"Dapper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... persons you meet in this place. The majority of them carry packets of written papers tied about with red tape, and folded after a fashion here invariably observed.... First, and most abundant, are certain short, thin-visaged, spare-limbed, keen-featured, dapper-looking men, who appear as if they had never been young and would never be old, clothed in habiliments of sober hue, seemingly as unchangeable as themselves. They walk with a hurried step, and a somewhat important swing of the unoccupied arm. A ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... came also the dapper man-servant of the bishop; and when I, the bell, who am made of metal, rang hard and loud, and swung to and fro, I might have beaten out his brains. He sat down close under me, and played with two little sticks as if they had been a stringed ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Burns for the altar's ornament. For sanctity, they have, to these, Their curious copes and surplices Of cleanest cobweb, hanging by In their religious vestery. They have their ash-pans and their brooms, To purge the chapel and the rooms; Their many mumbling mass-priests here, And many a dapper chorister. Their ush'ring vergers here likewise, Their canons and their chaunteries; Of cloister-monks they have enow, Ay, and their abbey-lubbers too:— And if their legend do not lie, They much affect ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... throughout the great South-west, a man who asked no odds and gave no quarter, one whose name sent as chill a shiver through the hard hearts of the lawless as a sight of the gallows would have done. And this man, small, well dressed, quiet mannered, as dapper as a ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... a small sallow man, with rather an agitated fussy manner, and eyes that never seemed to be looking at you. He was neat, almost dapper, in his dress, and was rather like the butler in ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... she saw him come along, having on the previous day made herself acquainted with his personality. He was a dapper pert little man, neat in his dress, and suave in his manners. Not at all like the detective of fiction as known to Mrs. Parry. There was no solemnity or hint of mystery about Mr. Steel. He would pass unnoticed in a crowd, and no one would take him for a bloodhound of the ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... Jennie," said Bob, "it isn't merely our sex who are guilty of making themselves less agreeable after marriage. Your dapper little fairy creatures, who dazzle us so with wondrous and fresh toilettes, who are so trim and neat and sprightly and enchanting, what becomes of them after marriage? If he reads the newspaper at the breakfast-table, perhaps it's because there is a sleepy, dowdy woman opposite, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... proved to be a dapper little man, with a weather-beaten face. He was in evening dress, and ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... were broken by one figure that was once the most potent among them all. I had been strangely moved at a theatre, a week or so before, as I looked at Lord Randolph Churchill. I remembered him twelve years ago—a mere boy in appearance, with clean-shaven face, dapper and slight figure, the alertness and grace of youth, and a face smooth as the cheek of a maiden. And now—bearded, slightly bowed, with lines deep as the wrinkles of an octogenarian, he sometimes looks like the grandfather of his youthful self. It is in the deep-set, brilliant ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... not going to ask her after all. Violet felt piqued. She was also conscious of a sensation very near akin to disappointment. She looked across at Madison. How trim and dapper he was! ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in the extraordinary changes Mr. William J. Denham had made in his personal appearance. Denham was a slender, youngish man, neat and dapper, with light brown hair, a smooth face, and pale skin. Jones had reddish, rumpled eye-brows, puffy pink lids, and large, roving eyes behind convex glasses. His hair was also red and rumpled, and though he was not enormously ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... editor, Mr. [vC]okorilo, will be, one trusts, reconstituted and devoted, as it can be, to a nobler purpose. One of its deplorable effects has been that the organ of the Croat party, a paper called Jugoslavija, has been compelled to write in a similar strain, whereas the editor, a dapper little priest, assures one that he would prefer a more ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... my poets and philosophers; was careful to present them in their own light, and me, their lowly servant, in my own shade. Moreover, in the matter of apparel I was equally mindful; not that I had ever been dapper that way; but that I ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... more effective in soliloquy. It is a memorable sight to see him standing with his back to one of the high stone mantelpieces in Durham Castle, his feet wide apart on the hearth-rug, his hands in the openings of his apron, his trim and dapper body swaying ceaselessly from the waist, his head, with its smooth boyish hair, bending constantly forward, jerking every now and then to emphasise a point in his argument, the light in his bright, watchful, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... architect Frisoni was called. An artist of no mean merit, and pupil of Jules Hardouin Mansard, the chief architect of Versailles, where Frisoni had worked at the plans together with his master. The Italian arrived: a small, dapper man, ridiculous in his huge powdered wig, his little brown monkey face peering out of the curled white locks. Her Excellency desired a palace on the same model as the fine French palazzo? Nothing easier! No? An original design, then, but ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... gentleman of noble birth and the representative of the province, who, having a large family of growing children, had wisely let his gentility take care of itself and permitted his guests to be entertained at their own rather than at his expense. As the noble landlady was suffering from headache, the dapper waitress took charge of us, provided us with rooms, and then installed us at the early table-d'hote, where a number of the officers of the garrison, with some other regular diners, whom we learnt to recognize in time as the town bailiff, the apothecary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... surprised. A short, dapper figure leaped lightly on the deck and nearly bounded into him where he stood beyond the circle of light from the gangway lamp. When it had passed towards the bridge, after exchanging a hurried "Good evening," Massy said surlily to Sterne who ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... old friend Bernard Barton chose to die in the early part of this year. . . . We have made a Book out of his Letters and Poems, and published it by subscription . . . and I have been obliged to contribute a little dapper {251} Memoir, as well as to select bits of Letters, bits of Poems, etc. All that was wanted is accomplished: many people subscribed. Some of B. B.'s letters are pleasant, I think, and when you come to England I will give ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... surprisingly unreal and artificial. A little dog belonging to a neighbor was known to the members of my household by the name of "Glass," from the general suggestion he gave of having been spun of that article. Perhaps I have somewhat exaggerated these illustrations of the dapper nicety of our neighborhood,—a neatness and conciseness which I think have a general tendency to belittle, dwarf, and contract their objects. For we gradually fell into small ways and narrow ideas, and to some extent squared ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... guider of the united caravans now travelling through Ugogo, was of such a fragile and small make, that he might be taken for an imitation of his famous prototype "Dapper." Being of such dimensions, what he lacked for weight and size he made up by activity. No sooner had he arrived in camp than his trim dapper form was seen frisking about from side to side of the great ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... on home prices. He had it at his fingers' end. Under his skillful hands the dry subject became really interesting, embellished with a wealth of illustration and anecdote. He was still deep in his exposition, when, beyond Scranton, a hand was laid on his arm. A dapper, little, dark man, with twinkling, black eyes and pointed black beard, stood in ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... nothing of that. His round, plump, rosy face, at first sight absurdly disproportionate to his dapper and effeminate body, wore a frown of annoyance. In fact, he had been obliged to think, and the effort invariably distressed him. Apparently he had a big head, and big headed men of diminutive frame ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... at home at the time we write of. He was an honest soul—a gentle, affectionate man with a handsome face, neat dapper little frame, something like his mother in many ways, yet not unmanly. He was too earnest, simple, unassuming, and unaffected to be that. He was a railway clerk, and had recently been appointed to Langrye station, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... require a whole peal of silver bells to ring such an exquisite chime. Then we crept softly up to a low branch, to have a good look at the Tui, or Parson-bird, most respectable and clerical-looking in its glossy black suit, with a singularly trim and dapper air, and white wattles of very slender feathers—indeed they are as fine as hair-curled coquettishly at each side of his throat, exactly like bands. All the birds were quite tame, and, instead of avoiding ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... und Dichtung (B. xii. vol. xxii. p. 86) Goethe tells us that he first became acquainted with Hindu fables through Dapper's book of travel,[86] while pursuing his law studies at Wetzlar, in 1771. He amused his circle of literary friends by relating stories of Rama and the monkey Hanneman (i.e. Hanuman), who speedily won the favor of the audience. The poet himself, ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... fear. He gabbled half incoherently his allegiance to his captor, his love for him, his willingness to do this, that, anything—only, not the Deep Place—prease! He was a pitiable object, could Martin have found pity for him in his heart. He was no longer the suave, dapper Japanese gentleman. His boasted gentility was gone with his courage; and superstitious terror had quite overcome his Western skepticism. He was just a yellow coolie, terror-stricken, cringing before and begging ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... of the staircase he ran into the arms of a dapper French doctor, young, yet experienced, a man of science, a man of pleasure, an anatomist, a dancer, a philosopher, and a dandy—who put both hands on his shoulders, and looked in his face with so comical an expression of congratulation, sympathy, pity, and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... leave-takings in the dimly-lighted station. There were few passengers travelling that night, and few loiterers about. We made M. Zola take his seat in a compartment, and stood on guard before it talking to him. Only one gentleman, a short dapper individual with mutton-chop whiskers (Wareham suggested that he looked like a barrister), paid any attention to the master, and, it may be, recognised him. For the rest, all went well. There were au revoirs and handshakes all round, and messages, too, for ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... and, having a strong penchant for ceremonial, the proprietor even went so far as to buy two skull-caps of shoddy red felt, one for himself and one for his clerk, Merlin Grainger. Moreover, he let his goatee grow until it resembled the tail-feathers of an ancient sparrow and substituted for a once dapper business suit a reverence-inspiring ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... statesman's money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the school-master, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... conveyed me from the station to Albury Lodge, after depositing a grim-looking elderly lady at a house on the outskirts of the town, and a dapper-looking little man, whom I took for a commercial traveller, at an inn in the market-place. I watched the road with a kind of idle curiosity as the vehicle lumbered along. The town had a cheerful ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... gentleman whose periwig occupied nearly as much space against the blue of a vernal sky as all the rest of his dapper little person. "Gud, my lord, it is vastly old-fashioned in your lordship to taste Shakespeare!" protested Sir Ralph Masaroon, shaking a cloud of pulvilio out of his cataract of curls. "There was a ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... plenty; gold is scarce and dear; Crystals abound, but diamonds still are rare. Is this the golden age, or the age of gold? Lo by the page or column fame is sold. Hear the big journal braying like an ass; Behold the brazen statesmen as they pass; See dapper poets hurrying for their dimes With hasty verses hammered out in rhymes: The Muses whisper—'"Tis the age of brass." Workmen are plenty, but the masters few— Fewer to-day than in the days of old. Rare blue-eyed pansies peeping pearled ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... and with such simplicity, accompanied by a winning smile, that the dapper Frenchman could not have refused his modest request even had his heart not warmed toward these young friends of ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... an agent for eight-day clocks came along, and being a stranger took her eye. He was one of those nice, dapper fellows, wore a red necktie, and could talk all day to a woman. He worked by the rule of three,—tickle, talk, and flatter, with a few cutes thrown in for a pelon; that gets nearly any of them. They live in town now. He's a windmill agent. I never ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... conscious, in the first place, that the school-mistress was a much more attractive-looking young person than he had anticipated, and secondly, that she seemed rather amused than otherwise at his conditions. No man, and least of all a man so consummate as Mr. Barker—for he was a dapper little person with a closely cropped beard and irreproachable kid gloves—likes to be laughed at by a woman, especially by one who is young and moderately good-looking; and he instinctively drew himself up by way of protest before ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... 'When you have sought a man over the face of the globe year after year, you don't make a mistake when you find him at last. Not you! Not me either! I'm not mistaken, and I don't let you go now I've found you after all these years, with your same little dapper, black, cut-away coat, that I thought so queer; and your broad-brimmed hat that I well remember. Never heard a man preach ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... fifty-two years of age. He was slender and dapper, and in appearance and comportment was so sweet- and gentle-spirited that the impression he radiated was almost of sissyness. He might have taught a Sunday-school, presided over a girls' seminary, or been a president of ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Dapper-waisted waitresses in black, with white aprons, served the customers. Vernon was served by Madame herself. The clientele formed its own opinion of the cause of this, ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... brethren, who had a market farther up in the town, and showed that a Jewish market could be much filthier than a' Moorish market without being more picturesque. Into the web of Oriental life were wrought the dapper figures of the red-coated, red-cheeked English soldiers, with blue, blue eyes and incredible red and yellow hair, lounging or hurrying orderlies with swagger-sticks, and apparently aimless privates no doubt bent 'upon quite definite business or pleasure. Now and then an English groom led ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... adroitness in dealing with them. He could be democratic or autocratic as occasion demanded; he knew when to yield, and when to remain inflexible. One morning, for instance, there arrived from New York a dapper salesman whose jauntily tied bow, whose thin hair—carefully parted to conceal an incipient baldness—whose wary and slightly weary eyes all impressively suggested the metropolitan atmosphere of high pressure and sophistication from which he had emerged. He had a machine to sell; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in a little room, the walls decorated with sporting prints, the green baize table gloomily laden with volumes of Punch and the Tatler. Wilbraham's doctor came in to see me, a dapper, smart little man, efficient and impersonal. He told me that Wilbraham had at most only twenty-four hours to live, that his brain was quite clear, and that he was suffering very little pain, that he had been brutally kicked in the stomach by some man in the Covent Garden crowd and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... company with those who were rich and delighted to eat of good things; and with these he went often to dine and sup, albeit he was not always bidden. There was likewise at Florence, in those days, a man called Biondello, a little dapper fellow of his person, very quaint of his dress and sprucer than a fly, with his coif on his head and his yellow periwig still drest to a nicety, without a hair awry, who plied the same trade as Ciacco. Going one morning in Lent whereas they sell the fish and cheapening two very ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... not ashamed to show their native brass; the missing rails have returned to their duty in the ranks. The whole establishment, including its master, has emerged out of a state of foggy dilapidation. Old Molly Gilders has retired into the interior, and given place above stairs to a dapper damsel. As for the ghosts, they could not be expected to remain under such dispiriting circumstances, and have had the good sense to resort to ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... bad whisky, but smoking a very good cigar. The whisky, of course, was the choice brand of The Champion Arms; the cigar he had probably brought with him from London. Nothing could be more different than his cynical negligence from the dapper dryness of the young American; but something in his pencil and open notebook, and perhaps in the expression of his alert blue eye, caused Kidd to guess, correctly, that ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... standing there blinking at them, his eyes vaguely trying to focus, and so mildly blue. His head with the graying hair so closely cropped gave him an odd appearance of boyishness, to which the smart little bow tie added not a little. He was trim, dapper, in spite of the fact that his standing collar was a size or two too large; in spite, too, of the tiny, well-trimmed goatee. He looked like a faun in trouble. With a shadow of distress crossing his face, he gave ground and backed away, the lamp tipping perilously in his grasp. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... hilarious ease from motives of mental hygiene, revealed the strain of his soul by striding abruptly out of the inner room and confronting the new-comer. A glance at him was quite sufficient to confirm the savage guesswork of a man in love. This very dapper but dwarfish figure, with the spike of black beard carried insolently forward, the clever unrestful eyes, the neat but very nervous fingers, could be none other than the man just described to him: Isidore Smythe, who made dolls out of banana skins ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Barber Sam's voice had been cultured at the proper time—by which I suppose he meant in youth—Barber Sam would undoubtedly have become "one of the brightest constellations in the operatic firmament." Moreover, Barber Sam had a winsome presence; a dapper body was he, with a clear olive skin, soulful eyes, a noble mustache, and a splendid suit of black curly hair. His powers of conversation were remarkable—that fact, coupled with his playing the guitar and wearing plaid clothes, gave him the name of ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... rococo church, look down upon the clear tideless waters that gently lap the ancient stone-work of the Mole, whilst a mixed crowd of fishermen with bare bronzed limbs, of chattering women with gay handkerchiefs tied over their thick black hair, and of blue uniformed dapper little customs officers,—lupi marini (wolves of the sea) as the poor people facetiously term these revenue officials of the coast—loiter in the sunlight amidst the piles of tawny fishing nets or the pyramids of golden oranges. From the quay ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the sergeant continued, indicating an exceedingly dapper and well-groomed little man with medico written all over him. "He was the nearest medical man ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... parlour, Anson Kirkpatrick, Marshall Field's man, was at the piano, playing airs from a musical comedy then running in Chicago. He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey, with friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor. I did not know all the men who were sitting about, but I recognized a furniture salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy O'Reilly, who travelled for a jewellery ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... when a young man of dapper appearance was ushered in. Gard looked up, frowning, into the mild blue eyes ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... corridor I met Professor Shatsky, a rat-faced individual in a dapper frock-coat, very influential in the councils of the Cadet party. I asked him what he thought of the much-talked-of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... startling change in Fritz Braun's appearance. The flowing golden beard, the blue glasses, the padded clothes of middle-age cut were gone. Fritz Braun, lithe, sharp-faced, with piercing eyes, a dashing cavalry mustache, and dapper Wall Street tailoring, was twenty ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... wrath subsided. The boy became pathetic to him; behind his dapper morning clothes, his intricate studs and fobs and rings, his reedy self-confidence, the physician saw the faint, grisly shadow of a sickly middle-age, ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... to go on with it, he took his time—flecking a few crumbs from his white waistcoat and from his fingertips. In the action he showed himself for what he was—a man so neat as just to escape being dapper. There was nothing large about him, in either mind or body; while, on the contrary, there was much that was keen and able. The incisiveness of the face would have been too sharp had it not been saved ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... an alert, dapper young man who wore glasses, and I remembered having seen him, both at the ticket window and in the women's room. Outside of the gates he confirmed my suspicion by trailing us to the ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... cement of Mr Fielding's connexion with him"; and Fielding's own scholarship, irradiated by his wit, would assuredly have made him an ideal translator of Greek comedy. But the public of 1742 appears to have afforded very little encouragement to this scheme, preferring that "pretty, dapper, brisk, smart, pert, Dialogue" of their own comedies, to which allusion is ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... upstairs. "We've nothing to take off, young woman," she declared at last; "can't you see that? Do you want us to undress and go to bed?" And with that she brushed Katie aside and proceeded on her way. A dapper little man in a dress-suit, the only man anywhere in sight, popped out from behind a great palm and demanded, "Name, please, madam?" Elizabeth regarded him with awe. He represented the zenith point of Estella's ambition. They always had ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... dapper Mr. Doolittle, expatriated American, waved a carefully manicured hand in acquired Gallic gestures as he expatiated on the circumstances which had summoned the soldier to his office. As he discoursed of these extraordinary matters ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... younger beside her on the sofa, saying, "Now, Alick, I do so want to hear about poor, dear little Bessie;" and they began so low and confidentially, that Rachel wondered if her alarms wore to be transfered from the bearded colonel to the dapper boy, or if, in very truth, she must deem poor Fanny a general coquette. Besides, a man must be contemptible who wore gloves at so small a party, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A dapper young man, with small, piercing eyes and a head that suggested a large bump of self-conceit, called out: "You chaps can't reach Beauregard. You'll run right ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... trifled with their teacups, or lightly snored. Yet no two were alike—a tall man-with dark moustache, thick hair, and red, smooth cheeks; another, bald, with stooping shoulders; a tremendous old buck, with a grey, pointed beard and large white waistcoat; a clean-shaven dapper man past middle age, whose face was like a bird's; a long, sallow, misanthrope; and a sanguine creature fast asleep. Asleep or awake, reading or snoring, fat or thin, hairy or bald, the insulation of their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... show me the lines and relics of battle, and give me the lists of killed, wounded, and missing. I repaired to his room, and arrayed myself in a fatigue officer's suit, with clean underclothing, after which, descending, I climbed into his saddle, and dashed off, with a mettlesome, dapper pony. The railroad track was about a mile from the house, and the whole country, hereabout, was sappy, dank, and almost barren. Scrub pines covered much of the soil, and the cleared fields were dotted with charred stumps. The houses were small and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... her a dapper body, in a silken jerkin—a limb like a short-legged hen's, in a cordovan boot—and a round, simpering, what-d'ye-lack sort of a countenance, set off with a velvet bonnet, a Turkey feather, and a gilded brooch? Ah! jolly mercer, they who have ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... he had a good lead; but if he had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... A dapper little gentleman, with a dry, authoritative air, then emerged and assumed charge of me. I explained my desire to receive, uncensured, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... The little, dapper officer with his keen, high-cheeked face, and his shoe-brush hair, got up and bowed, with a side ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper, learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... circumstance in my account of that first night at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, which at the time struck me with extreme disgust. That was seeing more than one man who had no females or babies to look after, who sought there a refuge from the coming attack. At daylight, one dapper young man, in fashionable array, came stepping lightly on the gallery, carrying a neat carpet-bag in his hand. I hardly think he expected to meet two young ladies at that hour; I shall always believe he meant to creep away before any one was up; for he certainly looked embarrassed when we looked ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the song. Fired by example, the dapper French Count approached the piano and asked Elsie if she could play Beranger's "Roi d'Yvetot." She repressed a smile at his choice, but the chance that presented itself of initiating a concert on the spur of the moment was too good to ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... particular side; we are merry with one, grave with another, as befits the nature and demands of the relation. Pepys's letter to Evelyn would have little in common with that other one to Mrs. Knipp which he signed by the pseudonym of DAPPER DICKY; yet each would be suitable to the character of his correspondent. There is no untruth in this, for man, being a Protean animal, swiftly shares and changes with his company and surroundings; and these changes ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and heavily from his horse (almost as though "by numbers") the General, followed by his smart and dapper Brigade-Major and the perspiring Colonel Dearman, strode with clank of steel and creak of leather, through the Headquarters building and emerged upon the parade-ground where steadfast stood seven companies of the Gungapur Fusilier Volunteers in quarter ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... Florentine, be he Orcagna, Lorenzetti, or Volterra, painted the typical masterpiece of mediaeval art, the great fresco of the Triumph of Death. With wonderful realization of character and situation he painted the prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... remained confused, disappointed and hurt, for he was not only unobserving, and seemingly unappreciative, but he was more silent than ever that night and he looked gloomy. But if he had grown accustomed to her beauty, there were others who had not, and smart, dapper college youths gathered about her like bees around a flower—a triumphant fact to which he also seemed indifferent. Moreover, he was not in evening clothes that night and she did not know whether he had forgotten or was indifferent to them, and the contrast that he was made her ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... month no one knew where he was, for beneath the battered white felt and homespun clothes of a river boatman no one recognised the dapper politician. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... A dapper young man came in. "I am from the MATIN," he announced. "I understand that Monsieur Rokoff has a story ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the cool orderly room at the cuartel, energetically clearing his desk of the last accumulations of the paper work he found a chore, when the dapper sergeant entered with his mail. Sorting quickly through the dozen official envelopes in anxious search for one addressed in the neat hand that always quickened his pulses, he discovered, miserably, that there was none from her. Fighting ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... mate, who always thought he did what he pleased, was occasionally made a fool of; and some obnoxious measures which he carried out, in spite of all growlings, were little thought to originate with the dapper little fellow in nankeen jacket and white canvas pumps. But, to all appearance, at least, the mate had everything his own way; indeed, in most things this was actually the case; and it was quite plain that the captain stood ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... door behind my father and Lewis was thrown violently open, and a man entered. He was a person with the manner of a barrister, precise and dapper; he had a long, pink face, pale eyes, and a close-cropped beard that brought out the hard lines of his mouth. He bustled to the table, put down a sort of portfolio that held an inkpot, a writing-pad and pens, and drew up a chair like one about ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold grey eyes under ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... house-agents, the difference between a fixture and a fitting. It is possible that neither word has any virtue without the other, as is the case with "spick" and "span." One has to be both; however dapper, one would never be described as a span gentleman. In the same way it may be that a curtain-rod or an electric light is never just a fixture or a fitting, but always "included in the fixtures and fittings." Then there is ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... more mechanical; flowers drooped, and dresses were crushed. An Englishman or two ran about complaining of the ventilation. As often as Maurice saw Louise, she was with Herries. At first, she had at least made a feint of dancing with other people; now she openly showed her preference. Always this dapper little man, with the violets ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... on his wrists. The bandage stretched and loosened, and at last, at long last, he succeeded in slipping one turn off his hand. He had no hope now for anything but death, and the only wish left to him in life was to get his hands free to wreak vengeance on the dapper little monster opposite him, to die with his ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... could not be the horse she had been advised to see and she was about to pass on when she felt eyes watching her from the steep shadow of the shed which bordered the corral. Then she made out a dapper olive-skinned fellow sitting with his back against the wall in such a position of complete relaxation as only a Mexican is capable of assuming. He wore a short tuft of black moustache cut well away from the edge of the red lip, a moustache which oddly accentuated his youth. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... down from the barrel and shook hands. He was a dapper little person, and had a trick of punctuating every ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the other claimant to the English throne won but little honour. There was always a question about James's courage. Neither then in Flanders, nor afterwards in his own ancient kingdom of Scotland, did the luckless Pretender show much resolution. But dapper little George had a famous tough spirit of his own, and fought like a Trojan. He called out his brother of Prussia, with sword and pistol; and I wish, for the interest of romancers in general, that that famous duel could have taken place. The two sovereigns hated each other with all their ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with interest—he was so dapper, so alert, so all that an office-boy in a staid lawyer's establishment ought to be. "How old ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... came up the garden path, the foremost small and dapper, with a ready address and astute countenance. "All right, Mother Darkness, is our consignment ready? Aye, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... notorious "Libby Prison," whose name was painfully familiar to every Union man in the land. Under the sign was a broad entrance way, large enough to admit a dray or a small wagon. On one side of this was the prison office, in which were a number of dapper, feeble-faced clerks at ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... dapper man, who had been regarding her with a temperate and critical eye, now, urged by her obvious distressed timidity, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, wee, petty, minikin^, miniature, pygmy, pigmy^, elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative^, portable; duodecimo^; dumpy, squat; short &c 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic^; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; rudimentary, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is small, dark, dapper, unobjectionable. He is much agitated. Helene holds out her hand to him in a friendly, but non-committal, discreet way. Maid ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... sauntered out of the hotel into the gardens directed his steps towards them, and met them face to face as they issued from one of the side-paths. He was not tall, but he was dapper and agile: his moustache curled fiercely, and his eyeglass was worn with something of an aggressive air. He was perfectly dressed, except that—for English taste—he wore too much jewellery; and from the crown of his shining hat to the tip of his polished pointed boot he was essentially Parisian—a ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the Sunday Sweeper.—This neat, dapper, and cleanly variety of the genus besom, is usually a young fellow, who, pursuing some humble and ill-paid occupation during the week, ekes out his modest salary by labouring with the broom on the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... sweet of gracious ladies' praise. Now comes a suitor with sharp prying eye— Says, Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart—a trade? What! weeping? why? Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, O sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will meet: I ask not if thy love my love can greet: Whatever thy worshipful soft tongue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the same course: it at one time conveyed no suggestion of mean finery or shabby splendour, as now it does. 'Voluble' was an epithet which had nothing of slight in it, but meant what 'fluent' means now; 'dapper' was what in German 'tapfer' is; not so much neat and spruce as brave and bold; 'plausible' was worthy of applause; 'pert' is now brisk and lively, but with a very distinct subaudition, which once it had not, of sauciness as well; ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... M." for William and Mary. There it was, on a beam, above the chancel arch, and the lion and unicorn on either side, the first with a huge tongue hanging out at the corner of his mouth, looking very complacent, as though he were displaying the royal arms, the unicorn slim and dapper with a chain hanging ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a serious divinity, and so were all the mid-Western human-beings about him. One heard no joking either of the dapper or cockney sort of cities, or the quaint graphic phrasing of Eastern country folk; and it may have been not far enough West for the true Western humor. At any rate, when they were not silent these men ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... station-master was disengaged, she approached the spectacled, dapper little man and told ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... a small, dapper Frenchman who somehow, in the course of his life, had acquired the nickname "Chicken" and it had been with him ever since. The cadets had met him once before when they rode on a passenger liner from Mars to Venusport and liked the small, stubby spaceman. Now, renewing their friendship, the boys ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... laffed a bit too early; for jest then the train slowed down, and pulled up at a stashun. Sam looked out an' saw a dapper little man a-bustlin' up an' down the platform, like a bee in a bottle, an' pryin' into the carr'ge windeys same as ef the train were a peep-show. Presently he opens the door of Sam's compartment, an' axes, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my disappointment! A dapper little foppish gentleman in white silk trousers, with a white cap on his head, was walking beside my mother in the garden. With his hands behind him and his head thrown back, every now and then running on ahead of mother, he looked quite ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the heavenly powers to us, but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. It is a peremptory rule with them, that they never go out of their road. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their foreordained paths,—neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Upjohn, "it do do my heart good to see a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in mind that after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your smoke didn't rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by my beater; and that's late, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... has always seemed to me that his righteousness would be more effective without his refinement. The curse of the Nonconformists is their universal refinement. They dimly connect being good with being delicate, and even dapper; with not being grotesque or loud or violent; with not sitting down on one's hat. Now it is always a pleasure to be loud and violent, and sometimes it is a duty. Certainly it has nothing to do with sin; a ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... fortune is secured on the Budget. In place of paying taxes to the State, I receive from it, every half-year, in my own person, and free from cost, thirty thousand francs in thirty notes, handed over the counter to me by a dapper little clerk at the Treasury, who smiles when he sees ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... all have it; they all lose it. Now she is dull and thick as bacon; now transparent as a hanging glass. The fixed faces are the dull ones. Here comes Lady Venice displayed like a monument for admiration, but carved in alabaster, to be set on the mantelpiece and never dusted. A dapper brunette complete from head to foot serves only as an illustration to lie upon the drawing-room table. The women in the streets have the faces of playing cards; the outlines accurately filled in with pink or yellow, and the line ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... observed, there were but few Of either sex among the crew, Whom she or her assessors knew. The goddess soon began to see, Things were not ripe for a decree; And said, she must consult her books, The lovers' Fletas, Bractons, Cokes. First to a dapper clerk she beckon'd To turn to Ovid, book the second: She then referr'd them to a place In Virgil, vide Dido's case: As for Tibullus's reports, They never pass'd for law in courts: For Cowley's briefs, and pleas of Waller, Still their authority was smaller. There was on ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... years ago fought with Wellington in the Peninsula. There is no possible need to doubt that they will maintain the old traditions of their regiments and add new records to their colours. Before this war is finished these soldiers of ours, who are singing on their way, in dapper suits of khaki, will be all tattered and torn, with straw tied round their feet, with stubby beards on their chins, with the grime of gunpowder and dust and grease and mud and blood upon their hands and faces. They will have lost the freshness ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... neck, the curious napless cloth cap with its peak pulled down over one eye, that curious cap which seems to be worn by no one else in the world but seafaring men, it was easy enough for Bat to visualise the dapper picture, that other picture of Walter Idepski that Standing had described. The man possessed a well-knit, sinuous figure which his dungarees could not disguise. His alert eyes were good-looking. And, cleaned ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... was a dapper, dumpy thing, With nought decisive on him graven But smiles, like footlights flickering ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... to put another question, the buzzer on our door sounded, and I admitted a dapper, soft-spoken man of middle size, who might have been a travelling salesman or a bookkeeper. He pulled a card from his case and stood facing us, evidently in doubt how ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... when the Chancellor happened to be drunk. "Well, Mr. Bartlemy," said his lordship, snuffing, "what have you to say?" The man, who had prepared a formal harangue, was transported to have so fair opportunity given him of uttering it, and with much dapper gesticulation congratulated his lordship on his health, and the nation on enjoying such great abilities. The Chancellor stopped him short, crying, "By God, it is a lie! I have neither health nor abilities; my bad health ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... one of the five seats of the tonneau sat a dapper-looking young man of medium height, with a soft, curly little moustache and dressed in the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... to suppress. A stranger arriving at the railway station of Helsingfors, for instance, may readily imagine himself in Germany, Austria, or even Switzerland, but certainly not within a thousand miles of Petersburg. Everything is so different, from the dapper stationmaster with gold-laced cap of German build down to the porters in clean white linen blouses, which pleasantly contrast with the malodorous sheepskins of unwashed Russia. At Helsingfors there is nothing, save the soldiery, to remind one of the proximity ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... self-satisfaction of his tribe. His thin hair was parted in the middle and a faint straw-colored mustache decorated his upper lip. Altogether, he might measure five feet five in his boots. The miner looked at him gravely. No faintest hint of humor came into the sea-blue eyes. They took in the dapper Britisher as if he had been a ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... well acquainted, and so the former, with that candour inseparable from intimate friendship, told me his dear friend's history. Captain Rag is a small dapper north-country man. He went when quite a boy into a crack light cavalry regiment, and by the time he got his troop, had cheated all his brother officers so completely, selling them lame horses for sound ones, and winning their ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they may be briefly described. Edward Strobik, the chief of them, and the one most useful to Mollenhauer, in a minor way, was a very spry person of about thirty-five at this time—lean and somewhat forceful, with black hair, black eyes, and an inordinately large black mustache. He was dapper, inclined to noticeable clothing—a pair of striped trousers, a white vest, a black cutaway coat and a high silk hat. His markedly ornamental shoes were always polished to perfection, and his immaculate appearance gave him the nickname of "The Dude" among some. Nevertheless he ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... me too ill to continue, Imagining how it will be When some dapper youth comes to win you ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... dapper man, rather above the middle height, and good-looking enough had he had a little more expression in his face. He had dark hair, very nicely brushed, small black whiskers, and a small black moustache. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... of hauling down the flag. There were squads of other people at intervals down the street. They too were quiet but filled with suppressed rage, and muttered their resentment at the insult to, what they called, "their" flag. Before the car I was in had started, a dapper little fellow—he would be called a dude at this day —stepped in. He was in a great state of excitement and used adjectives freely to express his contempt for the Union and for those who had just perpetrated such an outrage upon the rights of a free people. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... an immense hat, and wearing a very large ring on one hand, walked with a dapper step out of the telegraph office. He did see Kate. He checked his pace, coughed slightly and changed his course, as if to hold himself open to inquiry. Kate without hesitation turned to him and explained she was for Doubleday's ranch. She asked whether he knew the ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... darkly. He was as far as ever from hitting it off with this smiling, dapper product of ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... me before upon the green settee are familiar with the upper shelf, with the tattered Macaulay, the dapper Gibbon, the drab Boswell, the olive-green Scott, the pied Borrow, and all the goodly company who rub shoulders yonder. By the way, how one wishes that one's dear friends would only be friends also with each other. Why should Borrow snarl so churlishly at Scott? One would have thought ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Oliver thinks that his editor, probably Defoe, or an imitator of Defoe, 'faked' the book, partly out of De Flacourt's Histoire de Madagascar (1661), and a French authority adds another old French source, Dapper's Description de l'Afrique. Drury was himself a pirate, his editor thinks: Defoe picked his brains, or an imitator of Defoe did so, and Defoe, or whoever was the editor, would know the story that Drummond really lost the ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... sidewalk, amid the dapper, swiftly moving, high-heeled boots and gaiters, I catch a glimpse of the naked human foot. Nimbly it scuffs along, the toes spread, the sides flatten, the heel protrudes; it grasps the curbing, or bends to the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... fashioned a new Martin Blake. In the bronzed and active figure, dungaree clad, sheath-knife on hip, who so casually balanced himself on the swaying foot-rope, there was little in common, so far as outward appearance went, with the dapper, white-faced clerk ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... event; some of their neighbours smiling satirically at their folly. Old farmer-looking bodies, grumbling at the crush, mingled with Yankees, toothpick in hand, ready for business; sturdy Englishmen whom one knew appreciated creature comforts; and dapper little Frenchmen, hungry yet polite. Here stood a bright-looking Irishwoman, who vainly tried to restrain the impatience of five or six children, whose faces still shone from the friction of their morning ablutions; there, an old woman, well-nigh double with age, who, rather ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... to ask questions; he promptly showed her the office and she entered. She had not seen young Harry Lossing half a dozen times; and, now, her anxious eyes wandered from one dapper figure at the high desks, to another, until Lossing advanced ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... would meet a typical commercial traveller, dapper and alert. Anon, you encountered a heavily bearded Australian. Later, maybe, it was a courteous old retired colonel who stopped you and inquired the way to Trafalgar Square. Still later, a rather flashy individual of the sporting type asked you for a match for his cigar. Would you have suspected ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... possession of by the fat housekeeper, to whom he "did the amiable," as Frank had the knack of doing to anything with a petticoat. Cousin John handed off a stately damsel, whom I afterwards recognized as the upper housemaid, and I was claimed by a dapper little second-horse rider, of whom I flatter myself I made a complete conquest by the interest I took in his profession and the thorough knowledge I displayed of its details. I had to make most of the conversation myself, certainly, for ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... "Wedding-ring Edwards," in his quaint, sententious manner, growled out brief epigrammatic sentences, full of shrewdness and wisdom, most strangely seasoned with semi-contemptuous sarcasm. Here Isherwood Sutcliff, with his well-dressed, dapper figure, and his handsome Roman face, was wont to air his oratory; and here occasionally he, placing his right foot upon a spittoon, would deliver himself of set orations; most carefully prepared; most elegantly phrased; copiously garnished with Byronic quotations; ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... others resting on benches or walking up and down in groups, exercise being recommended as part of the cure. All thronged together to watch the Earl and his captive ride in with their suite, the household turning out to meet them, while foremost stood a dapper little figure with a short black cloak, a stiff round ruff, and a square barrett cap, with a gold-headed cane in one hand and a paper in ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a little of the dapper look about John Glover Drew who arrived the same day with the Admiral, as I met him for the first time near the corner of the Hive. He seemed stiff and formal in dress and manner, and his face had in it the cool, matter-of-fact element which did not attract ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Why not?" interrupted the dapper Monsieur Fuselier, in a sprightly tone; and, leaving Fandor abruptly, he leapt into ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... I behold? Following in Madam's wake, like a skiff towed at the stern of a rushing side-wheel steamer, a dapper little old man, a withered little old man, a gayly smiling little old man, whose countenance was somehow strangely familiar to me. I considered him a moment, and the scene in the Rue St. Lazare, with the coupe driver and the man with the pocket-book, flashed across my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... from "Dapper's Description of Africa," is corroborated by L'Hage Abdsalam, Shabeeni, whose narrative says, "Shabeeni, after staying three years at Timbuctoo, departed for Houssa, and crossing the small river close to the walls, reached the Neel ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... robust physique, Gregory, the publicity man, sank into insignificance. Even his pale spats, at which Bassett had shot a contemptuous glance, his highly expensive tailoring, failed to make him appear more than he was, a little, dapper man, with a pale cold eye and a rather too frequent smile. "She's the best there is," was his comment. He hesitated, then added: "She's my sister, you know. Naturally, for business reasons, I don't publish ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the rattle of Puff's pole-chains brought, in addition to the usual rush of shirt-sleeved helpers, an extremely smart, dapper little man, who might be either a jockey or a gentleman, or both, or neither. He was a clean-shaved, close-trimmed, spruce little fellow; remarkably natty about the legs—indeed, all over. His close-napped hat was carefully brushed, and what little ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... The dapper gentleman with the red tie and large scarf pin bowed amiably to the two witnesses of the interview, and Mr. Carruthers, with the minister by his side, proceeded to examine the papers. "Here it is," he said, after a few minutes of painful silence, "but what ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... several minutes. Evidently he was explaining the situation to his friend. But after a time Orme heard the clang of the elevator door, and in response to the knock that quickly followed, he opened his own door. At the side of his former visitor stood a dapper foreigner. He wore a long frock coat and carried a glossy hat, and his eyes were framed ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... in low water, Captain Lenox," she declared with her big laugh, "because your dapper little screw guns have been left out of the show. You want to be hitting the scoundrels back ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... and Mrs. Stickles held up her hands in amazement. "To think that I should live to hear sich words in me own house. Ye say the parson's too old. Ain't ye ashamed of them words? Too old! D'ye want some new dapper little snob spoutin' from the pulpit who hasn't as much knowledge in his hull body as Parson John has in his little finger? I know there's many a thing the parson talks about that I can't understan', an' so there is ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... rap, and a pause. "Monsieur and Madame de Tagliabue coming up." Enter Monsieur and Madame de Tagliabue. The former, a dapper little Frenchman, with a neat pair of legs, and stomach as round as a pea. Madame sailing in like an outward-bound East Indiaman, with studding sails below and aloft; so large in her dimensions, that her husband might ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... flush hotly to her cheeks. Somehow she could feel no sympathy for that cringing figure in there; but she felt a hot resentment toward that dapper, immaculately dressed and self-possessed young man, who stood there, silently now, tapping the papers with provoking coolness against the edge of the plain deal table in front of him. And somehow the resentment seemed to take ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... introduced,—the more's the pity; but, in lieu thereof, you are no sooner seated in one of the snug inviting little settles, with a table laid for four or six, spread with a snowy cloth, still bearing the fresh quadrangular marks impressed by the mangle, and rather damp, than the dapper, ubiquitous waiter, napkin in hand, stands before you, and rapidly runs over a detailed account of the tempting viands all smoking hot, and ready to ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... to the City Hall, and greatly astonished Mr. Dalton by walking into his office and requesting a moment's private conversation with him. Dalton was a dapper young man, exceedingly glib and well dressed, making his way in political and official, as he had already made it in social life. He greeted Mrs. Belding with effusion, and was anxious to know how he might serve her, having first cleared the room of the half-dozen ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... taxi from St. Mary Le Strand to Harley Street. Dr. Neil McDonnell was a dapper mystical little specialist, who was renowned for his applications of psychotherapy to raging militants and weary society leaders. He was a Scottish Highlander, with a rare gift of intuitive insight. ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... Roan. Hee will dispise the barbarisme of his owne countrey, and tell a whole legend of lyes of his travayles unto Constantinople. If he be challenged to fight ... hee objects that it is not the custome of the Spaniard or the Germaine to looke backe to everie dog that barks. You shall see a dapper Jacke that hath beene but once at Deepe, wring his face round about, as a man would stirre up a mustard pot and talke English through the teeth, like Jaques Scabdhams, or Monsieur Mingo de Moustrapo; when, poore slave, he hath but dipt his bread in wylde boares greace and come ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... lend an ear, 'Tis worth a trifler's time to hear. Tiberius Caesar, in his way To Naples, on a certain day Came to his own Misenian seat, (Of old Lucullus's retreat,) Which from the mountain top surveys Two seas, by looking different ways. Here a shrewd slave began to cringe With dapper coat and sash of fringe, And, as his master walk'd between The trees upon the tufted green, Finding the weather very hot, Officiates with his wat'ring-pot; And still attending through the glade, Is ostentatious of his aid. Caesar turns to another row, Where neither ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... small, dapper little man, typically house-agenty in manner, even to the point of assuring us gravely that another tenant was urgently in the field, and that we had secured our lease by the very ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... smaller man, well set and dapper, who wore black gloves when preaching, and who seemed to dance a minuet under his spectacles as he walked. Alas! to him also came in due time the sore heart and the bitter draught. They say in Cairn Edward ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... under the old doorway. I could almost see the lady, carefully dressed in many fine muslin folds and frills with hooped silk skirts, indeed, but slight and graceful in her quick advance, with blue eyes, with delicate sharp features, and a dazzling skin. As for the gentleman, I pictured him a dapper figure, with dark eyes, dressed in black, as befitted a minister even of dissenting views. The lady came forward, looking amused by my scrutiny, somewhat shy I thought—was she going to speak? And by the same token it seemed to me the gentleman was about to interrupt ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie) |
