When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the
gewgaws upon the mantelpiece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthy foundation.
So; pat the animal and lay your hand on the
gewgaws, with which the Red-skins have ornamented his mane, giving your eye as it were to one thing, and your mind to another.
'Trim off these
gewgaws,' said his father, plucking the scraps of ribbon and the feathers from his hat, 'and over your own dress wear my cloak.
This sort of
gewgaws undignify a speech, instead of adding a grace.
I had shuddered to see Raffles admiring the
gewgaws in his turn, in his own brazen fashion, with that air of the cool connoisseur which had its double meaning for me.
Every flat surface featured some kind of ancient lamp, broken clock, decorative gimcrack or
gewgaw to ensure that nothing from pocket or bag could be put on it, and a portable heater took up what remained of floor space.
But he could not resist getting into a horse-trading argument, and arrived at a fair price, aided by the fact that the man had an anniversary in the offing and needed a pretty
gewgaw for his wife.
From that stainless steel vision of future dreariness outside the library, via the well-meaning but lifeless coal miners and family groups around Queen Street, to that new
gewgaw leaning pointlessly about at the top of Charles Street, what have we got that's as exciting as this city deserves?
"Make your dollars work for the Earth." "Buy green!" "Purchase this green
gewgaw instead of that ungreen gadget." "Feel guilty about driving your car."
Yet someone selling a handsome new cell phone would be happy if you thought his
gewgaw better because it was new.
Another interesting geek
gewgaw offered was an early version (1843) of the first circular slide rule made in America--something called a Palmer's Computing Scale.
Today the separation of church and state is plowed under, today the coherence of the Constitution is sacrificed to provide a
gewgaw for fundamentalist bigots, today the lives of thousands are sacrificed to a half-baked adventure foisted upon the world by a man who slid into the White House with a resume stained by a ruined school system, gun control laws curbed so that people can carry concealed weapons in churches, and of course his nasty gigantic appetite for execution.
