I shall engage the table flippantly: Hear how preposterously the fellow talks!he jests to satisfy a grudge.

Combine not preposterously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives!but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it were half-way.

To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has to wait for his breakfast.

But the parson stays, while I preposterously assume his office; I am preaching, while the bride is on the threshold.

But when Rutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt; or Ruspina expects you to cherish and fondle her viper sister, whom she has preposterously taken into her bosom, to try stinging conclusions upon your constancy; they must not complain if the house be rather thin of suitors.

He had not taken above twenty steps, when, hearing footsteps behind him, he turned his head to discover Captain Obadiah skipping rapidly after him in a prodigious hurry, swinging his cane and chuckling preposterously to himself, as though in the enjoyment of some most exquisite piece of drollery.

so preposterously that the setting sun shone straight down his wide and cavernous gullet.

They wear also cotton drawers, reaching to the small of their legs; and these drawers are made preposterously wide, being often thirty-five or forty palms in circumference; so that, when tied on, they are full of plaits, and though like A sack before the hinder part trails on the ground like the train of a large petticoat.

I am a young Man, I confess, yet I honour the grey Head as much as any one; however, when in Company with old Men, I hear them speak obscurely, or reason preposterously (into which Absurdities, Prejudice, Pride, or Interest, will sometimes throw the wisest) I count it no Crime to rectifie their Reasoning, unless Conscience must truckle to Ceremony, and Truth fall a Sacrifice to Complaisance.

In a small piazza near the intersection of the main streets is a Dominican church, whose black and white inlaid marbles are amazing in their elaborateness, astounding in their preposterously bad taste.

Again, what king was ever so preposterously impudent as to have all the profits, and kindnesses, and privileges of his kingdom on sale?

" Next day, when Kimberley, preposterously overdressed and thoroughly ashamed of himself, was trying to talk business in Mr. Begg's office, the Earl of Windgall was announced.

The United States mail was represented, in the environs of Asquam, by a preposterously small wagon,more like a longitudinal slice of a milk-cart than anything else,drawn by two thin, rangy horses that seemed all out of proportion to their load.

" Sylvia thought of making the obviously suitable remark that she cared nothing about what people thought, but such a claim was so preposterously untrue to her character that she could not bring the words past her lips.

From these any one may seem to converse rationally, but he will converse preposterously; for in such case he thinks as a crab walks, the sight following the tail: it is otherwise if he thinks from the understanding; for then the rational sight selects from the memory whatever is suitable, whereby it confirms truth viewed in itself.

In the mean time, he would dispute the motives of her change; how preposterously, let all men judge, when he seemed to deny the subject of the controversy, the change itself.

At last, she came to a letter of many pages, covered with a scrawl that looked preposterously fashionable.

Yet even the Puritans came to battle in attire which would have seemed preposterously gaudy to the plain men of our own Revolution.

What was her strange attraction? Calmly considered, she was preposterously thin, but men, at least, could not think merely of her thinness, unless, when walking with her, they became fascinated by its shadow on the ground.

The tone of contempt which he habitually assumes preposterously reverses the relative intellectual status, so far as sound systematic thought is concerned, of the two men.

"From what part, may I ask?" continued the girl, with a slight inclination of her head to one side and a flash from beneath the preposterously long lashes toward his hand.

BERGERAC, SAVINIEN CYRANO DE, an eccentric man with comic power, a Gascon by birth; wrote a tragedy and a comedy; his best work a fiction entitled "Histoire Comique des États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil"; fought no end of duels in vindication, it is said, of his preposterously large nose (1619-1655).

Preposterously large roses covered his shoes; his ruff was a "treble-quadruple-dedalion;" his gloves richly embroidered; a large crimson satin purse hung from his girdle; and he was scented with powders and pulvilios.

His doublet, which on the present occasion was of green velvet, considerably frayed,for he was by no means particular about the newness of his apparel,was padded and quilted so as to be dagger-proof; and his hose were stuffed in the same manner, and preposterously large about the hips.

This was the appearance on the scene of the "land-sharks"shrewd adventurers, from Sydney and elsewhere, who had come to the conclusion that the colonization of New Zealand was near at hand, and were buying up preposterously large tracts of land on all sides.