"Rubicund" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... replied the rubicund damsel, as she moved briskly about her work. She had a peculiarity of wearing very short skirts, lest they should impede her progress; but once that Andy ventured a complimentary joke on her ankles, he met with such scathing scorn that he kept aloof from the subject in future, though ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... patients when his boluses fail to save them, and divides the glory with the local Fourth of July orators with a suitable poem. His magnum opus is an elementary chemistry in verse for use in schools. He had a chubby, rubicund face and a head of iron grey curls which ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... happened that day at dinner. Grandpapa, like a great many other persons in Finland, being a vegetarian, had gone to the rubicund and comfortable landlord that morning and explained that he wanted vegetables and fruit for his dinner. At four o'clock, the time for our mid-day meal, we all seated ourselves at table with excellent appetites, the Judge being on my left hand and his ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... haste, and opening the door, was heard condoling 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 of visage. ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... 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
... the plate was slowly making his way towards the pew in which she sat, and with her gaze fixed on him, she began fumbling with the clasp of her purse, under cover of her muff. She had never seen such a rubicund portly gentleman, with two double chins and expansive bald spot on his crown. She held the coin between her fingers awaiting his slow approach. Just as he reached the end of their pew where Phil was sitting, she sneezed. Not a loud ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... astonished at the change he saw upon the strong man of rubicund countenance, and his heart filled with compassion. The factor was sitting up in bed, looking very white and worn and troubled. Even his nose had grown thin and white. He held out his hand to him, and said to his wife, "Tak ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... daughter of the GROSSE KURFURST, and so very fat and rubicund, had a Son once: he too is mentionable in his way,—as a milestone (parish milestone) in the obscure Chronology of those parts. Her first husband was the Duke of Courland; to him she brought an heir, who became Duke in his turn,—and was the final Duke, LAST of the "Kettler" or native ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... John Oxon," he said, a broad grin on his rubicund face. "This very week he comes to us, and he and I are cronies, yet he has blabbed nothing of what is being buzzed about ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hum of voices, the stamping of feet, the calls and orders, and sounds of laughter, mingle in confusion. Cigar-smoke and the steam from the glasses fill the room—all too small—with a thick white mist, through which rubicund faces dimly shine like the red sun through ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... coalscuttle bonnets, and 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 ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... was short 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 manner in which the hand is drawn, so as to give it a great air of ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... 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 ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... enjoy a fair amount of fun, whether it was genuine or not is another point, nor would I like to vouch for its being altogether devoid of irony. "Father Christmas" paid us his customary visit anyway, in his mantle of snow—fancy snow within fifteen degrees of the line!—which merry, rubicund, and very ancient man was ably personated by a gigantic marine, the necessary barrel-like proportions being conveyed by a ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Perry was a sleek, rubicund man, with a bristling white moustache, bushy white eyebrows, and a shining bald head. He was certainly not handsome and he was a very tiresome, pompous sort of person. But if he had looked like the Archangel Michael and talked with the tongues of men ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 than refined—"fer sendin' ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... at either University. Spenser is, of course, the glory of the Cambridge Pembroke, though were the fellowships of that college made to depend upon passing a yearly examination in the Faerie Queen, to be conducted by Dean Church, there would be wailing and lamentation within her rubicund walls. Sir Thomas Wyatt was at St. John's, Fulke Greville Lord Brooke at Jesus, Giles and Phineas Fletcher were at King's, Herrick was first at St. John's, but migrated to the Hall, where he is still reckoned very pretty reading, even ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... in your search, only—I don't like to spoil a picture. You brought a very good one to my mind as you turned the corner, a 'Descent into Egypt,' that I saw long ago. The blot there, I remember, was a very stout, rubicund Joseph, not at all ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... in question was stout and rubicund, with smooth, tightly-braided brown hair, worn very flat and close to the head, and bright observant black eyes. She wore a high black satin dress, and had apparently been poured into it, so tight was it, so absolutely moulded to her form. A double gold chain was arranged over her ample ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... the two sitters was a young lady in white muslin, who listened somewhat impatiently to the remarks of her companion, an elderly, rubicund personage, whom the merest stranger could have pronounced to be her father. The watcher evinced no signs of moving, and it became evident that affairs were not so simple as they first had seemed. The ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the "lions" of Youghal. A most accomplished cicerone he proved to be. As we left his house we met in the street two or three of the "evicted" tenants, whom he introduced to me. One of these, Mr. Loughlin, was the holder of farms representing a rental of L94. A stalwart, hearty, rotund, and rubicund farmer he was, and in reply to my query how long the holdings he had lost had been in his family, he answered, "not far from two hundred years." Certainly some one must have blundered as badly as at Balaklava to make it necessary for ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... 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 ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... 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 ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... 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
... of the moderns, as if men now-a-days were in every respect inferior to their 99ancestors; but I maintain, and challenge contradiction, that there are many stout rubicund gentlemen in this metropolis that might be backed for eating or drinking with any Bacchanalian or masticator since the days of Adam himself. What was Offellius Bibulus, the Roman parasite, or Silenus Ebrius, or Milo, who could knock down an ox, and eat him up directly ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... guess I owe it all to you," replied Tavender. Traces of the old Quaker effect which had been so characteristic of him still hung about his garb and mien, but there shone a new assurance on his benignant, rubicund face. Prosperity had visibly liberalized and enheartened him. He shook Thorpe's hand again. "Yes, sir—it must have been all through you!" he repeated. "I got my cable three weeks ago—'Hasten to London, urgent business, expenses ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... a man of 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
... to luncheon 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 this reference ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... 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
... with his run, he sprang to the mound of bodies, and the first that met his eyes was that of his uncle. But he had hardly recognized the rubicund face now furrowed with blue lines, and seen the stiffened arms and the gunshot wound before he gave a stifled cry, exclaiming, "Let ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... the other 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, ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... rubicund face was a study as he leaned forth, nodding to his cronies, and shouting at ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... pleasures,—mostly waltzes, they being the special delight of Frau Stark. When Borgert entered the ballroom the band struck up the latest waltz,—"Over the Waves,"—and he noticed Frau Stark, flaming like a peony, perspiration streaming down her rubicund face, being handed, true to his programme, by Lieutenant Specht to his smiling comrade, von Meckelburg. Frau Stark just took the time to gulp a glass of lemonade, and then was off again, breathing ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... in the artistes' restaurant. At the small tables sat bony, close-cropped men of a peculiar rubicund type, having dinner with some girl or other from the neighborhood. They were acrobats, clowns, and wrestlers, people of a homogeneous type, dressed in loud checks, with enormous cuffs and boots with almost armor-plated ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... 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 institutions ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... this on the train as the intelligent readers will gather from the chirography. I have just had my breakfast, and it was funny to study the menu card for inexpensive nourishment with staying powers. I shared a tiny table with a large gentleman whose rubicund neck hung over his collar in back in what was distinctly not the line of beauty, a chatty soul, conversation not at all impeded by food ... needed a few table traffic regulations ... The noble head of the animal to whose tribe he belongs beamed ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... time, however, his personal appearance had undergone a marked change. He was rubicund, and more youthful of countenance; shabbily smart in dress; excessively "horsey," ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... sun came down—the tinge of many mountains and the distant sea—until the sun himself settled quietly into it, and there grew richer and more ripe (as old bottled wine is fed by the crust), and bowed his rubicund farewell, through the postern of the scaur-gate, to the old Hall, and the valley, and the face ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... good nature, and from a kindly feeling for 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 of the party. The wine was produced, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... 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; I have seen ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Villages took shape, straggled into towns, widened into cities and coalesced into kingdoms and empires: and so, the civilisation of which we are partakers crawled laboriously into being, with the brewer somewhere in the centre, active, rubicund and disputatious, as he has continued to date, with a seat on the County Council which he had swindled some thirsty statesman out of, and more property than he ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... will remember how Lamb imagines him as a rubicund priest of Hymen, and pictures him 'attended with thousands and ten thousands of little loves, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... long visit. About an hour after I had arrived, Colonel Delmar made his appearance: he was a cousin of Lord de Versely's, but I certainly should not, from his appearance, have supposed him to be a Delmar: for he was short, round-shouldered, and with a fat, rubicund face, apparently about forty years of age. I observed, after our introduction, that his eyes were very often directed towards me; but his manner was courteous, and, although his appearance at first sight was not prepossessing, his conversation was very agreeable, and he was very gentleman-like. ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... Ambrose reigned in undisputed possession of the woman's social rights in Billingsfield. She was an excellent person in every way. She had once been handsome and even now she was fine-looking, of goodly stature, if also of goodly weight; rosy, even rubicund, in complexion, and rotund of feature; looking at you rather severely out of her large grey eyes, but able to smile very cheerfully and to show an uncommonly good set of teeth; twisting her thick grey hair into a small knot ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... "here we have many friends and all fine blades. This is indeed a pleasure party." His eyes travelled from the table to the window, where the man in black still sat and read quite unconcernedly. Something like surprise puckered Cocardasse's rubicund face. "You here, AEsop?" ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 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 waves ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mrs. Maynard sprang after him, and the little major leaped upon a chair, his face aglow, jolly, rubicund, beaming with bliss and triumph. She looked up, almost wringing her hands, and turned half appealingly to the colonel, who was laughing heartily on the sofa, never dreaming Sloat could be ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... in the hammock, one foot used to propel herself gently back and forth. The newly-acquired striped dress was such a tight fit for her rubicund form, that it cracked ominously every time the wearer took a deep breath. But the short-coming of the two fronts over her ample bosom was camouflaged with the plaid ribbon and many pins. The corsage bouquet was tucked high under her chin where it ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... was in the club at the same hour, and again Major Selby entered. This time he walked with considerable difficulty, and I noticed an expression of pain and malaise upon his rubicund countenance. He ordered a whisky and soda from the servant, and ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... tall and 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 ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... virtues and all the vices wherewith it is pleased to charge itself; and nothing really better explains the character of a people than their choice of a national hero. Fifty years ago John Bull was the typical Englishman. Stout, rubicund and healthy, with a loud voice and a somewhat aggressive manner, he belonged distinctly to the middle classes. He had a precise idea of his rights and a flattering opinion of his merits; he was peaceable, but ready enough ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... both physically and 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 ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... sots. The 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. (Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires," (MS.) ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... finally into hell without finding the bottom. And then when I had no more a drop of blood in my veins, when my heart no longer beat in my body, and I was ruined at all points, the demon, still fresh, white, rubicund, glowing, and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • 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 old ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... liquor, 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 of ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... comprehension on the heights and depths of the Eaux Chaudes ravine, as we turn the foot of the V and pull steadily upward and inward again. There is Madame Baudot at the doorway, hearing the distant wheels, ready to welcome us with all her heart; there appear her daughter, Madame Julie, and the rubicund serving-woman; and even the square, white cap of the chef bobs up and down behind them, within ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... little chorus singer is here to offer that?" said the bishop, insolently turning his great rubicund face towards Philippe. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... heron's feather. The hero of Sherwood was personated by a tall, well-limbed fellow, to whom, being really a forester of Bowland, the character was natural. Beside him stood a very different figure, a jovial friar, with shaven crown, rubicund cheeks, bull throat, and mighty paunch, covered by a russet habit, and girded in by a red cord, decorated with golden twist and tassel. He wore red hose and sandal shoon, and carried in his girdle a Wallet, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... could 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. He it was who had given ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of fat, who, perhaps, was even now at his heels. A slouch-hat, crowning hollow eyes and haggard beard, filled him with joy: it marked a bran-bread man and a brother. He smiled approvingly at a shrivelled form with hobbling gait; but from the fat and the rubicund he turned with severest frown. They were fleshly sinners, insults to himself, corrupters of youth, gorged drones, law-breakers. He was ready to say, with the statesman of old: "What use can the state turn a man's body to, when all between the throat and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... my peculiar pleasure was the little thick-shaded garden which adjoins the convent and commands from its massive artificial foundations an enchanting view of the lake. Part of it is laid out in cabbages and lettuce, over which a rubicund brother, with his frock tucked up, was bending with a solicitude which he interrupted to remove his skullcap and greet me with the unsophisticated sweet-humoured smile that every now and then in Italy does so much ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... 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. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... that queer pictures and absurd pictures remain in my memory, when better ones pass away by the score. There is a picture of Venus, combing her son Cupid's head with a small-tooth comb, and looking with maternal care among his curls; this I shall not forget. Likewise, a picture of a broad, rubicund Judith by Bardone,—a widow of fifty, of an easy, lymphatic, cheerful temperament, who has just killed Holofernes, and is as self-complacent as if she had been carving a goose. What could possibly have stirred up this pudding of a woman (unless it ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sulky, wholly puzzled. Then one of the speakers rose. At first sight the preacher looked like anything but an apostle; his plump, rounded body gave no hint of asceticism, and his merry, pure eye twinkled from the midst of a most rubicund expanse of countenance. He looked like one who had found the world a pleasant place, and Jim gruffly described him as a "jolly old bloke." But the voice of this comfortable, suave-looking missionary by no means matched his appearance. He spoke with a ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless, sleepy stories about nothing. ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... 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 ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... 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 ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'feard goin' to-morrow marnin' up to the Five Sisters with ne'er a tool and ne'er a man,—Leach 'ull be that wild!" said Spruce, his rubicund face paling at the very thought—"If I could but ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... The Inspector's rubicund countenance was white with fury. His head kept turning in the direction of Laura, to whom the Professor was busy rendering ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on the occasion of asylum reunions. No one could exceed him in the respect he showed to a coroneted head, even when cracked; and a bishop under his charge was always secured, as far as possible, from the least whisper of heretical conversation. He possessed besides a pleasant rubicund countenance and an immaculate wardrobe. He was further fortunate in having in his assistants, Dr Escott and Dr Sherlaw, two young gentlemen whose medical knowledge was almost equal to the affability of their manners and the excellence ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... slightly portly gentleman of fifty-eight, though he did not look his age, thanks to the correct life he led. He had a military carriage, a rubicund face, a heavy mustache, keen, twinkling eyes, and a head of iron-gray hair. He was a childless widower, and Victor Nevill, the son of his dead sister Elizabeth, was his nephew, and presumably his heir. He had had another sister—his favorite one—but ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... the rubicund gossips, with their short necks covered with gold chains, to Madame Taverneau's young and slender guest, I was free to talk with her under cover of Louisa Pugett's ballads and sonatas executed by infant phenomena upon a cracked piano hired from ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... of horse's hoofs was heard on the gravel outside, and a stoutly built, rubicund man, on a very large horse, drew ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... just arrived from Albany, who knew her family there." Kitty dropped her most formal courtesy and raised her eyes to the face of the stranger. Verily, Oliver possessed positive genius for disguises, and troubled as she was Kitty could not restrain a smile as she recognized in the rubicund countenance and somewhat portly form of the gentleman bowing before her an admirable caricature of no less a person than her respected uncle, Cornelius ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... 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
... to possess the outward and visible signs of alcoholic excess, so much the worse for him—Mr. Creddle was touchy on the subject of his family and did not wish to please. His own nose was slightly rubicund, but it was solely owing to the east winds which constantly blew across it as he worked for the Council on the long roads near the sea; for he was a sober man, and when he did have a glass of beer on a Saturday night, he brought it home in a jug ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... from the division battling beyond the Marne. Their metal fittings were dented by projectiles, their wind-shields broken by star-shaped holes. From their interiors appeared men and more men; some on foot, others on canvas stretchers—faces pale and rubicund, profiles aquiline and snubby, red heads and skulls wrapped in white turbans stiff with blood; mouths that laughed with bravado and mouths that groaned with bluish lips; jaws supported with mummy-like bandages; ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... boy, do you smoke?—Well then, load away." And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and notwithstanding my host's rubicund nose, I could hardly ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... seeing that I had gone down to the place where we used to receive the holy communion, called Communichino, the conversa of my aunt rang the bell for the priest to come with the pyx.[2] He was a man of about fifty years of age, very corpulent, with a rubicund face, and a type of physiognomy as vulgar as it ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... person's stomach, Roderick assured him that his snake was a copper-head and had been generated by the immense quantities of that base metal with which he daily defiled his fingers. Again, he assaulted a man of rubicund visage, and told him that few bosom serpents had more of the devil in them than those that breed in the vats of a distillery. The next whom Roderick honored with his attention was a distinguished clergyman, who happened just then to be engaged ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... He 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 these a streaming woollen ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... 