"Tinsel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sunburned necks were bare. A scarlet belt encircled the waist of each; and while some wore hats with gaudy feathers, others had their heads adorned with caps and bonnets, surrounded with gold and silver tinsel hat-cords. A few, however, despising coats, travelled in blue and white striped shirts, and trusted to their thickly-matted hair to guard them from the rain and sun. They were truly a wild yet handsome set of men; and no one, when gazing on their happy faces as they lay or stood in ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... realized has sent your mother to a premature grave. You are now entering upon the age that is capable of framing your whole life, and why not reconcile yourself to the belief, that the world, which is dazzling you with its gaudy show, is false and delusive. It is a tinsel glitter, Josephine, the wreck of the innocent and good, turn your back on it for my sake if not ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... or stump," as being so named "when the figures are high and prominent, supported by cotton, wool, or hair;" also in "low and plain embroideries, without enrichment between." He speaks of work "cut and laid on the cloth, laid down with gold, enriched with tinsel and ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... swelling up from the bosom of the deep, with its plains and forests, and hills and rocks and streams, and strange new races of men. These are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our continent exceeds the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... tinsel and the glare That lit his forbears' lives, His tweed-clad shoulders amply bear The burden ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... distasteful fruits to be painfully harvested by following her mother's tuition, and accept the easily gathered luscious golden fruit offered her by her father. Like all children and many adults, the glitter and the tinsel of the present enjoyment were too powerful and seductive to be resisted, or to be postponed for a ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... being more moved with her most virtuous example than with all that ever Paul or Peter wrote touching that matter. Yea, this I know, that a great man's daughter (lady Jane Grey) receiving from lady Mary before she was queen good apparel of tinsel, cloth of gold and velvet, laid on with parchment lace of gold, when she saw it, said, 'What shall I do with it?' 'Mary,' said a gentlewoman, 'wear it.' 'Nay,' quoth she, 'that were a shame, to follow my ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... nacre of any mussel or oyster-shell you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat circular discs of the prettiest colour and lustre. To some extent, such tinsel or foil of shell is used pleasantly for decoration. But the mussel or oyster becoming itself an unwilling modeller, agglutinates its juice into three dimensions, and the fact of the surface being now geometrically gradated, together with the savage instinct ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... It is a real thing," said Mrs. Mayflower. "It does not project itself in advance of us; but exists in the actual and the now, if it exists at all. We cannot catch it by pursuit; that is only a cheating counterfeit, in guilt and tinsel, which dazzles our eyes in the ever receding future. No; happiness is a state of life; and it comes only to those who do each day's work peaceful self-forgetfulness, and a calm trust in the Giver of all good for the blessing that lies stored for each one prepared ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... carefully poised on her outspread fingers . . . some one suddenly grasped her vigorously by the elbow; she turned round and fairly screamed; behind her stood Gerasim. With a foolish smile, making inarticulate caressing grunts, he held out to her a gingerbread cock with gold tinsel on his tail and wings. She was about to refuse it, but he thrust it forcibly into her hand, shook his head, walked away, and turning round, once more grunted ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... and passed the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have calumniated the love of Louis XV.'s time!) She was so unused to see the sunrise, that she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her attitude, quite as much as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her; amazed at her gestures, her voice, her beauty, they took her for an angel, and dropped on their knees around her. If Voltaire had not existed we might have thought it a new miracle. I don't know if God gave ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... the world, just like ourselves, save that they walked more gracefully, and spoke in softer voice. But when the report went round that the cook was getting breakfast ready—out of doors, too!—we were more than compensated for the loss of such tinsel joys. Chattering and eager, we ran over to the dining-tent, and there, close beside it, found the little kitchen, its ovens smoking hot, and a man outside, aproned and capped, cutting up chops and steaks, with careless deftness, and laying them in the great iron pans, preparatory ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... the petty ambitions that are so large a part of the complex world, into which he had gone, she had been introduced to a world where the life itself is the only thing worth while. She had seen nothing of the glittering tinsel of that cheap culture that is death to all true refinement, But in the daily companionship of her gentle teacher, she had lived in touch with true aristocracy, the ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... detect the enemy's lines of communication and raid it with bomb attacks. Even when the land forces cannot reach the enemy with gunfire he can rain missiles of all sorts upon them. Sometimes the airman flies over the enemy lines and drops glittering tinsel or bright metal devices, which falling to the ground serve as marks for the artillerymen ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... race, of nature, and in this he follows Christ, in whose system of Philosophy, Love is ever the pre-dominating idea which permeates mankind with its beneficial effects, and will, when the bastard tinsel with which the truths of the Nazarene are hidden, be replaced by that pure gold which it is impossible to trace in the enunciations of any previous philosopher. This subject is always present to Shelley, and he thus appeals in one of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... after spending much time in scanning similar embroidery in the literature of the Napoleonic Era, I unhesitatingly place the work of Archibald Forbes, and that of several knights of the pen still living, far above the delusive tinsel of Marbot, Thiebault, and Segur. I will go further and say that, if we could find out what were the sources used by Thucydides, we should notice qualms of misgiving shoot through the circles of scientific historians as they contemplated his majestic work. In any case, I may ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... hears always the regular, insistent, maniacal breathing of a concertina. And what in it is not purely mechanistic nevertheless completes the picture of the world as it appears to one who has seen the man-machine in all its comedy. The stage pictures, the trumpery little fair, the tinsel and pathetic finery of the crowds, the dancing of the human ephemeridae a moment before the snow begins to fall, are stained marvelously deeply by the music. The score has the colors of crudely dyed, faded bunting. It has indeed a servant girl grace, a coachman ardor, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... respect, with any the least weakness either of hand or design, is only to set the weakness in a more glaring light, dressing it up, not in the gorgeous array and real jewellery of the court, but in the foil and tinsel glitter, and mock regality of a low theatrical pageantry. And this would be the case even if we had in use his luscious vehicle; but with an inferior one, too often with a bad one, the case of weakness is aggravated, and not unseldom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... exactly a 'stranger' to him. And then, twice as suddenly, to great, grown-up, cool-blooded, money-staled, book-tamed me—it swept over me like a cyclone that I should never be able to decide anything more in all my life—not the width of a tinsel ribbon, not the goal of a journey, not the worth of a lover—until I'd seen the Face that belonged to the Voice in ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... course were in great peril, if not actually consumed. Now was not this characteristic?—the ruling passions of Pope are nothing to it. Whilst the poor distracted manager was bewailing the loss of a building only worth L300,000., together with some twenty thousand pounds of rags and tinsel in the tiring rooms, Bluebeard's elephants, [6] and all that—in comes a note from a scorching author, requiring at his hands two acts and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... people here are extravagantly fond of dress; a stranger would take Montreal to be a city inhabited by none but the rich and idle: they are all finely powdered, walk with their hats under their arms, and wear long coats, adorned with tinsel lace, and buttoned down to the extremity. Since I came here, I have not seen one man dressed like a tradesman. The ladies in general are handsome, extremely gay, ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... Katchiba came to see us, bringing a present of flour. I gave him a tin plate, a wooden spoon, the last of the tea-cups, and a tinsel paper of mother-of-pearl shirt buttons, which took his fancy so immensely, that my wife was begged to suspend it from his neck like a medal. He was really a very good old fellow—by far the best I have seen in Africa. He was very suspicious of the Turks, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... veneration for titles. She considered them a tinsel, and the devotee on his knee-caps to them a lump for a kick. Adding: 'Of course I stand for my class; and if we can't have a manlier people—and it 's not likely in a country treating my brother ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... There was a market for the best, and the problem was to supply it. At first I bound my books in paper covers and simple boards. Men wrote to me wanting fine bindings. I said, "There is a market in America for the best—cheap boards, covered with cloth, stamped by machinery in gaudy tinsel and gilt, are not enough." I discovered that nearly all the bookbinders were dead. I found five hundred people in a book-factory in Chicago binding books, but not a bookbinder among them. They simply ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... or feel insulted by the proffer of a stolen regard? And what have we to do with homes, or hearts, or firesides? Have we not the playhouse, its paste diamonds, its paste feelings, and the loud applause of fops and sots—hearts?—beneath loads of tinsel and paint? Nonsense! The love that can go with souls to heaven—such love for us? Nonsense! These men applaud us, cajole us, swear to us, flatter us; and yet, forsooth, we would have ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... A pale partridge or woodcock wing, short red hackle legs, a peacock-herl body, and a tail—on which too much artistic skill can hardly be expended—of yellow floss silk, and gold twist or tinsel. The orange-tailed governors 'of ye shops,' as the old drug-books would say, are all 'havers;' for the proper colour is a honey yellow. The mystery of this all-conquering tail seems to be, that it represents the yellow ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... By my troth's but a night-gowne in respect of yours, cloth a gold and cuts, and lac'd with siluer, set with pearles, downe sleeues, side sleeues, and skirts, round vnderborn with a blewish tinsel, but for a fine queint gracefull and excellent fashion, yours is worth ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... consequences of vice will allow, at the same time that I exhibit those adventures and entertaining scenes which disguise the dismal path, and make the road to ruin pleasing. They meet here with a true prospect of things, the tinsel splendour of sensual pleasure, and that dreadful price men pay for it—shameful death. I hope it may be of use in correcting the errors of juvenile tempers devoted to their passions, with whom sometimes danger passes for a certain road to ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... account of the other confessions (except one), tinsel or tawdry fragments from the drift-wood of life, that were offered blithely by three or four members of the gay company. We are concerned with Penelope's confession, and with this only as it leads up to subsequent developments of the evening. There was an ominous significance in the fact that ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... the brilliancy of their rose-and-violet-faced uniforms, and by the display of their graceful and accurate military movements. Now they were to have an opportunity to show whether their warlike spirit was expressed chiefly in ruffles and tinsel trimmings, or whether they could win fame ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... introduced us, I glanced hastily out of the corner of my eye at Kennedy. Involuntarily his hand which held the telltale sequin had sought his waistcoat pocket, as though to hide it. Then I saw him check the action and deliberately examine the piece of tinsel between his ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... on hamely fare we dine, Wear hodden gray, and a' that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine— A man's a man for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that; The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king of men ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... of the stage rose in a superior stile of elegance, and entered something like a stable in Castle-street. Here the comedian strutted in painted rags, ornamented with tinsel: The audience raised a noisy laugh, half real and half forced, at three-pence ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... in company with a missionary and a native, both of whom could talk both English and Chinese, and visited some 'flower-boats' on the river. Many of these boats are quite pretentious, with their rich wood-carving, fine furniture, and gaudy display of tinsel. There were whole streets of them,—floating houses moored together; we walked along the length of the street on one side, stepping from the bow of one boat to the next, the bows of the boats constituting front verandahs. We called at almost every place, ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... its confectionery-like halls, the insipidly emphatic pretentiousness of the Casino itself—Durkin could never quite decide whether it reminded him of a hurriedly finished exposition building or of a child's birthday cake duly iced and bedecked—the tinsel glory, the hackneyed magnificence, of its legitimatized and ever-orderly gaming dens, the eternal claws of greed beneath the voluptuous velvet of indolence—it all combined to fill his soul with a sense of hot revolt, as had so often before happened ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the tumbled roar, Lest brave ships drive and break against the shore. What though thy sounding song be roughly set? Parnassus' self is rough! Give thou the thought, The golden ore, the gems that few forget; In time the tinsel jewel will be wrought. Stand thou alone, and fixed as destiny, An imaged god that lifts above all hate; Stand thou serene and satisfied with fate; Stand thou as stands the lightning-riven tree, That lords the cloven clouds of gray Yosemite. ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... respect—that "it is particularly happy in the composition of two or three words together, near equal to the Greek". No one has done more than Milton to justify this praise, or to make manifest what may be effected by this marriage of words. Many of his compound epithets, as 'golden-tressed', 'tinsel-slippered', 'coral-paven', 'flowry-kirtled', 'violet-embroidered', 'vermeil-tinctured', are themselves poems in miniature. Not unworthy to be set beside these are Sylvester's "opal-coloured morn", Drayton's "silver-sanded shore", and ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... were pleasant-smelling new white gloves, and inside their heads solemn timidity commingled with glittering anticipations. Before them, like a Christmas tree glimpsed through lace curtains, they beheld joy shimmering—music, ice-cream, macaroons, tinsel caps, and the starched ladies of their hearts Penrod and Sam walked demurely yet almost boundingly; their faces were shining but grave—they were on their ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... candles, red, white, and blue, were fastened to the different boughs. Dolls that looked exactly like real people—the Tree had never seen such before—swung among the foliage, and high on the summit of the Tree was fixed a tinsel star. It was splendid, ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... she received with empressement. She was dressed to her heart's delight, with a profusion of mock pearl and tinsel; her hair in a shower of long curls in front, with any quantity of bows and braids behind, and a wreath!—that required all Mrs. Castleton's self-possession to look at without laughing. Her entrance excited no little sensation—for she was a striking-looking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... surrenders, their immoralities and diamonds were as familiar to her as the blots on her writing-table. She was not a belated producer of the old fashionable novel, she had a cleverness and a modernness of her own, she had freshened up the fly-blown tinsel. She turned off plots by the hundred and—so far as her flying quill could convey her—was perpetually going abroad. Her types, her illustrations, her tone were nothing if not cosmopolitan. She recognised nothing less provincial ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... felt the way I look sometimes at dawn after dancing all night, my tinsel tarnished, my color faded. All my effects are planned for artificial ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... courts will avenge the violations of liberty of commerce! Victims of monopoly, they will suffer the penalty due to the monopolists! O justice of men, stupid courtesan, how long, under your goddess's tinsel, will you drink the blood of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Napoleon, making little answer, asked for a pair of scissors, clipt one of the gold tassels from a window-curtain, put it in his pocket, and walked on. Some days afterwards, he produced it at the right moment, to the horror of his upholstery functionary; it was not gold but tinsel! In Saint Helena, it is notable how he still, to his last days, insists on the practical, the real. "Why talk and complain; above all, why quarrel with one another? There is no result in it; it comes to nothing that one can do. Say nothing, if one can do nothing!" ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... moment, and never used at all, accumulate upon him so rapidly that he is glad to find some enthusiastic boatman to bestow them upon. It is needless to add, that a gift of this kind is usually very much appreciated by the recipient. Tinsel is a very useful adjunct to a fly, and should always be employed in those used in loch-fishing. If variety is wanted in colouring, the least tip of Berlin or pig's wool of the desired shade will be found very effective. Get your flies dressed on Limerick-bend hooks, ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... Sixth Avenue to the Cigar-Makers' Ball. They made an Indian file through the Christmas shopping crowds, and stopped frequently and noisily before the street-booths' glamour of tinsel and teddy-bears. They shrieked all with one rotund mad laughter as Tom Poppins capered over and bought for seven cents a pink bisque doll, which he pinned to the lapel of his plaid overcoat. They drank hot chocolate at the Olympic Confectionery Store, pretending to each ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... contempt of him; and declared, that, were there not another man in England, she would not have him. She was ready, on the contrary, she could assure them, to resign her pretensions under hand and seal, if Miss Clary were taken with his tinsel, and if every one else approved of his ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... do not possess, and to produce results that are deceptive, and which would mislead us if we drew any absolute inference from them. Here the priest advances, kaleidoscope in hand, and desires you to look at his tinsel and observe its order. Well, you do so, and imagine that the beauty and order you see lie in the things themselves, and not in the prism through which you view them. But you are not satisfied—you must examine. You take the kaleidoscope to pieces, and where then ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... could make the yard outside the castle of green blotting-paper. Another child could furnish a mirror for the lake, another two toy green trees, one two wax swans, one a box of tin soldiers, another a jack-in-the-box, while the girls might dress a paper doll for a tinsel maid. The teacher, instructed by the class, might make a castle of heavy gray cardboard, fastening it together with heavy brass paper-fasteners and cutting out the door, windows, and tower. It is natural for children to handle playthings; and when a story like this is furnished ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... of tinsel! why we see The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks. You prate of nature! you are he That spilt his ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... But, after all, all these people are rubbish, and their life is not life, but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world culture. But there are two singular realities—ancient as humanity itself: the prostitute and the moujik. And about them we know nothing, save some tinsel, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... 'gainst love That's true? Tell me with what you'd turn the scale? Yea, make the index waver? Wealth? A feather! Rank? Tinsel against bullion in the balance! The love of kindred? That to set 'gainst love! Friendship comes nearest to't; but put it in, Friendship will kick the beam!—weigh nothing 'gainst it! Weigh love against ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... pillow to be kissed; and out of a pocket in the hooded coat came forth the Christmas Angel. In the face it bore a strong family likeness to the drayman, but its feet were hidden in folds of snowy muslin, and on its head glittered a tinsel star. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... cherish private virtues.' One of the company mentioned Lord Chesterfield, as a man who had no friend. JOHNSON. 'There were more materials to make friendship in Garrick, had he not been so diffused.' BOSWELL. 'Garrick was pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf. Lord Chesterfield was tinsel.' JOHNSON. 'Garrick was a very good man, the cheerfullest man of his age;[1175] a decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gave away, freely, money acquired by himself. He began the world with a great hunger for money; the son ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... They smile superior; of external show Regardless, while their inbred virtues give A lustre to their power, and grace their court With real splendours, far above the pomp Of eastern kings, in all their tinsel pride. Like troops of Amazons, the female band Prance round their cars, not in refulgent arms As those of old; unskilled to wield the sword, Or bend the bow, these kill with surer aim. The royal offspring, fairest of the fair, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... which were draped silks in all the colors of the chromatic scale. Their necks and arms, which were stained a saffron yellow, were hung with jewels or near-jewels. On their heads were towering, indescribable affairs of feathers, flowers and tinsel, faintly reminiscent of those fantastic headdresses affected by the lamented Gaby. The music was furnished by a gamelan, or orchestra, of half-a-hundred musicians playing on drums, gongs and reeds, with a few xylophones thrown in for good measure. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... loyalty Had in your ears a meaning and a place Quite strange to mine. For my Rhode Island stock, Grown far afield, and long acclimated, Had dropped all meanings for the name of King, Of Church, of mother country. Such appeals Were like a tinsel fringe of superstition, Alien imposture. It was ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... tinsel for a poor little woman to carry around! How it must have shocked you to find me so commonplace! None of us escape the common fates. It is always a surprise to me to discover how simple the men of great literary ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... characters in wax-work, and she was allowed to be present at the rehearsals, but there was no question of such a little thing taking a part. She thought all the figures very beautiful, especially Joan of Arc, who was dressed in splendid tinsel armour and a crimson skirt, and was seated on a spotted rocking-horse. When she gracefully waved her sword Nan could hardly believe that it really was her own sister Sophy, and afterwards when she read about Joan of Arc in the ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... world at large habitually putting money-making, position-making, and the care of the things of the body, of time, and of sense, in the first place; and is not the moral law perpetually warning us that the fashion of the world passes away, and that what seems gold is in reality tinsel? As far as the condemnation that conscience passes on the broad evils which affect society—"thou shalt not steal," "thou shalt not lie," or so forth—no doubt it is supported by the transmitted sense of inconvenience; ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... Jeffrey is apt to fail; though he affects to be a dictator, he is really a follower of the fashion. He could put up with Rogers's flattest 'correctness,' Moore's most intolerable tinsel, and even Southey's most ponderous epic poetry, because admiration was respectable. He could endorse, though rather coldly, the general verdict in Scott's favour, only guarding his dignity by some ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Certificates, Kenneth's bonnet, a thin packet of real letters, and the famous champagne cork. She kisses the letters, but she does not blub over them. She strokes the dress, and waggles her head over the certificates and presses the bonnet to her cheeks, and rubs the tinsel of the cork carefully with her apron. She is a tremulous old 'un; yet she exults, for she owns all these things, and also the penny flag on her breast. She puts them away in the drawer, the scarf over them, the lavender on the scarf. Her air ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... accomplishments. It consists not in intellectual acquirements. It consists in the development of the triune man—body, soul and spirit—in their divine harmony. Without a cultivation of the spirit in harmony with its immortal destiny, all that this world calls culture is but the gilded tinsel that bedecks the putrefaction of death. The truly cultured man is developed in harmony with the laws of his being. This being is compound, having a fleshly and a spiritual side. Hence, to cultivate one to the neglect of the other is to disproportion ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... wound: Ground with severe distress the industrious poor Driven by the ruthless landlord to the door. While thus our land her hapless fate bemoans In secret, and with inward sorrow groans; Though deck'd with tinsel trophies of renown, All gash'd with sores, with anguish bending down; Can yet some impious parricide appear, Who strives to make this anguish more severe? 170 Can one exist, so much his country's foe, To bid her wounds with fresh effusion flow? There can; to him in vain she lifts ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... apropos of that, do you know what they call them in America?—they call them lightning-bugs, if you can believe me—remark the difference between southern euphuism and western bluntness—your fireflies are pretty enough, I grant. But they are tinsel pasted on the Desert of Sahara. They are condiments added to a dinner of dust and ashes. Life, trick it out as you will, is just an incubus—is just the Old Man of the Sea. Language fails me to convey to you any notion how heavily he sits ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... frequently lost in the clouds; and they clanked down again upon the sandy shore two or three feet in front of where they had stood—or behind, just as it happened; and their swords banged against their breast-plates and shields, proving that they were real metal and not merely tinsel; and they twirled round and round like beef on a roasting-jack, until at last Michele dealt the inevitable blow and the giant fell dead on the sand with a thud that jolted the coast, shook the islands, ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... with himself. "The girl CAN understand!—A thing is always dead to you when you have done with it," he answered her. "Suppose you had a ball-dress crumpled and unsightly—the roses on it withered, and the tinsel shining hideously through them—would it not be ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... for it, and I gave it him, telling him, that it was without design; that is, according to them, from no interested motive. The natives put as great a value on a pipe of peace as on a gun. Mine was adorned with tinsel and silver wire: so that in their estimation my pipe was worth two guns. He appeared to be extremely well pleased with it; put it up hastily in his case, squeezed my hand with a smile, and called ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... he, "a matter-of-fact sailor making such a d——fool of himself!" I reminded him that this achievement was not so rare an occurrence. But he was not to be appeased! The sailor of the olden times never used tinsel nautical terms. His dialect was straight and strong, and his peculiar dandyism very funny. His hair used to be combed behind his ears, he wore a broad, flat cap cocked to one side, and his ears were adorned with light drops of gold or silver; and when he went forth to do his courting he seemed ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... didst follow thy dim fancies through the Land of Shadow; or when thou didst vainly seek to give voice to an ideal beauty, on the boards where illusion counterfeits earth and heaven for an hour, till the weary sense, awaking, sees but the tinsel and the scene-shifter. Thy spirit reposes in its own happiness. Its wanderings have found a goal. In a moment there often dwells the sense of eternity; for when profoundly happy, we know that it is impossible to die. Whenever the soul FEELS ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... people hastening hither and thither on business had to dismount and kneel in obeisance, and farmers, instead of cultivating the fields, had to act as bearers of the dogs' sedan-chairs. Thus, the city of Kamakura presented the curious spectacle of a town filled with well-fed dogs, clothed in tinsel and brocades, and totalling from four to five thousand. Twelve days in every month used to be devoted to dog-fights, and on these occasions, the regent, the nobles, and the people inside and outside the mansion used ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... divan was gorgeous with silk curtains and cushions embroidered with gold thread and embossed with tinsel ornaments, the work of the bride herself. The seat for the bridegroom was somewhat higher and larger than the bride's. At last the bridegroom approached in a large barge, which held about two hundred people. A small boat preceded it with ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... the thought had first come to her, she had carried a big, square package out to the table before the kitchen window and untied with fluttering fingers the string that bound it. The little scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt, alive with tinsel that glinted under the light, still lay there beside the thin-heeled slippers and filmy silk stockings. She bent over them, patting them lovingly with a slim hand, her eyes ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... repelled or shocked by a life which, compared with all true, noble standards, was sadly lacking. And yet she was the very last one to be dazzled by a fast, brilliant man of the world. She had been too well educated for that, and had been early taught to distinguish between solid worth and mere tinsel. Her native powers of observation were strong, and her father, and mother also before she died, had given her opportunities for exercising them. Instead of mere assertions as to what was right and wrong and general lecturing on the subject, they had aimed to show her right and wrong embodied ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... that approach it are Paul's appeal to the Athenians on Mars Hill, and the speech of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. These have no tricks, no devices, no tinsel gilt. They do not attempt to "split the ears of the groundlings," and yet they are addressed to the commonest ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... and corrodes even an originally noble-minded spirit. It is throughout, moreover, the distinguishing characteristic of such natures as that of Scipio—strange mixtures of genuine gold and glittering tinsel—that they need the good fortune and the brilliance of youth in order to exercise their charm, and, when this charm begins to fade, it is the charmer himself that is most painfully ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... no make-believe about him now, no mockery. He was naked man, stripped of his tinsel, and laid bare to the soul by the inexorable Master, Pain. Across his chin, as though to mock him, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... furnished to a marvel with the most delicate ebony and silver suite, on a deep red carpet of Aleppo, as soft and yielding as the moss of a forest. In keeping with the furniture was the sole occupant of this stately chamber—a little negro boy in a livery of velvet picked out with silver tinsel, who stood as motionless as a small swart statuette against the door which faced that through ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rather unwell, in consequence of the great quantity of lemon and sugar-candy he had eaten to improve his voice; and two flutes and a violoncello had pleaded severe colds. What of that? the audience were all coming. Everybody knew his part: the dresses were covered with tinsel and spangles; the white plumes looked beautiful; Mr. Evans had practised falling until he was bruised from head to foot and quite perfect; Iago was sure that, in the stabbing-scene, he should make 'a decided hit.' A self-taught deaf gentleman, who ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... looked at the bit of tinsel in his own hand, and at the smaller, but exquisitely-shaped "article" that my grandmother held up to look at, suspended by its bit of ribbon, and was quite as much puzzled as he had evidently been a little while before, in his distinctions ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... his boxing gloves, and yet forget that the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry tinsel glitters through the dust of the ring which obscures ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... which were far from mild. Food was regulated, minstrels were not allowed to sit at the same table with ladies and gentlemen, most rigid rules were formulated against the abuse of gold, silver, and tinsel trimmings on the dresses of the women, and of the men as well, and the use of ermine and of all fine and Costly furs was carefully restricted. In Castile the same movement was taking place, and Alfonso X., who ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... the Christmas tree, after the presents have been distributed, some one says, "I see something on the Christmas tree which commences with T. What is it?" Many guesses are given, the one who says "Tinsel," has guessed correctly, and it is his turn to give a guess, which may commence with P and C. Pop-corn is easily guessed, and so on, until everything has ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... a corner, and many of the guests also were seated on the floor. Miss Ingate, intoxicated by the rapture of existence, and Miss Thompkins were carefully examining the frescoes on the walls. A young woman covered from head to foot with gold tinsel was throwing chocolates into Musa's mouth, or as near to it ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... not lied, for the wine really did come from a freshly opened cask just brought up from the cellar. But as the niche was illumined only by the tiny oil lamp burning beneath the image of the Virgin, bedizened with flowers and gold and silver tinsel, fastened against the wall, Biberli asked the weary bar-maid for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a draughty wind fluttered the tinselly decorations of last night. The floor was strewed with fragments of garments torn in the crush—paper and silken flowers, here a rosette, there a buckle, a satin bow, a tinsel spangle. Benches and tables were piled about the room, which was half dark; only to westward, through one window, was visible a paler gleam, which might by ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the chief entertainments are held. The approaching avenues are illuminated with many-colored lights suspended from the branches of the trees, and wind under triumphal archways, festooned with flowers. The theatres present open fronts, and abound in all the tinsel of the stage, both inside and out. The grounds are crowded to their utmost capacity with the rank and fashion of the city, in all the glory of jeweled head-dresses and decorations of order. Festoons of variegated lights swing from the trees over the audience, and painted figures of dragons ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... certain vulgarity is inseparable from even the most respectable forms of magic,—an atmosphere of tinsel, of ostentation, of big cry and little wool. A child might have told us that matter is not almighty, that minds are sometimes transparent to one another, that love and faith can work wonders. And we also know that, in this mortal life, our means are ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... lake" where she had spent the summer, and how much she had loved it, but William missed all that. Upon the many-colored platform the ineffable One drifted to and fro, back and forth; her little blonde head, in a golden net, glinting here and there like a bit of tinsel blowing ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... and of Smithfield, engendered not the least admiration; and as for the Poet's Corner in the Abbey, he loudly declared that he could see no poetry whatever about it. But what hurt the feelings of Herr Burkhardt most of all, was the utter contempt Clare showed for the delights of Vauxhall. The tinsel and the oil-lamps, the wooden bowers and paper flowers, struck Clare as perfectly absurd, and he expressed his astonishment that people should go and stare at such childish things, with a world of ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... were used in Ireland by Sir Walter Scott's eldest son. The controversy as to whether fish can distinguish colours was unknown to our ancestors. I am inclined to believe that, for salmon, size, and perhaps shade, light or dark, with more or less of tinsel, are the only important points. Izaak stumbled on the idea of Mr. Stewart (author of The Practical Angler) saying, 'for the generality, three or four flies, neat, and rightly made, and not too big, serve for a trout in most rivers, all the summer.' ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... stopped with clusters of boys and wenches buzzing about the cake-shops like flies.(7) There had the fools let out their shops two yards forward into the streets, all spread with great cakes frothed with sugar, and stuck with streamers of tinsel. And then I went to Bateman's the bookseller, and laid out eight-and-forty shillings for books. I bought three little volumes of Lucian in French for our Stella, and so and so. Then I went to Garraway's(8) to meet Stratford and dine with him; but it was an idle day with ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... entirely out of his element, but Florence shows him the spirit in which to accept the tinsel and the rude fun-making. He soon comes to like it—and to think very well of the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... of life, broken in spirit, unfit for any new career, impaired in health, perfectly useless—victims of the conventional ideas that rule supreme in the army. Others he had seen forced to resign, overloaded with a burden of debt, ruined financially, physically, morally bankrupt,—all due to the tinsel and glitter, to the ceaseless temptations thrown into the path of the German army officer. A young civilian, even when the son of wealthy parents, is not coaxed and wheedled into a network of useless expenditure, as is the youngest army officer, waylaid everywhere by ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... was in May, 1841,—a long column of troops entered Paris with a celerity hitherto unknown. There was no false glitter, no tinsel; everything was neat and martial, with bugles for their only music, and a uniform that was sombre, indeed, but of such harmonious simplicity as to be by no means devoid of elegance. This column consisted of the Chasseurs, coming to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... shrinking from the light, One dull, dim taper through the cell Glimmering, to make more horrible The face of darkness, she prepares, Working unseen, all kinds of snares, With curious, but destructive art: Here, through the eye to catch the heart, 30 Gay stars their tinsel beams afford, Neat artifice to trap a lord; There, fit for all whom Folly bred, Wave plumes of feathers for the head; Garters the hag contrives to make, Which, as it seems, a babe might break, But which ambitious madmen feel More firm and sure than chains of steel; Which, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... face is the face of fine physical beauty. Imagine for yourself the sensual countenance of a young Bacchus, beautiful as Milton's devils; imagine him clad in splendor before which even English luxury is mean; arrayed in jewels, to which even Eastern pomp is tinsel; imagine an expression of tired hate, of low, brutal lust, hanging on those exquisite licentious features, and you have before you the type of Roman civilization. It is the boy just budding into manhood, whom later times will ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... and ingenuousness that enchained me!" he cried impetuously. "Wait till she has been flattered and spoiled by a vain and deceiving world; till she learns to prize the admiration of many better than the true love of one; till she becomes that tinsel thing my soul abhors, a false and worldly woman. No! give her to me now," he added, clasping me to his heart with irresistible tenderness and passion. "Give her to me now, in the bloom of her innocence, the flower of her youth, and I will enshrine her in my heart as in a crystal vase, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... whom we fetched and carried, for whom we bound nosegays on the heath and stole apples from the orchard and climbed upon the table after desert, if we were left alone in the dining-room, to lay hands on some beautiful sweetmeat wrapped in tinsel and fringes of pink paper—have we not met her again in after-life, a grown woman, very, very far from our ideal of feminine grace and beauty? And still in spite of changes in herself and ourselves there has clung to her memory through all those years enough of ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... eyes, brimful with simple faith and simple trust, gazed in reverence on the naive wax figure behind the grating, within its throne of rough stone and whitewash. It was dressed in blue calico spangled with tinsel, and had a crown on its head made of gilt paper and a veil of coarse tarlatan. Two china pots containing artificial flowers were placed on either ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... dainty work. When the clean granite stands where it should to shelter the four-and-thirty States as they walk the vast colonnades together, intent upon the great interchanges of the country's thought and work, this tinsel will not be missed; as men look upon the grave lines that assure them of security, they will rejoice that the time for the truly beautiful has arrived, and hasten to relieve the solid space with shapes as durable as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... discussions began at the hour of four, and were continued till ten o'clock in the evening; during which time I was a silent witness to a coolness and candor of argument unusual in the conflicts of political opinion; to a logical reasoning, and chaste eloquence, disfigured by no gaudy tinsel of rhetoric or declamation, and truly worthy of being placed in parallel with the finest dialogues of antiquity, as handed to us by Xenophon, by Plato, and Cicero. The result was, that the King should have a suspensive veto on the laws, that the legislature should be composed ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a story illustrative of this altered manner and matter of preaching. He had been preaching when very young, at Galashiels, and one wife said to her "neebor," "Jean, what think ye o' the lad?" "It's maist o't tinsel wark," said Jean, neither relishing nor appreciating his fine sentiments and figures. After my mother's death, he preached in the same place, and Jean, running to her friend, took the first word, "It's ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... in the field are cutting off French heads. And it will be best for me to go back to Kunzendorf. I have nothing to do here; no one cares for an old fellow like me. I have hoped on from day to day, but all my hopes are gone now. Amelia, take off your tinsel, and pack up our traps. The best thing we can do will be to start this very evening and return to our ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... having little by little found its way into the word.] Could the Magdalen have ever bequeathed us 'maudlin' in its present contemptuous application, if the tears of penitential sorrow had been held in due honour by the world? 'Tinsel,' the French 'etincelle,' meant once anything that sparkled or glistened; thus, 'cloth of tinsel' would be cloth inwrought with silver and gold; but the sad experience that 'all is not gold that glitters, that much showing fair to the eye is worthless in reality, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the vision of Zachariah was effected by the smoke of the chandeliers in the temple; the Magian kings, with their offerings of myrrh, of gold, and of incense, were three wandering merchants, who brought some glittering tinsel to the Child of Bethlehem; the star which went before them a servant bearing a flambeau; the angels in the scene of the temptation, a caravan traversing the desert, laden with provisions; the two angels in the ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... caustic tongue, was not likely to attain any very large share of popular favour or to be esteemed a companionable sort of person. The fabric of social life is interwoven with a multitude of delicate evasions, of small hypocrisies, of matters of tinsel sentiment; social intercourse would be impossible, if it were not so. There is no sort of social existence possible for a person who is ingenuous enough to say always what he thinks, and, on the whole, one may be thankful that there is not. One naturally enough objects to form the ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... I ejaculated, holding up my hands. "He does not believe he is a great stupid!" But Nino was not angry at all. He busied himself a little with his costume, which was laid out on the piano, with the sword and the tinsel collar and all the rest ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... inclined to think that the morning is more favourable to dramatic excellence than the evening. The daylight accords with the truth and sobriety of nature, and it is the season of cool judgment: the gilded, the painted, the tawdry, the meretricious—spangles and tinsel, and tarnished and glittering trumpery—demand the glare of candle-light and the shades of night. It is certain, that the best pieces were written for the day; and it is probable, that the best actors were those who performed whilst the sun was above the ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... fellows," said Stevenson, "but none of us can write like Hazlitt." To write a style that is easy yet incisive, lively and at the same time substantial, buoyant without being frothy, glittering but with no tinsel frippery, a style combining the virtues of homeliness and picturesqueness, has been given to few mortals. Writing in a generation in which the standards of prose were conspicuously unsettled, when the most ambitious writers were seeking ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... shall have to begin at the beginning, and enlighten the mothers. Follies and fripperies, in cooking or dressing, will give way before enlightenment, just as do the skin paintings, tattooings, gaudy colors, glass beads and tinsel, and other absurdities of savage tribes; just as have done the barbaric customs and splendors of the barbaric ages. Woman is not quite out of her barbaric stage yet. At any rate, she is not fully enlightened. ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... are a fellow of fine qualities, altogether out of the common way of men. A pity that conditions do not allow you to be perfectly honest; but people in general are so foolish that you would get no credit for your superiority if you did not wear a little tinsel, practise a few harmless affectations. Some day your difficulties will be at an end, and then you can afford to show yourself in a simpler guise." When he looked in the glass, Clifford admired ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... are the sands, fair Licia, on the shore, Or colored flowers, garlands of the spring, Or as the frosts not seen, not felt before, Or as the fruits that autumn forth doth bring; As twinkling stars, the tinsel of the night, Or as the fish that gallop in the seas; As airs each part that still escapes our sight, So are my sighs, controllers of my ease. Yet these are such as needs must have an end, For things finite none else hath nature done; Only the sighs, which from my heart I send, Will never cease, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... conclusions. Only nobody could discover who was the young girl concerned, or where she came from or what might be her name. And, after a few days, Broadway, also, forgot the matter amid the tarnished tinsel and raucous noises of its own ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... almost be an enlarged reproduction of some little girl's Doll-King, dressed up in silver tinsel and left out of doors, by mistake, some ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... which took place at Christmas, 1440, is from the records of Norwich:—"John Hadman, a wealthy citizen, made disport with his neighbours and friends, and was crowned King of Christmas. He rode in state through the city, dressed forth in silks and tinsel, and preceded by twelve persons habited as the twelve months of the year, their costumes varying to represent the different seasons of the year. Alter King Christmas followed Lent, clothed in white garments ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... yoke. Some erect and manly spirits still remained, pillars of state; but the word republic had grown stale to the vulgar ear; and many—the event would prove whether it was a majority— pined for the tinsel and show of royalty. Ryland was roused to resistance; he asserted that his sufferance alone had permitted the encrease of this party; but the time for indulgence was passed, and with one motion of his arm he would sweep away the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... drags, and the players would begone, Out of this theatre of tinsel days And lights and tawdry glamour, out to face Even the blank of night, the icy stars, The vast abysses. What the gallery-gods Could give, they well have given; but deities Inscrutabler than they annul all gifts ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... most serious fault arises from his desire to be thought a fine writer. Without making long extracts, it is impossible to give any conception of the absurdities into which this childish ambition has led him. The tropes and metaphors, the tawdry tinsel, the common tricks of feeble rhetoricians are reproduced here as if they were the highest results of rhetorical art. The display is often amusing. Thus, in describing Mrs. John Adams, Mr. Randall says: "Her lofty lineaments carried a trace of the Puritan severity. They ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... you unfledged Guy Fawkes. I know nothing would give you greater joy than to put on a mask, grasp a dagger in your hand, and go to Wesley, crying, 'Villain, your secret or your life!' Dick, you're a stage hero; you're a thing of sawdust and tinsel. Come to the parlor and hear Kate play the divine songs of Mendelssohn; perhaps, night-eyed conspirator, to whirl Polly or Miss Rosa in the delirium of the 'Blaue ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... he called them; gentlemen who reminded him of some spinsters in his country who 'spin their thread so fine that it is neither fit for weft nor woof.' To such men, recognising only the culture of schools, a genius like Burns was a puzzle, easier dismissed than solved. Burns saw them, in all their tinsel of academic tradition, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... calling the virgins with a flute; these appeared from a green-room, to the number of thirty or forty, of all ages and sizes. Each had her hair dressed in a topknot, and her head covered with a veil; a scarlet petticoat loaded with tinsel concealed her naked feet, and over this was a short red kirtle, and an enormous white shawl was swathed round the body from the armpits to the waist. A broad belt passed over the right shoulder and under the left arm, to which hung ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... countries where beasts of chase are found in great abundance; sell your land to us, and go to live happily in those solitudes." After holding this language, they spread before the eyes of the Indians fire-arms, woollen garments, kegs of brandy, glass necklaces, bracelets of tinsel, ear-rings, and looking-glasses.[214] If, when they have beheld all these riches, they still hesitate, it is insinuated that they have not the means of refusing their required consent, and that the government itself will not long have the power of protecting them ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... scalped his enemies, white or red, with devilish glee; they hung about every French post, warmed themselves by the Frenchman's fire, ate his food, and patted their stomachs with delight; and they swarmed by thousands to Quebec, bringing their peltries for trade, received gewgaws and tinsel decorations from the Governor, and swore eternal allegiance to his master, the Sun of the ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... pitiful western vulgarity obtruding at every turn, and the quiet beauty of his surroundings struck Craven even more sharply than usual. It seemed impossible that only two miles away was Theatre Street blazing and rioting with all its tinsel tawdriness, flaring lights and whining gramophones. Here was another world—and here he had found more continuous contentment than he had known in the last ten years. The garden was an old one, planned by a master ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... baron in disguise—in private life he had a castle and retainers; and even Gygi, the gendarme, was a make-believe official who behind the scenes was a vigneron and farmer in a very humble way. Daddy, too, seemed sometimes but a tinsel author dressed up for the occasion, and absurdly busy over books that no one ever saw on railway bookstalls. While Mademoiselle Lemaire was not in fact and verity a suffering, patient, bed-ridden lady, but ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... value at its true worth the show and tinsel of London life. She never appeared again at Court but once, to pay her respects to the new Queen, who received her very cordially, seated on a throne by her husband. The small Queen of eight "hoped she was quite well, ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... illustration again, lighted up like a great transparency, the focus for a thousand eyes. For on the dais of the barge, in the place of honour nearest the idols, stood three women and a child. The women were swathed in fold upon fold of rich violet silk, sprinkled all over with tinsel and gold; they were crowned with white flowers, wreathed round a golden ornament like a full moon set in their dark hair; and the effect of the whole, seen in the luminous flush of colour thrown upon them from the shore, was ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... He is accustomed to the lights, to the spectators, to the laughter, to the applause, to the frightened scream of the hysterical women in the audience, to the close air and to the narrow stage behind the bars. The tamer in his tights and tinsel has grown used to his tiger, to his emotions, to his hourly danger. He even finds at last that his mind wanders during the performance, and that at the very instant when he is holding the ring for the leap, or thrusting ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... tinsel or gold depends on the using,' said he, thoughtfully; 'there are some lumps of solid gold among those papers, I am sure, one, in particular, about a trifle. May I see ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to me that I had the light of my wretched provision on the fact that now it was I who possessed at least all but the personal part of my brother's advantages? Our sweet illusions are half of them conscious illusions, like effects of colour that we know to be made up of tinsel, broken ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... love, thy beauty far outshineth them; The tinsel they are, thou the living gem. Great gift of Gods! Shall flowers of earth despise Those flowers of heaven—thy tresses, and thine eyes? Away with gloom I let no ill-boding make My heart to falter, or my hand to shake. One ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... "Angelo Beffa, Helvetia Exchange," with the white cross and plumed hat of Switzerland. One street is all Chinese, with shiny-haired women, and little mandarins with long cues of braided red silk. The babies seem to be dressed in imitation of the idol in the temple; their tight caps have the same tinsel and trimmings, and the resemblance their little dry faces bear to it ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... exhibited the taste and skill which the French, more than any other people on earth, exhibit in temporary things. Nothing could exceed the elegance with which the Parisian decorators had fitted up this silk and tinsel abode, which was to be superseded, within a few months, by the solid majesty of marble. But, on this memorable and melancholy night, the ornaments bore, to me, the look of those sad frivolities with which France is fond ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... night for Belinda when Blanche went away; and her husband, with rather a blush and a sigh, said "he had been deceived in her; he had thought her endowed with many precious gifts, he feared they were mere tinsel; he thought she had been a right-thinking person, he feared she had merely made religion an amusement—she certainly had quite lost her temper to the schoolmistress, and beat Polly Rucker's knuckles ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... relics—presented the same appearance as those worn by him during his ordinary labors. And this, by the way, exhibits another feature of the extreme simplicity of the time—and one too highly praise-worthy—when the individual was sought for himself alone, and not for the tinsel gew-gaws, comparatively speaking, he might chance to exhibit. Necessity forced all to be plain and substantial in the matter of dress; and consequently comfort and convenience were looked to, rather than ostentatious display. All at that day were habited much alike—so ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... forever before him. He is shy, sensitive, the reverse of everything coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and commonplace. His spirit clothes itself in the garb of elder time; homelier, but more durable. He is borne along with no pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel of a fashionable phraseology, is neither fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take an underground course, or be conveyed through old-fashioned ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... beautiful and edifying adornment for the drawing-room in times of Victorian self-satisfied peace, but was a tinsel armour for the battle of life, and entirely futile as ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... she pulled her clothing furiously from her, and stood with nothing but a plain coloured shawl of gauze covered in tinsel twined about her slim waist, "why hast thou wasted precious moments? Why has thou imperilled my chance by infuriating the great man? Out of my way, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... cheapness, its crudity, like those poor painted faces of the dancers pirouetting in the midst of a public they can more surely enchant from the distance of the stage. The costumes, so many of them, came from humble costumers who let them from year to year without renewal of the tinsel or freshening of the ribbons. But those very things gave to this page of life its depth of interest, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... taste displayed in their arrangement, the folding doors communicating with another parlor were suddenly thrown open, disclosing the grand achievement of the afternoon—the beautiful Christmas tree—tall, wide-spreading, glittering with lights and tinsel ornaments, gorgeous with gay colors, and every branch ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... confess his folly! It is true that, did they not propose themselves as fit to hold my leading-staff, little should I care for plucking the silken trappings off the puppets thou hast shown me in succession. What concerns it me what fine tinsel robes they swagger in, unless when they are named as rivals in the glorious enterprise to which I have vowed myself? Yes, De Vaux, I confess my weakness, and the wilfulness of my ambition. The Christian camp contains, doubtless, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... wedding of this plant with the god Vishnu, notwithstanding that tulsi bears the title of Krishna's bride, probably because of the latter being an incarnation of Vishnu. On these occasions pots of this plant are painted and adorned with tinsel. A magical circle is traced in the garden and the plant is put in the middle of it. A Brahman brings an idol of Vishnu and begins the marriage ceremony, standing before the plant. A married couple ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... are who lord it o'er their fellow-men With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen Their baaing vanities, to browse away The comfortable green and juicy hay From human pastures; or, O torturing fact! Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats |
