"Tidy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up father" exclaimed Helen at last, "I want to have the room nice and tidy for Gladys and ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... is, that he does not look upon the tidy state of a room as a result, but as one into which, if left to itself, it would naturally fall and remain. We know, alas! too well, that every room not only has within itself possibilities of untidiness, but that its constant tendency is ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... "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
... cannot, without some application, be kept tidy, then a little castor oil, scented, might, by means of an old tooth-brush, be used to smooth it; castor oil is, for the purpose, one of the most simple and harmless of dressings; but, as I said before, the hair's own natural oil cannot ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... children. The set angry frown was the only distinguishing mark—like the dents on a penny made by a hobnail boot, by which it can be known from twenty otherwise precisely similar. His clothes were little better than sacking, but clean, tidy, and repaired. Any one would have said, "Poor, but carefully tended." A kind heart might have put a threepenny-bit in his clenched little fist, and sighed. But that iron set frown on the young brow would not have unbent even for the silver. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... train whisking right through the centre of Arabi Pasha's earthworks. Near the battle-field is a little cemetery where the English soldiers killed in the battle were buried. The cemetery is kept green and tidy, and surrounded by a neat iron fence; amid the gray desert that begins at Tel-el-Kebre this little cemetery is the only bright spot immediately about. From Tel-el-Kebre to Suez the country is a sandy desert, where sand-fences, like ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... at the foot of the stair and led her to the dining-room. Another surprise! The room was not only large, pleasant, and airy, overlooking a beautiful garden, but it was neat and tidy, and the table was spotless, with fine damask, delicate china, and beautiful silver. The food was delicious—Elsie had taken her place perforce—and was particularly appetizing after ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... pincushion, and the alabaster vase which Denas had once thought beautiful beyond price. The snowy quilt and pillows, the carefully kept floor and chairs, the clothing washed and laid with sprigs of lavender in the tidy drawers—oh, what poetry and eloquence of untiring, undespairing mother-love were in ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... two instances checks of substantial value. There was also what was called a steward's rebate on the monthly bills, which in circles where lavish entertainment is the order of the day amounted to a tidy little income in itself. My only embarrassment lay in the contact into which I was necessarily brought with other butlers, with whom I was perforce required to associate. This went very much against ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... afternoon. We throbbed out of our yard above Hammersmith Bridge, fussed about for a moment, and headed down stream. We came at an easy rush down Craven Reach, past Fulham and Hurlingham, past the long stretches of muddy meadow And muddy suburb to Battersea and Chelsea, round the cape of tidy frontage that is Grosvenor Road and under Vauxhall Bridge, and Westminster opened before us. We cleared a string of coal barges and there on the left in the October sunshine stood the Parliament houses, and the flag was flying and Parliament ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... here; but I cannot help adding that it does seem a pity not to try and get Perez the Mouse to come to England. * The only way to manage this will be to take great pains over your copies and spelling, so that when your first tooth comes out you will be able to write a nice, tidy, polite letter to him. If you put it under your pillow at night I am nearly sure you will find it gone and a present in its place in the morning. Perhaps you may even feel the same little soft tickle on ...
— Perez the Mouse • Luis Coloma
... best clothes and, obtaining the permission of the marine sentry at the "brig," had handed them to him, to be put on before he was summoned to the mast. This was done to propitiate Captain Snipes, who liked to see a tidy sailor; but it was all in vain. To all the young American's supplications, Captain Snipes turned a deaf ear. Sukey declared he had been struck twice before he ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... stove, and the tiny ice chest and the screen pantry. All her married life she had kept house in a big, bounteous way; apples in barrels; butter in firkins; flour in sacks; eggs in boxes; sugar in bins; cream in crocks. Sometimes she told herself, bitterly, that it was easier to keep twelve rooms tidy and habitable ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... sure, he is come to breakfast! I hope nothin's amiss with my young Lord! I must run up with a cup and plate, and you, make the place tidy, in case Mr. Poynings comes in. You'd better run into the scullery and wash your face; 'tis all tears! You're a terrible one to cry, Charlotte!' with a kind, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The tidy breezes with their brooms Sweep vale, and hill, and tree! Prithee, my pretty housewives! Who may ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... eye on those doors. This dull winter morning, when they came quaking along behind their mother into this grim place, it was still in the squalor of morning confusion. Later, Harris would open the shutters and tidy things up; he would dust the painted pine bureau and Blair's photographs and the slender green bottle of German cologne on which the red ribbons of the calendar were beginning to fade; now everything was dark and bleak ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... mother was the exceptional colored woman of our community. She was a dressmaker and tailoress and had all the work she could do. She owned her own home, a quite comfortable one, and earned continuously from her work a tidy sum of money. ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... small, neat house, Tenanted by peasants poor. The mother was a loving spouse, One who never was a blowze, But most tidy evermore. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... and had then, as he thought, been grossly insulted by him. "What are you hafter, captain?" To this Mountjoy made no answer, but Hart, walking a step or two in advance, turned upon his heels and looked at the park around him. "Tidy sort of place, ain't it, Tyrrwhit, for a gentleman to hang his 'at up, when we were told he was a bastard, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... in with a tray on which is a jug of water and a glass.] I'm bringing the drink for Aunt, Mr. Jenner. Maggie's crying ever so badly, and Mother's sent her upstairs to wash her face and put her hair tidy. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... gift for 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 unrecognisable, and had, if she wanted to rub her nose or her eyebrows, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... over the hills. Sir Christopher, even a cat, believed firmly in sartorial pulchritude. I admired him for that, even from the first glance; and, afterward, I put me up three new mirrors: I did not mean to be outdone by my cat, I intended to look tidy every minute, and there is nothing like mirrors to tell the truth. Credit for the initial impulse, ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a ...
— The Velveteen Rabbit • Margery Williams
... tidy, orderly, trim, clean, cleanly; tasteful, trim, finished, artistic, nice, excellent, adroit; dainty; spruce; dapper, natty. Antonyms: dowdy, slovenly, slatternly, untidy, tawdry, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... said Bob, pointing to these men. "Pretty tidy looking lot, aren't they? I brought them along as a sort of guard of honour for Marion. They're not really the least necessary; but I thought you and she might be pleased to ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... the herdsman of a large estate in nineteenth-century France, whilst his English compeers two generations before, and in much humbler employ, had their tidy bedroom and comfortable bed under the farmer's roof. What would my own Suffolk ploughmen have said to the notion of spending the night in an ox-stall? But autres pays, autres moeurs. In Droulde's fine little poem, "Bon gte", a famished, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to her, and then sat in silence for a minute while she tried to put her hair tidy, and then I ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... twinkling in the glorious tropical sky, shed a mellow light on the sandbar where the last of the turtles were escaping from their prison shells. Suma feasted leisurely, then drank from the lazy stream, and sat straight upright like a huge cat and began unconcernedly to tidy up by licking her huge paws with her pink tongue and then applying them to ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... timiano. Tibia tibio. Tick bateti, frapeti. Ticket bileto. Tickle tikli. Ticklish tiklosentema. Tidal marmova. Tide, incoming alfluo. Tide, receding forfluo. Tidings sciigo. Tidiness malnegligxeco. Tidy malnegligxa. Tie ligi. Tie together (unite) kunligi. Tie (cravat) kravato. Tier (row) vico. Tier (string, etc.) ligilo. Tiger tigro. Tight prema, troprema. Tile tegmenta briko. Till (money-box) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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 ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... was busy 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 of ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... I. And with that I into the bedroom and shut the door, and left him out there in his shirt. My sister and I soon got everything arranged, for there was no time to lose. And before morning I had all made tidy, and your poor mother lying as sweet a corpse as ever angel saw. And no one could say a word against her. And it's my belief that that villain made her believe somehow or other that she was as good as married to him. She was buried down there in the churchyard, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... did not immediately recognize it for what it was. What he saw, at first, was not a clew, but just a mess. He had a tidy soul and abhorred messes, and this was a particularly messy mess. A considerable portion of the floor was a sea of red paint. The can from which it had flowed was lying on its side—near the wall. He had noticed that the smell of paint had seemed particularly pungent, but had attributed this ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in flat caps and little round buttons atop, knee-breeches, and short-tailed coats, funnier to look at than their white-capped sisters, gentlemanly choristers, tidy sons of artisans and warehousemen, ragged half-tamed little street vagabonds, all file past, under curate, schoolmaster or pupil teacher, till the whole multitude is safely deposited in a large mead running into the heart ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... service to become independent farmers; thus they ceased to be recognizable as a distinct class of society. Nevertheless the common statement that no traces of the "mean white" are to be found in New England is perhaps somewhat too sweeping. Interspersed among those respectable and tidy mountain villages, once full of such vigorous life, one sometimes comes upon little isolated groups of wretched hovels whose local reputation is sufficiently indicated by such terse epithets as "Hardscrabble" or "Hell-huddle." Their denizens may in ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... The original chimneys had been allowed to fall into decay. Finally, a new large skylight added interest to the roof. In a general way, the building resembled a suit of clothes that had been worn, during four of the seven ages of man, by an untidy husband with a tidy and economical wife, and then given by the wife to a poor relation of a somewhat different figure to finish. All that could be said of it was that ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... order, become in order &c adj.; form, fall in, draw up; arrange itself, range itself, place itself; fall into one's place, take one's place, take one's rank; rally round. adjust, methodize, regulate, systematize. Adj. orderly, regular; in order, in trim, in apple-pie order, in its proper place; neat, tidy, en regle [Fr.], well regulated, correct, methodical, uniform, symmetrical, shipshape, businesslike, systematic; unconfused &c (confuse) &c 61; arranged &c 60. Adv. in order; methodically &c adj.; in turn, in its turn; by steps, step by step; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the young man had violently rung the bell. "Sime," he shouted to the servant, "clear away this mess and lay the table again. Order more breakfast, all the breakfast you can get. Open the windows and get the tobacco smoke out of the air. Tidy up the place for there's a lady comin'. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... in discovering that Douglas, the marvelous boy, was in their midst. He must make an address. They erected a platform and billed the town. I stayed near until Douglas rose to speak. He looked fresh and tidy in his new suit, and with freshly shaven face. I heard his great voice roll out over the large crowd collected to hear him. I heard the applause that welcomed him, that responded to the first thrill of his fluent eloquence. Then I stole away to look ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... of the Springfield Training School game, most of the Harvard coaches went down to New Haven, leaving the team in charge of Campbell and Kennard's other rooter. The psychological moment had arrived. Just as soon as the Harvard team had rolled up a tidy little score, Kennard was sent into the game and instructions were given to the quarterback that he was to signal for a drop kick every time the Harvard team was within forty yards of the opponent's goal—no matter what the angle might be. The game ended with Kennard ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... have appeared really not much else than that. But look at the servant who has just finished dressing her; —awe-struck, full of love and wonder, putting her hand softly on the child's head, who has never cried. The nurse, who has just taken her, is—the nurse, and no more: tidy in the extreme, and greatly proud and pleased: but would be as much so with ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... Callan. I seemed to be jerked into the commonplace medium of a great, great—oh, an infinitely great—novelist's home life. I was led into a well-lit drawing-room, welcomed by the great man's wife, gently propelled into a bedroom, made myself tidy, descended and was introduced into the sanctum, before my eyes had grown accustomed to the lamp-light. Callan was seated upon his sofa surrounded by an admiring crowd of very local personages. I forget what they looked like. I think there was a man whose reddish beard did not become him and ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... interest Lisbeth. The old woman listened, and forgot to be fretful, unconsciously subject to the soothing influence of Dinah's face and voice. After a while she was persuaded to let the kitchen be made tidy; for Dinah was bent on this, believing that the sense of order and quietude around her would help in disposing Lisbeth to join in the prayer she longed to pour forth at her side. Seth, meanwhile, went out to chop wood, for he surmised that Dinah would like to be left alone with ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... as the Sisters of the Sacred Heart have erected a terribly modern convent here. A large Gothic doorway, in a high fragment of ancient wall, admits you to a garden-like enclosure, of great extent, from which you are further introduced into an extraordinarily tidy little parlour, where two good nuns sit at work. One of these came out with me and showed me over the place—a very definite little woman, with pointed features, an intensely distinct enunciation, and those pretty manners ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Tescheron, I am for giving woman the largest liberty in all matters; let her have suffrage if she will take it. I am for giving woman everything—just let her run loose, here, there and everywhere, and then you'll see the world tidy up. It's time the worldliness of the world was viewed with fresh eyes. Woman, so long held in restraint, in many ways is a better observer than conventional man. She is like a countryman newly arrived in the city. It takes a countryman to see the real sights of ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... light-hearted man than before. His smile was less ironical, his politeness less distant. He did not study Machiavelli so intensely,—and he did not return to the spectacles; which last was an excellent sign. Moreover, the humanising influence of the tidy English wife might be seen in the improvement of his outward or artificial man. His clothes seemed to fit him better; indeed, the clothes were new. Mrs. Dale no longer remarked that the buttons were off the wrist-bands, which was a great satisfaction to her. But the sage still remained ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... "that reminds me there's more to my story. These sewing lessons are actually making Mrs. Torrence cleaner and more tidy. The first day I went the table was all cluttered up, and when she cleaned it off for me to cut out on she looked rather ashamed of its dinginess, and muttered some excuse as she wiped it over with an old cloth. The next day ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... Hair.—When the hair is uncombed, the whole person looks untidy. The hair should be combed carefully every morning and again made tidy before each meal. You should use as little water as possible to moisten the hair. The glands can be made to give out their hair oil by squeezing parts of the ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... originally written. If Mr. Darwin had dealt thus with us we should have readily condoned all the mistakes he would have been at all likely to have made, for we should have known him as one who was trying to help us, tidy us up, keep us straight, and enable us to use our judgments to the best advantage. The public will forgive many errors alike of taste and judgment, where it feels that a writer persistently ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... renew my pledge every day, of course," Madaline declared. "But I do feel lonely for my nice, tidy uniform. Do you suppose we ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... whom he asked credit inquired into his history, and found out that up to that time he had never played an important part, but had been employed in various workshops and factories, rising finally to be a foreman. Lately, however, he had fallen into a tidy inheritance; and so people accorded him a certain measure of respect, and a few enterprising men put money also into his business. Soon, then, a moderately large and good-looking factory arose, in which Huerlin proposed ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... passed in. It was a mean little room, not as tidy as it might have been, and far from as clean. There on the low pillow was a pale face, with golden hair disordered about the brow; a face so wasted that it was not easy in the first moment to identify it with that which had been ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... years. I've gone through a number of methods. I've used and then abandoned power chipper/shredders, used home-made bins and then switched to crude heaps; I've sheet composted, mulched, and used green manure. I first made compost on a half-acre lot where maintaining a tidy appearance was a reasonable concern. Now, living in the country, I don't have be concerned with what the neighbors think of my heaps because the nearest neighbor's house is 800 feet from my compost area and I live in the country ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... somehow her mood changed as she looked over the well-kept kitchen. Something in the tidy order and tasty arrangement of its shelves hurt. Sadie ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... always asserted that the room was tidy enough, and that he hated to live in a prim apartment. He said that he could lay his hand on anything he wanted, and that the seeming confusion was perfect order to him. Lucy gave up arguing on these grounds, but privately determined that when the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... whose Indian name was Meyooachimoowin, was very industrious, and kept her wigwam and her children tidy and clean, yet she was never considered as merely a drudge and a slave and left to do all the heavy work. Strange to say, she was not allowed to cut the wood in the forest and then drag it home. Neither did she carry the heavy buckets of water up from the lake, ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... to drive about in, with such tidy dukes as yours, comrade!" said the humble hackney-coachman to this automaton, who remained mute and impassible, without even appearing to know that he was ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and flinging the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper. But presently, when she heard Lise sigh, she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of one hundred compactly built houses standing on the western bank of the Detroit river. Beyond it, on both sides for nearly eight miles, stretched the prosperous settlement of French peasants, whose long, narrow farms reached far back from the river, though in every case the tidy white houses and outbuildings stood close to ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... is over; there will be just time for a run in the garden before dinner, girls. I must go and change my cap, for literary ladies should not neglect to look well after the ways of their household and keep themseves tidy, no matter how old they may be." And with a nod Mrs. Warburton left them, wondering what the effect of the conversation would be on the minds of her ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... investigated this subject. The water was collected in mid-channel between Newhaven and Dieppe by the engineers of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway in stoppered glass carboys. The author has used the combustion method, the albuminoid ammonia, and in some cases the oxygen process of Prof. Tidy. To determine how the various methods of water-analysis were effected by a change of the organic matter from organic compounds in solution to organisms in suspension, some experiments were made with hay-infusion. The results confirm ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Jasper's yard was a welcome sight when the interviewer completed the long walk to the old Negro's place in the sweltering heat of a sunny July afternoon. The old house appeared to be in good condition and the yard was clean and tidy. Jasper's wife, Lula, came around the side of the house in answer to the call for Jasper. A large checked apron almost covered her blue dress and a clean white headcloth concealed her hair. Despite her advanced age, she ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... and at this time of the day, or evening, even when there were few customers, she knew that her father and mother were generally busy. There were late parcels to put up for the little errand-boy to leave on his way home; there was the shop to tidy, and always a good many entries to make in the big ledger. Very often there were letters to write and send off, ordering supplies needed for the shop, or books not in stock, which some customer had ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... and the heavy cloud of sorrow, past, present, and to come, rushed in upon her heart. Taking her bag, she made herself as tidy as she could. Then she stepped outside the station into the deserted street, and finding a space between the houses, watched the sun rise over the waking world. It was her last ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... comes, and the Widow is seen, I' the aisle o' the auld kirk, baith tidy and clean; Though she aft sits for hours on the mossy grave-stane, Yet there 's naebody hears Widow ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... fell to my lot a tidy, efficient-trained English girl; pretty, and genteel, and neat, and knowing how to do every thing, and with the sweetest temper in the world. "Now," said I to myself, "I shall rest from my labors." Every thing ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... foolish princess, and desire a roc's egg; it will prove a stone, the egg of a rock, indeed. Be content rather with this ostrich-egg I send you; with your own slender fingers lift the lid;—pretty, is it not, the tea-service I send you? The tidy warblers threw out the emptied shells; one by one I picked them up, and have made cups and saucers, bowls and pitchers for you: a roc's egg never held anything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... came to the conclusion that it would be a charming plan. Accordingly, next day she set to work and made the place as clean and tidy as circumstances would ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... the park. And now I was able to thank God that they had the parks to walk in. Then came tottering by, an old man, apparently of eighty years, leaning on the arm of his grand-daughter, I supposed—a tidy, gentle-looking maiden. As they passed, I heard the old man say: 'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.' And his quiet face looked as if the fields were yet green to his eyes, and ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... hovels of the neighbouring narrow streets assemble in crowds. There are withered, chilly-looking old women in tumbled caps, and young ones in loose jackets and carelessly fastened skirts, with bare heads and tired, faded faces, eloquent of the wretchedness of their lives. There are some men also: tidy old buffers, porters in greasy jackets, and equivocal-looking individuals in black silk hats, while the foot-path is overrun by a swarm of youngsters dragging toy carts without wheels about, filling pails with sand, and screaming and fighting; a dreadful crew, with ragged clothes ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... quiet, philosophical way, that these tides did great good to the world in many ways, particularly in the way of cleansing the shores of the land, and carrying off the filth that was constantly poured into the sea therefrom—which, Peterkin suggested, was remarkably tidy of it to do. Poor Peterkin could never let slip an opportunity to joke, however inopportune it might be, which at first we found rather a disagreeable propensity, as it often interrupted the flow of very agreeable conversation—and, indeed, I cannot too strongly ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... Judy came in to tell Emma and Ulrica to get up at once and come and help the housekeeper make the rooms tidy and prepare breakfast. Miriam lay motionless while Emma unfolded and arranged the screens. Then she gazed at the ceiling. It was pleasant to lie tranquil, open-eyed and unchallenged while others moved busily about. Two separate, sudden and resounding garglings almost ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... his capacities? Dr. Foxton has the highest regard for him professionally, and I'm told he doctors people for miles around. Yet he lives the life of a recluse. An old woman comes by day to prepare his meals, and tidy the house and shop. His sole relaxation is an hour of an evening in the village inn, his visits there being uninterrupted since the murder. He was there on the night of the murder, too. For the rest, he is alone, shut off from the world. Without knowing it, he's going to fall into ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... contiguous. Neat, tidy, orderly, spruce, trim, prim. Needful, necessary, requisite, essential, indispensable. Negligence, neglect, inattention, inattentiveness, inadvertence, remissness, oversight. New, novel, fresh, recent, modern, late, innovative, unprecedented. Nice, fastidious, dainty, finical, squeamish. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Very busy making things tidy, and resolved, almost religiously, to keep them so. I think I would not, for any consideration, die with all my things in disorder. Disorder must be the result of a disordered mind, and not only so, it reacts on the mind and ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... though the first thing one thinks of in crossing the bridge is the splendid view, the second thought that comes must be, how bare the Italian country looks compared to the luxuriant cultivation we're leaving behind. We're turning our backs now on cosy comfort, well-kept roads, tidy houses, tidy people; and we're on our way to meet beggars, shabbiness, and rags, poverty everywhere staring us in the face. Yet much as I admire France, it's to Italy I give ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... head, for all 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 little shop in ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... but one maid. She always appeared trim and tidy, yet she did the entire housework. Upon the days that Mrs. Archie gave bridge parties or afternoon teas for Ethel's young friends, she hired two extra girls who had been so perfectly trained that the guests never once ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... roared the big fellow threateningly. "You've got a lass there as I likes the looks on; pull up, d'ye hear! Look at the shape of 'er!" quoth he, pointing out Diana to his companions. "A tidy piece—eh, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... "Well, yes, sir, tidy—tidy like, and I s'pose it arn't much worse than coming down that there rope when we tried to get away; but I often feel when I'm lying out on the yard, with my feet in the stirrup, that there's a precious little bit between being up there and ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... "always seems to me just like a tidy little parlour, livin' around in them hills the ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... heartily, and asked and answered local questions. Miss Bocock's people lived not so many miles from Thremdon Hall, and, though she had been little at home of late years, she and Sir Basil had country memories in common. She said presently that she, too, would like to tidy for the tea, and Imogen, taking her to her room, sat with her while she smoothed out one section of her hair and tonged the other, and while she put on a very stiff holland skirt and a blouse distressing to Imogen's sensitive taste, a crude ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... or sell his farm—by far the handsomest property in the township. I was there when a buyer came, in the last days of that summer. We took him over the smooth acres from Lone Pine to Woody Ledge, from the top of Bowman's Hill to Tinkie Brook in the far valley. He went with us through every tidy room of the house. He looked over the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... a long line of weary, backaching, footsore successors. Indeed there is a strain of Martha in all of us; we worry more over a stain in the carpet than a stain on the soul; we bestow more thought on the choice of hats than on the choice of friends; we tidy up bureau drawers, sometimes, when we should be tidying up the inner recesses of our mind and soul; we clean up the attic and burn up the rubbish which has accumulated there, every spring, whether it needs it or not. But when do we appoint a housecleaning day ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... could. But you couldn't. She said it was like what she read once, that you couldn't really be the same any more than you could put the dress you were wearing back on the shelf in the store, and expect it to turn back into a fine long web of cloth all folded up nice and tidy, as it was in the first place. And, of course, you couldn't do that—after the cloth was all ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... England girl of ordinary accomplishments, home loving and filial in disposition, with a nature as sweet as the daisies that grew in the green meadows about her home, and a mind as clear as the brook that rippled through them. Fond of pretty things in the house, a daintily set table, tidy rooms, and loving neatness and order, she was a good cook, a capable housekeeper and a charming hostess as well. She loved the flowers that bloomed each summer in the wide dooryard, and had enough romance to enjoy nature's moods at all times. She cared but ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... two gells put together; and there's the last elder-flower wine I've made—beautiful! I allays offer it along with the sherry, though sister Glegg will have it I'm so extravagant; and as for liking to have my clothes tidy, and not go a fright about the house, there's nobody in the parish can say anything against me in respect o' backbiting and making mischief, for I don't wish anybody any harm; and nobody loses by sending me a porkpie, for my pies are fit to show with the best o' my neighbors'; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... homespun woollens, dyed with hemlock, or oil-nut bark, and fitting so ill that, if they had all cast their clothes into a heap, and then each snatched up whatsoever coat or gown came to hand, they could not have suited worse. Yet they were all clean and tidy, and the young people especially did look exceeding happy, it being with them a famous holiday. The young men came with their sisters or their sweethearts riding behind them on pillions; and the ordinary and all the houses about were soon noisy enough with merry talking and laughter. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... economy of time and toil as building a road. Almost every cottage has specimens of fine art on the walls in the shape of pictures "done" by Jane or Eliza, or embroidery upon lambrequin, portiere, or tidy. It occurs to Jane and Eliza as seldom as to their fore-mothers, that cooking is an art in itself, that may be "fine" to exquisiteness. In their eyes, it is an ugly necessity, to be got over as expeditiously as "the men-folks" will allow, their coarser natures ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... was born to a noble principality. It has been a great pleasure to retain a certain hold upon it for so many years; and since in the natural course of things it must at length pass into other hands, it is a gratification to see the old place making itself tidy for a new tenant, like some venerable dame who is getting ready to entertain a neighbor of condition. Not long since a new cap of shingles adorned this ancient mother among the village—now city—mansions. She has dressed ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Jerome Edwards could tidy a house as well as a woman, and John Upham followed his directions with clumsy zeal. When the kitchen was set to rights Mrs. Upham went in there, as she was bidden, with the baby, and sat down in ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... has a tidy sum of money on deposit with the bank at one per cent., if he wants to employ a sum for a short time, say for the purchase of cattle, he prefers to raise the money on a bill ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... came home!) "Something for mother, too," as he pulled on his socks. "Gloves, now, hey? A dozen pair. I wish I had asked Madame Soule what size she wore, last night. Their hands are about the same size. Mother always had a tidy little paw. So will Totty, eh?" And so finished dressing, thinking Soule had a neat little wife, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... of his forehead, in the 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 favourite 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 ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had a good cleaning out while the Cat was gone, and made the house tidy; but the greedy Cat ate the fat ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... of scrupulous neatness, careful never to be seen by strangers except in a tidy dress, and with her hair in a Grecian knot, gracefully secured by a leather string and a wooden peg. "Weak creepings" were her main reliance in the way of disease. She was also troubled, at times, with a "fullness of the head." In addition, there were other times when ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... be 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
... 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 be built for them to live in, and, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... woman of about forty, very active, rather hasty, wrinkled, very neat and tidy, and with a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... novelists—a well-to-do set of people, in constant communication with the town where they sell their corn, oil, vegetables, and wine, and easily getting confused with the lower class of artizans with whom they doubtless largely intermarried. These peasants whom we see in tidy kilted tunics and leathern gaiters, driving their barrel-laden bullock carts, or riding their mules up to the red city gates in many a Florentine and Sienese painting of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... "Tidy heavy now, Master Tom," said David, as they bore the old walnut-wood piece of furniture across the garden and up to the mill, only setting it down once just inside the yard by way of a rest, and to ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... sky became as black as ink—a heavy blow was comin' on, and we just had time to stow our loose gear up tidy, when the wind came down from between the mountains with a roar like thunder, and away went the roofs of the huts, and with it nearly everything around us that was not too heavy to be carried away. My own boat, which was lying on the beach, was lifted ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... that is, to all outward appearance. She had on a dark blue serge dress with white collar and cuffs, and her hair was tied loosely in the nape of her neck with a black ribbon. The curls, that Martha had tried so hard to keep tidy, were blowing about her face, her cheeks were pale from nervousness, and her ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... and greedily drank it off, for I was intensely thirsty. Axinya had quite recently scrubbed the table and benches, and there was that smell in the kitchen which is found in bright, snug kitchens kept by tidy cooks. And that smell and the chirp of the cricket used to lure us as children into the kitchen, and put us in the mood for hearing fairy tales and playing ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... concerning the melancholy and sentimental career which drove them—poor young gentlemen—into the hard-hearted navy. Indeed, many of them show tokens of having moved in very respectable society. They always maintain a tidy exterior; and express an abhorrence of the tar-bucket, into which they are seldom or never called to dip their digits. And pluming themselves upon the cut of their trowsers, and the glossiness of their tarpaulins, from the rest of the ship's ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... propositions. The result was a model fire company that won the confidence and respect of the citizens. In his boyhood the same trait of character caused him to care for his appearance, so that in his poverty he was usually more neat and tidy in his dress than many sons of the rich with far costlier apparel. And it was this that had somewhat to do with the general manly character for which he was ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... tidy but rather 'unsettled' servant girl, some forty years ago went to an old fortune-teller, to have her fortune told, and the doings on both sides came out as follows, before the magistrate at the Bow Street police-court. The fortune-teller ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... brown silk dress, with a lace collar and cuff set contributed the Christmas before by her Aunt Kate from Ontario, and at her waist, one of the doctor's roses. The others had been brought over by Mary, and were in a glass jar on the tidy desk, where they attracted much attention and speculation as to where they had come from. They seemed to redeem the bare school-room from utter dreariness, and Pearl found herself repeating the phrase in the doctor's letter, "Like a rose in a ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... mother gave thee L5,000. It was put out at interest on thy first birthday, and I hev added a L100 now and then, as I could see my way clear to do so. Thou hes now L22,000 o' thy own—a varry tidy fortune. If ta takes Hallam thou must pay down a' of this to Antony. I'll hev to find t' other L28,000 by a mortgage. Then I shall sell all t' young timber that's wise to sell, and some o' Hallam marsh, to pay off t' mortgage. That will take time to do wisely, ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... Knowles," he said. "Least I could do, it seems to me. I pulled quite a tidy bit from that inside information of yours; I did really. Awfully obliged, and all that. You seem to have a wide acquaintance among the officers. That captain chap tells us he knew your father—the sailor one you told me of, ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... talk that was a loose mosaic of detail and generalisation, he told of the woman's work to which the proud Scotchman had been reduced in care of the aunt who in his infancy had cared for him, and how he strove to keep the house tidy for her because she fretted when she saw housework ill-done. He explained that Bates would have been reduced to hard straits for want of the yearly income from his lumber had not he himself "chanced" to go and help him. He said that Bates had gone through all this without complaint, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... opened as there appeared in answer to the buzzer a very alert, very smiling, and very tidy office girl. Emma McChesney had tried office boys, ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... that what 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
... set-off to the case of an American wife, who one day received a windfall in the form of a check for a tidy amount. She immediately proposed a trip abroad to her husband, but found that he preferred to remain at home in the society of his horses and dogs. So our fair compatriot starts off (with his full consent), has her outing, spends her little "pile," ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... happiness. I had received a "mark," which was a coin like our silver quarter, on Christmas Eve, and I hied myself to Rag Hall at once to divide it with the poorest family there, on the express condition that they should tidy up things, especially those children, and generally change their way of living. The man took the money—I have a vague recollection of seeing a stunned look on his face—and, I believe, brought it back to our house to see if ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... house, and that right speedily, we shall have the storm about our heads, and maybe lose our way if the mist comes on, or get soused over head and ears in some bog-trap. We'll climb yonder hill, Norton, whence we may survey the broil and commotion from our 'watch-tower in the skies,' under a tidy roof and a dry skin. Thou mayest tarry here an thou wilt, and offer thyself a sacrifice on these altars of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... passed without bringing changes in their wake. Maud's sweet face had lost its look of sadness, and blossomed into fresh youth; Lilias was still the professional beauty, whose very apron was donned with an air to effect; while, wonder of wonders! Nan had grown tidy, possessing hair as daintily coiled and hands as carefully kept as Lilias's own. In the old days it had been hazarded as an occasional conjecture that Nan was pretty; but there could be no doubt on that question now, for the plump face had ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... just sweeps me arm over the whole business; an' I'm thinkin' there'll be 'tubes' a plenty for all the pictures master'll ever paint. In a fine heap, though, an' that must be your job, Master Hal, come to-morrow, to put them all tidy, as 'tis ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond |
