"Gray-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the more worldly successes, attracted to him many admirable persons, as naturally as sweet herbs draw bees, and as naturally he gave them the honey into which fifty years of hard experience had distilled no bitter drop. Earnest young men found the gray-headed scholar as young at heart as they; thoughtful or troubled women instinctively brought their doubts to him, sure of finding the gentlest sympathy, the wisest counsel. Sinners told their sins to the pure-hearted old man and were both rebuked and saved. Gifted men found a companion in him. Ambitious ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... in that," persisted Bill. "I'll admit that we've found plenty of places where the gold isn't, but that doesn't get us anywhere. And we'll be gray-headed before we can explore the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... to while away this tedious hour, good Murdoch?" he asked, after a while, addressing a gray-headed veteran. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... seventy fights; He made AEbutius Elva His Master of the Knights. On the third morn thereafter, At downing of the day, Did Aulus and AEbutius Set forth with their array. Sempronius Atratinus Was left in charge at home With boys, and with gray-headed men, To keep the walls of Rome. Hard by the Lake Regillus Our camp was pitched at night: Eastward a mile the Latines lay, Under the Porcian height. Far over hill and valley Their mighty host was spread; And with their thousand watch-fires ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hardly suit you, Mr. Tape," replied the veteran, with a grim smile. "Well, the gray-headed old fox followed up his look with a number of interesting queries concerning my birth, parentage, and present occupation, my answers to which so operated upon him, that I felt quite certain when he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... between the Canaanitish and the Hellenic Jews there existed the most bitter hostility, so that—even were the story of Jesus true—it could not have reached Philo before A.D. 40, at which time he was old and gray-headed. We again quote from Mr. Lake's treatise, who prints the parallel passages, and we would draw special attention to the similarity of phraseology as ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... have gone through museums of old furniture in Paris, London, Munich, or Vienna, with the gray-headed custodian who shows you the splendors of time past, I have peopled the rooms with figures from the Collection of Antiquities. Often, as little schoolboys of eight or ten we used to propose to go and take a look at the curiosities in their glass cage, for the fun of the thing. But as soon as I caught ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... the sky. A long, low porch ran across the front of the structure, and a complaining sign hung out announcing, in dim, weather-flecked letters on a cracked board, that this was the "Tutt House." A gray-headed man, in brown overalls and faded blue jumper, stood on the porch and shook his fist at the stage as ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... does around the shop wouldn't turn anyone gray-headed; but he makes the most of it. He swells up more over orderin' a few office supplies than Mr. Robert would about signin' a million-dollar contract, and the way he keeps watch of the towels and soap and spring water you'd think ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... musical voice, she seemed a ministering angel to the sick and suffering soldiers, while her sweet womanly purity and her tender devotion to their wants made her almost an object of worship among them. "Ain't she an angel?" said a gray-headed soldier as he watched her one morning as she was busy getting breakfast for the boys on the steamer "City of Alton." "She never seems to tire, she is always smiling, and don't seem to walk—she flies, all ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... grave in the churchyard at Grasmere, and my companion wove a chaplet of flowers and placed it on the headstone. Afterwards we went into the old church and sat down in the poet's pew. "They are all dead and gone now," sighed the gray-headed sexton; "but I can remember when the seats used to be filled by the family from Rydal Mount. Now they are all outside there in ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... this departure had subsided, the venerable M. Dupont de l'Eure, a gray-headed old man of eighty, was, by unanimous acclamation, placed in the President's chair. Lamartine still remained in the tribune, and repeatedly strove to make his voice heard, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... The gray-headed crow of the cliff lighted on a spar of rock and made herself an interpreter between the two. "Shaggy beast of the Island," said the seal, "friend and follower of men, tell me about their ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... every Sabbath-school scholar in the land, but utterly new to Tode, falling on his ear for the first time, bearing all the charm of a fairy tale to him. There was just one thing that struck this ignorant boy as very strange, that a company of men and women, some of them gray-headed, should spend their time in coming together that stormy evening, and reading over and talking about so utterly improbable a tale. He listened eagerly to see what might be ...
— Three People • Pansy
... there some remnant of a higher race, was disappointed enough at seeing on board only the usual half-dozen of low-browed, dirty Orsons, painted red with arnotto: but a gray-headed elder at the stern seemed, by his feathers and gold ornaments, to be some man of note in the little ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... mess-table sat a gray-headed captain, who had been frost-bitten in Canada, wounded in the Peninsula, and saved by an iron constitution from the regimental doctor and yellow fever on Brimstone Hill, St Kitts; and, despite his varied adventures and ailments, had contrived to accumulate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... over, and weep. Her husband was moved by his child's anxiety for his salvation. Once, when she urged him to pray, he replied, "I cannot; but you may pray for me." She at once knelt and interceded for him, with many tears. The gray-headed man knelt also, deeply moved, and tears flowed from eyes not used to weep. When she ceased praying, she rose; but his strength was gone; he could not rise. Yet the love of the world was strong within him, and it is to be feared that he ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... neighboring gardens, and the boulevards stretching away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... and myself got on a train going out of Chicago on the Michigan Southern one evening, and took seats in different parts of the car. In a few moments after the train started, the conductor and a fine looking old gray-headed gentleman came into the car where we were seated, and something told me that he was one of the officers. I saw them talking together a short distance from where I was sitting alongside of a big fat man. The conductor was evidently pointing us out, for I could see by his actions that they ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... but one of the chained line was an old gray-headed man, followed by a slender graceful girl of some eighteen years old, and Amyas' heart yearned over them as they came up. Just as they passed, the foremost of the file had rounded the corner above; there was a bustle, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... best were done for them that could be hoped, they would but grow up miniature Mullers; and to think of that!" said Kitty. She had given her life to him. If she lived to be gray-headed, he alone owned her, mind and body. "If I were dead in my coffin, he would put his mild, fat little hand on me, and look forward to owning me in heaven! Oh-h!" This last was the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... putting forward a claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight, as old houses, here and there about the streets, get covered halfway to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... and saw to what his comrade referred. Perched on the highest portion was an immense gray-headed eagle. Sailing thither from the depths of space, he had paused for a while, with the grand view spread out before him, and what a view ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... was a garden, and in that garden there grew a tree, and on that tree there grew shining apples. Thou knowst, O well-loved one, that every day that passes makes us older and brings us to that day when we will be bent and feeble, gray-headed and weak-eyed. But those shining apples that grew in Asgard—they who ate of them every day grew never a day older, for the eating of the apples ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... of the BARON of ATTINGHAUSEN. A Gothic Hall, decorated with escutcheons and helmets. The BARON, a gray-headed man, eighty-five years old, tall and of a commanding mien, clad in a furred pelisse, and leaning on a staff tipped with chamois horn. KUONI and six hinds standing round him with rakes and scythes. ULRICH of RUDENZ enters in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... be jiggered! Looks like you can live in the same house with a woman from the time she's born till she's gray-headed and not know her any better than if you'd met her once at a Sunday-school picnic. To think of Persis with all those feelings bottled up inside her for the last twenty years. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... their force. Had they been called up but one week since, where would have been those who have now been, as it were, intrusted to my weak help? The father, the mother, the children, the infant at the breast, and I, the gray-headed old man, - all buried fathoms deep, awaiting our summons; but they were restrained by his will, and by his will we were saved. Will those timbers which bore us here so miraculously hold together till morning? I should think not. What are the iron ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... apothecary, for he it was who prepared my pills." On his first reception at Carlton House, the populace pushed their way through the guards and doors as far as the apartments of the prince-regent, who, taking his gray-headed guest by the hand, presented him to them, and publicly hung his portrait set in brilliants around his neck. On his passing through the streets, the horses were taken from his carriage, and he was drawn in triumph by the shouting crowd. One fete succeeded ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... his handmaid whom he hath called home. Wherever she was, and in whatever circumstances, she remembered the guide of her youth, who, according to His promise, never left her, nor forsook her; but continued His gracious presence with her when she was old and gray-headed. ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... Spirit were fixed in the boy's mind, for his mother was always repeating them to him. She would say as he left the wigwam: "Honor the gray-headed person," or "Thou shalt not mimic the thunder;" "Thou shalt always feed the hungry and the stranger," or "Thou shalt immerse thyself in the river at least ten times in succession in the early part of the spring, so that thy body ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... Billy's ball for the magnate, who was having the time of his gray-headed life under Billy's and Nickols' enthusiastic direction, the strange alien thing that had been developed in my depths, part unrest and part rebellion, since I had first looked into the eyes of the young Methodist parson, who had intruded himself and his ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... be gray-headed when he comes back, soon gets a young wife. But a woman's time is short within which she can expect to obtain a husband. If she allows it to slip away, no one cares to marry her. She sits at home, speculating on the probability ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... call me forth. Yet, I protest, it is no salt desire Of seeing countries, shifting a religion, Nor any disaffection to the state Where I was bred, and unto which I owe My dearest plots, hath brought me out; much less, That idle, antique, stale, gray-headed project Of knowing men's minds, and manners, with Ulysses! But a peculiar humour of my wife's Laid for this height of Venice, to observe, To quote, to learn the language, and so forth— I hope ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... Puritan New England meeting-houses, but deserted by its congregation of Baptists, which had dwindled to the vanishing point. In the centre of the village green is a grove of noble elms under whose grateful shade, on the day of my visit to Newfane, I saw a quartette of gray-headed attorneys, playing quoits with horse-shoes. They had come up from Brattleboro to try a case, which had suffered the usual "law's delay" of a continuance, and were whiling away the hours in the bucolic sport ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... handsome and so happy that I secretly congratulated my absent son on the excellent taste he had shown in falling in love with her. Round this bright young creature (Owen, at the foot of the table, and Morgan and I on either side) sat her three wrinkled, gray-headed, dingily-attired hosts, and just behind her, in still more inappropriate companionship, towered the spectral figure of the man in armor, which had so unaccountably attracted her on her arrival. This strange scene was lighted up by candles in high and heavy brass sconces. Before Jessie ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... the little fire-place near the counter, where Aurelius Attwood, with his good-humoured face, used to stand warming his coat-tails, and greeting the customers as they came in, were all so much in harmony with the staid, gray-headed clerks, and the quiet, methodical ways of the place, that when there, one might fancy he had stepped back for fifty years, or was looking upon ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... the religious press except by way of ridicule or denunciation. The careless and ungodly, emboldened by the position of religious teachers, resorted to opprobrious epithets, to base and blasphemous witticisms, in their efforts to heap contumely upon him and his work. The gray-headed man who had left a comfortable home to travel at his own expense from city to city, from town to town, toiling unceasingly to bear to the world the solemn warning of the judgment near, was sneeringly denounced as a fanatic, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... investigation. Holmes sat in a great, old-fashioned chair, his inexorable eyes gleaming out of his haggard face. I could read in them a set purpose to devote his life to this quest until the client whom he had failed to save should at last be avenged. The trim Inspector Martin, the old, gray-headed country doctor, myself, and a stolid village policeman made up the rest of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... before him with very mingled emotions. He had been there before at the head of his clan to disturb the serenity which, in spite of himself, was now softening his heart. He did not linger long, but led his horse a little within the woods, and entered the church. The gray-headed priest at the altar was solemnly chanting, from the beautiful liturgy of the Church, as he knelt down on the hard aisle, and the branching ceiling seemed to catch and repeat the notes. Through the stained window, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... and neglect?" She ran to seek the king, and asked for a pension for the poet of one hundred louis a-year from her privy purse. When Crebillon came to Versailles to thank her, she was in bed. "Let him come in," she exclaimed, "that I may see the gray-headed genius." At the sight of the fine old man—Crebillon was then eighty years of age—so poor and yet so proud, she was affected to tears. She received him with so touching a grace that the old poet was deeply moved. As he leaned over the bed to kiss her hand, the king appeared. "Ah, madame," ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... arrives, and a horn sounding from the judges' stand, the horses are led out in their blankets and head-coverings, and walked up and down before the crowd by their trainers, who are for the most part old gray-headed negroes, born and raised, to the best of their recollection, on the turf. The riders are noble scions of the same ancient stock, and average three feet and a half in height, and twenty pounds in weight. They are clad in ornamental garments; ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... plenty to eat, and with it a great deal of dignity. Even questions were asked slowly and carefully, and every answer was thoughtfully considered before any comment was made upon it. At first Murray merely listened as brave after brave replied to the mention of his name. He saw that only the very gray-headed men had anything to say in favor of peaceful action and a prompt "getting away." He was even surprised at the warlike ardor with which many of the warriors declared their eagerness for a blow at the Lipans, and the good reasons they ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... Hazlan, Sherd Raines told the people of Isom's flight down the mountain, across the river, and up the steep to save his life by losing it. Before he was done, one gray-headed figure pressed from the darkness on one side and stood trembling under the dips. It was old Steve Brayton, who had fired from the cabin at Isom, and dropping his Winchester, he stumbled forward with the butt of his pistol held out to Raines. A Marcum appeared on the other side with the muzzle ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... they left unlearned! Mr. Eliot would put into their hands some of the pages, which he had been writing; and behold! the gray-headed men stammered over the long, strange words, like a little child in his first attempts to read. Then would the apostle call to him an Indian boy, one of his scholars, and show him the manuscript, which had so puzzled the ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dines, two lovers might fall out and exchange the earnest of reconciliation without fear of intruders. The only possible spoil-sport was the pensioner on duty at the little iron gate on the Rue de l'Ouest, if that gray-headed veteran should take it into his head to lengthen his monotonous beat. There, on a bench beneath the lime-trees, Etienne Lousteau sat and listened ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... young man, wearing a saffron colored velvet coat, ruffled shirt, buff satin breeches, black silk stockings, and shining shoe-buckles, step in a dignified manner from the chaise and hand the reins to a gray-headed negro, who lifted his hat ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... went into the churchyard, and there offered a prayer as holy, if not as deeply true, as any I know now; a prayer, which perhaps took form as the guardian angel of my life. If that word in the Bible, Selah, means what gray-headed old men think it does, when they read aloud, it ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to hell [sheol, the grave]". (Genesis 42:38) We know, then, that the hell here described could not be a place of fire and brimstone, for the gray hairs of Jacob would not last long in the fire. What he really meant was that as an old, gray-headed man he would go down to the grave in sorrow if anything befell ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... instant in his walk, either to look at something or to consult his map, or let him ask the way, and he will have a half dozen of the persistent guild upon him; and they cannot easily be shaken off. The afternoon we arrived, we had barely got into our rooms at Brack's Oude Doelan, when a gray-headed commissionaire knocked at our door, and offered his services to show us the city. We deferred the pleasure of his valuable society. Shortly, when we came down to the street, a smartly dressed Israelite took off his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries—to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them—came to seek the clew that should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists—whose systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in an iron framework—travelled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thraldom. People that had lighted on a new ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... feelin'," said an old gray-headed Yankee, who sat at the head of the table, and who was guardian of the establishment. "You can't do nothin' with these Papists," continued he. "I have seed the attempts made time and agin, but allers fail. The very children, only five years of age, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... backward from off the narrow trail until the precipitous canyon walls finally halted their disorganized flight, and from sheer necessity compelled a rally in hopeless battle. Sixteen,—ten infantrymen from old Fort Bethune, under command of Syd. Wyman, a gray-headed sergeant of thirty years' continuous service in the regulars, two cow-punchers from the "X L" ranch, a stranger who had joined them uninvited at the ford over the Bear Water, together with old Gillis the post-trader, and his silent chit of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the terror! Only think of so composite a phenomenon as Mrs. Walters, for instance, adorned with limp nightcap and stiff curl-papers, like garnishes around a leg of roast mutton, waking up beside me at four o'clock in the morning as some gray-headed love-bird of Madagascar, and beginning to chirp and trill ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... mine in early life (which I never thought about at the time, but which has become evident in the course of this autobiography) to prefer the society of elderly men. In London I had liked to be with Mackay, Robinson the engraver, and Leslie, all gray-headed men, and in Paris I soon acquired a strong liking for M. Ouvrard, M. Gindriez, and Mr. Wyld. They were kind and open, and had experience, therefore they were interesting; my uncles in Lancashire had, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... man shaking his hand!" ejaculated Gridson, as a very erect gray-headed officer came down off the bridge and extended his hand. "You wouldn't think he had ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... boy strong enough on one side or other of their natures, to be a great provocation to womankind; and Dr. Spencer did not rest from his pursuit till the brood of the jackdaws had been discovered, and two gray-headed nestlings kidnapped, which were destined to a wicker cage and education. Little Aubrey was beyond measure proud, and was suggesting all sorts of outrageous classical names for them, till politely told by Tom that he would make them as great prigs as himself, and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... fright and disappeared before the jeweller could send for the police, and since that time McFarlane in London, Harrison in Paris, Dennet in Berlin, and Clancy in Vienna had been chasing men with white patches on their hair until no gray-headed patriarch in Europe was free from suspicion. I myself had sleuthed it through England, France, Holland, and Belgium, and now I found myself in Antwerp at the Hotel St. Antoine, without a clew that promised anything except another outrage on some ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... freely, and, besides the county doctor, had two very eminent practitioners from London, one of whom was a gray-headed man, the other singularly young for the fame he had obtained. But then he was a genuine enthusiast ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... just this moment arrived-just as I was finishing a note to poor Lady Stanley. I believe the last country-house visit we paid in England was to Stanley's. Lord! how my friends & acquaintances fall about me now in my gray-headed days! Vereshchagin, Mommsen, Dvorak, Lenbach, & Jokai, all so recently, & now Stanley. I have known Stanley 37 years. Goodness, who is ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with astonishment, the old cheat saluted the forty gray-headed men. "Devout adorers of fire," said he to them, "this is a happy day for us; where ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... face downwards, on the bank counter, took a pen, indorsed, and passed it to the managing clerk. The gray-headed man glanced sharply at the signature, and then at Burton, "Why, surely this is not Mr. Hornby's signature? It does not at ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... devotion of the Rev. Mr. Viljoen, clergyman of Reitz, in the Orange Free State, who is a fellow-prisoner of ours. The gaiety is kept up by sports and by the companionship of many children. The sorrow is enhanced by the presence of many gray-headed old men and by sad and heart-breaking tidings. 'Guard, is there ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... Cato, when they saw others sink under labors, and grow effeminate by pleasures, but beheld him unconquered by either; and that, too, not only when he was young and desirous of honor, but also when old and gray-headed, after a consulship and triumph; like some famous victor in the games, persevering in his exercise and maintaining his character to the very last. He himself says, that he never wore a suit of clothes which cost more than a hundred drachmas; and that, when he ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Ocean, and over the wide expanse of the Atlantic, sinks slowly to night behind the mountains of our own broad and beautiful land. They gild the spire of an ancient village church, beneath which, in the days that are no more, our youthful ears drank in the kindly teachings of the gray-headed and venerable man, now forming one of the congregation that sleeps beneath the green sod surrounding it. They gild, with a golden tint, the attic windows of an old homestead, behind the small panes of which, there came to us once, more golden, but equally unsubstantial, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... primogeniture. [Science of old age.] geriatrics, nostology|. V. be aged &c. adj.; grow old, get old &c. adj.; age; decline, wane, dodder; senesce. Adj. aged; old &c. 124; elderly, geriatric, senile; matronly, anile|; in years; ripe, mellow, run to seed, declining, waning, past one's prime; gray, gray-headed; hoar, hoary; venerable, time-worn, antiquated, passe, effete, decrepit, superannuated; advanced in life, advanced in years; stricken in years; wrinkled, marked withthe crow's foot; having one foot in the grave; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... day of sale there were slave traders and speculators on the ground to buy. The slaves were offered on the auction block one after another, until they were all sold before their old master's face. The first man offered on the block was an old gray-headed slave by the name of Richard. His wife followed him up to the block, and when they had bid him up to seventy or eighty dollars one of the bidders asked Mr. Young what he could do, as he looked very old and infirm? Mr. Young replied by ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... master in the world, he seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him; by this means his domesticks are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet de chambre for his brother, his butler is gray-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy-counsellor. You see the goodness of the master even in the old house-dog, and in a gray pad that ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... before described. We were ordered out of the cars, and marching a few rods, came in sight of another of those hateful Stockades, which seemed to be as natural products of the Sterile sand of that dreary land as its desolate woods and its breed of boy murderers and gray-headed assassins. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... gray-headed servitors were left to guard the precincts of the castle, for no attack was apprehended from the marauders of the forest, as the Normans styled the English; and every one who could bear arms had left to swell the final ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... new aspirations, of her Roman republic. One day, when Madame Roland was in power, she had just passed from her splendid dining-room, where she had been entertaining the most distinguished men of the empire, into her drawing-room, when a gray-headed gentleman entered, and bowing profoundly and most obsequiously before her, entreated the honor of an introduction to the Minister of the Interior. This gentleman was M. Haudry, with whose servants she had ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the old man, softly. The word "lad" seemed so inapplicable to that gray-headed, care-lined face, which he had known so young and comely, that the misuse of it touched the speaker. "You ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... presence of a guest so courtly. The good squire heaped his plate with a profusion of boiled beef; and while the poor earl was contemplating in dismay the Alps upon Alps which he was expected to devour, the gray-headed butler, anxious to serve him with alacrity, whipped away the overloaded plate, and presently returned it, yet more astoundingly surcharged with an additional world of a composition of stony colour and sudorific aspect, which, after examining ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... respect for our soldiers, and to bring no severer punishment upon the city than it had already received. There was a brutal scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, with a pair of tailor's shears, insisted on cutting the buttons from the uniform of an elegant gray-headed old brigadier, who had just come in from Johnston's army; but he bore himself modestly and very handsomely through it. His staff was composed of fine-looking, stalwart fellows, evidently gentlemen, who appeared intensely mortified at such treatment. They had no clothes except their rebel ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... Marya Borissovna were Minister of War, and Princess Vatkovskaya were Commander-in-Chief," said a gray-headed, little old man in a gold-embroidered uniform, addressing a tall, handsome maid of honor who had questioned him about ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... boat, a sword, and a sharp axe, Pedro embraced his brothers and departed, never to return. He took a longer and safer route than that of his predecessors. He had no sooner arrived at the mountain than an old gray-headed man in tattered clothes came limping towards him and asking for help; but the selfish Pedro turned a deaf ear to the supplications of the old man, whom he pushed away with much disrespect. Ignorant of his doom, and regardless of his ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... it's lovely," nodded Grace. "When I start on my pilgrimage I'm not going to think that I shall ever grow into a staid, stately married person. I'm going to keep the spirit of youth alive until I'm old and gray-headed. Did I dream it, Nora, or did I see you lay your work bag on the hall settee? I hope it's a reality. These are busy times, you know. I'm a hard-working individual. So is Mother. If I see someone else blissfully idle it has ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... frequently paused more accurately to survey, and its laughing and sportive beams playing over chink and crevice, seemed almost as insolent and untimeous as the mirth of the young mocking the silent grief of some gray-headed and solitary mourner. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men,— The youth in life's fresh spring and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe and the gray-headed man— Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those who in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... know them. And the manager couldn't call his soul his own until he had loaded her into a cab and on her way. Wilbur told me that while on the road that between watching the panners in the box offices and keeping her from throwing a fit on the stage he got gray-headed. As for her maid, I can only say, 'Help that poor creature.' One time the maid pinched her foot while buttoning her shoe and what does the prima donna do but bounce her whole makeup box on the top of the maid's defenseless nob. And the way she looks on the street compared ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... I," said Luke, "but it don't make much difference. If I had fifty dollars, I'd go off and try my luck somewhere else, but I'll have to wait till I'm gray-headed before I ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... testimony of my gratitude to your self and Family, who descended to such a degree of humility as to admit me into their friendship in the dayes of my youth; and notwithstanding my many infirmities, have continued me in it till I am become gray-headed; and as Time has added to my yeares, have still increased and ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... very well the first ideas I had of God when a boy, which I derived from the preaching and praying of ministers. It was that God and our Lord Jesus Christ were two distinct Beings. We had for a time a venerable gray-headed old man who preached one Sabbath, and a young man who preached the next. I thought the old man represented God the Father and the young man ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... knew me, Jenison. Now, I'm a man again. See these hands? Well, they've been doing honest work, even if it was in a convict barrel factory. I'm ten times stronger than I was before. There isn't a soft muscle in my body. What you miss is the fat—the whiskey fat. I'm gray-headed, but who wouldn't be? But that is not what I'm trying to get at. I saw Dick Cronk this morning. I don't know how he found me. He told me you were up here to take a hand in my affairs. What I want to know, right ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... young in years, fellows," he was saying, "but I am aged in experience. If I had my rights, I should long ago have been gray-headed. I have seen thrilling times in my life, and have been the hero of adventures, that, were I to relate them to you, would make each particular hair of your heads stand on end, like the quills of a punched hedge-hog. I am—if you will ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... the ten days that had elapsed since informing Weir he had learned of Saurez' possible knowledge of the past had proceeded to make himself agreeable to the gray-headed old man. He had explained his "history." He exercised all the arts of graciousness and flattery. Beginning at the present he worked back through the past to the killing of Jim Dent and the flight of Joseph Weir, extracting tales of early fights, raids, ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men— The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man Shall one by one be gathered to thy side By those who in their turn ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... empires; a uniform known to the southern and the northern hemispheres, the eastern and the western continents, and all the islands of the sea. Subalterns wearing this uniform have fronted dangers and responsibilities such as in most other services only gray-headed generals are called upon to face; and, at the head of handfuls of troops, have won for the British crown realms as large, and often as populous, as European kingdoms. The scarlet-clad officers who serve the monarchy of Great Britain have conquered many a barbarous people in all the ends of ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the hill, Bates, the gray-headed groom, who had attended Violet ever since her first pony-ride, took possession of Titmouse and the chaise, while the baskets were handed over to a lad, who had been on the watch for their arrival. Then they all went down the steep ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... men who seemed to have some connection with these girls,— one an elderly, gray-headed personage, well-stricken in liquor, talking loudly and foolishly, but good-humoredly; the other a young man, sober, and doing his best to keep his elder friend quiet. The girls seemed to give themselves no uneasiness about the matter.—Both ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one of them. Mr. Schultz wrote me of the first occasion: "When I entered the lodge, it was already well filled with men who had been invited to participate in the ceremony. The medicine man was aged and gray-headed, and his feeble limbs could scarcely support his body. Between him and his wife was the bundle which contained the medicine pipe, as yet unwrapped, lying on a carefully folded buffalo robe. Plates of food were placed before each guest, and after all had finished ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... what I have described, but for an old starched gray-headed steward, who is as much an antiquity as any in the place, and looks like an old family picture walked out of its frame. He failed not, as we passed from room to room, to relate several memoirs of the family; but his observations were particularly curious ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... to the sea. As each citizen, wine-dealer, grocer, innkeeper, or worker in iron, came up on the height, he incontinently inquired for Tonti, or 'Maso, as he was generally called; and getting the bearings and distance of the gray-headed old seaman, he invariably made his way to his side, until a group of some two hundred men, women, and children had clustered near the person of the pilota, as the faithful gather about a favorite expounder of the law, in moments of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the things which no fellow can understand. Thousands come to it, thousands go from it. Porters grow gray-headed beneath its roof. Buns, once fresh and tender, become hard and misanthropic in its refreshment rooms, and look as if they had seen the littleness of existence and were disillusioned. But there the station stands, year after year, wrapped in ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... hastily around a projecting point of the slope and spur at rapid gait towards the spot where the cavalry have dismounted and are breathing their horses. There is hardly time for salutations. A gray-headed, keen-eyed, florid-faced old soldier is the colonel, and he is snapping with ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... war-whoop, she stepped forward and shook her club towards the Sioux lines, and related that a war party of Chippewas had gone to the Warwater River, and killed a Sioux, and when they returned they threw the scalp at her feet. A very old, deaf, and gray-headed man, tottering with age, also stepped out to tell the exploits of his ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... ditches and embankments, made of muskets and swords. A long room in the second wing contains an encampment in which twelve or fifteen large tents are formed in like manner. There was also exhibited the armor of a dwarf king of Bohemia and Hungary who died a gray-headed old man in his twentieth year, the sword of Marlborough, the coat of Gustavus Adolphus, pierced in the breast and back with the bullet which killed him at Luetzen, the armor of the old Bohemian princess Libussa, and that of the amazon Wlaska, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... educated Englishman can ever have heard that text except in his youth, and that those who are old enough to remember having heard it, "never considered its precise applicability," are surely rash, in the treatment of a scientific subject. I can assure Mr. Greg that a few gray-headed votaries of the creed of Christendom still read—though perhaps under their breath—the words which early associations have made precious to them; and that in the bygone days, when that Sermon on the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Union, and of the calamities which might follow its dissolution, every eye was fixed upon him. There were several quite dramatic passages in the speech which roused the orator to more than usual animation. Such were the allusions to the gray-headed Clerk of the Senate, the contrast of the man-of-war entering a foreign port before and after the dissolution of the Union, and the episode, where, enumerating by name the great men who had added glory to the Republic, he said: "After all these have performed their ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... attractions of simplicity and youthful innocence, and finding so much interest in the bare circumstance of being a traveller at a childish age. Then what blooming young handmaidens! how different from the knowing and worldly demireps of modern high roads! And sometimes gray-headed, faithful waiters, how sincere and how attentive, by comparison with their flippant successors, the eternal "coming, sir, coming," of our ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ascent of Mont Ventoux, near Avignon. An indefinable longing for a distant panorama grew stronger and stronger in him, till at length the accidental sight of a passage in Livy, where King Philip, the enemy of Rome, ascends the Haemus, decided him. He thought that what was not blamed in a gray-headed monarch might be well excused in a young ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Miguel Ballester hear of the arrival of Roldan, than he set forth to meet him. Ballester was a venerable man, gray-headed, and of a soldier-like demeanor. Loyal, frank, and virtuous, of a serious disposition, and great simplicity of heart, he was well chosen as a mediator with rash and profligate men; being calculated to calm ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... country, denying it for the whole, speech ignoring the nationalist tendency so soon to overwhelm all bounds, all creeds in the making of a mighty America that should be a home for all the nations. But as the gray-headed old doctor went on he only voiced what was the earnest conviction of many of the ablest men of his time, both of the South and ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... feminine weakness and the helplessness of infancy or of extreme old age would secure better terms for them than could be hoped for in case of a brave, but ineffectual defence by unarmed men.[490] It was a confidence misplaced. Unresisting, gray-headed men were despatched with the sword, while the women were reserved for the grossest outrage, or suffered the mutilation of their breasts, or, if with child, were butchered with their unborn offspring. Of all the property spared them by previous oppressors, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... approached the big table, above which hung two heavy seven-branched candelabra of solid silver. The old man—whose bent, but strong figure, wrinkled face, and snow-white beard, proclaimed that he was over eighty—took from the hand of the eldest son—himself a gray-headed man—a long candle, and, raising it toward the other candles in the candelabra, exclaimed, in a ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... people he brought over! Old gray-headed uncles, leaning on canes, who told stories of "de good ole times long befo' de wah"; middle-aged men and women who rejoiced in the present good times of freedom, and comical little pickaninnies, who looked forward with eagerness ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, Came children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green; Gray-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... his note for one hundred dollars as a memento. I might have been keener, I dare say; but one of the transcendentally lovely things of youth is its perfect faith. These preternaturally wise and prudent young people come into the world mentally gray-headed. But I do it now with my eyes wide open; and, when you are a rich man, I have another scheme I want to take through, a sort of home or hospital of my own planning: so don't fancy I shall let you ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... continued, "Directly that sister got big enough, she was married and started to go to England, but the vessel went to smash and the crew went to the bottom. Poor gal, she always hated salt, but she's used to it by this time, I reckon. Then there was pap died next, but he was old and gray-headed, and sick-hearted like, and he wanted to go, but it made it jest as bad for me. Then thar ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... was at that time not tall enough to look through the levelling-instrument; and in using it, he was obliged to mount upon a stool, carried by his attendants for that purpose. As the discipline in the Swedish army required that the soldier should always uncover the head in speaking to his superior, gray-headed men came, cap in hand, to receive their instructions from this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Leigoutte had risen from the ashes after the war was over. A great sensation was caused one day by the appearance in the village of an old gray-headed man. He said he intended to erect a new building on the spot where the school and tavern house formerly stood. The old man paid without any haggling the price asked for the ground, and shortly afterward workmen ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... me gray-headed," Fairchild answered with a little laugh. Then his brow furrowed. "You say you slipped and fell just as you were ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come, And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man,— Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... which filled most of the lower story of the hotel. There he found the hardware department, and prominent among the hardware were the gun racks. He went over the Colts and with an expert hand took up the guns, while the gray-headed storekeeper advanced an eulogium upon each weapon. His attention was distracted by the entrance of a tall, painfully thin man ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... runnin' walk that is good for six miles an hour. He's a walkin' fool. And anything you git your rope on, he'll hold it till you're gray-headed and got whiskers. That ole hoss is the best cow-hoss in Antelope County—and I'm referrin' you to Steve Brown to back me up. I bought that hoss from Steve. Any time you see the Box-S brand on a hoss, you can figure he's a ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... gray-headed president, "that you will enjoy this scouting expedition all the more because you are on the trail of a white man. But while I am going to trust to your own good sense and your knowledge of your people in running this lie right ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... same's it does you, Miss Kate. It doesn't seem more than five years ago, and what would I have thought if I had known 'he' and I were going to keep a lighthouse and be contented there, what's more, and sometimes not get ashore for a fortnight; settled, gray-headed old folks! We were gay enough in those days. I know old Miss Sabrina Smith warned me that I'd better think twice before I took up with Tom Kew, for he was a light-minded young man. I speak o' that to him in the winter-time, when he sets reading the almanac half asleep ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... mile from the mole, in a retired street running parallel with the Cabanas river, surrounded by a large garden, at the foot of which was a summer-house, overhanging the river, to which led a flight of steps. Upon our arrival we alighted from our vehicle, paid our driver and rang the gate-bell. A gray-headed negro gave us admission and conducted us to the house, where we were ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... and able-bodied of the people were slain or absent on distant expeditions, and only old and gray-headed men were ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... in the silence of the wide field, and saw an elderly man, bent in the shoulders as fishermen often are, gray-headed and clean-shaven, and with a timid air. It was William. He looked just like his mother, and I had been imagining that he was large and stout like his sister, Almira Todd; and, strange to say, my fancy had led me to picture him not far from ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Their mirth and their employment, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man, Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... hair or baldness. Only worry about the location of your gray hair or baldness. If they get on the inside of the head, worry. Do you know why corporations sometimes say they do not want to employ gray-headed men? They have found that so many of them have quit going on south and have gotten ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... Through it, as I reached the door, I saw Zura half bending over the bed, shielding the face of the sick boy, Jane at the foot with lifted, detaining hand, Kobu's face as he pointed to the bed, saying, "There, sir, is the thief—I mean prisoner," and his startled look as the tall, gray-headed stranger went swiftly to the bed and gathered Page into ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... again almost immediately, followed by the gray-headed gentleman whom I had noticed on the journey ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Paris; we grew quite fond of the honest family of the hotel at Chamouni. Pictet knows all the people, and wherever we stopped they all flocked round him with such cordial gratitude in their faces, from the little children to the gray-headed men and women; all seemed to love "Monsieur le Professeur." The guides, especially Pierre Balmat and his son, are some of the best-informed and most agreeable men I ever conversed with. Indeed for six ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... advice; but the three months were not out, and the idea of giving up so soon was proclaiming a defeat before I was fairly routed; so to all "Don't stays" I opposed "I wills," till, one fine morning, a gray-headed gentleman rose like a welcome ghost on my hearth; and, at the sight of him, my resolution melted away, my heart turned traitor to my boys, and, when he said, "Come home," I answered, "Yes, father;" and so ended my career ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... door softly and with tremulous fingers, Coronado looked out upon an old gray-headed man, short and paunchy in build, with small, tottering, uneasy legs, skin mottled like that of a toad, cheeks drooping and shaking, chin retiring, nose bulbous, one eye a black hollow, the other filmy and yet shining, expression both dull ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... and her husband, a tall, thin, gray-headed, well-dressed man, both came forward to greet us, and after a few introductions I joined a set at tennis. They were a merry crowd. The Leithcourts were entertaining a large house-party, and their hospitality ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... went up the steps. By and by a trumpet sounded, a drum beat, and again appeared a succession of half a dozen royal equipages, each with its six horses, its postilion, coachman, and three footmen, grand with cocked hats and embroidery; and the gray-headed, bowing Grand Duke and his nodding Grand Duchess as before. The Noble Guard ranged themselves on horseback opposite the loggia; but there was no irksome and impertinent show of ceremony and restraint upon the people. The play-guard of volunteer soldiers, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... young girl turned upon the gray-headed chancellor almost savagely. "Oblige! and who, Sir Chancellor, upon earth shall OBLIGE me to do so, if I do it not of mine own will? Say not ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... to support black poplars, and we rounded a crumbly sand bank just in time to see the seven-banded birch canoe of a little old hunter, Sam Ba'tiste Buck—eighty years old he was—squatting in the bottom of the birch canoe, ragged almost to nakedness, bare of feet, gray-headed, nearly toothless but happier than an emperor—the first living being we had seen for a week in the muskegs. We camped together that night on the sandbars—trading Sam Ba'tiste flour and matches for a couple of ducks. He had been ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... my stoicism as best I can," he writes to Voltaire. "If you saw me you would hardly know me: I am old, broken, gray-headed, wrinkled. If this goes on there will be nothing left of me but the mania of making verses and an inviolable attachment to my duties and to the few virtuous men I know. But you will not get a peace signed by my hand except on conditions honorable to my nation. Your people, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... have changed into this gravity and anxiety! On the other hand, those who stood where they stand now,—whose names occupied the signs and the records which theirs now fill,—have passed away, or, here and there, come tottering along, bent and gray-headed men. Those, too, who were mere infants-those whom we never saw-take up our old stations, and inspire them with the gladness of childhood. And exactly thus have we changed to others. We are a mirror to them and they ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... and on one of them was an engraving, representing a young man, presumed to be gray-headed, standing in his night-dress in the middle of his chamber, and with closed eyes applying the Elixir to his head, with both hands; while on the bed adjacent stood a large bottle, conspicuously labeled, "Balm of Paradise." It seemed from the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... was a gay-hearted, good-natured woman it is certainly Miss Anthony. From the beginning of this council it is she who has kept the fun barometer away up. The gray-headed friends of her youth are all "girls" to her, and she is a girl among them. Parliamentary rules have been by no means so severe as to keep even the regular proceedings free from her lively interpolation and comment. When Miss Anthony has felt the public ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... party, junior in years of life and years of service to the gray-headed subaltern whom some odd fate had assigned to the command of this detachment, nearly two complete "troops" of cavalry with a pack-train of sturdy little mules to match. We all knew that, as organized, one of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... and, as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him; by this means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet-de-chambre for his brother; his butler is gray-headed; his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen; and his coachman has the looks of a privy-councillor. You see the goodness of the master even in the old house-dog, and in a gray pad that is kept in the stable with great care and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... "an old family servant" carries with it a thousand kind associations, in all parts of the world; and there is no claim upon the home-bred charities of the heart more irresistible than that of having been "born in the house." It is common to see gray-headed domestics of this kind attached to an English family of the "old school," who continue in it to the day of their death, in the enjoyment of steady, unaffected kindness, and the performance of faithful, unofficious duty. I think ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... strain of his office-work, and the strain of his remittances, and the knowledge of his boy's death, which touched the boy more, perhaps, than it would have touched a man; and, beyond all, the enduring strain of his daily life. Gray-headed seniors, who approved of his thrift and his fashion of denying himself everything pleasant, reminded him of the old saw ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Seraphael's burial by night, with the music winding up among the stars; but did it in reality exceed the actual progress of the dead Master's ashes from city to city, met in the twilight and the evening by music, gray-headed Capellmeisters receiving him with singing in the open midnight, and fresh songs being flung upon his coffin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... in the dead of night under waving black flags, between human walls again, but everywhere was a deep stillness now & a stillness emphasized rather than broken by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over pavements cushioned with sand, & the low sobbing of gray-headed women who had witnessed the first entrance, forty-four years before, when she & they were young & unaware.... She was so blameless—the Empress; & so beautiful in mind & heart, in person & spirit; & whether with the crown upon her head, or without it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... trees, lopt of their branches, lay about in picturesque confusion. A wheelwright's shed and yard adjoined the cottage, and Mr. Carnegie, halting without dismounting, whistled loud and shrill to call attention. A wiry, gray-headed man appeared from the shed, and came forward with a rueful, humorous twinkle in ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... gone. A thick-set and gray-headed old figure, he bent over his desk by my side, putting up a fierce, silent fight for his strength, and now slowly getting enough of it back to keep him at his job as a clerk in what had been his warehouse. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... queen roused the quick Andalusian spirit. Warriors who had long since given up fighting and had sent their sons to battle now seized the sword and lance rusting on the wall, and marshalled forth their gray-headed domestics and their grandchildren for the field. The great dread was, that all aid would arrive too late; El Zagal and his host had passed like a storm through the mountains, and it was feared the tempest had already burst upon ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... The gray-headed butler did as ordered with a very good grace, and then hurried into the servants' hall to communicate ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was, I think, Max Mueller who gave us an introduction to Madame Mohl. She sent us an invitation to one of her Friday evenings, and we duly mounted to the top of the old house in the Rue du Bac which she made famous for so long. As we entered the room I saw a small disheveled figure, gray-headed, crouching beside a grate, with a kettle in her hand. It was Madame Mohl—then eighty- one—who was trying to make the fire burn. She just raised herself to greet us, with a swift investigating glance; and then returned to her task of making the tea, in which I endeavored to help her. ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... looked up in my face in a shy fashion at first; but when she saw what a mild, gray-headed old bachelor had bade her good morning, she took courage, ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... jests are insupportable," cried she, stamping with her little satin-slippered foot upon the carpet. "You excuse this gray-headed dunce merely to vex me, and to remind me that I am an orphan ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... own time, Khem Singh knocked at the wicket-gate of the Fort and walked to the Captain and the Subaltern, who were nearly gray-headed on account of correspondence that daily arrived from ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... return my thanks!" exclaimed the younger sister, rising from the encircling arm of Cora, and casting herself with enthusiastic gratitude on the naked rock; "to that Heaven who has spared the tears of a gray-headed father; has saved the lives of those I ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... pirate's death, and the fate of poor Florette, is a tale that never wearies their fire-side circle, and there, tears are still shed for the dark scourge of the ocean, and his devoted mistress; and very often is an old and gray-headed man, in whom the reader would hardly recognize our old friend, John, asked to recount his perilous achievements on the pirate's deck, and his wonderful escape, obtained by his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... by a Yank speakin' good French, most of 'em relyin', like Matthews here, on the sign language, although I'll say that Matthews gets plenty far enough with that. Why, they're four girls and a widow at home that if they knew how far Matthews was gettin' with the sign language they'd be gray-headed to-day.... Aw, well, Matthews, quit spoilin' this drawin'. Do you wanta get me and Admiral Sims into trouble ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... ornamented with the horns of deer and goats, and made it look as cheerful and gay as the faces of the children. Hulda's grandmother had sent her a great cake, and when the children had played enough at all the games they could think of, the old gray-headed servants brought it in and set it on the table, together with a great many other nice things such as people eat in Norway—pasties made of reindeer meat, and castles of the sweet pastry sparkling with sugar ornaments of ships and flowers and crowns, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... and some shuttlecocks with most of the feathers missing, were on a marble slab in one corner of the hall, which constantly reminded me that there had once been younger inhabitants here than the old lady and her gray-headed servants. In another corner stood a marble figure of a satyr: every day I laid my hand on his shoulder to feel ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... especially sharply criticized by the Russian sectarian peasants at Glendale, Arizona. "Why, the school is making out of our children dancers and soldiers of war, instead of farmers—soldiers of the soil!" exclaimed a gray-headed "prophet" in disgust. Another peasant, perhaps not so high in the sectarian hierarchy, wanted the school to teach their boys how to run and ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... have been greater if the stranger had worn a panther-skin and carried a thyrsus, for the cunning barber had said nothing of the Greeks age or appearance, and among her father's scholarly visitors she had hardly ever seen any but gray-headed men. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the soldier, throwing his palm open with an air of happy extravagance, and a group of gray-headed "citizens," just behind, exploded a ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... soldiers were now armed, and awaited the victims they were to chastise. These were dragged out of the guard-house. First came tottering the gray-headed Mr. Krause, slowly and sadly; then came Mr. Kretschmer, formerly the brave, undaunted hero of the quill—now a poor, trembling, crushed piece of humanity. They stood in the middle of the square, and, bewildered with terror, their help-imploring looks ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... wise to force himself upon that gray-headed sufferer in this cruel hour, in which he had been awakened from the one delusion of a blameless life to discover that he had been the dupe of a false face, and the fool of a nature which was too coldly mercenary, too cruelly heartless, to be ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... of feeling at all that must have passed before their eyes. The gathering of armed knights for war or revelry; the rejoicings for the birth of an heir, or the lamentations for the death of the stern gray-headed lord; the bridal of one lovely daughter of the house of Lomervo, or the solitary departure of the mail-clad lover of another for the Crusades. But, it is said, they saw much more than all this: according to popular rumour, these calm deep ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle |
