"Rubicund" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I see him now before me, with his jolly red face, twinkling black eyes, and rubicund nose. No thin, weasel-faced Yankee was he, looking as if he had lived upon 'cute ideas and speculations all his life; yet Yankee he was by birth, ay, and in mind, too; for a more knowing fellow at a bargain never crossed the lakes to abuse British ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench the fiery fever of last night's potations, which he drained from no cup of mine. Welcome, most rubicund sir! You and I have been strangers hitherto; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a closer intimacy, till the fumes of your breath be a ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... following is a specimen. A certain Velu, a born vagabond, formerly in the alms-house and brought up there, then a shoemaker or a cobbler, afterwards teaching school in the faubourg de Vienne, and at last a haranguer and proposer of tyrannicide motions, short, stout and as rubicund as his cap, is made President of the Popular club at Blois, then delegate for domiciliary visits, and, throughout the reign of Terror, he is a principal personage in the town, district and department. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... post with iron rods projecting at the top. This was the target, and it was highly amusing and characteristic to watch these burghers gathered round and firing at the bird or some other object on the top. Now they were all returning carrying their bows, and in high good-humour. A young and rubicund priest was of the party, regarded evidently with affection and pride by his companions; for all that he seemed to say and do was applauded, and greeted with obstreperous Flemish laughter. When an old woman came to offer cakes from her basket ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... a flourish of silver trumpets, was borne in by liveried servants walking two and two, with rubicund marshals strutting in front and behind, bearing white wands in their hands, not only as badges of their office, but also as weapons with which to repel any impertinent inroad upon the dishes in the journey from the kitchen to the hall. Boar's heads, enarmed and endored ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... comes as a pleasant shock. Is it possible that the morning has passed? It seems to have but commenced. I rouse myself and descend to the cabin. Toward the end of the meal a rubicund Frenchman opposite makes the startling proposition that if I wish to send a message home he will undertake to have it delivered. It is not until I notice the little square of oiled paper he is holding out to me that I understand ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... seeing Burke was obvious; he hailed him with acclamations. "I've been meaning to ride over your way for ages," he declared, his rubicund face shining with geniality as he wrung his friend's hand hard. "I was up-country when you came along last with your bride. Dark horse that you are, Burke! I should as soon have thought of getting married myself, as of ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... are really very comfortable here," said he, after scattering these greetings with a cackle of loud laughter that hardly moved the rubicund muscles ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Kent Road, a little way from the Elephant and Castle; and the caravanserai bearing the title of the Jolly Butchers is an unpretending beershop, with no outward and visible signs of especial joviality. On entering I met mine host, rubicund and jolly enough, who politely pioneered me upstairs, when I reported myself as in quest of the linnets. The scene of contest I found to be a largish room, where some twenty or thirty most un-Arcadian looking gentlemen were already assembled, the only adjunct ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... thin; Mrs B. was short and stout. The face of the manager and proprietor of Blewcome's Royal Menagerie was sallow and cadaverous. The face of his spouse was rubicund to a degree. In fact, in everything, the pair were admirably suited, according to the principle, that the more unlike two people are, the better they will agree; and they led a very prosperous "Jack Sprat and his wife" sort of life, roaming from place to place, ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... radiance of many candles and surrounded by a numerous company—fat and thin, old and young, red-faced and pale, gentle and simple. At the end farthest from the street one figure stood erect—a short, round, rubicund little man, wearing a gown of rusty black, one thumb stuck into his vest, and a rosy benignity in the glance with which he scanned the table. He threw back his head, cleared his tight throat sonorously, and began, in tones ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... at his climax in a state of suppressed emotion, which culminated in a chuckle, which shook his rubicund visage and brought a series of twitches to his aching toe. As for Montague, ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... hand, had followed the hint of his father's figure in his make-up, and appeared as a rubicund old gentleman, large in the waist, bald, with an apoplectic tendency, a wheezy asthmatic voice, and ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... and on all kinds of brackets; with samplers and worsted landscapes of ancient date on the walls; with a very old lady in lofty cap and faded silk gown in the chimney corner, where she had sat on her little stool as a girl more than half a century before, and with a hearty, rubicund host presiding over a mighty bowl of wassail, something smaller than an ordinary washhouse copper, in which the hot apples would "hiss and bubble with a rich look and a jolly sound that were perfectly irresistible". Or when the carpet was up, the candles burning brightly, and family, guests, ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... the rubicund gentleman observed. "I have always found you conservative before. Now, go and send sweet Hulda here, and, for Heaven's sake, Patty, don't reveal this bargain ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... quicker perceptions than Mr. Wheelwright—but fortunately his wife was the earliest riser. It happened that as his spouse was exchanging some rather undignified jokes with the milkman, a jolly son of Erin came along, whose rubicund visage kindled with a thousand smiles as his ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... milliner's shop was full of fat squiresses, buying muslin ammunition, to make the ball go off; and the attics, even at four o'clock, were thronged with rubicund damsels, who were already, as Shakspeare says of ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... understood and appreciated. Even when walking alone he was always muttering something to an imaginary listener. A stranger meeting him on such occasions might have supposed that he was holding converse with unseen spirits, though his broad muscular form and rubicund face militated strongly against such a supposition; but no man, woman, or child living within a radius of ten miles would ever have fallen into this mistake. Every one in the neighbourhood knew that "Batushka" (papa), as he was familiarly called, was too prosaical, practical a man to see ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... representations of maids and swains, who combined a pastoral occupation with the gratification of a musical talent; while they gazed with a languishing air on their protrusive neighbour, a portly individual with a highly-coloured, rubicund, and grinning physiognomy, and scalpless cranium, from which he invited the lovers of the narcotic weed to extract a supply of that universal solace. These were supported, on the background, by a mirror of ordinary size; which presented unmistakable ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... towards the west, where the waysides were blue with the flowers of the wild chicory. A priest astride upon a rough old cob passed me, his hitched-up soutane showing his gaitered legs. The French rural priests are generally rubicund, but this one was cadaverous. He would have looked like Death on horseback, swathed in a black mantle, but for the dangling gaitered legs, which spoilt the solemn effect. A very curious figure did he cut upon his shaggy, ambling steed. On ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... walked into the library in the same deliberate way, and turned up the gas. Mr. Frayling came hurrying down, fat and fussy, and puffing a little, but cheerfully rubicund upon the success of the day's proceedings, and apprehending nothing untoward. When he saw his son-in-law he opened his eyes, stopped short, turned ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... grieved," exclaimed the innkeeper, a portly man with rubicund face, "but monsieur can have a table for his refreshment, and he will ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... of Travers Gladwin left Whitney Barnes and the shirt-sleeved Michael Phelan staring blankly at each other. The unfrocked policeman was anything but an imposing figure and the contortions of distress in his rubicund countenance were grotesque enough to kindle the sense of humor in a far less volatile mind than that of Whitney Barnes. His smile came to the surface and spread out in full blossom. But it failed to find reflection in the features ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Lamb imagines him as a rubicund priest of Hymen, and pictures him 'attended with thousands and ten thousands of little loves, and ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... his forehead was high, his eyebrows scanty, his eyes, grey and sly, with a downward tendency, his nose was slightly aquiline, his mouth rather large—a kind of sneering smile played continually on his lips, his complexion was somewhat rubicund. ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... that man's soul. When the author of the "Lost Tales" represented Sisyphus as capturing his guest, the King of Terrors, and stuffing the old glutton with meat and drink until he became "a jolly, rubicund, tun-bellied Death," he gave us a tale which needs no hc fabula docet to ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Locke, taking off his floppy Bangkok hat and using a handkerchief on his face as though it were a blotter. His nose was peeled from sunburn, but his round and rubicund ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... exceedingly florid countenance and good features, eyes full of quickness and shrewdness, but at the same time beaming with good nature. He wears white pantaloons, white frock, and white hat, and is, indeed, all white, with the exception of his polished Wellingtons and rubicund face. He carries a whip beneath his arm, which adds wonderfully to the knowingness of his appearance, which is rather more that of a gentleman who keeps an inn on the Newmarket road, "purely for ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... table she occupied. Her coarse-featured, heavy fare, surrounded by a broad, muslin cap frill, that nearly covered her harsh yellow hair, was lighted up by a pair of small gray eyes, expressing a mixture of cunning and curiosity. Her rubicund visage, gaudy-colored chintz dress, and yellow bandanna handkerchief, produced a sort of glaring sun-flower effect, not mitigated by the contrast afforded by the other members of ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... is a great talker, this man, and a fairly respectable gesticulator, and to him it is we make our first ineffectual tentatives at explaining who indeed we are; but his flow of talk washes that all away again. He has a face of that rubicund, knobby type I have heard an indignant mineralogist speak of as botryoidal, and about it waves a quantity of disorderly blond hair. He is dressed in leather doublet and knee breeches, and he wears over ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... a change in the cashier's appearance. A strange pallor overspread his once rubicund countenance; it wore the peculiarly sinister and stony look of the mysterious visitor. The sullen glare of his eyes was intolerable, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch. The man who had looked so good-humored ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... surprising, since his appetite was most inordinate. He was eating from morning till night; half the time he would be at work cooking some private repast for himself, and he paid a visit to the coffee-pot eight or ten times a day. His rueful and disconsolate face became jovial and rubicund, his eyes stood out like a lobster's, and his spirits, which before were sunk to the depths of despondency, were now elated in proportion; all day he was singing, whistling, laughing, and telling stories. Being mortally afraid of Jim Gurney, he kept close ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... calling and of his race, rubicund of cheek, portly of figure and genial in manner, was over-anxious to please his guests. It was not often that gentlemen of such distinguished appearance called at the "Auberge du Grand Dauphin," seeing that Notre Dame de Vaulx lies perdu on the outskirts of the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... tall and portly, and a wag out of office hours, with a moustache that, in spite of all his efforts, would not turn up, but insisted on making a melancholy inner semicircle just a size smaller than the rubicund circle of his face. How I hated kindly, vulgar Uncle Tom! I used to pray that he might die before the holidays. But he never did. I see now that Uncle Tom was far, far worse than Uncle Thomas, who had had a stroke, and was a kind of furious invalid ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... opened here, and the rubicund visage of Mr. Fogg appeared like the head of the Medusa. He said that 'Captain' had ordered the blue roan to be saddled and brought over to me, but I knew that this was a cunning device on his part, to revisit the dwelling. Miss Bell, somehow caught the idea that Fogg was enamored of her, and the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... happened shortly after the proposed elopement, and which cannot be passed over without mention, was a call from Squire Hennion on Mr. Meredith. The master of Boxely opened the interview by shaking his fist within a few inches of the rubicund countenance of the master of Greenwood, and, suiting his words to the motion, he roared: "May Belza take yer, yer old—" and the particular epithet is best omitted, the eighteenth-century vocabulary being more expressive ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... years old, neither fat nor lean, neither short nor tall, neither rubicund nor pale, neither gay nor sad, neither contented nor discontented, neither energetic nor dull, neither proud nor humble, neither good nor bad, neither generous nor miserly, neither courageous nor cowardly, neither too much nor too little of anything—a man notably moderate in all respects, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... maiden enthroned upon his great shoulder, her soft white arm curled round his shining headpiece. So the throng moved on, until at the very gate it was brought to a stand by a wondrously fat man, who came darting forth from the town with rage in every feature of his rubicund face. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and thick, though in the earlier part of his life he had been thought handsome. His face, latterly, became somewhat rubicund, and his utterance so confused, that Johnson compared it to the gobbling of a turkey. The portrait of him by Reynolds, besides the resemblance of the features, is particularly characterized by the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... of my father's rather garish copy) was a panelled chamber, hung round with rubicund portraits of the male O'Neills from the early ones of the family who had been Lords of Ellan down to the "bad Lord Raa," who had sworn at my grandmother on ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... neat little cottage, some five miles from town, Lived a pretty young maiden, by name Daphne Brown, Like a butterfly, pretty and airy: In a village hard by lived a medical prig, With a rubicund nose, and a full-bottomed wig, Apollo, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... Revolution of July had engendered and incubated a multitude of journals, great and little, bounding with young blood and health—journals whose editors and writers did not desire better sport than to attack the Constitutionnel at right and at left, and to tumble the dear, fat, rubicund, old gentleman, head over heels. Among these was the Charivari, which incontinently laughed at the whole system of the establishment, from the crapulous, corpulent, and Voltairien Etienne, down to the lowest printer's devil. The metaphors, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the great volumes of mist. I glanced out also. Not only was the sea invisible, but even the brow of the cliffs. When he turned towards me, as I passed him, I saw that his face had lost much of its rubicund hue, and looked troubled ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... gratification to bestow. For, in His Worship, the Most Primordial, the High Senior Governour and Primitive Patriarch of all Sextons, Colonel Prowley soon discovered a relative of his own. Sir Joseph Barley, a rubicund old knight, and the Most Primordial in question, after an elaborate investigation and counter-investigation, a jockeying of the wits of very old women, and a raid into divers registers, scrolls, schedules, archives, and the like,—Sir Joseph Barley, I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... distinction to be afflicted with the gout. Quite against the doctor's orders he purchased a stock of port, and began to drink it steadily. He was determined that there should be no mistake about his gout; he was determined to have the gout properly and fully. Indulgence in port made him somewhat rubicund and "portly,"—he who had once been a pale little counter-jumper; and by means of shooting-coats, tight gaiters, and the right shape of hat he turned himself into a passable imitation of the fine old English gentleman. His tone altered, too, and instead of being uniformly ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... stood him up against one of the posts of the piazza to have his laugh out. When he did, however, recover the power of speech, he wiped his eyes and looked around till they rested on Madame Nathalie, when, with his white napkin held up like a shield beside his rubicund visage, he spluttered, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... the little angle of rail may be pushed in or pushed back that shall send the train to one of two places five hundred miles asunder: it may depend upon whether he shall take or not take that half-crown, whether, thirty years after, he shall be taking the chair, a rubicund baronet, at a missionary society meeting, and receive the commendations of philanthropic peers and earnest bishops, or be laboring in chains at Norfolk Island, a brutalized, cursing, hardened, scourge-scarred, despairing wretch, without a hope for this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... slashing the air with a cane, the top of which, made of gold, glittered in the sunshine. The first man might have cut off a head with his own hand, but the second was capable of entangling innocence, virtue, and beauty in the nets of calumny and intrigue, and then poisoning them or drowning them. The rubicund stranger would have comforted his victim with a jest; the other was incapable of a smile. The first was forty-five years old, and he loved, undoubtedly, both women and good cheer. Such men have passions which keep them slaves to their calling. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... person has undergone a similar metamorphosis. He has been credited with a full moon of a face, the rubicund nose of an incorrigible toper, and thick coarse lips always apart because always laughing. The picture would have surprised his friends no less than himself. There have been portraits painted of Rabelais; ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... stared at the speaker. He went on: "Mr. Harkless was an old—and—" He broke off, with a sudden, sharp choking, and for a moment was unable to control an emotion that seemed, for some reason, as surprising and unbefitting, in a person of his rubicund presence, as was his gravity. An astonished tear glittered in the corner of his eye. The grief of the gayer sorts of stout people appears, sometimes, to dumfound even themselves. The young man took off his glasses ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... horrified," said Miss Crewys to the canon, whose admiration and delight were very plainly depicted on his rubicund countenance. "Where are our cloaks and umbrellas? That's what I say to Isabella. Where are our goloshes? Where is anything, indeed, that one would expect to find in a gentleman's hall? Not so much as a walking-stick. Everything to be kept in the outer hall, where tramps could ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... with the new arrival. The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that Mrs. White said, "Tut, tut!" and coughed gently as her husband entered the room, followed by a tall, burly man, beady of eye and rubicund ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... coach swayed to and fro, with its dignified elderly gentlemen and rubicund Lord Mayor, rejoicing in countless turtle feeds—for, reader, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... still more famous ginger-bread cake, and, most famous of all, its lemon biscuits. Even as the Ronders' cab paused for a moment before it turned to pass under the dark Arden Gate on to the asphalt of the Precincts, the great Mrs. Mellock herself, round and rubicund, came to the door and looked about her at the weather. An errand-boy passed, whistling, down the hill, a stiff military-looking gentleman with white moustaches mounted majestically the steps of the Conservative Club; then they rattled under the black archway, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... stirrup, and I swung myself up into the saddle, with which I was but indifferently acquainted. Then Arcolano mounted too, puffing over the effort, for he was a corpulent, rubicund man with the fattest hands I have ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... quick at observation, and took in quickly the fact that all the men were armed, and looked shabbier than their leader, though not so stout; for he was rubicund and portly, where he ought not to have been, for activity, though in a barrel a tubby space does indicate strength. Neither were the noses of the other men so red as their leader's, albeit they were a ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... friend to the house of his brother-in-law, a German named Burkhardt, proprietor of a jeweller's and watchmaker's shop in the Strand. Herr Burkhardt, a well-to-do tradesman, with a rubicund face and an inexhaustible stock of good humour, was excessively fond of showing strangers the sights of London; and his guests had no sooner arrived, than he wanted to take them to Covent Garden theatre. John Clare was very anxious ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... officer of the Legion of honor, which met with difficulty over a gastronomic stomach in keeping with a mouth that stretched from ear to ear, and a pair of powerful shoulders. The torso was supported by a spindling pair of legs, while the rubicund tints on the cheek-bones bore testimony to a rollicking life. The lower part of the cheeks, which were deeply wrinkled, overhung a coat-collar of velvet the worse for wear. Among other adornments, the ex-dragoon wore enormous gold rings in ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... song under his breath and slapped his reins against the flanks of the plodding horse to keep time. He came into a piece of woodland. He seemed to take cheery and fresh interest in this place. He poked his rubicund face out from the shadow of the chaise's canopy and peered to right and to left. There was a smile in his puckery eyes. When there were trees ahead of him, trees behind him, and trees all about he pulled his ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... and detectives were doing until the middle of the afternoon. And then Mr. Elkin, the manager of the bank from which Chatfield had withdrawn the estate and the private balance, came hurrying to the "Angel" and to Mrs. Greyle, his usually rubicund face pale with emotion, his hand waving a scrap of crumpled paper. Mrs. Greyle and Audrey were at that moment in consultation with Sir Cresswell Oliver and Copplestone—the bank manager burst in ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... out before him, dotted over with green fields and groups of trees. Raoul had been there about ten minutes, during five of which he was lost in reverie, when there appeared within the circle comprised in his rolling gaze a man with a rubicund face, who, with a napkin around his body, another under his arm, and a white cap upon his head, approached him, holding paper, pen and ink ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... myself no longer, and burst into a roar of laughter; for my uncle, stumpy, fat, and rubicund, ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Holmes of fiction is a gaunt figure, with a hatchet face, spare of flesh. Our Little Man is a chubby lad, standing about four foot ten in his stockinged feet, rubicund and corpulent, and he wears a mackintosh with a very mackintoshy smell in all weathers. He never did a day's work, and he never means to try, but he is a genius at getting it out of others. Some say he is of Swiss origin, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... eyes to the outlook from the window, which presented a happy combination of grange scenery with marine. Upon the irregular slope between the house and the quay was an orchard of aged trees wherein every apple ripening on the boughs presented its rubicund side towards the cottage, because that building chanced to lie upwards in the same direction as the sun. Under the trees were a few Cape sheep, and over them the stone chimneys of the village below: outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack, and the violet waters of the bay, seamed ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... proceeded westward. Dismissing the cab in Waterloo Place, they went along Pall Mall on foot, where in place of the usual well-dressed clubbists—rubicund with alcohol—were to be seen, in linen pinafores, flocks of house-painters pallid from white lead. When they had reached the Green Park, Cytherea proposed that they should sit down awhile under the young elms at the brow ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... fresh and eager, in her pretty dinner dress, a curious contrast to the antiquated garb and parchment face of old Cazalette, who sat by her, watchful and doubting; the officialdom-suggesting figure of the police-inspector, erect and rigid in his close-fitting uniform; the detective, rubicund and confident, though of what one scarcely knew; Lorrimore and myself, keen listeners and watchers, and last, but not by any means the least notable, the bland, suave Chinaman in his neat native dress, sitting modestly ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... man about sixty, with keen gray eyes, a good-humored mouth, a nose whose enlargement had not of late gone in the direction of its original design, and a face more than inclining to the rubicund, suggestive of good living as well as open air. Altogether he had the look of a man who knew what he was about, and was on tolerable terms with himself, and on still better with his neighbor. The heart under his ribs was larger even than indicated ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... repeat their names like a fragment from a choir book, from Homer to Victor Hugo. Then his glance would seek another head equally glorious although less white, with blonde and grizzled beard, rubicund nose and bilious cheeks that in certain moments scattered bits of scale. The sweet eyes of his godfather—yellowish eyes spotted with black dots—used to receive Ulysses with the doting affection of an aging, old bachelor who needs to invent a family. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... they want to stop my star performance for?" asked Santa Claus, pulling off his beard and revealing the rubicund face of Ben Tremont, who was slowly baking beneath the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Thorpe, he was not even thinking about the vast fortune that had been placed at the young man's disposal. His soul was sick. In spite of all that he could do to prevent it, his gaze went furtively to Murray's rubicund jowl, and then shifted to the rapt, eager face of his young mistress. Twenty-five thousand dollars! There was no excuse for him now. With all that money he could not hope to stay on in service. He was rich. He would have ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... representatives in her pages will convince us. In "Adam Bede," there is Mr. Irwine, the vicar, with avowedly no qualification for his profession, placidly playing chess with his mother, stroking his dogs, and dipping into Greek tragedies; there is the excellent Martin Poyser at the Farm, good-natured and rubicund; there is his wife, somewhat too sharply voluble, but only in behalf of cleanliness and honesty and order; there is Captain Donnithorne at the Hall, who does a poor girl a mortal wrong, but who is, after all, such a nice, good-looking fellow; there are Adam and Seth Bede, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... little alarmed, and the Professor horrified, on looking at their companions' faces, to observe that they were pinched, haggard, and old-looking, as if they all had aged somewhat during the last few hours! Captain Wopper's rubicund visage was pale, and his nose blue; the face of Lewis was white all over, and drawn, as if he were suffering pain; Dr Lawrence's countenance was yellow, and Slingsby's was green. The Professor himself was as bad as his comrades, and the porters were ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... slept away half of the sixteen, and a taste of the seventeenth salt-water glass of gin-toddy. He rubbed his grey eyes, that he might peer through the grey of the morning; the fresh breeze blew about his grizzly locks, and cooled his rubicund nose. The revenue-cutter, whose name was the Active, cast off from the buoy; and, with a fresh breeze, steered her course for the ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicund face with reddish brown eyes—previously I had seen him only against the light. "One moment, sir," said I as he turned. He stared. "One moment," he said, "certainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for longer, and it is not asking too much—your ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... dead, mother divorced and leading a pleasant existence amongst the capitals of Europe. The uncle, although maintaining a decent appearance of grief, was obviously, at heart, relieved to be rid of his nephew so easily. Poor Carfax! For so rubicund and noisy a person he left strangely little mark upon the world. Within a fortnight the college had nearly lost account of his existence. He lent to Sannet Wood a sinister air that caused numberless ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... doin' his best, Nathan Pilley," answered another man, stout and stocky, with bushy side whiskers flanking around a rubicund face, out of which stared two prominent ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... was soon accomplished. His Excellency's footman mounted the horse, and Sir Asinus entered the chariot and found himself opposite an elderly gentleman, very richly clad, and with a smiling and rubicund face which seemed to indicate a love of the best living. This gentleman was Francis Fauquier, Governor of his Majesty's loyal colony of Virginia; and he seemed to be no stranger to ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... editorial apartment, where I found Arncliffe giving audience to his news editor, Mr. Pink, and one of his leader-writers, a very old Advocate identity, Mr. Samuel Harbottle—-a white-whiskered and rubicund gentleman, who was entitled to use most of the letters of the alphabet after his name should he so choose. I was presented to both these gentlemen, and in a few minutes they ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Palmer, gave a dinner at Carlton House, when a fair trial was to be given to his claret. A select circle of gastronomes was to be present, amongst whom was Lord Yarmouth, well known in those days by the appellation of "Red-herrings," from his rubicund whiskers, hair, and face, and from the town of Yarmouth deriving its principal support from the importation from Holland of that fish; Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, Sir William Knighton, and Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, were also ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... voice was rough it was not unkindly, and as John came out of his dreams and wheeled about he saw again the rubicund face of Sergeant Scheller. ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... another officer, whose rather rubicund face told of credit somewhere, and the product of credit,—good wine and good dinners generally. "That is true, Monredin! The old curmudgeon of a broker at the corner of the Cul de Sac had the impudence to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was seated just ahead of her with what she afterward described as a Blonde. Then her uncle had turned around, and seeing her, had been surprised into a smile that spread genially all over his plump and rubicund face. Then he had turned to face ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... grand-maternal caps. So he made his toilet with care, and put his best hat on to hide his shaven crown. He then kept his door ajar, and waited for a chance of speaking to the justices. One soon came: a portly old gentleman, with a rubicund face and honest eye, walked slowly along the corridor, looking as wise as he could, cringed on by Cooper and Dr. Bailey; the latter had arrived post haste, and Baker had been sent for. Alfred came out, touched his hat respectfully, and begged a private interview with the magistrate. The ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... pasture lands, arrived at some rocks interspersed with stunted ilex, where a lamb was roasting for our dinner. The meridian sun had long ere this pierced the clouds that overhung our departure, and the sight of the lamb completely irradiated the rubicund visage of the plethoric clerk. A low round table was set down on the grass, under the shade of a large boulder stone. An ilex growing from its interstices seemed to live on its wits, for not an ounce of soil ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... and the canon came in glowing hot. "Pouf!" and he wiped his rubicund, round visage with a handkerchief as brilliant. Coming straight from the glare out of doors, he was not aware of the stranger in the salon till his eyes were used to the gloom. Then madame and Bessie effected Harry's introduction, and as Harry, with a rare wisdom, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a [v]rubicund portrait of His Majesty George III. Here they used to sit in the shade of a long, lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... court was in session and Hal sat for a while in the court-room, watching Judge Denton. Here was another prosperous and well-fed appearing gentleman, with a rubicund visage shining over the top of his black silk robe. The young miner found himself regarding both the robe and the visage with suspicion. Could it be that Hal was becoming cynical, and losing his faith in his fellow man? What he thought of, in connection with the Judge's ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... or perhaps playing off the trick of the "honest landlord" on some stranger. The decanters and wine-bottles on the move, and the beer and soda founts pouring out continual streams, with a whiz. Stage-drivers, etc., asked to drink with the aristocracy, and mine host treating and being treated. Rubicund faces; breaths odorous of brandy-and-water. Occasionally the pop ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... friends said, it was a physical impossibility for it to do so, and his huge, rough body was as uncouth as his manners, and as unwieldy as his slow-moving tongue. Taylor, otherwise "Twirly," the butcher, was a man so genial and rubicund that in five minutes you began to wish that he was built like the lower animals that have no means of giving audible expression to their good humor, or, if they have, there is no necessity to notice it except by a well-directed ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... three,—two, manifestly travellers of an humble class; the third, who sat apart with a large glass of beer before him, more deserving of notice. His age might be about sixty. His hair was grizzled; his face, and especially his nose, large and rubicund, and his belly portly. He wore a black frock and dingy white neckcloth; and he made no use of a pipe. All this we noticed while advancing towards the hostess, who, as usual, looked cold upon us for an instant, and ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... muscular, and grave as a statue, stands on the further side. Is this really a bacchanal? Yes, for there is the paunchy Silenus, there are the fauns, there the vat and vine-wreaths and drinking-horns. And yet it cannot be a bacchanal. Compare with it one of Rubens's orgies, where the overgrown, rubicund men and women and fauns tumble about in tumultuous, riotous intoxication: that is a bacchanal; they have been drinking, those magnificent brutes, there is wine firing their blood and weighing down their ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... three-ringed circuses was sellin' for six bits a throw me an' Bart couldn't buy a whisker from a dead tiger." The dreadful admission brought a dull flush to Mr. Gibney's already rubicund countenance. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... by an old gray-headed seaman, with a rubicund face, whose open countenance betrayed ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... Commodore Vanderbilt," said the other, the wearer of a rubicund face, and great blue eyes. "My forte was oysters and economy. I grew wondrous fat and conservative, and one day awoke with a stomach that exclaimed, 'I have become round, so that you can trundle me for the exercise you deprived ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... forward, I persisted in taking a side seat next to the wall, and quite near the door; for my guide, in order to show his goodwill and to atone for what might seem rudeness, was bent on marshalling me almost up to the high seats that faced the congregation, where sat my rubicund old Friend lady, whose aspect betokened that she had just ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... a head of hair which has changed from dark to blond? What is there comic about a rubicund nose? And why does one laugh at a negro? The question would appear to be an embarrassing one, for it has been asked by successive psychologists such as Hecker, Kraepelin and Lipps, and all have given different replies. And yet I rather fancy the correct answer was ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... before I saw van Manderpootz again, but one bright spring evening his broad, rubicund face looked out of the phone-screen ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... had a heavy jaw and rather too rubicund a complexion. He looked as if apoplexy would get him some day. However, his head was like a lion's of the tribe of Judah; his eye was kindly; his manner dignified, courteous, and charming. Queed had decided not to set the Colonel right in his views ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... hard in texture and rubicund as beef and good ale could make them, leaned silent a moment high above the dim pavement. St. Bat's little bell struck the three quarters before ten; lightly, delicately, with always a promise of the great booming which should follow on the stroke of the hour. Its perfection of sound contrasted ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Still they came and went. I used to pay my friend the rubicund surgeon to test some of these highly recommended animals in a short ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... A rubicund Mexican priest is the celebrant, while two old Mexicans in modern dress, and a Pueblo Indian in a red blanket, are acolytes. When the host is elevated, an Indian at the door beats a villainous drum and four musket shots are discharged. After the services are ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... an offensive insinuation, for his face, usually rubicund from the effects of champagne and oysters, became redder, and his lips were tightly compressed; but he merely reiterated, "I ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... approached it, he saw the landlord standing at its entrance—John Cox. A rubicund man, with a bald head, who evidently did justice to his own good cheer, if visitors did not. Shading his eyes with one hand, he had the other extended in the direction of the village, pointing out the way to a strange gentleman ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... come back again each man laden with the spoils of the shrubberies—holly, mistletoe, and evergreens—ruthlessly plundered under cover of the darkness. A couple of days before "the day," the sergeant-major enters the barrack-room, a smile playing upon his rubicund features. We all know what his errand is and he knows right well that we do; but he cannot refrain from the customary short patronising harangue, "Our worthy captain—liberal gent you know—deputed me—what you like for dinner—plum-puddings, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... see him very often and was in no way intimate with him, I kept my ears open for any account of his doings. From one point of view, the Club Window outlook, he was a very usual figure, one of those stout, rubicund, jolly men, a good polo player, a good man in a house party, genial-natured, and none too brilliantly brained, whom every one liked and no one thought about. All this he was on one side of the report, but, on the other, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... Mr. Jack-o-lantern assumed a more grimly realistic aspect. There was something sinister in the squint of his eye, and uncanny in the way his rubicund nose gleamed. On entering the room a little while after I ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Courtecuisse, in whom you would scarcely have recognized the once jovial forester, the rubicund do-nothing, whose wife made his morning coffee as we have before seen. Aged, and thin, and haggard, he presented to all eyes a lesson that no one learned. "He tried to climb higher than the ladder," was what his neighbors said when others ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... February, had succeeded in committing frightful ravages upon Allied commerce and seriously threatened to starve the British Isles. Admiral Sims was two years older than Pershing and as typical a sailor as the former was soldier. With his bluff and genial, yet dignified, manner, his rubicund complexion, closely-trimmed white beard, and piercing eyes, no one could have mistaken his calling. Free of speech, frank in praise and criticism, abounding in indiscretions, he possessed the capacity ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... rubicund, as jovial, as cynical as ever. But few cast him more than a passing glance. Then they gave an audible gasp, induced by an ingenuous compound of amazement, disappointment, and admiration. They had been prepared to forgive, to endure, to make ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... needed a change of tone before I could contemplate with equanimity the meeting of that individual. I had been preparing myself to confront all the ethically excellent young men and Fox was, ethically speaking, far from excellent, middle-aged, rubicund, leery—a free lance of genius. I made the necessary change in my tone of mind and ran ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... seen a somewhat unprepossessing assistant district attorney lounging in front of the jury box, taking apparently no great interest in the proceedings, and a worried-looking young Italian sitting at the prisoner's table between a rubicund little man with a round red face and a tall, grave, longish-haired lawyer with a frame not unlike that of Abraham Lincoln, over whose wrinkled face played from time to time the suggestion of a smile. Behind a balustrade were the ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... walk warily, and not stir up strife," quoth the rubicund prior, who looked at once a benevolent and a strong-willed man. "We will pray for the restoration—the permanent restoration of the good king; but we must avoid stirring up the hearts of his subjects in such a way as will make them ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... financially speaking; possessed of an ill-kept house, bad servants, and nine neglected children. This prospect, however alarming to others, had great charms for Prue; nor was the Reverend Gamaliel Bliss repugnant to her, being a rubicund, bland personage, much given to fine linen, long dinners, and short sermons. His third spouse had been suddenly translated, and though the years of mourning had not yet expired, things went so hardly with Gamaliel, that he could no ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... his acquaintance to draw up the memoire, and introduced him accordingly; telling me at the same time, in private, that if he was not a drunkard, he would be at the head of his profession. He had indeed all the outward signs of a sot; a sleepy eye, a rubicund face, and carbuncled nose. He seemed to be a little out at elbows, had marvellous foul linen, and his breeches were not very sound: but he assumed an air of importance, was very courteous, and very solemn. I asked him if he did not sometimes divert himself with the muse: ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... grew horribly long, and to kill it he volunteered to act as witness to the butcher's marriage, one being wanted. The effects of a jovial night, fortified by some matutinal potations, were still visible in the small black eyes of the rubicund butcher—a huge man, apparently of cheery disposition; he swung to and fro before the shiny oak table as might one of his own carcasses. His bride, a small-featured woman, wrapped in a plaid shawl, evidently fearing ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... said Havill, who was also present, in the tone of one who, though sitting in this rubicund company, was not of it. 'I could have told you the truth of it any day ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... of them offered little. The second of them developed Johnny McComas. He sat at a table, talking too familiarly, or at least too forbearingly, with a rubicund, hard-faced man in shirt-sleeves standing at his elbow—probably the head of the place, or his first aide; and he was buying obviously unnecessary glasses of things for two of the young creatures in short skirts—Gertrudes ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... A large looming, rubicund visage smiles kindly on me, bringing back into my heart the old, odd mingling of instinctive liking held in check by conscientious disapproval. I turn from it, and see a massive, clean-shaven face, with the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... redden. render red &c. adj.; redden, rouge; rubify[obs3], rubricate; incarnadine.; ruddle[obs3]. Adj. red &c. n., reddish; rufous, ruddy, florid, incarnadine, sanguine; rosy, roseate; blowzy, blowed[obs3]; burnt; rubicund, rubiform[obs3]; lurid, stammell blood red[obs3]; russet buff, murrey[obs3], carroty[obs3], sorrel, lateritious[obs3]; rubineous[obs3], rubricate, rubricose[obs3], rufulous[obs3]. rose-colored, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... after the visit to Cadurcis, when Lady Annabel was sitting alone, a postchaise drove up to the hall, whence issued a short and stout woman with a rubicund countenance, and dressed in a style which remarkably blended the shabby with the tawdry. She was accompanied by a boy between eleven and twelve years of age, whose appearance, however, much contrasted with that of his mother, for he was pale and slender, with long ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... office window threw the light of the glass-framed candle straight upon Hart's rubicund face, and that face was a study. He faltered ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... consciousness of two men riding round the store-wing and dismounting. One of the two remained in the background screened by the trails of native cucumber overhanging the veranda end. The other—a wiry, powerful figure in uniform, with a rubicund face, black bristling moustache and beard and prominent black eyes, reminding one of the eyes of a bull—walked forward and spoke with an air of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed |
