"Smartness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the affair in the public gardens, and they hurried back to the brilliantly lighted mess-rooms to give vent in heated language to their indignation. They were really rather pleased at Sarudine's discomfiture, since often enough his smartness and elegance in dress and demeanour had served to put them in ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... it shone like a 'patent leather' boot. Further, Constance developed a 'hand' for lettering which outdid Mr. Povey's. Between them they manufactured tickets by the dozen and by the score—tickets which, while possessing nearly all the smartness and finish of Mr. Chawner's tickets, were much superior to these in originality and strikingness. Constance and Mr. Povey were delighted and fascinated by them. As for Mrs. Baines, she said little, but the modern spirit was too ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... port of London had their abode. Snug cottages with trim gardens lay thickly along the banks of the river, where their owners could sit and watch the vessels passing up and down or moored in the stream, and discourse with each other over the hedges as to the way in which they were handled, the smartness of their equipage, whence they had come, or where they were going. For the trade of London was comparatively small in those days, and the skippers as they chatted together could form a shrewd guess from the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... the whole superficies of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference. He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along with him. One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with semi-professional knowledge. Harvey, however, could never have entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through the portals of such ideas! He delivered his letter; he was wearied out, and as he returned he noticed neither sky nor ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... International Copyright Treaty with the United Kingdom, who is an author of any book, etc., shall have the sole right of printing, publishing, etc., for a number of years on certain conditions. This is a narrow construction of the Canadian Act, and savours somewhat of smartness and sharp practice. I believe it is not a fair construction and is certainly not in accord with the spirit and manifest intention of the Act. I am not alone in entertaining this opinion which still remains to ...
— The Copyright Question - A Letter to the Toronto Board of Trade • George N. Morang
... the lodge, looking over his shoulder as he went through the door. Then he ran away as fast as he could go. Over hills and valleys, across rivers and creeks, toward the east. He wasted much breath laughing at his smartness as he ran, and soon ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... of general discussion, so Strong made a brief exposition of his case—gently enough, but with considerable force—then and there, displaying the letter he carried by way of proof. He hardly expected to elicit anything but the usual laugh and comment on the Judge's smartness. But there was a marked seriousness of tone in the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... o' their smartness, an' their prominence. Ain't one o' ther signs o' the zodiac up in ther heavens named after ther goat—Capricornus is ther feller ter what I refer—an' them heathen chaps what wuz half man an' half goat? Didn't they come pretty near bein' ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... smartness in driving, in the way you manage your whip, your horses, and the many other details, which it is the province of a good master of the sport ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... German can rule others, and be ruled by others, but he cannot rule himself. The cure would appear to be to train every German for an officer, and then put him under himself. It is certain he would order himself about with discretion and judgment, and see to it that he himself obeyed himself with smartness and precision. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... the new womanhood of Western Europe shows its worth. It is an exit. There is likely to be something like a truce in the fashions throughout Europe for some years. It is in America if anywhere that the holy fires of smartness and the fashion will be ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... the listless lolling of the sporadic foreign tourists. Crisp, curling, tawny hair, a sweeping soldierly moustache, with a resolute chin and gleaming blue eyes accentuated a handsome face burnt to a dark olive by the fiery Indian sun. An easy insouciance tempered the habitual military smartness of the man who had known several different services in the fifteen years of his wasted young manhood. As he swung into the glare of the hospitable doorway of the Grand Rational, the obsequious head porter doffed ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... F.A. a week or two before this date, and was with us till the end of the great Somme push of July. He was a most capable C.O., strict but much respected by the men, and under him the Ambulance attained a high degree of smartness and discipline such as it ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Judging him by his novels alone it would be difficult to determine his rank; but judging him by his high aim and distinguished style (a style remarkable for its charm and purity in an age too much influenced by newspaper slang and smartness) he is certainly one of the best of our recent prose writers. Since his first modest volume appeared in 1860 he has published many poems, sketches of travel, appreciations of literature, parlor comedies, novels,—an immense variety of writings; but whatever ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... for it but to watch, in the hope that this time they might be right, and all that afternoon and evening the cutter had been as it were disguised. Her sails had been allowed to hang loosely, her customary smartness was hidden, and the carpenter had been over the bows with a pot of white paint, and painted big letters and a couple of figures on each side, to give the Kestrel the appearance of a fishing-boat. This done, ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... battle; but, clever saleswoman as she was, when brain and heart were cool, Thorpe realized that all credit for originating the scheme should be given to the new girl. "She's a live wire," he said to himself, though his deepest sympathies were for Miss Stein. And he saw the "smartness" of Mr. Meggison in "spotting" No. 2884 ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... insinuating eyes, a battered countenance, and a nervous twitch about the mouth. He spent his whole life hanging about the aristocratic world; frequented the English clubs of both capitals, and had the reputation of a smart, not very trustworthy, but jolly good-natured fellow. In spite of his smartness, he was almost always on the brink of ruin, and the property he left his son was small and heavily-encumbered. To make up for that, however, he did exert himself, after his own fashion, over his son's education. Vladimir Nikolaitch spoke ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... for that I don't suppose the captain would object to put you ashore. He has evidently taken a fancy to you, and is pleased with the way in which you have taken things and with your smartness and willingness. Beside, I don't think he considers you altogether as a prisoner. Running you down in the way we did in the channel wasn't like capturing you in a prize, and I think if the captain could see his way to letting you go without risk to himself he would do it. As he can't do ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor? or her vulgar music with the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and not a sensible face, nothing to admire; but in the other, who was not more than two or three and twenty, they acknowledged considerable beauty; her features were pretty, and she had a sharp quick eye, and a smartness of air, which though it did not give actual elegance or grace, gave distinction to her person. Their manners were particularly civil, and Elinor soon allowed them credit for some kind of sense, when she saw with what constant and judicious attention they were making themselves agreeable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... she said, and she meant neither smartness nor humor. The boy was looking wonderingly, almost suspiciously at her, and she saw she must ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... could (but didn't) boast of a 'Varsity education, and he prided himself on his smartness, but he was far from being "gleg at the uptak'," as the Scots say, and his powers of observation and deduction assuredly would not have qualified him for a position as a Scotland Yard "sleuth." Seemingly he was quite unconscious of the electrical atmosphere as he entered, and ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... waist of his ordinary black frock-coat, were his scant martial suggestions. But his hat, albeit exchanged for a soft felt one, still reposed on the back of his benevolent head, and seemed to accent more than ever the contrast between his peaceful shoulders and the military smartness of his lower figure. He bowed with easy politeness to the assembled fugitives; but before he could address them, Father Esteban had risen ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... managed to open and shut my mouth, no more, being taken unawares. But it was enough for him. He made as if I had deafened him with protestations of my smartness ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... had not done so much as he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments; he had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual propriety that they look as if they were ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is the main authority. G.H.Q. Constantinople occupies a large barracks which faces a parade-ground. Indian sentries march to and fro outside and enjoy thus serving their King, a picture of polish and smartness. Facing the barracks is a smaller building called "The Jockey Club" where the Commander-in-Chief himself and many of his staff meet to lunch or dine, play billiards, or chat pleasantly over their liqueurs ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... magnify into a flaw. Or he may even fly at one bound to a pinnacle of wisdom by basing his criticism entirely upon the first chapter or the last chapter of a book, or the first act or the last act of a play. Or he may win his spurs for smartness by deliberate misstatements, born, perhaps, of carelessness, perhaps of the genuine desire to be downright disagreeable and funny. The one thing which he must carefully avoid is the slightest touch of genuine appreciation. This is not difficult, ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... pale-yellow ribbons. A wide white hat was wreathed with primroses and green leaves. It was indeed a charming frock, and so modern that Mollie thought she might have worn it at home without anyone being surprised at anything except her unusual smartness. Prudence and Grizzel wore dresses fashioned in precisely the same way, but Prue's muslin was sprigged with pink rosebuds, while Grizzel's ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... you think so, I won't persuade ye, though I don't think so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won't quarrel; you've done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only feel I aren't level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now, you've got your trade ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... country's good," and by whom we were surrounded in our first settlement, detested us, and with them we could have no feeling in common. We could neither lie nor cheat in our dealings with them; and they despised us for our ignorance in trading and our want of smartness. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the distance between the two boats was slightly but sensibly diminished. The lateen, no doubt, observed this, for she began to play the game of short tacks, and hoisted her mainsail, and carried on till she seemed to sail on her beam-ends, to make up, as far as possible, by speed and smartness for what she lost by rig in beating ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... thirty-three years since I was first associated with the Royal Fusiliers, the regiment I have looked up to during all my service as a pattern of smartness and efficiency. I have served with you in Gibraltar, Egypt, and many stations in India; also at Aldershot, and on the Gallipoli Peninsula during the past year. There is no regiment in the service in which I have had a higher confidence, and I hope next week to be able to assemble you again ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... two wives, and which they obtained by the practice of certain arts peculiar to Gypsy females. One of his wives was a truly remarkable woman: she was of the Petulengro or Smith tribe; her Christian name, if Christian name it can be called, was Xuri or Shuri, and from her exceeding smartness and cleverness she was generally called by the Gypsies Yocky Shuri,—that is, smart or clever Shuri, yocky being a Gypsy word, signifying 'clever.' She could dukker—that is, tell fortunes—to perfection, ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... proprietor of a stock of pale yellow hair which required an abundant stock of bear's grease to keep it in order. His face was freckled and expressionless. His eyebrows and eyelashes were of the same faded color. He was dressed, however, with some pretensions to smartness. He wore a blue necktie, of large dimensions, fastened by an enormous breast-pin, which, in its already tarnished splendor, suggested strong doubts as to ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... with singular differences in their instinctive choice of material, the dominant qualities of an isolated, in-bred race, still proud in its decline; still inquisitive and acquisitive, versatile yet stubborn, with thrift passing over into avarice, and mental power degenerating into smartness; cold and hard under long repression of emotion, yet capable of passion and fanaticism; at worst, a mere trader, a crank, a grim recluse; at best, endowed with an austere physical and moral beauty. Miss Jewett preferred ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... anticipation of a cup of tea and brandy with Dame Tremblay, had dressed herself with some appearance of smartness in a clean striped gown of linsey. A peaked Artois hat surmounted a broad-frilled cap, which left visible some tresses of coarse gray hair and a pair of silver ear-rings, which dangled with every motion of her head. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Evans. Mr. Low did not find the worthy man at home; he had walked out with his nephew and three boys who boarded in the house; but Mr. Low found Miss Evans in a small parlour, dressed, as she always was in an evening, with some pretensions to fashion and smartness: she was very busy with a huge basket of stockings, ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... Wunpost certainly had taken the upper trail, for there were his tracks leading on; and the dog, after all, had no notion of leading her to his master. He was still young and inexperienced, though with that thoroughbred smartness which set him apart from the ordinary cur; but when she made as though to follow he cut circles with delight and ran along enticingly in front of her. So Billy rode after him, and at the foot of the hill she found mule-tracks heading off north. Wunpost had made a wide detour ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... acquaintance, and to a certain Florio Montaigne. Rickman had got the better of him over that Florio Montaigne. Hitherto, whenever Jewdwine had thought of that little transaction he had smiled in spite of himself; he really could not help admiring the smartness of a young man who had worsted him in a bargain. Jewdwine was a terror to all the second-hand booksellers in London and Oxford; he would waste so much of their good time in cheapening a book that it was hardly worth their while to sell ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of sentiment into satire as the following is rather jarring, and is a good specimen of that "laborious smartness," as Mr. R.H. Hutton justly calls it, which is found in ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... would alarm and caution even the political and business reader, and to the utmost extent, against the prevailing delusion that the establishment of free political institutions, and plentiful intellectual smartness, with general good order, physical plenty, industry, &c., (desirable and precious advantages as they all are,) do, of themselves, determine and yield to our experiment of democracy the fruitage of success. With such advantages at present fully, or almost fully, possess'd—the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... of Congress favour the influence of the sable goddess. In the first place, the members are paid by the day—eight dollars each. Permit us to observe, Jonathan, that you scarcely display your usual "smartness" here. It would be much better to contract with them by the scrape. As for instance—To involving the country in a war with Mexico, so much—To ditto with Great Britain, so much more. One year you might lay down a lumping sum for a protective tariff, with an understanding, that it was to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Delilah, really, with her flushed face, her too elaborately coiffured hair with its ugly ornament, her ready-made evening dress with its cheap attempts at smartness, her cleaned gloves, indifferent shoes. But Peter ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... observes, that "Tusser's general precepts have often an expressive brevity, and are sometimes pointed with an epigrammatic turn, and smartness of allusion." ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... ugly as a mule, with a ewe-neck, rat-tail, and cow- hocks. The Drummer detested that animal, and the best of the Band-horses put back their ears and showed the whites of their eyes at the very sight of him. They knew him for an upstart and no gentleman. I fancy that the Colonel's ideas of smartness extended to the Band, and that he wanted to make it take part in the regular parade movements. A Cavalry Band is a sacred thing. It only turns out for Commanding Officers' parades, and the Band ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... unfortunately it is rarely cultivated. They possess shrewd and penetrating intelligence, clear judgment, and in general very just views on the ordinary affairs of life. Like the women of the southern provinces of Spain, they are remarkable for quickness and smartness of repartee, and in a wordy contest a Limena is sure to come off triumphant. They have a great deal of decision of character, and a degree of courage which does not usually fall to the lot of the female sex. In these respects they are infinitely superior to ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Loire endeared to me by Sevigne—for I never saw the glimmer of its Waters myself. If you were in England I should send you an account of a tour there, written by a Lady in 1833—written in the good old way of Ladies' writing, without any of the smartness, and not too much of the 'graphic' of later times. Did you look at Les Rochers, which, I have read, is not to be looked into by the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... would have been killed long ago. He never makes the foolish mistake of thinking that other people are not smart. He knew that the hunter who had started out to follow him early that morning was not one to be easily discouraged or to be fooled by simple tricks. He had a very great respect for the smartness of that hunter. He knew that he couldn't afford to be ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... of spectators were paraded about two thousand Girl Guides. It delighted the eye to see the companies march with precision and smartness, while the ear was charmed and the marital spirit stirred by the music of the pipes and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... evident appreciation of the smartness that could accomplish what looked like a miracle, although he shook his head disapprovingly. 'He telephoned to somewhere abroad—I don't rightly know if 'twas France or Belgium; in fact, he've been 'phoning for days; and it seems there was a wool-mill shut down, and ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... was a French Hugenot who came to England upon the restoration of the Edict of Nantes (1685). He soon mixed with the gayest society, and became well known as a prolific writer of songs, prologues, epilogues, masques, and the lighter dramatic fare. Much of this work is not lacking in wit and volatile smartness, but it is all far too ephemeral to have any permanent value as literature. He edited The Gentleman's Journal, but is perhaps best remembered for his translation of Don Quixote, and his concluding ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... that stage and walk through the woods and glens on foot. They took the advice, and about ten miles from Dunkeld came upon a young lady, the daughter of a neighbouring proprietor, reading a novel under a tree. They entered into conversation with her, and Windham was so much struck with her smartness and talent that though he was obliged at the time, as he said, most reluctantly to leave her, he, three years afterwards, came to Sinclair in the House of Commons and said to him, "I have never been able to get ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... of about my dresses, is that they should make people admire me—not my dressmaker," said Bertha candidly. "I don't care for much variety, and I leave real smartness to Madeline and the other tall, slim girls. My figure is so wrong! How dare I be short and tiny, ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... carried me as far as Hyde Park, where I saw not a soul, either of the quick or the dead, in the chilly drizzle, save a keeper cleaning up the edges of the road. In the consecrated closes, where the vanished children of smartness used to stand or sit, to go and come like bright birds, or flowers walking, the inverted chairs lay massed together or scattered, with their legs in the air, on the wet grass, and the dripping leaves smote damply together overhead. Another close, in Green Park the afternoon before, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... good-natured, plebeian, Danish countenance. For all that, the book was a success in its day; and no less an authority than the aesthetic Grand Mogul, J. L. Heiberg, hailed it as a work of no mean merit. It strikes us to-day as an exhibition of that mocking smartness of youth which often hides a childish heart. It was because he was so excessively sentimental and feared to betray his real physiognomy that he cut these excruciating capers. His other alternative would have been mawkishness. His vaudeville, "Love on the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... her and himself a scene and steered ably through the difficulties of the situation towards a point where they could have met upon a normal plane. A very pretty woman with whose affairs one has nothing whatever to do, and whose pretty home has been the perfection of modern smartness of custom, suddenly opening her front door in the unexplained absence of a footman and confronting a visitor, plainly upon the verge of hysteria, suggests the necessity ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... resplendent in a room that was coloured a bright green. He was himself stout and red-faced and of a surpassing smartness, his light blue suit was very tight at the waist and very broad over the hips, his white spats gleamed, his pearl pin stared like an eye across the room, his neck bulged in red folds over his collar. Mr. Boset was eating chocolates ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... pecuniary point of view, were only eight and a half. The night was fearfully dark, and the roads were altogether unworthy of the name. Yet there is an immense traffic on this route, which is the highway from East to West. The Americans, with all their "smartness," have not the knack of making either good roads or good streets. About 11 P.M. we arrived at Uniontown, 12 miles from Brownsville. There the horses were to be changed, an operation which took about an hour to accomplish. Three coaches were there together. The ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... world. It had made moral hypocrisy and religious humbug characteristic of Christians, for he who indulges in sensual vice and balances it off by ritual devices is morally subject to the deepest corruption of character. The church system had corrupted the mores by adding casuistry and dialectic smartness to the devices for regulating conduct and satisfying interests. The men of the Renaissance, especially in Italy, acted always from passionate motives and went to great excess. Their only system ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sarcasm; their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he represented the real ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Carpenters' Guild." His novels are exhausting in their minute detail. Everything in him that has a temporary character, all his digs at the critics and liberals of the period, all his critical observations with their assumption of smartness and modernity, and all the so-called profound reflections scattered here and there—how petty and naive it all is to our modern ideas! The fact of the matter is this: a novelist, an artist, ought to pass by everything that has ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... coat together and fumbled at his collar to give himself an air of smartness, and gazed gaily at his partner, both of them over sixty and dusty specimens, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... hundred; you worry because you're afraid your business is going to smash, and your health busts up instead. Worrying is the one game in which, if you guess right, you don't get any satisfaction out of your smartness. A busy man has no time to bother with it. He can always find plenty of old women in skirts or trousers to spend their days worrying over their own troubles and to sit up nights ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... go," cried he, giving me a hoist up, while he covered me over with a blanket which he pulled off young Weeks, that worthy having with his customary smartness appropriated mine as well as his own. ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... we have a poet who devoted himself to the one class of poetry which, apart from satire, the conditions of the Silver Age were qualified to produce in any real excellence—the epigram. In a period when rhetorical smartness and point were the predominant features of literature, the epigram was almost certain to flourish. But Roman poets in general, and Martial in particular, gave a character to the epigram which has clung to it ever since, and has actually changed the significance ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... as she called herself, was a rosy-cheeked, black-haired, pert girl of about eighteen, who under ordinary circumstances would have found herself able to answer, with a due degree of smartness, any question which might have been addressed to her. But fright will sometimes cower the stoutest heart, and Molly, standing before the coroner at this juncture, presented anything but a reckless appearance, her naturally rosy cheeks blanching at the first word addressed to her, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... at the story, but she liked it, and sincerely wished she could imitate the hero of it in his piety, not his powder. She was about to say so when the sound of approaching steps announced the advent of her host. She had been rather impressed with the "smartness" of Lisha by his wife's praises, but when a small, sallow, sickly looking man came in she changed her mind; for not even an immensely stiff collar, nor a pair of boots that seemed composed entirely of what the boys call "creak leather," ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... bear-baitings, so the tory McFingal goes out against the liberty-poles and bonfires of the patriots, but is tarred and feathered, and otherwise ill-entreated, and finally takes refuge in the camp of General Gage at Boston. The poem is written with smartness and vivacity, attains often to drollery and sometimes to genuine humor. It remains one of the best of American political satires, and unquestionably the most successful of the many imitations of Hudibras, whose manner it follows so closely ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... haste and some vexation, when she had first tried to thrust herself into the Ball household and demanded the place filled by Sheila Macklin. This girl certainly was not insane. But with all her apparent smartness, Cap'n Ira easily saw that she was not intelligent—that she had scarcely ordinary understanding. Beside the newcomer's shallow nature and even more shallow endowments, Sheila seemed to be from a ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... ambition—went far farther than that. It was to be of man's estate, broad-shouldered and heavy-bearded; to wear huge black boots up to his thighs, and a blue flannel jersey; to have a peaked cap (not forgetting a brass button on each side by way of smartness); and then to come along, in the afternoon, with a yellow oilskin tied up in a bundle, to the wharf where the herring fleet lay, the admiration and the envy of all the miserable creatures condemned ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... told us how Mademoiselle Cunegonde, who had kept her beauty through some very severe experiences, suddenly lost it. It is idle as literary, though not as historical, criticism to say, as has been often said about the Byng passage, that Voltaire's smartness rather "goes off through the touch-hole," seeing that the admiral's execution did very considerably "encourage the others." It is superfluous to urge the unnecessary "smuts," which are sometimes not in the least amusing. All these and other sought-for knots ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the ordinary battle of wits in blank verse, he might have had some chance he thought, but with this new and telling jingle at the end of alternate lines, he knew that he must of a surety fail. This was extremely galling, because, by the union of smartness, shrewd common sense, and at times judicious silence, he had managed up to that time to maintain his supremacy among his fellows. But on this unlucky day he had been physically overcome by his rival Angut, and now there was the prospect of being ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... very brisk indeed, and would be kept up with a smartness rendering such an encounter as this quite tame. But the Billickin almost invariably made by far the higher score; and would come in with side hits of the most unexpected and extraordinary description, when ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... abundance those he had said, including a great many puns. Thus it happens that certain chapters of his "De Nugis Curialium," a title that the work owes to the success of John of Salisbury's, are real novels, and have the smartness of such; others are real fabliaux, with all their coarseness; others are scenes of comedy, with dialogues, and indications of characters as in a play[286]; others again are anecdotes of the East, "quoddam mirabile," told on their return by ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... for ever, a slight tap at the door roused me from my painful reveries, and Mrs. C—- entered the room. Like most of the Canadian women, my friend was small of stature, slight and delicately formed, and dressed with the smartness and neatness so characteristic of the females of this continent, who, if they lack some of the accomplishments of English women, far surpass them in their taste in dress, their choice of colours, and the graceful and becoming manner in which they wear their clothes. If my young ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... old spy and traitress! For while you are standing here, your wife is gathering under her roof at Robles a gang of spies and traitors like herself—secession leaders and their bloated, drunken 'chivalry'! Yes, you may smile your superior smile, but I tell you, Clarence Brant, that with all your smartness and book learning you know no more of what goes on around you than a child. But others do! This conspiracy is known to the government, the Federal officers have been warned; General Sumner has been sent out here—and his first act was to change ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... was given the lie by his ruddy, unlined countenance and the youthfulness with which he wore his clothes. A good tailor had evidently found a model worthy of his skill and had tried to live up to the task set him, for everything in the stranger's attitude and appearance proclaimed smartness and the savoir faire of the man about town. Yet Howard Snelling was something far better than either a fashion plate or a society darling. He was energy personified. It spoke in every motion of his strong, fine hands, in ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... being a confessed copier of the great dramatists of the generation before him) there is enough of the manner of Fletcher and Ben Jonson kept up to hide, at first sight, the utter want of anything like their matter; and as one sickens at the rakish swagger and the artificial smartness of his coxcombs, one regrets the racy and unaffected blackguardism ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... stronger than neat, implying value and beauty; a cheap, coarse dress may be perfectly neat, but would not be termed nice. Spruce is applied to the show and affectation of neatness with a touch of smartness, and is always a term of mild contempt; as, a spruce serving man. Trim denotes a certain shapely and elegant firmness, often with suppleness and grace; as, a trim suit; a trim figure. Prim applies to a precise, formal, affected nicety. Dapper ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... artful eyes, that gives the characteristic air of intelligence and wisdom to the parrot's face. We naturally expect so clever a bird to speak. And when it turns upon us suddenly with a copy-book maxim, we are in no way astonished at its surpassing smartness. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and a coffee pot, frying pan and some few other necessary articles. All these things were "packed" on the back of a led horse—and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept, to pack an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural smartness. That is impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but was not perfect. He put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled the property on it and then wound a rope all over and about it and under it, "every which way," taking a hitch in it every now and then, and occasionally surging ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sex, were singularly concerned. Apparently one of these, one sultry afternoon, stopped before the shadowed window of a photographer's; she was a handsome, well-dressed woman, yet bearing a certain countrylike simplicity that was unlike the restless smartness of the more urban promenaders who passed her. Nevertheless she had halted before Mr. Hamlin's picture, which Sophy had not yet dared to bring home and present to him, and was gazing at it with rapt and breathless attention. Suddenly she shook ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dauntless courage, the fidelity and devotion of her love. Retz, moreover, mistakes entirely the order of her adventures; he forgets and then invents. In striving after epigrammatic point, he sacrifices truth to smartness of style, and writes as though he looked upon events in which the passions of the Duchess made her take part as mere trifles, whereas among them there were some than which none were ever of graver or ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... through influence. It might be that they had had their "chance" through a relative or successful business man, or it might be that they "got next" to a politician, who required no other qualification than "smartness." A boy in a telegraph or a lawyer's office has a better opportunity to reach influence than a boy in a workshop. The scholastic requirement for such advancement as these vocations contemplate, is provided for in the established school program of the lower ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... there," said Mr. Frayling; "but all the same, you'll be able to make a good deal of that boy, or I'm much mistaken. And as for Angelica, why, when she is at the head of an establishment of her own she will require all her smartness. But teach her housekeeping, Lady Adeline; that is the thing ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... be premised, the shyness was still in evidence, and the author became as silent and austere as the other members of the company. There was a youth, in trousers obviously pressed under his mattress, and a coat too short for him, whose air of shabby smartness brought tears to the eyes of the author, who had passed through very much the same purgatory years before. Indeed it was very much like a coffee room in purgatory, if the reader can imagine such a thing, for every one of ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... is smart, and that is a very dreadful thing to be, I never like to hear the Yankee called smart, it is a term of reproach. I don't like to think of a Smart Set. And my refuge is in the knowledge that there is just one thing that destroys smartness and that is, to put it in a very high-sounding word, Nobility. There is the test we can all put to ourselves—and it really is conscience and ethics and religion all in one—is the idea smart or is it noble? I'd take my chances of going to Heaven on the ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... is a smart boy—perhaps he is too smart; but his smartness is not worldly cunning; it is made up of those elements of character which constitute a noble and true man—good judgment, quick perception, and manly decision, mingled with those moral and religious attributes which are the leading springs of the true ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... openly against my project; he calls me a thief and a ruffian; he's an avowed enemy. Yet you run around with him as if that were of no importance, as if it made no difference. The scoundrel no doubt counts it a brilliant bit of smartness to carry about in his car the fiancee of the man he hates, and brags of it. It reflects on us both, Ruth. I ask you to consider my ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... in his youthful breast, And he worked hard, scarce taking time for rest. His pride was somewhat humbled when he found That he could make but thirty each day round. Yet courage took from this, that their's were made Of soft pine wood, which did their smartness aid. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Mr. Agnew has kindly sent me an anecdote which supplies an example of cleverness in a Scottish boy, and which rivals, as he observes, the smartness of the London boy, termed by Punch the "Street boy." It has also a touch of quiet, sly Scottish humour. A gentleman, editor of a Glasgow paper, well known as a bon-vivant and epicure, and by no means a popular character, was returning one ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... mistily out from under straight, black brows. She wore a small bright green toque over her black bobbed hair, and her extremely short and rather shabby skirt revealed a pair of uncommonly dainty ankles. Her appearance presented a valiant attempt at smartness. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... finding wealth at their command, imagine that they can command obeisance and popularity. Woe betide other women who arouse their jealousy, for they will scandalise and blight the reputation of the purest of their sex in the suburban belief that the invention of scandal is the hallmark of smartness. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... such under close surveillance. One, a youthful and handsome officer of Virginia riflemen, aged 27 years, a friend of Governor Dinwiddie, had been allowed the range of the fortress, on parole. His good looks, education, smartness (we use the word advisedly) and misfortunes seem to have created much sympathy for the captive, but canny Scot. He has a warm welcome in many houses—the French ladies even plead his cause; le beau capitaine is asked out; no entertainment at last ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that they adopted him among them. There was something in the life which was attractive to the wild American lad, and he embraced it eagerly, and spent five years among them. His bravery, skill, and natural "smartness," advanced him rapidly along the line of promotion, until, while yet a boy, he became ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... fluctuation of weather, for every degree of festivity. From one of the number out came a long driving coat, snowy white, light of texture, an ideal garment for a warm yet dusty summer's day, which being fastened down the side by huge pearl buttons, displayed a degree of smartness nothing short of uncanny in an untrimmed garment. To wear with the coat there was a jaunty cap, and a pair of driving gloves with wide, gauntleted cuffs. Cornelia made faces at herself in the glass as her custom was the while she arranged the "set" of ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... views than the rest, and considering the question from an elderly point of view. 'But if you don't take it out one way, you have it another,' he continued. A manly-sounding sentence, which impressed us all. 'Don't think about smartness, Mary,' he went on, with a grand air of renouncing vanities; 'fine entrance, you know, and front door. But a good back yard, if possible, and some empty outhouses for carpenters' shops; and if you could meet with a place with a few old boxes and barrels lying about, for rafts on ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... prone. I cannot recall anything that then indicated he would hereafter become a literary celebrity; but perhaps he was too young then. He usually held his head more erect than lads ordinarily do, and there was a general smartness about him. His weekday dress of jacket and trowsers, I can clearly remember, was what is called pepper-and-salt; and, instead of the frill that most boys of his age wore then, he had a turn-down collar, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... parties, for surrendering and accepting the surrender of the town. Having therefore seen the deputation of the town off for Turin, my next most anxious endeavour was to cause the battle to cease, which had been carried on at the advanced posts with great smartness. I therefore once more took to my boat to begin the arduous duty of separating the combatants. General La Marmora sent aide-de- camps, but it took time before they could reach all points from which cannon were firing, not on the town but all the points of attack. The first ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... industrial districts are in the habit of staying at the Grand Babylon! No! Edward Henry, for example, had never stayed at the Grand Babylon, no more than he had ever bought a first-class ticket on a railroad. The idea of doing so had scarcely occurred to him. There are certain ways of extravagant smartness which are not considered to be good form among solid wealthy provincials. Why travel first-class (they argue) when second is just as good and no one can tell the difference once you get out of the train? Why ape the tricks of another ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... But he hasn't troubled the Pytchley for the last eight years. There was a time when he was the last thing in smartness in the German court—officer in the Guards, ancient family, rich, darned clever—all the fixings. Kaiser liked him, and it's easy to see why. I guess a man who had as many personalities as the Graf was amusing after-dinner company. Specially among the Germans, who in my experience ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... wind, her gaff-topsail yet fluttering aloft, but she herself, the Lucy Foster of Gloucester, was at your service. "And what do you think of her, people?" might just as well have been shot off her deck through a megaphone, for that was what her bearing and the unnatural smartness of her crew plainly ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... woman, helping with the housework in the old home there in Bayport, before her father's death and the sale of that home, she had watched with immense gratification his success in school. When he ran away to sea she had defended him when others condemned. Later, when tales of his "smartness," as sailor or mate, or by and by, a full rated captain, began to drift back, she had gloried in them. He came to see her semi-occasionally when his ship was in port, and his yarns of foreign lands and strange people were, to her, far more wonderful than anything she had ever found in the ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... in France, and Boulogne equals the best town in smartness. The shops are better set out, the women are better dressed, and there is a holiday brightness and air of pleasure on every countenance. Then instead of seeing a sulky husband trudging behind a pouting ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... know, he had discovered among us in England; he finds honesty and dishonesty in serious matters of conduct as prevalent in one section as in the other; he finds the Northerner better taught and more alert in mind; but he ascribes to him an objectionable quality of "smartness," a determination to show you that he is a stirring and pushing fellow, from which the Southerner is wholly free; and he finds that the Southerner has derived from home influences and from boarding schools in which the influence of many similar ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... and of a better figure. For the rest, he was very well pleased with himself: he thought himself irresistible, as indeed he was. The little German Jew, clod as he was, had made himself the chronicler and arbiter of Parisian fashion and smartness. He wrote insipid society paragraphs and articles in a delicately involved manner. He was the champion of French style, French smartness, French gallantry, French wit—Regency, red heels, Lauzun. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... a pair of trousers and a dark blue cloth tunic with linen lining and uniform buttons, and a red fez. Leather slippers for privates and shoes for sergeants and corporals complete the outfit, the smartness of which leaves nothing to be desired. Although on the day of our visit the thermometer stood at about 53 deg.F. many of the men were also wearing their thick cloth overcoats. Every prisoner has fastened in ...
— Turkish Prisoners in Egypt - A Report By The Delegates Of The International Committee - Of The Red Cross • Various
... maid inside the carriage. He had not deemed it wise to take an undivided charge of the boy even from Casalunga to Siena. At the door of the house, as though waiting for him, he found Trevelyan, not dirty as he had been before, but dressed with much appearance of smartness. He had a brocaded cap on his head, and a shirt with a laced front, and a worked waistcoat, and a frock coat, and coloured bright trousers. Mr. Glascock knew at once that all the clothes which he saw before him had been made for Italian and not for English wear; and could almost have ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... destitution of the other. Their escort did not halt, however, but pushed on, followed by a great crowd of Mormons, until they reached a waggon, which was conspicuous for its great size and for the gaudiness and smartness of its appearance. Six horses were yoked to it, whereas the others were furnished with two, or, at most, four a-piece. Beside the driver there sat a man who could not have been more than thirty years of age, but whose massive head and ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... country generally lacks, and which is so largely the attraction of Italy and Spain. Instead of adapting and modifying the houses and homes that the climate suggests, the new American comers have brought here from the East the smartness and prettiness of our modern nondescript architecture. The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... already been given is absurd; to fail to correct an introduction that, as a whole, is obscure or is unfair, is to merit defeat. It may be added, by way of caution, that when a debater supplies any deficiencies in the speech of his predecessor, he should do this without any appearance of "smartness" or personal antagonism. Even if the affirmative debater has been manifestly unfair, the negative speaker will do well to correct this unfairness in a friendly, though in ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... his little song and skipped about in the moonlight, and dodged in and out of his little round doorways, and all the time kept his sharp little eyes open for any sign of Granny Fox or Reddy Fox. But with all his smartness, Danny forgot. Yes, Sir, Danny forgot one thing. He forgot to watch up in the sky. He knew that of course old Roughleg the Hawk was asleep, so he had nothing to fear from him. But he never once thought of ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... bounds. "That young cockerel—I'll soon find a way to quiet his crowing. What does all his singing and painting and fencing amount to, after all? He couldn't post an item into a ledger; he couldn't even tie up a pound of tea. He can't work off any of his foreign smartness on me!" ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... have the worst of it there, papa,' said Cecilia, taken by the unexpectedness and smartness of the comparison coming from wits that she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... whole list of improbabilities, before he laid down the book he was reading and answered the bell. When at last he did this, he was rewarded by the apparition of an utter stranger on his threshold,—a gaunt figure of forlorn and curious smartness towering far above him, that jerked him a nod of the head, and asked if Mr. Hapford lived there. The face which the lamplight revealed was remarkable for a harsh two days' growth of beard, and a single bloodshot eye; yet it was not otherwise a sinister countenance, and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... seeming to feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect something. This conscious expression, since it was as far as possible from boyish mirthfulness, was usually attributed to insolence or "smartness." ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, and slow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the mouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But there is nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of smartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a house smelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, its floors unclean, is ever so much worse than an old inn that never pretended to be ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... house, and was taken up out of doors, the party throughout the country using it as if it were expressive of something which ought to be considered very fatal to the measure. Mr. Hobhouse replied with smartness to Sir Charles, aptly quoting Hume's History of England for illustrations of his arguments. This speech was effective on the ministerial side. Mr. Baring made a heavy speech, which fell flatly on the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... satisfied at your boy rising no higher than this, then, again I say, guard the springs of reverence. Do not let your pride in your child's smartness or any momentary sense of humor make you pass over any little speech that savors of irreverence; check it instantly. Exact respect for yourself and for the boy's father, the respect which is no enemy, but the reverse, to the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... before us, the last man of the yard of the dilatory topsail was infallibly booked for a flogging next day. And so with all other evolutions. The result of which was, that while our crew became noted for their smartness, they daily grew more sullen, sulky, and discontented in their dispositions, shirking their work whenever there was a possibility of doing so undetected, and performing their duties with an ill-will which they took little pains to conceal. This, of course, only tended to make matters ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... by a gentleman twice his age, if not older, whose conservative smartness was such that one wondered if he hadn't strayed out of bounds through inadvertence. One would have thought his place was in the clubs of Piccadilly if not (at that particular hour) at a tea table on the river terrace of the Houses of Parliament. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... time, Willems, I take you in hand. Mind it is the last. The second time; and the only difference between then and now is that you were bare-footed then and have boots now. In fourteen years. With all your smartness! A poor result that. A ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... statements, thus fairly epitomized, there is not one that is true—not one of which the essential falsity is not evident, obvious, conspicuous to even the most delinquent observation. Yet with the smartness and smirk of a graduating seminary girl refuting Epicurus she marshals them against the awful truth that every year in Europe and the United States alone more than five thousand human beings the of hydrophobia—a fact which her controversial conscience does ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... same time that it was manly, in the voice of Wilder, that the ladies, by a common impulse, seemed struck with its peculiarities. The neatness of his attire, which, while it was strictly professional, was worn with an air of smartness, and even of gentility, that rendered it difficult to suppose that he was not entitled to lay claim to a higher station in society than that in which he actually appeared, added to this impression. Bending her head, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... whatever they were employed about before the Rabbi's entrance. Youth is a bad courtier, ever preferring frolic and amusement to sobriety and attention. They had been at once piqued and pleased by Robin's smartness, and resolved to whet their own wit upon ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... islands from a party who did not own them; with real smartness and a good counterfeit of disinterested friendliness we coaxed a confiding weak nation into a trap and closed it upon them; we went back on an honored guest of the Stars and Stripes when we had no further use for him and chased him to the mountains; ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the Piccaninny should be in subjection to anyone but himself; irritated impatience that the O'Shaughnessys should be expected to pay for what they desired, like any ordinary, commonplace family; chuckling delight over the smartness of the child; and finally an even greater inability than his sons to say "No" to a charming woman! Storm he never so wildly, the Major would undoubtedly have ended by consenting to Mrs Wallace's plea, while Esmeralda's ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wayward fellow who manifested a strong disposition to sheer off to the right or left, and again turning the whole body just where the master wished. It was an amusing sight, and well worth the walk from the city. To be sure, the dog was rather egotistical and ostentatious. He knew his smartness, and was quite willing that bystanders should know it too, for he pawed, and fawned, and barked at a tremendous rate. The flock seemed to know his ways, and while they obeyed his voice, they were not ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... a magnificent set of teeth, and a touch of rouge on each cheek-bone. To Aunt William's extreme annoyance Lady Virginia was dressed to-day in a strange medley of the artistic style combined oddly with a rather wild attempt at Parisian smartness. That is to say, in her cloak and furs she looked almost like an outside coloured plate on the cover of Paris Fashions; while when she threw it open one could see that she wore a limp crepe de chine Empire gown of an undecided mauve, with a waist ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... Florian's clothes. He had adopted that careful looseness—that ease of fit—that skilful sloppiness—which is the last word in masculine sartorial smartness. In talking he dropped his final g's and said "sportin'" and "mountain climbin'" and "shootin'." From June until September he wore those Norfolk things with bow ties, and his shirt patterns were restrained to the ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... answers; but that which he endeavoured, he seldom failed of performing. His scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion; his personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit is a meteor playing to and fro with alternate coruscations. His comedies have, therefore, in some degree, the operation of tragedies; they surprise rather than divert, and raise admiration oftener ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... James II. This seems to have given a somewhat diplomatic character to his closing years, inasmuch as, while remaining a nonconformist, he had a good deal to do with proposed political- ecclesiastical compromises. He died on the 8th of May 1703, having preserved his "spirits and smartness'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unrelated fragments of half-baked information form a stock of "knowledge" with which the townsman's glib tongue enables him to present a showy intellectual shop-front. Business smartness pays better in the town, and the low intellectual qualities which are contained in it are educated by town life. The knowledge of human nature thus evoked is in no sense science, it is a mere rule-of-thumb ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... groaned the pale lady-doctor, turning uneasily away from the little things that lay squirming and making such grimaces, as only very young babies can make, in the face of Mrs. Pimble. The alleged father stood there, chuckling over the smartness of his progeny. Mrs. Pimble darted one withering glance upon him, and walked away without another word. She roused old Dr. Potipher, and took him home with her. Well she did so, for Garrison was much worse than when she left him, and the doctor pronounced it ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... antiquity," with the souls of poets dead and gone for our judges. But we are also to write for the future, asking with what feelings posterity will read us—if it reads us at all. This is a good discipline. We know by practice what will hit some contemporary tastes; we know the measure of smartness, say, or the delicate flippancy, or the sentence with "a dying fall." But one should also know that these are fancies of the hour—these and the touch of archaism, and the spinster-like and artificial precision, which seem to ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... chambermaid was a pattern of town prettiness and smartness. So trim her waist, her cap, her dress—I wondered how they had all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent which in its mincing glibness seemed to rebuke mine as by authority; her spruce attire flaunted an easy scorn ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... band, which was a splendid one, playing a familiar tune. They marched in quarter column, halted, piled arms, and immediately proceeded to pitch tents and prepare the camp for a two days' stay. The whole brigade looked on and were astonished at the smartness of the volunteers in this part of their drills and exercises, and indeed, afterwards we found nothing wanting in ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... acquainted in a business way with the tradition of old Phillips Corey, and he had heard a great many things about the Corey who had spent his youth abroad and his father's money everywhere, and done nothing but say smart things. Lapham could not see the smartness of some of them which had been repeated to him. Once he had encountered the fellow, and it seemed to Lapham that the tall, slim, white-moustached man, with the slight stoop, was everything that was offensively aristocratic. He had bristled ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of timber, and of land was better than his knowledge of men. He had no precocious "smartness," as the Yankees name the quality which enables one person to outwit another. His credulity was simple and unsuspecting, at least in some directions. This is illustrated by a story which he has told himself, one which he was never ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... Even the scrapers are sleek with blacklead, and it is not easy to find a window without spotlessly clean curtains. The little coastguard station by the opening on to the shore has difficulty in showing itself superior to the rest in these essential matters of smartness. However, the coastguards glory in a little stone pathway protected by a low wall in front of their building. On this narrow quarter-deck the men love to walk to and fro, just as though they were afloat ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... was afraid of missing the flower-show, or merely of not being in time for tea, with muffins and toast, at the Rue Royale tea-rooms, where she believed that regular attendance was indispensable, and set the seal upon a woman's certificate of 'smartness,' Swann, enraptured, as all of us are, at times, by the natural behaviour of a child, or by the likeness of a portrait, which appears to be on the point of speaking, would feel so distinctly the soul of his mistress rising to fill the outlines of her ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... boys in those old days very much longer than they do now. The smartness of children like my grandsons, Shem, Ham and Japhet, for instance, who at the age of two hundred and fifty arrogate to themselves all the knowledge of the universe, was comparatively unknown when I was a ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong Lancashire accent. "What does Ferrier's smartness matter to us? The Labor men are sick of it! All he's asked to do is to run straight!—as the party wants ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... obliterate the bad impression I have apparently made. They are good people, these Creoles—not particularly bashful or discreet; but yet I like their forwardness and volatility better than the sly smartness of the Yankees, in spite of their ridiculous love of dancing, which even the first emigrants could not lay aside, amidst all the difficulties of their settlement in America. It must have been absurd enough to see them capering about, and dancing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... suggestion had the effect of depriving the producer momentarily of speech, and while he was struggling for utterance, there dashed out from the wings a gorgeous being in blue velvet and a hat of such unimpeachable smartness that Sally ached at the sight of it with ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse |
