"Swallow-tailed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... own sex—is about all that can be said in favor of our present fashions. I wish I had the vocabulary of Herr Teufelsdrockh with which to inveigh against the dress-coat of our evening parties, the angular swallow-tailed coat that makes a man look like a poor species of bird and gets him mistaken for the waiter. "As long as a man wears the modern coat," says Leigh Hunt, "he has no right to despise any dress. What snips at the collar and lapels! What a mechanical and ridiculous cut about the flaps! What ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... quite a peculiar shape, the oar-shaft immediately next the hand-hold swells into a bulbous affair for the next eighteen inches, which is at least four times the circumference of the remainder, and the end of the oarblade is for some reason made swallow-tailed. The object of the enlarged portion, which of course comes inside the rowlocks, appears to be the double purpose of balancing the weight of the longer portion outside, and also for preventing the oar at all times from escaping into the water. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... was withdrawn from the land to a sight of great splendour on board. This was Lieutenant Bundy, the guardian of Her Majesty's mails, who issued from his cabin in his long swallow-tailed coat with anchor buttons; his sabre clattering between his legs; a magnificent shirt-collar, of several inches in height, rising round his good-humoured sallow face; and above it a cocked hat, that shone so, I thought it was made of polished tin (it may have been ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... district judge, and officers so richly dressed that they could scarcely move. Seven or eight of the principal farmers of the district were also in the company, and first among these were Nordrum, Jacob's master, and the master of Hoel Farm, who was then living. These two wore queer old-fashioned swallow-tailed coats. All around over the whole mountain top were crowds of other people gazing at the ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... the larvae of the swallow-tailed butterfly through their different stages, and reserved two chrysalides to develop into the perfect insect. In due time one of these fairy-like creatures came out. I placed it in a small Indian cage, made of ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... without being able to determine whether they were priests, magistrates, or gravediggers, for in their dress and appearance they bore a certain resemblance to all three. They wore three-cornered hats, with long black veils which reached to the waist, swallow-tailed black coats, short black breeches, black stockings, black cloaks, buckled shoes, and white cravats and gloves, and they held in their hands sheets of paper bordered with black. My companion explained to me that they ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... quarter, to give them an American dance; but after the ridiculous figure some of our countrymen cut in dancing after the Mexicans, we thought it best to leave it to their imaginations. Our agent, with a tight, black, swallow-tailed coat just imported from Boston, a high stiff cravat, looking as if he had been pinned and skewered, with only his feet and hands left free, took the floor just after Bandini, and we thought they had ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... name you have held in profound veneration all your life long? Now, in the wayward drift of your imagination among the freaks of modern fashion, did it ever dare to present before your eyes St. Paul in strapped pantaloons, figured velvet vest, swallow-tailed coat, stove-pipe hat, and a cockney glass at his eye? Did your fancy, in its wildest fictions, ever pass such an image across the speculum of your ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt |
