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Starched   Listen
adjective
Starched  adj.  
1.
Stiffened with starch.
2.
Stiff; precise; formal.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Starched" Quotes from Famous Books



... where I can pin down me overskirt; thin I'll r-read it in a lookin' glass; thin I'll saw it into sthrips an' r-run it through a wringer an' lave it stand in a tub iv bluein', an' whin its properly starched I'll find out what it says. Fin'lly I'll cut it into small pieces an' cook with rice an' lave it to rest in a cool place, an' thin 'twill r-read even betther. I hope ye're satisfied,' he says. 'I am,' says Jawn Hay. 'I'll tillygraft to Mark that ivrything ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... of the girls who had come over, in a white, linen-starched wagon load, from Fairfield, gave me my last spurt. Expecting every moment to hear my antagonist grind past me, on the cinders, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... it so the iron wouldn't stick to the starched dress," explained Janet. "I should think anybody would know that! Wouldn't you, Lola?" she asked in a rather "snippy" manner and with an upward turn of ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis

... down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he deposited himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched antimacassar which scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of skin ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... decarbonized iron, wrought iron; nail; brick, concrete; cement. V. render hard &c. adj.; harden, stiffen, indurate, petrify, temper, ossify, vitrify; accrust[obs3]. Adj. hard, rigid, stubborn, stiff, firm; starch, starched; stark, unbending, unlimber, unyielding; inflexible, tense; indurate, indurated; gritty, proof. adamant, adamantine, adamantean[obs3]; concrete, stony, granitic, calculous, lithic[obs3], vitreous; horny, corneous[obs3]; bony; osseous, ossific[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the Pembertons' green gate she sees the tidy parlor maid come, in her smart shawl and new, bright ribbons; holding up her pretty printed mousseline dress with one hand, as she steps down upon the street, and so revealing the white hem of a clean starched skirt; while the other hand is occupied with the little Catholic prayer book and a folded handkerchief. Actually, gloves on her hands, too. The gate closes with a cord and pulley after her, and somehow the hem of the fresh, outspreading crinoline gets caught in it, as it shuts. ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... man of his word, packed up his portmanteau, and paid his bill. He had just completed this heavy operation, when somebody wanted to speak to him, and a sort of half-clerical, half-legal sort of looking gentleman was introduced, who, with a starched face and prim air, said that he came to request in writing the name of the officer who was dressed as a devil in the masquerade of the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Congo was aware of his power and of the impression he made on the humbler residents of Santiago. Every now and then he heightened his superiority to common clay by appearing in public in a starched collar, looking over the top of it with an assumption of pride and ease, as of one born to such luxury, but in reality chafing his neck against its ragged edges and longing to be in the fields, where he would not need to be spectacular. One year the day of the kings dawned without a cloud, and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... would, and mother and I would stand and listen to him and try not to laugh. 'Lost, stolen, or strayed, a little witch-girl in a clean white frock, rather too much starched; a frilled cape that crackles when she moves, and a pretty broad-brimmed hat.' Well, Fluffy, what does that mysterious look mean? you are very rude to interrupt the old crier," and Fern tried to frown, while Fluff nodded ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... was strongly recommended in the "water cure" journals. When women began to go into public work, they could not fail to recognize the disadvantages of the unyielding corsets, heavy, quilted and stiffly-starched petticoats, five or six worn at one time to hold out the long, voluminous dress skirts; and to feel that to be consistent they must give freedom to the body. The proprietors of the "water cures" were, for the most part, in touch with all reform ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... and before the last appeal was echoed the old lady appeared. She came forward rapidly, her knitting in her hand. She was singularly bright and alert, with rosy cheeks, and snow-white hair under a snow-white cap of clear-starched lace. A snow-white kerchief of lawn was crossed over her breast, and the rest of her dress was so perfectly Dutch that she might have stepped out ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... plant and many varieties of greens and early vegetables. The stalls themselves were prettily arranged and fragrant with nice smells but their keepers were the great attraction. Many were in charge of old women dressed in white peasant caps and clean starched aprons above full wool skirts and wooden sabots. Little tow-headed grandchildren, comical replicas in miniature, smiled shyly or dropped bobbing curtsys as ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... post-horses always look as though they had been made to do their best, for his lordship likes to move fast even in his old age. He is a tall thin man, bent much with age, and apparently too weak for much walking; he is dressed from head to foot in a sportsman's garb, with a broad stiffly starched coloured handkerchief tied rigidly round his neck. One would say that old as he is he has sacrificed in no way to comfort. It is with difficulty that he gets into his saddle, his servant holding his rein and stirrup and giving him ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... would be very grateful to me." After pestering him with a few other commissions, he tells him that "Andrew and Bettsy [children of Pepperrell] send their proper compliments," and signs himself, with the starched flourish of provincial breeding, "With all possible Respect, Honoured Sir, Your Obedient Son and Servant." [Footnote: Sparhawk to Pepperrell,-June, 1745. This is but one of many letters from Sparhawk.] Pepperrell was much annoyed ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... the love of our women? No, no, it must be admitted. Love, for them, is another thing; it is to go out veiled, to write in secret, to make trembling advances, to heave chaste sighs under starched and unnatural robes, then to draw bolts and throw them aside, to humiliate a rival, to deceive a husband, to render a lover desolate. To love, for our women, is to play at lying, as children play at hide and seek, a hideous orgy of the heart, worse than the lubricity ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... health. By the side of the physic for the body was medicine for the soul—a number of pretty little books in middle-age bindings, in antique type many of theist, adorned with pictures of the German school, representing demure ecclesiastics, with their heads on one side, children in long starched nightgowns, virgins bearing lilies, and so forth, from which it was to be concluded that the owner of the volumes was not so hostile to Rome as she had been at an earlier period of her religious life; and that she had migrated (in spirit) from Clapham to Knightsbridge—so ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that part of the boat in which she had an immense provision basket—a regular portable larder—under her own eye. The big basket and the little lady entirely occupied one bench, while the two other ladies, with their starched dresses, quite filled up the ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie

... each. One was a florid man of large proportions, dressed in the height of the fashion and with scrupulous neatness. He was a jeweller. Another, a lawyer with a keen and anxious face, wore a tightly-buttoned frock coat and a black tie. Immense starched cuffs covered his bony hands and part of his fingers. He was supping on a salad, into which he from time to time poured an additional dose of vinegar. A third man, with a round hat on one side of his head, and who wore a very light-coloured overcoat, displaying a purple scarf with ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... though many of them very sensible, I entirely disapprove of, because it appears to me to be beginning, as it were at the wrong end. A cultivated understanding, and an affectionate heart, will never want starched rules of decorum, something more substantial than seemliness will be the result; and, without understanding, the behaviour here recommended, would be rank affectation. Decorum, indeed, is the one thing needful! ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... Gideon. "You wears buckskins an' flannels an' a frontier hat; you goes about with your shirt-sleeves rolled up an' a scarf 'stead of a stiff starched collar; but you takes care that thar's allus elegant underclothin' nex' yer skin. You've gotten surprisin' clean habits, too: washes yourself three or four times a day, allus shaves yerself mornin's an' ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... the Georgian period, and the flowing full-bottomed wigs familiar to St. James's and Tunbridge-wells in the days of inoffensive Anne. There were in all seven miniatures, six of which specimens of antique portraiture were prim and starched and artificial of aspect. But the seventh was different in form and style: it was the picture of a girlish face looking out of a frame of loose unpowdered locks; a bright innocent face, with gray eyes and marked black eyebrows, pouting lips a little ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... moisture of the English air. Then the all-pervading smoke of the city, abundantly intermingled with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal, hovering overhead, descending, and alighting on pavements and rich architectural fronts, on the snowy muslin of the ladies, and the gentlemen's starched collars and shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets in a half-mourning garb. It is beyond the resources of Wealth to keep the smut away from its premises or its own fingers' ends; and as for Poverty, it surrenders itself to the dark influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... there was power in common sense, But did not know it worked thus promptly. Well— At last each understands the other, then? Each drops disguise, then? So, at supper-time These masquerading people doff their gear, Grand Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress Her stiff-starched bib and tucker,—make-believe That only bothers when, ball-business done, Nature demands champagne and mayonnaise. Just so has each of us sage three abjured His and her moral pet particular Pretension to superiority, And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth munch and joke! Go, happy ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... frequent feature of which was an adventurous visit, upstairs, to picture books criticised for not being ALL geegees and walking sticks happily more conformable. The young man's window, too, looked out on their acquaintance; through a starched muslin curtain it kept his neighbour before him, made him almost more aware of her comings and goings than he felt he had a right to be. He was capable of a shyness of curiosity about her and of dumb little delicacies of consideration. She did give a few lessons; they were ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James

... starched pinafore was sent for the rope. And as soon as the pig had agreed to let us tie it round his neck we came away. The scene in the drawing-room had not been ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... on the class. Mr Tate did not break it but dug with his hand between his thighs while his heavily starched linen creaked about his neck and wrists. Stephen did not look up. It was a raw spring morning and his eyes were still smarting and weak. He was conscious of failure and of detection, of the squalor of his own mind and home, and felt against his neck the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... night, loaded with more or less heavy burdens. He was now very pale and his heart beat painfully as he endeavoured instinctively to smooth his long frock-coat, from which a button had been torn out by the roots in a very apparent place, and to settle his starched collar, which at the best of times owed its stability to the secret virtues of a pin, and which at present had made a quarter of a revolution upon itself, so that the stiffly-starched corners, the Count's chief coquetry and pride, had established themselves in an unseemly ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... was dressing in another room, and I heard some one bring him his blue frockcoat and under-linen. Then at the door leading downstairs I heard a maid-servant's voice, and went to see what she wanted. In her hand she held a well-starched shirt which she said she had been sitting up all night to get ready. I took it, and asked if Grandmamma was ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... of a nobleman. Start not, republican reader, for we mean not a stiff-starched branch of English nobility, but one of America's noblemen,—and hers are nature's! He was a hard-working mechanic; one of God's noblest works,—an honest man! Americans know not, as yet, the titled honors of the Old World; and none, save a few, whose birth-place ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... They were real at the time—and most pure, true, and beautiful. What matter, if years sweeping on have swept them all away or merged them into higher duties and closer ties? Perhaps, if you met your beautiful idol of fifteen, you would see a starched old maid of fifty, or a grandame presiding over the third generation; or perchance, in seeking thus, you would find only a green hillock, or a stone inscribed with the well-known name. But what of that? To you the girlish image ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... Polly," said Jasper, her next neighbour, "I want to do the same thing. And it will do some of those starched and prim people good to hear a little enthusiasm." Polly knew whom he meant,—some young Englishmen. One of them immediately put up his monocle and regarded her as if she had been a new kind of creature displayed for his benefit. ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney

... Hardwick gave up the contest, and allowed Caesar to travel when and where he chose. But on Sunday he sat on the front-door step, erect upon his haunches, with one ear dropping forward, and the other upright like the point of a starched shirt-collar; and though on week-days he was fond of paying the usual courtesies to his canine acquaintances, and (if the truth must be told) of barking at strange horses occasionally, yet nothing could induce him either to follow any of the family, or accost a dog, or chase ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... verse-makers, who never show a grain of effort, courage, or endurance, possibly have them on the most copious scale. Education, enlarging as it does our horizon and perspective, is a means of multiplying our ideals, of bringing new ones into view. And your college professor, with a starched shirt and spectacles, would, if a stock of ideals were all alone by itself enough to render a life significant, be the most absolutely and deeply significant of men. Tolstoi would be completely blind ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... already, and the women went busily from house to house, carefully bringing short, starched muslin dresses or very long wax tapers tied in the middle with a bow of silk fringed with gold, and with dents in the wax for ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... mediaeval poetry by the Italian peasantry of the Renaissance can be compared more significantly than at first seemed with the adoption of a once fashionable garb by country folk. The peasant pulled about this Courtly lyrism, oppressively tight in its conventional fit and starched with elaborate rhetorical embroideries; turned it inside out, twisted a bit here, a bit there, ripped open seam after seam, patched and repatched with stuffs and stitches of its own; and then wore the whole thing as it had never been intended ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... but a wit and a singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed a fee to the verger who had shown him around Westminster Abbey, said: "I would willingly give you twice as much if the collection were complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a greater man than the "starched, stiff" Wellington; and the "potatoes boiled in water and put on the table as God made them" and the "country with three hundred religions and only one sauce were a constant source of amused annoyance. The German ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... forward in her crackly starched apron. "I—Please, Mr. Vetsburg, it ain't right, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... conspicuous on others. As for the muslins and laces, being of a frailer fabric, they gave way beneath the vigorous treatment to which they were subjected, and exhibited mere wrecks of their former selves. Not a single article was wearable which had passed through the severe ordeal of being starched and ironed by Deborah, and what was still more lamentable, many of them could not even, like an antique painting or ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... themselves no less agitated, were standing up on chairs and benches, splitting their gloves and breaking their fans in their enthusiasm; while every male dancer on the floor—ensigns in their gold-faced uniforms and "rovers" in starched and immaculate shirt-bosoms—cheered and cheered and struggled with one another to shake hands with a man whom two of their number old Yale grads, with memories of athletic triumphs yet in their minds—carried into that ball-room, borne ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... Llangollen, and returned, as they never sleep from home. Oh, such curiosities! I was nearly convulsed.... As they are seated, there is not one point to distinguish them from men; the dressing and powdering of the hair; their well-starched neckcloths; the upper part of their habits, which they always wear, even at a dinner-party, made precisely like men's coats; and regular black beaver men's hats. They looked exactly like two respectable superannuated old clergymen.... I ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... older. People had wondered if she would not wear the dress she had had made for her own wedding, but she did not. She wore her old purple silk, which had been made over from one of her mother's, and a freshly-starched muslin collar. The air was full of the rich sweetness of cake; there was a loud discord of laughter and high shrill voices, through which yet ran a subtle harmony of mirth. Laughing faces nodded and uplifted like flowers in the merry romping ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... to go to the Church of St. Jehan, on the Place de Greve, where, as everyone knows, the fashionable world was accustomed to meet; and while saying her paternosters to God she feasted her eyes upon all these gallants, curled, adorned, and starched, young, comely, and flitting about like true butterflies, and finished by picking out from among the lot a good gentleman, lover of the queen-mother, and a handsome Italian, with whom she was smitten because he was in the May of his age, nobly dressed, a graceful mover, brave in mien, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... amateur barber, and hearing the snip, snip, of his scissors, as the long growth of hair fell to the ground. The luxury of "a shave;" the possession of comb, brush, small mirror, towels and soap; boots blacked every day; white collars, and occasionally a starched bosom, called, in the expressive language of the day, a "biled shirt," completed the restoration of the man to decency. Now, also, the soldier with painful care threaded his needle with huge thread, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... knows that they are the best sailors in the world! But for you and me, our ruffles are too well starched for such a ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various

... just time to compose themselves before Paulett came in, looking, as they all thought, grimmer and more starched than ever, and not well pleased to find Humfrey there, but the Queen ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Usually at church the wearer draws the garment over her upper body, but does not put her arms into the sleeves, nor her head through the neck-opening, simply fitting her face into this in such a way that it appears to be framed in a broad, oval, well-starched border of pleated lace. Usually, however, the garment is not even worn in this manner, but is turned upside down and carelessly hung upon the head so that the broad lower fringe of lace falls back upon the hair, while the upper part of the garment, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... it because I hadn't been downstairs for three nights. I might have been dead for all anybody cared. Then I was determined they should care—and I got hold of the matches. I thought the clothes would burn first—and then my starched frock would catch fire—and then—everybody would be sorry for me at last. But unfortunately I got frightened, and ran up the passage screaming—silly little fool! That might have made an ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... variance with all precedent, the bewitching look produced no effect whatever. The man bowed gravely, pressed a bell-button, and then went over to where Miss Willis was sitting. Before he could speak—if he had any such intention—a girl in starched cap and apron appeared in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... I now ever permitted to see her in disarray, but always, as it seemed to me, fresh from my sister's clever hands, her hair laid smooth and shining, her simple gown starched crisp and sweetly smelling of the ironing board; and when I asked her why she was never but thus lovely, she answered, with a smile, that surely it pleased her son to find her always so: which, indeed, it did. I felt, hence, in some puzzled way, that this display was a design ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... in a new dress to me; no more jewels to be seen, no more pearls; the finery of which so dazzled me in Tuscany: these wenches are prohibited such ornaments it seems. A muslin handkerchief, folded in a most becoming manner, and starched exactly enough to make it wear clean four days, is the head-dress of Lucchese lasses; it is put on turban-wise, and they button their gowns close, with long sleeves a la Savoyarde; but it is made often of a stiff brocaded silk, and green ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... C—If—d, in which duel he had the honour of sending his lordship to his account with all his 'imperfections on his head.' The third party, 'Lord P.,' is a nobleman, whose chief points are a queer-shaped hat, long shirt sleeves, exquisitely starched, very white gloves, a very low cabriolet, and a Lord George Gordon-ish affectation of beard. We do not know that he is distinguished for any thing else. For the fourth party—the young lady's mamma, she is,— what ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... never suffered any thing since like the torment of the next two hours. I saw her several times afterward, and might have made play, perhaps, but the phantom of a round red face, with collars starched a l'outrance, always came between us. It is only a slight satisfaction to hear that she has utterly lost sight of my rival, and promises to cut him dead the first time they meet. There's the history of a young ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... with that unbendingness which a profound moralist calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul, because she could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits different to those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life. Not to be hungry when she was; not to sleep at night, but to write while she was sleeping, and to sleep when she was up; in short, to gratify the requirements of material and intellectual life at hours different to hers,—all that was not merely annoying for her, but it must be madness; ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the waltz that would admit of his crossing the room, when his attention was attracted by the same little girl he had seen that morning in the garden. She was still dressed in the shabby old frock and pinafore, and as she came creeping in, threading her way deftly amongst the young ladies in starched muslins and gay ribbons who were fluttering about, she made the effect of a little brown moth who had strayed into the midst of a swarm of brilliant butterflies. No one took any notice of her, and she made her way up to the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... Here a starched rustling on the stairs betokened the descent of Mandy Calline. Pushing back the door, she stepped down with all the dignity which she deemed suitable to don with her ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... and that pitiful voice; consider her deportment, her complexion, the plumpness of her cheeks under all those formal veils; 'tis there she talks plain French. There are few who do not mend upon't, and health is a quality that cannot lie. That starched and ceremonious countenance looks not so much back as forward, and is rather intended to get a new husband than to lament the old. When I was a boy, a very beautiful and virtuous lady, who is yet living, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... love, Mrs. Brewster took her chair at the table. Immediately after giving thanks, the host stood up to carve the roast. Then, to the surprise of all present, it was seen that the rancher had donned his second-best black coat and had taken the trouble to wear cuffs and a starched collar. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... kick in the face led an ascending policeman to follow his example. A rush of three more gained the top and locked with Bill Totts in a gigantic clinch, during which his scalp was opened up by a club, and coat, vest, and half his starched shirt were torn from him. But the three policemen were flung far and wide, and Bill Totts, raining down lumps of ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... was formal, even in its kindness—for it was kind; but Miss Helstone excused this. She knew something of the benevolence of the heart which beat under that starched kerchief; all the neighbourhood—at least all the female neighbourhood—knew something of it. No one spoke against Miss Ainley except lively young gentlemen and inconsiderate old ones, who ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... time"—upon which a rough, honest gentleman took him up short, "I would fain know what that gentleman means: is there any one in this house that has not had the honor to be born as well as himself?" The good sense which reigns in our nation has pretty well destroyed this starched behavior among men who have seen the world, and know that every gentleman will be treated upon a foot of equality. But there are many who have had their education among women, dependents or flatterers, that lose all the respect which would otherwise ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... murmured in her sweetest tone, "forgive me, cousin. I feel as if I must break out a bit, now and then. Yankee manners, you know. Let me stay quiet with you for a while. You know the thought of starched and stiff London society quite frightens me. I am not used to anything stiff. Let me stay at home quiet, ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... lived about a mile from Jimmie, and asked his new friend to come and see him. So the next afternoon, which was Sunday, Lizzie put on a newly starched dress, and Jimmie packed the two smallest infants in the double perambulator, and took Jimmie Junior's chubby hand and they trudged down the road to the farmhouse which the old man's father had built. Mrs. Drew was a sweet-faced, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... stone-collecting, par exemple! I wonder what induced me to take up such a hobby. The German Professor, as usual. Ah, Mr. Koken, Mr. Koken—those light words of yours have borne a heavy fruit. I possess four hundred implements now, and they will double the weight of my luggage and ruin my starched shirts, especially those formidable "praechellean" skull-cleavers. And I know exactly what the customs officer at Marseilles will say, when he peeps into ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... collar, or a shirt-waist, the artistically arranged folds of a man's shirt, or the taste of his necktie or his collar. This will explain the passages in which I said of the honest woman [Meditation II], "She spends her life in having her dresses starched." I have sought information on this point from a lady in order to learn accurately at what sum was to be estimated the tax thus imposed by love, and after fixing it at one hundred francs per annum for a woman, I recollect what she said with great good humor: "It depends on the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... in the right-hand wall of the room, and Malone took one look. It was a long, long look. Standing framed in the doorway, dressed in the starched white of a nurse's uniform, was the most beautiful ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)

... and embroidery blouses cunningly enhanced their immaculate virginity. White piqu skirts, destined to be grimed by the sands of beach and tee, dangled like innocent lambs before the slaughter. Just behind this starched and glistening ambush one glimpsed the bent head and the nimble fingers of Martha Eggers, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... mentioned, he uses the poncho, a long, broad blanket, with a slit in the centre to admit his head. For trousers he wears very wide white drawers, richly embroidered with broad needlework and stiffly starched. Over these he puts a black chirip, which really I cannot describe other than as similar to the napkins the mother provides for her child. Below this black and white leg covering come the long boots, made from one piece of seamless hide. These ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... was raining or shining, whether the birds were singing, whether it was the season for dahlias or daisies, whether the Luxembourg was more charming than the Tuileries, whether the linen which the laundress brought home was starched too much or not enough, whether Toussaint had done "her marketing" well or ill; and she remained dejected, absorbed, attentive to but a single thought, her eyes vague and staring as when one gazes by night at a black and fathomless spot where ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... should not be visible when she could feel its palm flame against his. She let it snuggle there, secure.... Mr. Walter Babson was not a young man with "bad prospects," or "good prospects"; he was love incarnate in magic warm flesh, and his hand was the hand of love. She was conscious of his hard-starched cuff pressing against her bare arm—a man's cuff under the rough surface ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... go to work and get supper ready, and get that out of the way; and by that time the starched clothes will be done, and you can do the rest. I expect the children want their supper by this ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson

... cautious and insinuating; when he meets anyone in a narrow passage he is always the first to stop and make way, and to say, not in a bass, as one would expect, but in a high, soft tenor: "I beg your pardon!" He has a little swelling on his neck which prevents him from wearing stiff starched collars, and so he always goes about in soft linen or cotton shirts. Altogether he does not dress like a doctor. He wears the same suit for ten years, and the new clothes, which he usually buys at a Jewish ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... wind, gave evident signs of habitation. It cost my conductor's one hand an arduous wrench to lay open the lock of the outer door, in front of which he had first to dislodge a very dingy female, attired in an earth-coloured gown, that seemed as if starched with ashes; and as the rusty hinges creaked, and the door fell against the wall, we became sensible of a damp, unwholesome smell, like the breath of a charnel-house, which issued from the interior. The place had been shut ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... the spirit of opposition, that lived long before Christianity, and can easily subsist without it. Let us, for instance, examine wherein the opposition of sectaries among us consists, we shall find Christianity to have no share in it at all Does the Gospel any where prescribe a starched, squeezed countenance, a stiff, formal gait, a singularity of manners and habit, or any affected modes of speech different from the reasonable part of mankind? Yet, if Christianity did not lend its name to stand in the gap, and to employ or divert these humours, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... tone, "do you know you have never called to take away the shirts you left for me to make more than two years ago? I have often thought I would take them to you; but sister Stanhope said I had better wait, as you would call when you wanted them. I starched and ironed them all up nice for you; but I am sure the stiffening is all out, and they are as yellow ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... west, he goes on to tell us, were up at cockcrow, and no men might rest for the chatter and the noise of their preparations. One cried that her curch was not starched enough, another that a hood was best, another bewailed herself as "so evil sunburnt" that she was not fit to be seen. The young folk stream along "full bold" with the bagpipes blowing, and every village ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... the cheap severity of abstract ethics! My wife was very plain, never had my ruffs properly starched, and knew nothing about cookery. Why, there was a buck I had shot in Hogley Woods, a magnificent pricket, and do you know how she had it sent up to table? However, it is no matter now, for it is all over, and I don't think it was very nice of her brothers to starve ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... George the Fourth now (more the pity) to set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed, swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... struggling in the sea of trouble. I am sharply pulled up. "I thought you would be too immersed in the wretched folly of agitation to understand," she says; "I came to show you the better way." She is followed by the clothes enthusiast. He wears sandals and has discarded the abomination of starched linen. "We are forming a Society for the Revival of Greek Clothing," he announces. "From the aesthetic and the hygienic points of view, nothing is more important than the clothes we wear." I venture on a feeble Teufelsdroeckh joke. He does not condescend to listen. "We ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... now just as much, down in the bottom of my heart. Where are all my gentle foremothers that smiled behind their lace fans and had their lily-white hands kissed by cavalier gentlemen in starched ruffles, out under the stars that rise over Old Harpeth, that they don't claim me in a calm and peaceful death? Still, as much as I would like to die, I am interested in what ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... trimmings. Your arms must swing easily at your sides. Thus equipped walking should not be a task, but a great, big, lovely joy, no matter if the frost does nip your nice little nose and make your cheeks feel as if they had been starched, dried, ironed and hung ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... girdle with quite a Henry V air. Jeff looked more like—well, like a Huguenot Lover; and I don't know what I looked like, only that I felt very comfortable. When I got back to our own padded armor and its starched borders I realized with acute regret how comfortable were ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... she needs them now, eh? What do you think, my dear sir? For now she's got to keep up her appearance. It costs money, that smartness, that special smartness, you know? Do you understand? And there's pomatum, too, you see, she must have things; petticoats, starched ones, shoes, too, real jaunty ones to show off her foot when she has to step over a puddle. Do you understand, sir, do you understand what all that smartness means? And here I, her own father, here I took thirty copecks of that money ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... ridicule and censure him for giving himself airs. A bustling, active, good-humoured man, he was prone now and then to play the scholar and the fine gentleman, the while he lost sight of his more recognised position as a landlord. He wore a full-dress suit of black, starched ruffles, and a very grand periwig; was ceremonious and stately in his manners, affected an inordinate love of literature and an air of connoisseurship that contrasted rather strangely with his calling. Certainly there was not such another landlord to be seen upon ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... could only have gone to church barefoot, with my shirt open at the throat, and with a pocket full of cookies to munch ad lib throughout the services, I am sure that the spiritual uplift would have been greater. The soul of a boy doesn't expand violently when encased in a starched shirt and a paper collar, and these surmounted by a thick coat, with the mercury at ninety-seven in the shade. I think I can trace my religious retardation back to those hungry Sundays, those tight shoes, that warm coat, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... starched and creaking garments which had been made for a slightly smaller child, Ardelia was transported to the station, and for the first time introduced to a railroad car. She sat stiffly on the red plush seat while the young lady talked reassuringly ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... men and women, and he had seen and comprehended and delivered the whole and pure truth respecting them. Of course, therefore, they are as far as possible from being mere names set before pieces of starched and painted rhetoric, or mere got-up figures of modes and manners: they are no shadows or images of fancy, no heroes of romance, no theatrical personages at all; they have nothing surreptitious or make-believe or ungenuine about them: they ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... of the settlement of Jamestown, in 1607, the characteristics of a man of fashion were, to wear velvet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff, a gilt-handled sword, and a Spanish dagger: to play at cards or dice in the room of the groom-porter, and to smoke tobacco in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... few minutes, Jacob was ushered up by Agatha into Miss Judith Villiers's apartment. The old lady was about fifty years of age, very prim and starched, sitting in a high-backed chair, with her feet upon a stool, and her hands crossed before her, her black mittens reposing ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... even happy, in an earnest, unplayful fashion, being blessed besides by three healthy, active, self- reliant children, all girls. They were all pedestrians too. Even the youngest would wander away for miles if not restrained. Mrs. Fyne had a ruddy out-of-doors complexion and wore blouses with a starched front like a man's shirt, a stand-up collar and a long necktie. Marlow had made their acquaintance one summer in the country, where they were accustomed to take a cottage for the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... brow big and full of cause and effect and of quiet deductions and deliberate conclusions. His coat was seedy, his trousers bagged at the knees, his shoes were old, and there were patches on them, but his collar and linen were white and very much starched, and his awkward, shambling gait was honest to the last footfall. A world of depth and soul was in his strong, fine face, lit up now with an honest, humble smile, but, at rest, full of ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... the uniformity of the great city which was his home. His dress was peculiar: an enormous black hat above a shock of wispy fair hair, an ill-cut black coat, a cloak flung back over his shoulders, a very high starched collar, abominable trousers, ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... frock and two nice pinafores, the black alpaca some small aprons. Mary trimmed the two worst hats with the ribbon. Last of all, she cut and stitched five narrow bands of the linen, which mother washed and starched, and behold, the class had collars! I don't know which was most pleased at this last decoration, Mary ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... delighted cry of surprise; a rather uncertain, "Oh, Mr. Tom!" and in another instant he was enveloped in a tiny cloud of lace and ribbons and primly starched linen while two bare, brown little legs waved wildly about his breast, a pair of very sticky lips were set against his own, and his neck found itself in the clasp of tiny fingers that had known orange-juice and oat-meal and sugar—and ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... poet's merits; while de Marsay, with his flow of spirits, his confidence in his power to please, and appropriate style of dress, eclipsed every rival by his presence. Judge, therefore, the kind of figure that Lucien, stiff, starched, unbending in clothes as new and unfamiliar as his surroundings, was likely to cut in de Marsay's vicinity. De Marsay with his wit and charm of manner was privileged to be insolent. From Mme. d'Espard's reception of this personage his importance was at ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... lank, In scuffling circle or in mural rank, Of misery mechanic They look the wooden symbols; nought to show That even well-starched linen's sheeny ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various

... or fatigued her, at least she never betrayed the fact. There never were pots and pans awaiting cleaning in Pauline's sink, there never was a teaspoonful of flour spilled upon her biscuit board. Her gingham cuffs were always starched and stiff, her colourless hair smooth. She was a silent, dun-coloured creature, whose most violent expression was an occasional deep, unctuous laugh ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... Calais was all Sterne. I find everywhere that it is a distinctive personality which makes me want to linger round a spot, more than an important historical event. There is not much worth remembering about Brummel; but his audacity, his starched neckcloth, his assumptions and their success, make him a curious subject for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... room was hung with flags and cedar boughs, and the benches down the long uncovered tables were crowded. The men's attire was motley—broadcloth and duck; white shirts, starched or limp, and blue ones; shoes with the creeper-spikes filed down, and long boots to the knees. There were women present also, and they wore anything from light print, put together for the occasion, to treasured garments made in Montreal or Toronto ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... kick themselves about like some staid old deacon having his fling. Then there is the middle-sized bear whose bloomers, billowed by the wind, become a ridiculous fat woman cut off at the waist. And the little bear's starched clothes crack and snap while the revolving tree-horse whirls about like some mad dervish. I often wonder if the family know of the wild actions that take ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... make a touchdown and hear 'em yell—why I'm there! I'm on the team because I've helped a little to keep you on the team! It almost makes up for having to be a girl. Just for the moment, I'm not sitting up high, clean and starched and safe; I'm on the field, hot and muddy and with my nose bleeding, doing something for ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... The congregation of the faithful was greater than on other days, but even so the Cathedral seemed deserted. In the crossways, kneeling between the choir and the high altar, were several nuns in starched linen bibs and pointed hoods, in charge of sundry groups of children dressed in black, with red or blue stripes according to the colleges to which they belonged; a few officials from the academy, fat and bald, listened to the mass standing, bending their heads ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... reached that time of life at which a man's neck begins to bulge over his collar at the back, forming a kind of roll of rather hairy flesh, along which the starched linen marks a deep line from ear to ear. I noticed as I passed that Malcolmson's neck was far more swollen than usual and, that it was rapidly changing colour from its ordinary brick red to a deep purple. The sight was so strange and startling that I stopped for a minute to see what would happen ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... was not particularly well disposed towards her new guest, because she had not been originally consulted as to her visit; and even the good-natured Miss Cordsen frightened Madeleine at first, with her tall, spare figure and well-starched cap-strings. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... which, though firm, wore a reassuring smile that immediately conveyed his warm friendliness. He was a well preserved elderly gentleman of aristocratic mien, clad in a bright blue garment of odd cut, his neck wound about with spotlessly white linen in lieu of a starched collar. His high nose, raised cheek-bones, flashing black eyes and olive skin contrasted in lively fashion with a heavy mane of white hair. His eyes as well as his lips conveyed a kindliness which ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina

... gait was an embodied essay on graceful pride. As for his coat, save for a white star just in the middle of his forehead, it was as black and sleek as the nap on a new silk hat. After a good rubbing he was so shiny that at a distance you might have thought him starched and ironed and newly come ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... clothes, and tours, and Points and knots.' The Younger Brother (1696), Act V, the last scene, old Lady Youthly anxiously asks her maid, 'is not this Tour too brown?' During the reign of Mary II and particularly in the time of Anne a Tower meant almost exclusively the high starched head-dress in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... strips are finally scoured in hydrochloric acid, washed, and well squeezed between metal rollers covered with cloth. After squeezing and drying, the cloth, if required for printing, needs no further operation, but if intended to be marketed in a white state, it must be finished, that is, starched or calendered. ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... footpaths and unpaved tracks lost their deserted appearance. Solitary figures and groups lounged along them. Men accompanied by their well-starched womenfolk, women striving vainly to control their legions of offspring. They all began to move abroad, and their ways were convergent. They were all moving upon a common goal, as though drawn thither by the ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... to thee our good Queen Bess, 1558-1603 Garbed in the puffed and padded dress, Farthingale and starched up frills, Meaning heavy laundry bills. Od's Bodikins; what monstrous ruffs, What gowns of rich embroidered stuffs Piped and scolloped, trimmed with furs, And shaped like huge gasometers. Now we've warfare of the Creeds, For ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison

... found the aspect of that house, with its formal mahogany chairs, high-backed, and carved in grim festoons and ovals of incessant repetition,—its penitential couch of a sofa, where only the iron spine of a Revolutionary heroine could have found rest,—its pinched, starved, and double-starched portraits of defunct Hydes, Puritanic to the very ends of toupet and periwig,—little Mrs. Hyde was deep enough in love with her tall and handsome husband to overlook the upholstery of a home he glorified, and to care little for comfort elsewhere, so long as she could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... sort of fellow, this M. Courtet, who was head clerk, though too conceited and starched up, certainly. His red rosette, as large as a fifty-cent piece, made one's eyes blink, and he certainly was very imprudent to stand so long backed up to the fireplace with limbs spread apart, for it seemed that he must surely burn the seat of his trousers. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... manners and living was carefully inculcated. At first the ministers had almost entire control. A church reproof was the heaviest punishment, and knotty points in theology caused the bitterest discussion. A pillion was the grandest equipage, and a plain blue and white gown, with primly starched apron, was the common attire of the New ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... since they were nearer the noises of the street—in fact, the house being a corner one, the noises of two streets. Roxdal continued to exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the menage. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even on ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... Aunt Nettie from their rocking-chairs on the side-porch watched the slim figure in its stiffly-starched white duck skirt and shirt-waist disappear down ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... Factory Acts are passed to mitigate sweating; schooling is made free and compulsory; sanitary by-laws are multiplied; public steps are taken to house the masses decently; the bare-footed get boots; rags become rare; and bathrooms and pianos, smart tweeds and starched collars, reach numbers of people who once, as "the unsoaped," played the Jew's harp or the accordion in moleskins and belchers. Some of these changes are gains: some of them are losses. Some of them are not changes at all: all ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... going to practice em marchin'. Looked like bout fifty fellows. I never seed Mr. Wimbeish on a horse all time he passed long that road. He miter jes' et round mong the people while he stayed there. He wore red 'appletts' on his shoulders. I never seed him outer that fresh starched white suit. It was fishtail coat and had red bands stitched all round the edge and white breetches [britches] [TR: 'britches' is marked out by hand] with red bands down the side. He sure was a young man. They ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... night. On one side of the fire-place sits the old man in his hard arm-chair, his hands folded, and his spectacles awry, as he sonorously snores away the time. Opposite him sits the old lady, a little, toothless dame, with angular features half hidden in a stiffly starched white cap, her fingers flying over her knitting-work, as precisely and perseveringly she "seams," "narrows," and "widens." At the old lady's right hand stands a cherry table, on which burns a yellow tallow candle that occasionally ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... the starch, the fronts of the shirts and the whole of the skirts. Then she rolled up the pieces tightly and placed them neatly in a square basket after having sprinkled with clear water all those portions which were not starched. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... black wool feverishly. People were arriving, and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... Duncton Beacon, until they reached what promised to be the security of Houghton Forest. There they were panic-stricken nearly to meet Captain Morley, governor of Arundel Castle, and therefore by no means a King's man. The King, on being told who it was, replied merrily, "I did not much like his starched mouchates." This peril avoided, they descended to Houghton village, where the Arun was crossed, and so to Amberley, where in Sir John Briscoe's castle the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... when he died. M. de Montrond belonged to two generations, two strongly-contrasted epochs. At his first ball at court he wore a powdered cadogan and danced in talons rouges: at his last he lolled with bald head against a doorway, in varnished boots and starched cravat. His existence has remained an enigma to this hour. Although solicited to accept office by every party that rose to power during his life, he steadfastly refused, and yet, by virtue of his quality of premier gentilhomme ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... always dressed alike in elaborately simple clothes, with frilly, starched underpinnies, silk stockings, high boots buttoned up slim legs; and across their shoulders, from beneath wonderful lingerie hats, hung shining curls. The latter were not natural, but had each day to be elaborately constructed. They made ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... have been conceived a stronger contrast in nature than that which existed between the starched, proud, and portly uncle, and the tall, handsome, and hearty young nephew, whose ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... in the Grand Duke's landau. We drove through fields in which I knew every blade of grass, through woods that I adored, where I used to run wild all by myself. Well: I saw nothing at all. The whole country had become as stiff and starched as the idiots with whom I was driving. Between the fields and my heart there was not only the curtain of the souls of those formal people. The wooden planks beneath my feet, the moving platform being rolled over the face of Nature, were quite enough. To feel that the earth is my mother, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... dear," replied mother, "because this is wash morning and I have a new laundress to look after. Didn't you see her come around the house when we were at breakfast? I have to go downstairs and show her how we like our clothes washed and starched. Don't you want to ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson

... grow big, why skirts are at one time only two and a half yards around and at another time five and a half or eight yards around. An Elizabethan gentleman might be too poor to dress well, but he would squander his last penny in getting his ruff starched. Lyly's style bristles with extravagances of the starched ruff sort, which only serve to call attention to the intellectual deficiencies in the matter of ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... causes. Its rise was taken from the licence of arms, which permit, and almost authorize, the greatest disorders in a conquered country. The pleasures of Asia, and the commerce of infidels, aided not a little to debauch the Portuguese, as starched and regular as they naturally are. The want of spiritual directors contributed largely to this growing mischief. There were not four preachers, in all the Indies, nor any one priest without the walls of Goa; insomuch, that in many fortified ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... little note first of all. And if you only knew how my wristbands are plaguing me you'd be very sorry. They're too much starched, and would come down like mittens; and now I've turned them up, they're just like two horrid china cups upside down, inside my coat, and I'm afraid to write for fear of breaking them. And I've a week's work on the table, to be done before one o'clock, on pain of uproar ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... the kitchen helping with some ironing, and now she came up with an armful of stiff skirts. For many women on state occasions wore a big hoop, and others swelled out with starched petticoats. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... walls were lined with all the representative characters of the town, good and bad, rich and poor; merchants, bar-keepers, politicians and miners. In the center the old-time church-goers sat. Up the front, filling every inch of space, the starched and well-washed youngsters wriggled and grinned and sang without fear, as hymn ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... told. "You'll do beautifully in her place, won't you?" she asked with such evident desire for an affirmative answer that Miss Tatten, being only human and liking Patricia exceedingly, showed signs of melting from her official starched dignity, and ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... fantastic changes took place in the costumes of courtiers and their followers. At the restoration, the dress most common to women of all ranks consisted of a gown with a laced stomacher and starched neckerchief, a sad-coloured cloak with a French hood, and a high-crowned hat. Such habiliments, admitting of little variety and less ornament, found no favour in the eyes of those who returned from foreign courts with the king, and therefore a change was gradually effected. The simple gown ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... surmounted by eyebrows like parenthesis marks, glittered large, green eyes, remarkably round and staring, and set very close to a hooked nose, extremely sharp and prominent; a chin like that on the old fashioned nutcrackers was half-hidden in a broad and ample white cravat, as stiffly-starched as the round-cornered shirt-collar, which nearly touched his ears. The face was exceedingly thin and bony, and yet the complexion was high-colored, approaching to purple, which made the bright green of the pupils, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... them, they had not heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling's cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill-starched it was. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the smallest breath of wind But all the quarter sounded like a wood; And in the chequered silence and above The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois, Suburban ashes shivered into song. A patter and a chatter and a chirp And a long dying hiss—it was as though Starched old brocaded dames through all the house Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain. Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks Of the near Autumn, how the smitten ash Trembles and augurs floods! O not too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... her. The small boulder upon which she had placed the box was round, and it was difficult to maintain one's position upon it without slipping. Doubly difficult if one were perched upon a sharp-angled cube, and one's pique skirt was stiffly starched. He comprehended the situation and meant to be upon the spot when the slipping occurred. He really didn't care very much to know what she was hiding, but was grateful for a chance ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... instinct that this was the state of affairs. He was making up his mind to propose. So much of her and so little of her had at length made an end of all the prudent hesitations that lay under the crisp pie-crust of that starched and dazzling shirt front. That he should never be able to speak a word to her without that May! that fellow! "the son of my coach!" poking himself in, was a thing which at length had fired his cool blood to fever heat. Nobody else could play his accompaniments like that, or pull him through the ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... starched and ironed out of it, apparently. Saratoga is still trying to do the good old American act, with its big hotels and its heterogeneous hops, and I don't suppose there's ever such a thing as a society person at any of them. That wouldn't be so bad. But ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Gwendolyn smiled at herself in the pier-glass. Johnnie carried a long willow fishing-pole cut from the stream-side. Reel he had none, nor basket; and he did not own a belted outing-suit of hunter's-green, and high buckled boots. He wore a plaid gingham waist, starched so stiff that its round collar stood up and tickled his ears. His hat was of straw, and somewhat ragged. His brown jeans overalls, riveted and suspendered, reached to bare ankles fully as brown. The overalls were provided with ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... of the Big House by way of a massive, hewn- timber, iron-studded door that let in at the foot of what seemed a donjon keep. The floor was cement, and doors let off in various directions. One, opening to a Chinese in the white apron and starched cap of a chef, emitted at the same time the low hum of a dynamo. It was this that deflected Forrest from his straight path. He paused, holding the door ajar, and peered into a cool, electric-lighted cement room where stood a long, glass-fronted, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... itself forward still more, showing a pair of plump shoulders as its support. Then the plump shoulders heaved into the room, disclosing a stout, starched gingham body. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... your gold frame, Between that starched old Bishop and the dame In awe-inspiring ruff. We'll brave their ire And trip a minuet. You will not?—Fie! Those mocking lips half make me wish that I, Her grandson, might have been ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... becomes a habit. And I for one quite refuse to excuse myself from further exercise of it on coming back to Europe. The General feels with me; and we have laid ourselves out to be civil to our compatriots here at St. Augustin this winter. A few people were vexatiously stiff and starched at first; but each one of them has given in, in turn. They really do, I believe, appreciate our ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet



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