"Middle-aged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was everything in my appearance to command respect, I went into the manager's room with confidence. Lean and brown and middle-aged, in a tweed coat and grey flannel trousers, which, though not new, were well cut, I felt that I looked like one accustomed to put in and take out sums from banks. There was no trying for effect, no effort, no tie-pin. The stick I carried was a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... the office full of clerks, nodded to their bald- headed middle-aged senior in a half-patronising manner. 'Don't be afraid, Mr. Spooner; I'm not coming back on your hands, whatever this good brother of mine may intend. Is ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for! Is it not a sounder ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... like himself waiting and with a vigilant eye reviewing the departing, the while he talked in close confidence with one who, a stranger to P. Sybarite, was briefly catalogued in his gallery of impressions as "hard-faced, cold-eyed, middle-aged, fine-trained but awkward—very likely, nouveau riche;" and with this summary, dismissed ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... and then heaping scorn on him for his weakness. More than once I've seen his father actually hurt him, although the child was too proud to admit it. Dinky-Dunk, I think, really wants his boy to be a bigger figure in the world than his dad. Milord's a middle-aged man now and knows his limitations. He has realized just how high the supremest high-water mark of his life will stand. And being human, he must nurse his human regrets over his failures in life. So now he wishes to see his thwarted powers come to fuller fruit ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... a success? Didn't the children have a wonderful time?" she begged to know, with all the happy concern of a middle-aged hostess. "Are you dreadfully tired, Mother Lynch? Because tonight's the real test." She stopped suddenly and leaned on her broom, her face very serious. "I do hope the big girls will like it. I wish the Queen hadn't said she didn't believe our—experiment would ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... the chief said when they entered, "you are welcome." He was a middle-aged Cascellan with at least fifteen knives strapped to various parts of his person. He squatted ...
— Warrior Race • Robert Sheckley
... remains to add that he was as good as his word; he was an able clerk first, and an historian only as a middle-aged man. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... her as far as the door of the history room, which was in charge of Miss Atkins, a stout, middle-aged woman, who beamed amiably upon Marjorie, entered her name in the class register, motioned her to a front seat and promptly appeared to forget her existence. But though Miss Atkins exhibited small personal interest in her new pupil, such was not the case with ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... Saturday afternoon, surveying the stage with a judicious and undeceived eye, as she sucked indefatigably at a lollipop extracted from the sticky bag clutched in one moist palm. (A bag of candy to each and every girl; a ball or a top to each and every boy!) Josie knew that the middle-aged soubrette who came out between the first and second acts to sing a gingham-and-sunbonnet song would whisk off to reappear immediately in knee-length pink satin and curls. When the heroine left home in a shawl and a sudden snowstorm ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Miss Wadsworth was middle-aged and vacillating and easily-led and ladylike and shockable. She herself knew that she had no strength of character; and she conscientiously strove to overcome this cardinal defect in a chaperon, by stubbornly opposing whatever ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... ... that summer," she said with a sigh, "I'm so thankful ... so thankful." And then Arthur came back with his sweater over his arm, swinging his racket, and she went straight up to him and kissed him with the sort of modesty that you would have expected in a young girl rather than a middle-aged widow. ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... difficulties of this subject is that those who are called upon to give counsel are apt to forget the strength of the forces to be dealt with, for it is during youth especially that sex attractions are so powerful, and, may I add, so delightful. Middle-aged people may be divided into ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... two rooms and a kitchen with a large closet opening out from it. She lived in the kitchen and rented the front rooms. Her tenants were a middle-aged man, inspector in a factory, who had the larger room; and a younger man who was bookkeeper in an importing house in the city. But this young man had not been at home for forty-eight hours, a fact, however, which did not greatly worry his landlady. The gentleman in question lived a rather dissipated ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... mind was a large, looming sense of responsibility for the car. It was his mother's car, and it was new and shiny, and his mother liked to drive flocks of fluttery, middle-aged ladies to benefit teas and the like. It had taken a full hour of coaxing to get the car for the day, and Jack knew what would be the penalty if anything happened to mar its costly beauty. A scratch would be almost as much ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... comer; and it is usual for the late comer to thank her courteously and take it. But the thing happens differently sometimes. When we were ready to leave Bombay my daughter's satchels were holding possession of her berth—a lower one. At the last moment, a middle-aged American lady swarmed into the compartment, followed by native porters laden with her baggage. She was growling and snarling and scolding, and trying to make herself phenomenally disagreeable; and succeeding. Without a word, she hoisted the satchels into the hanging shelf, and took possession ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... now hardened middle-aged men, if the seas, rocks, fevers, and the deadlier enemies that beset a sailor's life on shore have spared them; and the then strong men have bowed themselves, and the earth ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... offered to the object of their worship upon this occasion, seemed to be a middle-aged man; and, as we were told, was a toutou, that is, one of the lowest class of the people. But, after all my enquiries, I could not learn that he had been pitched upon on account of any particular crime committed by him meriting death. It is certain, however, that they generally make choice ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... a letter of introduction to me presented it when seven days out. It was from the manager of a restaurant in San Francisco, and asked me to guide him in any way I could. The Swiss was middle-aged, and talked only of a raw diet. He was to go to the Marquesas to eat raw food. One would have thought a crude diet to be in itself an end in life. He spoke of it proudly and earnestly, as if cooking one's edibles were a crime or a ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... In celebrating the heroic death of Bozzaris, Halleck chose a subject that was naturally fitted to appeal to all whose liberties were threatened. This poem has been honored with a place in almost all American anthologies. Middle-aged people can still remember the frequency with which the poem was declaimed. At one time these lines were perhaps as often heard as any in ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... above all, the Chief Pharisee, sitting in his high place. The Chief Pharisee—his name I learned was Nash, Mr. J. H. Nash (I did not know then that I was soon to make his acquaintance)—the Chief Pharisee looked as hard as nails, a middle-aged man with stiff chin-whiskers, small round, sharp eyes, ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... first appearance, was not out of proportion to their real interest. They relate to a period of our history second only in importance to the Revolution of 1688; they portray manners which have now disappeared from society, yet have disappeared so recently that middle-aged men can recollect them; and they concern the conduct of very eminent persons, of whom some are still living, while of others the memory is so fresh that they still seem ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... droves—like cattle—by "Nawthon speckulatahs". And prospective buyers would visit the "block" accompanied by doctors, who would feel of, thump, and examine the "Nigger" to see if sound. A young or middle-aged Negro man, specially or even well trained in some trade or out-of-the-ordinary line of work, often sold for from $2000.00 to $4000.00 in gold. Women and "runty Nigger men" commanded a price of from $600.00 up, each. A good "breedin oman", though, says "Uncle" Rias, would sometimes ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Gwen thought at least—was discernible in every phrase of the composition. This was all very fine for Lieutenant Tatham and Di Accrington, the two young monkeys. But why Aunt Constance and her middle-aged M.P.? If they wanted to, why couldn't they, without any nonsense? That was the truncated inquiry Gwen's ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... accepting death, either as a boon or as a matter of course, and with perfect resignation to the will of God, seems to have been throughout, since the introduction of Christianity, a characteristic of the Irish people. It is often witnessed in our own days, and manifested, equally by the young, the middle-aged, or the old. The young, closing their eyes to that bright life whose sweetness they have as yet scarcely tasted, never murmur at being deprived of it, though hope is to them so alluring; the middle-aged, called away in the midst of projects yet unaccomplished, see ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... sits next to me, I feel his lack of talent. He is wooed and made a fuss of as if he were a bishop. And when it cleared up, I went back on foot. How easily people deceive themselves, how they love prophets and soothsayers; what a herd it is! Another person went with us, a Councillor of State, middle-aged, silent, because he thinks he is right and despises the critic, because he too is without talent. A girl afraid to smile because she ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... estate, come to years of discretion; attain majority, assume the toga virilis[Lat]; have cut one's eyeteeth, have sown one's mild oats. Adj. adolescent, pubescent, of age; of full age, of ripe age; out of one's teens, grown up, mature, full grown, in one's prime, middle-aged, manly, virile, adult; womanly, matronly; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... had climbed over as a child, and had stood on many times, to see myself in the mirror above. The chair was newly finished and looked the better for its age. I glanced in the old glass. The chair had stood time better than I. I was a middle-aged woman, lined with poverty and care, shabby, prematurely gray, a little hard. I had thought my father an old man when that picture was taken, and now I was even older. "Father!" I whispered again, and fell to crying in the dimly ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... incongruous element amid the festivities, but they bore themselves very well, notwithstanding, and seemed to be sufficiently interested. The elder of the two—a tall, slender, middle-aged woman, with a somewhat severe, though delicate face—sat quietly apart, looking on at the rough dances and games with a keen relish of their primitive uncouthness; but the younger, a slight, alert creature, moved here and there, her large, changeable eyes looking larger through ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... skimmed over the sand almost as if she were flying, but, as she reached the largest group of rocks, her exalted mood suddenly dissipated and her high spirits came down to earth with a thud. Sitting on the other side of the rock, calmly smoking a cigar, was a middle-aged individual in a tweed coat and a soft hat. The creek, which they had imagined was their private ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... obtained a government post for him. Middle-aged ladies were generally ready to befriend Konstantin Diomiditch; he knew well how to court them and was successful in coming across them. He was at this very time living with a rich lady, a landowner, Darya Mihailovna Lasunsky, in a position between that of a guest and of a dependant. He was very ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... father of the present owner. The Prospers been at Buston ever since the time of George the First. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. He had been ever assuring himself of that fact, which was now more of a fact than ever. And fifty years old! It was quite shocking. With a steady middle-aged man like himself, and with the approval of her family, marriage might have been thought of. But this harum-scarum young tenant's son, who was in no respect a gentleman, whose only thought was of galloping over hedges and ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Edith, and I think I may safely repeat my promise, provided we make camp a little later than usual this evening, and get started again by daylight to-morrow morning," answered the middle-aged lieutenant, who sat just back of the ladies and steered the boat. "Yon far-reaching land," he continued, "is Point Pelee, and from there the fort is only about twenty-five ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and he cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office. He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened with business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no clerks. He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped. His clients want HIM; he is ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... three minutes later a middle-aged woman came slowly down the staircase, gazing about her. At last her glance settled, with some bewilderment on Dick and Greg, who were the only ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... received rather coolly. A temporary boarder from the country, consisting of a somewhat more than middle-aged female, with a parchment forehead and a dry little "frisette" shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, a black dress too rusty for recent grief, and contours in basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was reported to have been very virulent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... shawls round their waists, with highly ornamented krisses stuck in them; the blue and red cloth over their saddles, and the silver trappings to their horses. Two Europeans were with them: one we soon recognised as the lieutenant; the other, a middle-aged, gentlemanly-looking man, was a stranger to me; but the widow, as she watched ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... for them, and it was good for him, for it gave him an immediate audience, always inspiring to an author. Furthermore, the comments offered were often of the greatest value, especially suggestions from one Mrs. Fairbanks, of Cleveland, a middle-aged, cultured woman, herself a correspondent for her husband's paper, the "Herald". It requires not many days for acquaintances to form on shipboard, and in due time a little group gathered regularly each afternoon to hear Mark Twain read what he had written of their day's doings, ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Wessels, a lean, middle-aged little lady, with a flat, pointed nose, had no suggestions to offer. She disengaged herself from any responsibility in the situation and, while waiting, found a vague amusement in counting the number of people who filtered in single file through the wicket where the tickets were presented. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... the early part of this golden age there came to Athens a middle-aged man from Clazomenae, who, from our present stand-point, was a more interesting personality than perhaps any other in the great galaxy of remarkable men assembled there. The name of this new-comer was Anaxagoras. It was said in after-time, we know not with what degree of truth, that he had ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... he had given notice, he would have been informed that we had changed our residence and that that gruff old bass-voiced sailorman, Dr. G., our family physician, was living in the house which we had formerly occupied and that Orion's former room in that house was now occupied by Dr. G.'s two middle-aged maiden sisters. Orion arrived at Hannibal per steamboat in the middle of the night, and started with his customary eagerness on his excursion, his mind all on fire with his romantic project and building and enjoying his surprise ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... middle-aged English gentlewoman of the usual governess type. Isabelle knew the kind thoroughly. She had initiated whole companies of them into life at The Beeches. Miss Watts, this one was called. She was putting her things into bureau drawers, when Isabelle appeared at the door ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... a thong of deer's hide, and led her unresistingly away. By a circuitous path through the ravine they reached the foot of the mount, where lay a birch canoe, rocking gently on the waters, in which a middle-aged female and a young girl were seated. The females asked no questions, and expressed no word indicative of curiosity or surprise, as the strong arm of the Indian lifted his captive into the canoe, and made ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... wear of common adult Utopian women; they are both dark and sallow, and they affect amber and crimson in their garments. Their faces strike me as a little unintelligent, and there is a faint touch of middle-aged coquetry in their bearing that I do not like. Yet on earth we should consider them women of exceptional refinement. But the botanist evidently sees in this direction scope for the feelings that have wilted a little under my inattention, and he begins that ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... with excess of pleasure, I became aware of a slight movement beside the bed, and, glancing round, I perceived a middle-aged negress bending over me and ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... cases. I jumped from the wagon, and, tying my handkerchief to the ferule of my umbrella, advanced, waving it and shouting, "A flag of truce!" The General ordered a halt and despatched himself to the flag. As he approached I beheld a stout, middle-aged, good natured looking man, dressed in the graceless costume of Uncle Sam's army; but I must say that he wore it with more grace than most of the Regulars I have seen. Our soldiers look unbecomingly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... As it is, you appear to advocate no single practical measure which concerns the welfare of this country and the perpetuity of our glorious Union. PUNCHINELLO is the favorite paper of careless young men, depraved middle-aged men, who care nothing for Progress and Humanity, and young girls who prefer dress and admiration to addressing their Earnest sisters from the platform of Reform meetings. The Rev. Mr. DODGE tells me that all the young people of his congregation read ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... she forced her simplicity so far as to say that she did not think him absurd. And supposing Mr. Tinman to have proposed to the titled widow, Lady Ray, as she had heard, and to other ladies young and middle-aged in the neighbourhood, why should he not, if he wished to marry? If he was economical, surely he had a right to manage his own affairs. Her dread was lest Mr. Tinman and her father should quarrel over the payment for the broken chiwal-glass: that she honestly admitted, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... neared the door of my heart's desire, it opened and out stepped a plump, middle-aged little person, looking very trim and neat in her ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... impossible. Thus, while one afternoon seven hundred hats were counted and on them but twenty birds recognized, five hundred and forty-two were decorated with feathers of some kind. Of the one hundred and fifty-eight remaining, seventy-two were worn by young or middle-aged ladies, and eighty-six by ladies in mourning ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... was more interested in the various forms of mining operations which were to be seen on all sides. His continued exclamations of, "Oh, Paul! look at that new breaker," or, "Isn't that a capital idea for a slope?" at last attracted the attention of a middle-aged gentleman who, with a lady, occupied the ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... and excited, and I am afraid that I occupied myself in marking out possible careers for a good many of them as I studied their faces. There was not much fun of the healthy kind; fat, comfortable, middle-aged men laughed so heartily at the faintest indecent allusion that the singers grew broader and broader, and the hateful music-hall songs grew more and more risky as the night grew onward. By the way, can anything ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... chain with both hands, and they were full, at that. The dog stood up on his hind legs and pawed the air with his front ones, and his tongue hung out and dripped. You could see he was yearning, just dying, to taste of a middle-aged longshoreman by the name of Obed Nickerson. I stared at the dog, and he stared at me. I don't know which of ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the identical "little cot where she was born." Inside is an ordinary tent, with a rough platform at the further end, whereon is an empty chair, at which a group of small Boys, two or three young Women, and some middle-aged Farm-labourers, have been solemnly and patiently staring for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... was the only exception. He stood aloof, grim and sarcastic, and informed some good middle-aged ladies who came to see if he would, as they phrased it, "esteem it a privilege to add his mite" to the Doctor's outfit, that he would give him a likely negro boy, if he wanted him, and, if he was too conscientious to keep him, he might sell him at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... lives. I did so from taste, no doubt, having an instinctive horror of losing my sense of full self-possession, but also from artistic conviction. Yet there are so many pitfalls on each side of the true path that, having gone some way, and feeling a little battered and weary, as a middle-aged traveller will from the mere daily difficulties of the march, I ask myself whether I have kept always, always faithful to that sobriety where in there is power ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... of this work, to the scores of advertisements written by slaveholders, printed by slaveholders, published by slaveholders, in newspapers edited by slaveholders and patronized by slaveholders; advertisement describing not only men and boys, but women aged and middle-aged, matrons and girls of tender years, their necks chafed with iron collars with prongs, their limbs galled with iron rings and chains, and bars of iron, iron hobbles and shackles, all parts of their persons scarred with the lash, and branded with hot irons, and torn with rifle ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... point a middle-aged man with a burly frame and resolute expression started up, and said in an excited yet ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... confusion of events, it might seem altogether hopeless to disentangle the law which is guiding them all, and demonstrate it clearly. Of such groups, each may exhibit, at the same moment, an advance to a different stage, just as we see in the same family the young, the middle-aged, the old. It is thus that Europe shows in its different parts societies in very different states—here the restless civilization of France and England, there the contentment and inferiority of Lapland. This commingling might seem to render ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... A small, wiry, middle-aged man, with an honest, lantern-jawed face, entered the living room bearing a breakfast tray. After one glance, keeping his eyes cast down, he ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... bowed, and smiled, and rubbed the palms of his hands in a rotary movement; and being taken up in trying to amalgamate the scantiness of her money, the prices on the carte, and the enormity of her hunger, neither did she notice the burning eyes in the handsome, sensual dark face of a middle-aged native fixed upon her hungrily from behind a half-open door, where he had been hurriedly summoned by the man who advertised his skill in "la ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... means communicative. An elderly man, with a red turban and sword by side, hurried away from us when we addressed him, leaving his middle-aged wife to follow with a babe on shoulder and a boy in hand: she also refused to speak, waving her hand by way of reply to every question. At last a semi-civilized being, acquainted with the Convent of St. Catherine, Selm bin Husayn, of the Muzaynah tribe, satisfied our curiosity in view of tobacco, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Mr. Bonnington, the venerable occupant of the Gate House, told him that he remembered the visit and the visitor! It was "about twenty-five years ago"—and after examining some carving in the interior of the Gate House and putting many suggestive questions, the middle-aged active stranger slightly lame, and with keen grey eye, passed through the court and remained among the ruins silent and alone for about two hours. (Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 89.) The famous romance ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... "of organizing work and failing to organize play has, of course, brought about a fine revenge. The love of pleasure will not be denied, and when it has turned into all sorts of malignant and vicious appetites, then we, the middle-aged, grow quite distracted and resort to all sorts of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... forenoon of the day following Bob McGraw's spectacular advent into San Pasqual, the nurse for whom Doc Taylor had telephoned to Bakersfield arrived at the Hat Ranch. She proved to be a kind middle-aged woman, devoted to her profession and thoroughly competent to do everything for Bob McGraw that could be done. Her arrival released Donna from the care of watching the wounded man, and ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... nonchalantly, "Black fellow come up!" and presently I heard voices, and saw a whole host of men, women, and children. Then these three boys set up a long squeaky harangue to the others, and three or four men and five or six boys came running up to me. One was a middle-aged, good-looking man; with him were two boys, and Tommy gave me to understand that these were his father and brothers. The father drew Tommy towards him, and ranged his three boys in a row, and when I looked at them, it was impossible to doubt ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... hands on the broad stone sill, and looked downward into the city street as you would look into a well. The wind was blowing sticks and dust around in fairy rings, and a motor car or so ran up and down, and there were the usual number of the usual kind of people on the sidewalks; middle-aged people principally, for most of the younger inhabitants of New York are caged in offices at ten in the morning, unless they are whisking by in the motors. Mostly elderly ladies in handsome blue dresses, Marjorie noticed. She liked it, and drew a deep, happy breath of Spring ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... beside a middle-aged woman, or lady, as she probably called herself, whose sharp visage and thin lips did not seem to promise a very pleasant disposition. When the two gentlemen who sat beside her arose, she spread her skirts in the endeavor to fill two ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... answer when there came a knock on the bedroom door. He opened it to find himself confronted by a middle-aged lady, ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... Mercer as we approached the cottage door, and had the effect of bringing out a stiff-looking, sturdy, middle-aged man with a short pipe in his mouth, which he removed, carried one hand to his forehead in a salute, and then stood stiff and erect before us, ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... met by a middle-aged man and conducted across the road to a hotel, which had been a roller-skating rink in other days, and was not prepossessing. However, they were ushered into the parlor, which resembled the sitting room of a rather ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... sister-in-law was courteous and kindly. He talked of reformation and a new life, of the honourable and onerous position he now occupied in a reputable Sydney business, and of his approaching marriage with an excellent, middle-aged, maiden lady of means. Deftly he worked round to a tall, aristocratic woman who had appeared a Mary Queen of Scots at the memorable fancy-dress ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... it often enough. Walking near the market-town with him just at the outskirts, and looking up a side-road, we saw a pedler woman squat down and piss. We stopped short and looked at her: she was a short-petticoated, thick-legged, middle-aged woman; the piss ran off in a copious stream, and there we stood grinning. "Be off, be off, what are you standing grinning at, yer dam'd young fools," cried the woman, "be off, or I'll heave a stone at yer," and she pissed on. We moved a few steps back, but keeping ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... closely shaven, with stooping shoulders, at least fifteen years older, with a black poodle at his heels, as well shorn as his master, newly risen from lying outside the church door; a gentle, somewhat drooping lady in black, not yet middle-aged and very pretty; a small eager, unformed, black-eyed girl, who could hardly keep back her words for the outside of the church door; a tall self-possessed handsome woman, with a fine classical cast of features; ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Slang Dictionary declares means a lady, and is "Anglo-Indian," is in general use among English Gipsies for aunt. It is also a respectful form of address to any middle-aged woman, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... itinerant players, some of whom were very highly thought of in London, and the annual three-days' fair in June, Milby might be considered dull by people of a hypochondriacal temperament; and perhaps this was one reason why many of the middle-aged inhabitants, male and female, often found it impossible to keep up their spirits without a very abundant supply of stimulants. It is true there were several substantial men who had a reputation for exceptional sobriety, so that Milby habits were really not as bad as ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... not thrown away on the rebel party in Ireland. There was, naturally, widespread indignation in England at the spectacle of the youth of Ireland taking its ease at home and earning extravagantly high war-time wages while middle-aged bread-winners in England were compulsorily called to the colours; but the marvellously easy-going disposition of Englishmen submitted to the injustice with no more than a ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... elderly bride that the affair ceased to be funny to her. For the first time, she saw something pathetic and beautiful in the permanence of a love that, starved and thwarted and blasted by ridicule, could survive the years and make two faded, middle-aged people like Aunt Enid and Mr. Chester eager to drain the dregs of life together, when they had been denied ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... spoke the boat was passing almost directly beneath them, and they saw its name painted in red letters on the prow, Sirena del Mare. The two men, one young, one middle-aged, were staring before them at the rocks. But the boy, more sensitive, perhaps, than they were to the watching eyes of women, looked straight up to Vere and to her mother. They saw his level rows of white teeth gleaming as the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... to Weald Lodge were three—Jasper Cole, May Nuttall, and a stout, middle-aged man of slow speech but of authoritative tone. This was Inspector Nash, of Scotland Yard, who was in charge of the investigations into the forgeries. Minute received them in the library. He knew ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... was a middle-aged man with iron-gray hair. He was carrying his hat in his hand and enjoying the beauty and fragrance of the ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... of course not," exclaimed Dunn hurriedly, by no means anxious to offend the other. "I'm very sorry, I only meant it was impossible it should be the same Mr. John Clive I knew once, though I think he came from about here somewhere. A little, middle-aged man, I mean, quite ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... up and down the room, henceforward to be called the studio, in sweet and silent communion. They heard rapping at Torpenhow's door. 'That's some ruffian come up for a drink,' said Torpenhow; and he raised his voice cheerily. There entered no one more ruffianly than a portly middle-aged gentleman in a satin-faced frockcoat. His lips were parted and pale, and there were deep pouches ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Indian bows and arrows, wampum belts, and antlers, fitly decorated the rough walls, and equally fitly, rifles were stuck up in the corners. Seven men, smoking, were lying about on the floor, a sick man lay on the couch, and a middle-aged lady sat at the table writing. I went out again and asked Evans if he could take me in, expecting nothing better than a shakedown; but, to my joy, he told me he could give me a cabin to myself, two minutes' walk from his own. So in this glorious upper world, with ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... her as being inhabited by the doctor who attended to the needs of the people of Mount Pleasant and the surrounding district. Fortunately he was at home. Lucy looked at him closely as he entered the room and took his seat. He was a middle-aged man with a shrewd face, and she at once felt that she might have ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... sacred wine had been in reverent circulation for twenty minutes. Half-way through, warming to his new friend, he rang for a bottle of wood port first known to history in 1823, when it was already a middle-aged wine, and fortified from ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... in the doorway, a short, sturdy, middle-aged Frenchman, with strong features, a tuft of grey beard, heavy eyebrows, and dark, prominent eyes, with a hot, shining ...
— "Fin Tireur" - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... hedge. He did not pretend, he said, to be always right; he could recollect many occasions when he had been considerably wide of the mark. In fact, a bigger blunderhead, excepting in regard to certain matters, of which this was not one, probably did not exist. Trew begged to point out that the middle-aged party walking along behind them was, after all, only one middle-aged party, and there was no reason to assume that she could knock out every opponent she encountered. At the finish of his argument, Trew urged ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... most brilliant star. One may speak, therefore, without shocking existing susceptibilities, of the 'Review' in its first period, when Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Brougham were the most prominent names. A man may still call himself middle-aged and yet have a distinct memory of Brougham courting, rather too eagerly, the applause of the Social Science Association; or Jeffrey, as he appeared in his kindly old age, when he could hardly have spoken sharply of a Lake poet; and even of the last outpourings of the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... like a rose. She had been all white and gold then; now, hair, eyes, skin, and clothes seemed to him to be of one earthy color. Her clean, dull calico dress belted in by her checked apron revealed the ungraceful lines of her figure. She looked middle-aged and unshapely, when he wanted youth and an exquisite loveliness. Well, he told himself, harshly, he was not likely to get it. There was no sense in harboring such notions. They must be crushed. He would work harder, much harder, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... the entrance of a middle-aged coloured woman. "Miz Williams," she began, and then, as she caught sight of Penrod, she addressed him directly, "You' ma telefoam if you here, send you home right away, 'cause they ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... "No—only middle-aged." This morning, after her master had left the house, she actually asked me what I thought of my brother-in-law! I told her, as coldly as possible, that I thought he was very kind. She was quite insensible to the tone in which I ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... where a man slept in a box-settle at night, to wake up early passengers,—where teamsters came in, with wooden-handled whips and coarse frocks, reinforcing the bucolic flavor of the atmosphere, and middle-aged male gossips, sometimes including the squire of the neighboring law-office, gathered to exchange a question or two about the news, and then fall into that solemn state of suspended animation which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reported to the Woman's Journal of Boston by Miss Parker as follows: "It was a great victory. The women at the polls were wonderfully effective. Many young women, middle-aged women and white-haired grandmothers stood for hours handing out the little reminders. It rained—the usual gentle but very insistent kind of rain—and the men were so solicitous! They kept trying to drag us off to get our feet warm or bringing us chairs or offering to hand out our ballots while ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... few more brightly colored posters, notices, and placards on the dead walls, but the life of the city itself had not changed at all; the usual crowds filled the boulevards, the usual street cries sounded, the same middle-aged gentlemen sat in front of the cafes reading the same daily papers, the same waiters served them the same drinks; rows of cabs were drawn up where cabs are always to be found, and the same policemen dawdled in gossip with the same flower-girls. I caught the scent of early winter violets ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the counsellors, a middle-aged man with graying russet hair and large gray eyes set in a perfectly smooth countenance, stepped from the platform and grasped the two adventurers as the confusion in the square ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... A middle-aged, rather homely, yet kindly nurse entered and puttered round them both. At last she inquired in ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... the German people may keep up their production of food, the authors find that various factors will work against such a result. In the first place, there is a shortage of labor, nearly all the able-bodied young and middle-aged men in the farming districts being in the war. There is also a scarcity of horses, some 500,000 head having already been requisitioned for army use, and the imports of about 140,000 head (chiefly from Russia) have almost wholly ceased. The people must therefore resort more extensively to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... occupied by about twenty persons, the majority of whom were visitors, inhabitants of Tudela or of neighbouring country-houses. With four or five exceptions, the party consisted of men, for the most part elderly or middle-aged. One of the ladies and a young officer of the royal guard were the singers, and their performance seemed partially to interrupt the conversation of a group of the seniors who were seated round a card-table at the further ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a little gate, and proceeded through a neat garden, in which flowers and vegetables were intermixed. It had a gay appearance from the pear, apple, thorn and cherry being all in full bloom. We were received at the door by a middle-aged woman, with the ruddy glow of health on her cheeks, and dressed in coarse, plain, but remarkably neat and suitable, attire. As this was a cottage selected at random, and visited without previous intimation of our intention, I took particular notice of every thing I saw, because I ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the character of the man now to be disinherited. I lay no stress upon the fact that I was then nothing, and am now a physician; my art will not help me here. As little do I insist that I was then young, and am now middle-aged, with my years as a guarantee against misconduct; perhaps there is not much in that either. But, gentlemen, at the time of my previous expulsion, if I had never done my father any harm (as I should maintain), neither had I done him any good; whereas now I have recently been his preserver and benefactor; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... I understand your feeling very well. But yet I can fancy that when you are twice as old as you are—when a few grey hairs peep out among all that brown—when this plump little hand grows thin, and that girlish figure of yours looks dignified and middle-aged, and people say that nobody thought when you were young that you would turn out a handsome woman—I can fancy that when all this has happened, you may be more disposed to look forward, and less disinclined ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... conceptions which thrilled him till he shuddered—a realization that here was an army of veterans, men grown old in the ferocious struggle against injustice and the apparent niggardliness of nature,—a grim and terrible battle-line. It was made up, throughout its entire length, of old or middle-aged men and women with stooping shoulders, and eyes dim with toil and suffering. There was nothing of lovely girlhood or elastic, smiling boyhood; not a touch of color or grace in the long line of march. It was sombre, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... still, with the stillness of a middle-aged disapproving woman, and looked at her charge. She believed that Alvina was just speaking at random. Yet she dared not check her, in ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... were Priscilla and Hortense—she found to be middle-aged maiden ladies, eminently prim and proper, and the educational establishment over which they presided a sort of Protestant nunnery ruled according to the precepts of the Congregational Church and the New England aristocracy. Miss Priscilla was tall and thin and her favorite author was Emerson; ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... deck; elderly male ghosts in thick dressing-gowns: youthful ghosts of the same sex, fully clothed and decently groomed because of cloaked girl-ghosts, with floating hair (if there were enough to float effectively: others made a virtue of having it put up): and middle-aged female ghosts, with transformations apparently ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... found himself sitting next to a middle-aged woman who wore glasses and was surrounded by packages. She beamed at him, as she did at every one else around her, and Plato shrank back into his seat. If there was anything he didn't want on this trip, it was to ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... second family consisted of a respectable, middle-aged woman who had been twice married, four children of the first marriage, and the second husband. The eldest daughter had married, and with her husband occupied part of the house in which her mother ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... not the sort of modern woman of fifty, with a thin figure and a good deal of rouge, who looks young from the back when dancing or walking, and talks volubly and confidentially of her young men. She had, of course, nothing of the middle-aged woman of the past, who at her age would have been definitely on the shelf, doing wool-work or collecting recipes there. Nor did she resemble the strong-minded type in perpetual tailor-made clothes, ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... Harold, and was soon ushered into the large upper room, which was used as both nursery and school-room, for Mrs. Tracy could not allow her two sons, Tom and Jack, to come in contact with the boys at school; so she kept a governess, a middle-aged spinster, who, glad of a home, and the rather liberal compensation, sat all day in the nursery and bore patiently with Tom's freaks and Jack's dullness: to say nothing of the trouble it was to have the three-year-old Maude toddling ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Militia, magistrate, and sundry other honourable offices, in his due place on the right of the present baronet, the latter figured in a character so strange and so incongruous that it seemed as if one day the dignified array of Landales—old, young, middle-aged, but fine gentlemen, all of them—must turn their backs ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... far too precious on board the Slut for Dennis to spoil this one by explaining that his cousin was a middle-aged gentleman in partnership with the owner ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... men in England, had of late begun to pay Sylvia what he considered marked attention. Huge baskets of flowers, sometimes in the form of silver ships, sometimes of wicker wheelbarrows, or of brocaded sedan-chairs, and filled with orchids, lilies, roses, everything that, in the opinion of a middle-aged banker, would be likely to dazzle and delight a nice young girl, were sent periodically to Onslow Square. These floral tributes flattered Sir James and Savile; Woodville said they were hideous; and Sylvia (who neither wrote to thank their sender nor even acknowledged ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... scratching that secondary lesions, such as papules and slight thickening and infiltration, may result. It is much more common in advanced life—pruritus senilis. In such cases, as well as in those cases in younger and middle-aged individuals in which the itchiness develops at the approach of cold weather and disappears upon the coming of the warm season (pruritus hiemalis), the pruritus is usually more or less generalized, although not infrequently in the latter the ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... sarcastic brusquerie, carefully avoiding the least movement of hands or head during converse. This was exceedingly difficult of attainment to me, and took me an infinite deal of time and trouble; but I had for my model a middle-aged Englishman who was staying in the same hotel as myself, and whose starched stolidity never relaxed for a single instant. He was a human iceberg—perfectly respectable, with that air of decent gloom about him which is generally worn by all the sons of Britain while sojourning in a ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Jose?" asked his cousin, eagerly. "I've been watching that middle-aged gentleman who seems to be pressing close in on the flank of the crowd. There, see, he is speaking to Manuel, our purser, now, asking him some question. He looks up here at us; yes, and waves his hand, with a smile! That must be Senor ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... got up betimes to shoot, Or hunt; the young, because they liked the sport The first thing boys like, after play and fruit; The middle-aged, to make the day more short; For ennui is a growth of English root, Though nameless in our language-we retort The fact for words, and let the French translate That awful ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... up as a study, sat a fine-looking, middle-aged man, busily wilting; his dark face wore an expression of severity as ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... me up for a moment at a place I'd never heard of before, thrown me up there to assist in the astonishing job of transporting nuts, when the Chief remarked, pointing with the stem of his pipe, 'Here's a chief coming.' I looked round, expecting to see another stout, middle-aged man in singlet and dungarees, with perhaps an old uniform patrol jacket whose brass buttons were green with verdigris. But it was not so. He was indicating a large canoe emerging rapidly from the waterway astern of us. As it came more into our angle of vision I watched with extraordinary ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... boy busied himself for a few moments, with his father frowning and watching him angrily, and looking, in spite of his pain-distorted countenance, pallid look and sunken cheeks, a fine, handsome, middle-aged man. ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... light than as a visiter. I must only inform you that for a long time I have been restricted to an entire vegetable diet, neither fish nor flesh coming within my regimen; so I expect a powerful stock of potatoes, greens, and biscuit; I drink no wine. I have two servants, middle-aged men, and both Greeks. It is my intention to proceed first to town, to see Mr. Hanson, and thence to Newstead, on my way to Rochdale. I have only to beg you will not forget my diet, which it is very necessary for me to observe. I am well in health, as I have generally been, with ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the intruder. He was a short, stocky, middle-aged man whose bristling gray crewcut almost matched the neutral shades of ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... forward, he rode splashing through the shallow stream, up the gentle slope, and swung out of his saddle close to the kitchen door. This stood open, and striding up to it Buck met the languid gaze of a swarthy middle-aged Mexican who ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... village for the Dethick road, towards the place in which he had appointed to meet Anthony. At the entrance to the village he passed the minister, Mr. Barton, coming out of his house, that had been the priest's lodging, a middle-aged man, made a minister under the new Prayer-Book, and therefore, no priest as were some of the ministers about, who had been made priests under Mary. He was a solid man, of no great wit or learning, but there was not an ounce of harm in him. (They were fortunate, indeed, to have such a minister; ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... chairs, armless and with no spine, or high-backed and elbowed, and the carving-work thereof most intricate and allegorical—took their places, after much formal ceremony of scraping and bowing, blushing and curtsying, old, young, and middle-aged, of high and low degree, till in one moment all were hushed by the Minister shutting his eyes, and holding up his hand to ask a blessing. And "well worthy of a grace as lang's a tether," was the MAY-DAY meal spread beneath the shadow of the GLORY OF MOUNT ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... for pictures, and I am most anxious for one of a middle-aged Chinese, inclining to be fat, with a broad-brimmed straw hat, sitting on the back of a very small and placid cream colored donkey. He is fanning himself as the donkey moves imperceptibly along the highway, is satisfied with himself and at ease ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... two middle-aged listeners. It was a peculiar glance, full of a half-denied portent. Then Miss Fowler's fingers, true to their traditions, loosened their grip on her needles and ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the Vailima cook; Sina, his wife; Tauilo, his mother; Mitaele and Sosimo, his brothers. Lafaele, who was married to Faauma, was a middle-aged Futuna Islander, and had spent many years of his life on a whale-ship, the captain of which had kidnapped him when a boy. Misifolo was one of the "house-maids." Iopu and Tali, man and wife, had long been in our service, but had left it after they had been married some time; but, according to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his wife was greater than his wife's to Barclay. He was acutely uneasy if he were absent from her for a day. She, on the other hand, though devoted and faithful, was less obtrusively affectionate. But they were regarded in the regiment as the very model of a middle-aged couple. There was absolutely nothing in their mutual relations to prepare people for the tragedy which ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... being jealous and wanting to get him caught by Mr. Painter—whatever it was, that medicine had an awful power and did even more than he said it would. When every one had taken a good swallow, except the last one in line—he being a middle-aged person named Waters, who had to take what was left, which was only about a spoonful and very disappointing to Mr. Waters—they all felt the curling sensation begin, and commenced the new muscle-practice Somers had mentioned; and just then ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... A little middle-aged Norwegian woman told her story with great gusto. She had sailed from Seattle two years before with Mayor Woods' expedition, getting as far as a point on the Yukon River two hundred miles below Rampart ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... words is aroused by the dialogue of the orderer and the ordered; and afterwards by insertion and omission the child becomes thoroughly skilled in the use of the words. [Footnote: Cf. Sâhityadarpa.na, ii. "On the old man's saying, when giving directions to the middle-aged man," etc. The Sâhitya D. uses the terms âvâpoddhârau, the ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin
... was down and the grayest lock of all showed plainly. She had discarded frills and furbelows and wore a warm gray wrapper. She looked nice and middle-aged, yet carried, withal, a subtle air of girlishness—would carry it, in spite of storm or stress, until the end, as the sign and ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... that her soul was honeycombed—that was her word—with conventionality and false standards, and she made confessions like these to Laura, sitting in the girl's bedroom in the twilight. They were very soothing, these confessions. Laura would take Mrs. Simpson's thin, veined, middle-aged hand in hers and seem to charge herself for the moment with the responsibility of the elder lady's case. She did not attempt to conceal her pity or even her contempt for Mrs. Simpson's state of grace: she made short work of special services and ladies' ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... silent. Three people remained, a middle-aged man and his wife and their son, a boy of about twelve. They stood in the corner, staring white-faced at the Leiter, at the rod ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... weapon. She was middle-aged, kindly faced, and her eyes were swollen from weeping. She looked out of place with the shotgun—friendless and ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... books limited to such books as some frock-coated personage in Oxford Street thought good for me. I've spent about forty years in learning to know what I like in literature, and I don't want anybody to teach me. I'm not a young girl, I'm a middle-aged man; but I don't see why I should be handicapped by that. And if I am to be handicapped I'm going to chuck Mudie's. I've already written them a very rude letter about Mr. de Morgan's "It Never Can Happen Again." ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... the natives. Martin suspected they composed the mate's watch because they were all old, tractable hands. They were the Maori, Rimoa, a strapping, middle-aged man, Oomak, the Koriak, the man with the tattooed and scarified face whom Martin had seen at the wheel the first day at sea, the two Kanakas, and the Aleut. They talked to each other, he found, in a strange pidgin—a speech composed mainly of verbs and profanity, a ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... on the shelf To give his taste expansion, And, since no man, retired with pelf, The building mania can shun, 10 Knott, being middle-aged himself, Resolved to build (unhappy elf!) ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... gave it up. Just beyond the ridge where I had been shooting I came upon the pan of water that was to be our outspan, and beside the pan was a farmhouse, outside of which stood a little group of people. An old woman, a young man, a girl, two middle-aged matrons, a man horribly deformed—people of different ages and manners, yet having in common one startling thing: they were all shaking with terror. It was startling because they were the only living creatures except birds ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Heidelberg, which had won him considerable respect among those who knew anything about such matters, and his diplomas included half the letters of the alphabet, and were undeniable. And so when he had suddenly appeared in London on the death of his uncle and cousin, a middle-aged, distinguished gentleman, with manners a little foreign, but in their way perfect, society had voted him a great improvement on the former baronet, and had taken him by the hand at once. That was a good many years ago, and very soon after his first introduction to the London world ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and kerosene-flame lamps held forth on the streets until within the memory of middle-aged persons of to-day. The lamplighter with his ladder is still fresh in memory. Many of the towns and villages have never been lighted by gas, for they stepped from the oil-lamp to the electric lamp. The gas-mantle has made it possible for gas-lighting to continue as ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... voice became audibly articulate, it proved to be shouting blasphemies from the broad chest of a middle-aged man—an Italian of the type that grows stout and wears whiskers. The man was in bourgeois dress, and he stood with his hat off in front of the small station building, shaking his thick fist at the sky. No ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... had also been a very pretty woman, and even now she retained a good deal of pleasant middle-aged comeliness. She was somewhat stout, and had grown a little inactive in consequence; but her expression was soft and motherly, and she had the unmistakable air of a gentlewoman. In her husband's eyes she was still handsomer than ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... bachelors, and dressed in mourning, sat together after supper in the parlour of their house at the bottom of Oldcastle Street, Bursley. Maggie, the middle-aged servant, was clearing ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... rather blushed for Becky that she must sit there in the sight of everybody and share a feast with a shabby old Judge, a lean and lank stripling with straight hair, a lame duck of an officer, and two middle-aged women, who made spots of black and purple on the landscape. Like Oscar, George's ideas of life had to do largely with motor cars and yachts, and estates on Long Island, palaces at Newport and Len ox and Palm Beach. During the war he had served rather comfortably in a becoming ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... sixty or seventy yards away to a shady spot, where he sat down on the green slope of the foss to cool himself. He had been riding many hours in a burning sun, and wanted cooling. He attracted everybody's attention on his arrival by his appearance: middle-aged, with good features and curly brown hair and beard, but huge—one of the biggest men I had ever seen; his weight could not have been under about seventeen stone. Sitting or reclining on the grass, he fell asleep, and rolling down the slope fell with a tremendous splash into the water, which was ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... riddle is the case of a middle-aged man, whose costume and avocation explain nothing, save that he is not an Osmanli. He is a passenger homeward bound to one of the coast villages, and he constantly circulates among the crowd with a basket of water-melons, which he has brought aboard "on spec," ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens |
