"Jet-black" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been out of order when I tested it. Almost in a trance I walked along, until, stumbling, I fell, and dropped Cats'-meat into a well. And then another strange thing happened. The horse with its jet-black tail and mane, emerged from the water as white as snow! Apparently annoyed at the treatment to which it had been accidentally subjected, it fled away, and I lost sight of it amongst the hills that overlook Wild-Westbury. And then the strangest thing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... curved half of a shell, deeply hollowed, and set on two high wheels that as they rolled made scarcely any sound; there was no seat, and both he and Sah-luma stood erect, the latter using all the force of his slender brown hands to control the spirited prancing of the pair of jet-black steeds which, harnessed tandem-wise to the light-vehicle, seemed more than once disposed to break loose into furious gallop regardless ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... gods! What a smell of fish and fustian," signed Bertie, with a yawn of utter famine for want of something to drink and something to smoke, were it only a glass of brown sherry and a little papelito, while he glanced down at the snow-white and jet-black masterpieces of Rake's genius, all ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the volcanoes Mount Eoa and Mount Kea, was supposed to guard all the passes to the extensive valleys lying round their base. There are legends of her having chased with streams of fire several impious adventurers. Near Hilo, a jet-black cliff is shown, with the vitreous torrent apparently pouring over into the sea: just as it cooled after one of these ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... of his bearing. He was not a scholar, yet his words were like martial music; in stature he was less than the medium size, yet his strength was extraordinary; he seemed made of tempered steel. His entire aspect breathed high ambition and daring. His jet-black curls, his open candid brow, his dark eyes, at once fiery and tender, his eagle profile, his mouth just shaded by the youthful growth that hid none of its powerful and delicate lines—the whole face, which seemed made for nothing less than the command of men, whether as general ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... it is a better description than the speaker knows. The Oxford M.A. gown, worn over a cassock, is the Benedictine habit modified by time and place; the spare, thin figure suggests asceticism; the beautifully chiselled, sharply-pointed features, the close-shaved face, the tawny skin, the jet-black hair, remind us vaguely of something by Velasquez or Murillo, or of Ary Scheffer's picture of St. Augustine. And the interest aroused by sight is intensified by sound. The vibrant voice strikes like an electric shock. The exquisite, almost over-refined, articulation seems the very ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... not pretty; even the Dahcotahs, who are far from being connoisseurs in beauty do not consider her pretty. She is, however, tall and well made, and her feet and hands (as is always the case with the Dahcotah women) are small. She has a quantity of jet-black hair, that she braids with a great deal of care. Her eyes are very black, but small, and her dark complexion is relieved by more red than is usually seen in the cheeks of the daughters of her race. Her teeth are very fine, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... it, I should most probably have trodden upon or dangerously near it. Viewing it closely, I found that it was a coral snake, famed as much for its beauty and singularity as for its deadly character. It was about three feet long, and very slim; its ground colour a brilliant vermilion, with broad jet-black rings at equal distances round its body, each black ring or band divided by a narrow yellow strip in the middle. The symmetrical pattern and vividly contrasted colours would have given it the appearance ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... own request, was introduced to Don Carlos de Ruiz, who was smilingly receiving the congratulations of English friends on his splendid play. At close quarters she found him to be a man of about thirty-five, very handsome, with clean-cut features, pale complexion, jet-black hair with a natural crinkle in it, and dark, inscrutable eyes ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... so yet. Look at that," as, with a turn in the air, the hanging Hummer changed its jet-black throat to flame and scarlet that silenced ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and Shenac, the youngest, who was her father's favourite, and who could take liberties that none of the others could have done at her age, came at other times. She was older than our Shenac by a year or so; but she was little and merry, and her jet-black hair was cut close to her head like a child's, so she seemed much younger. She could not come too often. She was equally welcome to the grave, quiet Hamish and the boyish Dan, and more welcome to Shenac than to either. For she never hindered work, but helped it rather. She ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... twenty-five years, poring ever his old books, and occasionally jotting down extracts therefrom. He was a broad-shouldered man, tall and straight, about sixty-five years of age. His clean-shaven face was white as marble, its cold and lifeless appearance accentuated by his jet-black hair, strongly-marked eyebrows of the same dark hue, and his unusually black eyes; his nose was slightly aquiline, and his mouth well shaped, though wide; but the firm-set lips and broad nostrils, gave the whole face an expression of coldness and ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... hesitated, looked around with narrowing green-jewelled eyes, and, ignoring the whispered invitation and the outstretched hand, leaped lightly to a chair and settled down on a silken cushion, paws and tail folded under her jet-black body. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and shines most unctuously with "thy incomparable oil, Macassar."' Willis was always interested in dress, being himself a born dandy, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you," he causes the whole matter to be indelibly impressed on their minds by the very mechanical comparison of Perfection, Establishment, Strengthening, and Settling to four sparkling jewels set in the jet-black foil of past suffering. This is just that kind of illustration which his audience craves. It matters not whether he meets this audience through a vague or a transparent medium, provided the vagueness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the justice curry-combed his front hair with his fingers—greasy, jet-black hair, worn long, as befitted his position,—"this is not a question of sympathy, but a question of law. Your honorable boord advertoised some time since for certain supplies needed for the growth and development of this most important of the villages of Staten Island. In ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... animated rather than joyous. It often excited laughter around her; but it was by dint of intellect that she created gayety (if we may so express it), for her countenance, impassioned as it was, seemed incapable of bending into a smile, and her large blue eyes, under her jet-black hair, gave her at first rather ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... embarrassed. Carried away by Sham Rao's description, we had noticed neither how nor whence she came. Had she appeared from beneath the earth we could not have been more astonished. Narayan stared at her, opening wide his big jet-black eyes; the Babu clicked his tongue in utter confusion. Imagine a skeleton seven feet high, covered with brown leather, with a dead child's tiny head stuck on its bony shoulders; the eyes set so deep and at the same time flashing such fiendish flames all through your ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... man, on a jet-black Arabian, who rode ahead of those glittering nobles—this was the Emperor Joseph, the hope ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... England, but audacity in colour, audacity in design, and audacity in construction. She would ride in the park in a black and yellow habit, and appear at the opera in white velvet without a speck of colour. Though certainly turned thirty, and probably nearer to forty, she would wear her jet-black hair streaming down her back, and when June came would drive about London in a straw hat. But yet it was always admitted that she was well dressed. And then would arise that ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... metallic- coloured dung-beetle, which is VERY common on the hill-sides; also, if you WOULD be so very kind as to cross the ferry, and you will find a great number under the stones on the waste land of a long, smooth, jet-black beetle (a great many of these); also, in the same situation, a very small pinkish insect, with black spots, with a curved thorax projecting beyond the head; also, upon the marshy land over the ferry, near the sea, under old sea-weed, stones, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... jet-black hair And eyes grey-blue, You felt when'er he lookt you fair That he must be true; And when he smil'd his dear and shy way Sidelong his mouth, I always thought the sun fell my way And the ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... not get out of her way, the captain hailed, and very politely asked her to get out of ours, or rather to steer clear of us. Instead of replying, or acting according to his request, some forty ugly fellows or more, of every hue, from jet-black to white, and in every style of costume, sprung up on her decks from below, and directly afterwards she ranged up alongside of us. The captain, on this, ordered her to sheer off; but instead of so ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... were black with many a crack, All black and bare, I ween; Jet-black and bare, save where with rust, Of mouldy damps and charnel crust, They were patched with purple ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... embossed, cut out, it did not shine—it glared from the sky. It made a melted moonstone of the atmosphere. It faded the few clouds to a sapphire-gray, just touched here and there with the chalky dot of a star. It slashed a silver trail across a sea jet-black except where the waves rimmed it with snow. Up in the white enchantment, but not far above them, the strange air-creatures were flying. They were not birds; they were ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... suits in which even the poorest parents are so proud to clothe their offspring. They love colour; and ribbons of many hues are lavished on the frocks and tunics. One of my London moments was when I first saw, in Whitechapel High Street, a little Jewess, with masses of jet-black hair, dressed in vermilion and white. I wonder, by the way, why it is that the children of the genteel quarters of London, such as Kensington Gardens, have no hair, or at any rate, only skimpy little twigs of it, while the children of the East are loaded with curls and ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... deck; when, if you should sometimes, as I hope you often may, fall in with a soft downy south-west breeze, a clear deep-blue sky over head, gemmed full with little stars, and fringed about, down into the watery round, by a broad border of jet-black cloud, against which each curling wave appears to break, and the goodly ship seems as though delving through a lake of quick-silver—when the track of the swift porpoises show like long furrows of ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... smooth in accordance with the laws of antique beauty, was massed jet-black hair divided and plaited into a multitude of fine tresses which fell on either shoulder. Twenty golden pins stuck into the tresses, like flowers in a ball head-dress, studded with brilliant points the thick dark hair which might have been ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... head was covered with a thick suit of white hair, which gave him a very dignified and venerable appearance. His dress was uniformly of superfine broadcloth, made in the old style of a plain coat, with straight collar and long waistcoat, and a broad-brimmed hat. His color was not jet-black, but decidedly negro. In size and personal appearance, the statue of Franklin at the Library of Philadelphia, as seen from the street, is a perfect likeness of him. Go to his house when you would, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... unfrequently adorned with costly necklaces. A negress, who was a slave belonging to a family of my acquaintance, possessed a necklace composed of fine Panama pearls, worth several thousand dollars. The pure white of the pearls was wonderfully heightened by the contrast of the jet-black skin of the wearer; and for this reason they were more ornamental to the negress than they would have been to ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... nobody seen before, and nobody suspicioned was there till they hearn him give that kind of snort, and they seen him standun' right in front of the mourners' bench under Elder Grove's pulpit. He was in his bare head, and he had a suit of long, glossy, jet-black hair hengun down back of his ears clean to his shoulders. He was kind of pale like, and sad-lookun', and he had a Roman nose some like yourn, and eyes like two coals, just black fire, kind of. He was putty thickset, round the shoulders, but he ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... the theory would put all these cases lightly aside, to cite that of the male cow-bird practising antics before the female and drawing a wide circle of melody round her; or that of the jet-black, automaton-like, dancing tyrant-bird; and concerning this species he would probably say that the plain-plumaged female went about unseen, critically watching the dancing of different males, to discover the most excellent performer according to the traditional standard. And this was, in substance, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... dizzily, and the larger part of the picture began to fade out of his vision. But her face remained to the last. It grew clearer, like a cameo framed in an iris—a beautiful, staring, horrified face with shimmering tresses of jet-black hair blowing about it like a veil. He noticed the hair, that was partly undone as if she had been in a struggle of some sort, or had been running fast against the breeze that ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... have him,' said the other woman, whose face was also of the hue of mahogany, and her hair jet-black, in greasy curls. 'I've nineteen of my own, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... insects let them alone; but it is now believed that no part of the plant is poisonous. Certainly one that claims the potato, tomato, and eggplant among its kin has no right to be dangerous. The BLACK, GARDEN, or DEADLY NIGHTSHADE, also called MOREL (S. nigrum), bears jet-black berries that are alleged to be fatal. Nevertheless, female bumblebees, to which its white flowers are specially adapted, visit them to draw out pollen from the chinks of the anthers with their jaws, just as they do in the case of the wild, sensitive plant, and with no more disastrous result. It ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... interpose between herself and her husband. Hogg had been told before her first appearance in the friendly circle that Eliza was "beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; an elegant figure, full of grace; her face was lovely,—dark, bright eyes; jet-black hair, glossy; a crop upon which she bestowed the care it merited,—almost all her time; and she was so sensible, so amiable, so good!" Now let us listen to the account he has himself transmitted of this woman, whom certainly he ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... tall and spare—almost gaunt—in figure, but powerfully framed, and capable of great exertion. His features were handsome and strongly marked—an aquiline nose and very prominent chin. His complexion was as pale as marble, and contrasted effectively with a thick crop of jet-black hair which extreme old age scarcely tinged ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the return of the riders. She placed it on her head, and behold! the cheeks had no more than their own roseate tinting, and she was beginning to hope Arthur would be pleased, when she became aware of certain dark eyes and a handsome face set in jet-black hair, presenting itself over her shoulder in the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the rich deep colour that nature had bestowed on the Indian beauty, the tell-tale blood deepened on her cheeks, until the blush gave new animation and intelligence to her jet-black eyes. Raising a finger in an attitude of warning, she dropped her voice, already so soft and sweet, nearly to a whisper, as ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... horse. Each cart was piled high with such belongings as could be brought away in the rush. On top of the belongings were piled children and the old women, all of whom had contrived to save their umbrellas and their gleaming, jet-black bonnets, piled with finery. Those who could not find places in the carts walked alongside, some of them carrying other belongings that could not be put on the carts. It was the most depressing sight so far. Lots of them were crying; all looked sad and crushed. Every one of ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... wrapped her like a chrysalis she emerged suddenly a glimmering, shimmering little oriental figure of satin and silver and haunting sandalwood—a veritable little incandescent rainbow of spangled moonlight and flaming scarlet and dark purple shadows. Great, heavy, jet-black curls caught back from her small piquant face by a blazing rhinestone fillet,—cheeks just a tiny bit over-tinted with rouge and excitement,—big, red-brown eyes packed full of high lights like a startled fawn's,—bold in the utter security of her masquerade, ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... to me a countenance yet more uninviting than that of the old crone who was performing with such dexterity the office of cook to the party. He was perhaps sixty years old; yet his brow was not much furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, by the advance of age. All his motions spoke strength unabated; and, though rather undersized, he had very broad shoulders, was square-made, thin-flanked, and apparently combined in his frame muscular strength and activity; the last somewhat impaired ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... and vendors, there were black, brown and fair; from the fairest skin, with light blue eyes, and flaxen hair, to the jet-black "Day and Martin" of Ethiopia; from the loveliest form of Nature's mould, to the disgusting squaw, whose flaccid mammae hung like inverted bottles to her girdle, or are extended over her shoulder to give nourishment to the little imp perched on her back; and here ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a well-formed, healthy Negrita damsel, with jet-black piercing eyes, and her hair in one perfect ball of close curls. The men are not of a handsome type; some of them have a hale, swarthy appearance, but many of them present a sickly, emaciated ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... introduced a person, apparently of no higher rank than a Nubian slave, whose appearance was nevertheless highly interesting. He was of superb stature and nobly formed, and his commanding features, although almost jet-black, showed nothing of negro descent. He wore over his coal-black locks a milk-white turban, and over his shoulders a short mantle of the same colour, open in front and at the sleeves, under which appeared a doublet of dressed leopard's skin reaching within a handbreadth of the knee. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of medium height and well-proportioned. His hands and feet were rather small and delicate. He carried his head erect with ease and freedom. Jet-black hair, slightly waving, streamed loose over temples and cheeks, and was gathered at the back in a short thick knot. In front it parted naturally, leaving exposed a narrow strip of the brow. The features of the face, though not regular, were still attractive, for large ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... heads of the great clans of the Achaemenians, then two hundred led desert horses, in splendid trappings, and then—after a long interval, that the host might cast no dust upon its lord, rode a single horseman on a jet-black steed, Artabanus—the king's uncle and vizier. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... feet, but he was so exquisitely proportioned that he looked less than his height. His skin was fair and smooth, but tanned to an olive-brown. His forehead was of medium height, straight and square, with jet-black brows drawn almost straight across it above a pair of rather soft, dreamy eyes that were blue or black according to the mood of their possessor. His nose was strong and slightly curved, with delicately sensitive nostrils. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... beam of burning light I hold!— My good Damascus brand, And the jet-black charger that I ride Was foaled in the Arab land, And a hundred horsemen, mailed in steel, Follow ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... veiling the sweet suggestion of distant sea and happier hills that should be visible, the horror of this view is aggravated. Breaking here and there, the billows of mist disclose forlorn tracts of jet-black desolation, wicked, unutterable, hateful in their hideousness, with patches of smutty snow above, and downward-rolling volumes of murky smoke. Shakspere, when he imagined the damned spirits confined to 'thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,' divined the nature of a ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was compelled to squeeze rent money out of the poor by his master. The latter looked so good and benevolent that people called him "The Patriarch," but he was at heart a genuine skinflint, for whose meanness Pancks got all the credit. Pancks was a short, wiry man, with a scrubby chin and jet-black eyes, and when he walked or talked he puffed and blew and snorted ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... the parting of her jet-black hair to the high instep of her slender foot; a glancing, brilliant, brunette beauty, with the piquant charm of perpetual spirits, and the equipoise of a perfectly healthy nature. She was altogether graceful, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... went to round them up, he found the nine indeed, but with them and guarding them with an air of more than mere comradeship was a coal-black stallion, prancing around and rounding up the bunch like an expert, his jet-black coat a vivid contrast to the golden hides ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... manufacturing art, by their COPYING FROM NATURE. The utter savage makes use of nature—the gourd is his utensil; and the more advanced natives of Unyoro adopt it as the model for their pottery. They make a fine quality of jet-black earthenware, producing excellent tobacco-pipes most finely worked in imitation of the small egg-shaped gourd. Of the same earthenware they make extremely pretty bowls, and also bottles copied from the varieties ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... small quantity of gas-black with the brown hard varnish previously mentioned. The black can be obtained by boiling a pot over a gas-burner, so that it almost touches the burner, when a fine jet-black will form at the bottom, which remove and mix with the varnish, and apply with ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... an opinion. Our aim just now is to keep them to facts. Some of them," the artist added with a smile, "are rather too much inclined to draw upon their imagination. Now there is one girl there who is, humanly speaking, certain to paint the model's hair jet-black, or as black as paint can be made. And yet, you see, there is not ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... their savings Pere Cognet and his spouse had managed to buy their present house. La Cognette, a woman of forty, tall and plump, with the nose of a Roxelane, a swarthy skin, jet-black hair, brown eyes that were round and lively, and a general air of mirth and intelligence, was selected by Maxence Gilet, on account of her character and her talent for cookery, as the Leonarde of the Order. Pere Cognet might be about fifty-six years old; he was ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... forth as he does constantly with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls on his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, which on the right temple is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl." A lady who met him at dinner described him as appareled in a black velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes Harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... merely a perforation at the top, they are used to carry water, some holding nearly three gallons. When divided, the parts serve, according to their size and shape, for platters, dishes, or drinking-cups. Being jet-black, and susceptible of a high polish, they are often curiously carved, and mounted with the precious metals, to form sugar-basins, toilet-dishes, and other useful and ornamental articles for the dwellings of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... by some morning birds, Little Auks. The two men are frightened of each other when daylight shines on them, as their hair and beards have grown so long. They have not washed for a year or more, and are as black in the face as negroes. Nansen, who is usually extremely fair, has now jet-black hair. They may be excused for not bathing ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... after year unto her feet, She lying on her couch alone, Across the purple coverlet, The maiden's jet-black hair has grown." ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... book shelf and tumble-down cabinet stood upon either side of the table, and the celebrated American author and traveller lay propped up in a long split-cane chair. He wore smoke glasses, and had a clean-shaven, olive face, with a profusion of jet-black hair. He was garbed in a dirty red dressing-gown, and a perfect fog of cigar smoke hung in the room. He did not rise to greet us, but merely extended his right hand, between two fingers whereof he ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... you saw in the air Ten thousand bright blades, and as many eyes Of flame flashed terribly. Then Rupert stay'd His hot hand in amazement, And all his blood-stain'd chivalry grew pale: The hunters, chang'd to quarry, fled amain, I saw the prince's jet-black, favourite barb Thrown on her haunches; then away, away, Her speed did bear him safe. Then there came one, A grisly man, with head all bare and grey, That shouted, "Smite and scatter, spare not, ho! Ye chosen of the Lord!" and they did smite, As on ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... leaving nothing in his narrative that is not to the sultan's credit. Of Abd-el-Kader at twenty-eight the lieutenant says: "His face is long and deadly pale, his large black eyes are soft and languishing, his mouth small and delicate, and his nose rather aquiline: his beard is thin, but jet-black, and he wears a small moustache, which gives a martial character to his soft, delicate face, and becomes him vastly. His hands are small and exquisitely formed, and his feet equally beautiful." Every interlocutor leaves a similar portrait, impressing upon the mind the image of some warrior-saint ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... in that direction in which the cohesive attraction is strongest, no crystals will be formed, but the resulting solid will have a different colour, a different degree of hardness and cohesion, and will refract light differently; in one word, will be amorphous. Thus we have cinnabar as a red and a jet-black substance; sulphur a fixed and brittle body, and soft, semitransparent, and ductile; glass as a milk-white opaque substance, so hard that it strikes fire with steel, and in its ordinary and well-known state. These dissimilar states and properties ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... it up, and a little cry, unheard save by the sea-birds which circled about my head, broke from my lips. It was a man's signet ring, thin and worn smooth with age. It was quaintly shaped, and in the centre was set a small jet-black stone. The device was a ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unable yet to save herself, Carver came to the brink of the flood, which alone was between them; and then he stroked his jet-black beard, and waited for Lorna to begin. Very likely, he thought that she would thank him for his kindness to her. But she was now recovering the power of her nimble limbs; and ready to be off like hope, and wonder at her ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... her satchel of books slung on her arm, now appeared. She looked to right and left of her as though she were slightly alarmed. Her face was beautiful in the truest sense of the world; it did not at all match with the shabby, faded clothes which she wore. She had large deep-violet eyes, jet-black hair, and a sweet, fresh complexion. Her expression was bewitching, and when she smiled a dimple came ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... and her cubs!" exclaimed Francois; "but see!" he continued, "she is red, while the cubs are jet-black!" ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... been "jolly" then, large and strong, laughing often, tossing her, she remembered, to the ceiling, his beard jet-black and his eyebrows bushy and overhanging. Once that vigour, afterwards this horror. She shook away from her last vision of him but it returned again and again, hanging about her over her shoulder like an ill-omened messenger. And all the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... perfect shower of balls had passed through the tissue drums, quite demolishing them, a shower of coloured papers, miniature lanterns, paper umbrellas, and flags came slowly fluttering down among the children on to their jet-black bobbing heads and into their eager outstretched hands. Never have I seen anything more beautiful than these gay, brightly-clad little people, packed closely together like a cluster of flowers in the brilliant sparkling ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... rather a tall man, with white hair, but with eyebrows and moustache of jet-black. His eyes were brilliant but sharp, and he moved with the ease and alertness ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... description he had heard of him from Blaize. The name of this half-crazed being was Solomon Eagle. Originally a Quaker, upon the outbreak of the plague he had abandoned his home and friends, and roamed the streets at night, denouncing doom to the city. He was a tall gaunt man, with long jet-black hair hanging in disordered masses over his shoulders. His eyes were large and black, and blazed with insane lustre, and his looks were so wild and terrific, that it required no great stretch of imagination ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... two sides he commonly chooses the wrong; If there is only one, why, he'll split it in two, And first pummel this half, then that, black and blue. That white's white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,— When it reaches your lips there's naught left to believe But a few silly-(syllo-, I mean,)-gisms that squat 'em Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud at ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and brought her a milk-white bird, with a bill jet-black, and eyes like stars. "In this, lurks the soul of a maiden; it hath flown from Oroolia to greet you." The soft stranger willingly nestled in her bosom; turning its bright eyes upon ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... vanity in Bob so peculiar to the negro, and by which he prides himself in the prime value of his person. There he sits-Marston's faithful friend, contemplating his silence with a steady gaze, and then, giving his jet-black face a double degree of seriousness, shrugs his shoulders, significantly nods his head, and intimates that it will soon be time to retire, by ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... well-proportioned limbs and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for the sculptor's chisel. In personal appearance the females are, except in early youth, very far inferior to the men. When young, however, they are not uninteresting. The jet-black eyes, shaded by their long, dark lashes, and the delicate and scarcely-formed features of incipient womanhood give a soft and pleasing expression to a countenance that might often be called ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Cairo," afoot and mounted on camels and donkeys, headed their part of the procession with the Turkish flag, and swift-footed runners guarded the banner, while men in rusty, antique chain-armor were near to defend. A horde of fakirs and jugglers of all colors, from jet-black Soudanese to fair-faced Greeks, pressed close at their heels, stripped to the waists, with bare feet, and cutting up all sorts of tricks. Swordsmen, garbed in long robes, twirling naked blades and shields as they hopped about one another ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... necks. The ponies moved with exactly the same steps, and shook their manes and swished their tails at exactly the same time. Behind the prince and the High Ki were King Terribus, riding his great white charger, and Wul-Takim on a stout horse of jet-black color. The two ancient Ki and Nerle, being of lesser rank than the others, brought up ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... in the old woman's eyes just then, if not in the well. It flashed out of them like two little streams of lightning out of two little jet-black clouds. She lifted her crutch, and I am not sure but she would have struck Andy with it, if she had not been too lame ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... unmeasured praise, and his words, so well chosen, salved the smarting wounds of the dramatist. "Those who have seen Miss Merival only as the melodrama queen or the adventuress in jet-black evening dress have a surprise in store for them. Her Enid is a dream of cold, chaste girlhood—a lily with heart of fire—in whose tender, virginal eyes the lust and cruelty of the world arouse only pity and wonder. So complete was Miss Merival's investiture of herself in this part that ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... while Don Stingo and Paddy Burns cackled incredulously; but, at the same moment, Ring Finger Bill and Nimble Jack, two jet-black persons, in loose striped gingham shirts and bare feet, with an attempt at a grave expression of thick-lipped coffee-coolers, the whites of their eyes turned up with becoming decorum, and preceded by the old twig of a clerk, who seemed to crackle in the sea-breeze as he again hung himself, stern ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... studied elegancies of the toilet! A strange contrast!—but one which seemed as nothing compared with that which was soon to follow: for Phoebe, happening to be with her grandfather and her great friend and playmate Venus, a jet-black greyhound of the very highest breed, whose fine limbed and shining beauty was almost as elegant and aristocratic as that of Phoebe herself;—the little damsel, happening to be with her grandfather when, instigated by Daniel Thorpe's grumbling accusation ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... he was a beautiful creature, sir, the finest dog I ever set eyes on. Like a setter in the make of him, but no setter that ever I saw could match him for size or looks. His coat was jet-black, as glossy as the skin of a thoroughbred, with just one streak of white showing down the breast, and his eyes—well, they were the very humanest, sir, that ever I see looking ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... and neck dark-colored, with a long white stripe lengthwise on each side. Back and sides finely waved with black and gray. Breast and belly pure white. Feathers under the tail jet-black. Long inner feathers of the wing striped lengthwise with velvet-black and silver-gray. Mirror on the wing glittering purple or violet, framed with black, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... of middle height, sallow, and careworn, with jet-black hair and beard, supported a sickly lad, apparently about seventeen, who clung to his arm and coughed at intervals. The father moved as though in a dream. He looked at the pictures with unseeing, lustreless eyes, except when the boy ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... limb, with small feet and hands, and small ears, and a well-turned neck. He was very dark—dark as a man can be, and yet show no sign of colour in his blood. No white man could be more dark and swarthy than Anton Trendellsohn. His eyes, however, which were quite black, were very bright. His jet-black hair, as it clustered round his ears, had in it something of a curl. Had it been allowed to grow, it would almost have hung in ringlets; but it was worn very short, as though its owner were jealous even of the curl. Anton Trendellsohn was ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... hand soothingly on hers. "Now, now, Aunt 'Melia, maybe the expression isn't just right, but the color is fine... just that jet-black his were ... and the artist has got in exact that funny stiff way uncle's hair stood up ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... even at that moment admiring the sinuous grace of the devilish thing, its long, undulating, rippling movements, the gloss of its beautiful flanks, the vivid, palpitating scarlet of the glistening tongue which hung from the jet-black muzzle. And all the time that deep, threatening growl was rising and rising in an unbroken crescendo. I knew that the crisis was ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... waterfall. They found that enormous masses of stone, falling from the roof, had narrowed the bed of the river to about fifteen feet, over which the water shot in a broad sheet, fully ten feet in height. The effect as it rushed over the jet-black rocks, casting up flakes of milky white foam, when illuminated by the torches, ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Dale was studying the other's chin, the lips, the white, even teeth, the jet-black hair. Some day the tables might be turned. Could he recognise again this cool, imperturbable ruffian who so callously ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... The horse was jet-black, and although walking on such a perilous and difficult trail, it was easy to tell at the first glance that it was a splendid thoroughbred. The animal's carriage showed not only pride in bearing such a beautiful rider, but a full ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... of wearing apparel which I was fortunate enough to meet. I shall also return hereafter to the almost omnipresent pieces of painted pottery, of two distinct kinds, and to the very numerous chips of obsidian, jet-black on the face, but transparent as smoky glass; of black lava; and to the flint, jasper, and moss-agates, broken mechanically by man, and scattered over the premises. These premises have been thoroughly ransacked by visitors, and every striking object has already been carried off. I had ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... her own room, for each Flower Girl had a room to herself in the great house. She brushed back her jet-black hair; she tidied her little blouse as well as she could, and even tied a crimson ribbon on one side of her hair; and then, feeling that she looked at least a little bewitching, and that Ardshiel mattered nothing at all to ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... No; then, I'll tell you all about him now, for he had more to do with the row aboard the Gulnare than anybody else! He was a regular dare-devil of a pocket-a-win, as they are called at Liverpool—a tall, lean, down-east Yankee from Boston, with jet-black hair, and a swarthy face, which made you think he had nigger blood in him and got him his name of 'Black Harry.' A powerful man and a good foremast hand; but an all-fired lazy devil about work, and as ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... their father's prime, inherited all his grandeur of form and beauty of countenance, his taste for high literature, along with a certain energy of mind that came to them, by some unknown law of nature, from their father's mother. From her Daniel derived his jet-black hair and eyes, and his complexion of burnt gunpowder; though all the rest of the children except one were remarkable for fairness of complexion, and had sandy hair. Ezekiel, who was considered the handsomest man in the United States, had a skin of singular fairness, and light ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... inhabitants, physically speaking, are not unworthy of their island-home; a tall, robust, and well-knit race, they would be comely but for their custom of flattening the nose as soon as the child is born. They have thick jet-black hair and fine dark eyes. The colour of their skin is a copper-brown. Both sexes, at the time of Ida Pfeiffer's visit, preserved the custom of tattooing, the devices being often very fanciful in design, and always ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the elasticity of an earlier period. His countenance expressed self-confidence, and something like a contempt for those who had neither seen nor endured so much as he had himself. His short black hair was mingled with grey, but not entirely whitened by it. His eyes were jet-black, deep-set, small, and sparkling, and contributed, with a short turned-up nose, to express an irritable and choleric habit. His complexion was burnt to a brick-colour by the vicissitudes of climate, to which it had ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... cotton handkerchief or piece of calico wound turban-wise about her head. She was of a yellowish parchment colour, the skin tight-drawn over the small bony aquiline features, and it would have seemed like the face of a corpse or mummy but for the deeply-sunken jet-black eyes burning with a troubled fire in their sockets. There was a tremor and strangely pathetic note in her thin high-pitched voice, as of a woman speaking with effort between half-suppressed sobs, or like the mournful cry of some wild bird of the marshes. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... for leagues and leagues, put out the stars, and made the sky resemble a canopy of yellow satin; we on the ship saw one another's faces as if by daylight; the shrouds and masts and our own figures cast jet-black shadows on the deck; the whole ship flashed out to that amazing radiance like a fabric sun-touched. The column of fire then fattened and disappeared, and the night rolled down upon our blinded eyes as black ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... good quality, were covered with dirt and blood, and he bore all the appearance of having recently been engaged in a very tough struggle. His face was notable only for its possession of an unusually long jet-black moustache. He had ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... of the middle height, lean and sinewy, and, as his jump into the train had shown, as lissom as a cat. His skin was so much tanned that it was difficult to guess his natural complexion; but his closely cropped hair was jet-black, and his clean-shaven face showed the roots of a very dark beard. In those days it was fashionable to wear one's hair rather long, and to cultivate whiskers and a moustache. Priests and actors were the only people who shaved clean, and I decided in my mind that my friend was an actor. ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... full, very gray, very blue, vivid with all the glamour of her personality, full of smiles and tears and spirituality and passion; one instant, frankly innocent, they illuminated the face of a blonde Madonna; the next, seen through the extraordinary, long, jet-black eye-lashes underneath the finely pencilled black brows, they caressed, coquetted, allured. I afterward found much of this girl's purely physical fascination lay in this strange blending of English fairness with Andalusian tints, though the abiding quality of her charm ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... put it back," faltered the culprit. He was a slender lad of twenty, with the olive skin, the curling jet-black hair, the liquid-brown eyes, which marked his descent from a southern race. The face was one of singular beauty. The curved lips, the broad brow on which the dusky hair grew low, the oval cheek and rounded chin might well have served ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... fine blue cloth, from which depended a soiled tassel in gold, and which was nearly buried in a mass of exuberant, curling, jet-black hair. Around his throat he had negligently fastened a stock of black silk. His body was enveloped in a hunting-shirt of dark green, trimmed with the yellow fringes and ornaments that were sometimes seen among the border-troops of the Confederacy. Beneath ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... though Time could not enter that land, it would immediately assert its dominion over him if he left it. At length she persuaded him to promise that he would return to his country for one day only, and then come back to dwell with her for ever. She accordingly gave him a beautiful jet-black horse, from whose back he was on no account to alight, or at all events not to allow the bridle to fall from his hand; and in parting she gifted him with wisdom and knowledge far surpassing that of men. Mounting the steed, he soon found himself near his former home; and as he ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... fire smouldering on the hearth, and flowers—Barker's flowers—scenting the room; home to the cares of Clementine, to lean back with half-closed eyes, thinking, while the deft French fingers uncoil and smooth and coil again the jet-black tresses; home to the luxury of sleep unbroken by ill ease of body, though visited by the dreams of a far-away lover—dreams not always hopeful, but ever sweet; home to a hotel! Can a hostelry be dignified with that great name? Yes. Wherever we ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... conflict. Peter had changed physically as well as spiritually. His face had paled to an ivory tone, the features had a cameo sharpness and purity of outline; cheeks and chin were covered with a heavy, jet-black beard,—as if his countenance were in morning for its lost boyishness. And out of this thin, quiet, black-haired, black-bearded face looked a pair of golden eyes of an almost intolerable clarity. Don Pedro Mrs. Hemingway called him laughingly, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... like that of a satyr, a sign of tenacity in his passions, was crowned by thick jet-black hair like a virgin forest, and under it flashed a pair of hazel eyes, so wild looking as to suggest that before his birth his mother must have ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of them in all, and most of them were as black as shoe-leather, though there was a variety of colour, from jet-black to a bad tawny-yellow. It was evident they were not all of one race, for there is scarcely any part of the western coast of Africa where there is not an admixture of different races,—arising, no doubt, from the long-continued slave-traffic ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... a full and complete drawing in charcoal of the subject before me, not in outline, but in strong darks, jet-black, many of them—a finished drawing really, in charcoal, which could be signed and framed. This is then "fixed" by a spray of alcohol and gum shellac, thrown by means of a common perfume atomizer, the whole apparatus costing less ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... limbs, carelessly tucked in at the waist, and a sleeveless upper garment that failed to make connections with the lower, recalling the women of Ceylon. The absence of any other garments was all too evident. Almost all wore in their jet-black hair a few red flowers, all displayed six inches or more of silky brown skin at the waist, and the majority wore necklaces of gold coins, generally American five and ten dollar gold pieces. To see one of them stretched ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... last two battleships from Tenedos joined, the Dublin patrolling outside. An hour later the most striking effect was produced by a shell falling on a fort at Kilid Bahr, which evidently exploded another magazine. A huge mass of heavy jet-black smoke gradually rose till it towered high above the cliffs on the European and Asiatic sides. It ballooned slowly out like a gigantic genie ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was a tall and loose-jointed man with a melancholy and almost ministerial face, enhanced in gravity by the jet-black hair that grew low on his forehead and the droop of long moustaches. In his own country the influence which he wielded was in effect a balance of power, and the candidate who aspired to public office did well to obtain ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... northern latitudes. I do not remember ever to have heard anything like it in the course of my travels either in the Old or New World—unless it be the harshness characteristic of the idioms in use among the Malays. And, in truth, with his olive, verging on copper-tinted skin, his jet-black, crinkly hair, his piercing, deep-set, restless eyes, his square shoulders and marked muscular development, it is by no means unlikely that he belongs to one of the extreme ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... camp; they never relinquish a chase, and will attack anything, man or beast, when really driven by hunger. I was at Tsavo Station one day—unfortunately without my rifle—when one of these dogs came up and stood within about thirty yards of me. He was a fine-looking beast, bigger than a collie, with jet-black hair and a white-tipped bushy tail. I was very sorry that I had not brought my rifle, as I badly wanted a specimen and never had ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... discover what young men had sowed their wild oats and were seeking the "strait and narrer path" between Miss Dinsmore's counter and the wall. Mr. Purdo was of middle height, and portly; and there was such a sombre hue about the entire man,—black suit of clothes, jet-black hair, eyebrows, and eyes,—that it was a relief to find that Nature had relented in her mourning over making him, and bestowed a sallow complexion, which strove to enliven his aspect by an infusion of orange. He greeted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... evening, after my conversation with the cultivator upon the wall that united the two hills,[1] I received a visit from my little friend the Sarimant. His fine rose-coloured turban is always put on very gracefully; every hair of his jet-black eyebrows and mustachios seems to be kept always most religiously in the same place; and he has always the same charming smile upon his little face, which was never, I believe, distorted into an absolute laugh or frown. No man was ever more perfectly master ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... discharged on the beach, I was confronted by a majestic Moor. His grave brown face was fringed with a closely-trimmed jet-black beard, and his upper lip was shaded with a jet-black moustache. He wore a white turban and a wide-sleeved ample garment of snowy white, flowing in graceful folds below his knees; and on his feet were loose yellow slippers, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the sentries, who were jet-black Turcos. As one of them would run from a plunging horse, the others laughed at him with that contagious laugh of the darky that is the same all the world over, whether he hails from Mobile or Tangiers, and he would return sheepishly, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... thirst, or weariness, and once in my life a headache), I stood before Lord Castlewood with a deference and humility such as I had never felt before toward any human being. Not only because he bore perpetual pain in the two degrees of night and day—the day being dark and the night jet-black—without a murmur or an evil word; not only because through the whole of this he had kept his mind clear and his love of knowledge bright; not even because he had managed, like Job, to love God through ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... stall next to Pacer, was a small, jet-black mare, with a lean head, slender legs, and a curious restless manner. She was a regular greyhound of a horse, no spare flesh, yet wiry and able to do a great deal of work. She was a wicked looking little thing, so I thought I had better keep at a ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... accompanied by a French maid to whom she spoke French in a manner which testified that before acquiring the French maid she had been in the custody of a French nurse. She possessed poise. For the rest, she had wonderful jet-black hair, violet eyes, and milk-white skin, a correct nose but a somewhat generous mouth, Bryce guessed she was twenty or twenty-one years old and that she had a temper susceptible of being aroused. On the whole, she was rather wonderful but not ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... magnificent mahogany writing-table, at which sat the man whose name was still ringing through a whole continent. He was an extremely handsome individual, and his enormous proportions were well set off by the dark blue and gold of his naval uniform. He had jet-black curly hair, and a short, pointed beard; while the dark eyes which looked out from beneath thick, overhanging brows, seemed to pierce through and through the individual toward whom his glance was directed. Jim saw at once that this was a man among a thousand, one ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... was oval, marked in every cameo-like line and feature with that expression of absolute, flawless purity, found in the angels and Madonnas of old paintings, a purity that held in it no faintest strain of earthliness. Her head was bare, and her thick, jet-black hair was parted above her forehead and hung in two heavy lustrous braids over her shoulders. Her eyes were of such a blue as Eric had never seen in eyes before, the tint of the sea in the still, calm light that follows after a fine sunset; they were as luminous as the stars that came ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... stamp in the house at all. He was tall and slim, but exquisitely formed, and plainly the possessor of enormous strength. His head, if only from a phrenological point of view, was a magnificent one, crowned with a wealth of jet-black hair. His eyes were dark as night, and glittered like those of a snake. His complexion was of a decidedly olive hue, though, as he sat in the shadow of the corner, it was difficult to tell ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... accurate observation and a clear head. He is in no sense an orator, his delivery not being pleasant or his sentiments couched in graceful or forcible language. He is of a dark complexion, rather tall, with jet-black hair, a little bald, and would not be selected as one of the leading men in the Senate from his personal appearance. As a presiding officer, he ranks well, being apparently posted on parliamentary law and impartial in his decisions, although he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... plenty besides! Poor woman, she was in such distress that one could not but let her pour it all out, but I declare the din rang in my ears the whole night after. A very nice, respectable-looking body she was, with jet-black eyes like diamonds, and a rosy, countrified complexion, quite a treat to see in that grimy place, her widow's cap as white as snow, but oh, such a tongue! She would give me all her spiritual experiences—how she was converted by an awakening minister in Cat-alley, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... retiring and in situation retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. Three feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. Vholes's jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest midsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage staircase against which belated civilians generally strike their brows. Mr. Vholes's chambers are on so small a scale that ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens |
