"Mellowed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... around the room crying, "Out with the water and in with the wine!" We all paid tribute to this joke, but Agamemnon in particular, for he well knew what strings to pull in order to secure another invitation to dinner. Tickled by our flattery, and mellowed by the wine, Trimalchio was just about drunk. "Why hasn't one of you asked my Fortunata to dance?" he demanded, "There's no one can do a better cancan, believe me," and he himself raised his arms above his head and favored us with an impersonation ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... schoolmen; but the two united, and together animated by a strenuous faith, made them theologians. In such intellects the seventeenth century abounded, but we question if in dialectic skill, guided by sober judgment, and in extensive acquirements, mellowed by a deep spirituality, it yielded ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... having furnished me with introductory credentials, I called upon M. Millin within twenty-four hours of my arrival at Paris. In consequence, from that time to this, I have had frequent intercourse with him. Indeed I am willing to hope that our acquaintance has well nigh mellowed into friendship. He is a short, spare, man; with a countenance lighted up by intelligence rather than moulded by beauty. But he is evidently just now (and indeed, as I learn, has been for some time past) ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... perfect—a day that in happier circumstances Mavis would have loved. The sun reigned in a cloudless sky, the blue of which was mellowed with a touch of autumn dignity. The grasses waved gladly by the road-side, and along the ditches; patches of sunlight played delightful games of hide-and-seek on hedge-rows and among the trees. Most ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... was a long time ago—a very, very long time ago. She had been dead many years. And he—he must be growing old. Thirty-eight! And he was nine then, with slender legs and tousled hair, and a worship for his mother that had mellowed and perhaps saddened his whole life. It was a long time ago. But the songs had lived. They must be known over the whole world—those songs his mother used to sing. He began to join in where he could catch the tunes, and his voice sounded strange and broken and unreal to him, ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... to the Marsh. Joanna had postponed, after all, her house-painting till the winter months of rotting sea mists were over. But in April the ladders striped her house-front, and soon her windows and doors began to start luridly out of their surroundings of mellowed tiles and brick. After much deliberation she had chosen yellow for her colour, tastefully picked out with green. She had always been partial to yellow—it was a colour that "showed up" well, and she was also influenced by the fact that there was no other yellow-piped ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... bend in the river, they came in sight of a handsome, dignified old house of mellowed red brick, with well-kept lawns reaching down to the ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... during the remainder of the luncheon that she did not even observe the kindly light that her presence was shedding on the right reverend ecclesiastic by her side. He reflected it back in tones duly mellowed by his position; the minor clergy caught up the rays thereof, and so the gentle influence played ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... mellowed into the Summer which brought a most unexpected letter from our sister Frances, who had been living all these years with the family of Mr. James F. Reed, in San Jose. Childlike, ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... hush of night, and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen. Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear Precipitously steep; and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, Or chirps ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... moved for, the case was afterwards solemnly argued. My friend Mr. Const, whom I delight in having an opportunity to praise, not only for his abilities but his manners; a gentleman whose ancient German blood has been mellowed in England, and who may be truely said to unite the Baron and the Barrister, was one of the Counsel for Mr. Topham. He displayed much learning and ingenuity upon the general question; which, however, was not decided, as the Court ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... cano the sunlight, sifting through the interlocking branches of ancient palms and caobas, mellowed and softened into a veil of yellow radiance that flecked the little stream with splashes of gold. Juan in the prow with the pole labored in silence. At times he stopped just long enough to roll a huge cigar, and to feast his bright eyes upon the fair girl whom he silently adored. Lazaro, as patron, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... fine December evening; the sharp air of morning had mellowed until it was as mild as autumn. There had been no snow, and the long fields, sloping down from the homestead, were brown and mellow. A weird, dreamy stillness had fallen on the purple earth, the dark fir woods, ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... writing-desk, the rotating chair, the easy chair at the fire, the rotating bookcase, the fixture of indexed pigeon-holes that filled the further recess. The vivid Turkey carpet, the later Victorian rugs and curtains had mellowed now to a rich dignity of effect, and copper and brass shone warm about the open fire. Electric lights had replaced the lamp of former days; that was the chief alteration in the original equipment. ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... part of the fixed furniture of their Alma Mater. In the larger American colleges, such men are mercilessly dropped or sent to a Divinity School; but the European universities, whose tempers the centuries have mellowed, harbor in their spacious Gothic bosoms a tenderer heart for their unfortunate sons. There the professors greet them at the green tables with a good-humored smile of recognition; they are treated with ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... now. I thought, at first, that you were perhaps again using a term that you are accustomed to yourself. Yes; I certainly do put the canvases into the garden that they may dry in the open air while I am painting, but I should be sorry to see them 'mellowed.'" ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... lunch, which took us gently up past Wargrave and Shiplake. Mellowed in the drowsy sunlight of a summer's afternoon, Wargrave, nestling where the river bends, makes a sweet old picture as you pass it, and one that lingers long upon the retina ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... the light are both alike' to our hope, in so far as each may become the occasion for its exercise. It is not only to be the sweet juice expressed from our hearts by the winepress of calamities, but that which flows of itself from hearts ripened and mellowed under the sunshine of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... to the other jurors, and, finding they were about to go back to the trial, I exclaimed, "Don't be in a hurry, gentlemen, let us take another glass." They again acceded to my request, and seeing that they were a little mellowed by their indulgence, I ventured to speak about the trial. I told them that the courts of the state were organized, and there was no necessity or justification now for Lynch juries; that the prisoner appeared to be without friends, and I appealed to them, as men of ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... through the ground. Each year it grew bigger, till at last it blossomed one spring, and in the following autumn bore some fine large persimmons. Among the broad smooth green leaves the fruit hung like golden balls, and as they ripened they mellowed to a deep orange. It was the little crab's pleasure to go out day by day and sit in the sun and put out his long eyes in the same way as a snail puts out its horn, and watch ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies: And all that's best of dark and bright Meet her in aspect and in her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... and meanwhile, overhead, if the weather be rightly characteristic of the place, the sky fades towards night through a surprising key of colours. The latest gold leaps from the last mountain. Soon, perhaps, the moon shall rise, and in her gentler light the valley shall be mellowed and misted, and here and there a wisp of silver cloud upon a hilltop, and here and there a warmly glowing window in a house, between fire and starlight, kind and homely ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... watch-tower I had re-read the great books from a new point of vantage, and let the eye roam over fields of literature which lie beyond the undergraduate's bounds; by a still permeation of fine influence, my crude philosophy was unconsciously mellowed, as the surface of ivory, according to Roman belief, by the bland air of Tibur. For by the mere being in an atmosphere of serenity our nature grows porous to gracious influences streaming in we know not how or when, ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... consequently the regular drinking place for every living creature in the neighbourhood, as he and his chum had already ascertained. Indeed the incessant bellowing, snorting, trumpeting, roaring, splashing, and squealing that, slightly mellowed by distance, penetrated to the interior of the tent, was quite enough to justify such an idea. But he had scarcely settled himself in his chair beside Grosvenor's hammock, and closed his eyes in the hope of wooing sleep to them, than he became aware of other and nearer sounds, dominating ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... womanhood would win, without any other protection. She is very beautiful, very satisfactory; and has a fresh and new charm about her unreached by any cast or copy. The line of the marble is just so much mellowed by time, as to do for her all that Gibson tries, or ought to try to do for his statues by color, softening her, warming her almost imperceptibly, making her an inmate of the heart, as well as a spiritual existence. I felt a kind of tenderness for her; an ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the old oak stalls and looked around her. The brilliant sunshine from without entered through the stained-glass windows, mellowed into golden beams of soft amber light, with here and there a shaft of crimson. What a beautiful expression—perpetual light! As Garth sang it, each syllable seemed to pierce the silence like a ray of purest sunlight. "The dulness of—" Jane could just see the top of his dark head over ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... European tour. A Parisian clock, rich in gilded scroll work to the verge of barbarity, contrasted with the artistic severity of one or two good Italian marbles, while these in turn stood quaintly upon choice examples of time-mellowed English cabinet-work. There was taste in them all, but they suffered from the juxtaposition, which, however, was somewhat characteristic of the country. Still, Miss Schuyler had not spoiled the splendid parquetrie ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... the innumerable strains made one divine harmony. From the full-orbed song from the maple by my window, down to the faintest chirp and twitter, there was no discord; while from the fields beyond the village the whistle of the meadow-larks was so mellowed and softened by distance as to incline one to wonder whether their notes were real or mere ideals ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... ask that it should. They all had known from the beginning that these days of companionship must slip away and come to an end. And yet the end had come so quickly. Why, it had scarcely been midsummer before the twilight had deepened and the days mellowed ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... Clement walked with their father to the church. There it was, that handsome church; the evening sun in slanting beams coming through the gorgeous west window to the illuminated walls, and the rich inlaid marble and alabaster of the chancel mellowed by the pure evening light. The east window, done before glass-painting had improved, was tame and ill-executed, and there was, even aesthetically, a strange unsatisfactory feeling in looking at the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slipper into the waste-basket in his room at the Knickerbocker, but the chambermaid, seeing that it was new and mateless, thought there must be a mistake, and placed it in his clothes-closet. He found it there when he returned from the theatre that evening. Considerably mellowed by food and drink and cheerful company, he took the slipper in his hand and decided to keep it as a reminder that absurd things could happen to people of the most clocklike deportment. When he got back ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... have been altogether satisfied with the species of emotion with which her devoted knight had hitherto gazed on the beautiful features, and fair form, and lustrous eyes, of the lovely Rebecca; eyes whose brilliancy was shaded, and, as it were, mellowed, by the fringe of her long silken eyelashes, and which a minstrel would have compared to the evening star darting its rays through a bower of jessamine. But Ivanhoe was too good a Catholic to retain the same class of feelings towards a Jewess. This Rebecca had foreseen, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... early spring, glad and warm over Manhattan, brought no message of cheer to the Billionaire. It bore no news of peace and joy to him. Its very brightness, as it flooded the metropolis and mellowed his luxurious inner office, seemed to offend the master of the world. And presently he arose, walked to the window and made as though to lower the shade. But for a moment he delayed this action. Standing there at the window, he peered out. Far below ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... landscape signs of twilight creep, And sounds that tell of night—sounds that I love: The hooting of the owl, the tree-frog's cry By distance mellowed; and—more distant still— I hear the barking of the village dogs. The breath of evening whispering 'mid the pines, And deepening shadows, bid me homeward turn; And yet I linger—for I seem a part Of lake and mountain, meadow, tree and sky,— And realize how sweet a thing it is ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... world has had its CHRIST, its FENELONS, its HOWARDS, as well as its CALIGULAS and NEROS. Love hath been at times a manifestation as well as a principle; and the train of its glory swept far below the stars, and its brightness has fallen in mitigated and mellowed rays from the faces of men. As the ambiguous stranger-star of Bethlehem had its interpreting angel-song to the herdsmen of the plains, so loving men in all ages have given glimpses and interpretations of the love of GOD, and of the pity that is ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... garlic returned to circulation by the Argonauts when they came back from hunting the golden fleece, but now hung as a badge of trade on the door-jambs; and the frying of eggs, that have long lost their market value, with Bombay ghee and young garlic, the whole mellowed and perhaps refined by the continual vapors from open sewers. One fragrance that perhaps tickles the olfactory nerve with more delicacy than all others and might be called a perfumed "dream," comes from baking a garlic pie piping hot in ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... Clelias and Mandanes of yore, they should resume the humour of sending their lovers into banishment. Distance, in truth, produces in idea the same effect as in real perspective. Objects are softened, and rounded, and rendered doubly graceful; the harsher and more ordinary points of character are mellowed down, and those by which it is remembered are the more striking outlines that mark sublimity, grace, or beauty. There are mists too in the mental as well as the natural horizon, to conceal what is ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... "You see, young gentlemen," said the chief with a smile, "that my arm yet retains some portion of my early vigor." He was then in his fortieth year, and probably in the fullness of his physical powers. Those powers became rather mellowed than decayed by time, for "his age was like lusty winter, frosty yet kindly," and up to his sixty-eighth year he mounted a horse with surprising agility, and rode with ease and grace. Rickets, the celebrated equestrian, used to say, "I delight to see the General ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... sharpness of vigor about him which was lost sight of as he ripened and mellowed in a conspicuous manner under the influences of ampler means and advancing years. The simple tastes and quiet ways of his boyhood home were however to the end more attractive and satisfactory to him than the demands and restraints of ...
— Fifty years with the Revere Copper Co. - A Paper Read at the Stockholders' Meeting held on Monday 24 March 1890 • S. T. Snow
... collaboration) his own name. "Sabre and Owen's Elementary Mathematics" had been notably taken up by the schools. "Sabre's Modern History", shunned by the public schools in accordance with their principle of ignoring all history mellowed by fewer than three thousand years, had been received enthusiastically by the lesser schools wherein was then dawning the daring idea of presenting to the rising generation some glimmering conception of the constitutional and sociological ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... though my selfe haue beene an idle Trewant, Omitting the sweet benefit of time To cloath mine age with Angel-like perfection: Yet hath Sir Protheus (for that's his name) Made vse, and faire aduantage of his daies: His yeares but yong, but his experience old: His head vn-mellowed, but his Iudgement ripe; And in a word (for far behinde his worth Comes all the praises that I now bestow.) He is compleat in feature, and in minde, With all good ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... this. They had ranged from mountain peak to mountain peak, or across the scarred tops of intervening peaks to a skyline untamed even by the coaxing tints of rose and purple sunsets; but before him now lay distance of another kind: hills upon hills, 'twas true, yet low; and whose once rough lines were mellowed by the patient surgery of a hundred years of plowshares. Gentle slopes, and shallow valleys, and slopes again—not standing like his graven monsters of the Cumberlands, but lolling in peace and lazy unconcern, melting into the azure west so artfully that ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... all mellowed and diminished as seen through a glass at great distance; and on the shore the men toiling to load a great treasure-chest into a long-boat looked like tiny manikins posed about a delicate model of marine life. The second chest yet stood on the cliff-edge, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... such seigneurial airs as might be claimed for it to its dominant position above the village rather than to any feature of its own. Built of granite, like all the rest of Gavrillac, though mellowed by some three centuries of existence, it was a squat, flat-fronted edifice of two stories, each lighted by four windows with external wooden shutters, and flanked at either end by two square towers or pavilions under extinguisher roofs. Standing well back ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... ready to receive and serve me. But don't think he does this for the sake of my black eyes or my philosophy. That disdainful glance of his on the first evening I could never forget, billah. And I found that it could be baited and mellowed only by a liberal tip. And this I make in advance every week for both my comfort and his. Yes, I am a fool, I grant you, but I'm not out of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... and the light mellowed, the lady dropped her book and began to think and dream, unconscious of a prosaic black object crossing the lawn towards her. This was a young gentleman in a frock coat. He was dark, and had a long, grave face, with a ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... can foster nobilities, it can discourage vices; but literal conveyance of lofty qualities, can it effect that? Can it create opulence of soul in a sterile nature? Can it cause a thin soil to do the work of a deep one? We have seen harsh natures mellowed, violent natures chastened, rough ones refined; but who has seen an essentially mean nature made large-hearted, self-forgetful, fertile of grandest faiths and greatest deeds? Who has beheld a Thersites transformed into an Achilles? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the heyday of its glory, when the sisters Margaret and Dorothy received the homage of their numerous admirers, or the "King of the Peak" himself passed to and fro within its walls. But it is more beautiful now than it was then, for now it is tinged with a beauty which age alone can bestow, and mellowed with a charm that none of ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... enough to suggest any phase of evil, and Brandt well knew that he was capable of what he meditated. It was now the policy of both parties, however, to be very friendly, and Bute was still further mellowed by a draught ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... grand simplicity, and an unpretentious majesty of character breathed all about him. An indwelling vehemency, a powerful will, and a firm confidence could readily be seen, but calm and mellowed with generous kindness, without a trace of selfishness or vanity. He was jovial, free-spoken, open, easily approached, and at home with ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... belly and the rocky face," as he has painted himself, presided, ready to enter the ring against all comers. By degrees the stern man with the worn features, darkened by prison cell and hardened by battle-fields, had mellowed into a Falstaff. Long struggles with poverty had made Ben arrogant, for he had worked as a bricklayer in early life and had served in Flanders as a common soldier; he had killed a rival actor in a duel, and had been in danger of having his nose slit in the pillory for a libel against ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... parted for their peculiar laugh of embarrassment, but the questioner's smile was so serious that she forced her sweetest gravity. "Why, General, according to our Southern ways," she said,—every word mellowed by her Southern way of saying it,—"that's for ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... brief tribute to her memory had the happiness to form her acquaintance; and he well remembers the impression of respectful admiration which that first interview produced on his mind. She was now "well stricken in years." Time had mellowed the naturally sweet expression of her countenance, without much impairing its vivacity. Her silvery locks shaded a brow imprinted with the wrinkles of age, but intelligent and serene. Her eyes were yet bright, and glanced upon her friends ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... Mellowed by a quarter of a mile or so of interesting space, the music lent a charm to the tranquil, ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... tolerant country? With its kind eyes and its wary sidelong look. Toleration. In which everything mellowed and nothing was destroyed. A soft country. A country with a passion for imperfection. A ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... house was of the type which, having from the first been massive and richly sombre, had mellowed into a darker sombreness and richness as it had stood unmoved amid London years and fogs. The grandeur of decoration and furnishing had been too solid to depreciate through decay, and its owner had been of no fickle mind led to waver in taste by whims of fashion. The ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... through the leafy arcade formed by whose boughs and trunks the level beams of the setting sun were pouring. In the distance a group of dairymaids were plying their task, which they accompanied throughout with snatches of Irish songs which, mellowed by the distance, floated not unpleasingly to the ear; and beside them sat or lay, with all the grave importance of conscious protection, six or seven large dogs of various kinds. Farther in the distance, and through the cloisters of the arching wood, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the general rule, by the extent of its shores, the elevation of its mountains, the beauty of its water—which has the deep tint of the ocean off soundings—and the softness of the atmosphere; lending to it by day all the mellowed and dreamy charms that other scenes borrow from the illusions of night and the milder brilliance of the secondary planets. Raoul did not exert himself at the oar; and, as he sat aft, his companion was obliged ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... all right, though Phillip never saw them; crumbling a bit, yet still a sturdy barrier to the sea. A broad cement and grass promenade runs atop, wide as an American street. Thirty or forty feet below the low parapet sounds the deep, time-mellowed voice of the Pacific, as there rolls higher and higher up the rock ledges that great tide so different from the scarcely noticeable one at Colon. The summer breeze never dies down, never grows boisterous. On the landward ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... and goddesses, nymphs and shepherds, standing in flowery grass under fruit-laden trees and wreathed about with roses. Both colour and subject were of fairyland. The golds and browns and pinks of it, the greens and ivory whites had been mellowed and pearled and warmed by age into a most glowing, delicate, and fanciful beauty. It was Italy at ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as the trees; all the leaves that fall are kisses,' replied the voice now mellowed by distance, so musical, so merged into the rippling whispers of the park, that ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... they thrill my heart with alternate throes. But the sad emotions have been tempered by time, and the glad ones, at each returning tide, seem tinged with brighter glow. In thy bowers, as elsewhere, roses must be plucked from thorns; but in memory's mellowed light I see not the thorns—I behold only the bright ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... had told but twenty years, and my heart had been mellowed in the tender sunshine of a happy home, and I had loved this boy as a stranger; and lo, he was Roland's son! I forgot all else, looking upon that anguish; and I threw myself on the ground by the form that writhed there, and folding ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heaths and rude rocks had assumed a flush of transient beauty; and the emerald-green patches on the hill-sides, barred by the plough lengthwise, diagonally, and transverse, had borrowed an aspect of soft and velvety richness, from the mellowed light and the broadening shadows. All was solitary. We could see among the deserted fields the grass-grown foundations of cottages razed to the ground; but the valley, more desolate than that which we had ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the landmark for the surrounding country. It was built in the fourteenth century, but is without architectural features. The "Man of Ross" rests within its walls, buried near the altar under a blue slab. His memory is the most cherished remembrance of Ross, and is mellowed as the ages pass. His fireside chair stands in the chancel, and they also show a book containing his autograph. A tablet to his memory is inserted in the wall, erected by a distant relative, Lady Betty Dupplin, for it is said, as is usually the case, that ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... was now an old man. The vehemence and determination and aggressiveness that had made him a far-famed conqueror had been mellowed by the years and rarely, ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... Jackson playing on the key-bugle. Oh, how gloriously it sounded, as its notes fell on the ear, mellowed and softened by the distance. When Englishmen talk of the hunters' horn in the morning, they don't know what they are a saying of. It's well enough I do suppose in the field, as it wakes the drowsy ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... thoughtfully. Somehow she was reminded of her father. There was the same gravity, marching hand in hand with tenacity of purpose, fixity of ideas; the same grim scorn of the tonic wine of jest and laughter. But in the elder man these were mellowed and softened. In Farwell, in the strength of his prime, they were in full ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... only a short phrase, but, coming warm and mellowed from Paddy's lips into the ear of his colleen dhas, it is a perfect spell—a sweet murmur, to which the lenis susurrus of the Hybla bees is, with all their honey, jarring discord. How tame is "My sweet darling," its literal translation, ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... that his feelings at this time were greatly modified and mellowed, with respect to the stand he had taken against Christianity. His wife's example, who was a woman of humble, consistent piety, exerted a salutary, and happy influence upon him. It led him to regard Christianity more favorably, and to recede ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... heat seemed to have increased, not lessened, and the ladies had declared even the cool, shaded drawing-room, with its sweet scents and mellowed light, to be too warm; so they had gone out on to the lawn, where a sweet western wind was blowing. Lady Peters had taken with her a book, which she made some pretense of reading, but over which her eyes closed in most suspicious fashion. The duchess, too, had a book, ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... explosive, intensive, had strained the limits of her vituperation. If that would not stir these men, what could? Tommy's neck ran red again, but he kept his tongue between his teeth. Dick's eyes mellowed. He had the advantage over Tommy, for he had once had a white ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... New Testament miracles are understood and interpreted by some of the modern critics he rejected as subversive of Christian truth, a common saying of his being, "If the Gospel is not true historically, it is not true at all: 'If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain'"; and while he mellowed with advancing years, he never wavered in his deep religious convictions, nor for a moment relaxed the tenacious grasp which he had of the doctrines of Christianity as set forth in the standards of the Reformed Churches. One of his latest sayings was, "I die ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... form only indistinctly through the numerous grey tree-stems that broke the view in something the way that ripples in water break a reflection. When the monotonous shouting of Saul's voice—"Gee, gee, there. Haw, wo, haw. Yo-hoi-eest," was somewhat mellowed by the widening space, Bates stepped into the boat, and, pushing off, laboured alone to propel her back ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... but the color wanting in the walls and fretted vault was more than compensated by the mellowed splendors of the matchless windows. It was, indeed, fit to be the home of much more secular history than can be associated with it; but not till the end of the thirteenth century had the Minster a patron of its own, when St. William was canonized, and exercised his office, whatever ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... had penetrated our chilled bodies with a feeling of comfort and repose. Williams' flask was empty; and this was a new Castro, mellowed, discoursive, almost genial. It was obvious to me that, had it not been for him, we two, lost and wandering in the storm, should have died from exposure and exhaustion—from some accident, perhaps. On the other hand I had indubitably saved his life, and he had already thanked me in high-flown ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sweet to have her go to sleep in his arms like this. He trembled with the joy of holding her, looking at her face with eyes of tenderest love, rejoicing in her, worshipping her. He went over the things she had said, his whole being mellowed, divinely exultant, at thought of her going to sleep just because she was tired from her day of happiness. Long ago his mother had taught him to pray, and he prayed now that he might keep her always as she was to-day, ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... broad bare whiteness through the sun-steeped heather. And, to the north, a wide valley, where wood and farm and pasture had been all fashioned by the labour of generations into one proud setting for the building in its midst. Flood Castle rose on the green bottom of the valley, a mass of mellowed wall and roof and tower, surrounded by its stately lawns and terraces, and girdled by its wide "chase," of alternating wood and glade—as though wrought into the landscape by the care of generations, and breathing history. A stream, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of them, and know the masonry." About the same time this conversation was going on at the bureau of the police, in another part of the town Morton and Gawtrey were seated alone. It is some weeks since they entered Paris, and spring has mellowed ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you will recollect, Gentlemen, are originally supposed to be holden by grants from the King, our liege Lord; and the Constitution of the Country is accordingly a mellowed feudality. The oldest and most respectable name for a County Representative is, KNIGHT OF THE SHIRE. In the reign of Queen Anne it was enacted, that every Knight of the Shire (the eldest sons of Peers and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... leaves give place To tints of rich and mellowed glow; As close the shortening autumn days, Whilst summer lingers, loth to go; Quick rises each familiar scene, And fancy homewards turns her gaze; Such are the hues in Oakford seem, And such a light ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... of this novel are intense, yet it is all mellowed by humor, and it contains perhaps the author's freshest and most sympathetic story of young love. Throughout its pages the "God be praised evil has turned to good" of the old Major rings like a trumpet call of hope. This story ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... perfunctory worship here; no one languidly enduring it because it was "the right sort of thing to show up at, you know;" but all were in earnest, terribly in earnest. When they sang, it behoved us to get away to a little distance, for the vigour of the voices, unless mellowed by distance, made the music decidedly harsh. Every one was dressed in European clothing—the women in neat calico gowns; but the men, nearly all of them, in woollen shirts, pilot-coats, and trousers to match, and sea-boots! Whew! it nearly stifled ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... red barns; all this meant happy children, contented women, and men who saw their lives coming to a fortunate issue. The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... any great man died, if we did not know the significance of his life and the loss it meant to the country, it was not his fault. He was a quiet, rather reserved man, terribly in earnest, we thought, and with a touch of sternness about him which vanished in later life. He mellowed with the passing years, and long before old age crept quietly upon him the prevailing note of his character was charity. He had been in early life associated to some extent with the Press, and later had written one or two books, so that ink was in ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... done. But man has added his deepening touch in one direction and his enlivening touch in another. The early fathers—Spanish—erected Missions from one end of the State to the other. These are time-mellowed, mediaeval structures with bell-towers, cloisters and gardens, sunbaked, shadow-colored; and in spots they make California as old and sad as Spain. Later emigrants—French—have built in the vicinity of San Francisco many tiny roadside inns where one can ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... drive right through Rainharbour, and about a mile out into the country on the other side, to arrive at Fairholm, Uncle James Patten's place. The sun had set, and the quaintly irregular red-brick houses, mellowed by age, shone warm in tint against the gathering grey of the sky, which rose like a leaden dome above them. At one part of the road the sea came in sight. Great dark mountainous masses of cloud, with flame-coloured fringes, hung suspended over its shining surface, in which they were reflected ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... holding of such an exercise in the open air at a season generally so inclement. The night before there was every appearance of a heavy N. E. storm. But Sabbath morning it was calm. As I went to church I noticed that the sun rested on the Vermont mountains just north of us, though with a mellowed light as if a veil had been thrown over them. In the after part of the day the open sky had spread southward—so that the interment took place when the air was as mild and serene as spring, just as the last sun of the year was sinking towards the mountains. Almost the entire ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... taken to conversing with the doorman. That adamantine individual, unaccustomed to being addressed as a human being, was startled at first, surly and distrustful. But he mellowed under Hosey's simple and friendly advances. They became quite pals, these two—perhaps two as lonely men as you could find in all lonely ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... played upon the deep yellow gorse and purple heather of the moorland, and, further away still, flashed upon a long silver streak of the German Ocean. In the old-fashioned gardens of the court it shone upon luscious peaches hanging on the time-mellowed red-brick walls; lit up the face and gleamed upon the hands of the stable clock, and warmed the ancient heart of the stooping, grey-haired old gardener's help who, with blinking eyes and hands tucked in his trousers pockets, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on Smyrna for a time, but Smyrna, obeying their foreman's adjurations, mellowed into amiable grins and went on ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... presence in the judges' chambers of the Capitol with a heart strangely mellowed, and with a feeling of relief too great to be measured. At last, without compromise, and equally without the slightest concession to the natural human passion for vindication, the momentous step had been taken. Whatever might come of it, there would ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... grave, often it was beyond, seeking, like a bird with spread wings above dark seas seeking the golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to her, and was drawn, in her ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... a house was in sight, a beautiful old house, built of mellowed red brick, its great tower and several minor turrets mirrored in a lily-carpeted lake which surrounded it on two sides, like an exaggerated moat. "Fifteenth century," said Brederode. "But the big tower dates from twelve ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... week, and how a better week's work he had never done in all his days. Peace and abundance were on the country-side in beautiful forms and beautiful colours, and the harvest seemed even to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea in the yellow-laden barges that mellowed ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the useful than of the pleasing; while a background of modest receding hills offers little beyond the verdant swales of the country. In this respect England itself has the fresh beauty of youth, rather than the mellowed hues of a more advanced period of life; or it might be better to say, it has the young freshness and retiring sweetness that distinguish her females, as compared with the warmer tints of Spain and Italy, and which, women and landscape ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... came on deck. The sun and wind were ruffling and glinting on the broadening river beyond the "measured mile"; a few gulls were wavering and dipping near the lee scuppers, and the sound of Sabbath bells, mellowed by a distance that secured immunity of conscience, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... my own domestic life, in aftertime, with her who was the inspiration of my toil. Pictures of my sister, made the wife of my dear friend, on equal terms—for he had some inheritance, we none—pictures of our sobered age and mellowed happiness, and of the golden links, extending back so far, that should bind us, and our children, in a radiant garland," said ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... mellowed by regret For having teased me with her talk; Then all-forgetful as she heard ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily's street, mellowed the blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings of the door-step, and struck prismatic glories from the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the door; or as the burst of applause, where there is no sycophantic flattery known or felt, greets his entrance to his seat. Again we see him adjusting his genial spectacles, and looking around upon the upturned faces with parental pride. Again we hear his mellowed, although often impetuous accents, expounding familiar principles of law, and descending to the consideration of "first things" with as much pride and carefulness as the artist treats his Rubens or Titian, which for years and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... You marvel at the quick, smooth cover-up when something is to be withheld, at the unexpected vigor of the mind when the bait is attractive enough to draw it out, and at the sweetness of the disposition. Some old people merely get mellowed and sweetened by the hardships through which they have passed. Sometimes, you wonder if some of the old folk don't have dispositions that they can turn off ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... more pleasing of the two; but it must be remembered that he was writing long after the time he mentions, and that his recollections were no doubt somewhat mellowed by Jane Austen's subsequent fame; whereas Philadelphia Walter's is an unvarnished contemporary criticism—the impression made by Jane on a girl a few ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... and a New Year, in which the Faringfield house saw some revival of the spirit of gladness that had formerly prevailed within its comfortable walls at that season. Mr. Faringfield, who had grown more gray and taciturn each year, mellowed into some resemblance to his former benevolent, though stately, self. He had not yet heard of Ned's treason. His lady, still graceful and slender, resumed her youth. Fanny, who had ever forced herself to the diffusion of merriment ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... which the Sahara and its prolongation produce is something evil, or at least to us evil. There is in the idea running through the mind of the Desert an intensity which may be of some value to us if it be diluted by a large admixture of European tradition, or if it be mellowed and transformed by a long process of time, but which, if we take it at its source and inspire ourselves directly from it, warps and does hurt to ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... retains the enthusiasm and, if I may use the word, the exuberance of youth, whereas that of Francis-Joseph, though even more fervent, is chastened, humbled and mellowed by the experience of many a cruel sorrow and many a hard blow. To some of these he would have succumbed had it not been for his religious belief. There have been at least three different occasions during his fifty years' reign when he would have abandoned his ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... of characteristic Philadelphia brick construction, delightfully mellowed by age, with marble and white-painted wood trim. The main building is two stories high with a decked gable roof, heavily balustraded between large, arched quadruple chimney stacks at each end, corners heavily quoined with marble and ends without fenestration other than a round bull's-eye ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... That was about noon, and they decided to lunch at the next inn, though it did not look inviting. However, Milly's French coaxed a tolerable meal from the fat housewife whom they discovered cleaning fish in the kitchen, and even the stodgy Roy mellowed under the influence of fresh fish and a drinkable bottle of wine which ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... and to this fact we owe the preservation of many of them. Those made two hundred years later, on a coarse, loose canvas, even now show signs of decay, while these ancient ones on linen are as perfect as when made, only being gently mellowed by Time to the colour ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... of his shop—out of his life. The door clicked. With a sigh he turned and walked brokenly back toward the glass partition that enclosed the yellowed accounts of many years as well as the mellowed, wrinkled ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... from the hills above as they talk and laugh together; and sometimes they vary the monotony of their walk by singing a hymn, the sound of which is borne very far on the bosom of the silence, and is sweet and soft in its cadence, mellowed as it is by the distance and idealized by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... eminence equal to that attained by the arts of painting and architecture. He brought forth a perception of the needs which music suffered, adding an earnestness and science to a profound quality of simpleness and grace. It was between 1561 and 1571 that his genius mellowed and his style took on those characteristics upon which was based the future music of the Catholic Church. It was while he was Maestro at the Vatican that he submitted to the Church the famed Missa Papae Marcelli, which determined the future of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... a hollow booming sound—a roar, mellowed and subdued by distance, with a peculiar beat upon the ear, as if a wave struck the nerve and rebounded and struck again in an infinitesimal fraction of time—such a sound as can only bellow from the mouth of cannon. Another and another. The big guns at Woolwich ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Mrs. Rabinowich. Thank you." A voice resonant and deep, a voice mellowed by long keeping in the breast of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... airy pleasantries Flashed by the honourable gentleman, Who shines in them by birthright. Each device Of drollery he has laboured to outshape, [Or treasured up from others who have shaped it,] Displays that are the conjurings of the moment, [Or mellowed and matured by sleeping on]— Dry hoardings in his book of commonplace, Stored without stint of toil through days and months— He heaps into one mass, and light and fans As fuel for his flaming eloquence, Mouthed and maintained without a thought ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... eyes strayed to the piano. On it lay a violin case. He picked it up and took out an age-mellowed violin. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... His tall form, as though robbed of its substance, hovered noiselessly over invisible things with stooping and indefinite movements; his voice, heard in that remoteness where he could be glimpsed mysteriously busy with immaterial cares, was no longer incisive, seemed to roll voluminous and grave—mellowed by distance. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... were three fussy old English maidens under the protection of a still fussier old colonel, who disagreed with everybody because his liver disagreed with him. Twenty years of active service in Upper India had seriously damaged that physiological function, and "pegs" no longer mellowed him. The quartet greatly amused Elsa. Their nods were abrupt, and they spoke in the most formal manner. She was under grave suspicion; in the first place, she was traveling alone, in the second place, ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... her recognition of Passover as a "national holiday" she was in festive array, wearing her newest dress, a garment of blue taffeta embroidered in old rose, with a crpe collar of gray. It mellowed the glow of her healthful pink complexion. She was the most beautiful creature at the table, excluding neither her picturesque younger brother nor her majestic old mother. She shone. She flooded ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... confidence had all been beaten out of him. Time was when he was ready to take up the role of deliverer at his own hand; but these hot days were past, and age and solitude and communion with God had mellowed him into humility. His recoil was but one instance of the shrinking which all true, devout men feel when designated for tasks which may probably make life short, and will certainly make it hard. All prophets and reformers till to-day have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... of the city was dwarfed by a humming of factory whistles, some long drawn and of deep bass, others quicker and higher pitched, rising and dying away in succession as they were supplanted by the distance-mellowed notes of other establishments with lagging time clocks. Dismay robbed John's face of the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... of his later years, he did not degenerate into drunkenness, nor was the sense of his responsibilities as a husband, a father, and a man less clear and acute in the last months of his life than it had ever been. Had he lived a few years longer, we should have seen the man mellowed by sorrow and suffering, braving life, not as he had done all along with the passionate vehemence of undisciplined youth, but with the fortitude and dignity of one who had learned that contentment and peace are gifts the world cannot give, and, if he haply find them ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... majestic bearing, and a form and expression which, when once fixed in the mind, could not easily be forgotten. As I remember him, his countenance was cast in that strong mould which characterized the land of his birth, but the features were often mellowed by a quiet smile. He was a man of deep piety, and was esteemed a pillar in the Brick Church, then the leading Presbyterian church ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... but quietly disappeared into space. Then, with a ponderous feeling of running the blockade, I put on wig and spectacles and the venerable costume which had been provided for the occasion. Appropriately enough, it had originally belonged to an aunt—Aunt Eliza, to wit—who had handed it to me in its mellowed age, to be bequeathed to one of my many protegees. It was brown in colour—I detest brown, and it cordially detests me in return— and by way of further offence the material was roughened and displayed a mottled check. The cut was that of ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... well advanced now, the last vivid patches were mellowed into a pervading gray, which seemed to cover the rocks and woods like a mantle. Clad in this somber robe, the wooded height which rose to the north seemed the more forbidding. Not a sound was to be heard but the voice of a whip-poor-will somewhere. ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which Heaven to gaudy ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... their wedding day arrived, she, with her first born, were laid in the same grave. But grief does not kill, and the young husband bore his loss as brave men do in living out their allotted day. But to the hour of his death the memory of Mary Bryan mellowed him into a child, and, when unoccupied, with every recurring thought of her or the mere mention of her name, he would fall into deep reverie, lasting sometimes for hours. And although he contracted two marriages afterward, they were simply marriages ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... beans, tea, coffee and flour—had been raided by a band of hostile Indians, and he viewed with deep concern the progress of the severe winter. Although three years of hard, frugal life had made his muscles like iron, they had only mellowed his temper, increased his flesh and rounded his face; nor did he look an hour older than on the day when he had won Wingo for his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and ask him to be so kind as to get him the grammars in Christminster? He might slip a letter inside the case of the instrument, and it would be sure to reach the desired eyes. Why not ask him to send any old second-hand copies, which would have the charm of being mellowed by ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... swiftly hither and thither, planning for themselves such glorious games in and out and round about their well-stocked store-houses amongst the crisp, rustling corn. Red-cheeked apples, dark-skinned winter pears ripened slowly on the orchard trees. Big bronze plums and late Victorias mellowed against the garden wall. And now and then when a breeze, gentle as the flutter of a fairy's wing, fanned the branches of the stately spreading lime tree that was comrade of the shining cedar on the lawn, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... infinite progression, to attain, but which as yet she only indicates here and there in those hints and parts that prophetic genius combines and moulds into a whole. He softened the harsh outlines, mellowed the glaring colours, and harmonised the awkward proportions of mediaeval art. With him, a new epoch commenced, adorned by many illustrious names, from Julio Romano, the poet of painters, to Titian, who clipped his pencil in the rainbow. The Lombard school of Titian was the third of the three ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... She sat down to consider; then, to make thought easier, she lay at full length, closing her eyes and dreaming luxuriously. The summer day lured her senses deliciously. Even the late experience with Mark was mellowed by the present delight. The memory of the recent encounter with the master of Bluff Head stirred her pulses to a quicker time. Ah, life was glorious! Life was full, in spite of all. It was like the sea in a fog or an unopened book. She had only ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... which the Coliseum was built is exactly fitted to the purposes of a great ruin. It is travertine, of a rich, dark, warm color, deepened and mellowed by time. There is nothing glaring, harsh, or abrupt in the harmony of tints. The blue sky above, and the green earth beneath, are in unison with a tone of coloring not unlike the brown of one of our own early winter landscapes. The travertine is also of a coarse grain and porous texture, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... through this leafy screen with a mellowed and delicious softness, and the perfume of flowers ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... indeed, an air of great beauty in the morning sunlight. The Renaissance galleries and woodwork, mellowed by time, were dusted by that soft warm glow, and the somewhat sparse congregation, in its magnificently isolated groups, was humanised by it too. The stone of the chancel, flecked with colour, had a quiet dignity, and even the altar, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... us. That faint resemblance composed Gladys, and gave her yet more loving thoughts of the old man. He had been kind when, in his own rugged way, the first harshness of his bearing towards her had swiftly been mellowed by her own sweet, subtle influence. We must not too harshly blame Abel Graham; his environment had been of a kind to foster the least beautiful ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... position of landowners, who stand in no relation of aristocracy or leadership, government or guidance, succour or solace to millions of the people, who famish on the territorial possessions from which you derive your titles, your importance, your influence, your wealth. Has confiscation been mellowed into the legal semblance of undisputed succession, only to bring about a state of things which the most ruthless ravagers ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... with an equal splendor The morning sun rays fall, With a touch impartially tender On the blossoms blooming for all; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the Judgment Day; Broidered with gold the Blue; Mellowed with gold the Gray. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... several others, drew up a remonstrance against "the desecration by officious restoration, and the tearing down of time-mellowed structures to make room for the unsightly brick piles of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the Golden Snail! What crackling throats have gulped your ale! What sons of Fame from far and near Have glowed and mellowed in your cheer! Within this corner where I sit Banville and Coppee clashed their wit; And hither too, to dream and drain, And drown despair, came poor Verlaine. Here Wilde would talk and Synge would muse, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... clinging, with tiny hands, to cornice and parapet, give surely the sharpest and most delicate sense that it is possible to conceive of the contrast on which the essence of so much beauty depends. To pass through one of these dark and smoke-stained courts, with every line mellowed and harmonised, as if it had grown up so out of the earth; to find oneself in a sunny pleasaunce, carpeted with velvet turf, and set thick with flowers, makes the spirit sigh with delight. Nowhere in the world can one see ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and there we must not stay; because we thus grow to fear and mistrust the strong flavours and sounds of life, the joys of toil and adventure, the desire of begetting, giving life, drawing a soul from the unknown; we come to linger in a half-lit place, where things reach us faintly mellowed, as in a vision, through enfolding trees and at the ends of enchanted glades. This book of mine lays no claim to be a pageant of all life's joys; it leaves many things untouched and untold; but it is ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to the west; this new road was a correction line, and I had to follow it for half a mile. There was no farmhouse on this short bend. Then north for five miles. The road was as level as a table top—a good, smooth, hard-beaten, age-mellowed prairie-grade. The land to east and west was also level; binders were going and whirring their harvest song. Nobody could have felt more contented than I did. There were two clusters of buildings—substantial buildings—set far back from the road, ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... would have said it was day, not night. There was no sound to break the deep stillness of all around except the murmur of many cataracts of melted snow-water, that poured down the mountainsides like threads of silver or streams of milk. But the rush of these was so mellowed by distance that the noise was soft ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... Faintly, far away in the distance, you hear a few subdued sounds, the only evidences of human habitation. There is the tinkle of a cow-bell, the barking of a pariah dog, the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub of a timber-toned tom-tom, muffled and slightly mellowed by the distance. The faint, far cries, and occasional halloos of the herd-boys calling to each other, gradually cease, but the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub continues till ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... with the life of Venetia before their arrival, that, taking a general view of her existence, their residence at the abbey figured only as an episode in her career; active indeed and stirring, and one that had left some impressions not easily discarded; but, on the whole, mellowed by the magic of time, Venetia looked back to her youthful friendship as an event that was only an exception in her lot, and she viewed herself as a being born and bred up in a seclusion which she was never to quit, with no aspirations beyond the little world ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... surely a crime to keep such beauty of tint and tone hidden away in drawers or all but hidden on crowded shelves. Let them be displayed in open cases where all may enjoy them. But let us go softly; these century-mellowed parchments are too precious to be displayed to unappreciative, perhaps scornful, eyes. Put them away in their hiding-places until some gentle reader of these lines shall ask for them; then we will bring them forth and persuade ourselves that we can ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... bagpipes. This proceeds from defective musical education. Sergeant Clarke's bagpipes proved a potent factor in securing the personal goodwill of the people. He played "Auld Scottish airs," and many of the old men, mellowed with whiskey, wept in the bar-room of the little hotel at Stornaway. The courtesy of Major Dugas, and the civil bearing of the men, told upon the people, but nevertheless they did not abate one jot of what they called their ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... ago), but spires and towers and pinnacles rose before him like a dream, glowing against the dark sky, lit by the soft radiance of the streets beneath. To the right, not a hundred yards away, rose Saint Edward's tower, mellowed now to clear orange by the lapse of three-quarters of a century; to the left a flight of buildings, of an architectural design which he did not understand, but which gave him a sense of extreme satisfaction; in front towered the masses of Buckingham Palace as he seemed always ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... arising from this scene of depravity, and floating away into the still evening air, made the evening, at any point which they just reached fitfully, mellowed by the distance, more still by contrast. Such was the stillness of the evening to Eugene Wrayburn, as he walked by the river ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... river winding its sluggish way through the broad level marshes like a ribbon of molten gold, and the few great fleecy bundles of white clouds sailing across the deep blue of the sky like froth upon some placid stream. Imagine a sound of fresh voices, mellowed by a little distance, from where, to and fro, walking, trotting, darting, but ever moving like the particles in a kaleidoscope, many squads of players were practicing on the football field. Such, then, is the picture that would have ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... between forty-five and fifty years old, in the prime of his beneficent powers. He had fulfilled the promise of his unique youth—obeyed the voice at eve, obeyed at prime. The sweet austerity of his nature had been mellowed by human sorrows—the loss of his brothers and of his eldest son; he had the breadth and poise that are given by knowledge of foreign lands, and friendships with the best men in them; he had the unstained and indomitable ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... breath of spring stole into the air,—ah, then Lovell's Harbor became a different place altogether. The stems of the willows fringing the small fresh-water ponds mellowed to bronze before one's very eyes; the dull reaches of salt grass turned emerald; the steely tint of the sea softened to azure and glinted golden in the sun. How shrill sounded the cries of the redwings in the marsh! How jolly ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... and natural fraternal affection, which is more powerful when mellowed by virtue, Pere Augustin saw the hand of death making each day new traces on the frame of Alvira. The hectic flush, the frequent faintings, and the cold, icy grasp of her hand told the energy of the poison that gnawed at the vital cords. Sweet and gentle words of encouragement ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... severity of the refusal, that all her lovers became her friends, and each, with affectionate kindness, blended with the bold bearing of one who says what he knows he has courage to perform, promised that his love mellowed into friendship should remain firmly fixed in his heart, and that he would defend its object, should danger cross her path, as long as strength was given him to carry a spear. The rejection by the fair Winona of so many youths, most of whom were deemed worthy of her choice, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the angle of a small gable. She could see roof all round her, and sky above. Still on hands and knees, she began to creep upwards. The weather-beaten old tiles had mellowed to dull red and orange, and were partly covered with moss. She could not help admiring the artistic beauty of their colour. She reached the ridge, and peered over. Apparently she was somewhere in the middle of the roof, for a tall, twisted stack of ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... well as her own; I bequeath all my books in general, with the cases they are in, to my said cousin Dolly Hervey. As they are not ill-chosen for a woman's library, I know that she will take the greater pleasure in them, (when her friendly grief is mellowed by time into a remembrance more sweet than painful,) because they were mine; and because there are observations in many of them of my own writing; and some very judicious ones, written by the truly reverend ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... times, twilight falling on the world of sea and rock beyond the kitchen window, with the last fire of the sun failing in the west like a bright hope—there were hours when her fear of the issue was so poignant that her decision trembled. The weather mellowed; the temptation gathered strength and renewed itself persistently—the temptation discreetly to accept the aid of artifice. After all, what matter? 'Twas surely a thing o' small consequence. An' who would ever hear the least whisper about it? For a long time Peggy Lacey ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... distant, the land rose steadily, ridge on ridge. It looked like a series of giant steps blotched and chequered with dark patches of forest which contained so many secrets hidden from the eyes of man. As the distance gained the crystal of it all mellowed softly till a deep purple ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... explanation is, of course, that Holmes never understood theology, not for a moment; he only disliked it, and was consequently sure that it must be wrong and that somebody ought to put an end to it. In later years he mellowed somewhat. One cannot truthfully say that he overcame his prejudice, but he understood men better and was inclined to include even reformers and Calvinists in what he called "the larger humanity into which I was born so ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... in the city, Beryl went to the window, pushed the sash up, and listened to the ringing of the Sabbath-school bells, as every church beyond the river called its nursery to the altar, to celebrate the day. The metallic clangor was mellowed by distance, rising and falling like rhythmic waves, and the faint echo, filtered through dense pine forests behind the penitentiary, had the ghostly ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson |
