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In his subtle capacity for enjoying the more refined points of earth, of human relationship, he could throw the gleam of poetry or humour on what seemed common or threadbare; has a care for the sighs, and the weary, humdrum preoccupations of very weak people, down to their little pathetic "gentilities," even; while, in the purely human temper, he can write of death, almost like Shakespeare.
This refusal of Joe's to talk out and explain everything was a display of the threadbare Newbolt dignity, people said, an exhibition of which they had not seen since old Peter's death. But it looked more like bull-headedness to them. "Don't the darned fool know he's pokin' his head under the gallus?" they asked. What was the trouble between him and Isom about?
In front was a ship, with a waiting warrior and a swelling sail; and under him, a blue wave worn very threadbare, shamed indeed by that intruding handle, but still blue enough, still windy enough for thoughts of love and flight. Laura, half asleep still, with her hands under her cheek, lay staring in a vague pleasure at the castle and the forest.
Linden to be a marvel of learning, a man of vast and curious literary attainments: but all that their hero does to maintain this reputation and vindicate their opinion is to quote trite passages of poetry, which are all very well, but which every gentleman of ordinary cultivation is expected to know, and which no gentleman of ordinary cultivation is expected to quote, things that are remembered only to be avoided as utterly threadbare.
Whereas think of Tom, Dick, or Harry, their natural good parts watered down with other folks' notions, their imagination worn threadbare by the friction of experience; men who ought to be so amusing, and alas!... The superfine are those who will not eat walnuts because of the shell, and are pained that Nature should have been so coarse as to propagate oranges through pips.
Mordecai had no handsome Sabbath garment, but instead of the threadbare rusty black coat of the morning he wore one of light drab, which looked as if it had once been a handsome loose paletot now shrunk with washing; and this change of clothing gave a still stronger accentuation to his dark-haired, eager face which might have belonged to the prophet Ezekiel also probably not modish in the eyes of contemporaries.
The evening conversation, when they were all assembled, had lost much of its animation, and almost all its sense by the absence of Jane and Elizabeth. They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough-bass and human nature; and had some extracts to admire, and some new observations of threadbare morality to listen to. Catherine and Lydia had information for them of a different sort.
Evidently Miss Ross had little ingenuity in the line of excuses or she would never have offered such a threadbare one as that. I wanted the chance to annihilate her and here it was. I called up Bentonville and asked if Miss Ross was there. She was, and I said, "Isn't it possible for you to invent a better excuse than 'lunch' for your failure to answer last night, or this morning rather?"
Homer Pettifoot related, with minute detail, an old, threadbare hunting lie, dating, in slightly differing forms, from the age of Nimrod, about finding twenty-five partridges sitting in a row on a rail, and killing them all with a single buckshot, which passed through twenty-four and lodged in the body of the twenty-fifth, from which it was extracted and returned to the shot pouch for future service.
Of course, among other things, she spoke of Willibald's and Toni's betrothal, of which Wallmoden fully approved. The subject had been worn threadbare long years ago, so there was little really to be said. And now Frau von Eschenhagen branched off on another theme. "Well, Herbert, how do you feel now you're a married man?" asked his sister.
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