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 me of.' Henceforward, not even the unequalled advantages of the Baltimore ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... at five, crowded the men, ay, and the women and children, of Rangeley and thereabout. They came as the winds and waves come when forests and navies are rended and stranded. Horse, foot, and charioteers, they thronged toward the rubicund fountain of education. From houses that lurked invisible in clearings suddenly burst forth a population, an audience ardent with patriotism, eager for politics even from a Cockney interpreter, and numerous enough to stir electricity in a speaker's mind. Some of the matrons ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... alarming symptoms which had filled me with dread a few months before. "I begin to think," he remarked often, "that by continuing this life, as simple as that which a bird leads flying from bough to bough, I am to grow stout and elderly, and go on getting gray, rubicund, with an amplitude of white waistcoat, until I am seventy years of age or so. My father and mother each died young, but both by accident as it were: the habit of both families was of long life and great strength. I confess I should like to live for a good many years yet. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... host, in evident delight, as I stood dipping my nose in the second cupful of the cool, revivifying liquid, and peering in a congratulatory kind of way at the blurred and rubicund reflection of my features in the bottom of the cup, "Well-sir, blame-don! ef it don't do a feller good to see you enjoyin' of it thataway! But don't you drink too much o' the worter!—'cause there're some sweet milk over there in one o' them crocks, maybe; and ef you'll jest, kindo' ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... of the "Burton Arms," was of some five and fifty—"or by'r lady," three score years, of a rubicund and hale complexion; and though her short neck and corpulent figure might have set her down as "doubly hazardous," she looked a good life for many years to come. In height and breadth she most nearly resembled a sugar-hogshead, whose ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... standing where she was. In a little while the heavy door opened, and a portly, rubicund man came out with a smile on his face. He broke into a laugh, when halfway across the room, as if the memory of what he had heard were too much for his gravity. The doorkeeper slipped into the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lilies enough in the square garden to have furnished a whole century of poets with similes; and in the posy-bed under the front windows were tulips of Chinese awkwardness and splendor, beds of pinks spicy as all Arabia, blue hyacinths heavy with sweetness as well as bells, "pi'nies" rubicund and rank, hearts-ease clustered against the house, and sticky rose-acacias, pretty and impracticable, not to mention the grenadier files of hollyhocks that contended with fennel-bushes and scarlet-flowered beans for the precedence, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... prevail, but the guide was a 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 ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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, some say he is American, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... adventurer paced along, talking to himself and saying, "Who knows but that in time to come, when the veracious history of my famous deeds is made known, the sage who writes it, when he has to set forth my first sally in the early morning, will do it after this fashion? 'Scarce had the rubicund Apollo spread o'er the face of the broad spacious earth the golden threads of his bright hair, scarce had the little birds of painted plumage attuned their notes to hail with dulcet and mellifluous harmony the coming of the rosy Dawn, that, deserting the soft ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... red in ordinary hours, no epithet sufficiently rubicund or sanguineous can express its color at this appeal. "The man's mad," he said at last, with a tone of astonishment that almost concealed his wrath, "stark mad! I take his child!—lodge and board a great, positive, hungry child! Why, sir, many and many a time have I said to Mrs. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 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, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the poor man wrong in this, for I believe he had hurried things really to please me. His face had lengthened considerably by this time, and its rubicund hue declined. ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... of the six individuals who had alighted from the wagon, and Mrs. Salsify Mumbles declared it as her opinion that the family consisted of three brothers who had married three sisters for their wives. The short, fat woman, who had a rubicund visage and turned-up nose, and wore a broad-plaided cashmere dress, drew forth a bunch of keys from a wicker basket that hung on her arm, and with a pompous tread ascended the marble steps, unlocked the broad, mahogany-panelled door, turned the massive silver knob, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... through the first half of the tasteless reign of good old George III., did this horrible covering disguise the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be judged of by his grandchildren, when they contemplate, not without awe, the rubicund figure of some metropolitan church-beadle with his large-caped coat, silver-headed cane, and monstrous three-cornered hat. Our modern great ladies, strange to say, seem to have an especial affection for this hat, since ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... hair having died away from the fore part of his crown; 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
... blinked nervously, and his first glance was a questioning one in the direction of Duvillard, as if he wished to know how the latter bore the fresh thrust directed at him by Sagnier. And when he saw the banker looking perfectly composed, as superb, as rubicund as usual, and chatting in a bantering way with Rosemonde, he also put on an easy air, like a gamester who had never lost but had always known how to compel good luck, even in hours of treachery. And by way of showing his unconstraint of mind he at once addressed the Baroness on managerial ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the men was in the ultimate stage of deterioration. As far as rain and wind and sun could wreck the garments he wore, it had been done. In his person the ravages of drink were as plainly visible. And yet, upon his high-bridged, rubicund nose was jauntily perched a pair of shining and ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... mistress of the house, pausing before an extensive row of masculine portraits, "are very valuable, and you must be very careful when dusting. They are old masters." Mary's jaw dropped, and a look of intense wonder overspread her rubicund face. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the window. There he saw as he looked out upon the lawn something that interested him; that caused a grin to fasten itself upon his rubicund countenance. Phil, under a fire of snowballs from a group of boys who were waiting with their Christmas sleds for a chance to hitch to a passing vehicle, gained Amzi's gate, ducked behind the fence to gather ammunition, rose and delivered her fire, and then retreated toward ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... and spoiled the gallantry by squeezing her shoulder—half her little body it seemed to be—and emerging from the compartment joined us on the platform. He put a great finger on the arm of the rubicund, thickset, black-moustached Jornicroft. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... caring what happened to Braden 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 to go out into the world and shift for himself. He could ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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
... totally different man: he was about twenty-eight, and he was writing some work of fiction. He was a small, sturdy, rubicund creature, with beady eyes and pink cheeks, cherubic in aspect, entirely good-natured and lively, full of not very exalted humour, and with a tendency to wild and even hysterical giggling. I used to think that Father Payne did not like him very much; but he was a quick and regular worker, and it ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The fat, rubicund, animated face of the Father, detached itself like a Rembrandt on the obscure depth of the passage at the extremity of which he had stopped; from fear of the cold, the monk had drawn over his head the warm hood of his black cloak. A soft soutane of white wool draped itself ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... not 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, there were certain stories that were something ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... come was 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 ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... scenes with the Chief-Justice are unmatched in literature. The knight stands royally forth in them, clothed with his entire panoply of agile intellect, robust humour, and boundless comic effrontery. But the arrogant and expeditious Falstaff of The Merry Wives—so richly freighted with rubicund sensuality, so abundant in comic loquacity, and so ludicrous in his sorry plights—is a much less complex person, and therefore he stands more level than the real Falstaff does with the average comprehension of mankind. The American stage, accordingly, by which more ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... of the short, stout, bald-headed type, sometimes called aldermanic. It was plainly to be seen that his was a jocund nature, and the awe which he felt in this dreadful presence of death, though clearly shown on his rubicund face, was evidently a rare emotion with him. He glanced round the room as if expecting to see everything there materially changed, and though he looked toward the figure of Mr. Crawford now and then, it was with difficulty, and he averted his ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... 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
... 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
... her carriage for some time, chatting and laughing with her daughter Beatrice. Her countenance had become very florid and her figure very stout. The last time that I saw her driving in the Park her full, rubicund face made her look not only like the venerable grandmother of a host of descendants, but of the whole vast empire on which the sun never sets. Last year the most beloved sovereign that has ever occupied the British throne was laid in the gorgeous mausoleum at Frogmore beside the husband of her youth ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Beck appeared a personage of a figure rather short and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way: that is, with the grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her complexion was fresh and sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue and serene; her dark silk dress fitted her as a French sempstress alone can make a dress fit; she looked well, though a little bourgeoise, as bourgeoise indeed she was. I know not what of harmony ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... in some ten minutes—a fat, rubicund, spectacled man, with a cast in his left eye and two fingers missing, to remind him of early days in experimental work on explosives. Under his arm he carried several tomes and pamphlets; and so, bowing first to one financier, then to the other, he stood there on ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... 