and disagreeable; and he walked with a mincing air in which there was no majesty, but this, however, I attributed to the gout. He ate heartily of everything offered him, except vegetables, which he never ate, saying that grass was good only for cattle; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... on the fly-leaf of the volume of Tennyson, and, when she had gone, rose to his feet and stood looking after her curiously. As she walked down the street with mincing step, he saw several persons whom she passed turn and look back at her with a smile of kindly amusement. When she had turned the corner, he went upstairs to his bedroom, and stood for a long time before the mirror of his dressing-case, ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... 8. There are mincing women, mewing, (Like cats, who amant misere,) Of their own virtue, and pursuing Their gentler sisters to that ruin, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... he would take little mincing steps, and toss his head from side to side, and pretend to be ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... and feet. It is passing strange, that any tyrant should be able—even Fashion herself—so to change the whole current of human feeling, as to make a sprightly buoyant young girl of ten years of age, become at thirteen a grave, staid or mincing young woman, unable—rather, unwilling—to move except in a certain style, and then only with an effort scarcely exceeded by the efforts of those who ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... of an old Frisian housekeeper, who had been his nurse, and who from the time when he had devoted himself to the culture of tulips ventured no longer to put onions in his stews, for fear of pulling to pieces and mincing the ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... certain Lady Fawn,—a pretty mincing married woman of about twenty-five, with a husband much older, who liked mild flirtations with mild young men. "I am afraid we've lost your great attraction," she whispered ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... most Yankee-Doodle-Dandy manner, collapsing inward at his extremely thin waistline, arms akimbo, his step designed to be a mincing one, and his voice as soprano as it ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... in the other half of this place—the old infirmary, Mr. Harewood calls it. Such a contrast! He is a tremendous old Turk in his house, and she is a little mincing woman; and they've made Gus—he's one of us, you know—a horrid sneak, and think it's all my bad company and Bill's. By-the-by, Cherry, Gus Shapcote asked me if ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... but caught herself, musingly crossed the room, returned half-way, and with frank design resumed the stool warily vacated by the unslippered foot; whose owner was mincing on, just enough fluttered to play defiance ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... a conversation between a mincing and lackadaisical young lady and a bouncing one who talked noisily; and she changed her attitudes, her accent, the expressions of her face in such droll ways, and altogether contrasted the two characters so well, that a round of applause ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland

... know, for anything," though he was born and has lived most of his life in America; and he pronounces his words in the most affected way. Altogether, he is awfully affected; you should see the air with which he flirts his handkerchief out of his pocket, his mincing steps, and the bored, you-can't-teach-me-anything ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... print it and every one immediately gives you especial attention and the benefit of his judgment. If you should happen to serve in the right wing of Orthodoxy, you will have the inestimable boon of the freest criticism from the left wing. And it is the religious newspapers for not mincing matters. Between Jew and Gentile hostility is the normal condition of things; and is carried on peaceably enough; but when Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war! These people obey to the letter the Apostolic injunction, and confess your faults one to another ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... minute she was dancing, but not in the dull, mincing fashion in which she had so recently been coached. The music caught at her homesick heart-strings, the old familiar scent of blossoming gardenias was in her nostrils and she was out under a Mexican night. Her pulses leaped to the throbbing notes, and she flung herself sinuously into the ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... of Venice, perfumed bracelets, necklaces, and gloves—"gloves sweet as damask roses"—a pocket-handkerchief wrought in gold and silver, a small looking-glass pendant at the girdle, and a love-lock hanging wantonly over the shoulder, artificial flowers at the corsage, and a mincing step. "These fashionable women, when they are disappointed, dissolve into tears, weep with one eye, laugh with the other, or, like children, laugh and cry they can both together, and as much pity is to be taken of a woman ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... coming nearer and nearer, guided by its light, we saw a boat, not cut in any foreign fashion, but built and rigged near St Margaret's Hope. It was full of men; we could hear them cheering and shouting in our own good Scots tongue, which fell kindly on our ears after the soft mincing English which had been thrown at our heads for ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... abhorrent khaki. He felt as if the hideous cloth went into his blood and made it gritty and dirty. Then Winifred so ready to serve the soldier, when she repudiated the man. And this made the grit worse between his teeth. And the children running around playing and calling in the rather mincing fashion of children who have nurses and governesses and literature in the family. And Joyce so lame! It had all become unreal to him, after the camp. It only set his soul on edge. He left at ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... important trait of character, which should be cultivated in early life. What can be more disgusting than the ridiculous airs of a vain child? Sometimes you will see a foolish girl tossing her head about, and walking with a mincing step, which shows you at once that she is excessively vain. She thinks that others are admiring her ridiculous airs, when the fact is, they are laughing at her, and despising her. Every one speaks of her as a very simple, vain girl. Vanity is a sure sign of weakness of ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott

... There was no need to feign madness or—the Babu had thought of another means of securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet clothes, slipped on his patent-leather shoes, opened the blue-and-white umbrella, and with mincing gait and a heart beating against his tonsils appeared as 'agent for His Royal Highness, the Rajah of Rampur, gentlemen. What can I do ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... to stop some place, and I really can't stand that mincing Miss Mitchin and her half-baked yearners and that odious creature with the beard and the ballet ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... ago, Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips, Her head erect, her fan upon her lips, Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray To watch yon amorous couple in their play, With bony and unkerchief'd neck defies The rude inclemency of wintry skies, And sails, with lappet-head and mincing airs, Duly at chink of bell to morning prayers. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... musk and hair oil, of which several young barbers in the company were especially redolent. There was a play of sparkling eyes and glancing feet. Mary B. danced with the languorous grace of an Eastern odalisque, Mis' Molly with the mincing, hesitating step of one long out of practice. Wain performed saltatory prodigies. This was a golden opportunity for the display in which his soul found delight. He introduced variations hitherto unknown to the dance. His skill and suppleness ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... take the curb off his prejudices, give the rein to his whimsical fancy, and better his expression as he talked. But where men must talk, as well as write, upon oath, paralysis is not easily avoided. In the little mincing societies addicted to intellectual and moral culture the creative zest is lost. The painful inhibition of a continual rigorous choice, if it is never relaxed, cripples the activity of the mind. Those who ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... besides; nevertheless, he was discreet, and, like other gazettes, only said things that might safely be published. Again Victurnien listened to the Chevalier's esoteric doctrines. The Vidame told young d'Esgrignon, without mincing matters, to make conquests among women of quality, supplementing the advice with anecdotes from his own experience. The Vicomte de Pamiers, it seemed, had permitted himself much that it would serve no purpose to relate here; so remote was it all from our modern manners, in which soul ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... no easy thing to tell them from the real affair, or to guess the made from the maiden, so slender and so graceful were they all, with their ruffs and their muffs and their feathered fans, and all the airs and mincing graces of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... pots on the fire in order to melt down some lard, began to prepare the black-puddings. Auguste assisted him. At one corner of the square table Lisa and Augustine sat mending linen, whilst opposite to them, on the other side, with his face turned towards the fireplace, was Florent. Leon was mincing some sausage-meat on the oak block in a ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... quietness and maidenly modesty, and there was no need for her to undertake any of those kinds of tasks which, by removing young girls from home shelter, do sometimes help to make them rude and indecorous; but she was fine, when she gave herself a little mincing air of contempt, as if she despised the work and those who did it. Lydia Grant, who worked so steadily and kept to herself so modestly, that no one ventured a bold word to her as she tossed her hay, was just as refined as Ellen King behind her white blinds, ay, or as Jane Selby herself in her ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... impatience, stood watching Count Cobenzl, as with his mincing gait he tripped out of the room, and turned again at the door to make his last bow. Scarcely had the portiere fallen when he sprang across the room, and darted toward his sleeping-chamber. Near his bed stood an escritoire. He ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... ceasing to be on her guard. In girlhood, she had been to Albany, Its splendour and the reckless conduct of one Alma Haskins, companion of her travels, had been ever since a day-long perennial topic of her conversation. Miss Letitia was more amiable. She had a playful, cheery heart in her, a mincing and precise manner, and a sweet voice. What with the cleaning, dusting, and preserving, they were ever busy. A fly, driven hither and thither, fell of exhaustion if not disabled with a broom. They were two weeks getting ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... alone in the corral and as Calumet entered and closed the gate behind him, not fastening it, the black came toward him with mincing steps, its ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... than the saints that adorn our churches, with their mincing attitude, their piteous expression, that indescribably anaemic and emaciated—one may almost say emasculated—air which shows in their whole nature; they are pious seminarists brought up under the direction of St. Alphonso di Liguori or of St. Louis di Gonzagua; ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... had been thus treated in infancy, and who hobbled about with much difficulty, but no young girls were to be seen thus hampered. When this hideous deformity has been adopted, the knee and ankle joints do not bend at all in walking; all movement is from the thigh joints, a mincing gait is imparted, and the arms swing from side to side, the whole body being at all times liable to topple over. A traveler is not competent, however, to speak of the higher classes of women, as no access is afforded to domestic life in wealthy families. Only ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... smart bob coming down on the forehead, are set too near the humped, nervous, very handsome nose. When, at last, after long efforts the musicians agree, the somewhat small Verka walks up to the large Zoe, in that mincing, tethered walk, the hind part sticking out, and elbows spread as though for flight, with which only women in male costume can walk, and makes a comical masculine bow to her, spreading her arms wide and lowering them. And, with great enjoyment, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... around, they waltzed and wound; Some wheeled in smirking pairs; With the mincing step of a demirep Some sidled up the stairs: And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, Each helped us ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... "no mincing, wench. In the confusion of the ball, the bird escaped my guard by magic. We know ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... human life. In The Great Free Show, in our common human peep at it, who has not seen them, staggering to know what the very children, playing with dolls and rocking-horses, can take for granted? Minds which seem absolutely incapable of striking out, of taking a good, manly stride on anything, mincing in religion, effeminate in enthusiasm—please forgive me, Gentle Reader, I know I ought not to carry on in this fashion, but have I not spent years in my soul (sometimes it seems hundreds of years) in being humble—in being abject ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... world is the matter with the men to-day, and why they don't come along with the buns and sugar. Once within the zareba, once you have pushed your way between the giraffes and got their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have really only to be wary of the ostrich. He, mincing delicately around you with his little wicked red eye blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an ill-assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close behind you. If he succeeds he will land you ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... the queerest little mannikin—like the tiny waiter's assistants you see in hotels on the Continent. He wore his Eton suit, you understand—grown-up evening clothes minus the coat-tails, and a top hat. He sat at tea and chatted with the mincing graces of a cotillion-leader; you expected to find some of his hair gone when he took off his hat! He spoke of his brother, the duke, who had gone off shooting seals somewhere. 'The jolly rotter has nothing to do but spend his money; but we younger sons have to work like ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... stood aside. An instant later "Karl" joined him, swung on a heel, facing back, clicked heels again and bowed mockingly. Apparently he got no response, for he laughed quietly, then turned and went out through the window, Blensop mincing after. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... Gabriel, setting her face. "No, Charlotte"—she turned upon Mrs. Pope—"this is no time for mincing language. They were on a scarecrow, sir, in the very middle of the garrison garden, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... forbidden my ever going to Mincing Lane again! Says the box of "Incomparable Congou" was mere ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various

... climbed over the cliffs with him to his hut. Down on the floor we sat. Wilfrid put his treasures between his knees before him, I sat opposite, and the barter began. "What for this fellow, huh?" and he held up a piece of carved ivory, a little triangular mincing-knife, a fur mat that his wife had made, or the skin of a baby-seal. The first thing he asked for was scented soap, the ring that I was wearing, and my porcupine-quill hat-band which looked good to him; every exchange was accompanied ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... to the cobbler if she could, for while she despised him as a "low" person, she feared his opinion, and knew that he disapproved of her. She now put on her most mincing ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... especially in view of the prevailing infatuation. "My people," said he, "do not consider." He denounces all classes alike, and spares not even women. In sarcastic language he rebukes their love of dress, their abandonment to vanities, their finery, their very gait and mincing attitude. Still more contemptuously does the preacher speak of the men, over whom the women rule and children oppress. He is severe on corrupt judges, on usurers; on all who are conceited in their own eyes; on those who are mighty to drink wine; on those who join house ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... born in 1863 of poor parents, and by reason of his native genius and stubborn will power he became what he is—the painter of vibrating sunshine without equal. Let there be no mincing of comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet painted so directly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard. He is an impressionist, but not of the school of Monet. His manner is his own, cunningly ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... girl had a dreadful time. She began with: "Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Dill. I know so very few persons in service." Alice imitates her mincing way of talking, but I can't do it. And then she went on to talk about her family, how they had farmed their own land for five hundred years—such stuff! George had told Alice all about it: they had had an old cottage with a good strip of garden and two fields somewhere in ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... stay at Loughlinter, though he was asked to do so both by Violet and his sister, and though, as he confessed himself, he had no special business elsewhere. "It is no use mincing the matter. I don't like Kennedy, and I don't like being in his house," he said to Violet. And then he promised that there should be a party got up at Saulsby before the winter was over. His plan was to stop that night at Carlisle, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... long, black hair; and as he walked through the forest he might be heard talking to himself, with wild gesticulations. He was an itinerant cooper by trade, and made for the farmers' wives their butter-tubs and butter-ladles, mincing-bowls and coggies, and for the men, whip-stalks, axe handles, and the like. But in the boys' eyes he was guilty of a horrible iniquity. He was a dog-killer. His chief business was the doing away with dogs of ill-repute in the country; vicious ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... analysis. Such eccentricities rarely occur in his more generally known and admired compositions. His Polonaises, which are less studied than they merit, on account of the difficulties presented by their perfect execution, are to be classed among his highest inspirations. They never remind us of the mincing and affected "Polonaises a la Pompadour," which our orchestras have introduced into ball-rooms, our virtuosi in concerts, or of those to be found in our "Parlor Repertories," filled, as they invariably are, with hackneyed collections of music, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... ear wabbling, the good ear cocked forward with devilish comprehension. He thrust his head on one side quizzically, and advanced with mincing, playful steps. He rubbed his body gently against the box till it shook and shook again. Leclere teetered carefully to ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... of apology, Doctor Chord went mincing toward them, his face still spread with its ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... again broken the murmur of voices told them that the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia, walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the remainder of womanhood. Good women—those mistaken females who move in an atmosphere ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... water on the right hand and left; crowds of castanet-players and dancers, in every variety of laughable, grotesque, and most frequently tatterdemalion costume, beating drums, and so on—making a horrible din. Sometimes, in the midst of all this wild confusion, a kind of French courtier would come mincing along, in old-fashioned costume, leading a lady, also in antique attire, and, gazing on the right hand and the left through an immense opera-glass, making, in the meantime, the most polite bows. However much he might be pushed about, or powdered, it mattered not; he only gazed ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... this was about to become my property, and that such luck could not last long. So strong was this apprehension that I was about asking for trappings less gaudy and more serviceable; but again, I thought that any delay might be my ruin; so without mincing the matter I mounted him, and in a very short time had passed the gates of the city, and was far advanced into ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... at six o'clock—for the omelet," and he walked away with short, mincing steps that seemed to ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... vengeance which are characteristic of religious wars, and which add so much of the moral sufferings to the physical calamities of life. L'Hospital, when sending the seals to the queen-mother, who demanded them of him, considered it his bounden duty to give her without any mincing, and the king whom she governed, a piece of patriotic advice. "At my departure," he says in his will and testament, "I prayed of the king and queen this thing, that, as they had determined to break the peace, and proceed by war against those with whom they had previously ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... mighty lucky," said Smart, "she could speak nothing but her mother tongue, and that but badly clipping and mincing it, for she was letting out everything in such a way I could ha' shook her well; and I'll be bound to do it when I next see her. I hopes as they did not understand, but I ha' ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... concealment, a lamentable and wretched sheaf of verbiage, worse, it seemed, than the efforts of his boyhood. He was not longer tautological, he avoided tautology with the infernal art of a leader-writer, filling his wind bags and mincing words as if he had been a trained journalist on the staff of the Daily Post. There seemed all the matter of an insufferable tragedy in these thoughts; that his patient and enduring toil was in vain, that practice went for nothing, and that ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... There was no mistake. Harry Robinson, junior partner of the firm of Robinson & Co., of Mincing Lane. Vain, indeed, would it be to seek the help of Great Scotland Yard. Harry had blown out his brains in the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... he walked with a curiously quick, mincing gait, as well as had a habit of hitching one of his shoulders. His eyes were small and perpetually twinkling, his nose large and aquiline, his lips irregular and rather oddly (though pleasantly) compressed, his articulation slightly ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... into a run across the snow, his traces trailing behind him. And there, out in the snow of their back track, was the she-wolf waiting for him. As he neared her, he became suddenly cautious. He slowed down to an alert and mincing walk and then stopped. He regarded her carefully and dubiously, yet desirefully. She seemed to smile at him, showing her teeth in an ingratiating rather than a menacing way. She moved toward him a few steps, ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... house I found my deare and sweet love Fotis mincing of meat and making pottage for her master and mistresse, the Cupboord was all set with wines, and I thought I smelled the savor of some dainty meats: she had about her middle a white and clean apron, and shee was girded about ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... An' a good stall to stand in instead of millin' around a corral all night." The rope slackened, and securing a firm grip on the halter, the Texan edged slowly toward the door, the horse following with nervous, mincing steps, and nostrils aquiver. From her place beside the corral, the girl watched in astonishment as man and horse passed from sight. From the black interior of the stable the voice of the Texan sounded its monotonous drone, and presently the man himself appeared and ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... wife, and idol; a proud mincing peat, and as perverse as he is officious. She dotes as perfectly upon the courtier, as her husband doth on her, and only wants the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... difficult to believe one was not mad, that one was not a figure in the hall of kings in some Egyptian tomb, where the dead all sat immemorial and tremendous. How utterly he knew Joshua Mattheson, who was talking in his harsh, yet rather mincing voice, endlessly, endlessly, always with a strong mentality working, always interesting, and yet always known, everything he said known beforehand, however novel it was, and clever. Alexander the up-to-date ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... is no mincing and begging institution. It has, at its disposal, the entire military battery. No mayor holds a whip handle over it. I must confess I was happy as I witnessed the blessed effect of this Moral Department. All evil is not extirpated, neither is all lawlessness overcome, ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... man with a good heart, and would not let my beloved work go to ruin; and the chief reason is that I love you as a son, and I am proud of you. If Tanya and you could get up a romance somehow, then—well! I should be very glad and even happy. I tell you this plainly, without mincing matters, like ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... for cheating agents de change on the Bourse—for squabbling politicians in the Chambers—for mincing dandies in the salons—for the sarcasm of Scribe-ish comedies, or the coarse drolleries of Palais Royal farces, but for poetry the French language was extinct. All modern poets who used it were ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... about a mile, and bivouacked. Williams and I minced our meat in one of the battery mincing machines, and made a grand dish of it over the cook's fire. There was a red glare over half the sky to-night, as though a Babylon were burning. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... herself—isn't that the phrase? I hope the reverse now; that she and her husband will philander along to the close of the chapter. But I prefer your word,—to the close of the "comedy," say. It implies something artificial. Mallinson and Clarice give me that impression,—as of Watteau figures mincing a gavotte, and made more unreal by the juxtaposition of a man. Let's hope they will never perceive the flimsiness of their pretty bows and ribbons! But I think of your one o'clock in the morning of the masquerade ball, and frankly I am afraid. I look at the three without—well, with as little ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... was Aunt Betsey, you fool! Aunt Nancy used to—she has been dead these eighty years, so there is no use in mincing matters—she used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had been tasting a drop out of the bottle the stick used to come off the shelf and I had to taste that. And here she is made a saint of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... dowdy girl, And the rowdy girl, And the girl that's always late; There's the girl of style, And the girl of wile, And the girl with the mincing gaits ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... perfumed dandy. In him culture had begun to turn yellow. Men who pride themselves upon their culture haven't any of which to speak. All the beauties of art, this man thought, were exclusively for him and his precious company of lisping exquisites and giggling, mincing queans. The thought that those who create beauty are also they who possess it, never dawned upon this ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... included two very recent additions. Also, Finn brought a baffling mixture of scents with him, including those of men and of wild creatures such as the stallion had never seen and did not wish to see. So he continued his threateningly mincing progress toward Finn, and whinnied out a declaration to the effect that this could be no resting-place for dingoes, however huge and diversified in their smells. Finn was not in the least like a dingo; but, on the other hand, he was not like a kangaroo-hound. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... a writer. Johnson found such a playground in talk. There he could take the curb off his prejudices, give the rein to his whimsical fancy, and better his expression as he talked. But where men must talk, as well as write, upon oath, paralysis is not easily avoided. In the little mincing societies addicted to intellectual and moral culture the creative zest is lost. The painful inhibition of a continual rigorous choice, if it is never relaxed, cripples the activity of the mind. Those who can talk the best and most ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... stared after the couple with keen appreciation of the picture they presented. Miss Slocum had a queer, mincing gait which her long limbs appeared averse to, and the result was a little hitchy. But she kept up with Overton, and surveyed him with weak blue eyes of gratitude. He appeared to her a very admirable personage—a ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... place of the new one, and as they parted he presented the fellow with the gloves and stick I had purchased for him that very morning. As I stared aghast at this faux pas the navvy, with his new hat at an angle and twirling the stick, proceeded down the street with mincing steps and exaggerated airs of gentility, to the applause of the entire ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... characteristic of religious wars, and which add so much of the moral sufferings to the physical calamities of life. L'Hospital, when sending the seals to the queen-mother, who demanded them of him, considered it his bounden duty to give her without any mincing, and the king whom she governed, a piece of patriotic advice. "At my departure," he says in his will and testament, "I prayed of the king and queen this thing, that, as they had determined to break the peace, and proceed by war ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... which lies to the westward of the White Tower is held by some to be within this ward. The principal streets and places contained in it are Great Tower Street, part of Little Tower Street and Tower Hill, part of Thames Street, Mark Lane, Mincing Lane, Seething Lane, St. Olave Hart Street, Idle Lane, St. Dunstan's Hill, Harp Lane, Water Lane, and Bear Lane, with the courts and alleys that fall ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... same chambermaid was a pattern of town prettiness and smartness. So trim her waist, her cap, her dress—I wondered how they had all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent which in its mincing glibness seemed to rebuke mine as by authority; her spruce attire flaunted an easy scorn ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... of the times of old"; and the solemn, dirge-like chant of MacPherson's sentences, with the peculiar manner of his narrative, its repetitions, its want of transitions, suited well with his matter. "Men had been talking under their breath, and in a mincing dialect so long," says Leslie Stephen, "that they were easily gratified and easily imposed upon by an affectation of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... frequently looked around at him, his eyes full of careless laughter, and once or twice he called out—some jocose remark. He helped the conductor, in pantomime, to pull the cord and stop or start the car, and he watched with the liveliest interest each passenger getting on or getting off. A rather mincing young girl with a flaring red ribbon at her throat was to him the finest comedy in the world, so that he had to wink a telegram to the conductor about her. An old woman with a basket of vegetables who delayed the car ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson

... the spirited little jade, the off-leader in the third stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish, mincing mare of Marshy Hope. A spoiled beauty she was; you could see that as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty head about, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up "in any simple knot,"—like the back hair of Shelley's ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... which its author gave it, year after year, keeping it in his desk, and then sending it, a mere pamphlet, with no flourish of trumpets, into the world. Many an ancient figure came to lend animation to the scene. Horace Walpole in his lace coat and spruce wig went mincing by; the mother of Gray, with her sister, measured lace for the customers who came to her little shop in London; the wags of Pembroke College, graceless varlets, raise an alarm of fire that they may see the frightened poet drop from the window, half dead with alarm; old Foulis, the Glasgow printer, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... Carr; and he got up, raising his shoulders and squaring his elbows, and took a few mincing steps across the room. Katy couldn't help laughing, it was so funny, and so like Imogen. Then Papa sat down again and drew her close ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge

... There's no use mincing matters, Studdenham. It's a thunderbolt—young Dunning's case ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... that slight gray-haired figure Gordon refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes. The thing was too utterly absurd—yet Gordon was positive that the strong oak floor of the dancing space was visibly swaying and creaking beneath the stranger's mincing tread! ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... my ever going to Mincing Lane again! Says the box of "Incomparable Congou" was mere "dust." So are ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various

... One-quarter pound macaroni; one pound filet of veal; one ounce butter; one ounce flour; one gill of white stock or milk; three eggs; pepper; salt, and a little cayenne to taste. Chop the veal and then pass it twice through a sausage cutter or mincing machine. Cook the butter and flour together for about ten minutes; then add the milk or stock; then turn on a plate to cool; then add the minced veal; then add the seasoning; break the eggs in one by one; stir well. Boil the macaroni in salt and water ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman

... again. He had never heard Elsie complain of the hill before. Usually they scampered up it, and rolled down the steepest side—not, truly, when there was milk to carry, but at other times. And now Elsie was walking along in a languid, mincing fashion, as if she had no more fun in her than Robbie himself, and had never scampered bare-foot over the moor six days out of every week, no matter ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... They live in the other half of this place—the old infirmary, Mr. Harewood calls it. Such a contrast! He is a tremendous old Turk in his house, and she is a little mincing woman; and they've made Gus—he's one of us, you know—a horrid sneak, and think it's all my bad company and Bill's. By-the-by, Cherry, Gus Shapcote asked me if ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... manoeuvre to get her to London, and result in an offer of marriage? She put it to herself as indelicately as possible, in the hope that her brain would cry, "Rubbish, you're a self-conscious fool!" But her brain only tingled a little and was silent, and for a time she sat gazing at the mincing waves, and wondering whether the news would seem strange to ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... a presentiment on the subject of Soames' communication as they left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise and hurry of Cheapside. They walked together a good minute without speaking, Soames with his mousing, mincing step, and old Jolyon upright and using his umbrella languidly as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... pudding-cloth wrung into a twist out of the scald, and waiting upon a plate, and a pitcher of cold water with ice tinkling against its sides. Mother sat with the deal bowl in her lap, turning and mincing with the few last strokes the light, delicate dust of the pastry. The sunshine—work and sunshine always go so blessedly together—poured in, and filled the room up with life ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... me that? Let me tell you, I have known my lady these thirty years; and if she were to take me by the shoulders, and turn me out of the house, I should only love her the more. So don't you think to come between us with any little mincing, peace-making speeches. I have been a mischief-making parrot, and I like her the better for being vexed with me. So good-bye to you, Miss; and wait till you know Lady Ludlow as well as I do, before you next think of telling me she will soon get ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... two or three years as a student at St. Bartholomew's, and would have qualified, but that the sudden death of his father compelled him to abandon the hope and to assume the responsibilities of the head of the house of Morford & Morford, tea importers, of Mincing Lane." ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... of slaves and keeping pigs, I would have put my hand in my wallet at once and have bought your freedom and have carried you off home as my wife—and no Masdakite who saw you would ever blame me. Now you know all about it, and there, I hope, is an end of your coyness and mincing." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes a subtle flavour of wine; sometimes of tea. One church, near Mincing Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument, the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... was collecting, and evinced lively signs of pleasure at the prospect of seeing the Bishop of Beorminster as umpire in a street row. But the bishop had heard quite enough of the affray, and without mincing matters fled as quickly as his dignity would permit towards the friendly shelter of The Derby Winner, leaving Mesdames Pansey and Trumbly in the thick of a wordy war. The first-named lady held her own for some considerable time, until routed ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... regained colour. Some quarrel with Peggy. What it was all about he had entirely forgotten; but he remembered her little flushed face and her angry words: "Well, I'm a sport and you ain't!" He remembered also rebuking her priggishly for unintelligible language and mincing away. He read the letter again in the light of this flash of memory. The only difference between it and the childish speech lay in the fact that instead of a declaration of contrasts, she now uttered a declaration of similitudes. They were both "sports." There she was wrong. Doggie shook his ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... had not life long enough to serve them to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as the human body; and then they want to comprehend the mind of God in which the universe is included, weighing it minutely and mincing it into infinite parts, as if they had to ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... the curtain, ten dainty Japanese ladies fluttered upon the stage with mincing steps, waving gay fans and bowing low as they drew up in line before the audience. So much did the flowing garments, the fan-bedecked hair and the slanting eyebrows change the girls that even some of the mothers failed at first ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... faintly. She realized that their relations had reached a critical point, and that the next step might be fatal. She put down her teacup, and leaning forward, said with smiling confidential eagerness, "I don't. I wouldn't admit it to anyone else. But what's the use of mincing matters with an intelligent woman like you? I might put you off now, and declare that Benham is well enough. But you would soon divine what I really think, and that would be the end of confidence between us. I like honesty and frankness, and I can see that you do. My opinion of Benham ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... am sorry to say that I am not. I write what papa calls a mincing hand; all jumbled up together, you know, or running into each other, the letters are, and so difficult to read that papa said when I came away he hoped I would call on his friend, Dr. Stuart, every day, and write a letter ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... this side of the river," said the Colonel abruptly; "I am perfectly certain about that. There is no use in mincing matters. We ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... manner no suggestion whatever of things behind, no reference to herself or to the past between them. His passion, it seemed, was for his comrades; his indifference for her. What had he to do with her any more? He had been among the realities of battle and death, while she had been mincing and ambling along the usual feminine path. That was the utterance, it seemed, of the man's whole manner and personality, and nothing could have more effectually recalled Kitty's wild ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the mincing minuets!" blurted the young matron. "One word will settle it all. I tell you, ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... me one of the most interesting features is Fremont's Proclamation freeing the slaves of the rebels. Is there no ray of hope in that? I should not wonder if Edward M. Davis breathed that into his ear. His proclamation looks like real earnestness; no mincing the matter with the rebels. Death to the traitors and confiscation of their slaves is no child's play. I hope that the boldness of his stand will inspire others to look the real cause of the war in the face and inspire ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... back! Enough your play Till next sun-shine holiday. Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades On the lawns and ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... month of May, and the sun blazed upon them with an intolerable heat. They had long since lost their alertness. They rode rocking drowsily in their saddles and prayed for the evening and the silver shine of stars. For three hours the camels went mincing on with their queer smirking motions of the head, and then quite suddenly a hundred yards ahead Durrance saw a broken wall with window-spaces which ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... For all the modernity of medium they are simple and sober. Moreover, in those of his compositions that approach banality most closely, there is a certain saving hardness and virility and honesty. Unlike his neighbor, Grieg, he is never mincing and meretricious. We never find him languishing in a pretty boudoir. He is always out under the sky. It is only that he is not always free and resourceful and deeply self-critical. Even through the bold and rugged and ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... gentleman, with a bow, the pink of courtesy, offered a hand to lead her out, nor could she refuse, though, to use her own expression, she hated the absurdity of mincing down the aisle with a fine young spark looking like her grandson; while her poor father had to put up with Harriet's arm. Outside came the greetings, the flourish of the hat, the "I may venture to introduce myself, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Pope says—approach "with mincing steps and bow profound;" we are about to introduce you to persons ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... man you come to marry shall be a man and not a mincing exquisite with no ideas beyond the ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol

... about him found it hard work often to make him dance to their piping. Perhaps no one understood him better, or had greater influence with him, than the man who now walked a pace or two behind him, and was so small that, beside the King, he looked almost ridiculous. His mincing gait, and his apparently nervous deference to everyone about him, would have amused those who did not know the man, or until they had made a more careful study of his face. Nature seemed to have tried her hand at a caricature, and had placed upon this diminutive body a leonine head. The face ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... patiently, and mark what the other monkeys do: and then follow suit. And by so doing, you will gain a vast reputation as an accomplished ape. Above all things, follow not the silly example of the young spark Karkeke, of whom Mohi was telling me. Dying, and entering the other world with a mincing gait, and there finding certain customs quite strange and new; such as friendly shades passing through each other by way of a salutation;— Karkeke, nevertheless, resolved to show no sign of embarrassment. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... her resources within herself were not particularly strong, thought about little or nothing else than ensnaring the hearts of the younger Cowfold males—that is to say, the hearts which were converted, and yet she encouraged none of them, save by a general acceptance of little attentions, by little mincing smiles, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... the floor we sat. Wilfrid put his treasures between his knees before him, I sat opposite, and the barter began. "What for this fellow, huh?" and he held up a piece of carved ivory, a little triangular mincing-knife, a fur mat that his wife had made, or the skin of a baby-seal. The first thing he asked for was scented soap, the ring that I was wearing, and my porcupine-quill hat-band which looked good to him; every exchange was accompanied ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... Irish ladies, who, ashamed of their country, betray themselves by mincing out their abjuration, by calling tables teebles, and chairs cheers! To such renegadoes we prefer the honest quixotism of a modern champion[55] for the Scottish accent, who boldly asserted that "the broad dialect rises above ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... 'I will take the most paticularest care of it;' and she smoothed it softly down, and walked out with such a funny, mincing step that I ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... good a man as there is at Mincing Lane over a tea bargain; but a job like this knocks the wind out of me, makes me feel a damaged lot where the sea-water's got in, or a Maloo mixture. Can't do ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... holidame! Heavy of heart she seems, and sore afflicted. But thus it is when rude calamity Lays its strong gripe upon these mincing minions; The dainty gew-gaw forms dissolve at once, And shiver at the shock. What says her paper? [seeming to read. Ha! What is this? Come nearer, Ratcliffe! Catesby! Mark the contents, and then divine the meaning. [he reads. 'Wonder not, princely Gloster, at the notice This ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... cried, in his loud bullying voice, "this is the way to teach French monkeys! Now, my mincing young skipjack, God save King Harry!—Malediction!" he roared, as he snatched up his sword, for with a quick motion the boy had emptied the ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... exclaimed Tchelkache, motioning with his hand. "Are you in love with me? Say? Look at you mincing like a young girl. Are you distressed at leaving me? Eh! youngster, ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... Will Sommers immediately arose, and advancing towards her with a mincing step, bowed with an air of mock ceremony, and said in an affected tone, "Welcome, fair mistress, to the king's kitchen. We are all right glad to see ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... being set in gold. His hose were of flame-colored silk, and his shoes of black velvet, the long, pointed toes being turned up and fastened to his knees, and on either instep was embroidered a cross in gold thread. Beside the Bishop rode the Prior of Emmet upon a mincing palfrey. Rich were his clothes also, but not so gay as the stout Bishop's. Behind these were two of the higher brethren of Emmet, and behind these again two retainers belonging to the Bishop; for the Lord Bishop of Hereford strove to be as like ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... Tea are not all the Mischiefs it occasions. Did it cause none of them, but were it entirely wholesome, as Balm or Mint, it were yet Mischief enough to have our whole Populace used to sip warm Water in a mincing, effeminate Manner, once or twice every Day; which hot Water must be supped out of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes the Stomach, satiates ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... little knobs of cherries nod at me, as if saying, "You would not like us now, but you will by and by." The oriole gurgled and giggled from among them, "Wait! Come again! Come again! Ha, ha!" The noise of the greedy canker-worms, mincing the poor young green leaves over my head, seemed a soothing sound; and even the sharp headache I had brought with me from the school-room, only a sort of sauce piquante to my delicious rest. I did not ask myself what Jim would say. I scarcely longed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... among them. No town in the world had ever shown more startling contrasts in its streets. Here, side by side, were outward signs of the highest civilization and of the lowest barbarism. Here were the most refined of ladies, dressed in the latest Paris fashions, mincing about in silks and satins and high-heeled, golden-buckled shoes. Here were the most courtly gentlemen of Europe, in the same embroidered and beruffled uniforms that they would have worn before the king of France. Yet in and out of this gay throng of polite ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood

... you to; we understand that. But tell me! Bluntly, without mincing matters, if necessary. You know that I have no objection to that sort of thing, so go on. Do not keep me in suspense like this. I am burning with curiosity. What ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... shot out of the school," said Jasper desperately; "there's no use in mincing matters. Mr. Faber has utterly lost patience; and the other ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney

... than sweets. After an hour in the bungalow, Chellalu would wander off, apparently because she was tired of us, but really because she was full of a new and original idea, and wanted an audience. Once she puzzled the nursery community who had not been visiting the bungalow, by mincing about on pointed toes, with shoulders shrugged like a dancing master in caricature. The babies thought this a very nice game, and for weeks they played ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... giddiness, heedless, bold, even coquettish, and appeared to be incapable of a reasonable attachment? However, to-day, you tell me, she has become a serious melancholic; pre-occupied, timid, affected; sentiment has taken the place of mincing airs; at least she appears to so fit in with the character she assumes to-day, that you imagine it to be her true one, and her former one, borrowed. All my philosophy would be at fault in such a case, if I did not recognize in this metamorphosis ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... Cornelius admitted only the inoffensive broom of an old Frisian housekeeper, who had been his nurse, and who from the time when he had devoted himself to the culture of tulips ventured no longer to put onions in his stews, for fear of pulling to pieces and mincing the ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... a darker hue than the lord of the wallow, and of much slimmer build,—altogether less formidable in appearance. But he looked very fit and fearless as, after a moment's supercilious survey of his rival's ooze-dripping form, he came mincing forward to the attack. The two, probably, had never seen each other before; but in rutting season all caribou bulls are ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... "It's no use mincing matters," he said, "nor walking round the bush. It is just this. If there is a family on this earth that I have been proud to have to do with, it is that of the Dales. If there were children that I loved next to ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... worked he talked, and as he talked he strode constantly back and forth through the room with his light-falling, mincing steps. He grew excited. He flushed. There came a thrill and a ring and a deepening of the voice. For the master was indeed talking of the secrets of ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... set eyes on him at the station at Villahorrenda, and he spoke to me with his honeyed voice and his mincing manners," declared Licurgo, "I thought him a great—I will not say what, through respect for the mistress. But I knew him—I put my mark upon him from that moment, and I make no mistakes. A thread shows what the ball is, as the saying goes; a sample tells what ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... it was pure affectation. He had a muddled idea, common to men of his stamp, that women assume nervousness because they think it pretty and becoming to them, and that if one could only convince them of the folly of it they might be induced to lay it aside, in the same way that they lay aside mincing steps and simpering voices. A man who prided himself, as he did, upon his knowledge of horses, might, one would think, have grasped a truer notion of the nature of nervousness, which is a mere matter of temperament. But ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... said he, mysteriously, "I've seen enough lately to frighten any quiet gentleman out of his senses. I'll not get a wink of sleep, I fear, for a week to come. There must have been something dreadful upon Sir Piers's mind; sure—nay, there's no use in mincing the matter with you—in a word, then, some crime ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... I will give you my advice to hold your tongue more under government. Those young knights have earned royal favour not by soft words or mincing ways, but by their swords; and it were best in future that any remarks you may wish to make concerning them, should be either in strict privacy or openly and in ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... more; and when the julep appeared on a silver tray, he left the room and went upstairs to where Betty was waiting. "He's awful, there's no use mincing words, he's simply awful," he remarked in ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... down; we can see right into the hearts of people. It is like a fire or an earthquake when all the doors are open and the folks are carrying their dearest possessions into the street, and they are all real people now, and they have lost all their little mincing airs and all their lawdie-daw. But believe me, we have been some fiddlers! When I look around this house I see evidence of it everywhere; look at that abomination now"—She pointed to an elaborately beaded match-safe ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... is no harm in the book. It is true that the Author is any thing but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious. There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope however that there is not so much as there was. ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... grotesque dance with Bruin Boru, the wonderful dancing bear. Jack Fenn was very funny in his bear-skin costume, and he pawed and scraped as he ambled ludicrously about, and kept time to the music with mincing ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells

... would take little mincing steps, and toss his head from side to side, and pretend to be fanning with ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... Lady Fawn,—a pretty mincing married woman of about twenty-five, with a husband much older, who liked mild flirtations with mild young men. "I am afraid we've lost your great attraction," ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... trade, and here, when a heaven-sent alternative was delivered into their hands, they found themselves hampered by the coils of a cast-off lie. No shade, however, of hesitancy appeared on the open countenance of the friend. He approached Miss Fitzroy with a mincing step, a deprecating wave of the hand, and a deeply respectful ogle. He was going to adopt the desperate resource of telling the truth, but to tell the truth profitably was a part that required rather more playing than ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... and wrote about A.D. 90, expressly mentions it as abounding in merchants and business. Dr. Guest was of opinion that the Roman fort was made in A.D. 43. It stood above the outfall of the Walbrook, its western wing being where Cannon Street terminus is now, and its eastern extremity reaching to Mincing Lane. These limits were determined in a paper by Arthur Taylor in Archaeologia in 1849, and were confirmed during the building of Cannon Street Station. The road from the bridge divided in East Cheap and passed out towards the ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... with a conversation between a mincing and lackadaisical young lady and a bouncing one who talked noisily; and she changed her attitudes, her accent, the expressions of her face in such droll ways, and altogether contrasted the two characters so well, ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland

... with impatience, stood watching Count Cobenzl, as with his mincing gait he tripped out of the room, and turned again at the door to make his last bow. Scarcely had the portiere fallen when he sprang across the room, and darted toward his sleeping-chamber. Near his bed stood an escritoire. He flung ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... Jane!" said my wife, mincing veal as though she was mincing William. "It's a shame of them. I would think no more of him. He ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the deadening of the moral sense, as we have seen, must bring to life, we shall get no help there. The massy fabric of which saints and heroes were the builders, will never be re-elected by this mincing ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... turn, she was determined that she would act as differently as possible from her usual manner and so fool everybody. After she was blindfolded and turned round, she took the stick and with little mincing steps, imitated exactly the gait of Josie Holmes. She made a wild dash with the stick, but failed to hit a bag and Maisie Norris called out at once, "You're Josie ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... an acquaintance, returning from afternoon service, looked up to bow to her, and while the daylight was still strong, Marthy, resplendent in Sunday raiment, came out of the little green gate at the side of the yard and passed, mincing, in the direction of the negro church. Then the door opened slowly, and the two old maids came in and stopped for a minute at the parlour door to see if Gabriella ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... lest there might be any want of comprehension, she expressed her own assurance that her friend would be glad to have an opportunity of reciprocating the feelings which had been evinced on the occasion of her own marriage. "It is no good mincing matters now-a-days," Mrs. Carbuncle would have said, had any friend pointed out to her that she was taking strong measures in the exaction of toll. "People have come to understand that a spade is a spade, and L10, L10," she would have said. Had Mrs. Hanbury Smith not noticed the application, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... all in a row and with their chins up as if they disdained everyone but themselves. They were magnificently dressed, and their blue hair was carefully arranged in huge towers upon their heads, with blue plumes stuck into the tops. These plumes waved gracefully in the air with every mincing step the Princesses took. Rich jewels of blue stones glittered upon their persons, and the royal ladies were fully as gorgeous as they were haughty and overbearing. They marched to their chairs and seated themselves to enjoy the cruel scene their father was about to enact, ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum

... heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... impulses. But I am a mother and you are an impartial spectator, and therefore qualified with your intelligence to form a more impartial opinion. I implore you, in fact' (yes, that word, 'implore' was uttered!), 'to tell me the whole truth, without mincing matters. And if you will give me your word never to forget that I have spoken to you in confidence, you may reckon upon my always being ready to seize every opportunity in the future to show my gratitude.' Well, what do ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... no beating about the bush here, and no mincing of phrases. The matter is at once ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... the ranks of the King's silk-clad warriors who lay oiled and scented upon velvet cloaks, with a pleasant breeze among them caused by the fans of slaves; even their casting-spears were set with jewels; through their ranks the heralds went with mincing steps, and came to the prophets, clad in brown and black, and one of them they brought and set him before the King. And the King looked at him and said, "Prophesy ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... feather Washington took from the plume of his three-cornered hat, and presented with his own hand to the worshipful Mistress Jocelyn the day he left Rivermouth forever. I wish I could describe the mincing genteel air, and the ill-concealed self-complacency, with which the dear ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Anson had already engaged him. Such a breach of friendship was soon followed by an expostulation (there was jealousy of the Duke of Newcastle's favour already under the coals): in short the nephew earl called the favourite earl such gross names, that it was well they were ministers! otherwise, as Mincing says, "I vow, I believe they must have fit." The public, that is half-a-dozen toad-eaters, have great hopes that the present unfavourable posture of affairs in America will tend to cement this breach, and that we shall all unite hand and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... only necessary to say that he was in a reverential condition, and that is saying a great deal for Mr. Blithers. A certain bombastic confidence in himself gave way to mellow timidity. He was in a new world. He was cognisant of a distinct sensation of awe. His ruthless Wall Street tread became a mincing, uncertain shuffle; he could not conquer the absurd notion that he ought to tip- toe his way about these ancient halls with their thick, velvety ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... we can't understand," Graham said. "There's no evidence we know anything about that your grandfather's heart didn't simply give out, but the detective is absolutely certain, and—there's no use mincing matters, Bobby—he believes he has the proof to convict you. He won't tell me what. He simply smiles and refuses ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... continued Kate. "Now, such a girl oughtn't to be on the foundation at all. If you only knew the snubbing she gave me yesterday. I quite hate her, with all her pretty face and her mincing ways." ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... garments were brought in, and Derues was ordered to put them on, which he did readily, affecting much amusement. As he was assisted to disguise himself, he laughed, stroked his chin and assumed mincing airs, carrying effrontery so far as to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... expressions were too subtle, too insufficiently open, the difficulty in no way diminished his high spirits. Easily and gracefully did he exchange agreeable bandinage with one lady, and then approach another one with the short, mincing steps usually affected by young-old dandies who are fluttering around the fair. As he turned, not without dexterity, to right and left, he kept one leg slightly dragging behind the other, like a short ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... vanities of the world in general, and of being the sort of person to whom it was no novelty at all to be a mother; yet in the same breath, they showed her, laughing at the Carrier for being awkward, and pulling up his shirt-collar to make him smart, and mincing merrily about that very room to teach ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... keener appreciator of the tendencies to a rise or fall in colonial produce—sugars more especially—than John Linden, of Mincing Lane, it would have been difficult to point out in the wide city of London. He was not so immensely rich as many others engaged in the same merchant-traffic as himself; nothing at all like it, indeed, for I doubt ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... Mincing Lane are not far away. In the latter was "Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles" Counting-House, and still further on Trinity House and Tower Hill to remind one of the locale of certain scenes ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... them remarkably so, and had the manners and deportment of young women: not of degraded brutes of burden. If I had seen in one of those mills (but I did not, though I looked for something of this kind with a sharp eye), the most lisping, mincing, affected, and ridiculous young creature that my imagination could suggest, I should have thought of the careless, moping, slatternly, degraded, dull reverse (I HAVE seen that), and should have been still well pleased to look ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... little Dagonet mincing with his feet, 'Knight, an ye fling those rubies round my neck In lieu of hers, I'll hold thou hast some touch Of music, since I care not for thy pearls. Swine? I have wallowed, I have washed—the world Is flesh and shadow—I have had my day. The dirty nurse, Experience, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... fair Queen," said Marjorie, coming up with mincing steps and bowing before Kitty. "From now on I am the Sand Witch of this court, and I humbly beg ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells

... miles of it. The nearer the open sea the more widespread was the floe. Beyond—hauling down the Spotted Horses, which lay in the open—the proportion of new ice would be vastly greater. At a trot for the time over the pans, which were flat, and in delicate, mincing little spurts across the bending ice, Doctor Rolfe proceeded. In a confidence that was somewhat flushed—he ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... higher than ourselves. It was for Una that the Red Cross Knight did war. For no painted, mincing court dame could the dragon have been slain. Oh, ladies fair, be fair in mind and soul as well as face, so that brave knights may win glory in your service! Oh, woman, throw off your disguising cloaks of selfishness, effrontery, and affectation! Stand forth once more a queen ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... properly and neat!" Dryden rightly calls her "the mincing Prioress;" Mr Horne wrongly says, "she was evidently one of the most high-bred and refined ladies ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... eye on Forrest. Inwardly I was chuckling, but Quince was mincing along with his dinner, showing that languid indifference which is inborn to the Texan. Lovell continued to monopolize the conversation, blowing on the cattle and ribbing up Forrest to see that the beeves thenceforth ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... Cat-Bird has flirted and attitudinized on my garden-fence; the House-Wren stopped a moment between the showers, and indulged in a short, but spirited, rehearsal under a large leaf in the grape-arbor; the King-Bird advised me of his proximity, as he went by on his mincing flight; and the Chimney-Swallows have been crying the child's riddle of "Chippy, chippy, cherryo," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... tell you, without mincing the matter brother Algernon, that I never grant favors in any shape. That I never ask favors of any one. That I never lend money, or borrow money. That I never require security for myself of others, or give my name ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... me. There is only one change, Mr Dombey,' observed Mrs Skewton, with a mincing sigh, 'for which I really care, and that I fear I shall never be permitted to enjoy. People cannot spare one. But seclusion ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Mr. Meredith," said the visitor, in the mincing affected tones of one who excused the vulgar source of her prosperity by frequently reiterated claims to ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... please is "plaise," sea is "say," and ease is "aise." The softer sound of e is broadened out by the natural Irishman,—not, to my ear, without a certain euphony;—but no one in Ireland says or hears the reverse. The Irishman who in London might talk of his "neetive" race, would be mincing his words to please ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... discordantly, though I sought to modulate it into the softest tones. "The truth is," thought I to myself, "I cannot bring my mind down to the small talk necessary for young girls; it is too masculine and robust for the mincing measure of parlor gossip. I am a philosopher—and that accounts ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... school for gentlemen.") "Honestly," said Sylvia, "he was the queerest little mannikin—like the tiny waiter's assistants you see in hotels on the Continent. He wore his Eton suit, you understand—grown-up evening clothes minus the coat-tails, and a top hat. He sat at tea and chatted with the mincing graces of a cotillion-leader; you expected to find some of his hair gone when he took off his hat! He spoke of his brother, the duke, who had gone off shooting seals somewhere. 'The jolly rotter has nothing to do ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... excuse," continued the unaffected youth, "but you bet your life you'll never beat our Cora-lee when there's a person in pants on the premises! It's sickening." He rose, and performed something like a toe-dance, a supposed imitation of his sister's mincing approach to the visitor. "Oh, dear, I am such a little sweety! Here I am all alone just reeking with Browning-and-Tennyson and thinking to myself about such lovely things, and walking around looking for my nice, pretty ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... prevailing tendencies. This last feature of degradation had developed itself in Isaiah's day; and he attacks it with a strange combination of humour and moral indignation: "Because the daughters of Jerusalem are haughty, and walk with outstretched neck and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, making a tinkling with their feet, therefore ... the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the moon, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... effective blow, the ram stepped back a pace or two, mincing on his slender feet, and prepared to repeat it. The lynx was struggling frantically among the branches, which stuck into him and tore his fine fur. Just in time to escape the second assault he got free,—but free not for fight but for flight. One ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Marshal of the Palace, and have to pick my words with an Emperor, and find that everybody hints instead of talking straight out, I feel like a troop-horse who has been put in a lady's caleche. It is not my trade, all this mincing and pretending. I have learned the manners of a gentleman, but never those of a courtier. I was right glad then to get into the fresh air again, and I ran away up to my quarters like a schoolboy who has just escaped ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... wish I could say I was! It is very horrid, I know, but where's the good of mincing matters? If I did not call the thing by its name, the thing would be just the same. You know, people in our world have to do as they must; they can't pick and choose like you happy creatures. I dare say, now, you are engaged to a young man you love with all your heart, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... one hand: on the other hand, nothing but wretched Sieur Motiers, treasonous Riquetti Mirabeaus; traitors, or else shadows, and simulacra of Quacks, to be seen in high places, look where you will! Men that go mincing, grimacing, with plausible speech and brushed raiment; hollow within: Quacks Political; Quacks scientific, Academical; all with a fellow-feeling for each other, and kind of Quack public-spirit! Not great Lavoisier himself, or any of the Forty can escape ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... with their hand luggage, trooped down the long dock to the Lanawaxa's boarding-plank. Heavy Stone turned suddenly in the hot sunshine (for it was a glowing noon) to find two of the smaller girls mincing ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... Robe About her lanke and all ore-teamed Loines, A blanket in th' Alarum of feare caught vp. Who this had seene, with tongue in Venome steep'd, 'Gainst Fortunes State, would Treason haue pronounc'd? But if the Gods themselues did see her then, When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his Sword her Husbands limbes, The instant Burst of Clamour that she made (Vnlesse things mortall moue them not at all) Would haue made milche the Burning eyes of Heauen, And passion in ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... sale, and the number of bags of each, were sent, together with samples, to the buyers some days beforehand, so that they were able to decide what they wished to purchase and the price they were willing to pay. The sales always took place at 11 o'clock on Tuesdays in the Commercial Sale Room in Mincing Lane, that narrow street off Fenchurch Street, where the air is so highly charged with expert knowledge of the world's produce, that it would illuminate the prosaic surroundings with brilliant flashes if it could become visible. ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... to her. This woman of calamitous fires hears and sees her tormentors chiefly as the probable owner, of the cake which is standing on that tray.) So awkward, I gave my sandwiches to a poor girl and her father whom I met in the wood, and now ... isn't it a nuisance—I am quite hungry. (So far with a mincing bravado.) May I? ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie

... go to prison. If your foolish principles were made the test, there would hardly be a free man in Mincing Lane. We should have to lock up the whole City. Come, let me have your signature, and I will do the rest. To refuse is madness. You are offered the chance ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... the best intentions, done a good deal more than most of these innocents to deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the Juge d'Instruction told him, without mincing matters, ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... according to the terms of friendship and familiarity on which you may stand with this dignitary, who, by the way, has a vote on board worth canvassing for;—I say bawl out, because, firstly, your mincing and Clarendon-like lisp of "Waiter!" would not be heard by one used to listen to the rush of the tempest and the shriek of the scourged Atlantic; also, for that your stirring call may remind some wretched skulker of a circumstance which he is miserably ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... agreeable to me," assented Gray, in the mincing, elaborate voice characteristic of him ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... declaration contained the essence of the information which Lord Etherington had designed to extract by his momentary flirtation with Mrs. Pott; for when, retreating as it were from this sore subject, she asked him, in a pretty mincing tone, to try his skill in pointing out another love-letter, he only answered carelessly, "that in order to do that he must write her one;" and leaving his confidential station by her little throne, he lounged through the narrow shop, bowed slightly to Lady Penelope as he passed, and issued forth ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... with the Fair Maid in ballast to look for a freight in the Sofala's port of registry, and her letter met him there. Its tenor was that it was no use mincing matters. Her only resource was in opening a boarding-house, for which the prospects, she judged, were good. Good enough, at any rate, to make her tell him frankly that with two hundred pounds she could make a start. He had torn the envelope open, hastily, on deck, where it was handed to him ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... the two, for she carried the family follies several degrees farther than Miss Emmeline. Taken altogether, she was an absurd compound. Personally, she was thoroughly American, very pretty and delicate in form and features, and thus far appeared to great advantage; but she had, also, an affected mincing manner, and drawling voice. Of course, her dress was as Parisian as possible; everything she wore was a faithful copy from "Le Courier des Dames." Her feelings and opinions; Mrs. Hilson was proud to call ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... the barrier," he explained. And presently—mincing, sidling, making futile leaps to get away, the boys on their backs standing clear above them in the short stirrups—a band of deer-like young thoroughbreds assembled, thirty feet ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote

... neither more nor less than the heart's utterance of the faith and hope which are in it. We are told of those nice preachers who 'never mention hell to ears polite.' They are the preachers of your highly-refined, sentimental society. Whatever hell may be, they are the very teachers that, by their mincing forbearance, conduct the poor soul that relies on them into its jaws. It is a sort of lie not to use the properest language to express our thoughts, but rather so to falsify our thoughts by a sort of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... how heroic it was to utter these mincing accents over a broken leg she might have been touched; but she did not even know that the leg was broken. She went on rigidly, 'How could you get aboard when she was sailing so fast? Where did you ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... Council Chamber and found the others in their accustomed seats. Jefferson's brow was corrugated, his weak and mincing mouth pressed out of shape. He had just finished reading the last of Hamilton's "No Jacobin" papers, published that morning, in which Genet's abominable breaches of decorum, violation of treaties, and deliberate ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... it was no easy thing to tell them from the real affair, or to guess the made from the maiden, so slender and so graceful were they all, with their ruffs and their muffs and their feathered fans, and all the airs and mincing graces of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... things you would have to do to keep your heart up would cause your next showing to degenerate into a slight motion of slime at the base of mountains. Think of the distance lost, Charles, for such a little mincing forward step. Come, the morning wanes. Fortunately there are things to do, no matter what cannot be done. I shall return you half of your fortune, which, you will remember, is wholly confiscate to the Crown, but upon the condition that ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange

... she said, with a mincing, apologetic gesture of her head; and then "Dear me!" Having committed the solecism, she found it necessary to draw attention to it. She may have been a Shropshire Norman, but at that relaxed hour of the night, she displayed all the signs of ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... preparing splendid feasts and banquets, and the cooks were busy plucking geese, killing little pigs, flaying kids, basting the roast meat, skimming pots, mincing meat for dumplings, larding capons, and preparing a thousand other delicacies, a beautiful dove came flying to the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... Pierre had twisted these hairs together, as a man twists a mustache, and had trained them to grow obliquely across his cheek bone. He was a big fellow, for a Frenchman, and, as he walked towards Cleggett with a mincing elasticity of gait, he smirked and caressed this whimsical adornment. Cleggett, fascinated, stared at it as the fellow paused before him. Pierre, evidently gratified at the sensation he was creating, continued ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... you mean me to understand from that, Miss Child, that you don't think I've any right to force myself on you after you showed me so plainly you thought me a bounder," said Peter, not mincing his words or stumbling over them. "But I'm not a bounder. There must be some way of proving to you that I'm not. That's why I'm here for one thing, though ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson









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