"Middle-aged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appointed wages regularly, so that they have not even the amusement of making and losing money. It would be an excellent thing for the world if the kind, charitable, cold-blooded people of middle age, or with middle-aged heads and hearts, who think that a population may be ruled into an every-day life of alternate work, study, and constitutional walks, without anything warmer than a weak simper from year's end to year's end, would consult the residents of Wolverton and Crewe before planning ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... preceding pages of this work, to the scores of advertisements written by slaveholders, printed by slaveholders, published by slaveholders, in newspapers edited by slaveholders and patronized by slaveholders; advertisement describing not only men and boys, but women aged and middle-aged, matrons and girls of tender years, their necks chafed with iron collars with prongs, their limbs galled with iron rings and chains, and bars of iron, iron hobbles and shackles, all parts of their persons scarred with the lash, and branded with hot irons, and torn with rifle bullets, pistol ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... slowly. A middle-aged man, loosely-dressed, hair turning gray, dark-complexioned, with a scar on his cheek, a scar such as a slash with a keen-edged knife might have made. She approached and passed him; she did not look at him; he did ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... Hence it appears that caries, when no longer labouring as heretofore under the irritation of decomposing matter, ceases to be an opprobrium of surgery, and recovers like other inflammatory affections. In the publication before alluded to, I have mentioned the case of a middle-aged man with a psoas abscess depending in diseased bone, in whom the sinus finally closed after months of patient perseverance with the antiseptic treatment. Since that article was written I have had another instance of abscess equally gratifying, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men, with their bateau, who had been exploring for six weeks as far as the Canada line, and had let their beards grow. They had the skin of a beaver, which they had recently caught, stretched on an oval hoop, though the fur was not good at that season. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... so busy but that she managed to spend a good deal of her time with Mr. Palmer, who seemed to renew his youth in her presence, and was so gallant and attentive that the young people, who were exceedingly interested in watching the progress of this middle-aged romance, were kept in a constant flutter of amused excitement. Mr. Wellington and his wife were also ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... one would have thought that he took delight in anything except Society meetings. He went from group to group, as if he were the son of the house, cheering the forlorn, lightening the heavy, smoothing down the prickly,—a medical Father O'Flynn. But it was the elderly and the middle-aged that he sought out; the matrons whose children he had tended, the spinsters whose neuralgia he had relieved. The few younger members of the Society bridled and simpered in vain; the young doctor never ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... of words is aroused by the dialogue of the orderer and the ordered; and afterwards by insertion and omission the child becomes thoroughly skilled in the use of the words. [Footnote: Cf. Sâhityadarpa.na, ii. "On the old man's saying, when giving directions to the middle-aged man," etc. The Sâhitya D. uses the terms âvâpoddhârau, the Siddhântamuktâvalî (p. 80) ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin
... stunning! She's a wonder!" he exclaimed to himself as he stood in Mr. Sheratt's drawing-room. "She's got 'em all skinned a mile, as Martin would say." It is safe to affirm that Mr. Dunn was not referring to the middle-aged and highly respectable maid who had opened the door to him. It is equally safe to affirm that this was the unanimous verdict of the three men who, half an hour later, brought their deliberations to a conclusion, frankly ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... negation, through a serene surrender of the unattainable. As the Epicureans counseled, they increase their happiness by lessening their desires. The content which middle-aged people exhibit is not so frequently to be traced to the dazzling character of their achievement as to their resignation to their station. Young people are moody and unhappy not infrequently because they cannot make a reconciliation between what they would be and what ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... to be a most disgraceful course of proceeding on the part of Sir William Patterson," said the rector to a middle-aged legal functionary, who was managing ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... shown also in all these paintings as graceful and beautiful in figure; but in those days when the Pocahontas girls went barefooted till the age of eighty-nine years, chewed tobacco, kept Lent all winter and then ate a brace of middle-aged men for Easter, the figure must have been affected ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... profoundly sleeping on this bed—a handsome, middle-aged man, whose thick brown beard showed soft gleams of silver in it, and whose hair, though waving and bright, was growing thin on the top ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... and her stopping-place and its people were stranger than all. The male population of Middle Bethany, as is usual with small New England villages, consisted almost entirely of very young boys and very old men. But here at Bottle Flat were hosts of middle-aged men, and such funny ones! She was wild to see more of them, and hear them talk; yet, her wildness was no match for her prudence. She sighed to think how slightly Toledo had spoken of the minister on the local committee, and she piously admitted to herself that Toledo and his friends were undoubtedly ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... that displeases her, Fanny," said Graeme, laughing; "it is the middle-aged look that is settling down upon me, that she ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... crossing the threshold heard on their left hand an unctuous voice which they recognised; it was that of M. Vigneron, who was loudly repeating the morning prayers. A moment afterwards came a meeting which interested them. They were walking down the passage when they were passed by a middle-aged, thick-set, sturdy-looking gentleman, wearing carefully trimmed whiskers. He bent his back and passed so rapidly that they were unable to distinguish his features, but they noticed that he was carrying a carefully made ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of 1860-1 will be remembered by middle-aged people of to-day as one of great excitement. South Carolina promptly seceded after the result of the Presidential election was known. Other Southern States proposed to follow. In some of them the Union sentiment ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... considering the H. C. of L.," put in a middle-aged man in a very tight Shepherd's plaid suit. "Mrs. Pete feeds us the best she can ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... spirit I called for, eleven thousand times; and this I assured him I would painfully perform. He then said, he was afraid at my age the operation would be dangerous. I wonder whether the rogue meant that I was too young, or too old, or too middle-aged; for I was exactly thirty-eight. Seeing that I only pressed him the more, he took his fee and walked off, intimating that there was no use in doing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... cried holding out my hands. "I am sorry I'm alone. You ought to have been met by troops of boys and girls flower-crowned, but alas! you will have to content yourself with one middle-aged admirer." ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... it has been told is wrong. It is Christ in the young man, which fills him with lofty aspirations, hopes of bettering the world around him, hopes of training his soul to be all that it can be, and of putting forth all his powers in the service of Christ. It is Christ in the middle-aged man, which makes him strong in good works, labouring patiently, wisely, and sturdily; so that having drunk of the living waters himself, they may flow out of him again to others in good deeds; a fountain springing up in him to an eternal life of goodness. It is Christ in the old man, which makes ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Susannah's discovering their escape and pursuing was the one bitter drop in the cup of these truants' happiness. Susannah—a middle-aged, ill-favoured spinster, daughter of a yeoman-farmer, with whose second wife she could not agree—scorned the sea and all sailors. Once, as a girl, she had committed her ample person to a sailing boat, and, thank God! that one lesson had been enough. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ran up the street at once to the Whately home. Mrs. Whately had retired. Eight o'clock was bed time for middle-aged people in our town. Marjie sat alone by the fire. How many times that summer we had talked of the long winter evenings we should spend together by that fireplace in Marjie's cosy sitting-room. And now she was beside the hearth, and I was far away. I might have been forgiven ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Wrybolt set before Dyce's mind a middle-aged man, red-necked, heavy of eyelid, with a rather punctilious hearing and authoritative mode of speech. They had met only once, here ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... great love for the ex-soldier. Somehow he jarred upon me. Middle-aged, squat, square, and bleached with the sun, he had faded eyes, flattened-out features, and an expression of restless moroseness. Never could I make out what he really wanted, what he was really seeking. For instance, once, after reviewing ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... fishes love Jesus?" followed by "What is a soul?" The conclusion was, "It's the thing we love Jesus with." When they first come to us they invariably think that mountains grow like trees: "Stones are young mountains, aren't they? and hills are middle-aged mountains." Later on, every printed thing on a wall is a text. We were in a railway station, on our way to the hills: "Look! oh, what numbers and numbers of texts! But what queer pictures to have on texts!" One was specially perplexing; ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... of the dining-room into the store, his clerk, a young man new to the business, was serving a middle-aged woman at the counter. ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... say that!" cried Mrs. Clibborn, with a positive groan. "It sounds so middle-aged.... I always thought Mary was too old for you. A woman should be ten years younger ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... my first voyage." And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... I was in a rut. I felt I must get out of it. It did not take me long to make up my mind. I told the friend with whom I shared the flat that I wanted to be rid of it and go abroad. He could not keep it by himself, but we luckily found a middle-aged gentleman who wished to install his mistress in it, and was prepared to take it off our hands. We sold the furniture for what it could fetch, and within a month I was on my way to Paris. I took a room in a cheap hotel on the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... Wednesday evening. I had nearly finished shaving a large, military-looking laborer when the door opened very quietly and a seedy, middle-aged man entered and sat down. His movements were silent—almost stealthy; and, when he had seated himself, he picked up a newspaper from behind which I saw him steal furtive and suspicious glances at the patient in the operating chair. The latter, being scraped clean, rose to depart, and ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... how could you be such an ass?" said Mackinnon. "As it has turned out, there is no very great harm done. You have insulted a respectable middle-aged woman, the mother of a family, and the wife of a general officer, and there is an end of it;— unless, indeed, the general officer should come out from England to call you ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... forty-four women and eleven men in a compact body advanced to the inside of the circle. The women were mostly middle-aged, and they were better looking than the women of other tribes. Seen in the firelight they had primitive dignity and a wilderness majesty, that was brightened by the savage richness of their dress. They wore their hair in long dark braids, adorned by shells and small red ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... about to answer when there came a knock on the bedroom door. He opened it to find himself confronted by a middle-aged lady, who ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... of woman was Miss Blake?" I asked, eagerly, forgetting my few troubled tears at the thought of Uncle Geoffrey's one romance. The romance of middle-aged people always came with a faint, far-away odor to us young ones, like some old garment laid up in rose-leaves or lavender, which must needs be of quaint fashion and material, but doubtless precious in the eyes of ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... formidable Boss. Harraway, the secretary, was a lean, bitter man with a long, scraggy neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of incorruptible fidelity where the finances of the order were concerned, and with no notion of justice or honesty to anyone beyond. The treasurer, Carter, was a middle-aged man, with an impassive, rather sulky expression, and a yellow parchment skin. He was a capable organizer, and the actual details of nearly every outrage had sprung from his plotting brain. The two Willabys were men of action, tall, lithe young fellows with determined faces, while their companion, ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... men in front heard the words, and redoubled their efforts, but they were heavy, middle-aged scoundrels, and plodded clumsily over the stone-strewed ground; while, forgetting their wounds in the excitement, Mark and Ralph bounded along, leaping blocks that stood in their way, and gaining so fast upon their flying enemies, that in a few minutes ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... victim, offered to the object of their worship upon this occasion, seemed to be a middle-aged man; and, as we were told, was a toutou, that is, one of the lowest class of the people. But, after all my enquiries, I could not learn that he had been pitched upon on account of any particular crime ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... middle-aged woman, with a remarkably sweet voice, comes to wait upon us at supper-time. Her teeth are blackened and her eyebrows shaved after the fashion of married women twenty years ago; nevertheless her ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... was really after: she was demonstrating madly, extravagantly, her claim to personal freedom. And to prove how much she meant it she had gone to these wild lengths. Well might her father, in his essentially middle-aged mind, wonder what the younger ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... out, the fetters fell to the floor, and the prisoner was passed from the anvil to the further extremity of the room. A second entered. This was a middle-aged man. Reflection seemed with him to have well performed its duty. Calm and undismayed, he advanced to the anvil, apparently unconscious of the presence of a single spectator, and wholly occupied with meditations on eternity. Having already witnessed that part ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... are playing the vestals, because they are stripped naked to be shown to the customers," said the "horse-dealer," who had kept near me. Presently he took me to the rear of the booth. On the way I counted nine captives, some in their youth, others middle-aged, and only two were past their prime. Some were seated on the straw, their faces turned down to escape the looks of the curious, others were lying prone, their faces to the ground; a few stood erect casting fierce ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... stretches with that dim yet delicious verdure so refreshing to the eyes of Londoners. If doomed to live within the thickest of London smoke you would surely say that that would be your chosen spot. Yes, you, you whom I now address, my dear, middle-aged bachelor friend, can nowhere be so well domiciled as here. No one here will ask whether you are out or at home; alone or with friends; here no Sabbatarian will investigate your Sundays, no censorious landlady will scrutinise your empty bottle, no valetudinarian neighbour will complain of late hours. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... country earlier than had been anticipated, and, save for Fisher, the only other person in the house beside the girl, was the middle-aged domestic who was parlour-maid, serving-maid ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... tree-stems took a glow, and the dew that ran dripping down their mossy sides trickled blood-red to earth. Elsewhere the shadows were still black, and strange things began to move in them—things we in our middle-aged world have never seen the likeness of: beasts half birds, birds half creeping things, and creeping things which it seemed to me passed through lesser creations down to the basest life that crawls without interruption ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... cannot stand a novel now, he says, if there's a shock in it; Prefer our heroine angular, her eye must have a cock in it, Unless she's dull and middle-aged, no sympathy have we with her, Her sole excitement is to ask a plainer friend to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... vellum, velin magnetique,' of the Sieurs d'Hozier and Petit-Jean, Parlementeers of Rouen. Sweet young d'Hozier, 'bred in the faith of his Missal, and of parchment genealogies,' and of parchment generally: adust, melancholic, middle-aged Petit-Jean: why came these two to Saint-Cloud, where his Majesty was hunting, on the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul; and waited there, in antechambers, a wonder to whispering Swiss, the livelong day; and even waited without the Grates, when turned ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... hewn out of the solid clay. Carpet was stretched on the floor, paper was on the walls, and even a picture. There was a little window cut like a port in a prison cell, and under it a bed, beside which a middle-aged lady was seated. She had a kindly face which seemed to Stephen a little pinched as she turned to them with a gesture of restraint. She pointed to the bed, where a sheet lay limply over the angles of a wasted frame. The face ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... banished to Yakutsk in Siberia for six years when he was quite a young man and had barely finished his studies at the University of Warsaw, at a time when every profession of radicalism, however moderate, was punished severely by the Russian authorities. He died, a middle-aged man, during the War, after many years of literary and journalistic activity in the interest of his country. Neither he nor Prus lived to see Poland free and republican, an ideal for which they ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... she had been reading rolled from her lap to the floor. He ran towards her to pick it up. Her name—the name she had told him to call her—was passionately trembling on his lips, when she slowly put her veil aside, and displayed a pale, kindly, middle-aged face, slightly marked by old scars of smallpox. It was not Alice; it was the real Sister Seraphina who stood ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... she sat beside the bed of a middle-aged man, a corporal in a Minnesota regiment whose eyes had been shot out on picket. Otherwise he was convalescent from dysentery. But Ailsa had seen the convalescent camp, and she would not ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... a burly, middle-aged person in guidance. A green turban above a round face, large black eyes in muffling of fleshy lids, pallid cheeks lost in dense beard, a drab gown lined with yellow fur, a naked cimeter in a silk-embroidered sash, bespoke the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a retired naval officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small crowd was pressing round him. Pierre went up to the circle that had formed round the speaker and listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a military ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the young man as he had lost the rest of his friends, and, after calling to him to come back, which he never did, went on upon his journey. At last he came to a middle-aged gentleman. So he said to him, "What are you doing here?" And his answer was, "I am always busy. Come ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... stout, breathless, perspiring, middle-aged gentleman to do under such circumstances? Mr. Damer was a man who, in most matters, had his own way. That his wife should have given such an invitation without consulting him, was, he knew, quite impossible. She would as soon have thought of asking all those Arab guides ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... Middle-Aged, when you come to think of it. But it does the police business oftener than anything else, I guess. A detective will work mighty hard nowadays for ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... are, however, in order, and so while we are waiting for old Moggins, who drives the village 'bus, and who has been charged by Miss Felicia on no account to omit bringing in his next load a certain straight, bronzed-cheeked, well-set-up young man with a springy step, accompanied by a middle-aged gentleman who looked like a soldier, and deliver them both with their attendant baggage at her snow-banked door, any data regarding this same young man's movements since the night Peter wanted to hug him for leaving his uncle's service, cannot ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... us permission to enter. We lifted the hanging door of reindeer hide, crept in, stumbling over a confused mixture of dogs and deerskins, until we found room to sit down. Two middle-aged women, dressed in poesks, like the men, were kindling a fire between some large stones in the centre, but the air inside was still as cold as outside. The damp birch sticks gave out a thick smoke, which almost stifled us, and for half an hour ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... Johnny Potter did it much like other men. Any one can do it. One takes some dirty, horrible incident or sight of the battle-front and describes it in loathsome detail, and then, by way of contrast, describes some fat and incredibly bloodthirsty woman or middle-aged clubman at home, gloating over the glorious war. I always thought it a great bore, and sentimental at that. But it was the thing for a time, and people seemed to be impressed by it, and Peacock, who encouraged ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... sick-nurse, let her be gentle, patient, cheerful, quiet, and kind, but firm withal; she ought to be neither old nor young: if she be old she is often garrulous and prejudiced, and thinks too much of her trouble; if she he young, she is frequently thoughtless and noisy; therefore choose a middle-aged woman. Do not let there be in the sick-room more than, besides the mother, one efficient nurse; a greater number can he of no service—they will only be in each other's way, and will distract ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... a sudden opening between paper walls. In a little room behind a table stood a middle-aged Japanese couple as stiff as waxworks. For an instant Geoffrey thought they must be the cloakroom attendants. Then, to his ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... we were opposite the white facade of the Hotel Westminster we encountered a short, rather stout, middle-aged lady, accompanied by a tall, thin, white-haired gentleman. They were well dressed, the lady ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... things unknown to the Scots. And Margaret, even though not so prominent as the chroniclers say, was evidently by the consent of all a most gracious and courteous young lady, with unusual grace and vivacity of speech. The grave middle-aged King, with his recollections of a society more advanced than his own, which probably had made him long for something better than his rude courtiers could supply, would seem at once to have fallen under the spell of the wandering princess. She was such a mate as a poor ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... an immense decanter of their superb cider; and as soon as I told him my business, he turned out a tumblerful and gave me. It was as much as a common head could clearly carry. Our dining-room was well furnished, the dinner excellent, and the table attended by a middle-aged Shaker lady, good looking and cheerful.... This establishment is immensely rich. Their land extends two or three miles along the road, and there are streets of great houses painted yellow and tipt with red.... On the whole, they lead a good and comfortable life, and, if ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... were like me when he went, he can't be very like me now. He must be a middle-aged man. Do you think you'd ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... are more beneficial to youth, to the middle-aged, to the robust in general, and particularly to ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... more than the German emigrants who come on board the large New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every thing comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute, middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... and a rich creamy complexion—that was what flashed upon Carmichael as he turned from the retrievers. He was a man so unobservant of women that he could not have described a woman's dress to save his life or any other person's; and now that he is married—he is a middle-aged man now and threatened with stoutness—it is his wife's reproach that he does not know when she wears her new spring bonnet for the first time. Yet he took in this young woman's dress, from the smart ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... reflection, he perceived that he felt as if he were a boy again—a boy excited by pleasure. It surprised as much as it delighted him to experience this frank and direct joy of a child. He caught the inkling of an idea that perhaps his years were an illusion. He had latterly been thinking of himself as middle-aged; the grey hairs thickening at his temples had vaguely depressed him. Now all at once he saw that he was not old at all. The buoyancy of veritable youth bubbled in his veins. He began walking up and down the room, regarding new halcyon ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... what amusement we can out of this note of high-flown sentimentalism. At the same time its instructive aspect should not be lost sight of. When a youth of twenty-three, battling with the vulgar prose of life, falls into such a tone in writing to a middle-aged lady who has befriended him; when he lets his imagination brood upon the coming luxury of tears and of beautiful emotions; when he is so pathetically eager to reign without a rival in the heart of his friend, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... whole compass of English history, at least, we know that nothing like discipline and organization, in the modern sense of the terms, were introduced into the management of fire apparatus until a time quite within the recollection of the middle-aged men of our own day. If there be anything apparently improbable in this fact, we need only recollect that many of the grandest triumphs of human genius, with which we are already so familiar, are not yet forty years old. The modern system of English fire brigades belongs ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... neighbour, with the face and voice of an angel, and yet not to know her! It was enough to drive him wild. At last, to every one's surprise, the mysterious lady, apparently so exclusive, permitted the advances of a very commonplace, middle-aged gentleman with hardly a hair on his head and a paunch that ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... woman firmly around the waist and lifted her down the opposite side of the stile. Pen and Jim followed with a mad scramble. For a moment it looked as if the red-headed woman would murder Sara. But as she looked at his young beauty her middle-aged face was etched ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... with sacks. They were horse-dealers and basket-makers, as one could see from the drove of lean horses and heap of wicker-work near the waggon. Several children were playing about among the huts. Some women were at their basket-making by the waggon. A middle-aged man, smoking a pipe, stood by the hedge, mending what looked like an enormous butterfly net. In spite of my adventure on the road, I was not at all frightened by these gipsies, because I liked their looks, and I knew now that I ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... steed down with a pint of vin ordinaire, I realized the alteration which this siege was effecting in the condition of all classes. But the strangest habitues of the restaurant are certain stalwart, middle-aged men, who seem to consider that their function in life is to grieve over their country, and to do nothing else for it. They walk in as though they were the soldiers of Leonidas on the high road to Thermopylae—they sit down as though their stools were curule chairs—they ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... elaborate arrangement of his cravat, and finally made his appearance in a dress-coat, which I suspected to be newly come from the tailor's, and now first put on for a dinner-party. At a window of the next story below, two children, prettily dressed, were looking out. By and by a middle-aged gentleman came softly behind them, kissed the little girl, and playfully pulled the little boy's ear. It was a papa, no doubt, just come in from his counting-room or office; and anon appeared mamma, stealing as softly behind papa as he had stolen behind the children, and laying her hand on his ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to different Inmates. The first was a middle-aged, scholarly man, who was seated at a table with a Webster's Dictionary and a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... mine was, with that gust of life—the young men who had clung to them like bees to lily-bells, and shaken all their locked-up tone and shrillness into the wild winter air? Alas! how many generations of the young have handled them; and they are still there, frozen in their belfry; and the young grow middle-aged, and old, and die at last; and the bells they grappled in their lust of manhood toll them to their graves, on which the tireless wind will, winter after winter, sprinkle snow from alps ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the Invisible Man could easily have distanced his middle-aged pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position in which Wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between a drift of stinging nettles and the gravel ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... variety of unpleasant sensation. Embarrassment, suspense, fear, anxiety, dismay, and terror were to follow each other in rapid succession, and to wind up, strangely enough, with a delicious ecstasy of pure relief and happiness—a fatiguing programme for any middle-aged gentleman who had never cultivated ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the toga virilis[Lat]; have cut one's eyeteeth, have sown one's mild oats. Adj. adolescent, pubescent, of age; of full age, of ripe age; out of one's teens, grown up, mature, full grown, in one's prime, middle-aged, manly, virile, adult; womanly, matronly; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... gray suit and Panama hat; you must have seen him. A very distinguished-looking man and yet very simple and pleasant; like some of those nice middle-aged men that you see in 'Punch,' slenderly built, with handsome chin and eyes, and thick mustache and whiskers. Oh, auntie, why do you never notice things? I think a man between forty and fifty is ever so much nicer than when they're younger. They ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered Clarke and faced him, there was a flush ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... not smile. His sense of humor was suffering from temporary exhaustion and his strongest consciousness was a feeling of relief that neither Benis nor anyone else appeared to notice their arrival. Even the unique spectacle of a middle-aged lady in elastic-sided boots proceeding on tiptoe, and with all the tactics of a scouting party, toward the evidently deserted tents provoked ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... question, was the Reverend Abdias Assheton, Rector of Middleton, a very worthy man, who, though differing from his kinsmen upon some religious points, and not altogether approving of the conduct of one of them, was on good terms with both. The Rector of Middleton was portly and middle-aged, fond of ease and reading, and by no means indifferent to the good things of life. He was unmarried, and passed much of his time at Middleton Hall, the seat of his near relative Sir Richard Assheton, to whose family he was greatly ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... These were known as the "Squirrel-Hunters." They came in files numbering thousands upon thousands, in all kinds of costumes, and armed with all kinds of fire-arms, but chiefly the deadly rifle, which they knew so well bow to use. Old men, middle-aged men, young men, and often mere boys, like the "minute-men" of the old Revolution, they left the plough in the furrow, the flail on the half-threshed sheaves, the unfinished iron upon the anvil,—in short, dropped all their peculiar avocations, and with their leathern pouches full ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... something more than to explain the state of mind which led a distinguished politician and moralist, a married, middle-aged man, to victimise—that is the "worldly" way of looking at it—a beautiful young girl who had fallen in love with his genius. Here we have the life-story and character of Remington portrayed at full length—Remington an individual ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... very stout and a little middle-aged, would always use flavouring sauces from the grocer's rather than walk up to the garden, where we have a most seductive herb bed," said Mrs. Wilding; "and then, again, the love of the English for pungent-made sauces is another reason for this makeshift practice. 'Oh, a table-spoonful of ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... following Averill": his father and grandfather, both second sons, as was the Rector himself, had held the living before him, and had performed the duties of it in the traditional and perfectly respectable way. This one was a quiet middle-aged man, clean-shaven except for two small whiskers. He wore a white tie, and a small gold stud was visible in the long slit of his white shirt-front. He was on very easy terms in this house, in an unintimate manner, and dined here once a fortnight or so, without saying ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... away!" Louis, the waiter, cried, as he deposited a plate of dill pickles on the adjoining table, at which sat a stout middle-aged person with a ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... orator and a Solomon. He was a farmer, middle-aged, and somewhat short, whose shaven lips were drawn so over-soberly as to express a complete self-conviction of his own profundity, while his unstable averted glance warned that his alliances were not to be depended on where he was likely to be a material loser. A particularly "fluent" man, accomplished ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... elsewhere as Southern politicians; a few, he was shocked to see, were well-known Northern Democrats. Occupying a characteristically central position was the famous Colonel Starbottle, of Virginia. Jaunty and youthful-looking in his mask-like, beardless face, expansive and dignified in his middle-aged port and carriage, he alone retained some of the importance—albeit slightly theatrical and affected—of the occasion. Clarence in his first hurried glance had not observed his wife, and for a moment had felt relieved; but as Colonel Starbottle arose ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... occurred, had for generations been kept gloriously in the little peninsula, though no case was known of any earl's attaining his majority as being already Earl of Cairnforth. The Montgomeries were usually a long-lived race, and their heirs rarely came to their titles till middle-aged fathers of families. ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... instructions which we blush to think of, but she followed them implicitly. And the middle-aged Boaz was caught. We suppose he was forty-five or fifty from the fact that he called Ruth "my daughter," and commended her because she didn't run after the gilded youths of society, but preferred him above ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... thought at least—was discernible in every phrase of the composition. This was all very fine for Lieutenant Tatham and Di Accrington, the two young monkeys. But why Aunt Constance and her middle-aged M.P.? If they wanted to, why couldn't they, without any nonsense? That was the truncated ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... door. A light was burning in the parlor, and Mr. Dale's eye caught through the window a vague outline of three forms. There was an evident bustle within at the sound of the knocks. One of the forms rose and disappeared. A very prim, neat, middle-aged maid-servant now appeared at the threshold, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... middle of the room. He is a simple-mannered, immaculately dressed young man in his early twenties, his bearing and appearance suggesting the soldier. He rises expectantly as GLADYS, a flashy parlourmaid in a uniform, shows in LIONEL ROPER, a middle-aged individual of the type of ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... have been thinking all night, and I have made up my mind to have done with all this foolish sentimentality finally and for ever. From to-day forward I enter upon the prosaic, middle-aged stage. I was upset yesterday at the thought of losing you so soon. It's been a lovely summer, hasn't it?" She stifled a sigh half uttered. "Well, it's over. You have to go back to India, and we must just make the ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... first battle of Ypres. The French dwell rather on the equally strenuous struggle farther south round Arras under Foch. For the line of battle stretched north from the Albert plateau for a hundred miles, and we can hardly claim that the boys and the middle-aged men, at whom some were inclined to scoff, in Flanders were the pick of the German troops sent into the fray. The glory of the defence consisted rather in the resistance of better troops to superior numbers backed by a vast preponderance of artillery. The estimates of the German forces ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... beds, and the men acted as guards to the caravans which came from Egypt through the peninsula of Sinai to Petrea and Hebron. The daughter of the aged sheik whose men accompanied the trains of goods, a pleasant, middle-aged woman, recognised the Biamite, who when a boy had recovered under her mother's nursing, and promised Bias to honour his blind master as a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and so kindly that not even a cross-eye had power to spoil it. But Ezra saw only the plain middle-aged woman—the contrast to the blooming divinity whose image yet filled his soul. And he was committed to her who held his hand, unequivocally committed in writing. If he sent heavenward an agonized prayer for deliverance from a trying crisis, his ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... ordinary carpet, the Encyclopedia made clumsy cliff-like "cover", and more particularly the room in which the game had its beginnings was subject to the invasion of callers, alien souls, trampling skirt-swishers, chatterers, creatures unfavourably impressed by the spectacle of two middle-aged men playing with "toy soldiers" on the floor, and very heated and excited about it. Overhead was the day nursery, with a wide extent of smooth cork carpet (the natural terrain of toy soldiers), a large box of bricks—such as I have described in Floor Games—and certain ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... tugged at his middle-aged heart, these casual and opinionated young things, with their follies and fanaticisms, their Jacob's ladders hitched perilously to the stars; with their triumphs and failures and disillusions all ahead of them; airily impervious to proffered help ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... afternoon of the day of his call upon the blacksmith, there was a ring at the bell, and a middle-aged stranger was ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... course," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker, blundering into the little feminine snare, "a naval man can scarcely marry. They are always so badly off. I suppose poor Fitz will not be able to support a wife until he is quite middle-aged." ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... couple of hundred inhabitants clustered round an ancient, moss-grown church. The vicar of the parish, Mr. Roundhay, was something of an archaeologist, and as such Holmes had made his acquaintance. He was a middle-aged man, portly and affable, with a considerable fund of local lore. At his invitation we had taken tea at the vicarage and had come to know, also, Mr. Mortimer Tregennis, an independent gentleman, who increased the clergyman's scanty resources by taking rooms ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... some are stepping off. But where are these latter stepping? Into eternity. See that old man with bent form, snow-white locks, and tottering steps. His has been a long round, but he has made it at last. See the middle-aged. His round has not been so long, but he must step off. See the youth. He has been on only a little while, but he is brought to the stepping-off place. He thought his round would be much longer. He supposed he was fairly getting started when that icy ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... Senor Jose?" asked his cousin, eagerly. "I've been watching that middle-aged gentleman who seems to be pressing close in on the flank of the crowd. There, see, he is speaking to Manuel, our purser, now, asking him some question. He looks up here at us; yes, and waves his hand, with a smile! That must be Senor ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... cheerful, and R——- seemed anxious to get off. Poor Fanny was altogether cast down, and shed tears, either from regret at leaving her native land, or dread of sea-sickness, or general despondency, being a person of no spring of spirits. I waited till the captain came on board, —a middle-aged or rather elderly man, with a sensible expression, but, methought, with a hard, cold eye, to whom I introduced my wife, recommending her to his especial care, as she was unattended by any gentleman; and then we thought it best to cut short the parting scene. So we ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... began to go into the church. It was a wedding evidently, although the groom was a tall, lean, middle-aged ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... his house alone; and one day some weeks before this wagons had begun to roll in from this direction and that direction out of the forest, hauling the logs for Joseph's cabin. Then with loud laughter and the writhing of tough backs and the straining of powerful arms and legs, men old, middle-aged, and young had raised the house like overgrown boys at play, and then had returned to their own neglected business: so that to him was left only the finishing.He had finished it and furnished it for the simple scant needs of pioneer life.But on this, his wedding morning, he ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... carpets, fine pictures, all the belongings of a very rich man's house—then he and his companions were ushered into a large room, half study, half library, wherein, at a massive, handsomely carved desk, littered with books and papers, sat a middle-aged, keen-eyed man, who looked quietly up from ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... gave him trouble at times, and the cottage wanted a ruling hand over it when he was absent, and rheumatism now and then bade him look out for a nurse before old age, and Mary Alder was a notable middle-aged careful sort of soul, and so she became Mary Acton. All went on pretty well, until Mrs. Acton began to have certain little ones of her own; and then the step-mother would break out (a contingency poor Roger hadn't thought ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... faint translucence marked the windows and the transom above the door. As she stood there she heard a step behind her, and a man walked by in the direction of the house. He walked slowly, with a heavy middle-aged gait, his head sunk a little between the shoulders, the red crease of his neck visible above the fur collar of his overcoat. He crossed the street, went up the steps of the house, drew forth a latch-key, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... young men, too. Indeed, it is not the young man, but the old and middle-aged man who has the right to complain. The exactions of modern business are discriminating in favor of the man under forty. There are calls for all kinds of men. But the fiercest demand is for first-class men. You have only to be a first-class man in order to be sought ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... told him that he remembered the visit and the visitor! It was "about twenty-five years ago"—and after examining some carving in the interior of the Gate House and putting many suggestive questions, the middle-aged active stranger slightly lame, and with keen grey eye, passed through the court and remained among the ruins silent and alone for about two hours. (Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 89.) The famous romance did not appear until six years ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... interviews with managers. At the same time, some doubts are possible concerning the letter; it seems to contain some implicit evidence that it was concocted by somebody holding a brief, by a person accustomed to controversy; it is written on the Sports Club notepaper, and merely signed "A Middle-Aged Pleasure-Seeker." ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... less than he had hoped about certain inscriptions, he was supporting himself and two sisters by really brilliant work, so that the balance of his power was creditably maintained. Surely the inscriptions did not suffer, and what then was Amory that he should object? Presently Holt, the middle-aged marine man, and Harding who, since he had lost a lightweight sparring championship, was sporting editor, solemnly entered together and sat down with the social caution of their class. So did Provin, the "elder giant," who gathered news as he breathed and could not intelligibly put six ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... a new and painful sensation. Her manner was bright and quaint as ever, her sayings perhaps less edged than usual, because the pain at her heart made her guard her tongue; but she had begun to feel middle-aged, and strangely lonely. Richard, though always a comfort, would not have entered into her troubles; Harry, in his atmosphere of sailor on shore, had nothing of the confidant, and engrossed his father; Mary and Aubrey were both gone from her, and Gertrude was still a child. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cleverest, the strongest and the bold Will make mistakes like other folks, young, middle-aged, and old. ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... to the opposite pavement, where the only person in sight, a stout, middle-aged woman, was dragging slowly along, her arms full of parcels; and, planting himself directly in front of her, so that she was forced to stop, he seized both her hands and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... down by the Woolworth Building. By the time I reached that bindery there were only two girls ahead of me. A man interviewed the younger. She had had a good bit of bindery experience. The man was noncommittal. The very refined middle-aged woman had had years of experience. She no sooner spoke of it than the man squinted his eyes at her and said: "You belong to the union then, don't you?" "Yes," the woman admitted, with no hesitation, "I do, but that makes no difference. I'm perfectly ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... answer from me. It came from one of the squareheads, from Lindquist, a sober, bearded, middle-aged man, the one man among them who could manage a ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... give the invitations. I won't bring any middle-aged people," laughed Mother, with ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and of inferior mentality, they had no desire or capacity for any intellectual pursuit. So they took up this work for the pleasure of playing the grand lady and the superior person at a very small expense. Other of these visiting ladies were middle-aged, unmarried women with small private incomes—some of them well-meaning, compassionate, gentle creatures who did this work because they sincerely desired to help others, and they knew of no better way. These ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... child with her wonderful joyousness, and the maiden with her wondrous cheer, came too late to undo what the years had done. The most they could do was to interrupt the process, to stay it at that point. The consequence was that Mrs. Carr at sixty-five was a placid sort of middle-aged old lady, very pleasant to talk with as you would talk with a child, very easy to take care of as you would take care of a child, but, for all purposes of practical management or efficient force, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... dragoons, a friend of my companion the Comte, that we found a human being in these solitudes. The house was, indeed, a melancholy ruin, but by the gate was a lodge, and in the lodge a concierge. He was a small man and middle-aged, and as he spoke he trembled with a continual agitation of body as though he were afflicted with ague. He led us into his little house, the walls of which were blackened as with fire and pierced in many places with the impact ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... tone took Sister Giovanna by surprise, though she had lately understood that the Mother Superior's affection for her was much stronger than she would formerly have believed possible; it was something more than the sincere friendship which a middle-aged woman might feel for one much younger, and it was certainly not founded on the fact that the latter was an exceptionally gifted nurse, whose presence and activity were of the highest importance to the hospital. Neither friendship nor admiration for ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... represented by the now moribund News, there was provoked one evening a large, round, middle-aged, smiling, bespectacled apparition who named himself as Rudy Sheffer and invited himself to a job. Marrineal had sent him to Severance, and Severance, ever tactful, had brought him to Banneker. Russell Edmonds being called in, the three ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Dortje I cannot say; but on the left-hand side of the busy, bustling, picturesque Oude Gracht there was a handsome shop filled with all manner of cakes, sweeties, confections, and liquors—from absinthe to Benedictine, or arrack to chartreuse. In that shop was a handsome, prosperous, middle-aged woman, well dressed and well mannered, no longer Professor van Dijck's Koosje, but the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... appear that evening, and Howat sat informally before a blazing hearth with his mother, Gilbert Penny and Caroline. Myrtle had retired with a headache. Howat felt pleasantly settled, almost middle-aged; he smoked a pipe with the deliberate gestures of his father. He wondered at the loss of his old restlessness, his revolt from just such placid scenes as the present. Never, he had thought, would he be caught, bound, with invidious affections, desires. Howat, a black Penny! He ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... The Dancing Master? He is a middle-aged gentleman, of reprobate and romantic tendencies, and tries to be a friend ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... have been about a year and a half after the marriage of his daughter—Felix Millsap was on his way home from work, a middle-aged figure, moving with the clunking gait of a tired laborer who wears cheap, heavy shoes, his broad splayed hands dangling at the ends of his arms as though in either of them he carried an invisible weight. It had been a hot day, and where he had been toiling ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... yards, however, brought us to a low cottage on the road side, and there we knocked. A mulatto serving-man came round cautiously to reconnoitre from the back of the house, when having ascertained that we really were English travellers benighted and wet, the front door was opened, and we found within a middle-aged very kind-looking woman, and her little daughter; her name is Maria Rosa d'Acunha. Her husband and son were absent on business, and she and the little girl were alone. As soon as we had changed our wet clothes, and had provided ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the garage. The girl was inside. He inspected the slope-topped, patent-leather motoring trunk on the rack at the rear of the Gomez-Dep. He noticed a middle-aged man waiting in the car. "Must be her father. Probably—maybe she isn't married then." He could not get himself to shout at the man, as he usually did. He entered the garage office; from the inner ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... his wife was greater than his wife's to Barclay. He was acutely uneasy if he were absent from her for a day. She, on the other hand, though devoted and faithful, was less obtrusively affectionate. But they were regarded in the regiment as the very model of a middle-aged couple. There was absolutely nothing in their mutual relations to prepare people for the tragedy which was ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... She was impressed. It was quite another matter however, whether he would have been pleased to know that the impression was due to his resemblance to a Spanish conspirator, whose object was to destroy the Monarchy and the Church, as had been the object of the middle-aged conspirator—the girl's father—who had the good fortune to escape from justice. It is probable that if Jean Jacques had known these facts, his story would never have been written, and he would have died in course of time with twenty children and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had just conducted to the platform an elderly professor in a shabby frock coat, followed by three well-washed children, each of whom carried a concertina, now returned and sat down beside a middle-aged lady, who made herself conspicuous by using a gold framed eyeglass so as to convey an impression that she was ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... from us a very stout, middle-aged man, apoplectic with the heat, was elephantinely jolly for the benefit of a bored-looking girl across the table from him, and at the next table a newspaper woman ate alone, the last edition propped against the water-bottle before her, her hat, for coolness, on the corner of the table. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had been worked up with exquisite finish, the whole force and power of the painting lay in the expression of the woman's face, which was an indescribable mingling of longing and despair. Here also Christine had traced a faint resemblance to herself, though the woman was middle-aged and haggard, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried before it. Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of feet above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were rising beside them, rising higher; old buildings were coming down; middle-aged buildings were coming down; the streets were laid open to their entrails and men worked underground between palisades, and overhead in metal cobwebs like spiders in the sky. Trolley-cars and long interurban cars, built to split the wind like torpedo-boats, ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... inn together, and walked briskly through the streets, until we reached a house not far from the harbour. The door was opened by a middle-aged woman who gazed ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... up quickly at the woman standing beside the tray. The yellow pallor of her middle-aged skin matched the color of her uniform. She wore the insignia of a ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... find him at the office. But it needed a change of tone before I could contemplate with equanimity the meeting of that individual. I had been preparing myself to confront all the ethically excellent young men and Fox was, ethically speaking, far from excellent, middle-aged, rubicund, leery—a free lance of genius. I made the necessary change in my tone of mind and ran him ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad |
