"Elderly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... providence and government of God, which extends alike to all states and worlds, he was now met by one who told him he was sent to conduct him to this destined state of abode, from which he concluded it was an angel, though he appeared in the form of an elderly man. They accordingly advanced together, till they came within sight of a large spacious building, which had the air of a palace. Upon his inquiring what it was, his guide replied, it was the place assigned ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... two young persons—with red cheeks and black waving locks, smiling round his couch, and suddenly departing thence, soon after he had come to himself, arose in the young man's mind. Then, then, there returned the remembrance of a female—lovely, it is true, but more elderly—certainly considerably older—and with f——. Oh, horror and remorse! He writhed with anguish, as a certain recollection crossed him. An immense gulf of time gaped between him and the past. How long was it since ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the famous surgeon, Professor MacDonald. He was elderly, with the broad high forehead, dignity of poise, and sharpness of glance which bespeaks the successful scientist. His face, to-night, was chalky and the firm, full mouth twitched with nervousness. He greeted Shirley abstractedly. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... at the railing, still looking angry and bewildered after the retreating carriage, and rubbing his back, he suddenly felt someone thrust money into his hand. He looked. It was an elderly woman in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl, probably her daughter wearing a hat, and ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... respect to poetry became more rigorous as he grew older. In 1823 in a letter to Miss Baillie he commented on Mrs. Hemans as "somewhat too poetical for my taste—too many flowers, I mean, and too little fruit—but that may be the cynical criticism of an elderly gentleman; for it is certain that when I was young I read verses of every kind with infinitely more indulgence, because with more pleasure than I can now do—the more shame for me now to refuse the complaisance which I have had ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... elderly barrister, full of pomp and dignity; and, like many of his brother Recorders, had very seldom a prisoner to try. You may therefore imagine with what stupendous importance he was invested when he found that the rural magistrates had committed a little boy for trial for stealing a ball ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... gradually, but he found himself not as fully prepared for Willowfield as he could have wished. He was not entirely prepared for Mrs. Stornaway, who hurried towards them with exultation on her large, stupid face, and, after effusive embraces, bustled with them towards an elderly woman ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the background. "Brutes!" she had declared and reached the chair-side voluble in unintelligible German to find Emma serenely emerging from unconsciousness. Once she had taken Gertrude to the dentist—another dentist, an elderly man, practising in a frock-coat in a heavily-furnished room with high sash windows, the lower sashes filled with stained glass. There had been a driving March wind and Gertrude with a shawl round ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... The Aunt Caroline's elderly maid easily agreed to this. It was true there did not seem to be anyone adventurous-looking, and Miss Stella would be more or less under her eye—and she was thoroughly tired with traveling and what not. So Stella found herself ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... mentioned by Sir Thomas Browne, in his 'Vulgar Errors,' and from whatever cause it may have arisen it is certain that the hairs taken from the part of the animal so marked are held in high estimation as a cure for the hooping-cough. In this metropolis, at least so lately as 1842, an elderly lady advised a friend who had a child dangerously ill with that complaint, to procure three such hairs, and hang them round the neck of the sufferer in a muslin bag. It was added that the animal from whom the hairs are taken for this purpose is never worth anything afterwards, and, consequently, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... an elderly gentleman in American costume, with his pig-tail neatly wound round his head. He spoke English, and was talking busily with Uncle Mac in the most commonplace way so Rose considered him a failure. But Fun See was delightfully Chinese from his junk-like shoes to the button ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... absurd to place such a young coxcomb, merely because he could talk fluently and cleverly, in an office on which the wellbeing of the kingdom depended. Surely Sir Stephen Fox was, of all the Lords of the Treasury, the fittest to be at the head of the Board. He was an elderly man, grave, experienced, exact, laborious; and he had never made a verse in his life. The King hesitated during a considerable time between the two candidates; but time was all in Montague's favour; for, from ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was on the first floor of a building which faced the street on one side and Hyde Park on the other. Dion rang at a large, very solid oak door. In two or three minutes the door was opened by an elderly maid, with high cheek-bones and long and narrow light gray eyes, who said, with a foreign accent, that Mrs. Clarke was at home. Afterwards Dion knew that this woman was a Russian ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... book I was living in the region where the scenes of the story are laid, and had the benefit of local knowledge concerning terms used, customs referred to, etc. No pains were spared in verifying particulars, especially through elderly people on the farms, who could best explain the old-fashioned terms and who had a clear remembrance of obsolescent details of saeter life. For this welcome help and for elucidations through other friends I wish here ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... me try to let that back room upstairs: the woman next door has got hers let unfurnished to an elderly woman and her husband for two shillings a week. If we could get someone like that it would be better than having an empty ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... was pretty. It flattered the elderly man's vanity immensely that nobody ever spoke of her as "Mrs. Tiralla," plain and simple, but always as "the beautiful Mrs. Tiralla." When he drove with her through Gradewitz—he on the box, she on the seat behind, in her veil and feather boa—everybody stared. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... through the brazen door of the palace. Here many fair women, elderly and young, were sitting in the round hall, partaking of the fairest fruits and listening to glorious invisible music. In the vaulting of the ceiling, palms, flowers, and groves stood painted, among which little ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Two elderly minor nobles agree that they will set out on a voyage to see the world. They set out on it, but their adventures take them no farther than Holland, which is where they already are. They have various mishaps, and even at one point get separated, only coming together again by chance. ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... decided, the trampling of horses was heard, and there rode into the court an elderly man, whose dress and bearing showed him to be of consideration, accompanied by a youth of eighteen or nineteen, and attended by two servants. Sir Reginald and his brother immediately stepped forward ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then that I fell into the arms of as admirable although peculiar a man as I ever hope to meet, and communicative too. He was one of those elderly men who keep their youth, largely by virtue of cheerful spirits. He was short and active and he wore a cap. He had sandy-grey hair and a touch of sandy-grey whisker; his eye was bright and his cheeks were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... eat in our fingers, and fed the children. Before we had finished, we were joined by a party of Mennonites, in a comfortable covered waggon drawn by two powerful horses. The family consisted of an elderly man; his wife, a pretty, quaint-looking little woman; a daughter, apparently sixteen; a boy of twelve; and two little girls of about six, looking like twins. They were well dressed, in the quaint costume of their country. The man, who alone could speak English, told us they were going to Winnipeg ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... grown so deft at her work and made herself so appreciated, that she was practically indispensable to the elderly woman, and therefore the greatest comfort to John. Immediately he saw that his mother was properly cared for, sympathetically and even lovingly, he made it his business to smooth Jennie's path in every way possible. ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... usually dealt with from the point of view of religion and morals. Women, when they appear in the matter at all, figure as missionaries, "prison angels," and the like. As evangelists to sinners women have been permitted to associate with their fallen sisters without losing caste. Likewise, when elderly enough, they have been allowed to serve on governing boards of "homes" and "refuges." Their activities were limited to rescue work. They might extend a hand to a repentant Magdalene. A Phryne they must not even be aware of. In other words, this evil ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... and the great majority were at least quiet, and left us to ourselves. The next morning I started at about eight, buying two small pigs for two hatchets, and yams and taro and dried bread- fruit for fish-hooks. I gave one young man a piece of iron for his attention to us. As we pulled away, one elderly man drew his bow, and the women and children ran off into the bush, here, as everywhere almost in these islands, growing quite thickly some twenty yards above high-water mark. The man did not let fly his arrow: I cannot tell why this small ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... postilion upon the outer one. Very fine and rich it was, with beams painted and gilt, wheels and spokes carved in strange figures, and over all an arched cover of red and white tapestry. Beneath its shade there sat a stout and elderly lady in a pink cote-hardie, leaning back among a pile of cushions, and plucking out her eyebrows with a small pair of silver tweezers. None could seem more safe and secure and at her ease than this lady, yet here also was a symbol of human life, for in an instant, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seems; she looks twenty years younger; and he, an elderly, iron-grey clergyman; it would be ridiculous, only it is all so true and good. I suppose, after all, there is something grand, as the poet says, in constancy, and love, and the like; and I ought to pity Rowland Prothero, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... trot to the spring for a fresh supply; he would doubtless have smashed the vessel had it been smaller and of lesser value. Naturally I feel a trifle conscience-stricken at having caused him so much trouble, for he is rather an elderly man, but the soldiers display no sympathy for him whatever, apparently regarding an humble water-carrier as a person of small consequence anyhow, and they laugh heartily at seeing him trotting briskly back half ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... roused the rebellion of these American Colonies; and tea made many a half Tory among the elderly ladies of the Revolution. It has, indeed, been regarded, and humorously described by the senior Weller, as the indispensable comforter and friend of advanced female life. Dr. Johnson was as noted for his fondness for tea as for his other excesses at the table. Many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... elderly gentleman, who appeared to be in feeble health, but who conducted himself ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... it might move the mirth of gallants who had served a campaign in Flanders, raised his character in his own eyes and in the eyes of his neighbours. Nor indeed was his soldiership justly a subject of derision. In every county there were elderly gentlemen who had seen service which was no child's play. One had been knighted by Charles the First, after the battle of Edgehill. Another still wore a patch over the scar which he had received at Naseby. A third had defended his old house till Fairfax had blown in the door ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the sight. Evidently Voltaire had been claiming the fulfilment of her promise, for he was earnestly speaking when I entered, while Miss Forrest, pale as death, sat by an elderly lady, who I concluded to be her aunt. Miss Staggles also sat near, as ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... her lose the little beauty that still remained to her; nothing seemed more incongruous and ridiculous than to hear this elderly grand lady talking perpetually about "her dearest darling, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... his wife, and two daughters had good Roman noses, and one of the latter was an extremely pretty young woman. Their teeth are short, thick, and close, generally regular, and in the young persons almost always white. The elderly women were still well furnished in this way, though their teeth were usually a good deal worn down, probably by the habit of chewing ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... reason why she should refuse, particularly with three middle-aged women, two elderly gentlemen, and four girls observing with interest from the porch. Neither was there good reason for refusing to allow Mr. Jarvis to take the reins, since he leaped up at the right side of the wagon, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... completely vanished out of the memory of Stillwater as if he had been lying all the while in the crowded family tomb behind the South Church, Richard Shackford reappeared one summer morning at the door of his cousin's house in Welch's Court. Mr. Shackford was absent at the moment, and Mrs. Morganson, an elderly deaf woman, who came in for a few hours every day to do the house-work, was busy in the extension. Without announcing himself, Richard stalked up-stairs to the chamber in the gable, and went directly to a little shelf in one corner, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and with a look of discouraged weariness on her thin face, knocked at a house-door in a little street by Lavender Hill. A card in the window gave notice that a bedroom was here to let. When the door opened, and a clean, grave, elderly woman presented herself, the visitor, regarding her anxiously, made known that she was in ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... time longer, but we omit what followed as not being necessary to a clear understanding of our story. At last they separated, Senor Don Inocencio remaining to the last, as usual. Before the canon and Dona Perfecta had had time to exchange a word, an elderly woman, Dona Perfecta's confidential servant and her right hand, entered the dining-room, and her mistress, seeing that she looked disturbed and anxious, was at once filled with disquietude, suspecting that something wrong was ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Dr. Burn landed with three men, and proceeded to a native village, about three miles from the beach, where he was kindly received by an elderly chief, who appeared well acquainted with our countrymen. He could pronounce 'King George,' and a few other English words, and wore as an ornament, suspended from his neck, a brass plate, which had belonged to the cap ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... King sat down there was dumb silence for a little while; for the whole crowd seemed to feel all he had been saying, deep in their hearts. But this soon changed into smiles and a soft rustle of dresses, for a nice elderly gentleman got up and made a delightful speech, full of cheerfulness and nice friendly feeling, which brightened the whole crowd up like spring ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... more.... Of 'Rev. Homer Wilbur, A.M., Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam,' we have small care to speak here. Spare touch in him of his Melesigenes namesake, save, haply, the—blindness! A tolerably caliginose, nephelegeretous elderly gentleman, with infinite faculty of sermonizing, muscularized by long practice and excellent digestive apparatus, and, for the rest, well-meaning enough, and with small private illuminations (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of his own. To him, there, 'Pastor of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... in which Anjou had flouted her. She was thirty-nine, and her vanity was wounded; but yet the friendship or neutrality of France was vital to her. "How tall is he?" she asked Cecil. "About as tall as I am," replied the elderly minister. "As tall as your grandson, you mean!" snapped the queen. But Walsingham, Smith, and the French envoys plied her busily with descriptions of Alencon's manly charms, and a treaty between France and England ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... accompany him to a larger house, fronting a main thoroughfare, which, said he, would henceforth be their home. The sight of the unscreened windows of her new home struck a chill into Imtiazan's heart; and when the door opened and she was met by three elderly Muhammadans who saluted her as their "Bai-Saheb," fear took possession of her soul. The thin red cases hanging on the wall told her that the men were musicians; and in response to the mute appeal in her eyes her husband bade her with almost brutal ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... no! She looked out of the window, smiling slightly now, and then came back again, for he didn't notice her. Grave, unconscious... now he looked up, past her... he seemed so out of place, somehow, alone with an elderly lady... then he fixed his eyes—which were blue—on the landscape. He had not realized her presence, she thought. Yet it was none of HER fault that this was not a smoking-carriage—if that ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... danger of being crushed by a coal-cart which had entered the street. The cries and alarms of the females were met by the activity of the travellers, and the companion of M. —— set off to snatch the infant from danger, and place him in security. An elderly female from the second story, gave M. ——, who was still on his horse, the directions he desired; and, at the same time, expressed her uneasiness that the gentleman should have had the trouble ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... and more than one person, as it happened. There was a knock at the door, followed straightway by the entrance of an elderly lady, accompanied by a young lady and a young gentleman, who sailed into the room, much to the amazement and consternation of ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... her; but she read less than she pondered, and she invariably pondered with her eyes closed and her mouth ajar. On the eleventh day, however, she gathered herself together and went on deck. With anxious care Weldon tucked the rugs about her elderly frame. Then he exchanged a glance with Ethel and together they sought the shelter of the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... least, startled and surprised. I dodged the threatening club and turned a dazed face toward the person brandishing it. He appeared to be a middle-sized, elderly person, in oilskins and souwester, and when he spoke a gray whisker wagged above the chin strap of ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Court Theatre, Le Feu Toupinel, adapted for the English stage as The Late Lamented, is decidedly funny, that is, if you can once get over the idea that all its humour depends upon the immoral vagaries of an elderly scoundrel, an habitual criminal, who has departed this life in the odour of respectability, without his immoralities ever having been discovered. Had he been found out during his lifetime, he would have ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... interval in the music, an elderly gentleman, with the ribbon of an order in his button-hole, came up to the table, and from the manner in which he greeted them, it was evident that he was an old friend. From their conversation, which was carried on in a very loud tone of voice, and with much ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... her brother being over, was acting as companion to an old lady who lived in a little house up the shore, a mile or so above the station. This elderly female, whose name was Mayo, had a son who kept a grocery store in the village and was, therefore, obliged to be away all day and until late in the evening. Miss Patience found Mrs. Mayo's crotchets a bit trying, but ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... before a large, round, shining centre-table, whose sterile emptiness was relieved only by a shaded lamp and a large black and gilt open volume. A single picture on the opposite wall—the portrait of an elderly gentleman stiffened over a corresponding volume, which he held in invincible mortmain in his rigid hand, and apparently defied posterity to take from him—seemed to offer a not uncongenial companionship. Yet the greenish light of the shade fell upon a young and pretty face, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... my father's arm, and hurried up two or three steps into a small apartment. Here Mrs. Crewe, addressing herself to an elderly gentleman, asked if he could inform the people below that a mad woman was terrifying the company ; and while he was receiving her commission with the most profound respect, and with an evident air of admiring astonishment at her beauty, we heard a rustling, and, looking round, saw the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... called him Uncle Em. He was not really uncle anyway to Gloria, being merely her kind, good-natured, easily-coaxed guardian. But for ten years he and this sweet-faced elderly woman in the doorway had been father and ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... abroad with the earliest? Radiant with enthusiasm are those dark eyes, is that strong Minerva-face, looking dignity and earnest joy; joyfullest she where all are joyful. It is Roland de la Platriere's Wife! (Madame Roland, Memoires, i. (Discours Preliminaire, p. 23).) Strict elderly Roland, King's Inspector of Manufactures here; and now likewise, by popular choice, the strictest of our new Lyons Municipals: a man who has gained much, if worth and faculty be gain; but above all things, has gained to wife Phlipon the Paris ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... visitors had left them, an elderly Chinaman approached the side of the cage. He spoke to their guard and looked at them attentively for some minutes, then he said in pigeon English, ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... the back of the church. Always it had one occupant; sometimes it had three. But the behavior of this pew was very erratic. Sometimes an elderly and portly gentleman with white hair and fierce eyebrows would come in when the sermon was almost over. Again, a hand would reach through the grill behind it, and a tall young man who had had his eyes fixed in the proper direction, but not always on the rector, would reach for his hat, get up ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... but received no answer. Then, having sharp ears, he tried the handle of one marked "Private." It yielded, and he entered, to be accosted angrily by a pallid, elderly, bewhiskered man, standing in front ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... meant to match those of the walls, contrasted disagreeably with them, having been applied more recently, apparently by a color-blind artist. The door beneath the portico stood open. Sir Charles rang the bell, and an elderly woman answered it; but before they could address her, Trefusis appeared, clad in a painter's jacket of white jean. Following him in, they found that the house was a hollow square, enclosing a courtyard with a bath sunk in the middle, and a ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... wanted to remain in the town where there were crowds. At the end of the week came his great chance. He had been sent down to the docks to do some repairs on a small steamer and had pleased the skipper, who was himself an elderly man, by the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... boys, at their own request, on board, under the care of Jenny and Smart. The three elder girls were to wait on each other, and each take a little girl in their charge, while Hargrave waited on the three elderly ladies. We were objects of great curiosity, and many people supposed our party to consist of a school. They were more surprised at hearing that La Luna belonged to the school. The visitors on board of her became innumerable, causing the good-natured captain a world of trouble. ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... on opposite tacks! Well, your plans you are perfectly welcome to try on. They talk of the patience of lambs, or park hacks; They're not in it, my lads, with an elderly Lion. A Lion, I mean, of the genuine breed, And not a thin-skinned and upstart adolescent. Dear me! did I let everybody succeed In stirring me up, or in making things pleasant, By smoothing me down in a flattering style, I'd have, there's no doubt, a delectable time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... in a day or two. While he talked to Laura Waynefleet, there were footsteps outside, and she ran towards the door as a man came into the room. Nasmyth fancied the newcomer was her father, for he was grey-haired and elderly, but he did not look in the least like a Bush-rancher. Beneath the fur coat, which he flung off when he had kissed his daughter, he was dressed as one who lived in the cities, though his garments were evidently far from new. He was ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... to the door and opened it. He saw before him a woman. She was coloured, but of mixed race, the European element evidently preponderating. She was elderly—certainly over forty years of age—very thin; and she stooped somewhat. Her face was drawn and haggard, but her eyes were still beautiful—black, large, and deep. She ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... the studio they were greeted by a number of other players, and an elderly gentleman, with a bearing and carriage that revealed the schooling of many years behind the ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... day I went round the plain, and visited the fields of kidney potatoes and Indian corn, the principal nourishment of the inhabitants. The old chief and some elderly people accompanied me. When we reached the spot where, upon the eve, I had already remarked enormous blocks of rock, the old man ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... eighteen feet, and twelve feet high—a fine room for painting, with a neat little bedroom, and every convenience, and board, all for six dollars a week, which I think is very reasonable. My landlord is an elderly Irish gentleman with three daughters, once in independent circumstances but now reduced. Everything bears the appearance of old-fashioned gentility which you know I always liked. Everything is neat and clean and genteel.... Bishop Hobart and a great many acquaintances ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... remarks (100. 389, 390): "Adoption was rendered extremely easy; a man would give himself a father or sons almost ad infinitum." In the Marquesas Islands "it was not uncommon to see elderly persons being adopted by children." Moreover, "animals even were adopted. A chief adopted a dog, to whom, he offered ten pigs and some precious ornaments. The dog was carried about by a kikino, and at every meal he had his stated place beside his adopted father." Connected with adoption ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... and stood at the door, looking out in order, after the friendly manner of the traveling Briton, to thwart an invasion of fellow-travelers. Then he withdrew his head suddenly and sat down. An elderly gentleman, accompanied by a girl, was coming toward him. It was not this type of fellow-traveler whom he hoped to keep out. He had noticed the girl at the booking office. She had waited by the side of the line, while the elderly gentleman struggled gamely for the tickets, and he had plenty of opportunity ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... Rodd declared that he knew the way, and his uncle yielding to his opinion, the boy led on, till, turning a corner sharply, they almost came in contact with a couple of French officers walking in the opposite direction, the one a tall, stern, elderly-looking man, talking in a low excited tone to his young companion, whose attention was so much taken up as he deferentially listened to his elder, that he started back to avoid striking against Rodd, ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... privation. Before she was fifteen, she had persuaded her grandmother to part with her serving maiden, and with very little assistance from Helen, she performed the labours of their cottage, aided twice a-week by an elderly woman, who often declared that such another girl as Rose Dillon was not to be found in the country. Both were now verging on seventeen, and Helen received the addresses of a young farmer in the neighbourhood—a youth of excellent yeoman family, and ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... on a sudden they saw three female Indians, from whom they had been concealed by the deep ravines which intersected the road, till they were now within thirty paces of each other; one of them a young woman immediately took to flight, the other two, an elderly woman and a little girl, seeing we were too near for them to escape, sat on the ground, and holding down their heads seemed as if reconciled to the death which they supposed awaited them. The same habit of holding down the head and inviting the enemy to strike, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... end of an autumn afternoon an elderly man with a thin face and grey Piccadilly weepers pushed open the swing-door leading into the vestibule of a certain famous library, and addressing himself to an attendant, stated that he believed he was entitled to use the ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... good as one can expect out of Old England. I fell in with an elderly woman calling herself Giuntotardi—which is regular built Italian, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... we started on our first real horseback journey. The party numbered seven,—three elderly people and four younger ones. Two of our friends escorted us a few miles on our way, and then, as it began to rain, they turned back. I could think of nothing but a party of gipsies, as we rode out of Mr. Coan's yard. You would have ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... would not have done at her Joe's bidding. So she made the arrangement, exciting much gratitude in the heads of the Pomfret House Establishment for Young Ladies; though without seeing little Miss Allen, till, from the Doctor's own brougham, but escorted only by an elderly maid-servant, there came climbing up the stairs a little heap of shawls and cloaks, surmounted by a ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was filled with a miscellaneous collection: teapots, telescopes, knives, spoons, pipes, and one or two flutes and concertinas. Presently I summoned enough resolution to enter, and going to the counter, held out the watch and chain to the rather elderly man ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... feeling as if she had accidentally picked up an elderly gentleman or a college professor. "Pray, ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... that more staff-officers were going in to perform those duties which no private soldier could attempt to understand, believing they belonged to such mysteries as those of God. Through the narrow streets walked elderly generals, middle-aged colonels and majors, youthful subalterns all wearing red hat-bands, red tabs, and the blue-and-red armlet of G. H. Q., so that color went with them ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the parentage of Roy Gilbert. He arranges with two schoolmates to make a tour of the Great Lakes on a steam launch. The three boys visit many points of interest on the lakes. Afterwards the lads rescue an elderly gentleman and a lady from a sinking yacht. Later on the boys narrowly escape with their lives. The hero is a manly, self-reliant boy, whose adventures will ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... an elderly man, with a noble forehead and a long beard. His face, a sad one, was lighted up by a feeble smile; his voice was soft, and his manner gentle. When the boys were gone he swung over his shoulders a black cloak with a red lining, and followed ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... virtue, and that there should be a variety in the strains, that they may not weary of them? Now the fairest and most useful of strains will be uttered by the elder men, and therefore we cannot let them off. But how can we make them sing? For a discreet elderly man is ashamed to hear the sound of his own voice in private, and still more in public. The only way is to give them drink; this will mellow the sourness of age. No one should be allowed to taste wine until they are eighteen; ...
— Laws • Plato
... lived here the year I mean come so quiet nobody knew it until they was here—an' that ain't easy to do in Friendship. First we knew they was in an' housekeepin'. Their accounts was in the name of a Mis' Morgan. We see her now an' then on the street—trim an' elderly an' no airs excep' she wouldn't open up a conversation an' she wouldn't return her calls. 'Most everybody called on her inside the two weeks, but the woman was never home an' she never paid any attention. She ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... and stops, and then he turns to the elderly female, and asks desperate: 'What in tunket did I say ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... above the tumultuous and levelling society of his day, a tardy Don Quixote, of the knighthood of pleasures, fetes, loves and prodigalities, which are no longer of our time. His great name, his grand manner, his elderly graces, his serene carelessness, made him a being by himself. No one will succeed this master of departed elegances. If he does not recover from his attack, if the paralysis does not leave that poor brain, worn out with doing nothing, we can honestly say that he is the last ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... out and being lost on the awful wastes of homeless hillside and moor, they also prevented the brief summer heat of the wayfaring sun from entering with freedom, and hence the fires were needful in the summer days as well—at least at the time my story commences, for then, as generally, there were elderly and aged people in the house, who had to help their souls ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... there was a fine pow-wow going on. Cigars were exchanged for tobacco. Friendship was pledged in socks. The Germans brought out some beer and the English some rum. Finally, on Christmas Day, there was a great concert and dance. The Germans were spruce, elderly men, keen and well fed, with buttons cleaned for the occasion. They appeared to have plenty of supplies, and were fully equipped with everything necessary for a winter campaign. A third battalion, wisely but churlishly, refused these seasonable advances, ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... Bowling Green. Some quaintly attired elderly people who had the entree of the place were sitting about enjoying the loveliness. One old Frenchman had a ruffled shirt-front and a very high coat-collar that made him look like a ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... they aren't going to complain of Roger," Ethel Brown said, for Roger acted as furnace man for these elderly ladies who had gained for themselves a reputation ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... newspaper, gazed from the window into the back-yard of the next house, saw nothing but an elderly man-servant brushing a garment, and ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... the bedside, leaving Mr. Weiss at the end of the room near the door by which we had entered, where he remained, slowly and noiselessly pacing backwards and forwards in the semi-obscurity. By the light of the candle I saw an elderly man with good features and a refined, intelligent and even attractive face, but dreadfully emaciated, bloodless and sallow. He lay quite motionless except for the scarcely perceptible rise and fall of his chest; his eyes were nearly closed, his features relaxed, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... "Well, it's not for me to disagree with the reverend gentleman," she remarked. "And I haven't been in contact with Americans. No doubt they're well enough in their country, but I hope, Miss Star, it'll be some of our people that want to come. Now an elderly couple or some middle-aged ladies would be quite suitable and proper, but Americans—Well, ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... there is a slight stir as a group is seen to emerge from the inn, and the magistrates take their seats. An elderly man who sits by the chair cocks his felt hat on the back of his head: the clerical magistrate very tenderly places his beaver in safety on the broad mantelpiece, that no irreverent sleeve may ruffle its gloss: several others who ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... had delivered a speech. On reading it, he smothered a slight laugh; he remembered certain stories told at the Quai d'Orsay. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was enamoured of Madame de Neuilles, an elderly lady with a lurid past, whom public rumour had raised to the status of adventuress and spy. He was wont, it was whispered, to try on her the speeches which he was to deliver in the Chamber. Ligny, who had formerly been to a certain small extent the lover of Madame ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... to his feet he found the battle joined. The Spaniards had fired a volley from their calivers and a dense cloud of smoke hung above the bulwarks; through this surged now the corsairs, led by a tall, lean, elderly man with a flowing white beard and a swarthy eagle face. A crescent of emeralds flashed from his snowy turban; above it rose the peak of a steel cap, and his body was cased in chain mail. He swung a great scimitar, before which Spaniards went down like ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... into a garden. Doors open out of the room to the right and left. The room is furnished with valuable old furniture, which is carefully protected by linen covers. The walls are hung with pictures. The room is lighted by candelabra. ZINAIDA is sitting on a sofa; the elderly guests are sitting in arm-chairs on either hand. The young guests are sitting about the room on small chairs. KOSICH, AVDOTIA NAZAROVNA, GEORGE, and others are playing cards in the background. GABRIEL is standing near the door on the right. The maid is passing sweetmeats ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... happy hope in an elderly couple. They are your true friends. You are now all in the same lines of thought. Oh, there is a modest, young lady coming to the elderly folks. She is now away in some large building—a school, I think. You ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... sometimes think I will go and work for my living, but my father won't hear of it. And what can I do? I haven't qualified for anything. The only thing open to me is to fill a post of unpaid companion to a rich and elderly cousin who would put up with me but doesn't much want me. She lives at Kensington, too, and I can breathe only in ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... increases; what are we to do? Outside, djins pass rapidly, calling out: "Take care!" splashing the foot-passengers and casting through the shower streams of light from their many-colored lanterns. Mousmes and elderly ladies pass, tucked up, muddy, laughing nevertheless under their paper umbrellas, exchanging greetings, clacking their wooden pattens on the stone pavement. The whole street is filled with the noise of the pattering ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... some to Kast the last time he dined here," observed a languid and rather elegant elderly man, who occupied the fourth side of the table. "Mine ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the past three days," remarked an elderly clergyman, "to realize that these bare hills were once 'a land flowing with milk and honey,' producing 'grapes, pomegranates, and figs' in abundance. To-day I have been thinking of the changes that the tempests of a few short years have made in the hills of my own native state, New Hampshire, ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... away from the dangers and fascinations of the Point—having guarded her, drooping and languid, against the advances of good-looking soldier lads at headquarters, and finally having, by dint of hours of argument, persuasion and skill, delivered her into the arms of the elderly but well-preserved groom. All he demanded to know was that she was fancy free—that there was no previous attachment, and on this point Mrs. Frank had solemnly averred there was none. The child had had a foolish fancy for a cadet beau, but it amounted to absolutely nothing. ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Beulah, would not have done it. Beulah had nothing in common with the jovial hunters and fishers. She had her own circle of companions, her own small concerns, her own convictions as to the frivolity of these elderly guests. She would not have cared to listen to what they had to say. She did not know that their travels, their adventures, their stored-up experience had made them rich in anecdote, ready of tongue to tell of wonders undreamed of in the dullness ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... a sickly one—this time a consumptive farmer, named Jackson; and some time afterward a fourth, an elderly woman, with a cancer; she was Mrs. Lyons, formerly a milliner in South Boston. Then the patience and hope which had sustained us gave way, and we were in a condition close upon despair. The cooler ones among the men assembled quietly apart and ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... of it all, there came another calamity. In the boarding-house with Corydon lived some elderly ladies, who had a remarkable faculty for divining the evil deeds of other people. They had divined the evil deeds of Corydon and Thyrsis, and one of them was moved to come to Corydon's mother one day, and warn her lest others should divine them too. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... spring of the year above named, an elderly gentleman of undoubted respectability was shown into our private office. He was exceedingly nervous and flurried, and his wan, colorless face looked like an effaced page. In a tortuous, round-about way, he intimated that his married daughter was in great ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... he will be treated with the utmost consideration—I am not able to tell you exactly what brand of gun he may be. It is evident from his conservative use of black powder, and the old-gentlemanly staidness of his movements, that he is an elderly gun. His calibre appears to be six inches. From the plunging nature of his fire, some have conjectured him a sort of howitzer, but it is next to certain he is one of the sixteen 15-cm. Creusot guns bought for the forts of Pretoria and Johannesburg. Anyhow, ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... spot, and as Miriam's stately bearing made the throng move respectfully aside, they soon saw the mournful contents of a large travelling-chariot, which had lost its wheels. The linen canopy which had protected it was torn away, and on the floor lay two elderly Egyptian women; a third, who was much younger, leaned against the back of the vehicle thus strangely transformed into a boat. Her companions lay dead in the water which had covered its floor, and several Hebrew women were in the act of tearing the costly gold ornaments from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... college, darter, ain't it?" the girls could hear the elderly woman ask Shirley, but they did not hear the latter's answer. Dolorez called, "Hello, girls," as she swung her car out again in the dusty roadway, and the "darter" deprived that little woman of her ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... immemorial, senile, ancient, elderly, olden, time-honored, antiquated, gray, patriarchal, time-worn, antique, hoary, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... came down, and passed several days at the Pig and Whistle. She was a dry, keen, elderly woman, chiefly interested in the question of her deceased brother's property, which proved to be insignificant enough. Meanwhile the inquest was held, and all the countryside talked of Mr. Fouracres, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Mr. Garrett's letter was handed to me, narrating the foregoing case of man stealing, I was listening to the sad tales of two colored women, who had come to the office for advice and assistance. One of them was an elderly person, whose son had been pursued by the marshal's deputies, and who had just escaped with 'the skin of his teeth.' She did not come on her own account, however; her heart was too full of joy for that. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... tail of the nightingale who was singing to his lady- love in the hawthorn bush, and he lost his place in his song and nearly tumbled over backwards into the garden. Then to her joy she met an elderly, domestic puss taking an evening walk ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... hundred hats were counted and on them but twenty birds recognized, five hundred and forty-two were decorated with feathers of some kind. Of the one hundred and fifty-eight remaining, seventy-two were worn by young or middle-aged ladies, and eighty-six by ladies in mourning or elderly ladies." ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... and remarkable contortions with his limbs, in the vain efforts to make himself understood by one who does not speak his language! Ned's powers of endurance were tested in this way by the chief of the tribe, an elderly man with a beard so sparse that each stumpy hair might have been ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... and he would have liked to look at the photographs again, but Mrs. Horton thought it was time to go in and find their seats. An usher, a pretty girl, took them easily and quickly to the right row, and Sunny Boy found himself seated next to an elderly lady, with two children, a boy and a girl, evidently her grandchildren, in two seats directly in ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... that one was inclined to send for a policeman; and then she sat down on a seat by the wall, and, in desperation, asked her next-door neighbor if he knew Lady Mickleham by sight, and had he seen her lately? The next-door neighbor, by way of reply, called out to a quiet elderly gentleman who was sidling unobtrusively about, "Duke, are there any particularly snug corners in your house?" The Duke stopped, searched his memory, and said that at the end of the Red Corridor there was a passage, and that a few yards down the passage, if you turned very suddenly to the ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... casual meeting. The slightest approach to disrespect or familiarity should be checked by dignified silence. A young lady, however, is not accorded the same privilege of forming acquaintances as is a married or elderly lady, and should be careful ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... "An elderly angel!" said Madame Marneffe softly, as she looked half tenderly, half mockingly, at her Hector, who was gazing at her as an examining judge ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... time for sententiousness it is when one is elderly, leisured and comfortable; that is the time to set down one's thoughts as they come, not inviting anybody to read them, but promising to those who do, that they will find a commentary upon life as it passes, either because it may be ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... lips they merely heard, in reply to delicate questioning, that sitting in trains was not walking about; and they knew that already. Except for the stick, however, she appeared to be a most desirable fourth—quiet, educated, elderly. She was much older than they or Lady Caroline—Lady Caroline had informed them she was twenty-eight—but not so old as to have ceased to be active-minded. She was very respectable indeed, and still wore a complete suit of black though her husband ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... or partly so, and led his wife, a kind and amiable little lady, a very unpleasant life. The Misses Hunt were elderly, amiable, and generally just ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... window looked out upon the market-place; so the studies for the prosecution of which my father had brought himself to pay extra for a sitting-room for me, ran a considerable chance of being diverted from books to men and women. I was to have my meals with the two elderly Miss Dawsons in the little parlour behind the three-cornered shop downstairs; my breakfasts and dinners at least, for, as my hours in an evening were likely to be uncertain, my tea or supper was ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... most interested in the description of the costume, its symbols, etc. Ethel thanked her gratefully for her gift, impulsively kissing her many times. The elderly woman had grown very fond of the girl and dreaded parting with her, but she knew that the new work she was about to take up would be of the greatest benefit to her, not only then but in the future, for Ethel had softened wonderfully. She had lost all of her false pride and worldliness. It was as ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... usual in the early hours of the morning, and after unloading drew out of the town, passing on the right the old Citadelle with its red ramparts high upon a hill, and the point of elderly Territorials at the junction of the great Amiens road. Thence we followed the south bank of the Authie River, enclosed on either side by rounded chalk hills 400 or 500 feet high. We breakfasted by the road opposite the Chateau of Autheuille, where ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... another thing to rejoice in; but before he sailed Elmendorf had had an opportunity of doing good to his kind, as he conceived it. Seeking an inexpensive lodging on his arrival in Chicago, he had found a neat, cheerful home under the roof of an elderly widow, a Mrs. Wallen, in a little house on the north side. She lived alone with her daughter, who, it presently transpired, was her main support. There was a son, a stalwart fellow, too, who, being only twenty-four and a man of some education and ability, should have been the mother's prop ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... relates that once when on a trip to the West he sat next to an elderly lady who every now and then would lean out of the open window and pour some thick salt—it seemed to him—from a bottle. When she had emptied the bottle she would ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Most of them had put the best face upon their lives, rejoicing in the occasional streaks of fat, eating the lean uncomplainingly. They led a migratory existence, moved arbitrarily, like pawns, at the will of eminent and elderly gentlemen a thousand or so miles away, whom they did not know and who did not know them. Continually, as their temporary habitations began to take on the semblance of homes, they were transferred, from mountains to plains, from the far north to the tropics. Their few household ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... told of a Boston publisher, sedate and fairly elderly, who came to the Scribner house to transact business with several of its departments. One of his errands concerning itself with advertising, he was introduced to Bok, who was then twenty-four. Looking the youth over, he transacted his business ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... sure I can find the mine, Mr. Swift!" persisted Alec Peterson, who was almost as elderly a man as the one he addressed. "I have the old documents that tell how rich the mine once was, how the old Mexican rulers used to get their opals from it, and how all trace of it was lost in the last century. I have all the landmarks down pat, and I'm sure I can find it. Come on now, ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton |
