"Dim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... colony. But considerably more than a generation has since passed; and, writing as I do for those who occupy to-day the old scene, I may plead as my excuse their own view of the subject; for already they regard the time I have come to as the real beginning of early Victoria, while the dim distances preceding are to them a kind of age before the deluge, which ordinary memories fail to fathom. In keeping to personal recollections I cannot, at the worst, be very protracted, for I quitted public life in 1853, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... rebelled against her own passion. She had such a moment of revolt, in this moonlit dark, as her eyes took in the farm, the dim outlines of the farm buildings, the stacks, the new-ploughed furrows. Two months earlier her life had been absorbed in simple, clear, practical ambitions: how to improve her stock—how to grow another bushel to the acre—how and when to build a silo—whether to try electrification: a ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and Stevenson far to the south-east, and Mount Sheridan almost south-west of us. The first three are bold peaks, while about them lie lesser hills numberless and nameless. The day seemed absolutely clear, yet the mountains were mere serrated silhouettes, dim with a silvery haze, through which gleamed the whiter silver of snow in patches or filling the long ravines. Striking across the plain, we came upon a tent and the horses of Captain G. and Mr. E., who were away ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... gladdened mine eyes, Let the cloud of thy going arise, Dim the sunlight and darken the day; For the mother whose son is away ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... dim-lit, at best. Now, the gathering storm made it as dark as twilight. The box stall to which Lad was led was almost pitch black; its shuttered window being closed. Still, it was shelter. Leaving the Master and the Mistress to ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... of the great house could have warmed and thrilled those six hearts as did the husky, tremulous words of greeting in the dim, smoky station amid the clanging engines and shouted orders of trainmen. Home! Ah, what a glorious feeling of possession! The tears which had not come at thought of leaving the old home now welled up in the blue eyes and in the brown, but ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... kept his last vigils; and though now no longer applied to purposes of worship, still wearing from the character of its architecture, its sculptured ornaments, and the painted glass in its casements, a dim religious air. The abbot's room was allotted to Dorothy Assheton; and from its sombre magnificence, as well as the ghostly tales connected with it, had impressed her with so much superstitious misgiving, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of him. I need scarcely tell you that Herr Scott, my captor," he said, "because he represents so much. Ah, the history and the legends clustering about our house, that goes far back into the dim ages! The Auerspergs were counts and princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and they have been grand dukes. They have decided the choice of more than one emperor at Frankfort, and they have stood with the highest when they were crowned at Augsburg. ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to rest for a moment on the western wall before plunging down into the world on the other side. Watching, he saw the purple of the hills deepen and deepen and the wondrous light on the wide sea of colors fade slowly out as the colors themselves paled and grew dim in the misty dusk of the coming night. Slowly the twilight sky grew dark, and into the velvet plain above came the heavenly flocks until their number was past counting save by Him who leadeth them in their fields. Against the last ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... to make a visit to Mrs. ——, my old neighbor, who lived at some distance from me. The path led through the fir forest, and at the time of day when I was at liberty, was dim and gloomy. I walked hurriedly along, fearing darkness would overtake me; and looking about me as I went, was snatching a hasty pleasure from the contemplation of Nature's beneficence, when my foot ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... in the darkness for his clothing, then pulled open the shutter hastily, and dressed himself in the dim light as well as he was able. He was excited but not panic-stricken, yet the time seemed long, although in reality it was but a few moments before he was ready to open his door into the saloon. As he came out he had a startled impression ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Though jammed in with other houses and undistinguished in the line of bustling street, it had the appearance of having once been a commodious enough house in the old fashion; and I have been informed that some of the old windows, consisting of thick bits of dim glass lozenged in lead, still remained in it at the back, and that the occupants knew one of the rooms in it as "the Schoolroom" where Milton had used to teach his pupils. But alas! one of the city railways took it into its head ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... and I will constitute you my broker, with unlimited orders. No, no. I see the fact as plainly as you do, but I know better than you how irremediable it is. My soul is a doleful morgue, and my pictures are dim photographs of its corpse-tenants. Shut in forever from the sunshine, I dip my brush in the shadows that surround ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... brain hunted clues and connections. He found himself trying to piece things together; to fit them in, to recollect. And every now and then some sound outside would make him start up and listen ... and listen. Was that not a footstep? ... the step of one who might come feeling his way... dim-eyed with regret? There were such things in life as momentary lapses, as ungovernable impulses—as fiery contrition ... the anguish of remorse. And yet, once more, he sat up and listened till ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... And these dim places of Catholic worship were generously open to all, every day and all day long, and never empty of worshippers, high and low, prostrate in the dust, or kneeling with their arms extended and their heads in the air, their wide-open, immovable, unblinking eyes hypnotized ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... received from the bank the previous day, and for greater safety had placed under his pillow when he went to bed. In the middle of the night his wife awoke him, saying there was someone in the tent, and by the dim light of a small oil-lamp he could just see a dark figure creeping along the floor. He sprang out of bed and seized the robber; but the latter, being perfectly naked and oiled all over, slipped through his hands and wriggled ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... subtle flame Ran quick through all my vital frame; O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung; My ears with ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... flame died down, and left the room very dim, but still the three sat on, silent, thoughtful. Miss Rose sat between them, holding a hand ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... crack he perceived that the glow he had seen from the window emanated from a tin can pierced with several holes. The dim, uncertain light revealed the figure of a tall and hatless man kneeling beside the safe. The man's back was toward the lighted tin can. One of the tall man's hands was slowly turning the knob of the combination. The side of the man's head was pressed against the front of the safe near ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... strength of a single aim, felt himself whirling at times. Thus he slowly grew to some knowledge of the difficulties and complications which must beset any young girl like Kate Alden, whose nearest relation and chaperon had been a feather-headed cousin not so many years her elder. At last, in a dim way, he began to see the possibility of replacing his bitterness with pity. For Mrs. Branscome did not love her husband; he plainly perceived that, if only from the formal precision with which she performed her duties. She appeared to him, indeed, to be paying off an obligation ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... me as I lie, Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries, From the broad moonlight of the sky, Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,— Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Since the lightning had ceased it was pitchy dark inside. There was a wide hall running through the building, with windows above the exits, but he saw nothing through them save the driving rain and the dim outline of the ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as before, wondering why he had quickened his pace. Soon there spread before him those deserted streets, which are not cheerful in the daytime, to say nothing of the evening. Now they were even more dim and lonely: the lanterns began to grow rarer, oil, evidently, had been less liberally supplied. Then came wooden houses and fences: not a soul anywhere; only the snow sparkled in the streets, and mournfully veiled the low-roofed cabins with their closed shutters. He approached the spot ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... veiled the sky during the early part of the night, had now broken and dispersed, the stars shone out and disclosed the outline of surrounding objects, assuming in the dim light all manner of fantastic forms. A cool wind, the forerunner of morning, swept across the valley, bringing pleasant refreshment to the heated soldiery, as they leaned upon their muskets and waited the orders of their chief. On either hand videttes were advanced, keeping vigilant watch. El Mochuelo ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Manchester, where Fleeming was entered in Fairbairn's works as an apprentice. From the palaces and Alps, the Mole, the blue Mediterranean, the humming lanes and the bright theatres of Genoa, he fell - and he was sharply conscious of the fall - to the dim skies and the foul ways of Manchester. England he found on his return 'a horrid place,' and there is no doubt the family found it a dear one. The story of the Jenkin finances is not easy to follow. The family, I ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only have been discovered of that which concerns the inner consciousness since before written history began. Three things only in twelve thousand written, or sculptured, years, and in the dumb, dim time before then. Three ideas the Cavemen primeval wrested from the unknown, the night which is round us still in daylight—the existence of the soul, im- mortality, the deity. These things found, prayer followed as a sequential result. ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... departure, but gave what they could; professional failure in South Africa; some gambling-trouble in Johannesburg, and a vanishing again into the unknown. Nevertheless his title was an old one. Men of his race had loomed great in dim historic days, and though during the last two centuries no Dauntrey had done anything notable except lose money, sell land, go bankrupt, figure in divorce cases or card scandals, and marry actresses, they had never in their degeneration lost that charm which, in Charles II's day, had ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... knee, her strained unseeing gaze resting on the garden and the sea, a sort of hallucination took possession of her. It seemed to her that she saw the form of the Son of man passing over the misty slope in front of her, that the dim majestic figure turned and beckoned. In her half-dream she fell on her knees. 'Master!' she cried in agony, 'I cannot leave him! Call me not! My life is here. I have no heart—it beats ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Buddha mildly gazed at him, And said in peace: 'Poor fiend, even thee I love.' Before great Wassywart the world grew dim; His bulk enormous dwindled to a dove. * * * —Celestial beauty sat on Buddhas face, While sweetly sang the metamorphosed dove: 'Swords, rocks, lies, fiends, must yield to moveless love, And nothing can withstand ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in the desolate room, scantily lighted with the dim taper—no laughter as the queen and the princess put on their strange, fearful attire. It was no masquerade, but a dreadful, horrible reality; and as they looked at each other wearing the costume of revolutionists, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... quits," she said. Then she withdrew her gaze and looked up at the dim outline of the big man nearest her. There was just a shade of eagerness in her manner now. "That's Lightfoot's camp, Mr. McFarlane," she assured. "I've done all that's needed. You see, I'm a woman, and I don't guess you need anything more from me. Shall ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... gorgeousness, the Lord of Day To the bright chambers of the west retired, And with the glory of his parting ray The hundred domes of Mexico he fired, When I, with vague and solemn awe inspired, Entered the Incarnation's sacred fane. The vaulted roof, the dim aisle far retired, Echoed the deep-toned organ's holy strain, Which through the incensed air did ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the boyish fancies Wrapped in the smoke-wreaths blue; My eyes grew dim, my head was light, The woodshed round me flew! Dark night closed in around me— Black night, without a star— Grim death methought had found me ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... obdurate when the reasons for her obduracy were so utterly valueless. But still there were vague fears about her health. Why had she fainted and fallen through his arms? Whence had come that peculiar brightness of complexion which would have charmed him had it not frightened him? A dim dread of something that was not intelligible to him pervaded him, and robbed him of a portion of the triumph which had come to him from ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the window and was looking out. It was dark, or nearly, and the house next door showed a dim light in the room opposite the ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... board he removed carefully the sand which had covered the skeleton. The clothes came away with it. As he moved his board along it struck something hard. He could not see in that dim light what it was, so he reached down his hand and ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... had passed, the people watched for it, and, truly, on the next day, a boat was seen beating against the gale and trying to make the pier. As it came nearer, the parents saw their children holding out their arms and laughing. Then the outlines of the hull and sail grew dim, the children's forms drooped as if weary; and in another moment the vision had passed. Long was the grief and loud were the curses on the English. When Drake learned that he had fired on a harmless fishing vessel and driven a company ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... wondrous message, When my hopes are growing dim, I can hear it thro' the darkness Like some sweet and far-off hymn. Nothing is too hard for Jesus, No man can work ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... soul of the despairing nymph took refuge and gifted with her dual nature,—so that ever and anon, amid the notes of human joy or sorrow, there comes suddenly a deeper and almost awful tone, thrilling us into dim consciousness of a ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... he had been all the time in a shop in Cheapside without a hair turned. This exemplary person not only embodies the type of middle class Briton but represents his most romantic aspirations. In those days the civilised world was still surrounded by the dim mysterious regions, where geographers placed elephants instead of towns, but where the adventurous Briton was beginning to push his way into strange native confines and to oust the wretched foreigner, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... thick darkness beyond the magic circle of the fires, the People of the Little Hills sat or crouched trembling and wondering, while monstrous dim shapes of such bears or tigers as they had never imagined in their worst nightmares prowled roaring all about them, held off by nothing more substantial than just those thin and darting tongues of flame. That the little, bright things could bite terribly ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... worshipper— No dove returned with olive branch to her: Her lamp burned dimly, yet its flick'ring light, Guided the wanderer thro' the lengthen'd night. Oft in her weary search, she paused the while, To catch one gleam of hope—one favour'd smile; But the dim mists of ignorance still threw, Their blighting influence o'er the famish'd few, Who deigned to look upon that lustrous eye, Which ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... toes— Won't she pull it open With funny little crows! Sober, dark gray, Quiet little mouse, That belongs to Sybil Of all the house; One stocking left, Whose should it be? Why, that I'm sure Must belong to me! Well, so they hang, packed to the brim, Swing, swing, swing, in the firelight dim. ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... sat there in the dim room, with only the fire to light it, she wondered whether anything could make of her as noble a woman as was her "Aunt Isabel." In her heart she felt not. Aunt Isabel was simply perfect in the girl's sight, and if she could ever have ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... went through the hall his eye fell on the megaphone which hung there, and with a dim idea that it might be of use to him he tucked it under his free arm. The piazza was clean and dry, and he walked its length, finding the exertion a relief to his feelings. The megaphone was an awkward burden, and he started to put it ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... breaking as the trusty captain made his way to the scene of action. The wan light of a cold, drizzly January morning showed him the wide, stately square—with its leafless lime-trees and its tall many storied, gable-ended houses rising dim and spectral through the mist-filled to overflowing with troops, whose uniforms and banners resembled nothing that he remembered in Dutch and English regiments. Fires were lighted at various corners, kettles ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... centre of so much good—so necessary to you—so necessary, alas! to me—is taken! He is gone to his rest—for us, what remains but to bow our heads, and murmur, "His will be done"? I trace these lines with a trembling hand, while tears dim my old eyes. I did not think that any earthly event could have moved me so profoundly. From the world I have long stood aloof. I once led a life of pleasure—alas! of wickedness—as I now do one of austerity; but as I never was rich, so my worst enemy will allow I never ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son, Manchester warehousemen ... had its place of business in a very narrow street somewhere behind the Post Office.... A dim, dirty, smoky, tumble-down, rotten old house it was ... but here the firm ... transacted their business ... and neither the young man nor the old one had ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... singing its way through the golden fields. Up on the hill top there was a sense of remoteness from the world, all sound and movement seemed far away. Only the vesper sparrows were here, filling the amber twilight with their soft murmurs, and away in the dim green aisles of the Slash a phoebe was calling sweetly. Christina came up into the light of the setting sun, and when Gavin's eyes first spied her, its rays were lighting up her white gown and touching her uncovered head to pure ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... were not to see now: that was for the dim future, after lunch; but we turned to the left off the main road, and ran on until we saw, bathed in pines, deliciously deluged and drowned in pines, the white glimmer of classic-looking villas. These meant Valescure, said the chauffeur; and the Grand Hotel—not ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... fine weather, a brougham for wet. (It was before the days of motor-cars.) Somewhere on the outskirts of his dream (moorland for choice) there hovered a gentleman in shooting clothes, carrying a gun, or on the uttermost dim verge, the sky-line of it, the same vague form (equestrian) shot gloriously by. But he took very little ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... turned the dream out of doors with Ann: the wonderful dream which sheltered the heart of reality, dream through which waking had come, from which all the long dim paths of wondering had opened—dream through which self ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... had died down by now; there was no flicker, and the patch of red had grown small and dim. . . . And as the fire went out the moonlight grew clearer and clearer. Now they could see the full width of the road, the bales of wool, the shafts of the waggons, the munching horses; on the further side ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... going to make happy, and of the betrothed who was waiting for him. About one o'clock, he tasted a celebrated port wine which Frau Meiser had herself gone to bring from the cellar. About half-past one, his tongue thickened and his eyes grew dim; he struggled some time against drunkenness and sleepiness, announced that he was going to describe the Russian campaign, muttered the name of the Emperor, and slid under ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... bounded lightly up the staircase. But all was dark there and in Mr. Linden's room. Reuben could not execute his commission so; and was turning to come down stairs again, when he encountered in the dim entry-way a ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... heaven a picture of that wonderful teaching, doubtless we shall see represented in it a dim childhood shining from the faces of all that group of disciples of which the centre is the Son of God with a child in his arms. The childhood, dim in the faces of the men, must be shining trustfully clear in the face of the ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... shadows of night were made seductive by the dim lamps that began to burn from mast-top and prow. On the barge of Senci only a single and subdued light was swung from a bronze tripod in the bow, and the fourteen charges of the young sculptor, wearied with the long day's excitement, were disposed in graceful abandon under ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... sink back more luxuriously than ever into the depths of his easy chair. It was the sort of night to throw, occasionally, another log on the fire and watch the flames dance higher—illuminate with their glowing radiance the dim corridors and the vast and stately apartments of a Chateau en Espagne. What an addition those new pictures are to the noble gallery! And the vast library with the windows opening on the Moorish court! But some of the tapestries ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... on in her appointed place, She does not strive to ape him, nor pretend But that she needs him for a guide and friend, To shield her with his greater strength from harm. We reached the forest; wandered to and fro Through many a winding path and dim retreat, Till I grew weary: when I chose a seat Upon an oak-tree, which had been laid low By some wind storm, or by some lightning stroke. And Roy stood just below me, where the ledge On which I sat sloped steeply to the edge Of sunny meadows lying at my ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... perhaps twenty steps when a door, against which my hand pressed, yielded at the touch and swung slowly open. I strove to stop it, for the first opening showed a dim light within. But the panel gave no hold for my fingers, and my efforts to close the door only swung it open the faster. I drew back a little into the shadow, for I hesitated to dash past the sight of any who might occupy ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... great cross in the center—and down the murky Tinto go the three little caravels with their unwilling, frightened, human freight. Those on shore turn tearfully into church to pray; and those aboard watch the dim outline of Palos fade away; by and by they notice that the reddish Tinto has become the blue ocean sparkling in the early sunshine; but no sparkle enters their timid souls. They can only keep looking longingly ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... the river's dim expanse Like some bold seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance— With a glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... see if our ol' frien' Percy don' show up," said Handy Solomon. He threw back his head and roared forth a volume of sound toward the dim stars. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... steed! what shall thy master do, When thou, who wast his all of joy, hast vanished from his view? When the dim distance cheats mine eye, and through the gathering tears Thy bright form, for a moment, like the false mirage appears; Slow and unmounted shall I roam, with weary step alone, Where, with fleet step and joyous bound, thou oft hast borne ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... influences, ever achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. Philosophy, like art, like literature, like science, arose, shined, grew dim, and passed away, and left the world in night. Why was so bright a glory followed by so dismal a shame? What a comment is this on the greatness ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... opposite, distant some twenty miles, rising out of the water like a beacon; Elba was visible to the northeast, a gloomy confused pile of mountain at that hour; and Ghita once or twice thought she could trace on the coast of the main the dim outline of her own hill, Monte Argentaro; though the distance, some sixty or seventy miles, rendered this improbable. Outside, too, lay the frigate, riding on the glassy surface of the sea, her sails furled, her yards squared, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... my eyes were dim with tears, Because I had not known her gentle face; Softly I said: "But when across the years Her smile illumes the darkness of my place, All grief from my poor ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... "Let me in." Then the shutter was cautiously unfastened and opened a little and in the dim starlight Goddard recognised his wife's pale face. Her hand went out to ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... of the two trappers and the group of browsing horses. Of the former, one only was asleep; the other sat upright, keeping guard over the camp. He was motionless as a statue: but the small spark gleaming like a glowworm from the bowl of his tobacco pipe, gave token of his wakefulness. Dim as the light was, I could distinguish the upright form to be that of the earless trapper. It ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... and she wished she had stayed up longer. She amused herself by listening to the old familiar noises that she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking towards the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she used to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim tree-tops against the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this meeting-line of light and shade nothing was visible save one solitary point of light, which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro before its beams. From its position it seemed to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... round-arms without pads, and actually blocked one of them once, and that was more than some of the fellows could say, I could take my header into the pool from the same step as Parkin. And once I had not run away from Hector when he broke loose from his kennel. Even now, but for the dim recollection of that awful automatic machine, I might have pulled myself together sufficiently to strike a light and jog my ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... a dismal suburb. No living thing was apparent, with the exception of a gang of prowling dogs, lean and savage, as all dogs are during a siege. An image, decked in all the glare of gaud and tinsel, looked out of a glazed niche in the opposite wall. A dim lamp burned at its feet, showing to the charitable a receptacle for their offerings. A quaint old steeple loomed ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... praise shook the pillars of the creation, and filled the vault of heaven with a pulsing flood of harmony. When, as they closed their hymn, stole up, faint heard, as from some most distant region of all space, in dim accents humbly rising, a responsive "Amen." God asked Gabriel, "Whence comes that Amen?" The hierarchic peer replied, "It rises from the damned in hell." God took, from where it hung above his seat, the key that unlocks the forty thousand doors of hell, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... when I was near a small house and barn, situate close to the road side. The barn was too near the road, and too small to afford secure shelter for the day; but as I cast my eye around by the dim light, I could see no wood, and no larger barn. It seemed to be an open country to a wide extent. The sun was travelling so rapidly from his eastern chamber, that ten or fifteen minutes would spread broad daylight over my track. Whether my deed was evil, you may judge, but I freely confess that ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... the night Uncle Henry came and called me and said that Uncle William was ill. So I put on an old shawl and went with him. The ship was pitching and heaving with a dreadful straining and creaking noise. A dim light burned in the cabin, and outside there was a great roaring of the wind and the wild sound of the sea surging against ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... so called, lay the Ethiopians, vassals of Egypt, tracing in a dim fashion their Christianity back to one of those queens who bore the title of Candace. These wild and warring tribes kept up continual conflict, and among the Blemmyes men still worshipped Isis in the temple of Philae. In 548 began the conversion of the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... calm, beautiful June morning. A gentle breeze barely rippled the smooth, blue water as the Governor Bodwell headed eastward out of the harbor. Behind lay the city, fringed with lazily smoking lime-kilns, each contributing its quota to the dim haze that obscured the shore-line. Leaving on their left the little light on the tip of the long granite breakwater, and presently on their right the white tower on the hummock of Owl's Head, marking the entrance of rocky Muscle ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... little gateways with roses, white enamel with cute little diamond panes of glass for windows, inviting bowers of artificial flowers and dim yellow lights. It makes you feel like a sybarite just to see it. It's a cosmetic Arcadia for that fundamental feminine ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... Even so!—but not so stupid, blind, that I, Whom thus the great Taskmaster of the world Has set to meditate, mistaken work, My dreary face against a dim blank wall, Throughout man a natural ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... nor very lively; it was happiness enough merely to breathe so near each other. The sun left the distant fields and hills; soft twilight stole through the woods, down the gap, and over the plain; the grass lost its green; the wall of trees grew dark and dusky; and very faint and dim showed the picture that was so bright a little while ago. As they sat quite silent, listening to what nature had to say to them, or letting fancy and memory take their way, the silence was broken—hardly broken—by the distinct far-off cry of a whip-poor-will. Alice ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... in every time of need. He quoted mainly from the Bible, his one source of all knowledge, and his words had the splendid vagueness of the Hebrew, and lifted the mind into the illimitable. And as they talked, the fog enveloped them, one drift after another passing by in dim majesty, till the whole world seemed a spectacle of desolation, and a breath of deadly chillness forced them to rise and wrap their plaids closely round them. So they parted at the kirk yard gate, and never, never again met ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... to have been a hospice at that time,—I do not remember any such at present,—a small square built house, built as if partly for a fortress, with a detached flight of stone steps in front of it, and a kind of drawbridge to the door. This building, about 400 or 500 yards off, is seen in a dim, ashy gray against the light, which by help of a violent blast of mountain wind has broken through the depth of clouds which hang upon the crags. There is no sky, properly so called, nothing but this roof of drifting cloud; but neither is there any weight ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... some twenty feet from the level of the byre, and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the soft tufa. The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim above, over the cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black openings of passages which radiated from this ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the sun shining high in the heavens the light was a dim yellow, in the midst of which the few people who remained in the stricken towns, their clothing, hair and beards covered with ashes, moved about in the awful stillness ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... thy thoughts Imperious like thy name. Is the Sunne dim'd, that Gnats do flie in it? The Eagle suffers little Birds to sing, And is not carefull what they meane thereby, Knowing that with the shadow of his wings, He can at pleasure stint their melodie. Euen so mayest thou, the giddy men of Rome, Then cheare thy spirit, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... houses. The opaque grey sky lost its greyness and was struck to a lurid yellow. Banks of high fog rolled up the east and moved menacingly, almost imperceptibly, upon the town. For a moment there were dim shadows of the wharves and the riverside houses, with a church tower dimmer still behind them, and then the billows of the fog descended and swallowed ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... pleasure and honour... Some will devote their leisure to science, art, or literature. Others will prefer to travel on the State steamships to different parts of the world to see for themselves all those things of which most of us have now but a dim and vague conception. The wonders of India and Egypt, the glories of Rome, the artistic treasures of the continent and the sublime scenery of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a formal and imperative ceremonial by which his newly-won treasure must be secured to himself at last, barely flashed across his consciousness. He did not trouble himself to put it into words. He listened to the brief disjointed fragments of her speech—fragments which gave a dim picture of her life in these empty years of division. Now and then he spoke of himself. She listened. Once she turned to him with an impulse of tenderness strange in one so cold ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... everything was done for our entertainment. Our rooms were on the ground floor, and we were startled at reveille to see five or six dogs leap in at the open windows and run about the floor. Just awakened, we hardly knew in the dim light what manner of wild beasts they might be. Afterward, we heard that this was the custom in the family. A pet porcupine in the house amused us very much. He was a grotesque little creature, and very tame and affectionate, following ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... dim light of the gloomy old room the boys and girls looked queer—almost ghostly. They were gathered about a shabby old trunk, and beside this trunk a man was kneeling. As Billie Bradley spoke, the man, who was her father, rose to his feet and thoughtfully brushed the dust from his clothes. ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... lay far below. It made Tarzan sick and dizzy to look down upon it from so great a height, so he closed his eyes tight and held his breath. Higher and higher climbed the huge bird. Tarzan opened his eyes. The jungle was so far away that he could see only a dim, green blur below him, but just above and quite close was the sun. Tarzan reached out his hands and warmed them, for they were very cold. Then a sudden madness seized him. Where was the bird taking him? Was he to submit ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mild, the sloping sunbeams glow; Now weak and pale the lessen'd lustres play, As round th' horizon rolls the timid day; Barb'd with the sleeted snow, the driving hail, Rush the fierce arrows of the polar gale; And through the dim, unvaried, ling'ring hours, Wide o'er the waves incumbent ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... of the hill the rumble of cranes and night labor came up from Balboa dock. There, began the canal, which the eye could follow away into the dim hilly inland distance—and come upon a great cluster of lights that was Corozal, then another group that was Miraflores, close followed by those of Pedro Miguel; and yet further, rising to such height as to be almost indistinguishable from the lower ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... lumber-town in the clearing of Swamp's End! Swamp's End for Gingerbread Jenkins! Swamp's End for Billy the Beast! Swamp's End—and the roaring hilarity thereof—for man and boy, straw-boss and cookee, of the lumber-jacks! Presently the dim trails from the Cant-hook cutting, from the Bottle River camps, from Snook's landing and the Yellow Tail works, poured the boys into town—a lusty, hilarious crew, like loosed school-boys on a lark, giving over, now, to the only distractions, it seemed—and ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... off-colored. An unkind critic might easily have misinterpreted that dim surface. It was a dull gray landscape, and as I gradually deciphered the details of it I realized that it represented a long and enormously high line of cliffs exactly like an immense cataract seen in the distance, with a sloping, tree-clad plain ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... until recently that some dim perception of this complexity had begun to dawn upon her, athwart the sunshine of her life as bride and queen. When she had first landed on this fabled island she had been too much under the influence of the glamour with which her dreams had invested ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... against the cushions, and was soon sound asleep; but Mrs. Denham sat bolt upright. Hers was an uncompromising nature, it had been said, and certainly it seemed so; but as the carriage rolled along, there grew before her mind's eye the vague, dim outlines of a vision,—a vision of a human creature hiding in the dark swamps, fleeing through the deep woods, and creeping swiftly through the pine thickets. It was a pathetic figure, this fleeing human creature, whether ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... rather absurd. Herbert's smile in the dim light became a grin. "The same old thing!" he whispered to me. "Watch her closely. They do it ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... key grated in the lock of the door. With an inward desperate prayer she closed her eyes and relaxed the muscles of her face, just as the door swung open and the light flashed in her face from the larger part of the room. It was only a dim light in here, though. She knew that the lamp, a high-powered one with a green shade, shed its rays straight down ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... "high God" sat. A river ran out of the throne; it flowed through each street. No church was seen. God was the church; Christ the sacrifice. The gates were ever open. There is no night in the city. The planets, and the sun itself, are dim compared to the divine light. Trees there renew their fruit every month. The beholder of this fair city stood still ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... thing may fall to you after the fight, when men shall be left on ground, and none shall arise again; But we know not, if we quail before the assault of Death, how much may be left of life—the goal is too dim to see." We rode to the strait of battle; there cleared us a space, around the white swords in our right hands which the smiths had furbished fair. On them fell the edge of my blade, on that day of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was in Jane's drawing-room. Jane was sitting at her writing-table, and the room was dim except for the light from the reading-lamp that made a soft bright circle round her head and shoulders. She turned round when I came in and said, 'Hallo, K. What an unusual hour. You must have something very important to ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... pines of the low hills, on to the endless giant forests of the cloud-kissed summits, the young horseman made his way. Now and then the road descended to a little ravine, where a mountain torrent had torn a path to the deep canyons below: again it stretched through a dim, royal archway of green where the great trees linked branches as over a king's pathway; and then it turned a bend where the steep sides sank so suddenly that even the trees had no foothold and the bare space disclosed a view ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... on guard his attention was attracted by the uneasiness of the horses. Gazing carefully through the dim light, he saw an Indian peering over the outer wall or stockade. The orders of the post were to shoot every Indian that came within range, so Kelley blazed away, but missed his man. In the morning, many tracks were found about the place. This wild shot had probably frightened the prowlers away, ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... maids were some rare exhibit which she had captured with a net and placed in the kitchen, and whom it was rather thrilling to open the door upon and peep at. He could hardly hear her voice and had to bend his head. It was dim in the lobby outside the kitchen door. The dimness, her intense whispers and her excitement made him feel that he was in some mysterious conspiracy with her. The whole atmosphere of the house and of this tour ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... extra-regarding impulse, directed towards something that is not pleasure; that in many cases the impulse is so far incompatible with the self-regarding that the two do not easily co-exist in the same moment of consciousness." A dim feeling that our impulses do not by any means always arise from any contemporaneous or anticipated pleasure, has, I cannot but think, been one chief cause of the acceptance of the intuitive theory of morality, and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... admitted and largely acted on in the other, then the method of procedure observable in the evolution of the organs whose history is within our ken should throw light upon the evolution of that whose history goes back into so dim a past that we can only know it by way of inference. In the absence of any show of reason to the contrary we should argue from the known to the unknown, and presume that even as our non-bodily organs originated and were developed ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... dwelleth not. Although no home were half so fair; No simplest duty is forgot, Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... deceitful. Ere they were distinctly seen, the phantoms vanished. Or, if such beings do exist, it has experienced the peculiar hardship of never having met with any, in whom both the purpose and the power were fully united. Therefore, with hands wearied with labour, eyes dim with watchfulness, veins but half nourished, and a mind at length subdued by intense study and a reiteration of unaccomplished hopes, it was driven by irresistible impulse to end at once such a complication of evils. The knowledge ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... as well as the window, beaded with drops, would allow her, and saw only the lamps, which had just been lit, blinking in the wet atmosphere, and rows of hideous zinc chimney-pipes in dim relief against the sky. She writhed uneasily, as when a thought is swelling in the mind which must cause much pain at its deliverance in words. Elfride had known no more about the stings of evil report than the native wild-fowl knew of the effects of Crusoe's first shot. Now she saw a little further, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... two hands below. As little light reached that region, it appeared at first to be entirely empty. The odour was not very pleasant. Tom was on the point of returning on deck when he heard a groan, and hurrying to the fore part, by the dim light which came down, he distinguished a human form lying on the deck. Blood was streaming from the poor fellow's head. Tom and his men lifted him up, and discovering no one else, they carried him under the main hatchway. He quickly revived in the fresher air, and gazed with astonishment at the ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... on tombs immediately before the altar, while others recline in deep niches on either side. The night had closed in by the time I entered the church, which made the scene more impressive. A few votive lamps shed a dim light about the interior; their beams were feebly reflected by the gilded work of the high altar, and the frames of the surrounding paintings, and rested upon the marble figures of the warriors and dames lying in the monumental repose of ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... nor sea They shall not find the way to Arcady, The old home of the awful heart-dear Mother, Whereto child-dreams and long rememberings lull us, Far from the cares that overlay and smother The memories of old woodland out-door mirth In the dim first life-burst centuries ago, The sense of the freedom and nearness of Earth— Nay, this they shall not know; For who goes thither, Leaves all the cark and clutch of his soul behind, The doves defiled and the serpents shrined, The hates that wax and ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... showed even fewer lights in its windows, and, except that no small crowd hung about the closed door, was no whit more attractive than ever. Ellerey's summons was answered immediately, however, and he entered a large bare stone hall, the dim light which hung in the centre disclosing many fast-closed doors ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... punishable for anything over whose existence we have no power or control? Yet this question, apparently so plain and simple in itself, has been enveloped in clouds of metaphysical subtilty, and obscured by huge masses of scholastic jargon. If, on this subject, we have wandered in the dim twilight of uncertain speculation, instead of walking in the clear open day, this has been, it seems to us, because we have neglected the wise admonition of Barrow, that logic, however admirable in its place, was not designed as an instrument ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... fire, And breathed between his lips the note of power That makes of all the winds of heaven a lyre Whose strings are stretched from topmost peaks that tower To softest springs of waters that suspire, With sounds too dim to shake the lowliest flower Breathless with hope and dauntless with desire: And bright before his face That Hour became a Grace, As in the light of their Athenian quire When the Hours before the sun And Graces were made one, Called by sweet Love down from the aerial ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in the faint flush of coming dawn, and over the sandhills came the boom of breakers. It was Sunday morning, and all the respectable, non-dog-fighting population of that odoriferous suburb were sleeping their heavy, Sunday-morning sleep. Some few people, however, were astir. In the dim light hurried pedestrians plodded along the heavy road towards the sandhills. Now and then a van, laden with ten or eleven of "the talent", and drawn by a horse that cost fifteen shillings at auction, rolled softly along ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... know not - but it was a great convenience. The same evening, or the next day, I fell in conversation (in my usual autobiographical and . . . see above) with a denizen of the Savile Club, name now gone from me, only his figure and a dim three-quarter view of his face remaining. To him I mentioned that you had given me a loan, remarking easily that of course it didn't matter to you. Whereupon he read me a lecture, and told me how it really stood with you financially. He was pretty serious; fearing, as I could ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clear, and the sea was reasonably calm. For the first time he was up earlier than Miss Earle, and he paced the deck with great impatience, waiting for her appearance. He wondered who and what she was. He had a dim, hazy idea that some time before in his life, he had met her, and probably had been acquainted with her. What an embarrassing thing it would be, he thought, if he had really known her years before, and had ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr |
