"Dapper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... small sallow man, with rather an agitated fussy manner, and eyes that never seemed to be looking at you. He was neat, almost dapper, in his dress, and was rather like the ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the other extremity of the garage came a jaunty, dapper, quasi-martial figure, in a new grey uniform, with a peaked grey cap, bright brown leggings, and bright brown boots to match—the whole highly brushed, polished, smooth and glittering. This being pulled out of his pocket a superb pair of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... briskly, and gave me his hand with unlooked-for cordiality. He was a dapper little man, with a head as round and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... that led up to the outbreak of hostilities in Turkey was that of the youthful Enver Pasha. He was one of the heroes of the remarkable rebellion that resulted in the downfall of Abdul Hamid, and since then he had ever played a leading part in the constantly shifting drama in Constantinople. Dapper, alert intelligent, and approachable, modest almost to the point of shyness, Enver was almost a venerated figure among the Turkish people. As he passed on horseback, his slim figure erect and stiff in its military pose, he ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... his manner; while his wife's bored attitude and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: "I couldn't BEAR to ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... haughty young lady insisted upon her going upstairs. "We've nothing to take off, young woman," she declared at last; "can't you see that? Do you want us to undress and go to bed?" And with that she brushed Katie aside and proceeded on her way. A dapper little man in a dress-suit, the only man anywhere in sight, popped out from behind a great palm and demanded, "Name, please, madam?" Elizabeth regarded him with awe. He represented the zenith point ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... The nervous, dapper, "peart" young man took the chair I offered him, and said he was connected with the Daily ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rights begin; 'T is only daylight ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... and Mr. O'Brien of counsel, belligerent in every nerve, were ready to try the case. The two dapper government attorneys, with immobile faces, twisted nervously in their chairs. There was the bevy of newspaper reporters struggling for places in the little courtroom, plainly sympathetic, for whatever they may have had to write for the papers ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... lead; but if he had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... called him Captain Ricks. Had he lacked these characteristics, but borne nevertheless even a remote resemblance to a retired mariner, his world would have hailed him as Old Cap Ricks; but since he was what he was—a dapper, precise, shrewd, lovable little old man with mild, paternal blue eyes, a keen sense of humor and a Henry Clay collar, which latter, together with a silk top hat, had distinguished him on 'Change for forty years—it was inevitable that along the Embarcadero and up California Street ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... reputation was irretrievably gone. It was no unusual thing in those days for ladies in semi-public life to outlive several reputations. The quondam Clio had already found the notoriety of that name too strong for her comfort, and had been rechristened Mira by the dapper Mr. Mallet.[19] Instead of adopting some such expedient Mrs. Haywood found it more convenient simply to lapse into anonymity. Of the four novels published within a year after "The Dunciad" none bore her name on the title-page, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... niggardly in his expenditure, strictly honest in conducting his own affairs and those of his clients, but taught by long experience to be wary and suspicious in observing the motions of others. Punctual as the clock of Saint Giles tolled nine, the neat dapper form of the little hale old gentleman was seen at the threshold of the court hall, or at farthest, at the head of the Back Stairs, trimly dressed in a complete suit of snuff-coloured brown, with stockings of silk or woollen as, suited the weather; a bob-wig, and a small cocked hat; ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... carriage of one of the burly, uncared-for guns, while the spider wove his web across the mortar's mouth, and the grass nodded above the tumbled pyramids of shot, and the children raced up and down, and the nursery-maids were wooed of the dapper sergeants, and the red-coated sentry loitered lazily to and fro before his box. On the days of the music, they listened to the band in the Governor's Garden, and watched the fine world of the old capital in flirtation with the ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... a sorry spectacle, and I saw mademoiselle's look of suppressed amusement change to pity and concern. Blood was gushing from his nose all over his fine clothes, and his face was so begrimed and gory it would have been impossible to guess it was the dapper Parisian. ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... be he Sienese or Florentine, be he Orcagna, Lorenzetti, or Volterra, painted the typical masterpiece of mediaeval art, the great fresco of the Triumph of Death. With wonderful realization of character and situation he painted the prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... black-eyed man of dapper appearance, wearing the coveted button of the Legion d'Honneur in his black frock-coat, he looked up sharply at the man brought into his presence, wished him a curt "bon jour," and motioned him to a seat at the opposite side of the big table, in such a position that the grey light from the long ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... been often told of Garrison's coming out to East Haverhill to find a contributor who had interested him; and it has been stated that the Quaker lad was called in from work in the field to see the dapper young editor and his lady friend. He once told me that the situation was a bit more awkward for him. It happened that on this eventful morning the young poet had discovered that a hen had stolen her nest under the barn, and he was crawling on his hands and ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... costume was what had momentarily baffled George. When they had met in the rose-garden, the other had been arrayed in untidy gardening clothes. Now, presumably in his Sunday suit, it was amusing to observe how almost dapper he had become. Really, you might have passed him in the lane and taken him for ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... teaches the children Latin every morning, and is already thinking when Tom shall be inducted into that language. He works in his garden for an hour before breakfast. His work over by three o'clock, he tramps home at four, and exchanges his dapper coat for his ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He was a round, dapper practitioner, with slightly soiled cuffs and an extremely business-like manner. On entering the room he jerked his head in a general nod to all present, and stepping to the table, drew a small packet from his waistcoat, and unfolded it. It ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was dapper and smiling as usual. Even the early hour at which he had been obliged to leave home had neither ruffled his temper nor withered the flower in his buttonhole. He spent his money generously at the various stalls in the garden, addressed ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... fell while we were in the train, and the heat was far less oppressive in Croydon than in town. Holmes had sent on a wire, so that Lestrade, as wiry, as dapper, and as ferret-like as ever, was, waiting for us at the station. A walk of five minutes took us to Cross Street, where ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... fair-sized stick-and-wattle house. He was a dapper little man, with a cleverish, weakling cast of face, and was all on the jump with the turn things had taken. He had just opened the door to us, and was eyeing us uncertainly, when the Colonel and the Chief, returning on foot from their inspection, having left ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... it during her sojourn in Paris, she was again fearfully agitated by that dreadful fondness for things English, in France, by which her nervous system had before been so greatly discomposed. Woful to relate, she was received by "a smart, dapper, English-innkeeper-looking landlord," and conducted to apartments "which were a box of boudoirs, as compact as a Chinese toy." "There were carpets on every floor, chairs that were moveable, mirrors that reflected, sofas to sink on, footstools ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the right place this time, and the girls went in. Behind the counter stood a dapper young man, who waited on them obsequiously. But when he heard Patty's request he said they did not have that essence in their regular stock and only made ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... Ferrygate, and after giving the servant George Sheldon's card, and announcing myself as concerned in a matter of business relating to the Haygarth family, I was at once ushered into a prim counting-house, where a dapper little old gentleman in spotless broadcloth, and a cambric cravat and shirt frill which were soft and snowy as the plumage of the swan, received me with old-fashioned courtesy. I was delighted to find him seventy-five years of age at the most moderate computation, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... voice, faltered their ca-ira. A vintner has wheeled in, on Patriot truck, beverage of wine: "Drink not, my brothers, if ye are not dry; that your cask may last the longer;" neither did any drink, but men 'evidently exhausted.' A dapper Abbe looks on, sneering. "To the barrow!" cry several; whom he, lest a worse thing befal him, obeys: nevertheless one wiser Patriot barrowman, arriving now, interposes his "arretez;" setting down his own barrow, he snatches ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... meet her discomfited master, who was crippling towards him, his clothes much soiled with his fall, his eyes streaming with tears, from pain as well as mortification, and altogether exhibiting an aspect so unlike the spruce and dapper importance of his ordinary appearance, that the honest smith felt compassion for the little man, and some remorse at having left him exposed to such disgrace. All men, I believe, enjoy an ill natured joke. The difference is, that an ill natured person can drink out to the very ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... have been worth any statesman's money to have heard the profound discussions which sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveler. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster,—a dapper, learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary! and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... was called. An artist of no mean merit, and pupil of Jules Hardouin Mansard, the chief architect of Versailles, where Frisoni had worked at the plans together with his master. The Italian arrived: a small, dapper man, ridiculous in his huge powdered wig, his little brown monkey face peering out of the curled white locks. Her Excellency desired a palace on the same model as the fine French palazzo? Nothing easier! No? An ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... fifth or sixth from the engine the three fellow-travellers greeted the arrival in the orthodox way. The tall American stretched his long limbs and groaned wearily as he got his belongings together, while the dapper young Englishman thrust his head out of the window and withdrew ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... clock in the outer room pointed to three. An active, dapper little man with glasses and with books under his arm passed hurriedly from another office into ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... a pack mule; Foy dressed in the grey jerkin of a merchant, but armed with a sword and mounted on a good mare; Martin riding a Flemish gelding that nowadays would only have been thought fit for the plough, since no lighter-boned beast could carry his weight. Among these moved a dapper little man, with sandy whiskers and sly face, asking their business and destination of the various travellers, and under pretence of guarding against the smuggling of forbidden goods, taking count upon his tablets of their ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... asked Mother Beaver, bustling back to them with a delicate green bough, from which she had stripped the leaves, as a titbit for Phil. She was surprised to hear that he was not hungry, until he reminded her how early that afternoon a dapper Bee in a velvet coat had invited him to a feast of honey. The Queen of the Fairies might have envied him that meal, so exquisite were the flower-cups in which he ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... two men could speak, the door was violently flung open and Martin Jaffry appeared. His clothing was disarranged, his manner agitated—in striking contrast to the dapper and composed appearance usual to that ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... solitary creature; I have never known more than one to occupy the same den. Apparently no two can agree to live together. What a clean, pert, dapper, nervous little fellow he is! How fast his heart beats, as he stands up on the wall by the roadside, and, with hands spread out upon his breast, regards you intently! A movement of your arm, and he darts into the wall ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... most exquisite embroideries, and this may mean that some part of his art was inherited. She handled lovely colours, and tried to fashion beautiful flower shapes for customers. She was a fragile, tender sort of woman, while the father was doubtless a dapper, over-nice little fellow. ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... hands with a small, dapper, early-gray, superdignified man, recalling his sign: "Antiques in Furniture, Glass, Bronze, Plate, China, and Jewelry." M. Ducatel seemed to be already taking leave. His "anceztral 'ome," he said, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... disappointed and hurt, for he was not only unobserving, and seemingly unappreciative, but he was more silent than ever that night and he looked gloomy. But if he had grown accustomed to her beauty, there were others who had not, and smart, dapper college youths gathered about her like bees around a flower—a triumphant fact to which he also seemed indifferent. Moreover, he was not in evening clothes that night and she did not know whether he had forgotten or was indifferent to them, and the contrast that ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... ask Cousin Fred," I decided (Cousin Fred being a stockbroker), and I smiled a little to myself as I thought how amazed and possibly amused my dapper cousin would be when he learnt the source of my knowledge. He might even refuse to believe in it—and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... his eyes vaguely trying to focus, and so mildly blue. His head with the graying hair so closely cropped gave him an odd appearance of boyishness, to which the smart little bow tie added not a little. He was trim, dapper, in spite of the fact that his standing collar was a size or two too large; in spite, too, of the tiny, well-trimmed goatee. He looked like a faun in trouble. With a shadow of distress crossing his face, he gave ground and backed away, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... other night by 'a little, pert petit-maitre figure, that claimed me for acquaintance. Do you remember to have seen at Florence an Abb'e Durazzo, of Genoa? well, this was he: it is mighty dapper and French: however, I will be civil to it: I never lose opportunities of paving myself an agreeable passage back to Florence. My dear Chutes, stay for me: I think the first gale of peace will ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... extremely hard not to laugh. On his head he had a cap with ear-pieces that hid his grey hair; round his neck a gaudy handkerchief muffled well about his face; immense goggles cloaked the familiar overhanging eyebrows and deep-set eyes, goggles curiously at variance with the dapper briskness of his gaitered legs. The Princess was in ordinary blue serge, short and rather shabby, it having been subjected for hours daily during the past week to rough treatment by the maid now travelling to Cologne. As ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... first night at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, which at the time struck me with extreme disgust. That was seeing more than one man who had no females or babies to look after, who sought there a refuge from the coming attack. At daylight, one dapper young man, in fashionable array, came stepping lightly on the gallery, carrying a neat carpet-bag in his hand. I hardly think he expected to meet two young ladies at that hour; I shall always believe he meant ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... it happened that a little very dapper gentleman who was largely interested in the land-agency and general mortgage business was spending the evening with Hawtrey in Wyllard's room at the Range. He had driven round by Hawtrey's homestead earlier in the afternoon, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... minutes. Evidently he was explaining the situation to his friend. But after a time Orme heard the clang of the elevator door, and in response to the knock that quickly followed, he opened his own door. At the side of his former visitor stood a dapper foreigner. He wore a long frock coat and carried a glossy hat, and his eyes were ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... The dapper little villain exuded a smug, complacent cruelty. It was no use for the sheriff to remind himself that such things weren't done nowadays, that the times of Geronimo and the Apache Kid were past forever. Black MacQueen ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Bridger, Baker, Richards and other of the celebrated hunters, trappers and Indian fighters were as familiar about the post as are bankers in Wall Street. All these men fascinated me, especially Carson, a small, dapper, quiet man whom everybody held ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper, learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... hungry eyes. The place is feverish rather than exciting. A tall fellow, whose gait and clothes proclaim him English, with a hard face and lack-lustre eyes, saunters about; his friends at home suppose he is making his fortune in America. A dapper young gentleman, quite in the mode, and with the quick air of prosperity, rapidly enters the room and confers with a clerk at the counter. He has the run of the Chamber, and is from the great house of Flamm and Slamm. Perhaps he is taking a "flier" ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... hawk and hunt the time away. Here one his mistress courts; another dances; A third incites to lust by wanton glances. This wastes the day in dressing; the other seeks To set fresh colours on her with red cheeks, That, when the sun declines, some dapper spark May take her to Spring Garden or the park. Plays some frequent, and balls; others their prime Consume at dice; some bowl away their time. With cards some wholly captivated are; From tables others scarce ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the school-master, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of the situation persisted. Rodney's strained face and uneasy manner, his uniform, the blank pause when he had learned that Graham was better, and when the ordinary banalities of greeting were over. Beside Clayton he looked small, dapper, and wretchedly uncomfortable, and yet even Clayton had to acknowledge a sort of dignity ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a little of the dapper look about John Glover Drew who arrived the same day with the Admiral, as I met him for the first time near the corner of the Hive. He seemed stiff and formal in dress and manner, and his face had in it the cool, matter-of-fact element which did not attract me; in fact he looked too "civilized." ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... in his quaint, sententious manner, growled out brief epigrammatic sentences, full of shrewdness and wisdom, most strangely seasoned with semi-contemptuous sarcasm. Here Isherwood Sutcliff, with his well-dressed, dapper figure, and his handsome Roman face, was wont to air his oratory; and here occasionally he, placing his right foot upon a spittoon, would deliver himself of set orations; most carefully prepared; most elegantly phrased; copiously garnished with Byronic quotations; ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... announced, and a meek and dapper little clergyman, with smooth pink cheeks, and tresses parted down the middle, whom I had not seen before, emerged ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... A dapper little gentleman, with a dry, authoritative air, then emerged and assumed charge of me. I explained my desire to receive, uncensured, a journal which ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... have sat with me before upon the green settee are familiar with the upper shelf, with the tattered Macaulay, the dapper Gibbon, the drab Boswell, the olive-green Scott, the pied Borrow, and all the goodly company who rub shoulders yonder. By the way, how one wishes that one's dear friends would only be friends also with each other. Why should Borrow snarl so churlishly ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to company with those who were rich and delighted to eat of good things; and with these he went often to dine and sup, albeit he was not always bidden. There was likewise at Florence, in those days, a man called Biondello, a little dapper fellow of his person, very quaint of his dress and sprucer than a fly, with his coif on his head and his yellow periwig still drest to a nicety, without a hair awry, who plied the same trade as Ciacco. Going one ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... him to his car, sir," replied the young man, "when a dapper fellow in a chauffeur's uniform confronted us on the sidewalk. He stood as stiff and straight as a soldier. He didn't say a word. He just looked at Mr. Hervey. Mr. Hervey stopped because the man was blocking the sidewalk. I looked into the chauffeur's ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... tropical-looking visitor that so delighted Thoreau in the Walden woods, often seems only the more intense by comparison with the blue sky, against which it stands out in relief as the bird perches singing in a tree-top. What has this gaily dressed, dapper little cavalier in common with his dingy sparrow cousins that haunt the ground and delight in dust-baths, leaving their feathers no whit more dingy than they were before, and in temper, as in plumage, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... of state. Though early in the season, the beach is well sprinkled with people. A few attempt the bathing again, but the rest saunter here and there or enjoy beach-chairs at a stipulated rental. The elderly French gentleman, a dapper and interesting, specimen rarely paralleled at home, strolls about contentedly on the asphalt promenade back from the beach, smoking a cigar and fingering a light bamboo. Younger men, also well-dressed, pass ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... was the young physician who kept watch over Sylvia's health; a dapper little man with pink and white complexion, and a brown moustache from which he could not keep his fingers. He had a bungalow to himself, but sometimes he went along on the launch-trips, and Sylvia thought she observed ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... to him,— Seven hundred pounds he gives him there and then, Proffers on easy terms as much again, And so persuades him, that, with tastes like his, He ought to buy a farm;—so bought it is. Not to detain you longer than enough, The dapper cit becomes a farmer bluff, Talks drains and subsoils, ever on the strain Grows lean, and ages with the lust of gain. But when his sheep are stolen, when murrains smite His goats, and his best crops are killed with blight, When at the plough his oxen drop ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... felt the blood flush hotly to her cheeks. Somehow she could feel no sympathy for that cringing figure in there; but she felt a hot resentment toward that dapper, immaculately dressed and self-possessed young man, who stood there, silently now, tapping the papers with provoking coolness against the edge of the plain deal table in front of him. And somehow the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... was not breezy in the same way. He was the typical society butterfly, chatty to the point of blissfulness and as full of energy as a pint bottle of champagne. You could never by any stretch of the fancy liken him to anything so magnificent as a quart. Dapper, arrogant, snobbish, superior was he, and a very handy man to have about if one wanted to debate the question: Should spats be worn this year the same as last, or why WILL ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Rag are very well acquainted, and so the former, with that candour inseparable from intimate friendship, told me his dear friend's history. Captain Rag is a small dapper north-country man. He went when quite a boy into a crack light cavalry regiment, and by the time he got his troop, had cheated all his brother officers so completely, selling them lame horses for sound ones, and ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in a little room, the walls decorated with sporting prints, the green baize table gloomily laden with volumes of Punch and the Tatler. Wilbraham's doctor came in to see me, a dapper, smart little man, efficient and impersonal. He told me that Wilbraham had at most only twenty-four hours to live, that his brain was quite clear, and that he was suffering very little pain, that he had been brutally kicked in the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... had lingered so long amid the delights of a Santa Barbara spring that they were journeying in that pleasant time of year when spring travel eastward has ended, and summer travel has not yet begun.) This one other passenger was a little man of dapper build and dapper dress, whose curiously-shaped articles of luggage betokened his connection with commercial affairs. Grace was forced to own, as she now for the first time regarded him attentively, that he did not seem to be wrought ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... to us, but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. It is a peremptory rule with them, that they never go out of their road. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their foreordained paths,—neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... "it isn't merely our sex who are guilty of making themselves less agreeable after marriage. Your dapper little fairy creatures, who dazzle us so with wondrous and fresh toilettes, who are so trim and neat and sprightly and enchanting, what becomes of them after marriage? If he reads the newspaper at the breakfast-table, perhaps it's because there is a sleepy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... dapper, bustling, round-headed little man, Roorback (or Rollebuck, as it was pronounced) by name. At the sight of him the women broke into loud lamentations, for they looked upon the signing of a will as the signing ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... his request, and with such simplicity, accompanied by a winning smile, that the dapper Frenchman could not have refused his modest request even had his heart not warmed toward these young friends of France from across ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... alert, dapper young man who wore glasses, and I remembered having seen him, both at the ticket window and in the women's room. Outside of the gates he confirmed my suspicion by trailing us to the steps of ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... Inspector, and the window she beheld, when the curtain drew up, was, she supposed, the bar of an inn. But no; on the board were two heads, ideals of male and female beauty, one with a waxed moustache, the other with a huge chignon, vividly recalling Mr. Pettitt's Penates. Presently came by a dapper professor, in blue spectacles and a college cap, who stood contemplating, and indulging in a harangue on entities and molecules, spirit and matter, affinities and development, while the soft deep brown eyes of the chignoned head languished, and the blue ones of the moustached one rolled, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is the Sunday Sweeper.—This neat, dapper, and cleanly variety of the genus besom, is usually a young fellow, who, pursuing some humble and ill-paid occupation during the week, ekes out his modest salary by labouring with the broom on the Sunday. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... displeasure, and instantly dashing to the top of the wall, followed at once by a stately black Spaniard, decorated with a lace mantilla of cut paper off a French plum box, squawking and curtseying. Then came a dapper pullet, with a doll's hat on her unwilling head, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the chat, a dapper little prig of a dandy, who sat on my left, volunteered to inform me that he was no less a personage than le Docteur Du Jean, a medical practitioner fresh from Metropolitan hospitals, who, in a spirit of the loftiest philanthropy, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... first, though, and at this meal gave an excellent account of himself. Shortly afterward, as he sat over his coffee, little de Soyecourt unlocked the high and narrow gate which constituted the one entrance to the garden, and sauntered forward, dapper and smiling. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... description, pointed directly toward me, I was about to venture a response on my own account, when my attention, as well as theirs, was freshly attracted by a loud "Whoa!" at the gate, followed by the hasty but assured entrance of a dapper, wizen, but perfectly preserved little old gentleman with a bag in ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... in the strait path they knew on uncarpeted floors and between high pews, they would slink back into their graves content,—all the more content, perhaps, if they should listen to the service of the new teacher, and, in their common-sense way, reckon what chance the dapper talker might have,—as compared with the solemn soberness of the old pastor,—in opening the ponderous doors for them upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Trap, ridiculed by Swift in "The Tatler," No. 66, as parson Dapper. He was sent to Ireland as chaplain to Sir Constantine Phipps, Lord Chancellor, in 1710-11. But in July, 1712, Swift writes to Stella, "I have made Trap chaplain to Lord Bolingbroke, and he is mighty happy and thankful for it." He translated the "Aeneid" into blank ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... my own expense. If I have a native heath it is certainly Kensington High Street, off which stands the house of my childhood. I grew up in that thorough-fare which Mr. Max Beerbohm, with his usual easy exactitude of phrase, has described as "dapper, with a leaning to the fine arts." Dapper was never perhaps a descriptive term for myself; but it is quite true that I owe a certain taste for the arts to the sort of people among whom I was brought up. It is also true that such a taste, in various forms and degrees, was fairly common ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... they sat and watched him while he tapped and tapped and hammered: pert little shoes piping "Be quick, be quick, we want to be toddling. You seem to have no idea, my good man, how much toddling there is to be done." Dapper boots, sighing: "Oh, please make haste, we are waiting to dance and to strut. Jack walks in the lane, Jill waits by the gate. Oh, deary, how slowly he taps." Stout sober boots, saying: "As soon as you can, old friend. Remember we've work ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... hastened the final Christian victory by some four hundred years. Alfonso was far-seeing enough to know the possibilities ahead, and it is easy to understand and sympathize with his rage at the mere thought of the dapper, silken Candespina. So the rebellious Urraca, with her heart full of love for Count Gomez, was married, and just before her father's death in 1109, to King Alfonso I., called el batallador [the battler], and known as the Emperor of Aragon. This union of Castile, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... the barrel and shook hands. He was a dapper little person, and had a trick of punctuating every sentence ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... a middle-aged, innocent west-countryman, a good sailor, knew all the harbours from Plymouth to the Land's End, and perhaps several others, but he was more of a pilot than a master, and usually conversed about landmarks, church steeples, and crayfish. The surgeon was a clever little dapper man, well-read, shockingly irritable, fond of controversy on ethics, etymology, and giving the blue pill. I need not acquaint my reader he was from York. The purser was the shadow of a man, very regular in his ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the door behind my father and Lewis was thrown violently open, and a man entered. He was a person with the manner of a barrister, precise and dapper; he had a long, pink face, pale eyes, and a close-cropped beard that brought out the hard lines of his mouth. He bustled to the table, put down a sort of portfolio that held an inkpot, a writing-pad and pens, and drew up a chair like one about to take the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... thrives best with a hot sun above and a burning sand below. There were—oh, the gallant creatures! I hear their neigh upon the wind; there were—goodliest sight of all—certain enormous quadrupeds only seen to perfection in our native isle, led about by dapper grooms, their manes ribanded and their tails curiously clubbed and balled. Ha! ha!—how distinctly do they ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... she had been very encouraging to Tom Todd, a young lawyer of the place—a little snob, with self-conceit enough in his dapper body for six larger men. This evening he had been particularly attentive to her. Susie was pretty and quite an heiress, so I knew Tom Todd would try to secure her. He was just that kind of a fellow who could propose to a girl while ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... remainder of the reign of Alphonzo, the line of coast, from Cape Verga in lat. 10 deg. N. to Cape St Catherine in 1 deg. 40' S. was much frequented by the Portuguese. Of this coast an ample account has been given by Dapper and Barbot, chiefly following a tract published by Gotard Artus of Dantzick, which is to be found in De Bry's Collection, and that of David von Nyendael and others. This was the work of a Dutch ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... tears, came to see her mother. Janice chanced to be in the kitchen when she entered from the Love Street gate. Amy had in tow a curly-haired dapper little man who looked too oily to be honest, and with little gimlet eyes that seemed ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... officer, a dapper little fellow, very pompous and important, turned him down mercilessly. Stanley was dismayed. He wandered idly out of the church and was about to start off on his four-mile walk to the Stopping House when a sudden impulse seized him ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... ushered into the presence of a beaming, dapper- looking, little old gentleman, quick of speech and movement, in spite ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... And 'twas observed, there were but few Of either sex, among the crew, Whom she or her assessors knew. The goddess soon began to see Things were not ripe for a decree, And said she must consult her books, The lovers' Fletas, Bractons, Cokes. First to a dapper clerk she beckoned, To turn to Ovid, book the second; She then referred them to a place In Virgil (vide Dido's case); As for Tibullus's reports, They never passed for law in Courts: For Cowley's brief, and pleas of Waller, Still ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... circumstance alluded to and parodied by Ben Johnson in his Alchemist. See the conduct of Dapper, &c.] ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of local gossip and scandal cleverly concealed. Andrew Hamilton figures in it as "Dapper Dumpling." J. N. Barker, the author of "Superstition," is "Billy Mushroom." Joseph Dennie is nicknamed "Oliver Crank." William Warren is dubbed "the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... and dramatist, belonged to a Roman Catholic family, and was an unsuccessful playwright, a literary hack, and a critic of little acumen or discrimination. He attacked Pope as "Sawny Dapper," and was in return embalmed in The Dunciad. He also wrote a ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... he'd wash hisself afore he came calling on a lady," said Anna to herself as she went in search of Miss Bibby, "an' brush his dirty hat. If that's what making books brings you to, give me bread," and she sent a loving thought to a certain dapper ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... a murmur of interest. Judge Shattuck, dignified, a trifle ponderous, came forward, spectacles in hand. He put them on, surveyed his clients with distaste, and took his place composedly at the table. Hall McAllister, dapper, young and something of a dandy, advanced with less assurance. He would have preferred the other side of the case, for he did not like running ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... blackness of those glossy curls that hung so ravishingly over her fair blushing cheeks, discovering a delicately arched brow, and enhancing the sweetness of her oval face, carried me away captive, and made it seem as if heaven had created our loves to flow on in one unhallowed stream of joy. Her dapper figure was neatly set off with a dress of black silk, buttoned close about the neck, and showing the symmetry of her bust to great advantage; and over this she wore an apron of brown silk, gimped at the edge, and her collar and wristbands were of snowy ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... brier-wood pipe in my hand, and I felt inclined to hurl it at the dapper head of the consequential little gentleman, but with such a girl standing by it would have been impossible to treat him with any disrespect, and as I looked at him I felt sure that his apparent superciliousness was probably the result of too much money ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... to secure a compartment in the front of the train, and when it came to rest at Parkeston Quay Station, the crowd, eager for the steamer, rushed past me, and I stepped out into the midst of it, a dapper, well-dressed young man, with black beard and moustaches, my own closely cropped black hair covered by a new bowler hat. Anyone looking for Paul Ducharme would have paid small attention to me, and to any friend of ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... flat half-way up Shaftesbury Avenue on the right-hand side. Far more French than English, in spite of his English name, he quickly introduced himself into the good graces of Jean's father—the short, dapper old restaurateur, Louis Libert, a Provencal from the remote little town of Aix, a Frenchman whom many years' residence in London ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... in the first place, that the school-mistress was a much more attractive-looking young person than he had anticipated, and secondly, that she seemed rather amused than otherwise at his conditions. No man, and least of all a man so consummate as Mr. Barker—for he was a dapper little person with a closely cropped beard and irreproachable kid gloves—likes to be laughed at by a woman, especially by one who is young and moderately good-looking; and he instinctively drew himself up by way of ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... dapper and thin-faced man who might have been anywhere from forty to sixty years of age. He walked, however, with a quick and nervous step. Yet the most remarkable thing about him seemed to be his eyes. They were wide-set and protuberant, like a bird's, as though years of being hunted had equipped ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... Frenchman—who, notwithstanding the derangement which his coeffure might naturally be expected to have experienced in his tumble, looked, Susan thought, as if his hair were put in paper every night and pomatumed every morning, and as if his whole dapper person were saturated with his own finest essences, a sort of travelling perfumer's shop, a peripatetic pouncet-box—walked off in the direction indicated, with an air of habitual submission, which showed pretty plainly that, whether as proprietor of the unlucky britschka, or from his ...
— Town Versus Country • Mary Russell Mitford
... sleeves and a button was gone. In three days he had not shaved; his shock of heavy blond hair escaped from beneath the visor of his woollen cap and hung low over his forehead. He stood with awkward, shifting feet and uncertain eyes before the dapper young fellow who reeked of the barber shop, and whom he had once ordered ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... was arranged in something almost like ringlets on either side. He was neat-faced. Of the three men he carried the Whipple nose most gracefully. His figure was slight, not so tall as his father's, and he was garbed in a more dapper fashion. He wore an expertly fitted frock coat of black, gray trousers faintly striped, a pearl-gray cravat skewered by a pear-headed pin, and his small feet were incased in shoes of patent leather. He was arrayed ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... would be under the disagreeable necessity to bundle and go with the disabled man of war to the temple of Hymen. Sacrilegious thought! I could not permit it to enter my bosom, and (pardon me for a moment, sir) when I looked down, and caught a glance of my own natty-looking, tight little leg, and dapper Hessians, I recommended her strongly to act on the principle of the Drury-lane play-bill, which says, 'All for Love, or the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... automatic. Someone squealed with mortal agony. Eddie opened his eyes cautiously and saw that the room was full of people. The pungent odor of burned powder assailed his nostrils. There was Cadorna and Carlos, David Shelton and Lina. An undersized, dapper youth stood over the body of the big German, his hands outstretched before his horror-stricken face. A moment he stood thus, like a statue. Then his knees gave way beneath him and he crumpled into a grotesque heap beside the man who had been called Gus. Such was the manner of Cadorna's dealing ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the precise and dapper Mr. Doolittle, expatriated American, waved a carefully manicured hand in acquired Gallic gestures as he expatiated on the circumstances which had summoned the soldier to his office. As he discoursed of these extraordinary matters his sharp eyes took in his client ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... and slight, and dapper as to person, clean-shaven, alert of eye, and soft of movement,—in a word, Baxter was the cream of gentlemen's gentlemen, and the very acme of what a valet should be, from the very precise parting of ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... is a good-looking man; spruce and dapper, and very tidy. He is somewhat below middle height, being about five feet four; but he makes up for the inches which he wants by the dignity with which he carries those which he has. It is no fault of his own if he has not a commanding eye, for he studies hard to assume ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... built up a barrier of books around his table, perhaps because he feared a too practical enthusiasm. Huge heaps of books lay on the floor, the chairs, the table, and at first I thought the room otherwise unoccupied. But suddenly a dapper little figure emerged from a huge armchair by the fire, and stepped briskly across the room. For a moment I was bewildered. The poet's face was familiar in photographs, but I had somehow imagined him a tall, gaunt man. I recovered myself to find him standing before me, holding ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... quantity) 32; minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c. (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, wee, petty, minikin[obs3], miniature, pygmy, pigmy[obs3], elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative[obs3], portable; duodecimo[obs3]; dumpy, squat; short &c. 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic[obs3]; atomic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... escaped the nest-hunter's lips, which resulted in the production of sundry bright-coloured cotton Manchester cloths, some evidently modern kreises (probably made at Birmingham), besides bird-calls and pipes. In the next shop were two dapper little Sulus in Spanish-looking costumes, with dozens of pairs of the golden-edged pearl-shells, which we had searched for in vain the night before last. The bargain was not yet concluded, so that it was useless for us to try to trade. The shells, being bought and sold by weight, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... hilarious ease from motives of mental hygiene, revealed the strain of his soul by striding abruptly out of the inner room and confronting the new-comer. A glance at him was quite sufficient to confirm the savage guesswork of a man in love. This very dapper but dwarfish figure, with the spike of black beard carried insolently forward, the clever unrestful eyes, the neat but very nervous fingers, could be none other than the man just described to him: Isidore Smythe, who made dolls out of banana skins and match-boxes; Isidore Smythe, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... come roving northward from unknown feeding grounds outside the Cape the haddock. There are people who call the haddock "scoodled skull-joe," probably in derision because he is such a dapper fish. He is so silvery and neat that the black stripe down his side seems to give him the effect of being clad in the very latest thing in summer trousers. The Banks fishermen who sail from Gloucester and are ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... been in that bald, gray time between darkness and dawn when Ben Allen and Hollis, riding at the head of the detail of troopers beside the dapper little captain, had arrived at the edge of the butte where Hollis had directed Norton to await ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... cool orderly room at the cuartel, energetically clearing his desk of the last accumulations of the paper work he found a chore, when the dapper sergeant entered with his mail. Sorting quickly through the dozen official envelopes in anxious search for one addressed in the neat hand that always quickened his pulses, he discovered, miserably, that there was none from her. Fighting off the discouraged ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye — Says, 'Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart — a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, 'O sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... her coffee slowly, and said nothing; but her eyes travelled downward from the crown of her companion's head to his dapper feet. And during that scrutiny there is little doubt that she reckoned the value of Monsieur Alphonse Giraud. What she saw was a pleasant spoken young man, plus twenty thousand pounds a year. No wonder the Vicomtesse ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Shakespeare!" cried a gentleman whose periwig occupied nearly as much space against the blue of a vernal sky as all the rest of his dapper little person. "Gud, my lord, it is vastly old-fashioned in your lordship to taste Shakespeare!" protested Sir Ralph Masaroon, shaking a cloud of pulvilio out of his cataract of curls. "There was a pretty enough ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... little hat, With such a narrow brim; They laughed to note his dapper coat, With skirts so ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... again, I saw my first White City acquaintance seated upon a settle in the shadow of one of the mammoth arches, his basket between his knees and his umbrella between his two clasped hands. He was talking just as amiably and frankly as before, and this time he had for audience a dapper man with a thin face that might have been old or young, and which I disliked at sight. He was exceedingly well dressed; he looked very respectable, but he also looked smug and sophisticated—too sophisticated, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... dollars' reward," said the Kid haltingly, "for the a-rest and con-viction of—the person whose picture is below, and who is known in New York as Dapper Dan Craven. He is wanted for smuggling ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... my fortune is secured on the Budget. In place of paying taxes to the State, I receive from it, every half-year, in my own person, and free from cost, thirty thousand francs in thirty notes, handed over the counter to me by a dapper little clerk at the Treasury, who smiles when he sees ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... I heard a sabre come clanking against every step of my wooden stair. It was Lasalle, and with him was a lame gentleman, very neatly dressed in black with dapper ruffles and cuffs. We did not know many civilians, we of the army, but, my word, this was one whom we could not afford to ignore! I had only to glance at those twinkling eyes, the comical, upturned nose, and the straight, precise mouth, to know that I was in the ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Germany. And it expresses with uncalculating sincerity all the natural emotions which a century of pedantry and Gallic affectation had been crowding out of books and men. It was a charge at the point of the pen upon the dapper flunkeys who were keeping the door of the German future; the brawny breast, breathing deep with the struggle, and pouring out great volumes of feeling, burst through the restraints of the time. He cleared a place, and called all men to stand close to his beating heart, and almost furiously ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a great friend of the children's, and lived in a house next door. The yards of the houses were only separated by a green hedge, with no gate, so that Cecy spent two-thirds of her time at Dr. Carr's, and was exactly like one of the family. She was a neat, dapper, pink-and-white-girl, modest and prim in manner, with light shiny hair, which always kept smooth, and slim hands, which never looked dirty. How different from my poor Katy! Katy's hair was forever in a snarl; her gowns were ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... Following in Madam's wake, like a skiff towed at the stern of a rushing side-wheel steamer, a dapper little old man, a withered little old man, a gayly smiling little old man, whose countenance was somehow strangely familiar to me. I considered him a moment, and the scene in the Rue St. Lazare, with the coupe driver and the man with the pocket-book, flashed across ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... either sex among the crew, Whom she or her assessors knew. The goddess soon began to see, Things were not ripe for a decree; And said, she must consult her books, The lovers' Fletas, Bractons, Cokes. First to a dapper clerk she beckon'd To turn to Ovid, book the second: She then referr'd them to a place In Virgil, vide Dido's case: As for Tibullus's reports, They never pass'd for law in courts: For Cowley's briefs, and pleas ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... laffed a bit too early; for jest then the train slowed down, and pulled up at a stashun. Sam looked out an' saw a dapper little man a-bustlin' up an' down the platform, like a bee in a bottle, an' pryin' into the carr'ge windeys same as ef the train were a peep-show. Presently he opens the door of Sam's compartment, an' ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... declare!" and Mrs. Stickles held up her hands in amazement. "To think that I should live to hear sich words in me own house. Ye say the parson's too old. Ain't ye ashamed of them words? Too old! D'ye want some new dapper little snob spoutin' from the pulpit who hasn't as much knowledge in his hull body as Parson John has in his little finger? I know there's many a thing the parson talks about that I can't understan', an' so there is in the Bible. I often talk the matter over with John. 'John,' sez I, 'Ye recollect ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin Cunningham took the elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit, who walked uncertainly, with hasty ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... flowers drooped, and dresses were crushed. An Englishman or two ran about complaining of the ventilation. As often as Maurice saw Louise, she was with Herries. At first, she had at least made a feint of dancing with other people; now she openly showed her preference. Always this dapper little man, with the violets and the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... A dapper young man, with small, piercing eyes and a head that suggested a large bump of self-conceit, called out: "You chaps can't reach Beauregard. You'll run right ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... be writing his love-letters. Go in there, Hartley, and help him out. You're an adept at that," hazarded the youngster at the window to the dapper youth ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... You'd think she was working the whole show!' However, he turned up at a little before five o'clock, spruce and dapper and well dressed and groomed as usual. He was shown, as before, into the blue drawing-room. Miss Rowly, who sat there, rose as he entered, and coming across the room, greeted him, as he thought, effusively. He actually winced when she called him 'my dear ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... and so were all the mid-Western human-beings about him. One heard no joking either of the dapper or cockney sort of cities, or the quaint graphic phrasing of Eastern country folk; and it may have been not far enough West for the true Western humor. At any rate, when they were not silent these ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the house of prayer with any other object than that of hearing. It was never by any accident to worship or to pray. What, in truth was the vast but lowly looking building, into which hundreds crowded with the dapper deacon at their head, sabbath after sabbath—what but a temple sacred to vanity and excitement, eloquence and perspiration! Which one individual, taken at random from the concourse, was not ready ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... was full of all manner of ambitions and yearnings, and dreams which nobody else in the wide world dreamed about, a family conclave was held to decide what Paul should be. One Simmons, a dapper, perky draper in the High Street, wanted a shop-boy, and Mrs. Armstrong was for asking the place for Paul There was not a grain of ambition in the household, and the melancholy fact was that there ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... scribbled below in his worst of all bad writing, that it represented the Giants, Pope and Pagan, as described in the Pilgrim's Progress, while, close to Pope, was placed a delineation very like Don Quixote, purporting to be the superannuated Giant Chivalry, biting his nails at a dapper little personification of 'Civil and Religious Liberty.' A figure whose pointed head, lame foot, and stout walking-stick, shewed him to be intended for Sir Walter Scott, was throwing over him an embroidered surcoat, which a most striking and ludicrous likeness of Mr. Augustus Mills ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... publicly traced. A man like myself, with heavy knee-joints and a thick ankle, was almost always a Whig in the Revolutionary time—as if by natural prejudice against the would-be aristocrats, who liked to sport a straight-sinking knee-cap and dapper calf. When the Whigs, after the peace, became masters of their own country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World ideas and monarchical tastes ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the staff, carried it in the evening, when the Chancellor happened to be drunk. "Well, Mr. Bartlemy," said his lordship, snuffing, "what have you to say?" The man, who had prepared a formal harangue, was transported to have so fair opportunity given him of uttering it, and with much dapper gesticulation congratulated his lordship on his health, and the nation on enjoying such great abilities. The Chancellor stopped him short, crying, "By God, it is a lie! I have neither health nor abilities; my bad health has ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... useful to Mollenhauer, in a minor way, was a very spry person of about thirty-five at this time—lean and somewhat forceful, with black hair, black eyes, and an inordinately large black mustache. He was dapper, inclined to noticeable clothing—a pair of striped trousers, a white vest, a black cutaway coat and a high silk hat. His markedly ornamental shoes were always polished to perfection, and his immaculate appearance gave him the nickname ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... sufficient left over to indulge in the maddening extravagance of an occasional paper of pins or a ball of tape! What if, after hard labor, and repeated failure, she does secure something like success? No sooner will she do so, than up will step some dapper youth who will beckon her over the border into the land where troubles just begin. She won't know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee, for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a girl makes a career for herself, and so love will gallop away over the hills like a riderless ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... Englishman. One was always sure of an appreciative audience if he railed at the "disguised garments and desperate hats" of the "affectate traveller" how; his attire spoke French or Italian, and his gait cried "behold me!" how he spoke his own language with shame and loathing.[100] "You shall see a dapper Jacke, that hath beene but over at Deepe,[101] wring his face round about, as a man would stir up a mustard-pot, and talke English through the teeth, like ... Monsieur Mingo de Moustrap."[102] Nash ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... young people who have just crossed the road, and are following this happy couple down the street, are a fair specimen of another class of Sunday—pleasurers. There is a dapper smartness, struggling through very limited means, about the young man, which induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake. You may ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... in the soup Mittendorfer appeared, escorting a French lieutenant who was taken prisoner this morning. The prisoner was a little, handsome, dapper chap not over twenty-two years old, wearing his trim blue-and-red uniform with an air, even though he himself looked thoroughly miserable. We were warned not to speak with him, or he with us; but Gerbeaux, after ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... well pleased; Aunt Jessie looked thoughtful; Aunt Jane's keen eyes went from dapper Steve to broad-shouldered Mac with an anxious glance; Mrs. Myra murmured something about her "blessed Caroline"; and Aunt Plenty said warmly, "Bless the dears! Anyone might be proud of such a bonny ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... that he was caught and must submit. For lack of a white flag, a pillow-case was run up to the masthead, and the beating of the great wheels stopped. The davits amidships of the "Grand Gulf" are swung out, and a boat's crew, with a lieutenant and dapper midshipman, climb in. A quick order, "Let fall there," and the boat drops into the water, and is headed for the prize. Another moment, and the stars and stripes supplant the pillow-case waving from the masthead of the "Young Republic." An officer who went into the boiler-room found that the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... it was said had been on the staff of Kossuth in the Hungarian army. He was a "dapper little Dutchman," as everybody called him. His appearance was that of a natty staff officer, and did not fill one's ideal of a major general, or even a brigadier general by brevet. He affected the foreign style of seat on horseback, and it was "as good ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... grew, the downy, the dapper; He flew in and perched on the knob of the clapper, And shouted Too-whoo! An echo awoke Like a far-off ghostly Bing-Bang stroke: "Just so!" he cried; "I am quite at home! I will take his place ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... reason our time, our lands, that we see no fresh local courage, sanity, of our own—the Mississippi, stalwart Western men, real mental and physical facts, Southerners, &c., in the body of our literature? especially the poetic part of it. But always, instead, a parcel of dandies and ennuyees, dapper little gentlemen from abroad, who flood us with their thin sentiment of parlors, parasols, piano-songs, tinkling rhymes, the five-hundredth importation—or whimpering and crying about something, chasing one aborted conceit after another, and forever occupied in dyspeptic amours with ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the lawyer's professional stamping ground did not extend to his person. Sir Mallaby Marlowe was a dapper little man, with a round, cheerful face and a bright eye. His morning coat had been cut by London's best tailor, and his trousers perfectly creased by a sedulous valet. A pink carnation in his buttonhole matched his healthy complexion. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... Madison was thirty-eight; Hamilton was thirty-two. They were little men, of the quick, dapper type. Madison was five feet six and a quarter inches tall, slim and delicate in physique, with a pale student's face lit up by bright hazel eyes. He was as plain as a Quaker in his style of dress, and his hair, which was light in color, was brushed ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... so absorbed in the mental picture of her chagrin, that he collided with a dapper young man in a dinner jacket at that moment about to enter Therese's sitting-room. Pulling up short, he looked to see who it was who made so free of the house, and, simultaneously, the visitor wheeled round with an expression of ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... door was thrown open, and a spruce, dapper looking gentleman, clothed in sombre colored garments, irreproachable linen, and carrying a small merino bag in his hand, was ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... before when we had both noted in our books that we saw the male feeding the young. Even had the nest not been so plainly a redstart's, the air of that mother was unmistakable. She owned that nest and that baby, there could not be a doubt, and the dapper little personage with chestnut ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... sense, quite remote from visionary idealism. The Foreign Minister, Dr. Machado, is of more immediately impressive personality. Younger than the President by at least ten years, yet little short, I should guess, of sixty, he is extremely neat and dapper in person, while his very handsome face has a birdlike keenness and alertness of expression betokening not only great intelligence but high-strung vitality. He is a copious, eloquent, and witty talker, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... man. I could see that at a glance, although he was not one I should have thought who had donned her majesty's uniform, for he lacked that dapper look that the blue-jackets of the service are usually distinguished by; but he was a veritable old salt, or "shell- back," none the less, sniffing of the ocean all over, and having his face seamed with those little venous streaks of ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... ordered Jack; and a minute later the waiter re-appeared, conducting a dapper-looking, clean-shaven man of medium height, attired in a suit of blue serge, the double-breasted jacket of which he wore buttoned tight to his body. This individual spotted Jack instantly, and, pushing the waiter on one side, bustled up with outstretched ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... relating either to his marriage, or to his future as the head of a great household. All his old exigent, extravagant liking for rich clothing returned to him. He had constant visits from his London tailor, a dapper little artist, who brought with him a profusion of rich cloth, silk and satin, and who firmly believed that the tailor made the man. There were also endless interviews with the family lawyer, endless readings of law ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr |
