"Thickset" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commanded the Windsor Castle was an original. His figure was short and thickset, his face broad, and deeply pitted with the small-pox, his nose an apology for a nose, being a small tubercle arising mid-way between his eyes and mouth, the former of which were small, the latter wide, and displaying a magnificent row of white teeth. On the whole, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... by the Eureka Mining Company lying on their backs on the grassy site of the prospective quartz mill, not far from the equally hypothetical "slide" to the gulch. He came by the future stage road—at present a thickset jungle of scrub-oaks and ferns. He was accompanied by Captain Jim, who had gone to meet him on the trail, and for a few moments all critical inspection of himself was withheld by the extraordinary effect he seemed to have upon ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... you know about this!" growled the thickset man, in utter disgust. "Do we hunt for a ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... hull the waves gnashed and fought like white wolves, leaping high, flinging themselves upon her. In the recoil Captain Holt's quick eye got a glimpse of the crew; two were lashed to the rigging and one held the tiller—a short, thickset man, wearing what appeared to be a slouch hat tied over his ears by ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... other works published by the Shakers, there are recorded details of her life and conversation, from which one gets the idea that she was a woman of practical sense, sincerely pious, and humble-minded. She was "rather below the common stature of woman, thickset but straight, and otherwise well-proportioned and regular in form and feature. Her complexion was light and fair, and her eyes were blue, but keen and penetrating; her countenance mild and expressive, but grave and solemn. ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... of the century there began to appear "ready-made clothes for men." Jolley Allen advertised such, and under that name, in 1768, "Coats, Silk Jackets, Shapes and Cloth Ditto; Stocking Breeches of all sizes & most colours. Velvet Cotton Thickset Duroy Everlasting & Plush Breeches. Sailors Great Coats, outside & inside Jackets, Check Shirts, Frocks, long and wide Trowzers, Scotch bonnets & Blue mill'd Shirts." But women's clothes were made to order in the town by mantua makers, and in the country by travelling tailoresses ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... cut, chop up, hack, hew; cut down, pare down; clip, dock, lop, prune, shear, shave, mow, reap, crop; snub; truncate, pollard, stunt, nip, check the growth of; foreshorten (in drawing). Adj. short, brief, curt; compendious, compact; stubby, scrimp; shorn, stubbed; stumpy, thickset, pug; chunky [U.S.], decurtate^; retrousse^; stocky; squab, squabby^; squat, dumpy; little &c 193; curtailed of its fair proportions; short by; oblate; concise &c 572; summary. Adv. shortly &c adj.; in short ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... bosoms. We long to lead the new Napoleon, the absolute Nicholas, the frank, hospitable, and brave, but sometimes overconfident American, to this green sward of Runnymead and tell them that here was secured to the Englishman a liberty which other nations have never enjoyed! Here in the thickset beauty of yon little island, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... in them, while crow lines in their corners gave them a laughing expression. His firm mouth and square chin showed that he could mingle seriousness with mirth. He was considerably under the average height, but thickset and strong. ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... summer waxed to its fullness of fire and fruition. There were days when the crowded forest seemed choked and impeded with its own foliage, and pungent and stifling with its own rank maturity; when the long hillside ranks of wild oats, thickset and impassable, filled the air with the heated dust of germination. In this quickening irritation of life it would be strange if the unfortunate man's torpid intellect was not helped in its awakening, and he was allowed to ramble at will over the ranch; but with the instinct of a domestic ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... admitted her and she stepped into the hall and stood waiting. Back in the shadow, in an open doorway, Mrs. Mosby and a stout, thickset man with stubbly black hair were talking in low tones. The Negro woman hurried past them back into the passage, and they moved aside a little as she passed. The last words of the conversation came faintly to Mary Louise's ears; ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Dirk van Goorl and his son Foy—there was no mistaking their relationship. Save that he had grown somewhat portly and thoughtful, Dirk was the Dirk of five and twenty years ago, thickset, grey-eyed, bearded, a handsome man according to the Dutch standard, whose massive, kindly countenance betrayed the massive, kindly mind within. Very like him was his son Foy, only his eyes were blue instead of grey, and his hair was yellow. Though they seemed ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they should not, sooner or later, have been blown down. But when the storm is over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, towering fresh and unscathed in erect ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... behave himself." "I'se warrant he's do that, doctor;" and in slunk the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled, and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thickset, like a little bull—a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—being all he had—gleaming out of his jaws ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... an easy one, for a quarter of a mile, and came to a valley thickset with bushes and ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of you, and you get a bullet out of your own gun!" I warned him; and then I got speech with the driver, a squat, thickset Irishman, whose face and brogue were both ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... also, Uliades of Samos," said a thickset and burly Greek who had joined the group unobserved, "I demand justice. What, by the Gods! Are we to be all equals in the day of battle? 'My good sir, march here;' and, 'My dear sir, just run into that breach;' and yet when we have won the victory and ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... The sound dies down the stream Till it only clings at the senses' edge Like a half-remembered dream. Doubtless, he in the silence lies, His fair face turned to the tender skies, Starlight touching his sleeping eyes. While his boat caught in the thickset sedge And the waters round it gurgle and sob, Or floats set free on the river's ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... to his feet, carbine in hand, for from out the thickset jungle there emerged a thing of horror ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... of the road was gradually becoming more gentle. In the valley below there are meadows extending as far as the Viorne, which runs at the other end, beneath a range of low hills. These meadows, separated from the high-road by thickset hedges, are the meadows ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... had been as vigorous in body as he ought to have been, would he have died? She had read somewhere lately that physical delicacy was apt to react on the mind and make one's ideas too fine-spun and unsubstantial. Here was the advantage which a man like Mr. Lyons had over Wilbur. He was strong and thickset, and looked as though he could endure hard work without wincing. So could she. It was a great boon, an essential of effective manhood or womanhood. These thoughts followed in the wake of the enthusiasm ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... in answer to this summons was a thickset sturdy Norfolk man, with an intelligent face and shrewd dark eyes. On the chief constable informing him that he was to give the gentlemen the details of the Golden Anchor murder, he produced a notebook from his tunic, and commenced ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... impatient, staring past them, beating the road with his stick. He was thickset and square. He had the stooping head and heavy eyes of a bull. Black hair and eyebrows grew bushily from his dull-white ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... various points of the dog should be symmetrical and well balanced, no one point being in excess of the others so as to destroy the impression of determination, strength, and activity which is conveyed by the typical specimen. His body should be thickset, rather low in stature, but broad, powerful, and compact. The head should be strikingly massive and large in proportion to the dog's size. It cannot be too large so long as it is square; that is, it must not be wider than it is deep. The larger the head in circumference, caused by the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... noted statesman of the day was the subject of this narrative. Short, thickset, and muscular in person, and strong in intellect Stephen A. Douglass came to be known ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... horses were serviceable animals, with thickset knees and legs that had some difficulty in moving. Like the carriage, they belonged to the earlier part of the century. They were not as fleet as the English horses of M. Fouquet, and consequently it took two hours to get to Saint-Mande. Their progress, it might be said, was majestic. ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... infites you to come," said the Baron, a thickset Alsatian, with indications of a sinister cunning in his full-moon countenance, "you are quide ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... of the passengers, rather those of the gentler sex than the rude one, had, however, given attention to the figure which the flowing cloak did not wholly muffle. With his dark complexion and slender form, not much in keeping with the thickset and heavy-footed natives, and his glistening black eyes, he made the corner where he ensconced himself appear the nook where an Italian or Spanish gallant was ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... visitor from shore, who came and departed in a crowded whale-boat manned by natives; having read of yachts in the Sunday papers, and being fired with the desire to see one. Captain Chase, they called him, an old whaler-man, thickset and white-bearded, with a strong Indiana drawl; years old in the country, a good backer in battle, and one of those dead shots whose practice at the target struck terror in the braves of Haamau. Captain Chase dwelt farther east in a bay called Hanamate, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ancient Badia of Fiesole, descends in front of the three-arched loggia which protects the entrance to the church. No extended prospect is open to it; though over the low wall, and through the sharp, thickset olive leaves, may be seen one silver gleam of the Arno, and, at evening, the peaks of the Carrara mountains, purple against the twilight, dark and calm, while the fire-flies glance beneath, silent and intermittent, like stars upon the rippling of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... flung himself into the fray with that unyielding intensity of fervour, that passion for the extreme and the absolute, which is the very lifeblood of the Church of Rome. Even the redoubtable Dr. Errington, short, thickset, determined, with his 'hawk-like expression of face', as a contemporary described him, 'as he looked at you through his blue spectacles', had been known to quail in the presence of his, antagonist, with his tall and graceful figure, his pale ascetic features, his compressed and icy lips, his ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... the place, two men confronted them at the door. One was Mr. Scully, he of the ground-floor apartment, the other a short, thickset man, who at once announced himself as the ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... arrive were the guides of Grindelwald. I uttered a cry of joy when Pierre Bohren appeared, a man of low stature but thickset limbs, and Jean Almer, who was tall and robust. Both were chamois hunters, renowned for their intrepidity. They looked at me with curious attentiveness. They confessed, with the frank cordiality peculiar to these brave mountaineers, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... singularly white and delicate. Very tall and spare, and both face and figure were of that exalted kind which make ordinary beauty seem dross. In short, he was one of those ethereal priests the Roman Catholic Church produces every now and then by way of incredible contrast to the thickset peasants in black that form her staple. This Brother Leonard looked and moved like a being who had come down from some higher sphere to pay the world a very little visit, and be very kind and patient with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... business might have compared it, likening small things to great, to walls or many thickset islands being besieged by sea. Thus the one party strove to scale the boats like some land or fortress and eagerly brought to bear everything that contributed to this result. The others tried to repel them, devising every means that is commonly used ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... Had lost his way between the piney hills. They came—all three—the Olympian goddesses. Naked they came to the smoothswarded bower, Lustrous with lilyflower, violeteyed Both white and blue, with lotetree-fruit thickset, Shadowed with singing-pine; and all the while, Above, the overwandering ivy and vine This way and that in many a wild festoon Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs With bunch and berry and flower thro' and thro'. ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the above conversation, two respectable individuals called upon me at Mr Clayton's house—the accredited messengers of the church in which my eternal safety was about to be secured. One was a thickset man, with large black whiskers and corresponding eyebrows. His countenance had a stern expression—the eye especially, which lay couched like a tiger beneath its rugged overhanging brow. You did not like to look at it, and you could not meet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... beside her. His curious eyes at once perceived the hideous, thickset lizard that lay flattened upon the shadowed sand as if in a torpor. The reptile's dirty orange-mottled black body was as loathsome as its ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... The thickset man advanced his face, and the bread became a physical threat in his hand. Denton's mind rushed together to the one problem ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... as the door closed behind her. He was a short, thickset man, not in the least like Lawrence, who was ten years his junior. Two years previously he had made a furtive attempt to pay court to Bessy Houghton for the sake of her wealth, and her decided repulse of his advances was a remembrance that made him grit his teeth ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... tall, thin; strong, wiry, and black-bearded. The lieutenant was very short, thickset, deep-chested, and powerful. Tom himself was burly, ruddy, broad, ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... great stairway—the scalone, as Italy had taught Raymond to call it. This was an ample affair with an elaborate handrail, whose function was nullified by potted plants, and with a commodious landing, whose corners contained many thickset palms. A crowd swarmed up; a crowd swarmed down; the hundreds were congested among the palms. Johnny, with his wife on his arm, was robust and hearty, and smiled on things in general as he fought their way up. He took the occasion as he took any other occasion: much for granted, ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... called down, announcing simply that the voyage was ended: and in the dusk there I saw monk after monk upheave himself from the straw and come clambering up the ladder; tall monks and short, old monks and young and middle-aged, lean monks and thickset—but the most of them cadaverous, and all of them yellow with sea-sickness; twenty-eight monks, all barefoot, all tolerably dirty, and all blinking in the fresh sunshine. When they were gathered, at a sign from one of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... that, Fandor?" continued Juve, who was getting excited at last.... "I grant you that we have seen, in the course of our chequered existence, an old gentleman, like Etienne Rambert, a thickset Englishman like Gurn, a robust fellow like Loupart, a weak and sickly individual like Chaleck. We have identified each one of them, in turn, as ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... not quite so short as Carrissima, she had a thickset but flat figure, and a conscientious objection to make her drabbish-coloured hair appear more plentiful than ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... in spite of the prevailing dullness, at the prospect of the warm, familiar evening. He was continually obliged to step off the pavement into the road, to allow a bunch of merry, chattering girls, their cheeks coloured by the wind beneath the dark fur of their hats, or a line of gaudy capped, thickset students, to pass him by, unbroken; and it seemed to him that he was more frequently off the pavement than on it. He began to feel disconsolate among these jovial people, who were hastening forward, with such spirit, to some end, and he had not gone far, before he turned down a side ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... opened their surgical cases and displayed the array of glittering steel instruments within. One of them was a youngish man, pale, bald, and with feminine hands and a hard mouth, with a continual and visible contraction of the lower jaw, which was extraordinarily developed. The other was a thickset man of mature years with a freckled face, bushy red beard and the neck of an ox. The one seemed the antithesis of the other, and their disparity excited Sperelli's curiosity and attention. They set out upon a table bandages and carbolic ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... hell. My heart sank down as I entered, and wearily there I sat While the chairman strove to end his maunder of this and of that. And partly shy he seemed, and partly indeed ashamed Of the grizzled man beside him as his name to us he named. He rose, thickset and short, and dressed in shabby blue, And even as he began it seemed as though I knew The thing he was going to say, though I never heard it before. He spoke, were it well, were it ill, as though a message he bore, A word that he could not refrain ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... remained nameless. He was of a graceful and delicate build and fast, quite unlike the heavier, thickset, thick-coated native dogs; his hair was short, soft, and silky. His appearance had condemned him to an isolated and lonely life. Attempts at participation in the canine social life had failed deplorably; ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... doubt, alone, save for his disciple John, holding the crucifix aloft, he walked slowly up the wide road towards the place where he guessed that the king must be. His arm was weary ere ever he reached it, but at length he found himself standing before a thickset old man, who was clad in leopard skins and seated upon a stool ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... back yonder, haven't you?" he asked, abruptly, nodding toward a landward stretch of ground shut off from the lawn by a thickset hedge of oleander. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... the office of Scott & Rand he came face to face with a thickset, florid-faced man and a slender, dark-eyed youth, who had just stepped ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... thickset man with a firm, clean-shaven jaw and a face furrowed by deep lines, but with eyes that oddly enough looked comparatively youthful and capable not only of appreciating humor, but even of manufacturing ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... on the after-deck of the Negros during our stay at Jolo was a former soldier, John Jennings by name. He was an operative of the Philippine Secret Service, being engaged at the time in breaking up the running of opium from Borneo across the Sulu Sea to the Moro islands. Jennings is a short, thickset, powerfully-built man, all nerve and no nerves. Adventure is his middle name. He has lived more stories than I could invent. Shortly before our arrival at Jolo Jennings had learned from a native in his pay that a son of the Flowery Kingdom, the proprietor ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... moment a small crowd was visible in one of the further drawing-rooms, moving obsequiously along in reverent attendance upon the great Towle, Mrs. Bridgeman and a thickset, red-faced lady, without a waist and plainly clad in untrimmed linsey-wolsey, who was speaking authoritatively to a hysterical-looking young girl, upon whose narrow shoulder she rested a heavy, fat-fingered hand as ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the door as instructed, but she swung it wide because one of the men outside was a policeman. The man behind him was a thickset, squat individual, with puffed, discoloured eyes and a nose that reminded ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... so. A moment or so after Mr. Kincaid had disappeared, the little boy became aware of a man approaching across the stump-dotted field. He was a short, thickset man, with a broad face almost entirely covered with a beard, a thick nose, and little, inflamed snapping eyes. He was clad in faded and dingy overalls, and ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... sixteen years, not tall, but very thickset and stout built, broad shouldered, deep chested, and strong limbed. His long silky locks were a rich nut-brown, and his sparkling eyes were dark and gentle as those of a fallow deer. The sun and the bracing sea air had made ruddy his fair skin, even ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... Bahama Bill presented himself. The boys had been told how he looked, yet they had all they could do to keep from smiling when he presented himself. He was a short, thickset man, with broad shoulders, and legs which were very much bowed. He wore his reddish hair long and also sported a thick beard. He had a squint in one eye which, as Sam said, "gave him the appearance of looking continually over his ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... at this time as short, thickset, bowlegged, with the rapid and jerky gait of an English boy. His face, surrounded by dark curly hair, wore a grave, half-melancholy look; but it would light up expressively when he talked. He was a noted walker; ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... A thickset, powerful figure paced to and fro on the quarter-deck, occasionally bellowing an order in a tremendous voice like the roar of a bull. He was getting canvas set for the fresh breeze of the open seas that was catching him astern, and the sailors were jumping to obey his ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... was travelling on foot entered the little town of D——The few inhabitants who were at their windows or on their thresholds at the moment stared at this traveller with a sort of uneasiness. It was difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance. He was a man of medium stature, thickset and robust, in the prime of life. He might have been forty-six or forty-eight years old. A cap with a drooping leather visor partly concealed his face, burned and tanned by sun and wind, and dripping with perspiration. His shirt of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... considered himself very much a ladies' man, also an accomplished athlete, and positively the last word in electrical knowledge. He was donning his working garments in very leisurely fashion when a short, broad-shouldered, thickset young man came back toward ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... great shout rolled up from the crowd below. Nearly a thousand people had gathered. The street was crowded and in the open space beyond they stood in little groups. On a slight eminence near the lake bluff, a man stood haranguing those around him. He was a short, very thickset little man, with very long arms—a squat, apelike figure. He talked loudly and indignantly; around him perhaps a hundred people ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... incident as closed. "Get up on that waggon, Flack," he said to a thickset, wiry little man. "Boon, take ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... slowly, and out of the half obscurity of the passage a thickset figure lurched toward him into the full light of the room. Randolph half rose, and then sank back into his chair, awed, spellbound, and motionless. He saw the figure standing plainly before him; he saw distinctly the familiar furniture of his room, the storm-twinkling lights ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and horses broke up at length, scattered in all directions, and within five minutes she looked up to find her husband in the doorway—a thickset man, with more of force than perception in his blunt features ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Both on the upper and lower arm the hairs are directed toward the elbow, where they meet at an obtuse angle—this striking arrangement is only found in man and the anthropoid apes, the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and several species of gibbons. The fine short hairs on the body become developed into "thickset, long, and rather coarse dark hairs," when abnormally nourished near old-standing inflamed surfaces.[32] The fine wool-like hair or so-called lanugo with which the human foetus, during the fifth and sixth months, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... rapidly round the corner, drew up at the gate. Elvin Drew jumped down, and helped out his companion, a short, rather thickset girl, with smooth, dark hair, honest eyes, and a sensitive mouth. She came quickly up the path, after an embarrassed word of thanks to ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... out of the place, some of them staggering. With the new arrivals came one whom Dick and his friends rightly guessed to be Miller—-a thickset man, with swaggering manner, insolent expression and ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... a kind of insanity peculiar to all headquarters, arising out of an exaggerated idea of his own importance. I had the pleasure, a few minutes afterward, of hearing him ordered to feed my horse. A thickset, gray-haired man sat near by, undergoing the process of shaving by a very nervous negro. The thickset man was also exercising the privileges of his rank; but the more he berated his attendant's awkwardness, the more nervous the other became. I addressed myself ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... medium, who was accustomed to regard men from a special angle. Backhouse, on the contrary, was a novelty to the merchant. As he tranquilly studied him through half closed lids and the smoke of a cigar, he wondered how this little, thickset person with the pointed beard contrived to remain so fresh and sane in appearance, in view of the morbid nature ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... in the road, a short, thickset brigand by the look of him, rushed up to the car, hat in ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the Restoration. House of the "Knights of Idlesse" captained by Maxence Gilet. A former groom; born about 1767; short, thickset, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... thickset man, of about middle age, upon whose upper lip bristled a fringe of reddish hair. His eyes were blue, narrow and evil, and his face was scarred ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... local knowledge was being authenticated at every step. Such a sound was almost uncouth in such a locality; and there, overhanging a jutting angle of red rock, was the predicted bush with keen prickles thickset on limber branches. Half amused, I climbed to the spot, and, clinging precariously to the principal stem, cut off a branch which, falling into the ravine, slipped several yards down the smooth floor. It ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Mr. Pelham," said the wine-merchant, advancing his chair to me, and then laying a short, thickset finger upon my arm—he looked up in my face with an investigating air, and said:—"Parliamentary Reform—what do you say to that? you're not an advocate for ancient abuses, and modern ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... most interesting, are not as a rule attractive in person. Generally small of stature, thickset, with high cheek-bones, and eyes inherited from their Tartar-Mongolian ancestors, they cannot be considered good-looking; while the peculiar manner in which the blonde male peasants cut their hair is not becoming to their sunburnt skins, which are generally a brilliant red, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... in his evening clothes and looking exceedingly handsome, stood by the smoking room door, with Tony West, short and thickset, wearing a suit that fitted badly and a collar which looked sizes too large for him (Merriton had long given up hope of making him visit a decent tailor) and waited for the sound of motor wheels which would announce the ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... a stocky, thickset man in the uniform of a brigadier, never moving eye, head or hand, managed to bring a sizable foot in heavy riding boot almost savagely upon the slim gaiter of the humorist, who suddenly started and flushed to the temples, glanced quickly at the chief, and then as quickly ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... only ten miles broad at this point; he declared that Bushwhackers exist in the woods, who shoot unsuspecting stragglers, and it would therefore be unsafe that Lawley and I should travel alone. General Longstreet is an Alabamian—a thickset, determined-looking man, forty-three years of age: he was an infantry major in the old army, and now commands the 1st corps d'armee: he is never far from General Lee, who relies very much upon his judgment. By the soldiers he is invariably ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... o'clock. We were in tight full dress clothes, standing at attention for thirty to forty-five minutes just before the game. A fine preparation for a stiff contest. We had quite a character by the name of Stacy, a Maine boy. He was a thickset chap, husky and fast. He never knew what it was to be stopped. He would fight it out to the end for every inch. Early in one of the Yale games he broke a rib and started another, but the more it hurt, ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... she has, sir," said the old groom, riding up at a jog-trot on his thickset brown cob. "It's quite against Mrs. Tempest's orders, and it's a great responsibility to go out with Miss ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... thickset man, dressed in sailor's clothes, in no way like the clothes the pirates had worn. His eyes were small and very close together; his nose was broken and flat; his lower jaw stuck out beyond his upper; an unpleasant ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... he had a suit of long, glossy, jet-black hair hengun down back of his ears clean to his shoulders. He was kind of pale like, and sad-lookun', and he had a Roman nose some like yourn, and eyes like two coals, just black fire, kind of. He was putty thickset, round the shoulders, but he slimmed down towards his legs, and he stood about six feet high. But the thing of it," Reverdy urged, seeing that Braile remained outwardly unmoved, "was the way he was dressed. I s'pose the rest beun' all in brown ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... a thickset, jolly looking, curly headed fellow, with a thick neck, a bulldog jaw, and a big voice," replied Talbot. "Of course he tried to bully me, but when that didn't work, he came down to business. We entered ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... in the working out of a discovery made by Falleix in smelting (patent of invention and gold medal granted at the exposition of 1825). Madame Baudoyer, whose only daughter was treading—to use an expression of old Saillard's—on the tail of her twelve years, laid claim to Falleix, a thickset, swarthy, active young fellow, of shrewd principles, whose education she was superintending. The said education, according to her ideas, consisted in teaching him to play boston, to hold his cards properly, and not to let others ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... father's weathered, narrow face, half-veiled eyes, thin nose, little crisp, grey moustache that did not hide his firm lips, his lean, erect figure, the very way he stood, his thin, dry, clipped voice were the absolute antithesis of Mr. Wagge's thickset, stoutly planted form, thick-skinned, thick-featured face, thick, rather hoarse yet oily voice. It was as if Providence had arranged a demonstration of the extremes of social ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... waistcoat with broad stripes of red and white; a pair of dove-coloured corded-velvet pantaloons with three large yellow buttons on the hips; and a neckcloth of fine white cam- bric.His figure was thickset, strong, cumbrous; his hair black, curly, shining. His eyes, bold, vivacious, and now inflamed, were of that rarely beautiful blue which is seen only in members of the Irish race. His complexion was a blending of the lily and the rose. His lips were thick and red under his short fuzzy moustache. ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... lodgings in Holloway, were lonely, and were desirous of improving their positions. This was the case with Sally's three admirers. Of the three, her immediate favourite, because he most nearly resembled Toby in physical type, was a thickset dark young man with a budding black moustache and polished eyes and a strong pink upon his cheekbones. But after she had looked at him a few times she decided that he had Jewish blood, and Jews were among her aversions. So, although his name was Robertson, she passed him over in favour ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... quantities of gold in their channels. The inland inhabitants, called Monacaboes, are a barbarous and savage people, whose chief delight is in doing injury to their neighbours. On this account, the peasantry about Malacca sow no grain, except in inclosures defended by thickset prickly hedges or deep ditches: For, when the grain is ripe in the open plains, the Monacaboes never fail to set it on fire. These inland natives are much whiter than the Malays of the lower country; and the king of Johor, whose subjects they are or ought to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... to its natural growth, it would be a very absurd fence indeed. But this is not the case; the branches spread out very widely, and by cutting off the tops and trimming the remainder twice in a season a very handsome thickset hedge is produced, with lustrous leaves and sharp, straight thorns. Another name for this tree is yellow-wood, or bow-wood, because the wood is of a bright-yellow color, and the grain is so fine and elastic that the Southern Indians have ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... the Palace of the Bishop of Wodgate, and here with his arms bare and black, he worked at those locks, which defied any skeleton key that was not made by himself. He was a short, thickset man, powerfully made, with brawny arms disproportionately short even for his height, and with a countenance, as far as one could judge of a face so disfigured by his grimy toil, rather brutal than savage. His choice apprentices, full of admiration ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... visit to the theatre, when some old English comedy or some new English ballet happened to be on the boards, was the periphery of his dissipation. What is called society saw nothing of him. He was a rough, breezy, thickset old gentleman, betrothed from his birth to apoplexy, enjoying life in his own secluded manner, and insisting on having everybody about him happy. He would strangle an old friend rather than not have him happy. A characteristic story is told of a quarrel ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... boats. As compared with other experimental submarine boats she was small. She was only fifty-three feet ten inches long, and ten feet seven inches deep. Although these proportions made her look rather thickset, they were the result of experimental work done by the builder during a period of twenty-five years. She was equipped both with a gasoline engine of fifty horse-power and an electric motor run by storage batteries. The latter was intended for use when the boat was ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... there rose a stately row; Here, of munificence a thickset grove; There, of wise industry a quickset grew; Here, flourished a dainty copse of love; There, sprang up pleasant twigs of ready wit; Here, larger trees of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... very keen eyes fixed on a neat, rather thickset figure that came rapidly toward them. It was but seldom now that Clark was seen in town, and this invested him with more suggestiveness than ever. He stepped off the sidewalk with a somewhat formal salute as they passed. Knowing that he would not pause, Mrs. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... was well set in the outside of his jaw, just underneath his chin; no wonder he played so long, with his mouth shut! Bring the spring-balance and test his weight. Forty-eight pounds, full measure, the record salmon of the river—a deep thickset fish, whose gleaming silver sides and sharp teeth proved him fresh-run from the sea! It was a signal victory for an angler to land such a fish under such conditions, and Chichester felt that fortune had been ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... dead man were contained in two trunks, a chest, a sail-cloth bag, and a barrel, and consisted of clothing, suggesting a thickset, middle-sized man; papers relative to ships and business, a spyglass, a loaded iron pistol, some books of navigation, some charts, several great pieces of tobacco, and a few cigars; some little plaster images, that he ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as he hoped. At divers times thereafter he saw her in the distance, faring to and fro from Peter Ferrara's house, out on the trail that ran to the Knob, several times when the sea was calm paddling a canoe or rowing alongshore. Also he had glimpses of the thickset figure of Horace Gower walking along the cliffs. MacRae avoided both. That was easy enough, since he knew every nook and bush and gully on that end of the island. But the mere sight of Gower was an irritation. He resented the man's presence. It affected him like a challenge. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... shadows a fourth form had materialized, a thickset man who approached us with a firm stride. He patted my ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... returned home after my daily jaunt around the wharves in search of employment, Hansen met me with a smile, and introduced me to Stephen Schmidt, a thickset Dutchman, with little gray eyes, and capacious cheeks, of a color which proved he was a dear lover of schnapps. Schmidt claimed to be a native of Hudson; his ancestors were Dutch, and Dutch was ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... grand washing, employing twenty women, the baskets overflowing with snow-white folds, the sheets flapping in the morning breeze on the long drying lines. She was deeply engrossed in that occupation, which made her forget her journey, Paris, even the place where she was, when a stout, thickset man, heavily bearded, in varnished boots, and a velvet jacket covering the chest and shoulders of a bull, entered ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the office at this time did nothing to remove this sensation of being outside everything that made life worth living. Betty, returning to the office one afternoon, found Smith in the doorway, just parting from a thickset young man. There was a rather gloomy expression on ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... was surrounded by the officers of his household, dressed in a plain, dark-green frock, with a star on his breast. On his head was a small, round, gray hat, full of days, or mayhap years, and of services. His breeches were of the homeliest thickset; and he also wore a pair of large leather gaiters—such as are very common among farmers and peasants in Kent and Sussex. Though the conformation of his figure was not powerful, yet it was muscular and wiry, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... commotion and riot ensued. Plates, dishes, knives, forks, and decanters flew right and left; every one pitched into his neighbor with the most fearful cries, and hell itself seemed broke loose. The hour-glass and the Moulah of Oude had got me down and were pummelling me to death, when a short, thickset man came on all fours slap down upon them shouting out, 'Way, make way for the royal Bengal tiger!' at which they both fled like lightning, leaving me to the encounter single-handed. Fortunately, however, this was not of very long duration, for ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... paused in his work to imitate the gesticulatory enthusiasms of the saints at the camp-meeting. He was a thickset fellow of only medium height, and was called, somewhat invidiously, "a chunky man." His face was broad, prosaic, good-natured, incapable of any fine gradations of expression. It indicated an elementary rage or ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the late 1600's a very fair and bright large Oronoco, Prior, and Kite's Foot were mentioned. As the years passed planters came to distinguish other varieties such as Hudson, Frederick, Thick-Joint, Shoe-string, Thickset, Blue Pryor, Medley Pryor, White Stem, Townsend, Long Green, ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon
... was a little, thickset man, with a civil but blunt electioneering manner. He started when he heard Lord Vargrave's name, and bowed with great stiffness. Vargrave saw at a glance that there was some cause of grudge in the mind of the worthy man; nor did Mr. Winsley ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a little apart from the other, a thickset grey figure of a man, with eyes reddened as though by excessive reading, and usually protected by glasses, which just then he had removed in order to polish them with his handkerchief. In age he was sixty or more. His thick grey beard was mingled with white, and the heavy moustache which ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... time that the cutter had been hove-to, every stroke of their oars having been accompanied with a nautical anathema from the crews upon the head of their commander. The steersman and first officer, who had charge of the boats, came over the gangway and went up to Vanslyperken. He was a thickset, stout man, about five feet four inches high, and, wrapped up in Flushing garments, looked very much like a bear in shape as well as in skin. His name was Dick Short, and in every respect he answered to his name, for he was short ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... plank on two wheels—the women being assisted by a rope. Cytherea lingered till the very last, reluctant to follow, and looking alternately at the boat and the valley behind. Her delay provoked a remark from Captain Jacobs, a thickset man of hybrid stains, resulting from the mixed effects of fire and water, peculiar to sailors where ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... fully fifty, burly, thickset, strong as an ox. His hat lay in the bottom of the boat and his head, covered with curly, grizzled hair, was broad and well-shaped. A corresponding grizzle of beard clothed his chin and fringed a straight line of lip. The rest of his face showed the skin sun-dried and lined less ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... out field-works advantage should be taken of all available artificial obstacles, such as hedges, walls, houses, outbuildings, &c. A thickset hedge may be rendered defensible by throwing up against it a slight parapet of earth. Stone fences may be employed in the same way. Walls of masonry may be pierced with loop-holes and arranged for one or two tiers ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... a house close by, across the glen—a little ruinous, perhaps, but we can soon repair it. Come to the window; you can see the place from here.' He pointed out a kind of thickset tower which crowned a pretty village set in orchards. 'If you care to see it we will go there when ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... another! Sergeant Hooper they call him; a short thickset man with a black mustache. He buys two bottles of rum every week at the Green Man. And—one minute, please, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... Suddenly, however, on this evening he had a moment of what felt to himself a most inconvenient access of emotion. There was a plain and obvious pathos in this particular situation that it needed no very fine sensibilities to grasp, in the sight of his sister, her small, thickset little figure encased in her ugly little gown, looking up appealingly to him over her spectacles with the joy of a child in the toy she was going to buy. It was probably the first, the very first time in her life, that she had had that particular experience. Added to the joy of getting the thing ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... fashion, with petticoat breeches of duck, a heavy pea-jacket, and thick boots, reaching to the knees. He wore a red sash tied around his waist, and once, as he pushed back his coat, Hiram saw the glitter of a pistol butt. He was a powerful, thickset man, low-browed and bull-necked, his cheek, and chin, and throat closely covered with a stubble of blue-black beard. He wore a red kerchief tied around his head and over it a cocked hat, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... a young man, and a negro, short, thickset, square, tough as india-rubber, and black as the Emperor of Zahara. Good-humour wrinkled the corners of his eyes, the milk of human kindness played on his thick lips and rippled his sable brow, and intense sincerity, like a sunbeam, suffused ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... irregular parallelogram in the wainscot, when I started up, and hastily drew on some clothes. Going out to the makaa, I perceived yesterday's assembly of merry-making peasants quadrupled in number, and all dressed in their holiday costume, thickset on their knees down the avenue to the church, and following a noble old hymn, I sprang out of the postern, and, helping myself with the grasp of trunks of trees, and bared roots and bushes, clambered up one of the sides of the hollow, and attaining a clear space, looked down with wonder and pleasure ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... is a strongly-built, thickset animal, compared to the more graceful of his relatives. He carries on his head a pair of magnificent antlers, varying greatly in different specimens— some palmating towards the upper ends, others with branches springing from the palmated portions. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Edmundson made a dive into the throng, and disappeared behind a quantity of silk brocade and Brussels lace. Phoebe ventured to steal a glance at him as he departed. She found that the person to whom she had been so unceremoniously handed over, alike by Madam, Lady Delawarr, and Molly, was a thickset man of fifty years, partially bald, with small, expressionless features. He was not more fascinating to look at than to talk to, and Phoebe could only entertain a faint hope that his preaching might be an improvement ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... speaking of Lacordaire's Gromphas. Let not this repellant name of Gromphas (the old sow) give us a wrong notion of the insect. On the contrary, it is, like the last, an elegant Dung-beetle, dark-bronze, thickset, square-shaped like our Bison Onitis[15] and almost as large. It also practises the same industry, at least as regards the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the best American productions I have ever seen have been some of your missionaries. I met some of them; they were noble characters." On our return from the drive Dr. Brown gave me an elegant edition of "Rab," with Harvey's portrait of the immortal dog, whose body was thickset like a little bull, and who had "fought his way to absolute supremacy,—like Julius Caesar or the Duke ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... effects hanging so fast to one another, that it was scarce possible for my uncle Toby to have dwelt in any other house in the world, or to have occupied any other garden in Christendom, but the very house and garden which join'd and laid parallel to Mrs. Wadman's; this, with the advantage of a thickset arbour in Mrs. Wadman's garden, but planted in the hedge-row of my uncle Toby's, put all the occasions into her hands which Love-militancy wanted; she could observe my uncle Toby's motions, and was mistress likewise of his councils of war; and as his unsuspecting ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... not finish his sentence, nor did Winslow, who had started toward the door, have time to reach it. The door was opened and a short, thickset man, with a leathery face and a bristling yellow- white chin beard, burst into the room. At the sight of its occupants he uttered a grunt of satisfaction and his bushy brows were drawn together above his little ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... scarlet woolsey, whose plaits were filled with the golden shower of a curly beard, untouched with gray. And his face was quite as worthy as the substance leading up to it, being large and strengthful and slow to move, though quick to make others do so. The forehead was heavy, and the nose thickset, the lower jaw backed up the resolution of the other, and the wide apart eyes, of a bright steel blue, were as steady as ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... direction served. In the open vistas we had frequent glimpses of it, winding, at feud with all the points of the compass, among the trees. But farther on we came into the lower land of a creek bottom, and here a thickset undergrowth robbed us of any view and made the march a toilsome struggle with ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... stout, thickset man with a face bronzed to the color of mahogany and a head of hair as red as a Pittsburgh furnace at midnight. His blue eyes sparkled with good nature and merriment, and a continual smile hovered ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... begin with he made use of one of his favourite weapons,—silence. He sat quite still, studying the situation, and in those few moments Josephine found herself studying him. He was tall, over six feet, with burly shoulders, a thickset body, and legs rather short for his height. He was clean-shaven, his hair was a sandy grey, his complexion florid, his eyes blue and piercing. His upper lip was long, and his mouth, when closed, rather resembled some sort of a trap. He was dressed with care, almost with distinction. But for his pronounced ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of this sympathetic appeal was that of the thoroughbred racial and national spirit of a great people, in the politeness which gave to a thickset peasant woman a certain grace, in the smiles of the land and its inhabitants, in that inbred patriotism which through the centuries has created a distinctive civilization called French by the same ready sacrifices for its continuity as those ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and then a short, thickset, bearded man, accompanied by a small staff, appeared. Dick drew a deep breath. It was General Grant, Commander-in-Chief of all the armies of the Union, and Sheridan hastened forward to meet him. Then the two, with several of the senior officers, went into a house, while ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... looked kindly at Peggy. She was a singular-looking girl, short and dark, with a curious effect of squareness in her thickset figure. Her face was plain, but one forgot that when one met the bright, intelligent ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... workhouse; nevertheless, such a stir had been roused that (to satisfy public opinion) they made a large sacrifice of inferior people, and among them this Solomon Gundry. Now the Gundries had long been a thickset race, and had furnished some champion wrestlers; and Solomon kept to the family stamp in the matter of obstinacy. He made a bold mark at the foot of a bond for 150 pounds; and with no other sign than that, his partner in their stanch herring-smack (the Good Hope, of Mevagissey) ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... came into the school drawing-room was a thing to remember. He was a tall boy, and he looked like his father. Very olive he was—and is—and his blue eyes shone out of the dark face from under the same thickset and long lashes. His father's charm and beauty halted me, but I judged, before I let myself go, that he had also his mother's stability. I have seen no reason since to doubt my judgment. I never had so fine a fishing ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... strong, powerful, vigorous, enduring, durable, tough; portly, fleshy, corpulent, thickset, obese, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming |
