"Ebony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... ebony to grey, and black shapes of hill outlined themselves against it. A wind blew down the valley, bringing the acrid smell of burning, but something too of the freshness of morn. It stirred strange thoughts in me, and woke the old morning ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 bones. His nose was hooked, and his ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 trembling bit ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 |
