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To this day I recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows actors of the Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day.
The most exclusive and the most out-at-elbows find a common meeting-place in the public-house; although it is only fair to say that the custom of 'shouting, as it is called, is going if it has not gone out of fashion amongst the better classes in the capital cities.
It is from your half-and-half sort of people that you get pomposity and vulgarity, the difference between the two being very much what one sees every day in England between the old, out-at-elbows, broken-down county family, and the overbearing, purse-proud people who come and 'take the place'. I really think that Nyleptha's greatest charm is her sweet simplicity, and her kindly genuine interest even in little things.
The place purported to be an hotel a seedy, out-at-elbows, seemingly little-frequented hotel, rejoicing in the altogether inappropriate name of the Hôtel Paradis, or the Paradise Hotel. Its outward appearance was calculated to repel rather than invite customers; no one would be likely to lodge there who could go elsewhere.
"With a penniless, out-at-elbows, good-for-nothing, you mean?" he said, with a kind of resentful bitterness. "No! I dare say I should not. Money!" he cried impetuously as he jumped to his feet, and burying his hands in the pockets of his breeches he began pacing the path up and down in front of her. "Money! always money! Always talk of duty and of obedience .
Also, drooping feminine vanity revives in hair-waves and emerges from underground burrows of Troglodytic type, arrayed in fluttering muslins, and crowned with coquettish hats, which walk about in company with ragged khâki and clay-stained duck and out-at-elbows tweed, and are proud to be seen in its brave company.
The clachan dabbled with snow, the white hills, the black sky, the sea marked in the coves with faint circular wrinkles, the whole world, as it looked from a loop-hole in Dunure, was cold, wretched, and out-at-elbows. If you had been a wicked baron and compelled to stay there all the afternoon, you would have had a rare fit of remorse. How you would have heaped up the fire and gnawed your fingers!
Semitic in type he looked, with his eagle-beaked nose and prominent cheek bones, but the blue of his eyes was English. They were intelligent eyes. He looked at me a moment, and I stood silent for his initiative. I remembered that I was dressed roughly, was torn and rumpled by my contest with the forest, and that I must appear an out-at-elbows coureur de bois.
The clachan dabbled with snow, the white hills, the black sky, the sea marked in the coves with faint circular wrinkles, the whole world, as it looked from a loop-hole in Dunure, was cold, wretched, and out-at-elbows. If you had been a wicked baron and compelled to stay there all the afternoon, you would have had a rare fit of remorse. How you would have heaped up the fire and gnawed your fingers!
I wonder what Captain Prigg would have said if he had seen such a turn-out as you, Mr. Smith, on his quarter-deck. 'I should have had one turn-out more, drawled Smith. 'With your out-at-elbows jacket, there, eh! continued Mr. Appleboy. Smith turned up his elbows, looked at one and then at the other; after so fatiguing an operation, he was silent.
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