"Lurid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed. And the townspeople were not slow in taking the hint. They were gathering such things as they could carry with them, and all those with anything of real value, and with a place to take it, were preparing to get away before the coming of the Germans. The refugees from Belgium had told them lurid tales of the German treatment of captured places; they had no mind to share the fate of their unhappy neighbors in the plucky little country to the north. And ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... lurid light gleamed in Frank Lamotte's eye, and it seemed that another "attack" was about to seize him, but he calmed himself with a mighty effort, and turning toward Doctor ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... things!" exclaimed Stell. A book on the war, by an Englishman. A detective story of the lurid type that lulls us to sleep. His shoes ranged in a careful row in the closet, with a shoe tree in every one of them. There was something speaking about them. They looked so human. Eva shut the door on them quickly. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... 39th Regiment! What visions are conjured up when this name comes on the scene! Cracked and gaping plains, desolate, desert and abandoned of life, scorched beneath a lurid sun of burning fire, waterless, hopeless, relentless, and accursed: that is the picture he draws of the great interior. He had followed up Oxley's footsteps and exposed the fallacies into which that ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... and then a dog ran by, with a terrified air and drooping tail, keeping close to the houses as if for protection. One might have fancied oneself in some city ravaged by the plague, and the burning heat of the atmosphere, and lurid red of the clouds, might have strengthened ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... here go ironed every day. Away on the horizon westwards is the black line of pine forests, in whose shadows is night everlasting. A wolf howls beneath my window every night, and for months I have seen no colour save in an occasionally lurid sunset with crimson afterglow. In the daytime I help in the hospital—at night I sit before a wood fire and look out beyond my whitewashed walls across the mighty forest, back to London, and then, dear, you may know that it is you of whom ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... roof of some temple that they now moved; instead of the bed of glowing flowers from which he was about to pluck an offering for her bosom, an altar rose, from the centre of which upsprang a quick and lurid tongue of fire. The dreamer gazed upon his companion, and her form was tinted with the dusky hue of the flame, and she held to her countenance a scarf, as if pressed by the unnatural heat. Great fear suddenly came over him. With haste, yet with tenderness, he himself withdrew ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... something into the kettle, and fill it with water. Then he put charcoal into the oven, kindled it, and blew it laboriously with his mouth until it became red-hot. This flameless fire did not tend much to enlighten surrounding objects; it merely added to them a lurid tinge of red. The operator's face, being close in front of the fire as he blew, seemed almost as hot as ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... certain amount of consent to his abductions—he had left the real for the chimerical; the true for the false; Dea for Josiana; love for pride; liberty for power; labour proud and poor for opulence full of unknown responsibilities; the shade in which is God for the lurid flames in which the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... broken into thousands of confused shapes, but none, Hans thought, like the ordinary forms of splintered ice. There seemed a curious expression about all their outlines,—a perpetual resemblance to living features, distorted and scornful. Myriads of deceitful shadows and lurid lights played and floated about and through the pale blue pinnacles, dazzling and confusing the sight of the traveller; while his ears grew dull and his head giddy with the constant gush and roar ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... the chasms strangely gleams, A lurid light, like dawn's red glow, Pervading with its quivering beams, The gorges of the gulf below! Here vapours rise, there clouds float by, Here through the mist the light doth shine; Now, like a fount, it bursts on high, Meanders now, a slender line; Far reaching, with a hundred ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... room, which, when the dark, high-ceilinged hall was entered, revealed depths of dingy gloom which appeared splashed in spots with incongruous brilliancy of color. This effect was produced by richly framed department-store chromo lithographs on the walls, aided by lurid cushion-covers, or "tidies" representing Indian maidens or chieftains in full war paint, or clusters of poppies of great boldness of hue. They had either been Christmas gifts bestowed upon Mrs. Bowse or department-store bargains of her own selection, purchased ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... impulse sent a rare, faint flush to the olive cheeks, and filled the uplooking clear eyes with light. This purple-clad shape, with fiery nasturtiums burning on the breast and filling the air with their peculiar odor, with the barbaric splendor of tiger lilies reflecting their lurid glare about her as she stood, bore no more likeness to the ordinary haughty woman than fire to snow. He would have liked to have crowned her with pomegranate blossoms—have dropped the silvery sheen of ermine under her feet, and have knelt there ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... completely to black thoughts. He recalled his words to her, uttered years ago, half in jest and half in earnest; he had horrified her beyond expression by telling her how he would punish a wife if he were the husband she deceived. With a grim, lurid smile he remembered the penalty. He had said he would not kill; he would disfigure the woman frightfully and permit her to live as a moral example to other wives. Slitting her mouth from ear to ear or cutting off her nose—these were two ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... we find new charms in after making her mother's acquaintance. You know how some young people would be passable enough if it were not for a lurid light thrown upon their identity by other members of their family. You know the sister you thought was a beauty and dear, until you met her sister, who was gristly and a jade. But it's a great shame in Tishy's case, because we do honestly believe her seeming da capo ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... lurid openings?" nervously asked Miss Church-Member, for their flames excited her terror. Mr. World replied, with a look of surprise: "Have you never heard that these are to give light to pilgrims, such as we? Without them the way would prove very dark ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... along a moment in silence. All about us the lurid special editions of the afternoon were flaunting their predictions of the horror to come. The face ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... day by day A smouldering flame, a lurid crimson creeps Into the ashy whiteness of her cheeks, And burns her ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... him a salary, and had taken another tutor for Zyozya.... Fofa had been sent to a school of cadets. Avenir was sitting near the window in an old easy-chair. It was exquisite weather. The clear autumn sky was a bright blue above the dark-brown line of bare limes; here and there a few last leaves of lurid gold rustled and whispered about them. The earth had been covered with frost, now melting into dewdrops in the sun, whose ruddy rays fell aslant across the pale grass; there was a faint crisp resonance in the air; the voices of the labourers in the garden reached us clearly and ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... less pitiful than either were greedily enjoying it, that suddenly the ground trembled violently. This perhaps was not perceived in the circus, on account of the excitement all were in, and the noise that was going on in the arena. But it was soon followed by a whirlwind of ashes, and lurid flashes of flame darted across the sky. The beasts were instantly tamed, and cowered down in abject terror, and the gladiators, for the first time in their lives, grew pale with fear. Then the startled crowd within the vast building heard from the streets the fearful cry: "Vesuvius is on fire!" ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... his big guns flashing their defiant answer to Beauregard's batteries. Jennie watched the lurid track of his ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... hawk-moth, feeds as a rule on the foliage of the potato, and its very varied colouring, as Sir John Lubbock has pointed out, so beautifully harmonises with the brown of the earth, the yellow and green of the leaves, and the faint purplish blue of the lurid flowers, that it can only be distinguished when the eye happens accidentally to focus itself exactly upon the spot occupied by the unobtrusive caterpillar. Other larvae which frequent pine trees ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... who choked on his food. He instinctively guessed the worst, and saw his home in lurid ruin about him, but was powerless to ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... recognition of American independence could allay. Associations formed throughout the whole length and breadth of America, by the exertions of the assembly of Massachusets Bay, stirred up and kept alive the flame of discord, and occasion need but fan it, and it would kindle into a blaze; the lurid glare of which would be seen burning brightly, and raging furiously across the wide Atlantic. The proceedings in America were but as yet, in truth, the warnings of a terrible commotion—the first intimations of an irruption, more frightful ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... him. He is not, however, as you suppose, dizzy with magnificence, nor drunk with the ecstatic breath of those innumerable censers. C'est vrai que de toutes ces choses il a pense beaucoup—mais! The Duc De L'Omelette is terror-stricken; for, through the lurid vista which a single uncurtained window is affording, lo! gleams the most ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... swimming strongly—and after a time a lurid flash of lightning showed him a black mass of trees close ahead. They vanished, the succeeding darkness was impenetrable, and the crash of thunder was deadened by the roar of water. For a moment or two ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... sympathy with Mont Pelee in 1902, and continued restless after that time, but it was not until about the middle of February, 1906, that it became threatening, lava beginning to overflow from the crater and make its lurid way ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... it really meant. He started in the New England ministry a strenuous speculation, which was not to rest till it destroyed the foundation from which he worked. The hell as to which comfortable churchmen were getting silent, he painted in such lurid colors that reaction and ultimate revolt were necessities of human nature. The life of holiness and love—in himself a most genuine reality—he defined in such terms of introspection and self-consciousness, that there opened a wide gulf between ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... evening sacrifice begun, When evil demons, lurid as the clouds That gather round the dying orb of day, Cluster in hideous troops, obscene and dread, About our altars, casting far and near Terrific shadows, while the sacred fire Sheds a pale ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... between brother and sister after they had penetrated the woods a considerable distance on their return home. It had become like night around them, except that, as has been shown, the gloom was of that peculiar lurid nature which can hardly be described, and can never be forgotten by those ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... lurking in the light, He ventures forth along the edge of night; With silent foot he scouts the coulie's rim And scents the carrion awaiting him. His savage eyeballs lurid with a flare Seen but in unfed beasts which leave their lair To wrangle with their fellows for a meal Of bones ill-covered. Sets he forth to steal, To search and snarl and forage hungrily; A worthless prairie vagabond ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... goin' to lose any dollars unless he has to," said McGinnis. "I don't think you need to be afraid of that." Then, following along the train of thought that had been suggested, he told the boy some lurid stories of life in the lumber camps of Michigan and Wisconsin in the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... And of all the poems published in the early days of the struggle, none equalled in high excellence August 1914, by John Masefield. And its tone was precisely the opposite of what his most famous efforts had led us to expect. It was not a lurid picture of wholesale murder, nor a bottle of vitriol thrown in the face of the Kaiser. After the thunder and the lightning, came the still small voice. It is a poem in the metre and manner of Gray, with the same silver tones of twilit peace—heartrending ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... glowed, As thro' the whirling gloom she rode, Her laboring breath drawn sharply in; Pitted against yon rushing wheels Were tireless grit and trusty heels, And with God's favor they might win! And soon along the perilous line Flamed out the lurid warning sign, While round her staggering horse the crowd Surged with wild cheers and plaudits loud.— And this is how, thro' flood and rain, Brave ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... There's a phrase I noticed in that rather lurid magazine Bud brought me two or three weeks ago." Her eyes twinkled. "'Cave-man stuff,' I think it was." Coming from her lips the words had an oddly bizarre sound. "It seemed descriptive. Of course one ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... blazing! He's having one, Hegio! See how his whole body is covered with lurid spots? It's black fury ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... kings' mistresses, and Dr. Warners were kissing the shoebuckles of great ladies for sheer love of their faces, plastered red and white, The parasites of the Manx clergy were not far behind some of their English brethren. There is a story told of their life among themselves which casts lurid light on their character and ways of life. It is said that two of the Vicars-general summoned a large number of the Manx people to Bishop's Court on some business of the spiritual court, Many of the people ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... his letters. This brief passage touches the sublime. The hunters enter, and from the moment Wolfram begins his really beautiful song about Elisabeth, it remains on Wagner's highest level. The finale is a set piece, of course, and is in free and joyous contrast to the lurid heat and sensual abandonment of the first scene. While the trees wave in the wind and the sun shines, the men shout merrily, and the huntsmen blow away at their horns—and Tannhaeuser has returned to his ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... been a scene in hell with the Motombo playing the part of Satan. Indeed, his swollen, diabolical figure supported on the thin, toad-like legs, the great fires burning on either side, the lurid lights of evening reflected from the still water beyond and glowering among the tree tops of the mountain, the white-robed forms of the tall Pongo, bending, every one of them, towards the wretched culprit ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... conflagration of the headsman's house must be numbered among the finest passages that have ever flowed from Jokai's pen. But the mild, idyllic strain, so characteristic of Jokai, who is nothing if not romantic, runs through the sombre and lurid tableau like a bright silver thread, and the denouement, in which all enmities are reconciled, all evil-doers are punished, and Gentleness and Heroism receive their retributive crowns, is a singularly ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... sunshine, the fly bouncing up and down the little window, the movements of the cat, who, rising from her nap, stretched every limb separately, yawned, lazily lapped at her saucer of milk, and then, seating herself in the patch of lurid sunshine, with her tail curled round her fore-paws, blinked drowsily for a few minutes, and then dozed ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... overblows itself. My spent passions gradually sunk into a lurid calm; and by degrees I have subsided into the time-settled sorrow of the sable-widower, who, wiping away the decent tear, lifts up his grief-worn eye ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... oars; swung until every muscle in the young Easterner's back had turned to live nerve-fiber, and the flesh had begun to strip from the palms of his hands. Even so, the hardy captain had done most of the work. Aided by the current, they turned the shoulder of the Cocopah range as the dawn shone lurid in the east, and the captain swung the boat's head to the southern shore of the lake. Meantime, between spells at the oars, Average Jones had outlined the case in full to Funcke. He could have ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of Allan's tongue. At the very instant, however, when he opened his lips, the abhorrent high tenor of Pedgift Junior, shouting for "Mr. Armadale," rang cheerfully through the quiet air. At the same moment, from the other side of the carriage, the lurid spectacles of the Reverend Samuel showed themselves officiously on the search; and the voice of the Reverend Samuel's mother (who had, with great dexterity, put the two ideas of the presence of water ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... time, Lord Geoffrey, who had seated himself at the tiller,—yoke-lines were not used a century since,—steered by the top-light of the rear-admiral; but now the maze of hamper was seen waving slowly to and fro in the lurid heavens, and the huge hull became visible, heaving and setting, as if the ocean groaned with the labour of lifting such a pile of wood and iron. A light gleamed from the cabin-windows, and ever and anon, one glanced athwart an open gun-room port. In all other respects, the ship presented ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... rain awnings are spread, and we can have no wind sails up; if we could, there is not a breath of wind to fill them; and consequently the lower and main decks are utterly unventilated: a sort of solution of man in steam fills them from end to end, and surrounds the lights with a lurid halo. It's too hot to sleep, and my sole amusement consists in watching the cockroaches, which are in a state of intense excitement and happiness. They manifest these feelings in a very remarkable manner—a sudden unanimous impulse seems to seize the obscene thousands ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... all yelling fearfully. On streamed the living mass; closer and closer they approached, till their faces were distinctly visible. They carried with them a hideous burden—a swathed and ghastly corpse, the rigid features of which looked ghastlier still in the lurid glare of the torch-light! This they flung, with frantic gestures, from one to another, receiving it in their arms with a yell and a scream, gibbering in fiendish glee, and dancing and whirling about. Sickening ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... familiar with the facts in the case, that a powerful confederacy of warlike Indians, after years of secret preparation, had made a sudden and bold descent upon the state of Illinois, and were about to carry war and desolation throughout the frontiers—to make the heavens lurid with the conflagration of dwelling houses, and the air resonant with the wails of women and children sinking beneath the murderous tomahawk: and, that this banded horde of northern savages, had been successfully met, captured or dispersed, by the patriotism, valor and ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... made dark blots of foliage. Nantbrook seemed unreal, a place of thin shadow, the future unsubstantial as well; only the past was actual in Lemuel Doret's mind—the gray cold prison, the city at night, locked rooms filled with smoke and lurid lights, avaricious voices in the mechanical sentences of gambling, agonized tones begging for a shot, just a shot, of an addicted ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... communication with each other, or with those who could form any rational estimate of the probabilities of our destiny; no officials appeared; the ordinary invariable routine of the steward department was suspended without notice; the sounds were tremendous, and a hot lurid obscurity filled the atmosphere. Soon after four the clamour increased, and the shock of a sea blowing up a part of the fore-guards made the groaning fabric reel and shiver throughout her whole huge bulk. At that time, by common consent, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... there was to be enacted a rapid drama of material progress such as the world has never elsewhere seen; but first there must be played the wild prologue of the West, never at any time to have a more lurid scene than here at the Halfway House of a continent, at the intersection of the grand transcontinental trails, the bloody angle of the plains. Eight men in a day, a score in a week, met death by violence. The street in the cemetery ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... a subject (in case I should unhappily be called on to occupy your attention for a moment), I had thought on offering a few observations upon Plymouth Rock; but I was deterred by a weird and lurid announcement which I saw in your papers, appearing in connection with the name of an eminent clothing dealer, which led me to apprehend that Plymouth Rock was getting tired. [Laughter.] The announcement read, "Plymouth Rock pants!" I presumed that ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... worse, for I have walked to look at them, or rather hopped, leaning on the shoulder of a very sniffy Swazi boy. Do you know, old fellow, I believe there never were any Basutos; also that the venerable Marnham and the lurid Rodd had no real existence, that they were but illusions, a prolonged nightmare—no more. Here is your shirt. I am sorry that I have not had time to wash it, but it has cooked well in the sun, which, being flannel, is ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... not hear, or, hearing, paid no heed. He was at the second floor, the evil-smelling smoke thick about him, blinding his eyes and smarting his throat. Above him was a strange lurid glare and the roaring of the flames. For a moment his heart failed him and he leaned weak and panting against the banister. Then a ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... lamp on the wall in front of Hilma stretched upward tall and thin and began to smoke. She went over to where the lamp hung and, standing on tip-toe, lowered the wick. As she reached her hand up, Annixter noted how the sombre, lurid red of the lamp made a warm reflection on ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... clouds of flame color hung above the dark summits of the mountain, and the reflected light turned the ghostly dwellings to a place of blood-tinged mystery. More than one of the adventurers crossed themselves. Don Ruy said it looked, in the lurid glow, ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and yet this idealistic interpretation would falsify the true motives on both sides. The crowd went because it found the satisfaction of sexual curiosity and erotic tension through the unveiled discussion of social perversities. And the managers produced the plays because the lurid subjects with their appeal to the low instincts, and therefore with their sure commercial success, could here escape the condemnation of police and decent public as they were covered by the pretence of social reform. How far the writers of the play of prostitution prostituted ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... created them to lie securely in their shells, or deep in the caverns of the earth; for the rivers to wash them with sweet waters or the lurid fire to shape them in the bowls of the mountains. The beauties given us to enjoy are those upon which our eyes may light in the woodlands or from the heights—the glory of the sunset, the stillness of the sea, the thousand Hues of a garden of flowers, or the cascade as ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... friend, do keep up a correspondence with one or more; or if it were possible for you, with several. I know by a little what your sufferings are, and that to shut the eyes, and stop up the ears, is to give one's self up to storm and darkness, and the lurid forms and horrors of a dream. I scarce know why it is; a feeling I have, and which I can hardly understand. I could not endure to live if I had not a firm faith that the life within you will pass forth out of the furnace, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... before another word was spoken, during which period the men had been rowing hard, and the boatswain, who had got hold of the rudder-lines, was steering almost at random for the shore, taking his bearings as well as he could from the gunboat, out of whose funnel sparks kept flying, and a lurid glare appeared upon the cloud of smoke which floated out, pointing to the fact that the ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... and seldom allowed anyone to interrupt him. Some man, who was greatly disgusted over one of Greeley's editorials, climbed up to his sanctum, and as soon as his head showed above the railing, he began to rave and rage, using the most lurid style of profanity. It seemed as if he never would stop, but at last, utterly exhausted and out of breath and all used up, he waited ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... condition when Clarence Weston crawled out of the swamp one evening and sat down on a cedar log before he followed his comrades up the track, though he supposed that supper would shortly be laid out in the sleeping-shanty. The sunlight that flung lurid flecks of color upon the western side of the fir trunks beat upon his dripping face, which, though a little worn and grim just then, was otherwise a pleasant face of the fair English type. In fact, though he had been some years in the country, Englishman was unmistakably ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... obscure, and in the Old Testament altogether unique. Contemporary historical facts are seen now in the lurid light of fear, more often in the more brilliant light of eschatological hopes. In ch. xxiv. a great catastrophe is impending. The world is weary, and joy has vanished. The city (Jerusalem?) is desolate. Something has happened to revive Jewish hopes and kindle high expectations as to the ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... islands between Loo-Choo and Japan appear to be volcanic, and at certain seasons of the year they break out in a similar manner to those which we saw. At noon the smoke from the large volcano became lurid; but whether this was the breaking out into flame, or from the rays of the sun pouring down upon the smoke, it was impossible to say, as we were then several miles off. During the whole of the following ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... death, and in an universal tremor. The women who were with her said she had been so outrageous before our going, that they thought a man must be sent for to manage her. However, after a serious time with her, her troubled soul became calmed." Another entry in the same journal casts a lurid light upon the interior of Newgate. "Besides this poor young woman, there are also six men to be hanged, one of whom has a wife near her confinement, also condemned, and seven young children. Since the awful report came down he has become quite ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... by Ditton Green, off the heathy commons, past the poor, scattered farms, on to the vast rushy meadows, while upon them was the dull weight of disappointment, shame, all but despair; their race enslaved, their country a prey to strangers, and all its future, like their own, a lurid blank,—little they dreamed of what that vale would be within eight hundred years,—the eye of England, and it may be of the world; a spot which owns more wealth and peace, more art and civilization, more beauty ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... gave evidence with as much confidence as though he had been talking with his Marfa, only perhaps more respectfully. It was impossible to make him contradict himself. The prosecutor questioned him first in detail about the family life of the Karamazovs. The family picture stood out in lurid colors. It was plain to ear and eye that the witness was guileless and impartial. In spite of his profound reverence for the memory of his deceased master, he yet bore witness that he had been unjust to Mitya and "hadn't brought up his children as he should. He'd have been devoured ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... investing self-government with something of the menace of independence, and treating the responsibility they sought in the most irresponsible way. The British theory, too, as guaranteeing a definitely British predominance in Canada, brought into rather lurid relief the mistaken fervour ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... dead; the everlasting roar of the surf was gone; and the only noise was the crashing of the branches snapped by the weight of the clammy dust. About one o'clock the veil began to lift, a lurid sunlight stared in from the horizon, but all was black overhead. Gradually the dust-cloud drifted away; the island saw the sun once more, and saw itself inches deep in black, and ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... and drinking that frightful pledge to meet them all again in one hundred years. Had he kept his appointment already? He would have a long while to wait. The act had seemed to him nothing, the recollection of it now made him shudder. All at once, the scene stood out to him in a lurid light, and through this he seemed to see a horror in Elizabeth Royal's face. For one moment the whirl of anguish and remorse blinded him. The next, that Archdale pride, so grand in a worthy cause, so fatal when in the hands of caprice and passion, was driving ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... light. In a very few minutes the terrible truth flashed upon the mind of Glenn. The dim light along the horizon was changed to an approaching flame. Columns of smoke could be seen rolling upward, while the fire beneath imparted a lurid glare to them. The wind blew more fiercely, and the fire approached from almost every quarter with the swiftness of a race-horse. The darkened vault above became gradually illuminated with a crimson ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... the dense obscurity and murky shadow of the heaven above; the long, heavy roll of the convulsed sea; the strident noise of the vapors and gases escaping from the mountain-crater; the shifting electric lights, crimson, emerald green, lurid yellow, azure, blood red, which at intervals relieved the blackness, only to make it ghastlier than before; the hot, hissing showers which descended like a rain of fire; the clash and clang of meeting rocks and riven stones; the burning ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... went down in a bank of lurid fire, and the Bridget was still a mile from the ship. A new apprehension now came over our hermit. Should a tempest bring the wind violently from the westward, as was very likely to be the case under ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... turned toward the lurid south. The air was very still. From away down the river sounded the bells of Lambeth Church, their volleying clang softened by distance to a monotonous refrain, drearily at one with the sadness of the falling night. Warburton heard them, yet heard ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... burning fiercely under the beautiful land. No spectacle could have been more sublime than that which the Roman Campagna presented at this period, when no less than ten volcanoes were in full or intermittent action, and poured their clouds of smoke and flame into the lurid sky all around the horizon. Up to the foot of the mountains the sea covered the vast plain; and the action of these waves of fire and steaming floods forms a natural epic of the grandest order. Prodigious quantities of ashes and cinders were discharged ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... gazed, the sun went lurid down Into the smoke-wrapt sea, and night came on. But through the dark they watched the burning ship Still carried o'er the distant waters.... But fainter, as the stars rose high, it flared; And as, in a decaying winter fire, A charr'd ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... Rose, and yet the undertone of all that night's uneasiness was a something that had been roused and quickened in him by his acquaintance with her. How he loathed himself for the last few weeks of his life! How he loathed that hot, lurid, murky atmosphere of flirtation and passion and French sentimentality in which he had been living!—atmosphere as hard to draw healthy breath in as the odor of wilting tuberoses the day ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... chances of coming up with the Indian were few did not deter the cattleman; the obscurity of night on the desert did not give him halt or hesitation. The name of his wrath burned high and hot in his brain and in its lurid light he saw his desire fulfilled. Had one tried at the moment to reason with him, Howard would have cursed him and gone on. His anger had spurted up in a brain already mad with the ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... size of two full moons, and a dozen, and a hundred, and a thousand. Still black, still noiseless, still revolving slowly, like a tardy but certain doom. Then a quarter of the leaden space was filled with their gigantic bodies, and the lurid air was darker. Then a half of the heavens was blotted out; She grew faint and sick, as she moved her head to the right and left, and up and down, and watched the dizzy revolutions of those vast ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... looked at his watch. Eight o'clock. The great street was ablaze. The crowds were parading from the restaurants to the theaters. The electric signs were pasting lurid legends on a long suffering sky; the taxis were spraying throats with gasoline; the traffic cop at Broadway and Forty-second Street was madly earning his pay. Mr. Magee got up and walked the floor. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... occurrences attending the flurries of last autumn in the money markets, when half a dozen men, in order to obtain control of certain railways, entered into a conspiracy that came near wrecking the entire industrial and commercial interests of the country, having shed a lurid light upon the enormous and baleful power which the corporate control of the railways places in the hands of what Theodore Roosevelt aptly termed "the dangerous wealthy classes," has had the effect of converting to the advocacy of national ownership not only ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... floating of ships, and the near wading of children through the surf. Endless trains of thoughts, like little waves, rippled forward and broke on the shore of her drowsiness. But each thought-ripple, though it ran lightly, was tinged with copper-coloured gleams as from a lurid sunset. Helena felt that the sun was setting on her and Siegmund. The hour was too composed, spell-bound, for grief or anxiety or even for close perception. She was merely aware that the sun was wheeling down, tangling Siegmund and her in the traces, like overthrown ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the florid face of a hunter's moon looked down, from the level line of a leaden cloud, which striped the star emblazoned shield of night, like a bar sinister; and the white lustre of her rays was dimmed to a lurid dulness solemn and presageful. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... war-clad steed That prances o'er the mead, And neighs to be among the pointed spears— Or in black armour stalk around Embattled Bristol, once thy ground, Or haunt with lurid glow the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... plainly showed seemed to gather about the injury done and the appeal of Ibycus. The earlier Ibycus had not seemed greatly to interest him. Strickland was used to stormy youth, to its passional moments, sudden glows, burnings, sympathies, defiances, lurid shows of effects with the causes largely unapparent. It was his trade to know youth, and he had a psychologist's interest. He said now to himself, "There is something in his character that connects itself with, that responds to, the idea of vengeance." There ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... the Squire promptly, and then drew a lurid picture of a place delivered over entirely to the hovels of nameless people of the lower middle classes, and worse, a place in which you would be as effectually cut off from your fellows as if you went to live in Kamschatka. ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... the change. She looked in the glass and was astonished at her beauty. She resolved to make her death toilet perfect. She took off her handkerchief turban and dressed her glossy wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of rather lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious artificial flowers; finally she threw over her shoulders a fluffy thing called a "cloud" in that day, which was of a blazing red complexion. Then she was ready for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... turned my eyes from the terrible pomp of the lurid forest, and looked fearfully down on the hoof-trampled sward for my ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down, and he blows—and blows,— While I drum on his swollen cheek, And croak in his angered eye that glows With the lurid lightning's streak; While the rushes drown in the watery frown That his ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... quick and startling enlightenment in the middle of a lurid July morning, while he and Joe were at work with one-horse cultivators, "laying by" the corn. Joe threw his plow down in the furrow, cast the lines from his shoulders, and declared that he was starving. He vowed that he would not cultivate another row unless assured, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... hour later found Mac, suitably adorned, sitting on a bench at Helmeih Station having his boots and bandolier polished by four jabbering, disreputable "Gyppie" youngsters, who swore glibly the while the most lurid English oaths. Incidentally, they often terminated an exceptionally fluent flow with "Eh, Mistah Mickkenzie?" the usual mode of native address to New Zealanders after the High Commissioner's visit, which sometimes ruffled Mac's dignity, but more ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... and regulations, the company granted me a pass in a first-class carriage to Wolverhampton. I returned to Birmingham by omnibus after dark the same evening, and passing through the heart of the Black Country, made my first acquaintance with that dingy region—its lurid light, its flashing tongues of intercessant flame, and its clouds ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... rode out upon a bare peak. But its outlook told them nothing. Behind rose other peaks, below was the dense primeval forest, rising and falling on other slopes. There was no glimpse of valley anywhere. The sky was heavy with the grey lurid clouds of ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... a storm, Yussuf?" said Mr Burne, as he looked round at the lurid brassy aspect of the heavens, and the wild reflections upon ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... flames, now bending down low to feed on the green bushes, devouring acres of them at a breath, now towering high in the air as if looking abroad to choose a way, then stooping to feed again,—the lurid flapping surges and the smoke and terrible rushing and roaring hiding all that is gentle and orderly in the work. But as soon as the deep forest was reached, the ungovernable flood became calm like a torrent entering a lake, creeping and spreading beneath the trees where the ground was level ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... wild cosmopolite backward generations that accounted for anything; and to have got nearer the luxuriant tribe of which the rare creature was the final flower, the immense, extravagant, unregulated cluster, with free-living ancestors, handsome dead cousins, lurid uncles, beautiful vanished aunts, persons all busts and curls, preserved, though so exposed, in the marble of famous French chisels—all this, to say nothing of the effect of closer growths of the stem, was to have had one's small world-space both crowded ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... serpent coiled round my ribs! Now my ribs seemed expanding—to hold my heart—and all the divine joy of existence thrilled me to a religious rapture. And with the lifting of the mists all that ghastly mediaeval nightmare was lifted from my soul; in that sacred moment all the lurid tragedy of the crucified Christ vanished, and only Christ was left, the simple fellowship with man and beast and nature, the love of life, the love of love, the love of God. And in that yearning ecstasy my picture came to me—The Joyous ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a bush publican and store-keeper he had an unusual reputation for honesty—and well deserved it, for all his roughness and lurid language when aroused to wrath. He asked Gerrard ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... towards their nests with the shrill and dissonant clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had altogether sunk below the horizon, and an early and lurid shade of darkness blotted the serene twilight of a summer evening. The wind began next to arise; but its wild and moaning sound was heard for some time, and its effects became visible on the bosom of the sea, before the gale was felt on shore. The mass of waters, now dark and ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to the edge of the cut and looked off across the country beyond where the waning sunlight fell upon the dense woods, touching the higher trees with its lurid glow. Over that way smoke arose and curled away ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... lakes. The morning was calm and sultry. A deep stillness pervaded Nature, which tended to produce a corresponding quiescence in the mind, and to fill it with those indescribably solemn feelings that frequently arise before a thunderstorm. Dark, lurid clouds hung overhead in gigantic masses, piled above each other like the battlements of a dark fortress, from whose ragged embrasures the artillery of heaven was about ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the crater of Vesuvius, and leaps in fiendish waves along the land. Few the souls escaping, and God have mercy upon those who stumble through the blinding darkness, made more torturingly hideous by the intermittent flashes of lurid light. And yet there come three, whom the darkness seems not to deter, nor obstacles impede. Only a blind person, accustomed to constant darkness, and familiarized with these streets could walk that way. Nearer they come, a burst of flames thrown into ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... hands in hopeless despair. She has helped save the books, still she "expects they will burn up, somehow, on the road." Her pony has been trotting about through the night; his hair is singed, and she "presumes it will strike in and kill him." The world is, to Susy's view, one vast scene of lurid horrors. If she couldn't cry, she ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... killed the Chief!" another yelped; and the cries rippled along from mouth to mouth; tulwars flashed in the light of the lurid torches as they swept upward at the end of long arms threateningly; but the jamadar roared: "Back, back! you're like jackals snapping and snarling. Back! if the one is killed how shall we know ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... your wife's faults does not kill your love. You cannot turn from your brother or your friend if he commit even a lurid act; you cannot turn from a stranger; much less can you turn from your beloved. Herbert, when men set themselves to judge, they are invariably ridiculous and an offence to high heaven. Believe me, it is artificial. The true judge cares not for the fact of the deed, but for its motive. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... James Fox." To praise this book is almost an impertinence. I content myself with saying that those who once taste its fascination go back to it again and again, and usually end by placing it with the books that are "the bosom friends" of men. Now the grim Scotchman lit up Horace's letters with the lurid furnace-glow of his genius; Sir George held the serene lamp of the scholar above the same letters, and lo, we have two pieces that can only die when the language dies! What a feat for a mere letter-writer to achieve! Let ambitious correspondents take example by Horace ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of flame, me-thought Shelley's poetry emitted a purer light than almost any other productions of his day, contrasting beautifully with the fitful and lurid gleams and gushes of black vapor that flashed and eddied from ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Blois, where he made some friends and spent most of a year. He returned to Paris in October 1792. France was no longer standing on the top of golden hours. The September massacres filled the sky with a lurid flame. Wordsworth still retained his ardent faith in the Revolution, and was even ready, though no better than "a landsman on the deck of a ship struggling with a hideous storm," to make common cause with the Girondists. But the prudence of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... a young woman was perched, thin shoulders rounded over the ink-stained drawing-board resting on her knees. She had a large, self-willed mouth and dark Bohemian hair, and wore a dreary cotton kimono over a silk petticoat whose past had been lurid. One hand clutched gingerly a bottle of India ink, the other wielded a ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... which bore it in Latin. The stressed vowel, except in au, eu, is short, even when, as in 'vivid', 'florid', it was long in classical Latin. This, of course, is in accord with the English pronunciation of Latin. Examples are 'acid', 'tepid', 'rigid', 'horrid', 'humid', 'lurid ', 'absurd', 'tacit', 'digit', 'deposit', 'compact', 'complex', 'revise', 'response', 'acute'. Those which have the suffix -es prefixed throw the stress back, as 'honest', 'modest'. Those which ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... blood, and destroyed the innocent and helpless for gain or hate. The air was laden with the cries and sighs of the stricken multitudes, who beheld their sin for the first time in the light of eternity and of its inevitable doom. The lurid flames of "the wrath to come" cast their searching light on practices which, in the comparative twilight of ignorance and neglect, had passed ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... Fairy Island, I must say, yes; but very seldom. And never but in the evening when the sun was setting, and that under particular circumstances—namely, when he went down into a dark red bank of clouds, or when there was a lurid crimson hue over the sky just above the horizon. Then occasionally you might see the dim hazy outline as of a beautiful mountainous island against the clouds, or the deep-coloured sky. There is an island sometimes seen from our western coast, under similar circumstances, but which you ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... all over, and on the evening of that same day a quiet, deep sleep came to Lillian Earle. It saved her life; the wearied brain found rest. When she awoke, the lurid light of fever died out of her eyes, and they looked in gratified amazement upon Lady Dora who sat ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... got up feigning unconcern. Just then Toddles came bounding up against his sister. They went off arm in arm. She had seen him at the window, yet she gave no friendly glance; Shelton felt more miserable than ever. He stepped out upon the drive. There was a lurid, gloomy canopy above; the elm-trees drooped their heavy blackish green, the wonted rustle of the aspen-tree was gone, even the rooks were silent. A store of force lay heavy on the heart of nature. He started pacing slowly up and down, his pride forbidding him to follow her, and presently sat down ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... destroy their trenches and put up the question, "Tommy, how do you like your new trenches?" But why smear filth over the photograph of three little girls, a family treasure? All around Bapaume the villages were looted and the night the deliverers entered the destroyers made the sky lurid with the fires of towns and hamlets. Some 300 in ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... express purpose of catching the susceptible. The shops were modestly attractive from their nature, but the booths deliberately make eyes at you, and with telling effect. The very atmosphere is bewitching. The lurid smurkiness of the torches lends an appropriate weirdness to the figure of the uncouthly clad pedlar who, with the politeness of the arch-fiend himself, displays to an eager group the fatal fascinations of some new conceit. Here the latest thing in inventions, a gutta-percha ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... see the birth-place of Nelson or the death-scene of Simon de Montfort strike a strange chill to the soul? I can tell quite easily what this dim aversion to tourists and their antiquities does not arise from—at least, in my case. Whatever my other vices (and they are, of course, of a lurid cast), I can lay my hand on my heart and say that it does not arise from a paltry contempt for the antiquities, nor yet from the still more paltry contempt for the tourists. If there is one thing more dwarfish and ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... desolation which mark this region, condemned of nature, the lurid glare of a burning forest was almost constantly visible after sunset, and when the wind so willed, the smoke arising from it floated in heavy vapour over our heads. Not all the novelty of the scene, not all its vastness, could prevent its heavy horror wearying the spirits. Perhaps the dinners ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... they were coming! The "Jews" could be heard, with their band, down the street. They would be wanting their banner. Dolores hastily threw a wrapper on, while the captain advanced to the frontiers of his domain to welcome his army. The lurid company drew up in front of the house. The drum-beat softened in tone, but continued to give the rhythm for the privates who stood there marking time, keeping their heads and bodies and legs moving energetically ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... disease," said the Virginian, striking the frying-pan on his knee, for the frogs were all gone. At those lurid words their untamed child minds took fire, and they drew round him again to hear a tale of blood. The crowd seemed ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... feelings. He will see this aura flooded with the beautiful rose-color of pure affection, the rich blue of devotional feeling, the hard, dull brown of selfishness, the deep scarlet of anger, the horrible lurid red of sensuality, the livid grey of fear, the black clouds of hatred and malice, or any of the other hundredfold indications so easily to be read in it by the practiced eye; and thus it will be impossible for any persons to conceal from his the real state ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... always refuse that, sir." And therewith Mr. Ray was remanded to his quarters. Verily there was some reason for Blake's outburst when he came in after hearing Warner's brief description of the official interview which Mrs. Whaling had given in lurid exaggeration ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Olympia, where, for a month past, "Van Zant's Royal Belgian Circus and World-famed Menagerie" had been holding forth to "Crowded and delighted audiences." Much was made of two "star turns" upon this lurid bill: "Mademoiselle Marie de Zanoni, the beautiful and peerless bare-back equestrienne, the most daring lady rider in the universe," for the one; and, for the other, "Chevalier Adrian di Roma, king of the animal world, with his great aggregation of savage and ferocious wild beasts, including ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... until midnight, notwithstanding the rain, to see the grand rock of Hornelen, a precipice 1200 feet high. The clouds lifted a little, and there was a dim, lurid light in the sky as our steamer swept under the awful cliff. A vast, indistinct mass, reaching apparently to the zenith, the summit crowned with a pointed tour, resembling the Cathedral of Drontheim, and the sides scarred with deep fissures, loomed over us. Now a splintered spire ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... widower and kept bachelor's hall, so to speak. We found him seated on a keg, by the side of an enormous caldron that might have contained the witches' compound, judging from the strange forms of steam that arose from it, while the lurid flames beneath, fed by the oily drippings, lent a still greater weirdness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... young lily. The white lilies are never more beautiful than when they wave capriciously in the summer wind; and if Laura Dunbar was a little passionate when you tried to thwart her; and if her great blue eyes at such times had a trick of lighting up with sudden fire in them, like a burst of lurid sunlight through a summer storm-cloud, there were plenty of gentlemen in Warwickshire ready to swear that the sight of those lightning-flashes of womanly anger was well worth the penalty of incurring Miss ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Practically ignorant of the spoliation and persecution practised under Henry the Eighth—of blessed domestic memory—of the further persecution which disfigured the "spacious days of great Elizabeth," not to mention the long and shameful history of the Penal Laws, he fixed his mind upon lurid legends of the reign of unhappy Mary Tudor, illustrated by prints in Fox's Book of Martyrs; upon inquisitorial tortures, the very thought of which—even out of doors in the pleasant spring sunshine—made him break into a heavy sweat, and which, by some ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and a great deal of it was of wood. Fires started almost at once, and it was almost completely on fire by the end of the second day. It had been visible in the telescopic screen even after they were out of atmosphere, a black smear until the turning planet carried it into darkness and then a lurid glow. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... the merciful amongst us would slay a dog, stood unmoved in the shadow, with his ruthless calm, his deadly serenity, which had no remorse as it had had no mercy, while about his lips there was a cold and evil smile, and in his eyes gleamed the lurid flame of a tiger's triumph—the triumph when it has tasted blood, and slaked its thirst ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... action, doubts assailed her. She remembered that she had never read the book, though she had heard much of it from Berrand. He was imaginative and essentially mischievous. Perhaps he had exaggerated its tendency, drawn too lurid a picture of its horrible power. Catherine turned a page or two and glanced at the clear, even writing. It ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and darts down upon them from the roofs above, supposing, from the armor and the plumes which they wore, that they were enemies. They saw the royal palace besieged, and the tortoise formed for scaling the walls of it. The tumult and din, and the frightful glare of lurid flames by which the city was illuminated, a scene ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... thunder and lightning; but through the cloud-rifts, now and then, the moonlight streamed down. Isabella and Otho had been talking earnestly,—so earnestly, that they were quite unobservant of the coming storm, of the strange lurid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... for, his thoughts went back to a scene he had once had with a half drunken machine-minder whom he had had to pay off. The man had epitomised the chief engineer's qualities and character, as those who encountered his authority understood them, in a few lurid, illuminating phrases. "You know," he had said, "that guy ain't a man. No, sir. He's the mush-fed image of a penitentiary boss. I guess he'd set the grease box of a driving shaft hot with a look. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... merely the warming up exercise of the editor's vocabulary. When he really cut loose on Andy P. Symes the graves of dead and buried adjectives opened to do him honor. In the lurid lexicon of his eloquence there was no such word as obsolete and no known synonym failed to pay tribute to this "mental and physical colossus." In his shirt sleeves, minus his cuffs, with his brain in a lather, one might say, Sylvanus Starr painted a picture of the coming ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... his eyes mutely upon the ruffian. The curate had had the precaution to send on before for torches, for the wintry evening now darkened round them, and the light from the torch-bearers, who met them at the cavern, cast forth its red and lurid flare at the mouth of the chasm. One of these torches Walter himself seized, and his was the first step that entered the gloomy passage. At this place and time, Houseman, who till then, throughout their short journey, had seemed to have recovered ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
