"Trimming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appearance. In single suits I saw sleeves of one color, the waist of another, the skirt of another; scarlet jackets and gray skirts; black waists and blue skirts; black skirts and gray waists; the trimming chiefly gold braid and buttons, to give a military air. The gray and gold uniforms of the officers, glittering between, made up a carnival of color. Every moment we saw strange meetings and partings ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... evaporation. The steam contains the aroma or fine volatile oil and essentials which pass into the air. In a fairly large family little meat need be purchased for the stock pot if the housewife insists that all portions of bone and trimming be sent with the purchased meat. The French women look with horror on the American women leaving all the scrap and trimming to ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... irresistible. In the presence of the irresistible the conventional is a crazy structure swept away with very little creaking of its timbers on the flood. When we feel its power we are immediately primitive creatures, flying anywhere in space, indifferent to nakedness. And after trimming ourselves for it, the sage asks your permission to add, it will be the thing we are most certain some day to feel. Had not she trimmed herself?—so much that she had won fame for an originality mistaken by her for the independent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the guides," said Mr. Waterman. "He's a corker. He's been up in through to Lac Corbeau trimming up some of ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... simply because they looked for something deep and recondite, when the solution lay almost upon the very surface. Was Catharine sincerely in favor of peace? She was never sincere. Her Macchiavellian training, the enforced hypocrisy of her married life, the trimming policy she had thought herself compelled to pursue during the minority of the kings, her two sons, had eaten from her soul, even to its root, truthfulness—that pure plant of heaven's sowing. Loving peace only because it freed her from the fears, the embarrassments, the vexations of war—not ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... most neglected in houses are the trimming of lamps and the care of the books. The condition of many libraries in large country houses is most lamentable. In such neglect are they that it would take months, and in some cases years, working day and night, ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... ought to be above childish negligence and tricks. If some men saw no use in botany, he would not waste time in beating it into them. He left the blind and the sluggards in their wilful ignorance, but had generously helpful hands for all wiser ones who saw the value of trimming their lamps. All such he would take to his garden personally to direct and inspire, and our better men felt all through their lives how much that meant. In general we soon came to feel and appreciate a most kindly influence as proceeding from him. I think ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... window, where her geraniums stood, and even thought kindly of Miss Webster herself, to whom it was not quite so easy to feel genial. She entered the shop. The apprentice sate there at work, busily trimming a fine rice straw bonnet for the lodger within. She looked up joyously at Emilie's approach. She thought how often that kind German face had been to her like a sunbeam on a dull path; how often her musical voice had spoken words of counsel, ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... with which they deceived several of our men; for these eastern people are wholly given to deceit. They brought also hens and cocoa-nuts for sale; but held them at so dear a rate that we bought very few. We staid here ten days, putting our ordnance in order and trimming our ships, that we might be in readiness at our first port, which we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... he replied. "'Tis I should say that to you," and bending gracefully on one knee he kissed the hem of her dress. It was a rich pink gingham check, ellaborately ornamented with white tape trimming. ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he begged them to remain; and after a good deal of polite hesitation they consented to do so, Mrs. Stoneham resuming her seat before the tea-tray, and Miss Stoneham retiring to a little table by the window, where she was engaged in trimming a bonnet. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... failed abruptly in her face; her mouth with its soft, firm molding, its vivid, floral red, like the lips of a child, went down a bit at the clean-cut corners. A small hand fumbled the trimming of her blouse; it was almost as if she laid ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... forward with frank dignity,—a young lady of a different type to most of those he was in the habit of seeing. Her dress was very plain: a close straw bonnet of the best material and shape, trimmed with white ribbon; a dark silk gown, without any trimming or flounce; a large Indian shawl, which hung about her in long heavy folds, and which she wore as an empress wears her drapery. He did not understand who she was, as he caught the simple, straight, unabashed look, which showed ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 'em nowadays. The only difference between the dresses we make for girls of sixteen and the dresses we make for their grandmothers of sixty is that the sixty-year-old ones want 'em shorter and lower, and they run more to rose-bud trimming." ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... the suits came home she was forced to be pleased. There was no over-trimming, no look of finery: every thing fitted perfectly, and had the air of finish which they had noticed and admired in Lilly's clothes. Katy almost forgot that she had objected to the ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... mums, she was looking so pretty. She had a brown dress with very soft, fussy trimming, and a brown bonnet, with something pink—just a tiny bit of pink. She generally wears bonnets, except when we're regularly in the country. They suit her, and I like them better than hats for her. I hate those mothers who are always trying to look ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... know, 'whose girl' that was before night. Everything was fair in love and war; and Bat considered he had run down a case of both. According to his lights, he had; but his lights were smutty and in need of trimming. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Irishman sitting on the bench before his door, trimming some plants to put in 'Squire Hope's garden; and, taking a seat on either side of him, the young gentlemen informed him of the cause of their visit. The Irishman listened to them with surprise and wonder; but, when they proceeded to ask his forgiveness, Pat interrupted them, by saying, "That ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... trim round the yards in such a manner as to make the most of them during their brief existence. This constant "box-hauling" of the yards was no trifling matter, accomplished as it had to be under the fierce rays of a blazing sun; and as it often happened that after laboriously trimming the yards and sheets to woo a wandering zephyr, it either expired before reaching the brig, or capriciously turned in another direction, passing her by without causing so much as a single flap of her canvas, it is not ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... need, have explained this free-and-easy demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the old-clothes buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes, made, it was evident, by the veriest cobbler, a ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a branch store still somewhere in New Mexico, and made a stack of money last winter in Navajo blankets and scalp-trimmed Indian arms and shields. It is the scalp trimming which catches the tourist. He gets most of his scalps from California, from hospitals there; but when he is short, horse hair does pretty well, especially for old ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... [1] It has often been observed that these writings stand out, in marked relief from those which precede and follow them, in virtue of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater freedom from traces of late interpolation and editorial trimming. Jephthah, Gideon and Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who would look as much in place in a Norse Saga as where they are; and if the varnish-brush of later respectability has passed over these memoirs of the mighty men of a wild ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... an oriole-hat, and a jockey must still be troubled with anxious cares for her spring and fall and summer and winter bonnets,—all the variety will not take the place of them. Gloves are bought by the dozen; and as to dresses, there seems to be no limit to the quantity of material and trimming that may be expended upon them. When I was a young lady, seventy-five dollars a year was considered by careful parents a liberal allowance for a daughter's wardrobe. I had a hundred, and was reckoned rich; ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... dusk when the Green Imp got away. Johnny Caruthers had the satisfaction of lighting up the car's lamps—always a joy to him, and particularly so to-night, for even the oil taillight bore witness to his trimming and polishing till its red eye could gleam no brighter. As for the front lamps and the searchlight the Imp's progress would be as down an avenue of brilliance if its driver allowed them all full ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... grave of the dear father to whom she had been all in all, and to give way, for one little half- hour, uninterrupted by sympathy and unobserved by friendship. But it was not to be. That afternoon Miss Jenkyns sent out for a yard of black crape, and employed herself busily in trimming the little black silk bonnet I have spoken about. When it was finished she put it on, and looked at us for approbation—admiration she despised. I was full of sorrow, but, by one of those whimsical thoughts which come unbidden into our heads, in times of deepest grief, I no sooner saw the bonnet ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... special affinity between them. In the marriage contract it was stipulated that her mother and brother were to pay the dower left by the father and also to bestow upon the bride two gowns for state ceremonies, one of them to be green, embroidered with violets, and the other of crimson, with a trimming of feathers. Petrarch frequently alludes to these gowns, and in the portraits of Laura which have been preserved she is attired in either one or the other of them. Her personal beauty has been described in greatest ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... trunk ten inches in diameter. David felled it and cut from its butt a two-foot length. This he proceeded to split into as thin slabs as possible. Then with their jack-knives the boys began the tedious task of whittling the surfaces of the slabs into smooth boards, first trimming them down to an inch and a half in thickness with ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... classes, without much reference to her own social equals. She proposes that "no servant, under pain of dismissal, shall wear flowers, feathers, brooches, buckles or clasps, earrings, lockets, neck-ribbons, velvets, kid gloves, parasols, sashes, jackets, or trimming of any kind on dresses, and, above all, no crinoline; no pads to be worn, or frisettes, or chignons, or hair-ribbons. The dress is to be gored and made just to touch the ground, and the hair to be drawn closely to the head, under a round white ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... ladyship Cornelia at the villa of the Lentuli?" was his demand of a gardener who was trimming a hedge along ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... literary turn of mind when as a comparative youth he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Twenty years later the University conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Law. He served a full term as County Surveyor of Washoe County and attended to Reno's old-fashioned lights, trimming them as he went along, no matter how severe the cold. One consolation he probably had was that unlike the other pedestrians he had an opportunity to warm those frozen finger tips. No mean advantage, I should judge, when the mercury sinks ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... on Monday last. She is ten years of age, dark blue eyes, black hair cut short, has a slight scar on her left temple. Was dressed in a dark alpaca frock, black woollen sontag with white border, black velvet hat, no-trimming, high laced boots, striped stockings. Any information relative to her will be gratefully received by Richard Burk, 217 Madison street, or Inspector ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... and such special symptoms as the chafing at the Payne Aldrich Tariff, the defeat of Speaker Cannon, and the election of a Democratic House of Representatives ought to have warned even the dullest Republican. For good, or for ill, a social and industrial revolution was under way, and, instead of trimming their sails to meet it, they had not even taken ship. Roosevelt and the Insurgents had long understood the revolution of which they were a part, and had taken measures to control it. Roosevelt's first achievement, as we have seen, was to bring the Big Interests under ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... a little to this subtle pressure from the past, and I must have strolled among the lilac and laburnums for a longer time than I knew, since the gardener who had been trimming the flower-beds with a hand lawn-mower was gone, and dusk already veiled the cedars, when I found myself leaning against the wooden gate that opened into the less formal part beyond ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... most vigorously "scrubs up." There are three distinct phases to the "scrubbing up": First, the three-minute scrubbing of the hands and forearms with a clean brush and green soap; to be followed by, second, the trimming and cleaning of the finger nails, for it is here, under the nails, that the micro-organism lives and thrives that causes child-bed fever or septicemia; and, third, the final five-minute scrubbing of the fingers, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... range, yet who waited, helpful, for yours, knowing it to be something new and full of an eternal meaning. It was Dr. Bowdler, rector of an Episcopal church, a man of more influence out of the Church than any in it. He was in the breakfast-room now, trimming the hanging-baskets in the window, while his niece finished her coffee: he "usually saved his appetite for dinner, English fashion; cigars until then,"—poohing at all preaching of hygiene, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... evening, the day after the ministerial reception and Madame Rabourdin's evening party, just as Antoine was trimming his beard and his nephews were assisting him in the antechamber of the division on the upper floor, they were surprised by the unexpected arrival ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... like the Fashion: one Man wears his Doublet slashed, another laced, another plain; but every Man has a Doublet. So every man has his Religion. We differ about Trimming. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... spreading a vast amount of canvas for a vessel of her moderate tonnage. It was quite impossible to take one's eyes off the two vessels. It was a race for life with the slaver, whose people worked with good effect at the sweeps and in trimming their sails to make the most out of the light but favorable wind that was filling them. The larger vessel would have made better headway in a stiff breeze or half a gale of wind, but the present moderate breeze favored the guilty little brigantine, which ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... magistrate. He had drawn on a pair of jack-boots over his shoes and stockings, to keep the mud off till the moment of action. Unfortunately the boots proved too tight, and could not be got off when the sign was given that the Queen was coming. One of the victim's spurs caught in the fur trimming of an alderman's robe, and rendered the confusion worse. The Lord Mayor stood with a leg out, and several men tugging at his boot. In the meantime the Queen was coming nearer and nearer; she was only a few paces off, while the representative of her ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... first were piles of snowy collars and handkerchiefs, all of plain, fine linen, with no lace or embroidery; a broad-brimmed straw hat with a simple wreath of daisies round it; another hat, a small one, of rough gray felt, with no trimming at all, save a narrow scarlet ribbon; a pair of heavy castor gloves; a couple of white aprons, and one of brown holland, with long sleeves. The next tray was filled with dresses,—dresses which made Hilda's eyes open wide again, as she laid them out, one by one, ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... and threw back her veil, revealing thus not only her face, but her whole figure clothed in smooth, tight-fitting black, so plain and devoid of trimming that the exquisite lines were shown to the best advantage. Her face, surrounded by black draperies, looked as purely tinted as a flower, and the excitement of the moment had made her eyes brilliant and flushed ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... riding up to him through the dull afterglow was a slightly built youth in the uniform of the regular cavalry, yellow trimming on collar, yellow welts about the seams of the jacket, yellow stripes on the breeches; and, as the youth drew bridle, saluted, and turned to ride forward beside him, he caught sight of a lieutenant's shoulder straps on the ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... quarries are in the counties of Greene, Ulster, Broome, Delaware and Sullivan. They are described in New York State Museum Bulletin 61 by Harold T. Dickinson. There is a great variety in color and physical properties of stone from these quarries. It is used as building stone and for trimming, and some of it is especially valuable for large platforms. A large proportion of the output is in the form ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... Character" in "Political Essays" (Works, III, 276): "This same shuffling divine is the same Dr. Paley, who afterwards employed the whole of his life, and his moderate second-hand abilities, in tampering with religion, morality, and politics,—in trimming between his convenience and his conscience,—in crawling between heaven and earth, and trying to cajole both. His celebrated and popular work on Moral Philosophy, is celebrated and popular for no other reason, than that it is a somewhat ingenious and amusing apology for ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... once, as it sparkled with light, Turned a ruined old mill-wheel around: Long years have passed by since its bed became dry, And the trees grow so close, scarce a glimpse of the sky Is seen in the hollow, so dark and so damp, Where the glow-worm at noonday is trimming his lamp, And hardly a sound from the thicket around, Where the rabbit and squirrel leap over the ground, Is heard by the toad in his spacious abode In the innermost heart of that ponderous stone, By the gray-haired ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... begins, otherwise the beautiful club-mosses and ground-pines would be frozen solid in the damp soil of the swamps and woods, or the whole would be covered with a snow carpet, broken only by rabbit and squirrel tracks. The freshest green for Christmas trimming is found in damp meadows or on springy hillsides, where it nestles in the moist earth, overshadowed by thickets of alders and birches. It grows in the forests too; not so much among pine-trees, as the dry carpet of fallen needles is less nutritious than ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in trimming the balance of power on the other side of the Alps, their deliberations were interrupted by the arrival of a scullion, who came to receive their orders touching the bill of fare for dinner, and his majesty found much more difficulty in ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... it said, who had left the cause to be supported by agitators so long as the defence was dangerous and profitless, stepped forward now that it was clearly winning, and received both the reward and the credit. Mill and Place could not find words to express their contempt for the trimming, shuffling Whigs. They were probably unjust enough in detail; but they had a strong case in some respects. The Utilitarians represented that part of the reforming party which had a definite and a reasoned creed. They tried to give logic where the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... drug store where paints and wall-paper were sold, and he was sometimes to be found there for an hour or so about noon. Thea had gone into the drug store to have a friendly chat with the proprietor, who used to lend her books from his shelves. She found Johnny there, trimming rolls of wall-paper for the parlor of Banker Smith's new house. She sat down on the top of his ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... and with pride, Their husbands' pockets trimming, The ladies are so full of whims That people ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... to understand that lath and plaster are unfit for first-class dwellings, but there is no sense in trimming a gingham suit with point lace. A general uniformity of value in the material of which your castle is built is as essential as uniformity ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... plants; and in winter, of the wood of the ash and other trees. The hunters and trappers in America formerly killed vast numbers for their skins, which were in great demand, as they were used in making hats, but as the only use they are now put to is for trimming, and for men's gloves and collars, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... and crimson ribbons at her throat and on her sleeves completed the toilet. It was ravishing; and nobody knew it better than Mademoiselle Victorine herself, who had toiled many an hour in the convent making the crimson lace for the precise purpose of trimming a black apron with it, if ever she escaped from the convent, and who had chosen out of fifty rose-bushes at the last Parish Fair the one whose blossoms matched her crimson lace. There is a picture still to be seen of Victorine in this costume; and many a handsome young ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... dreadful consequence, granny. A person would think my life depended on it to hear you speak. Sleeves are quite small this summer, as I said they would be; and if you'll look at this trimming, Miss Chatty, it is just the right ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... fashion of this world, even in angling! The old manuals with their precise instruction for trimming and painting trout-rods eighteen feet long, and their painful description of "oyntments" made of nettle-juice, fish-hawk oil, camphor, cat's fat, or assafoedita, (supposed to allure the fish,) are altogether behind the age. Many of the flies described by Charles ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... blade, who had the advantage of one of those very accommodating faces, that could shine with equal lustre on his victorious visitants, whether Britons or buckskins. Marion soon found him out; and as soon gave him a broad hint how heartily he despised such 'trimming'; for at a great public meeting where the old gentleman, with a smirking face, came up and presented his hand, Marion turned from him without deigning to receive it. Everybody was surprised at this conduct of the ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... well-executed conceit—a sun shining through a hole—three different sorts of light, of fire, candle, and moon, mixed in with monstrous shadows and commonplace figures—some meaningless countenance surmounting a satin whose every shining thread is distinguishable, and the pattern of whose lace trimming could be copied for a fashion plate; he is, in short, a fussy, loud individual, with money to buy and some ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... time finished trimming the aspen sticks; and by the fading light of day and the red light of the fire they set to work to mend the broken leg. Between them they knew something of surgery: she by recollecting all that she had seen in her father's office, where she had more than once helped Doctor Gaylord with ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... half-hour for Helena, then opened the ball in a brief waltz with Alan Rush instead of the quadrille in which the four debutantes were to dance. She sent a message to Helena, and Mrs. Cartright scribbled back that the poor dear child had altered the trimming on her bodice at the last moment, and would not be ready for an hour yet. Caro took her place in the quadrille, ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... quarters sat zu Pfeiffer with a towel tucked around his neck upon which was scattered inch-lengths of hair. Sergeant Schultz sheared deftly with clippers like a reaper in a field of corn. When he had completed the final trimming behind the ears, he stood aside with the air of an artist viewing ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the inauguration of the war, the only hope for this Union revived! Wicked or foolish people have said that the bombardment of Sumter was the death-knell of the Union;—we believe it was just the reverse;—as the turning point of a great crisis, it signalled the birth of a new era. It threw the trimming and temporizing politicians of the North off their old tracks, and tore their platforms from under them; their antipathies were suddenly neutralized; their prejudices vanished; they were unexpectedly floating ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the stillness was only broken by the clatter of the loose-jointed scissors, and an occasional moan from Grant, when the blunt points collided with his skin with more than ordinary vigor. With one hand clutching the boy's yellow head for support, Marjorie stood over him, clipping and trimming, then stopping to contemplate the result of her labors, before attacking a new spot. She had started out upon her undertaking valiantly enough; but a dozen reckless slashes had begun to awaken some slight misgivings ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... no progress in prostrate forests, in soft-coal smoke, in noise! I see nothing gained in trimming and cutting and ploughing and macadamising a heavenly wilderness into mincing little gardens for the rich." He was smiling at his own vehemence, but she knew that he ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... methods had been successful. They failed to-day only because Lois herself was at the side-door. With a pair of garden shears in her gloved hands she was trimming the leafless vine that grew over the pillars of the portico. Thor could see, as she turned round, that she braced herself to meet the moment's humiliation, speaking on the instant he drew ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... on his hat, and soon the whole Bobbsey family had reached the place where the boat was tied. At the first sight of her, with her pretty blue paint and white trimming, Nan cried: ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... and gloves she had just finished, and presenting me with a pair half done, which she begs I will finish and wear for her. Her netting too is a great source of amusement and is so neatly done that all the family are proud of trimming their dresses with it." ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... ancient Greek Tragedy; a delicate exotic, not made to thrive in our "cold septentrion blasts," and which, when it was long after transferred to the theatre by Colman, was unable to endure the rough aspect of a British audience. The poet complained of some trimming and altering that had been thought requisite by the manager on the occasion; and Colman, it is said, in return, threatened him with a chorus of Grecian washerwomen. Matters were no better when Mason himself undertook to prepare it for ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... of a machine, the need of trimming here and there, of giving up this or that ideal form just to get things together, must be seen and done unflinchingly. And in the same way the whole scheme must be made to ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... entirely passed away when Miss de Haldimar completed her sad narrative; and already the crew, roused to exertion by the swelling breeze, were once more engaged in weighing the anchor, and setting and trimming the sails of the schooner, which latter soon began to shoot round the concealing headland into the opening of the Sinclair. A deathlike silence prevailed throughout the decks of the little bark, as her bows, dividing the waters of the basin that formed its source, gradually immerged into the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... in all classes of Society, men and women were starving their minds and hearts, and straining their energies to follow this phantom of fashion; the masses were kept poor because of it, and the youth and hope of the world was betrayed by it. In country villages poor farmers' wives were trimming their bonnets over to be "stylish"; and servant-girls in the cities were wearing imitation sealskins, and shop-clerks and sempstresses selling themselves into brothels for the sake of ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... ye!" a woodman said, Who the low hedge was trimming with his shears. "This hour is fine"—the Poet bowed his head. "More fine," he thought, "O friend! to me appears The sunset than to you; finer the spread Of orange lustre through these azure spheres, Where little clouds lie still, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... and ordered all the men prisoners to be close shaved against the next morning, and the women to have their best head-dresses put on, which occasioned no little hurry on board; for, between the trimming of beards, and putting on of caps, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... her irritation by studying her highly polished nails. "Of course, that will be an advantage to them. But what on earth's to become of them in the meanwhile? Heaven knows what Hattie will develop into if she isn't taken in hand. She refuses to have trimming on her underclothes now, and wears boy's shoes. As for Constance! I've quite despaired of getting hold of her. She's simply running wild, making no social connections whatever. What they really need, Cousin John, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... the rich trimming from some of her plainest dresses, and wore them when she could not possibly avoid it. She did her work with great neatness and dispatch, and was supplied with all she could possibly do, so that she remunerated the kind hearted ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... afflicted Philoctetes, which constitutes the principal charm of the drama. Or we may instance the spirit and nature displayed in the grouping of the characters in the Prometheus which is almost without action;—the stubborn enemy of the new dynasty of gods; Oceanus trimming, as an accomplished politician, with the change of affairs; the single-hearted and generous Nereids; and Hermes the favourite and instrument of the usurping potentate. So again, the beauties of the Thebae are almost independent of the plot;—it is the Chorus which imparts grace and interest ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... women—the numbers are diminishing rapidly—were field-workers who had never been brought up to much domesticity. Far beyond the valley they had to go to earn money at hop-tying, haymaking, harvesting, potato-picking, swede-trimming, and at such work they came immediately, just as the men did, under conditions which made it a vice to flinch. As a rule they would leave work in the afternoon in time to get home and cook a meal in readiness for their husbands later, and at that hour one saw them on the roads trudging ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... Presently, he saw her quietly closet herself in the cupboard, only to emerge a few minutes later dressed for the night. Over her white cambric gown with its coarse lace trimming showing at the throat, she wore a red woollen blanket robe held in at the waist by a heavy, twisted, red cord which, to the man who got a glimpse of her as she crossed the room, made her prettier, even, than she had seemed at ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... but he shall not read himself. The minister is forbidden to read by lamp-light, lest he should trim his lamp; but he may direct the children where they should read, because that is quickly done, and there would be no danger of his trimming his lamp in their presence, or suffering any of them to do it in his. All these regulations, which some may conceive as minute and frivolous, show a great intimacy with the human heart, and a spirit of profound observation which had been ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... policy group looked not one whit better. Dr. Pilar had been worriedly rubbing at his face, so that his normally neat beard had begun to take on the appearance of a ruptured mohair sofa; Dr. Petrelli, the lean, waspish chemist, was nervously trimming his fingernails with his teeth: and the M.D., Dr. Smathers, had a hangdog expression on his pudgy face and had begun drumming his fingers in a staccato ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... gentlemen are becoming ornamental instead of useful. All this changing of coats, trimming of mustaches, and eloquent sighing doesn't seem to have affected the young lady. I've a notion to send you both to Maumee town, one hundred miles away. This young lady is charming, I admit, but if she is to keep on seriously hindering the work of the Moravian Mission I must object. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... race. 'Twas up on a high bank over the river, and the house itself was bigger than four Old Homes spliced together. It had a fair-sized township around it in the shape of land, with a high stone wall for trimming on the edges. There was trees, and places for flower-beds in summer, and the land knows what. We see right off that this was the real Cashmere-on-the-Hudson; the village folks were stranded on the flats—old Dillaway filled ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... arrived, and, as fuel was running very short at the concrete mill, Dick had gone to see that a supply was sent. It was late when he reached Adexe, and found nobody in authority about, but three loaded lighters were moored at the wharf, and a gang of peons were trimming the coal that was being thrown on board another. Ahead of the craft lay a small tug with steam up. As the half-breed foreman declared that he did not know whether the coal was going to Santa Brigida or not, Dick boarded the tug ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... that I should like it very much, and accordingly, when the trimming operations were concluded and I had secured a wisp of Mr. Towler's hair for subsequent examination, we ascended to the second floor front and he demonstrated the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... trimming down his garments, the boy departed. It was long or ere the audience was granted; in the meantime, they stood trembling and oppressed with an evil foreboding for the result, the known hasty and impetuous temper of the Saxon rendering it a matter of some doubt, and no small ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... day fixed for the ball I stayed to dinner at the Dupre's to be present at Agatha's toilette. Her dress was a rich and newly-made Lyons silk, and the trimming was exquisite Alencon point lace, of which the girl did not know the value. Madame R——, who had arranged the dress, and Madame Dupre, had received instructions to say nothing about it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... looked down at the fringe of muslin which hung from her waist, at the stained waist itself, from which the trimming fell in festoons, and she was aghast. "Oh, what shall I do?" ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... harder-ware Sheffield, while we hope to live to see razors regarded as antiquarian rarities, (even as a watchman's rattle, or the many-caped coats of the semi-extinct class Welleria coachmanensis are now some time become,) still we desire all possible multiplication to the tribe of trimming scissors. Like Ireland, we shout for long-denied justice; give us our beards. That reasonable indulgence shall never be abused; our Catholic emancipation of moustache and imperial, whisker and the rest, shall not be a pretence for lion's manes, or the fringe of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and again twice over, 'Feed my sheep.' Now, let us suppose some zealous clergyman setting himself, on the strength of the latter injunction here, to institute a new order of preachers. As barbers frequently amuse their employers with gossip, when divesting them of their beards or trimming their heads, and have opportunities of addressing their fellow-men which are not possessed by the other mechanical professions, the zealous clergyman determines on converting them into preachers, and sets up a Normal School, in order that they may be taught ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Rivers, about half way, while reading by very good light—good lamp, excellent oil, very good trimming—there was some shunting of the train, and the usual "bang" of the attachment of a carriage. A moment afterwards Mr. Van Horn's car steward entered, and asked if I was Sir Edward Watkin; and he guessed I must come into Mr. Van Horn's car, sent specially down ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... back through the undergrowth toward the pines, unlashed the ax from the horse's back, and, though he was never afterward sure whether he cut it from a young fir or a bush of juniper, Devine came upon him some time later trimming a forked twig with a short stem where the two slender branches united. The surveyor glanced at ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the first week he was able to write home that he had found a nice, quiet lodging in exchange for the care of a furnace in winter and the trimming of a lawn in other seasons, and that he had secured a position as waiter to pay for his meals; also that there was miscellaneous employment to pay for his ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... grove or such like place, Where here the curious cutting of a hedge: There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge: Here the fine setting of well-shading trees: The walks there mounting up by small degrees, The gravel and the green so equal lie, It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye: Here the sweet smells that ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... every day and never at any other time—at least at no other time when Charlotte was free to watch her; and that the Tall Lady was almost always in her garden at five in the afternoon, accompanied by the Very Handsome Cat, pruning and trimming some of her flowers. Charlotte never missed being at the gaps at the proper times, if she could possibly manage it, and her heart was full of dreams about her two Ladies. But the other orphans thought all the fun had gone out of her, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... be the "blood" of the bombax, which is also used for caulking. They gather it in the forest, especially during the dries, collect it in hollow bamboos, and prepare it by heating in the neptune, or brass pan. The odour is pleasant, but fragments of falling fire endanger the hut, and trimming must be repeated every ten minutes. The sexes are not separated; as throughout intertropical Africa, the men are fond of idling at their clubs; and the women, who must fetch water and cook, clean the hut, and nurse the baby, are seldom allowed to waste time. They are naturally a more prolific ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... enchanting crimson brocade is the slipover blouse which follows the lines of the French cuirasse. Charmingly simple, this blouse, quite devoid of trimming, achieves smartness by concealing the waistline ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... pot which smoked over the blaze. There was Aylward squatting cross-legged in his shirt, while he scrubbed away at his chain-mail brigandine, whistling loudly the while. On one side of him sat old Johnston, who was busy in trimming the feathers of some arrows to his liking; and on the other Hordle John, who lay with his great limbs all asprawl, and his headpiece balanced upon his uplifted foot. Black Simon of Norwich crouched amid the rocks, crooning an Eastland ballad to himself, while he whetted ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ships. When a vessel is ready to take in cargo, she is moored alongside of the rocks almost mast head high, from the top of which the guano is sent down through a canvass shute directly into the hold of the ship. Thus several hundred tons can be put on board in a day. The trimming of the cargo is a very unpleasant part of the labor. The dust and odor is almost overpowering; so the men are obliged to come often on deck for fresh air. The rule is to remain below as long as a candle will burn; when ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... I've finished lighting the lamp, trimming up things a bit," said the P.K., "I sit down like anybody else. Lots of people seem to forget that the lighthouse-keeper is not the coast-guard or the head of the crew of a life-saving station. They have their work to attend ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... high and spreads far abroad, and is unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman's head is hidden away in it like the man's who prompts the singers from his tin shed in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of trimming about this monstrous capote, as they call it—it is just a plain, ugly dead-blue mass of sail, and a woman can't go within eight points of the wind with one of them on; she has to go before the wind or not at all. The general style of the capote is the same ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... this great General 'tis allowed The best 'Life' is by J. A. Froude. Boadicea Boadicea earns our praise. A.D. 62 First woman leader in those days; For Freedom strove all she could do, 'Twas lost in A.D. sixty-two. Agricola Then came Agricola one day And gained a battle near the Tay. He started trimming up this isle, And laid out roads in Roman style. East, North, South, West, it's safe to say His handiwork is traced to-day. The Natives too were taught to know By busy merchants' constant flow The wisdom that great Empire held; Their ignorance was thus dispelled. Romans left About four hundred-ten ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... hills, well cared for, but lifting themselves upward in the beauty of Nature, not art. Buttercups and star-grass and chickweed arrest us occasionally by the roadside, until a wooded pathway brings us to a plot surrounded by an iron fence. Within, an old woman is trimming the ivy overspreading a grave, and there are eight or ten other mounds, all ivy or flower covered, and with low headstones. At the west end of the enclosure is a semicircular stone platform, with a stone seat skirting the circumference. From the centre rises a lofty shaft ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton |
