"Shabby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the end in a tin hook. His ears—transparent and pale—were unproportionately big. I stopped near the Elisseiev store to buy score cards for this evening's bridge, when a little group of men—civilians and soldiers—gathered near the communist. The usual crowd of nowadays loafers,—shabby looking, discussing something, casting around looks full of hostility, hatred and superiority. A boy brought a chair from a cigar counter, and the communist stepped on it, and started his talk. "Tovarishshi," he said, "the time has come."... They all applauded, though ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... a town from which a railroad takes its departure, for its long climb up the natural incline of the Great Plains, to the base of the mountains; hence the importance to this town of the large but somewhat shabby building serving as terminal station. In its smoky interior, late in the evening and not very long ago, a train was nearly ready to start. It was a train possessing a certain consideration. For ...
— The Denver Express - From "Belgravia" for January, 1884 • A. A. Hayes
... Tim was very poor, and his little cabin was small and shabby; and yet neither hunger nor cold had ever come in an unfriendly way to visit it. The tall plantation smoke-house threw a friendly shadow over the tiny hut every evening just before the sun went down—a shadow ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... and got such a good laugh, that the Paladin gave it another trial, and said: "Why you can just see her!—see her plunge into battle like any old veteran. Yes, indeed; and not a poor shabby common soldier like us, but an officer—an officer, mind you, with armor on, and the bars of a steel helmet to blush behind and hide her embarrassment when she finds an army in front of her that she hasn't been introduced to. An officer? Why, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... British Consulate, and the American could not help feeling a thrill of pride as he mentally compared the Office where he had been that morning and that which represented, in this shabby side street, the commercial might and weight of ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... expression that Ida shone above all compeers. It was by the intellectual part of her beauty that she commanded the admiration—enthusiastic in some cases, in others grudging and unwilling—of her schoolfellows, and reigned by right divine, despite her shabby gowns and her cheap ready-made boots, the belle ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... M. Tenant de Latour, lately the happy owner of this possession, tell his own story of his treasure: It was in 1827 that M. de Latour was walking on the quai of the Louvre. Among the volumes in a shop, he noticed a shabby little copy of the "Imitatio Christi." M. de Latour, like other bibliophiles, was not in the habit of examining stray copies of this work, except when they were of the Elzevir size, for the Elzevirs published a famous undated copy of ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... absurdity of restricting property-rights in books to forty-two years sticks prominently out in the fact that hardly any man's books ever live forty-two years, or even the half of it; and so, for the sake of getting a shabby advantage of the heirs of about one Scott or Burns or Milton in a hundred years, the lawmakers of the "Great" Republic are content to leave that poor little pilfering edict upon the statute-books. It is like an emperor lying in wait to rob a Phenix's nest, and waiting the necessary ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he had really had no hope at all. Yesterday had seen a crisis and a super-crisis. In the afternoon the butcher had stood at the back door and shouted and threatened, and he had been followed almost immediately by a stout shabby man with a bald head and good-natured face, who announced that he had come to put a distraint on the furniture which, incidentally, had never been paid for. Edith Stonehouse, with an air of outraged dignity, had lodged him ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... volumes. Much more, indeed, he wrote; and some very small part of it might yet be rummaged out (but it would not be worth the trouble) among the dingy pages of fifteen or twenty year old periodicals, or within the shabby morocco covers of faded Souvenirs. The remainder of the works alluded to had a very brief existence, but, on the score of brilliancy, enjoyed a fate vastly superior to that of their brotherhood, which succeeded in getting through the press. In a word, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... perhaps (and upon the face this latter is the more likely explanation of the two) because, in a very exaltation of enlightenment, there were no laws against vagrancy. Anyhow, however one might account for their presence, there the tramps were. One saw the shabby, homeless waifs everywhere—in the highways, in the byways. You saw them slouching past the shady little common, with its smooth greensward, where well-dressed young ladies and gentlemen played at lawn-tennis; you saw them standing knocking at the doors of the fine old ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... don't much care.' Again his vagueness jarred on me; there seemed to be some bar between us, invisible and insurmountable. And, after all, what was I doing here? Roughing it in a shabby little yacht, utterly out of my element, with a man who, a week ago, was nothing to me, and who now was a tiresome enigma. Like swift poison the old morbid mood in which I left London spread through me. All I had learnt and seen slipped away; ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... you don't mean to, Iry," she crooned. Married couples like the Balls, where the man has been at home only for brief visits between voyages, if they really love each other, never grow weary of the little frills on connubial bliss usually worn shabby by other people before the honeymoon is past. "I know you don't mean to. But when you sneeze I think it's the ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... cutting the doctor short. "I would not give a centime to know whether the shadow that moves across that shabby blind is that of a man or a woman, nor whether the inhabitant of that attic is happy or miserable. Though I was surprised to see no one at work there this evening, and though I stopped to look, it was solely for the pleasure of indulging in conjectures as numerous and as ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... gratification, without regard for the comfort of others, generally find out the real uses of money when it is too late. Though by nature generous, these thriftless persons are often driven in the end to do very shabby things. They waste their money as they do their time; draw bills upon the future; anticipate their earnings; and are thus under the necessity of dragging after them a load of debts and obligations, which seriously affect their actions as ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... circumstance. He'd always been rich, in the sense that his means had always been sufficient to his wants. He'd never in his life had an experience that even resembled Portia's with that old unpaid grocery bill. He'd enjoyed wearing shabby clothes, but he'd never worn them because he could afford no better. He'd always been democratic in the narrower social sense, but he'd never realized how easy that sort of democracy is and how little it means to a man never associated ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... infantry, and attempted to make a landing. As their mooring-lines were thrown on shore they were seized by dozens of persons in the crowd, and the crews were saved the trouble of making fast. This was an evidence that the laboring class, the men with blue shirts and shabby hats, were not disloyal. We had abundant evidence of this when our occupation became a fixed fact. It was generally the wealthy who adhered to ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... usually dark when the shabby little narrow-gauge train brings us home to Hillsboro from wanderings in the great world, and the big pond by the station is full of stars. Up on the hill the lights of the village twinkle against the blurred mass of Hemlock Mountain, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... High Street," then "turned down a bye-street," and would "soon be there." This bye-street was one turning out of Queen Square at the corner next Bantam's house; and a few doors down we find a rather shabby- looking "public" with a swinging sign, on which is inscribed "The Beaufort Arms"—a two-storied, three-windowed house. This, in the book, is called a "greengrocer's shop," and is firmly believed to be the scene of "the Swarry" on the substantial ground that ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... another little mental photograph, the kind of photograph, he mused, that sleekly shabby Frenchmen slip from under views of the Vendome Column and Napoleon's Tomb when they are trying to sell tourists picture post-cards outside the Cafe de la Paix. Judged by American standards the work would be called rather ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... the corpse lay, was scarcely used once in a year, and many of the neighbors had never before had occasion to enter it. The shabby, antiquated furniture looked cold and dreary from disuse, and the smell of camphor in the air hardly kept down the musty, mouldy odors which exhaled from the walls. The head and foot of the coffin rested on two chairs placed in the centre of the room; and several women, one of whom was ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... didn't eat I suffered. One of the most awful situations in life is to have one of your friends be the sort of girl that has a town named after her and wonderful family portraits and such dainty hands and feet that shabby shoes don't even count, and then to know that she is hungry most of the time from being too poor to get enough food. For two days I have had to keep my mind off Roxanne Byrd to make myself swallow one single morsel ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... she said encouragingly, stroking his chin with her fore-finger, and disclosing a hole in her shabby kid glove. "You go to college, you see. Artur is to be apprenticed too, next autumn. Mother thinks to a hairdresser. And Flebbe is already learning to be a grocer—his father can afford to do that—who knows? perhaps he may have a shop of his own ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... is their chief interest to conciliate. The great bug-bear ever present in the mind of an Englishman, is the dread of not being thought sufficiently "respectable." Professional men and tradesmen depend for their subsistence upon appearances. To be flashy is as bad as to be shabby; the great object is to appear substantial. If you are rich, you have less temptation to be dishonest, and may consequently be trusted. Every man, therefore, who depends upon the opinion of others, is compelled to assume the appearance of being comfortably circumstanced ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... to Naomi. She stared at the dusty gray olive-trees, the shabby scrub oaks, the low-branched sycamores as if she had not been familiar with them all her life. To-day the birds seemed to dart about more swiftly and to utter sweeter songs as they flew. The few sheep she spied nibbling the sparse grass ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... been alternately a prospector and a company promoter all the working years of his rather shabby life. He had organized some dubious concerns; but his new offices on Broadway were fitted so unostentatiously that anyone could see the Northern Exploitation Company was not trying to glitter for the benefit of the ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... no green thing; farmers plowing and sowing wheat; straw stacks far and near; miles of corn stubble, now and then a lone school house; the roads a black line fading away in the distance, the little villages shabby and ugly. When the train stops for water a crowd of men, women, and children make a rush for the President's car. He either speaks to them a few minutes or else gets off and shakes hands with them. He slights no one. He is a true ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... afford to dress well. The girls, the Miss Grants, have graceful, easy manners, just the kind of manners I should like to have; but I can't say I thought much of their dress. I am sure those muslins must have been washed several times. In fact, they were decidedly shabby. I think it odd and old-fashioned of them always to call Mrs. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... side with a strange look of mingled pity and contempt. The delicate, thin hands were clasped together on the breast. The chilly light fell upon the dead features, the silken robe and the stone floor. A single servant in a shabby livery stood in a corner, smiling foolishly, while the tears stood in his eyes and wet his unshaven cheeks. Perhaps he cared, as servants will, when no one else cares. The door opened almost directly upon a staircase and the noise of the feet of those passing ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... For had Cleopatra's barge, for instance, been a structure of canvas and Dutch metal, it would probably have been painted over or broken up after the withdrawal of the piece, and, even had it survived to our own day, would, I am afraid, have become extremely shabby by this time. Whereas now the beaten gold of its poop is still bright, and the purple of its sails still beautiful; its silver oars are not tired of keeping time to the music of the flutes they follow, nor the Nereid's flower-soft hands of touching its silken ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... roamed about the shabby room—shabby from the wretched pictures on the walls to the threadbare carpet underfoot, and, though he was not a gentleman, I felt some feeling of irritation. Perhaps if he had been a gentleman I should not have been put out at ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... the great rooms were very beautiful, but Oliver did not like their vast silence in which the slightest sound seemed so disconcertingly loud. He was not used to such a quiet house, for their own home was a cozy, shabby dwelling, full of the stir and bustle and laughter of happy living. Here the boy found that noises would burst from him in the most unexpected and involuntary manner, noises that the long rooms and passageways seemed to take up and echo and magnify a hundred times. Mrs. Brown was constantly ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... from the wharf, but was soon lost under the shade of the great trees that interlaced their branches above it—branches which were now lush with the late spring growth of leaves. Here and there a cottage, or larger dwelling, appeared, most of them originally white like the church, but many shabby from the action of ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... school just 'cause the dude wouldn't marry her, but I wanted to obey Pa, so I used to walk around a block when I see her coming, 'cause I didn't want to hurt her feelings. Well, last night she came in the store, looking pretty shabby, and wanted a glass of soda, and I gave it to her, and O, how her hand trembled when she raised the glass to her lips, and how wet her eyes were, and how pale her face was. I choked up so I couldn't speak when she handed me the nickel and when she looked up at me and smiled just ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... of furniture, there was, between the chimney and the partition, a wretched sideboard of painted wood, pretending to be mahogany, of all woods the most impossible to imitate. But the slippery red quarries, the shabby little rugs in front of the chairs, and all the furniture, shone with the hard rubbing cleanliness which lends a treacherous lustre to old things by making their defects, their age, and their long service still more conspicuous. An indescribable odor pervaded the room, a ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... humble little kitchen. In fact, the kitchen of your poor clerk, Bob Cratchit. Bob, with his fifteen shillings a week—with his wife and six children—with his shabby clothes and his humble, shabby manners—Bob, with his little four-roomed house, and his struggle to keep the wolf from the door. The Ghost of the Christmas ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... perhaps it was hunger alone that was now causing her mental and physical agony. After she had eaten, all would be well with her. She could control Jude and her own fate. She would never let any one think—Gaston above all—that she was not mistress of her own shabby ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... is a great deal of jolting, a great deal of noise, a great deal of wall, not much window, a locomotive engine, a shriek and a bell. The cars are like shabby omnibuses holding thirty, forty, fifty people. In the centre of the carriage there is usually a stove, fed with charcoal or anthracite coal, which is for the most part red hot. It is insufferably close, and you see the hot air fluttering between yourself and any ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... bar across the door was withdrawn, and Colomba reappeared in the dining-room, followed by a little ragged, bare-footed girl of about ten years old, her head bound with a shabby kerchief, from which escaped long locks of hair, as black as the raven's wing. The child was thin and pale, her skin was sunburnt, but her eyes shone with intelligence. When she saw Orso she stopped shyly, and courtesied ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... And the distant gale sighs drearilie, As the wanderer sighs for his home. The white sea-horses toss their manes On the bar of the southern reef, And the breakers moan, and—by Jove, it rains (I thought I should come to grief); Though it can't well damage my shabby hat, Though my coat looks best when it's damp; Since the shaking I got (no matter where at), I've a mortal dread of the cramp. My matches are wet, my pipe's put out, And the wind blows colder and stronger; I'll be stiff, and ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... individuals, who intended either to bestow or receive edification before the fires of the Bold Dragoon on that evening, were collecting, until the benches were nearly filled with men of different occupations. Dr. Todd and a slovenly-looking, shabby-genteel young man, who took tobacco profusely, wore a coat of imported cloth cut with something like a fashionable air, frequently exhibited a large French silver watch, with a chain of woven hair and a silver key, and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... devil do you know about my way of doing my business?" he burst out when the lawyer had done. "One of us two is talking like a born idiot—and (mind this) it isn't me. Look here! Your young lady goes out for a walk, and she meets with a dirty, shabby old beggar—I look like a shabby old beggar already, don't I? Very good. This dirty old wretch whines and whimpers and tells a long story, and gets sixpence out of the girl—and knows her by that time, inside and out, as well as if he had made her—and, ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... paring off tiny feathery shavings of wood. He was a tall, sparely-built, man of indeterminate age, with thinning sandy hair, a long Gaelic upper lip, and a wide, half-humorous, half-weary mouth; he wore an open-necked shirt, and an old and shabby leather jacket, to the left shoulder of which a few clinging flecks of paint showed where some military emblem had been, long ago. While his fingers worked with the jackknife and his eyes traveled over the page of closely-written symbols, his mind was reviewing the eight different ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... sensible woman. In woman there is at once a subtile delicacy of tact, and a plain soundness of judgment, which ire rarely combined to an equal degree in man. A woman, if she be really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing; for a woman Triend always desires to be proud of you. At the same time, her constitutional timidity makes her more cautious than your male friend. She, therefore, seldom counsels you to do an imprudent thing. By friendships I mean pure friendships, those in which there s no admixture ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... youngest daughter, Mademoiselle Clara de Duras, seemed sincerely moved by my distress, and wrote to various of her friends, who were emigrating within her reach, to make inquiry for me. I visited her in a shabby hotel, where I found her without suite or equipage, but in perfect tranquillity at their loss, and not alone unmurmuring, but nearly indifferent to her privations; while Mademoiselle Clara ran up and down stairs on her mother's messages, and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... him to smoke, or to buy new clothes before the old ones grew too shabby for so nice a man as a bookkeeper is apt to be. He did not drink or play cards or billiards; he did not belong to ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... I remember, the 13th day of April, 1920, that the first Government Lethal Chamber was established on the south side of Washington Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue. The block which had formerly consisted of a lot of shabby old buildings, used as cafes and restaurants for foreigners, had been acquired by the Government in the winter of 1898. The French and Italian cafes and restaurants were torn down; the whole block was enclosed by ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... he was thinking of buying some stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every one of 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper. You can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like a gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and knowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together—if that ain't a reporter I never saw one. I was ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... invasions of private life and reputation. He was doubly detestable, in that he was the corruptor and worst specimen of the editorial calling in Europe and in America. I remember frequently seeing Williams, in the latter part of his life, in his shabby pepper-and-salt dress, in the obscure parts of the city. I believe he died during the first prevalence of the cholera in Brooklyn. Fancy may depict his expression as illustrating Otway's lines, "as if all hell were in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... suggested its having once been applied to a more exalted use than the housing of a hundred boys for certain hours of the day. So spacious was it, that Dr. Johnston found ample room for his family in one half, while the other half was devoted to the purposes of the school. At the rear, a cluster of shabby outbuildings led to a long narrow yard where tufts of rank, coarse grass, and bunches of burdocks struggled hard to maintain their existence in spite ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... trousers, shoes, stockings, and linen. He always had the luck of his carelessness; for, the first day he put on a new coat, he unfailingly matched it with the rest of his costume by staining it with incredible promptitude. The good man waited till his housekeeper told him that his hat was too shabby before buying a new one. His necktie was always crumpled and starchless, and he never set his dog-eared shirt collar straight after his judge's bands had disordered it. He took no care of his gray hair, and shaved but twice a week. He never wore gloves, and generally kept ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... fashionable world is astir. Elegant carriages with gaily dressed occupants are dashing along. There is a carriage with the paint scarcely yet dry and seated within is a red-faced vulgar looking woman, the carriage, the horses, the woman, all painfully—new. At the same time hurrying along in shabby dress and mean attire is a fragile delicate woman whose garb shows evidences of much mending and patient darning, but the shabby dress cannot hide the fact that here is a lady, as with easy grace ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... in buying the proprietor out. A woman and a man belonging to the group took it on. The man had been a cook. The comrades could get their meals there, unnoticed amongst the other customers. This was another advantage. The first floor was occupied by a shabby Variety Artists' Agency—an agency for performers in inferior music-halls, you know. A fellow called Bomm, I remember. He was not disturbed. It was rather favourable than otherwise to have a lot of foreign-looking people, jugglers, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... one of those rather shabby, half-hotel, half-pension affairs which seem to hang on year after year with any visible means of support. I say 'seem.' As a matter of fact it was a steady, prosperous establishment with a steady, prosperous ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... over so much of me as grew above the table, which was little enough. Presently my uncle was subjected to the same severe appraisement, and wriggled under it in guilty way—an appraisement of the waterside slops: the limp and shabby cast-off apparel which scantily enveloped his great chest, insufficient for the bitter rain then sweeping the streets. Thence the glance of this Tom Bull went blankly over the foggy room, pausing nowhere upon the faces of the folk at the bar, but coming to rest, at last, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... saw a man of sixty, whose gross and battered visage told its own story. There was a sparse white frost about his ears; and his eyes, pale blue and prominent, looked out from under beetling brows. He wore a shabby plum-colored coat and tight, drab breeches. About his fat neck was a black stock, with just a suggestion of soiled linen showing above it. His ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... as abruptly as though some one had struck it from her lips. A strange man was kneeling by the beehive in the herb-garden. He was looking at her over his shoulder, at once startled and amused, and she saw that he was wearing a rather shabby tweed suit and that his face was oddly brown against his close-cropped, tawny hair. He smiled, his teeth a strong ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Just ring the bell once more, and then we'll go. I fancy Julia—I fancy Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael—has run out to stare at the Northern steam yacht in the harbor. It would be just like her. This house is historic itself. Shabby enough now, to be sure! The great-aunt of my cousin, John Mayrant (who is going to be married next Wednesday, to such a brute of a girl, poor boy!), lived here in 1840, and made an answer to the Earl of Mainridge that put him in his place. She was our ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... on the doorsteps watched him curiously, without daring to stretch out their hands; they could not tell if this early morning visitor with the worn-out cloak, the shabby hat, and the old boots, was simply an inquisitive traveller, or whether he was one of their own order, choosing a position about the Cathedral from whence ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the soul passed from the church amid the sneers, criticisms, and suppressed laughter of the spectators—who united in pronouncing the ceremony a shabby affair, not worth looking at—and, entering a carriage with Mr. Whedell, were driven to the New Jersey Railroad Depot furiously, as if they had been guilty of some crime against society. At the depot, Mr. Whedell kissed ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... although there was a pleasant smile, and a display of regular white teeth, which he turned upon me every time he encountered my eyes, as he lounged about smoking a cigar, whose fragrance betokened its origin. He was easy of mien, well-dressed, and evidently at home there; while by contrast I was shabby, ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... into the Rue Thiers, and at once the high, forbidding houses ceased, and small detached villas—such as are to be found in thousands round the shabby skirts of Paris—took their place. The Villa des Hortensias, clearly labelled, was nearly at the far end of the funereal street. It was rather larger than its fellows, and comprised three stories, with a small garden in ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... dumped on the ground long enough to permit his captor to lock the door securely. Then the submarine boy was lifted once more, carried around the corner of the house and dumped in the bottom of a shabby old delivery wagon. A canvas was pulled over him, concealing him from any chance passer. Then the mulatto ran around to the seat, picking up the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... BATTERSEA, in a fit of indignation, married, and was blessed with a son, the present Earl. CHARLIE FITZHUBERT married HERMIONE, but they are as poor as curates, and he hates her. I saw her two days ago in a shabby hired carriage. She is getting prematurely old, and grey, and wrinkled, and everybody avoids her, except her sister SOPHY, who still visits her, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... grandparents became so much better as they thought of her coming, that they noticed with startling clearness how dingy the old farmhouse had grown. Their brightened vision regarded the faded carpets with aversion, and when they had given place to new ones the curtains looked positively shabby, and they were astonished to find how much difference a little paint on the house and out-buildings made in the look ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... that you should come here from New York to look for an address in such a shabby street, and I so want to go to New York. If I was a poet I wouldn't ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... had noted so many times before, the motley appearance of the army, but with involuntary motion he began to straighten and smooth his own shabby uniform. He was about to enter the presence of a woman and he was ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... standard of heroism: heroism, remember, having its faults as well as its qualities. I, always on the heroic plane imaginatively, had two disgusting faults which I did not recognize as faults because I could not help them. I was poor and (by day) shabby. I therefore tolerated the gross error that poverty, though an inconvenience and a trial, is not a sin and a disgrace; and I stood for my self-respect on the things I had: probity, ability, knowledge ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... new parlourmaid, intensely white and black, and intensely aware of the eminence of her young employers. And little Doxey of the P.A. came in, rather shabby and insinuating as usual, and obviously impressed by ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... sank back at once,—so contentedly, too, that her father was continually reproaching her with a great lack of spirit. It was a sad come-down from his old air-castles for her and for himself,—he still the landlord of a shabby little inn, and Jeanne, stout and middle-aged, sitting again behind the bar as she had done fifteen years before. It was pretty hard. So long as he knew that Jeanne was living in her fine house as Mistress Blaycke he had been content, in spite of Willan Blaycke's ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... said he would wait; and sat down patiently enough in the faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer chintzes were removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all their threadbare deficiencies. He longed to send for the children; to have them there beside him, their supple bodies against his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... most properly termed common sense. If one is struck by the magnificence of the great towns of the Continent, one should ratiocinate, and conclude that a major characteristic of the great towns of England is their shabby and higgledy-piggledy slovenliness. It is so. But there are people who have lived fifty years in Manchester, Leeds, Hull and Hanley without noticing it. The English idiosyncrasy is in that awful external slovenliness too, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... ever so many flannel shirts we may be rich by-and-by. I should give mother a new bonnet first of all, for I heard Miss Kent say no lady would wear such a shabby one. Mrs. Smith said fine bonnets didn't make real ladies. I like her best, but I do want a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... a man short and powerfully built, dressed in a shabby-genteel sort of way, with a massive head covered with black hair, heavy side whiskers and moustache, and a clean shaved chin, which had that blue appearance common to very dark men who shave. His mouth—that is, as much as could be seen of it under ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... great value in and of itself. It is remarkable for the admirable co-operation of the performers, the potency of trained gesture and studied facial expression. The music, which was written by Victor Holoerder, is excellent in its harmony and appropriateness. The decorative quality of even the shabby scenery used in America is striking. It achieves an artistic, oriental effect without gaudy, ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... for those few seconds, seemed as though they had lost the power of speech or movement. Then before a word could be uttered by either the Inspector or the Prince, the door was opened from the outside, and a man came running in,—a man dressed in a shabby blue serge suit, dark and thin. He ran past the Inspector and his companions, and he fell on his knees ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... voice, all revealed a man whom Jean repelled at every point. Years had not refined, they had vulgarized him. His clothing careless and not quite fresh, offended her taste; in fact, his whole appearance was of that shabby genteel character, which is far more mean and plebeian than can be given by undisguised working apparel. As Jean was taking note of these things a girl, with a flushed, angry face, spoke to him. She was evidently making a ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... stumps are ugly; the bushes are scorched; the pine-leaf-strewn earth is trodden into mire; the landing looks like a cattle-ford; the ground is littered with all the unsightly dibris of a hand-to-hand life; the dismantled shanty is a shabby object; the charred and blackened logs, where the fire blazed, suggest the extinction of family life. Man has wrought his usual wrong upon Nature, and he can save his self-respect only by ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... but the more I tried the more the donkey ran away, and at last I understood by signs that the donkey was shying at me, so I threw the boy a coin and retreated, and sent another boy to help him. We called to an old man riding a shabby-looking horse, but the moment the horse saw me it did exactly the same thing, and nearly flung the old man off. My sides ached with laughing. Fancy being so queer that the ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... ancient palace of the Wolfburghs. It is a flat! In the very house where I went to-day. The third story flat just under the attics where the poor Joneses daub portraits. I passed the open doors and I saw the shabby old tables and chairs and the princesses—two fat old women in frowzy wrappers, and their hair in papers, eating that soup of pork and cabbages and raisins—the air was thick with the smell! And that ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... little private path there came a knight riding, whom they soon met. Very dreary and woebegone seemed this traveller; one foot was in the stirrup, the other dangled outside; his hood hung down over his eyes; his attire was poor and shabby; no sorrier man than he ever rode ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... bit," continued Wheatley; "the less so since it is rumoured that old 'Rough and Ready' is to be recalled, and we're to be commanded by that book martinet Scott. It's shabby treatment of Taylor, after what the old vet has accomplished. They're afraid of him setting up for President next go. Hang their politics! It's a ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... was habitually careless. He would rush to the printer's office, after twelve hours of hard work, with his hat drawn over his eyes, his hands thrust into shabby gloves, and his feet in shoes with high sides, worn over loose trousers, which were pleated at the waist and held down with straps. Even in society he took no trouble about his appearance, and Lamartine ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... of Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs, And he and they together Knelt down with angry prayers For tamed and shabby tigers And dancing dogs and bears, And wretched, blind pit ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... of socks (loose), of tie (shabby), she once more reached his face. She dwelt upon his mouth. The lips were shut. The eyes bent down, since he was reading. All was firm, yet youthful, indifferent, unconscious—as for knocking one down! No, no, no! She looked ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... I had never known him guilty of a dishonest action. But when you do get a decent young English fellow condescending to do anything shabby, be sure it is a girl who is the cause. I said nothing, of course; and in the evening a trap came for us, and we drove ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... adventures into stories for the magazines; here had come to him many an editorial refusal, but here, too, he had received the news of his first unexpected success. All his happiest memories were embalmed in those shabby, badly-furnished rooms. ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... that the diamond makers are on my trail. As long as I remained quiet, after their shabby treatment of me, and did not try to discover their secret, they were all right. But, after I realized that I had been cheated out of my rights, and when I began to make an investigation, with a view to discovering their secret ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... about that. I did not even notice if the man had such a cross on his chain. In fact," added Morley frankly, "he was too shabby and poverty-stricken to have a chain. I think Anne Denham killed Daisy; you think this man ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... unkempt head dejectedly, apparently having lost all willingness to drag the dilapidated top-buggy and its two occupants another step. Austin's manner, Sally reflected, was not much more cheerful than that of his horse; while his clothes were certainly as dirty, as shabby, and as out-of-date as ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... happened late in the afternoon that a man of shabby figure, evidently not a digger, observing that there was always more or less crowd in one place, shambled up and looked down with the rest; as he looked down, George happened to look up; the newcomer drew back hastily. After that his proceedings were singular; ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... than a cupboard. Anyhow it wasn't more than ten feet by twelve; and as I in a way expected to see the big shadowy cellar-like extent of the Shipping Office where I had been once or twice before, I was extremely startled. A gas bracket hung from the middle of the ceiling over a dark, shabby writing-desk covered with a litter of yellowish dusty documents. Under the flame of the single burner which made the place ablaze with light, a plump, little man was writing hard, his nose very near the desk. His head was perfectly bald and about the same drab tint as the papers. He appeared ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... bookseller, and was rising from his chair, when the door opened. A middle-aged, Jewish-looking man, wrapped to the chin in a shabby ulster and carrying a suit-case, stood on the threshold, and regarded ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... dear Doris," and Mr. Wynne gathered the slender, trembling figure in his arms protectingly, "not one living soul, except you and I, knows that they are there. There's no incentive to robbery, my dear—a poor, shabby little cottage like that. There is not ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... prepared, and with incomparably more zeal than the best trained conscripts of Europe. Not urged to the front like slaves by the whips of innumerable penalties, their needs not considered to the provision of a button, or a ration of salt, shabby even to squalor in their appointments, they gathered in response to a call which it was easy for the laggard to disobey, and almost uncared for by the ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... a heavy tread in the passage, and presently there entered the room a very shabby figure of a man. A ruddy beard obscured his face; his hair badly needed cutting; his boots were dirty and much worn; his hands bore marks of hard work, but his eyes were bright, and the colour of his cheek was healthy, and for all the noise he made as he walked there was strength ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... his shop in a search of distraught eagerness, and with a multitude of small exclamations, until, screeching jubilantly once, he pounced upon a shabby and learned-looking volume. This he brought me, thrusting it with his trembling fingers between my own, and shuffling the open pages. But when the apparently right one was found, he exclaimed, "No, I have better! and dashed away to a pile of ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... the current of traffic, and was waiting for an opportunity to cross the street. In the glare of light from the lamp above his head, Chilcote saw for the first time that, under a remarkable neatness of appearance, his clothes were well worn—almost shabby. The discovery struck him with something stronger than surprise. The idea of poverty seemed incongruous is connection with the reliance, the reserve, the personality of the man. With a certain embarrassed haste he stepped ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... over the waste of beach, and rolled and drifted over the sea, and beneath the curtain the tide was coming in at Downport, and two pair of eyes were watching it. Both pair of eyes watched it from the same place, namely, from the shabby sitting-room of the shabby residence of David North, Esq., lawyer, and both watched it without any motive, it seemed, unless that the dull gray waves and their dull moaning were not out of accord with the watchers' feelings. One pair of eyes—a youthful, discontented ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... interest—the "elders" all sat under the pulpit and in the front seats, and many would nod their heads from time to time in approbation, equivalent to the "'zackly" and "jus' so" of their every-day speech. They were all well dressed—a few in gaudy toggery, hoopskirts, and shabby bonnets, but mostly in their simple "head hankerchers" [which] I hope they will never give up. Many of the men on the road had their shoes in their hands to put on when they got to church. Most of them wear none. The women, many of them, came up to shake hands ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... first time in his life, he never went near the department. The next day he made his appearance, very pale, and in his old cape, which had become even more shabby. The news of the robbery of the cloak touched many; although there were some officials present who never lost an opportunity, even such a one as the present, of ridiculing Akakiy Akakievitch. They ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... accompanied by the Consul, with two janissaries in front, bearing silver maces, and a dragoman behind. The serai, or palace, is a large, plain wooden building, and a group of soldiers about the door, with a shabby carriage in the court, were the only tokens of its character. We were ushered at once into the presence of the Pasha, who is a man of about seventy years, with a good-humored, though shrewd face. He was quite cordial ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... one. He knew, if ever a man knew, that idealism was its own reward, and that it was priceless, and that any attempt to reward it with money, to pay a man for it after he had had it, and after it was all over, would make forty thousand dollars look shabby, or at least pathetic and ridiculous. What he wanted to do was to build his forty thousand dollars over into a Man. He wanted to feel that this money that he had made out of dynamite, out of destruction, would ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... old church in a yard, hemmed in by a labyrinth of back streets and courts, with a little burying-ground round it, and itself buried in a kind of vault, formed by the neighbouring houses, and paved with echoing stones It was a great dim, shabby pile, with high old oaken pews, among which about a score of people lost themselves every Sunday; while the clergyman's voice drowsily resounded through the emptiness, and the organ rumbled and rolled as if the church had got the colic, for want of a congregation to keep the wind ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... whispered and nudged Tom about how shabby it would look to reneague the adventure. So he asked which way he was to ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Lord Glistonbury was called away—Vivian remained. Mr. Wharton, with a party of his friends, entered the coffee-room. Wharton seemed much heated both with wine and anger—he was talking eagerly to the gentlemen with him, and he pronounced the words, "Infamous conduct!—Shabby!—Paltry fellow!" so loud, that all the coffee-room turned to listen. Colonel S——, a gentleman who was one of Wharton's party, but who had a good opinion of Vivian, at this moment took him by the arm, and, drawing him aside, whispered, in confidence, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... of pain each scar denotes, And of long miseries gone by, They feel beneath their shabby coats The ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... did Sangster mean by taking such an attitude? It was like his infernal cheek. It was no business of his if he chose to get engaged to Christine and half a dozen other girls at the same time. Anyone would think he had done a shabby trick by asking her to marry him; anyone would think that there had been something disgraceful in having done so; anyone ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... Ocean. Vessels of any importance kept well out of the way of treacherous shoals and currents lurking at the entrance of the bay. The anchorage ground was good; but the depth of water was suited to small vessels only—to shabby old fishing-smacks which seldom paid their expenses, and to dirty little coasters carrying coals and potatoes. At the back of the hotel, two slovenly rows of cottages took their crooked course inland. Sailing masters of yachts, off duty, sat and yawned at the windows; ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... Virginia was obliged to leave her school where "the very nicest children all went," which was a keen regret to Milly, for she had already formed ambitions for her daughter. The contrast of her own pretty apartment with the shabby, worn rooms of the Reddon flat brought home to her, as nothing else had, her precarious situation. And she set herself vigorously ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... father and I were, unwontedly, strolling together down the lane, there accosts us a shabby poor fellow, with something ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... be very pretty, if, instead of those frightful rocks and shabby cottages, there could be villas, and gardens, and lawns, and conservatories, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... had come into this shabby though eminently respectable neighborhood, and opened a small boarding-house in a neighboring street. She had come from some up-State country town, and her bureaus and bedsteads were barely enough to furnish the small, old-fashioned house which she took for a ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... carrying out wounded. I shall never forget the contented look on the faces of these captives as they worked inside our lines; they did everything required of them with a willingness and cheerfulness that at first seemed to be amazing. Most of them were young Bavarians and presented a very shabby appearance. ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... tiny creatures wrapped in old shawls, the shabby women, whose tear-stained faces were as white as the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... The truth was, that for some time past my appearance, owing to the state of my finances, had been rather shabby; and I did not wish to expose a fashionable young man like Francis Ardry, who lived in a fashionable neighbourhood, to the imputation of having a shabby acquaintance. I was aware that Francis Ardry was an excellent fellow; but, on that very account, I felt, under ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... enough to tell him that I INVITE HIM SPECIALLY to stay with me on his return journey, and that I should think it very shabby of him if he played me the trick of flying past me under my ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... hardly reached the gate when Lulu, turning to her father with a very discontented face, exclaimed, "I don't want to wear a shabby old dress! Must ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... Mrs. Jerry's eyes, and if she had seen, she would never have guessed what put it there; nor would she have understood why Mrs. Jerry might shrink from attending that magnificent festival, perhaps the only gringo woman in all the crowd, and a pitifully shabby gringo woman at that. To her mind, Mrs. Jerry was beautiful and perfect, even in her shapeless brown dress that was always clean. Teresita herself would never have worn that dress at all, yet it did not occur ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... wears a black beard, a hat pulled far over his eyes, and old, rough clothes and a very shabby U.S. Army cloak; he has a pack on his back: he looks about, sees only the family, throws down the pack, tearing off his ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... of being occupied, and at a glance it was easy to guess the vocation and also the sex of the tenant. In the wardrobe hung a few old dresses, most of them a good deal worn and shabby, while in an open drawer at the bottom could be seen several old pairs of women's shoes. On an armchair was thrown a cheap kimona. The dresser, in keeping with the general meanness, was adorned with pictorial postcards stuck in ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... on Boston prices," growled Strout, "why didn't he pay them instead of cheatin' you out of two dollars and a half? I consider it a very shabby trick, Mr. Hill. I shall buy my cigars at Eastborough Centre in the future. Perhaps you'll lose more than that ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... days Ali received these forced benevolences from all parts. He sat, covered with rags, on a shabby palm-leaf mat placed at the outer gate of his ruined palace, holding in his left hand a villainous pipe of the kind used by the lowest people, and in his right an old red cap, which he extended for the donations ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... bank on the top of which goats are browsing, down to the landing beside the closely-locked iron gate, and the little lodge sitting among the trees behind it, belonging to the property of a Captain Wood Martin. Had the felicity, while yet some way off, of seeing the shabby little boat cast off the rope and puff herself and paddle herself slowly ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... she was, with "Lorelei" in gold letters on her bows, this fair siren who had lured us across the North Sea; and instead of being covered up and shabby to look at after her long winter of retirement and neglect, she had the air of being ready to start off at a moment's notice ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... she received the money, Catriona kept it close at hand, in a little worn black leather purse, in a shabby bag hanging from her arm, and not out of sight ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... two boys working his pit, besides a superannuated old man driving the winding engine. And in spite of all jeering, he flourished. Shabby old coal-carts rambled up behind the New Connection, and filled from the pit-bank. The coal improved a little in quality: it was cheap and it was handy. James could sell at last fifty or sixty tons a week: for the stuff was easy getting. And now at last he was actually handling money. He saw ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... John to any of his banquets; and this is the cutting comment which the youthful future statesman recorded in his diary: "The Infantado, notwithstanding the champagne and burgundy he got at Woburn, has not asked me. Shabby fellow! It is clear he is unfit for the government of ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... help her. She is teaching now—do you know what women are paid for teaching in some private schools? And I don't think she is happy. The last time I saw her I almost cried afterward, though she would only tell me that she was choking for sunlight and air. Even her dress was worn and shabby. Ralph, you know how old friends we are, and I have been wondering—you really must be sensible—whether I could ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... in a cavalry regiment when I first met my darling. We were quartered in a stupid seaport town, where my pet lived with her shabby old father—a half-pay naval man. It was a case of love at first sight on both sides, and my darling and I made a match of it. My father is a rich man, but no sooner did he hear that I was married ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... deadly feud between the Indian and the outlaw brought them now, for the first time in months, face to face. In spite of his iron nerve Levake started. Scott, slightly stooped and wearing the familiar slouch hat and shabby coat in which he was always seen, regarded his enemy ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... in painting at the rather shabby house of Rossetti in Portland Street, he was introduced to Rossetti's favorite model—a young woman of rare grace and beauty. Rossetti had painted her picture as "The Blessed Damozel," leaning over the bar of Heaven, while the stars in her ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... [Losing control over herself utterly.] You'll spy on me, will you, you shabby loafer! You'll peep at me while I'm eating my supper, and count the dances I choose to give that boy over there, will you! And then you'll break into my house, and insult my friends behind their backs, and insinuate ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... a shabby, dingy cart, but a smart little house upon wheels, with white dimity curtains festooning the windows, and window-shutters of green picked out with panels of a staring red. Neither was it a poor caravan drawn by a single donkey or emaciated horse, for a pair of horses in pretty good condition ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser |
