"Elderly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made her lose the little beauty that still remained to her; nothing seemed more incongruous and ridiculous than to hear this elderly grand lady talking perpetually about "her dearest darling, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Cossack with an exceptionally long back and small hands and feet, was sitting on the earth-bank of a hut with his beshmet unbuttoned. On his face was the lazy, bored expression of a superior, and having shut his eyes he dropped his head upon the palm first of one hand and then of the other. An elderly Cossack with a broad greyish-black beard was lying in his shirt, girdled with a black strap, close to the river and gazing lazily at the waves of the Terek as they monotonously foamed and swirled. Others, also overcome by the heat and half naked, were rinsing clothes in the Terek, ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... of his books or pamphlets he had said "There is no difference except civilization between a very old woman and an ape." Some time after its publication, when he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli, Mrs. Disraeli, herself both elderly and very plain, laid a plan to disconcert him. She seated herself close to a low mirror, in the hopes that Burton would presently join her. He soon fell into the trap and was observed a few minutes later leaning over ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Milbanke, however, used persuasions which resulted in an effort being made to run the gauntlet. That evening an engine and a few carriages duly drew up at the station. Very soon French's staff was aboard. As the train was about to start a short and agile elderly officer might have been seen to dash across the platform into the last carriage, where he ensconced himself beneath a seat lest the train be stopped and searched. Very soon bullets were rattling through ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... uninterested gaze. Here a pretty insipid-looking girl sauntered the deck with a book in her hand, from which she never read; and another, more vivacious, and equally intent on attracting her share of public notice, raved to an elderly gentleman, on whose arm she was leaning, of the beauty and magnificence ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Puritan city; but it has divested its Puritanism of austerity, and clings rather to the politics and public bearing of its old fathers than to their social manners and pristine severity of intercourse. The young girls are, no doubt, much more comfortable under the new dispensation—and the elderly men also, as I fancy. Sunday, as regards the outer streets, is sabbatical. But Sunday evenings within doors I always found to be what my friends in that country call "quite a good time." It is not the thing in Boston to smoke in the streets ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... brought M. Gambetta to the most romantic part of his career. The National Defence Government had delegated two of their members, MM. Cremieux and Glaiz-Bizoin, to go to Tours and govern the provinces; but being both elderly men of weak health, they were hardly up to their work; and early in October M. Gambetta was ordered by his colleagues to join them. He had to leave Paris in a balloon, and in going over the German lines nearly met with misadventure, through the balloon sinking till ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... 3. Interview an elderly friend or relative, with the purpose of securing a definite idea of the condition of the working classes a half century ago. Contrast with the condition of the ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... they said; after a brief furlough at home; votes were then taken from time to time to ascertain the most popular candidate for the presidency resulting, as I recall it now, each time in a large majority for Lincoln. This seemed to greatly disturb an elderly man and when apparently he could stand it no longer, he denounced the government as despotic, the draft unconstitutional, the Emancipation Proclamation as an effort on Lincoln's part to flood the whole North with "niggers," ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... a certain proportion of elderly men collected on the occasion—they were seen, with a few exceptions, standing in knots, talking great speculations and little politics, and looking rather anxious for supper, and the boned turkey. Of the mothers and chaperons, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... sheets of mist, and a stranger who had been coming along the road from Duffclane, stepped out of them abruptly quite close, to Mrs. Kilfoyle's door, before she knew that there was anybody near. He was a tall, elderly man, gaunt and grizzled, very ragged, and so miserable-looking that Mrs. Kilfoyle could have felt nothing but compassion for him had he not carried over his shoulder a bunch of shiny cans, which was to her mind as satisfactory a passport as ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... way as to remark him incurably. I saw before me on that morning of tender leafage, of pale sunlight and blue mist contending for the day, a strangely assorted pair proceeding slowly toward the Inn. A telegraph boy was one; by his side walked, vehemently explaining, a tall, elderly solicitor—white-whiskered, drab-spatted, frock-coated, eye-glassed, silk-hatted—in every detail the trusted family lawyer. I knew the man by sight, and I knew him by name and repute. He was, let me say—for I withhold his real ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... stunned; obeyed automatically, without question, and had very little realization of what was happening to him. Altogether, and without reason, he was in precisely the condition of an elderly spouse detected in flagrant misbehaviour. Marjorie, similarly, was in precisely the condition of the party who detects such misbehaviour. It may be added that she had acted with a promptness, a decision and a disregard ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... surprised to find the poet different from what she had thought. It was over two years since she had read his book, the lyric drama which had brought him so much fame. She had thought the master to be an elderly man. ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... stumbling-block to him, spite of the polite name by which he called its manifestations. It was probably the recollection of the trouble it had brought to him, and of the struggles which even now it cost him, an elderly man, which made him so intolerant of its existence in others, especially the young. It is not necessary for the reader to quote the oft-repeated proverb about dwellers in glass houses, for uncle Rutherford was perfectly conscious of ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... a good man at the board, thinness being no bar to appetite and capacity. As he ate he asked the boys many questions, and they, knowing well his kindly heart under his crusty manner, answered them all readily and freely. Elderly and bookish though he was, his heart throbbed at the tale of the great perils through which they had gone, and his face darkened when Robert told anew the ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his distant New Hampshire home, for the first time in three years. Near by, on the strand, stood two men, both tall and possessed of a military bearing. One, who wore the undress uniform of an officer, was elderly and white-haired, while the other, slender, and clad much as was the ranger in the canoe, was in the first flush of splendid young manhood. As these two stood hand in hand, the younger said: "Can I not persuade you, father, even at this last moment, to change your mind and accompany us? ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... to speculating upon the identity and appearance of this man who bore this weird name of Scobbs. She pictured him an elderly man with chin whiskers who wore his pants thrust into top-boots. And why was Red Horse Valley so called? These unexpected and, to her, hitherto unknown names of places and people set in train most interesting processions of thought that slid through the noisy jangle of traffic, and ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... place this to come to look for a wife," remarked an elderly gentleman in a gruff voice, who had just entered on business as the last words ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... a great croaking. And to his delight his elderly friend heard him calling and dropped ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... they consider a moral and even a religious ceremony." He turned to an illustration of a woman's rights convention; "observe with what rapt attention the audience of that heathen temple watch the inspired ravings of that elderly priestess on the dais. It is even this kind of sacrilegious performance that I am told thy nephew ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... precaution in the event of having to abandon the ship, which was for some time doubtful, the elderly women and children were removed to the Eddystone when the wind was moderate this afternoon, but the young women remained to assist at the pumps, and their services were highly valuable, both for their personal labour and for the encouragement their ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... doings that would be less reassuring. When they exhibit any genuine religious fervour, its sexual character is usually so obvious that even the majority of men are cognizant of it. Women never go flocking ecstatically to a church in which the agent of God in the pulpit is an elderly asthmatic with a watchful wife. When one finds them driven to frenzies by the merits of the saints, and weeping over the sorrows of the heathen, and rushing out to haul the whole vicinage up to grace, and spending hours on their knees in hysterical abasement before ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Belles-letteriste, turned, for an hour, honest antiquary, lets us know how, upon the southern bank of the Rhone, flowing out from Switzerland, in the narrowly-bounded and, when he first quitted it, yet hidden valley of his birth:—The FAIRIES—elderly, not beautiful, but benevolent unmarried ladies—kept, while time was, open school in THE GROTTO, which was their habitation, for the young girls of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... and was aware of a sharp snapping and crackling sound as a lady in white passed quickly by me. I stared at her erect thin back and her agitated elbows. A short fat man passed in pursuit of her—an elderly man in a black alpaca jacket that billowed. I saw that she had left a trail of little white things on the asphalt. I watched the efforts of the agonised short fat man to overtake her as she swept wraith-like away to the distant end of the terrace. What was the matter? What had made her so spectacularly ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... HERDAL enter by the door on the right. He is a stoutish, elderly man, with a round, good-humoured face, clean shaven, with thin, light ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... the country, is the matter above stated. Therefore I have petitioned your Majesty to grant me favor and license for it, as I hope for it from your royal clemency. Many times I have considered and been brought face to face with the great evil that is done in this land by the marriage of elderly widows with whomsoever they may choose. They are old and but ordinary women, as they were those who first came here. Their husbands pacified the best encomiendas, and died; and these widows are left with five or six thousand pesos of income. They ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... von der Goltz, recently appointed Governor General of Belgium. Previous to the former Balkan War he had been employed in reorganizing the Turkish army. An onlooker in Namur thus describes the German Field Marshal:—"An elderly gentleman covered with orders, buttoned in an overcoat up to his nose, above which gleamed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... peace. These people were especially obnoxious to the Romans because Antiochus, at the commencement of the war, had married the daughter of a citizen of Chalkis. The match was both unseasonable in point of time, and unequal in respect of age, as he was an elderly man when he fell in love with the girl, who was the daughter of one Kleoptolemus, and is said to have been of exceeding beauty. This marriage caused the Chalkidians to become eager partizans of King Antiochus, and even to offer him their city for his ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... something was sure to happen, and Miss Abingdon disapproved of happenings. She believed in the essential respectability of monotony, and loved routine. But alas for routine and respectability and a peaceful and serene existence! Even elderly ladies, who dress in black satin and pay their bills weekly, and whose most stimulating and exciting morning is the one spent in scolding the gardener, may be touched with sorrows for which they are not responsible, ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... have been made. But according to popular tradition Mr. Wendell clung to the garden because his sisters desired it as a place in which to exercise their dogs. Now, after the death of John Gottlieb, the three elderly sisters still live in the house, in a state of the same old-time plainness. They, with a married sister, are the sole heirs of the eighty million dollars in New York real estate left by their brother. The house, a few ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... other of my own sex was present at the lunch-table, a Mr. Dowden, an elderly lawyer and politician of whom I had heard, and to whom Mrs. Apperthwaite, coming in after the rest of us were seated, introduced me. She made the presentation general; and I had the experience of receiving a nod and a slow glance, in which there ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... wondering what all this meant, the curtain suddenly parted and there entered an elderly gentleman somewhat jauntily attired in evening dress with a rose at his buttonhole. Saunders instantly recognised him as the banker, and he felt a resentment at what he considered his foppish appearance, realising almost ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... and silence of all, young Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient of the silence, started-up, and exclaimed in passionate fierce language, That he would! The assembly, among whom was Abu Thaleb, Ali's Father, could not be unfriendly to Mahomet; yet the sight there, of one unlettered elderly man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise against all mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the assembly broke-up in laughter. Nevertheless it proved not a laughable thing; it was a very serious thing! As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... hard to achieve an independence, and whose wives have toiled with them, either because they lived in communities where it was impossible to keep servants, or out of a mistaken sense of economy. The man looks fresh and his wife elderly and wrinkled and shapeless, even if she has reasonable health. It is quite different in real cities where life on a decent income (or salary) can be made very easy for the woman, as I have just pointed out; but I have noticed that in small towns or on the farm, even now, when these ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... puts my mind at ease!" murmured Mrs. Toplady. "To tell the truth, I have been worrying a little. Sometimes elderly people are so very tenacious of their ideas. Of course Lady Ogram has nothing but ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... this supposition, but began to wheel the carriage around the deck. Still the baby yelled and kicked. An elderly gentleman who had been reading a ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... elderly gentleman, in full evening dress, who was to represent the supposed bride's father in giving his ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... merry time that day, Tupman being deeply smitten with the charms of the elderly Miss Wardle, and Snodgrass no less in love with Emily, one of the pretty daughters. When the review was over the old gentleman invited them all to ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... the mouths of missionaries from Yukon posts. Most of the adults had been baptized; I baptized sixteen children. One curious feature of my stay was the megaphonic recapitulation of the heads of the instruction, after each session, by an elderly Indian who stood out in the midst of the tents. What on earth this man, with his town-crier voice, was proclaiming at such length, we were at a loss to conjecture, and upon inquiry were informed: "Them women, not much sense; one time tell 'em, quick forget; ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... now rained very violently, we entered this cottage, in which we espied a light, without any ceremony. Here we found an elderly woman sitting by herself at a little fire, who had no sooner viewed us than she instantly sprung from her seat, and starting back gave the strongest tokens of amazement; upon which Amelia said, 'Be not ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... and respectable parlor, the "angel" he worshipped "explained how she was situated," and from a "sense of duty" stated her purpose to yield to the wishes of her friends. Gregory had often seen Mr. Grobb, but had given him no thought, supposing him some elderly relative of the family. That this was the accepted suitor of the girl who had, with tender, meaning glances, sung for him sentimental ballads, who had sweetly talked to him of religion and mission work, seemed a monstrous perversion. Call it unjust, unreasonable, if you will, yet it was the most ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... caused some sensation, but, ascending to my room, I quickly washed, changed my ruined suit, and made myself presentable, and then went to see an elderly and rather fussy doctor, who put on his most serious professional air, and who was probably the most renowned medical man in the town. The provincial medico, when he becomes a consultant, nearly always becomes pompous ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... an elderly Arab came along from behind, as if in answer to his expressed intention, and Helmar stopped him, and inquired the way. The old fellow grinned, showing a row of perfect white teeth, which, in a man of his apparent years, astonished ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... occurred. There was a stir in the bushes above their heads, and an elderly scout peered down upon them, rifle ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... also made sensible of the benevolent influence of this kindly day, if I may draw any inference from my own case. At an early hour a gentleman of whom I had a slight knowledge entered my room, accompanied by an elderly person I had never before seen, and who, on being named, excused himself for adopting such a frank mode of making my acquaintance, which he was pleased to add he much desired, and at once requested me to fall in with the custom of the day, whose privilege he had thus ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... of the ladies, the wife of the caid, the last survivor out of some five or six. She was elderly and not beautiful, her dress gay rather than tasteful, and upon the whole less rich than I expected, considering the immense wealth of her husband. We were assured he possessed four thousand camels, besides boundless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... least. I believe the danger past. God be thanked!" Upon a settle piled with cushions lay Captain Laramore, with a bandaged shoulder, a long pipe between his teeth, and at his elbow a tankard of sack and an elderly Hebe in the person of Mistress Lettice Verney. Patricia, sumptuously clad and beautiful as a dream, sat in the great window with Betty and Sir Charles. Her eyes shone with a feverish brilliancy, her white hands were never still, she laughed and jested with her lover, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... mean time, one of the boys had left the room. Shotaye was still eating when he returned in company with an elderly man of low stature, whose greeting was answered with the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the objections to the bicycle to which I have referred were sufficient to prevent many, especially elderly men, from dreaming of becoming cyclists. So long as the tricycle was a crude and clumsy machine, there was no chance of cycling becoming a part, as it almost is and certainly soon will be, of our national life. The tricycle has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... too little of it; and you seem to have a degree of laziness and listlessness about you that makes you indifferent as to general applause. This is not in character at your age, and would be barely pardonable in an elderly and philosophical man. It is a vulgar, ordinary saying, but it is a very true one, that one should always put the best foot foremost. One should please, shine, and dazzle, wherever it is possible. At Paris, I am sure you must observe 'que chacun se fait ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... men to do his bidding. He has sinned against heaven, and against the spirit of that most immortal of documents—" (Blank again. Most unfortunate blank, for this is becoming oratory, but somebody from below has seized the squire by the leg.) Squire Northcutt is too dignified and elderly a person to descend to rough and tumble, but he did get his leg liberated and kicked Fletcher Bartlett in the face. Oh, Coniston, that such scenes should take place in your town meeting! By this time another is orating, Mr. Sam Price, Jackson Democrat. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... associate worthy persons with them in the task of begetting children, and taught them to ridicule those who insisted on the exclusive possession of their wives, and who were ready to fight and kill people to maintain their right. It was permitted to an elderly husband, with a young wife, to associate with himself any well-born youth whom he might fancy, and to adopt the offspring as ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... God of Mercy! Who am I to cast anybody out, Missis Dinnett? Shall an elderly and faulty fellow creature rise in judgment at the weakness of youth? What have I done in the past to lead you to any such conclusion? I feel very certain, indeed, that you are permitting yourself a debauch of ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... should be given to understand that something worth having was expected,—no trumpery thirty-shilling piece of crockery, no insignificant glass bottle, or fantastic paper-knife of no real value whatever, but got up just to put money into the tradesmen's hands. To one or two elderly gentlemen upon whom Mrs. Carbuncle had smiled, she ventured to suggest in plain words that a cheque was the most convenient cadeau. "What do you say to a couple of sovereigns?" one sarcastic old gentleman replied, upon whom probably Mrs. Carbuncle had not ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to reconstruct a picture of the High Table, made up as it was for many years of a group of middle-aged or elderly men, with a considerable admixture of youthful Fellow Commoners. During the eighteenth century the proportion of Fellow Commoners was probably from one-fourth to one-third of those dining together, and constraint on both sides must have been almost inevitable. ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... him straight off to the City, where they emerged in a quiet, shady square. The old gentleman led the way into some business premises, which had the inscription, "Cheeryble Brothers," on the doorpost, and stopped to speak to an elderly, large-faced clerk in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... An elderly friend said: "Well! in Palestine they at least know what the Sabbath is, whilst here in London, unless one keeps it strictly and remains indoors all day, except to go to synagogue, one never sees any difference between the Sabbath and any other ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... harmless game of cards,' he says, addressing the elderly guy, 'entitled,' he says, 'California euchre. I have here, you will observe, two jacks and an ace—the noble ace of spades. I riffle and shuffle and drop 'em in a row, the trick being to pick out the ace. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... town of Kashna, where an old Arab chief, who had resided there for some years, took compassion on him and sent an elderly black slave woman to nurse him, with two younger attendants. This was the first offer of the kind he had ever received from a Mussulman, and under their care and attendance he soon recovered his ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... frank curiosity of the barbarian, and the look of pleased surprise that he bestowed on the safe and the way in which his glance traveled from that object to my person were easy enough to interpret. Here was an iron safe, presumably containing valuables, and here was an elderly man with the key of that safe in his pocket. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... with a great knocking at the Door, when my Landlady's Daughter came up to me, and told me, that there was a Man below desired to speak with me. Upon my asking her who it was, she told me it was a very grave elderly Person, but that she did not know his Name. I immediately went down to him, and found him to be the Coachman of my worthy Friend Sir ROGER DE COVERLEY. He told me that his Master came to Town last Night, and would be glad to take a Turn with me in Grays-Inn Walks. As I was wondring ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fan-light, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderly ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... in the full sunshine, he was engaged in "posing," with the sheepish air of a person having his photograph taken, while a fresh, comely girl of sixteen stood, kodak in hand, waiting for his attitude to relax. Half a dozen spectators, elderly men and small boys, stood about making facetious remarks, but Gustav and his youthful "operator" were too much in earnest to pay them ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... the houses from which a shot had been fired, an innocent Englishman, who, being elderly and deaf, knew nothing of what had happened, came downstairs unsuspectingly on to the pavement into the middle of the crowd, and had a very narrow escape for his life. Some ingenious self-constituted detective called ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... two good lines, but these may have been supplied by Johnson. The lines to 'Lyce, an elderly Lady,' would, if written by him, have been taken as a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... That stout woman riding by in her limousine, with a Pomeranian on her lap instead of a baby? That fifteen-dollar-a-week chorus-girl in a cab, half buried under a two-thousand-dollar chinchilla coat? That elderly man who hobbles goutily out of his club and walks a few short blocks to his house on Murray Hill, "for exercise"? Assuredly, somebody has the price, for the shops are ever open, the allurement of their windows never less. But not you, who gaze hungry-eyed at these ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... footman, having opened the door, mentioned their names, they saw that everything within the room was just the same as it had been. But there was a nice elderly lady, dressed in black silk, who sat near the open window. She seemed, by the book in her hand, to have been reading to a pretty fair girl, nearly of the age of Lucy, who sat on a stool ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... of the Farmer out upon his rounds in these last days has been left us by his adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis. Custis relates that one day when out with a gun he met on the forest road an elderly gentleman on horseback who inquired where he could find the General. The boy told the stranger, who proved to be Colonel Meade, once of Washington's staff, that the General was abroad on the estate and pointed out what direction to take to come upon him. "You will meet, sir, with an ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... him with renewed insistence, and unexpectedly she received an ally in M. des Cadoux—an elderly gentleman who had been observing the flogging with disapproval, and who had followed her ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... hands of "Rory of the Hills" and folk of his stamp. In addition, there were several maiden ladies of divers ages, but all of slender means; one or two courtesy lords of high descent, but burdened with numerous offspring; together with a riding-master who wrote novels, and an elderly clergyman appointed by the Bishop of Gibraltar. I dare say there may have been a few black sheep in the colony; but the picture which Mrs. Annie Edwardes gave of it in her novel, "Susan Fielding," was exaggerated, though there was truth in the ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... a little movement among the tall men-servants in the royal scarlet liveries, and an elderly man descended the steps attended by another who walked behind him. He entered the carriage, the other man followed him, the door was closed, and the carriage drove through the entrance gates, where ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... appearance with a tendency to corpulence. His character was written in his fine open face, clean-shaven save for a ring of white hair that set his honest countenance in an oval frame; was felt as one listened to the tones of his rough, good-natured voice. He was joined by an elderly woman, who despite her grey hair and heavy build, was as active as many a younger maid. Her voice had a genuine and pleasant ring in it and her face always wore a cheerful, contented smile. She was beloved by all who came in contact with her, for she was the ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... was a positive shade of that yellowness she had noticed in others no older than herself; and, then, to return to her cheeks, or rather her chin, there was a laxity about the muscles at the sides of her mouth that gave her chin an elderly outline! No, it was not only the absence of youth, it was the presence of age—her full forty years. And her hair! It was certainly not as abundant as it used to be, it had wearied her, once, to brush out its thick glossy length; it was becoming unmistakably ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... pretty, and grand-daughterly, she is, however, only twenty-six years his junior. Then, this happened; the little train from Montebelluna to Feltre was crowded—we could find no room except in a smoking carriage—wherein I observed a good-natured, elderly gentleman, an Italian, I took for granted. Presently he said, 'Can I offer you an English paper?' 'What, are you English?' 'Oh, yes, and I know you,—who are going to see your son at Primiero.' ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... Winters and Ed Bush appeared, seemingly from nowhere. A sneering smile on his face, Winters held two paralo-ray guns and covered the group of farmers while Bush slipped up behind Logan and hit him on the back of the neck. The elderly ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... almost total, of the monarchical government of England. The opposition, therefore, which the remonstrance met with in the house of commons was great. For above fourteen hours the debate was warmly managed; and from the weariness of the king's party, which probably consisted chiefly of the elderly people, and men of cool spirits, the vote was at last carried by a small majority of eleven.[**] Some time after, the remonstrance was ordered to be printed and published, without being carried up to the house of peers for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... steps of the high pillared porch which completely covered the face of the building, they were met, at the great door which gave entrance to the spacious hallway extending through the house, by a stately and gracious, if somewhat elderly gentleman. ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... wart, and occurs commonly upon the back, especially in elderly people (verruca senilis, keratosis pigmentosa). It is, as a rule, but slightly elevated, is usually dark in color, and of the size ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... but the elderly abbess herself became excited while encouraging the young future "Sister" to her noble task. The days when, with the inmates of the convent, she had prayed that the Emperor Rudolph might fulfil the Pope's desire, and in a new crusade again ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was not indispensable—for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process—and I have gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... woman, and Kingo found in her, perhaps for the first time in his life, a woman with whom he could share fully the rich treasure of his own heart and mind. He is credited with the remark that he had done what all ought to do: married an elderly woman in his young days, whom he could care for when she grew old, and a young woman in his later years, who could comfort ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... thrown apart with a clattering noise, a warmth and radiance from the entrance-hall thus displayed streamed into the foggy street, and at the same instant the footman, still with grave and imperturbable countenance, opened the brougham. An elderly lady, richly dressed, with diamonds sparkling in her gray hair, came rustling down the steps, bringing with her faint odours of patchouly and violet-powder. She was followed by a girl of doll-like prettiness, with a snub nose and petulant ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... recalls the elderly, prim Miss Branwell about ten years later than her first arrival in Yorkshire. But it is always said of her that she changed very little. Miss Nussey's striking picture will pretty accurately represent the maiden lady of forty, who, from a stringent and noble sense ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... House and when he crossed the threshold he confronted the elderly unliveried man who had stood at his place for years—and the usually unperturbed face was agitated so nearly to panic that he stopped and ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... an immense sensation. It was associated in the heated minds at the North with the "slavery aggressions of the South." At the South, it was generally excused as the resentment of an impetuous young man to an insult offered an elderly kinsman. Northern men denounced the assault in unmeasured terms on the floor of the House and Senate. The affair led to several challenges between the representatives of both sections. Congressman Brooks resigned his ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... openings of like character, until Tom counted ten in number. Then he looked up at the huge mass above him, and made an estimate that it would take an army of men, each armed with a spade and pick, to work it all away. These were probably the marks of the elderly man among the cowboys, who told him that the reason he didn't find the nugget was because he didn't dig in the right place. Tom shouldered his rifle, walked back to ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... considerable bustle; but the individual whom (from his costume and general appearance) I will call the Complete Sportsman was nimble enough to secure a corner seat in a compartment that was immediately filled. A couple of quiet-looking elderly men, wearing hard hats and field-glasses, took the corners on the far side and began to discuss the day's events in undertones. They were followed by a stout red-faced gentleman in a suit of pronounced check, a curate (at sight of whom the Complete Sportsman elevated his eyebrows) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... infested by hippopotami, and, as certain elderly males are expelled the herd, they become soured in their temper, and so misanthropic as to attack every canoe that passes near them. The herd is never dangerous, except when a canoe passes into the midst of it when all are asleep, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... being, in fact, the following: "Oh, the darkness ... never, never, never! ... you couldn't ... he wouldn't ... Ah, mother! ... Where the river swings so slowly ... Ah, no!" Nevertheless, she was doing all she could for the elderly stranger, and as they came closer, encountered, and passed on, she had the definite impression that he did indeed take her to be a struggling young actress who would some day be famous—and then he might see her on a night of triumph and recognize ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... its infancy. This was not only his first visit to England, but, indeed, to any spot further afield than Interlaken. All of his six-and-twenty years that he could recollect had been passed in a chalet on the Scheidegg above Grindelwald, his only companion an elderly recluse who had deliberately cut himself off from communion with his fellows. The trouble which had driven Mr. Strange, an author at one time of some mark, into this seclusion, was now as completely forgotten ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... street walked an elderly man, with bronzed features and thin gray hair, supporting his somewhat uncertain steps by a stout cane. He was apparently tired, for, seeing a slight natural elevation under a branching elm tree, he sat down, and looked ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... generous with his letters, but by the end of the first week in Chicago, Roger had presented them all. Curiously enough, in all this week of meeting with manufacturers Roger told but one of them his ultimate dream. John McGinnis, maker of kerosene engines, was elderly and Irish and immensely interested in Roger and ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... illuminated with vintages, crowned with his curls like Bacchus, he now stood before me for an instant, the perfect master of himself, smiling with airs of conscious popularity and insufferable condescension. He reminded me at once of a royal duke, or an actor turned a little elderly, and of a blatant bagman who should have been the illegitimate son of a gentleman. A moment after he was gliding noiselessly ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seemed to be holding Emma in the chair, had started from her sofa in the background. "Brutes!" she had declared and reached the chair-side voluble in unintelligible German to find Emma serenely emerging from unconsciousness. Once she had taken Gertrude to the dentist—another dentist, an elderly man, practising in a frock-coat in a heavily-furnished room with high sash windows, the lower sashes filled with stained glass. There had been a driving March wind and Gertrude with a shawl round her face had battled gallantly along shouting through her shawl. ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... wife were quiet unpretending people enough when they did come; languid, as all East Indians are, I suppose. We were rather dismayed at their bringing two servants with them, a Hindoo body-servant for the Major, and a steady elderly maid for his wife; but they slept at the inn, and took off a good deal of the responsibility by attending carefully to their master's and mistress's comfort. Martha, to be sure, had never ended her staring at the East Indian's ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... could not longer turn her attention to the spectacle for wondering why Mrs. Yaverland should speak of the Thames as if it were an interesting and important relative. It could not possibly be that Mrs. Yaverland felt about the river as she felt about the Pentlands, for elderly people did not feel things like that. They liked a day's outing, but they always sat against the breakwater with the newspaper and the sandwich-basket while one went exploring; at least, mother always did. Trying to insert some sense into the conversation, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... but he held a true course for the grassy area, and with a multitude looking on his nerve was never steadier. Amid great cheering the Arrow came safely to rest at her appointed place. John and Lannes stepped forth, as an elderly man in a quiet uniform came ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with the school in Greengate, I attended a night school in Fell-lane—much nearer home. This was kept by an elderly personage known as Mr. John Tansey, and under the guidance of that gentleman, the present Mayor of Keighley (Alderman Ira Ickringill) and myself spent a portion of our time in obtaining knowledge. His Worship and myself were twin companions, ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... all told, and the like of that outfit couldn't be bought any other place of style in New York for less than a thousand, Miss," remarked to me the elderly clerk as he closed and made fast with keys the two bags. "Shall I send ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... perfection of summer beauty, and after a few moments' solitude Harriet began to feel its spell. She put her cups and spoons in order, and chatted with a hovering maid. Some elderly persons came out and sat near, and were grateful for the quiet and the tea. From the reception line, on the lawn, came such a brainless confusion of jabbering and chattering as might well ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... Cheapside, were assembled, according to custom, at prayer. The grocer's name was Stephen Bloundel. His family consisted of his wife, three sons, and two daughters. He had, moreover, an apprentice; an elderly female serving as cook; her son, a young man about five-and-twenty, filling the place of porter to the shop and general assistant; and a kitchen-maid. The whole household attended; for the worthy grocer, being a strict ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in a Connemara trout stream. At this moment they were scanning with approval, tempered by anxiety, the muddy legs of a lean and lengthy grey filly, who was fearfully returning her gaze from between the strands of a touzled forelock. The owner of the filly, a small man, with a face like a serious elderly monkey, stood at her head in a silence that was the outcome partly of stupidity, partly of caution, and partly of lack of English speech. The conduct of the matter was in the hands of a friend, a tall young man with ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... conduct of that post depended everything: and here comes the fun. The commander of the post was not what you might expect, a Frenchman of any one of the French types with which the Revolution has made us familiar: contrariwise, he was an elderly private gentleman ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... from her early swim with Olga, and an undeniably languid stroll in the evening, she scarcely left the precincts of the cottage: No visitors came to her. There were none but fisher-folk in the little village. And so her sole company consisted of Daisy's ayah and the elderly English cook. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... ridiculous bombardments of Scarborough and Ramsgate were colossal tragedies, and the battle of Jutland a mere ballad. The words "after thorough artillery preparation" in the news from the front meant nothing to us; but when our seaside trippers learned that an elderly gentleman at breakfast in a week-end marine hotel had been interrupted by a bomb dropping into his egg-cup, their wrath and horror knew no bounds. They declared that this would put a new spirit into the army; and had no suspicion that ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... there had been a small flutter of excitement in the loom room of this very mill. Johnny's mother had fainted. They stretched her out on the floor in the midst of the shrieking machines. A couple of elderly women were called from their looms. The foreman assisted. And in a few minutes there was one more soul in the loom room than had entered by the doors. It was Johnny, born with the pounding, crashing roar of the looms in ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... The elderly personage, with grizzly hair and whiskers, a round pale face, and a somewhat red nose (being too much in the wind will make the nose red, and this old officer is very often 'in the wind,' of course, from the very nature of his profession), is a Lieutenant Appleboy. He has served in every class of ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... any lodging suitable to a person of her station, I was puzzled how to act; I did not want to lose a patient, and yet could not, even if so disposed, make room for her in my own house. I knew that my next door neighbor (an elderly French-Canadian lady) was accustomed to take in lodgers; so, leaving the lady and gentleman for a while in my parlor, I went to see if I could make arrangements for the reception of the former. Madame Charbonneau, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... found her when it was growing dark, still with the rapt expression of glad thought on her face. And the elderly woman shook her head. "That child is not canny," she muttered, while aloud she chided her for idleness and untidiness in having thrown her ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... . : "unsexed" . . ." pathological" . . . "They must be crazy" . . . "Don't they know anything about politics?" . . . "What can Wilson do? He does not have to sign the constitutional amendment." . . . So ran the comment from the wise elderly gentlemen sitting buried in their cushioned chairs at the gentlemen's club across the Park, watching eagerly the "shocking," "shameless" women at the gates of the White House. No wonder these gentlemen found the pickets ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... The Aunt Caroline's elderly maid easily agreed to this. It was true there did not seem to be anyone adventurous-looking, and Miss Stella would be more or less under her eye—and she was thoroughly tired with traveling and what not. So Stella found herself ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... Meanwhile the volunteers assembled in the square, thirty-four in all; men of half a dozen nationalities. One giant Russian loomed above them, a Goliath on a great roan horse. And near him, to accentuate the contrast, an elderly moustached, imperialed Frenchman on a mare as ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... gather here are not of the right type—they are the young, or empty-headed, or merely thirsty. The other is the true centre of the leisured class, the philosophers' rendezvous. Your speciale (apothecary) is himself an elderly and honoured man, full of responsibility and local knowledge; he is altogether a superior person, having been trained in a University. You enter the shop, therefore, and purchase a pennyworth of vaseline. This act entitles you to all the privileges of the club. Then is the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... upsetting all my ideas," she said languidly. "I had always regarded golf as a suitable amusement for stout elderly persons who waddled, a good deal like the caucus race in Alice. Babe's vigor fairly takes ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... like a blush. She wondered if any of the curious eyes of the tourists had noticed it; she had been conscious of being freely criticized all the evening. She looked about her quickly. The place had become almost devoid of young people; only some elderly men and women were left, reclining in big chairs. With the absence of youth, Margaret's spirits sank very low; it was not bracing to her strained nerves and lonely condition to sit with the elderly invalids and watch them passing the time away in a semi-dozing condition ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... a rather uncommon specimen of the class. She inclined to plumpness, was lively in the extreme, wore very fashionable garments of the brightest colours, and—although somewhat elderly—still cherished a hope that some young man would elevate her to ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... any sense they'll send bloodhounds after them," said the elderly man, fiercely. "I helped catch a murderer with my own hands that way, last ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... having been working too hard, he went abroad for a long change. On his way back, at the Albergo La Luna, in Venice, he met an elderly Russian lady in whose company he spent most of his time there. She was no doubt impressed by his versatility and charmed, as everyone always was, by his conversation and original views on the many subjects that interested ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... Madonnas, local landscapes for Oriental scenery, up-to-date dresses for New Testament episodes, portraits of their patrons for patron-saints and apostles. Did you ever see a more modern figure than Tintoretto's portrait of himself, the elderly man in a frock-coat who looks on at his own wonderful picture of St. Mark descending to rescue a Christian slave? An Academician or a new English Art Clubbite who had done only one tiny corner of this picture would so swell ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Mr. Abraham Hayward hold a whole dinner table." There were long and frequent pauses—between which I heard myself talking loudly, frantically, sinking lower and lower in the esteem of my small audience. I felt like a man drowning under the eyes of an elderly couple who sit on the bank regretting that they can offer NO assistance. Presently the Duke looked at his watch and said to the Duchess that it was "time to ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... was taken—again a sickly one—this time a consumptive farmer, named Jackson; and some time afterward a fourth, an elderly woman, with a cancer; she was Mrs. Lyons, formerly a milliner in South Boston. Then the patience and hope which had sustained us gave way, and we were in a condition close upon despair. The cooler ones among the men assembled quietly apart and debated what to do. Our captain, a man quiet and brave, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... our way through," said Bethmann-Hollweg. And we, in Morogoro, were very curious to see what manner of vengeance the Belgians might wreak. Nor would we have blamed them over-much for anything they might have done. I had lived in German prisons with elderly Belgian officers whose wives and grown-up daughters had been left behind in occupied parts of Belgium. We all had shuddered at the stories they told us; nor did we wonder that these unhappy fathers had often gone insane. And when we learnt the truth about Tabora, and knew too, to our disgust, ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... other sections, these New England plots do not fall so readily into formulas as do those of the South and West; and yet they have their formulas: how a stubborn pride worthy of some supreme cause holds an elderly Yankee to a petty, obstinate course until grievous calamities ensue; how a rural wife, neglected and overworked by her husband, rises in revolt against the treadmill of her dull tasks and startles him into comprehension and awkward consideration; how the remnant of some once prosperous ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... usually came to our week-day services were a few church workers and an elderly lady or two who happened to be passing and dropped in. The elderly ladies who lived in the parish were much too ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... the mysteries of our company was a tall, slender, elderly Scotchman, who appeared on the rolls as William Bradford. What his past life had been, where he had lived, what his profession, whether married or single, no one ever knew. He came to us while in Camp of Instruction near Springfield, Illinois, and ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... you make your hearers weep in an unmanly fashion; and even while yet they are moved, they despise themselves and hate the occasion of their weakness. It did not come to tears that night, for the experiment was interrupted. An elderly, hard-looking man, with a goatee beard and about as much appearance of sentiment an you would expect from a retired slaver, turned with a start and bade the performer stop that "damned thing." "I've heard about enough of that," he added; "give us something about ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a stranger to Roger Strang. He was an elderly man, stooped, with graying hair and a small clipped mustache that seemed to stick out like antennae. He watched Roger impassively with steel gray eyes, ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... Jack Rogers passed briskly through the room with the closed windows towards this chamber of revelry, preceded by an elderly woman with a smoking dish in her hands. I could not see the doorway between the two rooms; but the company announced his appearance with a shout, and several guests pushing back their chairs and rising to welcome him, in the same instant were disclosed to me, first, the pale face of ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... partition walls, quite justified the comment of a little girl when she first attended a service in one of these old-fashioned, square-pewed churches. She exclaimed in dismay, "What! must I be shut up in a closet and sit on a shelf?" Often elderly people petitioned to build separate small pens of pews with a single wider seat as "through the seats being so very narrow" they could ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle |
