"Dusky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... word with Allan, he went to his room and from his south window smoked into the night—smoked into something approaching quietude a mind that had been rebelliously running back to the bare-armed girl in dusky white—the wondering, waiting girl whose hand had trembled into his so long ago—so many years during which he had been a dreaming fool, forgetting the world to worship certain impalpable gods of idealism—forgetting a world in which it was the divinely sensible custom to eat one's candy ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... of her dusky tresses, Like a star, shines out her face, And the form his strong arm presses Is sylph like in its grace. As a leaf on the bounding river Is lost in the seething sea, I know that forever and ever My dream ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the place—not a dog barked—not a breeze blew, nor did a leaf move on its stem, so calm and warm was the night. Neither moon nor stars shone in the firmament, and the darkness seemed kindly to throw its dusky mantle over this sweet and stolen interview of our young lovers. As yet, however, Una had not come, nor could Connor, on surveying the large massy farm—house of the Bodagh, perceive any appearance of light, or hear a single sound, however ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... affectionately linked arms with her relation and, with the nonchalant rudeness that was in those days almost a badge of caste, dragged her off to a cool and dusky corner of the panelled reception-hall to acquaint her with the adulterated facts responsible for ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... and commonly ring-burnished, the process beginning at the base of a vase and climbing spirally: little painted decoration: face usually dusky brown over pinkish body clay, but red and yellow-white faced wares also found: shapes, mostly bowls, open and half closed: ring feet, but no handles to vases: only occasionally lug-ears (IX, Figs. 1,2,3,5,6). Rims well turned over belong ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... endued with the speed of the mind. And they also gave unto the king enough gold of superior quality. I also saw numberless Chins and Sakas and Uddras and many barbarous tribes living in the woods, and many Vrishnis and Harahunas, and dusky tribes of the Himavat, and many Nipas and people residing in regions on the sea-coast, waiting at the gate being refused permission to enter. And the people of Valhika gave unto him as tribute ten thousand asses, of goodly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... all built in a locust grove to the rear of the house. To-night the negroes had lighted a bonfire, and were making merry in the old-time, ante-bellum way. Seated upon broken-down chairs, or strewn upon the grass in various attitudes, these dusky children of misfortune watched the performance of an exceedingly black old uncle, who, sitting upon a bench before his cabin, was picking the strings of a banjo almost as old as himself. His bald head, surrounded by a fringe of gray wool, shone brightly in the firelight, he was rocking ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... increasing in number and beauty. At one place there was a forest of palms, a singularity, for trees of the same order are seldom associated. The forest, densely packed and gloomy, stands on very low, flat banks of hard river mud. Scarcely a sign of animal life was visible; but, as we progressed, dusky faces peered out of the woods; little shanties belonging to the seringeros, or rubber-makers, here and there broke the solitude, and occasionally a large group of half-clad natives greeted us from the shore. A labyrinth of channels ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... languorous with dreams Of her beloved Darkness, rose in fear, Feeling the presence of another near. Outside her curtained casement shone the gleams Of burning orbs; and modestly she hid Her brow and bosom with her dusky hair. When lo! the bold intruder lurking there Leaped through the fragile lattice, all unbid, And half unveiled her. Then the swooning Night Fell pale and dead, while yet her soul was white Before that lawless Ravisher, ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... back in a patched chair in the dusky, unoccupied office of the Labyrinth mine and addressed himself to four lads of seventeen who were clad in the khaki uniform of the Boy Scouts ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... hurriedly away, down the dusky street. In his mind were his articles, shooting about: his terrible articles, where surely nobody would find any gentleness to surprise them. They were the best thing he would ever do; precisely the thing he had always wanted to do. And yet—well he knew now that he had no ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... which, beside the slight Moorish race, appeared gigantic; stolid and passionless machines, to execute, without thought, the bloodiest or the slightest caprice of despotism. There they stood; their silver breastplates and long earrings contrasting their dusky skins; and bearing, over their shoulders, immense clubs studded with ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... met her eyes was at once graphic and fearful in the extreme. On either side of the river lines of streaming torches were waved by dusky warriors high above their heads, reflecting the grim countenances, not only of those who bore them, but of dense groups in their rear, whose numbers were alone concealed by the foliage of the forest ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... mountain-top, with eager eye Exploring far and wide the watery waste, For sight of ship from England. Every speck Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale With conflict of contending hopes and fears. But comes at last the dull and dusky eve, And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepared To dream all night of what the day denied. Alas, expect it not. We found no bait To tempt us in thy country. Doing good, Disinterested good, is not our trade. We travel far, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... It was dusky in the room when Caw brought tea to his master. Fitful gleams from the fire touched the latter's face, which had grown haggard. The Green ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... Lal Chowdar, who is now dead. Morstan and I had a difference of opinion as to the division of the treasure, and we came to heated words. Morstan had sprung out of his chair in a paroxysm of anger, when he suddenly pressed his hand to his side, his face turned a dusky hue, and he fell backwards, cutting his head against the corner of the treasure-chest. When I stooped over him I found, to my horror, that ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... under him, foot, leg, and thigh! His eyesight and hearing are lost; Between life and death his blood freezes and thaws; And his two pretty pinions of blue dusky gauze Are glued to his ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... enthralled again Within a marble minster over-seas. I watch the solemn gold-stained gloom that creeps To kiss an alabaster tomb, where sleeps A lady 'twixt two knights' stone effigies, And every day in dusky glory steeps Their sculptured slumber of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... gold on the walls of the temple. The bodies, clothed in the princely attire which they had been accustomed to wear, were placed on chairs of gold, and sat with their heads inclined downward, their hands placidly crossed over their bosoms, their countenances exhibiting their natural dusky hue, - less liable to change than the fresher coloring of a European complexion, - and their hair of raven black, or silvered over with age, according to the period at which they died! It seemed like a company of solemn worshippers fixed in devotion, - so true were the forms and lineaments ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... that; but she did not know that a quarter-strain of tropic sunshine streamed in his veins, and she knew that that was sufficient to put him outside the marriage pale. It was a strange world. There was the Honourable A. S. Cleghorn, who had married a dusky princess of the Kamehameha blood, yet men considered it an honour to know him, and the most exclusive women of the ultra-exclusive "Missionary Crowd" were to be seen at his afternoon teas. And there was Steve. No one had disapproved of his teaching her ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... smooth-barked hazel, And the dusky sloe, Are the poor men of the forest— Are the weak and low. Yet unto the poor is given Power the earth to bless; And the sloe's small fruit of down, And the hazel's clusters brown, Are the tribute they can ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... just beginning to be dusky. The sad gray twilight was over everything, and as the figures retreated they merged into a single dark mass in the throat of the street. As this mass reached Jackson Street corner, there was an ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... brilliant kernel of the night, The flaming lightroom circles me: I sit within a blaze of light Held high above the dusky sea. Far off the surf doth break and roar Along bleak miles of moonlit shore, Where through the tides the tumbling wave Falls in an avalanche of foam And drives its churned waters home Up many an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had time to think. As he glanced round the room at the flushed faces of the boys, some of whom he could not recognise in the dusky atmosphere, a qualm of disgust and shame passed over him. Several of them were smoking, and, with Ball and Brigson heading the line on each side of the table, he could not help observing what a bad set they looked. The remembrance of Russell came back to him. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... married to an Arapahoe squaw, and his strange wooing and winning of the dusky maiden ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... circular diamond, there, Look'd out above into the purple air And rays from God shot down that meteor chain And hallow'd all the beauty twice again, Save when, between th' Empyrean and that ring, Some eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing. But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen The dimness of this world: that grayish green That Nature loves the best for Beauty's grave Lurk'd in each cornice, round each architrave— And every sculptured cherub thereabout That from his marble dwelling peered out, Seem'd earthly ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... beautiful lashes seemed to screen his eyes. He was fairly tall, but loosely built for an Italian, with slightly sloping shoulders. Alvina noticed the brown, slender Mediterranean hand, as he put his fingers to his lips. It was a hand such as she did not know, prehensile and tender and dusky. With an odd graceful slouch he went into the passage and reached ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... own beautiful blond locks were piled high, and the style became her. But Charlotte's dusky braids were prettier low on the white neck, in the girlish fashion in which they had long been worn, and Celia announced this fact with a loving touch on the graceful coiffure her own hands ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... and fearless manner with which the young Mohawk waved back the dusky matron who approached as if with the design of laying hands upon her unwelcome guest, followed with beating heart till they stood in the entrance of the lodge of the Bald Eagle. It was filled with the hunters, who were stretched on skins on the floor, reposing in quiet after ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... great diapason of noisy battle. The eyes of the beleaguered were turned toward the setting sun, whose enormous disk was leaning against the far-away mountains, and casting his red and vermilion over the dusky faces of dead Ashantees and Fantis; and, imparting a momentary beauty to the features of the dead white men who fell so far away from home and friends, he sank to rest. There was a sad, far-off look in the eye of the impatient sailor who kept his lonely watch on the vessel that lay at rest on ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... a marvel to Stratton as he recalled the past, and, as he sat gazing from the open window or strolled out upon the dusky sands, he wondered that he could feel so well. In fact a sensation of annoyance attacked him, for he felt guilty and faithless, a traitor to the past, and strove to resume his old cloak of sadness, but it ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... land, The dreaded Infant's hand, The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside Longer dare abide, Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine. Our Babe, to shew his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling-bands ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... were sawed into lumber. The latter offered the great excitement of sitting on a log while it slowly approached the buzzing saw which was cutting it into slabs, and of getting off just in time to escape a sudden and gory death. But the flouring mill was much more beloved. It was full of dusky, floury places which we adored, of empty bins in which we might play house; it had a basement, with piles of bran and shorts which were almost as good as sand to play in, whenever the miller let us wet the edges of the pile with water brought in his sprinkling ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... such praises merit! My father's was a sombre, brooding brain, Which through the holy spheres of Nature groped and wandered, And honestly, in his own fashion, pondered With labor whimsical, and pain: Who, in his dusky work-shop bending, With proved adepts in company, Made, from his recipes unending, Opposing substances agree. There was a Lion red, a wooer daring, Within the Lily's tepid bath espoused, And both, tormented then by flame unsparing, By turns in either bridal chamber housed. If then ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Hugh did not return. A step sounded up the walk in the dusky twilight, but it was not his; Graham Marr appeared, and again ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... fancy-work. They were a fine company of old women, and a Dutch painter would have loved to find them there together, where the sun made bright patches on the floor and sent long, quivering shafts of gold through the dusky shade up among the rafters. There were fat, rosy old women who looked hot in their best black dresses; spare, alert old women with brown, dark-veined hands; and several of almost heroic frame, not less massive ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... center of the Calle, when Gentleman Geoff barked a brief command and a withering blast of shots rang forth from the besieged garrison. The advancing line crumpled, wavered, then at a cat-like yowl from its dusky leader, closed in and came forward ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... morning in July when the doctor stood grasping George Mansion's slender hands, searching into his dusky, anxious eyes, and saying with ringing cheeriness, "Chief, I congratulate you. You've got the most beautiful son upstairs—the finest boy I ever saw. Hail to the ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... given to the Duke and Duchess in a pavilion festooned with lights and filled with Indian and Arab ladies in robes of silks, officers in white uniforms, the Sultans of two tributary States and their dusky retinues. Surrounded by a guard of honour from the West Kent Regiment, with towering mountains of brown lava in the distance, and with groups of Somalis, Arabs, Hindoos and Seedees gazing at "the great lord of the seas," the Prince received an address of ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... for his life. The bundles were all put in one place to be defended; and Masiko and Dr. Livingstone walked a few paces back to meet the coming foe. Masiko knelt down anxious to fire, but was ordered not to do so. For a second or two dusky forms appeared among the trees, and the Mazitu were asked, in their own tongue, "What do you want?" Masiko adding, "What do you say?" No answer was given, but the dark shade in the forest vanished. They had evidently taken us for natives, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... a lone one, midst the throng, Seemed reckless all of dance or song: He was a youth of dusky mien, Whereon the Indian sun had been— Of crested brow, and long black hair— A stranger, like the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... while—for him," sighed Weary, who never could quite shake off a sense of responsibility for the moral defections of his kinsman. "Maybe I better go along and ride herd on him." Still, he did not go, and Irish presently merged into the dusky distance. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... INVADERS.—The history of India opens with glimpses of a struggle on the borders of the great rivers,—first of the Indus and then of the Ganges,—between an invading race, the Sanskrit-speaking Aryans from the north-west, and the dusky aborigines. These rude native tribes have left few relics but their tombs. Before they tenanted the soil, there dwelt upon it still earlier inhabitants, whose implements were of stone or bronze. The incoming people referred ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... black, polished boards, beyond the edge of the carpet, shivered into a hundred pieces, that lay glittering, like scattered diamonds in the lamplight. For the day had died altogether. Fleets of dark, straggling cloud chased each other across spaces of pallid sky, against the earthward edge of which dusky tree-tops strained and writhed in the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... no stranger to me who had fought under Maurice of Nassau; the good times that followed, when bowl-playing gallants were put down, cities founded, forts built, and the gospel preached; the marriage of Rolfe and his dusky princess; Argall's expedition, in which I played a part, and Argall's iniquitous rule; the return of Yeardley as Sir George, and the priceless gift he brought us,—all this and much else, old friends, old enemies, old toils and strifes and pleasures, ran, bitter-sweet, through my ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... of the Row a faint white mist was crawling, and a solitary, spectral-looking horseman was cantering noiselessly out of it towards them. The evening had almost begun; the sky had changed to a delicate green tint, merged towards the west in a dusky crocus, against which the Memorial spire stood out sharp and black; from South Kensington came the sound of a church bell calling ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... he demanded, when the newly-made convert was discovered skulking in the dusky shadows of the pines ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... tea with this family, and readily consented to do so. The furniture of the room was one heavy huge table, and about six wooden chairs. When we arrived the lady was in rather a dusky dishabille, but she vehemently urged us to be seated, and then retired into the closet-chamber above mentioned, whence she continued to address to us from behind the door, all kinds of "genteel country visiting talk," and at length ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... of his smoldering eyes drew the blood to her dusky cheeks. Something vigilant lay crouched panther-like behind the ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... dreams Is accustomed to visit this blacker of reams. Like the man that sits under a monster balloon, And soars o'er the earth halfway up to the moon, Now stepping at once into Fancy's fair car, He sails from the dusky old garret afar; And, leaving the world with its practical crowds, Such visions as these meet his gaze in ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... anything but compassion and the unquestionable affection which sprang from it. Appalled by this transition, he alighted from the car, and stood for a moment alone in the darkness gazing at the great white houses that rose above the dusky outline ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... irritated by my presence, but, like the rats, they became reconciled to it. The little martins, always trustful, never hesitated from the first to fly into the cave and drink from the dripping water. When the dusk came on, the bats, which had been hanging by their winged heels all day in dusky holes and corners, fluttered out one after another, and went zigzagging until they were lost to sight over the old stone roofs on which the moss ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... must have been that of Rome that, in those far-off days, when rapid transit was unknown, and steam and electricity both lay dormant, could have entered into the lives of two bright young maidens so many leagues removed from one another—Zenobia, the dusky Palmyrean of the East, and Helena, the fresh-faced English ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... his own efforts, and I wound him up toward the surface, but no sooner did he approach daylight than he surged downward again. Five minutes' play of this sort exhausted him, and I lifted on board a five-pound sheepshead, the same thick-set, arched-backed fish, with his six dusky bars on a silvery ground, which we buy in Fulton market at half a dollar the pound, and which the wise call Sargus ovis. In the New York waters it is a scarce fish, but runs larger than on the Southern coast, sometimes up to ten ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... last the gloom of night fell o'er them, And folded all the landscape from their eyes, They only know the dusky path before them Was ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... first stood court-martial. The bottle was brought forth from the cupboard; the glasses were ranged again by the General. In the grate a sea-coal fire burned brightly, its glance striking golden now and then upon the polished woodwork of the room and all its dusky corners, more golden, more warm, more generous, than the wan disheartened rays of the candles that shook a smoky flame above the board. Gilian waited his punishment with more wonderment than fear. What could be said to him for a misadventure? He had done no harm except to cause ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Mr. Chiffinch I felt more alone than ever. I regarded the King's dark face, turned down upon his paper; his dusky ringed hand with the lace turned back; the blue-gemmed quill that he used, his great plumed hat. I looked now and again, discreetly, round the room, at the gorgeous carvings, the tall presses, the innumerable clocks, ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... familiar sound of the flute and the guitar is hushed in every household and in every street.[*] The ordinary Chinese visiting-card —a piece of red paper about six inches by three, inscribed with its owner's name in large characters—changes to a dusky brown; and the very lines on letter paper, usually red, are printed of a dingy blue. Official seals are also universally stamped in blue instead of the vermilion or mauve otherwise used according to the ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... the boat, the miller's daughter had been rowing with bared arms; beautiful dusky arms, at once delicate and strong. Thus far, she had forgotten to cover them up. The moment mentioned my name, she started back as if I had frightened her—pulled her sleeves down in a hurry—and hid the objects of my admiration as an ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... blue had faded, there was a kind of dusky lull. Then, as if flames leaped up out of the clear water, river and mountains and sky ran gold, reddening slowly till the colour burned deep and vivid as the heart of a rose. From crimson was born violet, soft blue-violet that hung like a robe over the mountains, while ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... died away on my ear, the distant peal of her steeples more than once sounded to my ears the admonitory "Turn again," erst heard by her future Lord Mayor; and when I looked back from Highgate on her dusky magnificence, I felt as if I were leaving behind me comfort, opulence, the charms of society, and all the pleasures of ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and antique gaiters of an Anglican bishop never appeared to greater advantage than they did upon the old Indian, the winner of the game, when he proudly strutted before his dusky, admiring brethren, displaying on head and bare legs the Episcopal insignia, and having for his only other garment an old shirt whose dingy tail fluttered coyly in the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... bazaar where the nations assemble not to buy but to be employed. The stagnant scum of other countries floats hither to be purified in the fierce bouillon of live opportunity. It is a cosmopolitan procession that passes me: the dusky Easterner with a fez of Astrakhan, the gentle-eyed Italian with a shawl of gay colours, the loose-lipped Hungarian, the pale, mystic Swede, the German with wife and children hanging on ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... It was past midnight, and the house was painfully still. They stood upon the dusky landing, across which a bar of light streamed from his half-open door, and only Beethoven's eyes were upon them. But Lancelot felt no impulse to fondle her, only just to lay his hand on her hair, as in benediction ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... and winds its changing way Through wooded reach to dusky ports and gray, Till, wearily, it strikes the Flats of Leigh, An ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... dusky shabby little room in Ryder Street. To such caves many repair whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, in the clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall. The furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a certain historic ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... from? She turned instinctively. On a rock up-stream stood young Crawford, smoking peacefully, and casting a white fly into the dusky water. Swish! the silk line whistled out ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... the so-called "throne room of Minos" that the restoring hand is first met. Here it has been found necessary to provide a roof, that damage by weather be avoided; and to-day the throne room is a dusky spot, rather below the general level of the place. Its chief treasure is the throne itself, a stone chair, carved in rather rudimentary ornamentation, and about the size of an ordinary chair. The roof is supported by the curious, top-heavy-looking stone pillars, that are known to have prevailed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... seen nothing. Why do you ask?" Not for worlds would she own to any one the ghostly fears that shook her out there in the dusky avenue, with the sound of those following steps in ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... of little demons, each duly provided with horns and a tail, and dancing hand in hand with gestures of diabolical merriment round the circumference of the pipe-bowl. As if to confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest along a dusky passage from his private room to the parlor, the star on Feathertop's breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a flickering gleam upon the wall, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... moved to the less formal of the rooms used as places of gathering. The bed in a corner was hung in blue shalloon over ruffled white muslin, and there was blue at the windows. Against the wall a clavichord, set aside as obsolete, raised its dusky red ebony box on grooved legs. Myrtle was seated at it picking out an air from Belshazzar. She held each note in a silvery vibration that had the fragility of old age. Ludowika was by the fire, quartered across a corner; there was no stove, and the wood burning in the opening ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... only a little different from the first, but in that slight difference all the importance lay. As he repeated his "Abracadabra," trying ever so many other syllables after it, the cloak only went faster and faster, skimming on through the dusky, empty air. ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... the rosy air, itself tinged and brightened by the magical colors which floated round it. And the girls and men of Sorrento gathered in gossiping knots on the old Roman bridge that spanned the gorge, looked idly down into its dusky shadows, talking the while, and playing the time-honored game of flirtation which has gone on in all climes and languages since man and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... principal instigator." All Federalists agreed that the Southern Democratic talk was constructive insurrection,—which it certainly was,—-and they painted graphic pictures of noisy "Jacobins" over their wine, and eager dusky listeners behind their chairs. "It is evident that the French principles of liberty and equality have been effused into the minds of the negroes, and that the incautious and intemperate use of the words by some whites among us have inspired them with hopes of ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Moulang's pipes bearing in his breast the sweets of sin, by Wine's antiques, in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by Carroll's dusky battered plate, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to West Canada is a change pleasing to imagine. From dusky lane and fetid alley to open, bright Canadian fields is, in the very thought, refreshing. A child is snatched from pinching hunger, fluttering rags, and all the squalor of gutter life; from a creeping existence in the noisome pool ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... infantry and artillery, ably assisted by the little "pepper-boxes" afloat, soon put our dusky enemies to flight; and we marched straight into town, with colors flying, over trenches, barricades, and other obstructions hastily thrown in ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... Cardiff's library late one June afternoon, when it seemed to Janet that the crisis came, that she could never again speak of such matters to Elfrida without betraying herself. Things were growing dim about the room, the trees stood in dusky groups in the square outside. There was the white glimmer of the tea-things between them, and just light enough to define the shadows round the other girl's face, and write upon it the difference it bore, in Janet's eyes, ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... United States, in my day, was located in Washington Buildings, in the neighbourhood of some of the oldest docks. Here in a stifled and dusky chamber I spent wearily four good years of my existence. Hither came a great variety of visitors, principally Americans, but including almost every other nationality, especially the distressed and downfallen ones. All sufferers, or pretended ones, in the cause of Liberty sought the American ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hovering near in his surplice, and the pew-opener was all in a fluster at the idea of a runaway marriage. Brian came out of the dusky background—the daylight being tempered by small painted windows in heavy stone mullions—as Ida entered the church. Everything was ready. Before she knew how it came to pass, she was standing before the altar, and the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... to himself. And as the reading went on, he ran his eyes over the dusky, darkening walls. He knew what he expected ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... never been more interested in her than in any ordinary acquaintance, and so, though she knew she could be happier with him than with the one who with his arm around her waist was pleading for her love, she yielded at last, and in that dim old church, with the summer moonlight stealing up the dusky aisles, she promised to be the wife of J.C. De Vere on her ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... the coloured lady. "Blow in another cocktail, honey." She struck her breast where the uneasy bone showed through the dusky skin. "I've a fearful ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... place which was next in order, and which was the residence of a family by the name of Brier. The night was glorious. The moon rode proudly through the heavens, and the stars glittered brightly upon the deep azure of the evening sky. The trees cast dusky shadows across her pathway, as she walked onward, and far away to the right of her, stretched a dark forest, shrouded in impenetrable gloom and silence. All was calm repose. Sweet odors floated to her, borne on the evening breeze, while afar off came the musical plash of falling ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... tools only, and walked in the rear of the more warlike quartette. Their leader, his lean, black face clouded by a threatening scowl, strode across the home lot and approached the cabin door. His beady eyes glittered and when he was enraged his hooked nose seemed to glow a dull red beneath the dusky skin, like a ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... Government, it sinks into a dull, lethargic mechanism. Far above the din of faction, the red tape of cabinets, the rivalry of generals, the strife of politicians, shines the resolve, and pulses the determination of woman, that mankind shall be free. For this, the dusky nation bless her as she moves; the frighted mother torn from her child, the maiden sold to shame, call upon her to deliver them from infamy and the devouring hunger of a robbed mother's heart. The wronged children of Ham arise and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pronounced the benediction. As she left the room every one bowed again, and I then found myself alone, quite alone, in this cage of little wild animals. I was seated between two little girls of from ten to twelve years old, both as dusky as two young moles. They were twins from Jamaica, and their names were Dolores and Pepa Cardanos. They had only been in the convent two months, and appeared to be as timid as I was. The dinner was composed of soup made of everything, and of veal ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Little Dusky Hero A Son of the Hills At the Crossroads Camp Brave Pine Janet of the Dunes Joyce of the North Woods Mam'selle Jo Princess Rags and Tatters The Man Thou Gavest The Place Beyond the Winds The Shield of Silence The ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... mused upon the dusky height, Between two stars towards night, His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space, The meaning of his face: There was the secret, fled from earth and skies, Hid in his grey young eyes. My heart and all the Summer wait his choice, And wonder for his ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... scent, O thorny sight, O tangle of world's wrong and right, What art thou 'gainst my armour's gleam But dusky cobwebs of ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... the two candles, whose flicker made the shadows dance on the ceiling; but the fairest thing to see was beautiful dark Riekje sitting near the fire. She had broad shoulders, a plump neck, and strong arms; her cheeks were round and sunburnt, her eyes of a dusky brown, her lips full and red; and as for her black hair, which was coiled six times round her head, the coils were heavy as the towing ropes used on the banks of the river. Though so gentle and quiet, she was often lost in sombre fancies; but when Dolf was near, her face lit up with ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... hurry after them and so they threw down the comb. This time a forest appeared, a dark and dusky forest in which the roots were interwoven, the branches matted together, and the tree-tops touching each other. The witch tried very hard to pass through, but in vain, and so, very, very angry, ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... not like the dusky ghosts that wander through the pale-blue mists of Bloomsbury. Here comes a buxom water-carrier, in her orange petticoat and sage-green shawl, who has the two copper cans at the end of the long piece of wood poised on her shoulders, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... posing as a private and sovereign citizen, accepting government support but declining government supervision—that was something the Indian Bureau viewed with alarm, and well it might, for if Tatanka Iyotanka (Bull Sitting Big) and Siha Tanka, Si for short (Foot Big), should take it into their dusky heads to be allies and not rivals, if the great Uncapapa and the big Minniconjou were to join forces, there would be the mischief to pay all over the West. So the Bureau sent and civilly requested. Si Tanka most uncivilly replied, and Tatanka Iyotanka scorned ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... so that we might photograph the buck. The occupant was allowed to put her face through an opening to be photographed, in consideration of another present."[92] As a consequence of their long enforced idleness in the shade the girls grow fat and their dusky complexion bleaches to a more pallid hue. Both their corpulence and their ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... with all fields out were just going round. The faces of the crew, pallid with exhaustion, seemed of an ivory whiteness in the dusky gloom of the boat, which never resembled a gigantic and fantastically ornamental coffin so closely as ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... to us—not in the great dusky baritone of song, but like a command of the Father: "Come on, men, we ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... incalculable distance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl adorned with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival, running along the solitary strand with extremity of haste. Her running was the running of panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful enemy in the ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... foes in front of him, foes closing in hot behind him, and a dusky line extending on his right. On his left the hill ended in a precipice. He chose the precipice, and with his moccasined heels hammered his ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... foliage, the thronging of the dancers, and the chattering of women—we only knew their Christian names. And then the returning in open carriages rolling through the white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer night, when the dusky darkness of the street is chequered by a passing glimpse of light skirt or flying feather, and the moon looms like a magic lantern ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... morning rings and cracks With the rhythmic jet of his sharp-blown breath and the echoing shout of his axe. Only the waft of the wind besides, or the stir of some hardy bird— The call of the friendly chickadee, or the pat of the nuthatch—is heard; Or a rustle comes from a dusky clump, where the busy siskins feed, And scatter the dimpled sheet of the snow with the shells of the cedar-seed. Day after day the woodcutter toils untiring with axe and wedge, Till the jingling teams come up from the road that runs ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... shelves—each and all recalled my native country; and I positively should have ended by believing myself there in a dream, if not in reality, had not a glance at the fireplace undeceived me: there was no fire—all was dim, dusky, and dark; no glowing embers and cheerful pipe-clayed hearth, but iron dogs and wood-ashes where blazing coals should be. Even here, however, I could not but think of 'Caledonia stern and wild,' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... fairly was the work begun, The barbs of anger planted, pleased to view Latinus' purpose and his house undone, On dusky wings the Goddess soared, and through The liquid air to neighbouring Ardea flew, The bold Rutulian's city, built of yore By Danae, thither when the South-wind blew Her and her followers. Ardea's name it bore, And Ardea's name still lives, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... faces of the readiest smile. The third who comes the hyson to inhale, If not a man, at least appears a male. . . . Last of the rout, and dogg'd with public cares, The politician stumbles up the stairs; Whose dusky soul nor beauty can illume, Nor wine dispel his patriotic gloom. In restless ire from guest to guest he goes, And names us all among our country's foes; Swears 'tis a shame that we should drink our tea, 'Till wrongs are righted and the nation free, That priests and poets are a venal race, Who preach ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... light,' said Venus, keeping watch upon his dusky figure all the time, 'drop lower ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... applause! Yet, that I may state the whole truth, let me acknowledge, that even these, my dullest, hardest tasks, were light, compared with the burden I formerly bore of ennui. At length my period of probation in my pleader's office was over; I escaped from the dusky desk, and the smell of musty parchments, and the close smoky room; I finished eating my terms at the Temple, and returned, even, as the captain of the packet swore, "in the face and teeth ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... in the air—an October haze. Through this the lamps twinkled blithely. There were people on the dusky benches, and many on the walks strolling to and fro, although it was now ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... don't want to. If ever I'm such a silly ass as to marry, which I'm jolly well not going to be, I shall marry a—a dusky maiden. Jill, be sporty. All girls have to get married some time. It's ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... hours afterwards, in the dusky, silent street, paved with cobble-stones, I became aware that it was not mere gratitude which was guiding my steps towards the house with the old garden, where for years no guest other than myself had ever dined. Mere gratitude does not gnaw at one's interior economy in that particular ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad |
