"Unprepossessing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which a half dozen guests were seated, just concluding a late breakfast. Tantaine at once recognized four of the several guests as servants whom he knew from their having applied for situations at the office, and there were two men of a very unprepossessing exterior. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... accurate knowledge of London had enabled him to locate No. 236 South Lambeth Road without recourse to a guide, and now, walking on past the big gas works and the railway station, he turned under the dark arches and pressed on to where a row of unprepossessing dwellings extended in uniform ugliness from a partly demolished building to a patch of ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... wide, bloomer-like garment on the nether limbs. They also wore their hair in a knot at the back of the head, with a long, straight wisp hanging out of the coil, and in most instances were much less attractive than the men, being quite as unprepossessing in appearance, and lacking the redeeming strength and symmetry which gave beauty to the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... been kind to him, and he would protect her from all harm, but not for all the gilt-edged securities in Wall Street would he have the story of his knight-errantry get abroad, nor the unprepossessing heroine of it revealed to ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... of equally unprepossessing exterior now appeared from behind a great rock leading a couple ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... is unprepossessing in appearance, having a head very like that of a snake, with a dark green shell spotted with yellow, it produces excellent soup; the body is exceedingly flat, and the projecting edges of the shell are soft; it runs extremely fast upon the shore, and is suggestive ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Bradford's family were at the sea-shore, and Colonel and Mrs. Rush were their near neighbors, Maggie had taken a violent dislike to the mistress of the house where she boarded. The woman was somewhat rough and unprepossessing, it is true, and hence Maggie had conceived the prejudice against her; but she was kind-hearted and good, as the little girl learned later. Having heard some one use the expression, "happy circumstance," Maggie took a fancy to it; and, as she informed Bessie, ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... devoted to commissary supplies, the post butcher-shop, the saddler's shop, then big coal-sheds, and then the brow of the bluff, down which at a steep grade plunged the road to the stables. It was as unprepossessing a place for a home as ever was chosen by a man of education or position; and Mr. Hayne was possessed ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... lives were dull and joyless; to their minds the mightiest events shrank into insignificance and grew as insipid as they were themselves. Couple by couple they went, carrying in their arms or holding by the hand or letting them run on in front children as unprepossessing as their parents and promising to grow up no whit happier, who in due course would give birth to children of their own as poor in spirit and looks as they. Yet now and again a young girl would pass, tall and fair and ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... of the "track-walker" on the railroad. It was not an attractive place for rest, yet here they were forced to pass the night, and to sit down to such supper as might be provided in so desolate a spot. The unprepossessing look of everything was completed when the host came in and took his seat at the head of the table. A bear out of the woods could hardly have been rougher, with his unshaven hair and unkempt beard. He answered to the type of border ruffian, and his appearance suggested the dark deeds that might ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... her nature is beautiful, but her manner and figure are rather—rather unprepossessing ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... man with a bristly, protruding chin. She could see that, even in the starlight. There was something about the point of that stubby chin that she shrank from inexpressibly. He was not a pleasant man to look upon, and even his voice was unprepossessing. She began to think that even the night with its loneliness and unknown perils was ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Milwaukee, nor so picturesque as St. Paul, nor so grand as Chicago, nor so civilized as Cleveland, nor so busy as Buffalo. Indeed, Detroit is neither pleasant nor picturesque at all. I will not say that it is uncivilized; but it has a harsh, crude, unprepossessing appearance. It has some 70,000 inhabitants, and good accommodation for shipping. It was doing an enormous business before the war began, and, when these troublous times are over, will no doubt again go ahead. I ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Picken, the only son of Ebenezer, a person of somewhat unprepossessing appearance, contrived to derive a tolerable livelihood by following the conjunct occupation of an itinerant player and portrait-painter. He was the writer of some good poetry, and about 1827 published a respectable volume of verses, entitled, "The Bedouin, and other ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that the stranger was dark in complexion and not unprepossessing as to feature. His hat, which for a moment he did not remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing that they were large, open, and determined, moving with a flash rather than a glance round the room. He seemed pleased with the survey, ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... horses by a remarkably ill-looking set of men, whom we supposed to have come out to see us from curiosity. An unprepossessing young gentleman, with a scar that divided his nose and his upper lip, and a silver-mounted dagger, took a seat near the Mullah, and a violent discussion immediately commenced, of the drift of which, we were, happily, ignorant. Soon, another party of villagers ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... colour of their skins, so carefully is it disguised under a thick coating of grease, and the black and red substances which they rub in. Their hair is coarse, thick, and bushy, covered with ochre, down, and all the filth accumulated by time and neglect, and adds not a little to their unprepossessing appearance. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... within ten minutes. The place seemed to be a sort of private hotel, unostentatious and unprepossessing. A hall porter, whose uniform had seen better days and whose linen had seen cleaner ones, conducted me to the first floor. Mr. Parker himself met ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... met with a good reception in the Hanse Towns. The difference of language, indeed, occasionally caused discord, but when better acquainted the inhabitants and their visitors became good friends. The Marquis de la Romans was a little swarthy man, of unprepossessing and rather common appearance; but he had a considerable share of talent and information. He had travelled in almost every part of Europe, and as he had been a close observer of all he saw his conversation ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... sofa would, later in the evening, become a bed; one of the tables concealed a washing apparatus; his clothes and boots were disagreeably mixed with books which bore the gilt of college arms; and, for decoration, there hung upon the wall photographs of bridges and cathedrals and large, unprepossessing groups of insufficiently clothed young men, sitting in rows one above another upon stone steps. There was a look of meanness and shabbiness in the furniture and curtains, and nowhere any sign of luxury or even of a cultivated taste, unless the cheap classics in the book-case ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the pressure of astonishment and indignation. It was bad enough to be pictured thus unprepossessing, but to be suddenly made aware of her husband in a man whom she feared, was desperate. She stared with frank and horrified ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... found his garage in charge of an unwashed, unkempt, unprepossessing young ruffian whom he stared at for a full minute before he accepted him as the man he had left there. The ragged trousers, the spotted "reefer" buttoned high around the neck, the dirty cap pulled over ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... unpromising break in the monotonous white of the wintry landscape. But could the prisoner who had indirectly speeded this young detective on his present course, have read his thoughts and rightly estimated the force of his purpose, would he have viewed with so much confidence the entrance of this unprepossessing stranger upon the no-thoroughfare into which his own carefully studied ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... wives and families, too, but they exhibit no desire to better their domestic surroundings. If the houses happen to include another room other than the living room, that extra room is invariably used for storing grain. The women are untidy and unprepossessing, and the children have not yet learned to appreciate stockings and shoes. It is almost paradoxical to think of human beings in a civilized country living such lives, people who have great possibilities within their reach. ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... shock-headed, stout-limbed boy of about sixteen, who constituted the whole crew of the Johannes, and was as dirty as his master was clean. I felt a certain envious reverence for this unprepossessing youth, seeing in him a much more efficient counterpart of myself; but how he and his little master ever managed to work their ungainly vessel was a miracle I never understood. Phlegmatically impervious to rain and cold, he steered ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... swept over her, but superior to them all was the feminine feeling that she could not endure to have Harry see her in her present unprepossessing plight. ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... he yelled, "you promised me! Come on, Whiskey! Why, ain't he a bosker!" he enthusiastically exclaimed, as the hideously unprepossessing little mongrel stood on his hind legs and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... went into the best coffeehouse in the town here, and sat down to read the newspapers. I found in it people of all descriptions—several of a most unprepossessing appearance, and others really like gentlemen. One of the best dressed of these last, decorated with the white cockade and other insignia, and having several rings of precious stones on his fingers, a watch, with a beautiful assortment of seals ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Barnabas—a man of herculean form and strength. His face was marked by smallpox; he wore neither beard or mustache, and his hair was combed smoothly back, like a peasant's. His disposition was melancholy and taciturn; but he seemed constantly striving to atone, by the amiability of his manners, for an unprepossessing exterior. ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... at first seemed, for it fortunately chanced that John Saunders had had it copied; but the theft remained none the less mysterious. What could be the motive of the thief with whom—quite unreasonably and doubtless unjustly—my fancy persisted in connecting that unprepossessing face so keenly attentive in John Saunders's outer office, and again so plainly ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... a glance at him. He was looking at the portrait of that old Ironside Allway who had fought and died to make a nobler England, as he had dreamed. A grim, unprepossessing gentleman, unless the artist had done him much injustice, with high, narrow forehead, and ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... to the second mate, and Miss Arminster thought she had seldom seen a more unprepossessing individual. He was surly and shifty-eyed, and she confided to the Bishop, when they were alone, that she was glad they were not going far from land under that man's charge, for he looked ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... that increased as he came near. He was evidently, though short, of gigantic strength. His round, bullet head, large, light-gray eyes, with their shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large, coarse mouth was distended with tobacco, the juice of which, from time to time, he ejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands were immensely large, hairy, sun-burned, freckled, and very dirty, and garnished with long nails, in ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... difficulty. It was a small side street, of somewhat unprepossessing appearance, leading out of Beauchamp Street. Bennet, boot-maker and umbrella-maker, had a dark, dingy little shop just at the corner. It had evidently been an ordinary dwelling-house in old times, but a bow window had been added to transform it into a shop. A flight of broken steps led ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the autumn of 1849 that I went into residence at the little college and was assigned a very unprepossessing room in a very ugly barrack. Entering my new quarters I soon discovered about me various cabalistic signs, some of them evidently made by heating large iron keys, and pressing them against the woodwork. On inquiring I ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... is an unprepossessing child," murmured Miss Maria, "but don't you think, under the circumstances, that we ought to ask her ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... Lavretsky was soon known from Chausee d'Antin to Rue de Lille. In those days—it was in 1836—there had not yet arisen the tribe of journalists and reporters who now swarm on all sides like ants in an ant-hill; but even then there was seen in Varvara Pavlovna's salon a certain M. Jules, a gentleman of unprepossessing exterior, with a scandalous reputation, insolent and mean, like all duelists and men who have been beaten. Varvara Pavlovna felt a great aversion to this M. Jules, but she received him because he wrote for various journals, and was incessantly mentioning ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... interest in Nelly, from her association with her pleasant visit to Ashleigh, accompanied her cousin in her long walk to look for the house. On reaching it at last, tired and hot, the door was opened, not by Nelly, as Lucy had hoped, but by an unprepossessing-looking woman, whose hard face grew more rigid when informed what was the object ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... arose from his unwelcome bath, dripping from head to foot with the nasty mess, presenting a most unprepossessing appearance. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... defeat of Schuyler was attributed partly to the unprepossessing austerity of his ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... as unprepossessing within as it was outside. In one corner a homemade bunk was fastened to the wall, with ropes criss-crossed and run through holes in the 2 x 4 inch pieces of lumber which formed the bed, to take the place of springs. In another ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... large brick building at the corner of a street, with nothing very unprepossessing in its external appearance. The wooden stairs were dirty enough, and, on ascending them to the so-called "ladies' parlour," I found a large, meanly-furnished apartment, garnished with six spittoons, which, however, to my disgust, did not prevent the floor from ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... have been nearly as bad," Rendel said; "though if we were canaries we should be nicer to look at perhaps," and his eye fell on an unprepossessing elderly couple who were descending the stairs with none of the winsomeness of singing birds. "Have you read Maeterlinck's 'Life ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... easily enough said, but execution is difficult and practice rare. For Paul gives a strange description of the Christian life, and the color and characteristics with which he exhibits it render it decidedly unprepossessing. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... the office, where the former spent most of his time when not in the saddle. Whatever the planter's vices, and he was reputed to possess a fair working knowledge of good and evil, no one had ever charged him with hypocrisy. His emotions lay close to the surface and wrote themselves on his unprepossessing exterior with an impartial touch. He had felt no pleasure when Murrell rode into the yard, and he had welcomed him according to the dictates of his mood, which was ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... months under the tents in the desert, was a personage of no small importance. In his volume there were several pictures of Sands in various oriental costumes; and he travelled about with a black attendant of most unprepossessing appearance, just like another Brian de Bois Guilbert. Bedwin, his costumes, and black man, were hailed at Gaunt ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quite charming,—Gerome tall, slight, animated, talking very easily about everything. He told me who a great many of the people were, with a little commentary on their profession and career which was very useful to me, as I knew so few of them. Renan was short, stout, with a very large head, almost unprepossessing-looking, but with a great charm of manner and the most delightful smile and voice imaginable. He often dined with us in our own house, en petit comite, and was always charming. He was one of those happy mortals (there are not many) ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... provided, and unprepossessing military host, probably never entered a civilized city. In all, except our order, deportment, and arms, we might have been mistaken for a procession of tatterdemalions, or a tribe of Nomades from Tartary. There were not many of us so fortunate as to have in our possession an entire ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... opulent dominions the sun shone upon, and future Emperor of Germany, she had (1528) been given in marriage to the ruler of a petty Italian duchy, himself as inferior to her in mind as in moral character.[402] As for Renee, if her face was homely and unprepossessing, her intellect was vigorous. She had turned to good account the opportunities for self-improvement afforded by her high rank. Admiring courtiers made her classical and philosophical attainments the subject of lavish panegyric, perhaps with a better basis of fact than in the case of many other ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... turned sharply, and as his eye fell on the unprepossessing figure, he instinctively put his hand in the pocket in which ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... a miner, carrying a long-handled shovel, came slowly through the woods. A red handkerchief tied around his head under his hat, with the loose ends hanging from beneath, did not add much favor to his unprepossessing face. He did not perceive the master and M'liss until he was close upon them. When he did, he stopped suddenly and gazed at them with an expression of lowering distrust. M'liss drew nearer ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... artistic; to him the Greek language was a delight, "an ornament of women." Simon, the son of Lakish (200-275), hardy of muscle and of intellect, started life as a professional athlete. A later Rabbi, Zeira, was equally noted for his feeble, unprepossessing figure and his nimble, ingenious mind. Another contemporary of Jochanan, Joshua, the son of Levi, is the hero of many legends. He was so tender to the poor that he declared his conviction that the Messiah would arise among the beggars and cripples of Rome. Simlai, who was ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... never to appear before you, Celeste, except in a very unprepossessing state. When you first saw me I was wounded; at our next meeting I was in woman's clothes; the last time we met I was covered with dirt and gunpowder; and now I return to you wounded and in rags. I wonder whether I shall ever appear before you as ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... garments. In a dimly lighted courtyard we came face to face with the English proprietor of the Hotel de Peking. At our request for lodging, he said, "Pardon me, but may I first ask who you are and where you come from?" Our unprepossessing appearance was no doubt a sufficient excuse for this precaution. But just then his features changed, and he greeted us effusively. Explanations were now superfluous. The "North China Herald" correspondent at Pao-ting-foo had already published ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... apparently among communities but slightly isolated; on one side of a mountain a population may be remarkably attractive, while upon the other you may find a hamlet whose inhabitants are decidedly unprepossessing. But nowhere in this country have I seen a prettier jeunesse than ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... ran off, and soon returned followed by a most unprepossessing boy, who slouched in and stood looking about him, with a half bold, half sullen look, which made Mrs. Bhaer say to herself, after ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... his voice, so Colman picked out by his voice one of a number of soldiers destined for a religious life (VSH, i, 261). With the incident of the consecration, as successor, of an unprepossessing intruder, compare the tale of Findian consecrating for the same purpose a raider whom he caught hiding in the furnace-chamber of his kiln (LL, 2628 ff.; CS, 198). The version in LB conveys the impression that Oenna's learning was imparted to him miraculously, as Oengus the Culdee inspired an idle ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... Theophilus considered one of his greatest attractions. But my cousin had no personal attractions. There was nothing manly or decided about him. Smooth and insidious where he wished to please, his first appearance to strangers was always unprepossessing; and few persons on their first introduction had any great ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... Jim and Sorry, and those two unprepossessing ones looked at each other and at Swan and at the doctor and at each other again, and headed for the door. But Swan was leaning against it, and his eyes were on them. "I would like it if you say somebody rides to get the doctor," he ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... been in England at the time of Valentine's murder, and he had then learned the faithful and active part played by Harker. He had lost sight of the man for some time, but when he had bought the cottage, and during the progress of the changes and improvements he had made in that unprepossessing dwelling, accident had thrown Harker in his way, and they had found much to discuss in George Jernam's prosperity, in his generous treatment of Harker, in the general condition of the merchant service, which the two men declared to be going to the dogs, after the manner of all professions, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... with her to inspect this new treasure, I found a lad eight or ten years of age, very sickly, with a hump upon his back, and of a notably unprepossessing appearance, carrying a fiddle, and evidently forsaken by some strolling player. She had set her mind upon his staying, and he stayed; but finding the trouble her accumulated possessions were giving at Stair, she showed me within the week a bit of her power to get ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Rev. Thomas Contarini, and in part to his brother, the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, whom he cherished with the sincerest affection. An attack of the small-pox while he was a boy marked his face, and he was to most persons an unprepossessing child. He was ill-treated at school by larger boys, and afterwards at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a sizar, by his tutor. He was idle, careless, and improvident: he left college without permission, but was taken back by his brother, and was finally graduated with a bachelor's degree, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... pillage necessarily brought them into contact, and who seldom failed to attend them during their hours of relaxation and festivity;—to wit, dealers in junk, old rags, and marine stores, purchasers of prize-money, crimps, and Jew receivers. The latter formed by far the most knavish-looking and unprepossessing portion of the assemblage. One or two of the tables were occupied by groups of fat frowzy women in flat caps, with rings on their thumbs, and baskets by their sides; and no one who had listened for a single moment to their coarse language ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of retainers had now been brought up to five—the shikari, Ahmed Bot, having procured a satellite, known as the chota shikari, a youth of not unprepossessing appearance, but whose necessity in our scheme of existence I had not quite determined. Ahmed Bot, however, was of opinion that all sahibs who wanted sport required two shikaris, so I imagined that while I was to be engaged with one in pursuit of bara singh, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the cheek-bone, to others that seem almost perpendicular. No less astonishing is the contour of their mouths; ragged holes in their ugly faces are these for the most part, shapeless and uncouth as anything well could be. They are the most unprepossessing humans I have seen ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... "U. S.," a large and very lazy yellow dog. The two letters which give him his title are branded on his shoulder. He sticks very close to me, for the reason, possibly, that I do not kick him, and say "Get out," as most persons are tempted to do when they look upon his most unprepossessing visage. He is a solemn dog, and probably has had a rough row to hoe through life. At times, when I speak an encouraging word, he brightens up, and makes an effort to be playful; but cheerfulness is his forte ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... did he watch over thee, and had he thought that thy way of life had led thee into that which was wrong, he would have interfered to save thee; but he considered with Shakespeare that 'sweet were the uses of adversity,' and that thou wouldst be more schooled by remaining some time under her unprepossessing frowns. He hath ever ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of conversation, which was rather a sore one to him. He could never resign himself to his small stature, nor indeed to the whole of his unprepossessing figure. He felt it all the more because he was passionately fond of women and would have given anything to be attractive to them. The consciousness of his pitiful appearance was a much sorer point with him than his low origin and unenviable position in society. His father, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... any violent effort would cause them to force their way through the frail integument. An untrimmed beard, run wild; and a pair of whiskers so huge, as to refuse all accordance with the thin diminutive cheeks which wore them; thin lips, and a sharp chin;—completed the outline of a very unprepossessing face, which a broad high forehead did not tend very much ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers, and make what is called "a fist of it." Dangerous symptoms of these mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny Fairfield at the words and the look of the unprepossessing stranger. And the stranger seemed aware of them; for his pale face grew more pale, and his sullen eye more fixed ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the age of ornamentation nothing can be more untidy or more unprepossessing than the appearance of the Oraon. The ornaments are nearly all discarded, hair utterly neglected, and for raiment any rags are used. This applies both to males ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... on it when travelling, mix it with a little flour and water, and then boil it; in which state it is known throughout the country by the elegant name of robbiboo. Pemmican is good wholesome food, will keep fresh for a great length of time, and were it not for its unprepossessing appearance, and a good many buffalo hairs mixed with it, through the carelessness of the hunters, would be very palatable. After a time, however, one becomes ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... too, is not unlike that of an ordinary rather second-rate college; and Mr. James Morton's taste did not redeem the chambers in which he sat. From roof to floor the particular apartment in which he sat was lined with bookshelves filled with unprepossessing volumes and large black tin boxes. A large table stood in the middle of the room, littered with papers, with bulwarks of the same kind of tin boxes rising at ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... not think well of him, I am sure," replied Hulda. "His face is very unprepossessing, and I shall be very much surprised if there is a noble soul concealed under ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... eyes and closely shut mouth gave token of that firmness which, save in ourselves, we call obstinacy. To-night, however, her features were devoid of even their wonted dignity, compressed, as they had been, by the bandage encircling her face. She looked like a caricature of her unprepossessing self. On one of her uneasy journeys to the window, she caught the sound of sleigh-bells; and staying only to assure herself of their familiar ring, she hastily closed the shutter, and, going back to the fireplace, sank into ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... very hard at his unprepossessing visitor, while Rodd felt as if he wanted to laugh, but held the desire in check, "I may want one by and by, and a crew too; but I must have a ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... unprepossessing than the approach to Gwalior; the hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of grass or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... only one distraction all day,—the arrival of another guest, a distant cousin of their hostess, who has been lauding her for a week or so. On inspection she proves to be a girl of nineteen, decidedly unprepossessing in appearance,—in fact, as Mr. Murphy, the butler, says to Mrs. Collins, the housekeeper, "as ugly as if ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... time with a charming figure; but never did beauty so quickly vanish. Madame Victoire was handsome and very graceful; her address, mien, and smile were in perfect accordance with the goodness of her heart. Madame Sophie was remarkably ugly; never did I behold a person with so unprepossessing an appearance; she walked with the greatest rapidity; and, in order to recognise the people who placed themselves along her path without looking at them, she acquired the habit of leering on one side, like a hare. This Princess ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... of a blue woollen shirt, coarse blue trousers grimed in mud, and a low-crowned black hat; on his shoulder he carried a spade and pickaxe. As he walked along he was joined by others of an equally unprepossessing appearance, and found many more already assembled at the scene of their labours—the ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous
... the following generous suggestion: "If you find that you and the old gal couldn't hitch hosses, owin' to your not likin' red hair or a game leg" (it may be here recorded that Blazing Star had, for no reason whatever, attributed these unprepossessing qualities to the mysterious advertiser), "you might let me in. You might say ez how I used to jest worship that ring with you, and allers wanted to borrow it on Sundays. If anything ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... westward, to win over the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. This was the establishment of Father Piquet, which Celoron had visited in its infancy when on his way to the Ohio, and again on his return. Piquet was a man in the prime of life, of an alert, vivacious countenance, by no means unprepossessing;[29] an enthusiastic schemer, with great executive talents; ardent, energetic, vain, self-confident, and boastful. The enterprise seems to have been of his own devising; but it found warm approval from the Government.[30] La Presentation, as he called ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... in the day, Madeline and Florence, accompanied by Alfred and Stillwell, left Don Carlos's ranch it was not any too soon for Madeline. The inside of the Mexican's home was more unprepossessing and uncomfortable than the outside. The halls were dark, the rooms huge, empty, and musty; and there was an air of silence and secrecy and mystery about them most fitting to the character Florence had ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... of her tormentor, and was rejoicing at the circumstance, the repast usually served at noon was brought in by a fresh serving-man. Something in this person's manner, and in the meaning glance he fixed upon her attracted her attention; otherwise, he was a man of singularly unprepossessing appearance. She addressed a few words to him, but he made no reply, and became suddenly as reserved as his predecessor had been. This deportment, however, it presently appeared, was only assumed. While placing a flask of ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... her at Fern Torr fully as much as she did. She had already become jealous of Lionel's preference, and it was too galling to find the affection of her children stolen from her by that cold, pale, proud, unprepossessing girl. Had the love been on the part of Elliot or Walter, Mrs. Lyddell would hardly have regretted it, considering Miss Arundel's large fortune and high connexions; but nothing was less probable than this, and Marian's ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Philadelphia. Though everything about him indicated that he had very little in common with his fellow-citizens, he was the marked man of the city for more than a generation. His aspect was rather insignificant and quite unprepossessing. His dress was old-fashioned and shabby; and he wore the pig-tail, the white neck-cloth, the wide-brimmed hat, and the large-skirted coat of the last century. He was blind of one eye; and though his bushy eyebrows gave some character to his countenance, it was curiously devoid of expression. He ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... She tried it on for Helen's approval, and Fred stood back in a corner while Helen went into ecstasies over it. Even a man could not escape the fact that it was unbecoming. Somehow, in a subtle way, it seemed to accent all of Mrs. Hilmer's unprepossessing features. When she left the office ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... knowingly. You saw that he was getting ready to assume a bless-you-my-children attitude and even to take credit somehow as match-maker. He related anecdotes, in which, as an emissary of Cupid, he played a benevolent and leading role. One detected, too, a grin, ugly and unmirthful, on the unprepossessing countenance of Captain Magnus. I was indifferent. The man my gaiety was intended for sat at the far end of the table. I had to wipe out the memory of my wet eyes ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... avenue, directly up to the house-door: one was tolerably well mounted on a large horse, the second was on a shaggy pony, and the third, who was rather behind the others, was seated on a mule of most unprepossessing appearance, whose sides he did not for a moment cease to lacerate with his heels, to enable himself to keep ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... bookmaker, loud, florid, vulgar, was an unprepossessing individual, certainly George Higgins, who was still under the accusation of murder, was ten ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... outfit closely. Brigham, though the best buffalo horse in the West, was decidedly unprepossessing ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... they very fortunate in their manager. Mr. Pearson, although he might have been taken as a model of honesty, truthfulness, and straightforwardness, was a phlegmatic, heavy man, and his manners were, to say the least, unprepossessing. The bank was not a success. Negotiations were, a few years after, entered into, and arrangements resulted, by which the Birmingham Banking Company took over the business, on the basis of giving every shareholder in ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... he knew that he had arrived at a decision, Spike had groped his way across the icy street and pressed the bell-button on the front door of the least unprepossessing house ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... with its soiled, tri-colored flag flying, and the discordant din of drums and trumpets for the noon parade; all brought up the scene we had witnessed here with so much pleasure nearly a year before, when coming from a long voyage, and our unprepossessing reception at Santa Barbara. It seemed almost ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... emancipation and of high social standing. They received us with the dignified courtesy of the old school, declined our proposition in civil terms, and bowed us out with a cool politeness equalled only by that of the senior Winkle towards the unlucky deputation of Pickwick and his unprepossessing companions. As we left their doors we could not refrain from smiling in each other's faces at the thought of the small inducement our proffer of the presidency held out to men of their class. Evidently our company was not one for respectability ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... purification of Milan, Firmano, and Spoleto, and has thus replied to the threat of excommunication. The nominee is Hidolph, who is attached to his own chapel, a man of no merit whatever, but devoted to the emperor; and whose principal endeavor it has been to remedy by art the unprepossessing exterior which ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... money, and I returned to my parents. I have left them this morning again, and, like you, I am now on my way to London to start in life, and if possible make my own living. You see my appearance is not altogether unprepossessing" (she was tall, singularly handsome, a refined woman of style) ... I bowed ... "Well, I am also fortunate in having a good voice, it is well-trained, and I am going to London to sing as a paid professional in the houses in which I ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the money?" snarled Mack, screwing up his features into a frown that made him look even more unprepossessing. ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... a little chuckle of laughter from the group, and Zeiglemann glowered at the speaker, a tall, unprepossessing youth whose face was red ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... done credit to a sailor, climbed up the side of the ship, while the young man, going to his task, left the conversation to Danglars, who now came towards the owner. He was a man of twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, of unprepossessing countenance, obsequious to his superiors, insolent to his subordinates; and this, in addition to his position as responsible agent on board, which is always obnoxious to the sailors, made him as much disliked by the crew as Edmond Dantes was beloved ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the explorers saw the gang of labourers come filing in among the ruins, armed with rude wooden mattocks and spades, and provided with large baskets in which to convey away the soil as it was dug out. They were as unprepossessing a lot of specimens of female humanity as could well be imagined. Naked, save for a filthy ragged skin petticoat round their waists and reaching to the knee, their faces wore, without exception, an expression of sullen stupidity, and they looked as though ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... as he addressed her, and raising her eyebrows with a supercilious glance for his plain, unprepossessing appearance. "Yes, Madam, and glad shall I be to set my foot on Old England again Hey, Tom, my ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... it. He, therefore, to make amends, had had himself photographed in an attitude of perpetual salutation. Other letters rained in on my sister from the eccentric individual, and he sent her almost weekly fresh presentments of his unprepossessing exterior, but always in a bowing attitude. We made, naturally, inquiries about this person, and found that he was an elderly widower, a hatter by trade, who had retired from business after making a considerable fortune, and was living in Rathmines, a South ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... piqued me, and I saw him with prejudiced eyes. At any rate, he seemed to me a singularly unprepossessing youth. That portrait had flattered him. He had a stout body and a round, unwholesome face. His eyes were dull, and his mouth dropped discontentedly. He had the air of one who is surfeited ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... one exception, better forgotten, this blond ruffian who had insulted her was the only man who had ever desired her; doubtless, she reflected bitterly, even Trennahan might be excepted. And when an unprepossessing woman of starved affections and implacably controlled passions sees desire in the eyes of a man for the first time, her vanity of sex responds, if ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... senorita, lest you stumble in the darkness on the rough ground," said the muffled voice of El Diablo Cojuelo. "The entrance to my mountain eyrie is narrow and unprepossessing, but I promise you that you ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... contemporaries. Among these, the highest place must be given to Mme. Antoinette Cecile Saint Huberty, nee Gavel. Born in Germany of French descent, she made her first appearance in Paris in a small part in Gluck's "Armide." Small, thin, and unprepossessing in person, her power of expression and artistic vocal-ism won more and more on the public, till the retirement of Sophie Arnould and Mile. Levasseur, and the death of Laguerre, left her in undisputed possession of the stage. When Piccini's ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... along, with a quick, swinging gait. He was a tall man, of strong frame, and an unprepossessing countenance appropriate enough to ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... a horrified gasp as her eyes squarely encountered two other eyes, which were fixed upon her own in an insulting leer from beneath the rim of a rakish felt hat which was worn tilted on the side of a very unprepossessing head. The eyes, bad as they were, proved the best feature in a thoroughly vicious face, and for the first time in her life Nan felt frightened—chokingly frightened. She would have rushed on, but a ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... remark of Sagasta's did not seem to meet with much favor from Chris and the mulatto, but they were prudently silent, for the Spaniard was obviously the master-spirit of the unprepossessing gang. Even Montes, cruel and greedy as he was, yielded him the palm of superiority in matters ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... Spicer was upward of six feet in height, very large boned, and must, when he was in his prime, have been a man of prodigious strength. When he was admitted to the hospital he was nearly sixty years of age; his hair was black and gray mixed, his complexion very dark, and his countenance fierce and unprepossessing. He went by the name of Black Sam, on account of his appearance. He had lost his right hand in a frigate action, and to the stump he had fixed a sort of socket, into which he screwed his knife and the various articles which he wished to make use of—sometimes a file, sometimes ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... notwithstanding his unkempt hair, his general ungainliness, the hat he wore on the back of his head, and the pink carnation in his buttonhole, which, by its very incongruity, added the final accent to his unprepossessing appearance. Together we worked over the child, making it as comfortable as we could. It was hardly necessary to tell my aide what I wanted done; he seemed to know and even to anticipate ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... relations, nor do they object to appear publicly in the streets following wedding processions. They are the only well-dressed or nice-looking women who drive or walk about the streets or roads. The lower classes of females in Bombay are the most unprepossessing people I ever saw. In Bengal, the saree, though rather too scanty, is a graceful costume, and at a little distance appears to be a modest covering. Here it is worn very differently, and without the slightest attempt ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... breakfast, though he puzzled his brains exceedingly during the whole time he was so occupied with turning it over in his mind, how it was possible that such a delightful couple as the founders of the feast, could have produced so unprepossessing a progeny; whilst Timothy—who, though it was no part of his duty to wait at table, which was performed by a well-dressed man-servant out of livery—managed, on some pretext or other, to be continually coming in and out of the room, and every time contrived to catch Frank's eye, and, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... sir," began the gardener rather angrily, as he looked at Mozart's unprepossessing clothing, "I do not know whom I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... O'Connell only as a leader of party and an orator; his eloquence, however, was more refined than that of his more potential colleague. His speeches were dramatic, rhetorical, and effective. Their moral tone was offensive, vituperative, and vindictive. He was very small of stature, ungainly and unprepossessing in appearance, and had a strange squeaking voice; but in spite of these and other defects he was, next to O'Connell, the most powerful agent in carrying Roman Catholic emancipation. He was, however, never heartily trusted by O'Connell, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... facile princeps the typical telegrapher in all his more sociable and brilliant aspects. Speaking of that time, Mr. Adams says: "I can well recall when Edison drifted in to take a job. He was a youth of about eighteen years, decidedly unprepossessing in dress and rather uncouth in manner. I was twenty-one, and very dudish. He was quite thin in those days, and his nose was very prominent, giving a Napoleonic look to his face, although the curious resemblance did not strike me at the time. The boys did not take to him cheerfully, and ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... it could not be fairly said that his appearance was unprepossessing; indeed, to the congenial, it would have been doubtless not uncongenial; while to others, it could not fail to be at least curiously interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality, contrasting itself with one ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... again feebly ejaculated Hallam. He looked helplessly toward Amy, but she was disappearing indoors, too eager to be with her parents to loiter with this unprepossessing guest. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... late, Tommy remembered his scheme of obliterating the unprepossessing Conrad. A moment later he was glad that he had, for it was not Conrad who entered, but a girl. She carried a tray which she ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... at that—his ordinary associate; but Dean Prior had come long ago to accept the grisly brute as a concomitant of Dr. Herrick's presence almost as inevitable as his shadow. It was no crime to be fond of dumb animals, not even of one so inordinately unprepossessing; and you allowed for eccentricities, in any event, in ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... promising Transvaal General. A typical Boer of the modern school, with curiously unkempt hair literally standing on end, light sandy whiskers, and a small moustache, he was wearing a sullen and dejected expression on his by no means stupid, but discontented and unprepossessing, face. This scion of the Kruger family did not scruple to air his grievances or disclose his plans with regard to the struggle of the previous day. That he was brilliantly assisted by the French and German ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... way, and its other doors opened into a narrow alley turning off from the main street under a low archway. As Cuthbert pushed open the door of the public room, he saw several men with faces of decidedly unprepossessing type sitting together at a table engrossed in talk, and these all looked quickly up as he entered, and gazed at ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... countries, all services, and several languages. His features were plain, his turn of mind caustic, his feelings ambitious and avaricious, his temper uncomplying, and his whole appearance singular and unprepossessing. A temporary fit of generosity had induced him to quit the English service, and the Americans, at that period, listened to him as to an oracle. In his heart he detested the general, and felt a sincere affection ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... his costume. The man himself was of middle size, athletic, yet slender; with straight and regular features,—sunburnt, but not swarthy; and an expression of countenance which, though reckless and bold, had in it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if defying, was not altogether unprepossessing. ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brother of Charles, held a clerkship, with some considerable salary, in the South Sea House. I do not retain an agreeable impression of him. If not rude, he was sometimes, indeed generally, abrupt and unprepossessing in manner. He was assuredly deficient in that courtesy which usually springs from a mind at friendship with the world. Nevertheless, without much reasoning power (apparently), he had much cleverness of character; except when he ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... was brought downstairs. His appearance was most unprepossessing. He was very short, with a huge head and a remarkable shock of coal-black hair. Having hastily risen from bed, he had retained his pyjamas, but a long frock-coat hung nearly to his slippers, and in one hand he carried a pair of gloves, and in the other a huge eccentric silk ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... STYLE are not the surest passports to womanhood—some of the noblest specimens of womanhood that the world has ever seen have presented the plainest and most unprepossessing appearance. A woman's worth is to be estimated by the real goodness of her heart, the greatness of her soul, and the purity and sweetness of her character; and a woman with a kindly disposition and well-balanced temper is both lovely and attractive, be her face ever so plain, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... beaming, as if he suddenly had found a long lost friend and comrade. George took no notice of the friendly hand. He was staring hard, almost savagely at the other's face. Simmy was surprised to find that his cheeks, though sunken and haggard, were cleanly shaved, and his general appearance far from unprepossessing. In the light from a near-by window, the face was lowering but not inflamed; the eyes were heavy and tired-looking—but ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... didn't really think that that alligator could reach them, for he was so big and clumsy-looking that it didn't seem as if he could run very fast. But he could, and the first thing Bully and Bawly knew, that most unprepossessing creature, with a smile that went away around to his ears, was close behind them and gnashing his teeth ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... rejoice in the possession of an umbrella. On such a day, the park does not appear at its best. The Arch exhibited a dull, dirty, yellowish-grey exterior; every seat was bespattered with mud; whilst, to render the general aspect still more unprepossessing, the trees had not yet donned their mantles of green, but stood dejectedly drooping their leafless branches as if overcome with embarrassment at their nakedness. On the benches around me sat, or lay, London's homeless—wretched-looking men in long, tattered ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... that portentous business which permeated the atmosphere of the establishment with the taint of stealth and terror?—the famous "research work" that kept Victor closeted with Sturm in his study daily for hours at a time, often in confabulation with others of like ilk, men of furtive and unprepossessing cast who came and went by appointment at all hours, but as a rule late ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... procession. A whisper began in a thousand voices: 'That's so-and-so.... Charming! Bewitching!' Then it was they noticed me.... A couple of young milksops, local amateurs of the scenic art, I presume, looked at me, exchanged glances, and whispered: 'That's her lover!' How do you like that? And an unprepossessing individual in a top-hat, with a chin that badly needed shaving, hung round me, shifting from one foot to the other, then turned ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Bartlett, a tall and willowy blonde, still in her teens, was the daughter of a retired lieutenant in the United States Navy. The Bartlett home was in West Fourteenth Street, a few doors from the Avenue. The groom, many years the bride's senior, and of strikingly unprepossessing appearance, was a Cuban of great wealth. The wedding was the talk of the town, and Stedman, then a young man of twenty-six, satirized the ill-mating in a poem that appeared first in the New York "Tribune." The ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... woman scrambled from a pile of bearskins as he ran toward them. She had sunken eyes that watched his approach with a ratlike glitter, and her naked hands were so emaciated that they looked like claws; but in spite of her unprepossessing appearance Billy almost hugged her in his delight at their coming. Maballa was her name, Rookie had told him, and she understood and could talk English better than her son. Billy told her of the condition in the ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... forefathers; he alone has not discarded "the napless vesture of humility," to follow the always expensive, and often absurd fashions of his superiors. All ungalled of him is each courtier's heel or great man's kibe. Yet, is not even his every-day clothing unseemly, or his aspect unprepossessing. He casts as broad and proper a shadow in the sun as any other man. Black he is, indeed, but comely, like the daughters of Jerusalem.—To begin with the hat which he has honoured with a preference—what are your operas or your fire-shovels beside it? they must ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... the best society. He was no talker or conversationist, (an excellent word we should like to see legitimated,) but a quiet, observing man, who spoke to the point, inoffensive in manner, and not unprepossessing in appearance. As one of the lions of the country, he was much looked at, especially by foreigners. We find a sketch of an interview with him in the Travels of the Chevalier de Chastellux. De Lafayette and himself requested permission ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Hinduism—one of a great trilogy: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer. He had also spoken of the attributes of Kali, and, after a little further search, I discovered that Kali was Siva's wife—a most unprepossessing ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... a double row of sharp teeth of ivory whiteness, were certain lines and wrinkles that gave to his physiognomy an expression in the highest degree repulsive. Deceit, low cunning, and greed of gain, were legibly written upon this unprepossessing countenance; whose wild character was completed by a profusion of coarse dark hair, that hung or rather stuck out in black elf-locks around the receding forehead and tawny sunken cheeks. The dress of this man was in unison with his aspect. He wore a greasy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... a clew was placed, not in my hands, but in those of a superior official who at that time exerted a great influence over the whole force. He was sitting in his private room, when there was ushered into his presence a young man of a dissipated but not unprepossessing appearance, who, after a pause of marked embarrassment, entered upon ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... oblong window, barred, and with a sash that opened like a transom. The tables were dirty and the chairs rickety. The walls were bare and unfinished, with beams innocent of decoration. Altogether it was as unprepossessing a place as I ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... advised to stop, in Charlottesville, at the New Gleason, and when we alighted at the dingy old brick railroad station—a station quite as unprepossessing as that at New Haven, Connecticut—we began to feel that all was not for the best. A large gray horse hitched to the hack in which we rode to the Gleason evidently felt the same, for at first he balked, and ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... replenished. She soon reappears, and in response to our invitation, takes a seat beside us, while we enter into conversation with her. She is a fair sample (excuse the mercantile term) of her class, and her history is a history of a majority of her associates. Not unprepossessing in appearance, by any means, Ellen— that, she tells us, is her name—is twenty-two years of age; was born in the village of Tarrytown; resided with her parents until she was eighteen, when her father died. Leaving her mother with her youngest ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... now what first led us to feel that beneath that unprepossessing exterior were concealed the pulses of a warm, generous heart, and the powers of a strong and cultivated mind, but we remember well the morning that she set ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... man approached, shaking his head vigorously. He was a thin, pale man with a singularly scholastic face. Quite an unprepossessing, unsanguinary person, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Charlotte Stanhope is not unprepossessing. But it remains to be said that the influence which she had in her family, though it had been used to a certain extent for their worldly well-being, had not been used to their real benefit, as it might have been. She had aided ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... length returned, and with him a man of an exterior singularly unprepossessing. I need not describe him to you, for—do not look round—he rides behind us ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... particular Davis was whose name clung to the place we have been unable to ascertain, but when Ward Glazier moved there, the house seemed fairly to scowl upon the passer-by—so utterly unprepossessing was its appearance. A rude, capacious wooden structure, it stood fronting the highway, and was a place where the beautiful had no existence. The very soil looked black and rough—the vegetation ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... remained unmarried; but whether it was from a very unprepossessing squint which deterred suitors, or from the same dislike to matrimony as her brother had imbibed, it is not in our power to say. Mr. Witherington was three years younger than his sister; and although he had for some time worn a wig, it was only because ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... doorway at the side of the tobacconist's. At this moment I became aware of a man who, as he approached, seemed to eye my friend with some curiosity and more disfavour; a very short, burly young man, apparently a foreign Jew, whose face, naturally sinister and unprepossessing, was further disfigured by ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman |
