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More "Uncouth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... towered the palace and its massive pile, Made dubious if of nature or of art, So wild and so uncouth; yet, all the while, Shaped to strange grace in every varying part. And groves adorned it, green in hue, and bright, As icicles about a laurel-tree; And danced about their twigs a wonderous light; Whence came that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... to soothe the weary eyes, Which all the day with ceaseless care have sought The magic gold which from the seeker flies; Ere dreams put on the gown and cap of thought, And make the waking world a world of lies,— Of lies most palpable, uncouth, forlorn, That say life's full of aches and tears and sighs,— Oh, how with more than dreams the soul is torn, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... Rose (Ward) in Arab. is masculine, sounding to us most uncouth. But there is a fem. form Wardah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... wars with the aborigines; had had its financial and legislative troubles; and was still so very very young, we were naturally prepared to find Auckland a rude, rough, and inchoate settlement, pitched down in the midst of a wilderness as savage and uncouth as those ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... wide mouth, large ears, and a protuberant belly. It also particularizes his posterity as Nishadas, Kiratas, Bhillas, and other barbarians and Mlechchhas, living in woods and on mountains. These passages intend, and do not much exaggerate, the uncouth appearance of the Gonds, Koles, Bhils, and other uncivilized tribes, scattered along the forests and mountains of Central India from Behar to Khandesh, and who are, not improbably, the predecessors of the present occupants of the cultivated portions of the country. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Shoshones and Piute tribes were to be seen lounging in picturesque groups at nearly every railroad station. A few also traveled with us short distances in the baggage car, which is made free to them. The men were dirty, uncouth specimens of humanity, besmeared with yellow ochre and vermilion, dressed in red blankets, and bearing a hatchet in their hands, their only visible weapon. The women were dressed in tawdry colors,—striped government blankets and red flannel leggins, with a profusion ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... know as much about it as Bustle,' said Guy, catching the dog by his forepaws, and causing him to perform an uncouth dance. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... belonged to the body of the inhabitants. It was known to us all that abundance of poor despairing creatures who had the distemper upon them, and were grown stupid or melancholy by their misery, as many were, wandered away into the fields and Woods, and into secret uncouth places almost anywhere, to creep into a ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... (1780-1847),[398] probably best remembered at present for his leadership of the great disruption of 1843. He had a reputation for eloquence and philosophic ability not fully intelligible at the present day. His appearance was uncouth, and his written style is often clumsy. He gave an impression at times of indolence and of timidity. Yet his superficial qualities concealed an ardent temperament and cordial affections. Under a sufficient stimulus he could blaze out in ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... as was his back, he continued to exclaim, when his friend Edmund of York came to condole with him as usual in all his scrapes, "'Tis she that should have been scourged for clumsiness! A foul, uncouth Border dame! Well, one blessing at least is that now I shall never be wedded to her daughter—let the wench live or die as ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... indulge in landscape-painting for its own sake; as a rule, they had some ulterior end in view, and that end was the portrayal of some primal human passion, ambition, hate, jealousy, love, especially love. Guided by this principle, one asks what uncouth or romantic love adventure this wild mountain climb symbolizes. All the Hawaiians whom the author has consulted on this question deny any hidden meaning to this mele. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... fury fresh from Hell, with uncouth gestures and unclean, Stole from the poppy-drowsy queen and led you ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... fast as he threw one shovel full of earth out of the hole, two were thrown in by invisible hands. He succeeded so far, however, as to uncover an iron chest, when there was a terrible roaring, and ramping, and raging of uncouth figures about the hole, and at length a shower of blows, dealt by invisible cudgels, that fairly belabored him off the forbidden ground. This Cobus Quackenbos had declared on his death-bed, so that there could not be any doubt of it. He was a man that had devoted many years ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... marble. Only the light color play of its exterior would do against a placid blue sky to relieve the otherwise exceedingly simple rigidity of its massive forms of construction. To make an imitation of this great building in uncouth, somber, almost black pine logs of dubious proportions is hardly an artistically ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Langton, from perusing the writings of Johnson, expected to find him a decent, well dressed, in short a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down from his bed chamber about noon, came, as newly risen, a large uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so congenial with those in which Langton had ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... and made a succession of weird, uncouth gestures that suggested a lunatic or a traveling hypnotist. Evidently the good Pachacamac approved whatever suggestions the royal priest communicated, for he rose to his feet with a solemn grin and strutted majestically to the rear, facing the ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... ugly, uncouth man who had brought him from Monte Carlo lit a cigarette, and wishing the old woman a merry "addio" ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the name among the early Greeks for all foreigners. The word is probably onomatopoetic, designed to represent the uncouth babbling of which languages other than their own appeared to the Greeks to consist. Even the Romans were included in the term. The word soon assumed an evil meaning, becoming associated with the vices and savage natures of which they believed their enemies to be possessed. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... life always affords had been wanting to educate our generals. It is not wonderful, then, that two years of fruitless campaigning was needed to teach our leaders how to utilize on such difficult terrain material equally vast in extent and uncouth in quality. For, however apt the American to learn the trade of war,—or any other,—it is a moot-point whether his independence of character is compatible with the perfect soldier, as typified in Friedrich's regiments, or ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... long and prosper," he connects the act of drinking with a prayer, and unconsciously demonstrates the origin of the use of stimulants. It may be that when the jolly companion has become a loathsome sot, and his mind is ablaze with the fire of drink, and he sees uncouth beasts in horrid presence, that inherited memories haunt him with visions of the beast-gods worshipped by his ancestors at the very time when the appetite for stimulants ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... to the number, or succeed in the place of old ones, there is discernible an evident improvement in their taste and architecture. Those modest Doric little buildings, with their white pillars, green blinds, and neat enclosures, are very different affairs from those great, uncouth mountains of windows and doors that stood in the same place years before. To my childish eye, however, our old meeting house was an awe-inspiring thing. To me it seemed fashioned very nearly on ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... mythological figures composed entirely of chrysanthemum flowers. These effigies are quite worthy of comparison with their London cousins, being sufficiently life-like to terrify children and startle anybody. To come suddenly, on turning a corner, upon a colossal warrior, deterrently uncouth and frightfully battle-clad, in the act of dispatching a fallen foe, is a sensation not instantly dispelled by the fact that he is made of flowers. The practice, at least, bears witness to an artistic ingenuity of no mean merit, and to a horticulture ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... Ituraea, was represented on the maps by "a virgin white patch." Burton found it teeming with interest. There was hardly a mile without a ruin—broken pillars, inscribed slabs, monoliths, tombs. A little later he travelled as far northward as Hamah [232] in order to copy the uncouth characters on the famous stones, and Drake discovered an altar adorned with figures of Astarte and Baal. [233] Everywhere throughout Palestine he had to deplore the absence of trees. "Oh that Brigham Young were here!" he used to say, "to plant a million. The sky would then no longer be brass, or ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... as he wished and was listening in surprise. As much because he talked so well and so easily as at the really joyous tone in which he hailed his uncouth acquaintance ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... mornings, growing darker as they are continually doing, nobody felt in haste to leave their beds. Of course every one wore his Sunday clothes and I put on my very best waist of olive green satin with a good black skirt, which had a little train, thereby effectively hiding my uncouth feet, still clad as they are ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... to receive your letter this morning. I have for some time been wishing to write to you, but have been half worked to death in correcting my uncouth English for my new book. (705/1. "Descent of Man.") I have been glad to hear of your cases appearing like incipient dimorphism. I believe that they are due to mere variability, and have no significance. I found a good instance in Nolana prostrata, and experimented on it, but the forms did not differ ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... licence too limited for their depravity. The Huns were worthy sons of such fathers. The Goths, the bravest and noblest of barbarians, recoiled in horror from their physical and mental deformity. Their voices were shrill, their gestures uncouth, and their shapes scarcely human. They are said by a Gothic historian to have resembled brutes set up awkwardly on their hind legs, or to the misshapen figures (something like, I suppose, the grotesque forms of medieval sculpture), ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... better grammar and punctuation and more uniformity of spelling than "The New England Psalm-book," which at a later date displaced Ainsworth in the affections and religious services of the New England Puritans and Pilgrims. Both versions are somewhat confused in sense, and of uncouth and grotesque versification; though the metre of Ainsworth is better than the rhyme. It is all written in "common metre," nearly all in lines of ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... from bandit, Indian, and lurking Mexican; regrets for the home circle at Lagunitas, make Maxime Valois very grave. Individual sacrifices are not appreciated in war-time. As he rides through the Confederate camp, his heart sinks. The uncouth straggling plainsmen, without order or regular equipment, recall to him his old enemies, the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... making the sergeant the successor of her late husband. For some time past the trooper had seemed to flatter this preference; and Betty, conceiving that her violence might have mortified her suitor, was determined to make him all the amends in her power. Besides, rough and uncouth as she was, the washerwoman had still enough of her sex to know that the moments of reconciliation were the moments of power. She therefore poured out a glass of her morning beverage, and handed it to her ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the family, was always busy praying when he had nothing better to do. And so to-night Esther fared to the kitchen, with her red pitcher, passing in her childish eagerness numerous women shuffling along on the same errand, and bearing uncouth tin cans supplied by the institution. An individualistic instinct of cleanliness made Esther prefer the family pitcher. To-day this liberty of choice has been taken away, and the regulation can, numbered and stamped, serves as a soup-ticket. There was quite a crowd of applicants outside ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Lacy, Bud Young, Mr. Kelly, Bill Ferguson, Lon Perry and Gus Ferris, all gorgeously uncouth, as far as externals go, made an admirable onslaught in the direction of the "dress suit." "Immaculate evening dress," as we call the garb of a man who is rigged up in imitation of the elusive but energetic restaurant waiter, has rarely been more humorously ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not unlike. I recall him, two months later, a little less uncouth, a little better dressed, but in singularity and in angularity much the same. All the world now takes an interest in every detail that concerned him, or that relates to the weird tragedy of his life ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... the start of the return journey to the last possible moment. And Keeko set no obstacle in the way. She asked no margin of time for accident by the way. She was prepared to accept all chances. The last moments before the permanent freeze up must see her back at her home. For the rest this wild, uncouth land was a radiant garden ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... his seat by the fire and approached the window. "What a disgusting appearance he presents!" said he, gazing on the slowly-receding figure. "It angers me to see a man degrade himself by such uncouth apparel." ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... answered by "Blunderbuss" Pepper, the new Senator who had turned every aristocrat out of office in his aristocratic Southern State and filled the vacancies with men of his own humble origin. He was a burly untidy- looking man, and frequently as uncouth in speech, a demagogue and excitable. But the Senate, now that three years in that body had toned him down, conceded his ability and took his abuse with the utmost good-nature. Betty recalled his biography as sketched ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... at the feelings of a fish of the northern ocean around which the waters suddenly rose to tropical temperature, and swarmed with strange forms of life, uncouth and threatening, we should have a fair symbol of the mental condition in which Thomas Wingfold now found himself. The spiritual fluid in which his being floated had become all at once more potent, and he was in consequence uncomfortable. A certain intermittent stinging, as if from ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... called "Shanty Hill," were the quarters of the slaves. The only lights she saw were there, the only sounds she heard reached her across the intervening fields. This was her world. A half-savage world with its uncouth ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... belov'd Belvira; for a little Verse after the dull Prose Company of his Servant, was as great an Ease to him, (from whom it flow'd as naturally and unartificially, as his Love or his Breath) as a Pace or Hand-gallop, after a hard, uncouth, and rugged Trot. He therefore, finding his Pegasus was no way tir'd with his Land-travel, takes a short Journey thro' the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... made goose-flesh come out on his spine; and once when I took him by his rope collar he fell down and shrieked. But just let Mary Magdalen roll out an unctious, "Whah is yuh, Beaut'ful Dawg?" and his ears and tail went up, he curveted, and made uncouth movements with his splay feet, and grinned from ear ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... unmistakable, but how different, in the realistic group of the "Thunderstricken,"—the long, lank youth, with spindle-shanks and egg-shaped body, bounding forward, with most grotesque strides, over the uncouth heap of dead bodies, ungainly masses with soles and nostrils uppermost, lying in beast-like confusion. This youth, with something of a harlequin in his jumps and in his ridiculous thin legs and preposterous round body, is evidently ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... forced loans; they clamored against the unconstitutional Court of High Commission; they despised his arrogant favorites; and what they might have patiently borne from a gallant, energetic, and handsome monarch, they found it hard to bear from a pedantic, timid, uncouth, and rickety man, who gave them neither glory nor comfort. His eldest son, Prince Henry, the universal favorite of the nation, had died in 1612, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... The idea of his bodily deformity is utterly without foundation, and may have been adopted as a foil to his extraordinary shrewdness and wit, as exhibited in the anecdotes related of him by Planudes. That there was nothing uncouth in the person of Esop is evident from the fact that the Athenians erected a fine statue of him, by the famed sculptor Lysippus.—The Latin collection of the fables ascribed to Esop was first printed at Rome in 1473 and soon afterwards translated ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... country. But the expedition of three years and three days was rich in other disclosures of ruined cities and great watercourses and lofty plateaus and majestic mountain ranges. The population is sparse in those desolate wastes, and the scattered inhabitants are wild and uncouth ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... grizzled, uncouth-looking old man, but a certain dignity was imparted to him by a look of deep and unspeakable melancholy upon his face, which gave it pathos and character of its own. The rustic face is apt to become vacant, bovine, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... King Argimenes, sitting upon the ground, bowed, ragged, and dirty, gnawing a bone. He has uncouth hair and a dishevelled beard. A battered spade lies near him. Two or three slaves sit at back of stage eating raw cabbage-leaves. The tear-song, the chaunt of the low-born, rises at intervals, monotonous and mournful, ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... mountains of Kashmir and the flaming aridity of Lesser Tibet, than between the tall, dark, handsome natives of the one, with their statuesque and shrinking women, and the ugly, short, squat, yellow- skinned, flat-nosed, oblique-eyed, uncouth-looking people of the other. The Kashmiris are false, cringing, and suspicious; the Tibetans truthful, independent, and friendly, one of the pleasantest of peoples. I 'took' to them at once at Shergol, and terribly faulty though their morals are in some respects, I found no reason ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... then drawn up the curtain, and, whilst he was gazing with admiration, had pointed out to him a speck, and had told him, "Young man, there is America—which, at this day, serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death,"' &c. ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... an old acquaintance, and to their salutations he responded with a sidelong, yet a sufficiently civil, bow. Also, he became acquainted with an extremely unctuous and approachable landowner named Manilov, and with a landowner of more uncouth exterior named Sobakevitch—the latter of whom began the acquaintance by treading heavily upon Chichikov's toes, and then begging his pardon. Next, Chichikov received an offer of a "cut in" at whist, and accepted the same with his usual courteous inclination of the head. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... thought. They are therefore of value to us as items of history, and, though we would not repeat many of them, we shall preserve them, not only because we reverence the graves of our forefathers, but because they are entitled to our protection as ancient monuments. However uncouth they may be in design or expression, they must be tolerated for their age. It cannot be denied that some of them try our patience, in the epitaphs even more perhaps than in the carvings, and "merely mock whom they were meant to ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... the life here I looked upon as only an incident. The gay tawdry had faded; I realized how much more enduring were the rough, uncouth but genuine products like my friend Mr. Jenks and those of that ilk, who spoke me well instead of merely fair. Health of mind and body should ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... After heaping up more than a sufficient quantity, we returned to the sitting-room, drew our chairs close to the hearth, and began to talk over our prospects. Soon, with a tremendous stamping in the entry, appeared Silas Foster, lank, stalwart, uncouth, and grizzly-bearded. He came from foddering the cattle in the barn, and from the field, where he had been ploughing, until the depth of the snow rendered it impossible to draw a furrow. He greeted us in pretty ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we care how you have it," said the leader. But now the largest of the crows—a dishevelled and uncouth one, who had a white feather in his wing—came forward and said: "It would certainly be best for all of us, Wind-Rush, if Thumbietot got there whole, rather than half, and therefore, I shall carry him on my back." "If you can do it, Fumle-Drumle, ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... deep desiring, Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in; "Let such lodging be for a breath-while," thought ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... blunders and lack of organization too often characterizing a union, in marked contrast to the orderly management of a factory, often confuse us as to the real issues involved, and we find it hard to trust uncouth and unruly manifestations of social effort. The situation is made even more complicated by the fact that those who are formulating a code of associated action so often break through the established code of law and order. As society has a right to demand of the reforming individual that he be sternly ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... hand[28]." Other little delicate turns of phrase may be found in the mine of Euphues—for the digging. Our author was no genius, but he had a full measure of that indefinable quality known as wit; and, though the stylist's mask he wears is uncouth and rigid, it cannot always conceal the twinkle of his eyes. Moreover a certain weariness of this sermonizing on the stilts of antithesis is often visible; and we may suspect that he half sympathises with the petulant exclamation ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... frontlet of the elk adorns, Or mantles o'er the bison's horns; Pennons and flags defaced and stained, That blackening streaks of blood retained, And deer-skins, dappled, dun, and white, With otter's fur and seal's unite, In rude and uncouth tapestry all, To garnish ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... resembling a man with high shoulders, appearing to be "stuck up." It had two rows of formal, short and ungraceful windows, that being a point in orthodoxy at the period of its erection. It had a tower, uncouth, and in some respects too large and others too small, if one can reconcile the contradiction; but there are anomalies of this sort in art, as well as in nature. On top of this tower stood a long-legged belfry, which had got a very dangerous, though ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... affords; and for your evening's entertainment I will relate the history of my life from my first landing in this desert island." He then called for Caliban to prepare some food, and set the cave in order; and the company were astonished at the uncouth form and the savage appearance of this ugly monster, who (Prospero said) was the only attendant he ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... brought by Talleyrand in a letter which said: "Two young men have lately brought me strong recommendations. One is gentlemanly and appears to have the qualifications you desire in a secretary; the other is uncouth to a degree, but I think I can discern in him sparks of the fire of genius." The duke's reply was brief: "Send me the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... privileged classes, for such was not the case. At that time, the great mass of the people in Europe—men and women—were ignorant to the last degree, possessing little if any sense of delicacy or refinement, and were utterly uncouth. For the most part, they lived in miserable hovels, were clothed in a most meagre and scanty way, and were little better than those beasts of burden which are compelled to do their master's bidding. Among these people, rights depended quite largely upon physical strength, and women were generally ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... possessed with the gaiety of spirit so earnestly enjoined by their pastor. The elder folks gathered in knots in the churchyard, greeting and shaking hands; and the children ran about crying, Ule! Ule! and repeating some uncouth rhymes,[F] which the parson, who had joined us, informed me had been handed down from days of yore. The villagers doffed their hats to the Squire as he passed, giving him the good wishes of the season with every appearance of heartfelt sincerity, and were invited by him to the hall, to take something ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... lip and eye denoted the man of unyielding temper, and his very hair, slightly silvered, stood erect like quills round his wrinkled brow, as if they scorned to bend. Some sneered, it is true, at what they called a military tyro, at the impromptu general who had sprung out of the uncouth lawyer and the unlearned judge, who in arms had only the experience of a few months, acquired in a desultory war against wild Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training to his new profession, but also ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... that, huddled in his chair in the dirty, boxed-in little office, made her think of some crafty old spider lurking in its web for unwary prey. Was the man lying to her? Was he in any degree suspicious? Why should he be? He had given not the slightest sign that her uncouth language was either unexpected or unnecessary. Perhaps to Shluker, and perhaps to all the rest of the gang—except Danglar!—Gypsy Nan was accepted at face value as just Gypsy Nan; and, if that were so, the idea of playing up a natural ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... so solitary, and had taken more care of himself in his way of living than he did, he would have made known the greatness of his intellect in such a way that he would have been revered, whereas, by reason of his uncouth ways, he was rather held to be a madman, although in the end he did no harm save to himself alone, while his works were beneficial and useful to his art. For which reason every good intellect and every excellent craftsman should always be taught, from such an example, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... ladies, wherever Homer lets us see it, is very innocent cake and wine, with such fruits as were in season. To judge by Nausicaa, their breeding must have been exquisite. Nausicaa standing still, when the uncouth figure of Ulysses emerged from under the wood, all sea slime and nakedness, and only covered with a girdle of leaves—standing still to meet him when the other girls ran away tittering and terrified, is the perfect conception of true female modesty; and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... recall where he had seen the face before. Finally he remembered. One of the boys had pointed him out as an old soldier who had taken to nursing when he could no longer fight. He held no diploma from any training-school for nurses, he was uncouth and rough in many ways, but his varied experiences had made him a valuable assistant to the doctor, whom he called his general, and obeyed ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... century portieres of a thirteenth century doorway lay the goal we sought. I hesitated briefly before drawing them apart and taking the final plunge. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to feel ashamed of myself. Suppose that she really had a headache! What an uncouth, pusillanimous brute I— ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Discourse Lord Leighton carried on his inquiry upon the origins and conditions of Art into the difficult region of the Etruscans; whose plastic work, like their speech, he considers, was at best an uncouth, vigorous imitation, or re-shaping, of Greek models. As examples of Etruscan Art, we are referred to "the two lovely bronze mirrors, preserved at Perugia and Berlin, representing,—one, Helen between Castor and Pollux,—the other, Bacchus, Semele, and Apollo.... In either case, the design ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... he had scarcely expected to hear the uncouth mountain dialect from such lips as those but he quickly recovered, lifted his hat with the greatest gallantry, ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... on this uncouth-looking person that Mr. Winkle's eye rested, and it was towards him that Mr. Pickwick extended his hand when he said, 'A friend of our friend's here. We discovered this morning that our friend was connected with the theatre in this place, though he is not desirous to have ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... tolerable intimate with no Protestant, without thinking he was specially called on to convert him. A disciple less likely to make converts than Father Cullen it would be difficult to imagine, seeing that in language he was most violent and ungrammatical—in appearance most uncouth—in argument most unfair. He was impatient if any one spoke but himself. He relied in all such arguments on his power of proving logically that his own church was the true church, and as his education had been logical, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... And to you, my honoured parents. Many faults are in it, truly: Tragic pathos may be wanting, And a racy tendance; also, As in Amaranth, the fragrant Incense of a pious soul, its Sober but pretentious colouring. Take him, as he is, this ruddy. Rough, uncouth son of the mountains, With a pine branch on his straw hat. What he's wanting in, pray, cover With the veil of kind indulgence. Take him not as thanks, for always In your Book of Love I'm debtor, But as greeting and as witness, That a ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... the Witches in MACBETH, when they do 'a deed without a name', to the sylph-like expressions 'of Ariel, who 'does his spiriting gently'; the mischievous tricks and gossiping of Robin Goodfellow, or the uncouth gabbling and emphatic gesticulations of Caliban in ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... uncouth guide sitting tailor-fashion on the sumpter mule upon the baggage. The moon had just gone down, and the morning was pitchy dark, and, as usual, piercingly cold. He soon entered the dismal wood, which I had already traversed, and through which we wended our way for some time, slowly ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... with the print of birds' claws, and a lovely fern in bas-relief. These were the keys which unlocked the treasures of the antediluvian world for me. With trembling fingers I listened to Miss Sullivan's descriptions of the terrible beasts, with uncouth, unpronounceable names, which once went tramping through the primeval forests, tearing down the branches of gigantic trees for food, and died in the dismal swamps of an unknown age. For a long time these strange creatures haunted my dreams, and this gloomy period formed a sombre background ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... buttresses, with, here and there, between them, a narrow grate, that admitted a freer circulation of air to the court, the massy iron gates, that led to the castle, whose clustering turrets appeared above, and, opposite, the huge towers and arch of the portal itself. In this scene the large, uncouth person of Barnardine, bearing the torch, formed a characteristic figure. This Barnardine was wrapt in a long dark cloak, which scarcely allowed the kind of half-boots, or sandals, that were laced upon his legs, to appear, and shewed only the point of a broad sword, which he usually ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the aviators heard the ferocious bellows booming from behind and watched the appallingly swift progress of those uncouth monsters as, leaping high into the air, the allosauri covered between fifty and sixty feet at a ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... understood is unlikely. As it is, the power staggers belief and makes modern psychology, with its study of brain-cells, stand aghast. As to poor Fields himself, he excites only sympathy. Homeless, unkempt, and uncouth, traveling aimlessly on a journey which he does not understand, he hugs to his heart a marvelous power, which he declares to be a gift from God. To his weak mind it lifts him above his fellow-men, and yet it is as useless to the world as a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... strong dark feelings that sleep in the heart; his eyes were very singular and powerful; his voice from a whisper ran gathering, like snow-balls, and crashed, as I have heard the pack-ice in commotion far yonder in the North; while his gestures were as uncouth and gawky as some wild man's of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... Our well-loved guest will choose his place and moment: That moment is not now. You weary him With your uncouth insistence. ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... we'd meet this rather uncouth reception," the ambassador said stiffly, "I would have audited the language personally, of course, during the ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... and enchantments, for so your words would imply, then everybody in your country must have genius, for they seem to be excellent in everything. Your warriors are so peerlessly brave—all, excepting these Scottish lords who are such favorites with the king! I wonder what he can see in their uncouth faces, or find in their rough indelicate conversation to admire. If it had not been for their besetting my gracious Edward, I am sure he never would have suspected ill ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... gateway, and wailed as though with a hundred voices of aerial creatures, lamenting. The torches were burning low, the darkness of the vault deepened. Its gloom concerned me little—I had grown familiar with its unsightly things, its crawling spiders, its strange uncouth beetles, the clusters of blue fungi on its damp walls. The scurrying noises made by bats and owls, who, scared by the lighted candles, were hiding themselves in holes and corners of refuge, startled me not at all—I was well accustomed to such sounds. In my then state of mind, an ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... miller of Mona and his wife; and honour to the kind hospitable Celts in general! How different is the reception of this despised race of the wandering stranger from that of —-. However, I am a Saxon myself, and the Saxons have no doubt their virtues; a pity that they should be all uncouth and ungracious ones! ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... stands in the foremost rank. The young adventurer, however, consoles himself for his loss, shakes his feathers, and arrives at Paris without further accident. Before entering the capital he disposes of his horse, of whose uncouth appearance he is heartily ashamed; and after improving his toilet as well as his scanty wardrobe will allow, he proceeds to the hotel of Monsieur de Treville, where he falls in with the three mousquetaires who give a title to the book, in which, however, D'Artagnan plays ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... recognised this bearded, uncouth figure, and the flying, terrified girl at his heels. King was dragging her along by the hand. There was an instant of confusion on the part of the vanguard, a drawing of sabres, a movement toward the coach ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... aroused from her sleep by shrieks, and groans and curses, and the sound of a heavy blow, and she sprang from her little bed, to find her mother stretched senseless upon the floor, with the blood trickling from a wound in her head, and a group of uncouth, neighboring women ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Unseen, uncouth John Thorne, furious at the scant courtesy shown to the lady of his dreams, had brought his whip down heftily, just above the mangy tail of the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... person who passed a day or two at the Concordia as an ordinary traveller would carry away a strong impression. The people of the house would seem to him little short of savages, filthy in person and in habits, utterly uncouth in their demeanour, perpetual wranglers and railers, lacking every qualification for the duties they pretended to discharge. In England their mere appearance would revolt decent folk. With my better opportunity of judging them, I overcame the first natural antipathy; I saw their good ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... recent years from various monasteries, stating that the brethren who dwelt therein were offering up holy and pious supplications in our behalf. We observed that the sentiments in these letters were exemplary but that the form of expression was uncouth, because what true devotion faithfully dictated to the mind, the tongue, untrained by reason of neglect of study, was not able to express in a letter without mistakes. So it came about that we began to fear lest, perchance, as the skill in writing was less than it should be, the wisdom necessary ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... was sedately purring back when it was insulted by an intermediate host of a machine that came jumping out of a side road. The vulgar driver hailed them with uncouth howling. The Gilsons' chauffeur ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... which was wanted to dispel the erroneous notions about Buddhism, which are still current among educated men, and to excite an interest which may lead those who are naturally frightened by the appalling proportions of Buddhist literature, and the uncouth sounds of Buddhist terminology, to a study of the quartos of Burnouf, Turnour, and others. To those who may wish for more detailed information on Buddhism, than could be given by M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, consistently with the plan of his work, we can strongly recommend the work ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... was of a sultry blue, yet above the coast-line of Naples, standing out with preternatural distinctness, uncouth, livid clouds straggled chaotically to the upper sky, here and there reaching lank, shadowy films, like gigantic arms, far into the zenith. Flocks of sea-birds were uneasily flying landward; screaming, they wheeled round the sphinx-like rocks, and disappeared ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... with his paddle at a great uncouth monster, some twelve feet long and tremendously thick, which had raised its head from the slime in which it wallowed upon the edge of the river, and was slowly turning itself, first in one and then in another direction, before splashing a little and ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... figure: which always retained a boyish appearance when seen from behind. His face was common-place, except when his really expressive eyes sparkled with intelligence, or melted into the sweetest expression of kindness. But his laugh was forced and uncouth: and even in his smile there was a hard, sarcastic expression that made one regret ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... history, chronology, architecture, plastic art, sculpture, navigation, agriculture, textile industry, seem, all of them, to have had their origin in one or other of these two countries. The beginnings may have been often humble enough. We may laugh at the rude picture-writing, the uncouth brick pyramid, the coarse fabric, the homely and ill-shapen instruments, as they present themselves to our notice in the remains of these ancient nations; but they are really worthier of our admiration than of our ridicule. The first inventors of any art are among the greatest benefactors of their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... liberally expended in "fitting up," and the lucky possessors of it boldly burst upon the world of fashion as stars of the first magnitude. They are courted by all the newly rich, and invitations to the houses of other "stars" are showered upon them. They may be rude, ignorant, uncouth in manner, but they have wealth, and that is all that is required. They are lucky indeed, if they hold their positions long. A few manage to retain the wealth which comes to them thus suddenly, but as a rule those ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... comprehensible to Dick; nor could he think of a word to say in reply. He made an uncouth, half-irritated, half-despairing gesture towards the wood he had quitted, as if to indicate his helpless horse, but he knew it was meaningless to the frightened yet exalted girl before him. Her little hand crept to her breast and clutched a rosary within the folds of her dress, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... months of the year the people wear sandals on their bare feet. Only those who toil in the forests don the uncouth boots turned out by the firm of cobblers known as Block & Nicklestick. Shoes, boots and slippers of another day are zealously guarded by their owners, in anticipation of still another day,—the day of deliverance. "Waste not, want not," is ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the rebec that had first attracted Mary's attention. Later he had become her secretary for French affairs and the young Queen, reared amid the elegancies of the Court of France, grew attached to him as to a fellow-exile in the uncouth and turbulent land over which a harsh destiny ordained that she should rule. Using his opportunities and his subtle Italian intelligence, he had advanced so rapidly that soon there was no man in Scotland who stood higher with the Queen. When Maitland of Lethington was dismissed under ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... suffered so much from wrong thinking as the farmer; vicarious wrong thinking, I mean; other people have done the wrong thinking, and the farmer has suffered. Like many another bromide, the thought has grown on people that farmers are slow, uncouth, guileless, easily imposed on, ready to sign a promissory note for any smooth-tongued stranger who comes in for dinner. The stage and the colored supplements have spread this impression of the farmer, and the farmer has not cared. He felt he could stand it! Perhaps the women on the farm feel it ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... storekeeper drew off the molasses she exchanged shy looks with Stephen, who, clean, well-dressed, and carefully mothered as he was, felt all at once uncouth and awkward, rather as if he were some clumsy lout pitch-forked into the presence of a fairy queen. He offered her the little bunch of bachelor's buttons he held in his hand, augury of the future, had he known it,—and she accepted them with a ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... made bishops. And the names of these holy prelates were Lugacius, Columbanus, Meldanus, Lugadius, Cassanus, Ceranus; but to mention the names of the bishoprics we for good reason omit—for in many instances we avoid the names of places and of persons, that we may not, by their uncouth barbarousness, occasion disgust or horror to cultivated ears. However, these prelates profited much the church of God by their conversation and by their example, and closed their lives in much holiness; for they ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... been at ease after this assurance, but his body certainly was not; for he shuffled and writhed about, into various uncouth positions: eyeing his new friend meanwhile with mingled fear ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... of all that Nature did To make his uncouth form forbid, This creature dared to love. * * * * * * But virtue can itself advance To what the favourite fools of chance ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... sometimes their style uncouth appears, And their harsh numbers rudely hurt our ears; Or that full flatly flows the languid line, He, who owns this, has Jove's ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Though inartistic and uncouth, That effort of a novice hand Exemplifies a striking truth, And may Time's ravages withstand, To be by future ages read, When years and centuries ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard 'giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time that day.... He rose slowly. 'What ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... this speech made any man there look on me with greater favour, but it enormously increased my own comfort. I have never felt such a glow of gratitude as then filled my heart to the staid cleric. That he was of near kin to Miss Elspeth made it tenfold sweeter. I forgot my old clothes and my uncouth looks; I forgot, too, my irritation with the brocaded gentleman. If her kin thought me worthy, I cared not a bodle for the rest ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... less than six months to prove conclusively that he was, as yet at least, totally unfit to rule a state. The native chieftains who had accepted his father's government came in to signify their obedience, but he twitched their long beards and made sport before his attendants of their uncouth manners and dress, and allowed them to go home with anger in their hearts to stir up opposition to his rule. The Archbishop of Dublin and the barons who were most faithful to his father offered him their homage and ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... drawn forth for exercise; Ere yet reform'd and modelled by the drill, The free-born legs stand striding as they will. Much have I tried to guide the fist along, But still the blunderers placed their blottings wrong: Behold these marks uncouth! how strange that men Who guide the plough should fail to guide the pen: For half a mile the furrows even lie; For half an inch the letters stand awry; - Our peasants, strong and sturdy in the field, Cannot these arms of idle students wield: Like ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; of what real parentage we know not; reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light, nor fair surrounding; a young manhood vexed by weird dreams and visions; with scarcely a natural grace; singularly awkward, ungainly even among the uncouth about him: it was reserved for this remarkable character, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the destiny of a nation. The great leaders of his party were made to stand aside; ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... player upon his own board or table) of the first five numbers that may be drawn. Now we hear a strange rattling of wooden pieces, shaken in a bag, and as each piece is drawn, a bustling man with an obstreperous voice, calls out the number; not in full, sonorous German, but in broad, uncouth Platt Deutsche (low German), and eager tongues respond from distant corners claiming the prize. A dull-headed game is this, fitted only for the most inveterate gamblers; but it yields money to the Stadt, and that ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... princes indeed! Louis had been anxious enough to share in the inheritance from a petty German prince, when, at the death of her father without male heirs, the Roi Soleil had seen a chance of grasping a portion of the Bavarian Palatinate! And so she told him in her loud voice and uncouth French. Madame de Maintenon interposed: Why did her Royal Highness take so deep an interest in ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... clean Englishwoman keeps this small house, and my bedroom is sweetened with lavender, has a clean sash-window, and the walls are, moreover, adorned with ballads of Fair Rosamond and Cruel Barbara Allan. The woman's accent, though uncouth enough, sounds yet kindly in my ear; for I have never yet forgotten the desolate effect produced on my infant organs, when I heard on all sides your slow and broad northern pronunciation, which was to me the tone of a foreign land. I am sensible I myself have since ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... were still to come, were black. These veils were carried in the hand during the earlier part of the rite. Throughout a very wide region of Southern France the custom prevails. The church belonged to different ages. Upon the exterior of the Romanesque apse were uncouth carvings in relief of strange animal figures. They were more like lions than any other beasts, but their outlines were such as children ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... mode uncouth, Returning, met the Mystic Youth. "My darling boy," the Scholar said, "Take ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... of lasses wear for head-dress nought but a 'crantz,' or wreath of roses, encircling their bare hair, as laurel Caesar's; and though of the worshipful, scorned, yet is braver, I wist, to your eye and mine which painters be, though sorry ones, than the gorgeous, uncouth, mechanical head-gear of the time, and adorns, not hides her hair, that goodly ornament fitted to her head by craft divine. So the good lasses, being questioned close, did let me know, the rosebuds are cut ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the hospital. And now, brother, about this terrible beast who still gazes and snorts at us over the top of the wall as though his thoughts of Holy Church were as uncouth as those of Squire Nigel himself, what are we to ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... best a cultured place, this backwoods town. There was many a slip in grammar, many a broad uncouth accent, heard daily in Ann's drawing-room; but what mental life the town had came to centre in that room. Gradually reflecting neighbours began to learn that there was a beneficent force other than intellectual at ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... the highest and the lowest in heaven. It is, moreover, an impassable gulf, which the lowest can never cross so as to reach the highest happiness of heaven. It were far easier for the lowest and most uncouth servant-maid in a king's palace to reach the dignity and glory of a queen, than it is for the lowest in heaven to reach the most intimate degree of union with God. Each one is happy in the degree and sphere which his ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... her writing-materials together. Aunt Beatrice's tall figure, its stalwart handsomeness disguised in uncouth garments, passed with its usual vigorous gait across the burning sunlight on the lawn and broad gravel walk, to disappear under the awning of a French window. Milly, very pale, had closed her eyes and her hands were clasped. She trembled, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... of hissings and gutturals. Carmena jerked her hand about in swift signs and cried back in uncouth thick-tongued Apache words. The dispute at last ended in a sullen mutter from below and a sudden thudding of hoofs. The Apaches dashed out from under the cliff, loping their horses toward a corral over across to ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. As it was better, youth Should strive, through acts uncouth, Toward making, than repose on aught found made; So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed, statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... master the uncouth sounds of the still more uncouth savages of that distant region. The fellow who carried us in had a name of his own, doubtless, but it was not to be pronounced by a Christian tongue, and he got the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... rather a lonely uncultivated spot at one end of the garden. It was an old acquaintance of my childhood; but my thoughts had been turned towards it now from the fact that I could see it from my bedroom window, and had been struck afresh by its uncouth, incongruous appearance. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... in that sweet and civil country of Suffolk, near to St. Edmundsbury, my first work was to build up my house, which was extremely ruinous; which done, the uncouth solitariness of my life, and the extreme incommodity of that single housekeeping, drew my thoughts, after two years, to condescend to the necessity of a married estate, which God no less strangely provided for me; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... in what crowds the uncouth forms advance: Each would outstrip the other, each prevent Our careful search, and offer to your gaze, 80 Unask'd, his motley features. Wait awhile, My curious friends! and let us first arrange In proper order ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... distinctly that she had eaten no dinner; still, she plodded on. From the time she had left Troublous Times Castle she had not encountered an individual, but now, as she stepped forward, a man suddenly arose from his lair in the grass and confronted her. He was a black-eyed, unkempt, uncouth-looking person, and any other girl would have been very much afraid of him. He put his arms akimbo, a disagreeable smile crossed his face, and he instantly placed himself in such a position as completely to bar the ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... looked almost uncouth, compared with the immaculate, dandyish pair, Dodge and Bayliss. The latter, with so many amused glances turned their way, could only flush deeply, stammer, raise ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... departed. The expression of the lad's face plainly showed his love and admiration for the man. The calm courage of Boone, softened as it was by his gentleness and guided by his prudence, was crowned by a marvellous modesty. His robust, somewhat uncouth body showed the great strength of the hunter, while it concealed his quickness. His manner was dignified, almost cold, so silent and quiet was he under ordinary circumstances. His face, however, homely though it was, was at times lighted ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... an only child, a son, a grown up man, an uncouth ill-looking ungainly fellow, who did no work, smoked and loafed about, but was the idol of his mother. He resembled neither parent in the least, and, except that such vagaries of nature are not unknown, it might have been supposed that ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... affectionately around him to hear him talk and to tell stories. But he was not a mere story teller. His conversation was such as to draw men to him for its very worth. He was fundamentally serious, dignified, and never given to uncouth familiarities. ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... upwards of a hundred negroes, mostly men, though there were some women among them, all decked out in strange and uncouth ornaments, snakes' heads, dried frogs, various coloured beads forming necklaces round their throats; their garments were otherwise scanty in the extreme. They looked surprised and not very well pleased at seeing us, and Rob had some difficulty in persuading them that I only ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... in Jamie Fraser before mentioned, and which had kept him awake, shows itself in idiots occasionally by making them restless and troublesome. One of this character had annoyed the clergyman where he attended church by fidgeting, and by uncouth sounds which he uttered during divine service. Accordingly, one day before church began, he was cautioned against moving, or "making a whisht," under the penalty of being turned out. The poor creature sat quite still and silent, till, in a very important part of the sermon, he felt an inclination ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... humiliations, in which the inventive genius of Hurrell may be traced. He was not, for instance, permitted to have clothes from a tailor. Old garments were found in the house, and made up for him in uncouth shapes by a woman in the village. His father seldom spoke to him, and never said a kind word to him. By way of keeping him quiet, he was set to copy out Barrow's sermons. It is difficult to understand how the sternest disciplinarian, being human, could have treated his own motherless ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... progress of art, executed their works not in the excellent manner of the ancient Greeks, but in the rude modern style of their own day. Wherefore, though Cimabue imitated them, he very much improved the art, relieving it greatly from their uncouth manner and doing honour to his country by the name that he acquired and by the works which he performed. Of this we have evidence in Florence from the pictures which he painted there—as for example the front of the altar of ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... adjoining room we laid Efaw Kotee upon his own bed. The sheet that Tommy got out of a press to spread over him was, I noticed, of beautiful linen, and I felt softened toward the uncouth frame which, in this wilderness, had still demanded ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... of fancy, and gleams of genius—he has all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... two centuries ago, o'ergrown With brush and ivy, all undoored, ungated; And in restoring it we found a stone Set here and there in the dilapidated And crumbling frieze, inscribed, in antiquated Big characters, with certain uncouth names, Which we conclude were borne of old by awful Rapscallions guilty of all sinful games— Vagrants engaged in purposes unlawful, And orators less sensible than jawful. So each ten years we add to the long row A name, the most unworthy ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... return to his business, and withal not to forget to spread my gown upon the bed so that it might be sure to cover them both. These ridiculous circumstances are the main of the effect, our fancy being so far seduced as to believe that so strange and uncouth formalities must of necessity proceed from some abstruse science. Their inanity gives them reverence and weight. However, certain it is that my figures proved themselves more Veneran than Solar, and the fair bride had ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... assistance in procuring servants. So frequent are such appeals that there would seem to be a popular belief that the supply is inexhaustible. The villages are supposed to be full of girls, all ready to enter service, and, though a little uncouth in manner, possessed nevertheless of sterling good qualities. The letter is usually couched in something like the following terms:—'Do you happen to know of a really good girl that would suit us? You are aware of the scale on which our ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the capital, almost every village of the Vega and the mountains has its own anniversary, wherein its own deliverance from the Moorish yoke is celebrated with uncouth ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... endeavours to disguise her heavy ennui by an immovable simper. This pair loll one upon each other. Whether lights be high or low they hold each other's hands, hands hard and coarse with labour, with nails bitten down close to the quick. But, for all that, they, in their strange uncouth fashion, would seem to be loving each other. 'Not we alone have passions hymeneal,' sings an aristocratic poet. They smile at each other, an obvious animal smile, and you perhaps shudder. Or you study them for a realistic novel, or you call up that touch ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... passengers were sea-sick, and those who were not so were promenading the wet, sooty deck in the rain, in a uniform of oilskin coats and caps. The sea and sky were both of a leaden colour; and as there was nothing to enliven the prospect but the gambols of some very uncouth-looking porpoises, I was lying half asleep on a settee, when I was roused by the voice of a kind-hearted Yankee skipper, saying, "Come, get up; there's a glorious country and no mistake; a great country, a progressive country, the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... significant—Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847),[398] probably best remembered at present for his leadership of the great disruption of 1843. He had a reputation for eloquence and philosophic ability not fully intelligible at the present day. His appearance was uncouth, and his written style is often clumsy. He gave an impression at times of indolence and of timidity. Yet his superficial qualities concealed an ardent temperament and cordial affections. Under a sufficient stimulus he could blaze out in stirring speech and vigorous ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Dryops, and there he brought about the merry marriage. And in the house she bare Hermes a dear son who from his birth was marvellous to look upon, with goat's feet and two horns—a noisy, merry-laughing child. But when the nurse saw his uncouth face and full beard, she was afraid and sprang up and fled and left the child. Then luck-bringing Hermes received him and took him in his arms: very glad in his heart was the god. And he went quickly to the abodes of the deathless gods, carrying the son wrapped in ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... friendliness, breathing leeks and onions and dressing their hair with rancid butter (they were not, it appears, constrained to choose between spears and butter). How can he compose six foot metres, he asks, with so many seven foot patrons around him, all singing and all expecting him to admire their uncouth stream of non-Latin words? The shrug of the shoulder, the genial contempt of one conscious of an infinite superiority—how clear it is. One is reminded of ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... and Life's Little Ironies the part played by the "President of the Immortals" is no sublimer—save in the amount of force exerted—than that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must take some time in getting accustomed to it, and that ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of Charles I., whose portraits are our most familiar examples of Van Dyck, and who thus lives in the imagination of most people as the very personification of a noble and handsome cavalier, there have not been wanting critics who have maintained that Charles,—the son of a plain uncouth father, and of a mother rather floridly buxom than delicately handsome, and who was in his childhood a sickly rickety child,—was by no means so well endowed in the matter of manly beauty as we have supposed. These students of old gossip and close investigation, have alleged that Charles ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... History, and was private secretary to the Duc de Liancourt, to whose notice he had been brought by Talleyrand in a letter which said: "Two young men have lately brought me strong recommendations. One is gentlemanly and appears to have the qualifications you desire in a secretary; the other is uncouth to a degree, but I think I can discern in him sparks of the fire of genius." The duke's reply was brief: ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... because he could not come to her; or to soften some terrible news to her. Then her fancy fluttered and fell, and she waited patiently for the fact to reveal itself. There was something countrified in the figure of the man, and something clerical in his face, though there was nothing in his uncouth best clothes that confirmed this impression. In both face and figure there was a vague resemblance to some one she had seen before, when the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hunted man caught a glimpse of uncouth shapes wriggling along a fence ridge several rods away. No more than the barest glimpse, it served: with a mighty heave and wriggle he breasted the lower platform, shifted a hand to the top of its railing, heaved himself up to a foothold, and swarmed up the iron ladder with ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Thorn,' it said, 'I sing in the dark, for I am growing.'—'Sing on, Thorn,' said she, 'and grow if you will.' But in the morning when she awoke, her window was darkened, for the Thorn had grown to be a mighty tree, and its topmost shoots were black against the sky. She wondered whether this uncouth plant would bear anything but music. So she ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... teach new duties—Time makes ancient good uncouth, They must upward still and onward, who would keep ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... practice commended (in some cases and degrees) by philosophers as virtuous, not disallowed by reason, commonly affected by men, often used by wise and good persons; from which consequently, if our religion did wholly debar us, it would seem chargeable with somewhat too uncouth austerity and sourness: from imputations of which kind as in its temper and frame it is really most free (it never quenching natural light or cancelling the dictates of sound reason, but confirming and improving them); so it carefully declineth them, enjoining us ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... by the astonished Goths; who beheld their fields and villages consumed with flames, and deluged with indiscriminate slaughter. To these real terrors they added the surprise and abhorrence which were excited by the shrill voice, the uncouth gestures, and the strange deformity of the Huns. * These savages of Scythia were compared (and the picture had some resemblance) to the animals who walk very awkwardly on two legs and to the misshapen figures, the Termini, which were often placed on the bridges of antiquity. They were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... language, it is incontrovertibly modern, as well as uniform with itself, and exhibits the most perfect specimens of harmony; which cannot be interrupted by slight orthographical redundancies, nor by the sprinkling of a few uncouth ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... this brave fellow turned his back directly on the cook and set off walking for the beach. But he was not destined to go far. With a cry John seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out of his armpit, and sent that uncouth missile hurling through the air. It struck poor Tom, point foremost, and with stunning violence, right between the shoulders in the middle of his back. His hands flew up, he gave a sort ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unconstitutional Court of High Commission; they despised his arrogant favorites; and what they might have patiently borne from a gallant, energetic, and handsome monarch, they found it hard to bear from a pedantic, timid, uncouth, and rickety man, who gave them neither glory nor comfort. His eldest son, Prince Henry, the universal favorite of the nation, had died in 1612, before he ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... that is interesting, and very well deserve a more exhaustive analysis than they have ever yet received. There are also in the margins of these volumes, scores of pen-and-ink sketches of a most primitive description, depicting the carrying out of the various rigours of the law. Rough and uncouth as these illustrations are, they nevertheless possess a good deal of graphic significance, and I hope to reproduce some of them in facsimile, in a future publication. They represent, for instance, culprits hanging on the gallows—sometimes ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... the warm room he removed his uncouth costume. He was thoroughly worn out buffeting the waves and with his long tramp down the road, so he gladly accepted the proferred bunk close to the fire and was soon in a sound sleep from which he was awakened ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... societies, That sing, and singing in their glory move, And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more; Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore, In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood. Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills, While the still morn went out with sandals gray, He touched the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay: And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, And now was dropped into the western bay; At last ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... claimed as a saint by the Church of Rome, and styled Empereur Francais by modern French historians, Karl was really and truly a German king, proud, no doubt, of his Roman subjects, and of his title of Emperor, and anxious to give to his uncouth Germans the benefit of Italian and English teachers, but fondly attached in his heart to his own mother tongue, to the lays and laws of his fatherland: feelings displayed in his own attempt to compose a German grammar, and in his collection of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... time full of grace and dignity and rich merriment. He dived deeper and deeper into his books; he had taken all obsolescence to be his province; in his disgust at the stupid usual questions, "Will it pay?" "What good is it?" and so forth, he would only read what was uncouth and useless. The strange pomp and symbolism of the Cabala, with its hint of more terrible things; the Rosicrucian mysteries of Fludd, the enigmas of Vaughan, dreams of alchemists—all these were his delight. Such were his companions, with the hills and hanging woods, the brooks ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... actually laughed at the clumsy toy—laughed an elfish and weird laugh, the first it had ever indulged in? And Liz had laughed too, for pure gladness in the child's mirth, and the worsted bird became a sort of uncouth charm to make ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... cigar, at the same time darting a searching look at his questioner, but in the handsome, well-dressed, almost dandified young man before him, he failed to recognize the uncouth, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... in all likelihood, have done it with a sword thrust or a movement of her trigger finger; but as their sentiments are mostly atrophied it would have required a serious injury to have aroused such passions in them. Sola, let me add, was an exception; I never saw her perform a cruel or uncouth act, or fail in uniform kindliness and good nature. She was indeed, as her fellow Martian had said of her, an atavism; a dear and precious reversion to a former type of loved and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... throughout the large extent of the Vanderbilt's possessions or those of other ruling families are found warlike garrisons as evidence of ownership. Those uncouth barbarian methods are grossly antiquated; the part once played by armed battalions is now performed by bits of paper. A wondrously convenient change has it been; the owners of the resources of nations can disport themselves thousands of miles away from the scene of their ownership; they need never ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... could hardly remember anything but her pleading, half-inimical eyes, her mouth that twisted easily to anger, her shame that her hands and feet were uncouth. And now she had loved him. And now hated him. He remembered one May evening when suddenly she had caught his hand and kissed it, and pressed it to her heart. And later that night she had cursed bitterly at him, saying black was the day she had set ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... opportunity to express a feeling for the miseries of war; and to open some sort of conversation, which (after our public overtures had glutted their pride), at a cautious and jealous distance, might lead to something like an accommodation. What was the event? A strange uncouth thing, a theatrical figure of the opera, his head shaded with three-coloured plumes, his body fantastically habited, strutted from the back scenes, and, after a short speech, in the mock heroic falsetto of stupid tragedy, delivered the gentleman ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... name of Stevenson. A story would not be told so often unless it had some base in fact; nor (if there were no bond at all between the Red Macgregors and the Stevensons) would that extraneous and somewhat uncouth name be so much repeated in the legends of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had appeared to Edwin in his return from the feast of the bards, and had brewed the fatal storm that had preceded the rape of Imogen. The figure of the spectre was uncouth, and his countenance was full of savage and shapeless deformity. Nor did his appearance bely his character. To all other beings, whether of the terrestrial or the invisible world, his temper was hard, impracticable ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... previous to the time I write of, when she was quite a little girl, and had come from the country with her brother, who, having taken a small farm close to the town, preferred residing in the town to occupying the farmhouse, which was not comfortable. She looked at first with some terror on his uncouth appearance, and with much wonderment on his strange dress. This wonder was heightened by a conversation she overheard one day in the street, between the fool and a little pale-faced boy, who, approaching him respectfully, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... of [Greek: oude hen] into [Greek: ouden][464] traces survive in many of the Fathers[465]: but [Symbol: Aleph] and D are the only Uncial MSS. which are known to retain that corrupt reading.—The uncouth sentence which follows ([Greek: ho gegonen en auto zoe en]), singular to relate, was generally tolerated, became established in many quarters, and meets us still at every step. It was evidently put forward so perseveringly by the Gnostics, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... are far from being disagreeable; some females I observed among them whose expression of countenance was extremely prepossessing, and who would pass for "bonnie lasses" even among the whites, if divested of their filth and uncouth dress, and rigged out in European habiliments. The women fasten their hair in a knot on the crown of the head, and anoint it with rancid oil in lieu of pomatum; they also tattoo their faces, with the view, no doubt, of enhancing their charms ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... or at home, he was one of her companions. At her receptions of company, the fame of which has gone through the world, he was invariably an honored and active assistant. And, despite his deformed face, and uncouth appearance and bearing, he was a great favorite with all the chosen guests at the Abbaye-aux-Bois. To those who really knew him, his large, beaming eyes and noble forehead, his disinterested goodness, his literary ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... course, went into No. II.; and if exceedingly difficult, (and also important,) it was very properly thrown into No. III.; being a question that really ought not to have been asked, and did not deserve an answer. The fruit within these uncouth shells, however, was precious. Mr. Tresayle's law was supreme over everybody's else. It was currently reported that Lord Eldon even (who was himself slightly acquainted with such subjects) reverently deferred to the authority of Mr. Tresayle; and would lie winking and knitting his ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... and droll, and yet how sad, the boy looked! He was full grown now, uncouth and ungainly. Who but Jasper would have seen behind the features of that young, sinewy backwoodsman the soul of the leader ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Delmars leaped out at her side, mimicking the uncouth, hideous bounds of the gorilla so funnily that the grizzled sergeant himself gave a short laugh like the closing of a padlock. They danced together the gorilla dance, and won a hand ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... themselves to be wise, change the truth of God into a lie, and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator," as merely a mystic revelation of the Pantheism which leaves man to "erect everything into a God, provided it is none: sun, moon, stars, a cat, a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, a shapeless trunk, which the devout impatience of the idolater does not stay to fashion into the likeness of a man, but gives its apotheosis at once." Oh, yes; they accept the Bible as inspired—a God inspired Book—inasmuch as every product of the human mind ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Thence home, calling at my bookseller's and other trifling places, and in the evening the mother come and with a nurse she has got, who demanded and I did agree at 10s. per weeke to take her, and so she away, and my house mighty uncouth, having so few in it, and we shall want a servant or two by it, and the truth is my heart was a little sad all the afternoon and jealous of myself. But she went, and we all glad of it, and so a little to the office, and so home to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... known to us all that abundance of poor despairing creatures who had the distemper upon them, and were grown stupid or melancholy by their misery, as many were, wandered away into the fields and Woods, and into secret uncouth places almost anywhere, to creep into a bush or ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... like her companions, in a coarse linen skirt, whose uncouth folds disguise her hips, and a calico smock imprisoned in a black laced bodice, a sort of shapeless, barbarous cuirass. A broad-brimmed straw hat, adorned with a faded ribbon, casts its shadow on her shoulders; but, when she bends her head, I see the glint of her hair, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... as the wind from Rosamund's side. Notwithstanding her exceedingly ugly red dress, its shortness, its uncouth make, she ran as gracefully as a young fawn. Soon she had disappeared round the corner, and as soon as she had done so Lady Jane was seen tripping across the grass. She motioned ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... was lying in the narrow path, his chest riddled with bullets, when the chief fetish priest of the place, to encourage the natives to make further efforts, sprang upon a ruined wall in front of him, and began dancing an uncouth dance, accompanying it with savage yells and significant gestures to the dying man. He paid dearly for his rashness, however, for Scanlan, collecting his strength for a last supreme effort, seized his loaded rifle, which ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... cant and quip of schools, Uncouth, if only city ways refine; Ungodly, if 'tis creeds that make divine; In station poor, as judged by human rules, And yet a giant towering o'er them all; Clean, strong in mind, just, merciful, sublime; The ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... richness of its coloring.—It was at this calm and quiet hour that a caique, propelled by a dozen oarsmen, shot out from the shore of the Seraglio Point, and swept round at once with its prow turned towards the open sea. In the stern at two dark, uncouth looking Turks, between whom was a young man who seemed to be under restraint, and in whom the reader would have ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... soothing his diseased thoughts and harmonizing them, Nurse would become once more composed; the phantom danger was again put off, and the violinist would presently fall into silence,—sometimes into sleep. But still, while he slept, the witch-eye watched him; though with an expression of yearning, uncouth intensity which seldom ventured ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the sounds of music; not such, indeed, as Milton's echo, with Henry Lawes's notes, would have made,—of which the night and the scene had made me dream; but the voice of the slaves on this their night of holiday, beguiling their cares with uncouth airs, played on rude African instruments. Taking one of my ship-mates with me, I immediately went to the huts of the married slaves, where all merry-makings are held; and found parties playing, singing, and dancing to the moonlight. A superstitious veneration ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... provide their supper if he could; but without buying or stealing. They had a roaring fire, with nothing to roast, and a large stone table, with nothing on it but broken dishes and empty mugs. So the firelight shone on an uncouth set of long hungry faces. Whether there was among them 'ae winsome wench and wawlie,' is more than I can say; but most probably there was, or the bogle would scarcely have been so zealous in the cause. Still he was late on his quest. The friars of a still nourishing abbey were making preparations ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... possibly be given the most of the regiments hurriedly raised during the Civil War. The story goes that a raw battalion of rough backwoodsmen, who had "volunteered," once joined General Grant. He admired their fine physique, but distrusted the capacity of their uncouth commander to handle troops promptly and efficiently in the ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... floated around her like a cloud, for she had ridden forth without her hood on hearing the sound of the horns and bells, eager to see the show like any child, and the merrymakers stared at her, grinning with uncouth delight and never any resentment. There was that in Mary Cavendish's look, when she chose to have it so, that could, I verily believe, have swayed an army, so full of utter good-will and lovingkindness it was, and, more than ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... figure of the fighting gladiator to that of the Apollo Belvedere—and then, when shell fragments tear this body, it looks like some unspeakably unhallowed sacrilege. The horribly unlucky way these fragments seem to go in—an uncouth and butchering way instead of the gentlemanly puncture of the Mauser. One afternoon a young fellow galloped past me in the main street of Ladysmith. He had just got opposite the Town Hall hospital, when a shell from Bulwana burst right under ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... making a pretty picture against the dim background of the unlighted room beyond. Her fair hair was tossed, and her cheeks flushed; her blue eyes bright with sauciness and fun. In her hands, or across her arms, rather, she held some huge, uncouth thing, that was not to the last degree dainty-smelling, either; something conglomerated rudely upon a great crooked log or branch, which, glanced at closer, proved to be a fragment of gray old pine. Sticks and roots and bark, straw and grass and locks of dirty sheep's-wool, made ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... twenty virgins, arrayed in white vestments, and singing in honour of Juno Regina a hymn, which to the uncultivated minds of that time might appear to have merit, but if repeated now would seem inelegant and uncouth. The train of virgins was followed by the decemvirs, crowned with laurel, and in purple-bordered robes. From the gate they proceeded by the Jugarian street into the forum: in the forum the procession stopped, and the virgins, linked together by a cord passed ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... hermitage deep desiring, Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in; "Let such lodging be for a breath-while," thought I, "Soon a ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... besmear, In rags dishonest flutters with the air: A stag's torn hide is lapp'd around his reins; A rugged staff his trembling hand sustains; And at his side a wretched scrip was hung, Wide-patch'd, and knotted to a twisted thong. So looked the chief, so moved: to mortal eyes Object uncouth! a man of miseries! While Pallas, cleaving the wild fields of air, To Sparta flies, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... a large one, showing the vast territory drained by the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Mississippi, and the imagination of the cartographer had made good his lack of information. Rivers and mountains appeared where nature had made no such provision, while the names, quaint and uncouth, with which Jefferson proposed to burden states yet in embryo sprawled in large letters across the yellow plain. "Assenispia—Polypotamia—Chersonesus—Michigania," read Rand. "Barbarous! I could name them better out of Ossian!" He traced with his finger the lower Ohio. "This is where ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... adorns, Or mantles o'er the bison's horns; Pennons and flags defaced and stained, That blackening streaks of blood retained, And deer-skins, dappled, dun, and white, With otter's fur and seal's unite, In rude and uncouth tapestry all, To garnish ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... you'll please lift me in," whispered poor Prudy, trembling with fear of the uncouth wagon and strange man, yet resolved to ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... thrifty burghers boasted in their uncouth rhyme, That their great imperial city stretched its hand through ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... in their appearance, and to the looker-on, who knows not their meaning or importance, they are an uncouth and frightful display of starts, jumps, and yelps, and jarring gutturals, which to a ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... applied himself to his labours. She could hear his voice in the distant furnace-room, giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer reappeared, and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of chemical products, and natural treasures of the earth. Among the former he showed her ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... the Chaplain, Mr. Hodge, was very much of the same mind as your Humble. He said often, that he had been bearleader quite long enough to this young Cub, and was sick alike of his savage hugs, and uncouth gestures, when he had a mind to dance. Yet was he wise enough in his generation to acknowledge the commodity of a fat Pasty and a full Flask every day in the year, and of a neverfailing crown piece in the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... slippers I could observe that his legs fitted right into the middle of his feet, so that the heel stuck out behind pretty nearly as much as the forefoot in front, a singular deformation, rendering his walking uncouth, which otherwise would have been noble ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... in the afternoon of their third day's journey that the men from Sycamore Ridge rode in close order, singing, through the streets of Leavenworth. Watts McHurdie was playing his accordion, and the people turned to look at the uncouth crowd in civilian's clothes that went bellowing "O My Darling Nellie Gray," across the town and out to the Fort. Ezra Lane promised to call at the Fort for the two boys and with drivers for the teams early the next morning—but to Sycamore ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Stevenson, who is the humane artist; and Mr. Ruskin, whose rhythm and colour and fine rhetoric and marvellous music of words are entirely unattainable. But the general prose that one reads in magazines and in newspapers is terribly dull and cumbrous, heavy in movement and uncouth or exaggerated in expression. Possibly some day our women of letters will apply ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... wilderness and haunt of savage tribes; how at each stage of the construction roaring, impromptu cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then died away again, and are now but wayside stations in the desert; how in these uncouth places Chinese pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and broken men from Europe, gambling, drinking, quarreling, and murdering like wolves; and then when I go on to remember that all this epical turmoil was conducted by gentlemen ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Tursellinus writes. "Nothing was a greater impediment to him than his ignorance of the Japanese tongues; for, ever and anon, when some uncouth expression offended their fastidious and delicate ears, the awkward speech of Francis was a cause of laughter." But Father Bouhours, a century later, writing of Xavier at the same period, says, "He preached in the afternoon to the Japanese in their ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... had envied the loungers in the parks—those silent, inert figures that lie under the trees all the long summer day, their shabby hats over their faces, their hands clasped above their heads, legs sprawled in uncouth comfort, while the sun dapples down between the leaves and, like a good fairy godmother, touches their frayed and wrinkled garments with flickering figures of golden splendor, while they sleep. They always seemed so blissfully ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... you may be sure, was something uncouth to our Spaniards, who were, to give them a just character, men of the most calm, sedate tempers, and perfect good humour, that ever I met with: and, in particular, of the utmost modesty: I say, the sight was very uncouth, to see three naked men and five naked ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... were written at Moor Park by Sir William's secretary. Jonathan Swift, angry and rebellious, hating the authority and restraint of his Irish University, came to England an uncouth, ill-balanced, extravagant creature of twenty-one, and settled, or half-settled, to his work as amanuensis. He threw up his post in a rage, went over to Ireland and was ordained priest, made up his quarrel with his patron and came back to Moor Park to write The ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... washed like skeletons by the storms and suns of eight centuries: a chapel with pointed windows and low square tower, a hall and the alms-houses of the ancient guild. In the second story of the hall was the endowed grammar school of Stratford, restored by Edward VI. in 1553, and the uncouth, venerable desk at which Shakespeare is said to have studied is included among the few unauthenticated relics in the museum at the homestead. It is a reasonable inference that whatever education he received was obtained here, but this fact, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... a scholar, and his thoughts had once or twice rung out to the world clear and loud as a trumpet-note through the oracles of the Press. But in society he was shy, awkward, and uncouth of speech, quite unable to marshal his thoughts, deserted by his memory, abashed before his own silences, and startled by his own words. Any fool who could talk about the legs of a horse or the height of the thermometer was ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... are recorded.[168] But beyond this fact there is no reason for assigning the Pisa bust to him. No explanation is offered of its removal from Florence to Pisa, and had we not known that Donatello made such a bust, this uncouth and slovenly thing would never have been ascribed to him. It is a reliquary, the crown of the head being detachable, and the head can also be separated from the bust. It is heavily gilded and minutely chased with the trivial work of some meagre ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... perpetuate the memory of the late singular and unfortunate rector of Little Stukely, and is now exhibited in the mason's yard at Huntingdon. According to immemorial usage a copy of verses is appended to the inscription, which, in point of style, taste, and orthography, are on a par with the "uncouth rhymes" alluded to by Gray. The poetry is said to be the production ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... writings of Johnson, expected to find him a decent, well dressed, in short a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down from his bed chamber about noon, came, as newly risen, a large uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived for him ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... notices to the Rowley Poems; and such readers of our extracts as have been repelled from the perusal of those poems, by the formidable array of uncouth diction and strange spelling, may enquire what has become of the hard words. Here are long quotations, and not an obsolete term or unfamiliar metre among them. Chatterton took great pains to encrust his gold with verd-antique; it requires little to remove the green rubbish from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... that there are some who will not sanction any care in composition, contending that our words as they flow by chance, however uncouth they may sound, are not only more natural, but likewise more manly. If what first sprang from nature, indebted in nowise to care and industry, be only what they deem natural, I admit that the art of oratory in this respect has no pretensions to that quality. For it is certain that the first men did ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... never liked Johnson, and her husband had the candour to report an excellent sally of hers at his and his sage's expense: "I have seen many a bear led by a man; but I never before saw a man led by a bear." But though, as Boswell says, she could not be expected to like his "irregular hours and uncouth habits," she never failed in courtesy to him: and he on his part was unwearied in sending friendly messages to his "dear enemy" as he called her, and was well aware of her importance to her husband. The event unhappily proved ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... traditional prize-fighter. But far more disagreeable than any single feature was the woman's expression, or rather the expression which I caught her assuming naturally, and banishing with an effort for my benefit. To me she was strenuously civil in her uncouth way. But I saw her give her husband one look, as he staggered in with my comparatively light portmanteau, which she instantly snatched out of his feeble arms. I saw this look again before the evening was out, and it was such a one as ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... honest opponent, it must be confessed; and many an attack was made upon the gigantic enemy, which was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see the monster writhing under the effects of the arrow—to see his uncouth fury in return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive opponent!—not one of these told in a hundred; when they DID tell, it may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience, and served almost ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Time makes ancient good uncouth," said Lowell, and so it was with the flag. The flag of fifteen stars and fifteen stripes that was decreed in 1795 then represented each State; but in less than one year it was out of date. Tennessee had come into the Union. Then followed Ohio, Louisiana, and Indiana. Here were four States ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... stranger in puttees. Pat turned to follow the gaze of his companion just as the plainsman drawled softly: "And you've brought us that." The Irishman's heavy jaw dropped. He gasped and gulped like an uncouth monster. Then—speechless—he ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... the mutiny; its chief leaders were either executed or marooned, and on the 18th October he resumed his voyage. Meanwhile the habits and customs of the natives had been observed—their huge height and uncouth foot-coverings, for which Magelhaens gave them the name of Patagonians. Within three days they had arrived at the entrance of the passage which still bears Magelhaens' name. By this time one of the ships, the St Jago, had been ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... Pondering on their texts, he had discovered four separate interpretations for every suggestion of Sacred Writ. For some of the pregnant utterances of the prophets he found hundreds, pouring forth metaphor and illustration in wild and dazzling profusion of audacious, uncouth imagery. The flame which began to smoulder in him at San Gemignano burst forth into a blaze at Brescia, in 1486. Savonarola was now aged thirty-four. 'Midway upon the path of life' he opened the Book of Revelation: he figured to the people of Brescia ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... and deodar-clothed mountains of Kashmir and the flaming aridity of Lesser Tibet, than between the tall, dark, handsome natives of the one, with their statuesque and shrinking women, and the ugly, short, squat, yellow- skinned, flat-nosed, oblique-eyed, uncouth-looking people of the other. The Kashmiris are false, cringing, and suspicious; the Tibetans truthful, independent, and friendly, one of the pleasantest of peoples. I 'took' to them at once at Shergol, and terribly faulty though their morals are in some respects, ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... inhabited this strange place. Still the domestic animals kept up those noises, so familiar to Tite's ear when at home. And these were broken at intervals by what seemed the barking of a wolf. Now a strange and shadowy figure passed and repassed in the cabin, its uncouth form reflecting every few seconds in the light. Should they advance, enter the cabin, and see who this strange being was, or return to the beach and wait until morning? This was the question which occupied their thoughts ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... in Latin and French works, only counts, as far as English works are concerned, devotional books in prose and verse. The verses are uncouth and ill-shaped; the ancient rules, half-forgotten, are blended with new ones only half understood. Many authors employ at the same time alliteration and rhyme, and sin against both. The sermons are ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... much astonished at seeing the doctor pull out his note-book and write in it. The doctor, to indulge them, made a few clear strokes; and a young man, who had attached himself to Jerry and me, imitated them in a wonderful way, considering his rough and uncouth hand. We had heard them making a number of strange sounds, and at last we discovered that they were ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... form, grandeur of mass, a light and shade that is positively dramatic in its dispersion over wall and tower, are the characteristic marks of this unique etcher. He could not resist the temptation of dotting with figures the huge spaces of his ruins. They dance or recline or indulge in uncouth gestures. His shadows are luminous—you may gaze into them; his high lights caught on some projection or salient cornice or silvering the August porticoes of a vanished past, all these demonstrate his feeling for the dramatic. And dramatic is the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... table furnishings were similar to those in New England; but there were greater contrasts in table appointments. There was more silver, and richer food; but the negro servants were so squalid, clumsy, and uncouth that the incongruity made the meals very ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... part of the Union, are scattered about in profusion; the human species of every kind may be seen variously occupied—groups talking, others roasting over the stove, many cracking peanuts, many more smoking, and making the pavement, by their united labours, an uncouth mosaic of expectoration and nutshells, varied occasionally with cigar ashes and discarded stumps. Here and there you see a pair of Wellington-booted legs dangling over the back of one chair, while the owner thereof is supporting his centre of gravity ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... look of assent, the borderer uttered certain uncouth and guttural sounds, which, notwithstanding they entirely failed of their effect, he stoutly maintained were the ordinary terms of salutation among the people to whom the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... something perfectly in keeping between the recreation of these men and the wild, uncouth life they led. The long, grey winter and the brief, fleeting summer, the desolate wastes and ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... to my remark, "one would think the earth is under a curse, since of all her children these that cling to her the closest are uncouth in body and as leaden of gait as if their very hearts were loaded with chains. But here on this same road you might have seen amongst these heavy men a being lithe, supple, and long-limbed, straight like a pine with something striving upwards ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... when all nicer cares were evaded or forbidden, when chairs were shoved back against each other into corners, table-cloths left crooked, and dragging and crumby, drawing the flies,—mantel ornaments of uncouth odds and ends pushed all awry and one side during a dusting, and left so,—carpets rough and untidy at the corners; no touch of prettiness or pleasantness, nothing but clear, necessary work anywhere. She would have made home home; then she would ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... feeble sovereigns, and in turn assassinated for that support; and the depth of all ignominy in a Valentinian closing the twelve hundred years of Rome with the crime of a dastard, followed by Genseric, who was again to be overtopped by Ricimer, while world and Church barely escape from Attila's uncouth savagery. But Leo in his letters written in the midst of such calamities, in his sermons spoken from St. Peter's chair, speaks as if he were addressing a prostrate world with the inward vision of a seer to whom the triumph of the heavenly Jerusalem is ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... Columbanus, Meldanus, Lugadius, Cassanus, Ceranus; but to mention the names of the bishoprics we for good reason omit—for in many instances we avoid the names of places and of persons, that we may not, by their uncouth barbarousness, occasion disgust or horror to cultivated ears. However, these prelates profited much the church of God by their conversation and by their example, and closed their lives in much holiness; for they were wont to relate many miracles to have been worked by the aforementioned ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... from the loins; and to the knees are fastened tortoise-shells. Nothing is worn with a view to ornament. These seeming monstrosities, frightful in their ugliness, move about quite nimbly, and are boldly impudent to a degree approaching sublimity. Notwithstanding their uncouth figures and mountebank tricks their movements at times are undoubtedly graceful, and they appear to exercise a certain authority over ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... of her sex. And he could have cited evidence. The sweetness of her affection for rough Em Crawford, the dear, maternal tenderness with which she ruled her three-year-old brother Keith, motherless since the week of his birth, the kindness of the luminous brown eyes to the uncouth stranger thrown upon her hospitality: Dave treasured them all as signs of angelic grace, and they played ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... Collector's office. The evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the battle; the flourish of old heroic music, heard thirty years before—such scenes and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants and ship-masters, the spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of his commercial and Custom-House life kept up its little murmur round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the General appear to sustain the most distant relation. He was as much out of place as an old sword—now rusty, but which ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ner-e'i-des rushed from afar, Or clove the waters by. Came eager-eyed Even shy Na-i'a-des from inland streams, With wild cries headlong darting through the waves; And Dryads from the shore stretched their long arms, While, hoarsely sounding, heard was Triton's shell; Shoutings uncouth, bewildered sounds, And innumerable splashing feet Of monsters gambolling around their god, Forth shining on a sea-horse, fierce and finned. Some bestrode fishes glinting dusky gold, Or angry crimson, or chill silver bright; Others jerked fast on their own scanty tails; And sea-birds, screaming ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... unintentionally wronged him in his previous recollection, certain it is that some unknown reserve of strength in his own nature, of which he knew nothing before, suddenly came to his aid in this extremity. It invested him with an uncouth dignity that for the first time ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... to like the people of his section very much. They were uncouth and not cultivated, and not particularly industrious; but they were honest and straightforward, and their virtuous ways commanded respect. Their patriotism was strong, their pride in the flag was of ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... conveniences, or rather (if there was such a word) all the adaptments are assembled here, that melancholy, meditation, selfish devotion, and despair would require. But yet 'tis pleasing. Soften the terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns here, but a little, and 'tis a charming solitude. It stands on a large space of ground, is old and irregular. The chapel is gloomy: behind it, through some dark passages, you pass into a large obscure hall, which looks ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... whole lot safer with him than you'd be, old top!" I says. "And if I was you, I'd lay off that uncouth ruffian stuff around the Kid. Don't keep temptin' him, because he's liable to get sore, and when Scanlan gets mad you want to be ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... generalization, not even to be found in a flock of sheep. As most reduce what is sand into dust, the few that avoid it run to a contrary extreme, and would force us to believe that what is original must be unpolished and uncouth. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... his fatigue, sings "Blass the Prince of WAILES" enthusiastically, and at intervals ejaculates queer, uncouth words in the Russian tongue. Breakfast with Russian tongue. He asks the waiter for "minuoschhah karosh caviar." To which the waiter adroitly replies, "parfaitement M'sieu" and disappears. Returning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... itself by the gradual breaking-up of the blank-verse in the later plays, by the predominance given to prose, and by the over-importance assigned to characterisation. The passages in Shakespeare—and they are many—where the language is uncouth, vulgar, exaggerated, fantastic, obscene even, are entirely due to Life calling for an echo of her own voice, and rejecting the intervention of beautiful style, through which alone should life be suffered to ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... resemble a passage in the Pharonnida of William Chamberlayne, a Poet who has told an interesting story in uncouth rhymes, and mingled sublimity of thought and beauty of expression, with the quaintest conceits, and most ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... Foubert's Passage, Gnawbit (burn him!), and Captain Night, I succeeded in producing the following. I give it word for word as I wrote it, having kept a copy; but I need not say that, as a Gentleman of Fortune, my Style and Spelling are not now so Barbarous and Uncouth. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... one alien steward, and how he had questioned whether he should give the fellow six-pence or a shilling, seeing that apart from this tribute he should have to fee his own steward for the voyage; at the same time his fancy played with the question whether that uncouth, melancholy waitress had found a moment to wash her face before hurrying to fetch his coffee. He amused himself by contrasting her sloven dejection with the brisk neatness of the service at St. Johnswort; but through all he never lost the awe, the sense of responsibility which he bore to the vision ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... single row of egregious dwellings, squat, uncouth, stretching away on either side of the veranda-fronted store and "gambling hell" which formed a sort of center-piece around which revolved the whole life of the village. It was a poor, mean place, shapeless, evil-smelling in that pure mountain air. It was a mere shelter, a rough perch for ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... which pressed against little Jack on all sides; he feels the damp breath from their nostrils; their tails switch violently, and the heat of their bodies, and the odor of the stable, is almost stifling. Two boys and two dogs are in charge of these animals; the dogs bark, and the uncouth peasants yell, until the ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... periodically suffered, but the two men slept in the same bare room, and towards morning Mitchelbourne was awakened from a deep slumber by an unfamiliar voice talking at an incredible speed through the darkness in an uncouth tongue. He started up upon his elbow; the voice came from Lance's bed. He struck a light. Lance was in a high fever, which increased ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... get used to Dicky's expressions. The language in which he couched his repentance seemed so uncouth to me that I mentally shivered. Outwardly ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... of countless libraries, public and private. Among these are to be reckoned most law books, clad in that dead monotony of ugliness, which Charles Dickens has described as "that under-done pie-crust cover, which is technically known as law calf." There are other uncouth and unwholesome specimens everywhere abroad, "whom Satan hath bound", to borrow Mr. Henry Stevens's witty application of a well-known Scripture text. Such repellant bindings are only fit to serve as models to ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... might have been at ease after this assurance, but his body certainly was not; for he shuffled and writhed about, into various uncouth positions: eyeing his new friend meanwhile with mingled fear ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... islets, this island presented every variety of the boldest mountain scenery, and yet, like them, it displayed all the gorgeous beauty of a rich tropical vegetation. In some places the ground had been cracked and riven into great fissures and uncouth caverns of the wildest description, by volcanoes apparently long since extinct. In others the landscape presented the soft beauty of undulating grove-like scenery, in which, amid a profusion of bright green herbage, there rose conspicuous the tall stems and waving plumes of the ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... after Ericson was taken ill, he was too depressed and miserable to ask how he was cared for. But by slow degrees it dawned upon him that a heart deep and gracious, like that of a woman, watched over him. True, Robert was uncouth, but his uncouthness was that of a half-fledged angel. The heart of the man and the heart of the boy were drawn close together. Long before Ericson was well he loved Robert enough to be willing to be indebted to him, and would lie pondering—not how ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... slightly uncouth in several matters, these Feldpastoren, and would not quite suit sundry metropolitan charges one wots of. They do not wear gloves, nor are they addicted to scent on their pocket-handkerchiefs. Their boots are too often like boats, and when they are mounted there is frequently visible ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... myself deceived by an extraordinary resemblance; a resemblance, moreover, which did not hold at all times, and which frequently vanished altogether, as I recalled the straight-featured but often uncouth aspect of the man who had awakened the admiration of Boone. Memory had been awakened and my sleep filled with dreams, but the unendurable had been spared me and I was thanking God with my whole heart, when suddenly one night, when an evening ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... Philip feigned to listen to it; but all the strength and cunning of Huguenots and Protestants, joined by those of Catharine and Elizabeth, were brought into play against this threatening move, and Mary went to Scotland with a sinking, sad, and angry heart in 1561, fearing her uncouth subjects, foreign to her now, vexed with the Protestant party for standing in the way of her ambitious marriage, and determined to oppose Elizabeth to the utmost in her designs ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... and four or five dark figures jostled noisily out and came haltingly down the street. They walked crazily, like ships without a rudder, veering from one side of the walk to the other, shouting and singing uncouth, ribald songs, hoarse laughter interspersed with ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... week before the occurrence of these events. Let us penetrate the dim and lonesome abode on the confines of the "Jewish Quarter," but not within it, where the "Spanish Gipsy" delivered her predictions. It is midnight, and still she sits over her incantations. There are vessels of uncouth shape and unknown character before her. Huge braziers lie convenient, on one of which, amidst a few coals, a feeble flame may be seen to struggle. The atmosphere is impregnated with a strong but not ungrateful perfume, and through its vapors objects appear with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... were uprisings among the Protestant lords. Mary then showed herself a heroic queen. At the head of a motley band of soldiery who came at her call—half-clad, uncouth, and savage—she rode into the west, sleeping at night upon the bare ground, sharing the camp food, dressed in plain tartan, but swift and fierce as any eagle. Her spirit ran like fire through the veins of those who followed her. She ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... lack of sociability could scarcely have arisen from positive surliness or unkindness of disposition. Instances were not wanting in which he had given pretty strong evidence that he carried beneath that rugged and uncouth exterior a kinder and more gentle heart than is possessed by most men. Upon one occasion he had jumped at the imminent peril of his life, from the bridge which spans the Illinois river just above the entrance to the lake, and had fished up a drowning child from its depths ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... across a party of recruits making their way to the Confederate army at Corinth. They were mostly country boys, rough, uncouth, and with little or no education. They knew or cared little of the causes which had led up to the war; but they knew that the Southland had been invaded, that their homes were in danger, and they made soldiers whose bravery and devotion excited the ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
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