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More "Middle-aged" Quotes from Famous Books



... fan-drill in the pews. The pulpit was not visible; but from that unseen eminence a strident, persistent voice flowed steadily, expounding the necessity and uses of "a baptism of fire," with a monotonous variety of application. Fire was needful for the young, for the middle-aged, for the old, and for those, if any, who occupied the intermediate positions. It was needful for the rich and for the poor, for the ignorant and for the learned, for church-members, for those who were "well-wishers" ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... admitting of no delay, we hasted at once to the post-office, where he went in, leaving me outside to watch the rather meagre stream of goers and comers who at that time of day make the post-office of a country town their place of rendezvous. Among these, for some reason, I especially noted one middle-aged woman; why, I cannot say; her appearance was anything but remarkable. And yet when she came out, with two letters in her hand, one in a large and one in might be induced to give a bed to a friend of mine who is very anxious ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... indeed, was the Baroness doing dans cette galere? what fish did she expect to land out of these very stagnant waters? The game was evidently a deep one. Augustine could trust her; but the sense of walking in the dark betrayed itself in the physiognomy of this spare, sober, sallow, middle-aged person, who had nothing in common with Gertrude Wentworth's conception of a soubrette, by the most ironical scowl that had ever rested upon the unpretending tokens of the peace and plenty of the Wentworths. Fortunately, Augustine could quench ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... Missy didn't much admire her unfeminine attire, yet it was something to get one's picture printed—in any garb. Then there was a Southern woman who had built up an industry manufacturing babies' shoes. This photograph, too, Missy studied without enthusiasm: the shoemaker was undeniably middle-aged and matronly in appearance; nor did the metier of her achievement appeal. Making babies' shoes, somehow, savoured too much of darning stockings. (Oh, bother! there was that basket of stockings mother had said positively ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... was middle-aged and wanted to appear youthful; so she dyed her hair blue-black which was harsh for her pointed face, and wore costly, too elaborate clothes from Paris. But her body showed delicately round under the laces and chiffons, and she ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... rudimentary eyes, but no sorb. These membranes were expressionless, but in some strange way seemed to add vigour to the stem eyes underneath. When his glance rested on Maskull, the latter felt as though his brain were being thoroughly travelled through. The man was middle-aged. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... the walls. One by Ricard represented Philippe Dechartre, very pale, with rumpled hair, and eyes lost in a romantic dream. The other showed a middle-aged woman, almost beautiful in her ardent slightness. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... I have thought of that. But you must remember that my aunt is to all intents hardly middle-aged, and a very eligible person. I don't think that her dislike to mankind extends to individuals. She might form new ties, and then I should be a third wheel in the coach. It was all very well as long as I was only a boy, when ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle

... taking a position under her lee. A quarter-boat was lowered, and in five minutes its oars were tossed at the packet's lee-gangway, when the commander of the corvette ascended the ship's side, followed by a middle-aged man in the dress of a civilian, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... 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, ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... long latent, long forgotten, coming over me. I followed each story with painful interest; I did not ask myself if I believed the dismal tales. I listened, and fear grew upon me—the blind, irrational fear of our nursery days. I am sure most of the other ladies present, young or middle-aged, were affected by the circumstances under which these traditions were heard, no less than by the wild and fantastic character of them. But with them the impression would die out next morning, when the bright sun should shine on the frosted boughs, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... heard the beat of its flying, and the pulse in her veins answered the false signal. That was afterward, when she told the truth. She was not so happy when she indulged herself otherwise. As when she asked one to remember that she was a middle-aged woman, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... with coquettishly moving disks of sunshine like golden plates. A pattern of orange light and blue shadow was laid like a fanciful plaid over the lattice and the wide, slightly sagging steps of the elderly "back porch"; and here, taking her ease upon these steps, sat a middle-aged coloured woman of continental proportions. Beyond all contest, she was the largest coloured woman in that town, though her height was not unusual, and she had a rather small face. That is to say, as Florence had once explained to her, her face ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... late. He had, however, the fortitude to abstain from visiting Monsieur Bonelle until evening came; when he went up, resolved to see him in spite of all Marguerite might urge. The door was half-open, and the old housekeeper stood talking on the landing to a middle-aged man in ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... I had been shooting I came upon the pan of water that was to be our outspan, and beside the pan was a farmhouse, outside of which stood a little group of people. An old woman, a young man, a girl, two middle-aged matrons, a man horribly deformed—people of different ages and manners, yet having in common one startling thing: they were all shaking with terror. It was startling because they were the only living creatures except birds and springbuck that I had seen for miles of that ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... those surrounding these patriarchs were middle-aged men, generally of a robust type, with burly shoulders, and bushing beards framing shaven upper lips, and who looked for the most part like honest and prosperous farmers attired in their Sunday clothes. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... the eastward of them, but Bob ran down to the one into which the man had disappeared. His heart was all aflutter with excitement and expectancy. As he approached the door, it suddenly opened, and there appeared before him a tall, middle-aged man with full, sandy beard and a kindly face. Bob felt intuitively that this was the factor of the Post, and ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace

... thing stupidly for a moment, as I fumbled for a pourboire to give the messenger, when it occurred to me that he might explain the mystery. "Did a lady buy this?" I asked; "a young lady, with a tall senor also young, and another middle-aged?" ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... with crimped hair and a large baby; but the arrival of Lucius Harney had long since banished Mr. Miles from Charity's dreams, and as he walked up the path at Harney's side she saw him as he really was: a fat middle-aged man with a baldness showing under his clerical hat, and spectacles on his Grecian nose. She wondered what had called him to North Dormer on a weekday, and felt a little hurt that Harney should have ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... He was a grave middle-aged man, who seemed oppressed and burdened by the load of cares and responsibilities which his smiling chief carried so jauntily. People said that he was the proper complement of Lord Pilgrimstone, as the more volatile Atley was ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... people remained, a middle-aged man and his wife and their son, a boy of about twelve. They stood in the corner, staring white-faced at the Leiter, at the rod in ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick

... mind which is to itself pure wisdom's zenith, but to folk of coarse maturity and tough experience "calf-love," superior as it is to words and reason, must be left to its own course. The settled resolve of a middle-aged man, with seven large-appetited children, and an eighth approaching the shores of light, while baby-linen too often transmitted betrays a transient texture, and hose has ripened into holes, and breeches verify their name, and a knock at the door knocks at the heart—the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... Englishman of letters, and the most like an accomplished, high-toned English gentleman, that I have ever met with. You must know Mr. Kingsley. He is very young too, really young, for it is characteristic of our "young poets" that they generally turn out middle-aged and very often elderly. My book is out at last, hurried through the press in a fortnight,—a process which half killed me, and has left the volumes, no doubt, full of errata,—and you, I mean your house, have not got it. I am keeping a copy for you ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... attachment to muscles are not excessively prominent, they are well marked, and taken together with the apparently well developed frontal sinuses, and the condition of the sutures, leave no doubt on my mind that the skull is that of an adult, if not middle-aged man. ...
— On Some Fossil Remains of Man • Thomas H. Huxley

... painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and he cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office. He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened with business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no clerks. He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped. His clients want HIM; he is all in all. Drafts ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... Like all middle-aged men with young wives he was supremely anxious as the time drew near. In his anxiety for his wife his belief in the son became passive rather than active. Indeed, the idea of a son was so deeply fixed ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... up courage to ring the bell, he found it answered by a middle-aged woman with a face worn by time and weather to the polished grooves and creases to which water wears ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... comes my Amanuensis, so we'll get on more swimmingly now. You will understand perhaps that what so particularly pleased me in the new volume, what seems to me to have so personal and original a note, are the middle-aged pieces in the beginning. The whole of them, I may say, though I must own an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... council. The large cloister surrounds their burying-ground. The cloisters are very narrow and very long, and let into the cells, which are built like little huts detached from each other. We were carried into one, where lived a middle-aged man not long initiated into the order. He was extremely civil, and called himself Dom Victor. We have promised to visit him often. Their habit is all white: but besides this he was infinitely clean in his person; and his apartment and garden, which ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... compartment had no crowd before it, nor any further audience than a middle-aged woman, with a wistful Irish face and the neat and careful appearance peculiar to superior servants of the old-fashioned type. With her hands full of newly-purchased bookstand magazines and her eyes full of trouble, she stood gazing at the sole ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... interval she had bettered her social condition—with what ardour must she have hailed the advent of what, with all its shortcomings, was a book worth gold. Perhaps she went to Vauxhall with it in her muff, and shook it triumphantly at some middle-aged lady of her acquaintance. Perhaps she lived long enough to see one great novel after another break forth to lighten the darkness of life. She must have looked back on the pompous and lascivious pages of Eliza Haywood, with their long-drawn palpitating ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... which are shaky this morning. Listen: It is a curious thing, one less to be understood even than the coincidence of the Yellow God, but at my present age of forty-four, for the first time in my life I have committed the folly of what is called falling in love. It is not the case of a successful, middle-aged man wishing to ranger himself and settle down with a desirable partie, but of sheer, stark infatuation. I adore Barbara; the worse she treats me the more I adore her. I had rather that the Sahara flotation should fail than that she should refuse me. I would rather lose three-quarters ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... where he said he lived. The place had a perfectly respectable exterior, and is situated, as you know, in a reputable thoroughfare. We ascended to the second floor, entered the flat, and were ushered by a middle-aged Frenchwoman into ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... Dr. von Gerhard back home. I've scarcely seen him since I have been here. Famous specialists can't be bothered with middle-aged relatives of their college ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... respect among those who knew anything about such matters, and his diplomas included half the letters of the alphabet, and were undeniable. And so when he had suddenly appeared in London on the death of his uncle and cousin, a middle-aged, distinguished gentleman, with manners a little foreign, but in their way perfect, society had voted him a great improvement on the former baronet, and had taken him by the hand at once. That was a good many years ago, and very soon after his first introduction to ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... seized the first social opportunity which came to her next morning. A middle-aged woman, who was taking up all the available space in the dressing-room, grudgingly moved over a few inches when Mary tried to squeeze in to wash her face. Any one but Mary would have regarded her as a most unpromising companion, when she answered her question with a grumbling "Yes, been on two ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston

... she walked briskly along the station platform just as the train whizzed down the track. Her alert eyes scanned the nearest car steps where the porter was helping a crotchety old man to the platform. Behind him, came a stout middle-aged woman and two children. Grace scanned the next set of steps. Then, far up the platform she saw a tall, slender, blue-clad figure walking toward her at a leisurely pace. The girl carried a small handbag and a suit case. When she came directly opposite Grace she paused, then, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... years, I had made inquiries concerning him of mineralogists, botanists, and other vagrant characters, without getting the smallest hint as to his whereabouts. At last he had turned up as the private prophet of three middle-aged widows. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... not have stood it but for the imperturbable patience and sweet temper of the oldest man in the office, a quiet-faced, middle-aged man, who, in a low, cheery, pleasant voice, restrained their impatience and ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page

... or the trail had made them look middle-aged. A few were very old. Susan saw a face carved with seventy years of wrinkles mumbling in the framing folds of a shawl. Nearby, sitting on the dropped tongue of a wagon, a girl of perhaps sixteen, sat ruminant, nursing a baby. Children were everywhere, helping, fighting, rolling on the grass. Babies ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... The best they knew they imparted freely, and God will reward them for it. To monopolize those institutions for the rich, as is done now, is to violate both the spirit and the letter of the foundations; to restrict their studies to the limits of middle-aged Romanism, their conditions of admission to those fixed at the Reformation, is but a shade less wrongful. The letter is kept—the spirit is thrown away. You refuse to admit any who are not members of the Church of England, say, rather, any ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... little perplexed. "You don't mean the son of your uncle Henry, who went out to Australia? I thought your father had washed his hands of him because he had started play-acting or something?" Curiosity, that devouring passion of the middle-aged, worked in her breast, and her placid face ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... had said more than once, "are not middle-aged doctors with shoulders on them like a barn-door, and ribs like a dray; angels don't have bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I'd pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... a stack of Wiggins's breakfast food boxes appears a middle-aged gent strugglin' into a blue jumper three sizes too small for him. He's kind of heavy built and slow movin' for an average grocery clerk, and he's wearin' gold-rimmed specs; but when Aunty proceeds ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... sensitive, shy, entirely unskilled in games, and but moderately interested in learning. His vacations, which he spent at home, were as dull as he had always found them under a succession of well-meaning, middle-aged tutors—until, one August day, as he played a twelve-pound salmon, he glanced up at the farther bank and into a pair of brown eyes which were ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... 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 ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... middle-aged type of revery, and youth might show more life and color; but the linkages between one thought and the next are typical of any revery. The linkages belong in the category of "facts previously observed". I had previously observed the ownership of this dog by my neighbor, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... lady kiss a middle-aged man alternately upon each cheek; an incident that is common in European social life, and that shows how the affections of the heart are cultivated and find expression. In Brussels I saw a son rest his hand affectionately upon his mother's shoulder, as they stood amongst the multitude ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... Winkle, who slept soundly on, asking no questions. But to the old men he had died a youth, full of promise. They remembered well the eager buoyancy with which he and his comrades had set out for the gold fields. Middle-aged men and women remembered his school days in Reedsville, when he was one of them, when they were all healthy, merry boys ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... worthy of a Lord Chamberlain or the species of dandy who shrinks from swearing in the Russian language, but amply relieves his feelings in the language of France. Next, inclining his head slightly to one side, our hero endeavoured to pose as though he were addressing a middle-aged lady of exquisite refinement; and the result of these efforts was a picture which any artist might have yearned to portray. Next, his delight led him gracefully to execute a hop in ballet fashion, so that ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... at the edge of the marsh, and three figures ran out from it as they came up: two boys and a heavy middle-aged man. It was for Mary Bell to tell Henderson that it would be hours before he could look for other help than this oddly assorted wagonful. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... 1914, the Austrians had not yet taken the heights. But the Serbians, most of them middle-aged and old men, had spent their vitality. As the dark night lowered over the scene, they fell back, until, at Jarebitze, they met the first advance guards of the oncoming Serbian main army. And here they halted, and the united forces proceeded to dig a trench ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... Though middle-aged and lined with trouble it was, as Dr. Beckerleg said, a beautiful face that slept behind the dusty window above the court where the sparrows chattered. From a chamber at the back of the house the two men were met, as they climbed the stairs, by the sound of an infant's wailing. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... to be there waiting for us, but he does not know us, and we don't know him; what is to be done?" C—— insisted that he should know him by instinct; and so after we reached the depot, we told him to sally out and try. Sure enough, in a few moments he pitched upon a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, with a moderate but not decisive broad brim to his hat, and challenged him as Mr. Sturge; the result verified the truth that "instinct is a great matter." In a few moments our new friend and ourselves were snugly encased in a fly, trotting off as briskly as ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... experienced a slight shock of astonishment to mark the Italian's age. For Vergilio Mannetti was an ancient man. He had been tall, but now stooped, and, though not decrepit, yet he needed assistance, and was accompanied and attended by a middle-aged Italian. The traveller displayed a distinguished bearing. He had a brown, clean-shaved face, the skin of which appeared to have shrunk rather than wrinkled, yet no suggestion of a mummy accompanied this physical accident. His hair was still plentiful, ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... a dream over the sheet of grey note paper. Presently, a middle-aged man, a palpable German, came hesitatingly into the room and bunted among the desks as unmanageably as a tempest-tossed scow. Finally he was impatiently towed in the right direction. He came and stood at Coleman's elbow and waited nervously ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... was opened by a woman as respectable in appearance as her house, in short a hard-working, middle-aged American woman with an expression slightly embittered perhaps as a result of the influx of "dagoes" in her neighbourhood. She looked at them enquiringly. George Deaves fumbled assiduously in his inside ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... Pumblechook, a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to, "I have brought you as the compliments of the season—I ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... that?" argued one middle-aged widow of a practical turn of mind. "You can save funeral expenses by letting the Germans do it ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... though not always plentiful, and asked my mother after his release, to make him a pea soup like that he had had in his cell. The other two, however, one a mere lad, the other an old-maidish man of 50, complained bitterly of the food and other things. While narrating his part of the story the middle-aged man turned to me exclaiming: "Why, your father, no one would believe that he is a good bit over 60. He took it all so quietly, just as if he were still ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... to improve our principles were made, I remember, by a middle-aged single lady, who had known my mother in her girlhood, and who was visiting her at this unlucky stage of our career. Having failed to cope with us directly, she adopted the plan of talking improvingly ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... attitudes, formed the new group with tolerable success. Even Barbican, who had been to Paris in his youth, yielding for a moment to the humor of the thing, acted the naif Anglais to the life. The Captain was frisky enough to remind you of a middle-aged Frenchman from the provinces, on a hasty visit to the capital for a few days' fun. Ardan was ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... There followed then the strangest life for me. Lovers in the fullest sense we were and yet it was different from any love that I had ever known. When I ask myself why, in what, it differed I cannot answer. Two old grey middle-aged people who happened to suit one another.... Not romantic.... But I think in the end of it all the reason was that she never revealed herself to me entirely. I was always curious about her, always felt that other people ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... the moment could think of nothing further to say. The thing was incomprehensible to her, appalling, yet strangely touching. This twenty-year-old girl, groping her way toward safety, that refuge of the middle-aged, as eagerly as other young things grasp at happiness, at romance!—She recalled phrases spoken by another startled mother to another girl quite as headstrong: "You are only a child! He is twice your age! You ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... Times, it revered the button factory, and bitterly envied the carriages driven and the occasional festivities held by the families of the representatives of these monopolies. The carriages were sober and middle-aged, and so were the parties, but to Janway's Mills they illustrated wealth and gaiety. People drove about in the vehicles and wore fine clothes and ate cakes and ice-cream at the parties—neither of which things had ever been possible or ever would ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... need not fear that he would make a bad use of their money, as he had plenty of his own, adding:—"I believe I will tell you how I get some of it. A great many of these elders in Israel, soon after courting these young ladies, and old ladies, and middle-aged ladies, and having them sealed to them, want to have a bill of divorce. I have told them from the beginning that sealing men and women for time and all eternity is one of the ordinances of the House of God, and that I never wanted a farthing for sealing ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... might be some sense in its survival, he might have seen this particular problem much more clearly. The old playwrights have left us plenty of plays of marriage and middle-age. Othello is as much about what follows the wedding-bells as The Doll's House. Macbeth is about a middle-aged couple as much as Little Eyolf. But if we ask ourselves what is the real difference, we shall, I think, find that it can fairly be stated thus. The old tragedies of marriage, though not love stories, are like love stories in this, that they work up to ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... out, kept up a comfortable place in town to serve as a half-way house between his mills and his home in a city a couple of hundred miles distant. He believed that his appearance as a regular townsman had a steadying influence on his workmen, that it gave them faith in him. His placid middle-aged wife accompanied him back and forth on his weekly visits to the mills and interested herself in those of his workers who ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... last degree improbable, makes no urgent demand for belief. Sometimes indeed (as I have observed before with Mr. J.E. BUCKROSE) the characters themselves are more credible than the way in which they carry on. Thus while Mr. Tubbs, the middle-aged and high-principled champion of distress, is both human and likeable, I was never persuaded that any more real motive than regard for an amusing situation would compel him to saddle himself with the continued society of a squint-eyed maid-servant and her yellow cat, turned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... by about twenty persons, the majority of whom were visitors, inhabitants of Tudela or of neighbouring country-houses. With four or five exceptions, the party consisted of men, for the most part elderly or middle-aged. One of the ladies and a young officer of the royal guard were the singers, and their performance seemed partially to interrupt the conversation of a group of the seniors who were seated round a card-table at the further ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... they were introduced to Mrs. Gregg, who was just such a person as her husband had described: a cheerful, middle-aged woman, very short, very stout, and very hospitable. Early as it was, the tea-table was loaded with good cheer. Large strawberries preserved whole, and that pet sweetmeat of the Scotch, orange marmalade, looked tempting enough, in handsome dishes ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... been downtown, as usual, and on returning found a crowd assembled in front of my lodging-house. A woman had been run over and was being carried into our rooms. In the glimpse I caught of her I saw that she was middle-aged and was wrapped in a long black cloak. Later this cloak fell off, as her hat had done long before, and I perceived that her dress was ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... the coffin with their laurels. The ceremony was at an end. The torches were extinguished; the crowd dispersed. But, by the light of two candles still burning on the altar, might be seen the form of a small, now middle-aged woman who had flung herself upon the bier, whilst a pale young man knelt praying ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... And he said, 'You wouldn't make it a handsome face, would you?' and she says, 'A very handsome face.' And says he, 'Middle-aged?' and says she, 'Twenty-nine.' And I mind him saying, 'A little bald on the top?' and she says, says she, 'Not ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say St. Paul's Church-yard, for instance—literally to astonish his ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... says the King (like all the rest of them), 'never mind the young men! Turn thy eyes on a middle-aged autocrat, who has been considered ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Staniford, "than being younger than you look. I am twenty-eight, and people take me for thirty-four. I'm a prematurely middle-aged man. I wish you would tell me, Miss Blood, a little about South Bradfield. I've been trying to make out whether I was ever there. I tramped nearly everywhere when I was a student. What sort ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... try what can be done for you." There was a change in the man's voice that made me wonder. I entered a large room, in which blazed a brisk fire. Before the fire sat two stout lads, who turned upon me their heavy eyes, with no very welcome greeting. A middle-aged woman was standing at a table, and two children were amusing themselves with ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... son 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 of), separate interests crept in, and her own children fared ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... seeing me. He assisted me to alight, and embraced me with true affection. He immediately conducted me into the house, and introduced me to my aunt. She was a middle-aged, kindly-looking woman; and I also received from her a cordial welcome to their home. They invited Mr. Egmont to remain till after tea, but he declined, saying that he had promised to return to their friends ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... 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 attached, and whose residence ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the merchant began to understand the meaning of what was passing before him. The miniature was that of a middle-aged lady; and it required no great strength of imagination to determine that the original was the mother of the young woman who seemed so ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur

... more than 300 men, who had left Tsing-tau by railroad before Austria decided to join her ally in the Far East as well as in Europe, hurried back in small groups and in civilian clothes to escape detection. Squads of the Landsturm, the last reserve, middle-aged men who had left their families and their business in all parts of China joined the ranks and went to drilling in preparation for the hard fighting expected as soon as the invading fleet passed the outer defenses of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... rushed a girl—such a girl! One of those radiant creatures who explain the cult of womanhood; who make it difficult even for sober-minded, middle-aged men and matrons to realize that this is nothing but flesh and blood like themselves; one of those beautiful creatures who claim worship as a right and who repay it with kindness and brightness and sweetness ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... eyes of the middle-aged, Bathsheba was perhaps additionally charming just now. Her exuberance of spirit was pruned down; the original phantom of delight had shown herself to be not too bright for human nature's daily food, and she had been able to enter this second ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... governor of the State had come down to open the new ditch! Then there was a pause, the flash of the carriage lamps upon white silk, the light tread of a satin foot on the veranda and in the hall, and the entrance of a vision of loveliness! Middle-aged men and old dwellers of cities remembered their youth; younger men bethought themselves of Cinderella and the Prince! There was a thrill and a hush as this last guest—a beautiful girl, radiant with youth and adornment—put a dainty glass to her sparkling eye and advanced familiarly, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Treasury bench, or how unanswerable, how fatal, how joyous, when attacking the Government from the opposite seats! How crowded would have been his rack with invitations to dinner! How delighted would have been the middle-aged countesses of the time to hold with him mild intellectual flirtations—and the girls of the period, how proud to get his autograph, how much prouder to have touched the lips of the great orator with theirs! ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... become a confirmed invalid, confined by chronic rheumatism to his chair. He received me kindly, and a little wearily as well. His only unmarried daughter (he had long since been left a widower) was in the room, in attendance on her father. She was a melancholy, middle-aged woman, without visible attractions of any sort—one of those persons who appear to accept the obligation of living under protest, as a burden which they would never have consented to bear if they had only been consulted first. We three had a dreary little interview ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins

... the order the butler withdrew, and a moment later, John Wilson, a middle-aged man and a servant of Ralph Mainwaring's who had accompanied him from London, appeared, followed by Brown, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... it is nothing, when we come really to analyse it, but the universal type of vain, impetuous, passionate youth, asserting itself with royal and resplendent insolence in defiance of the cautious discretion of middle-aged conventions. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... A middle-aged country fellow (he had driven his cow to drink out of the spring) stared hard at young Bellerophon, and at the handsome bridle which he carried ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... of languor in the air, that heavenly languor which is so sweet a thing when one is young and hopeful, so depressing a thing when one is living on the edge of one's nervous force—he paid a call, which was not a thing he often did, on a middle-aged woman who passed for a sort of relation; she was a niece of his aunt's deceased husband, Monica Graves by name. She was a woman of independent means, who had done some educational work for a time, but had now retired, lived in her own little house, and occupied herself with ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of Isdigerd I. are not remarkable as works of art; but they possess some features of interest. They are numerous, and appear to have been issued from various mints, but all bear a head of the same type. [PLATE XXI., Fig. 1.] It is that of a middle-aged man, with a short beard and hair gathered behind the head in a cluster of curls. The distinguishing mark is the headdress, which has the usual inflated ball above a fragment of the old mural crown, and further bears a crescent in front. The reverse has the usual ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... 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

... later, a middle-aged man came down to the houseboat and shook hands warmly. His name was Carson Denton and he was the husband ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield

... night. His name, I have every reason to believe, is Jonathan Small. He is a poorly-educated man, small, active, with his right leg off, and wearing a wooden stump which is worn away upon the inner side. His left boot has a coarse, square-toed sole, with an iron band round the heel. He is a middle-aged man, much sunburned, and has been a convict. These few indications may be of some assistance to you, coupled with the fact that there is a good deal of skin missing from the palm of his hand. ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... say so, Miss Edith, and I think I may safely repeat my promise, provided we make camp a little later than usual this evening, and get started again by daylight to-morrow morning," answered the middle-aged lieutenant, who sat just back of the ladies and steered the boat. "Yon far-reaching land," he continued, "is Point Pelee, and from there the fort is only about twenty-five ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... never look at him, never dream of him, as anything more than a mere acquaintance? I don't wish for a lover or a husband—at least not yet," with a gasp; "I don't wish to leave home, and go away from all of you, though you are so unkind and teasing—not for a long, long time, till I am quite a middle-aged woman. I don't see why I should be plagued about it when Annie here, who is two years older than I am, and ever so much prettier, as everybody ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... President of the Sewing Circle, and, above all, the Chief Pharisee, sitting in his high place. The Chief Pharisee—his name I learned was Nash, Mr. J. H. Nash (I did not know then that I was soon to make his acquaintance)—the Chief Pharisee looked as hard as nails, a middle-aged man with stiff chin-whiskers, small round, sharp ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... an eager hand, for a letter from Uncle John Rayburn—middle-aged, a bachelor, and an ex-army officer, retired by an incurable injury which did not make him the less the best uncle in the world—could not fail to be welcome. But she had not read a page before she dropped the sheet and stared helplessly and ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, 'His ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... reason. Had Caesar never lived, perhaps this same Cato, who discerned his fatal genius, and foretold his great schemes, would have passed for a dreamer all his days. Those who judge children hastily are apt to be mistaken; they are often more childish than the child himself. I knew a middle-aged man, [Footnote: The Abbe de Condillac] whose friendship I esteemed an honour, who was reckoned a fool by his family. All at once he made his name as a philosopher, and I have no doubt posterity will give him a high place among the greatest ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... author of the Slang Dictionary declares means a lady, and is "Anglo-Indian," is in general use among English Gipsies for aunt. It is also a respectful form of address to any middle-aged woman, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... years by favour of the Lady of Stahrenburg, and Kepler writes of her: "Her person and manners are suitable to mine; no pride, no extravagance; she can bear to work; she has a tolerable knowledge of how to manage a family; middle-aged and of a disposition and capability to acquire ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... hanging on the ragged fences. Two mongrel dogs strained at their chains, yelping furiously. Genevieve crossed to the little square building bearing a gilt "office" sign. There was no response to her imperative knock, but a middle-aged man appeared on the porch of the adjoining shack ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... "Oh, two middle-aged, light gentlemen," replied Bobbie carelessly. "One gave me a shilling to buy a guinea-pig, so now I'm quite safe in telling James to bring them on Friday." And Bobbie seated himself before the fire with Habbakuk and Funnel on his knees, and rubbed ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... But lameness in one foot, the result of an illness early in 1865, handicapped him severely at times; and in the same year he sustained a rude shock in a railway accident where his nerves were upset by what he witnessed in helping the injured. He ought to have acquired the wisdom of the middle-aged man, and to have taken things more easily, but with him it was impossible to be doing nothing; physical and mental activity succeeded one another and often went together with a ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... house to which Bohun directed my attention was an ordinary-looking abode; but I cared little for its character, provided the price would suit. It was kept by a round-faced, jolly-looking, middle-aged woman, whose complexion bore unmistakable evidence of her African extraction. I told my errand. She threw a suspicious glance upon my person and on the diminutive bundle I held in my hand, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... sat where she always does, at the side of the fire, and my Uncle Charles—who for a wonder was at home— and my Aunt Dorothea were receiving the people as they came in. The Bracewells were there already, and Hatty, and Mr Crossland, and a middle-aged lady, who I suppose was his mother, and Miss Newton, and a few more whose faces and names I know. Sir Anthony and my Lady Parmenter came in just ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... affairs when she was with her relations, and excused herself from asking them to stay with her, on the ground of her poor health. On rare occasions Greifenstein and his wife drove over to the castle, and were invariably admitted by the same soberly-dressed, middle-aged woman, who showed them into the same old- fashioned room, whence, having made their visit, they returned to the outer gate by the way they had come. That is all they ever saw of Sigmundskron. Twice in the year, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... just should include Irishmen of all religious denominations. On Tone's return to Dublin, early in November, a branch society was formed on the Belfast basis. The Hon. Simon Butler, a leading barrister, was chosen Chairman, and Mr. Napper Tandy, an active middle-aged merchant, with strong republican principles, was Secretary. The solemn declaration or oath, binding every member "to forward a brotherhood of affection, an identity of interests, a communion of rights, and a union of power among Irishmen of all religious persuasions," ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... seen what I've seen,' said Paul. He was seven years old by now, breeched in corduroys, which had had time to grow rusty. The middle-aged man, sitting at his tent-door, smelt the odour of the new cords, and heard their disgusting whistle as he moved his limbs in them for the first time. Only the poorest boys went clothed in corduroy, and Paul and brother Dick were bitterly lowered in their own esteem when they were forced ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... you hear from Montel?" Montel was a middle-aged gentleman whose vain ambition and desire for the past twenty years had been to fill the void which Monsieur Lebrun's taking off had left in the Lebrun household. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... later found herself on the right platform waiting for it. It came in within a quarter of an hour, and Elma took her seat in a third-class compartment. She was relieved to find that she was in the company of a good-natured-looking, middle-aged woman who was just returning to her own home from doing some marketing at Middleton. She did not take any notice of Elma, who crouched up in the opposite corner, and sat looking out at the country. The woman left the carriage at the next ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade

... man made no reply. He continued to gaze down the beach. Of all outdoor sports, few are more stimulating than watching middle-aged Frenchmen bathe. Drama, action, suspense, all are here. From the first stealthy testing of the water with an apprehensive toe to the final seal-like plunge, there is never a dull moment. And apart from the excitement of the thing, judging it from a purely aesthetic ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... passed through the Marne valley the fields were being harvested for the first time since those fatal days in September. Among the harvesters were a number of middle-aged men with the soldiers' kepi, who had been given leave to make the crop, which was unusually abundant. The fields of old Champagne, watered with the best blood of France, had yielded their richest returns. Outside the charred and ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... between the ages of six and sixteen, sentimentalizing over a flower-basket; a pair of water-colour drawings represented a handsome church and comfortable parsonage; and the domestic gallery was completed by two prints—one of a middle-aged county-member, the other one of Chalon's ladylike matrons in watered-silk aprons. With some difficulty Rachel read on the one the autograph, J. T. Beauchamp, and on the other the inscription, the Lady Alison Beauchamp. The table-cover ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... All he knew was that by means of the trumpet attachment they were transmitted through the wooden partition and let loose into the larger air of the studio, where the waves of them had a singular effect on the brains of certain bright young women and sombre young and middle-aged men who were arranged in clasped couples: with the result that the brains of the women and men sent orders to their legs, arms, eyes, and they shifted to and fro in rhythmical movements. Each woman placed ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... fun!' Adeline could not help observing in such glee that she looked more like 'our youngest girl' than the handsome middle-aged aunt. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the "Courier," and Ralph Bastin's employer, had just arrived at the "Courier" office. The whilom middle-aged, sprightly old man was as bowed and decrepit ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... relatives, but he was not only incarcerated but had to give a bond of $100 for his appearance next morning. Another young man, working for the Pullman Company, entered the depot to cash a check for $11 when he was arrested, sent to jail and searched. Still another, a middle-aged man of most pleasing appearance, had just arrived from Jacksonville, Florida, and was waiting in the station until the time to proceed by boat that afternoon to New York. On one occasion, J.H. Butler, manager of the Savannah Tribune, a negro newspaper, was arrested ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... wishes for "the success of his business." Two young Americans with the same identical oddity of gait walked to and fro, and a little black Frenchman, with a frightful star-shaped scar at the corner of his mouth, paraded lonelily. A middle-aged French woman, rouged and dyed back to the thirties, and standing in a nimbus of perfume, wept at the going of a younger woman, and ruined an elaborate make-up with grotesque traceries of tears. "Give him my love," she sobbed; "tell him that the business is doing splendidly and that he is not to ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... thicker than usual, she gently observed that he had forgotten that he was a child himself once. He certainly retained no trace of having enjoyed that delightful state of existence, and though one would not be so rude as to call him an old boy, yet, being always clad in a middle-aged habit, an elderly coat, and adult pantaloons, one would as little fancy him a young man. Perhaps the fact of his wearing his father's wardrobe in all its unaltered amplitude might help to confuse one's ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... sunward sides of the 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 ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... set eyes upon," Mackintosh interjected—and her son Julius, a lad of twelve—"and thoroughly spoiled at that, more's the pity," the doctor added. There was also a certain Reverend Henry James Monroe, M.A., a middle-aged, refined, and very scholarly man, who served in the dual capacity of chaplain of the ship and tutor to the aforesaid Julius. He was one of the saloon party, and was held in the highest honour and respect by Mrs Vansittart, who deferred to ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... as you feel. Why, when I was twenty I felt I had all the cares and responsibility of the world on my shoulders. And now I am middle-aged more or less, I feel as light as if I were just beginning life." He beamed ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... reflection, in dreaming, in spiritual acquiescence, life was passing in sombre shadows for this middle-aged man who had been hopelessly crushed in Christ's service; and who had never regretted that service, never complained, never doubted the wisdom and the mercy of his Leader's inscrutable manoeuvres with the soldiers who enlist to follow Him. As far as that is concerned, the Reverend Wilbour Carew ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... exercise except my work, but when I worked in an office the case was different. A couple of summers I played polo with some of my neighbors. I shall always believe we played polo in just the right way for middle-aged men with stables of the general utility order. Of course it was polo which was chiefly of interest to ourselves, the only onlookers being the members of our faithful families. My two ponies were the only occupants of my stable except a cart-horse. My wife and I rode and drove them, and they were ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... a series of good things that, except just at the end, it may be said to be uninterrupted. Jeanie it is unnecessary to praise; the same Lady Louisa's admiration of the wonderful art which could attract so much interest to a plain, good, not clever, almost middle-aged woman sums up all. But almost everyone plays up to Jeanie in perfection—her father and, to no small extent, her sister, her husband and Dumbiedykes, Madge Wildfire (a most difficult and most successful character) and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... room, handsomely fitted up as a study, sat a fine-looking, middle-aged man, busily wilting; his dark face wore an expression of severity as he ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton

... the excitement; the figure of the quarry, after which so many hawks were abroad, appealed to his imagination. He dreamed of him at night, once as a crafty-looking man with narrow eyes and stooping shoulders, that skulked and ran from shadow to shadow across a moonlit country; once as a ruddy-faced middle-aged gentleman riding down a crowded street; and several times as a kind of double of Mr. Stewart, whom he had never forgotten, since he had watched him in the little room of Maxwell Hall, gallant ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... that; the few have seen the virtues die out of patriotism and trade; they have watched the desire for self turn reptile, and hearkened to this truth which is beginning to reverberate around the world: What is good for beasts is not of necessity good for men.... One recent caller here, male, middle-aged, smilingly discussed all things from the philosophical point of view. ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... 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. ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope

... and sat down on the edge of a sunken barge on the river bank, and began to chew a piece of grass. A boat came up to the landing, and a middle-aged man, with grey hair and dark moustache, stepped on shore. He saw the boy sitting there doing nothing, and asked him where the Chakravortis lived. Phatik went on chewing the grass, and said: "Over there," ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... the just and true one. Of the great leaders in this movement she alone remains.... Spanning a distance of forty years stood at her side Mrs. Catt, the younger woman who has taken up the battle, and grouped around were earnest young girls and middle-aged women fired with her enthusiasm and looking up to her with a reverence that was very beautiful and a most gracious tribute from youth to old age. When Miss Jean Gordon advanced to present her with a great cluster of Marechal Neil roses and took her so sweetly by the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... its peculiar work. The school is to train the young, the agricultural college to prepare the youth, the farmers' institute to instruct and inspire the middle-aged and mature. The experiment station seeks to discover the means by which nature and man may better work together. The producers' unions endeavor to secure a fair price for their goods. The Grange enlarges the views ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield

... the sheltered nook, watching the forest and the open, through the holes pierced for rifles, and he did not seek to hide his pleasure at seeing them. Two other men were there, but they were middle-aged and married, the fathers of increasing families, and they were not offended when Paul received a major ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... it was good for him, for it gave him an immediate audience, always inspiring to an author. Furthermore, the comments offered were often of the greatest value, especially suggestions from one Mrs. Fairbanks, of Cleveland, a middle-aged, cultured woman, herself a correspondent for her husband's paper, the "Herald". It requires not many days for acquaintances to form on shipboard, and in due time a little group gathered regularly each afternoon ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... must not get ahead of my story. It happened in this way. One morning after we had been out at work about a couple of hours the military engineer who was in charge of our operations rode up to the battery, accompanied by a very fine, handsome, middle-aged man, evidently also a soldier, for he was attired in an ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... I am a middle-aged woman, and conscious that I may use my privileges as such. But he has become quite an old man,—not in health so much as in manner. But he will be very glad to see you." So saying she led him into a room, in which he found the Earl seated near the fireplace, and wrapped ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... would have given little trouble to the intrusive French king at Madrid. Defeat Lee, and Mosby will vanish. After all, the Southern guerrillas are not much worse than other Southrons were at no very remote period. It is within the memory of even middle-aged persons, that the southwestern portion of our country was in as lawless a state as ever were the borders of England and Scotland, and with no Belted Will to hang up ruffians to swing in the wind. As those ruffians were mostly removed by time, and the scenes of their labors became the seats ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... in which blazed a brisk fire. Before the fire sat two stout lads, who turned upon me their heavy eyes, with no very welcome greeting. A middle-aged woman was standing at a table, and two children were amusing themselves with ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... sorb. These membranes were expressionless, but in some strange way seemed to add vigour to the stem eyes underneath. When his glance rested on Maskull, the latter felt as though his brain were being thoroughly travelled through. The man was middle-aged. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... could have sat "in the close of the evening, among the ruins of the Capitol," but one hardly saw Napoleon III there, or Palmerston or Tennyson or Longfellow. One morning, Adams happened to be chatting in the studio of Hamilton Wilde, when a middle-aged Englishman came in, evidently excited, and told of the shock he had just received, when riding near the Circus Maximus, at coming unexpectedly on the guillotine, where some criminal had been put ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... carried out in harlequin flannel surmounts a full brim of restful willow-green. Garnished with intertwined laurel and St. John's-Wort, and decorated with the tail feather of a Surrey fowl, it makes a comfortable and distinguished headdress for a middle-aged gentleman. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... heavily built and tanned almost as dark as an Indian by weather. He and Braxton Wyatt had become close friends, and both stood high in the councils of the Indians. Henry saw them clearly now, outlined against the firelight, engaged in close talk with the middle-aged Shawnee chief, ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... paused, and her eyes glowed with reminiscent fire. She was recalling the scene which had taken place three years ago between her sister and herself, when Eugenia had told her of her intention to marry an obscure and middle-aged actor named Bingley Crocker. Mrs. Pett had never seen Bingley Crocker, but she had condemned the proposed match in terms which had ended definitely and forever her relations with her sister. Eugenia was not a woman ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... cloak, the left hand hanging in the relaxation of death, while the right convulsively clutches a symbolical table of laws, with the inscription "La Loi," through which passes a treacherous rent. Baudin's face is that of a middle-aged man, with commonplace features, smooth-shaven lips and chin, and the regulation whiskers. But this ordinary countenance becomes grand and heroic by a horrible hole in the forehead, from which blood and brains have gushed. Oh, how such a hole in the brow, pierced ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... changed, as we all change, with the passing of the years. I first remember her as a woman middle-aged, sweet-faced, hardly like a widow, nor yet like an old maid. She was rather like a young girl in love, with her lover absent on a long journey. She lived more with the memory of her husband, she clung to him more, than if she had had a child. She never married; you would have ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... minds with wholesome thoughts and many little hearts with wholesome emotions. She leaves memory-word-pictures of healthy, New England childhood days,—pictures which are turned to with affection by middle-aged children,—pictures, that bear a sentiment, a leaven, that middle-aged America needs nowadays more than we ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... for though he was but middle-aged, within a year of my going my father died suddenly of a distemper of the heart in the nave of Ditchingham church, as he stood there, near the rood screen, musing by my mother's grave one Sunday after mass, and my brother took his lands and place. God rest him also! ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... I cannot agree, for something supernatural has happened to me myself," said a bald, corpulent middle-aged gentleman of medium height, who had till then sat silent behind the stove. The eyes of all in the room turned to him with curiosity and surprise, and ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... place, I'm thinkin', you're that thick, (There is a noise from the stairs in the hall.) Whisht! It's the doctor comin' down from Eileen. What'll he say, I wonder? (The door in the rear is opened and Doctor Gaynor enters. He is a stout, bald, middle-aged man, forceful of speech, who in the case of patients of the Carmodys' class dictates rather than advises. Carmody adopts a whining tone.) Aw, Doctor, and how's Eileen now? Have you got her cured ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... dinner given by the Whitman Society about twenty years ago, at the St. Denis Hotel, which was both grotesque and pitiable. The guest of honour was "Pete" Doyle, the former car-conductor and "young rebel friend of Walt's," then a middle-aged person. John Swinton, who presided, described Whitman as a troglodyte, but a cave-dweller he never was; rather the avatar of the hobo. As John Jay Chapman wittily wrote: "He patiently lived on cold pie, and tramped the earth in triumph." Instead of essaying the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... Miss Grantley's appearance, and yet she was the sort of person that you could not help looking at again and again if you once saw her. She was not very young, nor was she middle-aged—about thirty, perhaps. She was certainly not what is called a beauty, but she was not in the least plain. She was what some people would call "superior looking" or "rather remarkable," and yet they would not be able to say ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... protested bitterly. She and Mrs. Judge Hippisley had been bitter social rivals for twenty years. They had fought each other with teas and euchre parties and receptions from young wifehood to middle-aged portliness. And now her daughter was to work in that hateful Anastasia Hippisley's old fool of a husband's office? ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... I've been to every business man in the village, and done everything a fellow could do, seems to me, but in a little place like this there's absolutely no opening unless somebody dies. The good places are already filled by reliable, middle-aged men who have grown up in them. There's no use trying any longer. Every time I get my hopes up it's only to have them dashed to pieces—shipwrecked, ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston

... with locks of snow, who had grown into senility in this erudite quarter, still paced the same promenade which they had trodden for many a year, habit having fixed them where hope once led their steps. The middle-aged, too, might be seen with hair beginning to blanch from long hours devoted to the midnight lamp, and faces marked with "the pale cast of thought." Hope, though less sanguine in her promises, still lures them on, and they pass the venerable old, unconscious that they themselves are succeeding them ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... found imbedded in the pavement of the mosque-like little Duomo of Capri. But it is evident from the immense extent of its substructures, now used for humble enough purposes, that the Villa Jovis must have been a palace of remarkable size. A hermit who offers sour wine, a fat middle-aged woman, a figure of fun in her gay be-ribboned dress who begins languidly dancing a tarantella, and a vulgar pestilent guide who produces a spy-glass usually haunt these caverns on the look-out for any chance visitor. Buy them ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... more respectful than to call you 'Mamie,'" he responded, lightly; "and many of your admirers are middle-aged men, with a mediaeval style of compliment. I've discovered that amatory versifying wasn't entirely a youthful passion. Colonel Cash is about as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and scatters as terribly. Judge ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... attention. There was nothing prepossessing in his appearance; on the contrary, he bore the marks of dissipation in his countenance; his clothing was old and soiled, and once or twice he saw him when partially intoxicated. The agent was a middle-aged man, and was a close observer of those with whom he came in contact, and somehow or other he felt a strange interest in this young man for which he could not account; and meeting him so frequently, he determined to speak to him. As a pretext for accosting him he offered to sell him some books, ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... jumping from one bank to the other and scrambled through the willow trees, emerging, flushed and anxious-eyed, to confront a boy about fourteen years old in a torn straw hat and faded overalls and a tall, lean middle-aged man with a pitchfork in ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... is the case of a middle-aged man, whose costume and avocation explain nothing, save that he is not an Osmanli. He is a passenger homeward bound to one of the coast villages, and he constantly circulates among the crowd with a basket ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... to the little democracy won, and held intact for so many years. The dessert was hardly removed before they began to come: first the old men in black coats and high hats, and women with white, pointed caps and wide ruffles; then the middle-aged, fathers and mothers, bringing little children, all with the same conscientious expression on their faces, the same "Happy Christmas," while the pastor's "God bless you," was a benediction that carried happiness to the hearts of those ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society

... too large for him, and stuck out in a most ungainly manner. Another wore nothing but the common scanty native garment round the loins, and a black beaver hat. But the most ludicrous personage of all, and one who seemed to be chief, was a tall, middle-aged man, of a mild, simple expression of countenance, who wore a white cotton shirt, a swallow-tailed coat, and a straw hat, while his black, brawny legs were totally uncovered ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... sunlight streamed in through the window panes upon the heads and shoulders of the venerable patriarchs of the hamlet, and upon the middle-aged, and upon the young; upon men and women who had played out, or were to play, tragedies or tragi-comedies in that nook of civilization not less great, essentially, than those which, enacted on more central arenas, fix the attention of the world. One of the party was a cousin of Nicholas ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... very. She's kind of middle-aged, I guess. She's real pleasant. Miss Walton thinks a lot ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... my appearance, and all for nothing! I won't be able to get up the enthusiasm a second time: I feel that. How I hate young men,—young men in the army especially! They are so selfish and so good-for-nothing, with no thought for any one on earth but Number One. Give me a respectable, middle-aged squire, with no aspirations beyond ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... in the ministrant's favor as she appeared, and were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as she paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to a swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coarse gown lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed well with the red and russet ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... was a middle-aged man with iron-gray hair. He was carrying his hat in his hand and enjoying the beauty and fragrance of the late ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook

... ready to sail. Your future convert, Hato, or Hatagee, appears to me lively, and intelligent, and promising, and possesses an interesting countenance. With regard to her disposition, I can say little, but Millingen, who has the mother (who is a middle-aged woman of good character) in his house as a domestic (although their family was in good worldly circumstances previous to the Revolution), speaks well of both, and he is to be relied on. As far as I know, I have only seen the child a few times with her mother, and what I have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... deadly monotony and narrowness of his life, thinks of going to Australia—and doesn't go: that is the sum and substance of the action. Also, by way of underplot, a shopgirl, oppressed by the deadly monotony and narrowness of her life, thinks of escaping from it by marrying a middle-aged widower—and doesn't do it. If any one had told the late Francisque Sarcey, or the late Clement Scott, that a play could be made out of this slender material, which should hold an audience absorbed through four acts, and stir them to real enthusiasm, these eminent critics would have thought ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... sharp knock sounded upon her door. Somewhat surprised, she opened it far enough to see a middle-aged woman attired in nurse's uniform standing in ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... she was invariably called. They were among the oldest summer residents, for their father had been among the first to recognize the attractions of The Beaches, and their childhood had been passed there. Now they were middle-aged women and their father was dead; but they continued to occupy season after season their cottage, the location of which was one of the most picturesque on the whole shore. The estate commanded a wide ocean view and included some charming woods on one side and a small, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... unaided up and down stairs, and sat in a large armchair close to the ball-room, with one of his pretty daughters near him, talking brightly, and occasionally stealing wistful glances at the dancers, who were visible through a high archway to his left. He was a thin, middle-aged man, with a curious, transparent look in his face—something crystalline ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... 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 for the horses, which our hostess put into an empty building, she ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... knuckles into the corners of his eyes, emitting that snore final and querulous of a middle-aged man awakened rudely. With a gesture brusque but flaccid he plucked aside the net and peered around. The bales of cotton cloth, the beads, the brass wire, the bottles of rum, had not been spirited away in the night. So far so good. The faithful servant of his employers was now ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... brusquerie, carefully avoiding the least movement of hands or head during converse. This was exceedingly difficult of attainment to me, and took me an infinite deal of time and trouble; but I had for my model a middle-aged Englishman who was staying in the same hotel as myself, and whose starched stolidity never relaxed for a single instant. He was a human iceberg—perfectly respectable, with that air of decent gloom ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... marry. Free to come and go. And he found he didn't even think of marrying. He didn't even want to come or go, particularly. A rather frumpy old bachelor, with thinning hair and a thickening neck. Much has been written about the unwed, middle-aged woman; her fussiness, her primness, her angularity of mind and body. In the male that same fussiness develops, and a certain primness, too. But he grows flabby ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... to it? Oh, mon Dieu! very simply. Four years ago, my wife being dead, my children married, I had just retired from my post as hall-porter at the college, when an advertisement in the newspaper chanced to meet my eye: "Wanted, an office-porter, middle-aged, at the Territorial Bank, 56, Boulevard Malesherbes. Good references." Let me confess it at the outset. The modern Babylon had always attracted me. Then, too, I felt myself still a young man. I saw before me ten good years during which I might earn a little money, a great ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... not expect middle-aged men to be as demonstrative as very young ladies; but he has as much real affection for you as ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... BALLESTED, middle-aged, wearing an old velvet jacket, and a broad-brimmed artist's hat, stands under the flagstaff, arranging the ropes. The flag is lying on the ground. A little way from him is an easel, with an outspread canvas. By the easel on a camp-stool, brushes, a palette, ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen

... how are you? and the worthy Lady Frances, your mother, and your excellent father, all well?—I'm delighted to hear it. Russelton," continued Sir Willoughby, turning to a middle-aged man, whose arm he held, "you remember Pelham—true Whig—great friend of Sheridan's?—let me introduce his son to you. Mr. Russelton, Mr. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in the present century; therefore, only those subjects have been treated which appeal with more than passing interest to all. For instance, the flying machine is engaging the attention of the old, the young and the middle-aged, and soon the whole world will be on the wing. Radium, "the revealer," is opening the door to possibilities almost beyond human conception. Wireless Telegraphy is crossing thousands of miles of space with invisible feet and making the nations of the earth as one. 'Tis the ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... they receive three per cent. of the purchase money, but that is a very poor sinking fund to provide for a middle-aged gentleman, who has probably a family to support; and absolute bankruptcy must be the result if there is, as on several large properties, an agent with ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... like Roddy. Then he had been middle-aged, with hanging jaw and weak eyelids, like Dr. Charles. Now he was old, old; he sat doubled up, coughing and weeping, in a chair. But you could see that Miss Kendal was proud of him. She thought him wonderful because he kept ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... came under our notice some years ago. A wealthy young Frenchman eloped from Bordeaux with the girl-wife of a middle-aged wine exporter. The runaways came to New York, and in a short time, through a specialist, the lady obtained, in an Iowa court, a divorce from her deserted husband. The deferred rite of matrimony was then solemnized between ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... I needn't tell you that you and your men are welcome," came Seaforth's greeting. He was hardly a middle-aged man, but three years of planter's life in Mindanao had brought deep gray streaks into ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock

... Moreover, he took Letta with him, and he hunted many a day through the jungles of that land in company with his friend Redpath, and his henchman Flinn. And, long afterwards, he returned to England, a sturdy middle-aged man, with a wife whose beauty was unabated because it consisted, chiefly, in that love of heart to God and man which lends never-fading loveliness to ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... insisted, if the people had been comely. She had noted a young man loafing before a shop, one unwashed hand holding the cord of an awning; a middle-aged man who had a way of staring at women as though he had been married too long and too prosaically; an old farmer, solid, wholesome, but not clean—his face like a potato fresh from the earth. None of them had ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... contributing soft thuds of a good-sized middle-aged body and Lizzie with a light scramble ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... Edith, and I think I may safely repeat my promise, provided we make camp a little later than usual this evening, and get started again by daylight to-morrow morning," answered the middle-aged lieutenant, who sat just back of the ladies and steered the boat. "Yon far-reaching land," he continued, "is Point Pelee, and from there the fort is ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... was more anxiety in store for me; for presently I noticed Scholastica leave the marquis, and go apart with a middle-aged man, with whom she conversed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... interesting and able work upon this subject recently issued from the press of the Civiale Remedial Agency, of 174 Fulton street, this city. The subject matter of this book cannot fail to interest every man, young or old, and must prove of special interest to men just married, and to that large class of middle-aged men who find to their surprise and chagrin that while their bodily health is apparently excellent, their procreative ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... company: Emerson, Parkman, Curtis, Norton, James, Eliot,—all teachers in various ways. Through their lectures, books, and speeches, they influenced college students at an impressible age; they appealed to young and to middle-aged men; and they furnished comfort and entertainment for the old. It would have been difficult to find anywhere in the country an educated man whose thought was not affected by some one of these seven; and their influence on editorial writers ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... Mayence will have neither, but has resolved to spring upon the Electoral Court at the last moment the name of the Grand Duke Karl of Hesse, a middle-aged man already married, and entirely under the dominance of his ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... who attended to the household of Bluebeard's Castle; suggested that Sir Grimthorpe (they had just knighted him) might be the better for a strychnine tonic; she had read somewhere that strychnine did wonders for middle-aged men who had led rather a rackety life ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... him amid the crowd of people who sat and knelt in front of her, blackening the dusk, a vague darkness in which she could at first distinguish nothing but an occasional white plume and a bald head. But her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and above the uninteresting backs of middle-aged men she recognised his thin sharp shoulders. She had been compelled to look up from her prayers, and she wondered if he had been thinking of her. If so, it was very wrong of him to interrupt her ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... the second of the Commissioners, was a tall, thin, middle-aged man, who had risen into his high situation in the army, and his intimacy with Cromwell, by his dauntless courage in the field, and the popularity he had acquired by his exalted enthusiasm amongst the military saints, sectaries, and Independents, who composed the strength of the existing army. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... mouth, stood beside her, reading the sheets of a letter which she handed to him as she herself finished them. Every now and then she spoke to him, and he replied. In the little scene, between the slender white-haired woman and the middle-aged man, there was something so intimate, so conjugal even, that Diana involuntarily turned away as though to watch it ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... this to be done? I remember on one occasion, when I was going in the evening to address a mass meeting of working-class girls, a stout, middle-aged lady bustling up to me in a morning conference we were holding, and exclaiming: "And what are you going to say to them? What can you say to them, except to tell them to take care of themselves and keep ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... articulate, it proved to be shouting blasphemies from the broad chest of a middle-aged man—an Italian of the type that grows stout and wears whiskers. The man was in bourgeois dress, and he stood with his hat off in front of the small station building, shaking his thick fist at the sky. No one was on the platform with him except the railway officials, who seemed ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... landing, I was accosted by a middle-aged gentlemanly man, on the subject of the outrage on board the boat, and as he appeared to have less of that swaggering air about him than most men in the south possess, I entered freely into conversation with him, and in a very short time our interchange of sentiments ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... be understood even than the coincidence of the Yellow God, but at my present age of forty-four, for the first time in my life I have committed the folly of what is called falling in love. It is not the case of a successful, middle-aged man wishing to ranger himself and settle down with a desirable partie, but of sheer, stark infatuation. I adore Barbara; the worse she treats me the more I adore her. I had rather that the Sahara flotation should fail than that she should refuse me. I would rather lose three-quarters ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... been moving with the Ridges since her departure. Milly's insistent ambitions had borne fruit. She had roused the quiescent Horatio. Hoppers' mail-order house offered a secure berth for a middle-aged man, who had rattled half over the American continent in search of stability. But, he told himself, the fire was not all out of his veins yet, and Milly supplied the incentive this time "to better himself." After some persuasion he had hired his friend Snowden, who had not yet been ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... This middle-aged, shrewd-looking individual had for half his life been chained to the desk, for he had been many years a clerk in the great merchant houses of the Medici. Until he was forty years old he had hardly gone outside his native city. In the latter half of the fifteenth century each Italian city ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... time there was a He-Gossip named Cyrenius Bizzy. Mr. Bizzy was Middle-Aged and had a Set of dark Chinchillas. He carried a Gold-Headed Cane on Sunday. His Job on this Earth was to put on a pair of Pneumatic Sneakers every Morning and go out and ...
— More Fables • George Ade

... from the popular despondency reflected in Hag. ii. 3, Jerusalem is still disconsolate (Zech. i. 17), there has been fasting and mourning, vii. 5, the city is without walls, ii. 5, the population scanty, ii. 4, and most of the people are middle-aged, few old or young, viii. 4, 5. The message they need is one of consolation and encouragement, and that is precisely the message that Zechariah brings: "I have determined in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah; ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... if I came back late, wouldn't I catch it?" he said with some irritation, slipping into his evening clothes and looking critically at his rather subdued reflection in the glass. "Jim tells me I'm getting in a rut, middle-aged, showing the wear. Perhaps." He rubbed his hand over the wrinkled cheek and frowned. "I have gone off a bit—sedentary life—six years. It does settle you. Hello! quarter of ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... singular enough that such a letter should have been written, under any circumstances, by a middle-aged courtier to an aged queen; but it becomes far more remarkable and extraordinary when we know that the life of Raleigh was not so much as threatened at the time when he wrote; and, so far had either of the parties ever been from entertaining any such affection the ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various

... 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, ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... as extinct as the muffin-man; young art-students from the suburbs, dressed in Liberty serges and velveteens, and reading ninepenny editions of Browning and Rossetti—though a few, already, were reading Yeats; middle-aged spinsters from Bayswater or South Kensington, who took their weekly concert as they took their daily bath; many earnest young men, soft-hatted and long-haired, studying scores; the usual contingent of the fashionable and economical lady; and the pale-faced business man, bringing ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... described as majestic and middle-aged, and both gods are regarded as the divine progenitors of royal races, for while the Heraclidae claimed Jupiter as their father, the Inglings, Skioldings, etc., held that Odin was the founder of their families. The most solemn oaths were sworn by Odin's spear as well as by Jupiter's ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... of a middle-aged lady, addressed as aunty; a youth called Albert, subsequently described by Garnet as the rudest boy on earth—a proud title, honestly won; lastly, a niece of some twenty years, stolid and ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... which she surveyed with pride. "That step-mother of Esther's now," she said. "I don't hold much with her. Flighty, I call her. Delicate, too, if looks don't lie. Men are queer. The only thing queerer is women. What d'ye suppose a sensible middle-aged man like Doctor Coombe ever saw in that pretty doll? And what did she see in him—old enough to be her father? A queer match, I call it. But they do say that her side of it is easy explained. Anyway it must have been a trying thing when the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... attend to took him up the old stone staircase (part of the house was very old) and made him pause before a door at which he knocked gently. "Come in," said a woman's voice, and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and curtains that Miss Kate, the thin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside, would not have had light enough for any other sort of work than the knitting which lay on the little table near her. But at present she was doing what required only the dimmest light—sponging the aching ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... The middle-aged lover stood bending forward, his face impatiently eager and his attitude as stiffly alert as that of a bird dog when the quail scent ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... began to get low, their tongues loosened, and at last, when the kettles were emptied and the pipes filled, fresh logs thrown on the fires, and their limbs stretched out around them, the babel of English, French, and Indian that arose was quite overwhelming. The middle-aged men told long stories of what they had done; the young men boasted of what they meant to do; while the more aged smiled, nodded, smoked their pipes, put in a word or two as occasion offered, and listened. While they conversed the quick ears ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... had come out with a milking pail. To her Norton marched up, and addressed her in French; Matilda could not understand a word of it; but presently Norton went off into the farm-house. Here, in the kitchen, they found the rest of the family. A pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman was busy with supper; a young pretty girl was helping her; and two men, travel-worn and bearing the marks of poverty, sat over the fire holding their heads. Norton entered into conversation here again. It was very amusing to Matilda, the play of face and interchange of ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner

... hair, who darted inflammatory looks at the women from behind the shop-windows, no Saint-Cyrion with delicate moustache, no doctors of twenty-five or poets of eighteen. Besides her father and the notabilities of the village, middle-aged dignitaries, nothing ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... come. Even if they did not, Robin would pervade their lives, in long clothes, short skirts, knickerbockers, trousers. He might, of course, some day choose a profession which would carry him to some distant land: to an Indian jungle or a West African swamp. But by that time his parents would be middle-aged people. And how would their love be then? Dion knew that now, when Rosamund and he were still young, both less than thirty, he would give a hundred Robins, even if they were all his own Robins, to keep his one Rosamund. That was probably quite natural now, for Robin ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... of the family flocked in with an alacrity which proved either that the bitter cold had sharpened their appetites, or that the old-fashioned one-o'clock dinner was a cheerful break in the monotony of the day. There was a middle-aged man, who was evidently the strong stay and staff on which the old people leaned. His wife was the housekeeper of the family, and she was emphatically the "house-mother," as the Germans phrase it. Every line of her good, but ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... a little by the somewhat convulsive gurgle that burst from Anne's lips. "I beg your pardon. I just happened to think of something." She turned away to say good-bye to the last of her remaining visitors,—two middle-aged ladies who had not made her acquaintance until after her marriage to Templeton Thorpe and therefore were not by way of knowing Mrs. Wintermill without the aid of opera-glasses. "Do come ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... the blue soldiers stood watchfully, his hands upon an Enfield rifle. The other, a middle-aged, weather-beaten sergeant-major who had been leaning against the rail, straightened himself and spoke, being now within a few feet of the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... flying, but, as she reached the largest group of rocks, her exalted mood suddenly dissipated and her high spirits came down to earth with a thud. Sitting on the other side of the rock, calmly smoking a cigar, was a middle-aged individual in a tweed coat and a soft hat. The creek, which they had imagined was their private ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... atmosphere was vibrant with his personality. There hung about the place an air of repressed expectancy. The room was electrically charged with the high-voltage of the man in the inner office. His secretary was a spare, middle-aged, anxious-looking woman in snuff-brown and spectacles; his stenographer a blond young man, also spectacled and anxious; his office boy a stern youth in knickers, who bore no relation to the slangy, gum-chewing, redheaded office boy of the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... always been given to paradoxes about space and time, and it seemed to me that Gibberne was really preparing no less than the absolute acceleration of life. Suppose a man repeatedly dosed with such a preparation: he would live an active and record life indeed, but he would be an adult at eleven, middle-aged at twenty-five, and by thirty well on the road to senile decay. It seemed to me that so far Gibberne was only going to do for any one who took his drug exactly what Nature has done for the Jews and Orientals, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... sent his three daughters, one a winning girl, one a blooming virgin, and one a middle-aged beauty, to allure him, but they could not. Buddha was proof against all the demon's arts, and his only trouble was whether it were well or not to preach his doctrines to men. Feeling how hard to gain was that which he had gained, and how enslaved men were ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... Sherman were secured to the rear wall at a considerable distance from each other, after an exhibition of reluctance on the part of Duke, during which he displayed a nervous energy and agility almost miraculous in so small and middle-aged a dog. Benches were improvised for spectators; the rats were brought up; finally the rafters, corn-crib, and hay-chute were ornamented with flags and strips of bunting from Sam Williams' attic, Sam returning from the excursion wearing ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... kept by certain middle-aged unmarried sisters; and we had many teachers, and among these a Miss Latournelle, who taught us English after a fashion, and presided over our clothes. I was under her care, and slept in her room, which was one of those in the gateway; and though she was always scolding me about some untidiness, ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... the streets, over fences, and across fields, and even up the steep sides of houses. Usually just as he had caught up with them he awoke. Most of all he dreamed he was pursuing Karl Wernberg, who was a middle-aged German and not hard to overtake. But Bob did not catch him because he always woke up ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene

... chamberlain, a middle-aged man of dignified appearance, advanced to meet us between bowing clients and tradesmen. He led us through cool passages lined with the intricate mosaic-work of Fez, past beggars who sat on stone benches whining out their blessings, and pale Fazi craftsmen laying a ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... letter of introduction to me presented it when seven days out. It was from the manager of a restaurant in San Francisco, and asked me to guide him in any way I could. The Swiss was middle-aged, and talked only of a raw diet. He was to go to the Marquesas to eat raw food. One would have thought a crude diet to be in itself an end in life. He spoke of it proudly and earnestly, as if cooking one's edibles were a crime or a vile thing. He told me ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... babies are in the General Orphan Asylum, up on Twenty-third street. Well, it happens that this institution is the Beaubien's sole charity—in fact, it is her particular hobby. I presume that she feels she is now a middle-aged woman, and that the time is not far distant when she will have to close up her earthly accounts and hand them over to the heavenly auditor. Anyway, this last year or two she has suddenly become philanthropic, and when the General Orphan Asylum was building ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... of the McLane party, but who came with them, had been kept in ignorance with regard to his age. He was apparently middle-aged, medium size, dark color, and of average intelligence. He accused William Knight, a farmer, of having enslaved him contrary to his will or wishes, and averred that he fled from him because he used him badly and kept mean overseers. Jack said that his master owned six farms and kept three ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... years, Vikram the Brave found himself at the age of thirty, a staid and sober middle-aged man, He had several sons—daughters are naught in India—by his several wives, and he had some paternal affection for nearly all—except of course, for his eldest son, a youth who seemed to conduct himself as though he had a claim to the succession. ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... admirably, nay, most touchingly, acted. MAUREL excellent as Germont Senior, and MONTARIOL quite the weak-minded masher Alfredo. What a different turn the story might have taken had it occurred to Violetta to have a flirtation with the handsome middle-aged pere noble! At one time it almost seemed as if there had been some change in motive of the Opera since I last saw it, and that the above original idea was about to be carried out. But no; in another second ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various

... and that's where Marcelle is clever. She makes the clothes suit you, and doesn't try to make a fashionable middle-aged woman out of you. She spoke of your hands too, said they looked so—so—sort of feminine as they lay on the arms of the chair. You are clever, Miss Doane, to always sit on one of those high-backed chairs when callers come; ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... attained such a pitch, that he made an expedition into the debatable land north of the Tungabhadra for the sole purpose of capturing the girl and adding her to his harem. I have already shown reasons for supposing that Bukka II. was a middle-aged man at his accession, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that this hot-blooded monarch was his younger brother, who began to reign in November 1406 A.D. His escapade must be narrated in full as told by Firishtah, since it led to ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... o'clock attired in a pepper-and-salt tweed suit and heavy tan boots, and, speaking German with evident pain, tactfully asked—everybody else drinking beer—for tea. The man across the way whispered to his companion and stared; a middle-aged man farther up the aisle stood stock-still and stared; a young woman at the other end of the car turned round and, gazing over the back of her chair, whispered ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... is a boy who wants board," announced Dick, as he threw open a door. Then the pair entered a living room, where a middle-aged woman sat by a table, ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.

... he said, "down at Shinglestrand. Golfing? No—yes. I did play one game, the first since the War, and rather a remarkable game it was. I'm a member of the golf-club there, and was down at the clubhouse one morning looking at the papers when a fat middle-aged man, about my age, asked me if I cared for a game. I didn't, but in a spirit of self-sacrifice said that I should be very glad. 'I think I ought to tell you,' he went on, 'that I don't care about playing with a 18-handicap ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various

... a middle-aged, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark-brown coloured hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth: was born in London, and for many years was a hose-factor in ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... naturally leads them to judge themselves more charitably. They find an apology for their short-comings and wrong-doings in another consideration. They know very well that they are not the same persons as the middle-aged individuals, the young men, the boys, the children, that bore their names, and whose lives were continuous with theirs. Here is an old man who can remember the first time he was allowed to go shooting. What a remorseless young ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... next to consider the character of the man now to be disinherited. I lay no stress upon the fact that I was then nothing, and am now a physician; my art will not help me here. As little do I insist that I was then young, and am now middle-aged, with my years as a guarantee against misconduct; perhaps there is not much in that either. But, gentlemen, at the time of my previous expulsion, if I had never done my father any harm (as I should maintain), neither had ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... came up to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and gave him a kiss in a simple and motherly way, saying, "So here you actually are, my dear boy, and very much welcome." She then presented the other lady, a small, snub-nosed, middle-aged woman, saying, "This is Miss Merry, who lives with me, and keeps me more or less in order; she is quite excited at meeting a don; she has a respect for learning and talent, which is unhappily rare nowadays." Miss Merry shook hands as a spaniel might give its paw, and looked ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... at a table near our own. They wear the loose, coloured robes of soft material that are the usual wear of common adult Utopian women; they are both dark and sallow, and they affect amber and crimson in their garments. Their faces strike me as a little unintelligent, and there is a faint touch of middle-aged coquetry in their bearing that I do not like. Yet on earth we should consider them women of exceptional refinement. But the botanist evidently sees in this direction scope for the feelings that have wilted a little under my inattention, and he begins that petty intercourse of a word, of a slight ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... grant us an interview. Accompanied by an aide-de-camp, we drove to the Palace on the banks of the Angara, and were ushered into the presence of the Tsar's Viceroy, who governs a district about the size of Europe. General Panteleyeff was a middle-aged man, with white moustache, light blue eyes, and a spare athletic figure, displayed to advantage by a smart dark green uniform. The General is a personal friend of the Emperor, and the cross of St. Andrew and a tunic covered with various orders bore witness to their wearer's distinguished ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... she had a box of candy, but it was a 25c box and had been opened, so I thought it may be nearly anything just put in the box. The next store she went into was a nice-looking meat market and grocery combined, I followed in behind her. A nice-looking middle-aged man gave her a bundle that was large enough to hold a 50c meat roast. It was neatly tied, and the wrapping paper was white, I observed. She thanked him. She turned to me and said, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... venture in for instructions, and be gruffly told to take his team and do so and so. 'Eez, zur,' he would reply, 'uz did thuck job isterday.' His master had ordered him to do it the day before, but was oblivious that twenty-four hours had passed. The middle-aged men stood this continuous drinking without much harm, their constitutions having become hardened and 'set,' but it killed off numbers of ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... neighbourhood, four modes of disposing of the dead obtain, according to Mr. Meyer:—old persons are buried; middle-aged persons are placed in a tree, the hands and knees being brought nearly to the chin, all the openings of the body, as mouth, nose, ears, etc. being previously sewn up, and the corpse covered with mats, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... own tribute by referring to a graceful remark he made the first time I had the pleasure of meeting him. I heard someone say: "Here comes Mr. Blaine," and as I turned and he was formally presented to me I saw before me a distinguished looking middle-aged man of commanding presence, who, as he raised his hat to greet me, remarked in a low and pleasant voice: "I bow to ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... that of a middle-aged, fine-looking man, his head covered with the fur, ear-lapped cap that Norwegians affect, even in the tropics. The eyes were wide open, the face discolored. In the last gasp of suffocation the set of false teeth had been forced half-way out of his mouth, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... of Tibetans are singularly picturesque, from the variety in their parti-coloured dresses, and their odd appearance. First comes a middle-aged man or woman, driving a little silky black yak, grunting under his load of 260 lb. of salt, besides pots, pans, and kettles, stools, churn, and bamboo vessels, keeping up a constant rattle, and perhaps, buried amongst all, a rosy-cheeked ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... the middle of the town where the more populous streets are. You ought to notice how the colours of the clothes differ for the different ages of the people: the grandmothers and grandfathers wear dark purples and sombre hues; the middle-aged people have soft colouring, grey greens and palish shades; and the children are very gay, in every imaginable colour and often all mixed together. The girls have all a broad sash called an obi, humped up in a funny way behind their bodies; in the children this becomes ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... going its round. On and on it goes. Some are stepping on and 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 hand was laid upon ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... the next century is inevitably judged. The effect of his sudden uprising is almost as confusing to our judgments of his own poetry as of that of his unhappy 'successors.' Brought up, as most of us poor middle-aged critics have been, on textbooks which grudgingly devoted a scanty thirty or forty pages to all that happened ere Surrey and Wyatt began to write an English which literary historians could read without taking any trouble, we inevitably got it into our heads that with Chaucer we were at the very beginning; ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... imagine romance apart from youth. That is why the roles of the heroes and heroines of plays are given by the managers to the most youthful actors they can find among the competent. Both middle-aged people and young people enjoy a play about young lovers; but only middle-aged people will tolerate a play about middle-aged lovers; young people will not come to see such a play, because, for them, middle-aged lovers are a joke—not a very funny one. Therefore, to bring both the middle-aged people ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... the boys and young men who had gone, wrote Mrs. Mason, but the middle-aged men, too. Dr. Russell had kept the Pendleton Academy open, but he had no pupil over sixteen years of age. There were no trustees, because they had all gone to the war. Senator Culver had been killed in the fighting in Tennessee, but she heard that Colonel Kenton was ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... got the call as he was leaving the maternity ward. He took the elevator down and found a rather sloppily dressed, middle-aged man sitting on a lounge beside a weather-beaten camera that tended to mark ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman

... and Phineas Finn with his scheme of municipal Home Rule for Ireland, and Lord Ramsden with a codified Statute Book,—all full of work, all with something special to be done. But for him,—he had to arrange who should attend the Queen, what ribbons should be given away, and what middle-aged young man should move the address. He sighed as he thought of those happy days in which he used to fear that his mind and body would both give way under the ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... day a handsome middle-aged gentleman, in the dress of one of his own countrymen, attended by a great officer of the Dey, entered the ship-yard, and called up before him the American captives. The stranger was none other than Joel Barlow, Commissioner of the United States to procure the liberation of slaves belonging ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... outer room, and, later, he would pass Bunning in the Court without knowing him. He would be introduced one day to Margaret Craven and find the house in which she lived a charming comfortable place, full of light and air, with a croquet lawn at the back of it, and Mrs. Craven, a nice ordinary middle-aged woman, stout possibly and fond of gossip. And instead of being President of the Wolves and a person of importance in the College he would be once again his old self, knowing nobody, scornful of the whole world and of the next world as well. And this brought him up ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... a little start of surprise. A tall, middle-aged man, with a single streak of white hair through the brown, was gazing ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers

... paying one another compliments after this fashion, while I regarded him with the interest which the middle-aged bestow on the young and gallant in whom they see their own youth and hopes mirrored, when the door was again opened, and after a moment's pause admitted, equally, I think, to the disgust of M. Francois, and myself, the form ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... this eternal cry about the use of a thing. Poetry is the sort of beacon-light of man. What's wrong with you is that you've read the wrong stuff. It is all very well for a middle-aged man to worship Wordsworth and calm philosophy. But youth wants colour, life, passion, the poetry of revolt. Now look here, let me read you this, and then tell me what ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... at the age of fifteen, he was, from the little comfort he experienced, very desirous of quitting the school, and, as he truly said, he had not a spark of ambition. Near the school there resided a worthy, and, in their rank of life, a respectable middle-aged couple. The husband kept a little shop, and was a shoemaker, with whom Coleridge had become intimate. The wife, also, had been kind and attentive to him, and this was sufficient to captivate his affectionate ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... came forth in the morning she wore the high look she had been wont to wear in the years gone by, when she ruled in her father's house, and rode to the hunt with a following of gay middle-aged and elderly rioters. Her eye was brilliant, and her colour matched it. She held her head with the old dauntless carriage, and there was that in her voice before which her women quaked, and her lacqueys hurried to ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... ten sportsmen equipped with rifles and other accoutrements; two young men, one of them a lawyer, the other a merchant (as I discovered from their conversation); an elderly gentleman, evidently of wealth and position, whom the young lawyer addressed as "Judge;" a middle-aged widow from Chicago; a brisk little milliner on her way back to some Pennsylvania village with the latest fashions from New York; and myself, a lively girl just out of school. There was also a negro huddled up in the farthest corner of the car, whose business ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... breathe freely there. It is not a country weighed down with standing armies and conscriptions and fortifications. How could one live in a town like Coblentz, or Metz, or Brest? The poor wretches marching this way and marching that—you watch them from your hotel window—the young men and the middle-aged men—and you know that they would rather be away at their farms, or in their factories, or saw-pits, or engine-houses, working for ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... man, "I rather think there was something of the sort. The boy's uncle—Captain Stewart—middle-aged, rather prim old party—you'll have met him, I dare say—he intimated to me one day that there had been some trivial row. You see, the lad isn't of age yet, though he is to be in a few months, and so he has had to live ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... yard cough' at times still," said he, when speaking of this little episode of early life. "I don't think I shall ever live to be a middle-aged man." And he shook his head, and looked melancholy and poetical; nay, even showed Elizabeth some poetry that he himself had written on the subject, which was clever enough in ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... course, in the matter of golf, women—many of them no more than girls—play so well that men cannot affect any assurance of superiority. On my own course I sometimes come upon a middle-aged married couple playing with great contentment a friendly game. The wife always drives the longer ball, and upon most occasions manages to give her husband a ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... the course of his wanderings through, the western wilds of our country, came to a single cabin in one of the remotest and most inaccessible of our mountain territories. The only inmates in that lonely home were a middle-aged woman and four girls, ranging from eight to fifteen. The father was a miner, who spent a large part of the time in digging or "prospecting" for precious ores, as yet with only moderate success. The matron did ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... fitful, irritating way—little gritty pellets that blew into his face. He had nowhere to go—four o'clock is a dead time to drop in on people! He had nothing to do, and nothing to think of—except the foolish, middle-aged woman, stating, in their dreary third-floor front, an undeniable fact—he was tired of her! Walking aimlessly about in the cold, he said to himself, dully, "Why was I such an idiot as to marry her?" He was old enough to curse himself for his folly, but he was young enough to suffer, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... great trees seemed to reach out to her a protecting shelter. She spoke to the horse. Beyond the farm-house, on the other side of the road, was a group of gray, slate-shingled barns, and here two figures confronted her. One was that of the comfortable, middle-aged Mr. Jenney himself, standing on the threshold of the barn, and laughing heartily, and crying: "Hang on to him That's right—get him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Peterson, my old skipper, much as I had expected. He was a middle-aged, placid, well-poised man, a pessimist in speech, but a bold man in soul. He was fond of an evening pipe, and he sat now smoking and looking down the illuminated lane made by our search-light. He turned toward me, a sudden curiosity upon his face as he saw that I was a stranger on the boat, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... he said to Magnus, indicating a certain middle-aged man, flamboyantly dressed, who wore his hair long, who was afflicted with sore eyes, and the collar of whose velvet coat was sprinkled with dandruff, "that's Hartrath, the artist, a man absolutely ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... said Raven, with a ready cheerfulness he was aware she could not understand. How should she? He had not been in the habit of troubling Dick, or indeed any one, with his vaporings. He had lived, of late years, as a sedate, middle-aged gentleman should, with no implication of finding the world any less roseate than his hopes had promised. As to Dick, the very sight of him had shown him beyond a doubt how little disposed he was to take the lad into that area of tumultuous discontent which was now his mind. "Fire away," ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... the cabin a middle-aged major with a monocle, none other than our old friend, Major Hardy of the Rangoon. He fixed us with his monocle and said: "Well, I'm damned! Young Ray! Young Doe! Young Padre!" Immediately there followed a fine ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... The old and the middle-aged are more attended to here than with us, where the young are all in all. As Hayward said to me the other evening, "it takes time to make PEOPLE, like cathedrals," and Mr. Rogers and Miss Berry could not have ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)

... an 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 ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... maniacally yanks the bell cord is believed by his victims to be one of hellish glee; so they eagerly seek each morning for one little remaining trace of this. The tiniest hint would suffice. But they encounter only a rather sad-faced, middle-aged Chinaman, with immovable eyes and a strained devotion to delicate tasks, of whom it is impossible to believe that ever a ray ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... in hand, smiling at me with pleasant cordiality. His red hair had faded to a harmless carrot. From an overtopping rascal he had dwindled to my shoulder. It was as strange and incomprehensible as if the broken middle-aged gentleman, my familiar neighbor across the street who nods all day upon his step, were pointed out to me as Captain Kidd retired. Can it be that all villains come at last to a slippered state? Does Dick Turpin of the King's highway now falter with crutch along a garden path? And Captain ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... saddest sights in New York is that of a pale-faced, light- haired woman, middle-aged, who can frequently be seen sitting on a Broadway curbstone behind a small hand-organ, from which she grinds a plaintive tune, the notes of which are seldom heard above the thunder of the street. She always appears bareheaded, and with a small child in her lap. The little straw hat of the babe ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... Sewing Circle, and, above all, the Chief Pharisee, sitting in his high place. The Chief Pharisee—his name I learned was Nash, Mr. J. H. Nash (I did not know then that I was soon to make his acquaintance)—the Chief Pharisee looked as hard as nails, a middle-aged man with stiff chin-whiskers, small round, sharp eyes, ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... God's sake bring her home! If the thing has to go on, send over there some of the middle-aged women who have no ties. Let 'em get shot if they want to. They can write as good reports as she can, if that's all you want. And make as ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... where the Earl of W—— lived. There was a very fine house and a great deal of stabling. We went into the yard through a stone gateway, and John asked for Mr. York. It was some time before he came. He was a fine-looking, middle-aged man, and his voice said at once that he expected to be obeyed. He was very friendly and polite to John, and after giving us a slight look, he called a groom to take us to our boxes, and invited John ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell

... door having opened to its fullest, Barnabas saw a stout, middle-aged woman whose naturally unlovely look had been further marred by the loss of one eye, while the survivor, as though constantly striving to make amends, was continually rolling itself up and down and to and fro, in a manner ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... well paid for their complicity as soon as they have obtained a footing anywhere, and drain their patients of their secrets, in order to use them as a weapon for extorting money on occasions. He felt sure immediately that this middle-aged lady wanted something of him, as by some extraordinary perversion of taste, he was rather fond of the remains of a good-looking woman, if they were well got up, and offered to him; of that high flavor which arises from soft lips, which had been made tender ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... pier to the two brothers, a middle-aged, bow-legged, leathery fellow with a ragged grey beard and a ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford









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