"Prim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tramps and drunkards from the "barrel-houses" and "stale-beer shops;" and, across the square to the north, representatives of New York's oldest and most noted families. To the west were apartment houses whence stiff, prim bookkeepers, floor-walkers, clerks and small shop-keepers issued with their families on Sundays, bound for church. There were other apartment houses—the most of them to the south—whence in the midnight hours came slattern servants and reckless looking girls in loose wrappers ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... course, quite back to the time when the Hyde Street hill had been in an opulent heyday, but the flavor of its quality had trickled through to his generation. This was the section where his mother had languished in the prim gloom of her lamp-shaded parlor before his father's discreet advances. The house was gone ... replaced by a bay-windowed, jig-sawed horror of the '80s, but the garden still smiled, its quaint fragrance reenforced at the proper season by the ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... prim-looking, rather plain children; but Oliver was the very picture of a father's darling, a boy that any childless man would bitterly covet, any childless woman crave and yearn for, with a longing that women alone can understand; ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... little time to dress for dinner when I brought them to anchor for the night. The nice old hotel, with its Delft plates half covering the walls, its alcoves and unexpected stairways with green balusters, and its old dining-room looking on a prim garden, pleased the eyes which find all things in Hollow ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... house; we will wait for her here in the Ceramicus. I should think it is near her hour for coming back from the Academy, and taking her walk in the Poecile; she is very regular; to be sure, here she comes. Do you see the orderly, rather prim lady there, with the kindly look in her eyes, and ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... picture of vivid happenings in unoccupied houses and particularly of the prim, industrious, capable Susan Burnet, biting aggressive wrists, stuck in Lady Harman's imagination. She seemed to be looking into hitherto unsuspected pits of simple and violent living just beneath her feet. Susan told some upholsteress love tales, real love tales, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... a house owned by so famous a man," she insinuated gently one day, after vainly trying to awaken a proper enthusiasm in a prim little woman who was ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... swear, have "raked in golden barley," Like the great Fleet Street "Cock." Their jealous jeremiads, sour and snarly, PARTLET'S prim feelings shock. "Luck! Not at all: but the reward emphatic Of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... unfeigned malice, she began to disengage her hand from his—loosened the slim fingers one by one, all the while watching him sideways with prim lips pursed and ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Count Manuel said, "it may be. It is certain you are younger. Once, Ruric, I would not have lured any dark and prim-voiced young fellow into attempting this adventure, but would have essayed it myself post-haste. Well, but I have other duties now, and appearances to keep up: and people would talk if they saw a well-thought-of nobleman well settled ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... no weeping willows; the few fir trees hold themselves stiffly up, as though in pride at this triumph of the vegetable over the animal; and the great bushes of faded geranium only throw into relief the regular lines of limestone mounds, each with its prim wooden cross of advertisement. Always an ugly and a dreary place, it was, when I saw it a few days after the relief, more dreary than ever; for the sun, whose presence makes the difference of a season in this bare land, was hidden behind dark stacks ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... first prim Christianity. 2d Roman Catholicism: ye first is put away and dwells apart, 2d Guinevere flies. Arthur takes to the first again, but finds her changed ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Queen," Barlow was communing with himself. For the oval face with its olive skin, as fair as a Kashmiri girl's, was certainly beautiful. The black hair was smoothed back from a wide low forehead, after the habit of the Mahratti women; the prim simplicity of this seeming to add to the girlish effect. A small white-and-gold turban, even with its jauntiness, seemed just the very thing to check the austere simplicity. The girl's eyes, like Ajeet's, were the eyes of some one unafraid, of one born to a caste that felt ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... even for the young and hopeful partisans of the powers that be. There was nothing exclusive about this elegant hospitality. Beauty and good manners have always been a passport there. I have seen a proconsul of Prim talking with a Carlist leader, and a fiery young democrat dancing with a ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... odd mixture of the detached and the involved. He seemed to hint that nothing but the right "values" was of any consequence. Isabel made a rapid induction: perfect simplicity was not the badge of his family. Even the little girl from the convent, who, in her prim white dress, with her small submissive face and her hands locked before her, stood there as if she were about to partake of her first communion, even Mr. Osmond's diminutive daughter had a kind of finish that ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... its shame be it said—had failed to steal about her waist, nor had he dared to touch his lips to hers, beneath the hooded shelter of the great buffalo robe which curled protectingly around them. He would as soon have dared such familiarity with the minister's maiden sister, aged forty-two and prim as a Bible book-mark. Yet Jennie was just the sort of girl whom a cold-blooded expert must have declared as really meriting a kiss, when prudent and fairly practicable for the kisser and kissee, and as possessing just the sort of waist to be fitted handsomely ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... to the easy-going, lavish house, and Meg, with pretty frocks, abundant leisure and deliriously prim Ribston-Hallish manners, came in for her ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... for his part, intended his youngest daughter to be a model of prim propriety. He attributed to Flavia's frivolity of behaviour the difficulty he experienced in finding her a husband, and he had no intention of exposing himself to a second failure in the case of Faustina. She should marry in her first season, and if she chose to be gay after that, the responsibility ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... and went shivering out into the main street, from which he turned up the hill towards the Hoe. The day had dawned by that time, and the sky was a gloomy grey, varied towards the horizon by stormy gleams of yellow; the prim clean streets were deserted, save by an occasional workman going to his labours with a heavy tramp echoing on the wet flags. Mark went along by terraces of lodging-houses, where the placards of 'apartments' had an especially forlorn ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... PRIM, JUAN, a Spanish general; distinguished as a statesman; rose to be Minister of War, but aspiring to dictatorship, was shot by an assassin; he was the leader of the movement that overthrew Isabella in 1868 and installed Amadeo ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... grouping; just a few old gentlemen here and a few old ladies there, sometimes with their prematurely aged and chastened paid companions by their sides. There were some girls of fifteen or sixteen, too, scattered about, a few of them accompanied by prim governesses. ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... demure, prim thing. Sure all the world is hypocrisy Well, I thank my stars, whatsoever sufferings I have, I have none in reputation. I wonder at the men; I could never think her handsome. She has really a good shape and complexion but no mein; ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... day's journey was wholly without interest, through a country entirely flat, and looking wretchedly brown and barren. There were rows of trees, very slender, very prim and formal; there was ice wherever there happened to be any water to form it; there were occasional villages, compact little streets, or masses of stone or plastered cottages, very dirty and with gable ends and earthen roofs; and a succession ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wood and cordage captured his fancy. He wondered if by any chance the boatswain's ship was over there. He wondered what the brig Cohasset was like. He wondered what the "blessed little mate" was like. He visioned that surprising person who had such influence over rough boatswains—a prim little man with mutton chop whiskers, he decided. Yes, the 'blessed little mate' of the brig Cohasset would be a little, white-crowned, bewhiskered old gentleman, perhaps somewhat senile and decrepit. It was inherent respect for old age that ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... mussels, Ranged in natural order around it, and connoisseurs even Used with dazzled eyes to gaze at the spars and the coral. Then, in the drawing-room, people look'd with delight on the painting, Where the prim ladies and gentlemen walked in the garden demurely, And with pointed fingers presented the flowers, and held them. Ah, if only such things were now to be seen! Little care I Now to go out; for everything needs to be alter'd and tasteful, As it ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... very sensitive—that last whimsical smile of the unknown had humiliated her. She felt he had laughed at her prim propriety in wishing to get rid of him before the gate. Indeed, she suddenly felt he might laugh at a good many of the things she did. And this ruffled her serenity. She put up her slender hands and ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... us to the bottom of the hill. There is still one house round the corner, ending in a picturesque wheeler's shop. The dwelling-house is more ambitious. Look at the fine flowered window-blinds, the green door with the brass knocker, and the somewhat prim but very civil person, who is sending off a labouring man with sirs and curtsies enough for a prince of the blood. Those are the curate's lodgings—apartments his landlady would call them; he lives with his own family four miles off, but once or twice a week ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... reclining in a chair beside the desk. For these two, he felt an implacable hatred. The others were no less enemies, perhaps more dangerous enemies, but they were only the tools of Stephen and Myra. For instance, T. Barnwell Powell, prim and self-satisfied, sitting on the edge of his chair and clutching the briefcase on his lap as though it were a restless pet which might attempt to escape. He was an honest man, as lawyers went; painfully ethical. No doubt he had convinced ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... Helen Dartmoor walked with prim, small steps. She had a little three-cornered shawl on her shoulders, and an old-fashioned bonnet was tied under her chin. Her perfectly cold, serene face glanced ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... otherwise. Nevertheless, it was just such men as Hurd who tended to keep the Church of the eighteenth century in its apathetic state. Hurd was a religious-minded man; but his religion was characterised by a cold, prim propriety which was not calculated to commend it to men at large. Like his friend Warburton, he could see nothing but folly and fanatical madness in the great evangelical revival which was going on around him, and which he seems to have thought would soon be stamped ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... The prim courtesy I made in acknowledgment of his good intention satisfied him that I had understood him fully; and changing his whole manner to one more in accordance with business, he ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... and trays looked somewhat out of place on the prim dressing-table, but Patty thought them a decided improvement. Then she unwrapped her mother's portrait, and placed ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... of bed than a passion came over her to see herself in that less jealous arrangement of drapery which the Beauty of the last century had insisted on as presenting her most fittingly to the artist. She rolled up the sleeves of her dress, she turned down its prim collar and neck, and glanced from her glass to the portrait, from the portrait back to the glass. Myrtle was not blind nor dull, though young, and in many things untaught. She did not say in so ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Christmas tree or a Fourth of July picnic had usually been the occasions when Mary Hope, with her skirts just hitting her shoe tops in front and sagging in an ungainly fashion behind, had teetered solemnly through a "square" dance with him. Mother Douglas herself had always sat very straight and prim on a bench, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes blinking disapprovingly at the ungodly ones who let out an exultant little yip now and then when they started exuberantly through the mazes of ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... ridiculously large! On the smooth white walls reddish shadows moved in a fantastic procession, and from the big chintz-covered lounge the monstrous blue poppies leaped out of the firelight. The high canopy over the bed was draped with prim folds of damask, and the coverlet was of some quaint crocheted work that hung in fringed ends to the floor. Here again from the threadbare velvet carpet the blue poppies stared ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Edgworth's juvenile stories were in general circulation, and we knew "Harry and Lucy" and "Rosamond" almost as well as we did our own playmates. But we did not think those English children had so good a time as we did; they had to be so prim and methodical. It seemed to us that the little folks across the water never were allowed to romp and run wild; some of us may have held a vague idea that this freedom of ours was the natural inheritance of republican ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... to a few of the most popular of Petrarch's sonnets, and an imperfect acquaintance with Ariosto, through the medium of Mr. Hoole. As to the French poets, he dismisses them in the mass as a set of prim, precise, unnatural pretenders. The truth is, he is in a state of happy ignorance about them and all that they have done. He has never read Zaire nor Phedre. To those great German poets who have illuminated the last fifty years with a splendour to which this country ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... so short a date, While villains ripen grey with time? Must thou, the noble, gen'rous, great, Fall in bold manhood's hardy prim Why did I live to see that day— A day to me so full of woe? O! had I met the mortal shaft That laid my ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... town in the Midlands are, one would suppose, as hideous as human half-wittedness could invent or endure. But they are different. They are complete; they are, in their way, compact; rounded and finished with an effect that may be prim or smug, but is not raw. The surroundings of them are neat, if it be in a niggling fashion. But American ugliness is not complete even as ugliness. It is broken off short; it is ragged at the edges; even its worthy objects have around ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... more words about the "English" question: As I said, it seems to me, academical correctness, among the higher characters, will give a prim, old-fashioned tone: and you can look after this, as all my own work has been in the opposite direction in art. I have given it no thought in writing ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... of clapboards painted white, and stood four square; its small-paned windows, flanked with green shutters, blinking toward the west. It had a very prim air, said to have been absorbed from Aunt Jed, and seemed to be eternally trying to draw back its skirts from contact with the interloping veranda and the rose-tree, which, toward the end of the flowering season, certainly ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... that it has no effect on the skin—no, I really dare not." As she said this she looked as prim as a vestal. "It is the first time, do you know, that I ever used this liquid white, ah! ah! ah! What a baby I am! I am all ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... overlapping. At forty, she was still young and beautiful, with a ripe maturity that only the tender crow's feet about the corners of the eyes betrayed to the inquisitive. She set the pace for many a younger woman, and was far more active than prim little Netty, her daughter. Needless to say, she was adored by her son, to whom she was ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... who is so beautiful that I love her and can't get her out of my head. I want to find Ruth Craven. She went away with a horrid, stiff, pokery girl called Cassandra Weldon. You have such strange names in your country. That horrid, prim Cassandra chose to correct me when I came into school, and she has taken my darling away—the only one I love in the whole of England. I want to find her. I will give you—- I will give you an Irish diamond set in a brooch if you ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... sometimes, startlingly, in a mood of idle receptiveness. And it was so sad and so beautiful, so full of an ecstatic melancholy, that I dropped the curtain. And my thought ranged lovingly over our household—prim, regular, and perfect: my old aunt embroidering in the breakfast-room, and Rebecca and Lucy ironing in the impeachable kitchen, and not one of them with the least suspicion that Adam had not really waked ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... much sought after," said Clelia, with a prim shyness not like her own stormy confession. Sabrina, with her white hair and her young face seemed somehow set apart from love and ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... distance when the centre of attraction is fixed, as the sum of the masses of the two bodies, to the first of two mean proportionals between this sum and the largest of the two bodies inversely. (Vid. Prin. Prop. 60 Lib. Prim.) The ratio of the masses being as above 80 to 1 the mean proportional sought is 80.666 and in this ratio must the moon's mean distance be diminished to get the force of gravity at the moon. Therefore ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... noise of the sentry, on the quarter-deck below him, grounding arms, turned the current of his thoughts. A thin, tall, soldier-like man, with a cold blue eye, and prim features, came out of the cuddy below, handing out a fair-haired, affected, mincing lady, of middle age. Captain Vickers, of Mr. Frere's regiment, ordered for service in Van Diemen's Land, was bringing his lady on deck to get ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... then a carriage, filled with well-to-do citizens out for an evening ride, drove slowly by. The people in the carriages always saluted Mrs. Worth and she returned their salutations with a prim little bow. But no one stopped to chat or to offer her a seat. In this, also, there was nothing strange to the woman on the porch of the big, empty house. Sometimes the people in the carriages, entertaining visiting friends, pointed to Jefferson Worth's house, with proper explanations, ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... our usual occupations and offer our property and ourselves. Whim and individual action are for peace times. Take us and use us as you think fit. Take all we possess." When he thought of the government in this way, he forgot the governing class he knew. The slack-trousered Raeburn, the prim, attentive Philbert, Lady Frensham at the top of her voice, stern, preposterous Carson, boozy Bandershoot and artful Taper, wily Asquith, the eloquent yet unsubstantial George, and the immobile Grey, vanished out of his mind; all those representative exponents of the way things are done in Great ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... lawn. "I like her," she answered, "but she is funny. I suppose it is because she hasn't gone much to school. She isn't like Charlotte, or Katherine, or me. She isn't prim, and yet—it is queer, father, but she makes me feel as I do when I am ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... pretty well, Marcia," Joe replied, "back home they think I don't care much for the young people's work. It is a little too prim and ready-to-wear for me, if you'll excuse me for saying so. No fun in it at all, though I'll admit some of the classes here have more life in them ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... a few moments later a girl entered the office—if the prim little wisp that was Lucy Crane could be ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... young people to render in a creditable way the conceptions of a great poet? Let us look at the precedents again. When Mademoiselle de Caylus, in her account of St. Cyr, speaks of the representation of Andromaque, she writes, "It was only too well done." And prim Madame de Maintenon wrote to Racine: "Our young girls have played it so well they shall play it no more"; begging him to write some moral or historic poem. Hence came the beautiful masterpiece Esther, to which the young ladies seem to have done the fullest justice, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... guess: she exhausted the resources of soap and water in her own adornment (for she smelled of suds in the cabin of the Shining Light), and set out by the path from Whisper Cove to Twist Tickle, with never a glance behind, but a prim, sharp outlook, from shyly downcast eyes, upon all the world ahead. A staid, slim little maid, with softly fashioned shoulders, carried sedately, her small head drooping with shy grace, like a flower upon its slender stalk, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... its weaknesses. But meanwhile, they overlook the fact, that not the woman Elizabeth, but the Virgin-queen, the royal heroine, is the theme of admiration. Not the petty virtues, the pretty sensibilities, the cheap charity, the prim decorum, which modern flatterers dwell upon, degrading royalty, while they palaver its possessor, but Britannia's sacred majesty, enshrined in chaste and lofty womanhood. Our ancestors paid their compliments to sex or rank—ours are addressed to the person. There is no flattery where ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... heart enters—a structure of the understanding rising out of the moral and spiritual nature. Then follows a section on Children, which explodes not a few educational fallacies, and propounds certain articles of faith and practice wholesome for these times, though it will probably wear a prim and quakerish aspect to the admirers of Jean Paul's famous tractate[10] on the same theme. The concluding paper in this series, entitled The Life Poetic, is the liveliest, if not the most valuable of the six: it has, however, been charged, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... the children's, and lived in a house next door. The yards of the houses were only separated by a green hedge, with no gate, so that Cecy spent two-thirds of her time at Dr. Carr's, and was exactly like one of the family. She was a neat, dapper, pink-and-white-girl, modest and prim in manner, with light shiny hair, which always kept smooth, and slim hands, which never looked dirty. How different from my poor Katy! Katy's hair was forever in a snarl; her gowns were always catching ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... fashion had come to the Waldorf and registered himself and "Miss Elsie Cochrane"; and when the clerk made the usual inquiries as to the relationship of the young lady, it transpired that Miss Elsie was a dog, arrayed in a prim little tea-gown, and requiring a room to herself. And then there was a tale of a cat which had inherited a life-pension from a forty-thousand-dollar estate; it had a two-floor apartment and several attendants, and sat at table ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... altar, or whether he found her reposing by the roadside, having paid the debt of Nature, our informant could not say; enough that, in time, he owned a brush and immortalized himself by his skill in its use. Such erratic ones as Whittier, West, and Anna Dickinson go to prove that even the prim, proper, perfect Quakers are subject to like infirmities with the rest of ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... away. He had even left two of her letters—the rather formal letters which had come to mean so very much in his life—unanswered. A fortnight had gone by, and then there had reached him a prim little note from Mrs. Pomeroy, asking him why he had not been to see them lately. There was a postscript: "If you do not come soon, you will not see my daughter. She has not been well, and we are thinking of sending her up to Scotland, to friends ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... to was a little white house with green shutters and a slate roof. It stood in a prim little garden, and down each side of the neat path were large stone vases for flowers to grow in; but all ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... hardly existed during the first portion of the meal. Miss Cilly poured out her tea and broke her biscuit with a certain prim sort of elegance which belonged to that young lady—as at least she believed. But sipping tea and nibbling biscuit went on in company ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... hard horsehair sofa sat Mrs Fanshawe herself, her elaborately coiffured, elaborately attired figure looking extraordinarily out of place in the prim bareness of the little room. Her gloved hands were crossed on her lap, she sat ostentatiously erect, her satin cloak falling around her in regal folds; her face was a trifle paler than usual, but the mocking light shone in her eyes. At Claire's entrance ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... very pleasant place, that parlour of Mrs Nesbitt's—so neat, so cool, so quiet. There was not much to distinguish it from other parlours in Laidlaw; and, in general, they were prim and plain enough. There was a small figured carpet, crimson and black, upon the floor. It did not quite reach the wall on one side, for Mrs Nesbitt's Scottish parlour had been smaller than this one; and the deficiency was ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... The piano, which Mr. Barstow had promised, duly made its appearance in the schoolhouse, to the delight of the scholars and the gentle satisfaction of Mrs. Martin, who, in addition to the rudimentary musical instruction of the younger girls, occasionally played upon it herself in a prim, refined, and conscientious fashion. To this, when she was alone after school hours, she sometimes added a faint, colorless voice of limited range and gentlewomanly expression. It was on one of these occasions that Twing, becoming an accidental auditor of this chaste, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... should hear Zeuill and General Prim on the subject. The Marquis of Castrillon is in London. Our friend Parflete will soon be labouring with ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... is so," said Valerie demurely. Her little heart was beating confidently again and she seated herself beside Helene d'Enver in the prim circle of delegates intent upon their chairman, who was calling the meeting ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the eagerness of all onboard the frigate to take part in the work. The crews of the boats, and those who were to go on the expedition, stood in readiness, with pistols in their belts, and cutlasses at their sides; the marines drawn up, stiff and prim, ready to step into the boats, offering a strong contrast to the blue-jackets, with their rolling, somewhat swaggering movements, while several not told off to go were stealing round in the hopes of being able to slip ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... castles of the testy Victorian tetrarchs are gone now or decayed into boarding-houses, but the Eathorne Mansion remains virtuous and aloof, reminiscent of London, Back Bay, Rittenhouse Square. Its marble steps are scrubbed daily, the brass plate is reverently polished, and the lace curtains are as prim and superior as ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... that had sprung up for me in the midst of these solitudes. My Arabs were busy with their bread; Mysseri rattling tea-cups; the little kettle, with her odd old-maidish looks, sat humming away old songs about England; and two or three yards from the fire my tent stood prim and tight, with open portal, and with welcoming look, like “the old arm-chair” of our lyrist’s ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the proprietor coughed in embarrassment and motioned to a prim, thin-faced woman in the front room who came forward with fidgety shyness, begging the gentlemen to forgive her if she had done wrong, but there was something on her conscience and she couldn't sleep ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... door. He had been gardening, and was in his shirt-sleeves. At sight of his visitor he became exceedingly prim and scholastic, with a touch of defiance. He was short in stature, and, aware of this, often paused in the middle of a sentence to raise himself on his toes. He made a special study of what he called "Voice-Production," and regulated his most ordinary conversation by the laws (as he understood ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... been very prim for a week, and our bottled up spirits could no longer be contained; so we planed a revel after our own hearts, and set our wits to work to ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... bright days of April came a change. He was going back to England, he told her, one Saturday afternoon, as they sat, lover-like, side by side, in the prim salon. She gave a low cry at the words, and looked at him ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... mansion the room known as the library is on the ground floor in a wing of the main building. As rooms have a way of doing, it expresses unmistakably the character of its tenant. There is a book-case, with a few spick-and-span books standing in prim, cold rows behind the glass doors—which are always locked. The key is somewhere, no doubt. There are no pictures on the walls, save a fancy calendar—presented with the compliments of the Judge's banker, a crayon portrait of the Judge's father—in ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... Black Islands, and whom Ormond had never seen, was to accompany Dora on her return to Corny Castle: our young hero had settled it in his head that this aunt must be something like Aunt Ellenor in Sir Charles Grandison; a stiff-backed, prim, precise, old-fashioned looking aunt. Never was man's astonishment more visible in his countenance than was that of Harry Ormond on the first sight of Dora's aunt. His surprise was so great as to preclude the sight ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... of tactful discretion, sensible, but not too "touristy"'—Miss Winchelsea had a great dread of being "touristy"—and her Baedeker was carried in a cover of grey to hide its glaring red. She made a prim and pleasant little figure on the Charing Cross platform, in spite of her swelling pride, when at last the great day dawned, and she could start for Rome. The day was bright, the Channel passage would be pleasant, and all the omens promised well. There ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... and trim, You begin your steps demurely— There's a spirit almost prim In the feet that move so surely. So discreetly, to the chime Of the music that so sweetly Marks ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... moved with greater confidence. No detail seemed to have escaped his cunning calculation. Though the door leading from the verandah into the reception hall swung wide to the balmy airs of late Spring the prowler passed this blatant invitation to the hospitality of the House of Prim. It was as though he knew that from his place at the head of the table, with his back toward the great fire place which is the pride of the Prim dining hall, Jonas Prim commands a view of the major portion ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... always means to be just," defended Dorothy. "She has rather prim ideas about things, but she's a stickler for principle. I am glad she's over her prejudice against ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... she talks outside of school," said Suzanna, her voice falling. She fell into prim step as they neared ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... could never hold a candle To those prim, pale-faced people of propriety Who gloat o'er gossip and get fat on scandal— The cannibals of civilized society; They drink the blood of brothers with their rations, And crunch ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... to gaze at her he began to feel intimidated, disquieted by her prim, sedate demeanour; and in lieu of openly looking at her he ended by glancing surreptitiously in the mirrors around the shop, in which her back and face and profile could be seen. The mirror on the ceiling, too, reflected the top of her head, with its tightly rolled chignon and ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... pretend that Canaan was coextensive with the World,—the descendants of Abraham with the posterity of Noah! This amiable writer is inexcusable for excluding from the corporate entity of the Human Race the four great Empires of the world, (to say nothing of primval Egypt and mysterious India;) and for the sake of elaborating a worthless allegory, identifying the least of all people with the Colossal Man, who, (according to his own account of the matter,) represents the aggregate of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... within reach, and he was about to cross the dewy band of grass which bordered the road, when he recollected that he had just put on clean boots, and the result of a scramble through and among brambles would be unsatisfactory for their appearance in the rector's prim study. So the berries hung in their place, left to ripen, and he went on till a great dragon-fly came sailing along the moist lane to pause in the sunny openings, and poise itself in the clear air where its wings vibrated so rapidly that they ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... women that, even before this era, when "old maids" were open to all kinds of insult, there were women brave enough to refuse to barter their souls for the animal comforts of food and shelter. Speaking about "old maids," by which term we mean now a prim, fussy person, it is well to remember that there are male "old maids" as well as female who remain so all through life; also that many "old maids" marry, and are ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... had been standing prim, erect, and stiff, fell limply into a convenient rocking chair, and looked closely at this orphaned nephew who had come ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... missionary school came marching, two and two, sixteen prim and pious little Christian black girls, Europeanly clothed—dressed, to the last detail, as they would have been dressed on a summer Sunday in an English or American village. Those clothes—oh, they were unspeakably ugly! Ugly, barbarous, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... let me alone: I am not thine. [1] Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear To feature me my Lord by rule and line. Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's hair, Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp, Would'st count the strings upon an angel's ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... So she sat still and watched him,—giving a bit of a smile now and then indeed to his direct remarks, but as often only a fuller look of the brown eyes. Since the gentleman had been under the tree she had been idly busy with her own thoughts, having sketched herself tired in the morning. "Prim" she recognized at once—Dr. Maryland's sister,—she had heard him speak of her. Would she be a friend? any one to whom these many thoughts might come out? So Wych Hazel sat, gazing out upon the lengthening ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... smiled in prim sweetness, and noting that Mrs. Jackson's hands looked reasonably clean, extended one of the first two white kid gloves in Crowheart which Mrs. Jackson shook with heartiness before bouncing ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... before she heard a bustle on the stairs, which was followed by the entrance of Mademoiselle Therese Loire. Her face was not so long nor her hair so tightly drawn back as her sister's, and she came forward with a rush, smiling broadly, but, somehow, Barbara felt she would like the prim sister better. ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... never followed any profession; the lands of Beaubocage secured him a competence, so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch flower-garden. He was to live at Cotenoir, and look after his estate, and smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came natural to M. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... a penny apiece for each Gang-er he gets, and twice the money for a Frenchman," the Parson explained. "It stimulates effort," he added, prim as a pedagogue, but with twinkling eye. "And ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... newspaper without dread and sickness of suspense, came the telegram saying that Tom was wounded; and without so much as asking Miranda's leave, she packed her trunk and started for the South. She was in time to hold Tom's hand through hours of pain; to show him for once the heart of a prim New England girl when it is ablaze with love and grief; to put her arms about him so that he could have a home to die in, and that was ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wife perchance may have A comely sort of face, And at the table's upper end Conduct herself with grace, I hate the prim reserve that reigns, The caution and the state, I hate to see my friend grow vain Of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... ignore him altogether. If Amy had but been rescued by him, George F. Pearson, instead of by this Bertram Cope, and if she had been snatched from a disorderly set of breakers at the foot of those disheveled sandhills instead of from the prim, prosy, domestic edge of Churchton—well, wouldn't the affair have been better set and better carried off? In such case it might have been picturesque and heroic, instead of ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... fastenings. I wouldn't leave one snap to meet its partner. Come on Judy," the feet were again on the rug, "we will be simply dead in the morning, and we have got to be very much alive. We do miss the Weatherbee. I don't see why we let her go. Dear, prim, prompt Weatherbee! Now we know we loved her. Her successor is too ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... no emotion save amusement. Miss Guile was watching through half-closed eyes. There was a noticeable stiffening of the prim figure of Mrs. Gaston. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... from that train, and go by another in three or four hours' time, we availed ourselves of the opportunity of calling upon the Rev. Dr. Todd, the author of "Lectures to Children," "The Student's Guide," &c. Instead of the prim, neat, little man we had always imagined him to be, we found him tall, coarse, slovenly, and unshaven; a man of 46 years of age; hair of an iron-grey, rough and uncombed; features large; cheek-bones prominent; and the straps of his trowsers unbuttoned, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... the avenue, and who carried upon his arm a half-empty basket of cheap wares. The man was ragged; his toes were thrusting through his shoes; it was evident that he wore no linen, and a week's growth of beard dirtily stubbled his chin,—in a word, he was a man from whom M. Chateaudoux's prim soul positively shrank. M. Chateaudoux went quickly by, fearing to be pestered for alms. The hawker, however, remained seated upon the bench, drawing idle patterns upon the gravel with a hazel stick stolen from ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Moglaut's price was a prim, brunette soprano who wore her eyes disguised behind heavy tortoiseshell. The ill-cut garb she could afford added greatly to her staid appearance, obscuring a certain full-bodied litheness. She earned a throttled existence soloing ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... me alone: I am not thine. Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear To feature me my Lord by rule ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... on triumphantly to see her husband die. He had played the widower in sight of all Edinburgh, and now it would be seen how great was the lie, and nobody could dispute that the widowhood was hers. She hoped that he would turn his prim figure and formal face her way, that she might make him, too, an easy bow, showing how she despised the hypocrite, and how completely he had failed in breaking her spirit. She hoped she should be in good looks at that time, not owning the ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... other real magic. I do not believe that in this age God has altered anyone. People love God nowadays as much as the temperaments they were born with tell them to. He has grown too old for miracles. After two thousand years he has no longer the force to turn water into wine. Ellen, I love your dear prim smile. But always, everywhere, I have found the love of men and women doing that. Sometimes the love of places does something very like it. A man may land on a strange island, and abandon the journey on which he ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Aunt Agnes was prim but cultivated. She wrote for reviews and wore eye-glasses, and her library table was habitually littered with pamphlets and tomes. On the other hand, Aunt Helen was a neat, dapper little woman, who lived in a gem of a house and delighted in bric-a-brac and entertaining. They were both spinsters. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... the long windows, beyond which large greenish flies were buzzing around the branch of a mulberry tree in the alley, Gabriella was trying a purple hat on a prim-looking lady who regarded herself in the mirror with a furtive and deprecating air as if she were afraid of being unjustly blamed for her appearance. "I'm not sure—but I don't think it suits me exactly," she appeared to murmur in a strangled whisper, while she ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... of homes and of trees as people. A stiffly built, sharply roofed house with "gingerbread" trimmings reminded him of a prim old maid. He imagined that he knew what sort of person owned a particular house simply by studying it. Houses, especially old homes, fascinated him and he worshiped trees with the ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... will stay comfortably here by the fire, and I'll give you your tea and put you tidily to bed. I shan't be home any other night this week. Kate has a convoy coming for her;—haven't you, Kate?—Le beau cousin will take the best possible care of us; and even prim Aunt Deborah won't object to our walking back with him. I believe he came up from Wales on purpose. What would somebody else give to take the charge off his hands?—You needn't blush, Kate; I can see through a millstone as far as my neighbours. I'm not quite such ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... painted grey with green trim, having a square of green lawn in front and another in back enclosed with a rail fence, gay flowers in the corners, rubber plants in pots on the porch, and grape arbor down one side of the back yard. Inside, rust-colored mohair overstuffed chairs and davenport look prim with white, crocheted doilies, a big clock with weights stands in one corner on an ornately carved table, and several enlarged framed photographs hang on the wall. The other two rooms are the combined kitchen and dining room, and a bedroom ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... pray, what pretty neat damsel was with you? She says, she smiled, and asked, If his honour did not know who it was? No, said he, I never saw her before. Farmer Nichols, or Farmer Brady, have neither of them such a tight prim lass for a daughter! have they?—Though I did not see her face neither, said he. If your honour won't be angry, said she, I will introduce her into your presence; for I think, says she, she ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... charge, bully a negligent bearer, arrange a bed, and make a curry. But he is so fond of giving advice that I fear he will some day or other, as the Scotch say, raise my corruption, and provoke me to send him about his business. His name, which I never hear without laughing, is Peter Prim. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... I do want to sit at the head of our table, papa," said Patty; "I'd just like to see a housekeeper there! A prim, sour-faced old lady with a black silk dress and dangling ear-rings! No, I thank you. If I have my way I will keep that house myself, and when I get into any trouble, I will fly to Aunt Alice for ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... immortal Crusoe Island. Miss Edgeworth, indeed, might fairly pose as the most persistently malignant of all sources of error in the design of children's literature; but it is to be feared that it was Defoe who first made her aware of the availability of her own venom. She foisted her prim and narrow moral code upon the commonplace adventures of a priggish little boy and his companions; and straightway the whole dreary and disastrous army of sectarians and dogmatists took up the cry, and have been ringing the lugubrious changes on it ever ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... while she said in a prim little voice, which she adopted now and then when she wanted ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... round and through a drive gateway half hidden in trees. When I opened my eyes again I looked for the sunken garden; but except for a few very prim-looking flower-beds the grounds in front of the house consisted entirely of a lawn, round which the drive took ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... not from the blow delivered, but from the blow received. With the effect of a schoolmaster entering the play-room of his pupils was that blow administered. Women pulled down their sleeves and laid prim hands against their ruffled side locks. Men looked at their watches. There was nothing of the effect of a brawl about it; it was purely the still panic produced by the sound of the ax of the fly ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... behind ears the natural prominence of which was enhanced by her grayish hair being drawn up tightly and rolled into a "bun" on the very top of the head. She was the personification of neatness, if such be the word to characterize the prim stiffness of a flat-figured, elderly spinster. She wore large, square-toed, common-sense shoes, with low heels capped with rubber cushions, which, as I was shortly to discover, had earned for the lady the sobriquet of "Old Gum Heels." What her real name was I never found out. Nobody knew. She was ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... is in the background of Hogarth's print of Morning where the prim maiden lady, walking to church, is soured with seeing two fuddled beaux from King's Coffee-house caressing two frail women. At the door there is a drunken row, in which swords and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... occupying that one inside place. I remember nothing of the journey from the time we left the hotel door, except that it was fearfully long. At some hour of the day with which I was not acquainted (for my watch had stopped for want of winding up), I was set down in a clean little street of a prim little town (the name of which I never thought of asking), and was told that the ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... gracious' sake, let me talk! I feel sometimes as if I should suffocate. Everything about this house is so demure, and silent, and solemn, and Quakerish, and hatefully prim. If ever I have a house of my own, I mean to paste in great letters over the doors and windows, 'Laughing and talking freely allowed!' This is my birthday, and I think I might stay at home. Mother, don't forget to ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... I could only have laughed! The Bishop, the dear, prim little Bishop in his own carriage, with his arm about a young woman in red and chinchilla, offering her a bank-note, and Mrs. Dowager Diamonds, her eyes popping out of her head at the sight, and she one of the lady pillars of his church—oh, ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... graced the occasion with her presence; then there came Mame Crosby, the vivacious girl with the auburn locks, who was so fond of teasing Jerry; and last, but not least, pretty Susie Prescott, a dainty, prim little blonde, whom Will considered a ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... entire population was astir. The bells pealed, flags waved, and cannon thundered forth the triumphant nomination of Springfield's distinguished citizen. The bonfires blazed brightly, and especially in front of that prim-looking white house on Eighth street. The committee and the vast crowd following it passed in at the front door, and made their exit through the kitchen door in the rear, Mr. Lincoln giving them all a hearty shake of the hand as they passed him in ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... intentionally unkind, but it was wholly devoid of the tenderness which is as necessary to the growth of a child as air and sunshine to a plant. She always called him by his full name, which sounded strangely prim and formal applied to the little kilted figure with its thatch of black hair. He recalled distinctly once going up to the long pier-glass between the two windows and stroking his own hair as he had seen a mother across the street do for her boy at the window ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... her Lady in Waiting, Lady Mount Edgcumbe, went to a sofa at the other end of the corridor in front of which was a round table surrounded by arm-chairs. When the Queen was seated Lady Mount Edgcumbe came to us and requested us to take our seats round the table. This was a little prim, for I did not know exactly how much I might talk to others in the immediate presence of the Queen, and everybody seemed a little constrained. She spoke to us all, and very soon such of the gentlemen as were allowed by their rank, joined us at the round table. Lord Dalhousie came again ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... caught his eyes as he entered the drawing-room before dinner was Argemone listening in absorbed reverence to her favourite vicar,—a stern, prim, close-shaven, dyspeptic man, with a meek, cold smile, which might have become a cruel one. He watched and watched in vain, hoping to catch her eye; but no—there she stood, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... unclouded by its austere surroundings—crowed lustily from the cradle in which, after the fashion of the country, it was tightly strapped. It was a low, grimy room, with one square bit of a window, and far from clean. Dr. Gilly, the prim English biographer of Neff, quaintly says: "Cleanliness is not a virtue which distinguishes any of the people in these mountains; and, with such a nice sense of moral perception as they display, and with such strict attention to the duties of religion, it is astonishing that they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... must just arrange it. There is the tower door. Kindly tell her, Augustina, that I will let her have the key of it. And kindly tell her also—as from yourself, of course—that she will be treating us all with courtesy if she does come home at a reasonable hour. We have been a very quiet, prim household all these years, and Mrs. Denton, for all ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... passionate, perverse, and "pestering," like all children who have any great and positive elements in them. I dare say she was disposed, like any other "only child," to be self-willed and selfish, and that she required a fair amount of wholesome discipline, and that she got it. Had she been the prim and pious little precocity which some biographers have painted her, she would have died young, like the "Dairyman's Daughter"; we might have had an edifying tract, and England ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... ambitious of entering on this arduous field. The princely collector will, of course, put himself in possession of the magnificent edition of the Statutes issued by the Record Commission, but let not the unprofessional person who must look short of this imagine that he will find satisfaction in the prim pages of a professional lawyer's modern edition. These, indeed, are not truly the Statutes at large, but rather their pedantic and conventional descendants, who have taken out letters of administration to their wild ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... you've got a patient!" cried the New England lady, who looked very prim and unwesternlike in a gingham gown ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham |
