"Dapper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... natures to be. Neither cared further for elaborating giddy curves on that town-hall floor. They stood talking languidly about this and that local topic, till De Stancy turned aside for a short time to speak to a dapper little lady who had beckoned to him. In a few minutes he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... had opened the door and introduced to the company a dapper, affable gentleman who was habited, as became his calling, for the most part in black; but he lent an air of smartness to his notarial garb by reason that the black of his coat and breeches was of silk, and that he wore a quantity of costly lace. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... most exquisite embroideries, and this may mean that some part of his art was inherited. She handled lovely colours, and tried to fashion beautiful flower shapes for customers. She was a fragile, tender sort of woman, while the father was doubtless a dapper, over-nice little fellow. ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... gaze. The dapper figure of Mr. Wesson was moving down the lawn. He had a tennis racquet in his hand. His ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... himself to be, not altogether a buffoon, but a spunger[436] and to 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 fine lampreys for ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... confided to several of her bosom friends the tragedy of her unequal marriage and that she knew she would yet find a "soul mate." There was a Choral Society in Houston one winter, and following a few gratuitous compliments from the dapper young director, she decided she had found it. He left in the spring and this dream faded. A few months later the new minister's incautious exaggeration that "he didn't know how he could run the church without her" came near resulting in trouble, for some of the good sisters unkindly questioned ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... felt the blood 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 a most peculiar phase. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... A dark, dapper man, with an alert air and an eyeglass, sat near the seventh bridge, writing. Beside him stood an easel and other painting-gear. I asked him what he was doing, and he answered, with a fine smile, "I am gently making enemies;" so, to turn the subject, I picked up a large canvas, smeared ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... 3; that was his smoking-room of a night. Let me call him Blackwood. O'Reilly and I rattled down the companion, breathing hurry; and in his shirt-sleeves and perched across the carpenters bench upon one thigh, found Blackwood; a neat, bright, dapper, Glasgow-looking man, with a bead of an eye and a rank twang in his speech. I forget who was with him, but the pair were enjoying a deliberate talk over their pipes. I dare say he was tired with his day's work, and eminently comfortable at that moment; and the truth is, I did not stop to consider ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, nor a mote ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... A dapper little page appeared at Mr. Bingle's elbow, interrupting him with the curt remark that Mr. Force wanted to see him when ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... spirited drawing of the Battle of the Somme, shows an officer leading a charge waving a light cane. As an emblem of rank the cane among our Allies has apparently supplanted the sword. Something of the dapper, cocky look of our brothers in arms on our streets undoubtedly is due to their canes. One never sees a British, French or Italian officer in the rotogravure sections without his cane. We should be as startled ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... William felt, but I was not favorably impressed with Brother Dunn when he arrived on the late evening train, a frisky, dapper young man, who looked in the face as if his light was turned too high. That night as he preceded us up the aisle of the church, which was crowded to hear him, he showed to my mind a sort of irreverent confidence in the ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... Sydney, whom Mr. Jawkins had placed together with delicate discrimination. Mrs. Carey gave a little shrug at perceiving that she, too, was put in the same neighborhood. Lord Carringford and the Duchess seemed to be getting along uncommonly well together. Sir John Dacre ignored his dapper neighbor, Jawkins, and was absorbed in conversation with beautiful Mary Lincoln, who blushed whenever she caught her father's eye looking questioningly at her. Mrs. Carey's glance over the table was at first cursory; she ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... for the approach of the banderilleros, while the horses were led away out of sight, to be patched up for the succeeding engagement; a quantity of sand was thrown over the blood stains, which were pretty numerous throughout the arena. The banderilleros were three in number, and smart, dapper, little fellows, beautifully dressed in light blue satin and gold. Each was armed with the banderillo, small barbed darts, about a foot long, ornamented with coloured paper. Their duty is to go straight up to the bull, facing him, and as soon ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... been very encouraging to Tom Todd, a young lawyer of the place—a little snob, with self-conceit enough in his dapper body for six larger men. This evening he had been particularly attentive to her. Susie was pretty and quite an heiress, so I knew Tom Todd would try to secure her. He was just that kind of a fellow who could propose ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... 