"Dusky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... might come this way round to enter, and he wished her to be apprised of their presence. All went back into the room after a few moments, and, as the air had grown cooler, the windows were closed. As Wilfrid seated himself in a dusky part of the room, he noticed that Beatrice was regarding him steadily. She had not spoken since his return, and did not do so till she presently rose to say good-night. To Wilfrid she used no form of words, merely giving him her hand; that ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... was square, with dusky picture-hung walls. In its centre, about a table lit by veiled lamps, he fancied Mr. Lavington and his guests to be already seated at dinner; then he perceived that the table was covered not with viands but with papers, and that he had blundered ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... the outlines of the island's margin were now dusky and indistinct. Peace, peace lay over the waters, and the purple of the summer twilight had turned to grey, but I knew that in the depths of the undergrowth on Deadman's Island there blossomed a flower of flaming beauty; ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... theory which grants political power to the ignorant white foreigner need not be squeamish about granting it to the ignorant black native, for the gist of the matter is in the dark mind, and not the more or less dusky skin. Of course we shall be met by the usual fallacy,—Would you confer equality on the blacks? But the answer is a very simple one. Equality cannot be conferred on any man, be he white or black. If he be capable of it, his title is from God, and not from us. The opinion of the North is made ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... than you would put on your tiny teacups at breakfast, or lay the carving-knife by the butter-plate. Consequently it is very exasperating to sit, open-eyed and expectant, watching the removal of the successive swathings which hide from you the dusky glories of an old-time princess, and, when the unrolling is over, to find it is nothing, after all, but a great lubberly boy. Equally trying is it to feel your interest clustering round a narrator's manhood, all your individuality merging in his, till, of a sudden, by the merest chance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... dismissed the slave girl, who departed reluctantly towards the women's apartments. In spite of the froth of shining, billowy folds with which her arms were full, she turned round as she parted the striped, silken hangings of the doorway and drew her dusky orange finger-tips in a significant gesture across her slender brown throat. It was obvious that the slave girl considered this refusal a very serious breach ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... was noticeable at once. Slowly the warm blood flowed back into the dusky cheeks, the limbs began to twitch, the breathing grew audible, and the wounded man began to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... different objects in different lights. Here are four card-portraits from a negative taken from one of Barry's crayon-pictures, illustrating an experiment which will prove very useful to the beginner. The negative of No. 1 was exposed only two seconds. The young lady's face is very dusky on a very dusky ground. The lights have hardly come out at all. No. 2 was exposed five seconds. Undertimed, but much cleared up. No. 3 was exposed fifteen seconds, about the proper time. It is the best of the series, but the negative ought to have been intensified. It looks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... French traders were not a little aided by the Jesuit missionaries scattered among them, who naturally favored their countrymen, and besides were afraid of the spiritual influence which the heretical Puritans might exercise over their dusky neophytes. For even at that early period, the zeal of the Romish Church had penetrated the wilds of North as well as of South America, and erected the sacred crucifix where before stood the stake of the victim. Solitudes which, until then, had only trembled to the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... leaves or flowers of some sort. They seem to me very like the Maori women, but without the blue tattoo-mark on the lips; nor are their features so strongly marked, though they had the same wide faces, black eyes, full nostrils, and large lips. Their skins are of various hues, from a yellow to a dusky-brown. Their feet and hands are usually small ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... parallel to the faith kept by the negro in the South during the war. Often five hundred negroes to a single white man, and yet through these dusky throngs the women and children walked in safety, and the unprotected homes rested in peace. Unmarshalled, the black battalions moved patiently to the fields in the morning to feed the armies their idleness would have starved, and at night gathered anxiously at the "big house to hear the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Brook, neither of these was his grand tour. It was yet to be taken. In Mr. Wrenn, apparently fastened to New York like a domestic-minded barnacle, lay the possibilities of heroic roaming. He knew it. He, too, like the man who had taken the Gaumont pictures, would saunter among dusky Javan natives in "markets with tiles on the roofs and temples and—and—uh, well—places!" The scent of Oriental spices was in his broadened nostrils as he scampered out of the Nickelorion, without a look at the ticket-taker, and headed for "home"—for his third-floor-front on ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... that looks from the soul through the face. Ah! that is another thing! That still remains when the dusky hair is changed to white, when the glow is turned to shadows in the eyes, when the lithe form is bent. That is a bit of the eternal, and forever young like its Creator. You have got that beauty, my dear, as well ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... generally willing to trust to the pundits of the place,—look doubtful, uneasy, and bewildered. But they all do get properly placed and unplaced, so that the spectator at last acknowledges that over all this apparent chaos there is presiding a great genius of order. From dusky morn to dark night, and indeed almost throughout the night, the air is loaded with a succession of shrieks. The theory goes that each separate shriek,—if there can be any separation where the sound is so nearly continuous,—is a separate notice to separate ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... a watch on the larger ship as long as the light lasted, the darkness defeated them. They did not see the prisoner being taken aboard. Yet none of them doubted that sometime during the dusky hours it had ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... was small and round, with features that were a caricature of man's. His ears were huge, and had the power of movement, for they cocked forward as we entered the room. The nose was not prominently arched, but the nostrils were wide, and very thin, as was his mouth, which was faintly tinged with dusky blue, instead of healthy red. At one time his eyes had been nearly round, and, in proportion, very large. Now they were but shadowy pockets, mercifully covered by shrunken, wrinkled lids that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... into the saddle among the salaams of the dusky multitude, and all the ladies of the seraglio waved their scented handkerchiefs out ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... joyous shouts of the natives, the hunters filed out of the village, led by the dusky messenger who had brought the news of the elephants. And, as Tom and the others advanced, they could hear a distant trumpeting, and a crashing in the jungle that told of the near presence of the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... along: Winds blew hot, yet sang to him a song (So he told me, once) that gave him hope. Every time he saw a shadow grope Down the hillsides, from a flying cloud, Something touched his heart that made him proud: Seemed to him he saw her dusky face Watching over him, from place to place. Every time the dry leaves rustled near, Seemed to him she whispered, "Have ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... began, and Lord Strishfogel was still a rover; He was in the South Seas by this time, writing a book, and enjoying halcyon days among the friendly natives, swimming like a dolphin in those summery seas, and indulging in harmless flirtations with dusky princesses, whose chief attire was made of shells and flowers, and whose untutored dancing was more vigorous than refined. At the end of that second season, Jane Umleigh had serious thoughts of turning philanthropist, and taking a shipload of destitute ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... fact, bestowed upon her as a gift. Mrs. Cupp bought it for a shilling at a small shop in the village. Ameerah, in whose dusky being was incorporated the occult faith of lost centuries, and whose gods had been gods through mystic ages, received the fat, little brown book with down-dropped lids and grateful obeisance. These were her words to ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Rose-white in the dusky leaves, Shone the frank-ey'd Spartan child; Low the pale doves on the eaves, Made their soft moan, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... whan the wind frae the watery bars Blew into the dusky room, She opened her een like twa settin' stars, And ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... his wife—every tint and curve and line as distinctly as she could see him. Her cheeks never had much colour; now her whole face visibly darkened, from pallor to a dusky leaden grey, as she gazed. It was not an illusion then; not a miserable hallucination. The unbelievable, the inconceivable, had happened. He replaced the candles with trembling fingers and ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... the perpetual abyss into which it must fall some day; the invisible shadow of the Dark Star swept it at intervals when some far and nameless sun blazed out unseen; days dawned; the sun of the solar system rose furtively each day and hung around the heavens until that dusky huntress, Night, chased him once more beyond the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... dark; there was a hanging lamp in the arbour which lit up the table and the faces of the speakers; and along the arch, the leaves upon the trellis stood out illuminated against the night sky, a pattern of transparent green upon a dusky purple. The fat young man rose, and, taking Will by the arm, led him out under the open heavens. "Did you ever look at the stars?" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... people sot on the peaceful decks,—stately gentlemen, handsome ladies, and pretty children. And in one corner, off kinder by themselves, sot that band of dusky singers, whose songs have delighted the world. Modest, good-lookin' dark girls, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... stranding they had landed on it "to stretch their legs a bit," as the sailing-master defined it, and every evening since, as if exercising a privilege or performing a duty, the three paced there for an hour backward and forward lost in dusky immensity, threading at the edge of water the belt of damp sand, smooth, level, elastic to the touch like living flesh and sweating a little under ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... appearance. He had spoken of blue as the one sublime color. As she leaned a little back in her chair, resting from her labors, he could scarcely help noticing the blue silk stockings and suede shoes which matched the hidden color of her skirt, the ribbon which gleamed from the dusky masses of her hair. Madame Christophor was always a very beautiful and a very elegant woman, and it seemed to have pleased her during these last few days to appear at her best. Julien gripped for a moment at his ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sleep and forget our hunger and weariness. But all the night through our dusky comrades padded by to the lavatory, and in the streak of bright light which shot across the center of the room, startled heads could be seen bobbing up in the direction of a demented woman in the end cot. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... the Indian tribes in that part of the province. We talked together, and as we talked the sun went down. An old Indian arose on the bank opposite. In the stillness we heard him tap out the ashes of his pipe upon a stone. Then he came down like a dusky patriarch to the edge of the stream, stepped into his canoe ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... round as apples. I had seen her last in elegant evening attire. I don't know that she looked less charming now in her school-dress, a kind of careless peignoir of a dark-blue material, dimly and dingily plaided with black. I even think this dusky wrapper gave her charms a triumph; enhancing by contrast the fairness of her skin, the freshness of her bloom, the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... IVc.4: ——the other's umber'd face:] Umber'd means here discoloured by the gleam of the fires. Umber is a dark yellow earth, brought from Umbria, in Italy, which, being mixed with water, produces such a dusky yellow colour as the gleam of fire by night gives to the countenance. Shakespeare's theatrical profession probably furnished him with the epithet, as burnt umber is occasionally used by actors for colouring ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... a few minutes, and then having blown out the light, stepped out of the cabin, and closed the door behind her. The dusky gloom which had held the deck on the previous night enveloped all forward of the main-mast. A lantern swung in the forecastle, and swayed with the motion of the ship. The light at the prison door threw a glow through the open hatch, and in the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... and put himself at the head of the caravan, and the pagazis, animals, soldiers, and idlers were lined for the march, we bade a long farewell to the dolce far niente of civilised life, to the blue ocean, and to its open road to home, to the hundreds of dusky spectators who were there to celebrate our departure ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Commune, and later re-erected from the fragments. But you know when you study those dry facts they don't seem to mean anything; but to be here, really in Paris, looking at that wonderful column, in this dusky light, and the stars just beginning to show—oh, Elise, it's more like fairy tales ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... this wise and satisfactory conclusion he had also reached the end of his journey, and with much self-complacency retired to his humble cot to dream of his dusky sweetheart. ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... A dusky opening in a range of purpling hills; a vision of a cluster of small white human homes; a shining, murmuring little river spanned by a wooden bridge; a towering background of bald, steep rock, cleft at its base ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... reverberates through the most distant recesses of the huge edifice. What animation! What life! What varieties of type, of speech and gesture! Youths of athletic build, with great moustaches and stentorian voices; youths as slim and sweet as girls; the dusky skin and coal-black eyes of Sicily; the fair-haired, blue-eyed faces of the north; the excited gesticulation of Naples, the silvery Tuscan intonation, the rattling Venetian chatter, a hundred groups, a hundred dialects; on this side, songs and noisy talk, on ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... opened the door for her, he followed her out into the narrow hall. The justice proceeded to write in his record book. Hendon, always alert, thought he would like to know why the officer followed the woman out; so he slipped softly into the dusky hall and listened. He heard a conversation to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... far down in the west and the road under the spruces was dusky, when a singular obstacle halted the march. A tremendous thrashing and crashing at one side of the road signaled the approach of some large animal. A network of undergrowth hid the identity of this unknown, and the men instinctively huddled together and displayed some uncertainty as to whether ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... could be prolonged indefinitely. Somehow this intimate, personal contact seemed to create a friendliness for each other they had never known before. Presently Mary was chatting away almost as cordially as if it were Elise's dusky curls she had in her fingers, ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... A Little Dusky Hero A Son of the Hills At the Crossroads Camp Brave Pine Janet of the Dunes Joyce of the North Woods Mam'selle Jo Princess Rags and Tatters The Man Thou Gavest The Place Beyond the Winds The Shield of Silence The ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... very midst of forests of chestnut only—far as the eye can reach in every direction, and as far as vegetation will go up every mountain side, its grateful green forms a pleasing contrast to those gloomy frequenters and favourites of the mountain, the sombre pine and dusky olive. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... their digging operations; so engrossed were they with their discoveries that they did not hear the approach of some chattering natives. These dusky gents were within fifty yards of them when Bill whispered, "Keep still—lie down." They obeyed, and lying flat on the ground saw some Arabs go by. They could just see their figures against the sky, and had time to ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... up the street. There were armed soldiers with glittering uniforms, and there were flags flying, and merry voices shouting, and huzzas and blessings distinct upon the air. There were long lines of dusky faces upturned, and wet with happy tears. There were angry faces, too, scowling from windows, and lurking ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... The Hotel de Ville was the appointed place of rendezvous for the swarming multitudes. The affrighted citizens, knowing but too well to what scenes of violence and blood these demonstrations were the precursors, threw up their windows, and looked out with fainting hearts upon the dusky forms crowding by like apparitions of darkness. The rumbling of the wheels of heavy artillery, the flash of powder, with the frequent report of firearms, and the uproar and the clamor of countless voices, were fearful omens of a day to dawn in blacker darkness than the night. The Girondists ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... horizon. The shadows had melted into the violet twilight, which in equatorial Africa is almost as short as the snuffing of a candle. The stars were popping out. Dusky forms were circling round the yellow of the fire which threw pale flickers on the figure of Corporal Inyira, revealing the beginning of the hysterical gleam in the yellows of his eyes as, reverting to habit, he squatted on his haunches in the chair. They might make a rush for the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the less formal of the rooms used as places of gathering. The bed in a corner was hung in blue shalloon over ruffled white muslin, and there was blue at the windows. Against the wall a clavichord, set aside as obsolete, raised its dusky red ebony box on grooved legs. Myrtle was seated at it picking out an air from Belshazzar. She held each note in a silvery vibration that had the fragility of old age. Ludowika was by the fire, quartered across a corner; there was no stove, and the wood burning in the opening sent out frequent, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... o'clock. At two o'clock a jaded and blown horse stood before the door of the barracks at Archangel's Rise. Its rider, muffled to the chin, was knocking, and at the same time pulling his cap down closely over his head. "Thank God the night is dusky," he said. We have heard that voice before. The hat and cloak are those of Sergeant Tom, but the voice is that of Jen Galbraith. There is some danger in this act; danger for her lover, contempt for herself if she is discovered. Presently ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... half sullen and half reckless, of her dark eyes, as she sat there staring into the empty grate. There were no white threads yet in her thick long hair that had once been black and glossy, unkempt now, like everything about her, with a dusky dead look ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... that land must lie in this direction. A bright lookout was kept for the first two weeks of July. Two hundred and forty miles were traversed; and on a calm, {46} clear night between the 13th and 15th of July, there loomed above the horizon the dusky heights of a wooded mountainous land in latitude 55 degrees 21 minutes. Chirikoff was in the Alexander Archipelago. Daybreak came with the St. Paul only four miles off the conspicuous heights of Cape Addington. Chirikoff had discovered land some ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... dusky Night rides down the Sky, And ushers in the Morn; The Hounds all join in glorious Cry, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... hardly making any impression upon the darkness but only set off by it. And upon this one bright spot in earth or heaven, rode the planet of the morning—the sun's forerunner—bright upon the brightness. All else was dusky—except where overhead the clouds had parted again and shewed a faint old moon, glimmering down upon the night it could no longer be said ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... over. Then back to the dear old dusky chambers, with the pick and the axe in the mine of law, till I strike a gold vein, and follow it to the woolsack. I want peace. I begin to hate pleading. I hope to meet Death full-wigged. By my troth, I will look as grimly at him as he at me. Meantime, during a vacation, I will give ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... needless to say that when Mr. Londoner's store opened in the morning an ever-increasing cloud of dusky humanity, with teeth that glistened with the juice of anticipation, gathered about the entrance. Business in the store was at a standstill and travel on the street was blocked. No explanation could appease the rising anger of that dark multitude. It was ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach! The very lamp-lighter, who ran on before dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed: though little kenned the lamp-lighter that he had any ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... roused him effectually. A sort of dusky red came to his face as he sat up and looked at me. He did not ask me what I meant: we understood each other in a moment. He only sighed heavily, and said, 'I have never told you anything, Ursula, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the expense of two or more song-birds. For every one of these dusky little pedestrians there amid the grazing cattle there are two or more sparrows, or vireos, or warblers, the less. It is a big price to pay,—two larks for a bunting,—two sovereigns for a shilling; but Nature does not hesitate occasionally to contradict herself ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the hand,—her little effervescence of infantile fun having passed into a downcast humor, though not well knowing as yet what a dusky cloud of disheartening fancies arose from these green hillocks,—he went heavily toward the garden-gate. Close to its threshold, so that one who was issuing forth or entering must needs step upon it or over ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they came to where a river broad, Swiftly amid the dense trees winding, brimmed The flower-enamelled marge, and onward bore Green branches 'mid its eddies. On the bank Two virgins stood. Whiter than earliest streak Of matin pearl dividing dusky clouds Their raiment; and, as oft in silent woods White beds of wind-flower lean along the earth-breeze, So on the river-breeze that raiment wan Shivered, back blown. Slender they stood and tall, Their brows with violets bound; while shone, beneath, The ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... Of a sudden an unearthly yell rent the air, and half a dozen dusky figures leapt from the bushes in the distance. Flourishing curiously-shaped weapons, very like tomahawks, they rushed, yelling and ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... of bears, although the countries are closely connected, and these animals are not inhabitants of the same district. The Syrian bear is smaller than the ordinary brown bear, and would hardly exceed 300 lbs. in weight. The fur is a mixed and disagreeable colour, a dusky gray of somewhat rusty appearance, but blanched in portions as though by age. This species is to be found at the present day upon Mount Horeb, and the natives assured me that, when the grapes are ripe, it is necessary to protect them by watchers armed with guns, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... now were probably not Cornishmen at all—strangers, Londoners perhaps. They could watch that wonderful, ever-changing view of sea and cliff and moor without any beating of the heart; to them the crooked, dusky windings of the Cove, the mighty grey rocks of Trelennan's Jump, the strange, solemn permanency of the four grey stones on the moor, were as nothing; their ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... thickened to the crape of night, its darkness filled with thousands of small isolated splendours—fire-flies, those "golden boats" never seen "on a sunny sea," but haunting the eves of the young summer, pulsing, pulsing through the dusky air with seeming aimlessness, like sweet thoughts that have no faith to bind them in one. A tall, graceful woman stood in one of the windows alone. She had never been in Italy before, had never before seen fire-flies, and was absorbed in the beauty ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... good Alexander Whittaker?) read the marriage service of the Church of England, the eyes of haughty cavalier and of impassive savage met above the kneeling pair and sought to read each other. And a strange fate hung over the pale-face groom and the dusky bride—that in her land and by her people he should be slain; that in his land and among his people she should die and find a lonely grave beside ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... it is made, looks like putty, and has the same dusky-white colour; but, owing to the balls being kept in the huts in baskets in the smoke, and in wicker-work cages in the muddy pools to soak up as much water as possible before going into the hands of the traders, they get ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... mid-Victorian, viz., one in Boston, that takes you upstairs to see Edwin Edgett, the gentle-hearted literary editor of the Boston Transcript), we walked down the stairs, peeping into doorways in great curiosity. The whole building breathed a dusky and serene quaintness that pricks the imagination. It is a bit like the shop in Edinburgh (on the corner of the Leith Walk and Antigua Street, if we remember) that R.L.S. described in "A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured"—"it was dark and smelt of Bibles." We looked in at the entrance ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... design the destruction of a monarch they first make him mad, and what can be more mad than Kapchack's proposed marriage with the jay, to which he was doubtless instigated by the night-jars, who, like genii of the air, have been floating in the dusky summer twilight ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... you to help others; I am pleading with you to help yourselves. Rescue your own flesh and blood—free yourselves—free yourselves!" And from the swaying sobbing hundreds burst a great "Amen!" The minister's dusky face grew more and more sombre, and the angry sweat started on his brow. He felt himself hoaxed and cheated, and he meant to have his revenge. Two hundred men and women rose and pledged themselves to help Zora; and when she turned with overflowing ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... for the night with the kind-hearted old custom of shaking hands. As I passed through the hall, on the way to my chamber, the dying embers of the Yule-clog still sent forth a dusky glow; and had it not been the season when "no spirit dares stir abroad," I should have been half tempted to steal from my room at midnight, and peep whether the fairies might not be at their ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... waked up. The dew of dreams still lay on her luscious lips and in her great black eyes. Scarlet flowers, flat-petaled, black-stamened, wreathed her dusky hair. Scarlet bands outlined her dusky shoulders. Scarlet streamers trailed in her wake. Never had she seemed more lazy and languid, more velvety and voluptuous, more colorful ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... the world back to light and justice, will He who built it hurl it to the earth again in crashing ruin, to build another order in its place. The man who has let that great truth, written out in flame across the dusky forehead of the Past, slip from his foolish atheist's heart and his shallow atheist's brain, is blind, not only to our own land's short history, but to the lessons of the long ages and the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... stopped—that sublime principle somehow broke down. The working of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I can only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a last vague space it couldn't cross—a dusky, uncertain tract which looked ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in the winter twilight. But she was to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... above them towered a great and isolated rock, its precipitous sides scored here and there with twisted lines of red and yellow quartz; and on the summit of this bold headland, amid the dark green of the sea-grass, they could see the dusky ruins—the crumbling walls and doorways and battlements—of the castle that is named in all the stories of King Arthur and his knights. The bridge across to the mainland has, in the course of centuries, fallen away, but there, on the other side of the wide chasm, were the ruins of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... had heard the evidence with a "sour look," sitting in state upon a rude dais, covered with mats, his body wrapped in a cloak of raccoon skins. His dusky harem was grouped about him, watchful and interested. When the trial was over he bade one wife to bring water to wash the captive's hands, another a bunch of feathers to dry them upon. This was preliminary ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... whole truth, let me acknowledge, that even these, my dullest, hardest tasks, were light, compared with the burden I formerly bore of ennui. At length my period of probation in my pleader's office was over; I escaped from the dusky desk, and the smell of musty parchments, and the close smoky room; I finished eating my terms at the Temple, and returned, even, as the captain of the packet swore, "in the face and teeth of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... harsh laugh of hers that sounded in his ears afterward like the first muttering menace of the sand wind over the desert, the storm broke. Her eyes had an odd green glitter, her face was white, a dusky white, and her upper lip was drawn back from her teeth at each corner of ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... plying, and fishing-boats with colored sails, the men in them looking as small as children. For he was born in the Ghetto of Venice, on the seventh story of an ancient house. There were two more stories, up which he never went, and which remained strange regions, leading towards the blue sky. A dusky staircase, with gaunt whitewashed walls, led down and down—past doors whose lintels all bore little tin cases containing holy Hebrew words—into the narrow court of the oldest Ghetto in the world. A few ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... acquaintance of von Francius, and learn how mistaken—and again my eyes fell upon the opposite windows. Friedhelm Helfen leaned from one, holding fast Courvoisier's boy. The rich Italian coloring of the lovely young face; the dusky hair; the glow upon the cheeks, the deep blue of his serge dress, made the effect of a warmly tinted southern flower; it was a flower-face too; delicate ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the hour had come. She could free, exonerate, glorify him, and in doing so claim him for her own. Who, after this, could stand 'twixt her and him? He loved her, though he had been cold; and she—? Had he bidden her bow her dusky head to earth and kiss the print of his heel, she would have obeyed could she but feel sure that her reward would be a simple touch of his hand, an assurance that no other woman could find a moment's ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... shivering native's dull abode. And oft, beneath the odorous shade Of Chili's boundless forests laid, She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat, 60 In loose numbers wildly sweet, Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs, and dusky loves. Her track, where'er the Goddess roves, Glory pursue, and generous Shame, Th' unconquerable Mind, and ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... the distance a long line of wavering red lights snaked swiftly through the dusky valley toward them. ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat
... half-dozen big steers roaming on the Temple ranch whose brands had been crudely altered from the sign of the Big Bend outfit to the sign of her father's. Slowly the red blood of shame, shame for her, crept up into his cheeks, dusky under ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... But the figure neither moved nor changed its regular deep breathing, and La Mothe slipped past noiselessly, seeking anew for the promised signal. And midway to the well of the stairs, where faint murmurings told of sleepless life even in ill-lit, ill-guarded Amboise, he found it—a nebulous dusky cross, broader than long, stretching its shadowy arms upon the flags, and at his first low tap on the panel the door was softly opened and as softly closed ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Robertville. The French officers who took their pension there had long since ascended the hill of Addouna to the barracks. The cafes had closed their doors to the drinkers and domino players. The lounging Arab boys had deserted the sandy Place de la Marine. In their small and dusky bazaars the Israelites had reckoned up the takings of the day, and curled themselves up in gaudy quilts on their low divans to rest. Only two or three gendarmes were still about, and a few French and Spaniards at the Port, where, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... other matters than those they put before me, and while they desired there should be no mistake about their ancestors I became more and more lucid about themselves. I got away as soon as possible, and walked home through the great dusky, empty London—the best of all conditions for thought. By the time I reached my door my little article was practically composed— ready to be transferred on the morrow from the polished plate of fancy. I believe it attracted some notice, was thought "graceful" and was said to be by some one else. ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... from the house the clay oven with its sheltering roof of boards loomed dark, but the door of the fireplace fitted badly and one red gleam escaped through the chink; the dusky border of the forest stole a little closer in the night. Maria sat very still, delighting in the quiet and the coolness, while a thousand vague dreams circled about her like ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... to show him the letters." She was looking beyond me into the dusky shadows of the firelight, as if she saw the Other One standing there. "I have only to show him the letters," I knew now that she was not speaking to me, "and he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had taken their place. Huge, black birds circled over the forest island. Gaunt, dusky forms sat ghoul-like on the stick platforms that had been nests filled with impatient, squealing young birds, or flapped heavily ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... as they galloped back across the valley to the north to join the main body, which was seen coming over the ridge, increasing every moment in size. It looked, indeed, more as if the whole surface of the earth was moving, so compact was the dusky mass of the several thousand units which ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... was crawling, and a solitary, spectral-looking horseman was cantering noiselessly out of it towards them. The evening had almost begun; the sky had changed to a delicate green tint, merged towards the west in a dusky crocus, against which the Memorial spire stood out sharp and black; from South Kensington came the sound of a church bell calling for ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... occurs between the birth of the head and of the rest of the body. It is usually safe to await further expulsive contractions, but should the child's face turn a dusky blue, which indicates that it needs to breathe, the patient is to be advised to strain vigorously and to make firm pressure over the womb with both her hands. At the same time the attendant must pull the child downward, having seized its chin with one hand and the back of its head ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... opium on De Quincey were of a different, but a very pernicious sort: they weakened his will; they made him a colossal slave to a tiny tyrant; they shut him up (like the Genii in the "Arabian Tales") in a phial filled with dusky fire; they spread a torpor over the energies of his body; they closed up or poisoned the natural sources of enjoyment; the air, the light, the sunshine, the breeze, the influences of spring, lost all charm and power over him. Instead of these, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... reproach that year to Virginia. The foliage, touched here and there with prismatic tints, drooped motionless in the golden haze. The delicate Virginia creeper was almost minded to put forth its scarlet buds again. No wonder the lovely phantom—this dusky Southern sister of the pale Northern June—lingered not long with us, but, filling the once peaceful glens and valleys with her pathos, stole away rebukefully before ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 1786, was given to an English sea-captain as a marriage portion with the King of Keddah's daughter, and by him transferred to the East India Company. When Captain Francis Light received it with his dusky bride, it was the wild home of a few Malay fishermen and their families; to-day it has about a ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... that these appearances are deceitful; but I sufficiently know that this is a wicked world, to be glad that I have taken it on shares. In fact, I could not pick the pears alone, not to speak of eating them. When I climb the trees, and throw down the dusky fruit, Polly catches it in her apron; nearly always, however, letting go when it drops, the fall is so sudden. The sun gets in her face; and, every time a pear comes down it is a surprise, like having a tooth ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sullenly watched us. Leaving our horses on the north bank, Levering and I returned, and ignoring the presence of the darky spectators, started back to meet the herd, which was just then looming up in sight. But before we had ridden any distance, the dusky foreman overtook us and politely said, "Look-ee here, Cap'n; ain't you-all afraid of losin' some of your cattle among ours?" Never halting, I replied, "Not a particle; if we lose any, you eat them, and we'll do the same if our herd absorbs any of yours. ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... there were enough special torches with which a man so skilful as Denmark Vesey could kindle up these dusky powder-magazines; but, after all, the permanent peril lay in the powder. So long as that existed, everything was incendiary. Any torn scrap in the street might contain a Missouri-Compromise speech, or a report of the last battle in St. Domingo, or one of those able letters of Boyer's which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... dwell on the details of our flight. They remain in my memory in all clearness, each scene distinct, each incident a picture engraved on the mind. I came to believe in, implicitly rely on, all my comrades—on the black-eyed, dusky Elsie, emotional and efficient, whose care-free laugh was contagious, and whose marvelous skill in cooking only increased our hunger, who knew every wild plant that grew, and unearthed many a treasure to help out our slim larder from the forest and prairie soil; on ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... so-called "throne room of Minos" that the restoring hand is first met. Here it has been found necessary to provide a roof, that damage by weather be avoided; and to-day the throne room is a dusky spot, rather below the general level of the place. Its chief treasure is the throne itself, a stone chair, carved in rather rudimentary ornamentation, and about the size of an ordinary chair. The roof is supported by the curious, top-heavy-looking stone pillars, that are known ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... darkness. Unseen things crept silently by. Once a great winged wraith of ghostly white flapped by with a croak, a snowy heron, winging like a shape of Wrath Incarnate, above the crouching man in the grass. The wheel fires of the Seminoles flared among the live oaks, silhouetting dusky ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... gave Minna less pleasure than would have been hers had not the next saint in the row been the Apostle Simon with his dreadful saw. It must have hurt so horribly to be sawed in two, she thought. In the dusky depths of the great chancel gleamed the white marble of the beautiful altar, guarded by St. Peter with his keys and St. Paul with his naked two-edged sword; and above the altar was the dead Christ on Calvary, with His desolate mother and the despairing Magdalene ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean—they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses—even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... near in his surplice, and the pew-opener was all in a fluster at the idea of a runaway marriage. Brian came out of the dusky background—the daylight being tempered by small painted windows in heavy stone mullions—as Ida entered the church. Everything was ready. Before she knew how it came to pass, she was standing before the altar, and the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... steal,—not consenting or denying— One strong arm beneath her dusky hair, She would let me bare, not resisting or complying, One sweet breast so sweet and firm and fair; Then with the quick sob of passion's shy endeavour, She would gather close and shudder and swoon away, She would be mine for ever and ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... single-handed draw-knife, in the long winter evenings. He has little cash to spend for paint, and less skill in its use, but scorches the smooth, rounded blocks to the proper shade of grayish brown, and, with a little lampblack and white lead, using his fore-finger in lieu of a brush, manages to imitate the dusky head and neck with its snowy ring, and the white feathers ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... article of faith among the peasantry. They will prune their plants only when the satellite is waxing—al sottile detta luna, as they say. Altogether, the moon plays a considerable part in their lore, as might be expected in a country where she used to be worshipped under so many forms. The dusky markings on her surface are explained by saying that the moon used to be a woman and a baker of bread, her face gleaming with the reflection of the oven, but one day she annoyed her mother, who took up the brush they use for sweeping away the ashes, and ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the distance the blue Kennebec sweeping out toward the ocean through its picturesque rocky shores, docked with cedars and other dusky evergreens, which were illuminated by the orange and flame-colored trees of Indian summer. Here and there scarlet creepers swung long trailing garlands over the faces of the dark rock, and fringes of goldenrod ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... winged horse shot almost out of sight, soaring straight upward from the summit of Mount Helicon. Being long after sunset, it was now twilight on the mountain-top, and dusky evening over all the country round about. But Pegasus flew so high that he overtook the departed day, and was bathed in the upper radiance of the sun. Ascending higher and higher, he looked like a bright speck, and at last could no longer be seen in the hollow waste of the ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... stalk, a foot or more high; but how to describe it is the difficulty. Imagine a bat with expanded wings, with the addition of a tail, spread out before you, having on its breast a rosette of narrow ribbon, of the same dusky colour, and you will gain some idea of its form and colour. Its botanical ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... water, at my request; and then we read, and laughed over our reading. Every moment she not only knew something fresh, but knew that she had known it before. The dust of the years had to be swept away; but it was only dust, and flew at a breath. The light soon failed us in that dusky chamber; and we sat and whispered, till only when we kissed could we see each other's eyes. At ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... A dusky emptiness yawned and I got a glimpse of sunlight and open sky and knew that Evarin had stepped through into somewhere and was gone. The banging on the door sounded like a whole regiment of Spaceforce out there. I dived toward the shimmer of little stars which marked Miellyn's tiara in ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... practically disappeared. But some flavour of its old associations may still cling to it in the minds of the sais and ayah who proudly parade to a festival carrying umbrellas spread over them to shade their dusky features from the sun; though the Raja, in obedience to the dictates of fashion, has discarded the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... meetings in the evening and usually in the schoolhouse. The schoolhouse is conveniently near to Baxter's shop, so we gather at Baxter's shop. Baxter takes his lamp down from the bracket above his bench, reflector and all, and you will see us, a row of dusky figures, Baxter in the lead, proceeding down the roadway to the schoolhouse. Having arrived, some one scratches a match, shields it with his hand (I see yet the sudden fitful illumination of the brown-bearded, watchful faces of my neighbours!) and Baxter guides us into the ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... seemed to love her black nurse dearly, for as I walked behind, I saw her press her tender, lovely, pink and white cheek, close against the dusky face of her nurse, and I heard her say in a sweet lisping tone: 'Oh, Binah, I love you. When I go to Heaven, I will take you with me. Oh, B-i-n-a-h!' she said this last word just like the cooing of a ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... he had intended to be a jockey, but had suddenly shot up into a fine tall man, and had had to become a coachman instead. Bryden tried to recall the face, but he could only remember a straight nose, and a somewhat dusky complexion. Mike was one of the heroes of his childhood, and his youth floated before him, and he caught glimpses of himself, something that was more than a phantom and less than a reality. Suddenly his reverie was broken: the carman pointed with his ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... there—just Mexican voices. Then at the appointed, at the acute, moment, the soprano voice, like a fountain jet, shot up into the light. "HORCH! HORCH!" the old people whispered, both at once. How it leaped from among those dusky male voices! How it played in and about and around and over them, like a goldfish darting among creek minnows, like a yellow butterfly soaring above a swarm of dark ones. "Ah," said Mrs. Kohler softly, "the dear man; if he could hear ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... wakefulness of Frenzy and the three Furies,—which otherwise were not asleep! For they lie always, those subterranean Eumenides (fabulous and yet so true), in the dullest existence of man;—and can dance, brandishing their dusky torches, shaking their serpent-hair. Lambesc with Royal-Allemand may ride to his barracks, with curses for his marching-music; then ride back again, like one troubled in mind: vengeful Gardes Francaises, sacreing, with knit brows, start out on him, from their ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... greatest things on earth?" Mrs. Wood, as a young girl, asked the dusky disciples of her Sunday School class. "The Queen and The Company," was the ready response. "And of these, which is the greater?" Little Marten-Tail rubbed one moccasin over the other, and the answer came thoughtfully in Cree, "The Company. The Queen ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... old trees undoubtedly shaded the original path." In the minds of the girls the handsome residences faded from sight, and in place of the wide street they saw the narrow path trailing off through the forest, with dusky forms stealing along it on their long ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... was being sung, the probationer's earnest eyes rested as often on the yellow-haired girl at the harmonium as on his particular charge, the dusky choir. The eleven girls stood in a crescent, some modest and demure enough, but others looking bold, their wanton, roving eyes and generously developed figures being much in evidence. The youngest girl might have been twelve years of age, and the eldest twenty. The latter, ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... where this villa now stands was the simple dwelling of the two women whose history we have begun to tell you. There you might have seen a small stone cottage with a two-arched arcade in front, gleaming brilliantly white out of the dusky foliage of an orange-orchard. The dwelling was wedged like a bird-box between two fragments of rock, and behind it the land rose rocky, high, and steep, so as to form a natural wall. A small ledge or terrace of cultivated land here hung in air,—below ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... gravely at me, as if she were measuring me, and seeing, no doubt, that I was not deceived, a dusky red rose for a moment to her ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... on his mouth to impose silence, and stood in a listening attitude with his eyes cast upon the ground, his nostrils distended, and every muscle of his dusky frame rigid, as if he were a statue of black marble. We also listened attentively, and presently heard a sound as of the breaking of ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... visitors departed down the road, Levi stood for a while at the open door, looking after the dusky figures until they were swallowed in the darkness. Then he turned, came in, shut the door, shuddered, took a final dose of the apple brandy and went to bed, without, since his first suppressed explosion, having said a single word ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... cathedral psalm o'erflows The dusky, vaulted aisles, and slowly grows A burst of harmony the hearer knows, Her voice assailed by rage, and I Took its ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... voice sound thick and husky? Is my hand no longer warm? Round that neck where pearls look dusky Let me once more wind my arm; Rest my head upon that shoulder, Where it rested oft of yore; Warm and white, yet seeming colder Now ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... his eagerness was already pushing open one of the huge bronze doors, and Picard, brushing some of the snow from his clothes, followed him. The door swung shut behind them both, and he stood beside one of the pews staring into the dusky interior. ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... waves, to regain his legitimate element. His experiences at this period of his extraordinary voyage are best told in his own words. "At the time I descended the sun was near setting Already the shadows of evening had cast a dusky hue over the face of the ocean, and a crimson glow purpled the tops of the waves as, heaving in the evening breeze, they died away in distance, or broke in foam against the sides of the vessels, and before I rose from the sea the orb had sunk below the horizon, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... flecked a broad expanse of water, and down this shining track rushed a fleet of canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-colored heads above dusky-fringed buckskins following close after. This little army waved their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd on shore. The crowd all jangled voices in excited talk, no man listening to ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood |
