At Miss Selene Coblenz's engagement reception, an event properly festooned with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of waiters tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and a finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra, faintly seen and still more faintly heard, played into the babel.

These chiefly clothe the benches and eastern foot-slopes of the Sierras,great spreads of artemisia, coleogyne, and spinosa, suffering no other woody stemmed thing in their purlieus; this by election apparently, with no elbowing; and the several shrubs have each their clientèle of flowering herbs.

It commends itself by a certain exclusiveness of growth, taking enough room and never elbowing; for if the flora of the lake region has a fault it is that there is too much of it.

The storm began with great blobbery flakes of snow, which came elbowing each other down the wind, crossing and re-crossing, circling, drifting, whirling, fluttering, so dense and thick that the whole air darkened ominously, and the sun seemed to withdraw from the world, leaving the wind and the storm to their own evil ways.

What we have to eliminate is not this nation or that, but the system of national shoving and elbowing, the treatment of Africa as the board for a game of beggar-my-neighbour-and-damn-the-niggers, in which a few syndicates, masquerading as national interests, snatch a profit to the infinite loss of all mankind.

There was endless elbowing, endless mingling of breath as the swelling crowd sauntered along.

Sailing the seas of the world, touching at strange tropical ports and uncharted islands, elbowing all the races of the globe, hearing all the languages spoken by man,such were Conrad's activities between his twentieth and thirty-seventh years.

Sometimes when I am in a crowded London drawing-room (for I am a town-bird now, acquainted with smoky eaves, and tasting Nature in the parks) quick flights of memory take me back among my father's parishioners while I am still conscious of elbowing men who wear the same evening uniform as myself; and I presently begin to wonder what varieties of history lie hidden under this monotony of aspect.

But of my elbowing neighbours with their crush hats, I usually imagine that the most distinguished among them have probably had a far more instructive journey into manhood than mine.

People congregate together for the pleasure of elbowing each other, of trying to believe they are in great force.

She had heard how the professions were all over-crowded: how a mighty army of young men were walking the hospitals, all intent on feeling the pulses and picking the pockets of the rising generation: how at the Bar men were growing old and grey before they saw their first brief: how competitors were elbowing and hustling each other upon every road, thronging at every gate.

These little refinements became, indeed, very agreeable, only alloyed by the spirit of caste in which they were performed,elbowing the peasant-woman off the sidewalk for the sake of doffing the hat to the Baroness.

Passing down a passage and elbowing our way through the throng of idlers, we made for the solicitor's box, where we had barely taken our seats when the case was called.

In the press after dinner I saw his ferret's face peering this way and that, a good head higher than any other, and the moment our eyes met he began elbowing his way toward me.

This age of international elbowing and jostling, of intrigue and diplomacy, of wars, massacres, deportations en masse, and the continual fluctuation of irrational boundaries would come to an end forthwith.

There is no doubt that many of these village stations are not sure means of communication, partly perhaps from carelessness, and partly from the trunk arteries having more important matter to transmit, and elbowing their weaker neighbours out of the field.

The more vigorous strode briskly on, elbowing their way, or nimbly skipping into the road to gain advance; yet these also had a fixed gaze, preoccupied or vacant, seldom cheerful.

But, elbowing instinctive resentment, came uneasiness.

The Honorable señor don Rafael Brull, member from Alcira, felt as much at ease as if he were in his own house when he entered that corridor,a dark hole, thick with tobacco smoke, and peopled with black suits standing around in groups or laboriously elbowing their way through the crowds.

And, as He stands there, the center of a Jewish mob, there comes along a man elbowing his way in haste.

"The blue ribands," says Bachaumont, "huddled up in the crowd, and elbowing Savoyards; the guard dispersed, the doors burst, the iron gratings broken beneath the efforts of the assailants."

Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing everything superior from the highway, this, they tell us, is our irremediable destiny; and the picture papers of the European continent are already drawing Uncle Sam with the hog instead of the eagle for his heraldic emblem.

He was at Master von Sturm's by eight this morning, elbowing half a dozen others, all burning and shining lights of the famous Society of the White Wolf.

Crews of these desperadoes, therefore, the runagates of every country and every clime, might be seen swaggering in open day about the streets, elbowing its quiet inhabitants, trafficking their rich outlandish plunder at half or quarter price to the wary merchant; and then squandering their prize-money in taverns, drinking, gambling, singing, carousing and astounding the neighborhood with midnight brawl and revelry.

" "What will you buy, Messieurs?" continued to be the cry, as we moved along arm-in-arm, elbowing our way through the crowd, and exploring this singular scene in all directions.