"Dapper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... That dapper young gentleman, who twirls his moustache and swings his cane so jauntily upon the promenade, is an object of admiration to many; but to the man who knows the secrets of his inner life another scene is opened, and he remembers when this ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... amid the delights of a Santa Barbara spring that they were journeying in that pleasant time of year when spring travel eastward has ended, and summer travel has not yet begun.) This one other passenger was a little man of dapper build and dapper dress, whose curiously-shaped articles of luggage betokened his connection with commercial affairs. Grace was forced to own, as she now for the first time regarded him attentively, that he did not seem to be wrought of the stern stuff ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... away. Here one his mistress courts; another dances; A third incites to lust by wanton glances. This wastes the day in dressing; the other seeks To set fresh colours on her with red cheeks, That, when the sun declines, some dapper spark May take her to Spring Garden or the park. Plays some frequent, and balls; others their prime Consume at dice; some bowl away their time. With cards some wholly captivated are; From tables others scarce an hour can spare. One to soft music mancipates his ear; At shovel-board ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... exquisite embroideries, and this may mean that some part of his art was inherited. She handled lovely colours, and tried to fashion beautiful flower shapes for customers. She was a fragile, tender sort of woman, while the father was doubtless a dapper, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... delight were on the children's faces, as they watched the motorists alight. The dapper man and the slight little woman were given small attention, for in the car were two of the tiniest, dearest midgets that anybody had ever seen. As soon as it was known that they were actually coming into the ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... tell a whole legend of lyes of his travayles unto Constantinople. If he be challenged to fight ... hee objects that it is not the custome of the Spaniard or the Germaine to looke backe to everie dog that barks. You shall see a dapper Jacke that hath beene but once at Deepe, wring his face round about, as a man would stirre up a mustard pot and talke English through the teeth, like Jaques Scabdhams, or Monsieur Mingo de Moustrapo; when, poore ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... that a little very dapper gentleman who was largely interested in the land-agency and general mortgage business was spending the evening with Hawtrey in Wyllard's room at the Range. He had driven round by Hawtrey's homestead earlier in the afternoon, and had deduced a good deal from the state of it, though ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Some of us are even willing to contribute to his support, scandalous as it would be. But it is hard to do, because Gibb is no pauper. He is a gentleman of leisure with the dignity of an Indian. His worn suits are neat, and he is as dapper with a battered hat and a four-year-old celluloid collar as if he spent real money on his wardrobe. He chooses his life and lives it without complaint. Periodically we strive heroically to make him work. The ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... children's, and lived in a house next door. The yards of the houses were only separated by a green hedge, with no gate, so that Cecy spent two-thirds of her time at Dr. Carr's, and was exactly like one of the family. She was a neat, dapper, pink-and-white-girl, modest and prim in manner, with light shiny hair, which always kept smooth, and slim hands, which never looked dirty. How different from my poor Katy! Katy's hair was forever in a snarl; her gowns were always catching ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... Chancellor, which was joyfull newes to me. Thence with Lord Bruncker to Greenwich by water to a great dinner and much company; Mr. Cottle and his lady and others and I went, hoping to get Mrs. Knipp to us, having wrote a letter to her in the morning, calling myself "Dapper Dicky," in answer to hers of "Barbary Allen," but could not, and am told by the boy that carried my letter, that he found her crying; but I fear she lives a sad life with that ill-natured fellow her husband: so we had a great, but I a melancholy ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... in 1853 to the Thirty-third Congress a youngish, dapper and graceful man notable as the only Democrat in the Massachusetts delegation. It was said that he had been a dancing master, his wife a work girl. They brought with them a baby in arms with the wife's sister for its nurse—a mis-step which was quickly corrected. I cannot now tell just how I came ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... managed to articulate, and thereby to gain a smile, ere he was introduced to a cleanly built lieutenant of the Mounted Police, who stood by the fireplace discussing the grub proposition with a dapper little man very much out of place in a ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... successor could have completed his work and hastened the final Christian victory by some four hundred years. Alfonso was far-seeing enough to know the possibilities ahead, and it is easy to understand and sympathize with his rage at the mere thought of the dapper, silken Candespina. So the rebellious Urraca, with her heart full of love for Count Gomez, was married, and just before her father's death in 1109, to King Alfonso I., called el batallador [the battler], and known as the Emperor of Aragon. This ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... nose. He stood very straight in the pulpit, but on the street you saw that his back was bent just the least bit in the world—or perhaps it was only his student stoop, as he walked along with his eyes on the ground, smoking those slender, dapper, pale brown cigars that looked as if they had been expressly cut and rolled to ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... worse she screamed, and her feet and hands flew around like a wind-mill. I took her up, and trotted her on my knee, but bless you! she squirmed like an eel, and her little bald head bobbed up and down faster than a di-dapper. Then I walked her, but I would as soon try to swing to a greased snake. She wriggled and bucked, and tied herself up into a bow knot, and yelled—. Oh! a Comanche papoose is a dummy to her. As if I had not hands full, arms full, and ears full, Dick must ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Prison," whose name was painfully familiar to every Union man in the land. Under the sign was a broad entrance way, large enough to admit a dray or a small wagon. On one side of this was the prison office, in which were a number of dapper, feeble-faced clerks at work on ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... felt the blood flush hotly to her cheeks. Somehow she could feel no sympathy for that cringing figure in there; but she felt a hot resentment toward that dapper, immaculately dressed and self-possessed young man, who stood there, silently now, tapping the papers with provoking coolness against the edge of the plain deal table in front of him. And somehow the resentment seemed to take a most peculiar phase. She resented ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... Hall, all wit and no character; and old Parson Polsue, with his curate, old Mr. Grandison, the one almost too shaky to hold a churchwarden pipe while the other lighted it; and Roger Newte, whose monument you see over the hill—a dapper, youngish-looking man, very careful of his finger-nails and smooth in his talk till he got you in a corner. Last but not least was this Roger Newte, who had settled here as Collector of Customs and meant to be Mayor next year; a man to go where the devil ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I behold? Following in Madam's wake, like a skiff towed at the stern of a rushing side-wheel steamer, a dapper little old man, a withered little old man, a gayly smiling little old man, whose countenance was somehow strangely familiar to me. I considered him a moment, and the scene in the Rue St. Lazare, with the coupe driver and the man with the pocket-book, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy fully to match it of the peculiar systems that he knows. They don't just cover HIS world. One will be too dapper, another too pedantic, a third too much of a job-lot of opinions, a fourth too morbid, and a fifth too artificial, or what not. At any rate he and we know offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... involved in so serious a matter as getting murdered—especially in a fashionable restaurant! Long before the commissary had finished his report there arrived no less a person than M. Simon, the chief of police, round-faced and affable, a brisk, dapper man whose ready smile had led more than one trusting criminal ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... Ferrygate, and after giving the servant George Sheldon's card, and announcing myself as concerned in a matter of business relating to the Haygarth family, I was at once ushered into a prim counting-house, where a dapper little old gentleman in spotless broadcloth, and a cambric cravat and shirt frill which were soft and snowy as the plumage of the swan, received me with old-fashioned courtesy. I was delighted to find him seventy-five years of age at the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... not often at home at the time we write of. He was an honest soul—a gentle, affectionate man with a handsome face, neat dapper little frame, something like his mother in many ways, yet not unmanly. He was too earnest, simple, unassuming, and unaffected to be that. He was a railway clerk, and had recently been appointed to Langrye station, about fifty miles from Clatterby, which necessitated ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... a banquet! would to Christ I were one of their guests. Gods ad, a fine little Dapper fellow has spyed me: What will he doo? He comes to make me drinke: I thanke you, Sir. Some of your victuals, I pray; Sir; nay now keepe your meate, I have enough I; the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... discovered, in spite of my recent familiarity with house-agents, the difference between a fixture and a fitting. It is possible that neither word has any virtue without the other, as is the case with "spick" and "span." One has to be both; however dapper, one would never be described as a span gentleman. In the same way it may be that a curtain-rod or an electric light is never just a fixture or a fitting, but always "included in the fixtures and fittings." Then there is a distinction, apparently, between a "landlord's fixture" and a "tenant's fixture," ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... Smoots nodded heavily. The dapper sergeant cocked his felt smasher hat, and turned between pleasantly smiling lips the cigar he was smoking. Then he pointed with his riding-whip, a neatly varnished sjambok, with a smart ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... opened, and two persons entered. One was a dapper little man with a great wig, very handsomely dressed in a plum-coloured silken coat, with a snowy cravat at his neck. At the sight of the other my face crimsoned, for it was the girl who had sung Montrose's song in ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... minutes. Evidently he was explaining the situation to his friend. But after a time Orme heard the clang of the elevator door, and in response to the knock that quickly followed, he opened his own door. At the side of his former visitor stood a dapper foreigner. He wore a long frock coat and carried a glossy hat, and his eyes were framed by ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... water, Captain Lenox," she declared with her big laugh, "because your dapper little screw guns have been left out of the show. You want to be hitting the scoundrels back with your own ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... had a full quarter of an hour at our disposal for our leave-takings in the dimly-lighted station. There were few passengers travelling that night, and few loiterers about. We made M. Zola take his seat in a compartment, and stood on guard before it talking to him. Only one gentleman, a short dapper individual with mutton-chop whiskers (Wareham suggested that he looked like a barrister), paid any attention to the master, and, it may be, recognised him. For the rest, all went well. There were au revoirs and handshakes all round, and messages, too, for one and another. And M. Zola would ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... down the hall and turned in at the first door to the left, which stood partly open, and from behind which he heard voices. A burly, good-natured looking man with a derby hat in his hand was talking to a dapper, quick-eyed personage whose carefully trimmed beard and immaculately white waistcoat gave him the conventional "professional" look. Near a window was a big chair, among the pillows of which reclined a young girl with a pale, sweet face ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... thoughtfulness had provided. It seemed unbelievable, but there was no use pretending she was mistaken—Uncle Martin, Aunt Rose's husband, was falling in love with her. She felt a little heady with the excitement of it. He was so different from the callow youths and dapper fellows who had heretofore worshipped at her shrine. There was something so imposing, so important about him. She was conscious that a man so much older might not appeal to many girls of her age, but it so happened that he did ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... the station-master was disengaged, she approached the spectacled, dapper little man and told ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... rain, and thrives best with a hot sun above and a burning sand below. There were—oh, the gallant creatures! I hear their neigh upon the wind; there were—goodliest sight of all—certain enormous quadrupeds only seen to perfection in our native isle, led about by dapper grooms, their manes ribanded and their tails curiously clubbed and balled. Ha! ha!—how distinctly do they ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... a small, dapper little man, typically house-agenty in manner, even to the point of assuring us gravely that another tenant was urgently in the field, and that we had secured our lease by the very skin ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sweet cigarette I am singing This joyous and bright bacca-role; Just now to my lips she was clinging, Her spirit was soothing my soul. With figure so slender and dapper I feel the soft touch of it yet, Adorned in her dainty white wrapper, How fair is my own cigarette! 'Twere better, perhaps, that we part, love; 'Twere better, if never we'd met. Alas, you are part of my heart, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Peggy's dapper figure, smartly attired in her aviation costume, appeared a still ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... pamphlets stuft his pockets, (All out of date like spent skyrockets,) Our Exeter stood forth to caper, As high on the floor as he doth on paper— like a dapper Dancing Dervise, Who pirouettes his whole church-service— Performing, midst those reverend souls, Such entrechats, such cabrioles, Such balonnes, such—rigmaroles, Now high, now low, now this, that, That none could guess what the devil he'd be at; Tho', watching his various steps, some ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... divinity, and so were all the mid-Western human-beings about him. One heard no joking either of the dapper or cockney sort of cities, or the quaint graphic phrasing of Eastern country folk; and it may have been not far enough West for the true Western humor. At any rate, when they were not silent these ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... particular side; we are merry with one, grave with another, as befits the nature and demands of the relation. Pepys's letter to Evelyn would have little in common with that other one to Mrs. Knipp which he signed by the pseudonym of DAPPER DICKY; yet each would be suitable to the character of his correspondent. There is no untruth in this, for man, being a Protean animal, swiftly shares and changes with his company and surroundings; and these changes ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who was elected guider of the united caravans now travelling through Ugogo, was of such a fragile and small make, that he might be taken for an imitation of his famous prototype "Dapper." Being of such dimensions, what he lacked for weight and size he made up by activity. No sooner had he arrived in camp than his trim dapper form was seen frisking about from side to side of the great boma, fidgeting, arranging, disturbing everything and everybody. He permitted ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... hands with a small, dapper, early-gray, superdignified man, recalling his sign: "Antiques in Furniture, Glass, Bronze, Plate, China, and Jewelry." M. Ducatel seemed to be already taking leave. His "anceztral 'ome," he said, was far up-town; he had dropped in solely to ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... him come along, having on the previous day made herself acquainted with his personality. He was a dapper pert little man, neat in his dress, and suave in his manners. Not at all like the detective of fiction as known to Mrs. Parry. There was no solemnity or hint of mystery about Mr. Steel. He would pass unnoticed in a crowd, and no one would take him for a bloodhound of the law. He did not even ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... in time for tea, red-faced, dapper, and immaculate. He wore a check suit, very new and very pronounced, with a beautiful line down each trouser-leg; and his collar and his tie were of the latest mode. His scanty hair was carefully parted in the middle, and his moustache bristled with a martial ardour. He ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... who had been snatching tea, entered briskly and sternly. He was a small, dapper, fair man of about fifty, with wonderfully tended finger-nails. George despised him because Mr. Enwright despised him, but he had met him once in the way of the firm's business and ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... and Mrs. Stickles held up her hands in amazement. "To think that I should live to hear sich words in me own house. Ye say the parson's too old. Ain't ye ashamed of them words? Too old! D'ye want some new dapper little snob spoutin' from the pulpit who hasn't as much knowledge in his hull body as Parson John has in his little finger? I know there's many a thing the parson talks about that I can't understan', an' so there ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... his head. It seemed impossible that this dapper little man with his peering, short-sighted eyes could be capable of any determined effort to escape the police when once driven into a corner. However, Pendleton had ample reason to respect Ashton-Kirk's judgment; and so when the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... into the study behind the dining-room, and immediately the voices in the latter ceased. This was ominous; it was for Mrs. Carrington that Rachel had asked; and the omen was instantly fulfilled. It was Mr. Carrington who came into the room, dark, dapper, and duskily flushed with his own hospitality, but without the genial front which Rachel had liked best in him. His voice also, when he had carefully shut the door ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... room the Frenchman turned from his completed handiwork to accept his patron's invitation. He was a dapper, stout little man, merry of eye, despite the fact that a couple of months ago he and his family had been in bitter poverty. He smiled very happily as he took the chair beside the writing table. He was about to receive the ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... applauded, and chimed in admirably with all prejudices, and the voice that called Lawyer Pippin to preside over the deliberations of the assembly was unanimous. The gentleman thus highly distinguished, was a dapper and rather portly little personage, with sharp twinkling eyes, a ruby and remarkable nose, a double chin, retreating forehead, and corpulent cheek. He wore green glasses of a dark, and a green coat of a light, complexion. The lawyer was the only member of the profession ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the working men. I have been much struck with the difference between one of these poor fellows who is prepared to die for the honour of his country, between his quiet, calm demeanour, and the absurd airs, and noisy brawls, and the dapper uniforms of the young fellows one meets with in the fashionable quarters. It is the difference between reality and sham, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... notwithstanding the derangement which his coeffure might naturally be expected to have experienced in his tumble, looked, Susan thought, as if his hair were put in paper every night and pomatumed every morning, and as if his whole dapper person were saturated with his own finest essences, a sort of travelling perfumer's shop, a peripatetic pouncet-box—walked off in the direction indicated, with an air of habitual submission, which showed pretty plainly that, whether as proprietor of the unlucky britschka, or ...
— Town Versus Country • Mary Russell Mitford
... gaze. The dapper figure of Mr. Wesson was moving down the lawn. He had a tennis racquet in his hand. His face wore an ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... the song. Fired by example, the dapper French Count approached the piano and asked Elsie if she could play Beranger's "Roi d'Yvetot." She repressed a smile at his choice, but the chance that presented itself of initiating a concert on the spur of the moment was too good ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the disabled man of war to the temple of Hymen. Sacrilegious thought! I could not permit it to enter my bosom, and (pardon me for a moment, sir) when I looked down, and caught a glance of my own natty-looking, tight little leg, and dapper Hessians, I recommended her strongly to act on the principle of the Drury-lane play-bill, which says, 'All for Love, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... explained to her that her stout visitant was Queen of Fairies, and that he had since attended her by the express command of that lady, his queen and mistress. This reminds us of the extreme doting attachment which the Queen of the Fairies is represented to have taken for Dapper in "The Alchemist." Thome Reid attended her, it would seem, on being summoned thrice, and appeared to her very often within four years. He often requested her to go with him on his return to Fairyland, and when she refused, he shook his head, and ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... in their nightly watchfull Sphears, Lead in swift round the Months and Years. The Sounds, and Seas with all their finny drove Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move, And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves, Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves; By dimpled Brook, and Fountain brim, The Wood-Nymphs deckt with Daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love.... Com, knit ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... beautifully modelled under the carefully parted, already thinning, hair that was arranged in something almost like ringlets on either side. He was neat-faced. Of the three men he carried the Whipple nose most gracefully. His figure was slight, not so tall as his father's, and he was garbed in a more dapper fashion. He wore an expertly fitted frock coat of black, gray trousers faintly striped, a pearl-gray cravat skewered by a pear-headed pin, and his small feet were incased in shoes of patent leather. He was ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... and I needn't if you'd rather not tell me yet. Who is it? A dapper little man, I can see that from his ring, a schoolmaster ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... frequent scenes and rehearsals in her family. After many trials, she at last engages a seamstress who promises to prove a perfect treasure,—neat, dapper, nimble, skilful, and spirited. The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. Illusive bliss! The new-comer proves to be no favorite with Madam Cook, and the domestic fates evolve the catastrophe, as follows. First, low murmur of distant thunder in the kitchen; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Jules were fluent. We have described them earlier as typical Englishmen when taking a first glance at them; and we have to declare that they were just as typically French when one had the pleasure of making their acquaintance; but in the darkness, when no one could see their spruce and dapper appearance—and how many German youths can boast of being spruce and dapper?—when the voice alone could give an indication of the nationality of the speaker, then both Henri and Jules could pass muster as Germans with the greatest ease and security. But Stuart, this big, raw-boned, healthy, red-faced ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... May, Mrs. Gibson drove Ida and Leah and me and Mr. Babbage, a middle-aged but very dapper War Office clerk (who was a friend of the Gibson family), to Chelsea, that we might explore Cheyne Walk and its classic neighborhood. I rode on the box by ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... harbours from Plymouth to the Land's End, and perhaps several others, but he was more of a pilot than a master, and usually conversed about landmarks, church steeples, and crayfish. The surgeon was a clever little dapper man, well-read, shockingly irritable, fond of controversy on ethics, etymology, and giving the blue pill. I need not acquaint my reader he was from York. The purser was the shadow of a man, very regular in his accounts, fond of peach-water, playing the flute, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... refined; Like Orpheus, burned with public zeal To civilize the monkey weal: So watched occasion, broke his chain, And sought his native woods again. The hairy sylvans round him press Astonished at his strut and dress. Some praise his sleeve, and others gloat Upon his rich embroidered coat; His dapper periwig commending, With the black tail behind depending; His powdered back above, below, Like hoary frost or fleecy snow: But all, with envy and desire, His fluttering shoulder-knot admire. "Hear and improve," ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... approach of the banderilleros, while the horses were led away out of sight, to be patched up for the succeeding engagement; a quantity of sand was thrown over the blood stains, which were pretty numerous throughout the arena. The banderilleros were three in number, and smart, dapper, little fellows, beautifully dressed in light blue satin and gold. Each was armed with the banderillo, small barbed darts, about a foot long, ornamented with coloured paper. Their duty is to go straight up to the bull, facing ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... looked at the face of this small, dapper man with such soft voice and courteous manners. In his eyes I read such hate and tenacity that I understood at once the trembling respect of all the officers whom I had seen in his presence. Afterwards in Urga I learned more of this General Rezukhin distinguished ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... Trap, ridiculed by Swift in "The Tatler," No. 66, as parson Dapper. He was sent to Ireland as chaplain to Sir Constantine Phipps, Lord Chancellor, in 1710-11. But in July, 1712, Swift writes to Stella, "I have made Trap chaplain to Lord Bolingbroke, and he is mighty happy and thankful ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... him, Salvain and the three rescued, and stood in the roomy cabin, the captain and the first mate dapper and cool in their white uniforms, the other three marvelously ragged. Barefooted, their hair falling in jags across their foreheads, their muscles bulging through the rents in their shirts, McTee and Harrigan looked battered but triumphant. Kate Malone might have been the ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... the precise and dapper Mr. Doolittle, expatriated American, waved a carefully manicured hand in acquired Gallic gestures as he expatiated on the circumstances which had summoned the soldier to his office. As he discoursed of these extraordinary matters his sharp eyes took in his client and noted the ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... For lack of a white flag, a pillow-case was run up to the masthead, and the beating of the great wheels stopped. The davits amidships of the "Grand Gulf" are swung out, and a boat's crew, with a lieutenant and dapper midshipman, climb in. A quick order, "Let fall there," and the boat drops into the water, and is headed for the prize. Another moment, and the stars and stripes supplant the pillow-case waving from the masthead of the "Young Republic." An ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... fortune is secured on the Budget. In place of paying taxes to the State, I receive from it, every half-year, in my own person, and free from cost, thirty thousand francs in thirty notes, handed over the counter to me by a dapper little clerk at the Treasury, who smiles when he sees ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... that the school-mistress was a much more attractive-looking young person than he had anticipated, and secondly, that she seemed rather amused than otherwise at his conditions. No man, and least of all a man so consummate as Mr. Barker—for he was a dapper little person with a closely cropped beard and irreproachable kid gloves—likes to be laughed at by a woman, especially by one who is young and moderately good-looking; and he instinctively drew himself up by way of ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... and dapper police official would drift in on horseback looking for native criminals; and once a safari came by. Twelve miles away was the famous Kamiti Farm of Heatly, where Roosevelt killed his buffalo; and once or twice Heatly himself, a fine chap, came to ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Orcagna, Lorenzetti, or Volterra, painted the typical masterpiece of mediaeval art, the great fresco of the Triumph of Death. With wonderful realization of character and situation he painted the prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... surprisingly unreal and artificial. A little dog belonging to a neighbor was known to the members of my household by the name of "Glass," from the general suggestion he gave of having been spun of that article. Perhaps I have somewhat exaggerated these illustrations of the dapper nicety of our neighborhood,—a neatness and conciseness which I think have a general tendency to belittle, dwarf, and contract their objects. For we gradually fell into small ways and narrow ideas, and to some extent squared the round world outside to the correct ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... was not going to ask her after all. Violet felt piqued. She was also conscious of a sensation very near akin to disappointment. She looked across at Madison. How trim and dapper he was! ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lucky!" cried Livingstone, turning to greet a dapper little man in gray. "Sure I need you! It's a peach, though I doubt if we get much but fun, but there'll be enough of that to make up. Oh, he's got money—'heaps of it,' he says," laughed Livingstone, "and I saw a roll of bills myself. But I advise you not to count too much on that, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... Dartmoor. Two gentlemen were awaiting us in the station—the one a tall, fair man with lion-like hair and beard and curiously penetrating light blue eyes; the other a small, alert person, very neat and dapper, in a frock-coat and gaiters, with trim little side-whiskers and an eye-glass. The latter was Colonel Ross, the well-known sportsman; the other, Inspector Gregory, a man who was rapidly making his name ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... me before upon the green settee are familiar with the upper shelf, with the tattered Macaulay, the dapper Gibbon, the drab Boswell, the olive-green Scott, the pied Borrow, and all the goodly company who rub shoulders yonder. By the way, how one wishes that one's dear friends would only be friends also with each other. Why should Borrow snarl so churlishly at Scott? One would have thought that noble spirit ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope Place, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... greatness be, it wears no outer sign; No more the signet of the mighty line Stamps the great brow for all the world to know. Shrunken the mould of manhood is, and lo! Fragments and fractions of the old divine, Men pert of brain, planned on a mean design, Dapper and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... of the Tories were broken by one figure that was once the most potent among them all. I had been strangely moved at a theatre, a week or so before, as I looked at Lord Randolph Churchill. I remembered him twelve years ago—a mere boy in appearance, with clean-shaven face, dapper and slight figure, the alertness and grace of youth, and a face smooth as the cheek of a maiden. And now—bearded, slightly bowed, with lines deep as the wrinkles of an octogenarian, he sometimes looks like the grandfather of his youthful self. It is ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... had a Finance Minister who so disregarded the Gladstonian principle, that if figures cannot lie they may at least make interesting romances of the truth. In the two years that he has been budgeteering, this dapper, tailored man with the sailor hat and the truculent jaw and the heavy outskirts to his eyes has treated a budget as though it were a Santa Claus stocking to be talked about a long while in advance, so that when it comes it may be all ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... a small, dapper Frenchman who somehow, in the course of his life, had acquired the nickname "Chicken" and it had been with him ever since. The cadets had met him once before when they rode on a passenger liner from Mars to Venusport and liked the small, stubby spaceman. Now, renewing their friendship, the boys and ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... of an Italian Raggruppamento, or collection of Groups, under the command of a certain Sicilian Colonel named Canale, a dapper little man who generally wore white gloves, even in the front line. He was a fearless and capable officer and did all in his power for the comfort ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... journey to Chicago brideless. Fifteen minutes earlier, Buck had gone to the buffet-car for a smoke. At Cleveland, Emma, looking out of the car window, saw a familiar figure pacing up and down the station platform. It was that dapper and important little Irishman, O'Malley, buyer for Gage & Fosdick, the greatest mail-order house in the world—O'Malley, whose letter T. A. Buck had answered; O'Malley, whose order meant thousands. He was on his way ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... members exceeded the bounds in the matter of soft shirts with dinner-jackets. And the short, thick-set man who was standing just in front of them in attitude of restful immobility was certainly no dandy. His best friend could not have called him dapper. Take him for all in all and on the hoof, he might have been posing as a model for a sketch of What the Well-Dressed Man ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... decrees a crease down the trouser legs if those garments are but of well-bleached blue dungaree? The spotless shirt, how paltry a detail when a light singlet is the only wear? Of what trifling worth dapper boots to feet made leathery by contact with the clean, crisp, oatmeal-coloured sand. Here is no fetish about clothes; little concern for what we shall eat or what we shall drink. The man who has to observe the least of the ordinances of style knows not liberty. He is ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... want?" he demanded thickly, as the dapper little man came up and extended his hand. Simmy was beaming, as if he suddenly had found a long lost friend and comrade. George took no notice of the friendly hand. He was staring hard, almost savagely at the other's face. Simmy ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... not occurred to Maud. She had assumed that, being aware that she would be there with another, he would have stayed away. It may, however, be remarked that she did not know Mr Shute. He was not one of your sensitive plants. He smiled pleasantly upon her, looking very dapper in evening dress and a silk hat that, though a size too small for ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rights begin; ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... of the most acute remorse and contrition, and their life in prison had produced serious effects upon their robust persons. Far different was their lot now, to the free and happy existence which had once been theirs. Eugene Pearson, the dapper young gentleman, was put at hard labor in the stone-cutting department; Johnson, the dentist, was assigned to the machine shop, while Edwards and Duncan were working in the shoe-making department. Day after day the weary labor was performed, and night after night ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Frisoni was called. An artist of no mean merit, and pupil of Jules Hardouin Mansard, the chief architect of Versailles, where Frisoni had worked at the plans together with his master. The Italian arrived: a small, dapper man, ridiculous in his huge powdered wig, his little brown monkey face peering out of the curled white locks. Her Excellency desired a palace on the same model as the fine French palazzo? Nothing easier! No? An original design, then, but of that ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Emmet's discomfiture he interrupted his story to indulge in one of his silent laughs, an expression of mirth which, to his listener's excited mind, seemed almost an inhuman exhibition of his professed detachment from the passions about him. Perhaps, had he seen the dapper Cobbens and the lethargic Parr escorting the unsuspicious President to the carriage, and Emmet's expression as he found himself shoved into the third place in the procession, he might have appreciated his companion's sense of the ridiculous. But ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... under the old doorway. I could almost see the lady, carefully dressed in many fine muslin folds and frills with hooped silk skirts, indeed, but slight and graceful in her quick advance, with blue eyes, with delicate sharp features, and a dazzling skin. As for the gentleman, I pictured him a dapper figure, with dark eyes, dressed in black, as befitted a minister even of dissenting views. The lady came forward, looking amused by my scrutiny, somewhat shy I thought—was she going to speak? And by the same token it seemed to me the gentleman was ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... William felt, but I was not favorably impressed with Brother Dunn when he arrived on the late evening train, a frisky, dapper young man, who looked in the face as if his light was turned too high. That night as he preceded us up the aisle of the church, which was crowded to hear him, he showed to my mind a sort of irreverent confidence in ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... The captain, dapper in his gold-braided uniform, stood over the body as it lay on the plank from which it was to descend into the sea. In a high, clear voice he read that beautiful burial-service for the dead ... an upward tilt of the board in the hands of two brown-armed ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... sofa, saying, "Now, Alick, I do so want to hear about poor, dear little Bessie;" and they began so low and confidentially, that Rachel wondered if her alarms wore to be transfered from the bearded colonel to the dapper boy, or if, in very truth, she must deem poor Fanny a general coquette. Besides, a man must be contemptible who wore gloves at so small a ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... William and Mary. There it was, on a beam, above the chancel arch, and the lion and unicorn on either side, the first with a huge tongue hanging out at the corner of his mouth, looking very complacent, as though he were displaying the royal arms, the unicorn slim and dapper with a chain ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... adjoins the shore was the station of the harbor police, and Alf backed into the electric-lighted office, very much to the amusement of the dapper lieutenant in charge. The sampan men, grown quiet and orderly, clustered like flies by the open door, through which they could ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... the staff, carried it in the evening, when the Chancellor happened to be drunk. "Well, Mr. Bartlemy," said his lordship, snuffing, "what have you to say?" The man, who had prepared a formal harangue, was transported to have so fair opportunity given him of uttering it, and with much dapper gesticulation congratulated his lordship on his health, and the nation on enjoying such great abilities. The Chancellor stopped him short, crying, "By God, it is a lie! I have neither health nor abilities; my ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... upon those unhappy beings whom an inscrutable Providence has doomed to be "foreigners;" stolid Turks, tramping onward in silent defiance of the fierce looks cast at them from every side; sinewy Dalmatians, with close-cropped black hair; dapper Frenchmen, with well-trimmed moustaches, casting annihilating glances at the few ladies who happen to be abroad; and barefooted Greeks, with little baskets of fruit or fish perched on their heads—ragged, wild-eyed and brigand-like as the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various |