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 ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... settle in the shadow of one of the mammoth arches, his basket between his knees and his umbrella between his two clasped hands. He was talking just as amiably and frankly as before, and this time he had for audience a dapper man with a thin face that might have been old or young, and which I disliked at sight. He was exceedingly well dressed; he looked very respectable, but he also looked smug and sophisticated—too sophisticated, I thought, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... fashions. The real significance of freedom here is realised. What matters it that London decrees a crease down the trouser legs if those garments are but of well-bleached blue dungaree? The spotless shirt, how paltry a detail when a light singlet is the only wear? Of what trifling worth dapper boots to feet made leathery by contact with the clean, crisp, oatmeal-coloured sand. Here is no fetish about clothes; little concern for what we shall eat or what we shall drink. The man who has to observe the least of the ordinances of style knows not liberty. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the abbey, who, as the largest and stoutest man in the village, was chosen on that account to the part. Next to him came a character of no little importance, and upon whom much of the mirth of the pageant depended, and this devolved upon the village cobbler, Jack Roby, a dapper little fellow, who fitted the part of the Fool to a nicety. With bauble in hand, and blue coxcomb hood adorned with long white asses' ears on head, with jerkin of green, striped with yellow; hose of different colours, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... summer, and we went to school, Dapper country lads and little maidens; Taught the motto of the "Dunce's Stool,"— Its grave import still my fancy ladens,— "Here's a fool!" It was summer, and we ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... centre of the flowery ground A crystal fountain spread its streams around, The fruitful banks with verdant laurels crown'd. About this spring (if ancient fame say true) The dapper elves their moonlight sports pursue: 460 Their pigmy king, and little fairy queen, In circling dances gamboll'd on the green, While tuneful sprites a merry concert made, And airy music warbled through ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... 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 of that style? Ah! more facile still! Cost? A trifle to ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... sure enough!" said Frank, as, despite the many bandages about the head of the man, he recognized the dapper little French aviator with whom he had had more or ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... and began to drink his ale, as a small dapper man entered the bar-room with a brisk step and called for 'a glass of home-brewed,' looking round on those assembled with a condescending smile. All of them knew him as Jim Bennett, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... John 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
... sedate—passing 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)
... he went back to his cell, a keeper opened the door to let in another prisoner. He was a dapper young fellow, with a light brown mustache and blue eyes, and a graceful figure. He nodded to Jurgis, and then, as the keeper closed the door upon him, began gazing critically ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... 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 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 ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... craft, which was a dapper cutter with an oyster-knife sort of bow and a clean run aft, as if she could race well when heeling over and show a good deal of her copper sheathing, did not exceed the tonnage ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... bulk of the work was Young's, and that his colleague did little more than furnish the Preface, which is partly written in the first person, and betrays its origin by a sudden and not very relevant attack upon the "pretty, dapper, brisk, smart, pert Dialogue" of Modern Comedy into which the "infinite Wit" of Wycherley had degenerated under Cibber. It also contains a compliment to the numbers of the "inimitable Author" ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... chairs accommodated the witnesses, a corner of the table was allotted to the accused woman's solicitor, a smart dapper gentleman in gold pince-nez, a portion of one side to the reporters, and several ranks of benches were occupied by a miscellaneous ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his next to lead her to meet her discomfited master, who was crippling towards him, his clothes much soiled with his fall, his eyes streaming with tears, from pain as well as mortification, and altogether exhibiting an aspect so unlike the spruce and dapper importance of his ordinary appearance, that the honest smith felt compassion for the little man, and some remorse at having left him exposed to such disgrace. All men, I believe, enjoy an ill natured joke. ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c. (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, wee, petty, minikin[obs3], miniature, pygmy, pigmy[obs3], elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative[obs3], portable; duodecimo[obs3]; dumpy, squat; short &c. 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic[obs3]; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... was one of those dapper bird-like illusorily-active men, who seem to have been in a certain stage of middle-age for as long as human memory can recall them. A close-cut peaked beard lent a certain dignity to his appearance—a loan which the rest of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... children Latin every morning, and is already thinking when Tom shall be inducted into that language. He works in his garden for an hour before breakfast. His work over by three o'clock, he tramps home at four, and exchanges his dapper coat for his dressing-gown—a ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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, ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... 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 in the Bible. I often ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... Frenchman—a very small Frenchman, indeed—not over five feet four inches in height. He was dapper and tidy—had a large aquiline nose, and, notwithstanding his limited stature, a pair of tremendous moustachios, that curved over his mouth so as almost to hide it. These gave him a somewhat fierce aspect, which, combined with his upright carriage, and brisk mechanical-like ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... seldom came into the artificial world; into a royal throne there, probably never. A wild man, wholly in earnest, veritable as the old rocks,—and with a terrible volcanic fire in him too. He would have been strange anywhere; but among the dapper Royal gentlemen of the Eighteenth Century, what was to be done with such an Orson of a King?—Clap him in Bedlam, and bring out the ballot-boxes instead? The modern generation, too, still takes its impression of him from these rumors,—still more now from Wilhelmina's ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... Flanders, and in King Street, too. There, also, they read the news in the newspapers of the day, and discussed matters of high policy and strategy, while the civilians listened with respectful admiration. And see how that dapper young officer seated in the window arches his handsome eyebrows and smirks as two pretty Boston girls go by! Yes, it is no wonder that the British fleet needed a long time to refit in Boston harbor, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... like the boss of a shield, in the middle of the huge circle of Dartmoor. Two gentlemen were awaiting us in the station—the one a tall, fair man with lion-like hair and beard and curiously penetrating light blue eyes; the other a small, alert person, very neat and dapper, in a frock-coat and gaiters, with trim little side-whiskers and an eye-glass. The latter was Colonel Ross, the well-known sportsman; the other, Inspector Gregory, a man who was rapidly making his name ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... passed in the figures of the dance eyeing each other in mutual antipathy. The neat "hand-me-downs" of grocery clerks contrasted with the copper-riveted overalls of shy and silent prospectors from the hills who stood against the walls envying their dapper ease. A remittance man from Devonshire whose ancestral halls had sheltered an hundred knights danced with Faro Nell, who gambled for a living, while the station agent's attenuated daughter palpitated in the arms of a husky stage-driver. Mr. Percy Parrott, the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... it happened that a little very dapper gentleman who was largely interested in the land-agency and general mortgage business was spending the evening with Hawtrey in Wyllard's room at the Range. He had driven round by Hawtrey's homestead earlier in the afternoon, and had deduced a good deal from the state of it, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... a dapper little man, designed by Nature to be the "tame cat" of some married woman, was punctual when the time came to take the two ladies to the Amusement Club. Noreen had very dubiously donned her smartest frock which, having just been taken out of a trunk after a long journey, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... of the west. Ben Tatum's steeds may have been swifter, and 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
... offer of a chair with an air of demure shyness, and sitting on its edge stared at her rather hard. He looked neat and dapper in his Bond Street kit, and for a man who had started life as a Whitechapel toymaker, his manners were inoffensive. While Pine's secretary he had contrived to pick up hints in the way of social behavior, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... sat 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 off the discouraged feeling ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the court before they had finished the repast. Now that he was dressed, he proved to be a very dapper figure of an old gentleman, his bald poll ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... into the 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, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... 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
... 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 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 ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... though, of course, he was not able to have a soldier's funeral. Some of these poor French soldiers were dreadfully homesick—most of them were married, and some were fathers of families who had to suddenly leave their peaceful occupations to come to the war. Jules, a dapper little pastrycook with pink cheeks and bright black eyes, had been making a batch of tarts when his summons had come. And he was much better suited to making tarts than to fighting, poor little man, for he was utterly unnerved by what he had gone through, and used to have dreadful fits of ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... flowers in full bloom, which shed a sweet odour all round, and had a charming and elegant appearance. Everything within the house and without, seemed to be the perfection of neatness and order. In the garden there was not a weed to be seen, and to judge from some dapper gardening-tools, a basket, and a pair of gloves which were lying in one of the walks, old Mr Garland had been at work in it ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... 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 skin ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... absorbed in the mental picture of her chagrin, that he collided with a dapper young man in a dinner jacket at that moment about to enter Therese's sitting-room. Pulling up short, he looked to see who it was who made so free of the house, and, simultaneously, the visitor wheeled round with an expression ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... round, dapper practitioner, with slightly soiled cuffs and an extremely business-like manner. On entering the room he jerked his head in a general nod to all present, and stepping to the table, drew a small packet from his waistcoat, and unfolded it. It contained about a score ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... see his little hat, With such a narrow brim; They laughed to note his dapper coat, With skirts so ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... widely known 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 ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... trim and dapper police official would drift in on horseback looking for native criminals; and once a safari came by. Twelve miles away was the famous Kamiti Farm of Heatly, where Roosevelt killed his buffalo; and once or twice Heatly himself, a fine chap, came to see us. Also ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... curtain drew up, was, she supposed, the bar of an inn. But no; on the board were two heads, ideals of male and female beauty, one with a waxed moustache, the other with a huge chignon, vividly recalling Mr. Pettitt's Penates. Presently came by a dapper professor, in blue spectacles and a college cap, who stood contemplating, and indulging in a harangue on entities and molecules, spirit and matter, affinities and development, while the soft deep brown eyes of the chignoned head languished, and the blue ones of the moustached ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the next morning a closed carriage drew up before the heavy gate. A dapper figure pushed open the door and leaped out. It entered the big gateway, crossed a green garden and was ushered into the presence of the Baroness ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... front row near the Prince. Smiling, smiling, for ever smiling. He was a dapper little man, with a fiery, clean-shaven face, and a fringe of grizzled hair above his ears that gave the lie to the auburn silkiness with which his head was crowned. Next to him was Mr. Doulton, who chatted and smiled, smiled and chatted; but his eyes moved restlessly over ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... "disguised garments and desperate hats" of the "affectate traveller" how; his attire spoke French or Italian, and his gait cried "behold me!" how he spoke his own language with shame and loathing.[100] "You shall see a dapper Jacke, that hath beene but over at Deepe,[101] wring his face round about, as a man would stir up a mustard-pot, and talke English through the teeth, like ... Monsieur Mingo de Moustrap."[102] Nash was one of the best at describing some who had lived in France for half-a-dozen years, "and when they ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... other, his grip tighter than ever. '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 with ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... was so uncertain that when he introduced me to people he tactfully mumbled. On this occasion Senator Gorman very kindly stood near me to identify the people for me. I remember a very dapper, very little man in evening clothes, who was passed on to me by the Doctor, with the usual unintelligible introduction, and I had just begun to make myself agreeable when, pointing to a medal on his coat, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... small, dapper, early-gray, superdignified man, recalling his sign: "Antiques in Furniture, Glass, Bronze, Plate, China, and Jewelry." M. Ducatel seemed to be already taking leave. His "anceztral 'ome," he said, was far up-town; he had dropped in solely to borrow—showing ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... the neatly trimmed mutton-chop of an English inn, or the artistic little circle of lamb-chop fried in bread-crumbs coiled around a tempting centre of spinach which may always be found in France, can recognize any family resemblance to those dapper, civilized preparations, in these coarse, roughly-hacked strips of bone, gristle, and meat which are commonly called mutton-chop in America? There seems to be a large dish of something resembling meat, in which each fragment has about two or three edible ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... indulge in the maddening extravagance of an occasional paper of pins or a ball of tape! What if, after hard labor, and repeated failure, she does secure something like success? No sooner will she do so, than up will step some dapper youth who will beckon her over the border into the land where troubles just begin. She won't know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee, for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a girl makes a career for herself, and so love will gallop away over the hills like a riderless ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... that bald, gray time between darkness and dawn when Ben Allen and Hollis, riding at the head of the detail of troopers beside the dapper little captain, had arrived at the edge of the butte where Hollis had directed ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the insipid idlers who fill our saloons. Behold them now, gathered by the oriel window, yonder; precious distillers of talk,—sentinels of society with certain set phrases as watchwords, which they never exceed; sages, who follow Face's advice to Dapper,— ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... well pleased; Aunt Jessie looked thoughtful; Aunt Jane's keen eyes went from dapper Steve to broad-shouldered Mac with an anxious glance; Mrs. Myra murmured something about her "blessed Caroline"; and Aunt Plenty said warmly, "Bless the dears! Anyone might be proud of such a bonny ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... richer and touching than "darksome." "Feather beds are saft;" "paintit rooms are bonnie;" I would infer from this, that his "dearie," his "true love," was a lass up at "the big house"—a dapper Abigail possibly—at Sir William's at the Castle, and then we have the final paroxysm upon Friday nicht—Friday at the gloamin'! O for Friday nicht!—Friday's lang o' comin'!—it being very likely Thursday before daybreak, when this ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... authority of his manner; while his wife's bored attitude and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: "I couldn't BEAR to see ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... diamonds of the first and purest 165water, I assure you; and their respected father, the wealthy proprietor of Miles's-court, Bristol, may well be delighted with his amiable and beauteous daughters. The little dapper-looking man in the white hat yonder is the liberal, good-tempered Duke of Norfolk; and the dashing roue by his side, the legitimate heir to his title, is the Earl of Surrey, whose son, the young Baron of Mowbray, follows hand in hand with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... a dapper young man, wanted a little more "style," and would have preferred a new vehicle of fashionable build. He said so much about it that his father at length lost all patience, and told him seriously that he was tired of his talk, and would hear no ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... full of local gossip and scandal cleverly concealed. Andrew Hamilton figures in it as "Dapper Dumpling." J. N. Barker, the author of "Superstition," is "Billy Mushroom." Joseph Dennie is nicknamed "Oliver Crank." William Warren ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... extremity of the garage came a jaunty, dapper, quasi-martial figure, in a new grey uniform, with a peaked grey cap, bright brown leggings, and bright brown boots to match—the whole highly brushed, polished, smooth and glittering. This being ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... of high leather sea boots, the dirty-coloured handkerchief knotted about his 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 of the black, stubbly growth of beard and whisker, an amazing transformation in his ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... lady insisted upon her going 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 such a functionary ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... 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 ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Elizabethan ruff and cap, a respectable Dorking mother of the yard, cackling her displeasure, and instantly dashing to the top of the wall, followed at once by a stately black Spaniard, decorated with a lace mantilla of cut paper off a French plum box, squawking and curtseying. Then came a dapper pullet, with a doll's hat on her ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sidewise to the gutter, the narrow, ledge-like pavements, the awkward two-wheeled drays and carts, the men selling lobsters on the corner, the newsboys with their "papahs," the faces of the women so thin and pale, the men, neat, dapper, small, many of them walking with finicky precision as though treading on eggs,—everything had a Yankee tang, a special quality, and then, the noise! We had thought Chicago noisy, and so it was, but here the clamor was high-keyed, deafening for the reason that the rain-washed streets were ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... middle-aged, innocent west-countryman, a good sailor, knew all the harbours from Plymouth to the Land's End, and perhaps several others, but he was more of a pilot than a master, and usually conversed about landmarks, church steeples, and crayfish. The surgeon was a clever little dapper man, well-read, shockingly irritable, fond of controversy on ethics, etymology, and giving the blue pill. I need not acquaint my reader he was from York. The purser was the shadow of a man, very regular in his accounts, fond of peach-water, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... was disengaged, she approached the spectacled, dapper little man and told him of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... days—dates had become nothing to me—I saw a dapper young man sketching about the ruins. I spoke to him, and mentioned that his had been my profession. This acquaintance was the beginning ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... course of the next half-hour the clerk consumed two cigarettes and entertained a visitor in the person of a dapper little Greek curio-dealer from the Lal Bazaar, who left behind him an invitation to Mr. Labertouche to call and inspect some scarabs in which he had professed an interest. It was quite a fresh importation, averred the Greek; the clerk was to be ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... he went up the street and, passing the principal hotel in the place, saw young Longworth standing under the portico of the hotel as dapper and correct in costume as ever, his single eyeglass the admiration of all Ottawa, for there was not another like it ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... dapper sergeant cocked his felt smasher hat, and turned between pleasantly smiling lips the cigar he was smoking. Then he pointed with his riding-whip, a neatly varnished sjambok, with a smart ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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
... Dan, laughing down on the slender, dapper little figure at his feet. "Gee whilikins, ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... him as he leant over the piano, looking through the songs which she had dared once more to bring forth from her room. She might well have taken a romantic interest in the dark and dapper man, with the military eye-glass and mustache, the spruce duck jacket and the spurred top-boots. It was her first meeting with such a type in the back-blocks of New South Wales. The gallant ease, the natural gayety, the charming manners that charmed no less for a clear trace of mannerism, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... 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; ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... fire, Imitate the starry quire, Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rights begin; 'T is only ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... It seemed impossible that this dapper little man with his peering, short-sighted eyes could be capable of any determined effort to escape the police when once driven into a corner. However, Pendleton had ample reason to respect Ashton-Kirk's judgment; and so when the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... Hussein-ul-Mulk in French. He left the room in order to meet the new arrival. He returned without delay, bringing with him a man very different from those whom Brett had encountered thus far in connection with the crime. This was a dapper little Frenchman, wizened, yellow-skinned, black-haired, and dressed almost in the extreme of fashion. He at once addressed himself to ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... that of the youthful Enver Pasha. He was one of the heroes of the remarkable rebellion that resulted in the downfall of Abdul Hamid, and since then he had ever played a leading part in the constantly shifting drama in Constantinople. Dapper, alert intelligent, and approachable, modest almost to the point of shyness, Enver was almost a venerated figure among the Turkish people. As he passed on horseback, his slim figure erect and stiff in its military pose, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the dapper gentlemen of this generation like a drunken Hercules amid the dainty dancers," suggested the Christian Spiritualist (1856). "The book abounds in passages that cannot be quoted in drawing rooms, and expressions that fall upon ears ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... daughter?" asks the Marquis, with pointing finger. But the daughter, hearing voices, has come on to the balcony and throws up her arms astonished. "Dear me! the cavalier who accosted me in the wood!" The Marquis and Grizel walk off, he deferentially dapper, she hanging back a little in her black smock. Scene III.—The Marquis, still in purple and gold, and red stockings and Hessian boots, says with some timidity and much grace, pointing to the magnificent clothes brought by his courtiers, "Would ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... A dapper young man came in. "I am from the MATIN," he announced. "I understand that Monsieur Rokoff has ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... briskly, and gave me his hand with unlooked-for cordiality. He was a dapper little man, with a head as round and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up to the porticoed front door I observed in front of it, beside the tennis lawn, the black tool-house and the pedestalled sun-dial with which we had such strange associations. A dapper little man, with a quick, alert manner and a waxed moustache, had just descended from a high dog-cart. He introduced himself as Inspector Martin, of the Norfolk Constabulary, and he was considerably astonished when he heard the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Valentin of the opera, a dapper little Frenchman, with us (I forget his name: he had been very kind to Margarita and stood between her and the senseless jealousy of the big, handsome tenor more than once) and I heard him as we left the table remark significantly to Mme. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... 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 ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... had judiciously tipped, that Miss Morley managed to keep her flock together, and settle them in one of the small saloon carriages. Here they were wedged pretty tightly among native Italians, and tourists of various nations, including some voluble Swedes and a company of dapper Japanese gentlemen, who were seeing Europe. After much pushing, crowding, shouting, and gesticulation on the part of both the public and officials, the train at last started and pursued its jolting ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... and chimed in admirably with all prejudices, and the voice that called Lawyer Pippin to preside over the deliberations of the assembly was unanimous. The gentleman thus highly distinguished, was a dapper and rather portly little personage, with sharp twinkling eyes, a ruby and remarkable nose, a double chin, retreating forehead, and corpulent cheek. He wore green glasses of a dark, and a green coat of a light, complexion. The lawyer was the only member of the profession living in the village, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the woman brought in the soup Mittendorfer appeared, escorting a French lieutenant who was taken prisoner this morning. The prisoner was a little, handsome, dapper chap not over twenty-two years old, wearing his trim blue-and-red uniform with an air, even though he himself looked thoroughly miserable. We were warned not to speak with him, or he with us; but Gerbeaux, after listening to him exchanging ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... is best of all repose to him,— Seven hundred pounds he gives him there and then, Proffers on easy terms as much again, And so persuades him, that, with tastes like his, He ought to buy a farm;—so bought it is. Not to detain you longer than enough, The dapper cit becomes a farmer bluff, Talks drains and subsoils, ever on the strain Grows lean, and ages with the lust of gain. But when his sheep are stolen, when murrains smite His goats, and his best crops are killed with blight, When at the plough his oxen drop down dead, Stung with his losses, up ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... the College were kept in Harvard Hall. In the same building, also, was the Philosophy Chamber, where the chair usually stood for the inspection of the curious. Over this domain, from the year 1793 to 1800, presided Mr. Samuel Shapleigh, the Librarian. He was a dapper little bachelor, very active and remarkably attentive to the ladies who visited the Library, especially the younger portion of them. When ushered into the room where stood the old chair, he would watch them with eager eyes, and, as soon ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... 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 ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... 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
... rises; benches fill up; then, when everyone ready for Division, strangers in Gallery startled by mighty roar of execration; looking round with startled gaze in search of explanation, discover at corner-seat below Gangway a dapper figure uplifted on supernaturally high-heeled boots, with trousers tightly drawn to display proportions of limbs that would have made Sim Tappertit green with envy; a black frock coat, buff waistcoat, coloured tie, a high collar, a wizened countenance, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... 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 to take the minutes of a meeting. And all the while ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... meant 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 by the high-bred ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... 2nd July the "Ascanius" moved in and berthed. Here the voices of Egypt were heard in concert. A motley crowd of natives was grouped about—evidently watched and herded by dapper little policemen, armed with canes which they seemed to delight in using with or without provocation. In one place a small gang of labourers, to the music of its own voices, was building a ramp. In another, seemingly fierce argument was going on as to the moving of a heavy gangway ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... new and dapper tweeds; the eye-glasses upon his aristocratic nose had dependent from them a rather broad black ribbon; and the shirtfront across which it dangled was of peppermint-striped silk, its dominant color repeated in silk socks appearing above patent-leather shoes. But ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... appearance of the 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 smaller packet ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... 