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The aspect of the tawdry vanities scattered here and there chafed and annoyed the young man. He kicked the robes over with his foot. When Mrs. Mackenzie interposed with loud ejaculations, he sternly bade her to be silent, and not wake the child. His words were not to be questioned when he spoke in that manner.

North received the rich, diamond-studded, gold repeater, and looked at the tawdry, ignorant, vain creature that presented it, with astonishment. Then he examined the initials set in diamonds, and a change came over his face. He went to his desk, taking the watch with him. He drew out a small drawer, took from it a photograph, and compared it with the watch in his hand.

All this tawdry show of velvet and gilding must seem common to your eyes, that have rested so long on the sparkling pomp of the foaming waves, the glorious blue curtain of the sky, and the sheeny white of the sails of the 'Laura' gleaming in the gold of the sun. Would I could live such a life as yours, Andrea! there is nothing better under the width of heaven."

Alongside the track every ditch ran full of clay-colored water that wrapped little, ragged wreaths of dirty foam around every obstruction, like the tawdry finery of the slums. From the smoking-room where he had been for the past two hours with Art Osgood, Lite came unsteadily down the aisle, heralded as it were by the muffled scream of the whistle at a country crossing.

We shall have no more architecture in Europe till architects understand that all these tawdry excrescences have got to be simplified away, till they make up their minds to express themselves in the materials of the age steel, concrete, and glass and to create in these admirable media vast, simple, and significant forms.

The mechanic who furnishes his tiny sitting-room with half-a-dozen cane chairs, a Pembroke table, a Dutch clock, a tiny looking-glass, a crockery shepherd and shepherdess, and a set of gaudily-japanned iron tea-trays, makes the most of his limited possessions, and generally contrives to get some degree of comfort out of them; but the lady who loses the handsome furniture of the house she is compelled to abandon and encamps in some smaller habitation with the shabby remainder bought in by some merciful friend at the sale of her effects carries with her an aspect of genteel desolation and tawdry misery not easily to be paralleled in wretchedness by any other phase which poverty can assume.

There he sate then, miserable, and gazing at her. And she took no more notice of him than he did of the rest of the house. The Fotheringay was uncommonly handsome, in a white raiment and leopard skin, with a sun upon her breast, and fine tawdry bracelets on her beautiful glancing arms. She spouted to admiration the few words of her part, and looked it still better.

These two things, the advent of a new dancer at the Opera, and the fame of Paul Zouche, were the chief topics of 'Society' outside its own tawdry personal concern; but under all the light froth and spume of the pleasure-seeking, pleasure-loving whirl of fashion, a fierce tempest was rising, and the first whistlings of the wind of revolt were already beginning to pierce through the keyholes and crannies of the stately building allotted to the business of Government; so much so indeed that one terrible night, all unexpectedly, a huge mob, some twenty thousand strong, surrounded it, armed with every conceivable weapon from muskets to pickaxes, and shouted with horrid din for 'Bread and Justice! these being considered co-equal in the bewildered mind of the excited multitude.

It is the visitor from distant cities, or the callow youth with tawdry clothes and tawdry thoughts who disturbs the great silences and austerity of majestic scenes with half-felt effusive words or cheap impertinences. Oddly enough, the awe that the wilderness dweller knows at the sight of some great, mysterious canyon or towering peak seems to increase, rather than decrease, with familiarity.

She wore the showy bracelet Dan had given her that afternoon, and it shone conspicuous in its tawdry newness on her arm; her dress was tasteless too, and badly put on, and altogether she contrasted unfavourably with Beth, and Dan observed it. "Are you expecting any one in particular to-night?" he asked. "No," Beth answered smiling. "I dressed for my own benefit.