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More "Ebony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... valor and gallantry, and for his wealth and courage, as will yet be made known. The robe that he wore was of yellow satin embroidered in black with palm-trees, with clusters of fruit on them. His shield had a field of solid silver plates edged with gold. His lance was of ebony, and twenty palmos long; and instead of an iron head, a colic-stone, [13] so splendid to the sight and so well made that, however beautiful may be that of a painter, it cannot equal it. It was enclosed in a case of solid gold, a thing of inestimable value for its ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... was lit, for the darkness had fallen, and by its light I saw the old man seated in a chair of ivory and ebony at a table of stone on which were spread mystic writings of the words of Life and Death. But he read no more, for he slept, and his long white beard rested upon the table like the beard of a dead man. The soft light from the lamp fell ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Sam, his ebony face shining, stood behind trying to look over his shoulder. He couldn't make it out and his curiosity got ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... pursue the subject of woods beyond the few kinds mentioned. Woods such as ebony, sandalwood, cherry, brier, box, pear-tree, lancewood, and many others, are all good for the carver, but are better fitted for special purposes and small work. As this book is concerned more with the art of carving than its application, it ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... afterward a ragged, splashed and torn young ebony Samson lifted the flap of a Federal officer's tent upon one of the coast islands, stole silently in, and when he saw the officer's ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the door of my room into the hall, I found a small sedan-chair, of highly ornamental make, awaiting my convenience, carried upon the shoulders of two diminutive boys, who were as black, and shone as lustrously, as a bit of highly polished ebony. I had never seen their like before, save in an occasional bit of statuary in Italy, wherein marbles of differing hue and shade had been ingeniously used by the sculptor to give color to his work. The boys themselves, as I have said, were of polished ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... its little green vase, on a light ebony stand, in the window of the drawing room. The rich satin curtains, with their costly fringes, swept down on either side of it, and around it glittered every rare and fanciful trifle which wealth can offer to luxury; ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... bathed in tears. She sprang out of bed and threw the window nearest to her open to the night. The winter night was mild, and a full moon sailed the southern sky. Not a sound on the water, not a light in the palaces; a city of ebony and silver, Venice slept in the moonlight. Kitty gathered a cloak and some shawls round her, and sank into a low chair, still crying and half conscious. At his inn, some few hundred yards away, between her and the Piazzetta, was Geoffrey Cliffe waking too?—making his last preparations? ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it seemed to be an oratory or chapel. A large gold and ebony crucifix hung on the wall. There was a prie-dieu of heavy dark mahogany in the centre of the tiled floor; there was a low ottoman or couch, covered with a mantle of dark violet velvet, like a pall; ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... pleaded ignorance of any safe route; but mentioned the name of still another "friend of the Yankees," who, he said, had come up from the Union lines that morning and would willingly return with them. This friendly negro also was found. He was a genuine negro, as black as ebony and very devout in his mode of speech. His name was "March Dasher." "I'll do it, massa, if God be my helper!" he answered to their ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... precious stuffs, teak and cedar wood, Lebanon pine, apes, peacocks, sandal-wood, camel's hair, goat's hair, frankincense, pearl, dyes, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, Balm of Gilead, calamus, spikenard, corn, ebony, figs, fir, olives, olive-wood, wheat, amber, copper, lead, tin, and precious stones were the chief articles of exchange. A very little sufficed the poor; the rich were housed in palaces and panoplied ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... conceive the magnificence of this residence, or the tremendous devastation the French have committed. The throne-room was lined with ebony, carved in a marvellous way. There were huge mirrors of all shapes and kinds, clocks, watches, musical boxes with puppets on them, magnificent china of every description, heaps and heaps of silks of all colours, embroidery, and as much splendour and civilization as you would ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... how I got the key to the Irishmen's dialogue. For round the lad's throat was a black ribbon, pendant from which a small cross of ebony was clear to be seen upon his naked breast; and on this there glittered in the moonlight a silver image of the Redeemer of ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... because I want to have two hundred negroes to carry out my notions of the patriarachal life properly. Negroes, you see, are like a sort of family ready grown, and there are no inquisitive public prosecutors out there to interfere with you. That investment in ebony ought to mean three or four million francs in ten years' time. If I am successful, no one will ask me who I am. I shall be Mr. Four Millions, an American citizen. I shall be fifty years old by then, and sound and hearty still; I shall enjoy life after my own fashion. In two ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... rubbish the bearers had resumed their slow procession, a picturesque frieze of tattered, indigo-robed, ebony figures, baskets on heads, against a cloudless cobalt sky, and again the hot air was invaded with the monotonous rise and fall of their ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... pavement of the choir and that of the nave were covered with a black carpet. The pulpit, also draped in black and decorated with the Imperial eagle, and from which was pronounced the funeral oration over the marshal, was situated on the left in front of the bier; on the right was a seat of ebony decorated with Imperial arms, bees, stars, lace, fringes, and other ornaments in silver, which was intended for the prince arch-chancellor of the Empire, who presided at the ceremony. Steps were erected in the arches of the aisles, and corresponded to the tribunes which ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... walked out under the trees. The lorgnette which had said to her "it is strange he does not find some nice girl to marry," left a disquieting effect. Ann had only that day suggested the same idea, and Bob had laughed to her about it the previous evening. Even Aunt Timmie, the ebony font of wisdom, had but recently looked slyly at her, remarking: "'Foh long we's gwine to have a weddin' in a private cyar!" (Aunt Timmie had never seen a private car, but it typified her idea of grandeur). She now strolled on beneath the trees, beneath giant clinging wild grape and trumpet ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Littells were to us," thought Betty, a mist in her eyes blurring the sage brush. "Wasn't Bob surprised when Mr. Littell gave him that camera? And Mrs. Littell must have known he didn't have a nice bag, because she gave him that beauty all fitted with ebony toilet articles. And the girls clubbed together and gave each of us a signet ring—that was dear of them. I thought they had done everything for me friends could, keeping me there so long and entertaining me as though they had invited ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... partially covered by three good-sized mats. There was a writing-table on one side of the room with an ebony-and-gold crucifix standing upon it. Opposite to it, on the other side of the room near the fireplace, was a bookcase. On the shelves were volumes of Shakespeare, Dante, Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Christina ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... knees are trembling! I find a box, the first resembling, Within my press! Of ebony,— And things, all splendid to behold, And richer ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... visibly. His high-born instinct was not quite dead yet, and he slightly moved his right hand as if he would lift the ebony stick he carried; but Tommaso had one of cornel-wood and iron-shod, and he also made a very slight movement, and he was square and strong and had a jaw like a bull-dog. Don Alberto's instinctive desire to knock ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... matter to his master, and as soon as the morning had come, he went to Ubaaner and informed him that his wife had spent the previous day drinking beer with such and such a young man. Ubaaner then told the steward to fetch him his casket made of ebony and silver-gold, which contained materials and instruments used in working magic, and when it was brought him, he took out some wax, and fashioned a figure of a crocodile seven spans long. He then recited certain magical words over the crocodile, and said to it, "When the young man comes to ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the people of this island were lances of different kinds, some were made of a kind of ebony, or hard wood, about ten feet long, frequently ornamented with feathers of different colours at the upper end; others were made of bamboo, pointed with hard wood; the lance is thrown by hand, but they ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... expression, that spoke a stringent, earnest spirit, which, however deep might be the grave in which it lay buried, had not yet found repose. The long, thin, delicately formed hands were emaciated and bloodless; they clasped with a nervous eagerness a rosary and crucifix of ebony and silver,—the only mark of luxury that could be discerned in a costume unusually threadbare and squalid. The whole picture of the man, as he sat there, had it been painted and hung in a gallery, was such as must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... black; a wig of the same colour adorned his wide and ample head, which was again surmounted by a peaked hat, having a band and buckle above its brim, and a black rose in front. He looked an elderly and well-ordered gentleman, mighty spruce, and full of courtesy; and his cane was black as ebony, with a yellow knob that glittered like gold. He had a huge beaked nose, and a little black ferrety eye, which almost pierced what it gazed upon. Every one made way for the stranger, who sat down, not in the full glare ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... were found concealed in his sleeve. The uproar while this was going on had been tremendous, but it was suddenly stilled as four men in dark clothes entered the room. Each held in his hand the well known symbol of his office, the little ebony staff surmounted by ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... hundred had the arms or accoutrements of soldiers; but there were dresses and weapons of every kind, leather, cloth, and linen; short jackets and long Scotch plaids, and every tint of colour in their faces, from the sallow European to the ebony African. Military honours were paid us by these ragged regiments, and we were conducted to the palace square, where Mr. Dance and Mr. Caumont dismounted, and I determined to await the issue of their conference, with my cousin in ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... throne is covered with red velvet, with coats of arms at the angles of the canopy. Upon a large pier-table, in the rococo style, between the windows and opposite the throne, stands a great crucifix of ivory and ebony, between two candlesticks. The carpet used at such times was presented by Spain. Before the Emperor of Germany's visit the Pope himself gave particular directions for the dressing of the throne and the arrangement ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... And the gods tore white clouds out of the sky and draped them about the body of Morning Zai and bore him forth from his valley behind the hills, and muffled the mountain peaks with snow, and beat upon their summits with drum sticks carved of ebony, playing the dirge of the gods. And the echoes rolled about the passes and the winds howled, because the faith of the olden days was gone, and with it had sped the soul of Morning Zai. So through the mountain passes the gods came at night bearing Their dead father. And Uldoon followed. And the gods ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... succeeds the concerto proves satisfactorily that it is possible to be frisky without being lively; its vulgarity is so pronounced that it offends you like low conversation. Another concerto follows—ten folio pages! whew!!——Oh, ye ebony and ivory devils! oh, for an exorcist to put you to flight! Cramped fingers are crossing each other at a great rate; we really tremble for the glue, and the pegs, and the wires, and the whole economy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... explosions of inconsequent laughter was not, of course, to be expected in such a sober-minded person; but he was, I think, a little too sedate for a black, for, although his face would shine on warm days like polished ebony, it did not smile. Everyone in the house conspired to keep up the fiction of Nepomucino's importance; they had, in fact, conspired so long and so well, that it had very nearly ceased to be a fiction. Everybody addressed him with grave respect. Not a ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the Khalif, with walls of transparent and many-coloured marble, with roof of gold; on each side were eight doors fixed upon arches of ivory and ebony, ornamented with precious metals and with precious stones; and when the sun penetrated them, the reflection of its rays upon the roof and walls was sufficient to deprive the beholders of sight! In the centre was a great basin filled with quicksilver, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... the shrinking little form, she seized him in her arms, and dropping to the ground began rocking back and forth as she hugged him tight, meanwhile covering his ebony little ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... process of inlaying is of the most remote antiquity, and the student may see in the cases of the British Museum, at the Louvre, and in other museums, examples of both Assyrian and Egyptian inlaid patterns of metal and ivory, or ebony or vitreous pastes, upon both wood and ivory, dating from the 8th and 10th centuries before the Christian Era, or earlier. The Greeks and Romans also made use of it for costly furniture and ornamental sculpture; in Book 23 of the ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... if you like," she returned, gaily, and held up the two ebony canes which had been hidden by the tall grass. They told the story of Mercy Curtis' look of pain, but once she had had to hobble on crutches and, as she pluckily declared, canes ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... And although he has been honored and courted of women, I have been told that in his luxurious bachelor apartments in Hong Kong there is only one woman's picture, an old-fashioned daguerreotype of a sweet girlish face, in an ebony frame. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Spearmint, Peppermint, Camomiles, and Poppie-heads in the blue Chamber to dry, that she will not care to move them, nor have the Window opened lest they shoulde be blown aboute. I wish I had turned the Key on my ebony Cabinett. ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... drawing-room is a boudoir upholstered in light gray silk damask, with bouquets of flowers. This is Madame Desvarennes's favorite room. A splendid Erard piano occupies one side of the apartment. Facing it is a sideboard in sculptured ebony, enriched with bronze, by Gouthieres. There are only two pictures on the walls: "The Departure of the Newly Married Couple," exquisitely painted by Lancret; and "The Prediction," an adorable work by Watteau, bought at an incredible price at the Pourtales sale. Over the chimney-piece ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... happened to come quite right without further trouble. The tube of the lesser one was now cleaned out thoroughly, and polished by a little bunch of the roots of a tree-fern, until it was as smooth and hard as ebony. A mouthpiece of wood was placed at the smaller end of the table, and a sight was glued on the outside. This "sight" was the tooth of an animal,—one of the long curving incisors of a rodent animal called the "paca," which is found in most parts of tropical America. To make the instrument look neater, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... take care that your work shall not be completed too fast: and as long as the interminable "Napper Tandy" continues, the press of the fac-simile must stand still. Meanwhile, you commence a legitimate reprint, under the genuine Ebony arms, and reign as a kind of lord-lieutenant, under his ambrosial majesty, Christopher the Great. The stereotype plates of Maga reach you every month, and the American public discern the difference between a true fac-simile and a cunning counterfeit. Instead of the sham tete-de-Buchanan, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... smallest towns of Jutland served as maid in a plain burgher's house a poor girl of the Mosaic faith; this was Sarah. Her hair was black as ebony, her eyes dark, and yet brilliant and full of light, such as you see among the daughters of the East; and the expression in the countenance of the grown-up girl was still that of the child who sat on the school-room bench, listening with ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... made" must have been either covered with a very thin veneer, or else the ivory was used as inlay, which was often the case, in connection with ebony. Ezekiel alludes to this combination. Ivory and gold were used by the Greeks in their famous Chryselephantine statues, in which cases thin plates of ivory formed the face, hands, and exposed parts, the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... unclean refuse with our foot. What a swarming there is beneath it, what a tumult of busy workers! The Silphae, with wing-cases wide and dark, as though in mourning, fly distraught, hiding in the cracks in the soil; the Saprini, of polished ebony which mirrors the sunlight, jog hastily off, deserting their workshop; the Dermestes, of whom one wears a fawn-coloured tippet, spotted with white, seek to fly away, but, tipsy with their putrid nectar, tumble over and reveal the immaculate whiteness of their bellies, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... hand-gallop, he soon came in sight of tall cliffs which overlooked the sea, and which formed a natural harbour, wherein lay a vessel richly beseen. Its sails were of spun silk, and each plank and mast was fashioned of ebony. Dismounting, Gugemar made his way to the shore, and with much labour climbed upon the ship. Neither mariner nor merchant was therein. A large pavilion of silk covered part of the deck, and within this was a rich bed, the work of the cunning ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... set before King AEgeus and the herald who had come from Crete. Into one vessel they placed as many balls as there were noble youths in the city, and into the other as many as there were maidens; and all the balls were white save only seven in each vessel, and those were black as ebony. ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... clouds, high around the horizon, were thinning overhead, and the moon, herself invisible, yet lightened the darkness below. The sandy lane stretched behind us like a ribbon of twilight,—nothing to be seen but it and the ebony mass of bush and tree lining it on either side. We hastened on. A minute later and we heard behind us a sound like the winding of a small horn, clear, shrill, and sweet. Sparrow and I wheeled—and saw nothing. The trees ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... chancel is a marble medallion of the Duke of Wellington, presented by his son, and in the corresponding position on the north side one of the Duke of Marlborough, presented by the Earl of Cadogan. The stalls are of stained oak. The altar is of oak, with walnut panels and ebony shafts. The reredos is lined by beautiful glass mosaics, and the semi-dome is mosaic work to match. This sounds a mere catalogue, but it is quite impossible to give any idea of this singularly richly-decorated chapel without descending ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... the most varied human tides that flows through any street of the world, Benton and Cara sat at a table near the edge—the man wondering how he could tell her. Fakirs with spangled shawls from Assouit, bead necklaces, ebony walking-sticks, scarabs and souvenir postcards jostled on the sidewalk to pass their wares over the railing. Fat Arab guides with red fezes and the noisy jargon of half-mastered French and English discussed to-morrow's journeys with ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... it a shame to wed one of his name, and his conduct you blame if he thus breaks the law? For you still hold it wrong if a lubra {10} belong to the self- same kobong {11} that is Father of you, To take HER as a bride to your ebony side; nay, you give her a wide berth; quite right of you, too. For her father, you know, is YOUR father, the Crow, and no blessing but woe from the wedding would spring. Well, these rules they were made in the wattle-gum shade, and ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... lifting up to the support of the heavy beams in the ceiling. The furnishings were in keeping, but dust obscured the mirror-like surface of the mahogany tables, the heavy draperies were in need of renovation, while a housewife would have viewed with despair the condition of brass and ebony inlaid cabinets, ancient tapestries, and pictures, well-nigh defaced, but worthy, even in their faded aspect, of the brush of Sir Godfrey Kneller, Benjamin West and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... s'pose, ef Jeff giv him a lick, Ole Hick'ry'd tried his head to sof'n So's 'twouldn't hurt thet ebony stick Thet's made our side see stars so of'n? 'No!' he'd ha' thundered, 'on your knees, An' own one flag, one road to glory! Soft-heartedness, in times like these, Shows sof'ness in the upper ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of musical instruments at dinner; and their host now brought them some venerable lutes to examine—curiosities only, for most of the metal strings were broken. Beautiful objects, however, they were, in inlaid ivory or tortoise-shell and ebony; made, as the various inscriptions revealed, at Bologna, or Padua, or Venice; and dating, some of them, as far back as 1474. But in the midst of all this, Brand espied another instrument on one of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... both inside the door was fastened, and they all three entered a large court, surrounded by an open-work gallery. At one end of the court was a platform, and on the platform stood an amber throne supported by four ebony columns, garnished with pearls and diamonds. In the middle of the court stood a marble basin filled with water from the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... course; it's the sacred ebony stick stolen from the Indian temple, which is supposed to bring death to whoever possesses it. The hero gets hold of it, and the priests dog him and send him threatening messages. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... had told us that Miss Chauncey had large claims against the government, dating back sixty or seventy years, but nobody could ever find the papers; and I felt sure that they must be hidden away in some secret drawer. The brass handles and trimmings were blackened, and the wood looked like ebony. I wanted to climb up and look into the upper part of this antique piece of furniture, and it seemed to me I could at once put my hand on a package of "papers relating ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the schoolmaster, the Count of Artois the gamekeeper, the village with its merry mill, the dairy where the cream filled porphyry vessels on marble tables, the laundry where the clothes were beaten with ebony sticks, the granary to which led mahogany ladders, the sheep-house where the sheep were shorn with golden shears. They saw once more the grass sprinkled with flowers, the clear water, the trees of all colors ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burned, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralizing for an army: everybody was wild for plunder . . . The throne and room were lined with ebony, carved in a wonderful manner. There were huge mirrors of all shapes and sizes, clocks, watches, musical boxes with puppets on them, magnificent china of every description, heaps and heaps of silks of all colours, coral screens, large amounts of treasures, etc. The French have smashed up ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... look at, dat's sho'," replied Big Abel, his face shining like polished ebony, "en I ain' much to look at needer, but dey'll have ter recollect de way we all wuz befo' we runned away; dey'll have ter recollect you in yo' fine shuts en fancy waistcoats, en dey'll have ter recollect me in yo' ole ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... man, with a pointed black beard and wandering green eyes, wearing a Spanish sombrero and a black cloak, and carrying an ebony stick nearly as tall as himself, at this moment slipped furtively into the room, and, without changing his delicately plaintive expression, came up to Miss Van Tuyn and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... No. 3 came along, said he had been treated wrongly, that the artery was severed, etc., and operated on him. The operation itself was successful, but as regards other matters, it is touch and go with him, his arm is black up to a little above the elbow, in places it is ebony, and, I understand, amputation, if the worse comes to the worst, is almost out of the question. So, with others, I go in to keep him cheered up, and chaff him over the champagne and other luxuries he is on, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... seated ourselves in the big carved arm-chairs. Sipping the delicious beverage, we glanced toward the other tables, where groups of Chinamen were talking in a curious jargon and dexterously handling the thin ebony chop-sticks. On the wide matting-covered couches extending along the sidewalls, lounged sallow-faced Orientals, while in and out among the diners noiselessly moved the waiters, balancing on their heads, ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... Guards!" roared Commodus, and again the ebony-posted bed creaked under him. Narcissus stepped into the darkened room. He left the door open, to have light to do his work by, but Marcia closed it, clinging to the gilded satyr's head that served for knob with both ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... was a verandah, like two outstretched arms. An Entrance Hall stood in the centre, in the middle of which was a door-screen of Ta Li marble, set in an ebony frame. On the other side of this screen were three very small halls. At the back of these came at once an extensive courtyard, belonging to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... sound of fountains dispensing perfumes as of Araby. In an alcove, chastely draped with violent violet velvet, the grey apes swing, and the peacocks preen, on fretted pillar and jewelled screen. Horologes, to chime the hours, and even the quarters, uprise from tables of ebony-and-mother-of-pearl. Cabinets from Ind and Venice, of filligree gold and silver, enclose complete sets of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates; whilst lamps of silver, suspended from pendant pinnacles in the fretted ceiling, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... point—where the dog Moufflou returns to his little master—we remember that Carlotty Griggs clapped her ebony hands, and shrieked in transport, "I KNOWED HE'D ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... quarrel with Blackwood in consequence of some critical remarks of his on the end of the Black Dwarf,—remarks certainly not inexcusable,—and of Scott's famous letter in reply, will doubtless receive further elucidation in the forthcoming chronicle of the House of 'Ebony'; but it is told with fair detail, in the second edition of Lockhart, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... recover a fugitive chattel; but the existence of human nature in a man here and there is surely one of those accidents to be counted on at least as often as fire, shipwreck, or the cattle-disease; and the man who chooses to put his money into these images of his Maker cut in ebony should be content to take the incident risks along with the advantages. We should be very sorry to deem this risk capable of diminution; for we think that the claims of a common manhood upon us should be at least as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pilgrimage originated it appears to have been an object of veneration, and the commencement of the pilgrimage is lost in the dimness of the past. Like the statue of the Virgin at Le Puy, it is as black as ebony, but this is the effect of age, and the smoke of incense and candles. The antiquity of the image is, moreover, proved by the artistic treatment. The Child is crowned and rests upon the Virgin's knee; she does not touch him with her hands. This is in accordance with the early Christian sentiment, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... stewards and body-servants. One was named Topaz; he was handsome and well-made, as fair as a Circassian beauty, as gentle and obliging as an Armenian, and as wise as a Parsee. The other was called Ebony; a good-looking Negro, more active and more industrious than Topaz, and one who never made objections. To them he spoke about his journey. Topaz tried to dissuade him with the cautious zeal of a servant ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... to her husband upon her marriage. In the 17th century Boulle and his imitators glorified the marriage-coffer until it became a gorgeous casket, almost indeed a sarcophagus, inlaid with ivory and ebony and precious woods, and enriched with ormolu, supported upon a stand of equal magnificence. The Italian marriage-chests (cassone) were also of a richness which was never attempted in England. The main characteristics of English ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... brave splendor of a November sky that this morning burst through the lattice for me, on my bed? According to terrestrial calculations, above the horizon, in the east, there rose one rod of rainbow [20] hues, crowned with an acre of eldritch ebony. Little by little this topmost pall, drooping over a deeply daz- zling sunlight, softened, grew gray, then gay, and glided into a glory of mottled marvels. Fleecy, faint, fairy blue and golden flecks came out on a background ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... place of the thick, cottony paper windows of the Chinese. The paper windows shut out the cold, it is true, but, being opaque, they also shut out the sunlight. And how gorgeously they are furnished! Such ebony chairs, such wonderful carved tables! Now and then we meet some one who has picked up an old opium divan, a magnificent, huge bench of carved ebony, with marble seat and marble back, very deep, capable of holding two people lying ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... corner of the kitchen garden and a vista of trees beyond. It was a high-ceiled room with walls bare except for two large mirrors in the Empire fashion, which stared at each other across the way with dull and flaking eyes. Under each of these stood a heavy gilt and ebony console with a top of chocolate-colored marble, and in the centre of the room there was a table of a like fashion to the consoles. Further than this there was nothing save three chairs, upon one of which lay Captain Stewart's dust-coat and motoring ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... believe,' he answered, 'if you are a friend of Harold Tillington's. Ebony or ivory, he never forgot ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... very great space indeed because it was all space, and the roof was the ebony of limitless space from which the stars swung flaming, held by invisible ties, and the soil beneath his feet was a dust of atoms and the little beginnings of life. And long before the bishop bared his face again, he knew that he ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... residence portion of the city, but aside from the Cathedral there are few public buildings worth seeing. But one thing they have here always beautiful, and that is the luxuriant tropical vegetation, beautiful blossoming trees and shrubs, and the multitude of flowers, tall palms, bamboo, ebony, log-wood, mangoes, oranges, lemons, bread fruit, custard apples, and forty or fifty varieties of bananas, from little ones, not much more than a mouthful, to them eighteen or twenty inches long. Josiah enjoyed his walk, finding many things to emulate when ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... came back in a few minutes carrying an old-fashioned ebony jewel-case, inlaid with brass. She unlocked it with a little key hanging to her watch-chain, and exhibited its contents to Gilbert Fenton. There were some curious old rings, of no great value; a seal-ring with a crest cut ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... and left—for the cave had split it in two, lay the solid vein of coal, shining in the light, and throwing back splinters of ebony, to Clay ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... cinnamon shade in which some of my readers may have seen her elsewhere, with slippers to match, and a cap suggesting the Corinthian order. In this array, majesty replaced picturesqueness, and there were those in Elmerton who quailed at the very thought of this tiny old woman, upright in her ebony chair, with the acanthus-leaf in finest Brussels nodding over her brows. The last touch of severity was added when Mrs. Tree was found knitting, as ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... fact, a splendid animal, instinct with life from his thin flaring nostril to his small hoof; black as a raven, his highly groomed skin took the polish of ebony, and showed the play of his powerful muscles, and, one might say, almost the nervous currents that thrilled his fine texture. His large, bold eyes, though not wicked, flamed now and then with an energy and excitement that gave ample notice that he would obey ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... already had acquired a taste for European luxuries, and were desirous of an extended commerce. As they were rich in herds and flocks, in grain and fruits, as their forests of ebony, rosewood, and other valuable woods were immense, as their mines yielded coal and iron, perhaps even gold, they were ready and anxious to open their ports to the commerce of the world. England and France both recognized the king, sent envoys with congratulatory ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... says Swinhoe. "The emperor is seated on his ebony throne, attired in a yellow robe wrought over with dragons in gold thread, his head surmounted with a spherical crown of gold and precious stones, with pearl drops suspended round on light gold chains. His eunuchs and ministers, in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... those foreign sentinels, there mounted guard on the other side of the mirror two stout warders of Scottish lineage; a jug, namely, of double ale, which held a Scotch pint, and a quaigh, or bicker, of ivory and ebony, hooped with silver, the work of John Girder's own hands, and the pride of his heart. Besides these preparations against thirst, there was a goodly diet-loaf, or sweet cake; so that, with such auxiliaries, the apartment seemed ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... his table, where only the servant saw the motion, he twitched a finger as if pulling a cork. 'Tonio, his ebony countenance split by a grin, ducked his head and vanished into the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... make their appearance abruptly, in successive shocks, standing out from the darkness like pictures of scarlet above a background of ebony. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... she is represented also with a spear in her hand, and sometimes with a pat{)e}ra, as if she were about to sacrifice: on some medals she has a peacock at her feet, and sometimes holds the Palladium. Homer represents her in a chariot adorned with gems, having wheels of ebony, nails of silver, and horses with reins of gold, though more commonly her chariot is drawn by peacocks, her favourite birds. The most obvious and striking character of Juno, and that which we are apt to imbibe the most early of any, from the writings of Homer and ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... clasped in his left hand; gold rings innumerable glittered on his fingers; and a large diamond pin set in gold glistened in his shirt frill. He had a gold watch, and a gold curb chain with large gold seals; and he carried a pliant ebony cane with a gold top. His linen was of the very whitest, finest, and stiffest; his wig of the glossiest, blackest, and curliest. His snuff was princes' mixture; his scent BOUQUET DU ROI. His features were contracted into a perpetual smile; and his teeth were in such perfect order ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... of a cloth round the waist reaching to the knee, which in some instances was neatly ornamented with small white shells; their arms and ankles were loaded with rings formed of ebony, ivory, and coloured glass, some of the former bore evident marks of having been turned in a lathe. The lobes of their ears were perforated with large holes, from which enormous earrings of ivory and ebony, in the shape of padlocks, were suspended, sometimes as many ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... shabby. On the floor there were some rather good and very effective Oriental rugs. The only flowers in the room were bright yellow tulips, grouped together in a mass on an oak table a long way from the fire. Opposite to the piano there was a large ebony crucifix mounted on a stand, and so placed that anyone seated at the piano faced it. The room was lit not strongly by oil lamps with shades. A few mysterious oil paintings, very dark in color, hung on the walls between the bookcases. Mrs. Mansfield ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... over the grand canal. Full curtains of crimson damask partially shrouded the lofty windows, intercepting the superabundant light, and diffusing tints resembling the ruddy, soft, and melancholy hues of autumnal foliage; while these hues were further deepened by a richly carved ceiling of ebony, which, not reflecting but absorbing light, allayed the sunny radiance beneath, and imparted a sombre yet brilliant effect to the pictured walls, and glossy draperies, of the spacious apartment. Above the rich and lofty mantelpiece hung one of the last portraits of himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... on to the number 10, using a rake of her own which Dick Carleton had given her. It was a glorified rake, which he had ordered specially for her, made of ebony with the initials "M. G." set into it in little ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... front room. There were bedrooms at the back of the house, to be let to patrons of the establishment. At the opposite end of the front room from the windows was the ever-present idolatrous shrine. On either side of the room were elegantly-carved ebony chairs, with marble or agate panels. Rich Chinese pictures decorated the walls. Toward the back of the room hung the sign, '283 Licensed Eating House.' There was a large table in the centre of the room. Toward the front, on ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... received with the blowing of horns and jingling of bells; which continued to keep up a deafening sound while they were being conducted into the presence of his majesty, who wore a bright red cloak, and a hat quite resembling that of a Beadle. In complexion his majesty was a shade darker than ebony, and as to figure, he was as stalwarth a sovereign, though perhaps not as clean a one, as could be found in all the kingdoms round about: in short, if his majesty was none of the cleanest, he at least wore a contented ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... half-hours, and quarters: cut-glass toilet candlesticks, with silver sconces; an elegant zebra-wood cabinet; also a beautiful davenport of zebra-wood, with a plate-glass back, containing a pen rug worked on silver ground, an ebony match box, a blue crystal, containing a sponge pen-wiper, a beautiful envelope-case, a white-cornelian seal, with 'Hanby House' upon it, wax of all colours, papers of all textures, envelopes without end—every imaginable requirement ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... don't think so. Oh, dear, I just felt that something had happened to him!" wailed Dorothy, sinking into an ebony armchair and fanning herself with a silk ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... The pipe was not over large, for all its wealth of ornamentation. Barndale had hung over it when he smoked it first with the care of an affectionate nurse over a baby. It had rewarded his cares by colouring magnificently until it had grown a deep equable ebony everywhere. Not a trace of burn or scratch defaced its surface, and no touch of its first beauty was destroyed by use. Apart from its memories, Barndale would not have sold that pipe except at some astounding ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... rule mummies which have been filled with bitumen and natron resemble black simulacra carved in ebony; corruption cannot attack them, but the appearance of life is wholly lacking; the bodies have not returned to the dust whence they came, but they have been petrified in a hideous shape, which one cannot contemplate without disgust ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... earlier in the evening. They were identical in appearance. Both were covered with an exquisite fabric of oriental carving, and the wood was stained and polished until it shone with the dark luster of ebony. Instantly it flashed upon him that this was the same box he had seen at Miriam's. She had sent it to him, and Shan Tung had been her messenger. The absurd thought was in his head as he took up a small white square of card that lay on top of the box. The upper side of ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... palm; the more's my sin: If it be black, yet only dyed, not odious Damned natural ebony, there's hope, in rubbing, To wash this Ethiop white.—[Looks.] Pox o'the proverb! As black as hell;—another lucky saying! I think the devil's in me;—good again! I cannot speak one syllable, but tends To death or to damnation. [Holds up ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... reassuring. The first fact to impress itself upon me was that these people among whom I now found myself were of an entirely different race from the negro, properly so-called—the woolly-pated, high cheek-boned, ebony-skinned individual with snub nose and thick lips usually met with aboard a slaver. To start with, their colour was much lighter, being a clear brown of varying degrees of depth, from that of the mulatto to a tint not many ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... copy" locked up in the ebony cabinet in possession of the late Marquis of Lansdowne, Mr. Pickering's version came nearer to the authority; for he said, "My informant saw the bound volumes and the cabinet when a boy." The proof then rests ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... subjection, and conversing more freely with our men, many particulars and secrets respecting their religion were discovered, and many circumstances of the nature of the country: Particularly that it contained mines of copper, azure, and amber, and that it produced ebony, cedar, frankincense, and other rich gums, and spice of several kinds, but wild, and which might be brought to perfection by cultivation; as cinnamon of a good colour but bitter, ginger, long pepper, abundance of mulberry ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... this toning down; neither pallor nor dark circles detracting from them, but rather adding to them a melancholy favour of distinction. George had retained his mourning, a tribute completed down to the final details of black gloves and a polished ebony cane (which he would have been pained to name otherwise than as a "walking-stick") and in the aura of this sombre elegance his straight figure and drawn face were not without a tristful ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... swarming sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the middle the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms, growing, as it were, out of the impenetrable chaos of the foggy background, in which the river-lights gleamed like opals set in dull ebony. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... I live!" he cried, "and hard biscuit, the first bread I have seen in many a month! Senor, we are under obligations to you for these welcome additions to our menu. Manuel, hast thou forgotten how to make coffee, strong, and black as thine own ebony face? Waste thou not one precious grain, or, by holy St. Jago, I will blow ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... hand a scepter adorned with all manner of precious stones, and the bird seated on the scepter is an eagle. The robes and sandals of the god are also of gold; and on his robes are imitations of flowers, especially of lilies. And the throne is richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and with ebony and ivory. And there are imitations of animals painted on it, and models worked on it. There are four Victories like dancers, one at each foot of the throne, and two also at the instep of each foot; and at each of the front feet are Theban boys carried off by Sphinxes, and below the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... than to Mexican ladies, can I dedicate this mark of attention—(obsequio). Their graceful attractions well deserve any trouble that may have been taken to please them. Their bodies are graceful as the palms of the desert; their hair black as ebony, or golden as the rays of the sun, gracefully waves over their delicate shoulders; their glances are like the peaceful light of the moon. The Mexican ladies are not so white as the Europeans, but their whiteness is more agreeable ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... of his daughter's meeting with the sheriff's officer, he was sitting up in his carved ebony bedstead. A black skull-cap was drawn over his little head, and the long, white hair fell to his shoulders, where it curled up at the ends. His sunken eyes gleamed like a hawk's, and his dry, parchment skin was stretched tightly over the prominent ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... use when conducting. With my hands I indicated the approximate length and thickness of a medium-sized wooden rod, such as our choir-attendant was in the habit of supplying, freshly covered with white paper. He sighed, and asked if I thought it possible to procure him by to-morrow a baton of black ebony, whose very respectable length and thickness he indicated by a gesture, and on each end of which a fairly large knob of ivory was to be affixed. I promised to have one prepared for the next rehearsal, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... spreads to coves, And in the tides grow giant groves. The water shines like ebony, And odors resinous ascend From many an old balsamic tree, Whose roots the terrapin befriend; The great ball cypress, fringed with beard, Presides above the water oak, As doth its shingles, well revered, O'er many a happy home endeared To ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... sacristy the guide opened a cupboard that contained the jewels and sacred treasures of the church, and showed a most exquisite figure of Christ in ivory, represented as on a cross of ebony; and it was executed with wonderful truth and force of expression, and with great beauty likewise. I do not see what a full-length marble statue could have had that was lacking in this little ivory figure of hardly more than a foot high. It ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it was the middle of winter; the flakes of snow were falling like feathers from the sky; a Queen sat at a window sewing, and the frame of the window was made of black ebony. As she was sewing and looking out of the window at the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle, and three drops of blood fell upon the snow. And the red looked pretty upon the white snow, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... Then, if she be guardant, here; you are to come on, and, laterally disposing yourself, swear by her blushing and well-coloured cheek, the bright dye of her hair, her ivory teeth, (though they be ebony,) or some such white and innocent oath, to induce you. If regardant, then maintain your station, brisk and irpe, show the supple motion of your pliant body, but in chief of your knee, and hand, which cannot but arride her ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... the French sailors, fortunately for the British, failed them, and they fired the ships too soon. But the spectacle of these flaming monsters as they drifted towards the British fleet was appalling. The river showed ebony-black under the white flames. The glare lit up the river cliffs, the roofs of the city, the tents of Montcalm, the slopes of the distant hills, the black hulls of the British ships. It was one of the most stupendous exhibitions ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... neck into the violin, I attach the fingerboard and nut—the latter in rough ebony, as I always work this neater with some wood over and above what I want. This fingerboard must be perfect in fit, put on with very hot, thin glue, and well cramped with three No. 11 cramps, having wood guard 31 over ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... many varied mediums, from the deep, cold, black and blue of learned and scientific lore to the glowing flame colour and crimson of poetry and romance. Having taken down a choice copy of the Faery Queen, we committed our person to an ebony arm-chair, and our spirit to the magic guidance of our author's fancy. Obedient to its leading, we were careering somewhere betwixt earth and heaven, when a slight noise brought us down for a moment to our proper sphere; yet hardly,—for on looking up we beheld, standing in the wake ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... stirs leaf or flower. On such a night James Lorimer sat upon his south verandah smoking; and his niece Lulu, white and motionless as the magnolia flowers above her, mused the hour away beside him. There were little ebony squads of negroes huddled together around the doors of their quarters, but they also were singularly quiet. An angel of silence had passed by no one was inclined to disturb the tranquil calm ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... impossible and breathing difficult. The sky, however, instead of being clear and bright, as in former calms, was now overspread with menacing clouds; the sea looked black, and spread out before them on every side like an illimitable surface of polished ebony. There was something appalling in the depth and intensity of this calm with such accompaniments. All felt this influence. Although there was every temptation to inaction and sleep yet no one yielded to it. The men ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... courtier, was always looked upon with suspicion. His death was sudden, and the people firmly believed that he had made a compact with the devil, that the term had expired, and that Satan had met him in the woods and broken his neck. He was a tall, finely formed man, as black as ebony, and his movements always ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... merchandise. They of the house of Togarmah traded for thy wares with horses and war-horses and mules. The men of Dedan were thy traffickers: many isles were the mart of thine hand: they brought thee in exchange horns of ivory and ebony. Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of thy handyworks: they traded for thy wares with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and rubies. Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy traffickers: they traded for thy merchandise ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... yellowish like old coke ashes and grey as the fuzz on a new broom, with little white tufts like the fleece which flies up from the burnt-out faggot. It was a genuine gutter cat, long-legged, with a wild-beast head. It was regularly striped with waving lines of ebony, its paws were encircled by black bracelets and its eyes lengthened by two great zigzags ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the shadowy space, star-studded above, ebony below. Far across the depths shone a pinpoint of steady light. The Indian grunted again, August vented his "ha!" and then Jack saw the light blink like a star, go out for a second, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... a clock in the room behind him he turned as though a voice had spoken, and left the stone balcony on which he had been waiting. His spurs rang as he stepped into the room behind it. The floor was uncarpeted, and shone like ebony. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the description of the Black Rood of St. Margaret which, as Lord Hailes says, "was of gold, about the length of a palm; the figure of ebony, studded and inlaid with gold. A piece of the true ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... of the Isocarpous sympetalae has but a single common representative in the United States; viz., the persimmon (Diospyros) (Fig. 117, E). This belongs to the family Ebenaceae, to which also belongs the ebony a member of the same genus as the persimmon, and found in Africa ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... come up from the village, and her ebony suitor was expected. With that and their delight at Miss Elsie's improvement, the whole staff was in ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... looked, almost expecting to see a literal fulfilment of the prophecy. A form of imposing stature appeared. It was that of a negro upwards of six feet in height, magnificently proportioned, straight as a pillar, and black as ebony. He wore a dress of skins, carried a gun in his hand, and had an opossum slung over ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... collector of pictures and curiosities,—mostly sold by executors at his death, aged eighty-nine, though a full gallery remains at Albury; a carver too, and a constructor of cabinets,—whereof two fine specimens (inlaid with brecciated jaspers, and made of ebony and cedar from his own turning-lathe) decorate our large drawing-room; and the oldest folk in our village still remember the good old gentleman who always had gingerbread in his pockets for them as children, and who was known by them as the "man mushroom," seeing ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... dark face watching her so jealously, and so hardening toward her as he saw how pale she grew, and heard her exclamation of surprise when she first recognized the note, and remembered that in turning over the contents of the ebony box she must have dropped it ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... He was as ebony as a negro can get and as nattily dressed as only Savile Row can turn out a man. He said, "My name is Loo Motlamelle." He looked at ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... waving at him her ebony crook, "do not run away, young gentleman. I see that you admire my garden. Pray step inside and look more closely ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... with a pressing note to his representatives who, after some demur, paid up, English-fashion, in full. Then a noteworthy change came over the faces of men. Everybody beamed upon me in the streets, and there arrived multitudinous little gifts at my house—choice wines, tie-pins, game, cigars, ebony walking-sticks, confectionery, baskets of red mullets, old prints, Capodimonte ware, candied fruits, amber mouthpieces, maraschino—all from donors who plainly desired to remain anonymous. Such things were dropped from the clouds, so to speak, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat at her tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her work, sometimes she bent over it, and her hair, picturesque in its ebony smoothness and darkness, caught the light of the lamp. Helene was a picture in herself. In her beauty there was a rare distinctive character of power and refinement. Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from her face, so as to trace ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... They knew she collected ferns on the sly, but never before had they seen her bring home such a prize. Usually she found only crumpled things like old bits of wrinkled brown paper which she called "specimens." This one was marvellously beautiful. It had a dainty, slender stalk of ebony black, and its hundred tiny leaves quivered like a shower of green water-drops in the air. There was actual joy in every ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... walls the lords of the castle were accustomed to reside. The apartments were either hung with heavy tapestry, which displayed, in gigantic proportions, the combats of the Scots and Danes, or panelled with polished oak, rivalling ebony in its glossy blackness, inlaid with solid silver. Heavy draperies of damask fell from the ceiling to the floor at every window, a pleasant guard, indeed, from the constant winds which found entrance through many creaks and corners of the Gothic casements, but ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... could not imagine how any human being could sleep in such a catafalque. Under the baldachin hovered a gilded Cupid, spotted and faded, with his arrow aimed at the bed. In the corners stood carved cupboards, damascened with ebony and mother-of-pearl. Veroshka opened a press and put her little face inside, and a musty, dusty smell came from the shelves, laden with old-fashioned caftans and embroidered uniforms with ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... into the sea. To the west, after a mile of cultivation, fall and recede in succession the sea-beach of old in lengthy parallel waves, overgrown densely with forest grass and marsh reeds. On the spines of these land-swells flourish ebony, calabash, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... had gathered itself together, and came into full view in all its magnificence. There were pagodas in teakwood inlaid with gold; and resting on ebony poles, and behind them, on a very tame Rosinante decked with leopard skins and gold bullion fringes, a Chinese maiden dressed to represent a queen of Celestial mythology. Then came more pagodas, and companies of standard-bearers ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fleet touched at Java the Less "in compass about two thousand miles, with abundance of treasure and spices, ebony, and brazil, and so far to the south that the North Star cannot be seen, and none of the stars of the Great Bear." Here they were in great fear of "those brutish man eaters," with whom they traded for victuals and camphire and spices and precious stones, being forced ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... threw off his felt hat, adorned with an old red plume, in order to rub his hand over his bald head. Again he looked at his daughter, who, beneath the brown rafters of that leather-hung room, with its ebony furniture and portieres of silken damask, and its tall chimney-piece, the whole so softly lighted, was still his very own. The poor father felt the tears in his eyes and hastened to wipe them. A father who loves ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... was represented by massive furniture in calamander, ebony, and satinwood, carved with the most elaborate devices, dainty laces made by the nimble fingers of village women, beautiful productions on tortoise shell and gold, heavily embroidered cloths of gold, and a large collection ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... genuine enthusiasm of loyalty into contempt. There is too much of the Dollalolla in such an exhibition. When his majesty squats uneasily, as if he considered his chair an inconvenience, and the queen wipes her ebony nose with her illustrious white satin play bill. When the royal party entered, the people seemed unable to contain their rapture, and God save the King was called for. This is the established custom: whenever we look upon the king of another country, we always stand up and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... liquid notes of the cowbirds, like the pouring of mingled molasses and olive oil. Three handsome fellows in ebony and dark brown sit on the branch of a tall elm and just beneath them sit three brownish gray females, all in a row. Cowbird No. 1 comes nearer the end of the branch, ruffles out his head as if he were about to have a sick spell and then emits that famous molasses and oil kind of whistle, sufficient ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... of two-penny, which is a thin, yeasty beverage, made of malt; not quite so strong as the table-beer of England, — This is brought in a pewter stoop, shaped like a skittle, from whence it is emptied into a quaff; that is, a curious cup made of different pieces of wood, such as box and ebony, cut into little staves, joined alternately, and secured with delicate hoops, having two cars or handles — It holds about a gill, is sometimes tipt round the mouth with silver, and has a plate of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... classes, who thus, although they remained at home, would have just as good a claim to their share of the public funds as those who were serving at sea, in garrison, or in the field. The different materials used, such as stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, cypress-wood, and so forth, would require special artisans for each, such as carpenters, modelers, smiths, stone-masons, dyers, melters and moulders of gold, and ivory painters, embroiderers, workers in relief; and also men to bring them to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... and the Territories, and thus, by confining him to the South, give him political preponderance over the white man in many of the States of the Union? Imagine the pure crystal pillars of this temple of freedom turned to ebony; the radiant eyes of Freedom's Goddess shocked at the gloomy spectacle of symbolic night, and suffused with tears at such ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... from its den,) but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over every thing a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid—as that ebony to which has been ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and round men; the others are apt to escape in salt rheum, sal-volatile, and a white pocket-handkerchief. An odd thought strikes me: when I die will the Journal of these days be taken out of the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford, and read as the transient pout of a man worth L60,000, with wonder that the well-seeming Baronet should ever have experienced such a hitch? Or will it be found in some obscure lodging-house, where the decayed son of chivalry has hung up his scutcheon for ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... our arrival, left their play to welcome and kiss their father. A lovely vision of youth and beauty also made its appearance—one of those slender girls of the South, a woman of fifteen years old, with her dark eyelashes and her streaming ebony hair; slaves of all ages—mulattoes and quadroon girls, old negroes and boy negroes, all calling together—"Eh! Massa Courtenay, kill plenty bear, dare say; now plenty grease for black family, good ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Algerian and Moorish tilings, when my attention was attracted by a sort of charm or pendant that hung in a glass case. It was not particularly beautiful, but its appearance was quaint and curious, and took my fancy. It consisted of an oblong block of ebony in which was set a single pear-shaped pearl more than three-quarters of an inch long. The sides of the ebony block were lacquered—probably to conceal a joint—and bore a number of Chinese characters, and at the top was a little gold image with ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... centuries, which were produced with similar veneers. The process of inlaying is of the most remote antiquity, and the student may see in the cases of the British Museum, at the Louvre, and in other museums, examples of both Assyrian and Egyptian inlaid patterns of metal and ivory, or ebony or vitreous pastes, upon both wood and ivory, dating from the 8th and 10th centuries before the Christian Era, or earlier. The Greeks and Romans also made use of it for costly furniture and ornamental sculpture; in Book 23 of the "Odyssey," Ulysses, describing to Penelope the bride-bed ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... leading to a "small vaulted room," and eventually to a "subterraneous communication between your apartment and the chapel of St. Anthony scarcely two miles off." Arrived at the abbey, she is disappointed at the modern appearance of her room, but contrives to find a secret drawer in an ancient ebony cabinet, and in this a roll of yellow manuscript which, on being deciphered, proves to be a washing bill. She is convinced, notwithstanding, that a mysterious door at the end of a certain gallery conducts to a series of isolated chambers where General ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... took his seat, he planted his big gold-headed ebony cane between his knees, put his hat on the head of his cane, gave it a twirl, and looking over sidewise at her, smiled with an equal mixture of ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... to them in that unhallowed spot, and by the depth and dignity of her wild prayer, the two watchers had eyes for her alone. Therefore it happened that not until his arm was about to drag her away, did either of them perceive a huge man, black as ebony in colour, clad in a cloak of leopard skins and carrying in his right hand a broad-bladed spear who, following the shadow of the trees, had crept upon the priestess from the farther ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... had something of the character of a woman's. One detail alone gave it or rather would give it at certain moments a touch of singular firmness. Beneath the beautiful fair hair waving on his brow and temples, as was the fashion at that period, eyebrows, eyes and lashes were black as ebony. The rest of the face was, as we have said, almost feminine. There were two little ears of which only the tips could be seen beneath the tufts of hair to which the Incroyables of the day had given the name of "dog's-ears"; a straight, perfectly proportioned nose, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... and pressed against one another on the thorax, open to their full extent, forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillae ornamented with rows of pearls, and a black spot with a central point of white. These two eyes, faintly recalling those of the peacock's tail, and the fine ebony embossments, are part of the blazonry of conflict, concealed upon ordinary occasions. Their jewels are only assumed when they make themselves terrible and superb ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... ample head, which was again surmounted by a peaked hat, having a band and buckle above its brim, and a black rose in front. He looked an elderly and well-ordered gentleman, mighty spruce, and full of courtesy; and his cane was black as ebony, with a yellow knob that glittered like gold. He had a huge beaked nose, and a little black ferrety eye, which almost pierced what it gazed upon. Every one made way for the stranger, who sat down, not ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... above the ancient sentry at the gate was an open casement with some homely flowers in the window, from behind which good-humoured girls' faces were peeping. They were watching the young traveller dressed in black as he walked up gazing towards the castle, and the ebony attendant who followed the gentleman's steps also accoutred in mourning. So was he at the gate in mourning, and the girls when they ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tribute to the Spaniards in gold, the latter have not as yet—that is in the year 1600—been able to ascertain where they get it, notwithstanding their efforts. They are commencing to sow wheat there. Flour was formerly brought from Japon. The islands also supplied quantities of ebony and bamboo. ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... spotless white "camiza" is decorated with beautiful pillow lace, her own handiwork. Her skirt of stiffly starched cotton is red and purple in colour. A crimson flowered folded shawl hangs over her right shoulder and great strings of beads ornament the ebony of her neck and arms. To sit at the feet of Theresa, the ama, is to enter the gate of ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... and put off into the slow current. A haggard, eerie fragment of moon slinked westward. Stars glinted in the flawless chilly blue. The surface of the river was like polished ebony—a dream-path wrought of gloom and gleam. The banks were lines of dusk, except where some lone cottonwood loomed skyward like a giant ghost clothed with a mantle that glistered and darkled in ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... night gathers sleep, and spreads it over the darkened Earth. There is no door in the whole dwelling, to make a noise by the turning of the hinges; no porter at the entrance. But in the middle is a couch, raised high upon black ebony, stuffed with feathers, of a dark colour, concealed by a dark coverlet; on which the God himself lies, his limbs dissolved in sloth. Around him lie, in every direction, imitating divers shapes, unsubstantial dreams as many as the harvest ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... with her foot, leaps up, and pulls the bell-rope. In answer to its sound three young, slender negresses enter; they are as if carved of ebony, and are dressed from head to foot in red satin; each one has a rope ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... befallen thereof. There is without this hall a car that three white harts have drawn hither, and lightly may you send to see how rich it is. I tell you that the traces are of silk and the axletrees of gold, and the timber of the car is ebony. The car is covered above with a black samite, and below is a cross of gold the whole length, and under the coverlid of the car are the heads of an hundred and fifty knights whereof some be sealed ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... piece on to the number 10, using a rake of her own which Dick Carleton had given her. It was a glorified rake, which he had ordered specially for her, made of ebony with the initials "M. G." set into it in little sapphires, her ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... them across the water, out of the blackness that brooded upon the harbor, did any of the four give sign of excitement. The Babu started, and rose to his feet shivering; the others still squatted, mute and motionless as statues of ebony, neither by gesture nor murmur betraying their consciousness that at any moment, by tocsin from the fort, a thousand fierce and relentless warriors might be launched like sleuth ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... all ebony or marble," said Hetty, putting on a bewildered air, "but I will count them up if you like. There are six in the drawing-room," she continued, holding up all the fingers of her left hand, and ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... her eyes full of tears, took a poniard from one of the two ebony pieces of furniture, and presented it to Henri with a gesture of submission which ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... proves satisfactorily that it is possible to be frisky without being lively; its vulgarity is so pronounced that it offends you like low conversation. Another concerto follows—ten folio pages! whew!!——Oh, ye ebony and ivory devils! oh, for an exorcist to put you to flight! Cramped fingers are crossing each other at a great rate; we really tremble for the glue, and the pegs, and the wires, and the whole economy of the instrument, at that critical juncture when the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... cocoanut tree—and the heap thus formed is subjected, at every new increase, to a moderate beating, with a sort of wooden mallet, leisurely applied. The mallet is made of a hard heavy wood resembling ebony, is about twelve inches in length, and perhaps two in breadth, with a rounded handle at one end, and in shape is the exact counterpart of one of our four-sided razor-strops. The flat surfaces of the implement are marked with shallow parallel indentations, varying ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... appearance abruptly, in successive shocks, standing out from the darkness like pictures of scarlet above a background of ebony. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... were of satin, priceless rugs, which hung without a quiver in the breathless gloom. Massive furniture, chairs, tables, settees, of teak, of ebony and dark mahogany, with deep carvings, glaring gargoyles and hideous masks, were arranged with an ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Antony's hands the wife and children of Seleucus to be put to death. She had caused to be built, joining to the temple of Isis, several tombs and monuments of wonderful height, and very remarkable for the workmanship; thither she removed her treasure, her gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory, cinnamon, and, after all, a great quantity of torchwood and tow. Upon which Caesar began to fear lest she should, in a desperate fit, set all these riches on fire; and, therefore, while he was marching ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... possession except a few guns they had procured from the Moors and Hollanders, which they knew not how to use, and were even fearful of handling. They have excellent amber[5], white sandal, tortoises, ebony, sweet woods of various kinds, and abundance of slaves, with plenty of cattle of all kinds, the flesh of their goats being as sweet as mutton. The island likewise produces abundance of sea cows, sea-horses, monkeys, and some say tigers, with a great many snakes which are not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... bordering Victoria Nyanza the flora resembles that of Uganda (q.v.). The characteristic trees of the coast regions are the mangrove and coco-nut palm. Ebony grows in the scrub-jungle. Vast forests of olives and junipers are found on the Mau escarpment; the cotton, fig and bamboo on the Kikuyu escarpment; and in several regions are dense forests of great trees whose lowest branches ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... idly watching the terns and kingfishers busily seeking their suppers over the glassy water; and at night we sat on deck while the moon rose higher in the quiet sky, and the dark river banks assumed a clearer ebony as she rose above the lofty fringe of trees, until the towing-path lay a track of pure silver reaching away to the dim belt of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... concerning Maga's Icon in America. I wondered you should ask me for a description, when it was so easy to have ordered out the thing itself; and so resolved to save myself the trouble of writing a long story, by duly exporting a specimen of the American Ebony, from which you might form your own conclusions as to its counterfeit merits, and its supposed relations to the great question of international copyright. Segnius irritant—you know! What disciple of old Plunkett's will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... who made SUMNER is not to blame for this. In the first place, Mr. SUMNER'S Measures are very difficult to take. In the second place, the best Cabinet-makers have failed to make Mr. SUMNER appear very large. In the third and last place, Ebony, which is the only wood with which Mr. SUMNER has any affinity, is a mighty hard material to work, even when treated with the application ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... away with or lessen any of the petty inconveniences of life. Waggons and waggons of the richest furniture had passed through the village between lines of staring villagers. Costly skins, glossy carpets, rich rugs, ivory, and ebony, and metal; every glimpse into these storehouses of treasure had given rise to some new legend. And finally, when all had been arranged, there had come a staff of forty servants, who heralded the approach of the owner, Mr. ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with tide, wind, and engines carrying us up the James. Dancing Point reached sharply out as if to intercept us. But the owner of those strong dark hands that happened to be at the wheel knew the story of Dancing Point—of how many an ebony Tam O'Shanter had seen ghostly revelry there; and Gadabout was held well out in ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the dullest blockhead in Holkar's army. Seizing, then, a bottle of Burgess's walnut catsup, I dyed my face and my hands, and, with the simple aid of a flask of Warren's jet, I made my hair and beard as black as ebony. The Indian's helmet and chain hood covered likewise a great part of my face and I hoped thus, with luck, impudence, and a complete command of all the Eastern dialects and languages, from Burmah to Afghanistan, to pass scot-free ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Austrian ambassador at Berlin, the young Baron van Swieten. Meanwhile, Kaunitz was busy with a brush of peacock's feathers, dusting the expensive trifles that covered his escritoire, or polishing its ebony surface with a fine silk handkerchief which he kept for the purpose. This furbishing of trinkets and furniture was a private pastime with the all-powerful minister; and many a personage of rank was made to wait in the anteroom, while he ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... door to the left of the main entrance, and leading upstairs, opened. After a few words with the moon-faced attendant, the light was switched on and the three ascended to a small room, brilliant with gaudy Oriental colors and heavy with ebony furnishings. A group of three or four Chinamen sat at a small table soberly drinking their tea with the exaggerated innocence of those who have a deck of cards up their sleeves. The proprietor himself, fat as a butter ball, toddled up to Saul with a grin ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... ain' much to look at, dat's sho'," replied Big Abel, his face shining like polished ebony, "en I ain' much to look at needer, but dey'll have ter recollect de way we all wuz befo' we runned away; dey'll have ter recollect you in yo' fine shuts en fancy waistcoats, en dey'll have ter recollect me in yo' ole uns. Sakes alive! I kin see dat one er yourn wid ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... stood the palace, built of yellow mottled Numidian marble, broad courses supporting its four terraced stories. With its large, straight, ebony staircase, bearing the prow of a vanquished galley at the corners of every step, its red doors quartered with black crosses, its brass gratings protecting it from scorpions below, and its trellises of gilded rods closing the apertures above, it seemed to the soldiers ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... [Delta]. DC.—A small tree of Jamaica, where the wood is known as green ebony, and is used for making various small articles. It is imported into this country under the name of cocus wood, and is used with us for making flutes and other wind instruments. Mr. Worthington Smith considers that the wood equals ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Charley, with a glance at the grinning ebony face, the very picture of health. "He never had a real ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... of glade haunters were those who came strictly on business,—plasterers and sculptors, who found wet clay ready to their needs. Great golden and rufous bees blundered down and gouged out bucketsful of mud; while slender-bodied, dainty, ebony wasps, after much fastidious picking of place, would detach a tiny bit of the whitest clay, place it in their snuff-box holder, clean their feet and antennae, run their rapier in and out and delicately ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... gallery. His savings enabled him to renovate the whole gallery, which up to this time had been neglected and shabby. The floor was carefully waxed, the ceiling whitened, the wood-work painted to resemble the grain and knots of oak. A long table in ebony and two cabinets by Boulle completed the decoration, and gave to this gallery a certain air that was full of character. In the course of two years the liberality of devout persons, and legacies, though small ones, from pious ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... his watch, which hung within a beautiful little ebony temple, supported by four Ionic columns. He then laid his hand on the golden locks of little Alice, whose head had sunk down upon the arm of our ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she saw among the trees something silver-bright. She watched it rise slowly from behind the trees, now hidden, now white through rifts in the foliage, until it soared lovely and grand above the black horizon. The ebony shadows of night seemed to lift, as might a sable mantle moved by invisible hands. But dark shadows, safe from the moon-rays, lay under the trees, and a pale, misty vapor hung below the brow of ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... precedes the Esquire-Bedells, carrying an ebony mace, tipped with silver; his gown, as well as those of the Marshal and School-Keeper, is made of black prince's stuff, with square collar, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Vendome during the Empire. Mme. de Merret declared to her husband that she had purchased of this merchant an ebony crucifix encrusted with silver; but in truth she had obtained it of her lover, Bagos de Feredia. She swore falsely on this very ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... function Meynell went into the Cathedral with Mary just as the lengthening March afternoon was beginning to wane. They stepped through the western doors set open to the breeze and the sunshine into a building all opal and ebony, faintly flooded with rose from the sky without; a building of infinite height and majesty, where clustered columns of black marble, incredibly light, upheld the richness of the bossed roof, where every wall was broidered history, where every ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the head of Queen Mary, in a charger, taken the day after the execution. Many other interesting portraits grace the walls of this room. But by far the finest apartment in the building is the Drawing-room, with a lofty ceiling, and furnished with antique ebony furniture. After passing through the Library, with its twenty thousand volumes, we found ourselves in the Study, and I sat down in the same chair where once sat the Poet; while before me was the table upon which was written the "Lady ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... found in all Damascus and Bagdad. From the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads of gems, liked diamonds, but larger than men; and in among the streets of towers and pyramids and temples, there flowed immense rivers as black as ebony, and swarming with fish that had ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... five and six o'clock, made his coffee, and then went through his devotions, a black ebony crucifix, with the figure of our Lord in brass, on the table before him. Wherever he went he had this carried with him. [Footnote: This particular crucifix, however, was only used by Mr. Hope-Scott after his first wife's death. It was the one which she held in her hands when dying.] His ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... castanets to be had. Instantly she seized the old woman's only earthenware plate, smashed it up, and there she was dancing the Romalis, and making the bits of broken crockery rattle as well as if they had been ebony and ivory castanets. That girl was good company, I can tell you! Evening fell, and I ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... one could tell. He remained on the bridge night and day, clad from head to foot in oil-skin garments, facing the furious blast as if it were his native air, watching every motion of his vessel, and gazing intently into the world of ebony ahead as if trying ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... instead of the eternal labyrinth of mangrove-trees, with their complicated roots snarled into formidable coils under the water, as if to waylay and entangle the voyager, the low margin of the sea was covered with a stately growth of ebony, and with a species of mahogany, and other hard woods that take the most brilliant and variegated polish. The sandal-wood, and many balsamic trees of unknown names, scattered their sweet odors far and wide, not in an atmosphere tainted with vegetable corruption, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... replied. "I do not know. It is something in the wine. In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him. But see." And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial half filled with the ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... my dealer in bric-a-brac was a veritable Capharnauem; all ages and all countries seemed to have arranged a rendezvous there; an Etruscan terra cotta lamp stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony panels decorated with simple filaments of inlaid copper: a duchess of the reign of Louis XV stretched nonchalantly her graceful feet under a massive Louis XIII table with heavy, spiral oaken legs, and carvings of intermingled ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... looked behind me. She had reached the first landing, where the stairway curved. She saw me, and peered forward, holding the candle above her head. The loose sleeve of her dress fell back with the motion, and the bare symmetry of her rounded forearm gleamed upon the blackness like ivory upon ebony. I waved my hand; she waved hers, then ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... known to the English and American hunters. But it is like neither the otter nor beaver, though its habits are akin to both. Its nearest relative is probably the fur seal. Like the seal, its pelt has an ebony shimmer, showing silver when blown open, soft black tipped with white, when examined hair by hair. Six feet, the full-grown sea-otter measures from nose to stumpy tail, with a {66} beaver-shaped face, teeth like a cat, and short webbed ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... shot across the moon-filled night, so large a meteor that it made light even against that silver. A mass within Ian made a slow turn, with effort, with thrilling, changed its inclination. He saw that disdain, that it was shallow and streaked with ebony. He moved with a kind of groan. "Was there—is there—wickedness?... ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... times enfolding the whole abode, drags his black and sluggish length around. Charon, the slovenly old ferryman, plies his noiseless boat to and fro laden with shadowy passengers. Far away in the centre grim Pluto sits on his ebony throne and surveys the sad subjects of his dreadful domain. By his side sits his stolen and shrinking bride, Proserpine, her glimmering brows encircled with a wreath of poppies. Above the subterranean monarch's head a sable rainbow ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... watchful as the red squirrel is, he is frequently caught by the cat. My Nig, as black as ebony, knows well the taste of his flesh. I have known him to be caught by the black snake and successfully swallowed. The snake, no doubt, lay ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... Are there not causes enough to which the apparent inferiority of an African may be ascribed, without limiting the goodness of God, and supposing he forbore to stamp understanding on certainly his own image, because "carved in ebony." Might it not naturally be ascribed to their situation? When they come among Europeans, they are ignorant of their language, religion, manners, and customs. Are any pains taken to teach them these? Are they treated as men? Does not slavery itself depress the ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... Ten years ago an Old Wrykinian, suddenly reflecting that it would not be a bad idea to do something for the school in a small way, hied him to the nearest jeweller's and purchased another silver cup, vast withal and cunningly decorated with filigree work, and standing on a massive ebony plinth, round which were little silver lozenges just big enough to hold the name of the winning house and the year of grace. This he presented with his blessing to be competed for by the dozen houses that made up the school of Wrykyn, ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... merchants gave packages of Philadelphia groceries; some of the aristo-cratic families parted with heirlooms that had been laboriously brought over the mountains—a cup and saucer of Sevres, a pair of tall brass candlesticks, and a Venus -mirror framed in ebony. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon when John Gray jumped on the back of a strong trusty horse at the stable of the Indian Queen, leaned over to shake the hands of the friends who had met there to see him off, and turned his horse's head in the direction of the path that ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... to be loose and away scouring the plains in search of game. Everything on board was taut and trim and neat: not a yard out of the square, not a rope out of place, the decks as white as old ivory, the polished woodwork glittering like glass, the brass all gold apparently, the guns like ebony, and the very lanyards pipeclayed till they looked like ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... gladden the heart. And thus though my palate be dulled by age, With joy I partake of thy dear beverage. How glad I prepare me thy nectar most precious, No soul shall usurp me a rite so delicious; On the ambient flame when the black charcoal burns, The gold of thy bean to rare ebony turns, I alone, 'gainst the cone, wrought with fierce iron teeth. Make thy fruitage cry out with its bitter-sweet breath; Till charmed with such perfume, with care I entrust To the pot on my hearth the rare spice-laden dust: ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... like glassy streams, Her teeth are pearl, the breasts are ivory Of fair Samela; Her cheeks like rose and lily yield forth gleams; Her brows bright arches framed of ebony: ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... stop at the old woman's after this. I half-doubted the rascal's story, though I let him have the provender. Sure enough, as I came along just now, who should I see but the preacher sitting before the door of old Nancy's log-hut, as much at home as if his skin were the colour of ebony. These are rather queer doings, friend Martin; I don't ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... her breast that splendid necklace of emeralds which Guatemoc had given to me in the treasure chamber, and which she had preserved safely through all our evil fortune, and a golden girdle about her waist. In her hand also she took a little sceptre of ebony tipped with gold, that was in the palace, with other ornaments and emblems of rank, and thus attired, though she was worn with travel and suffering, and grief had dimmed her beauty for a while, she seemed the queenliest woman that my eyes have seen. ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... little fish carefully and regarded it with huge satisfaction before returning it to the river. Then, having accomplished the task set by sudden desire,—to catch a Teign trout again, feel it, smell it, see the ebony and crimson, the silver belly warming to gold on its sides and darkening to brown and olive above,—having by this act renewed sensations that had slept for fifteen years, he put up his rod and returned to his temporary quarters at the dwelling of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... from the live ivory of a female elephant. A short Wand, twenty-one inches long, tipped with gold at the largest end and silver or copper at the other, is very powerful. Next to these costly articles are Wands with a gold or copper core, a wire, in fact, cased with ebony, boxwood, rosewood, cedar or sandalwood. English yew also serves the purpose; so does almond wood. Simpler, less expensive, and almost as effective, are Wands made of witch-hazel. In fact, apart from the Wands of live ivory, I consider that witch-hazel ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... floating mines packed with explosives. The nerve of the French sailors, fortunately for the British, failed them, and they fired the ships too soon. But the spectacle of these flaming monsters as they drifted towards the British fleet was appalling. The river showed ebony-black under the white flames. The glare lit up the river cliffs, the roofs of the city, the tents of Montcalm, the slopes of the distant hills, the black hulls of the British ships. It was one of the ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... images in yellow wood or bronze or ebony are serious of mien, uneasy, and taciturn. Their faces have the disquieting and secret look of the snare suddenly discovered. The others laugh with a laugh that jangles like fantastic foreign instruments of music, a ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... of a November sky that this morning burst through the lattice for me, on my bed? According to terrestrial calculations, above the horizon, in the east, there rose one rod of rainbow [20] hues, crowned with an acre of eldritch ebony. Little by little this topmost pall, drooping over a deeply daz- zling sunlight, softened, grew gray, then gay, and glided into a glory of mottled marvels. Fleecy, faint, fairy blue and golden flecks came out on a background of [25] cerulean hue; while the lower lines of light kindled into ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... seen are very pleasing. They are gentle and simple, and naturally well-bred. Some of the Malay women are very handsome, and the little children are darlings. A little parti-coloured group of every shade, from ebony to golden hair and blue eyes, were at play in the street yesterday, and the majority were pretty, especially the half-castes. Most of the Caffres I have seen look like the perfection of human physical nature, and seem to have no diseases. Two days ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... a chariot of ebony drawn by two plunging, coal-black horses. A robust Egyptian, who shifted from one foot to the other and talked to his horses continually, drove therein alone. As he approached, the Hebrew woman raised herself so suddenly ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... near the border of the Canon. As we drove up to it, the situation seemed enchanting in its peace and beauty; for it is located in a grove of noble pines, through which the moon that night looked down in full-orbed splendor, paving the turf with inlaid ebony and silver, and laying a mantle of white velvet on the tents in which we were to sleep. Hance's log cabin serves as a kitchen and dining-room for travelers, and a few guests can even find lodging there; but, until a hotel is built, the principal dormitories ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... beautiful bulbs; how smooth they are, how well formed; there is that air of melancholy about them which promises to produce a flower of the colour of ebony. On their skin you cannot even distinguish the circulating veins with the naked eye. Certainly, certainly, not a light spot will disfigure the tulip which I have called into existence. And by what name shall we call this offspring of ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... doubt, makes it harder to recover a fugitive chattel; but the existence of human nature in a man here and there is surely one of those accidents to be counted on at least as often as fire, shipwreck, or the cattle-disease; and the man who chooses to put his money into these images of his Maker cut in ebony should be content to take the incident risks along with the advantages. We should be very sorry to deem this risk capable of diminution; for we think that the claims of a common manhood upon us should be at least as strong as those of Freemasonry, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Turkish tobacco-pipes had nothing particular in them, they were fitted up and ornamented as usual, with flexible tubes of Morocco leather and gold wire, and mounted at their ends, the one of them with ivory,—the other with black ebony, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... girl gave him, and unrolling it, he found the board within. Like the pieces it was large, rich, and inlaid with ebony and ivory. Putting the whole in conjunction the hunter, though not without many misgivings, slowly came over to Judith's opinion, and finally admitted that the fancied idols must be merely the curiously carved men of some unknown game. Judith ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... which his master paid to the panther. He growled hoarsely, and, raising his head, showed the under-part of his redoubtable triangular jaw, and his broad chest of a dirty white, with which blended the copper color, streaked with black, of his sides; his tail, like a huge red serpent, with rings of ebony, now clung to his flanks, now lashed them with a slow and continuous movement: his eyes, of a transparent, brilliant green, were fixed ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... process, did his companion, an extremely tall, thin man, throw various pieces of money upon certain stakes, which were deposited by the bystanders on different parts of the table; or, which was more often the case, with a silver rake with a long ebony handle, sweep into a large inclosure near him the scattered sums. This inclosure was called the bank, and the mysterious ceremony in which these persons were assisting was the celebrated game of rouge-et-noir. A deep silence ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... out under the trees. The lorgnette which had said to her "it is strange he does not find some nice girl to marry," left a disquieting effect. Ann had only that day suggested the same idea, and Bob had laughed to her about it the previous evening. Even Aunt Timmie, the ebony font of wisdom, had but recently looked slyly at her, remarking: "'Foh long we's gwine to have a weddin' in a private cyar!" (Aunt Timmie had never seen a private car, but it typified her idea ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... finally the price of dinner went up to one dollar and a half, with nothing to eat. The table was protected from flies by a series of paper fans, pendant from the ceiling and connected by a cord, which an ebony boy pulled, at the foot of the room to keep them in motion. This boy being worked day and night, often fell asleep upon his stool, when the yellow man boxed his ears, or knocked him down; and then he would fan with such vigor that a perfect gale swept down ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the air of finest conventional library, picture-gallery or parlor, with ladies and gentlemen in them, and plush and rosewood, and ground-glass lamps, and mahogany and ebony furniture, and a silver inkstand and scented satin paper to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... late one night I went up to the promenade deck to smoke a cigar before turning in. It was a warm moonlight night. The broad low waves of ebony water that went seething past below, foamed luminous and were streaked and starred with phosphorescence. The recumbent moon, past its full and sinking westward, seemed bigger than I had ever seen it before, and the roundness of the watery globe was manifest ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Blanc, and right over our heads—but she couldn't manage to climb high enough toward heaven to get entirely above them. She would show the glittering arch of her upper third, occasionally, and scrape it along behind the comblike row; sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuette of ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed to glide out of it by its own volition and power, and become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk with the black exclamation-point of its presence. The top of one pinnacle took ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ship. There we found an immense number of extraordinary things and unknown animals. In the place where in other ships the rowers sat were great apes; on high on the mast sat an eagle; in the inner rooms were many large and small cages of smooth ebony with thick gold bars, behind which moved a ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... and flowers. There was the old-fashioned square piano in its carven case, and cabinets from China or East India; also a lacquered Japanese screen, marble-topped tables of filigreed teek, brackets of inlaid ebony. Curios there were galore. Some paintings there were, and these rocked softly upon the gently-heaving walls. As for the velvet carpet, it was a bed of gigantic roses that might easily put to the blush the prime of summer ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burned, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralizing for an army: everybody was wild for plunder . . . The throne and room were lined with ebony, carved in a wonderful manner. There were huge mirrors of all shapes and sizes, clocks, watches, musical boxes with puppets on them, magnificent china of every description, heaps and heaps of silks of all colours, ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... but pallid and remorseful, gained the casement. Softly raising his head, he peeped within. The room was full of music; he seemed to grow blind for a moment, when lo! upon the kitchen-table sat the mysterious songster, an ebony-hued negress, scouring the tinware, and singing away. Just as he was peering through the window, the ebony songster discovered him. The soldier's limbs sank beneath him, and the ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... monastery of Montserrate, at eight leagues from Barcelona, where is preserved the ebony statue of the Virgin carrying the Infant Jesus, which is traditionally said to have been carved by St. Luke, and to have been brought to Spain by St. Peter.—See Libro de la historia y milagros hechos a invocation de Nuestra Seilora de ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... tambourine. Little children may be seen snapping their fingers or clicking two bits of slate together, in imitation of the castanet player; but the continuous roll, or succession of quick taps, is an art to be learned only by practice. The castanets are made of ebony, and are generally decorated with bunches of smart ribbons, which play a great ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... black gouts of blood Wrung from the awful forehead of the Night The first drops fell and ceased. Then, suddenly, Out of the darkness, earth with all her seas, Her little ships at anchor in the bay (Five ebony ships upon a sheet of silver, Drake saw not that, indeed, Drake saw not that!), Her woods, her boughs, her leaves, her tiniest twigs. Leapt like a hunted stag through one immense Lightning of revelation ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... him, I discovered that he was not so entirely without occupation as I had at first supposed. Placed amid the other rare and beautiful objects on a large round table near him, was a dwarf cabinet in ebony and silver, containing coins of all shapes and sizes, set out in little drawers lined with dark purple velvet. One of these drawers lay on the small table attached to his chair; and near it were some tiny jeweller's brushes, a wash-leather "stump," and a little bottle of liquid, all waiting ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... worth 400,000 crusados. She brought two great crosses and a jewel of diamonds, presents from the Viceroy to the King. She had 537 tons of spices. The pepper alone was represented by Burleigh as worth L102,000. It fell to the Crown's share. She carried fifteen tons of ebony, beside tapestries, silks, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Her hair sweeping against her cheek was ebony on snow, so white she was; while under her blue eyes were dark rings, like the smears of an inky finger. M. Etienne let fall the bracelet he was holding, staring at her oblivious of aught else, his brows knotted in distress, his face afire with love and ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... uncle, living in London, had mailed to her. More particulars had come in a letter from James Muldoon, one of the grooms at Oakdale, who gave a most pitiful and graphic account of the way the London dealers crowded about the old porcelains in the ebony cabinets, and of the prices paid by the Earl of Brinsmore, who bought most of the pictures, half of the old Spanish furniture, as well as the largest but one of the great tapestries, to enrich the new mansion he was then building in London and ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Tari Barl—"Tarry Barrel," his master invariably dubbed him—smiling all over his ebony features as he stood, clad in active service kit and holding ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... he soon came in sight of tall cliffs which overlooked the sea, and which formed a natural harbour, wherein lay a vessel richly beseen. Its sails were of spun silk, and each plank and mast was fashioned of ebony. Dismounting, Gugemar made his way to the shore, and with much labour climbed upon the ship. Neither mariner nor merchant was therein. A large pavilion of silk covered part of the deck, and within this was a rich bed, the work of the cunning artificers of the days of King Solomon. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Marie de Medicis, for thirteen hundred and fifty francs—a unique bargain!—and he could sell them again at a profit of thousands of francs if he wished to. Perhaps he would consent to part with the commode, but he intended to keep the writing desk and place it between two ebony wardrobes which he already possessed, and it would cost him nothing, because the sale of the other piece, the commode, would cover the entire cost! And although in his letters to Mme. Hanska he defended himself against the ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... my knees are trembling! I find a box, the first resembling, Within my press! Of ebony,— And things, all splendid to behold, And richer far than ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the whole face might be read in his small, dark, cunning eyes, which no man of any penetration could look upon without feeling that they were significant of duplicity, cruelty, and fraud. His hair, though long, and falling over his neck, was black as ebony; for although Time had left his impress upon the general features of his face, it had not discolored a single hair upon his head; whilst his whiskers, on the contrary, were like snow—a circumstance which, in connection with his sinister look, gave him a remarkable and startling ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... at a great price." That story too, as we shall see, illustrates the spirit of the age. For their sculpture they used the white marble of Paros, being workers in marble especially, though they worked also in ebony and in ivory, and made use of gilding. "Figures of cedar-wood, partly incrusted with gold"—kedrou zodia chryso dienthismena—Pausanias says exquisitely, describing a certain work of their pupil, Dontas of Lacedaemon. It is to that that we have ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of my bric-a-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum. All ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there. An Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the court of Louis xv. nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet under a massive table of the time of Louis xiii., with heavy spiral supports of oak, and carven designs ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... the white statues, or the pictures; that was the mistress and queen of all this magnificence, Philippa L'Estrange. She was reclining on a couch that had been sent from Paris—a couch made of finest ebony, and covered with pale, rose-colored velvet. If Titian or Velasquez had seen her as she lay there, the world would have been the richer by an immortal work of art; Titian alone could have reproduced those rich, marvelous colors; ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... thundering among our tall trees and ivied chimneys—a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered up to the ceiling, in small ebony panels; a cheerful clump of wax candles on the tea-table; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty, and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures, except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you would have taken ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... good-sized cupboard, and was illuminated in the day-time by a window commanding a pleasant prospect of coal-shed and dead wall. The paper on the walls was dark and greasy with age; and every bit of clumsy, bulging deal furniture in the room had been transformed into a kind of ebony by the action of time and dirt, the greasy backs and elbows of idle loungers, the tobacco-smoke and ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... by something unusual in the room which he had not noticed till now. On a writing-table of ebony near one of the windows he saw a large photograph in a curious frame of ruddy arbutus wood. He had never before seen a photograph in any room lived in by Mrs. Clarke, and he had heard her say that ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... dreams passed. Dawn lifted the ebony gloom out of the canyon and sunlight far up on the ramparts renewed Shefford's spirit. He rose and awoke the others. Fay's wistful smile still held its faith. They ate of the gritty, water-soaked food. Then ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... by side on couches in the vestibule, which was a lofty chamber, panelled in ivory and ebony, with inset opals of enormous size and a ceiling of dull silver. The Duchess was a short, spare, grey-haired and rather homely-looking woman in a black demi-toilette with priceless old lace. Lady Muscombe was about twenty-six, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... into the darkness. They could see nothing strange. The great trunks of the trees, with the long silvery moss of whitish hue, were glistening in the light of the still blazing fire. All the space between was gloomy and black as ebony. They could hear nothing that sounded strange. There was not a breath of air stirring, so that the trees were still and silent, as if asleep. Only up among their leaves and high tops, the tree-frogs (Hyloidea) ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... of the Melliston Company became instantly more distracted when Tom Reade began an account of the capture of Evarts, and his jailing, and the escape of Mr. Sambo Ebony. ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... that all the discourse hitherto made by me imports little to them, and that it serves their turn; that they have demonstrated in one instance, and in such manner and figure as pleases them best—namely, in a board and in a ball of ebony—that one when put into the water sinks to the bottom, and that the other stays to swim on the top; and the matter being the same, and the two bodies differing in nothing but in figure, they affirm that with all perspicuity ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... sleep. But no sooner had he shut his eyes than Parmetella arose, took a steel which she had provided, and lighting the tinder applied a match; then taking the candle, she raised the coverlet, and beheld the ebony turned to ivory, and the coal to chalk. And whilst she stood gazing with open mouth, and contemplating the most beautiful pencilling that Nature had ever given upon the canvas of Wonder, the youth awoke, and began to reproach Parmetella, saying, "Ah, woe is me! for your prying curiosity I ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... be seen with tolerable distinctness, the outline of the hull and of the lofty canvas showing black as ebony against the dark background of sea and sky; and any doubts which Captain Leicester might have still entertained concerning her, were completely set at rest as he glanced at the cut of her canvas. It ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... said to have written that novel on a diet of oatmeal and cold water, to that of the luxurious author whose seances with the Muses are decorously conducted in irreproachable interiors, with much garnishing, old rose and ivory, ebony carvings, and inlaid desks, at which the marvelous being who now and then condescends to "dictate" a "best seller," is apt to be surprised by a local photographer. But as a noted educator defined a University as "a log,—with Mark Hopkins sitting on the other end," so the "real thing" in ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... forgot their own fears of what might come in their interest at the reply which the famous diplomatist might make to a suggestion which everybody knew to be so true. He stood, leaning upon his black ebony stick, with his bulky shoulders stooping forward, and an amused smile upon his face, as if the most innocent of compliments had been addressed to him. One of his few titles to respect is that he always met Napoleon upon equal terms, and never condescended to fawn ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... roof of the cavern sank so low that they had to stoop to pass under it, and again it rose sharply like the roof of a cathedral, and the rays of the far-away, but ever-increasing light, shone upon glistening stalactites that hung from the darkness above them like daggers of diamonds set in ebony. ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... we were sitting in the silence of the heart that needs no language, little Jeffy, my ebony-beauty boy, darted his black head in, and reposing it for one instant against the scarcely lighter-hued mahogany of the door, jingled out, in shells ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... lines of gold from picture-frames on the wall, and now and then startling patches of lurid color blazing forth unmeaningly from the dark incline of their canvases, with gleams of crystal and shadows of bronze in settings of fretted ebony, with long swayings of rich draperies at doors and windows, a red light of fire in a grate, and two white lights, one of piano keys, the other of a flying marble figure in a corner, outlined clearly against dusky red. The light in this room was very ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... with the Baobab, on account of the shape of its fruits, the thickness of its trunk, and the way in which its branches grow. Its wood, which is very heavy and of a fallow colour, has the grain and smell of ebony: its Yoloffe name is Bonda, the English have cut down and exported ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... come again? Shall I again Set open shop, show my dead ware, dear-bought Of a relentless merchant, that doth trade On the red sea, swoll'n mighty with the blood Of noble, virtuous, harmless innocents? Whose coal-black vessel is of ebony, Their shrouds and tackle (wrought and woven by wrong) Stretch'd with no other gale of wind but grief, Whose sighs with full blasts beateth on her shrouds; The master murder is, the pilot shame, The mariners, rape, theft and perjury; The burden, tyrannous oppression, Which hourly ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... unnecessary to pursue the subject of woods beyond the few kinds mentioned. Woods such as ebony, sandalwood, cherry, brier, box, pear-tree, lancewood, and many others, are all good for the carver, but are better fitted for special purposes and small work. As this book is concerned more with the art of carving than its application, ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... out from his fur collar as if they had been a vulture's. By his dress and the embroidered bag at his girdle, and the clasps of his furred shoes, I made no doubt he was a rich man; and he leaned on an ebony staff or wand capped with a pretty device of ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... sleeve. The uproar while this was going on had been tremendous, but it was suddenly stilled as four men in dark clothes entered the room. Each held in his hand the well known symbol of his office, the little ebony staff surmounted ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... rendering objects within a quarter of a mile almost as distinct as though it were midday; and, clearly defined against the ghostly grey of the grass-clad ridge, I could see the head and shoulders of a savage, the white moonlight gleaming upon his ebony skin as he waved his arm, signalling ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... through which was rove a long green silk rope, with one end secured by a cleat on the wall, and the other dangling loose, and squirming, whenever a current of air struck it, like a long, slim snake. Around the sides of the room, which were paneled with cedar, stood four or five quaint ebony armoires, and as many cabinets, clocks, and bookcases, with here and there a woman's work-stand, some of them curiously inlaid with pearl and silver. The walls were hung with a great number of pictures of all kinds of vessels—generally, however, of the merchant description—under ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... telling me to search for spring flowers, when the ground is all covered with snow,—to look at the moon shining, when the night is as dark as ebony. But I am thinking of you, Gabriella, more than of her. I rejoice to find you the same artless child of nature that sat at my feet years ago in the green-wood shade. But beautiful as is your palace home, I long to see you again in our lovely valley among ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Major, with Margaret a little in advance, met the visitors at the steps in all the glory of new blue broadcloth and flowered velvet. Sir Charles Grandison could not have been more elegant, nor Sir Roger more gracious. Behind him yet grander stood George—George Washington—his master's fac-simile in ebony down to the bandanna handkerchief and the trick of waving the right hand in a flowing curve. It was perhaps this spectacle which saved the Major, for Miss Jemima was so overwhelmed by George Washington's portentous dignity that she exhibited sufficient humility to place the Major immediately ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... the most distinguished company. According to her biographer, the countess loved science and art jusqu'au delire, and she collected the furniture of the period, without neglecting the blue china of the glowing Orient. In ebony bookcases she possessed about eighteen thousand volumes, bound by the greatest artists of the day. "Without care for the present, without fear of the future, doing good, pursuing the beautiful, protecting the arts, with a tender heart and open hand, the countess passed through life, calm, happy, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... looked from the knot of gentlemen to the troop of hardy rangers, who, with a dozen ebony servants and four Meherrin Indians, made up the company. Under charge of the slaves were a number of packhorses. Thrown across one was a noble deer; a second bore a brace of wild turkeys and a two-year-old bear, fat and tender; a third had a legion of pots ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... next morning—that is, at about ten o'clock—Bobby bounced energetically into the office of Barrister and Coke, where old Mr. Barrister, who had been his father's lawyer for a great many years, received him with all the unbending grace of an ebony cane. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... last order of the Isocarpous sympetalae has but a single common representative in the United States; viz., the persimmon (Diospyros) (Fig. 117, E). This belongs to the family Ebenaceae, to which also belongs the ebony a member of the same genus as the persimmon, and ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... finest touch to his good looks was given by this toning down; neither pallor nor dark circles detracting from them, but rather adding to them a melancholy favour of distinction. George had retained his mourning, a tribute completed down to the final details of black gloves and a polished ebony cane (which he would have been pained to name otherwise than as a "walking-stick") and in the aura of this sombre elegance his straight figure and drawn face were not without a tristful and ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... inlaid with gold, and a cannon ball still sticking in the wall facing the hills which bear Napoleon's fort; the other containing the tombs of the Khedivial family and distinguished by the richness of the decorations and inlay of sandalwood, ebony, ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... was as black as ebony and whose skin shone in the sun, seemed to have caught sight of the deer at the same moment as I, for he threw himself into position, poising the long spear he carried, resting the shaft upon one hand ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... truth, say it is," returned the dragoon. "I prefer your ebony hair, from which you seem to have combed the powder with great industry. But that must have been a sad hurt you have received under ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... her life during the last ten or a dozen years. While she answered her new friend's questions and asked others of him she unconsciously looked about the room. The writing-table was not far from her, and she saw on it two photographs in plain ebony frames; one was of her father, the other was a likeness of Lady Maud. Little by little she understood that her father had been Lord Creedmore's best friend from their schoolboy days till his death. Yet although they had constantly exchanged short visits, the one living in Oxford ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... and spruce, up to the grey, bare sides of the mighty mountains, up to their snow peaks gleaming elusive, translucent, faintly discernible against the blue of the sky. In the valley immediately at their feet the waters of the little lake gleamed like a polished shield set in a frame of ebony. "That's our lake," said Nora, "with our house just behind it in the woods. And nearer in that little bluff is ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... to gladden the heart. And thus though my palate be dulled by age, With joy I partake of thy dear beverage. How glad I prepare me thy nectar most precious, No soul shall usurp me a rite so delicious; On the ambient flame when the black charcoal burns, The gold of thy bean to rare ebony turns, I alone, 'gainst the cone, wrought with fierce iron teeth. Make thy fruitage cry out with its bitter-sweet breath; Till charmed with such perfume, with care I entrust To the pot on my hearth the rare spice-laden dust: First to calm, then excite, till ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... leaped the garden-wall, and finally, undiscovered, but pallid and remorseful, gained the casement. Softly raising his head, he peeped within. The room was full of music; he seemed to grow blind for a moment, when lo! upon the kitchen-table sat the mysterious songster, an ebony-hued negress, scouring the tinware, and singing away. Just as he was peering through the window, the ebony songster discovered him. The soldier's limbs sank beneath him, and the black ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... appeared to be too great to spend upon the smallest detail which might do away with or lessen any of the petty inconveniences of life. Waggons and waggons of the richest furniture had passed through the village between lines of staring villagers. Costly skins, glossy carpets, rich rugs, ivory, and ebony, and metal; every glimpse into these storehouses of treasure had given rise to some new legend. And finally, when all had been arranged, there had come a staff of forty servants, who heralded the approach of the owner, ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... glade haunters were those who came strictly on business,—plasterers and sculptors, who found wet clay ready to their needs. Great golden and rufous bees blundered down and gouged out bucketsful of mud; while slender-bodied, dainty, ebony wasps, after much fastidious picking of place, would detach a tiny bit of the whitest clay, place it in their snuff-box holder, clean their feet and antennae, run their rapier in and out and delicately ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... him was a chariot of ebony drawn by two plunging, coal-black horses. A robust Egyptian, who shifted from one foot to the other and talked to his horses continually, drove therein alone. As he approached, the Hebrew woman raised herself ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... is poured upon the mind through as many varied mediums, from the deep, cold, black and blue of learned and scientific lore to the glowing flame colour and crimson of poetry and romance. Having taken down a choice copy of the Faery Queen, we committed our person to an ebony arm-chair, and our spirit to the magic guidance of our author's fancy. Obedient to its leading, we were careering somewhere betwixt earth and heaven, when a slight noise brought us down for a moment ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the stranger. He was looking at a faded picture in an ebony frame which hung by the side of the bed. It was the portrait of an old man with a beautiful forehead and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... city to negotiate with the new owner, and to his astonishment found him to be the very man he had refused a meal to the week before. Blunt happened to be in Walters's office at the time the fellow called. Walters, he says, drew himself up to his full height, and looked like an ebony statue. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... to her own room. She was sitting at a small ebony writing desk, jotting down a few thoughts in her diary When her sister entered, but now arose and drew forth a luxurious arm-chair for the imperious beauty ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... its hardness and durability; the hackea for its toughness; the ducalabali surpassing mahogany; the ebony and letter-wood vying with the choicest woods of the old world; the locust-tree yielding copal; and the hayawa- and olou-trees furnishing a sweet-smelling resin, are all to be met with in the forest betwixt the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... heavy smell of luscious cooking proclaimed the neighbourhood of the kitchens. A side corridor led to a heavily-barred iron door, and this in turn opened upon a steep flight of stone steps, feebly illuminated by the glimmer of wall lamps. At the head and foot stood a mute sentinel like an ebony statue, and below, along the dusky and forbidding passages from which the cells opened, a succession of niches in the wall were each occupied by a similar guardian. The unfortunate visitors were dragged brutally down a number of stone-flagged and ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... naked feet resting on the flowers, was seated on a chair of ebony inlaid with gold; he had on his knees seven or eight young spaniels, who were licking his bands. Two servants were curling his hair, his mustachios, and beard, a third was covering his face with a kind of cream, which ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... the Kasr-al-Kholaifa, or hall of the khalifs, "the roof and walls of which were of gold, and solid but transparent blocks of marble of various colours: on each side were eight doors fixed on arches of ivory and ebony, ornamented with gold and precious stones, and resting on pillars of variegated marble and transparent crystal:—and in the centre was fixed the unique pearl presented to An-nassir by the Greek Emperor." The mosque ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... the brave splendor of a November sky that this morning burst through the lattice for me, on my bed? According to terrestrial calculations, above the horizon, in the east, there rose one rod of rainbow [20] hues, crowned with an acre of eldritch ebony. Little by little this topmost pall, drooping over a deeply daz- zling sunlight, softened, grew gray, then gay, and glided into a glory of mottled marvels. Fleecy, faint, fairy blue and golden flecks came out on a background of [25] cerulean hue; while the lower lines of ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... before King AEgeus and the herald who had come from Crete. Into one vessel they placed as many balls as there were noble youths in the city, and into the other as many as there were maidens; and all the balls were white save only seven in each vessel, and those were black as ebony. ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... spots on a dark ground. That decorative purpose of dappling, or [Greek: poikilia], is as studiously and deliciously carried out by Turner with the Daedalus side of him, in the inlaying of these white spots on the Indiaman's deck, as if he were working a precious toy in ebony and ivory. But Turner did not paint either of the sea-pieces for the sake of these decorous arrangements; neither did he paint the Scarborough as a professor of physical science, to show you the level of low tide on the Yorkshire coast; nor the Indiaman to show you the force of impact in ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the middle the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms, growing, as it were, out of the impenetrable chaos of the foggy background, in which the river-lights gleamed like opals set in dull ebony. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... transmissibility of its infection or contagion. In ancient Greece the offerings used for the purification of the murderer became themselves polluted during the process and had to be buried. A similar reasoning applies to the articles employed in the marriage of a widow. The wood of the tendu or ebony tree [396] is chosen for the substituted axle, because it has the valuable property of keeping off spirits and ghosts. When a child is born a plank of this wood is laid along the door of the room to keep the spirits from troubling ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... and is owned by the British government, who erected it some twenty-five years since. At the time of our arrival there was gathered under the lofty Moorish portico of the hotel a most picturesque group of negroes, of both sexes and of all ages, their ebony faces forming a strong contrast to the background of well-whitewashed walls. Some of the women were dressed in neat calico gowns, and wore broad-brimmed straw hats; some were in rags, hatless, shoeless, and barelegged; some had high-colored kerchiefs wound turban-like about ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... with a blister of Spanish flies, stuck between his shoulders. Another whom I frequently met had the hollow of his eyes tattooed in two regular squares and his visual organs being remarkably brilliant, they gleamed forth from out this setting like a couple of diamonds inserted in ebony. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... with a coach-builder's admiration of the sumptuous furniture provided by the amorous Denisart as a setting for his fair one, describing it all in detail with diabolical complacency for Antonia's benefit," continued Desroches. "The ebony chests inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gold wire, the Brussels carpets, a mediaeval bedstead worth three thousand francs, a Boule clock, candelabra in the four corners of the dining-room, silk curtains, on which Chinese patience had wrought pictures ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... of Stubblington," observed my friend. "He beats his wife with an ebony stick. 'Tis said she always carries a little bottle of liniment in the pocket of her skirt. Poor thing, her only pleasure in life is to talk scandal; but this she does on such a heroic scale that it occupies her time completely. There is young Lord Gram ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... did not change with their complexions! Are there not causes enough to which the apparent inferiority of an African may be ascribed, without limiting the goodness of God, and supposing he forbore to stamp understanding on certainly his own image, because "carved in ebony." Might it not naturally be ascribed to their situation? When they come among Europeans, they are ignorant of their language, religion, manners, and customs. Are any pains taken to teach them these? Are they treated as men? Does not slavery itself depress ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... the penumbra, rows of yellow slippers outside in the sunlight—out of such glimpses one must reconstruct a vision of the long vistas of arches, the blues and golds of the mirhab,[A] the lustre of bronze chandeliers, and the ivory inlaying of the twelfth-century minbar[B] of ebony and sandalwood. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... interior, Kinabalu the highest (13,000 ft.); has no volcanoes; bordered all round with wide plains and low marshy ground; rich in vegetation and in minerals, in gold and precious stones; its forests abound with valuable timber, teak, ebony, &c.; all tropical crops and spices are cultivated; the population is Dyak, Malay, and Chinese; possessed in great part by the Dutch, and in the north part by ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... are very clearly cut in their hardness; the sea was like steel, the cliff like ebony. From the height where the child was the bay of Portland appeared almost like a geographical map, pale, in a semicircle of hills. There was something dreamlike in that nocturnal landscape—a wan disc belted by a dark crescent. The moon sometimes has a similar appearance. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... knife I held in my hand against Brigitte's bosom. I was no longer master of myself, and in my delirious condition I know not what might have happened; I threw back the bedclothing to uncover the heart, when I discovered on her white bosom a little ebony crucifix. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... little green vase, on a light ebony stand, in the window of the drawing room. The rich satin curtains, with their costly fringes, swept down on either side of it, and around it glittered every rare and fanciful trifle which wealth can offer to luxury; and yet ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stage of the game. The game, by means of French vermouth—of all drinks!—progressed steadily. We could hardly blame him for celebrating. By the afternoon he wanted to give things away. So insistent was he that F. finally accepted an ebony walking-stick, and I an ebony knife inset with ivory. If we had been the least bit unscrupulous, I am afraid the relatives at home would have missed their African souvenirs. He went out via freight car, all by himself, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,— "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore: Tell ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... 14 and 15, part of the elaborate fittings of a piece of furniture which occupied the place of honour in the state-rooms of the wealthy, and upon which the art of the day was generally lavished with a most liberal hand. Ivory, ebony, and the rarest woods were employed in their construction, occasionally plaques of lapis lazuli, or coloured marbles, were used for the panels; ultimately the whole surface became an encrusted mosaic of figures, ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... luxurious home was a fairy palace, an enchanted region, and, with eager curiosity and boundless admiration, she gazed upon beautiful articles whose use she could not even conjecture. The furniture throughout the mansion was elegant and costly; pictures, statues, bronzes, marble, silver, rosewood, ebony, mosaics, satin, velvet—naught that the most fastidious and cultivated taste or dilettanteism could suggest, or lavish expenditure supply, was wanting; while the elaborate and beautiful arrangement of the extensive ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the border of the Canon. As we drove up to it, the situation seemed enchanting in its peace and beauty; for it is located in a grove of noble pines, through which the moon that night looked down in full-orbed splendor, paving the turf with inlaid ebony and silver, and laying a mantle of white velvet on the tents in which we were to sleep. Hance's log cabin serves as a kitchen and dining-room for travelers, and a few guests can even find lodging there; but, until a hotel ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... Larkin,' said the gentleman's gentleman, as he also mounted to ride off. The emphasis on the 'Mister' was too much for the trader, and taking one spring toward the darky, he laid his stout whip across his face. The scented ebony roared, and just then his horse, a high-blooded animal, reared and threw him. When he had gathered himself up, Larkin made several warm applications of his thick boot to the inexpressible part of the darky's person, and, roaring ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a short, broad, black ribbon; a gold snuff-box was lightly clasped in his left hand; gold rings innumerable glittered on his fingers; and a large diamond pin set in gold glistened in his shirt frill. He had a gold watch, and a gold curb chain with large gold seals; and he carried a pliant ebony cane with a gold top. His linen was of the very whitest, finest, and stiffest; his wig of the glossiest, blackest, and curliest. His snuff was princes' mixture; his scent BOUQUET DU ROI. His features were contracted into ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... everything that he asked for. Then the priest said to Na.nefer.ka.ptah: 'This book is in the middle of the river at Koptos, in an iron box; in the iron box is a bronze box; in the bronze box is a sycamore box; in the sycamore box is an ivory and ebony box; in the ivory and ebony box is a silver box; in the silver box is a golden box, and in that is the book. It is twisted all round with snakes and scorpions and all the other crawling things around the box in which the ...
— Egyptian Literature
... keep me in bed, Barry, will you?" urged Nan as he helped her up the steps and into the great hall, its ancient panelling of oak gleaming like polished ebony in the ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... to coves, And in the tides grow giant groves. The water shines like ebony, And odors resinous ascend From many an old balsamic tree, Whose roots the terrapin befriend; The great ball cypress, fringed with beard, Presides above the water oak, As doth its shingles, well revered, O'er many a happy home endeared To thousands ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... secondary dining room—a comfortable apartment, which served pleasantly for all small gatherings, and had that social air so impossible in a stately banqueting-chamber—a perfect gem of a room, hung with gilt leather, relieved here and there by a choice picture in a frame of gold and ebony. Here the draperies were of a dark crimson cut velvet, which the sunshine brightened into ruby. The only ornaments in this room were a pair of matchless Venetian girandoles on the mantelpiece, and a monster Palissy dish, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... teachers a veritable march of triumph. The feeling that the curtain had gone up on an interesting play in which she was chief actor came back stronger than ever when she took her seat in one of the high-backed ebony chairs, with the carved griffins atop, and unfolded her napkin in the gaze of a long line of ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a few steps into an inner library where piles of early folios were wasting away on the ground. Beneath an old ebony table were two long carved oak chests. I lifted the lid of one, and at the top was a once-white surplice covered with dust, and beneath was a mass of tracts—Commonwealth quartos, unbound—a prey to worms and decay. All was neglect. The outer door of this room, which was open, was nearly on a ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... over the bookcases hung pictures of the Barbizon school. These books and these pictures were the elegant monument of hobbies which their owner had outlived. His present hobby happened to be music. A Steinway grand-piano was prominent in the chamber, and before the ebony instrument stood a ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... the small pocket-knife used by Sir Walter when he was a boy. We were shown the presents given to him from all parts of the kingdom, and from abroad, including an ebony suite of furniture presented to him by King George IV. There were many portraits and busts of himself, and his wife and children, including a marble bust of himself by Chantrey, the great sculptor, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... them. Some foreigners put in glass windows in place of the thick, cottony paper windows of the Chinese. The paper windows shut out the cold, it is true, but, being opaque, they also shut out the sunlight. And how gorgeously they are furnished! Such ebony chairs, such wonderful carved tables! Now and then we meet some one who has picked up an old opium divan, a magnificent, huge bench of carved ebony, with marble seat and marble back, very deep, capable of holding two people lying crosswise at full length, with ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... mantle; to them came three or four dandies, dressed smartly in the French fashion, with strong Jewish physiognomies. There was one, a solemn lean fellow in black, with his collars extremely turned over, and holding before him a long ivory-tipped ebony cane, who tripped along the little place with a solemn smirk, which gave one an indescribable feeling of the truth of "Gil Blas," and of those delightful bachelors and licentiates who have appeared to ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... advances, accused them to their father of gross designs upon their honor. Camaralzaman commanded his vizier to put them both to death; but instead of doing so, he conducted them out of the city, and told them not to return to their father's kingdom (the island of Ebony). They wandered on for ten days, when Assad went to a city in sight to obtain provisions. Here he was entrapped by an old fire-worshipper, who offered him hospitality, but cast him into a dungeon, intending to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... found their way into his sack; ten pounds of the finest Turkish tobacco followed them; then came, quite appropriately, a magnificent nargileh, with a long tube and a yellow amber mouth-piece, on the top of which he carelessly threw a heavy ebony box, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ministerial and police officer of the House. He preserves order, under the direction of the speaker, and executes all processes issued by the House or its committees. The symbol of authority of the House is the mace, consisting of a bundle of ebony rods surmounted by a globe, upon which is a silver eagle with outstretched wings. In scenes of disturbance, when the sergeant-at-arms bears the mace through the hall of the House at the speaker's command, the members immediately become quiet ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... continued to keep up a deafening sound while they were being conducted into the presence of his majesty, who wore a bright red cloak, and a hat quite resembling that of a Beadle. In complexion his majesty was a shade darker than ebony, and as to figure, he was as stalwarth a sovereign, though perhaps not as clean a one, as could be found in all the kingdoms round about: in short, if his majesty was none of the cleanest, he at least wore a contented air, which ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the north, over a corner of the kitchen garden and a vista of trees beyond. It was a high-ceiled room with walls bare except for two large mirrors in the Empire fashion, which stared at each other across the way with dull and flaking eyes. Under each of these stood a heavy gilt and ebony console with a top of chocolate-colored marble, and in the centre of the room there was a table of a like fashion to the consoles. Further than this there was nothing save three chairs, upon one of which lay Captain Stewart's dust-coat and motoring ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... is to be finally the inheritance of men with dark hair and brown eyes. It seems that already the great majority of mankind is dark-haired in various shades. But it is only when you meet one that you notice how men with really black hair, black as ebony, are rare. Bunter's hair was absolutely black, black as a raven's wing. He wore, too, all his beard (clipped, but a good length all the same), and his eyebrows were thick and bushy. Add to this steely blue eyes, which in a fair-haired man would have been nothing so extraordinary, ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... should we forget Eugene Field, the beatifier of childhood; or Joel Chandler Harris, the fabulist of the plantation; or Ruth McEnery Stuart, the coronal singer of the joys and hopes, the loves and the dreams of the images of God in ebony in the old South, ere it leaped ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... entrance of one of the aristocratic hotels on the Schlossberg, where he performed the function of a kind of caryatid, and looked, in the black of his skin and the white of his flowing costume, like a colossal figure carved in ebony and ivory. They took a roundabout way through a street entirely of villa-pensions; every house in Carlsbad but one is a pension if it is not n hotel; but these were of a sort of sentimental prettiness; with each a little garden before it, and a bower with an iron ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fine linen and a linen coverlet, spun, woven, and embroidered with black silk, by the lady herself. On the floor were strewn rushes and fragrant herbs. There were two straight carved chairs of old oak, an ivory footstool and a small table which held a few books and an ebony work-box inlaid with ivory, and writing materials. Two carved chests set one on the other served as wardrobe. As for washing conveniences, these were brought in as they were needed, by the knight's body-servant or the lady's ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... fondling fingers, the party of the first part honorably contracting to "shut his eyes and go straight to sleep," provided the party of the second part would remain at the bedside till the last heavy-lingering wink was winked,—that image of her Maker carved in ebony took up her part in creation's pausing chorus, and poured her little human praise into the echoing ear of God in such a burst of triumphant humility, of exulting hope and trust, and all-embracing charity and love,—wherein master and mistress and fellow-servant, friend and stranger, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... lit, for the darkness had fallen, and by its light I saw the old man seated in a chair of ivory and ebony at a table of stone on which were spread mystic writings of the words of Life and Death. But he read no more, for he slept, and his long white beard rested upon the table like the beard of a dead man. The soft light from ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... where shadows made black patternings upon the silver, and then it plunged into obscurities. For a time it lifted, and then on one hand the bush fell away, and he saw across a vast moonlit valley wide undulations of open cultivation, belts of jungle, copses, and a great lake as black as ebony. For a time the path ran thus open, and then the jungle closed in again and there were more thickets, more levels of grass, and in one place far overhead among the branches he heard and stood for a time perplexed at a vast deep ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... very late one night I went up to the promenade deck to smoke a cigar before turning in. It was a warm moonlight night. The broad low waves of ebony water that went seething past below, foamed luminous and were streaked and starred with phosphorescence. The recumbent moon, past its full and sinking westward, seemed bigger than I had ever seen it before, and the roundness of the watery globe was manifest about ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Hagan's tenement, he ran the car into a lane, slipped off the motor coat, and from his pocket whipped out the little metal insignia case—and in another moment a diamond-shaped gray seal was neatly affixed to the black ebony rim of the steering wheel. He smiled ironically. It was necessary, quite necessary that the police should have no doubt as to who had been in Doyle's house with Connie Myers that night, or to whom they had so considerately loaned ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Across the shaggy brows of Tristram's hound Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground; Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes 90 Fixt, her slight hands clasp'd on her lap; then rise, And at her prie-dieu deg. kneel, until she have told deg.92 Her rosary-beads of ebony tipp'd with gold, Then to her soft sleep—and to-morrow'll be To-day's ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... rascal's story, though I let him have the provender. Sure enough, as I came along just now, who should I see but the preacher sitting before the door of old Nancy's log-hut, as much at home as if his skin were the colour of ebony. These are rather queer doings, friend Martin; I don't know ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... placed a little temple of Ionic architecture, most delicately wrought, which was meant to contain the pepper. Beneath her were the handsomest living creatures which the earth produces; and the rocks were partly enamelled, partly left in gold. The whole piece reposed upon a base of ebony, properly proportioned, but with a projecting cornice, upon which I introduced four golden figures in rather more than half-relief. They represented Night, Day, Twilight, and Dawn. I put, moreover, into the same frieze four other figures, similar in size, and intended ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... the midst of that intense darkness, black as ebony on either side, while above and below there were still the bright glittering and softened streaks of light, there was an interval ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... a line of steamers between several American ports and the coast of Africa, Gibraltar, and England,—familiarly known as the "Ebony Line,"—has been strongly recommended to Congress by petitions from all quarters. The Legislature of Virginia, and the Constitutional Convention of the same State, now in session, have both passed resolutions ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... but the fountain of mingled grief and joy stole out from beneath his eyelashes, and glistened like pearls upon his ebony cheeks. ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... state, before which was a balustrade of silver. In all the Grand Apartments were hangings and furniture of extraordinary richness. There were tables of gilded wood and mosaic, Florentine marbles, pedestals of porphyry for vases of precious metal, ebony cabinets inlaid with copper, columns of jasper, agate and lapis lazuli, silver chandeliers, branched candle-sticks, baskets, vessels for liqueurs, silver perfuming pans. Windows were draped with silver brocade worked in gold thread, with Venetian silks ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... of ebony, but more commonly of some other wood. The grasp for the hand is cylindrical. The handle is often bound with a braid of rattan, or a band or two of steel or of brass, to prevent splitting, or less commonly with silver bands for ornament's sake. Curving ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... iron carved into horrible and jagged shapes. Where they fell into ravines they became black. Their swelling bosses and flanks, sharp sometimes as the spines of animals, were steel coloured. Their summits were purple, deepening where the clouds came down to ebony. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... door of a low whitewashed farm-house, around which the cans were reared, ready to be filled with the morning's milk. He ventured in, (first carefully removing all the mire from his shoes, lest he should soil the nicely sanded floor,) and drawing up the old arm chair which shone like polished ebony,—he looked around the strange apartment. "Its a queer fancy (he said at last) at Mally should be soa fond o' pots,—what ther's mooar here nor what ud start a shop; it saves th' expense of slapdashing onyway." And he was right, for, from floor, ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... it hath bay-windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clerestories toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony; and yet ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... keeps his eye on the group of observers, and well knows when the 'sun is up' by the stir which takes place amongst the astronomers; or by noticing the master working out his latitude with a pencil on the ebony bar of his quadrant or on the edge of the hammock railing,—though, if he be one of your modern, neat-handed navigators, he carries his look-book for this purpose. In one way or other the latitude is ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... itself. The only luxuries in the room were books and rare flowers. He limited himself to these things, intending later on to hang a few drawings or paintings on the panels which remained bare; to place shelves and book racks of ebony around the walls; to spread the pelts of wild beasts and the skins of blue fox on the floor; to install, near a massive fifteenth century counting-table, deep armchairs and an old chapel reading-desk of forged iron, one of those old lecterns on which the deacon formerly placed the antiphonary ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... synod proceeded to business, the Bishop of Aberdeen presented to the Bishop of Connecticut a Pastoral Staff, the gift of Scotch Churchmen to him and his successors in office, with these words: [Footnote: The Staff is of ebony, the upper part being of silver parcel gilt. The crook proper has for its central subject our Lord's charge to St Peter, who kneels at the Saviour's feet. The pierced side of our Lord is significantly seen, as the drapery falls ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... we have not found one-tenth of all their works; and then, let any lover of art go to Florence and see Michael Angelo's Penseroso, or to the Cathedral of Mainz, and behold the Virgin by Albert Durer, who has created a living woman out of ebony, under her threefold drapery, with the most flowing, the softest hair that ever a waiting-maid combed through; let all the ignorant flock thither, and they will acknowledge that genius can give mind to drapery, to armor, to a robe, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the dyked path struck across a long wet field against the black soil of which the dozens of white-clad peons with their mattocks gleamed like grains of rice on an ebony surface. Beyond, it entered foothills, flanked a peak, and joined a wide road leading directly to an immense cluster of buildings among trees. The sun was firing the western horizon. From every direction groups of white-garbed peons were drawing like homing pigeons toward ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... wealth and courage, as will yet be made known. The robe that he wore was of yellow satin embroidered in black with palm-trees, with clusters of fruit on them. His shield had a field of solid silver plates edged with gold. His lance was of ebony, and twenty palmos long; and instead of an iron head, a colic-stone, [13] so splendid to the sight and so well made that, however beautiful may be that of a painter, it cannot equal it. It was enclosed in a case of solid gold, a thing of inestimable value for its efficacy and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... case. A cigarette was the one thing for which Desmond craved. He took one and lit it. Strangwise sat down on the other side of a curiously carved ebony table, his ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... apartment, and placed upon the table two silver lamps, fed with perfumed oil; the richest wines, and the most delicate refreshments, were at the same time displayed by another Israelitish domestic on a small ebony table, inlaid with silver; for, in the interior of their houses, the Jews refused themselves no expensive indulgences. At the same time the servant informed Isaac, that a Nazarene (so they termed Christians, while conversing among themselves) desired to speak with him. He that would ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,— "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, 45 Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore: Tell me what thy lordly name is ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... could not have replaced what was destroyed then. The soldiers grew reckless as they went on, and wild for plunder. Quantities of gold ornaments were burned for brass. The throne room, lined with ebony, was smashed up and burned. Carved ivory and coral screens, magnificent china, gorgeous silks, huge mirrors, and many priceless things were burned or destroyed, as a gardener burns up heaps of dead ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... nose, short crimped hair, falsely called wool, long arms, meagre thighs, calfless legs, highly elongated heels, and flat feet. No single tribe, however, possesses all these deformities. The colour of the skin passes through every gradation, from ebony black, as in the Joloffers, to the light tint of the mulattoes, as in the Wakilema, and Barth even describes copper-coloured negroes in Marghi. As to the skull in many tribes, as in the above mentioned Joloffers, the jaws are not prominent, and the lips are not swollen. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... was helping Mary to take the covers off the family portraits, and sitting in front of the old andirons with the firelight dancing in their great brass balls. I felt it when I sat down at my mahogany table and laid my fingers on the ebony handle of the old silver coffee-pot. Things come to have a distinct individuality, almost a personality, and we unconsciously impute to them a response to our feeling for them. It seemed to me that ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... lady waving at him her ebony crook, "do not run away, young gentleman. I see that you admire my garden. Pray step inside and ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... weakness. His pulse was beating feebly and his face was ashen. Wilson stooped to place his hands upon his shoulders, when he caught sight of that which had doubtless led the stranger to undertake the strain of opening the safe—a black ebony box, from which protruded through the opened cover the golden head of a small, quaint image peering out like some fat spider from its web. In falling the head had snapped open so that from the interior ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... peculiarities, tended to dispel the silly notions of medieval ignorance; and the goods of every land were brought for the comfort of the European—American timber for his house, Persian rugs for his floors, Indian ebony for his table, Irish linen to cover it, Peruvian silver for his fork, Chinese tea, sweetened with sugar ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... appeared, he entered it with the others who were waiting. He looked aloofly past the elevator boy as he did so, and that young person showed himself equal to the situation by presenting to this new-comer a stolid ebony profile. But when the lift had reached the top floor and discharged its passengers, the two conspirators lent themselves to the ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... of Cosway's house in Stratford Place seem to have been of a most extravagant kind. He surrounded himself with suits of armour, Genoa velvet, mother-of-pearl, ebony and ivory, carving and gilding. His rooms were crowded with mosaic cabinets set with jasper, bloodstone, and lapis-lazuli, ormolu escritoires, buhl chiffoniers, Japanese screens, massive musical clocks, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... beauty as it appeared to them in that unhallowed spot, and by the depth and dignity of her wild prayer, the two watchers had eyes for her alone. Therefore it happened that not until his arm was about to drag her away, did either of them perceive a huge man, black as ebony in colour, clad in a cloak of leopard skins and carrying in his right hand a broad-bladed spear who, following the shadow of the trees, had crept upon the priestess from the farther side of ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... his ebony coffee-cup on his knee. "Well, Henry," he said, "what d'yeh think th' chances are? D'yeh ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... great drawing-room is a boudoir upholstered in light gray silk damask, with bouquets of flowers. This is Madame Desvarennes's favorite room. A splendid Erard piano occupies one side of the apartment. Facing it is a sideboard in sculptured ebony, enriched with bronze, by Gouthieres. There are only two pictures on the walls: "The Departure of the Newly Married Couple," exquisitely painted by Lancret; and "The Prediction," an adorable work by Watteau, bought at an incredible price at ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the bright-plumaged birds in their handsome cages, the white statues, or the pictures; that was the mistress and queen of all this magnificence, Philippa L'Estrange. She was reclining on a couch that had been sent from Paris—a couch made of finest ebony, and covered with pale, rose-colored velvet. If Titian or Velasquez had seen her as she lay there, the world would have been the richer by an immortal work of art; Titian alone could have reproduced those rich, marvelous colors; that perfect, queenly beauty. He would ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... one's shoulders as long as time is unfavourable. When however, the opportunity has come, one should break him into fragments like an earthen jar on a stone. It is better, O monarch that a king should blaze up for a moment like charcoal of ebony-wood than that he should smoulder and smoke like chaff for many years. A man who has many purposes to serve should not scruple to deal with even an ungrateful person. If successful, one can enjoy happiness. If unsuccessful, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... much to look at, dat's sho'," replied Big Abel, his face shining like polished ebony, "en I ain' much to look at needer, but dey'll have ter recollect de way we all wuz befo' we runned away; dey'll have ter recollect you in yo' fine shuts en fancy waistcoats, en dey'll have ter recollect me in yo' ole uns. Sakes alive! I kin see dat one ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... the windless hills of Heaven, That I have no wish to see, White, eternal lilies stand, By a lake of ebony. ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... can be fancy'd: The most famous Statuary could not form the Figure of a Man more admirably turn'd from Head to Foot. His Face was not of that brown rusty Black which most of that Nation are, but a perfect Ebony, or polished Jet. His Eyes were the most aweful that could be seen, and very piercing; the White of 'em being like Snow, as were his Teeth. His Nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat: His Mouth the finest shaped that could be ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Paflagonia and Crim Tartary, there lived a mysterious personage, who was known in those countries as the Fairy Blackstick, from the ebony wand or crutch which she carried; on which she rode to the moon sometimes, or upon other excursions of business or pleasure, and with which ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... entered a spacious court, encompassed with an open gallery, which had a communication with several apartments of extraordinary magnificence. At the farther end of the court there was a platform, richly furnished, with a throne of amber in the middle, supported by four columns of ebony, enriched with diamonds and pearls of an extraordinary size, and covered with red satin embroidered with Indian gold of admirable workmanship. In the middle of the court there was a fountain, faced with white marble, and full of clear ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... Spaniards in gold, the latter have not as yet—that is in the year 1600—been able to ascertain where they get it, notwithstanding their efforts. They are commencing to sow wheat there. Flour was formerly brought from Japon. The islands also supplied quantities of ebony and bamboo. ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... into another island, whence they had come. As we advanced, we perceived at a distance a vast pile of building, and made toward it. We found it to be a palace, elegantly built, and very lofty, with a gate of ebony of two leaves, which we opened. We saw before us a large apartment, with a porch, having on one side a heap of human bones, and on the other a vast number of roasting-spits. We trembled at this spectacle, and were seized with deadly apprehension, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... is occasionally of ebony, but more commonly of some other wood. The grasp for the hand is cylindrical. The handle is often bound with a braid of rattan, or a band or two of steel or of brass, to prevent splitting, or less commonly with silver bands for ornament's sake. Curving downward ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... risen from a chair of ebony enriched by cunning Etruscan art—four mounted knights charging across its heavy back in armor of wrought gold. She stopped, facing the company, between two columns of white marble beautifully sculptured. Upon each a vine ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... possessors. The few Dutch ladies I have seen are very pleasing. They are gentle and simple, and naturally well-bred. Some of the Malay women are very handsome, and the little children are darlings. A little parti-coloured group of every shade, from ebony to golden hair and blue eyes, were at play in the street yesterday, and the majority were pretty, especially the half-castes. Most of the Caffres I have seen look like the perfection of human physical nature, and seem to have no diseases. Two days ago I saw a Hottentot girl of ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... When the sun struck it, it got all alive, as if there were light under it, as well as over it, and was, unmistakably, red. She made more fun of it than anybody else, but at heart she loved her hair, and would not have exchanged it for paley-gold or ebony tresses. Bud had fastened his chubby hands in it to steady himself on his perch, as she ran, and pulled some of it loose from her comb. A thick curl strayed over her arm, bare almost to the shoulder, as was the warm-weather ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... fantastic garb, yet not too fantastic to be worn decorously in the street; the delicately-wrought embroidery of the skirt; the broad gold chain about her neck; the curious ring upon her finger; the fan, so exquisitely sculptured in open work, and painted to resemble pearl and ebony;—where could Drowne, in his sober walk of life, have beheld the vision here so matchlessly embodied! And then her face! In the dark eyes, and around the voluptuous mouth, there played a look made up of pride, coquetry, and a gleam of mirthfulness, which ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before him, and knew that he should later be able to force them to do as he wished. He forgot his foster father and mother—aye, forgot even Ann—as all that was black in his nature inflamed his desire for the ebony-haired girl. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... in a man here and there is surely one of those accidents to be counted on at least as often as fire, shipwreck, or the cattle-disease; and the man who chooses to put his money into these images of his Maker cut in ebony should be content to take the incident risks along with the advantages. We should be very sorry to deem this risk capable of diminution; for we think that the claims of a common manhood upon us should be at least as strong as ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... whisper here that the most fascinating hour in the "Mouse Trap" is in the late afternoon, when no one is there, and the ebony hand-maiden in the big back kitchen is taking the fat, delicious-smelling cakes from the oven. Drop in some afternoon and sniff the fragrance that suggests your childhood and "sponge-cake day." You will feel that it is a trap no sane mouse would ever think of leaving! On a table ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... few steps into an inner library where piles of early folios were wasting away on the ground. Beneath an old ebony table were two long carved oak chests. I lifted the lid of one, and at the top was a once-white surplice covered with dust, and beneath was a mass of tracts—Commonwealth quartos, unbound—a prey to worms and decay. All was neglect. The outer door ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... the reins gently and gave a slight, admonishing flick at the broad flanks of the roans. Behind the barouche the school children still fluttered, and turning in his seat, the General looked back angrily and threatened them with a wave of his big ebony walking-stick. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... One detail alone gave it or rather would give it at certain moments a touch of singular firmness. Beneath the beautiful fair hair waving on his brow and temples, as was the fashion at that period, eyebrows, eyes and lashes were black as ebony. The rest of the face was, as we have said, almost feminine. There were two little ears of which only the tips could be seen beneath the tufts of hair to which the Incroyables of the day had given the name of "dog's-ears"; a straight, perfectly proportioned nose, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... were now absolutely electrified. The Marquess quietly adds his usual ten" and so there an end. "Mr Evans, ere his hammer fell, made a short pause—and indeed, as if by something preternatural, the ebony instrument itself seemed to be charmed or suspended in the mid air. However, at last down dropped ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... high moment. The twins were solemnly silent. Amid the funereal gloom, broken only by a hushed word or two from Winona or her mother, the judge completed his fond stroking of the luminous hat, raised it slowly, and with both hands adjusted it to his pale curls. Then he took up his gold-headed ebony cane and stepped from the dusk of the parlour into the light of day, walking uprightly in the pride of fine raiment and conscious dignity. Mrs. Penniman walked at his side, not unconscious herself of the impressive ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess, Shaking their horns in the evening wind; Cropping the buttercups out of the grass, But who was it following ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... she was the daughter of the beautiful Mrs. Tiralla? Rosa knew that she was not pretty; at least, she did not consider herself so when she plaited her curly, reddish hair before the looking-glass. Her mother's hair was as black as ebony and as smooth as silk, and her yellowish complexion and the tinge of red in her cheeks seemed twice as beautiful as ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... said the gentleman's gentleman, as he also mounted to ride off. The emphasis on the 'Mister' was too much for the trader, and taking one spring toward the darky, he laid his stout whip across his face. The scented ebony roared, and just then his horse, a high-blooded animal, reared and threw him. When he had gathered himself up, Larkin made several warm applications of his thick boot to the inexpressible part of the darky's person, and, roaring with pain, that personage made off at a gait ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a sight fo' soah eyes, 'deed yo' is, boys," said the colored man. "I can't tell yo' how much I'se missed yo'!" And his face shone like a piece of polished ebony. ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... moon, rendering objects within a quarter of a mile almost as distinct as though it were midday; and, clearly defined against the ghostly grey of the grass-clad ridge, I could see the head and shoulders of a savage, the white moonlight gleaming upon his ebony skin as he waved his arm, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... be, of ebony, or some such close-grained black wood, and was bound in every direction with flat bands of iron. Its antiquity must have been extreme, for the dense heavy wood was in parts actually ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... clad from head to foot in a long black mantle, sat on the farther side. There were a few implements of her profession about her—one or two big books, a crystal bowl containing some black fluid very clear and sparkling, an ebony wand, and a dusky mirror in a silver frame. She fixed her bright bead-like eyes upon her guests as they advanced, and asked in her ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... day I used to take him to the river in the morning for his bath. He would lie down on the sand bank while I rubbed him with the clean sand of the river for an hour. After that he would lie in the water for a long time. On coming out his skin would be shining like ebony, and he would squeal with pleasure as I rubbed water down his back. Then I would take him by the ear, because that is the easiest way to lead an elephant, and leave him on the edge of the jungle while I went into the forest to get ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... refrigerator-car. That cold-storage chicken looks the finest that ever happened. What's this rolled up in tissue-paper? Deviled eggs and ham sandwiches AND caviar, not to speak of claret frappe. I'm certainly grateful to the gentleman finished in ebony who helped to provision us for this siege. He'll never know what a tip he missed by not being here ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... seeing than we had been before. True, the launch looked far down, like a toy ship in a big basin of blue water; we could distinguish the sword-fish reef, as the lad called it, and other reefs to the east and north, but the place we stood on was shut in by a black wood of teak and blue ebony, and, save for the rustling of the great leaves, we couldn't hear a sound. As for the path through the plantation, that was covered with long, rank grass, and some pit or other—I don't know what it was—gave a pungent, heavy ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... ragged ramparts far above frowned bold and black at a few cold stars, and the blue of its sky was without the usual velvety brightness. How far it was up to that corrugated rim! All of a sudden Bostil hated this vast ebony pit. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... in chaining a woman, whether she be black as ebony or white as snow, degrades all the traits of the southerner's character, which he would have the world think noble? It is fear! The monster which the southerner sees by day, tolerates in his silence, protects as part and parcel ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... 'Orace!" he remarked genially. "You an' me was always pals. Put it there!" He extended an ebony hand, which Robin solemnly shook ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... first cause of the violent hatred of the Society for our family. Thank Heaven, these papers have been placed in safety, and if my last will is executed, will be found marked A. M.C. D. G., in the ebony casket in the Hall of Mourning, in the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of water. Then there were numerous groups belonging to the same family, among others one in particular, the fruit of which produces a very useful oil. Further on, Herbert remarked the lardizabala, a twining shrub which, when bruised in water, furnishes excellent cordage; and two or three ebony trees of a beautiful black, crossed ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... strides; two sisters of charity, buried under their caps, counting long rosaries which measured their time of waiting; priests from Lyons, recognisable by the shape of their hats; others reserved and severe in air, sitting at the great ebony table which filled the middle of the room, and turning over some of those pious journals printed at Fouvieres, just above Lyons, the Echo of Purgatory, the Rose-bush of Mary, which give as a present to all yearly subscribers ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... we saw there quarries of good marble*; I say good, because several things were seen that were made of it and of jasper. There were also seen ebony and large mother-o'-pearl shells; also some moderate-sized looms. In one house a heap of heavy black stones was seen, which afterwards proved to be metal from whence silver could be extracted. Two of our people said they had seen the footprints of ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... encounters, for there was not a soul in the vast building: the police were making their rounds outside it. Our adventurous journalist did not make his way upwards with stealthy tread—there was no need for that. Having gained the top floor, he went straight to a corner where an ebony ladder was ensconced, a ladder which had long been the joy and pride of the grand master of this part of the Palais, the ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... kimono embroidered with her favorite flower—a wondrous thing secured by correspondence with the American consul at Kobe: a pair of Siamese kittens which he named Cat-Nip and Cat-Nap: a sandal-wood fan out of India; and a little, triple-chinned, ebony god of Mirth, its impish eyes rolled back in merriment, mouth wrinkled with utter ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... to strike Mrs. von Briest mounted the stairway and entered Effi's room. Effi lay on a reclining chair near the open window. Mrs. von Briest drew up a small black chair with three gilt spindles in its ebony back, took Effi's hand and said: "How are you, Effi! Roswitha says ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... and distinguished persons are received in the grand throne-room, where the throne is covered with red velvet, with coats of arms at the angles of the canopy. Upon a large pier-table, in the rococo style, between the windows and opposite the throne, stands a great crucifix of ivory and ebony, between two candlesticks. The carpet used at such times was presented by Spain. Before the Emperor of Germany's visit the Pope himself gave particular directions for the dressing of the throne and the arrangement ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... that?" Asked Rachel, pointing to an open drawer In which a case of polished ebony Glittered and caught the eye. "A pistol-case!" "And is the pistol loaded?"—"I believe so." "And will you take it with you?"—"Well, my dear, I did not think to do so: would you have me?" "Yes, if we're going to the woods; for ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... renovate the whole gallery, which up to this time had been neglected and shabby. The floor was carefully waxed, the ceiling whitened, the wood-work painted to resemble the grain and knots of oak. A long table in ebony and two cabinets by Boulle completed the decoration, and gave to this gallery a certain air that was full of character. In the course of two years the liberality of devout persons, and legacies, though small ones, from pious penitents, filled the shelves of the bookcase, till then half empty. ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... counts the image of God—nevertheless his image—cut in ebony as if done in ivory, and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... further south the country was only known by the accounts of the natives or by the few merchants who had made their way into it. Beyond the Mazaiu, but still between the Nile and the Red Sea, lay the country of Puanit, rich in ivory, ebony, gold, metals, gums, and sweet-smelling resins. When some Egyptian, bolder than his fellows, ventured to travel thither, he could choose one of several routes for approaching it by land or sea. The navigation of the Red Sea was, indeed, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... men with whom he shared his tiny cotton tent, askaris all as beseemed his dignity, were sound asleep. He squatted on his heels, pushed together the embers of his fire, staring into the coals. His ugly face was as though carved from ebony. Only his wild savage eyes glowed and flashed with a brooding lambent flame; and his wide nostrils slowly expanded and contracted as though ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... come along with her water pot under her arm to draw water from the stream. When she got to the ghat she put down her pot and made her way up the stream towards where the snares had been set; she did not notice the hunter but went to the stump of an ebony tree near him and looking round and seeing no one she suddenly became possessed and started dancing round the ebony tree and singing some song which he could not clearly catch; and as she danced she called out "The Pig's fat is overflowing: brother-in-law Ramjit come here ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... fountain of quicksilver, which could be set in motion at pleasure, was placed in the Kasr-al-Kholaifa, or hall of the khalifs, "the roof and walls of which were of gold, and solid but transparent blocks of marble of various colours: on each side were eight doors fixed on arches of ivory and ebony, ornamented with gold and precious stones, and resting on pillars of variegated marble and transparent crystal:—and in the centre was fixed the unique pearl presented to An-nassir by the Greek Emperor." The mosque and baths attached to the palace were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... race on the ruins of the old Build we: a temple of the human form Fairer than marble, since with life-blood warm, Well crowned with its appointed crown of gold, Russet or ebony; lines clear and bold Beneath—a citadel no ills can storm, Buttressed with health; a type to be the norm In that great age the world shall ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... matter was being printed week by week in the local press, some of which must have been painful reading to Mr. Abel's friends. A darkened chamber, the existence of which had never been suspected in that familiar house in Main Street, furnished only with an ebony stand on which stood a cinerary urn, its surface ornamented with flower and leaf and thorn, and winding through it all the figure of a serpent; an inscription, too, of seven short words which no one could understand or rightly interpret; and finally the disposal ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... looked as if they were made of iron carved into horrible and jagged shapes. Where they fell into ravines they became black. Their swelling bosses and flanks, sharp sometimes as the spines of animals, were steel coloured. Their summits were purple, deepening where the clouds came down to ebony. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... in full view in glass cases in the museums, where even the small boys may stare at them in the "altogether," without blanket, bathrobe or pajamas to cover their physical imperfections. After "life's fitful fever," poor old Ram and his historical rivals and friends sleep well in these hard, ebony boxes in the museum at Cairo. Ram had lots of air and elbow room during his spectacular career, and it seems hardly fair that he should be kept on exhibition now, although his mummy is most interesting and always draws a crowd. To parody William a little, ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... stand, my knees are trembling! I find a box, the first resembling, Within my press! Of ebony,— And things, all splendid to behold, And richer far ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... cares and excitement of the day, she was half reclining on a sofa, in dressing-gown and slippers, her beautiful hair unbound and rippling over her shoulders, beside her a jewel-box of ebony ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... wood. It does not readily absorb foreign matter. Much used by turners and for all parts of musical instruments, for handles on whips and fancy articles, draught-boards, engraving blocks, cabinet work, etc. The wood is often dyed black and sold as ebony; works well and stands well. Most abundant in the lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf States, but occurring eastward to ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... rainbow thrilled along the iridescent roadways to the central point above, and tongues of flame leaped from arches in the north-west. Burning scarlet and amber, purple, green, trembled in pulsations across the ebony surface of the heavens, as if some vast fire beneath the horizon was flashing forth coruscations of its splendour to the dark hemisphere beyond. The floating banners of angels is a hackneyed symbol to express the oppressive magnificence ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... more in love than ever with sycamores. The house is not near so extensive as I expected:(330) the outward court has a beautiful decent simplicity that charms one. The apartments are many, but not large. The furniture throughout, ancient magnificence; loads of portraits, not good nor curious; ebony cabinets, embossed silver in vases, dishes, etc. embroidered beds, stiff chairs, and sweet bags lying on velvet tables, richly worked in silk and gold. There are two galleries, one very small; an old hall, and a spacious great drawing-room. There is never a good staircase. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... haunters were those who came strictly on business,—plasterers and sculptors, who found wet clay ready to their needs. Great golden and rufous bees blundered down and gouged out bucketsful of mud; while slender-bodied, dainty, ebony wasps, after much fastidious picking of place, would detach a tiny bit of the whitest clay, place it in their snuff-box holder, clean their feet and antennae, run their rapier in and out ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Napping out the sultry days In the quiet secluded bays; Where the tasseled rushes tower, O'er the purple pickerel-flower. And the floating dragon-fly— Azure glint and crystal gleam— Watches o'er the burnished stream With his eye of ebony; Where the bull-frog lolls at rest On his float of lily-leaves, That the swaying water weaves, And distends his yellow breast, Lowing out from shore to shore With a hollow vibrant roar; Where the softest wind that blows As it lightly comes and goes, O'er the jungled river meads, ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... means to this end the diffusion of knowledge concerning that unknown and mysterious region. He had therefore procured from Africa specimens of some of the actual products of the country, to which he called the attention of the Premier. The specimens of ivory and gold, of ebony and mahogany, of valuable gums and cotton cloth, awoke a new vein of thought in the mind of the statesman. The resources of such a country should be brought into use for her own benefit and for the promotion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... workroom before Allan had the chance of trying a more attractive subject. There, on the top of a rough wooden case, which evidently contained the machinery, was the wonderful clock. The dial was crowned by a glass pedestal placed on rock-work in carved ebony; and on the top of the pedestal sat the inevitable figure of Time, with his everlasting scythe in his hand. Below the dial was a little platform, and at either end of it rose two miniature sentry-boxes, with closed doors. Externally, this was all that appeared, until the magic moment came ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... in a state of elaborate undress and crept toward them. She was in her element: her ebony hair was slicked straight back on her head; her eyes were artificially darkened; she reeked of insistent perfume. She was got up to the best of her ability as a siren, more popularly a "vamp"—a picker ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... under the directing eye of a severe-looking matron; on the second floor are generally situated the show- and reception-rooms. The first saloon is sombre: the ceiling appears, in the daytime, blackened by gas; the walls are wainscoted in imitation ebony with gold fillets, and large panels above the chair-rail are filled with verdure tapestries of the most dismal green, chosen expressly to throw into relief the freshness and gayety of the dresses; on the chimney-piece, and reflected in the glass, is a clock surmounted by a monumental ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... treasures rare indeed in the good Brother's eye: a wonderful crucifix of ivory and ebony; the silver altar lamp of an old Spanish monastery; a Madonna in dull tints that still bore traces of a master hand; a rosary, whose well-worn beads made Brother Bart's pious ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... winter, when the broad flakes of snow were falling around, that the queen of a country many thousand miles off sat working at her window. The frame of the window was made of fine black ebony, and as she sat looking out upon the snow, she pricked her finger, and three drops of blood fell upon it. Then she gazed thoughtfully upon the red drops that sprinkled the white snow, and said, 'Would that my little daughter may be as white as ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... which a bride took to her husband upon her marriage. In the 17th century Boulle and his imitators glorified the marriage-coffer until it became a gorgeous casket, almost indeed a sarcophagus, inlaid with ivory and ebony and precious woods, and enriched with ormolu, supported upon a stand of equal magnificence. The Italian marriage-chests (cassone) were also of a richness which was never attempted in England. The main characteristics of English domestic chests (which not infrequently are carved with names ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... but the clouds had consolidated and the night was pitch black. On the bridge the Gaston de Paris seemed driving into a solid wall of ebony. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... joy I partake of thy dear beverage. How glad I prepare me thy nectar most precious, No soul shall usurp me a rite so delicious; On the ambient flame when the black charcoal burns, The gold of thy bean to rare ebony turns, I alone, 'gainst the cone, wrought with fierce iron teeth. Make thy fruitage cry out with its bitter-sweet breath; Till charmed with such perfume, with care I entrust To the pot on my hearth the rare spice-laden dust: First to calm, then excite, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... latitude of 29 deg. N. we fell in with a Dutch ship from the Mauritius, having gone there to cut timber, which seemed a bastard ebony. Contrary to their expectation, they found there the lamentable wreck of four ships come from Bantam and the Moluccas, which had gone to pieces on the rocks. The goods and men of two of these were totally lost, most of the goods of the third were saved, with part of which this ship ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... my bric-a-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum. All ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there. An Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the court of Louis xv. nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet under a massive table of the time of Louis xiii., with heavy spiral supports of oak, and carven designs of chimeras and ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... Lord Vargrave to write something in her album, and who cast a bashful look of admiration at the slim secretary, as he now sauntered into the room, in a black coat, black waistcoat, black trousers, and a black neckcloth, with a black pin,—looking much like an ebony cane split half-way up. Miss Biddy was a fair young lady, a leetle faded, with uncommonly thin arms and white satin shoes, on which the slim secretary cast ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trees. The lorgnette which had said to her "it is strange he does not find some nice girl to marry," left a disquieting effect. Ann had only that day suggested the same idea, and Bob had laughed to her about it the previous evening. Even Aunt Timmie, the ebony font of wisdom, had but recently looked slyly at her, remarking: "'Foh long we's gwine to have a weddin' in a private cyar!" (Aunt Timmie had never seen a private car, but it typified her idea of grandeur). ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... to mention a stick, And presto, they're up all around you as thick And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick." "It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit. I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot. And after all really they're ebony skinned: The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind, A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand, And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned." "Does Mortenson know what he has, do you think?" ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... proper order. After this display, the elephants were feasted, as the Romans were in the habit of feasting themselves, in grand style. Splendid couches were placed, ornamented with paintings and covered with tapestry. Before the couches, upon tables of ebony and cedar, was spread the banquet, in vessels of gold and silver. When the feast was prepared, the twelve elephants marched in; six gentleman elephants dressed in the robes of men, and six lady elephants attired in women's clothes. They lay down in order upon the couches; and then, at a certain ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... cricket is noticeable. The red berries of the dogwood and spice-bush and other shrubs shine in the sun like rubies and coral. The crows fly high above the earth, as they do only on such days, forms of ebony floating across the azure, and the buzzards look like kingly ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Khalif, with walls of transparent and many-coloured marble, with roof of gold; on each side were eight doors fixed upon arches of ivory and ebony, ornamented with precious metals and with precious stones; and when the sun penetrated them, the reflection of its rays upon the roof and walls was sufficient to deprive the beholders of sight! In the centre was a great basin filled with quicksilver, and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow: There saw the swan his neck of arched snow, And oar'd himself along with majesty; Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show Beneath the waves like Afric's ebony, And on his ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... Muse of Halleck, in her palmy days, immortalized not a few; and many persons still recall the "crazy poet Clarke," the "Lime-Kiln man," the courteous and venerable Toussaint,—New York's best "image of God carved in ebony,"—tall "gentleman George" Barrett, and a host of "familiar faces" associated with local fame or social traits. The representative clergy, physicians, lawyers, merchants, editors, politicians, bards, and beauties, "men about town," and actors, were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the baseness with which his imagination has long been easily and cynically familiar. As if his pessimism had been only a literary pigment, a resource of the studio, he shudders to find Paris painted in his own ebony colors, and his own purely "artistic" hatred of the bourgeois, translated into a principle of action, expressing itself in the horrors of the Commune, with half the population trying to strangle the other half. Hatred, after all, contempt ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... cosmetics for improving the complexion, of which the King used quantities almost incredible, all prepared by his own hand; and the mixing and arranging of these formed his greatest delight and amusement. In the recesses on each side the window stood two highly-polished ebony cases, which Catherine de Medicis his mother had brought from Italy, for containing books and holy relics; but for this they were totally useless to the present royal owner, who applied them to a far different purpose. On the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... his pocket, he began to stroll towards the railway station, whence the diligence started, slowly, as he had plenty of time. As he went he saw, in a shop window, a beautiful stick of olive wood, with an ebony crook. It was marked ten francs, and he coveted it greatly, but reflected with a sigh that having spent so much on others he could afford nothing for himself, for Godfrey was an unselfish soul. Instead he bought a collar of ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... illuminated in the day-time by a window commanding a pleasant prospect of coal-shed and dead wall. The paper on the walls was dark and greasy with age; and every bit of clumsy, bulging deal furniture in the room had been transformed into a kind of ebony by the action of time and dirt, the greasy backs and elbows of idle loungers, the tobacco-smoke and beer-stains of half ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Dick go on a voyage to the remoter islands of the Eastern seas, and their adventures are told in a truthful and vastly interesting fashion. The descriptions of Mr. Ebony, their black comrade, and of the scenes of savage life, are ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... opened with great deliberation an ebony box, took out two cigars, offered one to Jack, leaned over the lamp until his own was alight, and took the chair opposite Jack's. All this time Jack sat watching him as a child does a necromancer, wondering what he ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Which in an ebon vapor flows Among the cypresses that stand A stone-cast from the sombre strand— Among the trees whose shadows wake, But not to life, within the lake, That stand, like statues of the Past, And will, while that ebony lake shall last. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... seat, he planted his big gold-headed ebony cane between his knees, put his hat on the head of his cane, gave it a twirl, and looking over sidewise at her, smiled with an equal mixture of real ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Earthly monda, tera. Earthquake tertremo. Ease komforto. Ease, at sengxene. East oriento. Easter Pasko. Easterly orienta. Easy facila. Eat mangxi. Eatable mangxebla. Eaves defluilo. Ebb (and flow) forfluo (kaj alfluo). Ebony ebono. Ebriety ebrieco. Ebullition bolado. Eccentric stranga. Ecclesiastic ekleziulo. Ecclesiastical eklezia. Echo ehxo. Eclipse mallumigxo. Ecliptic ekliptiko. Eclogue eklogo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... village, in a house where Anacaona treasured up those articles which she esteemed most rare and precious. They consisted of various manufactures of cotton, ingeniously wrought; of vessels of clay, moulded into different forms; of chairs, tables, and like articles of furniture, formed of ebony and other kinds of wood, and carved with various devices,—all evincing great skill and ingenuity, in a people who had no iron tools to work with. Such were the simple treasures of this Indian princess, of which she made numerous presents to ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... could remove the pain, reason would have prevented it. If she could not do the one, how is she to perform the other? In all such cases we must look upon Reason as dispossessed of her empire, by a revolt of the mind. She retires herself to a distance to weep, and the ebony sceptre of Despair rules alone. All that Reason can do is to suggest, to hint a thought, to signify a wish, to cast now and then a kind of bewailing look, to hold up, when she can catch the eye, the miniature-shaded portrait of Hope; and though dethroned, and can dictate ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... The circles of olive shadow about them were bounded by thick arching lines of eyebrow. Magnificent mental power, well-nigh amounting to genius, seemed to dwell in the swarthy forehead beneath the double curve of ebony hair that lay upon it like a crown, and gleamed in the light like a varnished surface; but like many another actress, Coralie had little wit in spite of her aptness at greenroom repartee, and scarcely any education in spite of her boudoir experience. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Everything on board was taut and trim and neat: not a yard out of the square, not a rope out of place, the decks as white as old ivory, the polished woodwork glittering like glass, the brass all gold apparently, the guns like ebony, and the very lanyards pipeclayed till they looked like coils of ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... very beautiful young woman, wearing a wonderful lantern crown, sat on an ebony throne. On each side of the throne stood a tall soldier, clad in scarlet and holding a long ebony staff surmounted by a round lantern ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... minute after, his black face laughs all over, and his roguish eyes twinkle like diamonds, while he recounts how he 'come it' over the Southern gentleman. That bright soul of his is a jewel set in ebony." ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... middle of winter, when the broad flakes of snow were falling around, that a certain queen sat working at her window, the frame of which was made of fine black ebony; and, as she was looking out upon the snow, she pricked her finger, and three drops of blood fell upon it. Then she gazed thoughtfully down on the red drops which sprinkled the white snow and said, "Would that my little daughter may be as white as that snow, as red as the blood, and ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... those who have studied women on the chess-board, and know what ebony or ivory will do along particular lines, or hopping, that men much talked about will take possession of their thoughts; and certainly the fact may be accepted for one of their moves. But the whole fabric of our knowledge ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shows itself alike in the waving forests of cocoanut, which are common all along the coast, in the rich tobacco-fields of Madura and Coimbatore, in the plantations of cinchona, pepper, cardamoms, and other spices on the slopes of the Nilgiri highlands, and in the splendid growths of teak, ebony, and sandalwood that clothe the Western Ghats. The population, which in some parts attains extraordinary density and lives almost exclusively on the fruits of the soil, is of the old Dravidian stock, industrious and frugal ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... philosophically. Knowing that it was absolutely impossible to escape, he sat quietly down on a stone, rested his chin on his hands, heaved one or two deep sighs, and thereafter seemed to be nothing more than an ebony statue. ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... "better than to Mexican ladies, can I dedicate this mark of attention—(obsequio). Their graceful attractions well deserve any trouble that may have been taken to please them. Their bodies are graceful as the palms of the desert; their hair black as ebony, or golden as the rays of the sun, gracefully waves over their delicate shoulders; their glances are like the peaceful light of the moon. The Mexican ladies are not so white as the Europeans, but their whiteness is more agreeable to our eyes. Their words ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... are streets of shops and trades, so there are streets of dwelling-houses, but even the finest of these present a miserable appearance to the passers-by, for all one can see is a lofty and dimly-lighted stone vestibule, furnished with carved ebony chairs with marble seats and backs, and not infrequently with gigantic coffins placed on end, the gift of pious juniors to their seniors! A porter stands in this vestibule ready to open the lofty triple gate which admits to the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... and, picking up his old-fashioned bell-crowned silk hat and his quaint, heavy cane of ebony, withdrew. Dr. Goodwin turned ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... large and handsome piece of furniture made of ebony, which looked beautifully black and shiny; and the folding doors in front were carved in a wonderful fashion, and inlaid with cunning silver tracery. The carvings on these doors had always been Grace's special delight; they had ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... a distance was heard one morning, and from the choir's representations I was permitted to know that they were Chinese, for they exhibited a kind of woolly goat, then a cake of millet, and an ebony spoon, also the idea of a floating city. They desired to come nearer to me, and when they had joined me they said that they wished to be alone with me, that they might disclose their thoughts. But they were told that they were not alone, and that ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... to come on board, and several canoes were seen approaching us from different parts of the shore. One brought a tusk of ivory, others jars of palm oil, several had baskets of India-rubber, or gum-elastic, as it is called. Besides these articles, they had ebony, bees'-wax, tortoise-shell, gold-dust, copper-ore, ground nuts, ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... a cloth round the waist reaching to the knee, which in some instances was neatly ornamented with small white shells; their arms and ankles were loaded with rings formed of ebony, ivory, and coloured glass, some of the former bore evident marks of having been turned in a lathe. The lobes of their ears were perforated with large holes, from which enormous earrings of ivory and ebony, in the shape of padlocks, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... little as he came in, and then raised himself erect as he took a step or two into the half light of the shady place, and stopped short face to face with Frank, at whom for the first few moments he stood staring without the slightest sign of recognition in his countenance, while the youth resembled an ebony carving more than ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... of the rooms was of a very quaint and curious description, while yet it was very rich and magnificent. There were elegant bedsteads of carved ebony surmounted with silken curtains and canopies of the most gorgeous description. There were cabinets inlaid with silver and pearl, and elegant cameos and mosaics, and a profusion of other such articles, all of which Rollo had very little time ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... paints himself as mingling in the revels of a country village. To counterbalance those foreign sentinels, there mounted guard on the other side of the mirror two stout warders of Scottish lineage; a jug, namely, of double ale, which held a Scotch pint, and a quaigh, or bicker, of ivory and ebony, hooped with silver, the work of John Girder's own hands, and the pride of his heart. Besides these preparations against thirst, there was a goodly diet-loaf, or sweet cake; so that, with such auxiliaries, the apartment ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... started visibly. His high-born instinct was not quite dead yet, and he slightly moved his right hand as if he would lift the ebony stick he carried; but Tommaso had one of cornel-wood and iron-shod, and he also made a very slight movement, and he was square and strong and had a jaw like a bull-dog. Don Alberto's instinctive desire to ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... she had done the night before, and the youth came as usual and lay down to sleep. But no sooner had he shut his eyes than Parmetella arose, took a steel which she had provided, and lighting the tinder applied a match; then taking the candle, she raised the coverlet, and beheld the ebony turned to ivory, and the coal to chalk. And whilst she stood gazing with open mouth, and contemplating the most beautiful pencilling that Nature had ever given upon the canvas of Wonder, the youth awoke, and began to reproach Parmetella, saying, "Ah, woe is ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... borrowed, and hair cut, and chins shaved, until we feared our Christmas guests would look like convicts. Then the Dandy producing blacking brushes, boots that had never seen blacking before, shone like ebony. After that a mighty washing of hands took place, to remove the blacking stain; and then the Quarters settled down to a general "titivation," Tam "cleaning his nails for Christmas," ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... thing of ebony, brought by the Rhine road from Venice, and carved with fantastic hunting scenes by Hainault craftsmen. Its hangings were stiff brocaded silver, and above the pillows a great unicorn's horn, to protect against poisoning, stood out like the beak of a ship. The horn cast an odd shadow athwart ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... daughter's meeting with the sheriff's officer, he was sitting up in his carved ebony bedstead. A black skull-cap was drawn over his little head, and the long, white hair fell to his shoulders, where it curled up at the ends. His sunken eyes gleamed like a hawk's, and his dry, parchment skin ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... and again the ebony-posted bed creaked under him. Narcissus stepped into the darkened room. He left the door open, to have light to do his work by, but Marcia closed it, clinging to the gilded satyr's head that served for knob with both hands, her lips drawn tight against her teeth, ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... minds of the Spaniards did not change with their complexions! Are there not causes enough to which the apparent inferiority of an African may be ascribed, without limiting the goodness of God, and supposing he forbore to stamp understanding on certainly his own image, because "carved in ebony." Might it not naturally be ascribed to their situation? When they come among Europeans, they are ignorant of their language, religion, manners, and customs. Are any pains taken to teach them these? Are they ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... caresses annoy me as much as formerly they pleased me. I have long thought it would perhaps amuse me if I possessed a Christian wife who had eyes like violets and hair like gold, and a plump white body. A man tires very soon of ebony and amber.... Procure me such a wife and I will willingly release this Perion and all his ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... year Flea had been rapidly growing into a woman. Granny Cronk had proudly noted that the fair face had grown lovelier, that the ebony curls fell about her shoulders. The one dream the girl had had was a dream of long hair, ankle dresses, and girl's shoes. Until that year Lon had insisted that her hair be kept short, and had himself trimmed the ebony ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... them, chew what is called "betel" or "betel nut," a common masticatory in the East. The Siamese and the Tonquinese do the same, but to a still greater extent, which renders their teeth as black as ebony, or more so. As the use of the masticatory is generally not commenced until a certain age, the common practice is to stain the teeth of the boys and girls with a strong preparation of it, on the former attaining the age of ten ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... action; he was a famous fisherman, and quite as proud of his rod as of his reputation, which were both Dublin-made, he said, and, therefore, perfect in their way. Mr. Wyllys and Mrs. Creighton admired the apparatus contained in his ebony walking-stick, to the owner's full satisfaction: he had a great deal to say about its perfections, the beauty of his flies, the excellence of his hooks and lines, and so forth; and the ladies in general, Mrs. Creighton especially, listened as flatteringly as the gentleman could desire. As ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... boat had touched the shore, Hercules went towards the gloomy palace of Pluto where he with difficulty, on account of the darkness, saw Pluto seated upon an ebony throne by the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... an uneven staircase of oak, black as ebony, with huge balustrades, and newel-posts supporting clumsy balls, Lionel was conducted to a small chamber, modernized a century ago by a faded Chinese paper, and a mahogany bedstead, which took ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... morning—that is, at about ten o'clock—Bobby bounced energetically into the office of Barrister and Coke, where old Mr. Barrister, who had been his father's lawyer for a great many years, received him with all the unbending grace of an ebony cane. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... my lungs, but could deliver no louder note than a moan. The agony of mind I was under lest a shark should seize me I cannot express, and my strained eyeballs would come from the tall shadow of the ship to the the sea about me in a wild searching of the liquid ebony of it for the sparkling configuration of the most abhorred of all fish. I could have sworn that hours elapsed before they lowered a boat from the ship, that seemed to grow fainter and fainter every time I looked at her, so swallowing is the character ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... for the following classification I am indebted to my learned friend the Rev. Alexander Crummell, Episcopal missionary and Principal of the Mount Vaughn High School at Cape Palmas: Teak, ebony, lignum vitae, mahogany, brimstone, rosewood, walnut, hickory, ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... bindings. There were good rugs on the parquet door, but no ornaments anywhere, save three. On the carved mantelpiece stood two of the old soapstone birds which they used to find at Zimbabwe, and between, on an ebony stand, a half moon of alabaster, curiously carved with zodiacal figures. My host had altered his scheme of furnishing, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
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