"Middle-aged man" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accidents she had prayed for. As Jim strode home about noon one day, he heard a rabble of small boys jeering and shouting, "Holy Billy! Holy Billy! Salvation! Salvation!" He turned to see them pursued by a fat, middle-aged man, who after several attempts to drive them away, at length seized a pitch fork from those exhibited outside a hardware store and, intent on revenging himself, ran after the children. The youngsters fled, save one, who fell; and the furious fat man made a vicious prod with ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... as the Resident's carriage drew up before the steps of the Mess verandah on which stood all the officers of the regiment, dressed in the white drill uniform worn at dinner in India during the hot weather. From the carriage Major Norton, a stout, middle-aged man in civilian evening dress, descended stiffly and shook hands with the Commandant of the battalion, Colonel Trevor, who had come down the steps to meet him and whose ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... Scott!" they exclaim, "And ain't they high too?" One helps himself to some, with a sense that being on the Continent makes all the difference. But even his courage fails on being offered stewed apricots with it. Close by a couple of Americans; a dry middle-aged man, and a talkative young fellow who informs him he was at Harvard. Elder man listens to him with a grim and wooden forbearance. "Ez fur languages," the younger man is saying. "I'd undertake to learn any language ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... door opened, and a tall, thin, middle-aged man walked in sideways with his feet very much turned out to right and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... her, reading the sheets of a letter which she handed to him as she herself finished them. Every now and then she spoke to him, and he replied. In the little scene, between the slender white-haired woman and the middle-aged man, there was something so intimate, so conjugal even, that Diana involuntarily turned away as though to watch it ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slight middle-aged man, with fluffy straw-coloured hair which he grew long above his ears, to compensate for the baldness of his cranium—answered that he was glad Mr Pamphlett took it in so hearty a fashion, but for his part, if it wasn't for the Missus, he was dying ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... face. He stopped and sat waiting, twisted about in his saddle, his expression ugly and defiant, and yet touchingly helpless, the look of a boy in trouble and at bay. The horseman came into sight on the trail below, riding hard, a middle-aged man in a dark sack suit and a straw hat, an oddly incongruous figure and manifestly weary. He rode bent forward, and now and again he raised his eyes from the trail and searched the wall ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... drawn with a pencil, above each eye. Her daughter, a girl of fifteen, who bore the genuine Hebrew name of Rachel, had even bigger and blacker eyes than her mother; but her forehead was low, her mouth large, and the expression of her face exceedingly stupid. The father of the family was a middle-aged man, with a well-bred air, and talked with an Oriental politeness which was very refreshing. An English lady, who was of our party, said to him, through me, that if she possessed such a house she should be willing to remain in Damascus. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... tumult had somewhat subsided the eyes of those present were turned toward the spot whence the words "Viva la Reine" had proceeded. Leaning against one of the tall shade trees were two gentlemen, who had joined them unobserved. The elder of the strangers was a middle-aged man, in whose piercing black eyes and dark complexion we recognize the Mr. Middleton whom we left with Dr. Lacey in New Orleans. His companion was many years younger, and there was something in his appearance which instantly interested and attracted ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... on the counter negligently collecting scattered toothpicks, and conversing laughingly with a carefully dressed middle-aged man with a handsome face and curly brown hair. His hair and Lucy's fluffy topknot were almost touching. Hiram saw him grasp playfully at Lucy's hand, saw her jerk it away with a ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... distill their soft words upon him like dew upon the green herb. They reach even the poor relation, whose dreary apparition saddens the perfumed atmosphere of the sumptuous drawing-room. I have known one of these angels ask, of her own accord, that a desolate middle-aged man, whom nobody seemed to know, should be presented to her by the hostess. He wore no shirt-collar,—he had on black gloves,—and was flourishing a red bandanna handkerchief! Match me this, ye proud ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... turning a severe look upon the young girl (he was a middle-aged man of stern aspect). "Suppose I had not been near enough to catch her, and she had been precipitated to the ground from that great ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... said the man as Athalie lifted her eyes from the crystal and smiled reassuringly at him. He was a stocky, red-faced, trim, middle-aged man; but his sanguine visage bore the haggard imprint of sleepless nights, and the edges of his teeth had bitten his under ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... at the meal which explained the things that were so blind to me; but there was a good deal of talk about rifles. The farmer was named Preston, a middle-aged man who shaved all his beard except what grew under his chin, which hung down in a long black fringe over his breast like a window-lambrequin. His wife's father, who was an old Welshman named Evans, had worked in the lead mines over toward ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... First. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. He had been ever assuring himself of that fact, which was now more of a fact than ever. And fifty years old! It was quite shocking. With a steady middle-aged man like himself, and with the approval of her family, marriage might have been thought of. But this harum-scarum young tenant's son, who was in no respect a gentleman, whose only thought was of galloping over hedges and ditches, such an idea showed a state of mind which—well, absolutely ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... and governments, convert it to pacificism, and launch it on a confused but strident groping after Truth. It was incredible to him that any one who had read history could be guilty of such jejunity, and he attributed it to their bruised but itching egos. After all, it had been a middle-aged man's war. Not a single military reputation had been made by any one of the millions of young fighters, despite promotions, citations, and medals. Statesmen and military men long past their youth would alone be ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... farther on he saw the figure of a rather shabby, middle-aged man, in a faded grey overcoat and grey soft felt-hat of the mode usual on the Riviera, but discoloured by long wear, leaning upon the low sea-wall and smoking a cigarette. No other person was in the vicinity, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... flew open, and a burly middle-aged man, in a red shirt, appeared, with a face which was almost the same colour as his garment. "We hain't got no—" he was beginning, when he suddenly recognized his visitors and broke short off, staring at them ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... personage could not be an old gentleman; for old gentlemen are not apt to be so obstreperous to chamber-maids. He could not be a young gentleman; for young gentlemen are not apt to inspire such indignation. He must be a middle-aged man, and confounded ugly into the bargain, or the girl would not have taken the matter in such terrible dudgeon. I confess I ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a terrific facer ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... ignominiously ordered to the opposite side of the house?) and we finally turn various illegal occupants out of our seats, and begin to fan ourselves in fervid anticipation of the coming musical treat. A buzz of conversation is everywhere going on. Did any one ever notice the curious fact that a middle-aged man and woman can converse at a theatre or concert room without either one finding any difficulty in hearing what the other says, while no young man can make his accompanying young lady hear a single word unless his mouth is in close proximity to her ear? This singular state of things is doubtless ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... tall, thin, middle-aged man of pale complexion. Like AEsop and like Passepoil, he was dressed in black, as became the confidential servant of a master with many confidences; but, unlike the amorous AEsop and unlike the amorous Passepoil—though ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... by a low knocking on the front door, which opened on to the street. In response to his invitation it opened slowly, and a small middle-aged man of doleful aspect entered softly and ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... himself in the presence of a pleasant-looking middle-aged man, who was writing at a modest desk when the Hungarian entered, and who bowed politely, motioning him ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 'There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... had thrown me up for a moment at a place I'd never heard of before, thrown me up there to assist in the astonishing job of transporting nuts, when the Chief remarked, pointing with the stem of his pipe, 'Here's a chief coming.' I looked round, expecting to see another stout, middle-aged man in singlet and dungarees, with perhaps an old uniform patrol jacket whose brass buttons were green with verdigris. But it was not so. He was indicating a large canoe emerging rapidly from the waterway astern of us. As it came more into our angle of vision I watched ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... fifteen miles to Earlshall Park, where the Earl of W—— lived. There was a very fine house and a great deal of stabling. We went into the yard through a stone gateway, and John asked for Mr. York. It was some time before he came. He was a fine-looking, middle-aged man, and his voice said at once that he expected to be obeyed. He was very friendly and polite to John, and after giving us a slight look he called a groom to take us to our boxes, and invited ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... a middle-aged man, stout and florid, rough as a chunk of wood, but dressed in his best brown for the fair. Tears were rolling down his vast round cheeks as he expatiated on his grievances to ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... mind that both the parties to this proposed transaction were men well known in their own professions. Browne, particularly, was a real-estate lawyer of some distinction, and an editor of what were known as the old "New York Civil Procedure Reports." He was a middle-aged man, careful in his dress, particular in his speech, modest and quiet in his demeanor, by reputation a gentleman and a scholar, and had practised at the New York ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... extraordinary dimensions and significance. He sees in the throng a young lady of his acquaintance, and proceeds to shake hands with her with great effusion. So well is the secret kept, that she has no idea that the apparently frolicsome youth is a middle-aged man of business, and she spends perhaps half the night wondering which of her beaus this fearfully ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... train and dropped his suitcase into the Automatic Porter, and then went to find a seat. The only one available was next to a middle-aged man chewing a cigar in a sour silence. Charley slipped into his seat without a word, and hoped the man would ignore him. He had a face like an overripe summer squash, and his big hands, clasped in his lap, were fat and white, covered with ...
— Charley de Milo • Laurence Mark Janifer AKA Larry M. Harris
... poor wretches thus cowering about ran away upon perceiving, as they thought, an armed Japanese soldier, but in one instance I had reason to be thankful that I was not alone. A middle-aged man and two younger ones were carrying away, in one of the streets we traversed, the half-naked body of a woman, which had been split open from the abdomen to the chest. The elder man glared upon me, in the dim light, ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... sallow face and harsh voice; evidently possessed of that knowledge of the world, and captivating freedom of manner, which is to be acquired in public-house parlours, and at low billiard tables. The third tenant of the apartment was a middle-aged man in a very old suit of black, who looked pale and haggard, and paced up and down the room incessantly; stopping, now and then, to look with great anxiety out of the window as if he expected somebody, and then ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... hove-to with her fore-topsail aback. The Montauk followed, taking a position under her lee. A quarter-boat was lowered, and in five minutes its oars were tossed at the packet's lee-gangway, when the commander of the corvette ascended the ship's side, followed by a middle-aged man in the dress of a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... bowed. He was a grave middle-aged man, who seemed oppressed and burdened by the load of cares and responsibilities which his smiling chief carried so jauntily. People said that he was the proper complement of Lord Pilgrimstone, as the more volatile Atley ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Bacri was a middle-aged man of magnificent appearance. From the cast of his features it was easy to perceive that he was of Jewish extraction, and his proportions might have been compared to those of the ancient enemy of his nation, Goliath. Like Saul, he was a head and shoulders higher than ordinary men, ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... small, fleet hand was dashed across the twinkling, tearful eyes of this April day of a middle-aged man of the world—this modern Mercutio—merry and mournful at once, as if there were two sides to his every mood, like the famous shield of story. When we reached the quay the Kosciusko was already getting up her steam, and, in less than an hour afterward, the friends I loved were ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... her, simply darted in with her and up the stairs, causing no end of consternation amongst the people in his way. They scattered. What might have been their thoughts at the spectacle of a shameless middle-aged man abducting headlong into the upper regions of a respectable hotel a terrified young girl obviously under age, I don't know. And Fyne (he told me so) did not care for what people might think. All he wanted was to reach his wife before the girl collapsed. For a time she ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... panel is the well-known portrait of Lafayette by Ary Scheffer—not in uniform—no trace of the dashing young soldier; a middle-aged man in a long fur coat, hat and stick in his hand; looking, as one can imagine he did when he settled down, after his brilliant and eventful career, to the simple patriarchal life at La Grange, surrounded by devoted ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... her pallid face, replied that he was, and immediately conducted us to a little parlor on the first floor, the door of which stood partly open. Without knocking, Mrs. Colesworthy hastily entered, I closely following. A middle-aged man suddenly arose from a small table at which he was sitting, and turning quickly toward us, made an abrupt ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... by looking for men to be more perfect than they can be, he ends by thinking them worse than they are, and then he secretly plumes himself on his superior cleverness in having found humanity out. For the deadliest of all wet blankets give me a middle-aged man who has been most of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... the heap of packages, and enter the narrow passage where he was. The first, bearing a candle stuck between some nails in a piece of wood, was a fair, fresh-coloured young fellow, and he was closely followed by a burly middle-aged man bearing another candle, Allstone ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... breakfast-table next morning bore early testimony to the tonic of the hills. Jack only was not so well, and Mrs. Muir remained with him, while Madge and Mr. Muir wended their way to a little chapel whose spire was the only summons to worship. A short, genial, middle-aged man met them at the door, with such hospitable cordiality as to suggest that he was receiving friends at his own home, and conducted them to seats. A venerable clergyman sat in the pulpit with a face ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Hundred grinned. He walked over among the small boys, who stopped their talk and regarded him silently. "Ever play duck-on-the-rock?" he asked, with that curiously embarrassed friendliness of the middle-aged man trying to make up to boyhood. After a certain period, most of us unconsciously regard a small boy as a kind of buzz-saw, to be handled with ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... the monk's care, Casanova hoisted himself through the broken ceiling and gained Balbi's cell, where the sight of Count Asquino dismayed him. He found a middle-aged man of a corpulence which must render it impossible for him to face the athletic difficulties that lay before them; of this the Count himself seemed ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... he will be absent always. But especially at dinner; Charles had to take a place which he had sometimes filled, but then as the deputy, and in the presence of him whom now he succeeded. His father, being not much more than a middle-aged man, had been accustomed to carve himself. And when at the meal of the day Charles looked up, he had to encounter the troubled look of one, who, from her place at table, had before her eyes a still more vivid memento of ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... we entered Valparaiso. Near the plaza Victoria we paused before an English boarding house sign. As we stood looking, a middle-aged man came out and asked us our business. Before we could reply he said: "I bet you are the two boys from the Aven." Our frightened looks told him we were. He invited us ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... most momentous council yet held in North America, and all the young officers waited with the most intense eagerness the news from the tent. Robert saw Braddock as he went in, a middle-aged man of high color and an obstinate chin. Grosvenor gave him some of the gossip about ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... oak floor of this roomy apartment a middle-aged man who wore a green shade above his eyes was propelling himself in a wheeled chair. Thus did Joseph Foster cover the space where the younger and more fortunate sometimes danced, and thus did he move among works of art which, even on the brightest days, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... George Howell," said The Sparrow, introducing the slim, wiry-looking, middle-aged man, who was alert and clean-shaven, and plainly but well dressed—a man whom the casual acquaintance would take to be a solicitor of a fair practice. He bore the stamp of suburbia all over him, and his accent was peculiarly ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... a middle-aged man in the usual costume of a West-End shopman, who had sent in his name as Mr. Axminster, was shown into my private room. After a little hesitation, he said, "Although you do not know me, living at this end of the town, I know you very well ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... stated hour in the day, a tall, handsome, distinguished, middle-aged man, wearing for the occasion the uniform of a colonel in the Imperial Guard, a blood-stained, tarnished, battered, battle-worn uniform, be it observed, comes into the room. He is more often than not attended by ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... council. The large cloister surrounds their burying-ground. The cloisters are very narrow and very long, and let into the cells, which are built like little huts detached from each other. We were carried into one, where lived a middle-aged man not long initiated into the order. He was extremely civil, and called himself Dom Victor. We have promised to visit him often. Their habit is all white: but besides this he was infinitely clean in his person; and his apartment and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... she took the trolley pointed out to her by her friend, the starter, who noticed and remembered her when she returned to the waiting-room. The evening rush was over, and for some time she was the only passenger. Then a very tired-looking, middle-aged man, an accountant perhaps, in a shabby alpaca coat, boarded the car and sank at once into a restless doze, his heat-paled face nodding about like a broken-necked doll's. Lydia herself felt heavy on her the death-like fatigue which the last weeks ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Mills, the gunner's mate, a strongly-built middle-aged man, came on deck, and agreeing at once to join, was sent to fetch the keys of the arm-chest from the armourer, under pretence of getting out a musket to shoot a shark ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... at its height a middle-aged man, bleeding at the head, clothes torn and dusty, staggered into the West 47th street police station. He found a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... thrust the other from his path; each more certain, with every moment, that, the other removed, his path to the goal was clear and open. Neither gave a thought to Colonel Sullivan, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion upstairs: Payton, because the Colonel seemed to him a middle-aged man, plain and grey; and Asgill, because a more immediate and pressing jealousy had thrust his mistrust of the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... walking up Long Bridge Street, when he saw a large crowd in one of the yards leading from the street to a factory. Upon making his way to the centre of this crowd, he saw an old woman in a 'fit,' real or feigned, he could not say, but he believed the latter, and over her stood an angry, middle-aged man, gesticulating violently, and threatening the old dame, that he would hang her from an adjacent beam if she would not pronounce the word 'God' to a child which was held in its mother's arms before her. It was in vain that the old woman protested her innocence; in vain that she said that by complying ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... this that a middle-aged man, of somewhat threadbare appearance and restricted travelling conveniences, was seen carefully tying his horse at the outer enclosure of an elegant mansion in the town of ——, in one of our Western States; which being done, he eyed the house rather inquisitively, as ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... child is of lighter complexion than the young brave; this one lighter than the middle-aged man, and the middle-aged man lighter than the superannuated homo, who, by smoke, paint, dirt, and a drying up of the vital juices, appears to be the true copper-colored Dakota. The color of the Dakotas varies with the nation, and also with the age and condition of the individual. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... exhibition at Yokohama in the open air, which was remarkable, not for any mystery about it, but as showing to what degree of adroitness and skill the human hands may be trained by patient practice. The performer was a middle-aged man who had just closed a series of the stereotyped tricks before the British Consulate. It was a new exhibition to us, though one that is well known, and which we saw indifferently imitated afterwards in China. As has been said it was out-of-doors, but the air was perfectly still. The performer ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... to the northward stepped three men. One was a middle-aged man, a mountaineer if dress and ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... later they were stopping for a moment to look at a stout, middle-aged man who was standing on the steps of the little village hotel, talking with the landlord. A strap over one shoulder held up a fishing-basket that swung behind his left hip, and in his right hand he carried, all ready for use, the lightest fishing-rod Charley Morris had ever seen. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was musing disconsolately in his hall, a stranger suddenly entered his palace. Looking up, the king beheld a middle-aged man wrapped in a wide cloak, with a broad-brimmed hat drawn down over his forehead to conceal the fact that he had but one eye. The stranger courteously enquired the cause of his evident depression, and ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... middle-aged man. He looked honest and competent, a solid quiet man with a craggy face and the deep-set eyes of a Mystic. His skin had the typical thickness and pore prominence of the dwellers on that foggy world from which he came. But unlike the natives ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... it is most frequent, namely, from ten to thirty-five years of age. And its frequency diminishes even more rapidly than its fatality increases in later years. So that while it is much more serious in a middle-aged man, he is less liable to develop it than a younger one. Where the mortality from pneumonia is highest, is in the most densely populated wards, especially among negroes and foreigners of the hospital class, in individuals who are victims of chronic alcoholism, and also ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... than I expected: my clownish conductor was not so morose as he appeared to be. He was a middle-aged man, wore his black, grizzly hair, in a queue, had a martial air, a strong voice, was tolerably cheerful, and to make up for not having been taught any trade, could turn his hand to every one. Having proposed to establish some kind of manufactory at Annecy, he had consulted Madam ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... sayings which put God himself before us. Here is the bird's nest, and one little sparrow fallen to the ground—and God is there and he takes notice of it; he misses the little bird from the brood (Matt. 10:29; cf. Luke 12:6). Here again is quite another scene—the rich and middle-aged man, who has prospered in everything and is just completing his plans to retire from business, when he feels a tap on his shoulder and hears a voice speaking to him, and he turns and is face to face with God (Luke 12:20). And there are all the other stories ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... down stairs, and sat in a large armchair close to the ball-room, with one of his pretty daughters near him, talking brightly, and occasionally stealing wistful glances at the dancers, who were visible through a high archway to his left. He was a thin, middle-aged man, with a curious, transparent look in his face—something crystalline ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... cause fish to be there; after a series of random movements it is found that this result is to be caused by going to the City in the morning and coming back in the evening. No one would have guessed a priori that this movement of a middle-aged man's body would cause fish to come out of the sea into his larder, but experience shows that it does, and the middle-aged man therefore continues to go to the City, just as the cat in the cage continues to lift the latch when it has ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... high, and appears contented; and the print of Buonaparte, which hangs in his library, is so neutralized by that of Lord Hastings in full costume, that it can do no harm to anybody. . . . To finish the portrait of Maha Raja Sarbojee, I should tell you that he is a strong-built and very handsome middle-aged man, with eyes and nose like a fine hawk, and very bushy grey mustachios, generally splendidly dressed, but with no effeminacy of ornament, and looking and talking more like a favourable specimen of a French general officer than any other object of comparison which occurs to me. His son, Raja ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... age from sixteen to twenty, when Mason caught sight of her pretty, fatigued, but resolutely courteous face, and came instantly to her rescue. He was very fond of Blanche, and teased and petted her with almost cousinly freedom. He felt himself a middle-aged man beside her, and admired her sweet face, and gentle unselfishness as unreservedly as he would have done those of a child. Moving her draperies aside with a kindly, if unceremonious hand, he ensconced himself beside her right willingly and devoted his best energies to ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... hours, when they feel that they have suddenly passed from one epoch of life into another. A voice says in their hearts with unmistakable clearness, 'Yesterday I was young; to day I am young no longer.' There is also sometimes a day, I think, when the middle-aged man becomes suddenly aware that he is old. Who shall deny the truth of these intuitions, or say that it is not in that very day and hour that the spirit of youth or of maturity takes ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... C[oe]li was a middle-aged man with a kindly face, but under the new order he could ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... yonder," he said to Magnus, indicating a certain middle-aged man, flamboyantly dressed, who wore his hair long, who was afflicted with sore eyes, and the collar of whose velvet coat was sprinkled with dandruff, "that's Hartrath, the artist, a man absolutely devoid of even ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... simple. Then the commandant of the yard, Captain S——, a man without brilliancy, of plain aspect and simple manners, but just, upright, kindly, with an excellent practical intellect; his next in rank, Commander P——, an officer-like, middle-aged man, with such cultivation as a sensible man picks up about the world; and with what little tincture he imbibes from a bluish wife. In the vicinity of the Navy Yard, an engineer-officer, stationed for a year or two past on a secluded point of the coast, making a map, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... voice, telling them he had tracked the fugitive northward, his warriors picking up the trail again, and that he must have passed near their village. He wished to know if they had seen any trace of him, and he asked their help in the hunt. A middle-aged man, evidently the head of the village, replied with equal dignity, but in a dialect that Henry could not understand. Still, he assumed that it was a full assent, as, a few minutes after he had finished, ten warriors of the village, taking ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the middle-aged man, seated at the window, "which means triumph of the fat popolani over the lean, which again means triumph of the fattest popolano over those ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... pilot house. Here a dark-faced, middle-aged man handled the wheel. Frank immediately noticed that he was listening to what the gold braided officer ashore was shouting angrily. He also ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... and beckoned. A middle-aged man, with blond hair and gimlet like black eyes stepped in. He nodded curtly to the others ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... plenty of muscle if he chose to exert it, and plenty of brain if he chose to make use of it—a man who had become weary of the monotony of high life, and, like many of his order, was fond of seeking relief from the ennui of prosperity amid the excitements of the sea. Next to him was Dr. Congreve, a middle-aged man, with iron-gray hair, short beard and mustache, short nose, gray eyes, with spectacles, and stoutish body. Next came Noel Oxenden, late of Trinity College, Cambridge, a college friend of Featherstone's—a tall man, with a refined ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... that would make the most show for the money. That would do to begin with. I would then advertise myself as the celebrated Professor Brainey, or whatever name I might choose, and wait for my first customer—a middle-aged man. I look at him, ask him a question or two, so as to hear him talk. When I have got the hang of him, I ask him to sit down, and proceed to fumble his ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... personal experiences. He was banished to Yakutsk in Siberia for six years when he was quite a young man and had barely finished his studies at the University of Warsaw, at a time when every profession of radicalism, however moderate, was punished severely by the Russian authorities. He died, a middle-aged man, during the War, after many years of literary and journalistic activity in the interest of his country. Neither he nor Prus lived to see Poland free and republican, an ideal for which they ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Harraway, the secretary, was a lean, bitter man with a long, scraggy neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of incorruptible fidelity where the finances of the order were concerned, and with no notion of justice or honesty to anyone beyond. The treasurer, Carter, was a middle-aged man, with an impassive, rather sulky expression, and a yellow parchment skin. He was a capable organizer, and the actual details of nearly every outrage had sprung from his plotting brain. The two Willabys were men of action, tall, lithe young fellows with determined faces, while their ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... comprised Edward Hyde, then in his twenty-sixth year; young Bulstrode Whitelock, who had not yet astonished the more decorous magnates of his country by wearing a falling-band at the Oxford Quarter Sessions; Edward Herbert, the most unfortunate of Cavalier lawyers; John Selden, already a middle-aged man; John Finch, born in the same year as Selden, and already far advanced in his eager course to a not honorable notoriety. Attorney General Noy was also of the party, but his disastrous career was already near ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... and pure humanity, stamped on a face before. There was the fascination of the serpent there; and the longer I looked, the more pleasing became the countenance, and the longer I wished to protract my observation and delight. He was a middle-aged man—for a judge, he might be called young. His form was manly—his head massive—his forehead glorious and intellectual. His features were finely formed; but it was not these that seized my admiration, and, if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... forgive the waste, but God cannot give us back what the waste has lost out of our life. We must never lose sight of the fact that divine forgiveness cannot be vulgarized into impunity. I do not say for a moment, in the case of a middle-aged man, that the enemy he has made of himself is irredeemable and hopeless. I believe that a man's own effort and the grace of God can change this enemy into a valuable friend, if a man is man enough to accept and honour the cost of the great transformation. But ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... directed a glance at him in a certain mildly anxious way. Joe did not see these glances, but Bessie saw them, every one. Mr. Bronson was a middle-aged man, well developed and of heavy build, though not fat. His was a rugged face, square-jawed and stern-featured, though his eyes were kindly and there were lines about the mouth that betokened laughter rather than severity. A close examination was not required to discover the resemblance between him and ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... suddenly in his ear from behind, roused Archie from his reflections. Indeed, it roused him so effectually that he jumped a clear inch off the ground and bit his tongue. Revolving on his axis, he found himself confronting a middle-aged man with a face like a horse. The man was dressed in something of an old-world style. His clothes had an English cut. He had a drooping grey moustache. He also wore a grey bowler hat flattened at the crown—but who are we ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... A stoutish middle-aged man, good-looking and breezily genial, dressed in a silk smock, stockings, handsomely ornamented sandals, and a gold fillet round his brows, comes in. He is like Joyce Burge, yet also like Lubin, as if Nature had made a composite photograph of the two men. He takes ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... to another table to speak to a middle-aged man of somewhat remarkable countenance, with the red ribbon in his buttonhole, in whom Graham recognised an ex-minister of the Emperor, differing from most of those at that day in his Cabinet, in the reputation of being loyal to his master ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all the opportunities, the suit of our friend did not advance beyond a certain point. Irene was always cordial, always friendly, but he tried in vain to ascertain whether the middle-aged man from Boston had touched her imagination. There was a boating party the next evening in Frenchman's Bay, and King had the pleasure of pulling Miss Benson and Miss Lamont out seaward under the dark, frowning cliffs until they ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... appeared unceremoniously, and, taking casual part in the ordinary work, the affairs of the isolated estate went on as smoothly as before. There was a stranger in the camp, a middle-aged man, timorous, and knowing little of the ways of white men. Of him scarcely any notice was taken. Yet in a few weeks it was evident that the stranger was determined to make himself pleasant. Accordingly, the white man refrained ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... were turned to a middle-aged man in a deep armchair placed straight in front of the fire. He was short, inclined to be fat, with a bald head and a pointed beard like the beards that sailors wear. It was plain that he was deeply conscious of the sudden turning of so much strained yet forceful ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... custom—not a written law, but a custom sanctioned by all our college traditions—to visit, on our return, the professor who had charge of the domestic department of our institution,—a short, stout, middle-aged man, the picture of good-humor, but not deficient in decision and energy when occasion demanded,—it was our uniform custom to call upon this gentleman, Herr Lippe, and inform him that we had visited such or such a tavern, and the occasion of our doing so. A benignant smile, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... in the work. It was patent that he fought under the compulsion of command. His play was old-fashioned, as any middle-aged man's is apt to be, but he was not an indifferent swordsman. He was cool, determined, dogged. But he was not brilliant, and he was oppressed with foreknowledge of defeat. A score of times, by quick and brilliant, he was mine. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... usual came on board, partly to receive the tribute of hospitality to which they considered themselves entitled, partly to satisfy an easily understood curiosity and gossip a little about the most important occurrences of the preceding day. One of them, a middle-aged man, whom we had not seen before, with a friendly and self-satisfied bearing, whose face was a mere collection of wrinkles, and over whose pesk was drawn an old velvet shirt, presented himself with a certain pretentiousness ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... silence for a minute, and when I looked up Georgiana was gone. I remember her saying once that children should be kept tart; but now and then I fancy that she would like to keep even a middle-aged man in brine. Who knows but that in the end I shall sell my place to ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... out in a most ungainly manner. Another wore nothing but the common scanty native garment round the loins, and a black beaver hat. But the most ludicrous personage of all, and one who seemed to be chief, was a tall, middle-aged man, of a mild, simple expression of countenance, who wore a white cotton shirt, a swallow-tailed coat, and a straw hat, while his black, brawny legs were totally uncovered ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... like street music?" said Raskolnikoff to a middle-aged man standing near him. The latter looked at him in surprise, but smiled. "I love it," continued Raskolnikoff, "especially when they sing to the organ on a cold, dark, gray winter's evening, when all the passers-by seem to have pale, green, sickly-looking faces—when the snow is falling like a sleet, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... along the road and saw Avice Harborough at a little distance, hastening in their direction and talking earnestly to a middle-aged man who was evidently listening with grave concern ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... audience on the Promenade is as interesting as the programme. All types are to be found here—the serious and hard-up student, the musically inclined working-man, probably a member of some musical society in his suburb, the young clerk, the middle-aged man, and ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... was sultry, threatening a rain-storm, and they preferred not to sit on the "stoop." Jadwin lit a cigar; he still wore his business clothes—the inevitable "cutaway," white waistcoat, and grey trousers of the middle-aged man of affairs. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... There were two families besides our own, and outside of them were a number of young men, plowmen and shepherds, intent on getting land and sending for their people to join them the next spring. There was an exception in a middle-aged man, brisk and spruce, who held himself to be above his fellow-passengers, and said nothing about where he came from or who he was. The only information he gave was, that he had been in the mercantile line, and that he was to be addressed ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... who attended to the needs of the people of Mount Pleasant and the surrounding district. Fortunately he was at home. Lucy looked at him closely as he entered the room and took his seat. He was a middle-aged man with a shrewd face, and she at once felt that she ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... left hand the notary-general, who had acted as one of the chief mourners, took a seat. He was a short, thin, middle-aged man, with a pale complexion, twinkling gray eyes, and a sharp expression of countenance. Before him lay a sealed packet, on which the eyes of Nisida darted, at short intervals, looks, the burning impatience of which were comprehended by Dr. Duras alone; for next to Signor ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... across none of those ancient, corrupt buyers of champagne who usually assisted their New York parties. They were just through dancing and were making their way back to their chairs when Amory became aware that some one at a near-by table was looking at him. He turned and glanced casually... a middle-aged man dressed in a brown sack suit, it was, sitting a little apart at a table by himself and watching their party intently. At Amory's glance he smiled faintly. Amory turned to Fred, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... big end of a spy-glass. The actual landscape, at times, is a trifle discouragingly rain-washed and cloudy!—-Roger and Mary are here. Their two boys are just gone back to school again. They are fine, courteous, fearless, little fellows. Roger makes a rather superb middle-aged man. He has much of my father—your grandfather's reticence and dignity. Indeed, he might prove slightly alarming, was one not so perfectly sure of him, dear creature. Mary remains, as of old, the most wholesome and helpful of women. Yes, it is good to dwell, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... equal of the best among his fellow-men. He had never wished himself other than what he was, or mistrusted his own judgment, or doubted that he, Daniel Granger, was a very important atom in the scheme of creation. But in this case it was different. He knew himself to be a grave middle-aged man, with none of those attributes that might have qualified him to take a young woman's heart by storm; and as surely as he knew this, he also knew himself to be passionately in love. All the happiness of his future ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... this be?" said Miss Carry with a gentle flutter. An unknown, middle-aged man was still an object ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... But to the well-dressed, middle-aged man who now paused, half in doubt, on the threshold of the Buildings, the sordid-looking vestibule, with its bare floor and drab-coloured walls, presented ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... were brought on board—the captain being the last to come along the line. The first four were women, or rather, the first two were women; the third a girl of ten years old, and the fourth a woman. Then came a middle-aged man, evidently a passenger. Then came ten sailors, a steward, ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... Three people remained, a middle-aged man and his wife and their son, a boy of about twelve. They stood in the corner, staring white-faced at the Leiter, at the rod in his ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... again emerges, it is as a middle-aged man, rich in flocks and herds, who has won two wives as the reward of his labours, and is already the father of a family. He is on his way back to the country which had been promised to his seed and wherein he himself had ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... rickety building, with a tiled roof that time had darkened and greened with lichens, and a tall wheel turning slowly in a splash of water, and bright water dancing over a weir below. In the doorway leaned a middle-aged man, powdered all over with white, even to the eyelids. He caught sight of her, and she was afraid he would be angry, and warn her off for trespassing; but he nodded and called out something in a friendly manner—"Good day," perhaps. She ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she whispered to the first confidant she could find. It was Colonel Wilders, one of the family—a poor relation, in fact, commonly called by them "Cousin Bill"—a hale, hearty, middle-aged man, with grey hair he was not ashamed of, but erect and vigorous, with a soldierly air. "I wish he would not advertise himself with such a ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... by M. Didot, a middle-aged man with a precise and commercial air, whose speech was brief and plain as that of a man who knows the value of minutes. He desired to know what I had to say to him. I stammered for some time, and became embarrassed in one of those labyrinths of ambiguous phrases under which one ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... not infrequently instructive. On the way for the second time from our evening meal to my room, I stopped for a moment in the "Gentlemen's sitting-room," where I in part overheard a conversation between an elderly and a middle-aged man. I afterward learned that the younger man was a lawyer, by name Lill; that he was well known throughout the State, a man of cultivation, very conventional in his private life, but an unequivocal dissenter on almost every ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... There had always been a Solace at the Manor Farm within the memory of old Sally, who was very old indeed, but they felt sure none of them could have been so pleasant as the present one. "Young Master Andrew," old Sally called him, though he was a stout, middle-aged man with grizzled hair; but she gave him this name because she had worked for his father and grandfather, and could "mind" him when he was a little boy of Dennis's age. For the same reason, she never could ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... self-attentive flashes the capacity for which marks off the mind of the reflective type from others. He saw himself as he sat there, his whole appearance and dress; he took in his history, and the place to which that hour had brought him, he, Bart Toyner, a thin, somewhat drooping, middle-aged man, unsuccessful, because of his self-indulgence, in all that he had attempted, yet having carried about with him always high desires, which had never had the slightest realisation except in the one clear shining space of vision and victory which ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... English as they fancied, who we somehow understood lived at Barcelona; but nothing came of our interest. Then as the day waned we threw ourselves into the interest taken by a fellow-passenger in a young Spanish girl of thirteen or fourteen who had been in the care of a youngish middle-aged man when our train stopped, and been then abandoned by him for hours, while he seemed to be satisfying a vain curiosity at the head of the train. She owned that the deserter was her father, and while we were still poignantly ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... spirits had one evening declared that 'before morning they would have the deacon and Lupier.' 'Deacon' was an epithet applied to myself, as a token of familiarity. The tidings of the declaration of this infernal agent were soon conveyed to me. It happened that my companion of the dormitory, a middle-aged man, had that evening gone to watch with the mediums, and I was left alone. I replied to my companions, who interrogated and sarcastically congratulated me on my prospects for the night, that 'if the corporeal influence of incarnate devils could be kept from the room, I would combat without aid all ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... I. are not remarkable as works of art; but they possess some features of interest. They are numerous, and appear to have been issued from various mints, but all bear a head of the same type. [PLATE XXI., Fig. 1.] It is that of a middle-aged man, with a short beard and hair gathered behind the head in a cluster of curls. The distinguishing mark is the headdress, which has the usual inflated ball above a fragment of the old mural crown, and further bears a crescent in front. The ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... above the fellows into whose hands I had fallen, a tall, lantern-jawed, middle-aged man, with a most abominable squint, and to him ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... to confront the intruder. He was a short, stocky, middle-aged man whose bristling gray crewcut almost matched the neutral shades of ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... profoundly sleeping on this bed—a handsome, middle-aged man, whose thick brown beard showed soft gleams of silver in it, and whose hair, though waving and bright, was growing thin on the top of ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... man sat by an open fire in a strange-looking room with a little boy on his knee. Beside him was a middle-aged man, the ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth |