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 man can be loudly and violently virtuous—nay, he can be loudly and violently saintly, though ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... of coarse blue stuff. He bore a pilgrim's staff in his hand, and showed under his close hood a fine, handsome, reverent face, full of a sort of tender awe, touched with the pathos of penitence. In attendance upon the two was a dapper little silk-hatted man, with rogue so plainly written in his devotional countenance that I was not surprised to be told that he was a species of spiritual valet de place, whose occupation it was to attend pilgrims on their tour to the Seven Churches ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... venture to say so, a clear practical sense, quite remote from visionary idealism. The Foreign Minister, Dr. Machado, is of more immediately impressive personality. Younger than the President by at least ten years, yet little short, I should guess, of sixty, he is extremely neat and dapper in person, while his very handsome face has a birdlike keenness and alertness of expression betokening not only great intelligence but high-strung vitality. He is a copious, eloquent, and witty talker, and his remarkable charm of manner accounts, in part at any rate, for his immense ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... they knew on uncarpeted floors and between high pews, they would slink back into their graves content,—all the more content, perhaps, if they should listen to the service of the new teacher, and, in their common-sense way, reckon what chance the dapper talker might have,—as compared with the solemn soberness of the old pastor,—in opening the ponderous doors for them upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... The door-boy, a dapper little colored chap, in an exceedingly tight-fitting suit of blue, with innumerable brass buttons on it, in double rows in front, in triple rows behind, and in single rows on sleeves, opened the portal for the young ladies, bowing low ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... mutton-chop of an English inn, or the artistic little circle of lamb-chop fried in bread-crumbs coiled around a tempting centre of spinach which can always be found in France, can recognize any family-resemblance to these dapper civilized preparations in those coarse, roughly hacked strips of bone, gristle, and meat which are commonly called mutton-chop in America? There seems to be a large dish of something resembling meat, in which each fragment has about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... from the house. The tall, brown-bearded head keeper was in a sullen rage, though he could only reveal his wrath in sharp little sentences of discontent. Sir Hugh had also been put out at losing the best part of the morning; and Captain Waveney, who was a dapper little man, full of brisk spirits, did not care to talk to silent persons. As for Lionel, he was certainly very nervous and anxious; but none the less resolved to remember and act upon Honnor Cunyngham's advice. The tail ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... of an hour at our disposal for our 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 ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... 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 ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembles it, unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We have recently observed on certain stands, and we say it with deep regret, rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow, with four wheels of the same colour as the coach, whereas it is perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and a different size. These are innovations, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the other night by 'a little, pert petit-maitre figure, that claimed me for acquaintance. Do you remember to have seen at Florence an Abb'e Durazzo, of Genoa? well, this was he: it is mighty dapper and French: however, I will be civil to it: I never lose opportunities of paving myself an agreeable passage back to Florence. My dear Chutes, stay for me: I think the first gale of peace will carry me to you. Are you as fond of Florence as ever? of me you are not, I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... to Greenwich by water to a great dinner and much company; Mr. Cottle and his lady and others and I went, hoping to get Mrs. Knipp to us, having wrote a letter to her in the morning, calling myself "Dapper Dicky," in answer to hers of "Barbary Allen," but could not, and am told by the boy that carried my letter, that he found her crying; but I fear she lives a sad life with that ill-natured fellow her husband: ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... brought—a dapper, bustling, round-headed little man, Roorback (or Rollebuck, as it was pronounced) by name. At the sight of him the women broke into loud lamentations, for they looked upon the signing of a will as the signing of a death-warrant. Wolfert made a feeble motion for them to be silent. Poor ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... suddenly it gave way and Aunt Jen staggered back against the wall, swept away by the energy of her own effort. The wand fell from her hand, and she stood with the inner door handle still clutched in nervous fingers before a slight dapper man in a shiny brown coat, double-breasted and closely buttoned, even on this broiling day—while the strident "weesp-weesp" of brother Tom down in the meadow, sharpening his scythe with a newly fill "strake," made a keen top-note ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... with those Australians and New Zealanders. We drove back to camp for lunch, which we had in the captain's little brush-covered balcony, set into the hill. He did not eat, but showed us his photograph, very smooth and dapper, compared with his bristling service face, taken with his two children, one a little girl and the other a grave little boy, with a face like a miniature pasha. The captain came from the Asiatic side, near Broussa, on the slopes of Olympus, and was all Turk, without any foreign frills or a word ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... travels through Germany in summer time or who spends a month having his liver tickled at Homburg or Carlsbad, who has his digestion restored by Dr. Dapper at Kissingen or who relearns the lost art of eating meat at Dr. Dengler's in Baden, learns little of the real Germany and its rulers; and in this book I tell something of the real Germany, not only that my readers may understand the events of the last three years but ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... The dapper ditties, that I wont devise To feed youths' fancy and the flocking fry, Delighten much: what I the best for thy? They han the pleasure, I a sclender prize. I beat the bush, the birds to them do fly. What good thereof to ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... that, being aware that she would be there with another, he would have stayed away. It may, however, be remarked that she did not know Mr Shute. He was not one of your sensitive plants. He smiled pleasantly upon her, looking very dapper in evening dress and a silk hat that, though a size too small for him, shone ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the price in one word. Three words escaped the nest-hunter's lips, which resulted in the production of sundry bright-coloured cotton Manchester cloths, some evidently modern kreises (probably made at Birmingham), besides bird-calls and pipes. In the next shop were two dapper little Sulus in Spanish-looking costumes, with dozens of pairs of the golden-edged pearl-shells, which we had searched for in vain the night before last. The bargain was not yet concluded, so that it was useless for ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... situation persisted. Rodney's strained face and uneasy manner, his uniform, the blank pause when he had learned that Graham was better, and when the ordinary banalities of greeting were over. Beside Clayton he looked small, dapper, and wretchedly uncomfortable, and yet even Clayton had to acknowledge a sort of dignity in ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hundred battles, now incapacitated for work, the veterans who had set out as simple privates, were still simple privates. The few remaining officers among Demetrio's friends also grumbled, because his staff was made up of wealthy, dapper young men who oiled ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... not in the least likely to allow the national cause to rest for ever on the peaceful platform of Conciliation Hall. Death removed Davis early from the scene; but in John Mitchel, who had taken his place, there was no gain to the party of moral force. Then there was that other young firebrand—that dapper, well-built, well-dressed, curled and scented young gentleman from the Urbs Intacta—whose wondrous eloquence, with the glow of its thought, the brilliancy and richness of its imagery, and the sweetness of its cadences, charmed and swayed all hearts—adding immensely to the dangers of the situation. ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... energy; once I had high spirits—they are broken; once I had hope—I have none: I am not up to exertion; I have got into lazy habits. To go into new scenes, form new plans, live in a horrid raw new world, everybody round me bustling and pushing—No! that may suit your thin dapper light Hop-o'-my-thumbs! Look at me! See how I have increased in weight the last five years—all solid bone and muscle. I defy any four draymen to move me an inch if I am not in the mind to it; and to be blown off to the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... store across the street from where we lived was tended during most of the day and in the evenings by an attractive young native woman who seemed to be quite a belle. Every evening, at about dark, a dapper young native, in an American suit of white, always appeared and seated himself upon the bench in front of the store, where he could see and talk to his brunette lady love without interfering with her commercial duties, which were not heavy. Often several other ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... cried a 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 pretty enough play concocted t'other day out of two of his—a tragedy and comedy—Measure ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... There is a good copy of this delightful work in the Uffizi, where, in a congregation of self-painted artists, it does all but justice to the most beautiful of them all. For fineness of touch the original has never been surpassed by any hand of European or even Chinese master. Next there are the dapper little full-length portraits which Duerer inserted in his chief paintings. He stands beside his friend Pirkheimer at the back of the adoring crowd in the Feast of the Roses, and again in the midst of the mountain slope, where on all sides ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... passenger. (They had lingered so long amid the delights of a Santa Barbara spring that they were journeying in that pleasant time of year when spring travel eastward has ended, and summer travel has not yet begun.) This one other passenger was a little man of dapper build and dapper dress, whose curiously-shaped articles of luggage betokened his connection with commercial affairs. Grace was forced to own, as she now for the first time regarded him attentively, that he did not seem ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... misproportions, he might have passed for seven feet any day, were it not that his trousers, made for a much shorter man, and rising to the middle of his calfless leg, gave him much the appearance of a big boy walking on stilts. The boys of the place called him "Giant Grimbo;" while his companion, a tight dapper little fellow, who always showed off a compact, well-rounded leg in corduroy inexpressibles, they had learned to distinguish as "Billy Breeches." The giant, who carried a bagpipe, had broken down ere I came up with them; and now, sitting on the grass, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller |
