"Wizened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... An instant afterwards there appeared a little wizened fellow, with a cringing manner and a shambling style of walking. He wore an open jacket, with a splotch of tar on the sleeve, a red and black check shirt, dungaree trousers, and heavy boots badly worn. His face was thin and brown and crafty, with a perpetual smile ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... lions. For a few minutes the platforms were given over altogether to a sort of pleasurable confusion, a vivid scene, full of colour and human interest. Then the people thinned away, and, very nearly last of all, a wizened-looking, grey-headed man, carrying a black bag and a parcel, left the platform with hesitating footsteps and turned towards the bridge. He was followed almost immediately by Hiram Da Souza, who, curiously enough, seemed to have been on the platform when the train came in ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a newly fledged reporter, and Amarilly had all the instinct of the lowly for localities. She turned and doubled and dodged successfully. By a course circuitous she returned to Hebrew haunts, this time to seek, one Abram Canter, a little wizened, gnome-like Jew. Assuring herself that there was no other than the proprietor within, Amarilly entered and handed over the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... and then she took to rabblin', and sometimes skirlin' in the bed, ye'd think a robber had a knife to her throat, and she used to work out o' the bed, and not being strong enough, then, to walk or stand, she'd fall on the flure, wi' her ald wizened hands stretched before her face, and skirlin' still ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... day I heard two people—two wizened city clerks—discussing the war in the train. "When and how will the Germans be beaten?" asked the first. The other shrugged his shoulders and declared solemnly, while pulling at his pipe: "The Germans? They have been beaten a long time ago! They were beaten when they set foot ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... M. Lenoble to herself—a wizened, sallow-faced Macchiavellian individual, whose business in England must needs be connected with conspiracy, treason, commercial fraud, anything or everything ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... explaining that he had no right to let us have it, but as soon as a military policeman who was standing at his door, moved on we were placed on chairs at a small table and had our repast. We visited the church which was not unlike the bigger one at Mudros. With her head on the doorstep was a wizened old woman fast asleep, guarding three piles of salt she had laid out to dry in the sun. She got on her haunches, mumbled to us in a friendly way, and showed us how she worked her spinning machine, which she had with her. This consisted of a pole ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... was pale and tired. She complained of headache, and she looked old and wizened. She told Mrs Macphail that the missionary had not slept at all; he had passed the night in a state of frightful agitation and at five had got up and gone out. A glass of beer had been thrown over him and his clothes were stained and stinking. But a sombre fire glowed in Mrs Davidson's eyes when ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... old and feeble, small and thin—that's why everyone called her petite maman—but once she knew what she ought to do, then her spirit overpowered the weakness of her wizened body. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... with the appearance of the guards—for such they were—there emerged from the fetish-house a man who appeared to be incredibly old, for his hair and beard were as white as snow, and his once stalwart form was now bowed and wizened with the passage of, as it seemed to me, hundreds of years. Yet, although in appearance a very Methuselah in age, this individual had a pair of piercing black eyes that glowed and sparkled with all ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... quite abashed by the man's flowery way of talking—so unlike anything which I had ever heard. He had a wizened face, and sharp little dark eyes, which took in me and the house and my mother's startled face at the window all in the instant. My parents were together, the two of them, in the sitting-room, and my mother ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... counting piles of pelf Of a counterfeit gamboge hue. He's wizened and dried like old Arthur Gride, That the novelist DICKENS drew. In the midst of his heaps, He conveniently sleeps With his glass at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... his innermost thoughts. For he had not spoken to him once—simply the night before last, at the entrainment in Vienna, he had furtively observed his leavetaking from his mother. How had the confounded fellow come to suspect that the wizened, shrunken little old hag whose skin, dried by long living, hung in a thousand loose folds from her cheek-bones, had made such an impression on his captain? The man himself certainly did not know how ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... a face shrunken and pallid, on which no smile came; great eyes grown wan with gazing into darkness looking out beneath the shaven head, emptily, as the hollow eye-pits of a skull; a wizened halting form wasted by abstinence, sorrow, and prayer; a long wild beard of iron grey; thin blue-veined hands that ever trembled like a leaf; bowed shoulders and lessened limbs. Time and grief had done their work indeed; scarce could I think myself the same as when, the royal Harmachis—in all ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... man who has no Sister Jane— For he who has no sister seems to me to live in vain. I never had a sister—may be that is why today I'm wizened and dyspeptic, instead of blithe and gay; A boy who's only forty should be full of romp and mirth, But I (because I'm sisterless) am ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... enough," was the curt reply, and nothing more was said until the carriage was reached and the door had been jerked open. "Get in!" commanded the majesty of the law, and when the door was slammed upon the captive, the plain-clothes man turned to the driver, a little wizened Irishman with a face like a shrivelled winter apple. "What time does that New ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... he had come across scores of such men, dapper little fellows, wizened of face yet curiously youthful in manner; but they, each and all, were labeled "low comedian." Certainly, a rare intelligence gleamed from this man's eyes, but that is an attribute not often lacking in humorists ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... flapped drearily backwards and forwards in the summer breeze. We had pulled up our horses, and were gazing in silence at this sign-post of death, when what had seemed to us to be a bundle of rags thrown down at the foot of the gallows began suddenly to move, and turned towards us the wizened face of an aged woman, so marked with evil passions and so malignant in its expression that it inspired us with even more horror than the unclean thing ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pleasure of meeting the gentleman later on. He was a dirty, little, used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth, who swallowed an opium pill every two hours, and in defiance of common decency wore his hair uncovered and falling in wild stringy locks about his wizened grimy face. When giving audience he would clamber upon a sort of narrow stage erected in a hall like a ruinous barn with a rotten bamboo floor, through the cracks of which you could see, twelve or fifteen feet below, the heaps of refuse and garbage of all kinds lying under the house. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... in the morning he came to her lodging, in complete armor. From the open helmet his wrinkled face, showing like a wizened nut in a ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... hypothesis, of which he was now half-convinced, Stern nodded. By gesture-play he answered: Yes. Yes, this woman and he intended to drink of the water. The obeah-man, grinning, showed signs of lively interest. His eyes brightened, and a look of craft, of wizened cunning ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... no answer, and wearied out at length they rose and departed. At the door of the sanctuary they found the high-priest awaiting them, a wizened, aged man. ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... his chair, a wizened, frightened, unhappy, oldish man. "No, no, no, no!" he cried. "She is a good girl, but she would badger us to death. She wouldn't let us do one single thing our way. She always acts as though she wanted to make you all over, and I love you the ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... all about it," said Stemm, bobbing his head at his master, and making at the same time a gesture with his lips, whereby he intended to signify that his master was making a fool of himself. Stemm was hardly more than five feet high, and was a wizened dry old man, with a very old yellow wig. He delighted in scolding all the world, and his special delight was in scolding his master. But against all the world he would take his master's part, and had no care in the world except his master's ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... vagrant by bringing him under the eyes of the great soldier Nobunaga, who was attracted by his wizened, monkeyish face and restless eyes and gave him occupation among his grooms. As he grew older his love of war became pronounced, he took part in the numerous civil turmoils in which his patron was engaged, and manifested such courage and daring that Nobunaga rapidly advanced him in rank, finally ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... glad I made inquiries at once about these two young men, anyhow, "the Companion of St. Michael and St. George responded with fervour, clasping his wizened little hands contentedly over his narrow waistcoat. "It's a precious odd story, and a doubtful story, and not at all the sort of story one likes one's girl to be any way mixed up with. For my part, I shall give them a very wide berth ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... them as does the reminder of some overhanging evil clutch suddenly at our hearts in happy moments of forgetfulness. To let them be happy that day, to leave their feasts free of a death's head, La Boulaye would have withdrawn had he not already been too late. Duhamel had espied him, and the little, wizened old man came hurrying forward, his horn-rimmed spectacles perched on the very end of his nose, his keen little eyes beaming ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Mrs. Crocks, a wizened little pod of a woman with a face like parchment, dismally prophesied that Pearl Watson would be clean spoiled with so much notice being taken of her. "Put a beggar on horseback," she cried, when she read the invitation, "and ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... wizened creature, with china-blue eyes, showing widely in his withered face under the light of the paraffin-lamp his wife was holding—reached a key from a board on the wall and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... feast, the feast's own Founder; Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest Supposing I don the marriage vestiment: So, shut your mouth and open your Testament, And carve me my portion at your quickliest!" Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad With wizened face in want of soap, And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope, (After stopping outside, for his cough was bad, To get the fit over, poor gentle creature, And so avoid disturbing the preacher) —Passed ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... humour. His authority, mainly based on his being the only retired shopkeeper in the community, was greatly strengthened by his slow manner of taking snuff at a crisis. 'My dear Mendel,' observed the wizened senior, flicking away the spilth with a blue handkerchief, 'Simeon Samuels has already paid his annual ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... too, was a riverman, tough and wiry and small. A man whose pinched, wizened body was a fitting cloister for the warped soul that flashed malignantly from ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... wants to see a poor, ragged, diminutive, wizened, yet jolly race of human beings,—a race of beings who wear hairy garments, sup reindeer's milk with wooden spoons, and dwell in big bee-hives,—he has only got to go to Lapland ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... in its broad curve up to the Abbey, black with moving figures. Gordon slowly walked up to the House. It was the privilege of School House prefects to enter by a small gate near the masters' common room. Haughtily he rang the bell. A wizened old lady opened the door, bowing with a "Hope you 'ad a good 'oliday, sir." It was the first sensation ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... humour of the scene was twice as great because Lupin was appearing under the aspect of M. Nicole, in the clothes and figure of that wizened, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... more than the standard output from the same production line as Lieutenant Murphy, but the wizened little old man he had in tow was from a different and much rarer matrix. As fast as I had moved, I was none too soon. The character reached over and tilted up Sara's chin as I was coming through ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... she should decide who was to know it first and how her own advantage could be secured. So there was time, and Adonis swung himself along the dim corridor and up winding stairs that be knew, and roused the little wizened priest who lived in the west tower all alone, and whose duty it was to say a mass each morning for any prisoner who chanced to be locked up there; and when there was no one in confinement he said his ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... he had made amends by taking her back with him when he hurried on board again after a hasty greeting. Miss Prince lived that morning over again as she stood there, old and gray and alone in the world. She could see again the great weather-beaten and tar-darkened ship, and even the wizened monkey which belonged to one of the sailors. She lingered at her father's side admiringly, and felt the tears come into her eyes once more when he gave her a taste of the fiery contents of his tumbler. They were all in his cabin; old Captain Dunn and Captain Denny ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... his mouth, and hair that occupied its time in covering a bald patch that always escaped every design upon it. So much for Mr. Aitchinson. Let him be flattered sufficiently and Peter saw that his way would be easy. The wizened little creature had, moreover, a certain admiration for Peter's strength and broad shoulders and used sometimes in the middle of the morning's work to ask Peter how much he weighed, whether he'd ever considered taking up prize-fighting as a profession, and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... been hard not to laugh, for the mere idea of comparing the two men, Santoris in such splendid prime and Morton Harland in his bent, lean and wizened condition, as being of the same or nearly the same age was quite ludicrous. Even Catherine ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... just to tell you once for all that there is an insuperable obstacle in the way of our ever meeting. Maybe I've got a husband who is cruel to me. Maybe, biggest obstacle of all, I've got a husband whom I am utterly devoted to. Maybe, instead of any of these things, I'm a poor, old wizened-up, Shut-In, tossing day and night on a very small bed of very big pain. Maybe worse than being sick I'm starving poor, and maybe, worse than being sick or poor, I am most horribly tired of myself. Of course if you ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... name, in her happy sleep, Of her Hohe hunter so fair and far: And then she saw in her dreams the deep Where the spirit wailed, and a falling star; Then stealthily crouching under the trees, By the light of the moon, the Kan-e-ti-dan, [31] The little, wizened, mysterious man, With his long locks tossed by the moaning breeze. Then a flap of wings, like a thunder-bird, [32] And a wailing spirit the sleeper heard; And lo, through the mists of the moon, she saw The hateful visage ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... intelligence to fit them for any useful life. But they could creep forth and beg, the woman could stand in the gutter with a little bit of mortality wrapped in her old shawl, for tender-hearted passers-by to see its wizened face, and the father could stand not far away from her with a few bootlaces or matches exposed, as if for sale. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... a little wizened man wanted on Earth. His eyes darted down to the point of the knife that showed under Gordon's sleeve, and he licked his lips, showing snaggled teeth. The wheel hesitated and came to a halt, with the ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... renegades appeared at the door, and, entering the teepee, squatted down in Indian fashion. The little wiry man with the wizened face was McKee; the other was the latest acquisition to the renegade force, Jake Deering, deserter, thief, murderer—everything that is bad. In appearance he was of medium height, but very heavily, compactly built, and evidently as strong as an ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... drama loomed in his mind larger for that fateful last act. The tragic sock and the mask enhanced them. What mystery lay behind Manuela's sidelong eyes? What sin or suffering? What knowledge, how gained, justified Esteban's wizened saws? These two were wise before their time; when they ought to have been flirting on the brink of life, here they were, breasting the great flood, familiar ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... room out of his proper turn; but the startled pressure of Miss Willoughby's hand on his arm warned him in time. He stopped, to allow the statuesque Miss Chester to sail out under escort of a wizened little man with a horseshoe pin in his tie, whose name, in company with nearly all the others that had been spoken to him since he came into the room, ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... combed, had carefully removed his gray hairs, but he could not rid himself of his wizened air. The puny little man of law, tightly buttoned into his clothes, reminded you of a torpid viper; for if hope had brought a spark of life into his magpie eyes, his face was icily rigid, and so well did he assume an air of gravity, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... way which would entail their own speedy appearance in the dock if practiced in real life. Furneaux came as a positive revelation. A small, wiry individual who looked like a comedian and spouted the truisms of the studio, a wizened little whippersnapper who put hardly one direct question to a prospective witness, but whose caustic comments had placed a new and vastly disagreeable aspect on the morning's adventure—such a man to be the representative of staid and heavy-footed ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... dressed in mourning, with mustaches of iron-gray carefully waxed and twisted around a pair of lantern-jaws. The monstrous hat and prodigious feather, the enormous ruff and exaggerated trunk-hose, contrasted with a frame shrivelled and wizened, all belonged to a century previous. Yet Father Jose was not astonished. His adventurous life and poetic imagination, continually on the lookout for the marvellous, gave him a certain advantage over the practical and material ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... Antonia, wizened and dark, came and went silently. To the people of her race a wedding means a fiesta, a village hubbub, a dance, and varying degrees of drunkenness. She was not herself in this house of a wedding supper for two, and a prosaic attitude ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... time we had come-to, and a boat's crew had succeeded in picking up and bringing all the poor people on board. Among them was a wizened old woman, upon whom all sorts of kind attentions were naturally lavished by the ship's company. She could not be persuaded to go into a cabin after she had recovered from the shock and the fright ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... more wizened and bent than before—approached me slowly and warily as I stood there. The others all followed at a safe distance. I smiled to reassure them and then waved my arm in a friendly ...
— Houlihan's Equation • Walt Sheldon
... stately vender set his tree against a wall and began gravely untying the wizened little specimen from his branch, then handed him into the eagerly outstretched hands of Faith with a superb smile, as if he were some great potentate conferring a priceless boon upon a beloved subject. Not that he was anything but the poorest ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... streets would just be lined with trees all hung with big, luscious oranges. But, Lord! Here we are at the best hotel in Rome, and the fruit is worse than the stuff the pushcart men at home feed to their families—little wizened bananas and oranges. Still, it's grand here in Rome for Tweetie. I can't stay long—just ran away from business to bring 'em over; but I'd like Tweetie to stay in Italy until she learns the lingo. Sings, too—Tweetie does; and she and Ma think they'll have her voice cultivated ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... a door opened and, as I turned, I found myself looking into the wrathful eyes of a stunted little man with an enormous head. Any one who has once seen Zalnitch can never forget him. His wizened, misshapen body is a grotesque caricature of a man's, which, surmounted by his huge head with its bushy hair, makes him look for all the world like some scientist's experiment. In the doorway to Zalnitch's private office ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... of Daniel." That exhibition, which most people, who know anything about painting in its highest style of religious and monumental art, thought a most interesting display of a painter's career, is described by this most genial of critics as "acres of pallid purple canvases, with wizened saints and ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... what was more interesting to her than anything else in the world, Liz followed Gladys into the kitchen, where the old man sat, as usual, in his arm-chair by the fireside, looking very old and wizened and frail in the flickering glow ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... was friendly to their cause or not. Mabel had wired to her friend, and was met at the station, so we had nothing to worry over for the present on her score. Our own troubles began when we reached the only hotel and found it crowded. The proprietor, a little wizened, pockmarked Arab in a black alpaca jacket and yellow pants, with a tarboosh balanced forward at a pessimistic angle, suggested that there might be guests in the hotel who would let us share ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... shoulders the whole burden of parental responsibility. Or, rather, the burden was already there, for if she did not find enough meat to keep herself in good health the babies would be weak and wizened and unpromising, with small chance of growing up to be a credit to her or a satisfaction to themselves. So she hunted night and day, and, on the whole, with very good results. To tell the truth, I think she was rather more skilful in the chase than ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... you thief of the Church! Do you think what isn't fit for your pig is good enough for your priest? Bring better, or never let me look on your wizened old wicked ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... That's easy tae guess. Sax months syne Lachlan didna ken what father meant, and the heart wes wizened in the breist o' ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... upon the table, which was covered with a "watered" oilcloth of a bright walnut tint. At her back stood Sarah Jane with a plate of corn bread in one hand and a glass pitcher containing buttermilk in the other. She was a slight, flaxen-haired child, with wizened ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... life! A heartless threat and a cruel blow And grief that the world can never know; A tongue obscene and a will perverse, A horrid oath and a muttered curse, A winter drear and a scanty meal, A heart so hard, oh, a heart of steel! A wizened look and an infant's cry, The cold, cold clutch of Poverty, A withered hand and a blanched cheek, Alone, and, ah, no friend to seek! A chilly hearth and a ragged dress, A home ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... my Sally," screamed a wizened woman, the tears raining down her checks. "Kidnapped her at the street corner after dark. I didn't know why she hadn't come home last night. God, my ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Highlander. He was quite as tall as our Archie, and though the hermit assured us he was only a baby when he bought him in Central Africa for about sevenpence halfpenny in Indian coin, he had now the wrinkled face of an old man of ninety—wrinkled, wizened, and weird. But his eye was singularly bright and young-looking. In his hand he carried a long pole from which he had bitten all the bark, and his only dress was a little petticoat of skunk skin, which the hermit called his kilt. He was, ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens of other church-guardians in France, but in a curious furtive or rather hunted and oppressed air which he had. He was perpetually half glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and shoulders seemed to be hunched ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... discover which of the two might be Geoffrey. A small, thin-faced man behind the Sheriff was no less eager to discover Montfichet in this favorable apparel; and evidently had sharper eyes than had Robin in piercing disguise. This wizened-faced fellow leaned back with satisfied smile, after one searching glance; then, drawing out his tablets, he wrote on them, and despatched his man in haste ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... diminutive wisp of humanity, a starved, slender elf with a freckled face, wizened and peaked, which at times looked a thousand years old. It reminded you of the face of one of those preternaturally aged monkeys that sit motionless in a dark corner of the cage, oppressed with the sins and sorrows of a hundred centuries. And yet it mustn't be supposed that Patsy ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... lives all alone in a little cabin down near the beach. Spends his time fishing and doing odd jobs. He's a little wizened-up fellow. He's fond of talking, and all we'll have to do is to get him started and he'll do the rest. I only hope we'll find him in condition ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... thought, I decided on a plan of action. I proposed to Sir Alfred Jarnock that I should spend a night in the Chapel, and keep a constant watch upon the dagger. But to this, the old knight—a little, wizened, nervous man—would not listen for a moment. He, at least, I felt assured had no doubt of the reality of some dangerous supernatural Force a roam at night in the Chapel. He informed me that it had been his habit every evening to lock the Chapel door, so that no one might foolishly or heedlessly ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... do, my Cherry,' said Wilmet, as she saw that the wizened old fairy look was come back. 'You have been ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... over the general consternation. Few thought of Jessop—only of themselves. Many a father turned pale; many a mother melted into smothered tears. More than one honest countenance that five minutes before had beamed like the rising sun, all friendliness and jocularity, I saw shrink into a wizened, worldly face with greedy selfishness peering out of the corners of its eyes, eager to conceal its own alarms and dive as far as possible into the terrors ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... church. In the midst of his delighted study he suddenly felt the attraction of a pair of watchful eyes, and turned to find a peasant woman gazing fixedly at him. In her strange fascination she had placed beside her, on the ground, two huge melons and a mammoth cabbage, and her wizened hands were folded before her, Sunday-fashion. She was a little witch of a woman, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... live and got well, though she never grew a mite from that time. A little wizened-up thing she was, always; but I tell you folks 'round here thought a nawful lot of Aunt Debby! And Eddie, if you'll believe it, never took the sickness at all. They say, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... ever see such a horror?" he asked, pointing it out to his companion; "a curio for ugliness, and just the sort of monster Mrs. Malone would love. I'll try if I can get hold of it. What's the price of the China demon?" he inquired of a wizened old woman, who wore a bashed black bonnet and a pair of blue ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... over his head since I saw him last? The face that tried to smile at us from the pillow was strangely wizened and old. It was as though a withering blight had touched it. Only the eyes were the same. They glowed in the sunken face, beneath the shock of black hair, with a startling luster ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... spoke the door of the house opened again, and the old gentleman she had alluded to came gingerly down the steps. He had a small, wizened face, and he wore a fur-lined overcoat, in which it was evident that he still ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... golden salver, with the wizened pomegranate upon it, and left the room. When he was gone, Proserpina could not help coming close to the table, and looking at this poor specimen of dried fruit with a great deal of eagerness; for, to say the truth, on seeing something that suited her taste, she felt all the six ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... to meet the new arrival. He returned without delay, bringing with him a man very different from those whom Brett had encountered thus far in connection with the crime. This was a dapper little Frenchman, wizened, yellow-skinned, black-haired, and dressed almost in the extreme of fashion. He at once ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... he said, as if he had seen his guest only the day before. He looked vaguely about for something that Thornton might smoke, then seated himself on a cluttered bench holding a number of retorts, beside which flamed an oxyacetylene blowpipe. He was a wizened little chap, with scrawny neck and protruding Adam's apple. His long hair gave no evidence of the use of the comb, and his hands were the hands of Esau. He had an alertness that suggested a robin, but at the same time gave the impression that he looked through ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... Square-head? Drink up and forget it! What's in your bottle? Gin. Dot's nigger trink. Absinthe? It's doped. You'll go off your chump, Froggy! Cochon! Whiskey, that's the ticket! Where's Paddy? Going asleep. Sing us that whiskey song, Paddy. [They all turn to an old, wizened Irishman who is dozing, very drunk, on the benches forward. His face is extremely monkey-like with all the sad, patient pathos of that animal in his small eyes.] Singa da song, Caruso Pat! He's gettin' old. The drink is too much for ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... a series of advertisements of some marvellous patent food, and we wondered if she would ever grow like the fat and flourishing last baby of the series. For two months this state of things continued; she grew more wizened every day; and the uncanny spider-limbs and attitude gave her the air of not being a human baby at all, but a terrible little specimen which ought not to be on view but should be hidden safely away in some private medical ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... flowers had faded; but the pinks and the poppies were still rich in blood; and the sunflower sturdily held up its yellow face like 'a wizened sorcerer of old,' as a fair and gifted friend of my acquaintance puts it. The cottage and the grounds about it were the property of an English gentleman of taste and means. The nearest dwelling had an air ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... you little lump of love," called out a mellow voice; and there, close by, sat a wizened old woman, making flowers into nosegays. She had on a quilted hood as soft as her voice, but everything else about her was as hard as the door-stone she ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... [reduce in size by abrasion or paring; see subtraction 38] abrade, pare, reduce, attenuate, rub down, scrape, file, file down, grind, grind down, chip, shave, shear, wear down. Adj. contracting &c. v.; astringent; shrunk, contracted &c. v.; strangulated, tabid[obs3], wizened, stunted; waning &c. v.; neap, compact. unexpanded &c. (expand &c. 194)[obs3]; contractile; compressible; smaller &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... ready now!" cried Peter Riney, running out to open the other half of the gate. Peter was a wizened little man, with a sandy fringe of beard beneath his chin, a wart on the end of his long, slanting-out nose, light blue eyes, and bushy eyebrows of a reddish gray. The bearded red brows, close ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... fowling-piece, the only gun on board, and fired point blank at the savages. But the women were paddling away vigorously, and the shot splashed in the water on all sides of the canoe, though a howl and a series of violent contortions showed that one, at least, of the pellets had stung the wizened Indian whom Suarez believed to be ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... rang they were feeling at home in their new quarters. At the table they met the usual group of village boarders: the Brann brothers, newsdealers; old man Troutt, who ran the livery-stable—and smelled of it; and a small, dark, and wizened woman who kept the millinery store. The others, who came in late, were clerks ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the name, in her happy sleep, Of her Hh hunter so fair and far. And then she saw in her dreams the deep Where the spirit wailed, and a falling star; Then stealthily crouching under the trees, By the light of the moon, the Kan—ti-dan, [31] The little, wizened, mysterious man, With his long locks tossed by the moaning breeze. Then a flap of wings, like a thunder-bird, [32] And a wailing spirit the sleeper heard; And lo, through the mists of the moon, she saw The ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... school had been in charge of a very singular little old woman. Nobody had ever known where she came from. The benevolent lady who founded the institution, had brought her to the door one morning in her coach, and the neighbors had seen the little brown, wizened creature, with a most extraordinary gown on, alight and enter. This was all any one had ever known about her. In fact, the benevolent lady had come upon her in the course of her travels in a little German town, sitting ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... he was the offspring of a runaway marriage between a subaltern officer in the Austrian service and a Hungarian lady of noble birth. In some way he had got across the Atlantic, and being in Boston, a wizened youth not speaking a word of English, he was spirited on board a warship. Watching his chance of escape he leaped overboard in the darkness of night, though it was the dead of winter, and swam ashore. He was found unconscious on the beach by some charitable persons, who cared for him. Thence ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... wizened, clean-shaven, dark-visaged little man, appeared with a scuttle of coal. "Ay, Davie; that's it! Is ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... Macaroni has on the wrong saddle. Succarina is a favorite, the kindest, easiest, and surest-footed of beasts,—a diminutive animal, not bigger than a Friesland sheep; old, in fact grizzly with years, and not unlike the aged, wizened little women who are so common here: for beauty in this region dries up; and these handsome Sorrento girls, if they live, and almost everybody does live, have the prospect, in their old age, of becoming mummies, with parchment skins. I have heard ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Leonard answered. He felt suddenly contrite. He noticed for the first time in his life that his father looked old and little, almost wizened, and there was something deferential in his manner toward his big son that smote Leonard. It was as if he were saying, apologetically, "You're the bone and sinew of this country now. I admire you inordinately, my son. See, I defer to ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... sitting-room. But in Turkey such conveniences are a secondary consideration. The rooms were freshly whitewashed, the board floors were scrubbed, and the view from the windows was one of the most beautiful in the world. A day spent in the bazaar did the rest. I picked up a queer, wizened old Dalmatian cook, and with the help of my servant was installed in the little place eight-and-forty hours after I had made up ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... with her heart thumping so, and why did it thump? She found herself praying, "O God, show me what to say!" and then the door was open a crack and a sharp wizened face with a striking resemblance to Cherry's bold little beauty, was thrust at her. It must be Cherry's mother. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... little three-cornered hat on his head, and a blue long-skirted coat and waistcoat, richly laced. He had on also, I afterwards saw, knee-breeches, and huge silver buckles to his shoes. His countenance seemed wizened and dried up like a piece of parchment. Some of the younger passengers especially seemed to think him, by their remarks, a fair subject for their ridicule. The person who pulled was a huge negro. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... The wizened little old man, walking with difficulty by the aid of a staff, but armed in proof, with plumes waving gallantly from his iron headpiece, and with his rapier at his side, ordered a chair to be brought to the river's edge. Then calmly seating himself in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... day, as he could speak French, whether he would like to have some French convicts assigned to him. He had no objection, as he thought that he could manage them easily. What was his astonishment, when the party arrived at the farm, to recognise among them, in a little wizened-looking old man, his once dreaded enemy La Roche! He determined to try and melt the man's stony heart by kindness. At first he was almost hopeless in the matter, but he succeeded at last. La Roche confessed that he had placed himself within the ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... How can I describe it? It was much sweeter afterwards, but now it was so dark and witchlike, so uncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows. She sat up in her bed, a wizened little goblin, and laughed a queer, dry, knowing laugh to herself, a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, like the 'unwilling sleep' of a strong narcotic. ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... is, if it is possible. The professor, as I call him, has been teaching his language to officers, here, for the last thirty years. He is a queer, wizened-up little old chap, and has got out of the way of bowing and scraping that the senors generally indulge in; but he seems a cheery little old soul, and he has got to understand English ways and, at any rate, there is no fear of his leading Bob into ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... heavy supper, the substantial meal of the day, and immediately afterwards we went to bed, and dreamt such dreams as may be imagined. We were off early in the morning with a wizened old mestizo to guide us to the ruins of Xochicalco, which are on this very estate of Temisco. The estate is forty miles across, however, and it is a long ride to the ruins. After we leave the fields of sugar-cane, we see scarcely ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... wizened thing who gave you the ring—that prim morsel of feminine propriety who has been clever enough to make you believe that her morality would ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the owner—a small, wizened lady of negligible physique but great staying power—entered upon a duet with Alphonso, which soon reduced that very moderate performer to breathlessness. He shrugged his shoulders feebly, and cast an ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... by abrasion or paring. ] (subtraction) 38 abrade, pare, reduce, attenuate, rub down, scrape, file, file down, grind, grind down, chip, shave, shear, wear down. Adj. contracting &c v.; astringent; shrunk, contracted &c v.; strangulated, tabid^, wizened, stunted; waning &c v.; neap, compact. unexpanded &c (expand) &c 194 [Obs.]; contractile; compressible; smaller &c (small) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... did get there I found him grimly surveying a small and wizened creature, whose arm he had linked to his own by means of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... she had so little expected. She had never had the slightest knowledge of her husband's affairs, but she was quite convinced that he was very rich. On the evening after the funeral she was sitting alone with her son Jacob, who was a boy of about seven or eight, when a little wizened, grey-haired man came into the room, who, after respectfully wishing Mrs. Worse good evening, laid on the table some account-books and papers. The old man was well known to Mrs. Worse: it was Mr. Peter Samuelsen, commonly known as Pitter Nilken, the manager of the small shop ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... however atrocious, seemed to him too great for persons clearly guilty of enormous crimes. I have already referred to his defence of the horrible Boiling Act which disgraced the reign and the parliament of Henry VIII. The account of Mary Stuart's old and wizened face as it appeared when her false hair and front had been removed after her execution may be set down as an error of taste. But what is to be said, on the score of humanity, for an historian who in the nineteenth ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... back to my room, feeling stupefied. The little, wizened old man had grown great. He had been metamorphosed under my eyes into a strange visionary symbol; he had come to be the power of gold personified. I shrank, shuddering, from ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... tossed her head. Uncle Ned was old, wizened, wrinkled as a raisin, but he eyed Anniky over with a supercilious gaze, and said with dignity: "Ef I wanted ter marry, I could git a ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... dark when he reached the repair-shop near the railroad, and the proprietor, a wizened little bald-headed man, ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... don't nobody know more 'bout that, and there ain't nobody had as much of it done to 'em as I have," said a wizened old woman. "I know nobody could stand what I have stood. The first I knowed 'bout conjuration was when a woman named Lucinda hurt my sister. She was always a 'big me,' and her chillun was better than anybody elses. Well her oldest child ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... the only shabby thing in the house—a wizened little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher than the other, dressed in a shiny black moire gown, years after moires had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon her sleek black hair—raven black hair, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... from the table, and Harry followed her example, Hugh thought it better to rise as well. Mr. Arnold seemed to hesitate whether or not to ask him to resume his seat and have a glass of claret. Had he been a little wizened pedagogue, no doubt he would have insisted on his company, sure of acquiescence from him in every sentiment he might happen to utter. But Hugh really looked so very much like a gentleman, and stated his own views, or adopted his own plans, with so much independence, that Mr. Arnold judged it ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... I could not be, I was shaking so with laughter. If you could have seen the silly old thing, like a wizened monkey, with dyed hair and an eye-glass—it was too comic! I only told you because you said the sentence 'begin with you,' and I wanted to know if it ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... or messengers, wearing their broad, coloured sash of office across their shoulders, come and go upon their errands, and, with the white-clad butler of a "Sahib" intent upon his marketing, mingle with a crowd which is composed of all races and all stations of life, from the wizened labourer in his loin-cloth to the wealthy baboo or daintily-clad Burmese lady. It is a wonderful medley of strange faces, costumes, and tongues, and among it all the self-sufficient crow fights with the "pi" dogs over the garbage, to the ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... you leave her alone? A little wizened monkey like that!" It was thus that Madame Socani expressed her opinion of her rival. "A creature without an ounce of flesh on her bones. Her voice won't last long. It never does with those little mean made apes. There was Grisi and Tietjens,—they had ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... boy served at the counter. Sarah led the Mr. Woodseers into a corner knocked off the shop and called a room. Below the top bars of a wizened grate was a chilly fire. London's light came piecemeal through a smut-streaked window. If the wonderful was to occur, this was the place to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... order and a motorcycle shot off down the road. In half an hour it came sputtering back with a huge Cadillac roaring in its wake. The car drew up and stopped. From it descended two men. The first was a small, wizened figure with heavy glasses. What hair age had left to him was as white as snow. The second figure, which towered over the first, was ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... boy or a girl?" asked the Duke, looking at the brown, wizened face of the little thing, which was ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... playing upon them now, making the hearts of the women beat fast, thrilling them, turning meditation into dreams, and giving the sight of the eyes far visions of pleasure. So powerful was this influence that the shrill Elder twice essayed to speak in protest, but was prevented by the wizened Elder Meacham. When it seemed as if the aching, throbbing sweetness must surely bring denunciation, David changed the music to a slow mourning cadence. It was a wail of sorrow, a march to the grave, a benediction, a soft sound of farewell, floating through ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... then, and Crump stood in the door. Old Gabe stared hard at him without a word of welcome, but Crump shuffled to a chair unasked, and sat like a toad astride it, with his knees close up under his arms, and his wizened ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... its owner on a saddle immediately below its neck, and a pair of paniers just above its tail. The rider was an elderly man with shaggy eyebrows and beard of mingled black and gray. His swarthy, keen wizened face was twisted into grotesque lines beneath a pair of little blinking eyes, which seemed to say that anybody who refused to see that they belonged to a perfectly, wideawake son of old Adam made a portentous ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... was the terror of the northeast, of which the mystery of smoke was a token. Yet I was puzzled. Certainly he was nothing; of which to be afraid. Red-Eye or any of our strong men would have been more than a match for him. He was old, too, wizened with age, and the hair on his face was gray. Also, he limped badly with one leg. There was no doubt at all that we could out-run him and out-climb him. He could never catch us, ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... sorrowfully on the poor boy, whose thin, wizened face, with large, hungry eyes, was placed on a shrunk and distorted body. His mother was the pest of the court, always drunk, and in her drunken fury beating her wretched offspring. Half-starved and half-clothed, he passed his ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... Roman amphitheatre. It was a noble tent, a palace of a tent, the auditorium being but an inconsiderable section. There was stabling for fifty horses. There were decent dressing-rooms. There was a green-room, with a wooden, practicable bar running along one end, and a wizened, grizzled, old barman behind it who supplied your wants from the contents of a myriad bottles ranged in perfect order in some obscure nook beneath the counter. They did things in the great manner in the Cirque Rocambeau. It visited none but first-class towns which had open spaces ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... St. Louisian puffed its way into the big smoke-begrimed station in Missouri's largest city I looked about me for Bill, who was going to meet me at the station. We had not met since our prep. school and college days when Bill had been a thin, wizened little fellow, so hollow-chested that he had to be sent to Colorado for almost two years for his health. He came back to school looking better but before his diploma was handed to him announcing to the world that ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... wizened old man swung suddenly round. He had the face of a bird of prey, yellow as a louis d'or with a great hooked nose, and a pair of beady black eyes that observed me solemnly. The mouth alone was the redeeming feature in a countenance that had otherwise been evil; ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... the two voices, "we heard a crackling as if he were opening my letter, and after an odd noise or two he sent to call us in to where he was sitting with Richards, and the attorney he had got to prosecute us. He is a regular old wizened stick, the perfect image of an old miser; almost hump-backed, and as yellow as a mummy. He looked just ready to bite off our heads, but he was amazingly set on finding out which was which among us, and seemed uncommonly struck with my name and Bobus's. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The dominie was a wizened-looking little man, with sharp eyes that pierced you when they thought they were unobserved, and if any visitor drew near who might be a member of the Board, he disappeared into his house much as a startled ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands; Smith restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened briar a dozen times in as many minutes. In the big arm-chair the pseudogypsy was curled up. A brief toilet had converted the wizened old woman's face into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl. Wildly picturesque she looked in her ragged Romany garb. She held a cigarette in her fingers and watched us ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... towel on his arm, covered its worst stains with a napkin, and brought them, in their order, the vermicelli soup, the fried fish, the cheese-strewn spaghetti, the veal cutlets, the tepid roast fowl and salad, and the wizened pear and coffee which form the dinner ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Ganassi seemed to reign among the jungle folk as royally as any king. He chastised, praised, petted, and scolded; and one and all the beasts loved their wizened little master. Solemnly Ganassi went about his task. From his bosom he took a small object, smoothed, and caressed it. Piang trembled with excitement. Ganassi called each animal, and they responded ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... a Frenchman was inspired to cut a pigeon wing; and Father Baby had tripped it over every inch of this oak floor, when the frenzy for dancing seized him and the tunes were particularly irresistible. The bar-room gave him his only taste of Kaskaskia society, and he took it with zest. Little wizened black-eyed fellows clapped their hands, delighting, while their priest was not by, in the antics of a disreputable churchman; but the bigger and colder race ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... felled on the ground, and on the trunk among the long grass they noticed something jumping up and down, but what it was they couldn't distinguish. When they approached nearer they perceived a dwarf with a wizened face and a beard a yard long. The end of the beard was jammed into a cleft of the tree, and the little man sprang about like a dog on a chain, and didn't seem to know what he was to do. He glared at the girls with his fiery red eyes, and screamed out: "What are you standing there for? ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... a wizened old fellow in his grey wig. I should hardly ha' known him. I gave him a look, as much as to say, 'I could tell tales o' you, my lord judge, if I chose.' I don't know if he heeded me, though. I suppose it were for a sign of old acquaintance that he said ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... The wizened little Legate bowed to the ground as the noisy procession started, for though he wore a clerical dress he was only a layman, and the Nuncio was Archbishop of Kerasund, 'in partibus infidelium,' and returned ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... man, with thin grey hair, which stood upright from his narrow head—what his age might have been it was impossible to guess; he was wizened, and dry, and grey, but still active enough on his legs when he had exchanged his slippers for his shoes; and as keen in all his senses as though years could ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... dignity and beauty of face and body. Their physique is superb; their features shaped and lined by weather and experience into a Roman nobility that demands respect. Several such passed through. Then came an old woman, wizened and loquacious, bent double by the sack of her weekly provision of meat and flour. She required oil, was given it, secreted it in some cranny of the many-coloured bundle that she was, and staggered ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... He was a man of between forty and fifty, thin and wizened. Petra and he got into conversation, while the boy and a little urchin continued to heap up the old shoes. Manuel was looking on, when the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... little better than wood-ashes—there is small sign of the sap, and the leafy freshness, and the bursting buds that were once there; but wherever we see wood-ashes, we know that all that early fullness of life must have been. I, at least, hardly ever look at a bent old man, or a wizened old woman, but I see also, with my mind's eye, that Past of which they are the shrunken remnant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance, compared ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... broad, low margin, distinct, yet with a coercive conviction of unreality, the figure of a man drawn in lines of vague light paced slowly to and fro; an old man, he would have said, bent and wizened, swaying back and forth, in expressive contortions, a very pantomime of woe, wringing gaunt hands and arms above his head, and now and again bowing low in recurrent paroxysms of despair. The wind held its breath, and the river, mute as ever, ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... wits. God had given him precisely the same kind of wits as his brothers, but with a single added drop of uneasy leaven. He tumbled out of his cradle when he was a baby to see what lay beyond. He was thin, wizened, restless as a strange beast in a cage, though his brothers tirelessly puzzled their slow brains to soothe and satisfy him. When he was a boy he was wretched because he was not taken down into the valley or to far-off towns. His brothers were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... with reading-desk and clerk's box underneath. The ante-Communion Service was read from the desk, separated from the liturgy and sermon by such renderings of Tate and Brady as the unruly gang of volunteers with fiddles and wind instruments in the gallery pleased to contribute. The clerk, a wizened old fellow in a brown wig, repeated the responses in a nasal twang, and with a substitution of w for v so constant as not even to spare the Beliefs; while the local rendering of briefs, citations, and excommunications included announcements by this worthy, after the Nicene Creed, of meetings ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... he was bidden, and as he opened the door a flash of lightning showed him, standing at the threshold, a little wizened old man with a small harp ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy |
