"Absinthe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his wickedness, you have only to look at him to feel sure that he is not a hundredth part so wicked as he wishes to seem. In a word, then, M. Gustave Rameau is a type of that somewhat numerous class among the youth of Paris, which I call 'the lost Tribe of Absinthe.' There is a set of men who begin to live full gallop while they are still boys. As a general rule, they are originally of the sickly frames which can scarcely even trot, much less gallop without the spur of stimulants, and no stimulant ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... second-rate critics summoned across the ocean to present to universities which have heard Emerson, Longfellow, Henry Reed, Lowell, Whipple, and Curtis the coagulated nastiness of Verlaine, Mallarm, and their compeers, I expect next to hear of courses introducing young men to the beauties of absinthe, Turkish cigarettes, and stimulants unspeakable. Doubtless these things are all due to the "oscillatory law of human progress,'' which professors of "horse sense'' like my friend Joe Sheldon will gradually do ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... would scarcely go together," Jeanne remarked. "But after all I should think that absinthe and cigarettes are more destructive. I am dying for some tea. Let us go ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Elysées, Id's oop de Boulevarce, He's sampled all de weinshops, Und he's vinked at efery garce. Dou schveet plack-silken Gabrielle, O let me learn from dee, If 'tis in lofe - or absinthe drunks, Dat dis wild ghost ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... and Mitchell knew himself to be deadly tired—almost on the verge of collapse. He was inclined to doze off whenever he sat down; the raucous noises of the city no longer jarred or startled him, and his surroundings were becoming unreal, grotesque, as if seen through the spell of absinthe. Yes, it was necessary to check off ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... he fell into the habit of dropping on his knees and praying in the crowded London streets. There was incongruity, verging on the indecent, in this intrusion of religion into art, as if an archangel were to attend an afternoon tea in Mayfair or an absinthe session in a Bohemian cafe. It was, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, "an unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world" which ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... laudanum instead of brandy, there would seem to you a certain element of the poetic in the service of such a Muse. Drinks with Oriental or unfamiliar names have a romantic sound. Thus Alfred de Musset as the slave to absinthe sounds much more poetic than, say, Alfred de Musset as a slave to rum or gin, or even this brandy here. Yet this, too, is no less the stuff that dreams are made of; and the opium-eater, the absinthe-sipper, the brandy-drinker, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... and then purple, as if some great effect were produced on his circulation by the news he had just heard. Pierre was so startled by his cousin's wandering, senseless eyes, and otherwise disordered looks, that he rushed into a neighbouring cabaret for a glass of absinthe, which he paid for, as he recollected afterwards, with a portion of Virginie's five francs. By-and-by Morin recovered his natural appearance; but he was gloomy and silent; and all that Pierre could get out of him was, that the Norman farmer should not sleep another night at the Hotel ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... money is spent by women for drink. Wives and mothers, and even young girls, who are ashamed to drink at home, go to these fashionable restaurants for their liquor. Some will drink it openly, others will disguise it as much as possible. Absinthe has been introduced at these places of late years, and it is said to be very popular with the gentler sex. Those who know its effects will shudder at this. We have seen many drunken women in New York, and the majority have been well ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... Absinthe into large Bar glass and let ice cold water drip from the Absinthe glass into Bar glass until full. The Absinthe glass has a hole in the center. By filling the bowl of the Absinthe glass partly with Shaved Ice, and the rest with water, the water will be ice cold as it ...
— The Ideal Bartender • Tom Bullock
... Hatteras. "But there are things deeper at the heart of me than the love of woman, and one of those things is the love of horror. I tell you it bites as nothing else does in this world. It's like absinthe that turns you sick at the beginning and that you can't do without once you have got the taste of it. Do you remember my first landing? It made me sick enough at the beginning, you know. But now—" He sat down in a ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... intervals came the flash and outbreak of a fiery mind; but the years were years of lassitude. His patriotic song, Le Rhin Allemand, is of 1841. In 1852 the Academy received him. "Musset s'absente trop," observed an Academician; the ungracious reply, "Il s'absinthe trop," told the truth, and it was a piteous decline. In 1857, attended by the pious ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... attained real greatness. What a pity to destroy time-old illusions! Some prefer to think of their artist heroes dreaming their lives away in the hectic cafes of Pesth or buried in the melancholy, absinthe and paresis of some morbid cabaret of Paris. As a matter of fact, the best known pianists live a totally different life—a life of grind, grind, grind—incessant study, endless practice and ceaseless search for means to raise their artistic standing. In some quiet ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... his absinthe and gazed for an instant through the Cafe window; a solitary fiacre rattled by; he picked up the result ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... be evil. I never know what I shall be at a particular moment. Sometimes I like to sit at home after dinner and read 'The dream of Gerontius.' I love lentils and cold water. At other times I must drink absinthe, and hang the night hours with scarlet embroideries. I must have music, and the sins that march to music. There are moments when I desire squalor, sinister, mean surroundings, dreariness, and misery. The great unwashed mood is upon me. Then I go out from luxury. The mind has its West End ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... I'm so glad to hear about the simpatico boarding- house. Yes indeed I would like to hear about the people in it. And you are reading history? That's good. I'm getting sick of Paris and some day I'm going to stop an absinthe on the boulevard and slap its face to show I'm a sturdy moving-picture Western Amurrican and then leap to saddle and pursue the bandit. I'm working like the devil but what's the use. That is I mean unless one is doing the job well, ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... he has ordered for himself a strange mixture, which perfumes the night air as if some nauseous draught had been brought out of a chemist's shop, and which looks like green stagnant water in a big glass. It is called by PULLER, with great glee, an "Absinthe gummy." ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... well as other people? She flushed at the compliment, the first, I think, he had ever paid her. A waiter conjured a vacant table and chairs from nowhere, in the midst of the sedentary throng. For Liosha was brought grenadine syrup and soda, for me absinthe, at which Captain Maturin, with the steady English sailor's suspicion of any other drink than Scotch whisky, glanced disapprovingly. Jaffery, to give himself an appetite for dinner, ordered half a litre of ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... his poems. Mr. Moore says he wished to translate Tennyson. He read aloud a poem he had just written in celebration of his own fiftieth birthday. There was an allusion to a "crystal goblet." "Ce verre-la!" he interpolated, with a humorous smile, pointing to a cheap glass with the dregs of absinthe that stood on the table. There was also an allusion to a "blue-bird," a sort of symbol of the magic of spring, I fancy, that flutters through many of his poems. (The "plumage bleute de l'orgueil" figures in one of his ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the evening the open cafes and restaurants along the sidewalk are lined with groups of men and women playing cards and dice and drinking gin and bitters, vermouth or absinthe. There is an air of happiness and life about Hanoi which is typically Parisian and even during war time it is a city of gayety. An immense theater stands in the center of the town, but has not been opened since the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... indivisible, democratique, sociale, athenienne, intransigeante, despotique, invisible quoique etant partout. On y communie sous differentes especes; le matin (matines) on 'tue le ver' avec le vin blanc,—il y a plus tard les vepres de l'absinthe, auxquelles on se ferait ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... of the half-dozen decent villages standing in the flat bottom of the Val de Travers, a widish valley that lies between the gorges of the Jura and the Lake of Neuchatel, and is famous in our day for its production of absinthe and of asphalt. The flat of the valley, with the Reuss making a bald and colourless way through the midst of it, is nearly treeless, and it is too uniform to be very pleasing. In winter the climate is most rigorous, for the level is high, and the surrounding ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... than six old soldiers of the First Republic, with their uniforms torn and worn threadbare. Evidently they were of the mauvais sujet class; their bleary eyes and limp jaws told plainly of a common love of absinthe; and their eyes had that haggard, worn look of slumbering ferocity which follows hard in the wake of drink. The other side stood as of old, with its shelves intact, save that they were cut to half their depth, and in each shelf of ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... Europeanised Arabs, and laughed at the idea of their ever becoming "Francais." From what I saw, the natives merely adopted the vices without the good qualities of the dominant race. If to be civilised consists in sitting in the cafes, drinking absinthe, playing cards, and speaking bad French, I certainly saw one or two most unquestionable specimens of the Arab adaptability to Gallic impressions; but, with the exception of these brilliant results, I never saw the least token of intercourse between the Moors and their conquerors; indeed, each nation ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... called "fancy" diamonds in the trade. Certain of these "fancy" diamonds are still further defined by using a name specifying the color, as, for example, "canary" diamonds (when of a fine bright yellow), or "golden fancies," when of a fine golden brown, or "orange," or "pink," or "absinthe green," or "violet," as the case ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... your Majesty; and, in all but the dates, true enough. But what a drop of concentrated absinthe follows next, by way of finish,—which might ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... dismissal, and went home. I was without a penny, but was immediately visited by a wonderful run of fortune. Among other strokes of luck, I sold my rascal dog for $25 to an infatuated Englishman, and won six hundred glasses of absinthe at a single game of billiards from the proprietor of the Paris coach, commuting them for a dozen free passages. I said good-bye to the dear mother and the saintly abbe, and found myself early on a May morning ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... beer and mead—if he could get it—liqueurs made by monks, and, in a word, all those feeding, fortifying, and confirming beverages that our fathers drank in old time; but not whisky, nor brandy, nor sparkling wines, not absinthe, nor the kind of drink called gin. This he promised to do, and all went well. He became a merry companion, and began to write odes. His prose clarified and set, that had before been very mixed and cloudy. He slept well; he comprehended divine ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... the little room. Fairfax swung round upon his stool, a tall, aggressive-looking youth whose good-looks were half eaten up with dissipation. His eyes were unnaturally bright, the cloudy remains in his glass indicated absinthe. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... subordinates, Constance and Felicite; and beneath this, le pere et la mere Jaurion sold their cheap goodies, and jealously guarded the gates that secluded us from the wicked world outside—where women are, and merchants of tobacco, and cafes where you can sip the opalescent absinthe, and libraries where you can buy books more diverting than the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... N. green &c adj.; blue and yellow; vert [Heral.]. emerald, verd antique [Fr.], verdigris, malachite, beryl, aquamarine; absinthe, creme de menthe [Fr.]. [Pigments] terre verte [Fr.], verditer^, verdine^, copperas. greenness, verdure; viridity^, viridescence^; verditure^. [disease of eyes with green tint] glaucoma, rokunaisho [Jap.Tr.]. Adj. green, verdant; glaucous, olive, olive green; green as grass; verdurous. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... themselves, and for the most part they were bad rhymesters of decadent verse. Shirley was astonished to see so many of them busily engaged smoking cigarettes and imbibing glasses of a pale-green beverage, which Jefferson told her was absinthe. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... hatched a mite, like the cheese-mite, which devours books merely because it is compelled to gnaw its way out into the air." Book-worms like the paste which binders employ, but D'Alembert adds that they cannot endure absinthe. Mr. Blades finds too that they disdain to devour our adulterate ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... surgeon in charge—Major Tyrell—told me that the poor fellows quivered at every shot as if in anticipation of a blow. A bullet in the leg will made a brave man a coward. A blow on the head will make a wise man a fool. Indeed I have read that a sufficiency of absinthe can make a good man a knave. The triumph of mind over matter does not seem to be quite complete ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... this majestic personage, handing me over to a pretty little chambermaid who attended the summons. "And, Marie, on thy return, my child, bring me an absinthe." ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... for trouble," returned Blake, quietly. He advanced to the table and leaned against it. "Jack," he exclaimed, "you're a damned fool. There was some excuse for the others. Parmalee was a kid—Rogers an old fool—Van Dam—well, absinthe and asininity account for him. And they fell to their fooldom without warning to guard them or precedent to shield them. But you—open-eyed, knowing everything—forewarned and forearmed,—walk fatuously to your doom as one sheep follows ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... him by his name and pulled his ears. He had been a prisoner of Abd-el-Kader, bearing the scar of a yataghan stroke on his neck, of one ball in his shoulder and another in his chest; and notwithstanding absinthe, duels, debts of play, and almond-eyed Jewesses, he fairly won, with the point of the bayonet and sabre, his grade of captain in ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... fell into conversation with a postman, who made me the offer of his company during the remainder of the journey. I readily assented, and gave him a glass of absinthe—his favourite drink—before leaving. He did not need it, for, as he confessed, he had been clinking glasses with unusual zeal that day. He was a very droll fellow, a striking type of the Southerner, whom it was difficult to look at ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... she had seemed before a thin-stemmed, mild-hued flower of Puritanism, it may be imagined whether in her present situation this delicate bloom was less apparent. Beside her an old gentleman was drinking absinthe; behind her the dame de comptoir in the pink ribbons was calling "Alcibiade! Alcibiade!" to the long-aproned waiter. I explained to Miss Spencer that my companion had lately been her shipmate, and my brother-in-law came up and was introduced ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... present itself to a receptive summer visitor rather than the returned native. Mr. SYMONS' similes are essentially urban; the sea (to take an example at random) has for him "something of the colour of absinthe." In fine, though he can and does get into his pages much of the exhilaration of a tramp over heathery cliffs "smelling of honey and sea wind," one retains throughout a not unpleasing consciousness of Paddington. I have left myself too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... rapidly painting a pair of hens and a cock in a little water-colour sketching-box, and now and then glancing at the ceiling like a man who should seek inspiration from the muse. Dick thought it remarkable that a painter should choose to work over an absinthe in a public cafe, and looked the man over. The aged rakishness of his appearance was set off by a youthful costume; he had disreputable grey hair and a disreputable sore, red nose; but the coat and the gesture, the outworks of the man, were still designed for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a bold and courageous step—one of the most heroic things in the war. [Cheers.] One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the French Minister of Finance said, "I have got to go to the Chamber of Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe." [Cheers.] Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this country. It is really the worst form of drink used; not only among workmen, but among other classes as well. Its ravages are terrible, and they abolished it by a majority ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... yellow-flowered artemisia or absinthe whose wood burns like holm-oak. (Unexplored Syria ii. 43.) See vol. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... easy to me to do what's right," and Charlie turned on his heel and made rapidly for the nearest cafe, where he ordered an absinthe. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... but what will do you good; And the drugs are simples; 'tis hellebore, Nepenthe, upas, and dragon's blood, Absinthe, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... absurd," interrupted Hardy, snatching the box away from him. "You might as well give him a glass of absinthe. He is church-warden at home and can't smoke anything ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... contributor to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' In 1852 he was elected to the French Academy, but hardly ever appeared at the sessions. A confrere once made the remark: "De Musset frequently absents himself," whereupon it is said another Immortal answered, "And frequently absinthe's himself!" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... swaggering, magnanimous infant! Oscar Wilde is generally regarded as something short of "the just man made perfect," but his simple, babyish passion for touching pretty things, toying with pretty people, wearing pretty clothes, and drinking absinthe, is far too naive a thing to be, at bottom, evil. No really wicked person could have written "The Importance of Being Earnest," with those delicious, paradoxical children rallying one another, and ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... tables and uncomfortable chairs that repose on a flooring of chill cement tiles—where, in sheer desperation, two or three of us, muffled up to our ears, congregate before dinner to exchange gossip and imbibe the pre-prandial absinthe. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... have vomited forth its scum. Uncanny beings lurk at the corners. Wild with cognac and absinthe, the unruly mob commits every wanton act which unbridled wickedness can suggest. Good men are powerless, and women exposed to every insult. Public trade is suspended. Robbery and official pillage increase. The creatures of a day give way quickly to each other. Gallant Rossell, who passed ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... souper, make haste, zhay angazha Rigol-bouche itself!" Take me away from these furnished apartments and maisons dorees, from the Jockey Club and the Figaro, from close-shaven military heads and varnished barracks, from sergents-de-ville with Napoleonic beards, and from glasses of muddy absinthe, from gamblers playing dominoes at the cafes, and gamblers on the Bourse, from red ribbons in button-holes, from M. de Four, inventor of 'matrimonial specialities,' and the gratuitous consultations of Dr. Charles Albert, from liberal lectures and government pamphlets, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... he said quietly, "that a place like this is as the froth on our champagne. It is all show. It exists and it passes away. This very restaurant may be unknown in a year's time,—a beer palace for the Germans, a den of absinthe and fiery brandy for the cochers. It is for the tourists, for the happy ladies of the world, that such a place exists. For those who need ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thrummed, and a very French voice rose above it singing a song of the Paris pavements. In the large cafes just below the balcony where the two women were standing crowds of people were seated at little tables, sipping absinthe, vermouth, and bright-colored syrups. Among the Europeans of various nations the dignified and ample figures of well-dressed Arabs in pale blue, green, brown, and white burnouses, with high turbans bound by ropes of camel's hair, stood out, the conquered ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... ABSINTHE. The national headache of the French. A jag-builder which is mostly wormwood and bad dreams. A liquid substance which when applied to a "holdover" revivifies it and enables its owner to sit up and notice ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... a rag-picker, who had formerly been one of the handsomest women in Paris. Now, for the sake of a laugh, the women of the district made her drink absinthe, after which the street boys would chase her ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... coffee-rooms, to call the two or three justly celebrated women of our epoch by their Christian names; he is on the best of terms with the blue stockings of the second grade,—who ought to be called socks,—and he shakes hands and takes glasses of absinthe with the stars ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... girl has started in to wake up this little old town reminds me of the feeling you get under your belt seven minutes after you've sipped an absinthe frappe for the first time—you are liable for a good jag and don't know it," he continued enthusiastically. "Let's don't let the folks know that they are off until I get everybody in a full swing of buzz over my queen." I had never seen Tom so enthusiastic ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in the blazing terrors of the Commune, and who, in some cases, had paid the price in years of imprisonment under the tropical sun of Cayenne. In all their wanderings they had carried the spirit of revolution with them and spouted death to despots over their glasses of absinthe in cellar cafes. William H. Rideing, in an article which was published in "Scribner's Magazine" for November, 1879, described these men as he had found them in the Taverne Alsacienne in Greene Street: "gathered around the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... was kept a fixture on the driving-seat, to guard the treasure; while the Doctor, with a singular, slightly tipsy airiness of manner, fluttered in and out of cafes, where he shook hands with garrison officers, and mixed an absinthe with the nicety of old experience; in and out of shops, from which he returned laden with costly fruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece of silk for his wife, a preposterous cane for himself, and a kepi of the newest fashion for the boy; in ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see," he said again, and drained a glass of absinthe he had been toying with. "Thank ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... when Chrysantheme has gone up to Diou-djen-dji, we cross, Yves and myself, the European concession, on our way to the ship, to take up our watch till the following day. The cosmopolitan quarter exhaling an odor of absinthe, is dressed up with flags, and squibs are being fired off in honor of France. Long lines of djins pass by, dragging as fast as their naked legs can carry them, the crew of the Triomphante, who are shouting and fanning themselves. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... No, keep yer places, I ain't going to pinch nobody. Anyhow I'm only a Zone detective. But I just want to ask you a few questions. Now, Mamie, what's that you're drinking? Ah! A gin ricky. And just how much does that cost—here? And you, Flossie? An absinthe frappe? Ah! Very good. And what is the retail price of that particular drink?"—and so on ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... it is, Percy," Ralph said. "Who would think that we were in a besieged city? Everything looks very much as usual: the shops are open; people walk about and chat, and smoke, and drink their coffee or absinthe, just as usual. The only difference is, that everyone is in some sort of uniform or other. One does not see a single able-bodied man altogether in civilian dress; and at night the streets are very dismal, owing ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... smoothness under our feet, and the long detour we had to make in order to reach the summit was a series of the gentlest ascents, a wandering over fair meadow-land several thousand feet above the sea-level. Here we found the large yellow gentian, used in the fabrication of absinthe, and the bright yellow arnica, whilst instead of the snow-white flower of the Alpine anemone, the ground was now silvery with its feathery seed; the dark purple pansy of the Vosges was also rare. We were a month ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the club, which took place in a private dining room at the "Clarry" (the Clarendon Hotel) in February, Forbes was called upon to respond to the toast "The Real Kathleen." His voice, tremulous with emotion and absinthe frappe, nearly failed him; but he managed to stammer a few phrases which, thought at the time to be extemporaneous, called forth loud applause; but it was found later that he had jotted them down on the tablecloth during the soup and fish courses. "Fellow Scorpers," he said, "I mean ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... Senor. He will write his felicitations when the marriage and the crowning occur—he will even send suitable gifts, but he will remain at his cafe here with his absinthe, or in Paris near the fair Comptessa Astaride, whom he adores, unless, of course, he goes to touch ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Nouveau must have been originated by a would-be artist who got drunk on absinthe after eating too much pate de foie gras in a batard-Louis XV. room, then slept, then woke, and in a fit of D.T. conceived it. He saw impossible flowers and almost rats running up the furniture, and every leg and line out of balance and twisted; ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... just now," resumed the district attorney, as his colleague drew back out of sight once more. "You cannot remember the saloon in which you drank. That's possible enough; but perhaps you can remember what they gave you. Was it whiskey, rum, absinthe, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... mildly, "all variants of purple." "Very well," acquiesces the decorator, "we will make it green." In the end Mr. M.'s worst premonitions are realized: the walls are resplendent in a striking shade of magenta. Along the edge of each panel of Chinese brocade a narrow band of absinthe velvet ribbon gives the necessary contrast. The furniture is painted in dull ivory with touches of gold and beryl and the bed cover is peacock blue. Four round cushions of a similar shade repose on the floor at the foot of the bed. The fat manufacturer's ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... "Absinthe cocktails ruin the taste for sweet milk. Don't talk about things you know nothing about; thank God for that same ignorance," Mr. Vandeford commanded. "Go to bed and sleep like the cherub you are, while I expiate here ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... his girdle, paper, ink, and brush, and proceeds to compose a poem on the beauty of the spot and the feelings it calls up, which he subsequently reads to his admiring companions. Hot sake is next served, which is to them what beer is to a German or absinthe to a blouse; and there they sit, sip, and poetize, passing their couplets, as they do their cups, in honor to one another. At last, after drinking in an hour or two of scenery and sake combined, the symposium ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... the schooling and general conduct of the troops. My own observation leads me to think this true, not of St.-Omer only, but of all the considerable garrison towns which I have visited in France during the past six or seven years. The old type of swashbuckling, absinthe-tippling, rakehelly French officer of whom, during the last years of the Empire, one saw and heard so much, seems to have passed away into history and literature. However it may be with the 'gaiter-buttons' in the next great war, I do not believe ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... with the minor officials, the surgeons, and the clerks of the comptoir, drinking absinthe and colicky vermouth, smoking veritable "weeds," playing at dominoes, and contending who could talk longest and loudest. At 7 P.M. the word was given to "fall to." The room was small and exceedingly close; the social board was big and very rickety. The ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... or three napoleons, he had but a word to say; and he said it often. Thus, after a while, he became an excellent billiard-player; he kept his colored meerschaum in the rack of a popular brewery; he took absinthe before dinner, and spent his evenings in the laudable effort to ascertain how many mugs of beer he could "put away." Gaining in audacity, he danced at Bullier's, dined at Foyd's, and at ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... as he did, because his friends might not have understood. He laughed at the days when he had thought of the priesthood, blushed when he ran across any of those tender and exquisite old verses he had written in his youth, and became addicted to absinthe and other less peculiar drinks, and to gaming a little to escape a madness ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... half insensible with drugs all the time, until she gave up. She never got outside of that place for ten months, and then they sent her away, because she didn't suit. I guess they'll put her out of here, too—she's getting to have crazy fits, from drinking absinthe. Only one of the girls that came out with her got away, and she jumped out of a second-story window one night. There was a great fuss about that—maybe ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... called, "pour me out a glass of the stiffest brandy you've got in the place, with a dash of absinthe in it! Help! Life-saving ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... the habits of the people of London and Paris is shown by their eating and drinking. Paris is brilliant with cafes: all the world frequents them to sip coffee (and too often absinthe), read the papers, and gossip over the news; take them away, as all travelers know, and Paris would not know itself. There is not a cafe in London: instead of cafes, there are gin-mills; instead of light wine, there is heavy beer. The restaurants and restaurant life ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of scarlet, orange, and vivid yellows, with streaks of absinthe hue, burned up over the desert world. It showed Nissr about as she had been the night before; for the simoom had not thrashed up sea enough—offshore, as it had been—to break ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... house" under the palms at Raffles Hotel in Singapore; he had been instructed in the ways of the wise in Shanghai by a sophisticated attache of the French Legation, who imparted his knowledge between sips of absinthe, as he looked down on the passing show from a teahouse on the Bubbling Well Road; he had rapturously listened to every sweet secret that Japan had to tell, and had left a wake of ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... way of meditation. I could not choose but wonder at myself when I looked back to this time last year, and remembered my idle evenings in third-rate cafes, on the rive gauche, playing dominoes, talking the foul slang of Parisian bohemia, and poisoning my system with adulterated absinthe. And now I feast upon sweet cakes and honey, and think it paradisiac enjoyment to play whist—for love—in a farm-house parlour. I am younger by ten years than I was twelve ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Tsze, in the book called "Shang Mung." And the above is therefore a fair instance of the progress of human intelligence,—of a thousand years of incredulity, and final scientific admission. Let it be taken here as absinthe, appetizingly. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... murmur was heard: "A spy, an English spy!" From the mouths of absinthe-drinking liberes it passed to the mouths of rum-drinking recidivistes. It did not escape Blake Shorland's ears, but he betrayed no sign. He sipped his coffee and appeared absorbed in his paper, thinking carefully of the difficulties of his position. He knew that to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Everywhere the rose is met with, and reminds us of cultivated gardens and civilization. It is scattered over the prairies in small bouquets, and, when glittering in the dews and waving in the pleasant breeze of the early morning, is the most beautiful of the prairie flowers. The artemisia, absinthe, or prairie sage, as it is variously called, is increasing in size, and glittering like silver, as the southern breeze turns up its leaves to the sun. All these plants have their insect inhabitants, variously ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... out!" he cried. "I have discovered your sin! I knew you must have one tucked about you somewhere. Wormwood wine! Absinthe! The drink of our depraved French friends! Who would have suspected you of ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... Venice with Sand in the fall of 1833. They had the maternal sanction and means supplied by Madame de Musset. The story gives forth the true Gallic resonance on being critically tapped. De Musset returned alone, sick in body and soul, and thenceforth absinthe was his constant solace. There had been references, vague and disquieting, of a Dr. Pagello for whom Sand had suddenly manifested one of her extraordinary fancies. This she denied, but De Musset's brother plainly intimated that ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... himself after such an appellation. He would have esteemed it a favor now to be what he was named, and only lifted his creased beaver gratefully, and hobbled nervously away, and stopping near by at a cafe drank a great glass of absinthe, with almost a ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... share the comforts of a club (which may be enumerated as a billiard-board, absinthe, a map of the world on Mercator's projection, and one of the most agreeable verandahs in the tropics), a handful of whites of varying nationality, mostly French officials, German and Scottish merchant clerks, and the agents of the opium monopoly. There ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... name, and at the jolly southern accent, the Tarasconian lifted his head, and perceived, a couple of steps away, the honest tanned visage of Captain Barbassou, master of the Zouave, who was taking his absinthe at the ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... humility. The necessity of repairing an error and recovering a failure became to him a more powerful stimulus than the hope of avoiding it altogether. The hour of punishment, which was bitter as absinthe to his taste, became sweet as honey in his memory. Above all, these days taught him, in a manner never to be forgotten, the invaluable lesson that the sense of having done an ill deed is the very heaviest calamity that an ill deed ensures, and that in life ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... things backwards through my memory, or whether there are indeed atmospheres of psychology which the eye of science cannot as yet pierce, it is the humiliating fact that on that particular evening I felt like a poet—like any little rascal of a poet who drinks absinthe ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton |
