"Dapper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... figure seated there, waiting. Strange foreign faces flashed themselves in the great mirror and out. The outer door opened and closed noiselessly to admit them—uncouth figures that passed swiftly up the stairway, glancing curiously about them—and dapper men who did not look up as they went. The house settled again to quiet, and the long afternoon, while Achilles waited. The light from the high windows grew dusky under chairs and tables; it withdrew softly along the gleaming books and hovered in the air above them—a kind of halo—and ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... with bewilderment the Senior Surgeon started to brush an imaginary haze from his eyes but paused mid-way in the gesture and pointed back instead to a dapper little hall-table that seemed to be exhausting its entire blonde strength in holding up a slender green vase with a single pink rose in it. Like a caged animal buffeting for escape against each successive bar that incased ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the parlour, Anson Kirkpatrick, Marshall Field's man, was at the piano, playing airs from a musical comedy then running in Chicago. He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey, with friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor. I did not know all the men who were sitting about, but I recognized a furniture salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy O'Reilly, who travelled ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... took in the extraordinary changes Mr. William J. Denham had made in his personal appearance. Denham was a slender, youngish man, neat and dapper, with light brown hair, a smooth face, and pale skin. Jones had reddish, rumpled eye-brows, puffy pink lids, and large, roving eyes behind convex glasses. His hair was also red and rumpled, and though he was not enormously ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the children's, and lived in a house next door. The yards of the houses were only separated by a green hedge, with no gate, so that Cecy spent two-thirds of her time at Dr. Carr's, and was exactly like one of the family. She was a neat, dapper, pink-and-white-girl, modest and prim in manner, with light shiny hair, which always kept smooth, and slim hands, which never looked dirty. How different from my poor Katy! Katy's hair was forever in a snarl; her gowns were always catching ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... is plenty; gold is scarce and dear; Crystals abound, but diamonds still are rare. Is this the golden age, or the age of gold? Lo by the page or column fame is sold. Hear the big journal braying like an ass; Behold the brazen statesmen as they pass; See dapper poets hurrying for their dimes With hasty verses hammered out in rhymes: The Muses whisper—'"Tis the age of brass." Workmen are plenty, but the masters few— Fewer to-day than in the days of old. Rare blue-eyed pansies peeping ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... while the horses were led away out of sight, to be patched up for the succeeding engagement; a quantity of sand was thrown over the blood stains, which were pretty numerous throughout the arena. The banderilleros were three in number, and smart, dapper, little fellows, beautifully dressed in light blue satin and gold. Each was armed with the banderillo, small barbed darts, about a foot long, ornamented with coloured paper. Their duty is to go straight up to the bull, facing him, and as soon as he stoops his head to charge them, stick their ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... interrupted the dapper Monsieur Fuselier, in a sprightly tone; and, leaving Fandor abruptly, he leapt ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... O rare, a banquet! would to Christ I were one of their guests. Gods ad, a fine little Dapper fellow has spyed me: What will he doo? He comes to make me drinke: I thanke you, Sir. Some of your victuals, I pray; Sir; nay now keepe your meate, I have enough I; the cup, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... have described them earlier as typical Englishmen when taking a first glance at them; and we have to declare that they were just as typically French when one had the pleasure of making their acquaintance; but in the darkness, when no one could see their spruce and dapper appearance—and how many German youths can boast of being spruce and dapper?—when the voice alone could give an indication of the nationality of the speaker, then both Henri and Jules could pass muster as Germans ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... the Chancellor happened to be drunk. "Well, Mr. Bartlemy," said his lordship, snuffing, "what have you to say?" The man, who had prepared a formal harangue, was transported to have so fair opportunity given him of uttering it, and with much dapper gesticulation congratulated his lordship on his health, and the nation on enjoying such great abilities. The Chancellor stopped him short, crying, "By God, it is a lie! I have neither health nor abilities; my bad health has destroyed my abilities."[1] ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye — Says, 'Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart — a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, 'O sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... cackling her displeasure, and instantly dashing to the top of the wall, followed at once by a stately black Spaniard, decorated with a lace mantilla of cut paper off a French plum box, squawking and curtseying. Then came a dapper pullet, with a doll's hat on her unwilling head, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold grey eyes ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... concerts, variety theatres, bierkabaretts, moving picture halls, promenades and sideshow attractions of the Atlantic City type. The Kaisergarten is the rendezvous of the bourgeoisie, the heaven of hoi polloi—rotund merchants with walrus moustachios, dapper young clerks with flowing ties, high-chokered soldiers, their boots polished into ebony mirrors, fat-jowled maidens in rainbow garb.... There is lovemaking under the Linden trees, beer drinking on the midway, schnitzel eating ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... first, it was slow, tedious business seeking to remove the traces of his recent encounter with Trevors; and, though he could wash his face and manage a change of clothes, there was nothing dapper about the result. But at length, shaking his head at the bruised face looking at him from his bit of mirror, he went out to his horse and rode down the trail that led to the ranch headquarters. Judith was waiting for him—that was vastly more important than the fact that he had a crippled hand ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... Nils Kivi, was like a breath of home: a small dapper Finn who had traveled with Coffin on the first e Eridani trip. They were not exactly friends, an admiral has no intimates, but they had been young in the ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... summer, and we went to school, Dapper country lads and little maidens; Taught the motto of the "Dunce's Stool,"— Its grave import still my fancy ladens,— "Here's a fool!" It was summer, and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... under the disagreeable necessity to bundle and go with the disabled man of war to the temple of Hymen. Sacrilegious thought! I could not permit it to enter my bosom, and (pardon me for a moment, sir) when I looked down, and caught a glance of my own natty-looking, tight little leg, and dapper Hessians, I recommended her strongly to act on the principle of the Drury-lane play-bill, which says, 'All for Love, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... a dapper little man, remained on the boat, and busied himself officiously, getting the names of the men, peering at Singleton through his barred window, and expressing disappointment at my lack of foresight in having ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fashions. The real significance of freedom here is realised. What matters it that London decrees a crease down the trouser legs if those garments are but of well-bleached blue dungaree? The spotless shirt, how paltry a detail when a light singlet is the only wear? Of what trifling worth dapper boots to feet made leathery by contact with the clean, crisp, oatmeal-coloured sand. Here is no fetish about clothes; little concern for what we shall eat or what we shall drink. The man who has to observe the least of the ordinances of style knows not liberty. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... acted in 1610, also indicates the current popularity of this tale, when Face, the housekeeper, brings Dapper, the lawyer's clerk, to Subtle, and recommends ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... on the children's faces, as they watched the motorists alight. The dapper man and the slight little woman were given small attention, for in the car were two of the tiniest, dearest midgets that anybody had ever seen. As soon as it was known that they were actually coming into the house, the excitement ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... up to the porticoed front door I observed in front of it, beside the tennis lawn, the black tool-house and the pedestalled sun-dial with which we had such strange associations. A dapper little man, with a quick, alert manner and a waxed moustache, had just descended from a high dog-cart. He introduced himself as Inspector Martin, of the Norfolk Constabulary, and he was considerably astonished when he heard the name of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... visionary idealism. The Foreign Minister, Dr. Machado, is of more immediately impressive personality. Younger than the President by at least ten years, yet little short, I should guess, of sixty, he is extremely neat and dapper in person, while his very handsome face has a birdlike keenness and alertness of expression betokening not only great intelligence but high-strung vitality. He is a copious, eloquent, and witty talker, and his remarkable charm ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... ingenious Silas Wegg concerning the people who passed his corner or lived in the houses of the neighborhood. Among the more familiar types are college-students cramming for the day's recitation, giggling school-girls, dapper clerks, pert messenger-boys improving the time by reading a blood-and-thunder story-paper in the very smallest of type, business-men, all nerve in the morning, and in the afternoon chatting affably or half asleep, ladies keen for a shopping-"meet" on Fourteenth Street, housewives with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the flowery ground A crystal fountain spread its streams around, The fruitful banks with verdant laurels crown'd. About this spring (if ancient fame say true) The dapper elves their moonlight sports pursue: 460 Their pigmy king, and little fairy queen, In circling dances gamboll'd on the green, While tuneful sprites a merry concert made, And airy music ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... elected guider of the united caravans now travelling through Ugogo, was of such a fragile and small make, that he might be taken for an imitation of his famous prototype "Dapper." Being of such dimensions, what he lacked for weight and size he made up by activity. No sooner had he arrived in camp than his trim dapper form was seen frisking about from side to side of the great boma, fidgeting, arranging, disturbing everything and everybody. He permitted no bales or packs ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... "Now, Alick, I do so want to hear about poor, dear little Bessie;" and they began so low and confidentially, that Rachel wondered if her alarms wore to be transfered from the bearded colonel to the dapper boy, or if, in very truth, she must deem poor Fanny a general coquette. Besides, a man must be contemptible who wore gloves at so small a ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... earning enough money to pay her board bill and have sufficient left over to indulge in the maddening extravagance of an occasional paper of pins or a ball of tape! What if, after hard labor, and repeated failure, she does secure something like success? No sooner will she do so, than up will step some dapper youth who will beckon her over the border into the land where troubles just begin. She won't know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee, for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a girl makes a career for herself, and so love will gallop away over the ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... had come with Dr. Warner was a somewhat more urbane and even dapper figure than he had appeared when clutching the railings and craning his neck into the garden. He even looked comparatively young when he took his hat off, having fair hair parted in the middle and carefully curled on each side, and lively movements, especially of the ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... to ask her after all. Violet felt piqued. She was also conscious of a sensation very near akin to disappointment. She looked across at Madison. How trim and dapper he was! ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hand in his pocket, the other in his waistcoat, his cap brim over his eyes, shading in some measure their deep dancing ray of scorn. Twelve men waited in the yard, some in their shirt-sleeves, some in blue aprons. Two figured conspicuously in the van of the party. One, a little dapper strutting man with a turned-up nose; the other a broad-shouldered fellow, distinguished no less by his demure face and cat like, trustless eyes than by a wooden leg and stout crutch. There was a kind of leer about his lips; he seemed ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... proved to be a dapper little man, with a weather-beaten face. He was in evening dress, ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... distinguished himself. At Malplaquet the other claimant to the English throne won but little honour. There was always a question about James's courage. Neither then in Flanders, nor afterwards in his own ancient kingdom of Scotland, did the luckless Pretender show much resolution. But dapper little George had a famous tough spirit of his own, and fought like a Trojan. He called out his brother of Prussia, with sword and pistol; and I wish, for the interest of romancers in general, that that famous duel could have taken place. The two sovereigns hated each other ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... last; but not, surely, our dapper little visitor of yesterday! A majestic beard of ashen gray fell in patriarchal locks almost to his knees. Upon his head he wore a high cap of some dark fur; upon his feet embroidered slippers; and round his waist a glittering belt patterned with hieroglyphics. A long woollen ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Mr. Lincoln had joined, there was a dapper little chap for whom Mr. Lincoln had labored as a farm hand a year before, and whom he had left on account of ill treatment from him. This man was eager for the captaincy. He put in his days and nights "log-rolling" among his fellow volunteers; said ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Bob, regarding him with interest—he was so dapper, so alert, so all that an office-boy in a staid lawyer's establishment ought to be. "How old might ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... persons entered. One was a dapper little man with a great wig, very handsomely dressed in a plum-coloured silken coat, with a snowy cravat at his neck. At the sight of the other my face crimsoned, for it was the girl who had sung Montrose's song in ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... the newcomer into the room. I ran my eye over him as I advanced to meet him. He was small and dapper, and his air of self-possession was almost perfect. His features were clean-cut, dark eyes glowed in a face that had evidently been exposed to the weather for many years, and his brow was surmounted by a mass of ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... come. Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy fully to match it of the peculiar systems that he knows. They don't just cover HIS world. One will be too dapper, another too pedantic, a third too much of a job-lot of opinions, a fourth too morbid, and a fifth too artificial, or what not. At any rate he and we know offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb and out of key and out of 'whack,' and have no business to speak up ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... deserve no bacon for breakfast. But such was Jack. The same plump mulberry complexion, garnished with a few scattered black bristles; the same sleek skin, looking always as if it was upon the point of bursting; the same little toddling legs; the same dapper bend in the small of the back; the same cracked squeak; the same low upright forehead, and tiny eyes; the same round self-satisfied jowl; the same charming sensitive little cocked nose, always on the look-out for a savory smell,—and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife's bored attitude and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: "I couldn't BEAR to see the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... who spoke a little English,—having been for some time a prisoner in England,—as steward. They were both good-natured, merry fellows. The cook's name was Pierre le Grande, the other we called Jacques Little. He was a small, dapper little Frenchman, and played the violin. He would have fiddled all day long, for he preferred it to anything else; but he could not get any one to dance to him except Le Grande, who, as soon as he had washed up his pots and kettles, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... our character and acts by some particular side; we are merry with one, grave with another, as befits the nature and demands of the relation. Pepys's letter to Evelyn would have little in common with that other one to Mrs. Knipp which he signed by the pseudonym of DAPPER DICKY; yet each would be suitable to the character of his correspondent. There is no untruth in this, for man, being a Protean animal, swiftly shares and changes with his company and surroundings; and these changes ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the six horses that were to draw us for the next were led up: wicked, cross-grained stallions they were, that squealed and bit and kicked. They got harnessed somehow or other; and then out came the dapper postilions, with their hats trimmed with gay ribbons, cocked on one side, some of them still wearing powder and with their hair tied in a club. They had waistcoats trimmed with dozens of silver buttons, and close-fitting pantaloons covered their legs. Margot would ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... sure enough!" said Frank, as, despite the many bandages about the head of the man, he recognized the dapper little French aviator with whom he had had more or ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... night about affairs relating either to his marriage, or to his future as the head of a great household. All his old exigent, extravagant liking for rich clothing returned to him. He had constant visits from his London tailor, a dapper little artist, who brought with him a profusion of rich cloth, silk and satin, and who firmly believed that the tailor made the man. There were also endless interviews with the family lawyer, endless readings of ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... forth the extravagance and frivolity of society surrounding King George, I have employed Lord Upperton and his companion, Mr. Dapper, as narrators. The student of history by turning to Jessee's "Life and Times of George III.," Molloy's "Court Life Below Stairs," Waldegrave's "Memoirs," Horace Walpole's writings, and many other volumes, will find ample corroboration of any ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... who asked no odds and gave no quarter, one whose name sent as chill a shiver through the hard hearts of the lawless as a sight of the gallows would have done. And this man, small, well dressed, quiet mannered, as dapper as a tailor's dummy.... ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... friendly intercourse. A greater contrast than these two presented could scarcely be imagined. Macfarlane was tall and ungainly, with large loose joints that seemed to protrude angularly out of him in every direction,—Duprez was short, slight and wiry, with a dapper and by no means ungraceful figure. The one had formal gauche manners, a never-to-be-eradicated Glasgow accent, and a slow, infinitely tedious method of expressing himself,—the other was full of restless movement ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... efflux. The flow was diverted into a regular curve northwards by the South Atlantic current; voyagers from Ascension Island to the north-west therefore feel the full throb of the great riverine pulse, and it has been recognized, they say, at a distance of 300 miles. Lopez, Merolla, and Dapper[FN7] agree that the Congo freshens the water at thirty miles from the mouth, and that it can be distinguished thirty leagues off. The Amazonas tinges the sea along the Guiana coast 200 miles, and the effect of the Ganges extends to about twenty leagues. At this season, of course, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... store across the street from where we lived was tended during most of the day and in the evenings by an attractive young native woman who seemed to be quite a belle. Every evening, at about dark, a dapper young native, in an American suit of white, always appeared and seated himself upon the bench in front of the store, where he could see and talk to his brunette lady love without interfering with her commercial duties, which were not heavy. Often ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... Stickles held up her hands in amazement. "To think that I should live to hear sich words in me own house. Ye say the parson's too old. Ain't ye ashamed of them words? Too old! D'ye want some new dapper little snob spoutin' from the pulpit who hasn't as much knowledge in his hull body as Parson John has in his little finger? I know there's many a thing the parson talks about that I can't understan', an' so there is ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... Jezabel by the flowing rein, and his next to lead her to meet her discomfited master, who was crippling towards him, his clothes much soiled with his fall, his eyes streaming with tears, from pain as well as mortification, and altogether exhibiting an aspect so unlike the spruce and dapper importance of his ordinary appearance, that the honest smith felt compassion for the little man, and some remorse at having left him exposed to such disgrace. All men, I believe, enjoy an ill natured joke. The difference is, that an ill natured person can drink out to the very ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... & Company's was opening and shutting its black jaws regularly over the sheets of paper it was turning into circulars, about the middle of Wednesday forenoon, when a dapper gentleman with a rather prominent scarf-pin walked briskly into the store and up ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... want? And honest Frank Lupton, a quiet and industrious trader, thought of his store of pearl-shell and felt still more doubtful. And he knew Peese so well, the dapper, handsome little Englishman with the pleasant voice that had in it always a ripple of laughter—the voice and laugh that concealed his tigerish heart and savage vindictiveness. Lupton had children too—sons and daughters—and Peese, who looked upon women as mere articles of merchandise, ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... after him, Salvain and the three rescued, and stood in the roomy cabin, the captain and the first mate dapper and cool in their white uniforms, the other three marvelously ragged. Barefooted, their hair falling in jags across their foreheads, their muscles bulging through the rents in their shirts, McTee and Harrigan ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... who have just crossed the road, and are following this happy couple down the street, are a fair specimen of another class of Sunday—pleasurers. There is a dapper smartness, struggling through very limited means, about the young man, which induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake. You may tell a young woman in the employment of a large ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... Frisoni was called. An artist of no mean merit, and pupil of Jules Hardouin Mansard, the chief architect of Versailles, where Frisoni had worked at the plans together with his master. The Italian arrived: a small, dapper man, ridiculous in his huge powdered wig, his little brown monkey face peering out of the curled white locks. Her Excellency desired a palace on the same model as the fine French palazzo? Nothing easier! No? An original ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Dennett's account (op. cit. pp. 53, 67-71) we gather that drought and famine are thought to result from the intercourse of a man with a girl who has not yet passed through the "paint-house," as the hut is called where the young women live in seclusion. According to O. Dapper, the women of Loango paint themselves red on every recurrence of their monthly sickness; also they tie a cord tightly round their heads and take care neither to touch their husband's food nor to appear before him (Description ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the school-master, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... was following him, and wondering what on earth he could mean by this, there suddenly appeared, through the door that opened on to the veranda from the house, a dapper little man, dressed in a neat blue cotton suit, with shoes made of tanned hide, and remarkable for a bustling air and most enormous black mustachios, shaped into an upward curve, and coming to a point for all the world ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... around a mass of thorny roses, and a pair of scissors dangling from one finger, stood and gazed with savage intensity at the dapper little man—black eyes, waxed mustache, dressed in the height of fashion—who, with one hand outstretched, while the other held his hat, advanced with smiles and bows to meet the lady of the house. Locker had seen him before; ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... of all manner of ambitions and yearnings, and dreams which nobody else in the wide world dreamed about, a family conclave was held to decide what Paul should be. One Simmons, a dapper, perky draper in the High Street, wanted a shop-boy, and Mrs. Armstrong was for asking the place for Paul There was not a grain of ambition in the household, and the melancholy fact was that there was no money to bind Paul apprentice anywhere. But Paul would have none of the draper. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... was an alert, dapper young man who wore glasses, and I remembered having seen him, both at the ticket window and in the women's room. Outside of the gates he confirmed my suspicion by trailing us to ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... it was said had been on the staff of Kossuth in the Hungarian army. He was a "dapper little Dutchman," as everybody called him. His appearance was that of a natty staff officer, and did not fill one's ideal of a major general, or even a brigadier general by brevet. He affected the foreign style of seat on horseback, and it was "as good as a show" to see him dash along the ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... but in a pinch like this the dapper, finicky Councilor Peter Arbuthnot Forbes displayed an unshaken courage as became a gentleman of his position, while young Jack Cockrell had suddenly changed his opinion of the fascinating trade of piracy. He had not the slightest desire to investigate ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... in the soup Mittendorfer appeared, escorting a French lieutenant who was taken prisoner this morning. The prisoner was a little, handsome, dapper chap not over twenty-two years old, wearing his trim blue-and-red uniform with an air, even though he himself looked thoroughly miserable. We were warned not to speak with him, or he with us; but Gerbeaux, after listening to him exchanging a few words with the lieutenant, said he judged from ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... innocent west-countryman, a good sailor, knew all the harbours from Plymouth to the Land's End, and perhaps several others, but he was more of a pilot than a master, and usually conversed about landmarks, church steeples, and crayfish. The surgeon was a clever little dapper man, well-read, shockingly irritable, fond of controversy on ethics, etymology, and giving the blue pill. I need not acquaint my reader he was from York. The purser was the shadow of a man, very regular in his accounts, fond of peach-water, playing the flute, of going ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. It is a peremptory rule with them, that they never go out of their road. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their foreordained paths,—neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... ushered into seats near the bench by a dapper young lawyer. Behind a railing, all about von Rittenheim, in front of him, beside him, and back of him, were the lean forms and bent shoulders of the mountaineers who were witnesses or principals in the ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... imagination athirst. "These men came forth from the confines of hell" .... Who wrote of them had news, I think, of terrific doings in Atlantis, when earth shook to the tread of giant hosts. I confess that to me all things European, after this, look a little neat and dapper. I look from the cliffs at the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... from bad as well as any man, and the price at which he could buy it so as to leave himself a fair profit at the selling. He knew the value of a clear conscience, and without much argument had discovered for himself that honesty is in truth the best policy. Joe Mixet, who was dapper of person and glib of tongue, had often declared that any one buying John Crumb for a fool would lose his money. Joe Mixet was probably right; but there had been a want of prudence, a lack of worldly sagacity, in ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Dapper-waisted waitresses in black, with white aprons, served the customers. Vernon was served by Madame herself. The clientele formed its own opinion of the cause of this, her ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... a taxi from St. Mary Le Strand to Harley Street. Dr. Neil McDonnell was a dapper mystical little specialist, who was renowned for his applications of psychotherapy to raging militants and weary society leaders. He was a Scottish Highlander, with a rare gift of intuitive insight. He, too, had the agreeable quality of personal charm. Like all to whom the gods have been good, ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... watchfull Sphears, Lead in swift round the Months and Years. The Sounds, and Seas with all their finny drove Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move, And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves, Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves; By dimpled Brook, and Fountain brim, The Wood-Nymphs deckt with Daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love.... Com, knit ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... received, with which the old man was intrusted; he started immediately, and, after a most circuitous route, to avoid detection as to where he deposited his treasure, he was seen to enter the King's Arms Tavern, Bishopsgate Churchyard, where he was seen to deliver his despatches to a smart, dapper Jew, well known, who, after a few moments' deliberation, left the house, and was speedily joined by several confederates at the top of the churchyard, who, after dividing the letters, dispersed as instantaneously as can be ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... was supplied.— A needle dangled by his side; A dapper mouse he used to ride, Thus ...
— The History of Tom Thumb, and Others • Anonymous
... was prim but cultivated. She wrote for reviews and wore eye-glasses, and her library table was habitually littered with pamphlets and tomes. On the other hand, Aunt Helen was a neat, dapper little woman, who lived in a gem of a house and delighted in bric-a-brac and entertaining. They were both spinsters. Each of them passed one evening in every week with me. On Tuesdays I dined with Aunt Agnes, and on Fridays with Aunt Helen. Thus I was alone only ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... him come along, having on the previous day made herself acquainted with his personality. He was a dapper pert little man, neat in his dress, and suave in his manners. Not at all like the detective of fiction as known to Mrs. Parry. There was no solemnity or hint of mystery about Mr. Steel. He would pass unnoticed in a crowd, and no one would take him for a bloodhound ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... curious copes and surplices Of cleanest cobweb, hanging by In their religious vestery. They have their ash-pans and their brooms, To purge the chapel and the rooms; Their many mumbling mass-priests here, And many a dapper chorister. Their ush'ring vergers here likewise, Their canons and their chaunteries; Of cloister-monks they have enow, Ay, and their abbey-lubbers too:— And if their legend do not lie, They much ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... precise and dapper Mr. Doolittle, expatriated American, waved a carefully manicured hand in acquired Gallic gestures as he expatiated on the circumstances which had summoned the soldier to his office. As he discoursed of these extraordinary matters his sharp eyes took in his client ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... arm went the blue coat and bullion, locked in white grass sleeves, along the busy quays, crowded with mule-carts and drays for stores or shipping. Spanish dons, dapper Frenchmen, burly John Bulls, standing at warehouse and posadas, all with cigars in their teeth, which they puffed so lazily that the smoke scarcely found its way beyond the brims of their wide sombreros. ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... account of that first night at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, which at the time struck me with extreme disgust. That was seeing more than one man who had no females or babies to look after, who sought there a refuge from the coming attack. At daylight, one dapper young man, in fashionable array, came stepping lightly on the gallery, carrying a neat carpet-bag in his hand. I hardly think he expected to meet two young ladies at that hour; I shall always believe he meant ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... yelled the second engineer at once, as though he had been all the time looking out for Jukes. The donkeyman, a dapper little chap with a dazzling fair skin and a tiny, gingery moustache, worked in a sort of mute transport. They were keeping a full head of steam, and a profound rumbling, as of an empty furniture van trotting over a bridge, made ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... Thence with Lord Bruncker to Greenwich by water to a great dinner and much company; Mr. Cottle and his lady and others and I went, hoping to get Mrs. Knipp to us, having wrote a letter to her in the morning, calling myself "Dapper Dicky," in answer to hers of "Barbary Allen," but could not, and am told by the boy that carried my letter, that he found her crying; but I fear she lives a sad life with that ill-natured fellow her husband: so we had a great, but I a melancholy dinner, having not her there, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of beautiful bays were brought round, the shooting wagon was spic and span, almost new, the groom smart and dapper, ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... pushed open the gate, and led Artemisia into a little garden enclosed with a high stone wall, he surprised a dapper-appearing young slave-lad of about his age, who was lying idly on the tiny grass plot, and indulging in a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... a pair of Joe's shoes, light-soled and dapper, and laughed with Lottie, who stooped to turn up the trousers for her. Lottie was his sister, and in the secret. To her was due the inveigling of his mother into making a neighborhood call so that they could have the house to themselves. They went ...
— The Game • Jack London
... confused, disappointed and hurt, for he was not only unobserving, and seemingly unappreciative, but he was more silent than ever that night and he looked gloomy. But if he had grown accustomed to her beauty, there were others who had not, and smart, dapper college youths gathered about her like bees around a flower—a triumphant fact to which he also seemed indifferent. Moreover, he was not in evening clothes that night and she did not know whether he had forgotten or was indifferent to them, and the contrast ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... indeed the Count of Surigny, and that dapper, well-set-up young Frenchman was nattily dressed, smiling, and with an unmistakable air ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... and with rapid, nervous strides he hastened up the walk,—out past the old ordnance storehouse and the lighted windows of the trader's establishment, turned sharply to the west, and, sure enough, coming toward him was a brisk, dapper, slim-built little soldier in his snugly-fitting undress uniform. Holmes stopped short, whipped out his cigar-case and wind-matches, thrust a Partaga between his teeth, struck a light as the soldier passed him and the broad glare ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... meanwhile, it happened that a little very dapper gentleman who was largely interested in the land-agency and general mortgage business was spending the evening with Hawtrey in Wyllard's room at the Range. He had driven round by Hawtrey's homestead earlier in the afternoon, and had deduced a good deal from the state of it, though this was a ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... complaining vehemently to the badgered shop-men that their last orders had all been very inadequately fulfilled. I waited patiently till the mob, having apparently bought up the whole shop, thinned out, and a dapper London-trained young shopman smoothed down his ruffled front hair and leaned over the counter and asked, "And what can I ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... laugh behind her. The sound was familiar, and she turned to look. A band of showily dressed girls and dapper young men wearing badges of secret societies, with new straw hats tilted far back on their square-clipped hair, had invaded the balcony and were loudly clamouring for a table. The girl in the lead was the one who had laughed. She wore a large hat with ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... long and tiresome journey to the bedside of Father Tom's dying brother, so when the big, good-natured priest stepped off the train at Charton station in Texas, he was worn out and weary. But he soon had to forget both. A dapper young man was waiting for him in a buggy. The young lad had a white necktie and wore a long coat of clerical cut. Father Tom passed the buggy, but was called back ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... have a native heath it is certainly Kensington High Street, off which stands the house of my childhood. I grew up in that thorough-fare which Mr. Max Beerbohm, with his usual easy exactitude of phrase, has described as "dapper, with a leaning to the fine arts." Dapper was never perhaps a descriptive term for myself; but it is quite true that I owe a certain taste for the arts to the sort of people among whom I was brought up. It is ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... divinity, and so were all the mid-Western human-beings about him. One heard no joking either of the dapper or cockney sort of cities, or the quaint graphic phrasing of Eastern country folk; and it may have been not far enough West for the true Western humor. At any rate, when they were not silent these men ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... were but few Of either sex, among the crew, Whom she or her assessors knew. The goddess soon began to see Things were not ripe for a decree, And said she must consult her books, The lovers' Fletas, Bractons, Cokes. First to a dapper clerk she beckoned, To turn to Ovid, book the second; She then referred them to a place In Virgil (vide Dido's case); As for Tibullus's reports, They never passed for law in Courts: For Cowley's brief, and pleas of Waller, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... have completed his work and hastened the final Christian victory by some four hundred years. Alfonso was far-seeing enough to know the possibilities ahead, and it is easy to understand and sympathize with his rage at the mere thought of the dapper, silken Candespina. So the rebellious Urraca, with her heart full of love for Count Gomez, was married, and just before her father's death in 1109, to King Alfonso I., called el batallador [the battler], and known as the Emperor of Aragon. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... having a large family of growing children, had wisely let his gentility take care of itself and permitted his guests to be entertained at their own rather than at his expense. As the noble landlady was suffering from headache, the dapper waitress took charge of us, provided us with rooms, and then installed us at the early table-d'hote, where a number of the officers of the garrison, with some other regular diners, whom we learnt to recognize in time as the town bailiff, the apothecary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... it the very next evening in the level light under the elms of the Square I beheld sauntering towards me a dapper figure which I recognized as that of Mr. Cheyne himself. As I saluted him he gave me an amused and most disconcerting glance; and when I was congratulating myself that he had passed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... two such differing natures to be. Neither cared further for elaborating giddy curves on that town-hall floor. They stood talking languidly about this and that local topic, till De Stancy turned aside for a short time to speak to a dapper little lady who had beckoned to him. In a few minutes ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... all—just an aristocrat," declared Latham, a dapper little man with his hair slicked down to his ears and a waxed moustache. "And he's got fool notions, too. If he stopped the advertising signs I wouldn't sell half ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... repeated Dan, laughing down on the slender, dapper little figure at his feet. "Gee whilikins, I ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... gaze. The dapper figure of Mr. Wesson was moving down the lawn. He had a tennis racquet in his hand. His face wore an ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... bustling into the court before they had finished the repast. Now that he was dressed, he proved to be a very dapper figure of an old gentleman, his bald poll hidden by ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... feet, as we had observed the day before when we had both noted in our books that we saw the male feeding the young. Even had the nest not been so plainly a redstart's, the air of that mother was unmistakable. She owned that nest and that baby, there could not be a doubt, and the dapper little personage with chestnut sides ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... which implied a compliment, "by the insipid idlers who fill our saloons. Behold them now, gathered by the oriel window, yonder; precious distillers of talk,—sentinels of society with certain set phrases as watchwords, which they never exceed; sages, who follow Face's advice to Dapper,— ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and democracy than has ever been publicly traced. A man like myself, with heavy knee-joints and a thick ankle, was almost always a Whig in the Revolutionary time—as if by natural prejudice against the would-be aristocrats, who liked to sport a straight-sinking knee-cap and dapper calf. When the Whigs, after the peace, became masters of their own country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World ideas and monarchical tastes ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... for judgment in it. She went among that people as, in these days, a child still might go. To those bullet-headed captains, grim and shaven close; to those painted great ladies, whose bare necks looked the more naked for their jewels; to those cruddled, be-robed old men; to the dapper sons of them; to their stiff-laced daughters—Molly went blushing, smiling, shy, and glad, and to each she gave her fresh cheek and the balm of her English lips. O mouth of singular favour! O starry eyes! She ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... fell while we were in the train, and the heat was far less oppressive in Croydon than in town. Holmes had sent on a wire, so that Lestrade, as wiry, as dapper, and as ferret-like as ever, was, waiting for us at the station. A walk of five minutes took us to Cross ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... beggars whose post was at the gate of the Basse Ville. They seemed to be comparing the amount of alms each had received during the day, and were arranging for a supper at some obscure haunt they frequented in the purlieus of the lower town, when another figure came up, short, dapper, and carrying a knapsack, as Angelique could detect by the glimmer of a lantern that hung on a rope stretched across the street. He was greeted warmly by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... middle of the huge circle of Dartmoor. Two gentlemen were awaiting us in the station—the one a tall, fair man with lion-like hair and beard and curiously penetrating light blue eyes; the other a small, alert person, very neat and dapper, in a frock-coat and gaiters, with trim little side-whiskers and an eye-glass. The latter was Colonel Ross, the well-known sportsman; the other, Inspector Gregory, a man who was rapidly making his name in the English ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... beyond, the tap-tap of a cane and shuffling steps across the polished parquet. Dysart's grip relaxed, his hand fell away, and he made a ghastly grimace as a little old gentleman came half-trotting, half-shambling to the doorway. He was small and dapper and pink-skinned under his wig; the pink was paint; his lips and eyes peered and simpered; from one bird-claw hand ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... she is dull and thick as bacon; now transparent as a hanging glass. The fixed faces are the dull ones. Here comes Lady Venice displayed like a monument for admiration, but carved in alabaster, to be set on the mantelpiece and never dusted. A dapper brunette complete from head to foot serves only as an illustration to lie upon the drawing-room table. The women in the streets have the faces of playing cards; the outlines accurately filled in with pink ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Cowperwood's story, they may be briefly described. Edward Strobik, the chief of them, and the one most useful to Mollenhauer, in a minor way, was a very spry person of about thirty-five at this time—lean and somewhat forceful, with black hair, black eyes, and an inordinately large black mustache. He was dapper, inclined to noticeable clothing—a pair of striped trousers, a white vest, a black cutaway coat and a high silk hat. His markedly ornamental shoes were always polished to perfection, and his immaculate appearance gave him the nickname of "The Dude" among some. Nevertheless he was quite able ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser |
