"Iron-gray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Robert Maxwell, K. C. M. G., member of the Cabinet, chief orator of the Liberal party, and understudy for the part of Premier, who, although a Scotchman by birth, was a typical Canadian—free, unaffected, honest and sincere. His bushy iron-gray hair, his keen gray eyes, his healthy florid color, and the well-trimmed black moustache, which gave his face an unusually youthful appearance for a man of his age, went with a fine stalwart physique and a general ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... and looked around for the speaker; but nobody was visible. Again the boughs rustled and shook, and there emerged from the willows an old man of low stature, with iron-gray hair and shrivelled features. He wore no ornaments at all; his wrap was without belt and very dirty. In his left hand he held a plant which he had pulled up by the roots. He stepped up to Shyuote, stood close by his side, and growled at ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... 'Turk's Head' at the corner of Regent Street, a noble coach and four drives up. It is the Duke of Chandos, who is inquiring for Mr. Pope. Presently a deformed little man, in an iron-gray suit, and with a face as keen as a razor, hobbles out, makes a low bow to the burly Handel, who, helping him into the chariot, gets in after him, and they drive off together to Cannons, the duke's mansion at ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... commissaire his card and we were shown into a chamber and bidden to wait. I was frankly curious about what was in store for me, but I knew better by now than to ask questions. Presently there entered a tall, thin, iron-gray gentleman, the very type of a Prussian bureaucrat. Walking with quick nervous steps to his desk he acknowledged our bows with a curt nod and turning to Stammer ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... both standing together in the middle of the room, both having their eyes fixed on the door, when the door opened and Mr. Ayrton appeared, having by his side a man with iron-gray hair ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... himself in the shadow of a great affliction, was with him constantly. They were devotedly attached to each other. Mr. Gabriel Toombs is, in personal appearance, very much like his brother. The long, iron-gray hair, brushed straight out from his head, reminds one of Robert Toombs. He is smaller in stature, and is a man of strong abilities, even temperament, and well-balanced mind. His brother had great regard for his business judgment and political sagacity, and often ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... glance I recognized a "regular," one of those frequenters of beer houses who come in the morning when the place opens, and do not leave till evening when it is about to close. He was dirty, bald on top of his head, with a fringe of iron-gray hair falling on the collar of his frock coat. His clothes, much too large for him, appeared to have been made for him at a time when he was corpulent. One could guess that he did not wear suspenders, for he could not take ten steps without having to stop to pull up his trousers. Did he wear ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... he shunned the crowd, selecting a seat near Mr. Rosenbaum as the most quiet place available. Having removed his cap and thrown back the high collar of his fur coat, he appeared to be a man of about fifty years of age, with iron-gray hair and a full, heavy beard of the same shade. He wore dark glasses, and, having seated himself with his back towards the light, drew forth from his pocket a number of voluminous type-written documents, and became absorbed in a perusal ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... department, amid a busy crowd, blowings of whistles, electric bells, gold pieces piled up till they fall over; it savours of miracle. I need to look at myself in the glass before I can believe it, to see in the mirror my iron-gray coat, trimmed with silver, my white tie, my usher's chain like the one I used to wear at the Faculty on the days when there were sittings. And to think that to work this transformation, to bring back to our brows gaiety, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Kent as a kindly, iron-gray haired gentleman. He was stern with the discipline of his children; but he loved them, and was indulgent in many ways. They loved him; and I, an orphan, began looking upon him almost as a father. I was interested in chemistry. He knew it, and did his best ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... most bitter winter,—that season when, to the ecstatic amazement of a whole city-full of children, snow covered the streets ankle-deep,—there came a soft tap on the corridor-door of this pair of rooms. The lady opened it, and beheld a tall, lank, iron-gray man, a total stranger, standing behind—Monsieur George! Both men were weather-beaten, scarred, and tattered. Across 'Sieur George's crown, leaving a long, bare streak through his white hair, was the souvenir ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... the faces of the loungers on the white deck. J.J. Malone himself was seemingly nothing more formidable than the unexcelled host. As he leaned, bareheaded, on the rail of the forward deck the river breath stirred his iron-gray hair and his changeful eyes were kindly and atwinkle. Yet the party had not been wholly devised for purposes of pleasuring. There were no ladies on board and only four men exclusive of the crew. These four could swing directorates controlling the major interests of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... different with the white mule. He is generally soft, and can stand but little hardship. I refer particularly to those that have a white skin. Next to the white and cream, we have the iron-grey mule. This color generally indicates a hardy mule. We have now twelve teams of iron-gray mules in the park, which have been doing hard work every day since July, 1865; it is now January, 1866. Only one of these mules has become unfit for service, and that one was injured by being kicked by his mate. All our other teams have had more ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... the world so depressing as that which greets you as you enter into the wide court before the church, called El Templo. You are shut finally in by these iron-gray walls. The outside day has given you up. Your feet slip on the damp flags. An unhealthy fungus tinges the humid corners with a pallid green. You look in vain for any trace of human sympathy in those blank walls and that severe facade. There is a dismal attempt in that direction ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... of red and purple, deepening in places almost to black. There is some gleaming white quartzite mixed with both these shales. Next above lies more than four thousand feet of Siyeh limestone, very solid, very massive, iron-gray with an insistent flavor of yellow, and weathering buff. This heavy stratum is the most impressive part of the Glacier landscape. Horizontally through its middle runs a dark broad ribbon of diorite, a rock as hard as granite, which once, while molten, burst from below and forced its way between ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along a street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man of lofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy cane, and wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, and followed him with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded arms and a slow shake of the head, and his upper lip raised in company ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... change had come over his face—the jump as abrupt as that by which a young girl grows up—the transition from middle age to old age. It was not so much that his full, iron-gray hair and mustache had bleached and silvered. It was more that the cheeks were falling from middle-aged masses to old-age creases, more that the skin was drawing up, most that the inner energy which had vitalized his walk and ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... and made us more impatient for further developments. These were never to come. Bradford pined away an Belle Isle, and grew weaker, but no less reserved, each day. At length, one bitter cold night ended it all. He was found in the morning stone dead, with his iron-gray hair frozen fast to the ground, upon which he lay. Our mystery had to remain unsolved. There was nothing about his person to give any ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... unless perchance you are the ghost of a mediaeval porker," Hankinson said, his calmness returning now that he had succeeded in plastering his iron-gray lock across the top of his otherwise bald head. "Of course, if you are a spook of that kind you want the earth, ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... swiftly, with the skill of trained and accustomed fingers. The candle flickered on his cool young face, on his black hair and on his long, strong, surgeon's fingers. It flickered too on his mother's sweet lips, on her tired brown eyes and iron-gray hair. It put high-lights on the cameo at her throat and made a grotesque shadow of her ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... wigwam is white"—was a fur company's Chief, and, in his youth, a noted hunter of Rabisca (Chipewyan), whence he came to Lesser Slave Lake. Her own Cree name, unmusical for a wonder, was Ochenaskumagan— "Having passed many Birthdays." Her hair was gray and black rather than iron-gray, her eyes sunken but bright, her nose well formed, her mouth unshrunken but rather projecting, her cheeks and brow a mass of wrinkles, and her hands, strange to say, not shrivelled, but soft and delicate as a girl's. The body, however, was nothing but bones and integument; but, unlike ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... soldierly figure of Colonel Pendleton, clad in threadbare silk dressing-gown, was stretched. He had changed in eight years: his hair had become gray, and was thinned over the sunken temples, but his iron-gray moustache was still particularly long and well pointed. His face bore marks of illness and care; there were deep lines down the angle of the nostril that spoke of alternate savage outbreak and repression, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... and looked in. The light from the lamp was shining on his father's hair. How white it was! The iron-gray streaks were quite gone. And yet how little time had elapsed! The rector's Bible was at his elbow, lying open, and the desk was covered with sheets of manuscripts, spread about in unmethodical fashion. At the moment when Dick looked in, the rector picked up his Bible, and laid it ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... men!" She raised her head and laughed into his eyes, the while brushing back the thick iron-gray hair which thatched the dome of his forehead. "You, who have wrestled more mightily, done greater things than these painters and versifiers. You who know so well the law of change. Might not the same plaint fall ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... assistant, Verkan Vall, then lit his own cigarette. He was a man of middle age—his three hundredth birthday was only a decade or so off—and he had begun to acquire a double chin and a bulge at his waistline. His hair, once black, had turned a uniform iron-gray and was beginning to ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... and troubles, Thomas Roch's physical health, thanks to his vigorous constitution, was not particularly affected. A man of medium height, with a large head, high, wide forehead, strongly-cut features, iron-gray hair and moustache, eyes generally haggard, but which became piercing and imperious when illuminated by his dominant idea, thin lips closely compressed, as though to prevent the escape of a word that could ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... at him as he spoke. He had raised his eyes to heaven, and a gleam of elevated devotion, perhaps worthy of being-called sublime, irradiated his features. The sun, too, in setting, fell upon his broad temples and iron-gray locks, with a light solemn and religious. The effect to me, who knew his noble character, and all that he had suffered, was as if the eye of God then rested upon the decline of a virtuous man's life with approbation;—as if he had lifted up the glory of his countenance upon him. Would that ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... iron-gray widow of sixty, insatiably greedy of such fleshly comforts as had ever come within her knowledge—soft cushions, heavily sweetened dishes, finer clothing than her neighbors. She had cold eyes, and nature ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... thoughtful for some moments, his cloak, grasped with both hands, folded over his abdomen, his eyes fixed on the ground, his gold-rimmed spectacles slipping gently toward the point of his nose, his under-lip moist and projecting, and his iron-gray eyebrows gathered in a slight frown. He was a pious and holy man, of uncommon learning and of irreproachable clerical habits, a little past his sixtieth year, affable in his manners, courteous and kind, and greatly ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning; the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat; and, dearest of all, the large drawing-room, where she always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out upon the old iron-gray church of Santa Felice. There was something about this room that seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreamy look, which was enhanced by the tapestry-covered walls, and the old pictures of saints that looked out sadly ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... and he ran up to the stately animal without a fear. Duke put back his ears and swished his tail as if displeased for a moment; but Ben looked straight in his eyes, gave a scientific stroke to the iron-gray nose, and uttered a chirrup which made the ears prick up as ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... halfway up the thigh. A broad baldric of green silk hung from his shoulder across his breast, and supported at his side a long sword with an enormous basket hilt, through which somewhat coquettishly peeped a white lace handkerchief. Tall and erect, in spite of the grizzled hair and iron-gray moustaches and wrinkled face of a man of sixty, he suddenly halted on the deck with a military precision that made the jingling chains and bits of silver on his enormous spurs ring again. He was followed by an ecclesiastic of apparently ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... pacing up and down the long piazza in front of the house was Judge Merlin. He was a rather singular-looking man of about forty-five years of age. He was very tall, thin, and bony, with high aquiline features, dark complexion, and iron-gray hair, which he wore long and parted in the middle. He was habited in a loose jacket, vest, and trousers of brown linen, and wore a broad-brimmed straw hat on his head, and large slippers, down at the heel, on his feet. He carried in his hand a lighted pipe of common ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... career, some forty-six years of age. A life whose private character no journal had as yet been tempted to divulge had left no trace upon the impassive contour of his face nor on the somber dignity of his bearing. He was of middle height, and somewhat stout, his hair was iron-gray, and he carried himself with a sort of restrained or reflective optimism, as though he forced himself to be cheerful and companionable at the cost of untold anguish to an inner ego that no one knew. It was an effective carriage, and few people attempted ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... him the blue roan, that Fogg rides," said the quartermaster, to the great dejection of Fogg, a short stout youth, who was posting accounts. I was glad to see, however, that Fogg was not disposed to be angry, and when informed that a certain iron-gray nag was at his disposal, he was in a perfect glow of good humor. The other attaches were a German, whose name, as I caught it, seemed to be Skyhiski; and a pleasant lad called Owen, whose disposition ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... was a person of sufficient importance to warrant a paragraph quite to herself. She was a woman of middle age, with a wealth of curling, iron-gray hair, which she tucked away under a plain white cap. Her figure was large and grandly developed. She wore a blue print gown, carefully pinned back about her hips, thus disclosing her scarlet flannel petticoat; both garments faded by time and frequent washings to a most "artistic" hue. Upon her ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... met many new animals since leaving the land of the Yellowstone; he had known moose and goats in British Columbia, caribou on the barrens and the iron-gray sheep at the head of the Nelson. Now there were strange shaggy beasts with hair that hung nearly to the ground, and they came out of the north in small droves, the white wolves traveling on the flanks of the herds. He found musk ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... featured person of fifty or fifty-five, slightly bald, and closely shaven with the exception of a heavy iron-gray mustache, who rose from the chair and stepped forward to meet Lynde as he entered. Lynde's name was familiar to Mr. Denham, it having figured rather prominently in his wife's correspondence during the latter part ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Second corner turned. CASSOCK has dropped from the front, and JUDEX, an iron-gray, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat,—five,—six,—how many? They lie still enough! they will not get up again in this race, be very sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing off"! Anybody can see who ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... already there, waiting. With them stood another man dressed in the black-and-silver of the Star Watch. He was a blocky, broad-faced veteran with iron-gray hair and ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... you are! Well, any way it's all the same, and I'm not a bit afraid of stable horses. I can manage any of them, from Mr. Burt's iron-gray colt down," which was true enough. Gypsy was used ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... likenesses that had been {p.182} published of him. He came limping up the gravel walk, aiding himself by a stout walking staff, but moving rapidly and with vigor. By his side jogged along a large iron-gray staghound, of most grave demeanor, who took no part in the clamor of the canine rabble, but seemed to consider himself bound, for the dignity of the house, to give me a ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of the narwhal, with their long horns, were also playing there. Only that they are larger, and have these hideous-looking tusks, walruses are much like seals. The narwhal is a small species of whale, being about twenty feet long, and spotted something like an iron-gray horse. Its great peculiarity is the horn, which grows, like that of a sword-fish, straight out of the nose, and is nearly half as long as the body. Like all the other whales, it must come up to the surface of the water to breathe; and its breathing is done through a hole in ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... older than Lawler, much older. The hair at his temples was almost white, but heavy and coarse. An iron-gray wisp straggled over his brow, where he had run a hand through it, apparently; his eyes were gray, keen, with a light in them that hinted of a cold composure equal to that which gleamed in Lawler's. The long, hooked nose, though, gave the eyes an appearance of craftiness, and the slightly ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... no answer, for her heart was breaking, but turned and went into her room. Burrell had an irresistible desire to tell Gale that he wanted his daughter for his wife; it would be an unwonted pleasure to startle this iron-gray old man and the shawled and shambling mummy of red, with the unwinking eyes that always reminded him of two ox-heart cherries; but he had given Necia his promise. So he descended to the exchange of ordinary topics, and inquired for news ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... the first persons who got out. Two of Lady Maria's men were waiting on the platform. Emily recognised their liveries. One met the tall man, touching his hat, and followed him to a high cart, in the shafts of which a splendid iron-gray mare was fretting and dancing. In a few moments the arrival was on the high seat, the footman behind, and the mare speeding up the road. Miss Fox-Seton found herself following the second footman and the mother and daughter, who were being taken to the landau ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... huge gaunt man clad in shirt and jeans arose and confronted us. Our first impression was of a vast framework stiffened and shrunken into the peculiar petrifaction of age; our second, of a Jove-like wealth of iron-gray beard and hair; our third, of eyes, wide, clear, and tired with looking out on a century of the world's time. His movements, as he laid one side his axe and passed a great, gnarled hand across his forehead, were angular ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Mortality of Princes. He made a new black Suit upon the Death of the King of Spain, he turned it for the King of Portugal, and he now keeps his Chamber while it is scouring for the Emperor. [2] He is a good Oeconomist in his Extravagance, and makes only a fresh black Button upon his Iron-gray Suit for any Potentate of small Territories; he indeed adds his Crape Hatband for a Prince whose Exploits he has admired in the Gazette. But whatever Compliments may be made on these Occasions, the true Mourners are the Mercers, Silkmen, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... noticed the condition of the room. Hetty was dishing out fragrant, warmed-over stew into three lunch dishes on the table. She had cleaned up the worst of the mess and changed into a fresh shirt and jeans. Her iron-gray hair was pulled back in a still-damp knot at the back after a hasty scrubbing to get out the gooey mixture ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... passage-way at the bottom was also dirty and bare, that, for all the indications that there were to the contrary, this was an absolutely unfurnished house. As he reached the last stair he looked keenly at the man who held the lamp—a middle-aged man, loose-jointed and loosely dressed, with iron-gray hair and a scar upon his cheek. He spoke with a slightly foreign accent, and, with a bow, moved aside from the ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... before him, Joe did as he was directed, and there found two horses tethered side by side. Little wonder that his eyes gleamed with delight. One was jet-black; the other iron-gray and in every line the clean-limbed animals showed the thoroughbred. The black threw up his slim head and whinnied, with affection clearly shining in his soft, dark eyes as ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... very tall and straight, and handsome, with his iron-gray hair and his cheeks pink as a girl's, did step by next morning on his way to the post-office. It was whispered that in his youth Father Fitzpatrick had been an actor, and that he had deserted the footlights for the altar lights because of a disappointment. The ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... require here?" said Mr. Arithmetic, a man dressed in iron-gray clothes, with a face which looked dry and hard as one of his own kettles, above which was a shock of iron-gray hair, which gave ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... thundered the stern gentleman, kicking back his chair and straightening up to what seemed to me a colossal height. I stared at him, boylike. He had long, iron-gray hair and a creased, fleshy face and sunken eyes. He looked as if he might stop anybody as he turned upon Tom. "Who the devil is this Tom McChesney?" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his food uncomfortably, with much working of the muscles of his face; some teeth were missing now, and some replaced with unmanageable artificial ones. The thin, oily hair was iron-gray, and his moustache, which had stayed black so much longer, was iron-gray, too, and stained yellow from the tobacco of his cigars. His eyes were set in bags of wrinkles; it was a discontented face, even when Pa was amiable and pleased by chance. Martie knew its every expression ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... had meant him to be a wheel-horse. He had never had any hope of being chief of staff. Hawk-eyed, with a great beak nose and iron-gray hair, intensely and solemnly serious, lacking a sense of humor, he would have looked at home with his big, bony hands gripping a broadsword hilt and his lank body clothed in chain armor. He had a mastiff's devotion to its master ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... forward to meet Anne with a smile. He was a tall, handsome man of middle age, with iron-gray hair, deep-set, dark blue eyes, and a strong, sad face, splendidly modeled about chin and brow. Just the face for a hero of romance, Anne thought with a thrill of intense satisfaction. It was so disappointing to meet someone who ought to be a hero and find him bald or stooped, or ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... servants standing in the hall, in simple but elegant liveries, some half-dozen passengers had stopped to see get out of the carriage an elderly, middle-sized man, with a somewhat spare figure, dressed in plain black clothes, with iron-gray hair, and a countenance which, once seen, was not to be forgotten. That was a great man; one, the like of whom many previous centuries had not seen; whose name shot terror into the hearts of all the enemies of old England all ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... toy time-piece of buhl on the stone mantel chimed musically its story of the hour, and Sir Jasper Kingsland lifted his gloomy eyes for a moment at the sound. A tall, spare middle-aged man, handsome once—handsome still, some people said—with iron-gray hair ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... ancient colleague did not pray; Under the weight of his fourscore years He stood apart with the iron-gray Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears; And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame, Linking her own with his honored name, Subtle as sin, at his side withstood The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... working on his mail, with one of the hotel stenographers for a helper, that a thick-set, bull-necked man with Irish-blue eyes and a face two-thirds hidden in a curly tangle of iron-gray beard, stubbed through the corridor on the Pacific Southwestern floor of the Guaranty Building, and let himself cautiously into the general manager's outer office. The private secretary, a faultlessly groomed young ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... recognize the products of your talented son, dad?" he cried, as he took the object down and clapped it over his father's iron-gray head. "That's my new wireless telephone headpiece, and right underneath it here is the mahogany cabinet containing the sending and receiving instruments. You see, these two wires run from the plug up to the receivers, there being one receiver in each side of ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... the difference between night and day," said Major Ridgely, Gordon's father, a tall, well-built man with a mass of iron-gray hair framing a strong-featured face—the face of a scholar and a gentleman. "And it's like the difference," he continued, slowly and with emphasis, "it's like ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... hospitality, "What will you have, gentlemen?" There was a forced effort on the part of the drinkers to appear indifferent to the situation, but with the stranger sitting sullenly in their rear and an iron-gray man standing at the farther end of the line, hungering for an opportunity to settle differences with six-shooters, their indifference was an empty mockery. Some of the players returned to their games, while others sauntered into the street, yet Priest showed no disposition ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... the street to the court-house. To Phil nothing was funnier than Alec Waterman in the throes of oratory. Waterman was big and burly, with a thunderous voice; and when he addressed a jury he roared and shook his iron-gray mane in a manner truly terrifying. In warm weather when the windows were open, he could be plainly heard in any part of the court-house square. When Phil reached the circuit court-room Judge Walters, with his feet ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... man, somewhat past middle age, with a tall, finely proportioned though very spare form; a long, thin face, Roman nose, piercing black eyes, heavy black eyebrows, olive complexion, and iron-gray hair and beard. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... said, 'Come with me!'... We entered a cab and a few minutes later I entered the Wilhelmstrasse and was in the presence of that tall, iron-gray, wiry gentleman with eyes like a searchlight and the manners of a Chesterfield. 'Thank you, Colonel,' he said. The Colonel sprang to attention, bowed, saluted and backed away. We were ALONE!... 'In ten minutes,' he said, 'you will be conducted to another room. When you arrive ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... figure that crept along the road that cheery May morning. It was tall and gaunt, and had been for thirty years or more. The long head, bald on top, covered behind with iron-gray hair, and in front with a short tangled growth that curled and kinked in every direction, was surmounted by an old-fashioned stove-pipe hat, worn and stained, but eminently impressive. An old-fashioned Henry Clay cloth coat, stained and threadbare, divided itself impartially ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... years old then. His long, flowing beard was snow-white, and the shock that covered his Jove-like head was iron-gray. His form was that of an Apollo who had arrived at years of discretion. He weighed an even two hundred pounds and was just six feet high. His plain, check, cotton shirt was open at the throat to the breast; and he had an independence, a self-sufficiency, and withal a cleanliness, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... of it. The boy did not understand, but in the blue eyes of the Celt, peering from under the mop of iron-gray hair, there was no mistaking ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... tree and left it sore-hearted, not having been "taken"; sophomores who will stand there next year, who already are hoping for and dreading their Tap Day; little freshmen, each one sure that he, at least, will be of the elect; and again the iron-gray heads, the interested faces of old Yale men, and the gay spring hats ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the room, but Ben maintained his place. He took particular notice of the gentleman who had been pointed out to him. He was a tall, slender man, with iron-gray hair, and a stern, unpleasant look. Ben judged that her guardian had not seen Miss Sinclair, for he seemed wholly intent ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... was cut short by the sleigh at the door. Her husband poked in his busy, iron-gray head and said, "Now, mother." He helped her into the sleigh, tucked the rugs warmly around her, and put a hot brick at her feet. His solicitude hurt her. It was all for her material comfort. It did not matter to him ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was now fifty-three—a little man of a reddened, weather-worn skin and a meditative, almost saddened, aspect. He had blue eyes, but his scanty iron-gray hair showed raven black in its shadows. The width and prominence of his cheek-bones dominated all one's recollections of his face. The long vertical upper-lip and irregular teeth made, in repose, an unshapely mouth; its smile, though, sweetened the whole countenance. He wore a fringe ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... themselves. The next instant, two men came up to us, making their way from the neighborhood of the door. The one was a keen-faced, elderly man, with iron-gray whiskers and clean-shaved chin; the other was my first acquaintance in the neighborhood, the young bricklayer. The elder addressed my husband, while the other ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... was at the same time subconsciously as deep in a study of a face so unfamiliar that at first he had scarcely known it for his own. It was far leaner than of old; it was no longer richly tanned; and the mouth called louder than ever for a mustache. The hair, what there was of it, seemed iron-gray. It had certainly receded at the temples. What a pity, while it was ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... had just entered the restaurant. She was gowned magnificently enough even to be conspicuous among that crowd of well-dressed women, and she wore a large picture hat, crowned by expensive plumes. Close behind was her escort, a middle-aged, stockily built man, with iron-gray hair, also immaculately dressed. As the couple passed, the people at the tables turned and whispered. When the newcomer drew nearer, Madison could see that she was very young, and he was struck by her laughing, dimpled beauty. She appeared little more than a child, and the manner in which she ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... steel, and richly painted; and as they loomed in sight, turning the bends of the streets, they were truly magnificent and appropriate objects. Each was raised upon a car, so that, on the whole, it was thirty feet high; it was drawn by eighteen iron-gray horses, all in line, decorated with blue ribbons, and handsomely caparisoned; each horse being led by a workman, in clean, new, working costume. The next was a procession on foot. Eight negroes, in Eastern costume, walked as guards round ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... as the man moved, I made out that he was substantially dressed, but roughly, like a voyager by sea. That he had long iron-gray hair. That his age was about sixty. That he was a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned and hardened by exposure to weather. As he ascended the last stair or two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw, with a stupid kind of amazement, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... of the veranda pauses a tall, muscular man of fifty, with the usual smooth face and an iron-gray queue. That is Colonel Agamemnon Brahmin de Grandissime, purveyor to the family's military pride, conservator of its military glory, and, after Honore, the most admired of the name. Achille Grandissime, he who took Agricola away from ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... entirely, will he, Mrs. Annister?" the host was saying to the tall and handsome woman with iron-gray hair and warm-colored cheeks who sat beside ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... two dozen years old, he was a force in Sycamore Ridge, and there were days when he had four or five thousand dollars to his credit in General Hendricks' bank. The general used to look over the daily balances and stroke his iron-gray beard and say: "Robert, John is doing well to-day. Son, I wish you had the acquisitive faculty. Why don't you invest something and make something?" But Bob Hendricks was content to do his work in the bank, and read at home one night and slip over to the Culpeppers' the next night, and ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Lindsley the last time I saw him. I remember how he took me all over his claim and showed me the beauties of Lindsleyville, as he called it. His long iron-gray hair fluttered in the wind, and his face seemed like a wizard's, penetrating but unearthly. That was long before the great tide of immigrants had begun to find their way into this paradise through the highway ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... spoke handed a cup of tea to a tall gentleman, Louis Manvers by name, the possessor of a long, tanned countenance; of thin iron-gray hair, descending toward the shoulders; of a drooping moustache, and eyes that mostly studied the carpet or the knees of their owner. A shy, laconic person at first sight, with the manner of one to whom conversation, of the drawing-room kind, was little ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had almost finished covering one side of the street in collecting the census statistics, he heard the trot of horses' hoofs, and looking up, saw a tall, stern-visaged soldierly-looking gentleman, with iron-gray hair, riding a powerful iron-gray horse. Beside him rode a young fellow, evidently his son. Both reined up when they saw Hamilton. Seeing that he was expected to ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... dinner, the party being small and the room still, these motes from the mass of a magistrate's mind fell too noticeably. She wondered how a man like Mr. Casaubon would support such triviality. His manners, she thought, were very dignified; the set of his iron-gray hair and his deep eye-sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke. He had the spare form and the pale complexion which became a student; as different as possible from the blooming Englishman of the red-whiskered type represented by ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... his heart which the surgeon had told him might occur at any moment. On his death-bed his mind still worked analytically. And Kedsty, since the moment he had entered the room, had puzzled Kent. The commander of N Division was an unusual man. He was sixty, with iron-gray hair, cold, almost colorless eyes in which one would search long for a gleam of either mercy or fear, and a nerve that Kent had never seen even slightly disturbed. It took such a man, an iron man, to run N Division according ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... bull-fighters offered to leave the national sport and show us the House of Miranda, but it was the cathedral which was dominating our desire, as it everywhere dominates the vision, in Burgos and out of Burgos as far as the city can be seen. The iron-gray bulk, all flattered or fretted by Gothic art, rears itself from the clustering brown walls and roofs of the city, which it seems to gather into its mass below while it towers so far above them. We needed no pointing of the way to it; rather we should have needed instruction ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... his desk, a big man in a brown suit, natural iron-gray hair, a calm and administrative face, he began to realize that for the next twenty-four hours, at least, he would be in the spotlight. Well, he'd give a good account of himself. Demonstrate that he had an executive capacity beyond the needs of his present job. More than a mere ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Pelle!" she exclaimed vehemently, passing her trembling fingers through his iron-gray hair. "I can feel by your poor head how badly they've treated you. And I wasn't even with you! If I could only do something really nice to make ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... And now, quite desperate, she rushed through the house and out of the front-door, actually in search of a man! Just down the street she saw one. Had she been composed, she might have noticed the threadbare cleanliness of his dress, the odd cap that crowned his iron-gray locks, and the peculiar manner of his walk; for our little old maid had stumbled upon no less a person than Monsieur Jean Leclerc, the dancing-master of Dalton. Not that this accomplishment was much in vogue in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... sunlight slanted through the window, softening the iron-gray hair of the man who stood there. His shoulders almost blocked the window, for he had the body of a fighting man, one, moreover, in good condition. His short-clipped mustache rode with an air of dignity above ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... is a fair statement of the Clemens home, and the truest picture of Mark Twain at fifty that has been preserved, cannot be doubted. His hair was iron-gray, not entirely white at this time, the auburn tints everywhere mingled with the shining white that later would mantle it like a silver crown. He did not look young for his years, but he was still young, always young—indestructibly ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... bed, propped up with pillows. Beside him sat Mrs. Colton. Of the two she looked the more disturbed. Her eyes were wet and she was dabbing at them with a lace handkerchief. Her morning gown was a wondrous creation. "Big Jim," with his iron-gray hair awry and his eyes snapping, looked ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his piebald moustache, the remains of his shaggy hair fringing a skull that was the color of fresh butter, all gave an indescribably debauched and libidinous expression to his appearance. He wore an old iron-gray overcoat decorated with the red ribbon of an officer of the Legion of honor, which met with difficulty over a gastronomic stomach in keeping with a mouth that stretched from ear to ear, and a pair of powerful shoulders. The torso was supported by a spindling pair of legs, while the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... I arrived, and as the General's hands were not yet entirely well, he allowed me, as a great favour, to ride his horse "Traveller." Amongst the soldiers this horse was as well known as was his master. He was a handsome iron-gray with black points—mane and tail very dark—sixteen hands high, and five years old. He was born near the White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and attracted the notice of my father when he was in that part of the State in 1861. He was never known to tire, and, though ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... own, waiting for news from Chattanooga of which I was the bearer, chosen by Grant himself because of the reputation of my mare. What riding that was! We started, ten riders of us in all, each with the same message. I parted company the first hour out with all save one, an iron-gray stallion of Messenger blood. Jack Murdock rode him, who learned his horsemanship from buffalo and Indian hunting on the plains—not a bad school to graduate from. Ten miles out of Knoxville the gray, his flanks dripping with Wood, plunged up abreast of the mare's shoulders and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... elderly man, tall, thin, iron-gray, with a round head, a short, thick neck, a good, brown eye, a square jowl that betokened resolution, and a complexion so sallow as to be almost cadaverous. Hard as iron: but a certain stiff dignity and respectability sat ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... "Vieux de la Vieille!" with his big iron-gray mustache, his black satin stock, his spotless linen, his long green frock-coat so baggy about the skirts, and the smart red ribbon in his button-hole! He little foresaw with what warm and affectionate regard his memory would be kept forever sweet and green in the heart of his hereditary foe and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... breadth of view and the intelligent enterprise of Governor Leon, whom we encountered here. A man of middle age, of fair stature though slight in build, with dark complexion, iron-gray hair, beard and whiskers carefully trimmed after the French fashion, his appearance creates a favorable impression. He did everything in his power for our comfort and assistance, and supplied us with letters to the jefes politicos of the districts through which ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... crouched in its glare with one Indian club held by the end, like a footman with a stolen bottle. A good-looking, well-built, iron-gray, iron-jawed man; but a fool and a weakling at that moment, if he had never been ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... had trudged over every mile of it a great many times. He made nothing of walking five miles to a meeting on a December evening, with the thermometer below zero, or of climbing the hills in a driving snow-storm to visit a sick parishioner. He was a tall, spare man, healthy and vigorous, with iron-gray hair, a strong kind face, and a smile in his brown eyes that made every baby in Hilltown stretch out its arms to him to ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... the bonds of its confinement, but succeeded only in creating a vast confusion of wrinkles. His attitude was that of a man for the moment amazed beyond utterance: his head was thrown back, so that of his face nothing was to be seen but a short, ragged growth of iron-gray beard and a ridge of bushy eyebrow; his hands were plunged deep in his trousers pockets, which the fists distended; his legs, the left deformed (being bent inward at the knee), were spread wide. ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... stout square knot under his chin on the second turn. Under this black choker was a shirt of snowy white, as was his collar, while his coat and trousers looked worn and threadbare. His face was smooth-shaven, and his hair once black was now turning iron-gray. He was then about sixty ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... grasping the ironwork of the seat, staring at the driver, suddenly disarmed. The man on the seat was a grizzled, malformed creature of about fifty, with a deeply-wrinkled small face, burnt a dark tan, and almost covered with a tangle of short, crisp, iron-gray whiskers. The suggestion of a rough-haired terrier was so strong that Done expected the brute to bark at him. The small eyes in the protecting shade of tufted brows, like miniature overhanging horns, were keen and shrewd This extraordinary head was supported ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... the roof I saw this man was easily the most dominant personality I had so far encountered on Mercury. He was tall for his race, although several inches shorter than I, a man of sixty, perhaps, with iron-gray hair falling long about ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... just as they struck the fence, a brisk, elderly gentleman, with iron-gray hair, and spectacles, and a queer twinkle in his eye as he glanced up at the mass of clouds piling up in the mountains, walked hurriedly down a narrow sheep-path through the leafless woods, and entered the sugar-camp. It was dark in there,—dark as Erebus; only in two or three places ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... sat, handed, and very close to one another, till Mr. Lusignan, who thought five minutes quite enough for rational beings to take leave in, walked into the room and surprised them. At sight of his gray head and iron-gray eyebrows, Christopher Staines started up and looked confused; he thought some apology necessary, so he faltered out, "Forgive me, sir; it is a bitter parting to me, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... &c adj.; neutral tint, silver, pepper and salt, chiaroscuro, grisaille [Fr.]. [Pigments] Payne's gray; black &c 431. Adj. gray, grey; iron-gray, dun, drab, dingy, leaden, livid, somber, sad, pearly, russet, roan; calcareous, limy, favillous^; silver, silvery, silvered; ashen, ashy; cinereous^, cineritious^; grizzly, grizzled; slate-colored, stone-colored, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and sometimes chimed in. An uncommonly fine-looking old fellow he was, too. Although about sixty, his form was as erect as that of a young man, and his sinewy limbs gave signs of great strength. He sat in an easy-chair —his iron-gray hair clustering over his broad brow; his eyes keen, penetrating, but full of fun; his nose slightly curved, and his lips quivering into smiles; small whiskers of a vanished fashion on either cheek; and small hands—a ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... aside their instruments and gathered round their father. Graceful, brown-eyed Celia sat down beside him; Charlotte's curly black hair mingled with his heavy iron-gray locks as she perched upon the arm of his chair, her scarlet flannel arm under his head. The youngest boy, Justin, threw himself flat on the hearth-rug, chin propped on elbow, watching the fire; sixteen-year-old Jeff helped himself to a low stool, ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... great diversion for her. About the middle of the afternoon two gentlemen called for her father. One was quite as old, with a handsome white beard and iron-gray hair, very stylishly dressed. He wore a high-standing collar with points, and what was called a neckcloth of black silk with dark-blue brocaded figures running over it, and a handsome brocaded-velvet vest, double-breasted, the fashion of the ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... iron-gray one, himself an inveterate sentimentalist, passed on, chuckling over his time-worn device for quickening romance in the heart of the young by the judicious interposition of obstacles. He strolled over to the center of ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to me now than on either of the former occasions on which I had seen her. There was something in the expression of her eyes which seemed to be familiar to me. But the effort of my memory was not helped by what I observed in the other parts of her face. The iron-gray hair, the baggy lower eyelids, the fat cheeks, the coarse complexion, and the double chin, were features, and very disagreeable features, too, which I had never seen at any ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... eyebrows were iron-gray, and she had lost a front tooth, or she would still have been eminently handsome. She was tall and straight as a dart, and her noble port betrayed none of the weakness of age, only it was to be seen that her hands were a little weak, and the gold-headed crutch struck the ground rather sharply, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... formal and ceremonial occasions he bore himself with becoming dignity and even grace; in dress he was, as a rule, punctilious. During his years at the Hermitage he was accustomed to ride about in a carriage drawn by four spirited iron-gray horses, attended by servants in blue livery with brass buttons, glazed hats, and silver bands. "A very big man, sir," declared an old hotel waiter to the visiting biographer Parton long afterwards. "We had many big ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... with heightened color and a rapidly beating heart, followed Etta down into the parlor, and there, still seated on the edge of his chair, twirling an old felt hat rapidly round between two big, red hands, she saw a tall, lean man in a suit of coarse gray clothes. He had grizzly, iron-gray hair, stubby white whiskers, a pale-blue eye, a brown face streaked ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... a rough homespun garment. Her feet were clad in unbleached cotton stockings, also made at home; her little, iron-gray curls lay flat at each side of her hollow cheeks. She wore list slippers, very coarse and common in texture. Her whole appearance was the essence of the homely, the old-fashioned, even ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade |
