"Elderly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there, Rosie, too, and Mr. Dinsmore, and an elderly gentleman, whom Max at once recognized as the one he had seen in the ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... sure I can find the mine, Mr. Swift!" persisted Alec Peterson, who was almost as elderly a man as the one he addressed. "I have the old documents that tell how rich the mine once was, how the old Mexican rulers used to get their opals from it, and how all trace of it was lost in the last century. I have all the landmarks down pat, and I'm sure I can find it. Come ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... after these incidents, Montague was waiting for a friend who was to come to dinner at his hotel. He was sitting in the lobby reading a paper, and he noticed an elderly gentleman with a grey goatee and rather florid complexion who passed down the corridor before him. A minute or two later he happened to glance up, and ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... there were varieties of local characters without his limitations; venerable merchants retired from the East India trade; elderly gentlewomen, with family jewels and personal peculiarities; one or two scholarly recluses in by-gone cut of coat, haunting the Athenaeum reading-room; ex-sea captains, with rings on their fingers, like ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and bankrupt creature John Storm found his footsteps turning on that night when his own heart lay waste. But on entering the ward he saw that Brother Paul had a visitor already. He was an elderly man in a strange habit—a black cassock which buttoned close at the neck and fell nearly to his feet, and was girded about the waist by a black rope that had three great knots at its suspended ends. And the habit was not more different from the habit of the world than the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... home, but, without making the pretense of sharing it, generously left the whole to the reptile. After repeating this hospitality for three or four days, she was amazed one morning on returning to the house to find the snake—an elderly one with a dozen rattles—devotedly following her. Alarmed, not for her own safety nor that of her family, but for the existence of her grateful friend in danger of the blacksmith's hammer, she took a circuitous ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... of 1868, a young lady residing in a respectable part of the city, was decoyed by an elderly woman, (under the pretence of being able to introduce the young lady to a cheap dressmaker,) into a low neighborhood, where she was seized by two men, dragged into a hovel, and there held by the ruffians, while the old hag who had decoyed her thither, with a pair of shears cut off the larger ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... about this time, to have been seized with an unusually violent fit of zeal for his religion; and this is the more remarkable, because he had just relapsed, after a short interval of selfrestraint, into debauchery which all Christian divines condemn as sinful, and which, in an elderly man married to an agreeable young wife, is regarded even by people of the world as disreputable. Lady Dorchester had returned from Dublin, and was again the King's mistress. Her return was politically of no importance. She had learned by experience ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... English, and English and Welsh? The fanaticism of the Moslem to-day is no intenser than that of Catholic and heretic in Rome, Madrid, Paris, and Geneva at a time which is only separated from us by the lives of three or four elderly men. The heretic or infidel was then in Europe also a thing unclean and horrifying, exciting in the mind of the orthodox a sincere and honest hatred and a (very largely satisfied) desire to kill. The Catholic of the 16th century was apt to tell you that he ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... things, finally brought about the union of the three. One night Terry was drinking in a saloon, talking philosophy, and quoting literature. Some rapid lines from Swinburne had just left his lips when an elderly man, who had been listening to Terry's talk approached him and said: "You are the man I'm looking for, won't you have ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... music, an elderly gentleman, with the ribbon of an order in his button-hole, came up to the table, and from the manner in which he greeted them, it was evident that he was an old friend. From their conversation, which was carried on in a very loud tone of voice, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... out of the Empress's presence the peasant Ivan, who had introduced us, handed us over to the Tsar's chief valet, an elderly grey-bearded man in the Imperial livery, a man whose name we understood was Tchernoff, and who had been valet of the old Emperor ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... When they exhibit any genuine religious fervour, its sexual character is usually so obvious that even the majority of men are cognizant of it. Women never go flocking ecstatically to a church in which the agent of God in the pulpit is an elderly asthmatic with a watchful wife. When one finds them driven to frenzies by the merits of the saints, and weeping over the sorrows of the heathen, and rushing out to haul the whole vicinage up to grace, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... deliberately, quietly, as if the soft pedal were always down in his voice. He looked at his daughter-in-law as she crouched, flushed and dark, before the peacock, which would lay its long blue neck for a moment along her lap. In spite of his grey moustache and thin grey hair, the elderly man had a face young and almost delicate, like a young man's. His blue eyes twinkled with some inscrutable source of pleasure, his skin was fine and tender, his nose delicately arched. His grey hair ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... of us in the road the driver began waving his whip in a very singular and excited manner. As he drew nearer still he shouted, though at first we could not distinguish his words. By this time the policeman, trotting ponderously, was within a few yards. The passenger in the fly, a thin, dark, elderly man, leaned over the side to look ahead at us, and with that the policeman pulled up with a great gasp and staggered into ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... left arm and hand to the left, with her right hand brandishing a lance in the same direction, in which her feet show her to be ready to spring. She is urging the figures on her right to follow her at once to attempt some dangerous enterprise. Of these the elderly man, who is calmly seated, holds his right hand flat and reversed, and suspended slightly above his knee. This probably is the ending of the modern Neapolitan gesture, Fig. 68, which signifies hesitation, advice to pause before ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... my private opinion that it would have suited the audience to a T. Being principally composed of elderly gentlemen with large families, they had not that fine sense of the fitness of things so charming to see, and tooted and banged away with waltzes and marches, quite regardless of the flocks of Romeos and Juliets philandering all ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... The opposition, therefore, which the remonstrance met with in the house of commons was great. For above fourteen hours the debate was warmly managed; and from the weariness of the king's party, which probably consisted chiefly of the elderly people, and men of cool spirits, the vote was at last carried by a small majority of eleven.[**] Some time after, the remonstrance was ordered to be printed and published, without being carried up to the house of peers for their assent ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... said he, with a very polite air, "let me introduce you to Mr. Quirk"—(This was the senior partner, a short, stout elderly gentleman, dressed in black, with a shining bald crown fringed with white hair, and sharp black eyes, and who looked very earnestly, nay, with even a kind of dismay, at him)—"and Mr. Snap"—(This was the junior partner, having recently ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of thy father and mother. They are surely thy best friends," said a voice. It was the voice of an elderly gentleman, who ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... it must be," urged the inspector. "One of them, the man who spoke to me, had a bad sword-cut across his right cheek, whilst another squinted horribly; besides, they were all elderly men." ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... boat, her stern piled high with wicker crab-pots, came round the northern headland and entered the little bay. The elderly fisherman who was rowing rested on his oars and sat contemplating the crab-pots in the stem. A younger man, clad in a jersey and sea boots, was busy coiling down something in the bows. "How about this spot," he ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... is dead; you are not fit to gain a living by yourself; you do not wish to steal? No. Your situation then is undesirable; it is, for the moment, critical. On the other hand, you behold in me a man not old, though elderly, still enjoying the youth of the heart and the intelligence; a man of instruction; easily situated in this world's affairs; keeping a good table:—a man, neither as friend nor host, to be despised. I offer you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... condemned to a capital punishment by drowning. One of them was an elderly woman: the other two were young; one eighteen years of age, the other only thirteen. Even these violent persecutors were ashamed to put the youngest to death: but the other two were conducted to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... who agreed to follow him to India to be married. All this was revealed by the correspondence to which I have referred as having been found in the Nana's palace of Bithur. The greater number of these letters were from people in England—not a few from ladies of rank and position. One elderly dame called him her dear eastern son. There were numerous letters from his English fiancee, and two from a Frenchman of the name of Lafont,[3] relating to some business with the French settlement of Chandernagore, with which he had been entrusted by Azimula Khan, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... them or not. The guard, detained by the sleeve by your representative, who inquired how he felt about being almost crowded out of his brake by passengers, drew away his sleeve with some violence and his answer was quite unworthy to be reported. An elderly but strongly-built porter, with the luggage of fourteen families on his truck, and the fourteen families surrounding him and all talking at once, was approached by your representative for a little quiet chat, but he became so threatening ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... I applied for a night's lodging, an elderly woman with a mournful face declined to take me in, and gave no reason. When I had left, she came after me and said, with her eyes full ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... gay, cheerful woman, much younger than his father, and as she was only eighteen years old when Wolfgang was born, always said that they were young together. She had married with little affection for her elderly husband, and it was in her favorite son that she found all the romance and beauty of her life. She was a woman of strong character, and presents one of the pleasantest pictures in German literature. With ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... sir," bawls out in a stentorian voice an elderly gentleman; "I don't like your plot, sir," repeated he with an air of authority, which he had long assumed, from supposing because people would not be at the trouble of contradicting his opinions, that they were incontrovertible—"there is nothing ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... was accompanied by Field Marshal Baron von der Goltz, recently appointed Governor General of Belgium. Previous to the former Balkan War he had been employed in reorganizing the Turkish army. An onlooker in Namur thus describes the German Field Marshal:—"An elderly gentleman covered with orders, buttoned in an overcoat up to his nose, above which gleamed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Newark Daily Advertiser says that Mrs. Hannah Blackwell, a highly esteemed elderly lady, long resident in Roseville, and Mrs. Lucy Stone, her daughter-in-law, both of them property-holders and tax-payers in the county, appeared at the polls in Roseville Park, accompanied by Messrs. Bathgate and Blackwell as witnesses, and offered their votes. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... A peaceable elderly Englishman of a bald and scholarly aspect, inquired, following a lecture on Socialism, "Will the speaker state in one sentence what Socialism is?" He wore an air of mild gentlemanly triumph; apparently imagining that he had ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... rather unfamiliar society, that of French Protestantism at Rochelle itself and Montauban—and a certainly unusual situation, the desire of a young, pretty, and wealthy girl, Jane Defos, to marry an elderly pastor who is poor, and, though ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... not," replied the maid, a plain, elderly woman of the old-fashioned useful servant type. "Shall I take ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... February, while hard at work in his studio, Caper was agreeably surprised by the entrance of an elderly uncle of his, Mr. Bill Browne, of St. Louis, a gentleman of the rosy, stout, hearty school of old bachelors, who, having made a large fortune by keeping a Western country store, prudently retired from business, and finding it dull work doing nothing, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into the drawing-room and began to arrange some music on the top of the piano. Lady Vandeleur, at the other end of the apartment, was speaking somewhat eagerly with her brother, Charlie Pendragon, an elderly young man, much broken with dissipation, and very lame of one foot. The private secretary, to whose entrance they paid no regard, could not avoid overhearing a part ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his horse, he helped Grisell to dismount just as a small, keen-faced, elderly man in dark gown came forward, doffing his green velvet cap, and hoping the young lady would take shelter in his ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... alternate days and gave us singing lessons. Blangini, whose extreme popularity as a composer and teacher led him to the dignity of maestro di capella to some royal personage, survives only in the recollection of certain elderly drawing-room nightingales who warbled fifty summers ago, and who will still hum bits of his pretty Canzoni and Notturni, "Care pupille," "Per valli ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... their rifles to the occupants of any motor-car, sure that more staff-officers were going in to perform those duties which no private soldier could attempt to understand, believing they belonged to such mysteries as those of God. Through the narrow streets walked elderly generals, middle-aged colonels and majors, youthful subalterns all wearing red hat-bands, red tabs, and the blue-and-red armlet of G. H. Q., so that color went ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... in my new quarters above five minutes when two elderly women entered, each bearing upon her head a large bundle of dry fern, which they cast down in one of the two corners of the hut most distant from the door and proceeded to spread there in such a fashion as to form a most ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... looked round eagerly, and saw that an elderly Badger was approaching. He was evidently a woodcutter, for he had a large axe in his hand, and the three young Badgers who followed him were ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... went down to supper in the hall, where Jenny found herself placed at the higher table between Millicent and the steward—a stiff, silent, elderly man, who never said a word to her all supper-time. Robin Featherstone sat at the lower table; for the two tables made the only distinction between the family and the household, who all ate ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... Bathurst, with more faith in human nature, goes on resolutely touching his hat to the leading Nonconformists. 'The French taught in schools,' says Miss Martineau, 'was found to be unintelligible when the peace at length arrived, taught as it was by an aged powdered Monsieur and an elderly flowered Madame, who had taught their pupils' Norfolk pronunciation. But it was beginning to be known,' she continues, 'that there was such a language as German, and in due time there was a young man who had actually been in Germany, and was translating "Nathan the Wise." When ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... only fills democratic armies with elderly officers, but it also gives to all the officers habits both of body and mind which render them unfit for actual service. The man who has long lived amidst the calm and lukewarm atmosphere of democratic ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... much of Ayesha, a pretty animal organism who appears to have turned her elderly husband into a doting fool. I am beginning to have a ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... maintained at least enough of his business to ward the wolf from the door. It was only after his death, and after her older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means of livelihood, nor even a roof ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the road to Liverpool. But not on this occasion did he resort to any inn, or visit any treacherous hunter of the picturesque. He offered himself to no temptations now, nor to any risks. Right onwards he went to the docks, addressed himself to a grave, elderly master of a trading vessel, bound upon a distant voyage, and instantly procured an engagement. The skipper was a good and sensible man, and (as it turned out) a sailor accomplished in all parts of his profession. The ship which ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... vista of pleasant parties at open-air cafes, with foaming tankards of beer, on warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops and fed on love. My newly found friend was pleased to admit that my personality and appearance would render my courtship of the elderly duenna a comparatively easy one. She would soon, he declared, fall ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... however, have been a cheerful one. The elderly hidalgo sitting up in bed to darn a single pair of hose, the absent mother pining for her husband and tormented by her savage brother's avarice, environed the precocious child of ten with sad presentiments. That melancholy temperament which he inherited from Bernardo was nourished by ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... a blue dress, and, by Jove, it was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn't be mistaken. She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle. On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the girl call her "aunt." So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about the kid on ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... I am a plain, elderly, unmarried man, and I board at Mrs. Mason's. A great deal of what I am about to relate came under my own observation; and the remainder was confided to me from time to time by my landlady, with whom I am upon terms of friendship and intimacy, having had a home in her ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... some to Fort Valerien. At Mazas they were treated in all respects like criminals, except that they were not allowed a daily walk,—a privilege the knaves and malefactors obtained. Two deputies only were favored with beds,—M. Thiers and another elderly man. M. Grevy had none, nor the African generals, the ex-dictator ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... clattering noise, a warmth and radiance from the entrance-hall thus displayed streamed into the foggy street, and at the same instant the footman, still with grave and imperturbable countenance, opened the brougham. An elderly lady, richly dressed, with diamonds sparkling in her gray hair, came rustling down the steps, bringing with her faint odours of patchouly and violet-powder. She was followed by a girl of doll-like prettiness, with a snub nose and ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... hundred dollars all told, and the like of that outfit couldn't be bought any other place of style in New York for less than a thousand, Miss," remarked to me the elderly clerk as he closed and made fast with keys the two bags. "Shall I send ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... misfortune; Eudoxia, who slept by her side, was rejoiced on the contrary at seeing her so gay; only she was surprised to see the child, who usually fell asleep as soon as her little head was on the pillow, lying awake so long this evening. The elderly Greek, who suffered from a variety of little ailments and always went to sleep late, could not help ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the glibness born of practice. He rattled off the formula to the elderly woman, looking more like a housekeeper than a servant, who ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... toward midnight when Jimmie Dale arrived at his house on Riverside Drive, and was admitted by an elderly manservant. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... sends up showers of nuggets. There seldom probably was a novelist with such an uncanny knowledge of his characters as she has of Mr Salteena. The first line of the tale etches him for all time: "Mr Salteena was an elderly man of 42 and fond of asking people to stay with him." On the next page Salteena draws a touching picture of himself in a letter accepting an invitation: "I do hope I shall enjoy myself with you. I am fond of digging in the garden and I am parshal to ladies if they ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... one morning at his employment, and strolled out, with the intention of calling on Lady Tinemouth. As he walked along by Burlington House, he perceived Pembroke Somerset, with an elderly gentleman, of a very distinguished air, leaning on his arm. They approached ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... The great contrast between the reality she beheld before her, and the dark, taciturn, sharp, elderly man of business who had lurked in her imagination—a man with clothes smelling of city smoke, skin sallow from want of sun, and talk flavoured with epigram—was such a relief to her that Elfride smiled, almost ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... young, these first followers of Sabbatai. No one proclaimed him more ardently than the grave, elderly man of science, Moses Pinhero. But the sceptics far outnumbered the believers. Sabbatai was scouted as a madman. The Jewry was torn by dissensions and disturbances. But Sabbatai took no part in them. He had no communion with the bulk ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Mr. Abraham Hayward hold a whole dinner table." There were long and frequent pauses—between which I heard myself talking loudly, frantically, sinking lower and lower in the esteem of my small audience. I felt like a man drowning under the eyes of an elderly couple who sit on the bank regretting that they can offer NO assistance. Presently the Duke looked at his watch and said to the Duchess that it was "time to be ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... body, it will be remembered, was found under very mysterious circumstances, at the time the Duke left England, in a tunnel on the Great Western Railway, just after the Bath express had passed through, in which train it is known Mr. Summers had been travelling with an elderly gentleman. A rumour concerning the connection of Mr. Summers with a murder which had taken place in the Bath train seems to have preyed on the Duke's mind, and he has been unable to sleep for some ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... bad. I've come all the way alone and everything's been jolly. I've made awfully good friends, though they're all either elderly or children. So your being about my age only made me want to know you the more. Well, now that we're acquainted, we'll have to make the most of what's left of the way. I am Elsie Moss and I was sixteen Christmas day. ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... bell and the car started. The seven little boys found seats together at one end of the car, and the conductor made them laugh all the way to Lane's Corners. There were only two other people in the car, an elderly man and a man who read his newspapers and did not look up. The conductor pretended half the time that the trolley was a boat and that the boys were sailors. And then he would pretend that he was the conductor on a train and that the motorman was the engineer. ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... She was exquisitely dressed. Beside her sat a yellow and wrinkled woman of forty-five, with a low neck, in a black headdress, with a toothless smile on her intently-preoccupied and empty face, and in the inner recesses of the box was visible an elderly man in a wide frock-coat and high cravat, with an expression of dull dignity and a kind of ingratiating distrustfulness in his little eyes, with dyed moustache and whiskers, a large meaningless forehead and wrinkled cheeks, by every sign a retired general. Lavretsky did ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... hard to borrow," he said. "Money is very dear to the Britisher just now—right against his heart.... Still.... perhaps one's family could be thumb screwed......An elderly relative with no children would be the most favorable, I think. Have you got such a relative concealed somewhere in a nook of London? Think about it. If you could recall one, he would be ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... haven of comparative peace, and he expressed his regret so simply and heartily that she felt at her ease with him at once, especially when he had confided to her his reluctance at having to dance at all, and his only doing it under his sister's compulsion. To Molly he was an elderly widower, almost as old as her father, and by-and-by they got into very pleasant conversation. She learnt from him that Roger Hamley had just been publishing a paper in some scientific periodical, which had excited considerable attention, as it was intended to confute some theory of ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... they struck the fence, a brisk, elderly gentleman, with iron-gray hair, and spectacles, and a queer twinkle in his eye as he glanced up at the mass of clouds piling up in the mountains, walked hurriedly down a narrow sheep-path through the leafless woods, and entered the sugar-camp. It was dark in there,—dark as Erebus; only ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... British steam-roller with 'LINCOLN URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL' in dirty white lettering upon its fuel box, a mountain of duck-boards stacked on the cab roof, railway sleepers, riveting stakes and odds and ends of lumber tied on all over it. As I rode up an elderly head, grimy and perspiring, was thrust between a couple of duck-boards and nodded pleasantly to me. ''Ello,' it said, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... me, no sooner did I see her disengaged, than I requested the honour of her hand in the next dance. She declined, however, saying that her mamma was just about to leave the party, as they had a journey before them the next day. At a signal from an elderly lady, she arose and left the room. I was now doubly anxious to unravel the mystery of "Units," whoever or whatever he, she, or it might be; whom the one lady advised me to "beware of," for my own sake—the other to "shoot," for my friend's sake. I resolved to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... of Patience Tabernacle (MILLS AND BOON) suddenly left his books at the bank in a state of regrettable inaccuracy and went off to borrow the wig and other equipment of his elderly maiden sister I thought I was to have one of those jolly, naive detective stories which the feminine hand can best weave. But I was deceived, nor do I consider quite fairly. For how was I to know ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... in the afternoon on a tiny island off the coast of Venezuela. Two elderly men looked up from their inspection of a hot spring. The smaller of the two shrugged. He ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... over from Wrexford to help fill up the rooms; but the pressure of his ponderous attainments seemed only to compress yet more that handful of miscellaneous miserables in the front-parlor. Eight or ten elderly people, one or two undergraduates at home for the college-vacation,—these were the guests. The precautions of Mrs. Romulus had not been taken in vain,—there could be no singing: none, unless—but I trust that this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... seen of me I was headed south for the railroad on a roan bronco. They've traced me by my horse to San Pasqual, and now they're trying to find me with a registered letter; very probably acting under the advice of Miss Pickett, who, apparently, is an elderly bird and not to be caught ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... was but lately that I visited a family, not of 'moderate fortune,' but of no fortune at all; one of those people who live 'nobody knows how;' and I found a young girl, about sixteen, practising on the piano, while an elderly lady beside her was darning her stockings. I was told (for the mother was proud of bringing up her child so genteelly) that the daughter had almost forgotten how to sew, and that a woman was hired into the house to do her mending! 'But why,' said I, 'have ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... with my head in the air, and my senses in the seventh heaven, I jostled an elderly gentleman passing before the garden gate. I turned round to apologize; it was my brother in office, the estimable Treasurer ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... not dispute the dogmas of elderly persons of the other sex, Sir Gervaise, or your every-day remedia. If 'every-day' doctors would save life and alleviate pain, diplomas would be unnecessary; and we might, all of us, practise on the principle of the 'de'el tak' the hindmaist,' as ye did yoursel', Sir Gervaise, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... at Theodora's placid, finely-moulded face and tried to imagine what she herself would feel like if she were sitting there, waiting for an elderly lover who had, seemingly, taken so long to make up his mind. But even Anne's imagination failed her ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... peas to the last; they are the greatest fun," said Mrs. Herriton, who had the gift of making work a treat. She and her elderly daughter always got on very well, though they had not a great deal in common. Harriet's education had been almost too successful. As Philip once said, she had "bolted all the cardinal virtues and couldn't digest them." Though pious and patriotic, and ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... permit troops to be massed in body and exercised in maneuvers, particularly in marching. Such exercise during the summer just past has been of incalculable benefit to the Army and should under no circumstances be discontinued. If on these practise marches and in these maneuvers elderly officers prove unable to bear the strain, they should be retired at once, for the fact is conclusive as to their unfitness for war; that is, for the only purpose because of which they should be allowed to stay in the service. It is a real misfortune to have scores of small company ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and Lorraine would be ours now, without the firing of a gun!" added an elderly merchant at the foot of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... sent in a card which he had had printed in town. He was shown into a room where the two ladies were waiting for him. They had been some four or five years younger than his father, a fact of which he was not aware; and instead of being elderly women, as he expected, he found, by their appearance, they were scarcely entering middle age. They ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... silent stand, Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket; Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes? Who are you my dear comrade? Then to the second I step—and who are you my child and darling? Who are you sweet boy ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Radcliffe came out on the platform accompanied by his son—a handsome reckless looking fellow—his daughter Hazel, and Mr. Hamar, a thick-set, heavy-featured man with dark hair, jaunty black moustache and handsome black eyes. In the background stood an erect elderly woman in tailor-made attire and with a severe expression, Mr. Radcliffe's elder sister who was taking the trip with them expecting to remain in California with her son; and behind her hovered Hazel's maid. These two were not to be of ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... vision of that 'good sort of man' was present to him when, in old age, he wrote down his recollections for his beloved Miss Berry. By the side of a tall, lean, ill-favoured old German lady—the Duchess of Kendal—stood a pale, short, elderly man, with a dark tie-wig, in a plain coat and waistcoat: these and his breeches were all of snuff-coloured cloth, and his stockings of the same colour. By the blue riband alone could the young subject of this 'good sort of man' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... admirers—an elderly gentleman named Seymour—came to her one day when she was in much need of money, and told her that he had just deposited a thousand pounds to her credit at the bank. Having said this, he left the room precipitately. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... that many of us feel in like circumstances: he wished there were somebody there who knew him and could nod to him. Nevertheless, he was spoken to, asked questions about various of his fellow countrymen, and made at home. Presently, however, an elderly member who had been silent and whom I will designate as being of the Dr. Samuel Johnson type, said: "You seem to be having trouble in your packing ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... the spotless name of Sir R—— R——. He was not very handsome, having hair that was neither gold nor brown, and a brace of absurdly sea-blue eyes. But he was distinguished by many estimable qualities; he was English, for example, and not French, very brave, very sober, and quite fond of an elderly relation. And one day he was undoubtedly (although the Colonel's conscience pricked him) plunging on foot through a dense forest to the aid of a fellow-knight who had ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... stairway, crossed Main Street, and strode up the shady Court House walk. On the left side of the walk, a-tiptoe in an arid fountain, was poised a gracious nymph of cast-iron, so chastely garbed as to bring to the cheek of elderly innocence no faintest flush. On the walk's right side stood a rigid statue, suggesting tetanus in the model, of the city's founder, Col. Davy West, wearing a coonskin cap and leaning with conscious dignity upon ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... elderly Englishman who had resided at Dorade ever since he had a slight difference of opinion with the Bankruptcy Court a quarter of a century back. Drifting helplessly and aimlessly about Europe in search of ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... who slowly followed her. She had such an expansive majesty of mien that Rowland supposed she must have some proprietary right in the villa and was not just then in a hospitable mood. Beside her walked a little elderly man, tightly buttoned in a shabby black coat, but with a flower in his lappet, and a pair of soiled light gloves. He was a grotesque-looking personage, and might have passed for a gentleman of the old school, reduced by adversity to playing cicerone to foreigners of distinction. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... object of admiration. He also met George Sand, and was soon numbered among that wonderful and dangerous woman's best friends. Later he met the young and beautiful Countess Laprunarede, and a mutual attraction ensued. The elderly Count, her husband, pleased with the dashing young musician, invited him to spend the winter at his chateau, in Switzerland, where the witty ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... rough chair, by a table covered with the untidy remains of a meal, was seated an elderly Mexican, as shriveled and brown as a dried bean. The regularity with which he was "sawing wood" showed that he was as sound asleep as it is possible for a man to be. Still Jack knew that there are men who sleep with ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... woman who, I presume, was his wife—a quiet respectable body with nothing uncanny about her. The front parlour was comfortably furnished and scrupulously clean, and the celebrated Professor himself, a pleasant elderly gentleman, was sitting over a manuscript which he read by the light of a Queen's reading lamp. There was not, on the one hand, any charlatan assumption in his get-up, nor, on the other, was there that squalor and neglect of the decencies of life which I have ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... remarked here that a. d. would answer just as well as Anno Darwinis, if worst came to worst. But it was decided that there was no use trying after prophetical accuracy in dress, since it was out of the question, and even if attainable would not suggest age to their own minds as would the elderly weeds which they ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... An elderly lady was sitting before the fire reading, and on hearing Theo's name, she rose, and came forward to meet her. Of course, it was Lady Throckmorton, and, having been a beauty in her long past day, even at ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). This sonnet is a rebuke to the insolent pride of kings and empires. It is extremely picturesque. It finds a place here because more elderly scholars of good judgment are pleased with it. I remember an old gray-haired scholar in Chicago who often recited it to his friends merely because it touched ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... of her countrywomen and gayer of port than they, moved from group to group, talking cheerfully. Jane also awaited the opening of the schoolhouse door, watching the scene with interest and having no conception of herself as an object of note, in her elderly black bonnet and short ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... evening, and at about eight o'clock hardly a person in the whole village was to be found within doors; the elderly were sitting smoking at their doors, husbands were saying a thousand last words to their weeping wives, young men were sharpening their swords, and preparing their little kit for the morrow's march, and the girls were helping them; but everything was ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... the joy of the now elderly Father to see his deeply-beloved Son, after so many roamings, mischances and battles, at last settled as Professor in Jena; and soon thereafter, at the side of an excellent Wife, happy at a hearth of his own. The economic circumstances of the Son were now also shaped to the Father's satisfaction. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the negroes is an elderly sensible man, calls himself James, and says he is free, which we have no reason to doubt the truth of. He also says that he with the rest of the Negroes were taken from a ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... by the same woman he had observed leaning from the window. Her face was pale, and she was quite elderly. But there was a kind and pathetic look about her eyes. Once, she must ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... compared her want of reserve very unfavourably with her husband's demeanour (it must be owned that he had his reasons for a certain reticence). Against Colonel Lightmark, also, she cherished something of resentment, for he, too, more especially in collaboration with her mother, was wont to indulge in elderly, moral reflections, which, although for the most part no names were mentioned, were evidently not directed generally and at hazard against the society of which the Colonel and Mrs. Sylvester formed ornaments ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... box of collars. Indeed, I felt that this stencil process had been employed in the manufacture of every single person in that omnibus: two middle-aged matrons, each of whom seemed to think that having given birth to six children was an indisputable claim to originality; two elderly business men to correspond; a young miss carrying music and wearing eye-glasses; and a clergyman discussing stocks with one of the business men; I alone in my corner being, of course, the one occupant for whom Nature had been at the expense ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... most of the time, but she noticed a swift look of annoyance on his face when, before the steamer sailed, a tastefully-dressed young woman ascended the gangway, where he was receiving the guests. There was nothing dubious in the appearance of the lady or her elderly companion, and yet Millicent felt that Leslie was troubled by their presence, and hesitated to let them pass. The younger lady, however, smiled upon him in a manner that suggested they had met before, and Leslie stood aside when ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... corners of that ditty-box off as soon as Isaac had gone for the night. The lid was double, as she had said. Between the two boards I found a portrait of an elderly woman—her mother, no doubt—and three photos of herself; two in short frocks and one with her hair in a plait when she was about seventeen. She looked stouter and jollier then, poor girl. There ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... far away another stream of water was issuing from a hose held by two other lads. This, as well as the water from hose number one, had been directed towards the back of the garden, where an elderly white man and an equally elderly colored man were trying to shelter themselves behind a low hedge to keep ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... English young lady consenting to dance with this uncivilised kaffir! Imagine, they allowed him to dine at the same table, and to drive in the same carriage with them! I do not know how this information strikes my readers, but I must say that when the Governor of the Island, an elderly gentleman named Sterndale, with 35 years of the Indian Civil Service behind him, informed me that such had been the case, ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... quick eye rested upon a leather hand case on a rug beneath the seat. It did not take him a moment to snatch it and hide it swiftly beneath his coat. For a second or so he stood back against the wall. At that moment a girl came out of the house, in company with an elderly gentleman, and walked towards the car. O'Hagan looked at the girl swiftly. At the same time she glanced at him, and their eyes met. Things looked unhealthy for O'Hagan. But fate was altogether with him, and the motor moved off and left him standing there ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... roll him in the dirt to make him grow," explained Forrest to an elderly man who accompanied him. "These are my boys. Look at that red-headed rascal—fat as a calf with two mothers. Boys, shake hands ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... methods has been as complete and unquestioning as his acceptance of earth and sky. Now, with an effect of suddenness, this ceases to be the case. A new generation of workers is seen replacing the old, workers of a quality unfamiliar to the middle-aged and elderly men who still manage our great businesses and political affairs. The worker is beginning now to strike for unprecedented ends—against the system, against the fundamental conditions of labour, to strike for no defined ends at all, perplexingly and disconcertingly. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... trout stream. At this moment they were scanning with approval, tempered by anxiety, the muddy legs of a lean and lengthy grey filly, who was fearfully returning her gaze from between the strands of a touzled forelock. The owner of the filly, a small man, with a face like a serious elderly monkey, stood at her head in a silence that was the outcome partly of stupidity, partly of caution, and partly of lack of English speech. The conduct of the matter was in the hands of a friend, a tall young man with a black ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... least. I believe the danger past. God be thanked!" Upon a settle piled with cushions lay Captain Laramore, with a bandaged shoulder, a long pipe between his teeth, and at his elbow a tankard of sack and an elderly Hebe in the person of Mistress Lettice Verney. Patricia, sumptuously clad and beautiful as a dream, sat in the great window with Betty and Sir Charles. Her eyes shone with a feverish brilliancy, her white hands were never still, she laughed and jested ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... flag-waving, the secret doubts, the eagerness for hopeful news, the impatience of the warning voice. I seem to see, almost as if he were symbolic, the grey old general—the general who learnt his art of war away in the vanished nineteenth century, the altogether too elderly general with his epaulettes and decorations, his uniform that has still its historical value, his spurs and his sword—riding along on his obsolete horse, by the side of his doomed column. Above all things he is a gentleman. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... "if there was any hope. But there is none. There is nothing to wait for but the death of our parents, and by that time I shall be an elderly man, and you will have lost your bloom and wasted your youth—for what? No; I feel sometimes this will drive me mad, or make me a villain. I am beginning to hate my own father, and everybody else that thwarts my love. How can they earn my hate more surely? ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... for a fortnight; my landlady began to think that she had judged hardly, and often wished for such another lodger. At last, an elderly man of a grave aspect read the bill, and bargained for the room at the very first price that was asked. He lived in close retirement, seldom went out till evening, and then returned early, sometimes cheerful, and at other times dejected. It was remarkable, that whatever he purchased, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Presbyterian church, Wilkinsburg, Pa., and, among other needs of the schools visited, referred to the urgent need for water and a cook stove with a large oven at Oak Hill. At the close of her address an elderly lady, Mrs. Rebecca S. Campbell, arose in the back part of the room and said, "My sister-in-law, Anna E. Campbell, taught in that school some years ago; and I will give one hundred dollars for a good well and wind wheel for it, that it may be a useful and worthy memorial ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... short time, an elderly mulatto woman, with a pleasant face, entered, bearing a tray of cakes, ices, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... rastrajo right and left of the trace. I hurried down it like any schoolboy, dashing through mud and water, hopping from log to log, regardless of warnings and offers of help from good-natured Negroes, who expected the respectable elderly 'buccra' to come to grief; struggled perspiring up the other side of the gully; and then dashed away to the left, and stopped short, breathless with awe, in the primeval forest ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley |
