"Rakish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what should be to your honour, and in abhorrence of such actions. I am so convinced of this, that by this rule I would judge of any man's heart in the world, better than by a thousand declarations and protestations. I do assure you, rakish as Jackey is, and freely as I doubt not that Lord Davers has formerly lived (for he has been a man of pleasure), they gave me, by their behaviour on these tender occasions, reason to think they ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... glove with its huge gauntlet, and examining it with the deliciously foolish bewilderment of the accomplished clown. After one or two failures, brilliantly improvised, he fixed it firmly on his head. The huge gauntlet, with its limp five fingers dangling over his left ear, became a rakish kepi with a five-pointed flap. Max—I mean Prosper Panne—wore it with an "air impayable." Out of his round, soft, putty-coloured face he made fifteen other faces in rapid succession, all incomparably absurd. He lit a cigarette ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... motor-car, a rakish little craft, built long and low, with racing lines, and a green complexion, and a nose that cuts through the air like the prow of a swift boat through water. Von Gerhard had promised me a spin in it on the first mild day. Sunday turned out to be unexpectedly ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... baths. It was a very different Alfred Burton indeed who, an hour or two later, issued forth into the streets. Gone was the Cockney young man with the sandy moustache, the cheap silk hat worn at various angles to give himself a rakish air, the flashy clothes, cheap and pretentious, the assured, not to say bumptious air so sedulously copied from the deportment of his employer. Enter a new and completely transformed Alfred Burton, an inoffensive-looking young man in a neat gray suit, a lilac-colored tie of delicate shade, ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the machine I stretches my neck around and takes a look at this wayside group. Three little girls are huddled panicky around this young party who wears a brown velvet tam at such a rakish angle on top of her wavy brown hair. And cuddled up in her left arm she's holdin' a chubby youngster whose face is smeared ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... not found the larrikin [in Brisbane]. . . . The slouch-hat, the rakish jib, the drawn features are not to be seen; nor does the young larrikiness—that hideous outgrowth of Sydney and Melbourne ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... shadow of a mighty bridge I stepped into a very smart launch manned by sailors in overalls somewhat grimy, and, rising and falling to the surge of the broad river, we held away for a destroyer that lay grey and phantom-like, low, rakish, and with speed in every line of her. As we drew near, her narrow deck looked to my untutored eye a confused litter of guns, torpedo tubes, guy ropes, cables and windlasses. Howbeit, I clambered aboard, and ducking under a guy rope and avoiding sundry other obstructions, shook hands ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... the testiness of being so rudely roused, had pushed his nightcap very much on one side of his bald head. This gave him a rakish eccentric air which, now that he had leisure to observe it, charmed Mr Swiveller exceedingly; therefore, by way of propitiation, he expressed his hope that the gentleman was going to get up, and further that he would ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the side I resolved that I would there and then pay a visit to my new command, and see what she was like. I had already noticed her lying alongside the dockyard wharf, and had admired her, not only for her handsome rakish appearance, but also because she was the largest schooner I had at that time ever seen. We therefore pulled straight away for the dockyard, Courtenay accompanying me in the Foam's gig. As soon as we were fairly away from the Mars my ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... gentleman of Cowperwood, one morning, ambling in when announced and seating himself in the great presence. A half-burned cigar was between his fingers, and a little round felt hat looked peculiarly rakish above his sinister, intellectual, constructive face ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Staffs, and called Bickerstaff, quasi Biggerstaff; as much as to say, the great staff, or staff of staffs; and that it has applied itself to astronomy with great success, after the example of our aforesaid forefather. The descendants from Longstaff, the second son, were a rakish disorderly sort of people, and rambled from one place to another, till in Harry II.'s time they settled in Kent, and were called Long-tails, from the long tails which were sent them as a punishment for the ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... up to his hat, jerked the brim at a rakish angle over his eyes—and he sprawled himself out on a chair. He heard the Tocsin's voice at the front door, and a man's voice, low and guarded, answer her. Then the door closed, and their steps approached the room. It was rather curious, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... may you be?" he inquired, and a brown eye, rakish and roving in its glance, played briskly over the Parisian, whilst Garnache himself returned the compliment, and calmly surveyed this florid gentleman of middle height with the fair hair and ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the very hungry. The uncompromising coldness and solidity of the viands was enough to appall a man conscious that his digestion needed humouring. A huge cheese faced us in almost a swashbuckling way. I do not know how else to describe it. It wore a blatant, rakish, nemo-me-impune-lacessit air, and I noticed that the professor shivered slightly as he saw it. Sardines, looking more oily and uninviting than anything I had ever seen, appeared in their native tin beyond the loaf of bread. There was a ham, in its third quarter, ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... not do you honour before your fashionable friends?... And I say to you, have no fear. If my gowns are truly what I think they are, I shall conduct without a tremour—particularly if your Lana be there, and that careless, rakish friend ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... supposititious offspring. The landlady, all smiles, presented him with a transmogrified Jean, cleansed and powdered, arrayed in the smug panoply of bourgeois babyhood. Shoes with a pompon adorned his feet, and a rakish cap decorated with white satin ribbons crowned his head. He also wore an embroidered frock and a pelisse trimmed with rabbit-fur. Jean grinned and dribbled self-consciously, and showed his two little teeth to the proudest father in the world. The landlady invited the happy parent into her little ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... fulfilled; if, in place of the elegant, rakish-looking chevalier in florid garb, he had been confronted by an individual awry in body or hideous in feature, he would not have been confused, or stood repeating to himself, "My God, can this be a son ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... once, sitting against the roots of an aged banyan tree. A few yards away an ape sat on his haunches and eyed her curiously. A little farther off Rajah browsed in a clump of weeds, the howdah at a rakish angle, like the cocked hat of a bully. Kathlyn stared at her hands. There were no burns there; she passed a hand over her face; there was no smart or sting. A dream; she had dreamed it; a fantasy due to her light-headed state of mind. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... the Third Season we find him steering a long, low, rakish Chariot of Fire, with a Clock, a Trunk-Rack, an Emergency Ice- Box and all the other Comforts of Home. He had learned to smell a Constable a Mile off and whenever he ran up behind a Pewee Coffee- Grinder he went into the High and ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... the likeness; even the rakish tilt of the jaunty felt hat, caused by the wind and that wild dash across country, was painstakingly reproduced. And the fanciful tucks on the sleeve of the gown—"and I didn't suppose he had deigned so much as a glance!" was ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... room (for there were two, one opening from the other) stood a blackened, broken-nosed, plaster bust of Voltaire, upon the summit of whose august wig some irreverent customer had perched a particularly rakish-looking hat. Just in front of this alcove and below the bust stood a marble-topped table, at one end of which two young men were playing dominoes to the accompaniment of the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... white with black spots on them. His back was gray with a huge patch of yellow on one side and a black patch on the other. His tail was yellow with a gray tip. One ear was black and one yellow. A black patch over one eye gave him a fearfully rakish look. In reality he was meek and inoffensive, of a sociable disposition. In one respect, if in no other, Joseph was like a lily of the field. He toiled not neither did he spin or catch mice. Yet Solomon in all ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... points of obsidian, scattered through it are kitchen middens and pits of old sweat-houses. By the south corner, where the campoodie stood, is a single shrub of "hoopee" (Lycium andersonii), maintaining itself hardly among alien shrubs, and near by, three low rakish trees of hackberry, so far from home that no prying of mine has been able to find another in any canon east or west. But the berries of both were food for the Paiutes, eagerly sought and traded for as far south as Shoshone ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... early days of his sojourn at Plessis-les-Tours king Louis, not wishing to hold his drinking-bouts and give vent to his rakish propensities in his chateau, out of respect to her Majesty (a kingly delicacy which his successors have not possessed) became enamoured of a lady named Nicole Beaupertuys, who was, to tell the truth, wife of a citizen of the town. The ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... Jack's fleet held on its course, and the weather continued unbroken and fine. Day after day the phantom Frenchman hovered somewhere about, afraid perhaps to try conclusions with that rakish, spiteful-looking British frigate, or perhaps but biding ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... two paces away from where I sit to pour out tea. Her face was kind, but inquisitive, with that brown liver-look round the eyes and a large rakish hat. She comes often, having heard of him through the padre, to see a Canadian whom she doesn't know and who ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... in the middle of the freight-car, looking down in wonder at the fugitives, was a tall vagabond of the most picturesque type. No ragamuffin was ever so tattered and torn as this rakish individual. His clothes barely hung together on his lank frame; he was barefoot and hatless; a great mop of black hair topped his shrewd, rugged face; coal-black eyes snapped and twinkled beneath shaggy brows and a delighted, knowing grin spread slowly over his rather boyish countenance. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... his present presentment, is a medium sized man, attired in garments that have once been elegant, but are now frayed, threadbare, travel worn; his feet are encased in boots that have once been jaunty; his hat is as rakish as it is battered; his face wears that dull reddish hue, common to fair complexions that have been long exposed to sun and wind; his hair and beard, somewhat matted, somewhat disordered, may have borne ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... my niece," replied Aunt Jane with unutterable dignity from her corner. Her small features had all but disappeared in her swollen face, and her hair had slipped down at a rakish angle over one eye. But, of course, being Aunt Jane, she must choose this moment ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... glance at Crevel; but, like Dubois, who gave the Regent three kicks, she affected too much, and the rakish perfumer's thoughts jumped at such profligate suggestions, that he said to himself, "Does she want to turn the tables on Hulot?—Does she think me more attractive as a Mayor than as a National Guardsman? Women are ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Oxford men a FREEMAN for their boat. Among the crowd of oarsmen proud no name will fame shout louder Than his who sits at Number Two, the straight and upright CROWDER. Then RAIKES rows bow, and we must allow that with all the weight that's aft The bow-oar gives a rakish air to the bows o' the dark-blue craft. This is the crew, who've donned dark blue, and no stouter team of Oxon Has ploughed the waves of old Father Thames, or ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... let us procure some rakish fellows, and after we have made them sufficiently drunk, and given them a good sum of money, let us order them to go and debauch this virgin, promising them, if they do it, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... wallow in voluptuousness &c n.; plunge into dissipation. revel; rake, live hard, run riot, sow one's wild oats; slake one's appetite, slake one's thirst; swill; pamper. Adj. intemperate, inabstinent^; sensual, self-indulgent; voluptuous, luxurious, licentious, wild, dissolute, rakish, fast, debauched. brutish, crapulous^, swinish, piggish. Paphian, Epicurean, Sybaritical; bred in the lap of luxury, nursed in the lap of luxury; indulged, pampered; full-fed, high-fed. Phr. being full of supper and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hiccough was heard, and a rather fast and rakish-looking chap, named Stagger, spoke up. "How d'ye do, miss," he said politely to Efficiency, with a side glance out of his wicked old eye. "I'm a bit of a knut, and without the slightest trouble I can easily minimize the ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... had he failed to subdue. That was Teddy, a rakish sorrel that had never yet been ridden. Many had tried it, but none had stuck to the saddle to the finish; and some had been carried from ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... florid Colonel, who had been trying to look young and rakish ever since he had turned and caught sight of Viola, suggested that "Perhaps, if he had saved your British, he would not have ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... About dusk our rakish cutter drifted into the shelter of the hills along the north shore of the bay, and with a chorus of enthusiastic cheers we dropped anchor in two fathoms of soft mud. We felt called upon to sing such songs as marines are wont to sing upon the conclusion of a voyage, and I believe our deck ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... whatever task they were set to, and of finding the trail home again. There were active, clean-built, precise Frenchmen, with small hands and feet, and a peculiarly trim way of wearing their rough garments; typical native-born American lumber-jacks powerful in frame, rakish in air, reckless in manner; big blonde Scandinavians and Swedes, strong men at the sawing; an Indian or so, strangely in contrast to the rest; and a variety of Irishmen, Englishmen, and Canadians. These men tramped in without a word, and set busily to work at various tasks. Some sat on the "deacon ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... if he should have chanced to brush against a millionaire. Reality was his romance; he gloried to be thus engaged: he wallowed in his business. Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure ingots by the bucketful on the uproarious beach; such an one might realise a greater material ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his bright green coat, his faultless white vest, and sea-green tights, became rather the popular favourite. He seemed just rakish and gallant enough to fulfil the ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Germans their nickname of "Les demoiselles au pompon rouge." The saucy French of that has a touch beyond any English rendering of "the girls with the red pompon." "Les demoiselles au pompon rouge" paints their picture at one stroke, for they thrust out the face of a youngster from under a rakish blue sailor hat, crowned with a fluffy red button, like a blue flower with a red bloom at its heart. I rarely saw an aging marin. There are no seasoned troops so boyish. They wear open dickies, which expose ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... stumbled up, handed Lynch his cap and disappeared without a word. Lynch stared mournfully at it. The emblem was crushed and the cap looked rather worn and useless. He put it on his head, where it assumed the rakish tilt of a hobo's favorite tam-o'-shanter, and said: "I hope you're not thinking of blaming me ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... order to build an iron foundry upon the spot. Suppose they had excavated for a cellar! Why during the time that Capt. Kidd, Lafitte and I infested the coast thereabout, sailing three "low, black-hulled schooners with long rakish masts," I forced hundreds of merchant seamen to walk the plank—even helpless women and children. Unless the sharks devoured them, their bones are yet about three feet under the floor of that iron foundry. Under the lee of the Northernmost ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... the lady does not look a bit unwilling," said Mrs Ellison. "I suppose she's fond of rakish young men. You say Lord Ballindine was of that set; and I'm sure Lord Kilcullen's the same,—he has the reputation, at any rate. They say he and his father never speak, except just in public, to avoid the ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... saw a policeman standing at the top of the Gut. Up he looked; down he looked; Seacombe was orderly. Stepping as if to arrest a malefactor, he marched down the Gut.... Where was the policeman? A battered billycock and a rakish pipe looked round the corner, then withdrew. The battered billycock knew where the policeman was. The price of a glass, and billycock would have been ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... novels, ye Mauchline belles, Ye're safer at your spinning-wheel; Such witching books are baited hooks For rakish rooks, like Rob Mossgiel; Your fine Tom Jones and Grandisons, They make your youthful fancies reel; They heat your brains, and fire your veins, And then you're prey ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... affluence by as promptly spending a goodly portion of that wealth. He had bidden a cadaverous animal painter named Mershon and two equally hungry-eyed Michiganders yclept Albright to his room with the rakish back wall, where the feast had been a regal ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... clothes sat tilted back in one of several chairs beside the door. He wore a little black moustache and because his head was pressed against the brick wall behind him, his hat was pushed forward giving him a rakish look which was rather heightened by an unlighted cigar sticking up out of the corner of his mouth like a piece of ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the room alone; the rector remained below in the library. She found her father well propped up with pillows, and his skull-cap, with the long white tassel, was drawn down over one eye, giving him a curious leer. The rakish angle of the cap, with the piercing eyes beneath, the hawk-like beak, and the shriveled old mouth, puckered into a sardonic smile, made him an almost comic figure. Trimmer stood at attention by the head of the bed like a sentinel. His humility and deference to both his master and Mrs. Swinton were ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... her, intent on some joke or other, by way of revenging the blow; but with a furious glance she reminded him that her mistress was looking on. This seemed to trouble him but little, for he replied with a rakish wink, as much as to say that no woman, not even a lady, disliked a little fun. To be sure, when folks are sweethearting, other people always ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... out and called her brother. There was no answer for a minute; then Tom appeared, looking somewhat rakish and disheveled. ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the 'Relapse' or the 'Provoked Wife,' save that (Shirley being a confessed copier of the great dramatists of the generation before him) there is enough of the manner of Fletcher and Ben Jonson kept up to hide, at first sight, the utter want of anything like their matter; and as one sickens at the rakish swagger and the artificial smartness of his coxcombs, one regrets the racy and unaffected blackguardism of ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... back, prepared to enjoy himself to the full, suddenly noted, and with a pang, that his host, shorn of his headgear, was far less attractive in appearance than when covered; did not seem the strange, rakish, picturesque, almost wild figure of a moment before, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... of Majorca, in the Mediterranean Sea, stood on the shore of his island home gazing over the water. Raymund Lull from the beach of Palma Bay, where he had played as a boy, now looked out southward, where boats with their tall, rakish, brown sails ran ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... that there was a very 'highfalutin' gintleman' in the camp the night before last. He came there in a long, rakish automobile. Uncle Mac said that 'he parted his whiskers in the middle, so he did,' and that 'he looked like a governor or somethin' of the sort.' I was just wondering if that detective of yours has anything to do with that camp, and if these strange ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... a Mr. Rumbald, a maltster (which was all I thought him then), who frequented the Mitre tavern, without Aldgate, where I went one day, dressed in one of my sober country suits, wearing my hat at a somewhat rakish cock, that I might seem to be a simple fellow that ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the opposite shores of Culebra, while they were telegraphing bunting one with another as fast as the bright-colored flags could talk. And, as luck would have it, as I swept the glass round, what should I see but a long rakish corvette in company with a huge whale of a line-of-battle ship, with her double tier of ports glimmering away in the slanting rays of the sun, both on the wind, and coming out from under the lee of Culebra Point, just a mile or two astern of us. By the blood of ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... crushed by the crowd behind. In the van of the right-hand wing, brushing the rock with his shoulder, charged an enormous bull with tusks so large that the heavier had weighed down his head to a permanent rakish angle. He caught sight of me—trumpeted like a siren in the Channel fog—and came at me with raised ears and trunk outstretched. I heard shooting to the left, and more shots from the forest, where the very active ghost or madman was keeping ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... fair-sized, ocean-going steamer. The Francisco Reyes was a dirty old tub with pretensions to the contrary; and the General Blanco—well, metaphorically speaking, the General Blanco was a coal scuttle. She was a supercilious-looking craft, sitting at a rakish angle, her engines being aft. She had a freeboard of six or seven feet, and possessed neither cabin nor staterooms, the space between the superstructure and the rail being about three feet wide. You could stay there, or, if you did not ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... were returning to the tavern one night, after a visit to a rakish-looking vessel in the offing, when a squall broke in such force as to give their skiff a leeway to the place of executions. As they rounded that lonely reef a creaking noise overhead caused Vanderscamp to look up, and he could not repress a shudder as he ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... funny, shawl-draped figure, with enormous glasses framing round blue eyes, shadowed by a hat that was almost an exact counterpart of the shabby one Miss Gray had hung each morning for the past three winters on her peg in the dressing-room. But there was something about the rakish tilt of the hat that was in such strange contrast to the severe spectacles and the thin, frosty nose, that it gave the snowlady the appearance of staggering and ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... of faint mists along the creek and beyond, when John and Helen reached their bench (of course they went back there), and broken roundelays were croaking from a bayou up the stream, where rakish frogs held carnival in resentment of the lonesomeness. The air was still and close. Hundreds of fire-flies coquetted with the darkness amongst the trees across the water, glinting from unexpected spots, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... The cabin wore an unwonted and a rakish air. The stools seemed to have tried to dance the lancers and have fallen out about the figure. Two were overturned. The unwashed dishes were tossed helter-skelter. A tipsy Christmas tree leaned in drunken fashion against the wall, and under its boughs ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... the cards or played them, without lifting his elbows from the table, in the fashion of a jealous dog with a bone. He wore a blue cap with a polished black visor, tilted back on his head, giving him a rakish, devil-may-care aspect. His long and lean face, cut with wrinkles, was twisted into a sly grin, as if he thought he had the advantage of ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... the limited vocabulary of Morovenia the words that could express his boiling emotions, he saw Popova standing shamefaced in the doorway. Was it really Popova? The tutor wore a traveling-suit with large British checks, a blue four-in-hand, and, instead of a fez, a rakish cap with a peak in front. As he edged into the room the young women attendants filed timidly behind him. Horror upon horrors! They were in shirt-waists, with skirts that came tightly about the hips, and every one of them wore a chip hat, and not one ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... and I shall have a lovely time out of it. I haven't been on a horse since Dorothy came; I hope I haven't grown too stout for my habit. What are you going to wear, Rob? The blue cloth? You are perfectly irresistible in that! Do wear that rakish-looking soft hat with the scarf; it's wonderfully becoming, if it isn't quite so correct; and I'm sure Richard Kendrick won't take us to any stupid fashionable hotel. He'll arrange an outdoor affair, I'm confident, ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... as rakish and dashing a craft on seas literary as any of the hero's black-flagged ships on ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... a tall, strongly built young man who rode his horse with the matchless grace of an Indian. Although his companion was roughly dressed and wore a coon-skin cap, this man was unmistakably a dandy. His high beaver hat observed a jaunty, rakish tilt; his brass-buttoned coat was the colour of wine and of the latest fashion, while his snug fitting pantaloons were the shade of the mouse. He wore no cumbersome cape, but fashioned about his neck and shoulders was ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... of fining away toward the stern-post like the tail of a fish, was quite full, sweeping round under her counter in a semicircle. Then it was that I understood why her counter was so abnormally long; it was not merely a fancy on the part of her designer, intended to give her a smart, rakish appearance, it was for the purpose of giving her, despite the fulness of her run, a clean, easy delivery. Yes, as I looked at her critically, studying her lines from every possible point of view, I could believe ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... of iron in their hair and lines of iron in their faces, hardened by the life they led; and some, again, were smooth-shaven, so often and so closely that their faces were blue with the beard beneath the skin. But, oh, to Nicholas Attwood and the rest of Stratford boys, they were a dashing, rakish, admirable lot, with the air of something even greater than lords, and a keen knowingness in their sparkling, worldly eyes that made a common wise man seem almost a ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... very badly soiled cotton trousers; suspenders made of rawhide strips, fastened to his trousers with wooden pins, and the strangest of old boots, which turned high up at the toes like canoes (being much too long for his feet), and which had a rakish aspect. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... was silent; but anon he asked again what I thought of a long, rakish-looking steamer lying some miles away on the starboard quarter, and when I had satisfied ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... alone be seen at the street corners, listlessly gazing on the deserted prospect before him; and now and then a rakish-looking cat runs stealthily across the road and descends his own area with as much caution and slyness—bounding first on the water-butt, then on the dust-hole, and then alighting on the flag-stones—as if he were conscious that his character depended ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... rakish-looking kepi and bowed low before Iris. Perhaps the white misery in her face touched him more deeply than he had counted on. Be that as it may, a note of genuine sympathy vibrated in his voice as ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the place, and at scores of other gentlemen under whose protection they were walking here and there; and she thought that her gentleman was handsomer and grander looking than any other gent in the place. Of course there were votaries of pleasure of all ranks there—rakish young surgeons, fast young clerks and commercialists, occasional dandies of the guard regiments, and the rest. Old Lord Colchicum was there in attendance upon Mademoiselle Caracoline, who had been riding in the ring; and who talked her native French very loud, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... livelier preludings there came thronging out of the road into the parlour certain fellows of the baser sort, and behind them came one who was not of that denomination—a fair young man with a fine face under an Alpine hat. Heeding nothing of this audience, the girl gave a little rakish toss of her head and called ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... the chance,' replied the stranger, gazing at Fred Archer with much interest. Fred was a good looking young man, genteelly dressed, but with a dissipated, rakish air. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... delicate pale face A quizzical thin smile is showing, His cheeks are wrinkled like fine lace, His kind blue eyes are gay and glowing. He wears a brilliant-hued cravat, A suit to match his soft gray hair, A rakish stick, a knowing hat, A manner ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... to work to cut out and make up a hunting-shirt of dressed deer-skin, gayly fringed at the shoulders, with leggings of the same, fringed from hip to heel. He then made me a rakish raccoon-cap, with a flaunting tail to it; mounted me on his best horse; and I may say, without vanity, that I was one of the smartest fellows that figured on that occasion at the Pigeon Roost ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... it will much import, Whence spring their scenes, from common life or Court; Whether they seek applause by smile or tear, To draw a Lying Valet, [12] or a Lear, [13] A sage, or rakish youngster wild from school, A wandering Peregrine, or plain John Bull; All persons please when Nature's voice prevails, Scottish or Irish, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... no matter what outrage he had committed. His complexion was of a ruddy brown, and his hair, entirely innocent of a comb, was decorated with divers feathery tokens of his last night's rest. A cap with the front torn off, jauntily set on one side of his head, gave him a rakish and wide-awake air, his clothes were patched and torn in several places, and his shoes were already in an advanced stage of decay. As he approached the fence he took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and commenced to sketch the accustomed ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... of ten minutes past seven, the rakish recklessness of a quarter past, the drooping weariness of twenty-five minutes past, must ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... score of steps and stopped again. Sure enough, there she sat at the steering-wheel of a long, rakish touring-car, the slump of her shoulders vaguely hinting at despair and perhaps a stalled engine. His grin widened joyously. He touched his horse with his one spur, assumed an expression of vast indifference, and rode on. She jerked up her head, looked about at ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... activity there now than there had been when he had first set eyes upon it. There were more automobiles; four of them altogether. At the wheel of each sat a soldier driver in grey uniform, and with a cloth covered helmet. Each car was of the same type, a long rakish grey body, low to the ground. As he neared the house an officer wearing a long, grey coat came out, accompanied by two or three younger men. He turned to speak to them, then got into one of the cars, which immediately drove off. As it went a peculiar call was ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... under the arm; and, having paid for his bedroom, he went out at about eight o'clock, walking boldly through the streets—just as Mr. Dale of Rodchurch, dressed in blue serge and not in his best black coat—Mr. Dale dressed for the holidays, with a rakish go-as-you-please soft hat instead of the ceremonious hard-brimmed bowler, and not too proud to carry his ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... too rakish and privateerish for Major Fane; and as for Jack, I am afraid he has the bad taste to prefer Bluebells ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... refurbished, appeared at the windows; the old tin syrup cans, pasted over with dark green paper, were made to disgorge their mouldy stores and transform themselves into flower-pots holding scarlet geraniums; even the disreputable, rakish old rocking chair assumed a belated air of youth and respectability, wearing as it did a cushion of discreetly patterned chintz; and the packing-box table hid its deficiencies under a simple cloth. All these magic transformations Nora had achieved with various odds and ends which ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... fat and thin, and they all looked interesting and hard-used. One of the brothers had been to a party the night before, and on coming home had put his dress-tie about the neck of a little plaster bust of Byron that stood on the mantel. This head, with the tie at a rakish angle, drew Claude's attention more than anything else in the room, and for some reason instantly made ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... every sort of impression which may be made on it. The faculty, in short, which could produce those 3,000 fluent lines on the bare data of the stories of Venus and Adonis and Tarquin and Lucrece, with only the intellectual material of a rakish Stratford lad's schooling and reading, and the culture coming of a few years' association with the primitive English stage and its hangers-on, was capable of broadening and deepening, with vital experience and vital culture, into the poet of LEAR and MACBETH. But the vital culture must come to ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... standing as cool as you please, very grateful to the eye in tussore coat and skirt, with open-necked blouse, and some kind of rakish hat displaying her thick auburn hair in defiance of the fashion which decreed concealment even of eyebrows with flower-pot head gear. She laughed easily, mockingly, although she saw plainly the pikestaff ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... that God cares. Everything goes on by the almanac and natural law. The sun sets when the time comes, no matter who is belated. Girls that are sweet and loving and trusting, like Katy, have always been and will always be victims of rakish fools like Smith Westcott. I wish I were an Indian, and then I could be my own Providence. I would cut short his career, and make what David said about wicked men being cut off come true in this case, in the same way as I suppose ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... had been guilty of the act. All he could learn with regard to the latter point was, that on the day following that on which it occurred, a pilot boat and several fishing vessels had fallen in with a large schooner of a very rakish appearance, under French colours, steering a course apparently with the intention of running between Shetland and Orkney, into ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... liable to sail at ten o'clock, or possibly to-morrow afternoon; and although bound for Iloilo or Cebu, you can not be at all sure what her destination really is. She may return after a month from a long rambling cruise among the southern isles. The Spanish mariners, in rakish Tam o'Shanter caps, lounge at the entrance to the warehouse, or the office of the Compania Maritima, dreamily smoking cigarettes, sometimes imperiously ordering the laborers to "sigue, hombre!" (get along!) a warning that the Filipino has grown ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... a long slender ship of extremely low freeboard, rakish rigged as a single-master, both sails and oars being used as a means of propulsion; two small cannon were mounted forward, and a round dozen arquebuses were also carried. The total company and passengers of the three ships were only 110 ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... off at her best speed in the direction of the approaching steamer, which appeared to be fast, and to be of that peculiarly rakish class of vessels of which there were so many engaged in the business of blockade running. She was examined by the officers with their glasses; but they were unable to make her out. Her ensign was set on a stern pole; but they could not see whether it was the American ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Jovian. Poor gentleman, he was not often out a-hunting. This was one of the fine young rakish fellows from Lunnun as were always swarming about my Lady, like bees over that maybush. Sir Thomas Donne, I think they called him. They said he got killed by a wild boar, hunting in foreign parts, afterwards, and serve him right! But ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has borrowed old Bowman's house in Kent, and is retiring thither for six weeks: I tell her she has lived so rakish a life, that she is obliged to go and take up. I hope you don't know any more of it, and that Major Montagu is not to cross the country to her. There—I think you can't commend me for this letter; it shall not even have the merit of being one. My compliments to all your contented ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... a thousand hairpins next time," she said angrily, as she fastened the coils to the best of her ability, and straightened the rakish hat. "You had better see that your hair is safe, Mollie, before you have your turn. I am going to sit down on the grass and jeer at you for a change. It's so easy to be superior when ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... dashed out of the show-room to the telephone in the rear of the store. He returned a moment later with his cigar at a rakish angle to his ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... yard and then looking up, gasped. Perched like a rakish derby hat on the arm of the towering pump windmill was the slop cauldron. "Well I'll be...." ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... rather thick and long straggling hair; a large forehead, and large gray eyes; the remaining features well-formed—but rather fat, like the rest of his not elegant person; and a complexion rather pale. She thought he had quite a careless, if not a slightly rakish look; but I believe a man, even in that light, would have seen in him something manly and far from unattractive. He had a rather gruff but not unmusical voice, with what some might have thought a thread of pathos in it. He always reminded certain of his friends of the portrait of Jean Paul ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... open, in great surprise. Yes, it was really true. The bed was gone; there it went, tramping down the middle of the street. Its pillow had fallen a little to one side, which gave it a jaunty and rakish air. 'Humph!' said Willy. 'Well, I'm glad the ugly old thing is gone. Now I shall not have to go to bed ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... Sheridan they were so sterile in spite of their wit that they did not achieve between them the output of Moliere's single lifetime; and they were all (not without reason) ashamed of their profession, and preferred to be regarded as mere men of fashion with a rakish hobby. Goldsmith's was the only saved ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... up with candlesticks: gas burned only in the corridors and the restaurant— asthmatic jets that, spluttering blue within globes obese, semi-opaque, and yellowish, went well with furnishings and decorations of the Second Empire to which years had lent a mellow and somehow rakish dinginess; since nothing was ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... James Fox (1749-1806) was the most prominent. Fox had been taught to gamble by his father and took to it readily. Cards and horse-racing kept him in constant bankruptcy; many of his nights were spent in debauchery and his mornings in bed; and his close association with the rakish heir to the throne was the scandal of London. In spite of his eloquence and ability, the loose manner of his life militated against the success of Fox as a reformer. His friends knew him to be a free-hearted, impulsive sympathizer with all who ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Delaware's flat, flat roads, to know what could possibly have produced the brilliant, blazing scarlet banner that hung across a distant wood as if a dozen red flags were being there displayed. Closer approach disclosed one rakish branch on a sugar maple, all afire with color, while every other leaf on the tree yet held ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... refuse, they accepted. On the Saturday following the company came: the corpse was put into a velvet hearse; and eighteen mourning coaches, filled with company, attended. When they were just ready to move, the lord Jefferies, son of the lord chancellor Jefferies, with some of his rakish companions, coming by, asked whose funeral it was; and, being told Mr. Dryden's, he said, 'What, shall Dryden, the greatest honour and ornament of the nation, be buried after this private manner! No, gentlemen, let all that loved Mr. Dryden, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... to Lynde's fresh outbreak. Some one picked up his hat and set it on the back of his head, giving him quite a rakish air. His dignity suffered until the wind took the hat again. The party proceeded in silence, halting once to tighten a girth, and another time to wait for a straggler. If the men spoke to one another ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... flowers,—they don't think if she has a husband who ill-uses her, or a child dying at home. She has come there to make them sport. Well, there came an old lord,—a man of sixty or seventy,—who has led a wild rakish life all these years, and now he thinks 'tis time to settle down, and he wants me to help him to make people think he's become respectable. And they say I shall marry him. Phoebe, they say I must,—there is to be no help for it. And I can't bear him to look at me. If he touches ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... was a rakish-looking craft with a black hull, and she certainly could sail. It made me feel ashamed to watch how quickly she was overhauling us, and, as she finally came abreast and then passed us, it seemed to me that in the usual salutations exchanged between ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... journey brought us to Fisher's Landing, on Red Lake River, where we were to remain until next morning. Although the boat was at the landing, we were not allowed to go on board until all the freight was shipped. This intelligence was given us by a rakish-looking Yankee, who added that his "Ho-tel" was the best in the place, and if we would come "right along" he would give us rooms for the night. Gathering up our traps, and thinking we could not do much ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... observe, I have left several of the points untied, of set purpose; and if it please you to let a small portion of your shirt be seen betwixt your doublet and the band of your upper stock, it will have so much the more rakish effect, and will attract you respect in Alsatia, where linen is something scarce. Now, I tie some of the points carefully asquint, for your ruffianly gallant never ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the hut of rough logs and clay that denotes the settler, only occasionally is there a station, or a mill or a logging camp in this womb of loneliness. Only occasionally does one cross one of those lengthy and rakish spider bridges that give a hint of man ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... that sections might be sliced off them like cheese, and doors and windows might be carved in them; but these French haystacks were devil-may-care haystacks wearing tufts on their polls like headdresses. The windmills had a rakish air; and the scarecrows in the truck gardens were debonair and cocky, tilting themselves back on their pins the better to enjoy the view and fluttering their ragged vestments in a most jaunty fashion. The land though looked poor—it ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... was on the other side of the table, almost opposite Quentin. On Dickey's right sat the Duke Laselli, and next to that individual was the American millionaire. Directly across the broad table from Quentin was the tall rakish-looking Count Diego Sallaconi. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... forty years, it is hard to walk under a poor man's hat." When we reached the Astor House a complete reaction had occurred. His collar was turned down, his head came out confident and aggressive, his hat had shifted to the back of his head and on a rakish angle. The hopeful citizen fairly shouted: "Mr. Depew, the world has always gone around, it always will go around." He managed with the aid of Commodore Vanderbilt to save his assets from sacrifice. In a few years they recovered ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... have it. There's the founder of La Trappe, and Ignatius Loyola; in boyhood, and someway into manhood, both devil-may-care bloods, and yet, in the end, the wonders of the world for anchoritish self-command. These two examples, by-the-way, we cite to such patrons as would hastily return rakish young waiters upon us. 'Madam, or sir—patience; patience,' we say; 'good madam, or sir, would you discharge forth your cask of good wine, because, while working, it riles more or less? Then discharge not forth this young waiter; ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... behind the theoretic enthusiast, perplexed by the contrast between the semi-barbarism of the country and the old-fashioned apathy of its rulers; we have no more descriptions, serious or sarcastic, of rakish subalterns and disorderly regiments under ancient, incapable colonels; we are introduced to a reformed Anglo-India, full of hard-working, efficient officers, civil and military, and sufficiently decorous, except where hill-stations ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... cors de chasse of the legendary Roland and knights of the Nibelungen. Humble civilians grew fonder of the habit of donning their military or hunting uniforms and big marching boots, and sticking cock's feathers in their hats at rakish angles, recalling the war of 1870 or reviving dreams of the sporting Tyrol. They drank daily more pints of beer and swallowed the hot-headed Rhine wines as if thus renewing their blood in that of their fiery ancestors. Meals mounted to seven or eight a ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... shipping, Wagner's eyes were suddenly attracted by a large galley, with three masts—looking most rakish with its snow-white sail, its tapering spars, its large red streamer, and its low, long, and gracefully sweeping hull, which was painted jet black. On its deck were six pieces of brass ordnance; and stands of fire-arms were ranged round the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... fighters ever bled as did the English when the greedy hands of Spain were clutching at their shores. The light ships hung near the Spaniards at a distance and did not board until spars were down and the great rakish hulls were part helpless. Then—with a wild cheer—the little galleons—often two at a time—would grapple with the enemy and board—cutlasses swinging, pistols spitting, and hand-spikes hewing a way through the struggling, yellow-faced ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... ungrateful top. It was of burnished copper. A rebellious lock was then blowing in the wind, and there was a wide, rakish crown of rice-white straw. There was also a soft skin of creamy satin, lips blood red, a velvet patch near a dimple, and two gray eyes that danced behind the hat's filmy curtain. An ungrateful top, out of ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... any other animal barters away his legs he buys either fins or wings with them; this is a generally-understood law, invariably respected. But the snake goes in for extravagance in ribs and vertebrae; an eccentric, rakish, and improper proceeding; part of an irregular and raffish life. Nothing can carry within it affection, or even respect, for an animal whose tail begins nowhere in particular, unless it is at the neck; even if any creature may esteem it an animal at all that is but a tail with a mouth ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... dashed forward and pulled the auto-cannon off the injured man, hauling him and his companion over to the lift. The two rakish-winged fighter-bombers were returning, spraying the roof with machine-gun bullets, and behind them came a procession of fifteen big 'copters. They dropped the lift hastily; Slater jumped off when it was still six feet above the floor, and began ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... a steed that looked like Sunday afternoon, with brand-new reins and bit, and in a suit that fit him to perfection, with gleaming spurs and shining buttons, the rakish and indomitable Pancho, his long-lost friend, returned to greet him. He could scarcely believe it. For since that memorable night when he had left them, to return to the interior of Mexico, never ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... of that white head peering from the blackness was uncanny. The shaft of light struck straight across the peaked chin and twisted mouth. The snow had made him a cap which covered his horns and which gave him the look of a rakish old tipster. ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island; for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... whistled softly, took off the curly-brimmed hat, looked at it, and put it on again at a more rakish angle ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... this question he became aware of something very unusual in his wife's appearance. Alma was pallid and shaking; her small felt hat had got out of position, and her hair was disordered, giving her a wild, rakish aspect. He saw, too, that the horse dripped with sweat; that it glared, panted, trembled, and could not for a moment ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... all in this state of violent excitement; and down they bore at once upon the ancient mariner, as if he were a regular bluff-bowed old East Indiaman, full of golden ingots, and they were clipper-built, copper-fastened, rakish ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... hither in the teeth of royal mandates. Farther out, and tugging fretfully in the yellow current, were the aliens of the blue seas, high-hulled, their tracery of masts and spars shimmering in the heat: a full-rigged ocean packet from Spain, a barque and brigantine from the West Indies, a rakish slaver from Africa with her water-line dry, discharged but yesterday of a teeming horror of freight. I looked again upon the familiar rows of trees which shaded the gravelled promenades where Nick had first seen Antoinette. Then we were under it, for the river was low, and the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... finding ourselves outside the walls of the Nuns' House, and that we who undertook the formation of the future wives and mothers of England (the last words in a lower voice, as requiring to be communicated in confidence) were really bound (voice coming up again) to set a better example than one of rakish habits, wrappers were put in requisition, and the two young cavaliers volunteered to see the ladies home. It was soon done, and the gate of the Nuns' House ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... detachment of small boys to fetch from the wayside and meadows armfuls of wild roses for the decorations. Miss Abigail made pink icing for the cake. Ruby Lee hung bleeding-hearts over the dining-room door. Aunt Nancy resurrected from the bottom of her trunk a white lace cap with a rakish-looking pink bow for an adornment, and fastened it to her scant gray hairs in honor of the occasion. Blossy turned her pink china pig, his lid ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... velveteen; he had a rakish way of smoking a cigarette between his songs that was worth money in itself; he underlined his comic points, so that the dullest numskull in Castel-le-Gachis had a notion when to laugh; and he handled his guitar in a manner worthy of himself. Indeed his play with ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stranger in a small town always attracts public attention, and many were curious about the rakish-looking man who had now for some time occupied a room at ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... naturalness in acting out the spirit summoned by a woman steeped in the essences of high-flown books. "The trumpet," she said when they heard Margaret's dinner horn, and not even Tom, who could have recalled many a rakish bout of a Saturday night and many an unholy laugh in church of a Sunday, dared to smile at her. "You've caught me all right, auntie, and I'm strutting like a bantam cock in the spring ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... day, he saw her in her true proportions. The admiration of a seaman was blended with the other sensations of the young man. The brigantine lay in the position that exhibited her exquisitely-moulded hull and rakish rig to the most advantage. The head, having come to the wind, was turned towards her pursuer; and as the bows rose on some swell that was heavier than common, Ludlow saw, or fancied he saw, the mysterious image still perched on her cut-water, holding the book to the curious, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... should read Prayers before them. For then those that are afraid of stretching their Mouths, and spoiling their soft Voice, will learn to Read with Clearness, Loudness, and Strength. Others that affect a rakish negligent Air by folding their Arms, and lolling on their Book, will be taught a decent Behaviour, and comely Erection of Body. Those that Read so fast as if impatient of their Work, may learn to speak ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... off instantly at a smart walk; the rigid straddle of his legs, the turned-out feet, the stiff back, the rakish slant of the sombrero above the square, motionless set of the shoulders ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... tight-ankled pair of white trousers to replace the voluminous baggy ones of a Patan, and a blue shot-with-gold-thread Rajput turban. He shoved the Patan turban with its conical fez in his saddle-bags, and wound the many yards of blue material in a rakish criss-cross about his shapely head, running a fold or two beneath his chin. The Patan sheepskin coat ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Oecumenical Council, and of which be might justly say: Whosoever dare think that he ever tasted a better schema, or ever dreamed in his deepest consciousness that a better could be made, let him be anathema maranatha! A most rakish looking wooden button, noiselessly stealthly and sly, gave entrance to this treasury of dainties; and then what a rare array of disintegrated meals intoxicated the vision! There was the Athlete of the Dairy, commonly ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... complexion like these show-window models you see in department stores. She's costumed cheap but gaudy in a wrinkled, tango-colored dress that she must have picked off some Grand street bargain counter late last spring. The ninety-nine-cent soup-plate lid cocked over one ear adds a rakish touch that almost puts her in the comic ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... appearance. The neat, well-fitting Fifth Avenue tweeds did not fit quite so perfectly—the coat bunched a little at the shoulders, the trousers were drawn a little higher until they lost their "set." His hat was pulled still farther over his eyes, but at a more rakish angle, and his tie, tucked into his shirt bosom just below the collar, exposed blatantly a diamond shirt stud. But on Jimmie Dale's lips there was an ominous smile not wholly in keeping with the somewhat jaunty swagger he ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... procession scarlet robes and hoods." This imposing dress, in perfect harmony with the dignity of the office of those who wore them, degenerated towards the fifteenth century. So much was this the case, that an order of Francis I. forbad the judges from wearing pink "slashed hose" or other "rakish garments." ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... flush. The house, pierced by the main companionway, was divided into three sections—a small lounging room, a wireless room, and the captain's cabin, over which stood the bridge and chart house. The single funnel rose between the captain's cabin and the wireless room, and had the rakish tilt of the racer. Wanderer II could upon occasion hit it up round twenty-one knots, for all her fifteen years. There was plenty of deck room ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... flannel shirt and a black slouch hat, who was soon enough at his ease to lie flat upon the ferry gunwale, his cheeks supported by his hands, and talk to W—— and the Doctor as if they were old friends. He was a dealer in nitroglycerin cartridges, he said, and pointed to a long, rakish-looking skiff hard by, which bore a red flag at its prow. "Ye see that? Thet there red flag? Well, thet's the law on us glysereen fellers—over five hundred poun's, two flags; un'er five hundred, one flag. I've two hundred and fifty, I have. I tell yer ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... was looking on me from the corners of his eyes, and smiling in a sly, rakish way, that no man ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Chupin's daughter-in-law, a native of Auvergne, had been bitterly punished for preferring a rakish Parisian ragamuffin to one of the grimy charcoal-burners of the Puy de Dome. She was hardly more than twelve years of age when she first came to Paris and obtained employment in a large factory. After ten ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... without a certain knowledge of human nature, particularly Skippy-nature, so without further interest he proceeded to disrobe, flipping the five-dollar bill on the table with a rakish gesture and saying carelessly: ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... the greatest navigators and the most enterprising tradesmen, and were, in times gone by, the greatest pirates as well. In fact, the harbor master at Makassar told us that the crews of many of the rakish looking sailing craft which were anchored in close proximity to the Negros were reformed buccaneers. Certainly they looked it. They may have reformed, but that did not prevent Captain Galvez from doubling the deck-watch at night while we were in Celebes waters. He believed ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... '58, that Dr. Sevier, as one morning he approached his office, noticed with some grim amusement, standing among the brokers and speculators of Carondelet street, the baker, Reisen. He was earnestly conversing with and bending over a small, alert fellow, in a rakish beaver and very smart coat, with the blue flowers of modesty bunched saucily ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... herself she would never be able to master. There was a professional horse-breaker whom McKeith hailed as Zack Duppo, and to whom he had a good deal to say also. There were some gangs of shearers or stockmen or what not, who appeared to be the following of two or three rakish, aggressive looking males upon whom the bushmen scowled. Union ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... there very still and unresisting, her hand to her lips, uttering no word, scarcely breathing. He waited. He gave her time. After a little while her fingers strayed to the crown of her limp, rakish panama. They found the single hat-pin and drew it out. He smiled as he pushed the hat away and then pressed her dark little head against his breast. Her ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... or at all events had no intention of entering it. She was tolerably secure where she lay, and had the advantage of being able to get out again with less difficulty than if she had come into the harbour. We, however, went alongside. She was a rakish-looking craft, and there appeared to be a good many men on board. As we went up her side we saw a swarthy fellow with big whiskers ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... a very shabby pot-hat to a still more rakish angle, buttoning up an equally shabby coat the while against the east wind. He was a tall fair-haired fellow, half a Dane in race and aspect: broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, with a Franciscan passion for poverty and the poor. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... surprised or impressed, could not restrain a rather startled look at this lordly knowledge of the world. Sylvia, although she had scarcely taken in the significance of Arnold's words, dropped her eyes and blushed. Arnold surveyed them with the indulgent look of a rakish but good-hearted man of the world patting two pretty children on ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... asked a young woman from her own stall or stand very near, as she involuntarily arranged her hair and adjusted her waist- belt; for the rakish-looking reprobate, with the air of having been somewhere, was making towards them; and she was young enough to care how she looked when a man, who took notice, was near. Her own husband had been a horse-doctor, farmer, and sportsman of a kind, and she herself was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his income—from sheer despair breaking out of all bounds, and becoming extravagant, which is not his turn. But he likes to live as well as the rest of his company, and, between ourselves, has fell into some of the finist and most rakish in England. He thinks 'tis for the honour of the family not to go back, and many a time calls for ortolans and champaign when he would as leaf dine with a stake and a mugg of beer. And in this kind of spirit I have no doubt from what he hath told ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his name conjures up a vision of all that is brilliant, rakish, and bibulous in the expiring days of the seventeenth century! It is easy to picture him, as he stands near the congenial bar of the tavern, entranced by the liquid tones and marvellous expression of Nance's youthful voice. He has a whimsical, good-humoured ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... hate each other? Far from it; but what cannot escape from you inspires you with no haste to obtain it. Josiana wanted to remain free, David to remain young. To have no tie until as late as possible appeared to him to be a prolongation of youth. Middle-aged young men abounded in those rakish times. They grew gray as young fops. The wig was an accomplice: later on, powder became the auxiliary. At fifty-five Lord Charles Gerrard, Baron Gerrard, one of the Gerrards of Bromley, filled London with his successes. The young and pretty Duchess ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... keenly. She hurried to the dressing room and in a moment emerged looking strangely unlike the Josie her friends knew. Her sandy hair was completely covered by a henna wig, bobbed and crimped. Her sedate sailor hat was cocked at a rakish angle and draped with a much-ornamented veil, and mirabile dictu! a lipstick had been freely and relentlessly applied to her honest mouth and her cheeks were touched up with a paint of purplish hue. Her sober Norfolk jacket was ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... brevity; thus her figure was too short for her breadth, and her skirts too short for her figure; her jacket was too short over her hips, and her gloves too short over her wrists; her hair was too short on her neck and her veil too short over her nose. Yet the rakish hat settled, and the fobs and seals shaken out, she appeared mentally fresh and charming, and the rich cadences of her cultivated voice gave Ringfield pleasure, slightly recalling Miss Clairville's accents, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft, with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... pavement nearest the market-place. She knew it was a vulgar thing to do; her father and mother could not bear it; but the nostalgia came over her, she must be among the people. Sometimes she sat among the louts in the cinema: rakish-looking, unattractive louts they were. Yet she must be ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... he looked much more distressed than rejoiced as he lumbered from his table to grasp the outstretched hand of a classmate. The opera-hat of this Mr. Richard Giddings was cocked at a rakish angle, his blue eye twinkled good cheer and youthful hilarity, and his aspect was ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) |
