"Lilac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking chair under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his soft hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds before his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the arts she had lavished upon "Sarah Ellen, aged seventeen months," ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the quarrying of the rockery began in earnest. By 4.15 A.M. they had most of it littered over the drive, but had struck some granite boulders which defied even the crowbars. A further conference was then held, but at this point Edward made a dramatic appearance, clad in lilac pyjamas, odd boots and a kimono of the Aunt's, which he had worn as King Alfred in some charades the night before, and in the darkness had donned in mistake for his dressing-gown. His address was impassioned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... Betty going up the long village street with Captain Beck for company. She had not seen Tideshead for four years, but it looked exactly the same. There was the great, square, white house, with the poplars and lilac bushes. There were Aunt Barbara and Aunt Mary sitting in the wide hall doorway as if they had never left their high-backed chairs ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... scent that its blossoms never had before or after. I think now that those must have been moments when you too were in like contact with earth,—had your feet in grass which felt a faint ripple of wind, or stood under a lilac in a drench of fragrance that ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... and the living world the impassable circle of death in life, the ultima linea rerum. It was the last decree, the irrevocable sentence, the absolute end: and I had not yet reached half the Psalmist's span; I had not yet forgotten the lost summer mornings when the breeze scented with lilac came blowing through the casement, bearing with it the sound of glad voices ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... by herself, one day, to explain that her husband, the minister, was too unwell to visit, and to say her pleasant, unpretentious words of welcome. Squire Leatherbee's daughters made themselves fine in lilac silks and green Estella shawls, to offer acquaintance to the new "city people." Aunt Faith came over, once or twice a week, at times when "nobody else would be round under foot," and always with some dainty offering from dairy, garden, or kitchen. At other ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... side a magnificent cedar; on the other a great copper beech. Here and there among the tombs and headstones many beautiful blossoming trees rose from the long green grass. The laburnum glowed in the June afternoon sunlight; the lilac, the hawthorn and the clustering meadowsweet which fringed the edge of the lazy stream mingled their heavy sweetness in sleepy fragrance. The yellow-grey crumbling walls were green in places with wrinkled harts-tongues, and were topped with sweet-williams ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... Christopher had passed out of sight, Cynthia came from the kitchen with an armful of wet linen and began spreading it upon some scrubby lilac bushes in a corner of the yard. After fifteen years it still made her uncomfortable to have Christopher around when she did the family washing, and when it was possible she waited to dry the clothes until he had gone back to the field. In her scant calico dress, with the furrows of age ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... was called the Ash Copse. The dark green of our winter shrub, the spotted laurustinus, was relieved by the golden tassels of the laburnum, just opening into bloom; the hawthorn contended for beauty and perfume with the delicate blossoms of the purple lilac; while its modest sister, the white, sent forth her pale green leaves, and delicate buds, over a bed of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... and sent a glorious day for the May Day Festival. It was an early spring and everything that could do honor to the day had burst into blossom: daffodils that bordered the lawns of the campus houses nodded their delicate yellow heads in the morning sunlight; clumps of lilac bushes formed bouquets of purple and white and from an occasional old apple tree showers of pink petals ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... Gilbert Elliot "O Nancy! wilt Thou go with Me" Thomas Percy Cavalier's Song Robert Cunninghame-Graham "My Heart is a Lute" Anne Barnard Song, "Had I a heart for falsehood framed" Richard Brinsley Sheridan Meeting George Crabbe "O Were my Love you Lilac Fair" Robert Burns "Bonnie Wee Thing" Robert Burns Rose Aylmer Walter Savage Landor "Take back the Virgin Page" Thomas Moore "Believe me, if all Those Endearing Young Charms" Thomas Moore The Nun Leigh Hunt Only of Thee and Me ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... a fool——" mused the Major. He was still turning the mauve hat in his hands. "It is queer," he said unexpectedly, "how some women make you think of some flowers. Did you notice everything Miss MacVeigh wore was lilac—and there's the perfume ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... This plain was dotted with lovely lakes, whose waters shone in the slanting rays of the declining sun.... The sun went down quickly, as he does at sea, a round, red fire-ball, while light, splendid clouds of purple, pink, lilac, and gray, on the blue, blue heavens, refracted the ascending, slender, quivering rays of the disappearing orb, the type of Deity in all natural religions, the Totem of the Natchez Indians. Beloved city—bright ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... were walking about breaking the stillness with their voices and laughter; along the convent wall the vines were shooting and spreading their long tender sprays, and on the opposite side a great westeria was shedding showers of lilac blossoms with every breath of wind amongst the shrubs ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... A softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the ship, and Alan fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she looked about her upon the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like a lilac ribbon, ran the narrow waterway to Skagway's door, while on both sides rose high mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds. In this melting season there came ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... Miss Caroline had received him out of doors, on the shaded east side of the house, where the heat had driven her to await a cooling breeze from the river. One of the dingy rugs had been spread upon the grass close to the lilac clump, and by an unfashionable little table Miss Caroline sat, in a chair sadly out of date, reading of Childe Harold. It was understood that the minister had there sat in another antiquated chair of capacious arms and upholstered in faded ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... that live on bark become brown? How have the desert animals become yellow and the Arctic animals white? Why were the necessary variations always present? How could the green locust lay brown eggs, or the privet caterpillar develop white and lilac-coloured lines ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... about my head, and in a wrapping-shawl, closely drawn,—for cold and cannon-like came the bursts of wind down through the mountain valleys,—I went out. Through the path, hedged with leafless lilac-shrubs, just athrob with the mist of life sent up from the roots below, I went, and crossed the church-yard fence. Winding in and out among the graves,—for upon a heart, living and joyous, or still and dead, I cannot step,—I took my way. "Dear old tower, I have thee ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the Frenchman on to their shoulders and carried them to plaudits and joy-shrieks and brass bands. It was amusing to see a diminutive French officer with grey head and beard, sprawling thus on a moving couch of Polish hands whilst he waved his hat and was pelted from all hands with cowslips and lilac. "Vive la France! Vive la France!" Polish Cossacks with white pennants on their lances come trotting through and break the crowds, and then come artillerymen and their guns, and then French diplomatic personalities protected by mounted ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... costume, which in many cases seems to be the perfection of taste. The obvious reflection, that one color of the rainbow is quite as much of God as another, has led the children of gentle dove-colored mothers to appear in shades of rose-color, blue, and lilac; and wise elders have said, it is not so much the color or the shape that we object to, as giving too much time and too much money,—if the heart is right with God and man, the bonnet ribbon may be of any shade ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... a close application at his desk in the village school was an unheard-of consequence; and, having repeatedly smarted under the schoolmaster's ferule, not to mention his good mother's switches plucked from the big lilac bush by her door, he decided to run away to the great harbor, and ship upon some vessel ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... in our first reckless youth," he answered, catching the gold of passionate remembrance from an amber fly that hovered for an instant and was gone. "I remember well. You were half hidden by a drop of hanging dew, but I discovered you! That lilac bud across the world was just beginning to open." And, helped by the wind, he bent his shining head, taller than hers by the sixtieth part of an inch, towards the lilac ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... some lilac bushes, she enjoyed the great decorum of the arrest, and heard the dialogue of the two men die away along the path. Soon after, the rolling of a carriage and the beat of hoofs arose in the still air of the night, and passed speedily farther and fainter ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... B are the metal electrodes on the outside of the glass. A heap of diamonds from various countries emit red, orange, yellow, green, and blue rays. Ruby, sapphire, and emerald give a deep red, crimson, or lilac phosphorescence, and sulphate of zinc a magnificent green glow. Tesla has also shown that vacuum bulbs can be lit inside without any outside connection with the current, by means of an apparatus like that shown in figure 70, where D is an alternating dynamo, C a condenser, P S the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... disappear behind us. The sun has now risen well; the sky is a rich blue, and the tardy moon still hangs in it. Lilac tones show through the water. In the south there are a few straggling small white clouds,—like a long flight of birds. A great gray mountain shape looms up before us. We are steaming on ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... trees are in full spring leaf, only the oaks and walnuts a little belated, unfurling their rusty-red fronds. A waft of rich scent comes from a hawthorn hedge where a hidden cuckoo flutes, or just where the lane turns by the old water-mill, which throbs and grumbles with the moving gear, a great lilac-bush leans out of a garden and fills the air with perfume. Yet, as I go, I am filled with a heavy anxiety, which plays with my sick heart as a cat plays with a mouse, letting it run a little in the sun, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dark brown, straight with long joints. Leaves dark green with a brown tinge; lightly lobed. Bunches very large, sometimes weighing eight or nine pounds, moderately compact; shouldered. Berries large, oblong, red when mature, covered with lilac bloom; flesh firm, crisp, sweet; quality good. Season late, keeps and ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... return very soon. Her evening dress she had exchanged for a full lilac silk tea-gown, with open hanging sleeves; a thick twisted cord was fastened round her waist. She sat down by her husband, and, waiting till he was left 'fool,' said to him, 'Come, dumpling, that's enough!' ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... every variety of colour; thus are produced roses, pink, blue, green, lilac, brown, fire-colour, and sun-colour, which last is a colour so brilliant that the eye that has long gazed upon it stands in need ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... pattern, a large yard before it and a larger one behind, the tumble-down shed in which General Jackson had been tethered, a large barn, also rather tumble-down, with henhouses and corncribs beside it and attached to it in haphazard fashion. In the front yard were overgrown clusters of lilac and rose bushes and, behind the barn, was the stubble of a departed garden. Thankful looked ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... not once done since the church-meeting of acrid memory in which had been decreed the close of the minister's activity, at least in Glaston. It was a lovely June twilight; the bats were flitting about like the children of the gloamin', and the lamps of the laburnum and lilac hung dusky among the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... and pale lilac, sometimes nearly white; fragrant, alternate, clustered in thick, dense spikes from 3 to 15 in. long. Upper sepal and toothed petals erect; the lip of deepest shade, 1/2 in. long, fan-shaped, 3-parted, fringed half its length, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... chaparral. Wild lilac and big sage bushes, flowering lupins and gilias, bordered the road, for spring was abroad in San Lorenzo county. A boy slipped ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the worst by a long way—not but what your good lady made noise enough when she thought you'd been made away with: and afterwards, when she went upstairs and, taking a glance out of window, spied a long black coffin laid out under the lilac bushes, I'm told you could hear her a mile away. But she've been weakening this half-hour: her nature couldn't keep it up: whereas the longer we keep that Frenchman, the louder he ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... seven spectral colors; the wealth and beauty of color in nature, art, and commerce would be unknown; the flowers with their thousands of hues would have a poverty of color undreamed of; art would lose its magenta, its lilac, its olive, its lavender, and would have to work its wonders with the spectral colors alone. By compounding various colors in different proportions, new colors can be formed to give freshness and variety. If one third of the rotating disk is painted blue, and the remainder white, ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... to the most secluded corner of the garden. There, in a thicket of lime-trees and old bushes of black currant, elder, snowball-tree, and lilac, there stood a tumble-down green summer-house, blackened with age. Its walls were of lattice-work, but there was still a roof which could give shelter. God knows when this summer-house was built. There was a tradition ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... stick or wire, or even a bit of twine, and see how rapidly it will then climb, and clasp, and throw out longer and stronger shoots, and overspread your wall with its large bell-shaped flowers, so brilliant with every tint of white, lilac, pink, and rose colour, and so exquisitely delicate in their texture, expanding at earliest dawn, and closing, never to reopen, when the fervid rays of the noonday sun fall on them! But I must not attempt to depict every variety of holdfast, or every provision for climbing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... and were talking together. Mary's high, sweet laugh floated over the flowers, then her voice, a mere murmur. His voice, lower still. Then silence. They had turned back, together, down the lilac walk. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... and swelled and ebbed and suddenly sank away. At six o'clock, the minister and two maiden ladies in black silk with lilac ribbons, laid down their last plates of ice-cream and said they thought they must be going. Amanda and her mother preened their dresses and patted their hair. "Come into the study," said Mr. Wilson to Luke. "I want to have a talk ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... in the wilderness of the lilac-bushes, a turtle-dove greeted her with its first cooing; and at the spot where she had vanished the milky-white sky flushed a ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... country door-yard, humble or great, throughout New England; and every church-going woman picked a branch or spray of it when she left her home on Sabbath morn. To this day, on hot summer Sundays, many a staid old daughter of the Puritans may be seen entering the village meeting-house, clad in a lilac-sprigged lawn or a green-striped barege,—a scanty-skirted, surplice-waisted relic of past summers,—with a lace-bordered silk cape or a delicate, time-yellowed, purple and white cashmere scarf on her bent shoulders, wearing on her gray head a shirred-silk or leghorn bonnet, and carrying in her lace-mitted ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... this kind there, and so they do here. Everybody has it. My prettiest one is much like yours, only it's poppy-coloured. Katherine's is cornflower blue this year, and she's got a black one and a lilac one. When you see all the others prancing about in the same sort of things, you ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... light of day; and to the boy the man seemed almost a god in that dim light, which showed but an ivory shoulder lifting now and again as he struck outwards and deft his way through a yielding, yellow-grey waste that leaped in little lilac-hued ripples to his chin, and thence wavered off behind him in dancing lines of light. And once, when he heard him lift up his voice and sing as he swam, he felt sure that he must be a god—that that alone could explain why he had found ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... that drew up at the corner of Gissing and Swinburne streets early that afternoon. A chauffeur in green livery opened the door, lifted out a suitcase of beautiful brown leather, and gave a respectful hand to the vision that emerged from depths of lilac-coloured upholstery. ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... they always look hot and tired. When it is removed from the board into large calabashes, it is reduced to paste by the addition of water, and set aside for two or three days to ferment. When ready for use it is either lilac or pink, and tastes like sour bookbinders' paste. Before water is added, when it is in its dry state, it is called paiai, or hard food, and is then packed in ti leaves in 20 lb. bundles for inland carriage, and is exported to the Guano ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... by the very distance it put between them and her. Diana was different from them, and growing more different; yet it was hard to find fault. She was so handsome, too; that helped the effect of superiority. And her dress; what was there about her dress? It was a pale lilac muslin, no way remarkable in itself; but it fell around lines so soft and noble, and about so queenly a carriage, it waved with so quiet and graceful motions, there was a temptation to think Diana must have called ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... Atmore, "this satin piece hangs over the front parlor mantel. It is much prettier and better done than the one Miss Longstitch worked of Charlotte at the tomb of Werter, though she did sew silver spangles all over Charlotte's lilac gown, and used chenille, at a fi'-penny-bit a needleful, for all the banks and the large tree. Now, as the mantel-piece is provided for, I wish a landscape for each of the recesses, and a figure-piece to hang on each side of the large looking-glass, with flower-pieces under them, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... places scores of times, but they never attracted my attention so before, neither had I given much consideration to the brilliant scarlet passion flowers that dotted the edge of the forest, or the beautiful soft lilac-pink cloud of blossoms, where a bougainvillea draped ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... and a few of them nest on the Farallones. They lay their two eggs on the bare rock in dark crevices. The color is grayish or pale greenish blue and the markings are brown and black with paler shell markings of lilac. Size 2.40 x 1.60. Data.—S. Farallone Islands, Cal. Two eggs laid on gravel at the end of a burrow, about two feet from the entrance and 285 feet above the ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the ivy is green again, the chestnut-tree is full of leaf, the Persian lilac beside the little fountain is flushed with red and just about to flower; through the wide openings to the right and left of the old College of Calvin I see the Saleve above the trees of St. Antoine, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the older man, seeing as he stood the picture of that other catafalque to which he had crept one night in the lilac time of a year nearly a half century agone, the words flung anathema. He leaned back against the bronze grating of the shaft with a sudden look of age that brought Peter's protective arm to his shoulder. Then, with Peter following, he went ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was just too large to be called a cottage; not quite old enough to be picturesque; a pleasant enough dwelling, amid its green garden plot, sheltered on the north side by a dark hedge of yew, and shut from the quiet road by privet topped with lilac and laburnum. This day of early summer, fresh after rains, with a clear sky and the sun wide-gleaming over young leaf and bright blossom, with Nature's perfume wafted along every alley, about every field and lane, showed the spot at its best. But it was with no eye to natural beauty that Mr. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... necessary to have some place he could get through in a hurry to go after the school children who delighted in teasing him. So now quick as a flash he ran for this hole, which was well hidden by a big lilac bush, and before the tramp even knew he was coming, Zip was through the hole and had his little, sharp teeth buried in his shin. With a cry of surprise and pain, the tramp turned to see what had hurt him. When he saw the little dog, ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... elderberry and several species of viburnum. The hazel which may be obtained from the woods makes a good dense shrub, and the wild rose also has possibilities. The common barberry is an attractive shrub; but, as it assists in the formation of wheat rust, it should not be used in rural sections. The lilac may be used where a high shrub is desirable. The common arbor vitae or cedar of the swamps makes a good evergreen shrub. It serves well as a shield for both winter and summer and thrives with moderate care. The weigela, forsythia, and spiraea are ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... set at liberty Flora went to Ormaclade, where Lady Clanranald entered heartily into the plan. Among her stores they chose a light coloured quilted petticoat, a flowered gown—lilac flowers on a white ground, to be particular—an apron and a long duffle cloak. Fortunately Highland women are tall and large, for the Prince's height, 5 feet 10 inches, though moderate for a man, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... brightest in autumn; the lights various; the mountains in the richest colouring, fern covering them with reddish gold in great part; here and there, trees in every variety of autumn foliage; and the rock itself of a kind of lilac tint; the outlines of the mountains very fine; the Tarn, which might almost be called a lake for size and abundance of water, with no culture, or trees, or habitation around it, here and there a great rock stretching into it like a promontory, and high mountains surrounding it on three ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... conspicuous here for a civilian with such an old hat as I generally wear. In the evening I was, of course, on the islands, on a lively dark-brown horse, and drank tea there with a nice, old, white-haired Countess Stroganoff. The lilac, I must tell you, has flowered here as beautifully as in Frankfort, and the laburnum, too; and the nightingales warble so happily that it is hard to find a spot on the islands where one does not hear them. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... numerous observations of the celestial bodies, more especially the sun, which now appeared as a globe of lilac fire in the centre of a silvery lustre, but I will leave him to publish his results in his own fashion. We may claim to have seen the South Pole, but, of course, at a distance too great for scientific purposes. Judging ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... farmers stooping in the fields, gleamed in the sun like shields of brass. Over knolls and through hollows the little cavalcade jogged steadily, till, mounting a gentle eminence, they wound through a grove of camphor and Flame-of-the-Forest. Above the branches rose the faded lilac shaft of an ancient pagoda, ruinously adorned with young trees and wild shrubs clinging in ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... want to show her off on Friday. And make her put on something pretty. Ask her if she's got that lilac thing with lace she wore at Cambridge for the May Week the year before last. Tell her not to be silly; it wasn't a bit too young. Nash said she looked like something out of an old picture, and he's going to be an artist. Don't let her ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... aromatic spice, the bark of a tree of the laurel kind; the Cinnamon tree grows in the Southern parts of India; but most abundantly in the island of Ceylon, where it is extensively cultivated; its flowers are white, resembling those of the lilac in form, and are very fragrant; they are borne in large clusters. The tree sends up numerous shoots the third or fourth year after it has been planted; these shoots are planted out, when nearly an ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... as I passed the lilac bushes by the gate, somebody steps out and grabs my arm. I jumped, looked up, and there, glaring down at me out of the clouds, was friend Jones from ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... life,) I seemed to wake Upon a bed of bloom. The breath of spring Scented the air; mingling their odours sweet, The bright jonquil, the lily of the vale, The primrose, and the daffodil, o'erspread The fresh green turf; and, as it were in love, Around the boughs of budding lilac wreathed The honeysuckle, rich in earlier leaves, Gold-tinctured now, for sunrise fill'd the clouds With purple glory, and with aureate beams The dew-refreshen'd earth. Up, up, the larks Mounted to heaven, as did the angel wings Of old in Jacob's vision; and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... glistening white sand enclosed a basin of turquoise sea in which were reflected the dark, rich tones of the cliffs, all glowing like an opal beneath the sun, while above rose the hills covered with the wild lilac and greasewood of California. Even the tame sea-lions which frequent the harbor and follow incoming boats, and which frequently are to be seen hauled up on small fishing-craft, seemed to fit wonderfully into the scene. A passenger who heard the boy's ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... spurs Vital motion in my blood, Such as in the sap-wood stirs, Swells and shapes the pointed bud Of the lilac; and besets The hollow ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... all bourgeoning with Spring, You hold my winter in forgetfulness; Without my window lilac branches swing, Within my gate I hear a robin sing — O little laughing blooms that lift ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... the vista of a spinsterish-looking Main Street lined by dooryards having fences of pointed painted pickets, and behind the pickets, peonies and hollyhocks encroaching upon prim flagged walks which led back to the white-panelled doors of small houses buried almost to their eaves in lilac bushes and golden glow. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... international exchange in very recent times. Busbequius, Austrian ambassador at Constantinople about the middle of the sixteenth century—whose letters contain one of the best accounts of Turkish life which have appeared down to the present day—brought home from the Ottoman capital the lilac and the tulip. The Belgian Clusius about the same time introduced from the East the horse chestnut, which has since wandered to America. The weeping willows of Europe and the United States are said to have sprung from a slip received ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... associated with them, and among the strange, motley chaos, the most personal mementoes: women's hair smooth, curled, braided, long, and short, arranged by a true eye, with scandalously cool composure, upon a pale lilac varnished board, in a wonderful scale of colours, from the highest pitch, the fair locks of the Englishwoman, resembling a delicate halo, through almost imperceptible gradations to the deep, shining blue-black of the Sicilian, and portraits in every form which fashion has devised ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... a lilac bush entered passionate protest against the word stupidity. "What will you have? What will you have?" trilled the robin in ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... dry leaves, and one or two shrubs, whose foliage feared not the cold breath of winter. The gaudy hues, too, which nature had lately worn, were all faded; there was a pale, yellow-leafed vine clambering over the verdureless lilac, and far down in the garden might be seen a shrub covered with bright scarlet berries. But the warm south wind was sweet and fragrant, as if it had strayed through bowers of roses and eglantines. Deep-leaden and snow-white clouds blended together, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... coloured satin. The petticoats are still rather short, but it would be hard to hide such small feet, and such still smaller shoes. "Il faut souffrir pour tre belle," but quoi bon tre belle? if no one sees it. As for me, I ventured upon a lilac silk of Palmyre's, and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the old tiger-cat. In the afternoon silence their little voices sounded clear and sweet. The cat escaped to a cherry-tree and they chased him gayly, but he went to sleep in an insulting way in spite of the lilac ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona—delicate relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the book on ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... was as a moment. He opened his eyes to see the crags and towers and peaks and domes, and the lofty walls of that vast, broken chaos of canyons across the river. They were now emerging from the misty gray of dawn, growing pink and lilac and purple under the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... unrobing herself in her dressing-room, which was filled with baskets of orchids, bouquets of roses, and bunches of lilac, when a telegram was brought to her. She tore it open. It was a message from The ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... there was fire in the base burner, they were sitting together by the kitchen stove, the front of which was thrown open for the sake of the warm glow of the coals. By and by the kettle began to sing and the bare tips of the lilac scratched on the pane like a live thing waiting to be let in. The little familiar sounds refilled for ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... shine and rain Will the violet be sweet where the dead leaves have lain? Will Winter be past? In the brown of the copse Will white wind-flowers star through Where the last oak-leaf drops? Will the daisies come too, And the may and the lilac? Will Spring come again? O thrush, is ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... into the back yard where Freddie was playing with his wheelbarrow under the lilac-bushes. She sat down by the big pear-tree to read, though not forgetting to keep an eye on her little brother's proceedings. Missions seemed as interesting as ever as she read. Presently she saw Evaline coming out of the kitchen with ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... oftener than REALLY married folks. Bill, the handsome West Indian black, married my pretty washerwoman Rosalind, and was thought rather assuming because he was asked in church and lawfully married; and she wore a handsome lilac silk gown and a white wreath and veil, and very well she looked in them. She had a child of two years old, which did not at all disconcert Bill; but he continues to be dignified, and won't let her go and wash clothes in the river, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... near, shuts out the sea and hides from the Hermit the glory of the sundown. But we can behold its effects on Mt. Sanneen, on the clouds above us, on the glass casements in the villages far away. The mountains in the east are mantled with etherial lilac alternating with mauve; the clouds are touched with purple and gold; the casements in the distance are scintillating with mystical carbuncles: the sun is setting in the Mediterranean,—he is waving ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the simple yard within which stood the humble house forever after to be pointed out as the scene of Sutherlandtown's most heartrending tragedy. In this fence was a gate, and through this gate now passed Mr. Sutherland, followed by his would-be companion, Miss Page. A path bordered by lilac bushes led up to the house, the door of which stood wide open. As soon as Mr. Sutherland entered upon this path a man approached him from the doorway. It was Amos ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... spring morning in the very olden time, says the tradition, a Lord of this domain left his castle. It was when the sweet violet first cast its odours on the breeze, when the bright and abundant bloom of the lilac and laburnum gracefully decorated the gardens, and the country was reclad in all the charming freshness of the season. After a short absence, he returned, accompanied by a lovely bride;—but ere long she died. He went again, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... with the Lilacs," which Arthur Hughes had painted for him, and how he dwelt with intense pleasure on the exquisite contrasts of colour which it contained—the gold hair of a girl standing out against the purple of lilac-blossom. But with those who find in such things as these a complete satisfaction of their desire for the beautiful he had no sympathy; for no imperfect representations of life could, for him, take the place of life itself, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... met little Susy, with her lilac pinafore in flames. She had been trying to reach something from the mantelpiece, and had climbed up on the unsteady old fender. There was no guard in front of the open fire, and the draught had drawn her pinafore towards the bars and set it on ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... the rectory, one of those log-cabins boarded over and whitewashed, which are still quite common in Kentucky, sturdy mementoes of the sturdy pioneers whom they have outlived and will outlive for many a generation yet to come. Lilac, hollyhock, and hydrangea bloomed in season about this cabin, and it had a door-yard that made women linger enviously and men smile in scorn; for to these rough, hard-working, hard-living farmers it seemed that a young man might find better use for his leisure ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... the Cusco of 1860. In 1862, Mr. Goodrich described it: "Round to longish; sometimes a crease at the insertion of the root; white; flowers bright lilac; (produces) many balls; yield large. Table quality is already very good. This sort is No. 1 every way." He said to me in the spring of 1864: "This early sort gives me more satisfaction than any other I have ever grown." This variety ripens as early as the Ashleaf Kidney; on rich soil yields from ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under a big lilac bush, "is where he perched on the little heap of earth and showed me ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in a large wooden tub set on a bench nailed between the two china-berry trees in the yard. Peter loved those china-berry trees, covered with masses of sweet-smelling lilac-colored blossoms in the spring, and with clusters of hard green berries in the summer. The beautiful feathery foliage made a pleasant shade for Emma Campbell's wash-tubs. Peter loved to watch her, she looked so important and so cheerful. While she worked ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... undisguised satisfaction when the dim still-room precincts were fairly left behind, and they got into the pleasant old walled-in garden, where the yellow afternoon's sun was lying on the opening fruit-blossom, and bringing delicious scents out of the newly-blown lilac and hawthorn. She kept pulling Geordie's corduroys, to draw his attention to all that captivated her as they walked along the broad gravel walk. This was certainly a much pleasanter way home than along the dim ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... garden, with rich dark soil, such as one rarely sees around Moscow, laid out on the slope of a hill into four separate parts. In front of the house there was a flower garden, with straight gravel paths, groups of acacias and lilac, and round flower beds. To the left, past the stable yard, as far down as the barn, there was an orchard, thickly planted with apples, pears, plums, currants, and raspberries. Beyond the flower garden, in front of ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... of her window, in her fresh, white-paneled, lilac-chintzed bower. Her heart was actually thumping now. She had not noticed the books, which were carefully placed in a pile down beside her writing table. Would he ever get away from her father, who seemed to have taken to having endless political discussions with him? Would he ever be able to ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... particular value have, by some extraordinary oversight, been printed and issued in the wrong colour. In 1869 copies of the 1s. of Western Australia were printed in bistre instead of in green, and a few years later the twopence was discovered in lilac instead of yellow. In 1863 a supply of shilling stamps was sent out to Barbados printed in blue instead of black; but this latter error was, according to Messrs. Hardy and Bacon, so promptly discovered, that it is doubtful if any of the wrong colour were issued ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... could not be but that a child with a sensitive, nervous organization and vivid imagination should have grown up with an unworldly and spiritual character, and that a poetic mist should have enveloped all her outward perceptions similar to that palpitating veil of blue and lilac vapor that enshrouds ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... finding, of course, many things which had escaped us the night before. We saw our first Melocactus, and our first night-blowing Cereus creeping over the rocks. We found our first tropic orchid, with white, lilac, and purple flowers on a stalk three feet high. We saw our first wild pines (Tillandsias, etc.) clinging parasitic on the boughs of strange trees, or nestling among the angular limb- like shoots of the columnar Cereus. We learnt to distinguish the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... when both the old ones slept, he abstracted a pipe, stuffed it with the rich black flakes and fled with matches to a nook of charming secrecy in the midst of the lilac clump. Thence arose presently clouds of smoke from the strongest tobacco money ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... walked the length of the room several times, his chin in his collar, his hands clasped behind his back, under his coat-tails. The fifth passage carried him out on to the veranda. He kept on going and disappeared among the lilac hedges. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... life's work nobly done, I went many times, lingering long over many a mound that bore the names of those whom I had been familiar with in life, thinking of what they had been, and what I had known of them. Over some I planted shrubs and flowers, little lilac trees, obtained with no small trouble, and flowering evergreens, which looked quite gay and pretty ere I left, and may in time become great trees, and witness strange scenes, or be cut down as fuel for another besieging ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... spring once more. In the garden of the Byrdsnest flowering shrubs were in bloom; the beds were studded with daffodils; the scent of lilac filled the air. Birds flashed and sang, for it was May, high May, and the nests were built. Mary, warm-cheeked in the sun, and wearing a broad- brimmed hat and a pair of gardening gloves, was thinning out a clump of cornflowers. At one corner of the lawn, shaded ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... being the signs by which the dwellers in the streets know that the winter is over, that the time of the singing of birds has come, and that the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. The soft breezes blew a fragrance of violets and lilac-blossom from the gardens and the parks. London scarcely looked like itself, with the veil of smoke lifted away, and a fair blue sky, flecked with light silvery cloud, showing ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... afternoon, looking at Ray Ingraham, in her striped lilac and white calico, with its plaited waist and cross-banded, machine-stitched double skirt, sitting by her shady window, beyond which, behind the garden angle, rose up the red brick wall of the bakehouse, whence came ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... stealthily over the lilac hedge towards Magde's window. The entire valley was bathed in moonlight, and the moonbeams glanced directly through the window panes of Magde's apartment, with such vivid brightness that Gottlieb was undecided ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... of curious plants. The one has an instant and abiding pictorial effect, which is restful and satisfying: the observer exclaims, "What a beautiful home this is!" The other piques one's curiosity, obscures the residence, divides and distracts the attention: the observer exclaims, "What excellent lilac bushes are these!" ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... of the curious tricks of pronunciation of the eighteenth century still survived. My aunts, who had been born with, or before the nineteenth century, invariably pronounced "yellow" as "yaller." "Lilac" and "cucumber" became "laylock" and "cowcumber," and a gold bracelet was referred to as a "goold brasslet." They always spoke of "Proosia" and "Roosia," drank tea out of a "chaney" cup, and the eldest of ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... in the lilac muslin agreed that when everything else was so genteel, it would be unfortunate indeed to fail ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... is Billy and his ball. I never could really play with him before, but now I can't help it. But an awful thing happened about that yesterday. We were in the garden playing over by the lilac bushes and Billy always beats me because when he runs to base he throws himself down and slides along on the grass on his little stomach as he sees the real players do over at the ball grounds. Then all of a sudden, before I knew it, I just did ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... yellow organdie trimmed with black velvet ribbons, a large Leghorn covered with yellow feathers and black velvet. She was not pretty, but she had "an air," and that was supremest beauty in Andrew's eyes. Another was in lilac, another in pink. Each had the same sleek brown hair, the same ivory complexion. In attendance was a tall clumsily built but very imposing young man with sleepy blue eyes and a mighty mustache. The ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... decaying with the season; flowers lilac-purple, large and handsome, generally abortive; tubers of medium size, roundish, of a pink or reddish color; flesh yellow, dry, but not of so mild a flavor as many of the more recent kinds. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... they close every afternoon, opening about ten o'clock in the morning. The petals are arranged in a single series, spreading so as to form a shallow cup, and are notched on the edges near the upper end. They are coloured a deep purple-lilac on the upper half, the lower part being white, like a large pied daisy. The stamens are pure white; the anthers orange-coloured, as also is the star-shaped stigma. The plant is a native of Mexico, and was introduced in 1860. It requires the same treatment ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... Although the stream is sluggish, we were unable to reach Bodegas that night. We stopped therefore at the house of a gentleman engaged in the cultivation of cacao. The tree on which it grows somewhat resembles a lilac in size and shape. The fruit is yellowish-red, and oblong in shape, and the seeds are enveloped in a mass of white pulp. It is from the seeds that chocolate is prepared. The flowers and fruits grow directly ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... of skin, was very fresh and tender, requiring unusual care At three o'clock, when we reached Kuckula, the first station, the northern sky was one broad flush of the purest violet, melting into lilac at the zenith, where it met the fiery skirts ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... It recalls the fairy-like brilliance of the moors at sunset, when the sun, slipping behind a western hill, streams in level rays on to an opposite crest, gilding with pale gold the fawn-coloured faded grass; tangled in the film of lilac seeding grasses, spread, like the bloom on a grape, over all the heath; sparkling on the crisp edges of the heather blooms, pure white, wild-rose colour, shell-tinted, purple; emphasising every grey-green spur of the undergrowth ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... accepted, a berth in the gun-room. Neither Jack nor Murray had seen him, nor had they heard his name before they sailed. The next morning, after they had lost sight of the rock, when they went on deck, who should they see walking up and down, with an air of no little consequence, and having a pair of lilac kid gloves on his hands, but Bully Pigeon. Jack and Murray forgot all his bad qualities, and only thought of him as an old schoolfellow. So they went up to him, and cordially put out ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... same trees; as the Cynthia, like the Atlas cocoons, were all inclosed in leaves of the Berberis vulgaris, which shows that Cynthia is also a polyphagous species. It is already known that it feeds on several species of trees, besides the ailantus, such as the laburnum, lilac, cherry, and, I think, also on the castor-oil plant; the common barberry has, therefore, to be added ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... rain-washed blue, a pale lilac and a faded russet—gave him, as I said, immediate and massive pleasure like that of certain delicious tastes and smells, indeed anyone who had watched him attentively might have noticed that he was making rather ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... 15. The syring [lilac] or pipe-tree, so easily propagated by suckers or layers; the flower of the white (emulating both colour and flavor of the orange) I am told is made use of by the perfumers; I should not else have named it among the evergreens; for it loses ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... mission and its tragic cause she experienced a fleeting satisfaction that she was well and becomingly dressed. She had intended dropping in informally on Sibyl Forbes, still an outcast, in spite of her intercession, and wore a gown of dove-colored cashmere and a hat of the same shade with a long lilac feather. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... leaves and branches afford, to the inhabitants, an excellent shelter from the sun. It has the advantage also of not engendering insects; for, in consequence of its poisonous qualities, no insect can live upon it. When in blossom, the large clusters of its flowers resemble those of the lilac; these are succeeded by bunches of yellow berries, each about the size of a small cherry. It is a deciduous tree; but the berries remain during the winter, and drop off in ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... said "Bill Summers," "I was up to your folkeses house jist two or three days ago. No, there ain't many changes to speak of. The lilac bush by the kitchen window is over a foot higher, and the elm in the front yard died and had to be cut down. And yet it don't seem the same place ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... my little sister, born the same time. With our lilac frocks on and white bonnets to shade the sun off our eyes. And each a nosegay of garden flowers." There was no more sorrow in the old woman's voice than belongs to any old voice speaking thoughtfully and gently. Her old hand caressed ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... beds. Not a bird chirped as yet. Not a leaf stirred. But in this ghostly twilight the solitary gas lamps were beginning to show pale; and in the southern heavens the silver sickle of the moon, stealing over to the west, seemed to be taking the night with it, and leaving these faintly lilac skies to welcome the uprising of the ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... bone and muscle, and her graceful body seemed to be held together by integuments like long willow leaves—and kissed her with a light touch of cool, delicate lips. Aunt Camilla's slender arms in their pointed lilac sleeves and lace undersleeves waved forward as with a vague caressing intent. Soft locks of hair and frilling laces in her cap and bosom hung forward like leaves on a swaying bough, and tickled Lucina's face, half smothered in the ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Celia, heartily. "Ten years ago I came here a little girl, and made lilac chains under these very bushes, and picked chick-weed over there for my bird, and rode Thorny in his baby-wagon up and down these paths. Grandpa lived here then and we had fine times; but now they are ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... the bichromate, there came a most marvelous, kaleidoscopic change. From being almost colorless, the crystals turned instantly to a deep blue, then rapidly to purple, lilac, red, and then the red slowly faded away and they ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the door, and her hands steal up to smooth her pretty black hair. She had embroidered a white "Welcome" upon a blue ground, with an anchor in red upon each side, and a border of laurel leaves; and this was to hang upon the two lilac bushes which flanked the cottage door. He could not have left the Mediterranean before we had this finished, and every morning she looked to see if it were in its place and ready to ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in black and received him in a room where yellow flowers were massed. On the second occasion she was in grey and the flowers were pink. At the third audience her dress was purple and the flowers were of lilac and white. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard |
