"Ill-fitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... end of the hall, sipping whiskey with a fine air of indifference, but glancing apprehensively toward the crowd of women in the opposite corner that surround the bride, a pale little shop-girl with a pleading, winsome face. From somewhere unexpectedly appears a big man in an ill-fitting coat and skullcap, flanked on either side by a fiddler, who scrapes away and away, accompanying the improvisator in a plaintive minor key as he halts before the bride and intones his lay. With many a shrug of stooping shoulders and queer ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... and for a moment was motionless, a man deformed and diminished in stature by the ill-fitting surface suit. Expressionless, he looked down, without psychological advantage, at the seated civilian holding the partially ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... dabbed on hastily was plainly visible upon her face; the round, soft arms were hidden beneath ill-fitting sleeves of some crapey material, the thought of which put my teeth on edge. I wished her intention had been stronger. Instead, relenting, she offered me her flowery cheek, which I saluted gingerly, the taste of ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... looked unflinchingly the clear, steady blue eye of the woodsman. And so we knew. This old soldier had come in from the Long Trail to bear again the flag of his country. If his clothes were old and ill-fitting, at least they were his best, and the largeness of the empty sleeve belittled the too-largeness of the other. In all this ribald, laughing, irreverent, commonplace, semi-vicious crowd he was the one note of sincerity. To him this was a real occasion, and the exalted reverence ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... suddenly smiling as if he were all lighted up within—the day when she had said to her husband afterwards: "Ah, he's an angel!" Not yet a year—the beginning of last October term, in fact. He was different from all the other boys; not that he was a prodigy with untidy hair, ill-fitting clothes, and a clever tongue; but because of something—something—Ah! well—different; because he was—he; because she longed to take his head between her hands and kiss it. She remembered so well the day that longing first came to her. She was giving him tea, it was quite early in the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... looking over the back of the car, saw Jaffery in characteristic attitude, shaking a strange man by the shoulders and laughing in delighted welcome. He was a squat, broad, powerful-looking fellow, with a heavy black beard trimmed to a point, and wearing a curiously ill-fitting suit of tweeds and a bowler-hat. I noticed that he carried neither stick nor gloves. The ecstasies of encounter having subsided, Jaffery ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Haskell lying in that dank, musty shack, bleeding, unconscious, for hours. How long he lay there no man shall say. We may picture him wandering forth, in an ill-fitting suit of civilian clothes, demented, broken, dazed. Of his wanderings, likewise, who shall tell the full truth? He visited a place called Blytheville and took the name of Blythe. He visited great cities, so he said. He was in the west. He was in jail for vagrancy. ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... In many cases it will be a method of living to which he is totally unsuited. But once he is embarked on it the clogs are about his feet, and it is hard to break away and begin all over again. And this ill-fitting of men to jobs may not even embrace so wide a divergence as that between one kind of activity and business and another. A young man may be in the right business for him, and yet in the wrong department of it. In any case, ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... the word was a meaningless string of four letters, and the thing she supposed it stood for as fantastic and far-off as the recurring fragment of a dream, which seems so vivid in the dreaming and is a broken kaleidoscope of ill-fitting colours on awaking. She went to bed and slept soundly, better than ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... certainly had what is called the remains of a fine woman about her, but her face had so many marks of care, of evil passions, and of irregular living, that it was perhaps more repulsive than if it had been absolutely plain in features; her dress was slatternly and ill-fitting, her gray hair untidily gathered under a dingy black cap, with bright, though soiled yellow flowers stuck in it; her eyes, which had still some brightness, had a fierce, hungry expression; and the very hands, thin ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... each his share of good things. He was a most good-natured, courteous old gentleman, although his costume consisted of nothing but a few bunches of ferns. The number of guests increased steadily; besides the real heathen in unadorned beauty, there were half-civilized Christians, ugly in ill-fitting European clothes, of which they were visibly vain, although they made blots on the beautiful picture of native life. All around the square ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... pay for a prescription. The air was filled with the mingled odor of the boiling fruit and of burning sealing-wax. The cans were acting with outrageous perversity, for they were second-hand and the covers ill-fitting. Her blood was almost up to fainting heat, and she was worried all over. She had to do all her preserving in a pint cup, as she expressed it in her contempt for the diminutive proportions of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... executing his ungrateful and disastrous task is no less clear.[8] But the net result of his meddlesome benevolence has been that now for two centuries and a half the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance has worn the ill-fitting disguise prepared for him by a literary 'breeches-maker.' In fact, Michael Angelo the poet suffered no less from his grandnephew than Michael Angelo the fresco painter from ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... reasoning, too, Protestant vindicators of religion are at an immense disadvantage. They are hampered by principles, which they should never have adopted. Private judgment is to them what Saul's armor was to David, ill-fitting, and cumbersome. To borrow an illustration from Archbishop Whately, "They are obliged to fight infidelity with their left hand; their right hand being tied behind them." One of the specialties of this ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... ill-fitting black clothes approached Moonson's table, interrupting his reflections with thoughts that seemed designed to disturb and distract him out of sheer perversity. So even here there were flies in every ointment, and no dream of ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in his odd, ill-fitting uniform of the Legion, tunic unbuttoned, collarless of shirt, his bright, thick hair, now of decent length, ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... heart long, and in his life strive, to follow the Perfect Example in all things. But the temper which has been indulged for half a lifetime cannot be easily and always overcome, and habits which have grown through the years cannot be cast aside and put out of sight in a moment, like an ill-fitting garment which will never trouble more. Life was, in a way, a struggle ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Egypt. The scanty beard and small eyes; the flat, fleshy nose; the indeterminable, mask-like expression; all were faithfully reproduced by the celebrated academician—and humorist—who had executed the painting. Soft black hat, flat black tie, and ill-fitting frock coat might readily have been identified by the respectable but unfashionable tradesmen ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... could be seen—was a heavy Winchester rifle, which was slung at his back. If he was a soldier, he was a very fancy one, for his cavalry uniform, although in strict keeping with the regulations, was made of the finest material; he wore white gauntlet gloves on his hands; and instead of the ungainly, ill-fitting army shoe he wore fine boots, the heels of which were armed with small silver spurs. The troopers thought from his dress and carriage that he must be an officer, and when he drew rein in front of the station they stood at "attention" and ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... practitioner should draw the attention of the patient to it then and there, and so guard himself against actions for malpraxis should paralysis of the muscles ensue. Later, the nerve may become involved in callus, or be damaged by the pressure of ill-fitting splints. Weakness or paralysis of the extensors of the wrist and hand results, giving rise to the characteristic "wrist-drop." The actions of the muscles should always be tested before applying splints, and each time the apparatus is removed or readjusted, to assure that no undue pressure ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... not far from morning. In time the gray dawn came creeping in at the window, until at length the chinks between the logs in the little square-cut window and the ill-fitting door were flooded with a sea of sunlight. As this light grew stronger, Law slowly turned and looked at the face beside him. Out of the tangle of dark hair there blazed still two eyes, eyes which looked steadily up at the ceiling, refusing to turn either to the right or to the left. He calmly pulled ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... a gray cloth gown, ill-fitting and of coarse material; but no costume could destroy the fairy-like perfection of her form or the daintiness of her exquisite features. With downcast eyes and a troubled expression she stood modestly before them until Patsy ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... same. He now was in stiff, ill-fitting and exclaimingly new clothing. A new dark hat oppressed his perspiring brow, new and pointed shoes agonized his feet, a new white collar and a tie tortured his neck. He had been owner of these things no longer than overnight. ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... beards were long and faded, and tangled like autumn corn silk. Their gaunt, gnarled, and knotted hands held the reins over their equally sad and sober teams. The women looked worn and thin, and sat bent forward over the children in their laps. The dust had settled upon their ill-fitting dresses. There were no smart carriages, no touch of gay paint, no glittering new harnesses; the whole procession was keyed down among the most desolate and sorrowful ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... more especially in the matter of foot-gear that the working-classes in France show to advantage. My friend noticed with admiration the well- stockinged, well-shod children, all having good strong shoes—stockings evidently bought or made for them, not the ill-fitting belongings of others, gifts of charity or bargains of the pawnshop. The men and women, too, are uniformly well shod, with strong, clean, home-knit stockings. Again, the implied sense of security in these unprotected gardens and wayside orchards is a novelty to the English mind. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... for hats, the same size all the way up, and the shoes that seemed to be made of sole leather, and which scraped the skin off the ankles. O, if this government ever does go to Gehenna, as some people contend it will, sometime, it will be as a penalty for issuing such ill-fitting shoddy clothing to its brave soldiers, who never did the government any harm. I carried the lot of clothing to my tent, feeling sick and faint. The idea of wearing them among folks was almost more than I could bear to think of. I laid them on my bunk, and looked ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... dress was very noticeable. Czerny, his pupil, has described how he found him at home on his first visit, with his shock of black hair and his unshaven chin, and his ears stuffed with cotton-wool, whilst his clothes seemed to be made of so rough a material, and were so ill-fitting that he resembled nothing so much as a Robinson Crusoe. It is related that once, when he was engaging a servant, the man stated as a reason for leaving his last situation that he failed to dress his master's hair to the latter's satisfaction. 'It is no ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... assume that the average American of the better class is not imbued with the sporting spirit. He wears it like an ill-fitting coat. I find a singular feature among the Americans in connection with their sports. Thus if something is known and recognized as sport, people take to it with avidity, but if the same thing is called labor or exercise, it is considered hard work, shirked and avoided. This is very ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... commanders. There was greatness: there was that which lifted men to such deeds as write man's name across the firmament! And, strange to say, Lieutenant Lapenotiere recognised something of it in this queer old man, in dressing-gown and ill-fitting wig, who took snuff and interrupted now with a curse and anon with a "bravo!" as the Secretary read. He was absurd: but he was no common man, this Lord Barham. He had something of the ineffable ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Walter Gray's glance roamed over his young daughter. He saw nothing of her dreary attire. He saw only the spiritual face, over-pale, the slender, young, unformed body, graceful as a half-opened flower in its ill-fitting covering, the slender feet that had a suggestion of race, the toil-worn hands the fingers of which ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... said I, "you may try yourselves by this standard. You love dress too much when you care more for your outward adornings than for your inward dispositions,—when it afflicts you more to have torn your dress than to have lost your temper,—when you are more troubled by an ill-fitting gown than by a neglected duty,—when you are less concerned at having made an unjust comment, or spread a scandalous report, than at having worn a passee bonnet,—when you are less troubled at the thought of being found at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... sometimes ludicrous in form; citizens in lumpish robes and long-tailed caps; ladies in stiff and foldless brocade hoops and stomachers; artisans in striped and close-adhering hose and egg-shaped padded jerkin; soldiers in lumbering armour-plates, ill-fitted over ill-fitting leather, a shapeless shell of iron, bulging out and angular, in which the body was buried as successfully as in the robes of the magistrates. Thus we see the men and women of the Renaissance in the works of all its painters; heavy in Ghirlandajo, vulgarly jaunty ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... stolid back in front of them. The ill-fitting dust-coat masked the outline of the figure; the cap was so low on the head that the ears ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... interminable white waste before vanishing past Holl's shop in the direction of the Town Hall. She chiefly recalled the Square under snow; cold mornings, and the coldness of the oil-cloth at the window, and the draught of cold air through the ill-fitting sash (it was put right now)! These visions of herself seemed beautiful to her; her childish existence seemed beautiful; the storms and tempests of her girlhood seemed beautiful; even the great sterile expanse of tedium when, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... mother sometimes wept when I was rebuked. Perhaps she was disappointed in me. But she had no power to make things better. I felt that I was a beast of burden, fed only in order that I might be useful; and the dull life irked me like an ill-fitting harness. There was nothing ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... the lamp and crept down the narrow passage to the door of the back kitchen. His loud, even breathing sounded distinctly through the crannies of the ill-fitting door. Surely it was overloud. She listened to it. She could hear nothing else. Was his breathing a pretence? She opened the door noiselessly, and went in, shading the light with ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... alms. He looked around in some irritation, and with a sudden shock found himself confronted with the embodied proof of his somewhat stilted fancies. There, close beside him, his face altered and disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered by greasy ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry and wise for twelve revolving terms. Different occupations and varying interests ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... some tomb-dweller from Thebes. In the soft lamplight he looked like a fighting cherub, and it was a pity—in the interests of art—that the hairless pink and white face did not surmount a pair of wings rather than a rusty and ill-fitting dress suit. ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... a young woman with blond hair and an ill-fitting dress. She walked as in a dream, and there was a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... promises him a crown if he can find one—nine valets out of ten would make a misfit for half the money; and Robert instantly pays a tribute to the title of the play by discovering a wrinkle—equally an emblem of an "Old Maid" and an ill-fitting vest. This incident shows us that Sir Philip is an amateur in dress; but his predilection is further developed by his exit, which is made to scold his goldsmith for the careless setting of a lost diamond. The next scene takes us to the other ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... in the old days would have found little beauty in our grouping. I have our two photographs at hand in this bureau as I write, and they show me a gawky youth in ill-fitting ready-made clothing, and Nettie—Indeed Nettie is badly dressed, and her attitude is more than a little stiff; but I can see her through the picture, and her living brightness and something of that mystery of charm she ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... all the time," said the lady petulantly. "But you look quite handsome when you say it. Take off that ill-fitting coat. It isn't thick enough for winter, anyway. What in the world have you got round your waist? A belt? Why, that's a man's belt! And what have you got in it? Pistols? Horrors! Marie, take them away ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... a rough-looking fellow who appeared to be starving. He had a sack on his shoulder in which was gold-dust and nuggets worth $15,000. You should have seen him a few hours later—all perfumed and barbered, with shiny boots; costly, ill-fitting clothes and a marvelous display ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... is the man, and not the woman, who makes the false step; because it is the man who elects to marry when he is still very young. If he choose some ill-fitting, commonplace, and unresponsive nature to match his own, it is he who is bound in the course of time to learn his great mistake. When the splendid eagle shall have got his growth, and shall begin to soar up into the vault of heaven, the poor little barn-yard fowl that he once believed to be his ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... range, Stafford scrutinized his guest more narrowly. Quickly he took note of his ill-fitting clothes, cheap tie, frayed linen and shabby shoes. He hardly looked the kind of man likely to be burdened with heavy business responsibilities. Nodding sympathetically, so as to ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... but that was my delight. To make myself at home in an alien world was also within my talents; I had been practising it day and night for the past four years. To remain unconscious of my shabby and ill-fitting clothes when the rustle of silk petticoats in the schoolroom protested against them was a matter still within my moral reach. Half a dress a year had been my allowance for many seasons; even less, for as I did not grow much I could wear my dresses as long as they lasted. And ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... through the branches on the road above him. The archer was standing with folded arms, his bow jutting from over his shoulder, and the sun gleaming brightly upon his head-piece and the links of his chain-mail. Beside him stood his giant recruit, still clad in the home-spun and ill-fitting garments of the fuller of Lymington, with arms and legs shooting out of his scanty garb. Even as Alleyne watched them they turned upon their heels and plodded off together upon ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... being essentially ladies, but they have not much beauty to begin with—and their dress! It was chiefly made by their own sewing machine, with the assistance of the Bourne Parva mantua-maker, superintended by Jane, 'to prevent her from making it foolish'; and the effect, I grieve to say, is ill-fitting dowdiness, which becomes grotesque from their self-complacent belief that it displays the only graceful and sensible fashion in the place. It was laughable to hear them criticising every hat or costume they ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forenoon, and the whole family, except myself, sketched portions of it. Even Rosebud stood gravely sketching some of the inlaid figures of the pavement. As for me, I can but try to preserve some memorial of this beautiful edifice in ill-fitting words that never hit the mark. This morning visit was not my final one, for I went again after dinner and walked quite round the whole interior. I think I have not yet mentioned the rich carvings of the old oaken seats round the choir, and the curious mosaic ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dressed somewhat in a military fashion, with helmets or stiff shakos, ill-fitting uniform coats of red or blue cloth, oddly contrasting with the brown buckskin that covered ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... some lingering memory of her father's caress; but as she gazed at him with troubled eyes, the juvenile reprobate slipped back into the baby-boy that she had carried in her own childish arms such a short time ago, when the maternal responsibility had descended with the dead mother's ill-fitting dresses upon her lank girlish figure and scant virgin breast—and her hand ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... spend his days communing with the past in a lofty room with distempered walls and busts round them. That he should be forced to act, to decide, to be artful, to wrangle with maids, to make ends meet, to squeeze his long frame and explosive disposition into a Creeper Cottage where only an ill-fitting door separated him from the noise and fumes of the kitchen, was surely a cruel trick of Fate, and not less cruel because he had brought it on himself. That he should have thought he could run away as well as any man is merely a proof of his singleness of soul. A man who does that successfully ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the further room opens, and GERTRUDE comes in, then AGNES. The latter is in a rusty, ill-fitting, black, stuff, dress; her hair is tightly drawn from her brows; her face is haggard, her eyes are red and sunken. A strip of linen binds ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... delightful ease. Not a murmur nor even a movement hinted at interruption. The great Personage might have been the statue of one of his own princely ancestors stripped of a crusader's war harness, and put into an ill-fitting frock coat. The Assistant Commissioner felt as though he were at liberty to talk for an hour. But he kept his head, and at the end of the time mentioned above he broke off with a sudden conclusion, which, reproducing the opening statement, pleasantly surprised Sir Ethelred by its ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... a few days. But not they. They spattered their limp, ill-fitting garments with jest, and soon they had produced a poem in praise of the change. These are the verses which a Belgian soldier, clad in his fresh yellow, sang to us as we grouped around him ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... don't trouble themselves about the affairs of another world," said Fountain in a suave voice, as he stood in the lodging-house window, a bearded, broad-shouldered person, his hands thrust wilfully into the very baggy pockets of his ill-fitting light suit. "I won't worry your sister, and I don't suppose there'll be any children. But if there are, I really can't promise to make Catholics of them. And as for myself, I don't take things so easy as it's the fashion to ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of two wax candles was illuminating the bitterness of death upon a man's face. It was an old face, long, gaunt, clean-shaven, and the ill-fitting wig that gaped about the shrunken temples gave it the queer pinched look which tells of a starved belly. Eyes red-rimmed and staring, a long thin nose, and an unearthly pallor made it displeasing: the dropped jaw, showing the toothless gums, made ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... childish insolence that seemed to have taken possession of one who usually by no means lacked dignity, was merely the mask beneath which she concealed her own suffering. A grave motive was the source of the mirth by which she affected to be moved at the sight of her enemy's cloak. The grey, ill-fitting garment disfigured Barine, and she desired that the Queen should feel confident of surpassing her rival even in outward charms. No one, not even Cleopatra, could dispense with a protecting wrap in this cold draught, and nothing suited her better than the purple mantle ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... were so short, that there was considerably more of him above the belt than below it. On his head he wore a cap, somewhat like that of a jockey in shape, and his lower limbs were encased in tight but ill-fitting leggings. Altogether, this man was the most disreputable-looking schoolmaster that was ever seen ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... a very quiet night, here in Turner Road: the roysterers were in the better-lighted streets, and the sober folk were at home. And there was not a footstep on the pavements outside to confuse the little drama of sound that came down to her through the ill-fitting boards overhead. She could not explain afterwards why she did not interfere. I imagine that she hoped against hope that she was misinterpreting what she heard, and also that a kind of terror seized her which she found it ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... seem to be dull, uninteresting mortals, dressed in tight- fitting, and yet, somehow, ill-fitting, pantaloons, usually about three sizes too short, a small apron of blue ducking-an unbecoming garment that can only be described as a cross between a short jacket and a waistcoat - and a narrow-rimmed, prosy-looking ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... house. Her husband had gone to make some final preparations, of which there had been many. For one who expected to be unclothed that she might be clothed upon, she certainly made a tolerable to-do about the garment she was so soon to lay aside; especially seeing she often spoke of it as an ill-fitting garment—never with peevishness or complaint, only, as it seemed to me, with far more interest than it was worth. She had even, as afterwards appeared, given her husband—good, honest, dog-like man—full ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... ascended, and directly after the ill-fitting boards which formed the ceiling of his humble living-room creaked as he stepped upon them, and then there was a faint rustling as if he were removing leaves and stems of the Indian corn that was laid in company with other stores in what was undoubtedly ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... least a million dollars, and where the gentlemen who sat by the Princess entertained her for an hour or two by a calculation of the aggregate capital represented. New York also gave a ball at which the Princess appeared in an ill-fitting black silk dress with mock lace and jet ornaments, among several hundred toilets that proclaimed the refined republican simplicity of their owners at a cost of various hundred thousand dollars. After these hospitalities the Grand-ducal pair came on to Washington, where they became ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... eighteenth century. All night a fierce northeast snow-storm had been hissing and drifting through the frozen air, pelting angrily at the shuttered and curtained windows of the rich, and shrieking with scornful laughter as it forced its way through the ill-fitting casements and loose doors of the poor, clutching at them with icy fingers as they cowered over their poor fires, and spreading over the garret-beds in which they sought to hide from him a premature shroud of cold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... with arms and shoulders bare. From time to time these women come forward and sing—songs not always strictly adapted to the family circle, perhaps. But the favorite vocalist is a comic man, who emerges from behind the scenes in a grotesquely exaggerated costume—an ill-fitting, long, green calico tail-coat, with a huge yellow bandana dangling from a rear pocket; a red cotton umbrella with a brass ring on one end and a glass hook on the other; light blue shapeless trousers; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... of most use to these normal city working girls are the mothers who develop a sense of companionship with the changing experiences of their daughters, who are willing to modify ill-fitting social conventions into rules of conduct which are of actual service to their children in their daily lives of factory work and of city amusements. Those mothers, through their sympathy and adaptability, substitute keen present interests ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams |
