"Tidy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went into my bedroom, and sitting down, I cried, for I was sorry to lose Suzanne, even for a little and for her own good, and my heart was heavy. Also my quarrel with the predicant had put me out of temper. When I had got over this fit I set to work to tidy Suzanne's little sleeping place, and that I found a sad task. Then Jan returned from the waggon, having bid farewell to the young couple, an hour's trek away, and his head being clear by now, we talked over the plans of the new house which was to ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... not been seen or known of since Wombwell's lions came, when one of them ate a little child's arm; and she was, perhaps, too old to care about dress, but a new cap she must have; and, having heard that turbans were worn, and some of the county families likely to come, she would like to look tidy, if I would bring her a cap from the milliner I employed; and oh, dear! how careless of her to forget that she wrote to beg I would come and pay her a visit next Tuesday; when she hoped to have something to offer me in the way of amusement, which she would not ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... rise on the far side of the Mangadone Cantonment was the bungalow of Hartley, Head of the Police. It was a tidy, well-kept house, the house of a bachelor who had an eye to things himself and who was well served by competent servants. Hartley had reached the age of forty without having married, and he was solid of build and entirely sensible and practical of mind. He was spoken ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... to make ready his lantern. But, indeed, he had to get his lantern for himself; for my mother, who was now in a flush of excitement, speaking high and incoherently, would have my sister stay with her to make ready for the coming of the doctor—to dress her hair, and tidy the room, and lay out the best coverlet, and help on ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... (which is sometimes a trifle irksome) they never hear an unkind word. They grow in grace, partly because they return as many of these favors as is possible at their age. They water the plants, clean the bird's cage and fill the seed cups and bath; they keep the room as tidy as possible to make the janitor's work easier; they brush up the floor after their own muddy feet; the older ones help the younger and the strong look after the weak. The conditions are almost ideal; why should they ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... her cap, which was awry, upon her head, by plucking it quickly over to the opposite side, and hastily tying the strings of her apron, so as to give herself something of a tidy look, she proceeded, barefooted, but in slippers, to ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... between the lagoon and an irregular line of dark horns which, rising just above the shining surface of the water, marked a group of coral reefs. "There won't be much doubt in Johnny Crapaud's mind now as to what part that tidy little craft's cast to play ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... put things tidy here a little, and then I'll go. You couldn't give the that three months" pay now, could you? He ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... you were a bit of a fraud—even when I thought you were Butteridge. You're jolly lucky the Prince took it calmly. He's a pretty tidy blazer when he's roused. He wouldn't stick a moment at pitching a chap of your sort overboard if he thought fit. No!... They've shoved you on to me, but it's my ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... I believe, in Massachusetts, the more thoughtful of those whose affections are centred in their village homes have united in organized efforts to make their villages more tidy, to interest all classes of society in attention to those little details the neglect of which is fatal, and to make the village, what it certainly should be, an expression of the interest of its people in their homes and in the surroundings ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... preference of such a girl, and on the principle of noblesse oblige, he tries to become worthy of her. This love makes the cowardly brave, the weak strong, the dull witty, the prosy poetic, the slouches tidy. Burton glows eloquent on this subject (Ill., 2), confounding, as usual, love with lust. Ovid notes that when Polyphemus courted Galatea the desire to please made him arrange his hair and beard, using the water as a mirror; wherein the Roman poet shows a keener sense of the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Lathrop, I jumped—I really did. Him so tidy 'n' goin' out on the porch half a dozen times a day to brush up the seeds under the bird-cage—'n' wantin' you! I couldn't believe my ears at first, 'n' he talked quite a while, 'n' I did n't hear a word he said. 'N' then, ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... knotted fingers; he had sharp features, a hooked nose, blue-black hair, a low forehead, small, intent-looking, deep-set eyes, and bushy eyebrows; when he smiled, splendid white teeth gleamed for an instant between his thin, hard, over-defined lips. He was in a rather old but tidy coat, buttoned up ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... unswathed, and proved to be dolls in more or less good condition. Each was carefully laid upon a morsel of sheet, and covered with another sheet folded over in the neatest fashion. "If we teach them to be particular when they are young, they will be tidy when they are old," we were informed. It was pleasant to hear our own remarks so ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... wiped her hot face on her sleeve and said she was awfully sorry, because she admired Jane more than anybody else in the world. Then Martin looked at the sun and said, "You've barely time to get tidy for supper." So the milkmaids ran off to smooth their hair and their kerchiefs and do up ribbons and buttons or whatever else was necessary. And came fresh and rosy to their meal, of which not one of them could ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... glossy for men of their race; and, stranger still, it bore an appearance of careful combing. Nearly all wore loose cotton trousers or drawers reaching to the knee, with a kind of blouse of woollen or cotton, and over the shoulders a gay woollen blanket tied around the waist. In view of their tidy raiment and their general air of cleanliness, it seemed a mistake to class them as Indians. These were the Moquis, a remnant of one of the semi-civilizations of America, perhaps a colony left behind by the Aztecs in their migrations, or possibly ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... gather things and make medicine of them, and an honest Root-gatherer to divide the polyanthus plants and the bulbs when we take them up, and divide them fairly, and a Weeding Woman to work and make things tidy, and a Queen in a blue dress, and Saxon for the Dwarf"—the others set up such a shout of approbation that Father sent James to inquire if we imagined that he was going to allow his house to be turned into ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... contrary. There were traditions of other housekeepers. But since the death of Hope's mother Mrs. Simcoe was the only incumbent. She had been Mrs. Wayne's nurse in her last moments, and had rocked the little Hope to sleep the night after her mother's burial. She was always tidy, erect, imperturbable. She pervaded the house; and her eye was upon a table-cloth, a pane of glass, or a carpet, almost as soon as the spot which arrested it. Housekeeper nascitur non fit. She was so silent ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... conceivable that the tenderest and most beautiful reminiscences of a love of departed days may linger with a man who has grown grey, fat, and even snuffy. But it is only in the case of remarkably tidy, neat, and clever old gentlemen that such feelings are likely to attract much sympathy from their juniors. Possibly this world has more of such lingering romance than is generally credited. Possibly with all but very stolid and narrow natures, no very strong ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... watered them," Betty soothed her. "They're all right. Don't worry another minute. I'll make you tidy and get you something to eat and then I'm going ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... quite unmoved by this charge. "The town-site boomer at least believes in progress. He does not go so far as to shut out settlement. If a neat and tidy village or a well-ordered farmstead is not considered superior to a cattle-ranch littered with bones and tin cans, or better than even a cow-town whose main industry is whiskey-selling, then all civilized progress is a delusion. When I was a youngster these considerations didn't trouble ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... and Tarascon is fertile and well cultivated, and the cheerfulness of its aspect presents a striking contrast to the silence and solitude of the town. The streets, however, are as clean as those of Holland, and the inhabitants are neat and tidy in ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... golden hair done low. You've often exchanged "Good evening" with her, I'm sure. Her hair's done low: she used to make rather a point of telling me that. Why, I don't know, especially as it was always tidy ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... been an off-day—a day of cloudless summer beauty. Tired men had slept; tidy men had washed their clothes; restless men had wandered at ease about the countryside, careless of the guns which grumbled everlastingly a few miles away. There had been impromptu Church Parades for each denomination, in the corner of a wood ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... living at Dr. Wm. Bayards' three years—chambermaid—that is enough to assure me she is a good girl. I think she wears her dress too tight. I unloosened her laces and underskirts to make them easy; they are all neat and tidy, as if she had ...
— Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum • Mary Huestis Pengilly
... "Doc" Dennihan, was undeniably If-only Jim's exact antithesis—a scrupulously tidy, exacting lady, so severe in her virtues and so acrid in denunciations of the lack of down-east circumspection that nearly every man in camp shied off from her abode as he might have shied from a bath in nitric acid. Six months prior to this time she had come to Borealis from ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... than other wants, but it is important, and we all have it and seek to satisfy it in some way or other. It may be at one time by a walk in the woods or fields, or at other times by cultivating flowers, by keeping our room tidy, by looking at pictures, or by exercising good taste in clothing. We also enjoy beauty in sound, as the song of birds or music in the ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... children who were not at work, at play; for the school hours were past. I saw their happy faces, their clean, tidy clothes, and their long rows of nice, clean beds, for I went into every part of the house, and a beautiful sight it all was. In the kitchen some girls were making up the bread, and most excellent bread it was, and a good, large, thick slice there was for every one. I saw the dining hall, ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... heart. I weep over them in a sort of milky way. I have always seen cows in comfortable stables, with nice, clean straw under their feet and pails full of succulent food placed within easy reach, while at certain intervals a tidy, tender- hearted young milkmaid appears with a three-legged stool and a roomy pail, and extracts what the cow chooses to give her. But here the wiry creatures roam from door to door, and drop a pint or ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Jim. But you can behave. Cheer her up a little. She's blue about that dog of a Cheever. I've got to go and turn over the money we earned yesterday. Quite a tidy sum, but I'll never give another damned show as long as ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... evasion I walked over to Deane Hill and surveyed the wonderful panorama of neat country that fills the basin between the Hampden and the Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has something the effect of a Dutch landscape, it all looks so amazingly tidy. Away to the left I looked over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the hollow, but I could distinguish the high ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... jerk then, miss? That tug to sta'bo'd is the only fault I find with this here schooner. She's a right tidy craft, and Cap'n Tunis is a good judge of sailing ships, as his ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... more acute. Without waiting for him to answer, she rose as if his answer were indifferent to her, and began to put in order some papers that Mr. Basnett had left on the table. She hummed a scrap of a tune under her breath, and moved about the room as if she were occupied in making things tidy, and had ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... that, Mrs. Kronborg. I wish we could get the old man off his bottle and keep him tidy. Do you suppose if I gave you an old overcoat you could get him to wear it?" The doctor went to the bedroom door and Mrs. Kronborg ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... work. While you get everything tidy and in good shipshape, the cooks will get to work at the coppers; and I can promise you a good breakfast, washed down by sound cider, such ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... went on quietly, and at a very tidy speed; being only too thankful that the snow had ceased, and no wind as yet arisen. And from the ring of low white vapour girding all the verge of sky, and from the rosy blue above, and the shafts of starlight ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... is, Kitty?' Alice began. 'You'd have guessed if you'd been up in the window with me—only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire—and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... a bad job, Pavel Ivanich. You get up in the morning, clean the boots, boil the samovar, tidy up the room, and then there is nothing to do. The lieutenant draws plans all day long, and you can pray to God if you like—or read books—or go out into the streets. ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... open window in a wooden rocker with padded arms and back and covered with calico with a green ground sprinkled over with butterflies and yellow daisies; her head was thrown back against the knitted tidy of white cotton, and her hands were resting in her lap; the blue muslin was rather more crumpled than when she had seen it last, and instead of the linen collar the lace was knotted about her throat. The bandage had been removed from her forehead, the swelling had abated ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... work, and could not come back in the middle of the day for dinner; so in the morning before she went she used to give Beatrice Annie a bit of bread and an egg, if she had enough money to buy one, and a few sticks, and a little pan with water in it. Then she used to tidy up the room and go away, leaving the child alone. The door must be locked, for a thief might come in and steal the few bits of things there were. The window was dirty and very high up; Beatrice Annie could only see out of it by climbing on a rickety chair, and she ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... walked away to fetch some fine fish which had been washed up by the tidal wave and were still flapping about in a little pool of salt water. Then we took counsel as to how to make the best of our circumstances, and as a result set to work to tidy up the saloon and cabins, which was not difficult as what remained of the ship lay on an even keel. Also we got out some necessary stores, including paraffin for the swinging lamps with which the ship was fitted in case of accident to the electric light, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... with all on board—picking up the English language with facility, and readily conforming himself to our customs and the discipline of the ship. He was very cleanly in his personal habits, and paid much attention to his dress, which was always kept neat and tidy. I was often much amused and surprised by the oddity and justness of his remarks upon the many strange sights which a voyage of this kind brought before him.' The Nemesis steamer underweigh puzzled him at first; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... sand hills, facing south and west. It is upon an elevation, and therefore enjoys a view of the sea, and, inland, of the spires of The Hague. The garden is an old one, and there are quiet nooks in it where the trees have grown to a quite respectable stature. Holland is so essentially a tidy country that nothing old or moss-grown is tolerated. One wonders where all the rubbish of the centuries has been hidden; for all the ruins have been decently cleared away and cities that teem with historical interest ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... pigs, passed on in the eager tumult of business, before our eyes. The comfortable farmer in his best gray frize; the young man in spruce corduroy breeches, home-made blue coat, and bran new hat; the tidy maiden with neat bunch of yarn, spun by her own fingers, giving sufficient proof to her bachelor that a young woman of industrious habits uniformly makes the best wife for a poor man. Various, indeed, ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... street vendors. It had once soared as high as autographs, and a promising beginning of three signatures were already pasted into the remaining leaves of an exercise-book. Whatever the collection might be, it lived in heaps on the uncarpeted floor; and when Betty had a tidy fit, was covered with a crochet antimacassar which had known better days, and had grown decidedly ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in a corner of Cynthia's nursery. And it was not in the best corner either. It was in the corner behind the door, and that was not at all a fashionable neighborhood. Racketty-Packetty House had been pushed there to be out of the way when Tidy Castle was brought in, on Cynthia's birthday. As soon as she saw Tidy Castle Cynthia did not care for Racketty-Packetty House and indeed was quite ashamed of it. She thought the corner behind the door quite good ...
— Racketty-Packetty House • Frances H. Burnett
... is real for what is sham. It is true that a very young man may think the wig of an actress is her hair. But it is equally true that a child yet younger may call the hair of a negro his wig. Just because the woolly savage is remote and barbaric he seems to be unnaturally neat and tidy. Everyone must have noticed the same thing in the fixed and almost offensive color of all unfamiliar things, tropic birds and tropic blossoms. Tropic birds look like staring toys out of a toy-shop. Tropic flowers simply look like artificial flowers, like things ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... board, in a quiet and sedate manner, though they were evidently merry fellows, for we saw them laughing and joking among themselves. Their huts were larger and better built than any we had lately seen, and those we visited were remarkably clean and tidy; yet one of the missionaries whose acquaintance we had made, and who could speak a little English, told us that the people a few years ago were as savage as any of those in that part of the Pacific. We bought a dozen ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... houses climb up and down the steep hill, the whole place is involved in their beauty and sanctity, our hearts are satisfied and our eyes engaged on behalf of a place at once so old and picturesque and yet so neat and tidy and always ready to ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... table and seized him angrily in her hands, certain that he had forsaken his own little pan of water to bathe in the milk. But when she had looked him over carefully, and found him dry and tidy from top to toe, she let him go again, forgetting to feel of the white oil-cloth upon which he had been promenading, and which was spattered with milk ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... the diplomatic Mr. Hogg, who was well acquainted with his neighbour's tidy and methodical habits—"I s'pose you couldn't lend me your barrow for half an hour? The wheel's ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... than I used to, they seemed to think I must be rich and showed me marked attention, and made many inquiries about their neighbors who started for California about the same time I did. The young ladies smiled pleasantly when near me, and put on their best white aprons, looking very tidy and bright, far superior to any of the ladies I had seen in my crooked route from San Francisco through Acapulco, Panama, the West Indies ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... of fact, they became close companions at sight. There were certain affinities between them. Elizabeth, for example, although perhaps not so habitually sticky as The Kid, like her didn't seem able to remain clean or tidy for longer than half an hour at a time. Also, Elizabeth believing in Signs, The Kid revered her for her mysticism—about the only person who ever did. She used to beg to be allowed to study her Dream Book, and every evening before bedtime would go into the kitchen and—sitting ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... searched my pockets, and gave her the remnants of the bread and bacon I had brought from the Rappahannock post. Better still, I remembered that I had in my breast a little flask of eau-de-vie, and a mouthful of it revived her greatly. She put her hands to her head, and began to tidy her dishevelled hair, which is a sure sign in a woman that ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... of our development. The once tidy house became a place where angels would have feared to tread in the dark. Building blocks and trains of cars and fire engines and a rocking horse were everywhere, to trip the feet of the unwary. ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... dressed, made their beds, rubbed their metal chamber-service as bright as silver—a remarkable contrast in that respect to the metal dinner dishes—dusted and cleaned the ward, which was usually kept remarkably tidy and clean. About half-past six breakfast was on the table. This meal consisted of very weak tea and dry bread for the majority, with an egg, or half-an-ounce of butter for the few who were supposed to be dangerously ill or dying. In the interval between the breakfast time and nine o'clock ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... the marriage had taken place. There were letters for both the men, and they carried them out to a grass knoll on the edge of the forest some quarter of a mile away from the little village of tin huts which shone in the sunshine like a tidy kitchen, as Fielding was used to say. Drake read his through, and said to Fielding, 'You have ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... travelling, we stopped all night at a half-breed's house, where they had a large fire-place made of mud, which was just like a solid piece of stone; they had a bright fire, and everything appeared nice and tidy within; a woman was making bannock, and when she had the dough prepared, she took a frying pan and put the cake in and stood it up before the fire. This is the way they do all their baking, and then she fried some nice white fish ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... "They're all here. All except Dunn. You remember Dunn? Little thick-set chap who played half. He always had his hair quite tidy and parted exactly in the middle all through ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... a voice, and sure enough it was Bill back to us again, trig and tidy from hospital, in a new uniform, new boots and with that air of importance which can only be the privilege of a man who has seen strange sights ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... the field-glasses I had laid down in a corner, and returned to get them. In the room were Maga and the woman Anna, who had appointed herself Gloria Vanderman's maid; they were apparently about to sweep the floor and tidy the place, but as I crossed the room an older gipsy woman entered by the door, and she and Maga promptly drove Anna out through the window after my party. Then the old woman came close to me, her beady bright eyes fixed on mine, and went through the suggestive gipsy ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... of a free society to advance in its standards of what is deemed reasonable and right. Representing as it does a living principle, due process is not confined within a permanent catalogue of what may at a given time be deemed the limits of the essentials of fundamental rights. To rely on a tidy formula for the easy determination of what is a fundamental right for purposes of legal enforcement may satisfy a longing for certainty but ignores the movements of a free society. * * * The real clue to the problem confronting the judiciary ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... tidy while I am out. When I come back, I must see the fire bright, the hearth swept, and the kettle boiling; no dust on the table or chairs, the windows clear, the floor clean, and the heather in blossom—which last comes of sprinkling it with water three times a day. When you are hungry, ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... Mallet answered. "She is independent, quite; has a tidy little income of her own—six or seven hundred a year—and she could choose her own society. But she went in for this mission fad early; she didn't intend to marry, she said; so she would like to have some work to do in life. Girls suffer like that, nowadays. In her case, the malady took ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... precise place where our young belles have lately worn stuffed humming-birds, making him look as if dressed out for a party. Hum's most favorite perch was the back of the great rocking-chair, which, being covered by a tidy, gave some hold into which he could catch his little claws. There he would sit, balancing himself cleverly if its occupant chose to swing to and fro, and seeming to be listening to ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... them. That's where the perplexity of the whole thing comes in. If only they weren't such good chaps! If only they were like the Prussian officers to their men, then we'd just take on a revolution as well as the war, and make everything tidy at once. But they are decent, they are charming.... Only they do not think hard, and they do not understand that doing a job properly means doing it as directly and thought-outly as you possibly can. They won't worry about things. If their tempers were worse perhaps their work might be better. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... at sea in a vessel like this, and a day like this, when the men are all clean and tidy, and the bell rings for prayers, and all hands are assembled aft to listen to the captain as he reads the Church Service. It seems like a family scene. It reminds me of dear old Minister and days gone by, when he used to call us ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... one of them there is a cozy cupboard, where the woman-usher (in a neat muslin cap with pink ribbons) keeps the candies and cakes she sells to the audience between the acts. Upon the poor little profits of her office here this honest woman lives, and keeps herself as tidy as if she had ample pin-money. She thrusts a little wooden footstool under the feet of each woman in the audience, and is amply repaid with a sou at the end of the evening. The footstool is welcome, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... followed by other more cautious footsteps that grew delicately and even courteously deliberate as they approached. At which the young girl, in some new sense of decorum, drew in her pretty head, glanced around the room quickly, reset the tidy on her father's chair, placed the resplendent accordion like an ornament in the exact centre of the table, and then vanished into the hall as Mr. Harkutt entered ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... be left tidy. This also is a matter of honour. The doors are unlocked always in order that people who may need hospitality, in case of distress, can find shelter. Blankets can be borrowed. Wood is usually provided for firing and there may ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... documents," he said gravely. "How much of it she owns will have to be determined by an attorney. But I guess," he added, looking down at Nan with a kindly smile, "that the property she holds here is worth a tidy sum, several thousand dollars at least. Of course the orange grove itself is ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... child'; and the next she's at 'stormy', and woe betide you if you so much as drop your serviette at dinner, or happen to sneeze in the elocution class! Miss Edie's ripping! She doesn't teach much—only one or two classes. She does the housekeeping, and sees we keep our clothes tidy, and change our wet stockings, and all that sort ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... barren slope and ridges and mountain, she did not feel that she hated them. Instead, she saw that the yellow of the desert, the brown of the slopes, and the black of the distant granite ledges basseting from bleak hills were more beautiful than the tidy little plots of tilled ground she used to think so lovely. There was something hypnotic in these bald distances. She could not read, when she was out like this; she could only look and think ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... It chanced that "Tidy," as we will call him, was the first speaker who had something to say. He had a reason for talking, for some evil genius had followed him for two days. The yarn is best told in his own words, so far as they ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... hate to go down on the street to get it. Who wears the diamonds in this town? Why, Winnie, the Wiretapper's wife, and Bella, the Buncosteerer's bride. New Yorkers can be worked easier than a blue rose on a tidy. The only thing that bothers me is I know I'll break the cigars in my vest pocket when I get my clothes all full ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... you can; only be quiet, and let Rose go and take her iron and be made tidy, and then we will see what we can find for supper," said the old lady as she trotted away, followed by a volley of directions for ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... "is a votary of the arts; she has inherited her fond father's passion for the unattainable. Luckily, however, she also recently inherited a tidy legacy from her grandmother; and having seen the Leonardo, on which its discoverer had placed a price far beyond my reach, she took a step which deserves to go down to history: she invested her whole inheritance in the purchase of the picture, thus enabling me to spend my closing ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... may be gathered from the following anecdote:—Mr. Rawnsley's sister came in from a late evening walk, and said, 'O Mrs. D—-, have you seen the wonderful sunset?' The good lady turned sharply round and, drawing herself to her full height, as if mortally offended, answered: 'No, miss; I'm a tidy cook, I know, and "they say" a decentish body for a landlady, but I don't knaw nothing about sunsets or them sort of things, they've never been in my line.' Her reminiscence of Wordsworth was as worthy of tradition as it was explanatory, from her point of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... period this poor woman had suffered a mental torture, the severest, perhaps, to which her sex can be subjected. She had seen the man she loved—and, though she was only a drudge, and not by any means a tidy one, she could love very dearly—she had seen, I say, the man she loved gradually learning to despise her affection, and to estrange himself from her society. She was a good deal afraid of "Gentleman Jim"—perhaps ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... that Cockneys be, Among your gardens tidy, If you would ask a maid to tea, D'ye call the girl "a lydy"? And if you'd sing of Mr. Fry, And need a rhyme to "swiper," Are you so cruel as to try To fill the ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... was tinted brown and well frotted; each chair was furnished with a bit of carpet bound round the edges; the sofa, simple enough, was clean as that in the bedroom of some worthy bourgeoise. All these things denoted the tidy ways of a small mind and the thrift of a poor man. A bureau was there, in which to put away the studio implements, a table for breakfast, a sideboard, a secretary; in short, all the articles necessary to a painter, neatly arranged and very clean. The stove participated in this Dutch cleanliness, ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... be a big job, chief, but there is no doubt we must lay in a great store of it. Well, there is plenty of timber down in the valley, and with ten horses we can bring up a tidy lot ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... done all sorts of things. How do you like the look of it? It's a decent little place, isn't it? We must get Mrs. Templestowe to put us up to some of her nice little dodges about furniture and so on, such as they have at the other house. She and Mrs. Page have made it all tidy for us, and put up lots of nice little curtains and things. They must have worked awfully hard, too. Wasn't it ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... looking back at the clean and tidy kitchen with considerable satisfaction. She had done it all herself and it would have pleased even ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... think, sir, it was a cannibal island," he observed. "All so tight and tidy-like here. It would take a ship's guns to batter her down. A man might dig under these here two gate logs, if no one was against him. Like ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was decided. She prepared their Sunday morning breakfast and cooked it quite skillfully. Her appearance was now more tidy and she displayed greater energy than on the previous evening, when doubtless she was weary from her long walk. Mrs. Conant was well pleased with the girl and found the relief from clearing the table and "doing" the dishes very grateful. Their Sunday dinner, which Sarah prepared unaided ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... had finished and had made everything tidy in the room, and he had gone to the cellar and replenished the coal-hod, he told her something of his own life. For a little while she listened, but soon the room became blurred to her and she sank farther and farther among the ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower, and a troop of tidy happy villagers please me better than the finest banditti ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... near to her, and talked to her in a calm and soothing manner, and Jennie seemed really distressed, as she vainly tried to divert her from her grief by emptying the treasures of her pocket before her. The room was as clean as it could possibly be, and the persons of its occupants neat and tidy, but every thing betokened severe and pinching poverty. The bed for the three was in one corner, and this, with one table and a few chairs, comprised all their worldly goods. The healthy girl was washing for those who never ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... fortunes these ten years," said the Rue Saint Jacques; "it is only just. And now, neighbor, we may look to see Noel the Handsome and Catherine de Vaucelles make a match of it. The girl has a tidy dowry, they say; old Jehan proved wealthier than the quarter suspected. But death of my life, yes! You may see his tomb in the Innocents' yonder, with weeping seraphim and a yard of Latin on it. I warrant ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... for you-alls to stop here. The Injuns have got this section combed out clean. You couldn't get enough plumes around here to pay for your bacon. Now, I knows of a tidy little island 'bout twelve miles south of here where there's stacks of the birds. If you start right now you'll hit it before them pesky varmints of redskins find it. I'm telling you in pay for that tobacco. Max Hilliard ain't the kind of man ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... is a good-looking man; spruce and dapper, and very tidy. He is somewhat below middle height, being about five feet four; but he makes up for the inches which he wants by the dignity with which he carries those which he has. It is no fault of his own if he has not a commanding eye, for he studies hard ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... he observed, as he handed his new guest the change out of a one hundred dollar bill. "Wal, it's a tidy layout;—ninety-five dollars, mister; a dollar a drink. You'll find that c'rect—best ranch around these parts. Say," he went on, "the ol' blind hoss has hunched it together ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... keeping herself spotless. When her hands were clean she could do nothing, but felt as if everything would slip through her fingers. If she was told to do her hair on Sunday, to wash and to put on tidy clothes, she felt the whole day as if she had been sewn into a sack. She only seemed to be happy when, smeared and wet with washing the boards, the windows, the silver, or the doors, she had become almost ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... was half grey, mostly covered by a white cap with frills. A clean wrapper and apron, both of blue print, over a blue winsey petticoat, blue stockings, and strong shoes completed her dress. A book lay on her lap: always when she had finished her morning's work, and made her house tidy, she sat down to have her comfort, as she called it. The moment she saw Gibbie she rose. Had he been the angel Gabriel, come to tell her she was wanted at the throne, her attention could not have been more immediate or thorough. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... tidy," she acknowledged. "It used to make Joan fair sick when we shared rooms on tour. Joan is so different from me." Suddenly she threw aside pretence and dropped down on her knees before the armchair, squatting back on her heels to look at Mabel. "That is what I do want you to understand," she said, ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... much the cause she had for strictures upon my personal appearance at the time, to take that opportunity of defending the general character of boyhood. So we surrendered at discretion, and went up-stairs to make ourselves tidy, receiving before the second gong visits of inspection from nurse, who had in the meantime tied up our nosegays for us, and placed the lace paper round the one I had ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... we were at Kursk. An hour of waiting, a glass of vodka, a tidy-up and a wash, and cabbage soup. Change to another train. The carriage was crammed full. Immediately after Kursk I made friends with my neighbours: a landowner from Harkov, as jocose as Sasha K.; a lady who had just had an operation in Petersburg; a police captain; an officer from Little Russia; ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the farther corner of the room lay the sick child. He was a boy of about twelve years, and evidently in the last stages of consumption. By his side, bending over him as if to catch his almost inaudible words, sat a tidy, youthful-looking colored woman, his mother, and the wife of the negro we had met at the 'still.' Playing on the floor, was a younger child, perhaps five years old, but while the faces of the mother and the sick lad were of the hue of charcoal, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Miss Clyde said, entering the room followed by Delia with a brass kettle of steaming water, "make yourself tidy ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... theological errors, in secular matters they present an example of industry and thrift which the people of the State might advantageously imitate. They have a tract of land which they have cultivated for about three years and which has yielded profitable crops. The well-built houses, perfect fences and tidy dooryards give the place a homelike air such as we had not seen before in Texas. The dinner was a regular old-fashioned New England farmer's meal, comprising an abundance of everything, served with faultless neatness. The entire ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... they are neglected! If you have any pride as a housekeeper, be clean. Hot water, soap, a cleansing powder and a little effort, and your pots and pans will be a credit to you. Have a system. Take time. Keep your kitchen tidy. Don't let work accumulate from meal to meal or from day to day. It is astonishing how lazy and dirty some women are. We have seen young women on the street, dressed tidily and smartly, and we have gone into the homes of these women and have been disgusted ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... always stirred a strong emotion within her and seemed to drew her irresistibly to them. So she jumped out of bed and dressed herself as quickly as she could, but it took her some time even then, for she was careful now to be always clean and tidy. ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... a tidy sum saved out of the housekeeping money. She was naturally thrifty, and Orville had never been niggardly. Her meals when Orville was on the road, had been those sketchy, haphazard affairs with which women content themselves when their household ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Frances did not know of her mother's efforts to tidy Gilbert, but very early in their engagement she began her own abortive attempts to make him brush his hair, tie his tie straight and avoid made-up ones, attend to the buttons on his coat, and all the rest. It would seem that for a time at any ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the centre-table with its highly prized ornament, Thorpe gained the chair in which, if he did not lean against the tidy, he was permitted to sit. He held himself bolt upright and warmed his hands at the stove. "It is good to be out," he said, cheerfully, "and good to come in again. A day like this makes one appreciate the ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... time, Alice had found her way into a tidy little room with a table in the window, and on it a fan and two or three pairs of tiny white kid-gloves; she took up the fan and a pair of the gloves and was just going to leave the room, when her eyes fell upon a little bottle ...
— Alice in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... and I've picked up some tidy odds against our friend Carwell. I'm taking his end, and I think he's going ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... twenty years. He withdrew his savings from the Explosion City Third Federal Bank, stopped in a display room and informed a somewhat surprised clerk he was taking the electric runabout with the blue bonnet. The ground-car, complete with extras, retailed for a tidy ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... trance-somely! Then the chambermaids, that clean the rooms, Would come to the windows and rest on their brooms, With their saucy caps and their crisped hair, And they'd toss their heads in the fragrant air, And say to each other—"Just look down there, At the nice young man, so tidy and small, Who is paid for writing on nothing at all, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... was equal to his industry. He arrayed himself in the plainest manner, although he aimed to look neat and tidy. His board was simple and cheap, and everything about his business was graduated on the most economical principles. In order to save expense, and at the same time show the public that he was not proud, and above his ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... she said, imploringly, "my old dress is quite tidy. I put new braid round it yesterday, and I would so much rather you got a new great-coat. Even Aunt Madge noticed that your ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with her needle for days before the school opened, preparing the necessary clothing, that her children might appear neat and tidy. And when the day came round, Mehetabel set out with Jimmy on her back, and her younger sister by her side. When they returned, Mrs. Garfield and Thomas eagerly questioned the scholars, who declared that they had had "such a good time." Full ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... know. It's so different from what I expected. Yes, the lake is beautiful, and I like the shape of those hills." They were standing on Rousseau's Island, and he pointed to the long, severe outlines of the Savoy side. "But the town looks so stiff and tidy, somehow—so Protestant; it has a self-satisfied air. No, I don't like it; it reminds me ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... is a school; any one with an education would know that. Just look!—ain't you glad yo' Uncle Bob slicked you up some, now you see what them ladies has done fo' to make this place tidy?" ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... been disperate doings last night up at the house. We were all hearing, in the morn yesterday, as how Miss Anty and Mr Martin, God bless him!—were to make a match of it,—as why wouldn't they, ma'am? for wouldn't Mr Martin make her a tidy, dacent, good husband?" ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... nodded. "You peel like a fighting man, you've a tidy arm an' a goodish spread o' shoulder, likewise your legs is clean an' straight, but your skin's womanish, Barnabas, womanish, an' your muscles soft wi' books. So, lad!—are ye ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... do," Uncle John would say, "is to keep the garden clean and tidy, and to water the plants every morning so that they may be very green." And Toby would go and whisper this to the baby, and she would stare at the ceiling with large, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... have an extensive library of an exceedingly miscellaneous character. He has an especial liking for books which bear the traces of former distinguished owners. He himself has pointed out that, 'as a rule, tidy and self-respecting people do not even write their names on their fly-leaves, still less do they scribble marginalia. Collectors love a clean book, but a book scrawled on may have other merits. Thackeray's countless caricatures add a delight to his old school books; the comments of Scott are ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... of all sorts accumulates rapidly. The "Famous Cigarette Manufactory of Christian Fischelowitz from South Russia" is about as dingy, as unhealthy, as untidy, as dusty a place as can be found within the limits of tidy, well-to-do Munich. The room is lighted by a window and a half-glazed door, both opening upon a dark court. The walls, originally whitewashed, are of a deep rich brown, attributable partly to the constant fumes and exhalations of tobacco, partly to the fine brown dust of the ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... describing apples or potatoes. Hedge-picks, shoes. Hags or aggarts, haws. Rauch, smoke (comp. German and Scotch). Pond-keeper, dragon-fly. Stupid, ill-conditioned. To plim, to swell, as bacon boiled. To side up, to put tidy. Logie, poorly, out-of-sorts. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... tidy out of darning-cotton," answered Kittie. "That's pretty and cheap, and I know a lovely stitch, and can ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... hours. And then the professional colour! Madame said it was like living among the Sandwich Islanders. And so, to an extent, it was. My father had left a very tidy bit of money—a very tidy bit indeed, and we resolved to move. But where? That was the problem. For I was not as other men. I could not live like them—in the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... wuz a character uneek and standin' alone. When she wuz made the mould wuz throwed away and never used afterwards. She follered Dorothy round like her shadow and helped make the beds and keep the rooms tidy, a sort of chamber-maid, or ruther chamber-woman, for she wuz sixty if ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... that cry of mine did make, to be sure! Grandmamma was wide-awake in a moment, looking very much distressed, and laying her hand on the bell. This troubled me very much; for hadn't Jane told me when she brushed my hair and made me tidy, that I was to go down and be a good girl, "and do things pretty" in the drawing-room, and would she scold me if I was sent away for crying and making a noise? But Uncle Hugh came to my rescue, threw away his paper, and cuddled me up in his great strong arms almost like papa. And he showed me ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... great yarn as life goes. Mostly ordinary. But there's a deal of life in it, in its way. There's a pile of hope busted, and hope busted isn't a pleasant thing. Makes you think a deal. However, Will Henderson and I—we can't kick a lot when you look around. I'm earning a good wage, and I've got a tidy job—that don't look like quitting. And Will—he's netting eighty a month out of his pelts. After all things don't much count, do they? Fifty or sixty years hence our doings won't cut any ice. We're down, out, and nature shuts out memory. That's the best of it. We shan't know anything. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... her room together always carried me back to a dead and gone generation. There was a rag carpet on the floor, of the "hit-or-miss" pattern; the chairs were ancient Shaker rockers, some with homely "shuck" bottoms, and each had a tidy of snowy thread or crochet cotton fastened primly over the back. The high bed and bureau and a shining mahogany table suggested an era of "plain living" far, far remote from the day of Turkish rugs and Japanese bric-a-brac, and Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... hert greet tae see him," Mrs. Macfadyen said to me one day, "sae booed an' disjackit, him that wes that snod (tidy) and firm. His hair's turned white in a month, and he's awa' tae naething in his claithes. But least said is sunest mended. It's no richt tae interfere wi' another's sorrow, an' it wad be an awfu' sin tae misca' a young lassie. We maun juist houp that Flora 'll sune come back, for if ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... not," Mr. Embleton said. "I intend to take a lodging for him as close to the dock-gate as I can. Perhaps you may know of a tidy place." ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... did not extend beyond Mrs. Finnigan's establishment, where they took two or three rooms and set up housekeeping in a humble way. Margaret, who was a tidy housewife, kept the floor of her apartments as white as your hand, the tin plates on the dresser as bright as your lady-love's eyes, and the cooking-stove as neat as the machinery on a Sound steamer. When she was not rubbing the stove with lamp-black she was cooking ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... slept in the box-stall once inhabited by the prize stallion, Caleb the Second, now deceased, and you would have been surprised to see what a tidy place he made of it by tacking up two or three anatomical pictures from the Police Gazette, and putting in a folding bed,—or, more strictly speaking, a bed that could be folded. It consisted of three discarded horse ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... fishing or hunting, and, where they possess rice land, in ploughing for rice. They are said to be quiet, temperate, jealous, suspicious, some say treacherous, and most bigoted Mussulmen. The women are very small, keep their dwellings very tidy, and weave mats and baskets from reeds and palm leaves. They are clothed in cotton or silk from the ankles to the throat, and the men, even in the undress of their own homes, usually wear the sarong, a picturesque tightish petticoat, consisting of a wide piece of stuff kept on by a very ingenious ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... aunt Corinne scampered up the log steps and Grandma Padgett led Fairy Carrie; after them. A plain tidy woman met them at the door and took them into a square room. There were the homemade carpet, the centre-table with daguerreotypes standing open and glaring such light as they had yet to reflect, samplers and colored ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... palace, I could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there were little windows in it. It was beautifully clean inside and as tidy as possible. There was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers. On the walls were some coloured pictures of Biblical subjects. Abraham in red, going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow, cast into a den of green lions, were most prominent. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... he wanted was a house exactly like Sam Clark's, which was exactly like every third new house in every town in the country: a square, yellow stolidity with immaculate clapboards, a broad screened porch, tidy grass-plots, and concrete walks; a house resembling the mind of a merchant who votes the party ticket straight and goes to church once a month ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... supposed, is looked forward to with no small amount of anxiety; very clean and tidy are the little shoes placed by the young expectants; and their parents—who have threatened and promised in St. Nicholas's name for a year past—take care that, with one sort of present or the other, the shoes ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to be met with in the place usually occupied in other subjects, by that article of dress; but, from head to foot she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle as it were with her garments, ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... her bouncings and flinging of pots and kettles when she is in a temper. It is the basement tries her, poor soul. She says she has never been used to it. Her first husband was in the tin trade, and they had a tidy ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... start, thinking I heard his footstep on the landing. I went down to Waterloo Bridge to drown myself. I don't know why I didn't; I almost wish I had, although I have got on pretty well since, and get a pretty tidy weekly screw." ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore |
