"Disreputable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 18s.) over two reeking orange slabs distantly resembling moieties of the human figure. Their odour made me close prematurely for 14s., and I hurried back (for I was due there at eleven) to my office with my two disreputable brown-paper parcels, one of which made itself so noticeable in the close official air that Carter attentively asked if I would like to have it sent to my chambers, and K—was inquisitive to bluntness about it and my movements. But I did not care to enlighten K—, whose comments I knew ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... hero, be inclined to make peace. O thou that art conversant with every duty, be thou gratified with the child whose friends and kinsmen have all been slain and who himself knows nothing of what has happened. Do not yield to wrath. Forgetting his disreputable and cruel grandfather, who offended against thee so highly, it behoveth thee to show thy grace towards this child.' Recollecting queen Gandhari and king Dhritarashtra, Dhananjaya, afflicted with grief, addressed Dussala who had said ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... young Miss in New-Haven, who will soon wear a silk gown of her own make. Such noble industry ought to be written in letters of gold. May the ladies profit by the example—and may it soon be esteemed disreputable, by both ladies and gentlemen, to wear any thick silk but of our ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... how glad he was I had escaped. But he happened to be the ship's purser, and, instead of embracing me, he told me coldly that steerage passengers are not allowed aft. But I did not mind, I knew that I was a disreputable object, but I also knew that I had gold in my money-belt, and that clothes could ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... a more aristocratic body than the House of Lords. The fact is, a great peer would be a greater man now in the House of Commons than in the House of Lords. Nobody wants a second chamber, except a few disreputable individuals. It is a valuable institution for any member of it who has no distinction, neither character, talents, nor estate. But a peer who possesses all or any of these great qualifications, would find himself an immeasurably more important personage in what, by way of jest, they ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... that I do not know what to think of that Roumanian chap. All I know about it is that some kind of transaction about his wife had occurred, and that, put it in whatever light you will, is always a disreputable thing. Besides, as I am somewhat of a merchant myself, I will tell you another thing: a bankrupt can always find a way out of his difficulties: he either makes another fortune and then pays his debts, or he blows out his brains and pays with ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... which they have no reputable evidence. Thus does this very brave apostle of 'the other side' fearlessly assert, with no proof for his statement, that all the various persons who have given evidence in this case in Mr. Smith's favor are disreputable, and their testimony of no value. Truly this is a bold statement, and it would seem that sometimes pens as well as tongues need 'curbing.' Although Fair Play declares that he 'offers nothing in the ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... Jim and Jo were disreputable beyond words. Their clothes were muddy, torn and disheveled, their faces so grimed that it was hard to tell their original color, and there were blotches of blood upon their clothes as well as faces and hands. But, though they looked worse than tramps, there was something straightforward ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... impediment, encumbrance, handicap. Difficulty, predicament, perplexity, plight, quandary, dilemma, strait. Dirty, filthy, foul, nasty, squalid. Discernment, perception, penetration, insight, acumen. Disgraceful, dishonorable, shameful, disreputable, ignominious, opprobrious, scandalous, infamous. Disgusting, sickening, repulsive, revolting, loathsome, repugnant, abhorrent, noisome, fulsome. Dispel, disperse, dissipate, scatter. Dissatisfied, discontented, displeased, malcontent, disgruntled. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... unbuttoned at the throat; his soiled brown corduroy trousers were thrust unevenly into dusty and wrinkled boot tops; his old, gray hat was slouched over one side of his forehead, shading his eyes. But the face beneath that faded and disreputable hat, as Marion saw with a slight thrill of curiosity, belonged to no ranch hand or cow-puncher. Whoever he might be, and whatever he might be doing there scowling at her, she felt at once that he was as foreign as herself ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Dander, to saunter. Danders, cinders. Daurna, dare not. Deave, to deafen. Denty, dainty. Dirdum, vigour. Disjaskit, worn out, disreputable-looking. Doer, law agent. Dour, hard. Drumlie, dark. Dunting, knocking. Dwaibly, infirm, rickety. Dule-tree, the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a daily source of inspiration to him as a writer, he twice narrowly escaped marriage—first with a servant girl at his lodgings, and afterwards with the daughter of his landlady—and that at another period of his colonial life he became involved in a disreputable kind of Bohemianism. But he is not disgraced by these lapses to the extent that the author anticipates; at all events, they make him more human than ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... men, too, learned to like him. They discovered that, with all his public histrionics, he was on the level as a musician. He is a merciless task master, but in rehearsals he gives himself no airs. Dressed in an old pair of pants and a disreputable brown woolen sweater, which he has worn in private since the day he landed in Boston, he works like a stevedore. When he, the pants and the sweater had been with the Symphony ten years, the men ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... shore and boarded us. He was a long, melancholy Chinaman, had thirty-five hairs of a beard, and, poor fellow, was dying of consumption. He told us the local news, and then I asked him about the cargo of saints, many more of whom were now visible on the after-deck of their disreputable old crate. ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... heart failure," said my father, "in a disreputable place. They tried to hush it up, but the facts came out. When I heard of it, I plumped right down in a chair and laughed till I was almost sick. I knew what he was," he said with sudden savageness, "all along. But ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... Pudentilla for her own sake; her virtues and intelligence won his heart and overcame his desire for further travel. The marriage was duly solemnized. But it brought Apuleius no peace. Sicinius Aemilianus, another brother of her first husband, and Herennius Rufinus, the disreputable father-in-law of Pontianus, were both up in arms. Rufinus had hoped, through his son-in-law, to reap a rich harvest from Pudentilla's fortune; Aemilianus resented the treatment of his brother, Sicinius Clarus. They sought, therefore, how they might have their revenge. Their first ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... The Rougons, those poor disreputable devils, had thus succeeded in rallying round themselves the instruments of their own fortune. Everyone, from cowardice or stupidity, would have to obey them and work in the dark for their aggrandisement. They simply had to fear those other influences which might be working with the same object ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... phonograph standing before them. It seemed to have passed through many adventures since Ojo and his comrades last saw the machine, for the varnish of its wooden case was all marred and dented and scratched in a way that gave it an aged and disreputable appearance. ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... later a somewhat draggled-looking party might have been seen approaching the Chase. They were all dead tired, and all very untidy, not to say disreputable in appearance. The little girl's brown Holland frock was not only torn, but smeared with mud and some sort of green mossy stuff which produces a deep stain very difficult for laundresses to remove. The little boy was also in a sorry plight, for he ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... fortune left to Sam Willett, the hero, and the fact that it will pass to a disreputable relative if the lad dies before he shall have reached his majority. The story of his father's peril and of Sam's desperate trip down the great canyon on a raft, and how the party finally escape from their perils is described ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... relation or two—a disreputable father and a nondescript brother—now appeared on the threshold. Her presence reminded Frank of his responsibility, so forthwith he proceeded to bully the Registrar and allude menacingly to ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... said that George Vavasor lost his election for the Chelsea Districts, after all the money which he had spent,—money which he had been so ill able to spend, and on which he had laid his hands in a manner so disreputable! He had received two thousand pounds from the bills which Alice had executed on his behalf,—or rather, had received the full value of three out of the four bills, and a part of the value of the fourth, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... this strange cylinder had that quality. It is not its comfort It is stiff, it is heavy, it is unmanageable in a wind and ruined by a shower of rain. It needs as much attention as a peevish child or a pet dog. It is not even cheap, and when it is disreputable it is the most disreputable thing on earth. What is the mystery of its strange persistence? Is it simply a habit that we cannot throw off or is there a certain snobbishness about it that appeals to the flunkeyism of men? That is perhaps the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... devious ways, cringing to the strong, timid of all pain. I—but, dear reader, I will not sadden your sensitive ears with details I could give you, showing how contemptible a creature this wretched I happens to be. Nor would you understand me. You would only be astonished, discovering that such disreputable specimens of humanity contrive to exist in this age. It is best, my dear sir, or madam, you should remain ignorant of these evil persons. Let me not ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... a Mississippi River pilot, is engaged to Tillie Vail. Her affections are alienated by Jack Cragg, a disreputable steamboat engineer, whom Duncan, believing he is deceiving the girl, threatens to kill on sight. Cragg kills a man in a drunken brawl on shore, and Duncan assists the sheriff to save him from would-be lynchers, and swears to protect him, before he knows who ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... roof. It was the sunshine filtering through the dull, thick, greenish glass which gave that cold, sad-colored light. Within the galleries I caught glimpses of men at work at desks; and over the railings lounged figures, peered faces, disheveled, sodden, disreputable; and sometimes near these a policeman's star twinkled. I saw it all in one upward glance, for I was hurried on. Our steps clattered over the flags of the hall, and then, turning to the right, we began to go down-stairs. I took tighter hold on father's arm, for we seemed to be descending ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... a rencounter or duel was so far from being in fashion among the officers that served in the Parliament army, that on the contrary, it was as disreputable, and as great an impediment to advancement in the Service, as being ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... part than a mistake, had to them been cruelly severe. Suddenly to be told that they were servants to such a one as Cousin Henry,—servants to such a man without any contract or agreement on their part;—to be handed over like the chairs and tables to a disreputable clerk from London, whom in their hearts they regarded as very much inferior to themselves! And they, too, like Mr Griffith and the tenants, had been taught to look for the future reign of Queen Isabel as a thing of course. ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... for its dogs, not on account of their beauty or breed, for they are a disreputable lot of mongrel curs and bear the marks of many nightly brawls, but on account of the legions of them and their usefulness as scavengers. At nightfall the residents of Stamboul empty their garbage cans in the streets ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... was refreshing. They came across him at Pietrasanta; he was walking across Tuscany by himself, and came to the station, looking very dusty and disreputable, to put the book he had finished into his bag that travelled by train and ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... until he has been humiliated by a general incredulity. He is a born British subject, yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his nationality. He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken for anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable means of livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little boy—he couldn't have been more than ten—winked at me and whispered something about kissing. The station at Stettin was horrible, much worse than the Berlin one. I don't know where they all came from, the crowds of hooligan boys, just below military age, and extraordinarily disreputable and insolent. To add to the confusion on the platform there were hundreds of Russians and Poles with their families and bundles—I asked my porter who they were, and he told me—being taken from one place where they had been working in the fields to another ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... oak-tree has large responsibilities, what with the care of so many dead leaves all winter, and the acorns being blown from their places and littering up the ground everywhere, and the bark cracking until it looks positively disreputable: and Jurgen was at any such work less a help than a hindrance. So Chloris gave him a parcel of lunch and a perfunctory kiss, and told him to go down to the seashore and get inspired and make up a pretty poem about her. "And do you be back in time for an early supper, Jurgen," says she, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... wish to realize the aspect of the Globe or the Blackfriars it is to a lower class music-hall you must go. The quality of the audience is a point of agreement. The Globe was frequented by young "bloods" and by the more disreputable portions of the community, racing men (or their equivalents of that day) "coney catchers" and the like; commonly the only women present were women of the town. The similarity extends from the auditorium to the stage. The Elizabethan playgoer delighted in virtuosity; ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... hint or warning she turned up in Mauravania, accompanied by a disreputable one-eyed man who has the manner and appearance of one bred in the gutters of Paris, albeit he is well clothed, well looked after, and she treats him and his wretched collection of parakeets with ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... which may be in part attributed to the undue accumulation of Church property in a few hands, mere penury was not the worst. Some clergy struggled manfully and honestly against its pressure, but others fell into disreputable courses. These latter are not, of course, to be regarded as representative men of any class in the Church. They were simply the Pariahs of ecclesiastical society; the black sheep which will be found, in one form or another, in every age of the Church. But owing to the causes ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... mentally incompetent, from some active sympathy with active wickedness, or from a grim sense of his own mental superiority at such moments. But the general belief leant toward his kindred sympathy as a "yaller dog" with all that was disreputable. And this was supported by another very singular canine manifestation—the "sincere flattery" of simulation ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... breakfast the next morning, they were off for the station in one of those disreputable, shaky village hacks that Dr. Wandless always called "dark Icarian birds," with their two bags piled on the seat before them. On the few railway journeys Sylvia remembered, she had been carried on half-fare tickets, an ignominy which she recalled with ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... interrupted Vargrave, "I must turn to the Golden Idol; my rank and name must buy me an heiress, if not so endowed as Evelyn, wealthy enough, at least, to take from my wheels the drag-chain of disreputable debt. But Evelyn—I will not doubt of her! her heart ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... surviving relative at Pompeii, and that was Burbo. Various dark and disreputable ties, stronger than those of blood, united together their hearts and interests; and often the minister of Isis stole disguised and furtively from the supposed austerity of his devotions; and gliding ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... in high spirits. He hummed a tune and twirled his cane. He chirruped frequently to Bill, the companion of his walks abroad, a wiry fox-terrier of a demeanour, like his master's, both jaunty and slightly disreputable. An air ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... continued to discuss the matter, Peter was the only one who persisted in asserting that human agency alone had been employed, while Sandy MacGregor as strongly maintained that spirits of a very disreputable nature had a finger in the pie. That, however, like other matters of mystery, was one day to ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... anxiety to clear myself, that I had imbibed the ideas which, for obvious reasons, the right honorable gentleman wishes to have received concerning all attempts to plead the cause of the natives of India, as if it were a disreputable employment. If he had not forgot, in his present occupation, every principle which ought to have guided him, and I hope did guide him, in his late profession, he would have known that he who takes a fee for pleading the cause of distress against power, and manfully performs ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bitter words indeed respecting him who had the locking up of these gentlemen. Poor Mr. O'Mahony had no idea that he might have used with propriety as to this gentleman all the epithets of which he believed the "suspects" to be worthy; but instead of doing so he called him a "disreputable jailer." It is not pleasant to be called a disreputable jailer in the presence of all the best of one's fellow citizens, but the man so called in this instance only smiled. Mr. O'Mahony had certainly made ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... feelings at that time were. They must have been terrible. For years he had lived, for the most part with his family, a quiet, studious life, the life of contemplation; and now he was suddenly plunged into the roar and din, with an ignorant and disreputable girl on his hands whom he would not desert. We were certainly on the verge of destruction. The inevitable would have happened, for no other choice was left me, and I should have drifted with the current and Terry would do and could ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... of a short, dirty street in the meanest part of the small Ohio town of Dexter stood a house more sagging and dilapidated in appearance than its disreputable fellows. From the foundation the walls converged to the roof, which seemed to hold its place less by virtue of nails and rafters than by faith. The whole aspect of the dwelling, if dwelling it could be called, was as if, ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... a big, loose-limbed son of Anak, with little of the conventional cleric in his appearance as he came striding across the dewy lawn, clad in a disreputable old suit of grey tweeds and with his bathing-towel slung around his shoulders. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and since he had characteristically omitted to provide himself with a hat, his abundant brown hair was rumpled and tossed by the wind, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... to his feet, revealing to the gaze of the three friends a tall and sinewy form, attired in the picturesquely-tattered garb of a muleteer, or wagoner. The fellow was a low-class Spaniard, of singularly vicious and disreputable appearance; and as he glared vindictively at his captor he looked capable of anything, murder included. For a moment he appeared inclined to make a desperate bid for liberty; but as Jack had slipped between him ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... platform, two drummers and ourselves the only ones to disembark. The traveling men hastened to the nearest hack, while I glanced about in search of a conveyance. The only other vehicle present was a two-seated surrey, driven by a rather disreputable negro. ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... an unmanageable old fiend. Of course I went to him immediately, and what do you think? He demanded five hundred dollars for that strip of land! Five hundred dollars for a few inches of swamp meadow not worth ten dollars the acre! 'Then take your disreputable old mill off my property!' says Shackford,—he called it a disreputable old mill! I was hasty, perhaps, and I told him to go to the devil. He said he would, and he did; for he went to Blandmann. When the lawyers got hold ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... disreputable place thus thrown in the face of the unhappy barrister, was a charity, for it saved him from a foolish action, that of addressing, on the arm of the man who had suddenly made himself her cavalier, the unworthy creature of whom he was thinking a few seconds earlier ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... that another disreputable dog went for a walk, too,' said the Nilghai. 'What made you get up so early? Torp said you might be buying ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... day, was the most diligent search made throughout the town for the fugitive Carlist. Every place where he was likely to conceal himself, the taverns and lower class of posadas, the parts of the town inhabited by doubtful and disreputable characters, the houses of several suspected Carlists, were in turn visited, but not a trace of Baltasar could be found, and the night came without any better success. Herrera was furious, and bitterly reproached himself for his imprudence in leaving the prisoner alone even for a moment. His ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... ever with that disreputable Caterina, and the unfortunate young man, her husband, had decamped from Paris. Wanting then to finish off my Fontainebleau, which was already cast in bronze, as well as to execute the two Victories which ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... alternative to preserving one's volumes in a disreputable condition? Assuredly there is—there are two alternatives. Either the collector will be so wise (and, incidentally, so wealthy) as never to purchase a dilapidated book, or else he must exercise great common sense and much good taste, putting fancy ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... a tiny mining settlement in the West, which is shaken to the very roots by the sudden possession of a baby, found on the plains by one of its residents. The town is as disreputable a spot as the gold fever was ever responsible for, and the coming of that baby causes the upheaval of every rooted tradition of the place. Its christening, the problems of its toys and its illness supersede in the minds of the miners ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... wish for a charming trip to speed me, I left the Ritz, and luckily no vision was vouchsafed me of the condition in which I should return: Two crutches, a bandaged head, an utterly disreputable aspect; my bedraggled state equaled—and this I would maintain with swords and pistols if necessary—that of ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the sphere of the city. While he was in exile at Paris he published an account of his trial, etc., but, as he was unfortunate in his defenders, so was he in his adversaries. The writings of his friend and coadjutor, Charles Churchill, the clever writer, but disreputable divine, are wellnigh, if not entirely, forgotten, but the undying pencil of the immortal Hogarth will forever hold him up to the gaze of remote posterity. Whatever may be the feeling as to his political opinions, and however great may be our gratitude to him ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... which had sailed up the street in an eminently respectable manner, had suddenly and without apparent reason begun to act in an altogether disreputable way. It had veered round, rushed over the crossing, and made a bee-line for the sidewalk, almost running down a party of Frank Merriwell's friends, who were out for an afternoon stroll on the street in the pleasant ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... air and the wind of the rushing train pulled at his clothes and swirled sharp flakes into his eyes. Yet he dimly saw something white flutter down to his feet and he picked it up. It chanced to be a paper tossed out by some careless hand, a rather disreputable sheet printed some thousand miles away, one of the things that lie like scabs on the outer hide of civilization. It was much too dark and cold for him to think of removing a mitten and searching for the glasses in his coat pocket. But the respect is great, in waste places, for the printed ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... 'The disreputable lingo of Cockayne is henceforth justified before the world; for a man of genius has taken it in hand, and has shown, beyond all cavilling, that in its way it also is a medium for literature. You are grateful, and you say to yourself, half in ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... in, his curiosity working furiously at this strange combination of persons. What on earth could be the link between Verschoyle and the shabby, disreputable menage on the third floor?... His heart ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... the guests remarked,—a shabby old man, in a wig, and such a dirty, ragged, disreputable dressing-gown that I should have been quite surprised at him, only one never IS surprised ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so altogether disreputable as to satisfy the most violent hatred—such for instance as we found here. It did not require our pride to keep our hearts up or to keep us from feeling the humiliation of so cruel an ordeal. We simply did not experience the painful sensations that such a proceeding would ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... town ended in a row of high, disreputable-looking houses that were, however, picturesque enough, and across the pave in front of them commenced the docks. One walked in and out of harbours and waterways, the main stretch of harbour opening up more and more on the right hand, and finally showing two great encircling ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... distant town, the soft buffeting of the winds of heaven, are a joy to the aesthetic part of man, the freedom from all responsibility and accountability is Nirvana to his moral nature. A man who has once tasted these two joys together, the joy of being in the open air and the joy of being disreputable and unashamed, has touched an experience which the most close-knit and determined nature might well dread. Life has no terrors for such a man. Society has no hold on him. The trifling inconveniences of the mode of life are as nothing compared with its satisfactions. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... youth who, after some misdemeanor in the society of his native place, sought safety from reproach or punishment in the wilderness. Or he was some disappointed man, who with feelings embittered towards his fellows, preferred the seclusion of the forest and mountain. Many were of a class disreputable everywhere, who gladly embraced a life not subject to social laws. A few were brave, independent and hardy spirits, who delighted in the hardships and wild adventures their calling made necessary. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... anyone in Jersey," said Lady Mabel, in languid wonderment. "It is an altogether impossible place. Nobody in society goes there. It sounds almost as disreputable as Boulogne." ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... men of the people like Mr. Redbrook and that nice Mr. Jenney at Leith and a lot of others who do not ordinarily care for politics are thinking and indignant, I have come to the conclusion there must be a cause for it. They say that the railroad governs them through disreputable politicians,—and I—I am beginning to believe it is true. I have had some of the politicians pointed out to me in the Legislature, and they ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... authors into profitable publicity was shamefully abused,—as in the case of Maitland, an Englishman, who deliberately forged an absurdly distorted paraphrase of a note of Mr. Irving's, besides other disreputable use of the signature which he had enticed from him in answer to urgent appeals. But these were among the penalties of honorable fame and influence which he might naturally expect to pay. The sunny aspect on the "even ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... concerning any scientific cause which we found thus defended? We should exceedingly well know that it was lost. And yet our leading theologians are to be applauded and set in high places for condescending to such sharp practice as would be despised even by a disreputable attorney, as too transparently shallow to be of the smallest use ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... the bureau drawer. Everything came out—purse, tickets, gloves, handkerchief, the tiniest little looking-glass, a letter or two, a silver thimble, two coughdrops stuck together, a sample of ribbon which she had failed to match, a most disreputable looking piece ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... magnificence and ostentation of their costumes with the women of the lower world. Theatrical attractions at high prices were patronized abundantly. Balls of great magnificence were given almost every night. Private carriages of really excellent appointment were numerous along the disreputable planked roads or the sandy streets strewn with ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... shores of the Red Sea and in Arabia. Until these things happen, even should a canal be excavated, whether from Cairo to Suez, or from Suez to Tineh, during some pecuniary plethora in the city, we venture to predict that the Suez canal shares, or Mohammedan bonds, will be as disreputable a security as honest Jonathan's American repudiated stock, or the Greek bonds of King Otho not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... here now he would triumph. She had been anxious to get rid of him in a respectable way, of course, but death as usual had declined to step in when most wanted, and now, well! She must accept her release, in however disreputable a ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... disreputable language in mah days, but nothin' to compaiah with that!" he declared emphatically. "It ain't respectable. Ef Ah meet de fellah wha' talk lak dat Ah's gwan to tell him wha' ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... his wife's assertion that she "never, never would go any farther into this God-forsaken country," he succeeded in getting her into a lumber-wagon and headed for what he genially termed "the interior." At last he even succeeded in making her smile at his efforts to make the disreputable mule pack-team he had secured ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... I'll make the try anyway," and Jack hurried across to where he saw a rather disreputable citizen standing leaning against a ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... Kearney never deigned any reply; and now more than two years passed without any tidings of his disreputable relative, when there came one morning a letter with the Roman postmark, and addressed, 'A Monsieur le Vicomte de Kilgobbin, a son Chateau de Kilgobbin, en Irlande.' To the honour of the officials in the Irish post-office, it was forwarded to Kilgobbin with the words, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... many strangers pass this way, for never was a shy Englishman so stared at as this dust-begrimmed traveller. I became painfully self-conscious of the generally disreputable appearance of my cart and horses, the driver and myself, when two remarkably pretty girls tripped by, casting upon me well-bred but amused glances. All the womenkind of Oravicza must have turned out at this particular hour, for I had hardly passed ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... had thought of the girl in Tom's bedroom, and was going to say, "If you will throw the surreptitious and disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to something," but thought better ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Hall; and, careless which way I turned my steps, crossed the river at Moore's, and followed the footpath which led over the fields to the village of Chesterton. There had been a cattle fair at some place in the neighbourhood, which had drawn together a number of disreputable characters, and, in the course of my walk, I passed two or three parties of rather suspicious-looking men. Having nothing valuable about me, however, I continued my walk. I had advanced some half mile or more, when I was roused ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition. How did ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gambling hells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or Italian brigands. Father Brown knew that the once-celebrated Saradine had spent his last few years in almost ceaseless travel, but he had not guessed that the travels were so disreputable or so amusing. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... decent, and with much care would remain so for a long time. That which he wore at home and in his street wanderings declared poverty at every point; it had been discarded before he left the old abode. In his present state of mind he cared nothing how disreputable he looked to passers-by. These seedy habiliments were the token of his degradation, and at times he regarded them (happening to see himself in a shop mirror) with pleasurable contempt. The same spirit ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... went to the house of Halil Said Naivi, one of the accusers, and saw that individual. He is the keeper of a low grog-shop of disreputable character. It must be admitted that the nature of the man's calling does not afford any guarantee for the credibility ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... view of his great merits, has amazed posterity. The explanation is that his contemporaries probably knew him, not as a commanding genius, but as an Irishman who was always in debt, whose relatives were rather disreputable, whose judgment was often wrong, and whose temper was violent. His significance for us grows from the fact that he applied the imagination of a poet of the first order to the business of life. He saw organized society steadily and saw it whole. Perceiving that only a thin ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... answered Mrs. Rushmore wisely. 'You may say what you like, there is a vast difference between being respectable and disreputable—perfectly vast! It's of no use to deny it, because ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... several other things entirely unfit for publication. He was a big gross man, and he shook like a jelly when the parrot had the sentence correctly. Simmons, however, shook with rage, for all the room were laughing at him - the parrot was such a disreputable puff of green feathers and it looked so human when it chattered. Losson used to sit, swinging his fat legs, on the side of the cot, and ask the parrot what it thought of Simmons. The parrot would answer: "Simmons, ye ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... was a long, unpainted cottage quite near the road. The woman who lived alone there was under a kind of indefinite ban in the village. Her husband, who had died several years before, had been disreputable and drunken, and the mantle of his disgrace had seemed to fall upon his wife, if indeed she was not already provided with such a mantle of her own. Everybody spoke slightingly of Mrs. Jim Sloane. The men laughed meaningly when they saw her pass, wrapped in an old plaid shawl, which she wore summer ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... successful newspaper man, every time Allison read a novel depicting the reporter as a sharp-featured and half-disreputable young man running about with pencil and note-book in hand and making himself personally and professionally obnoxious, it produced apoplectic tendencies that permanently threatened health and peace of mind. Hence with the characteristic ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... a friendly old fellow in his awkward fashion; honourable, and so forth. But a disreputable alliance of that sort sticks to a man. The world will talk. Yes, he was fortunate so far; he fell into the mire and got out of it. Were he to marry ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... turn. With a laugh he interrupted. "Don't. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it must be fatal. Besides I know it all by heart. I am the son of rich and disreputable people. That is not my fault, and, anyway, it is all one to you. But what you mean is that, should you consent, the consideration will not be—er—personal with me or—er—spiritual with you, but—er—just plain and ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... drug; "let no man put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way." The influence of every man who is amenable to altruistic motives is needed against liquor, to counteract its lure; we must create a strong public sentiment and make it unfashionable and disreputable to drink. Happily the tide of liquor-drinking, which has been rising rapidly in the last half- century, owing to the increase in prosperity, the great influx of immigrants from liquor-drinking countries, and the stimulation of the trade ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... had three boys of her own, later on, and a more disreputable-looking crew it would be hard to find. I confess that I took a deal of grim satisfaction in their dilapidated ensemble, just for my aunt's benefit, of course. They were fine, wholesome, natural boys in spite of their parentage, and I liked them even while ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... offices in the Republic. On the mother's side he was the grandson of Scipio Africanus. His father, after a distinguished career as a soldier in Spain and Sardinia, had attempted reforms at Rome. He had been censor, and in this capacity he had ejected disreputable senators from the Curia; he had degraded offending equites; he had rearranged and tried to purify the Comitia. But his connections were aristocratic. His wife was the daughter of the most illustrious of the Scipios. His own daughter was married to the second ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... his pleasure at this good luck. The cabin was dusty, dirty, disreputable, and odorous, but that draught would take away all the odors and his stout arm could soon repair the holes in the roof, put the door back on its hinges, and straighten the sagging window shutter. Here was their home, a house built by white men as a home, ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... year before this calamity (April 5th, 1086), Maurice, chaplain and chancellor to William the Conqueror, had been consecrated Bishop of London by Lanfranc. Unlike most of William's nominees to bishoprics, Maurice's moral character was disreputable; but he was a man of energy, and he set to work at once to rebuild his cathedral, and succeeded in getting from the king abundance of stone for the purpose, some of it from the remains of the Palatine tower ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... appearance. It is believed that the Dean would be indistinguishable from a tramp but for the constant admonishment and active benevolence of Mrs. Inge. As it is, he is something more than shabby, and only escapes a disreputable appearance by the finest of hairs, resembling, as I have suggested, one of those poor Russian noblemen whom Dostoevsky loved to place in the dismal and sordid atmosphere of a lodging-house, there to shine like golden planets by the force of ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... the talk continued. A louder noise outside drew them all to the front porch. In front of the house was a hansom cab drawn by a disgusted-looking horse. He looked and acted like one who had been compelled against his will to mingle with disreputable associates. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... time alarming his audience by seizing a carving-knife and brandishing it about in the air to emphasize the passionate nature of his song. When a card- party proved too dull he slipped off and found his way into some slums, picking up all the disreputable characters he could find, working off his knowledge of cant on them, and getting out of them what he ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... thing with a shapeless crown. "So, extraordinary, my dear—so odd," Aunt Hester, passing through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange, disreputable cat—Tommy had such disgraceful friends! She was disturbed when ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and she is teaching a little district school, and from what I have seen of her, her manners are subject to criticism. She is not half as lady-like as other girls in Amity. When I think of the way she flew in here and attacked us for not clothing those disreputable people across the river, just because they have the same name, I can't help being indignant. I never heard of a young girl's doing such a thing. And I think that if she ran off when the bell rang, because she thought ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and the woman who would condescend to either was assumed, perhaps not quite without reason, to have lost something more than the mere perception of technical taste. This feeling ran through the whole of society, and pinchbeck was considered as at once despicable and disreputable. The successful speculator, sprung from nothing, who had made his fortune during the war, might buy land, build himself a mansion, and set up a magnificent establishment, but he was never looked on as more than ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... disgraceful rumours that you have been spreading about me have made me disreputable in the eyes of the whole countryside. You and I have nothing in common, and I ask you to leave my house ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... generally disliked by the men under him. The more evil-minded gossips in the bank said he was in league with "Old Nick." That, of course, was absurd, for it does not necessarily follow, because a man suggests a means looking to an end, disreputable though it be, that he has Mephistopheles for a silent partner. The conservative element among the employees would not openly venture so far, but rather thought if his satanic majesty and old Sanders ran a race, the former would come in a bad second, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... according to Dick Rover's idea, was the sweetest creature in the whole world. They had also made some enemies, the worst of the number being Dan Baxter, a fellow who had been the bully of the school, but who was now a homeless wanderer on the face of the earth. Baxter came from a disreputable family, his father having at one time tried to swindle Mr. Rover out of a rich gold mine in the West. The elder Baxter was now in prison suffering the ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... times more disreputable than it was, had I carried a mitrailleuse instead of a fourteen-shooter, I would have been still received with open arms after that piece of information was given and received. The door opened very wide and the worthy clergyman's hand shut very close. Then suddenly there became ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... much offended when, as he was proposing to give that ball, his chief favorite, a gay, Court lady, exclaimed: "Oh, do! it will be so nice to see the two little Queens dancing together." Yet he disliked the Duchess of Kent for keeping the child as much as possible away from his disreputable Court, and educating her after her own ideas, and often threatened to use his power as King to deprive her of the little girl. The country would not have stood this, yet the Duchess must have suffered cruelly from fear of having her darling child taken ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... discovered that she was very cold, and she went into the Big Soprano's deserted and disordered room. The tile stove was warm and comfortable, but on the toilet table there lay a disreputable comb with most of the teeth gone. Harmony kissed this unromantic object! Which reveals the fact that, genius or not, she was only a young and rather frightened girl, and that every atom of her ached ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... furniture or china, or a coin, emanating from a less favoured soil; nor will he willingly acquire even a volume of native origin in any state but the orthodox morocco; but his first impulse and act, if he does so under protest, is to strip and re-clothe the disreputable article, and have it put into habiliments worthy of the ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... York. The physician with his theory, rather obtained from than corrected by experiments on the human constitution; the pious, self- denying, laborious, and ill-paid missionary; the half-educated, litigious, envious, and disreputable lawyer, with his counterpoise, a brother of the profession, of better origin and of better character; the shiftless, bargaining, discontented seller of his betterments; the plausible carpenter, and most ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of office, some in a vague hope of preserving the old condition of things, will not only hold off from all participation in your government, but will make all sympathy with it, all advocacy of its principles, and especially all office-holding under it, odious—disreputable—infamous. You may find yourself constrained to fill your offices with men who can face down the contumely of a whole people. You know what such men generally are. One out of a hundred may be a moral hero—the ninety-nine will be scamps; and the moral hero will most likely get ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... you don't leave the room, I will. It's really disreputable to have you for a mother. You've never done me ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the case; he detailed a reporter, who wrote it up. He left out the man's real name. Nothing has come of it. Our courts have become so debased, God only knows what they will do next. We have a police judge now who is the owner of five disreputable dives, which he runs every day and Sunday. He sits down on the bench on Monday and discharges the cases against his saloons. We've another, who was drunk in the gutter, with two warrants out for his arrest, ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... while his daughter is being ravished by the Bulgars, and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt at First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But Italians as a whole—well, we are lovers of violent and disreputable methods; it is our heritage from mediaeval times. The only thing that annoys the ordinary native of the country is, if his own son ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... significance of their art and customs. He sometimes condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants of the most beggarly description, and—as he wished to believe, because of the romantic titillation involved—the hang-outs of crooks and thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he had been most assiduously cultivating for some time ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... like; but when I was in London I saw pictures of Henry Hatton, of our Harry, mind ye, singing in all makes and manners of fool dresses. I hope to goodness his father does not know a Hatton man is exhibiting himself to gentle and simple in such disreputable clothes. I have been wondering your father hasn't been to see me ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... also several in men's attire, chiefly French modistes, generally a most disreputable set here, and numerous men dressed as women. There were masked Poblanas without stockings, and with very short petticoats; knights in armour; innumerable dresses probably borrowed from the theatre, and even more than the usual proportion of odd figures. The music was very good, and the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... their eyes to facts all around them, and devote columns upon columns of newspaper, magazine and book argument—imaginary pictures—to the immorality, mental sterility and innate improvidence of this people; and they do this for various reasons, none of them honorable, many of them really disreputable. In dealing with this negro problem they always start off upon a false premise; their conclusions must, necessarily, be false. In the first place, disregarding the fact that the negroes of the South are nothing more nor less than the laboring class of the people, the same ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... attended to the official business of Prouty at a flat-top desk in a large front room where he also wrote an occasional life insurance policy. As the insurance business was a rise from a disreputable saloon and gambling joint, so the saloon and gambling joint had been a step upward from his former means of livelihood as a dance-hall tout in ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... John Gordon reached the corner of the road at which stood Croker's Hall, he met, outside on the roadway, close to the house, a most disreputable old man with a wooden leg and a red nose. This was Mr Baggett, or Sergeant Baggett as he was generally called, and was now known about all Alresford to be the husband of Mr Whittlestaff's housekeeper. For news had got abroad, and tidings were told that Mr Baggett was about ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... related to me the course the thing had taken. He. said, that, from the beginning, he had used every endeavor to prevail on the officers to renounce the project altogether, urging the many considerations which would render it odious to their fellow-citizens, and disreputable and injurious to themselves; that he had at length prevailed on most of the old officers to reject it, although with great and warm opposition from others, and especially the younger ones, among whom he named Colonel W. S. Smith ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... discipline, and make their company second to none in the United States. His laws were Draconic in their severity. He forbade his cadets from entering a drinking or gambling saloon or any other disreputable place under penalty of expulsion, publication of the offender's name in the city papers, and forfeiture of uniform. He insisted on prompt obedience and unremitting drill. The company under his firm and inspiring command rapidly pulled itself together, and attracted all ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... I have an unpleasant remembrance of the girl, too." Mrs. Tweksbury smiled grimly. "She was always a pert chit, and I believe she is like her disreputable father—you know about ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... they that have subdued their wrath, obtain a high reward by means of their numerous sacrifices. That reward, however, is unattainable by men that are wicked in their deeds, overwhelmed by covetousness, mean and disreputable with souls unblessed and impure. Therefore, must thou know, O Brahmana that this reward which is obtained by persons having their souls under control and which is unobtainable by the ignorant and the foolish,—this which is attainable ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... died in 1775. She became the mistress of the house. Her father formed disreputable connections. Late in that year her future husband, Roland de la Platiere, presented himself, with a letter from a friend of her girlhood. He was forty years old; he was a student; his form was awkward and his manners were stiff; his morals were irreproachable, his disposition ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... judicially, "is a budmash [Footnote: Budmash: a disreputable fellow.]—a big budmash. He will, without doubt, go to the jail-khana for his behaviour." Renewed yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apology to myself from ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... sort of a life is it that I am now leading? It is even a long, long time since I was loved by a noble woman such as you are. I understand, of course, your hesitation, or rather, your refusal. Deuce take it, of course it needs a bit of courage—with such a disreputable fellow as I am, too ... although, perhaps, things are not quite so bad. Ah, if I could only find a human soul, a kind, womanly soul!"—He emphasized the "womanly soul"—"Yes, my dear lady, it was as little meant to be my fate as it was yours to pine away and ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... yonng man from Matchin's. He is in the library," and Offitt came in, looking more disreputable than usual, as he had greased his hair inordinately for the occasion. Budsey evidently regarded him with no favorable eye; he said to Sleeny, "This person says he comes from Matchin's; ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... they continued to stare at each other in silent amazement. Mary Darrell, her face alternately flushing and paling with confusion, seemed fascinated and incapable of motion. In spite of Peveril's astonishingly disreputable appearance, she at once recognized him as being the young stranger whom she had seen twice before, and had even helped out of an awkward predicament. She also knew that he had in some way aroused her father's enmity. But he had taken his departure from ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... me thus far when I became aware of a small, furtive figure, dodging from one patch of shadow to another. Leaning from the window, I made out the form of a somewhat disreputable urchin, who, dropping upon hands and knees, proceeded to crawl towards me over the grass with a show of the most ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... 'Slimy' Cohen); I had given up an hour a day to studying the management of the concussor with the aid of a punching-ball; the alarms were ready for fixing, and I even had the address of an undoubtedly disreputable housemaid, when a most unexpected thing happened. I got a premature bite. A fellow actually walked into the trap without troubling me ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... the certificate proving your father's and mother's honorable marriage. I can give you letters that will also prove it, and prove, too, that your father was not quite so disreputable and heartless as you have been led to believe. There is also a picture of him, painted on ivory, and set in a frame of gold, embellished with costly stones, which he had made for his wife, and there are valuable ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Some of the women are good-looking, but with all classes, women and men, exists an appearance of suspicion in their features which is repulsive. They are, as a class, in a condition of miserable poverty, living from hand to mouth, idle, disreputable, restless, without any settled homes, and for the most part without even habitations. They have no distinct language of their own, but speak a dialect of Rajpootana, which is disguised by slang or argot terms of their own that is unintelligible to other classes. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... time he spent in the studio at Menilmontant; there at any rate he was at ease. We were not too disreputable for the umbrella, and though he deprecated the loose speech of Bringard and Bonnet who had returned to Paris, and the queer personal habits of Cazalet, he appeared to find solace in our society. At any rate the visits ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... time that a disreputable clerk—a lewd priest, as Hall calls him—a hanger-on of the house of Howard, was guilty of an insult to a citizen's wife as she was quietly walking home through the Cheap. Her husband and brother, who were nearer at hand ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... self-satisfied smirk and leer that would have done credit to a real comedian. This particular bit of acting was heightened by the fact that even in the coldest weather he wears thin summer clothes, generally acid-worn and more or less disreputable. For protection he varies the number of his suits of underclothing, sometimes wearing three or four sets, according to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... some trees at the back, smoking a disreputable cuddy pipe with a worse accompaniment of tobacco. When he saw ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... to what invisible spirits the child appealed. They were certainly disreputable ones, as will be seen; but they heard her prayer, and came to her now in her extremity. Hardly knowing what she did, she opened on this man a pair of eyes seraphically ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... saunter through the streets on the lower East Side which disreputable creatures used as their market-place. It was mildly exciting to watch women hunt for men and men hunt for women: their furtive glances, winks, tacit understandings, bargainings, the little subterfuges by which they sought to veil their purpose from the other passers-by; the way a man would ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... to hear such words from the lips of your own father or mother, your brother or your sister? Or would you like either of them to hear you making use of such language? After all, who and what are the men who thus habitually indulge in obscenity and profanity? Are they not the vicious and disreputable, the brutal drunken ruffians, the scum of the slums, the lowest of the low, the very outcasts and pariahs of society? And is it for one of these that you would like to be mistaken? is it with this repulsive brotherhood that you ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... shuffled into the room—a tall, shambling figure of a man, with a generally disreputable look. He was roughly dressed, and appeared like a social outlaw. He was a tenant of Mr. Grey's, living on a clearing just on the edge of a forest. He had a wife, but no children. She led a hard life, being subjected to ill usage from her husband when, as was frequently the case, he was ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... D'Estang, Armitage pointed to several more or less disreputable garments lying ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... hoarsely whispered, and the speaker leaned back in her fauteuil, a spark of fierce eagerness in her dilated eyes, Mabel, in her own anxiety, did not consider overstrained solicitude in behalf of a disreputable stranger. She had more sympathy with it than with the relapse into apparent nonchalance that succeeded her repetition of the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... wearily familiar to its monotonous repetition, fell the parrot's customary adieu, as that disreputable-looking bird swung rhythmically to and fro ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... conquest, the Persian nobles and heavy cavalry used panoply as impenetrable as the European chivalry of the middle ages. Among the other scattered traits of manners, it will be remarked as singular, according to the ideas of the present day, that open piracy and robbery are neither spoken of as disreputable, nor as attaching any slur to those who exercised them; insomuch, that the notoriety of Thyamis, having been a chief of freebooters, is not regarded as any obstacle to his assumption of the high-priesthood. But this, it will be found, was strictly in accordance with the manners ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... said, "'t would grieve you, would it not, To discover that I was a most disreputable lot? Of all unhappy sinners I'm the most unhappy one!" The padre said, "Whatever have you been and ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... of a conspiracy having been formed, by the family with whom you are staying, to get possession of your money; and that this conspiracy was entered into very shortly after the contents of my father's will had been made public. I must have this fact proved at the Assizes, and the disreputable parties to it punished, unless you will consent, at any rate for a time, to put yourself under the protection ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... a tall figure sprang up from a heap of rags in a dark corner, and came forward,—a very dirty, disreputable-looking man. Bessie, who had taken him for a sick man, was surprised to see that he also had a fine color in his cheeks, and even in his nose, but she noticed that he seemed very weak in his legs. "Hello! my little angel," he cried; "give me the money," and rudely caught the porte-monnaie ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... allows that much. But there are two factors in his scheme which, if not new, at least acquire a new prominence. These two factors are help and hope. Society drops these two h's. For help it substitutes money-giving, and as for hope for the disreputable, it has none. The personal contact of General Booth's workers, of his 10,000 officers, is an essential feature of the scheme. They take the man or the woman as they enter the shelter, and prevent it from becoming a means of dissemination ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker |
