"Elderly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will certainly relieve me from your disagreeable and troublesome society." She spoke aloud, and not only Belleville, but the group of French officers who stood behind him, heard every word. She passed by them with calm indifference and joined a large, elderly officer, who was leaning against a pillar, and who stretched out his hand smilingly ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Unintelligentsia. It may have been heavily seasoned in the hope that it would jounce the rough boy of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken-and lo, there in the third row on the aisle, is Dr. Frank Crane, being made visibly ill by it. Your playwright may write a piece to touch the memories and stir the hearts of elderly sinners, but he has to face the fact that the girls from Miss Spence's school may come fluttering to ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... half an hour they sat waiting for the storm to pass. Several games were proposed, but none of the children wanted to play. They seemed to feel more comfortable when they were snuggled up close against some grown person, or holding some elderly protecting hand. But gradually the lightning grew fainter and fainter, and the thunder went growling away in the distance, although the rain kept steadily on. Mrs. Sherman called for some music in the drawing-room, and while Miss Allison and Mrs. Cassidy played the liveliest duets they knew, ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to Mr. Crane, purporting to be from his dead son. She gave messages to Julie and to Peter's mother, all vapid and meaningless and mentally scoffed at by all present, except the two elderly listeners. ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... her face had lines, but she did not look accustomed to them; there was plaintiveness in her expression, as if she had been a young girl, really, made up for an elderly part in theatricals, and did not like her part. It was some sense of this which was attracting Gerald to her across the room. Leslie had ordered him to dance, so dance he must. But the glare of festivity all around him did something to his inner self comparable to a light ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... hideous grimaces with his features, and remarkable contortions with his limbs, in the vain efforts to make himself understood by one who does not speak his language! Ned's powers of endurance were tested in this way by the chief of the tribe, an elderly man with a beard so sparse that each stumpy hair ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... a stir among the crowd, and then an opening was made in it, through which came an elderly man wearing military trappings similar to, but much handsomer than those worn by the two warriors whom we had first encountered; and it was obvious, from the air of deference with which these saluted him, that he was their superior officer. In spite of the dignity of his demeanor it ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... exhibiting their treasures on their arrival to their older friends. The party forthwith began to seat themselves round the ample tablecloth, but they took up a good deal more room than had it been spread on a table. The variety of attitudes they assumed was amusing. The more elderly ladies sat very upright, with their plates on their laps; the younger ones who had gone for the water, and their friends of the same age, managed to assume more graceful attitudes; while the young men who had been to school and college, ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... up a bald-headed, elderly man with ingratiating little eyes, wearing a full, summer overcoat. Lifting his hat, he introduced himself with a honeyed lisp as Maximov, a landowner of Tula. He at once entered into ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a small room, with one part partitioned off as a repository for mail matter. He stepped up to a little window, and presently the postmaster, an elderly man, ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... depicting the romantic episodes hidden in the hearts of elderly spinsters as, for instance, in the case of Charlotte Holmes, whose maid Nancy would have sent for the doctor and subjected her to a porous plaster while waiting for him, had she known that up stairs there was a note-book full of original poems. ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of thirty years' standing could not have made the statement more impressively, and Orsino was conscious that he was assuming an elderly tone. He laughed ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... turned his back and was looking over some papers and grumbling to himself, so that Betty could no longer hear what he was pleased to say. As she left the window an elderly man, whose face was very familiar, was ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... pretty well," said an elderly man, with a woollen scarf or muffler about his neck and a fox-skin cap on his head, "He does it pretty well; but, Captain, did you ever ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... hideous—remind one of the tenement funerals, and are strikingly inappropriate. A bunch of white roses or of violets is a beautiful offering for a young woman, or two palms crossed, with violets or lilies of the valley attached, for a man or an elderly person. These should be accompanied by your card. If you have been an intimate friend, a few words written—a short note of condolence—would not be amiss. To all of these notes, and in acknowledgment of these offerings, one ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... until it was finished, entered the figures on his list, and went briskly back to the counting-house near the gateway. There he bustled into a room kept sacred to himself and Mallalieu, with a cheery greeting to his visitor—an elderly man who had recently rented from him a small house on ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... Egypt," by Percy 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
... the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fan-light, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed elderly servant opened ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 been ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... increases; what are we to do? Outside, djins pass rapidly, calling out: "Take care!" splashing the foot-passengers and casting through the shower streams of light from their many-colored lanterns. Mousmes and elderly ladies pass, tucked up, muddy, laughing nevertheless under their paper umbrellas, exchanging greetings, clacking their wooden pattens on the stone pavement. The whole street is filled with the noise of the pattering feet ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... the hamper was bumped down upon a kitchen floor, the lid was opened, and Pigling was lifted out. He looked up, blinking, and saw an offensively ugly elderly man, grinning ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... printer (1507-68), had a varied experience; taking four widows to wife. At the age of 20 he married—almost, it seems, out of a sense of duty—the widow of his teacher, Xylotectus of Lucerne; an elderly lady who persecuted him sorely, and once in a passion threw dirty water over him. After eight years, two of which he had spent roving through Germany with Paracelsus, she died, leaving her property to relations. Oporinus' ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... and elderly person, according to old John MacKinlay's account, while travelling in the wilder parts of Galloway, was benighted. With difficulty he found his way to a country-seat, where, with the hospitality of the time and country, he was readily admitted. The owner of the house, a gentleman of good fortune, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... evening of the eleventh day of the present month I was at a neighboring house in this village. Several people of both sexes were assembled in one of the apartments, and three or four others, with myself, were in another. At last came in a little elderly gentleman, pale, thin, with a solemn countenance, pleuritic voice, hooked nose, and hollow eyes. It was not long before we were summoned to attend in the apartment where he and the rest of the company were gathered. We went in and took our seats; ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... should, even to a locked book. Aunt Celia dozed a little after luncheon, and Mr. Copley almost talked in whispers, he was so afraid of disturbing her nap. It is just in these trifling things that one can tell a true man—courtesy to elderly people and consideration for their weaknesses. He has done something in the world; I was sure that he had. He has a little income of his own, but he is too proud and ambitious to be an idler. He looked so manly when he talked about it, standing up straight and strong in ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... himself with 'making music' in the seclusion of his own chamber. It may seem strange that Handel's mother should not have interposed in order that her boy should be taught music, but there is no doubt that the elderly surgeon ruled his household with a firm hand, which not even his wife's intercession would have made him relax. Moreover, Dorothea Handel was by nature far too gentle and submissive to seek to turn her husband from his decision. ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... 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
... de Frontignac would have her seat, and soon won the respect of the party by the dexterity with which she used her needle; though, when it was whispered that she learned to quilt among the nuns, some of the elderly ladies exhibited a slight uneasiness, as being rather doubtful whether they might not be encouraging papistical opinions by allowing her an equal share in the work of getting up their minister's bed quilt; but the younger part of the company ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... waiting in suspense, Mrs Trivett came up to say that the doctor had come again. Mavis had no time to ask her landlady what she had done with the broker's man, as the doctor came into the room directly after he had been announced. He was quite a young doctor, on whom the manners of an elderly man sat incongruously. He glanced keenly at Mavis as he bowed to her; then, without saying a word, he fell ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... smart young sailor, and Leslie at once put him down for—what he presently proved to be—the second mate of the lost ship. As for the other, Nicholls had spoken of him as "the bo'sun;" and he looked it—an elderly man, of burly build no doubt when in health, straightforward and honest as the day, and a prime seaman; "every finger a fish-hook, and every hair a ropeyarn." Leslie felt delighted beyond measure at the acquisition of two such invaluable assistants ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Her Majesty was generally in pretty good spirits. She commenced asking us a lot of questions. Amongst other things she asked whether we had noticed an elderly lady among the visitors, dressed as a bride. She explained that this lady was the only Manchu lady present who was married to a Chinese official, and had been invited because of her previous connection with the Court. Her Majesty said she had never seen her herself, ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... of a peasant named Marc Peguin. The monthly wage was regularly paid, and the child brought up as one of rank. La Pigoreau further told the woman that it was the son of a great nobleman, and would later make the fortunes of those who served him. An elderly man, whom the people supposed to be the child's father, but who Pigoreau assured them was her brother-in-law, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... He was an elderly man, with a noble forehead and a long beard. His face, a sad one, was lighted up by a feeble smile; his voice was soft, and his manner gentle. When the boys were gone he swung over his shoulders a black cloak with a red lining, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... at last caught a fair sight of Stephen Remsen, Joel saw a man of about twenty-eight years, gayly trudging at the head of the line, his handsome face smiling brightly as he replied to the questions and sallies of the more elderly youths who surrounded him. Joel's heart went out to Stephen Remsen at once. And neither then nor at any future time did ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Bunkers, and Daddy and Mother Bunker looked. There was, indeed, an elderly man asleep in a ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... were Gohier, Roger Ducos, and Moulin; the first, an elderly respectable advocate; the second, a Girondin by early associations, but a trimmer by instinct, and therefore easily gained over by Sieyes; while the recommendation of the third, Moulin, seem to have ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... lying on a small wooden fold-up bed, the scanty covering of which was supplemented by an overcoat and an elderly but still cheerful pair of check trousers, and he was wearing pajamas of a virulent pink and green. His neck seemed longer and more stringy than it had been even in our schooldays, and his upper lip had a wiry black moustache. The rest of his ruddy, knobby countenance, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... something of her fresh pink colour slowly deserting her face as she realised the enormity of the catastrophe. And was it possible that there was the faintest twinkle of grim satisfaction on the face of that elderly ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what you and your people have done!" exclaimed an elderly and rather portly lady, turning round and advancing towards me while she pointed at the younger females, whom I took to be her daughters, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... and milk at my table, Anne, and it won't be the last," and with that the little grandmother untied the white cloth, displaying a double row of soft gray curls that made her look like a charming, if elderly, cherub. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... brazen door of the palace. Here many fair women, elderly and young, were sitting in the round hall, partaking of the fairest fruits and listening to glorious invisible music. In the vaulting of the ceiling, palms, flowers, and groves stood painted, among which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 1679 Pietro and Violante Comparini, an elderly couple of the middle class, fond of show and good living, and who in spite of a fair income had run considerably into debt. They were, indeed at the period in question, in receipt of a papal bounty, employed in the relief of the needy who did not like ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... carelessly noticed by the village idlers, and received without ceremony by the Widow Duval, he was by no means so ordinary and uninteresting a stranger as the rustics of the place were pleased to consider him. The time had been when this quiet, elderly, unobtrusive applicant for refreshment at the Piebald House was trusted with the darkest secrets of the Reign of Terror, and was admitted at all times and seasons to speak face to face with Maximilian Robespierre himself. ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... appeared was elderly and thin; the mouth was tight, and there were squint-wrinkles at ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... The texture of this strange hat is of a fine open work like the dragon-fly's wing; it appears to be made of horse-hair varnished over, and is fastened under the chin by a band strung with large beads, mostly black and white, but occasionally red or yellow. Some of the elderly men wore stiff gauze caps over their hair, which was formed into a high conical knot on the top of the head. Their dress consisted of loose wide trowsers, and a sort of frock reaching nearly to the knee, made of a coarse open grass cloth, and on their feet neat straw sandals. They were ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... his elbow. The first step toward getting on in the world was a chill, dusty, noisy affair, and implied going without one's tea in order to stay in St. Ogg's and have an evening lesson from a one-armed elderly clerk, in a room smelling strongly of bad tobacco. Tom's young pink-and-white face had its colors very much deadened by the time he took off his hat at home, and sat down with keen hunger to his supper. No ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... to his feet he found the battle joined. The Spaniards had fired a volley from their calivers and a dense cloud of smoke hung above the bulwarks; through this surged now the corsairs, led by a tall, lean, elderly man with a flowing white beard and a swarthy eagle face. A crescent of emeralds flashed from his snowy turban; above it rose the peak of a steel cap, and his body was cased in chain mail. He swung a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Within a few minutes, a saurian Ullran face was looking out of it at him; a harsh-lined, elderly, face, with an old scar, quartz-crusted, along ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... a way as to remark him incurably. I saw before me on that morning of tender leafage, of pale sunlight and blue mist contending for the day, a strangely assorted pair proceeding slowly toward the Inn. A telegraph boy was one; by his side walked, vehemently explaining, a tall, elderly solicitor—white-whiskered, drab-spatted, frock-coated, eye-glassed, silk-hatted—in every detail the trusted family lawyer. I knew the man by sight, and I knew him by name and repute. He was, let me say—for I withhold his real name—George Lumley Fowkes, of Fowkes, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... fortunes had improved somewhat at this time, for Olivia, who had gone out as a governess, became engaged to Dr., afterwards Sir Arthur Clarke, a plain, elderly little gentleman, who, however, made her an excellent husband. Having a good house and a comfortable income, he was able to offer a home to Mr. Owenson and to the faithful Molly. For the present, Sydney, though always on excellent terms with her brother-in-law, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... was an elderly gentleman, who appeared to be in feeble health, but who conducted himself with dignity ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... an elderly don who lives with an elderly niece; And tea is the drink for studios and loud and violent peace— And brandy's the drink that spoils the clothes when the bottle breaks in the trunk; But coffee's the drink that is drunken by men who will never ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... mid-Victorian days, as so ably depicted in the works of Mrs. Florence Barclay—needed hair-cloth as a scourge for white tango-dancing backs. As for her, Ruth announced, she was going to be mid-Victorian just as soon as she could find a hair-locket, silk mitts, and an elderly female tortoise-shell cat with an instinctive sense of delicacy. She sat bolt-upright on the front of the most impersonal French-gilt chair in the drawing-room and asserted that Phil Dunleavy, with his ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... and three or four smaller cases, broken open and the contents strewn upon the carpeted deck, and prone among them, bound hand and foot and lashed together, were the figures of a man and woman, both evidently elderly, although their precise ages could hardly be guessed by the imperfect light that streamed in from the saloon through the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... to her heart and, turning to the elderly gentleman, gasped, "Doctor, that was his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... passionate tempest of heart-rending sobs and moans and wailings, that I had to move away. These Southerners are more demonstrative in their grief than the men of the North. I question if their sorrows spring from deeper depths, or are so lasting. The caretaker of the cemetery, an elderly Tipperary soldier, with a short dudheen in his mouth, was seated smoking on a head-stone by a goat-willow. We ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... offensive than are half the confidants of amorous heroes. But Chaucer sees his dramatic opportunity; and without painting black in black and creating a monster of vice, he invents a good-natured and loquacious, elderly go-between, full of proverbial philosophy and invaluable experience—a genuine light comedy character for all times. How admirably this Pandarus practises as well as preaches his art; using the hospitable Deiphobus and the queenly ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... you'd take it that way!" Crump remarked, not without gratification. "But it ain't so bad as that, Mr. Nicol." And he went on to explain, with a variety of nautical metaphors, that the couple, an elderly man and a young girl supposedly his grandchild, had appeared in Chepstow some weeks ago during fair-time; that the young woman "took observations," which I translated to mean that she told fortunes, supporting ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... undeniably languid stroll in the evening, she scarcely left the precincts of the cottage: No visitors came to her. There were none but fisher-folk in the little village. And so her sole company consisted of Daisy's ayah and the elderly English cook. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... University street were curious to know all about that lady's proceedings, and set a watch on all her movements. They discovered that at times a carriage was driven hastily up to the door, generally late at night, from which an elderly gentleman alighted and entered the house; but, although on the alert, they were never able to make out his features or even his general appearance, so quickly was the door of the house opened and closed behind him. Yet even this discovery ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... two elderly men glanced at each other; there was nothing of the domineering or resentful attitude that so often renders difficult the relation of master and man—"I must be getting old and forgetful," quoth father, stepping ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... old-timer he handled it, watching the smoke-wreaths above his head with the tranquil gaze of an elderly club-man. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... 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 been promoted to be such after ten years' service in the ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... existence, he talked English like a native, he had published a volume of delightful verse, and had omitted to publish several others, including a tiny volume which Sally Seabrook's charms had inspired him to write. His view of her was shared by most men who knew the world, and especially by the elderly men who had a real knowledge of human nature, among whom was a certain important member of the United States executive called John Appleton. When the end of all things at Washington came for Sally, these two men united to bear her up, that her feet should not stumble ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... The husband was the elderly man selected by your grandparents. Just how he had been led to accept the second place in your mother's life, and whether he had known of the tragedy, I could not learn without asking more ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... opened by an elderly woman, thin, and somewhat querulous in expression. Mr. Catesby had just time to notice this, and then he flung his arm round her waist, and hailing her as "Mother!" ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... had not come to the ceremony. He was not minded to set his foot upon any land other than his own, but he had sent as his representative Pocahontas's uncle, Opechisco, and many messages of affection to "his dearest daughter." The elderly werowance wore all the ceremonial robes of his tribe: a headdress of feathers, leggings and girdle and a long deerskin mantle heavily embroidered in beads of shell. With him came Nautauquaus and Catanaugh. The two wandered as they pleased through the town, and Nautauquaus, seeing Rolfe arrive ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... The elderly gentleman drew back from, the painful surcharged vibrations of sound and the unseemly aspect of this interpreter, who was in good sooth like a bull in disguise. "To be sure—the French," Richard Mivane said in response, repeating the only words which he ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... an elderly Scotch peer, an excellent man for the purpose in every respect, except that he possessed a very ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... old make, and had long, clumsy bayonets slung by their sides. It seemed to Henry as he watched a company of them marching through College Green that these men were not of the fighting breed ... that these pale clerks and young workmen and elderly professors and hungry, emaciated labourers were unlikely to deal in the serious work of war ... and when he met John Marsh in the evening, he sneered at him. Marsh kept his temper. He was more tolerant now than he had been in the days when he had tutored Henry at Ballymartin. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... that,' he retorted quickly. 'It makes me feel so middle-aged. I'd much sooner be a young sinner than an elderly cherub.' ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... say, but many boys don't seem to learn very fast. You look like a country lad." And the elderly man peered at Nat closely ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... scattered through the valleys, or on the sides of the hills, or in the recesses of the canyons, miles apart. Sometimes, though rarely, there was a little family in one. But usually the only occupant was an elderly or middle-aged man, who spoke but little about himself or his past, and was as destitute of curiosity as to what was going on in the outside world as he was about the former lives and affairs of ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... th.—Father Lenoir, Louie's director, has just been to call upon me; Louie insisted on my going to a festival service at St. Eulalie this morning, and introduced me to him—an elderly, courteous, noble-faced priest of a fine type. He was discreet, of course, and made me feel the enormous difference that exists between an outsider and a member of the one flock. But I gathered that the people among whom she is now thrown perfectly understand Louie. By ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... once, when I was very young and shy, how at one of my first London dinner-parties a charming elderly man discussed one of my earliest books with such appreciation that I at last remarked that I had written it myself. If I had looked for a surprised flash of delight at the fact that so much talent was palpitating in white muslin beside him, ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... continue their instructions at the school in its present quarters. Among these Professor Marshall was rather a favourite. As befitted a teacher in an establishment of young ladies, he was grey-haired and elderly, and, as the girls added, "married and guaranteed not to flirt," but all the same he was jolly, had a hearty, affable manner, and a habit of making bad jokes and weak puns to break up the monotony of his lectures. It was decidedly the fashion to admire him, to snigger indulgently at his mild little ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... His daughters, elderly, uninteresting married folk, begged him not to keep a peacock's feather in the house—it would certainly bring misfortune. The superstition was so firmly rooted in their minds that they actually ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... drawing-room you have military people who have thundered, been saluted, been respected—and superseded. And nobody can make worse clothes look better. The cook explains why she's not in Grosvenor Square, and the elderly Swiss waiter says that he has been in places where pace was not everytink. If you're out looking for depression, try ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... between the one publication and the other, whereas the Observations and the 'Epitaph' came close together. The others are 'To Miss——, on her giving the Authour a gold and silk net-work Purse of her own weaving;' 'Stella in Mourning;' 'The Winter's Walk;' 'An Ode;' and, 'To Lyce, an elderly Lady.' I am not positive that all these were his productions[516]; but as 'The Winter's Walk' has never been controverted to be his, and all of them have the same mark, it is reasonable to conclude that they are all written by the same hand. Yet to the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... by her elderly French governess, whose digestion had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of Strasbourg, came rushing towards them from under the oak tree. She stopped about a dozen yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mineralogist, an active young man, resolved to undertake this expedition, accompanied by three Tahaitians:—Maititi, who on our arrival had concluded a treaty of friendship with him, and adopted the name of Hoffman; Tauru, a respectable elderly man; and Teiraro, a brisk and lively young fellow. The two latter could write their own names. At first they raised many objections, assuring him that the journey, at all times difficult, was now dangerous from the waters being swollen ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... married a certain Mr. PARDOE, a barrister practising on the Archester Circuit, and established herself in town. Shortly afterwards she became the rage. Her beauty, her wit, her music, her dinners, her diamonds, were spoken of with enthusiasm. All the elderly roues, whose leathery hearts had been offered up at hundreds of shrines, became her temporary slaves. She coaxed them, cajoled them, and fooled them, did this innocent daughter of a simple-minded Dean, to the top of their various bents. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... "recreation," as a rule, resolved itself into taking flying leaps over forms piled in extraordinary positions one on the top of another, or alongside each other. I am afraid it is not a very dignified confession for an elderly matron to make, but those impromptu gymnastics on forms are amongst the most delightful recollections of my childhood. The little girls of the present day practise calisthenics, and perform wonderful feats with ropes and giant strides; I hope they know something of the delight we used to get ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... done all that could be expected of him. All, indeed, that he thought wise. Disappointed as the old couple would be by Ida May's refusal, Tunis felt that to urge her to reconsider the matter would not be in the best interests of her elderly relatives. They needed a young companion there on Wreckers' Head, needed one very sorely, but not such a person as Ida ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... he found a man whom he recognized as Melmotte's butler, a ponderous, elderly, heavy man who now had a letter in his hand. But the lord could tell by the man's face and manner that he himself had some story to tell. 'Is there ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... came to the daily halt beneath the blasted pine at the cross-roads, an elderly man, wearing a flapping frock coat and a soft slouch hat, stepped gingerly over one of the muddy wheels, and threw a doubtful glance across the level tobacco fields, where the young plants were drooping in the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... christening party, also on horseback, headed by the nurse with a baby in her arms. Making a halt as I approached her, she stopped me, and producing a cake, presented it to me, and insisted on my taking it. Several years after, when in the Isle of Man, I had the opportunity of hearing an elderly person relate several pieces of folk lore respecting the witches and fairies in that island. It had been customary, within his recollection, for a woman, when carrying a child to be christened, to take with her a piece of bread and cheese, to give ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... thanked the doctor, and went in search of the person to whom it was addressed. He soon found the house, which was situated in one of the most popular streets in Paris. He knocked at the door, which was opened by an elderly looking man: Alonzo enquired for the name to whom the note was addressed. The gentleman informed him that he was the man. Alonzo presented him the note, which having read, he desired him to walk in, and ordered supper. After supper ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... day I went by appointment to call on an elderly lady of my acquaintance, the widow of a country squire, who has settled in London on a small jointure, in an inconspicuous house in a dull street. She has always been a very active woman. As the wife of a country gentleman she was a cordial hostess, loving to fill the house with visitors; and ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... firm, yet youthful, indifferent, unconscious—as for knocking one down! No, no, no! She looked out of the window, smiling slightly now, and then came back again, for he didn't notice her. Grave, unconscious... now he looked up, past her... he seemed so out of place, somehow, alone with an elderly lady... then he fixed his eyes—which were blue—on the landscape. He had not realized her presence, she thought. Yet it was none of HER fault that this was not a smoking-carriage—if ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... on Governor's Island, unable to follow their sturdier companions to the upper part of the Hudson Valley, were widows, elderly men and 80 orphans. One of these orphans was Peter Zenger, who was apprenticed to William Bradford, at that time the only printer in the colony. When he grew up, he became the editor of The Weekly Journal, which made its first appearance on November 5th, 1733. Washington at this time was ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... Toil, the old schoolmaster," answered Hugh; "don't you see him among the haymakers?" and Hugh pointed to an elderly man, who seemed to be the owner ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... his earlier and his later life, and because it throws a luminous sidelight on the methods by which he achieved his unparalleled success. When he was in London in 1867 he made the acquaintance of an elderly, impressionable English-woman named Lyon, who immediately conceived a warm attachment for him and stated her intention of adopting him as her son. Carrying out this plan, she settled on him the snug little fortune of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, which she subsequently ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... goes first, then I, then you," he said to his father, with his deep slow tone. And the elderly man, whose chief puzzle in life—since he had given up the problem of the world—was the nature of his only son, now wondered again, as he seldom ceased from wondering, whether this boy despised or loved ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken on one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which seemed to justify an attempt upon him. It was brought by an elderly logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate's hands, and in some freak of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse than a slit nose and a drubbing. His account was recent and definite. The Happy Delivery ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... waste much time in unpacking, we took what we could eat in our fingers, and fed the children. Before we had finished, we were joined by a party of Mennonites, in a comfortable covered waggon drawn by two powerful horses. The family consisted of an elderly man; his wife, a pretty, quaint-looking little woman; a daughter, apparently sixteen; a boy of twelve; and two little girls of about six, looking like twins. They were well dressed, in the quaint costume of their country. The man, who alone could speak ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... 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
... 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 he commanded was a South Sea ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Samuel Clemens entering, saw his brother lying exactly as he had seen him in his dream, lacking only the bouquet of white flowers with its crimson center—a detail made complete while he stood there, for at that moment an elderly lady came in with a large white bouquet, and in the center of it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... George—or fools. The things will not keep up for a moment without you work at them, they need constant attention; I would as soon ride a treadmill. You cannot loaf with them, and the only true pleasure of cycling is to loaf. Yet only this morning did I meet an elderly gentleman with a beard fit for Abraham, his face all crimson and deliquescent with heat, and all distorted with the fury of his haste, toiling up a hill on one of these unstable instruments. When he saw me coming down in all my ease and dignity he damned ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells |