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 ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... boy—he was a man of thirty, and rather sedate in his appearance and manner; there was enough in his six feet one to have made two of the round and rubicund little Major. And yet it seemed to him quite proper that the other should address him so. He was back in his boyhood to-night—he was a boy whenever anyone mentioned the name ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... 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 worth any statesman's money ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... more and more passengers had collected as they awakened from sleep and emerged from the first- and second-class cabins. Among them was the mate, a man with a black moustache and rubicund features who inquired of someone amid the confusion: "You are not a doctor, I suppose?" and received the astonished, high-pitched reply: "No, sir, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... not think it worth mentioning; though, had we time to philosophize, it would be a curious matter for speculation, why a doctor's family is apt to be so lean and cadaverous, and a butcher's so jolly and rubicund. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... an old gray-headed seaman, with a rubicund face, whose open countenance betrayed only ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... enough contrast otherwise, however, the two presented. The man next the aisle was well past sixty, rotund of abdomen, rubicund of countenance, beetle-browed. He was elaborately well-groomed, almost foppish in attire, and wore the obvious stamp of worldly success, the air of one accustomed to giving orders and seeing ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... them, who had a red face and a large carbuncle on his nose, which served to distinguish him from his companions, who though they had both very rubicund faces ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... chamberlain—to the 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 ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... nothing of the pettifogger about him: somewhat under middle size, and somewhat rotund in person, he was always dressed in a full suit of black, never worn long enough to become threadbare. His face was rubicund, and not without keenness; but the most remarkable thing about him was his head, which was bald, and shone like polished ivory, nothing more white, smooth and lustrous. Some people have said that he wore false ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... tap came at the door. A hand, evidently accustomed to the outside management of the latch, lifted it, and Mr. Twitt entered, his rubicund face one broad smile. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... sentiments of most of the burly squires who had ridden in on the same errand, and throwing the reins to their grooms, likewise climbed the stair to the club-room with its oriel looking over the street. There too were several of the cathedral clergy, the rubicund double-chinned face of the Canon in residence set off by a white, cauliflower wig under a shovel hat, while the humbler minor canons (who served likewise as curates to all the country round) only powdered their own hair, and wore gowns and cassocks of ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... curious to see the cousin who was said to be prettier than the sisters, and as soon as the banker had gone I went downstairs to satisfy my curiosity. I met the father and asked him which was Le Duc's room, and thereon I went to see my fine fellow. I found him sitting up in a comfortable bed with a rubicund face which did not look as if ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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 of the hill. This ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... not shout when he saw him, did not even shake hands, to say nothing of thumping the little man upon the back. The broad and rubicund face of East Wellmouth's leading politician and dealer in real estate wore not a grin but a frown, and when he and Galusha came together at the gate he did not speak. Galusha spoke first, which was unusual; very few people meeting Mr. Horatio Pulcifer were afforded the opportunity ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... she not been interested in the man by her side, whose inquisitiveness was based upon friendship, and whose most persistent interrogations had been touched with a quiet and sober tact which contrasted pleasantly with Mr. Lawrence's dictatorial manner. That genial and rubicund person was now seen approaching with Sir John, and suggested that they 'ought to draw ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... disentangling the impressions; but just then they looked like three very solid ghosts. The dominant figure, both because he was bigger in all three dimensions, and because he sat centrally in the length of the table, facing me, was a tall, fat man dressed completely in black, with a rubicund, even apoplectic visage, but a rather bald and rather bothered brow. Looking at him again, more strictly, I could not exactly say what it was that gave me the sense of antiquity, except the antique cut of his white clerical necktie and the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Verdun on the sixth day. I waited on Captain Otter of the navy and the senior officer, who introduced me to the commandant, the Baron de Beauchene, who, by his rubicund face, appeared to be fond of good living. My name was registered at the police office, where I was desired to sport my graceful figure the first day of every month. Several officers did me the honour of a visit, but as my news was like salted cod—rather ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... these stanze is a work in tapestry representing Jesus Christ bursting forth from the sepulchre, but he has a visage far too rubicund and wanting in dignity; he looks like a person flushed with wine issuing from a tavern; in the countenance there is depicted (so it appears to me) a vulgar, not a ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the religious orders marched past, from the Dominicans to the Carthusians, from the Carmelites to the Capuchins. They advanced slowly, their eyes cast down, their step austere, their hands on their hearts; some faces were rubicund and shining, with large cheek-hones and rounded chins, herculean heads upon bullnecks; some, thin and livid, with cheeks hollowed by suffering and penitence, and with the look of living ghosts; in short, here were the two sides of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... large portion of the side of the 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 ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... she invited me on board her own vessel, the splendid yacht Osborne, commanded by a son of the late King William IV., Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence, a very good fellow, but a somewhat rubicund specimen of the old-fashioned British sailor, with an eye he had some difficulty in keeping open; which failing earned him the following reply to his chaffing remark, made to a little schoolboy, already somewhat sensitive about his personal dignity. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... old coach swayed to and fro, with its dignified elderly gentlemen and rubicund Lord Mayor, rejoicing in countless turtle feeds—for, reader, it ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... produced a rubicund housekeeper, of about eighty, who blended in perfect harmony with the house, the creeper, ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... 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
... jogged along over the melting snow. The day was unclouded for a wonder, and the sun proved its increasing power by turning the sleigh-tracks in the road into gleaming rills. The visage of my new acquaintance formed a decided contrast to the rubicund face of the beef-eating marketman. He was sandy even to his eyebrows and complexion. His scraggy beard suggested poverty of soil on his lantern jaws. His frame was as gaunt as that of a scare-crow, and his hands and feet were enormous. ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... there, her face rubicund, her swan's-down straight, drops on her cheeks, her chin, her forehead, and wherever drops could cling, her eyes watering, her curls limp, and an atmosphere of unbearable odor enveloping her in its cloud, the front door opened, and a footstep rung ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... doubt about the disease having "come out" in the person of the speaker. It had "come out" in her face, which was brilliantly rubicund; in her hands, and ankles and feet, which were a distressful spectacle of "knobs" and "bumps" of an exaggerated phrenological type— perhaps also in her temper, which was fierce and fiery as her complexion, as most ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... Bacchante's, A grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis! Suffer my singing, Gipsy of Seasons, ere thou go winging; Ere Winter throws His slaking snows In thy feasting-flagon's impurpurate glows! The sopped sun—toper as ever drank hard - Stares foolish, hazed, Rubicund, dazed, Totty with thine October tankard. Tanned maiden! with cheeks like apples russet, And breast a brown agaric faint-flushing at tip, And a mouth too red for the moon to buss it, But her cheek unvow its vestalship; Thy mists enclip Her steel-clear circuit illuminous, Until it crust Rubiginous ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... 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 in the background, inscrutable as an ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... intendance. He recommended an advocat of 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: he smiled, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... in the dining room fell flat, and looking up William Wetherell perceived a portly, rubicund man of middle age being shown to his seat by the headwaiter. The gentleman wore a great, glittering diamond in his shirt, and a watch chain that contained much fine gold. But the real cause of the silence was plainly in the young woman who walked ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... about this time, Franz might have been found together with his friends Krafft and Schilsky, at the latter's lodging in the TALSTRASSE. He was astride a chair, over the back of which he had folded his arms; and his chubby, rubicund face ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... probably considered it 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
... sight of Andrew P. Wilhammer almost consoled the player for his poverty. Who, even for an imperial income, would bear the burden of those grotesque teeth, protruding like a sample of wares in a dentist's showcase? But as the teeth came nearer and the great rubicund face bore down upon him, the prominence of the notorious incisors affected him less than their carnivorous capacity—he felt himself almost swallowed up by this monstrous beast of prey, so admirably equated to our small day of large ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... vine-covered slopes 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 the top of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... table glittering under the soft 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 perhaps ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... 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 ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... broke in 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
... peacefully, satisfied with his projects; a prolific writer like Ben-Zayb (anagram of Ibanez), who believed that the people of Manila thought because he, Ben-Zayb, was a thinker; a canon like Padre Irene, who added luster to the clergy with his rubicund face, carefully shaven, from which towered a beautiful Jewish nose, and his silken cassock of neat cut and small buttons; and a wealthy jeweler like Simoun, who was reputed to be the adviser and inspirer of all the acts of his Excellency, the Captain-General—just ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... 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 that his state, if perceived by the Registrar, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore |
