"Rubicund" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lieutenant came on deck, having only slept away half of the sixteen, and a taste of the seventeenth salt-water glass of gin-toddy. He rubbed his grey eyes, that he might peer through the grey of the morning; the fresh breeze blew about his grizzly locks, and cooled his rubicund nose. The revenue-cutter, whose name was the Active, cast off from the buoy; and, with a fresh breeze, steered her course ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... stopped with a friendly, "You are taking the air, my son. The night is warm." He was rubicund, and his little eyes looked ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... ribbon of an officer of the Legion of honor, which met with difficulty over a gastronomic stomach in keeping with a mouth that stretched from ear to ear, and a pair of powerful shoulders. The torso was supported by a spindling pair of legs, while the rubicund tints on the cheek-bones bore testimony to a rollicking life. The lower part of the cheeks, which were deeply wrinkled, overhung a coat-collar of velvet the worse for wear. Among other adornments, the ex-dragoon wore enormous ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... straw-spread hole where our tribe—some upright and hesitant, others kneeling and hammering like colliers—is mending, stacking, and subduing its provisions, clothes, and tools. There is a wordy growling, a riot of gesture. From the smoky glimmers, rubicund faces start forth in relief, and dark hands move about in the shadows like marionettes. In the barn next to ours, and separated from it only by a wall of a man's height, arise tipsy shouts. Two men in there have fallen upon each other with fierce violence and anger. The air is vibrant ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... it an offensive insinuation, for his face, usually rubicund from the effects of champagne and oysters, became redder, and his lips were tightly compressed; but he merely reiterated, "I stand ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... summons to luncheon comes as a pleasant shock. Is it possible that the morning has passed? It seems to have but commenced. I rouse myself and descend to the cabin. Toward the end of the meal a rubicund Frenchman opposite makes the startling proposition that if I wish to send a message home he will undertake to have it delivered. It is not until I notice the little square of oiled paper he is holding out to me that I understand this reference to the “pigeon ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... been seen in his hands. Denial was useless, since he had asked the Mayor to make a draft for him, and since he had shown that functionary the deed signed by Mme Lacoste. Here, word for word, is the explanation given by the rubicund Joseph: ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... and opening the door, was heard condoling with the new arrival. The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that Mrs. White said, "Tut, tut!" and coughed gently as her husband entered the room, followed by a tall, burly man, beady of eye and rubicund ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... special delight of Frau Stark. When Borgert entered the ballroom the band struck up the latest waltz,—"Over the Waves,"—and he noticed Frau Stark, flaming like a peony, perspiration streaming down her rubicund face, being handed, true to his programme, by Lieutenant Specht to his smiling comrade, von Meckelburg. Frau Stark just took the time to gulp a glass of lemonade, and then was off again, breathing hard, but still in the ring. The atmosphere in the room ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... short, stout, bald-headed type, sometimes called aldermanic. It was plainly to be seen that his was a jocund nature, and the awe which he felt in this dreadful presence of death, though clearly shown on his rubicund face, was evidently a rare emotion with him. He glanced round the room as if expecting to see everything there materially changed, and though he looked toward the figure of Mr. Crawford now and then, it was with difficulty, and he averted his eyes as quickly as possible. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... of medium height with a balloon-like stomach and a rubicund face framed in grizzled whiskers. His wife—tall, strong, resolute, loud in voice and rapid of decision—represented order and arithmetic in the business, which he enlivened by ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... morning" they kneeled and kissed her hand. She remained sitting in her carriage for some time, chatting and laughing with her daughter Beatrice. Her countenance had become very florid and her figure very stout. The last time that I saw her driving in the Park her full, rubicund face made her look not only like the venerable grandmother of a host of descendants, but of the whole vast empire on which the sun never sets. Last year the most beloved sovereign that has ever occupied the British throne was laid in the gorgeous mausoleum at Frogmore beside ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Mr. Irwine, the vicar, with avowedly no qualification for his profession, placidly playing chess with his mother, stroking his dogs, and dipping into Greek tragedies; there is the excellent Martin Poyser at the Farm, good-natured and rubicund; there is his wife, somewhat too sharply voluble, but only in behalf of cleanliness and honesty and order; there is Captain Donnithorne at the Hall, who does a poor girl a mortal wrong, but who is, after all, such a nice, good-looking fellow; there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... uncle. Father dead, mother divorced and leading a pleasant existence amongst the capitals of Europe. The uncle, although maintaining a decent appearance of grief, was obviously, at heart, relieved to be rid of his nephew so easily. Poor Carfax! For so rubicund and noisy a person he left strangely little mark upon the world. Within a fortnight the college had nearly lost account of his existence. He lent to Sannet Wood a sinister air that caused numberless undergraduates ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... "honest landlord" on some stranger. The decanters and wine-bottles on the move, and the beer and soda-founts pouring out continual streams, with a whiz. Stage-drivers, etc., asked to drink with the aristocracy, and mine host treating and being treated. Rubicund faces; breaths odorous of brandy and water. Occasionally the pop of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... face was red in ordinary hours, no epithet sufficiently rubicund or sanguineous can express its color at this appeal. "The man's mad," he said at last, with a tone of astonishment that almost concealed his wrath, "stark mad! I take his child!—lodge and board a great, positive, hungry child! Why, sir, many and many ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... see him very often and was in no way intimate with him, I kept my ears open for any account of his doings. From one point of view, the Club Window outlook, he was a very usual figure, one of those stout, rubicund, jolly men, a good polo player, a good man in a house party, genial-natured, and none too brilliantly brained, whom every one liked and no one thought about. All this he was on one side of the report, but, on the other, there ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... over, "now Jack, my boy, do you smoke?—Well then, load away." And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and notwithstanding my host's rubicund nose, I could hardly ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... introduces. Hospitality is a creed with them, and renewing their daughter's invitation, they place the choicest their home affords before the unexpected guest. Thus it is that Philip Roche finds himself in Eleanor's family circle, discussing the crops and weather with her father, a rubicund, hale old man, whose life is centred in ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... side. Is this really a bacchanal? Yes, for there is the paunchy Silenus, there are the fauns, there the vat and vine-wreaths and drinking-horns. And yet it cannot be a bacchanal. Compare with it one of Rubens's orgies, where the overgrown, rubicund men and women and fauns tumble about in tumultuous, riotous intoxication: that is a bacchanal; they have been drinking, those magnificent brutes, there is wine firing their blood and weighing down their heads. But here all is different, in this ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... now, in some ten minutes—a fat, rubicund, spectacled man, with a cast in his left eye and two fingers missing, to remind him of early days in experimental work on explosives. Under his arm he carried several tomes and pamphlets; and so, bowing first to one ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... and his son entered with others who found their way into the court. A short, though somewhat corpulent-looking gentleman, with ferrety eyes and rubicund nose, telling of numerous cups of sack which had gone down between the thick lips below it, occupied ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... was some fifty years old, neither fat nor lean, neither short nor tall, neither rubicund nor pale, neither gay nor sad, neither contented nor discontented, neither energetic nor dull, neither proud nor humble, neither good nor bad, neither generous nor miserly, neither courageous nor cowardly, neither too much nor too little of anything—a man notably moderate in all respects, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... the mistress of the house, pausing before an extensive row of masculine portraits, "are very valuable, and you must be very careful when dusting. They are old masters." Mary's jaw dropped, and a look of intense wonder overspread her rubicund face. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the hammock, one foot used to propel herself gently back and forth. The newly-acquired striped dress was such a tight fit for her rubicund form, that it cracked ominously every time the wearer took a deep breath. But the short-coming of the two fronts over her ample bosom was camouflaged with the plaid ribbon and many pins. The corsage bouquet was tucked high under her chin where it ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Lamb imagines him as a rubicund priest of Hymen, and pictures him 'attended with thousands and ten thousands of little ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... came over the Grinstun man, and paled his rubicund visage. He darted up to his room, and speedily re-appeared with knapsack on back and staff in hand, ready for the road. Mr. Carruthers pressed him to stay at least for dinner, but he was resolved to solve the mystery by a visit to the Talfourds, and said that, if Mr. Chisholm ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... he looked quite as gay as usual; but he blinked nervously, and his first glance was a questioning one in the direction of Duvillard, as if he wished to know how the latter bore the fresh thrust directed at him by Sagnier. And when he saw the banker looking perfectly composed, as superb, as rubicund as usual, and chatting in a bantering way with Rosemonde, he also put on an easy air, like a gamester who had never lost but had always known how to compel good luck, even in hours of treachery. And by way of showing his unconstraint ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a young man of five-and-twenty, of medium height, dark, with a very prominent thorax, well-made shoulders, rather plump legs, feet already fat, white dimpled hands, a beard under his chin, moustaches worthy of the garrison, a good-natured, fat, rubicund face, a flat nose, and brown expressionless eyes; nothing Spanish about him. He was progressing rapidly in the direction of obesity, which would be fatal to his pretensions. His nails were well kept, his beard trimmed, the ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... elegant!" cried that lady, emerging from her towel with a rubicund visage. "Drop that braid half an inch lower, and pull the worked end of her handkerchief out of the right-hand pocket, Vic. There! Now, Dora, don't run about and get rumpled, but sit quietly down and practise repose till I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a [v]rubicund portrait of His Majesty George III. Here they used to sit in the shade of a long, lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... was a rubicund portly man. He knew the fortunes of a hundred families by the things left with him or taken back. It was on his stuffy shelves that poor Benjamin's coat had lain compressed and packed away when it might have had a beautiful airing in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. It was ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... happened shortly after the proposed elopement, and which cannot be passed over without mention, was a call from Squire Hennion on Mr. Meredith. The master of Boxely opened the interview by shaking his fist within a few inches of the rubicund countenance of the master of Greenwood, and, suiting his words to the motion, he roared: "May Belza take yer, yer old—" and the particular epithet is best omitted, the eighteenth-century vocabulary being more expressive than refined—"fer sendin' my boy ter Boston, wheer, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... sir, I promise you," whispered Jupp to comfort him; however, before he could say any more, the panting female had drawn nearer from the doorway and come up close to the fireplace, the flickering red light from which made her somewhat rubicund countenance appear all ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... score. There is a picture of Venus, combing her son Cupid's head with a small-tooth comb, and looking with maternal care among his curls; this I shall not forget. Likewise, a picture of a broad, rubicund Judith by Bardone,—a widow of fifty, of an easy, lymphatic, cheerful temperament, who has just killed Holofernes, and is as self-complacent as if she had been carving a goose. What could possibly ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... narrow window, and then wandered back to the well-worn interior of the coach. Suddenly, as the startling realization of her position came to her, she uttered a loud cry, sprang toward the door, and, with nervous fingers, strove to open it. The man's face became more rubicund as he placed a detaining hand on her shoulder, and roughly thrust her toward ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... was short and thick, though in the earlier part of his life he had been thought handsome. His face, latterly, became somewhat rubicund, and his utterance so confused, that Johnson compared it to the gobbling of a turkey. The portrait of him by Reynolds, besides the resemblance of the features, is particularly characterized by the manner ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Wilhammer almost consoled the player for his poverty. Who, even for an imperial income, would bear the burden of those grotesque teeth, protruding like a sample of wares in a dentist's showcase? But as the teeth came nearer and the great rubicund face bore down upon him, the prominence of the notorious incisors affected him less than their carnivorous capacity—he felt himself almost swallowed up by this monstrous beast of prey, so admirably equated ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of waiting that ensued the door was again opened, but this time in a familiar fashion and without any formal announcement. A good-looking girl of some sixteen years of age entered in company with an old man, short of stature but with a rubicund, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... heralded by a flourish of silver trumpets, was borne in by liveried servants walking two and two, with rubicund marshals strutting in front and behind, bearing white wands in their hands, not only as badges of their office, but also as weapons with which to repel any impertinent inroad upon the dishes in the journey from the kitchen to the hall. Boar's heads, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Verdun on the sixth day. I waited on Captain Otter of the navy and the senior officer, who introduced me to the commandant, the Baron de Beauchene, who, by his rubicund face, appeared to be fond of good living. My name was registered at the police office, where I was desired to sport my graceful figure the first day of every month. Several officers did me the honour of a visit, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... The Inspector's rubicund countenance was white with fury. His head kept turning in the direction of Laura, to whom the Professor was busy ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the other hand, had followed the hint of his father's figure in his make-up, and appeared as a rubicund old gentleman, large in the waist, bald, with an apoplectic tendency, a wheezy asthmatic voice, and a full ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... commerce and seriously threatened to starve the British Isles. Admiral Sims was two years older than Pershing and as typical a sailor as the former was soldier. With his bluff and genial, yet dignified, manner, his rubicund complexion, closely-trimmed white beard, and piercing eyes, no one could have mistaken his calling. Free of speech, frank in praise and criticism, abounding in indiscretions, he possessed the capacity to make the warmest ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... sweeping the great volumes of mist. I glanced out also. Not only was the sea invisible, but even the brow of the cliffs. When he turned towards me, as I passed him, I saw that his face had lost much of its rubicund hue, and looked ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... desperate conflicts. On the mantelpiece stood some stoneware representations of maids and swains, who combined a pastoral occupation with the gratification of a musical talent; while they gazed with a languishing air on their protrusive neighbour, a portly individual with a highly-coloured, rubicund, and grinning physiognomy, and scalpless cranium, from which he invited the lovers of the narcotic weed to extract a supply of that universal solace. These were supported, on the background, by a mirror of ordinary size; which presented unmistakable signs of the household's reluctance ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... facing audience, a long seat with a high back and pew- like ends. At the rise of the curtain, Thomas Rigby, the rubicund landlord, is lighting with a taper the candles that stand on the mantelshelf, the buttons on his plum-colored waistcoat twinkling in the gleam. He has only lighted one when the door is pushed open, and there enter two young British lieutenants, mere lads, whose scarlet cloaks, exaggerated ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... Butt, a spherical-bodied man-of-war's-man, with a rubicund nose, got on his legs somewhat unsteadily, and addressed himself to the company. They had met that evening, said the speaker, in accordance with a time-honored custom. This was simply to relieve that one of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... never seen; he really looked what he was, a gentleman of the law—there was nothing of the pettifogger about him: somewhat under the middle size, and somewhat rotund in person, he was always dressed in a full suit of black, never worn long enough to become threadbare. His face was rubicund, and not without keenness; but the most remarkable thing about him was the crown of his head, which was bald, and shone like polished ivory, nothing more white, smooth, and lustrous. Some people have said that he wore false calves, probably ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... proceeded westward. Dismissing the cab in Waterloo Place, they went along Pall Mall on foot, where in place of the usual well-dressed clubbists—rubicund with alcohol—were to be seen, in linen pinafores, flocks of house-painters pallid from white lead. When they had reached the Green Park, Cytherea proposed that they should sit down awhile under the young elms at the brow of the hill. This they did—the growl of Piccadilly on their left hand—the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicund face with reddish brown eyes—previously I had seen him only against the light. "One moment, sir," said I as he turned. He stared. "One moment," he said, "certainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for longer, and it is not asking too much—your moment is up—would ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... are unmatched in literature. The knight stands royally forth in them, clothed with his entire panoply of agile intellect, robust humour, and boundless comic effrontery. But the arrogant and expeditious Falstaff of The Merry Wives—so richly freighted with rubicund sensuality, so abundant in comic loquacity, and so ludicrous in his sorry plights—is a much less complex person, and therefore he stands more level than the real Falstaff does with the average comprehension of mankind. The American stage, accordingly, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... about sixty, with keen gray eyes, a good-humored mouth, a nose whose enlargement had not of late gone in the direction of its original design, and a face more than inclining to the rubicund, suggestive of good living as well as open air. Altogether he had the look of a man who knew what he was about, and was on tolerable terms with himself, and on still better with his neighbor. The heart under his ribs was ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Red School-House, at five, crowded the men, ay, and the women and children, of Rangeley and thereabout. They came as the winds and waves come when forests and navies are rended and stranded. Horse, foot, and charioteers, they thronged toward the rubicund fountain of education. From houses that lurked invisible in clearings suddenly burst forth a population, an audience ardent with patriotism, eager for politics even from a Cockney interpreter, and numerous enough to stir electricity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Pater Bonifacius, who has finished saying his mass just in time to see the last of his lads. He has tucked his soutane well up under his sash, and he is running across the platform, his rubicund, kindly face ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless, sleepy stories about nothing. But it would ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... it extends to the last person of the family, if the course be not interrupted by cutting off the head or opening the heart of the ghost, whose corpse is found in his coffin, yielding, flexible, swollen, and rubicund, although he may have been dead some time. There proceeds from his body a great quantity of blood, which some mix up with flour to make bread of; and that bread eaten in ordinary protects them from being tormented by the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... John Oxon," he said, a broad grin on his rubicund face. "This very week he comes to us, and he and I are cronies, yet he has blabbed nothing of what is being buzzed about by ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... while he satisfied his hunger by the attention the hunters bestowed on his red hair. Several of them came up behind him and rubbed their hands in it as if they imagined it possessed some sort of medicinal value. Had any one at home dared to take such liberties with the boy's rubicund locks there would have been a fight right away, but Lathrop felt that the best policy to assume in the present situation was silence, and as the old ship captain said to his ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Court of George of Brunswick, at Hanover, in Seventeen Hundred Nine, was George Frederick Handel, six feet one, weight one hundred eighty, rubicund, rosy, and full of romp, aged twenty-four. George of Brunswick was to have the felicity of being King George the First of England, and already he was straining his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... obscured a good deal of the front view, but he suddenly turned a rubicund and smiling ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... (Ben Jumbo Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... dudgeon, and led Polly and her mother a sad life of it for two weary days. Having heard of Toady's gallant behavior, she solemnly ordered him up to receive her blessing. But the sight of Aunt Kipp's rubicund visage, surrounded by the stiff frills of an immense nightcap, caused the irreverent boy to explode with laughter in his handkerchief, and to be hustled away by his mother before Aunt Kipp discovered the true cause of ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... before. "I begin to think," he remarked often, "that by continuing this life, as simple as that which a bird leads flying from bough to bough, I am to grow stout and elderly, and go on getting gray, rubicund, with an amplitude of white waistcoat, until I am seventy years of age or so. My father and mother each died young, but both by accident as it were: the habit of both families was of long life and great strength. I confess I should like to live for a good many years yet. I suppose ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... canon came in glowing hot. "Pouf!" and he wiped his rubicund, round visage with a handkerchief as brilliant. Coming straight from the glare out of doors, he was not aware of the stranger in the salon till his eyes were used to the gloom. Then madame and Bessie effected Harry's introduction, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... court was in session and Hal sat for a while in the court-room, watching Judge Denton. Here was another prosperous and well-fed appearing gentleman, with a rubicund visage shining over the top of his black silk robe. The young miner found himself regarding both the robe and the visage with suspicion. Could it be that Hal was becoming cynical, and losing his faith in his fellow man? What he thought of, in connection with the Judge's appearance, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... counting-house, at which the little angle of rail may be pushed in or pushed back that shall send the train to one of two places five hundred miles asunder: it may depend upon whether he shall take or not take that half-crown, whether, thirty years after, he shall be taking the chair, a rubicund baronet, at a missionary society meeting, and receive the commendations of philanthropic peers and earnest bishops, or be laboring in chains at Norfolk Island, a brutalized, cursing, hardened, scourge-scarred, despairing wretch, without a hope for this life or the other. Oh, how much may turn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... never have taken this portly, rubicund, iron-gray, bushy-browed gentleman for a statesman. But a statesman he was for all that, and the Emperor and Germany miss him sorely. I would have taken him for a Boer Dopper or an English yeoman. This suggestion was supported by his atrocious taste in fancy waistcoats. The one he ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... A rubicund Mexican priest is the celebrant, while two old Mexicans in modern dress, and a Pueblo Indian in a red blanket, are acolytes. When the host is elevated, an Indian at the door beats a villainous drum and four musket shots are discharged. After the services are concluded, a procession ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the Ybar, and ascending for hours through open pasture lands, arrived at some rocks interspersed with stunted ilex, where a lamb was roasting for our dinner. The meridian sun had long ere this pierced the clouds that overhung our departure, and the sight of the lamb completely irradiated the rubicund visage of the plethoric clerk. A low round table was set down on the grass, under the shade of a large boulder stone. An ilex growing from its interstices seemed to live on its wits, for not an ounce of soil was visible for its subsistence. Our ride gave us a sharp appetite, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... I said in my wonder, "And com'st In a garment that putteth the roses to shame. Hath the red of thy cheek clad that vest upon thee Or in heart's blood of lovers hast tinctured the same?" Quoth he, "'Twas the sun lately gave me the wede; From the rubicund hue of his setting it came. So my garment and wine and the colour so clear Of my cheek are as flame ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... waving from the castle tower. They came from the division battling beyond the Marne. Their metal fittings were dented by projectiles, their wind-shields broken by star-shaped holes. From their interiors appeared men and more men; some on foot, others on canvas stretchers—faces pale and rubicund, profiles aquiline and snubby, red heads and skulls wrapped in white turbans stiff with blood; mouths that laughed with bravado and mouths that groaned with bluish lips; jaws supported with mummy-like bandages; giants in agony whose wounds were not apparent; ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Alick Pope, alias Allourpraises-whyshouldlords, etc.) is a thought and a half too fleshy, and, if he accidentally sat down upon his baby, would do it to the tune of fourteen stone. This popular codger is of the rubicund and jovial sort, and has long been known as a piscatorial pedestrian on the banks of the Wye. But Izaak Walton hadn't pace,—look at his book and you'll find it slow,—and when that article comes in question, the fishing-rod may prove to some of his disciples a rod in pickle. Howbeit, the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... manifestly travellers of an humble class; the third, who sat apart with a large glass of beer before him, more deserving of notice. His age might be about sixty. His hair was grizzled; his face, and especially his nose, large and rubicund, and his belly portly. He wore a black frock and dingy white neckcloth; and he made no use of a pipe. All this we noticed while advancing towards the hostess, who, as usual, looked cold upon us for an instant, and then became our sworn ally. Indeed, I do not know ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... glittering under the soft radiance of many candles and surrounded by a numerous company—fat and thin, old and young, red-faced and pale, gentle and simple. At the end farthest from the street one figure stood erect—a short, round, rubicund little man, wearing a gown of rusty black, one thumb stuck into his vest, and a rosy benignity in the glance with which he scanned the table. He threw back his head, cleared his tight throat sonorously, and began, in tones perhaps best described as treacly, to address ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... enough contrast otherwise, however, the two presented. The man next the aisle was well past sixty, rotund of abdomen, rubicund of countenance, beetle-browed. He was elaborately well-groomed, almost foppish in attire, and wore the obvious stamp of worldly success, the air of one accustomed to giving orders and seeing them obeyed before ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... white post with iron rods projecting at the top. This was the target, and it was highly amusing and characteristic to watch these burghers gathered round and firing at the bird or some other object on the top. Now they were all returning carrying their bows, and in high good-humour. A young and rubicund priest was of the party, regarded evidently with affection and pride by his companions; for all that he seemed to say and do was applauded, and greeted with obstreperous Flemish laughter. When an old woman came to offer cakes from her basket for sale, he convulsed his friends by ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... true!" broke in another officer, whose rather rubicund face told of credit somewhere, and the product of credit,—good wine and good dinners generally. "That is true, Monredin! The old curmudgeon of a broker at the corner of the Cul de Sac had the impudence to ask ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the religious orders marched past, from the Dominicans to the Carthusians, from the Carmelites to the Capuchins. They advanced slowly, their eyes cast down, their step austere, their hands on their hearts; some faces were rubicund and shining, with large cheek-hones and rounded chins, herculean heads upon bullnecks; some, thin and livid, with cheeks hollowed by suffering and penitence, and with the look of living ghosts; in short, here were the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... office window threw the light of the glass-framed candle straight upon Hart's rubicund face, and that face was a study. He faltered a ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... over the melting snow. The day was unclouded for a wonder, and the sun proved its increasing power by turning the sleigh-tracks in the road into gleaming rills. The visage of my new acquaintance formed a decided contrast to the rubicund face of the beef-eating marketman. He was sandy even to his eyebrows and complexion. His scraggy beard suggested poverty of soil on his lantern jaws. His frame was as gaunt as that of a scare-crow, ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... next to the wall, and quite near the door; for my guide, in order to show his goodwill and to atone for what might seem rudeness, was bent on marshalling me almost up to the high seats that faced the congregation, where sat my rubicund old Friend lady, whose aspect betokened that she had just ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... texture and rubicund as beef and good ale could make them, leaned silent a moment high above the dim pavement. St. Bat's little bell struck the three quarters before ten; lightly, delicately, with always a promise of the great booming which should follow ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of the woman's social rights in Billingsfield. She was an excellent person in every way. She had once been handsome and even now she was fine-looking, of goodly stature, if also of goodly weight; rosy, even rubicund, in complexion, and rotund of feature; looking at you rather severely out of her large grey eyes, but able to smile very cheerfully and to show an uncommonly good set of teeth; twisting her thick grey hair into a small knot at the back of her head and then covering it with a neatly ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... portly. There was Aderman Michaels, the head of his faction, Who had learned, it was whispered, the rule of subtraction, And practised it often in 'grinding his axes,' Which helped to account for the rise in the taxes. And there was a man with a rubicund nose, As bright as the bud of an opening rose, Disclosing a liking to 'live and be merry,' With a strong fellow feeling for brandy and sherry. And then there was one with elongated face, Who seemed to have made a mistake in the place. Not a jest, nor a pleasure, was known ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... King with that flame-face of his Was something exceedingly horrid; The rain, as it fell on his flight, gave a fizz Like unbottled champagne, and went off with a whizz As it sprinkled his rubicund forehead. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... old-fashioned lilies enough in the square garden to have furnished a whole century of poets with similes; and in the posy-bed under the front windows were tulips of Chinese awkwardness and splendor, beds of pinks spicy as all Arabia, blue hyacinths heavy with sweetness as well as bells, "pi'nies" rubicund and rank, hearts-ease clustered against the house, and sticky rose-acacias, pretty and impracticable, not to mention the grenadier files of hollyhocks that contended with fennel-bushes and scarlet-flowered beans for the precedence, and the hosts of wild flowers that bloomed by wood-edges ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... sometimes happened, bad news reached Pretoria, Opperman looked a picture of misery, and would come to us and speak of his resolve to shoot his wife and children and perish in the defence of the capital. Dr. Gunning was an amiable little Hollander, fat, rubicund, and well educated. He was a keen politician, and much attached to the Boer Government, which paid him an excellent salary for looking after the State Museum. He had a wonderful collection of postage stamps, and was also engaged in forming a Zoological Garden. This last ambition ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... only be closed by stuff curtains, just now drawn wide open. Pontius could therefore look in, unhindered and unperceived, at the table on which a three-branched bronze lamp was standing between a dish and some plates. The stout man was sitting with his rubicund moon-face towards the architect, who, indignant as he was, would have gone straight up to him with swift decision, if, before entering the second room, a low but pitiful sob had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it is likely, was a mere scandal; at any rate, Peter de Groodt did not think it worth mentioning; though, had we time to philosophize, it would be a curious matter for speculation, why a doctor's family is apt to be so lean and cadaverous, and a butcher's so jolly and rubicund. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... they were going to meet with a keen disappointment; Rob knew this the second he saw the shade of regret pass over the rubicund ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... leading out of the New Kent Road, a little way from the Elephant and Castle; and the caravanserai bearing the title of the Jolly Butchers is an unpretending beershop, with no outward and visible signs of especial joviality. On entering I met mine host, rubicund and jolly enough, who politely pioneered me upstairs, when I reported myself as in quest of the linnets. The scene of contest I found to be a largish room, where some twenty or thirty most un-Arcadian looking gentlemen were already assembled, the only adjunct ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... naturally on a forehead shadowed by melancholy! In reality, Monsieur Jules Sandeau is a good stout fellow, with broad, stalwart shoulders, a tendency to premature obesity, small, bright, gentle, acute eyes, a head as bald as my knee, rather thick lips, and a rubicund complexion; he has an air of good-nature and simplicity which excludes everything like sentimental exaggeration; he wears a black cravat tied negligently around a muscular neck; in fine, he looks like a sub-lieutenant dressed in citizen's-clothes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... busy time in the artistes' restaurant. At the small tables sat bony, close-cropped men of a peculiar rubicund type, having dinner with some girl or other from the neighborhood. They were acrobats, clowns, and wrestlers, people of a homogeneous type, dressed in loud checks, with enormous cuffs and boots with almost armor-plated toes. They chewed well and looked up stupidly at the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... disentangling the impressions; but just then they looked like three very solid ghosts. The dominant figure, both because he was bigger in all three dimensions, and because he sat centrally in the length of the table, facing me, was a tall, fat man dressed completely in black, with a rubicund, even apoplectic visage, but a rather bald and rather bothered brow. Looking at him again, more strictly, I could not exactly say what it was that gave me the sense of antiquity, except the antique cut of his white clerical necktie and the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... not shout when he saw him, did not even shake hands, to say nothing of thumping the little man upon the back. The broad and rubicund face of East Wellmouth's leading politician and dealer in real estate wore not a grin but a frown, and when he and Galusha came together at the gate he did not speak. Galusha spoke first, which was unusual; very few people meeting Mr. ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... tall and thin, he was comparatively short and broad; indeed, though of the regulation height, his width made him appear shorter than he really was; while his countenance, though burnt and tanned by southern suns and exposure to all sorts of weather, was fat and rubicund. He held his sides and laughed so heartily at the account his wife gave him of the questions which had been put to her, that Willy and Peter wished they had not mentioned ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... an immense car decked with many-coloured festoons and drawn by four horses. Mounted on the car is a huge chair, on which sits enthroned the majestic figure of the Carnival, a man of stucco about nine feet high with a rubicund and smiling countenance. Enormous boots, a tin helmet like those which grace the heads of officers of the Italian marine, and a coat of many colours embellished with strange devices, adorn the outward man of this stately personage. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... host on the occasion of asylum reunions. No one could exceed him in the respect he showed to a coroneted head, even when cracked; and a bishop under his charge was always secured, as far as possible, from the least whisper of heretical conversation. He possessed besides a pleasant rubicund countenance and an immaculate wardrobe. He was further fortunate in having in his assistants, Dr Escott and Dr Sherlaw, two young gentlemen whose medical knowledge was almost equal to the affability of their manners and the excellence of ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... was,' replied the rubicund damsel, as she moved briskly about her work. She had a peculiarity of wearing very short skirts, lest they should impede her progress; but once that Andy ventured a complimentary joke on her ankles, he met with such scathing scorn that he kept aloof from the subject ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... was with his run, he sprang to the mound of bodies, and the first that met his eyes was that of his uncle. But he had hardly recognized the rubicund face now furrowed with blue lines, and seen the stiffened arms and the gunshot wound before he gave a stifled cry, exclaiming, "Let ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... the waysides were blue with the flowers of the wild chicory. A priest astride upon a rough old cob passed me, his hitched-up soutane showing his gaitered legs. The French rural priests are generally rubicund, but this one was cadaverous. He would have looked like Death on horseback, swathed in a black mantle, but for the dangling gaitered legs, which spoilt the solemn effect. A very curious figure did he cut upon his ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... dress, a curious contrast to the antiquated garb and parchment face of old Cazalette, who sat by her, watchful and doubting; the officialdom-suggesting figure of the police-inspector, erect and rigid in his close-fitting uniform; the detective, rubicund and confident, though of what one scarcely knew; Lorrimore and myself, keen listeners and watchers, and last, but not by any means the least notable, the bland, suave Chinaman in his neat native dress, sitting modestly in the background, inscrutable as an image carved out of ivory. ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... caps. So he made his toilet with care, and put his best hat on to hide his shaven crown. He then kept his door ajar, and waited for a chance of speaking to the justices. One soon came: a portly old gentleman, with a rubicund face and honest eye, walked slowly along the corridor, looking as wise as he could, cringed on by Cooper and Dr. Bailey; the latter had arrived post haste, and Baker had been sent for. Alfred came out, touched his hat ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... occupied. Her coarse-featured, heavy fare, surrounded by a broad, muslin cap frill, that nearly covered her harsh yellow hair, was lighted up by a pair of small gray eyes, expressing a mixture of cunning and curiosity. Her rubicund visage, gaudy-colored chintz dress, and yellow bandanna handkerchief, produced a sort of glaring sun-flower effect, not mitigated by the contrast afforded by the other members of ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... The rubicund butcher of that period (we had no choice) was asked by a long-time patron how he got such a red face. "Cider apple sass." The same patron said, "You have served me pretty well, but cheated me a good deal." "Yes, sir, but you ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... doing right, are we," asked a rubicund-visaged man, who puffed away heartily "to smoke in the parlor? I condone that much to my wife's dislike of the weed. She makes a great ado about the curtains, ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... he was alone Mr. Jack-o-lantern assumed a more grimly realistic aspect. There was something sinister in the squint of his eye, and uncanny in the way his rubicund nose gleamed. On entering the room a little while after I ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers |
