"Dimness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that exhilaration that thrills in one's hair and quivers down his back bone when he knows that every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel cleaving through the waves at her utmost speed. There was no darkness, no dimness, no obscurity there. All was brightness, every object was vividly defined. Every prostrate Kanaka; every coil of rope; every calabash of poi; every puppy; every seam in the flooring; every bolthead; every object; however minute, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the Veery or Wilson's Thrush. He is the least of the Thrushes in size, being about that of the common Bluebird, and he may be distinguished from his relatives by the dimness of the spots upon his breast. The Wood-Thrush has very clear, distinct oval spots on a white ground; in the Hermit, the spots run more into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish-white; in the Veery, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... toward me, and even in the dimness I saw her quick and full sympathy—an impulsive flash that was instantly gone. But ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... looked up gravely from the script-laden table before them as Martin Pike came into the strong lamplight out of the dimness of the hall, where only a taper burned. He shambled a few limp steps into the room and came to a halt. Big as he was, his clothes hung upon him loosely, like coverlets upon a collapsed bed; and he seemed but a distorted image of himself, as if (save for the dull and reddened eyes) he had been ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... for some time in doubtful poise on the ridge, at length fell with a crash into the hollow, in which, as in a cavern, the after-part of the ship seemed embedded. It was, indeed, an awful crisis, rendered more frightful from the mistiness of the night and dimness of the moon. ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... hands of that enemy, that hath reserved himself to the last, to my last bed; then when I shall be able to stir no limb in any other measure than a fever or a palsy shall shake them; when everlasting darkness shall have an inchoation in the present dimness of mine eyes, and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth, and the everlasting worm in the present gnawing of the agonies of my body and anguishes of my mind; when the last enemy shall watch my remediless body, and my disconsolate soul ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... with Calvert was more touching in reality, but with fewer of the external signs of feeling. A few words, a single embrace and squeeze of the hand, and they separated; the old man hiding himself and his feelings in the dimness of his secluded abode, while his adopted son, with whom Ned Hinkley rode a brief distance on his way, struck spurs into his steed, as if to lose, in the rapid motion of the animal, the slow, sad feelings which were pressing heavily upon his heart. He had left Charlemont for ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... last they ended, and she found herself in a great arched vault like some ancient catacomb, empty, so far as she could see, but for cobwebs and dust. At least it was utterly silent; there was no more of that throbbing, and her eyes had by now accustomed themselves to the dimness. How broad this cellar might be she dared not adventure to find out, for a few paces from the ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... and he was led out and up the stairs. The blazing, blinding sun dazzled his eyes after the dimness of the dungeon. The pavement of the courtyard seemed burning to his cold, bare feet. Soldiers looked curiously at him as he passed, but of course didn't salute, now. He was taken away to the horrible place of execution, and there a new form of torture was applied to him—a ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... her devotions, and went with downcast eyes, her lips still repeating prayers, to the font of holy water, which was in a dim shadowy corner, where a painted window cast a gold and violet twilight. Suddenly there was a rustle of garments in the dimness, and a jewelled hand essayed to pass holy water to her on the tip of its finger. This mark of Christian fraternity, common in those times, Agnes almost mechanically accepted, touching her slender finger to the one extended, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... my mind. The Sanitary Officer reported some underground dwellings in Spitalfields as being perhaps the worst specimens of human habitation which we should find, and he offered to be my guide. I entered a cellar-like room in a basement, which, till one's eyes got used to the dimness, seemed pitch-dark. I felt, rather than saw, the presence of a woman, and, when we began to talk, I discerned by her voice that she was not a Londoner. "No, sir," she replied, "I come from Wantage, in Berkshire." Having always heard of Wantage as ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the whole, that it presented the appearance of being made entirely of windows. One break and one only he observed in the double row of lights encircling the courtyard. This was in a spot diagonally opposite, where a space of several feet showed a dimness he failed to understand. But as no workers appeared to be there, he passed the matter over ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... "The dimness of earth with me, the light of heaven with them. Here, again, worship seemed the only attitude for a human spirit, and the question was ever present, 'Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?' I rode ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... one of profound shock with faintness, giddiness, dimness of sight, and a feeling of great terror. The pupils dilate, the skin becomes moist with a clammy sweat, and nausea with vomiting, sometimes of blood, ensues. High fever, cramps, loss of sensation, haematuria, and melaena are among the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the mist is creeping; Fly the startled sunbeams weeping, Up the mountain feebly flying, Paling, waning, fainting, dying. All their cheerful work undoing, Crawls the cruel mist pursuing. Shrouded in a purple dimness, Quenched the sunlight is in shadow; Over hill and wood and meadow Broads the mist ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... her gown of rosy muslin, bouffant and billowy, a pink flower in her hair, and Celia's pink-and-white cameo at her whiter throat Ailsa Paige descended the carpeted stairs and came into the mellow dimness of the front parlour, where there was much rosewood, and a French carpet, and glinting prisms on the chandeliers,—and a young man, standing, dark against a bar of sunshine in ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... belong intrinsically to the subject. In perusing them, the uninitiated student is mortified at seeing so much powerful thought distorted, as he thinks, into such fantastic forms: the principles of reasoning, on which they rest, are apparently not those of common logic; a dimness and doubt overhangs their conclusions; scarcely anything is proved in a convincing manner. But this is no strange quality in such writings. To an exoteric reader the philosophy of Kant almost always appears to invert the common maxim; its end and aim seem not to be 'to make abstruse things simple, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Standing behind her, with his feet on the floor and his head high up in the obscurity of the ceiling, was a great Nimshee, or evil spirit of the ocean, who was fanning her with his wings, and had put her to sleep with their slow and dreamy motion. With his great eyes glowing like meteors in the dimness of the upper part of the room, the Nimshee glared at the Prince, and waved his wings faster and stronger. But our young friend was not afraid of him—not a bit. He walked softly round the room once or twice, and then, returning ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... Light, so early, lies timidly along the ground. It steals gently from ridge to ridge; it is soft, unsure. That blue dimness, receding from bole to bole, is the skirt of Night's garment, trailing off toward some other star. As easily as it slips from tree to tree, it glides from ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... a rustling of the bed-clothes, a faint murmur, and the sufferer languidly turned her eyes upon the speaker. A dimness was in those sunken orbs; a clamminess upon her wan brow, and her breast heaved wildly beneath the linen that lay in snowy waves across it. But she did not appear to have heard ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... the phlegm and similar humours which be at the mouth of the maw.[FN85] And let not the blood in the hot bath for it enfeebleth man's force, and gaze not upon the metal pots of the Balnea because such sight breedeth dimness of vision. Also have no connection with woman in the Hammam for its consequence is the palsy; nor do thou lie with her when thou art full or when thou art empty or when thou drunken with wine or when thou art in wrath nor when lying on thy side, for that it occasioneth swelling of the testicle-veins;[FN86] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... of Prince Karl, [For instance, The Life of his Highness Prince Charles of &c., with &c. &c. (London, 1746); one of the most distracted Blotches ever published under the name of Book;—wakening thoughts of a public dimness very considerable indeed, to which this could offer itself as lamp!] as well as tar-burning and TE-DEUM-ing on an extensive scale. For it had sent the Cause of Liberty bounding up again to the top of things, this of crossing the Rhine, in such fashion. And, in effect, the Cause of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... passages his reasons for the preference, I do not get angry; on the contrary, I feel quite pleased; perhaps, if the matter is related with unusual grace and tenderness, it is read with a certain moisture and dimness of eye. And the reason is obvious. The egotistical X. is barren, and suggests nothing beyond himself, save that he is a good deal better off than I am—a reflection much pleasanter to him than it is to me; whereas the equally egotistical Z., with a single sentence ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... waiting until late in the morning for Michel who did not come, Hepburn and I loaded ourselves with the bedding and, accompanied by Mr. Hood, set out for the pines. Mr. Hood was much affected with dimness of sight, giddiness, and other symptoms of extreme debility, which caused us to move very slowly and to ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... canopied with increasing clouds, will sometimes pierce through the interstices of the dark masses, and dart for a moment the intensity of his light upon the earth, the mind of Mazereau would flash in all its youthful grandeur and power from the dimness that ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Antarctic Pole, they did not see any star like our Pole Star; but they related that they saw another manner of stars very different from ours, and which they could not clearly discern because of a certain dimness which diffused itself about those stars, and obstructed the view of them." Also the Kachh mariners told Lieutenant Leech that midway to Zanzibar there was a town (?) called Marethee, where the North Pole Star sinks below the horizon, and they steer ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... could draw; velvet shoes tread without speck or spot upon the well-scoured pavement of a public street; men-at-arms grasp weapons and hold bridles with hands as carefully tended as any idle fine gentleman's, and there is neither fleck nor breath of dimness on the mirror-like steel of their armour; the very flowers, the roses and lilies that strew the way, are the perfection of fresh-cut hothouse blossoms; and when birds and beasts chance to be necessary ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... shot a loon, though several have legends of some one who has. Sound has no power to express a profounder emotion of utter loneliness than the loon's cry. Standing in piny darkness on the lake's bank, or floating in dimness of mist or glimmer of twilight on its surface, you hear this wailing note, and all possibility of human tenancy by the shore or human voyaging is annihilated. You can fancy no response to this signal of solitude disturbed, and again it comes sadly over the water, the despairing plaint of some companionless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... their remarks; but that he ascribed to the deafening effect of the experiment. Things about him seemed curiously dark and faint, but his mind explained that on the obvious but mistaken idea that the explosion had engendered a huge volume of dark smoke. Through the dimness the figures of Lidgett and the boys moved, as faint and silent as ghosts. Plattner's face still tingled with the stinging heat of the flash. He, was, he says, "all muddled." His first definite thoughts seem to have been of his personal safety. He thought he was ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... here, lacking knowledge whether the river front was guarded or not. He saw no human being, but could not be sure whether or not some dark form might emerge from the dimness when he should cross to the wharves. These, like the street and the roofs, were snow-covered. Aloft beyond them, but close, two or three faint lights, tiny yellow islets in a sea of gloom, revealed the presence ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and that Jesus Christ is glorified. Does my faith grasp the Christ that was—who died for me? Does my heart cling to the Christ who is—who lives and reigns, and with whom my life is hid in God? Do my hopes crystallise round, and anchor upon, the Christ that is to come, and pierce the dimness of the future and the gloom of the grave, looking onwards to that day of days when He, who is our life, shall appear, and we shall appear also with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... all given to tears, but there was now a sort of choking in her throat, and a sort of dimness in her eyes which made her rather hurriedly settle down on the floor in her own particular nook beside her mother's couch, where her face could not be seen. There was a silence. Presently the mother spoke, stroking back the wavy, auburn hair with ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Coming into the dimness after the golden bath of sunlight outside was like being plunged into night. For an instant all was dark before Mary's eyes, as if she had been pushed forward with her face against a black curtain. The once familiar perfume of incense came pungently to ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sufficient potency to reach the nostrils of the tiger, the hunter takes up his position in the edge of the clearing, or on a platform built in a tree if he believes in Safety First. For investigating the kill the tiger usually chooses the dimness of the early dawn or the semi-darkness which precedes nightfall. With no warning save a faint rustle in the undergrowth a lean and tawny form slithers on padded feet across the open—and the man behind ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... other point is there more occasion to note this trait of character, which presents a curious and interesting subject for study. Probably no exhaustive solution is possible. One wanders off into the mystery of human nature, loses his way in the dimness of that which can be felt but cannot be expressed, and becomes aware of even dimmer regions beyond in which it is vain to grope. It is well known that the coarse and rough side of life among the pioneers had its reaction in a reserved and at times morose habit, nearly ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... The casting vote on this momentous question was to be given by Victor Amadeus. He had recovered his strength in a wonderful manner, for his face had lost its pallor, his eyes their dimness, and his whole ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... know how the royal cousins met—whether the frank, kind, unconscious Princess came down under the wing of the Duchess as far as their entrance into the Clock Court; whether there was a little dimness of agitation and laughing confusion, in spite of the partial secrecy, in two pairs of blue eyes which then encountered each other for the first time; whether the courtly company ascended in well-arranged file, or in a little ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the faintest zephyr now at last dallied with my light flag for a minute, and the anchor was instantly raised. A schooner, also outward bound, soon gently burst its way through the cloudy barrier, and I tried to follow her, but she too melted into dimness, and left me in a noiseless, sightless vacancy, except when the distant gong of the light-ship told that they also ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... myself, I declare that as it has happened on the hills when I was fleeing from Claverhouse, so it is now in my affairs. I am moving in a mist which folds me round like a thin garment; here and there I see the light struggling through, and it seems to me most beautiful even in its dimness; by and by the mist shall altogether pass, and I shall stand in the light, which is the shining of His face. But whether I shall then find myself at Cana of Galilee or in the Garden ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... from the hollow vaults and thickens the air with its richness. It is all so quiet and sad and faded and yet all so brilliant and living. The strange figures in the mosaic pictures, bending with the curve of niche and vault, stare down through the glowing dimness; the burnished gold that stands behind them catches the light on its little uneven cubes. St. Mark's owes nothing of its character to the beauty of proportion or perspective; there is nothing grandly balanced or far-arching; there are no long lines nor triumphs of the perpendicular. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... sham-heroes, what are called quacks, thinking them heroes, and is not happy. The grand summary of a man's spiritual condition, what brings out all his herohood and insight, or all his flunkyhood and horn-eyed dimness, is this question put to him, What man dost thou honour? Which is thy ideal of a man; or nearest that? So too of a People: for a People too, every People, speaks its choice,—were it only by silently obeying, and not revolting,—in the course of a century or ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... his approach in the dimness of the February twilight, turned with a start to greet the Squire. He looked, to her eyes, lankier and thinner and queerer than ever. But it was a distinguished queerness. Elizabeth had forgotten ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... leave off looking, shut her eyes, and composed herself. She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently, that when we thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the blank clear darkness of the mirror without a stain. "What is our life? it is even a vapour, which appeareth for a little ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... curved, and went hesitatingly down many terraces. Here, from the dimness of the marge of the island, they gradually emerged into the beginnings of the faint light. It was not like entering upon dawn, or upon the moonlight. It was by no means like going to meet the lights of a city. It was literally "a light better than any light that ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... forgetfulness, he failed to bring it back, Martie, chancing to pass his office one day, determined to go in and get it for herself. She had never been in John's place of business before. She went from the spring warmth and dazzle of the street into the pleasant dimness of the big store that smelled pleasantly of reedy things, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding crash that seemed to set my very bones vibrating—a metallic, jangling crash, as the fall of heavy chains. I thought that, then, I half opened my eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting glimpse of a figure clad in gossamer silk, with arms covered with barbaric bangles and slim ankles surrounded by gold bands. The girl was gone, even as I told myself that she was an houri, and that I, though a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Dion's gift he felt for a moment almost depressed. He was accustomed to his constant visitor. Surely he would miss her. She smiled on him with her warm and very human cordiality for the last time, and went away, with her companion, into the dimness towards the hill of Drouva. Then the guardian pulled the great door. It closed with a final sound. The key was turned. And Hermes was left untroubled in that world where wings grow ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... principles which the want of mental energy, and of the sympathetic appeals of the child on the mother, so powerfully produce on the secreted nutriment, while the mother wakes in a state of clammy exhaustion, with giddiness, dimness of sight, nausea, loss of appetite, and a dull aching pain through the back and between the shoulders. In fact, she wakes languid and unrefreshed from her sleep, with febrile symptoms and hectic flushes, caused by her baby vampire, who, while dragging from her her health and strength, has excited ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... things for God knows what fraction of a farthing. On the stalls where you'd have cheap clocks and crockery and Austrian glass, they had stacks of violets and carnations—violetas y claveles...." Then a chill and a dimness passed over the bright spectacle and a sunset flamed up half across the sky as though light had been driven out of the gates by the sword and had scaled the heaven that it might storm the city from above. The lanes became little runnels of darkness and night slowly silted up ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the Hotel Lotus, Madame Beaumont preserved the state of a queen whose loneliness was of position only. She breakfasted at ten, a cool, sweet, leisurely, delicate being who glowed softly in the dimness like a jasmine flower ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the dreamer's memory as faithfully as scenes flashed by the sun on the plates of photography! True, the pictures were perhaps now slightly fading into the similitude of pale negatives, . . but still, would not everything that happened in the ACTUAL world merge into that same undecided dimness with the lapse ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... was, that morning, as I groped my way through the little white tables, the light chairs, and the dimness of early dawn to the windows. It was my business to open the windows every morning, finding my way down as best I could; for it was not permitted to light the gas at that hour, and no candles were allowed, lest they should soil the furniture. This morning the glass dome which brightened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... afflict thy feeble age; Let palsies make thy stubborn fingers faint; Let humours, streaming from thy moisten'd brains, With clouds of dimness choke thy fretful eyes, Before these monstrous ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... his Morris chair, his hands upon the arms of it, his head leaning back. His eyes were closed, one could not tell in that moment that he was blind, but it was more than the dimness, the blankness in his eyes, more than scarred eyeballs, made for the change in Karl's face. He and life did not dwell together as they had once; a freedom and a gladness and a sureness had gone. The loss of those things meant the loss of something fundamentally Karl. And ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... It was a sad sound, which pierced them to the heart. From time to time Roland Sefton walked up the long hills beside Phebe's pony, pouring out his whole heart to her. They could hardly see each other's faces in the dimness, and words came the more readily to him. All the burden of his confession was that he had fallen through seeking Felicita's happiness. For her sake he had longed for more wealth, and speculated in the hope of gaining it, and tampered with the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... open. The lamps of the roadster made little showing now as he rolled it in. Then these were switched off and everything down there was dark as a pocket. For a time I sat and waited for him to light up and call me, then started down. The fog was making the kind of dimness that has a curious, illusory character. I suppose I had gone half the distance of the garden walk, when, thrown up startlingly on the obscurity, I saw a square of white, and across that shining screen, moved the silhouette of a human head. ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... with the dawn; Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn, The aigret of one princess-feather, One monk's-hood tuft with oilets wan, I glimpsed, dead in ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... unto his kind resort, And Phoebus your father, with his streames red, Adorns the morrow, consuming the sort* *crowd Of misty cloudes, that would overlade True humble heartes with their mistihead.* *dimness, mistiness New comfort adaws,* when your eyen clear *dawns, awakens Disclose and spread, my ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... an inspiration: his riverside hiding-place was found! The spire was isolated from the church, and was entirely of wood, save for a stone stump. Great beams crossed and recrossed one another, in an ever-narrowing pyramid, for about two hundred feet. Up in the dimness and final darkness near the apex ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... far as it was capable, Pursued her, when in dimness she was lost, Turn'd to the mark where greater want impell'd, And bent on Beatrice all its gaze. But she as light'ning beam'd upon my looks: So that the sight sustain'd it not at first. Whence I to question her ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... perfection of impiety, the serpentine seducer of simplicity. Zeal herself will cry out upon thee, and curse the time that ever she was mashed by thy malice, who like a blind leader of the blind, sufferedst her to stumble at every step in Religion, and madest her seek in the dimness of her sight, to murder her mother the Church, from whose paps thou like an envious dog but yesterday pluckedst her. However, proud scorner, thy whorish impudency may happen hereafter to insist in the derision of these fearful denunciations, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the "pirate," turning on Owen his lusterless sea-green eyes, faded by much grog to a dimness that reminded one of the faint lights set in ships' decks and known as "dead-eyes." "No, but your porthole idea is just the scheme to get at him and get rid of him. I can slip down a rope tonight when all is quiet and the fool passengers ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... a little in presence of the explanation; then she had brought him up to a sort of recognition. He could make out by this light something of what he saw, but a dimness also there was, undispelled since his return. "There's something you must definitely tell me. If our friend knows ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... assures us of these things. The academicians[153] would have won. But this dulls it, and troubles the dogmatists to the glory of the sceptical crowd, which consists in this doubtful ambiguity, and in a certain doubtful dimness from which our doubts cannot take away all the clearness, nor our own natural lights chase ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... toward his, and through the dimness of sight from his straining efforts, he saw her try to smile, as she obeyed him to the letter, and without a sound. "O, brave girl!" he thought, and threw the ground behind ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... had in other words bravely let Miss Wenham know exactly who she was. Miss Wenham, in whose personal tradition the flame of resentment appeared to have been reduced by time to the palest ashes—for whom indeed the story of the great schism was now but a legend only needing a little less dimness to make it romantic—Miss Wenham had promptly responded by a letter fragrant with the hope that old threads might be taken up. It was a relationship that they must puzzle out together, and she had earnestly ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... mistress; why, I cannot remember, and I am glad to put her out of my mind, for I want to think of the strange poet whom we heard reciting verses, under the aspen, in which one of the apes had taken refuge. Through the dimness of the years I can see his fair hair floating about his shoulders, his blue eyes and his thin nose. Didn't somebody once describe him as a sort of sensual Christ? He, too, was after the commercant's wife. And didn't he select her as ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... The autumn-evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent;—hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play! The lights come out in the street, In the school-room windows—but cold, Solemn, unlighted, austere, Through the gathering darkness, arise The chapel-walls, in whose bound ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... overflowing with the mingled graces of poetry and art; a glorious composition, 'An Italian Scene,' of which we shall speak hereafter; as well as of the view of 'Ruined Aqueducts in the Campagna di Roma,' fading into dimness toward the imperial city, and of 'The Notch in the White Mountains' of New-Hampshire. Apropos: we perceive by a letter from an American at Rome, in one of the public journals, that THORWALDSEN, the great sculptor, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... water! The road which passed the castle joined, beyond these fields, the path which traversed them. It took, I well remember, a certain solemn and mysterious interest from the ruin. The shadow of the archway, the discolorizations of time on all the walls, the dimness of the little thicket which encircled it, the traditions of its immeasurable age, made St. Quentin's Castle a wonderful and awful fabric in the imagination of a child; and long after I last saw its mouldering roughness, I never read of fortresses, or heights, or spectres, or banditti, without ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... abodes that ring the firmament, Spirits of Peace and Happiness and Love, And thou, too, mild-eyed Spirit of Content, Ye will not chide if sometimes in her play The child should start and droop her shining head, Turning in meek surmise Her wistful eyes Back tow'rd the dimness of our mortal day And the loved home from which her soul was sped. Soon shall our little Wilma learn to be Amid the immortal blest An unrepining guest, Who now, dear heart, is young ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... I am ready, Twilight voices! Child of the spirit-world am I; How should I fear you? my soul rejoices, O speak plainer! O draw nigh! Fain would I fly! Tell me your message, Ye who are calling Out of the dimness vague and vast; Lift me, take me,—the night is falling; Quick, let us ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... well where He preached, to pray in the garden of His agony, and to stand on the summit above which He shone. And if his faith can be assured as to the site of Calvary, the great tragedy loses all historical dimness and is made real, visible, and present, though its story be read through penitent tears. The place suggests the man; the man suggests the Divine Man; He seems nearer when we worship where an apostle said, "My Lord ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... just light enough to discern the five human forms in the dimness of the garret; the rays of the moon having to find their way through the deep window-embrasures of the keep. Less illumination would have sufficed to disclose the ancient character of the garret, with its low ceiling, and the graduated mouldings ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... that of the civil wars, and of the death of the two young princes. No place, no name is now noted: and all is seen through the dimness ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... seen. She was defenceless. If she had been well, she would have gone straight along the balcony, to discover the cause of her alarm; but she was ill, and she shrank back in her chair, watching the pulsing dimness. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... strenuous one of trams, motor-busses, abbeys, and galleries, and though she realized an adventure might probably await her outside, it was pleasant to sit for awhile in the dimness of the quiet chapel. From her recess she could look out through the open doors upon the tragic Tower Green, where in the sunlight two sparrows were frivolously flirting. Even as she watched, the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... meant to be friendly, but his expression belied it. He was slightly taller than his father, and his cast of features was altogether different. His cheeks were pale, almost sunken, his eyes were too close together, and they had the dimness of the roue or the habitual dyspeptic. His lips were too full, his chin too receding, and ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the villagers called her. She had a large frame, but it was a good deal bowed down; her face was wrinkled, and her blue eyes had the peculiar dimness of extreme old age, yet those who noticed her closely might detect a remarkable shrewdness in her face; her faculties were not only perfect, but she loved to save money, and still retained a high value for, and a firm grip of, her possessions. The land she left waste was, notwithstanding, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... encountered the cook, who had to "do" that part of the housework, and she rose from her knees to wish him so hearty a good-morning, that a lump rose in Tom's throat, there was a dimness in his eyes, and his hand went out ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... party had not emerged all evening, but now, as the sex given to things of the spirit while the men warred against base things material, they took command and cried, "Oh, let's!" In the dimness the men were rather solemn and foolish, but the goodwives quivered and adored as they sat about the table. They laughed, "Now, you be good or I'll tell!" when the men took their hands ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... above. Joe went up, and was startled by a groan. He had to stand a few seconds, to let the darkness grow into light, ere he could see; and, when he could discern outlines in the dimness, there was given to him the picture of Uncle John, lying helpless amid and upon the nubbins that had been piled over ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... now come so near to the large vessel in front, that the latter had lost its dimness of outline and was much more plainly visible. It was evidently no Moorish craft, its large hull, its lofty masts, its tracery of spars and rigging being rather those of an English or American frigate than ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... half-mile along the track. It was beautiful to stand on the bank above a cutting and watch the files strike from the shadow of a wood into a broad flame of moonlight, every rifle sparkling up alert as it came forward. A beautiful sight to see the barrels writing themselves upon the dimness, each a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... our afternoons now, the landscape lies dark,—brown, and in a much deeper shadow than if it were clothed in green. But, perchance, a gleam of sun falls on a certain spot of distant shrubbery or woodland, and we see it brighten with many lines, standing forth prominently from the dimness around it. The sunlight gradually spreads, and the whole sombre scene is changed to a motley picture,—the sun bringing out many shades of color, and converting its gloom to an almost laughing cheerfulness. At such times ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thankfulness, and watched it grow. It spread rapidly. The walls of the ravine showed ghostly grey, then faintly pink. Through the dimness the boulders scattered about the stream stood up like mediaeval monsters, and for a few panic-stricken seconds Muriel took the twining roots of a rhododendron close at hand for the coils of a gigantic snake. Then as the ordinary light of day filtered down into the gloomy place ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Fourth Missouri was looking curiously at her; she started, cleared the dimness from her eyes, and steadied the ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... The dimness and poverty of their theological speculation caused the Stoics to attribute the government of the universe less to the uncertain design of gods than to a definite law of nature. By that law, which is superior to religious traditions and national authorities, and which every man ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... and firm ground which occurs frequently in newly cleared land, and over which nothing but the most powerful sinews can make way. We had now left every one behind us, were struggling on through the dimness of a hazy day, sinking into twilight. Suddenly my mysterious rival turned his horse full upon me, and to my utter amazement discharged a pistol at my head. The discharge was so close that I escaped only by the swerving of my horse at the flash. I felt my face burn, and in the impulse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... hills," she caught me up, "when one is alone among them—alone, or going to meet somebody in the dark of the night, or the dimness ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... they arrived at what seemed to Bradley to be an ordinary small hut. Outside the hut was what he took for a curiously shaped log of wood. The inside of the hut was in shadow, but as his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, he saw something in one corner. It was a weird-looking head, ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... infallibly Cured in an Instant, so as never to return again, by an admirable Chymical Secret, a few drops of which takes off a Fit in a Moment, dispels Sadness, clears the Head, takes away all Swimming, Giddiness, Dimness of Sight, Flushings in the Face, &c., to a Miracle, and most certainly prevents the Vapours returning again; for by Rooting out the very cause, it perfectly Cures as Hundreds have experienc'd: It also strengthens ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... up to the second floor, stumbling, terribly afraid of what he might find. Reaching the top, his heart thudding, he squinted into the dimness. ...
— Small World • William F. Nolan
... been raining, and the downpour rushed from the eaves with a melancholy sound as we sat in the lantern-lighted dimness drinking from the shells. The crew came in one by one, their naked bodies running water, their eyes eager for a draught of the tea, into which I put a little rum, the last of the two litres. Squall followed squall, shaking the hut. At half-past two, in ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... upon the Virginian. Her lips were faintly parted, and no woman's eyes ever said more plainly, "I am one of your possessions." She had forgotten that it might be seen. Her glance caught mine, and she backed into the dimness of the room. What look she may have received from him, if he gave her any at this too public moment, I could not tell. His eyes seemed to be upon the horses, and he drove with the same mastering ease that had roped the wild pony yesterday. We passed the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... the neighbors might have seen and commented; might even, at that moment, be gazing at her from behind their lace curtains. The thought was painful, and the lady retreated through her vestibule into the dimness of the hall beyond. There she paused and ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... It was not the room she had dreamed of, a great room, dimly lit, peopled with low-talking dancers, circling through the dimness. The place looked smaller decorated, and the decorations themselves seemed to have shrunk since she saw them. The lanterns had been hung only where nails were already driven, and under the supervision of the janitor, who would not permit them to be lighted. The cheesecloth ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... name of the town is variously pronounced by the people Foorn, Fern, and even Fearn. I doubt if many travelers in the Netherlands ever heard of it. Yet the town is one of great antiquity and renown, its origin lost in the dimness of the ages. ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... closer and closer. She had thought she heard them so often without hearing them. Before she came down the stairs to dinner, she had turned into the private chapel to say her night-prayers, praying for her beloved ones, and for all the world; and as she knelt there in the dimness she had been almost certain she heard Mustapha come. Now, sitting by the drawing-room fire, the river of prayer went flowing through her heart, half articulate, broken into by the effort of listening that might ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... did it come dropping down. High up above the trees they could see the red lantern shining in the dusk like a glowing ruby; the air was growing chilly, and all the warm bright colours were fading into a dull uniform grey, when suddenly out of the shadowy dimness there leapt a dark form—a form with a bushy tail and ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... no trouble," said Mrs. Porter. The doctor spun round, startled. In the dimness of the studio he had not perceived her. "Mr. Winfield's servant has injured his knee very superficially. There is practically nothing wrong with him. I have made ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... became as it were peopled with the souls of these exiles; they flitted ghostlike in the dimness behind flapping curtains, they peered down through closed jalousies—wraiths of the men and women and children who had lived and loved and played here before the curse of the barbarian ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... thus in some of its most important parts utterly destroyed. It represents, so far as is to be seen now, two men in the attitude of preaching to flocks who stand near them,—and if the eye is not deceived by the uncertain light, and by the dimness of the injured colors, a shower of rain, typical of the showers of divine grace, is falling upon the sheep: on one who is listening intently, with head erect, the shower falls abundantly; on another who listens, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... hedged their course discovered a profile, ragged, black against a sky whose purple dimness held the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... A curious dimness came over the professor's eyes, as he paused for a moment or two upon the top of a rock, to gaze before him. But there was nothing visible, for the defile at the bottom curved and zigzagged so that they could not see thirty yards before them, and where it was most straight ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... mysteriously disintegrated opened very softly, and through the aperture stole forth a woman's figure. . . . For a swift moment the light from within rested on yellow hair and gleaming blue satin; then the door closed and the figure became part of the stealing dimness which was neither night nor morning. But April, who stood in her ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... was chiefly pale or sombre: the vellum bindings, with their deep-ridged backs, gave little relief to the marble, livid with long burial; the once splendid patch of carpet at the farther end of the room had long been worn to dimness; the dark bronzes wanted sunlight upon them to bring out their tinge of green, and the sun was not yet high enough to send gleams of brightness through the narrow windows that looked on the Via ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... becomes dim, just as that jar is dim. If you can get a silver dish, or something of that kind, you will make the experiment still better. And now, just to carry your thoughts forward to the time we shall next meet, let me tell you that it is water which causes the dimness; and when we next meet. I will shew you that we can make it, without difficulty, assume the form of ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... to Hanging Rock to spend Saturday to Monday with her mother. Presbury, reduced now by various infirmities—by absolute deafness, by dimness of sight, by difficulty in walking—to where eating was his sole remaining pleasure, or, indeed, distraction, spent all his time in concocting dishes for himself. Mildred could not resist—and who can when seated at table with the dish before one's eyes and under one's nose. ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... dimness of my sight Makes me secure; For groping in my misty way, I feel his hand; I hear him say, "My help ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... is greater activity of speculation in regard to questions affecting the nature and destiny of man; and problems have been boldly propounded, but the solutions have not been found, and amidst much doubt and dimness, the present generation seems to be struggling toward a new organization ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... his right hand in the Indian sign of peace. Major King was riding with Chadron at the head of the vanguard. They drew rein suddenly at sight of what appeared to be such a formidable force at Macdonald's back, for at that distance, and with the dimness of the scattering mist, it appeared as if ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... with a feeling of exultation that Jill, from her elevated seat, looked down into the Arab's face, outlined in the scented dimness of the garden by the snow-white head-cloth, and her brilliant mouth widened in a low laugh of pleasure as she pulled down a bough of fluffy mimosa to sniff its perfume, and she also gave a little shriek of dismay as Taffadaln, taking matters into ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... sleep. There she lay wide awake tossing nervously to and fro. She tried to close her eyes only to find them wandering about the room in the obscure dimness, focusing themselves now on the old mahogany dresser, now on the little prie-Dieu against the inner wall with the small ivory crucifix outlined faintly above it, now on the chintz hangings that covered the window. She could ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... more particularly associated with the protection of British interests. The sunshine has appeared to rest upon scattered clusters of red-coats, while the background has been enveloped in a sort of chaotic and fuliginous dimness. The red-coats, according to their number, have been palpable and definite, though a great many other things have been inconveniently vague. At the beginning of the year, when Parliament was opened in the queen's name, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... it is not broken freely by a blow; it is slowly wrung, or ground, to pieces. You can only with extreme dimness conceive the force exerted on mountains in transitional states of movement. You have all read a little geology; and you know how coolly geologists talk of mountains being raised or depressed. They talk coolly of it, because they are accustomed to the fact; but the very universality ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... he had run before, now he flew. But fast as he ran, the leaves burned faster. The flame was ready to expire when, with a great leap, he bounded on the mat. The wind of his leaping blew it out; and with that the beach was gone, and the sun and the sea, and they stood once more in the dimness of the shuttered parlour, and were once more shaken and blinded; and on the mat betwixt them lay a pile of shining dollars. Keola ran to the shutters; and there was the steamer tossing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his hands repeatedly close to his face, as if there was something in it he wished to look at. I presently saw that it held a miniature of a fair haired, blue—eyed Scandinavian girl; but apparently he could not see it, from the increasing dimness of his eyes, which seemed to distress him greatly. After a still minute, during which no sound was heard but his own heavy breathing, he again began to speak very rapidly, but no one in the room could make out what he said. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... saw that the chair was huge, and its seat level with my head. The great barrel-cylinder of the microscope slanted sixty feet upward. The dome roof was a distant spread three hundred feet up in the dimness. The dome-room ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... waxen white, Flowered out a living dimness; bright Dawned the dear mortal grace Of ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... through their ranks in silver pride The nether crescent seems to glide! The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe, The lake is smooth and clear beneath, Where once again the spangled show Descends to meet our eyes below. The grounds which on the right aspire, In dimness from the view retire: The left presents a place of graves, Whose wall the silent water laves. 20 That steeple guides thy doubtful sight, Among the livid gleams of night. There pass, with melancholy state, By all ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the church door and found it shut; but to their surprise the big old-fashioned key was in the lock. Nick pushed the door open and they both went in, followed by Billy. The Padre was not to be seen. So far as they could tell in the dimness ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... her as sitting there, hunched up, depressed. He would bounce in with news of a good day. He tried the door carefully. Mother stood in the middle of the floor, in a dream. In the dimness of the room the coal fire shone through the front draught of the stove, and threw a faint rose on her crossed hands. Taller she seemed, and more commanding. Her head was back, her eyes sparkling. She was clean-cut and strong against the ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... seen through it; we speak of a stream as clear when we think of the water itself; we speak of it as transparent with reference to the ease with which we see the pebbles at the bottom. Clear is also said of that which comes to the senses without dimness, dulness, obstruction, or obscurity, so that there is no uncertainty as to its exact form, character, or meaning, with something of the brightness or brilliancy implied in the primary meaning of the word clear; as, the outlines of the ship were clear against the sky; a clear ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... not so good as it was," he whispered. "There's a dimness before my face, lad! Can you see anything up there?" he asked, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... been a glimpse of the "glory to be revealed" breaking through the dimness of death; for he did not see the dear face so close to his, and if he heard her voice, he was past all answering now. Just once again his lips moved, murmuring a name—the dearest of all—"Jesus;" and then he "saw ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... prime annoyance, her aunt's note was addressed to her and not to Mary, to whom it did not even allude. Mary only smiled inwardly at this, but Letty felt deeply hurt, and her displeasure with her aunt added yet a shade to the dimness of her judgment. She ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... following walked slowly across the house-top to a tower built over the northwest corner of the palace. Had he been a stranger, he might have bestowed a glance upon the structure as he drew nigh it, and seen all the dimness permitted—a darkened mass, low, latticed, pillared, and domed. He entered, passing under a half-raised curtain. The interior was all darkness, except that on four sides there were arched openings like doorways, through which the sky, lighted with stars, was visible. In one of the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... society,—nevertheless Phineas was not so troubled but what he could work at his vocation. Now, when he would find himself upon his legs in the House, he would wonder at the hesitation which had lately troubled him so sorely. He would sit sometimes and speculate upon that dimness of eye, upon that tendency of things to go round, upon that obtrusive palpitation of heart, which had afflicted him so seriously for so long a time. The House now was no more to him than any other chamber, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... and a half taller.[K] His person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence; his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically call fair, because it was associated with black hair; his eyes were soft and large in their expression, and it was by a peculiar appearance of haze or dimness which mixed with their light." "A lady of Bristol," writes De Quincey, "assured me she had not seen a young man so engaging in his exterior as Coleridge when young, in 1796. He had then a blooming and healthy complexion, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... be the beneficent arbiters of our own fate; that there are few pleasures which have not their price; and after all, though she, Katherine, had paid high for hers, it had not cost too much, considering she had been groping in the dimness of imperfect knowledge. Oh, hew she wished she had never attempted to act providence to her mother and herself, but trusted to Errington's sense of generosity and justice! Of course it would have been humiliating to beg from a stranger, yet before that stranger she had been compelled to lower herself ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... town that always like a friend appears, And always in the sunrise by the sea. And over it, somehow, there seems to be A downward flash of something new and fierce, That ever strives to clear, but never clears The dimness of ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... bring clear before us, and to keep high above the mists that cling to the low levels, the great vision which will make us glad. Brethren, I believe that one great source of the weakness of average Christianity amongst us to-day is the dimness into which so many of us have let the hope of the glory of God pass in our hearts. So I beg you to lay to heart this first commandment, and to rejoice ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... madam, there is not the least danger. The beaux yeux de ma casette are not brilliant enough to make amends for the spectacles which must supply the dimness of my own. I am a little deaf, too, as you know to your sorrow when we are partners; and if I could get a nymph to marry me with all these imperfections, who the deuce would marry Janet McEvoy? and from Janet McEvoy Chrystal Croftangry will ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... room, and through its dimness the little portrait on the wall was visible, no longer shrouded in somber weeds, but in its brightness and simplicity gazing down upon the two loving ones beneath it, and seeming to share in their deep and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... my children. Draw your chairs round me, all of you. There is a dimness over your figures. You sit quivering indistinctly with each motion of the blaze, which eddies about you like a flood; so that you all have the look of visions or people that dwell only in the firelight, and will vanish from ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as it were, into a sort of anagogical half consciousness, laved and carried along on currents of melody that were as sensually delicious as a warm bath. Her awareness of Lindsley on a diagonal from her so that she could see his profile hook into the music-scented dimness, ran under her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the dimness of the stairway, as she replied with emphasis, "I expect all my girls to obey the rules laid down for them, and if they won't do that, ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... In the dimness, I at length discovered a wall before me. It ran up and down and on either hand endlessly into the night. It was solid, black, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... again. Yet she had a consciousness of tunnels and hills and of broad marshes pallid under a moon and a coming dawn. And in the dawn there was Pisa. She watched the word hanging in the station in the dimness: "Pisa." Ciccio told her people were changing for Florence. It all seemed wonderful to her—wonderful. She sat and watched the black station—then she heard the sound of the child's trumpet. And it did not occur to her to connect the train's ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... had become more and more accustomed to the dimness in the huge room. Now, looking about, he saw great bales of pelts piled indiscriminately, thousands and thousands of dollars' worth. So, these were free-traders! This was the magnet that had drawn the hardy trappers from their allegiance to ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... enthusiasm, and finished it in a comparatively short time. The title of the story was "His Wife's Deceased Sister"; and when I read it to Hypatia she was delighted with it, and at times was so affected by its pathos that her uncontrollable emotion caused a sympathetic dimness in my eyes, which prevented my seeing the words I had written. When the reading was ended, and my wife had dried her eyes, she turned to me and said, "This story will make your fortune. There has been nothing so pathetic since Lamartine's 'History ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... an answer, exchanging, sitting on his feet, the profane talk of the bazar with the gatekeeper of the Christians. Stephen was in chapel. There was no service; he had half an hour to rest in and he rested there. He was speculating, in the grateful dimness, about the dogma—he had never quite accepted it, though Colquhoun had—of the intercessory power of the souls of saints. A converted Brahmin, an old man, had died the day before. Arnold luxuriated in the humility of thinking that he would be glad of any ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... long suffering; communication between one district and another was rendered impossible or difficult, and what was happening in one place was unknown quite near at hand; in the minds of men there reigned dimness, ignorance, confusion. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... now held four men, three rabbits—panting in terror in one corner—half a dozen game birds and the just-arrived porcupine. All the wild creatures shrank away from the men. At any sudden movement the birds tended to fly hysterically about in the dimness, dashing themselves against the ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of St. Michel is close to the chateau, but is of much more ancient origin, as its church plainly shows. The venerable Romanesque door-way was to me more beautiful because of the purple spots of snapdragon, that shone in the clear dimness of the twilight like little coloured lamps about the crevices of the old stones. It is uncertain whether Montaigne was christened here or in the family chapel. It was a strange christening wherever it took place, for we are told that he was 'held over the font' by persons of most humble condition, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... suspicion of red and no more, and a waviness that turns to curl at the ends. She has a good forehead, arched a little, not without a look of habitation, though whence that comes it might be hard to say. There are no great clouds on that sky of the face, but there is a soft dimness that might turn to rain. She has a straight nose, not too large for the imperfect yet decidedly Greek contour; a doubtful, rather straight, thin-lipped mouth, which seems to dissolve into a bewitching smile, and reveals perfect teeth—and a good deal more to the eyes that can read it. When the mouth ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... which is thus the next portion of my task, with no little diffidence. It is hard to rise to a point of view sufficiently elevated and clear, where the extent of dominion is so great geographically, and the reasons of policy are obscured by the dimness and clouds of so many centuries. Living in a social state the origin of which is in the events now to be examined, our mental vision can hardly free itself from the illusions of historical perspective, or bring things into their ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... tried to get up. After some effort she rose to a sitting, posture, and, reaching out, she felt something, a human body, on the ground beside her. She could now begin to see a little through the dimness. Franz lay beside her, motionless. She put out her hand and touched his face; something warm and wet covered it. Her heart seemed to stop beating—Blood?—Oh, what had happened? Franz was wounded and unconscious. Where was the coachman? She called him, ...
— The Dead Are Silent - 1907 • Arthur Schnitzler
... lip until the blood started, and, to conceal her chagrin, took refuge in the parlor, where the quiet dimness offered a covert. Locking the door, she sat down in one of the cushioned rocking-chairs and looked at the letter lying between her fingers. The gilt clock on the mantel uttered a dull, clicking sound, and a little green and gold-colored ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... always pretty near a sick woman's couch; but nearer even than God seems the sick-nurse—at least in that part of the country, under those circumstances. It is so good to look through the dimness and uncertainty, moral and physical, and to meet those little black, steadfast, all-seeing eyes; to feel those smooth, soft, all-soothing hands; to hear, across one's sleep, that three-footed step—the flat-soled left foot, the tiptoe right, and the padded end of the broomstick; ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... see the whirling sea-birds sweep by on graceful wing, I see the silver breakers leap high on shoal and bar, And hear the bell-buoy tolling his lonely note afar. The green salt-meadows fling me their salty, sweet perfume, I hear, through miles of dimness, the watchful fog-horn boom; Once more, beneath the blackness of night's great roof-tree high, The wild geese chant their marches athwart the ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... necessary with the least possible degree of heat. No prisoner in his cell is more excluded from an outside view than we were in our rooms during the day in the hot season. There was a remarkable contrast between the outside glare and the inside dimness, so that a person coming from without could not on entering see anything. The prevailing wind is from the west. There is enough in the morning to show the direction from which it is coming. It rises as the day advances; by two or three it blows with great strength, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... are also human respond to their finality, to their quizzical indifference and their stinging resentment. We also say, "Vanity of vanities," and bow our heads murmuring "Ilicet," and stretch out our hands to "turn down an empty glass," but all this in twilight moods when a dimness as of dying rests upon the soul. There are a few with whom it is always morning, and others who remember something of the radiance of the young day even in the heart of midnight. These disprove the postulates of sameness and satiety, these are not smitten by the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... in the sitting room huddled close together, Keziah holding the broom like a battle-ax, ready for whatsoever might develop. From the dimness of the tightly shuttered study stepped the owner of the voice, a stranger, a young man, his hair rumpled, his tie disarranged, and the buttons of his waistcoat filling the wrong buttonholes. Despite this evidence of a hasty ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that loud against it cry, See they don't entertain it inwardly; Sin, like to pitch, will to the fingers cleave, Look to it then, let none himself deceive; 'Tis catching; make resistances afresh, Abhor the garment spotted by the flesh. Some at the dimness of the candle puff, Who yet can daub ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... known himself! Often had he passed the night in the open air, but never before had his night-consciousness been such! Never had he felt the same way alone. He was parted from the whole earth, like the ship-boy on the giddy mast! Nothing was below but a dimness; the earth and all that was in it was massed into a vague shadow. It was as if he had died and gone where existence was independent of solidity and sense. Above him was domed the vast of the starry heavens; he could neither flee from it nor ascend to it! For a moment he felt it the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... crimson stain." He took her hand as he spoke, and held it in his own, in spite of the repugnance, amounting to nothing short of agony, with which she struggled to regain it. Holding it up to the fading light (for there was already dimness among the trees), he appeared to examine it closely, as if to discover the imaginary blood-stain with which he taunted her. He smiled as he let it go. "It looks very white," said he; "but I have known hands as white, which all the water in the ocean would ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long ere the signal was given for an audience. Still blindfolded, he was led by a circuitous route into a little wainscotted chamber lighted by a single bay-window. Here the bandage was taken from his eyes, and when the dimness had a little subsided, he beheld that heroic lady for the first time whom he had often compared, in no very moderate terms, to Jezebel, and many other names equally appropriate. A very different person she appeared from what his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the shadow and climbed a steep rise, wide moors stretched away in front, rising and falling in long undulations, streaked with belts of mist. The crying of restless plovers came out of the gathering dimness. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... executed remarkable flights, and there was much applause, every symptom of success; but Laura became more and more unaware of the music—she had no eyes but for Lady Ringrose and her friend. She watched them earnestly—she tried to sound with her glass the curtained dimness behind them. Their attention was all for the stage and they gave no present sign of having any fellow-listeners. These others had either gone away or were leaving them very much to themselves. Laura ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... the street loomed mansions, girls' schools, black and silent, and dining places, from the kitchens of which lights still streamed. There was not, however, a single shop to throw the glare of its frontage across the dimness. To Henri and Helene the loneliness was pregnant with intense charm. He had not ventured to offer her his arm. Jeanne walked between them in the middle of the road, which was gravelled like a walk in some park. At last the houses came to an end, and then on each side were walls, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... And presently there would be Nelly's children. Please God he would live to deck the Tree for the delight of Nelly's children! It was the thought of the golden heads of the little lads and lasses yet to be dancing about the Tree that brought the dimness to his eyes, the look of ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... with the intent to get quite round the ridge, and cut off the retreat of these most wily beasts of prey, before the coming of the rear-guard should alarm them—and the remainder of the party, sleighing it merrily along, with all the hounds attached to them. The dawn was yet in its first gray dimness when we got into line along the little ridge which bounds that small dense brake on the northeastern side—upon the southern side the hill rose almost inaccessibly in a succession of short limestone ledges—westward the open woods, through which ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester) |
