"Opal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Still the hunter lay quiet. From time to time the calf struggled and bellowed. Lank, gray wolves appeared on all sides; they prowled about with hungry howls, and shoved black-tipped noses through the grass. The sun sank, and the sky paled to opal blue. A star shone out, then another, and another. Over the prairie slanted the first dark ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... intelligibly in their work in glass or in enamel; secondly, that Nature herself produces all her loveliest colours in some kind of solid or liquid glass or crystal. The rainbow is painted on a shower of melted glass, and the colours of the opal are produced in vitreous flint mixed with water; the green and blue, and golden or amber brown of flowing water is in surface glassy, and in motion "splendidior vitro." And the loveliest colours ever granted to human sight—those of morning and evening clouds before or after rain—are produced on ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... his voice—was crying out as if in grievous pain. And now the voice of Lucius Ahenobarbus sounded again: "One thousand denarii if you fling him into the sea!" and she could do nothing—nothing! She tore down the purple tapestries around her bed, and dashed from its tripod a costly bowl of opal Alexandrian glass—all in the mere rage of impotence. And still they were fighting. What was that ornament hanging on the wall, half hid behind the torn tapestry? A scabbard—a sword, some relic of ancient ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... inexhaustible. It was like a diamond on sunny days, flashing out light in every little ripple; in the late, sunless afternoon the light lay deeply within it, and it seemed jealous of giving back the least particle. He compared it then to an opal or a sapphire, which shine with the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... and took the case. Slowly opening it under the gas, he inspected its contents. Suddenly he gave a cry of alarm, and the case fell to the floor. "The Opal Serpent!—The Opal Serpent!" he cried, growing purple in the face, "keep off!—keep off!" He beat the air with his lean hands. "Oh—the Opal!" and he fell face downward on the slimy floor in a fit or ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... All hands were up, I suppose, when that ship went down, and the rush of water as she plunged, washed them off. We found seven big chests in the 'tween-decks forward of the cabin, and in them all were coins, and jewelry, and here and there in the mess, what might have been an opal, or some kind of jewel. All the stuff was black from the action of the salt water; but we knew we had the real thing, and hooked on tackles. We had to come up to help each time we lifted a chest, for, after the chest was out of water, it was too heavy for the crowd above; but at last they were ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... with a certain dignity to meet his guests. He is garbed in a coat made of watered silk, its straight collar faced with dark-green material edged with gold. A green and gold shoulder knot sets off the garment, which is provided with large opal buttons set in brilliants, this same adornment appearing on the hilt of his sword, which he lays aside as he approaches. From the sides of his wig depend two carefully-arranged locks, dusted with a tan-colored powder. His small-clothes, of lighter hue than ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... it. Beauty is an attribute of the divine. I worship it for its own sweet sake wherever I find it, in pearl or opal, dewdrop or flower, the stars, or a woman's ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the troops were aboard, and the men were allowed on deck. For the first time Claude saw the profile of New York City, rising thin and gray against an opal-coloured morning sky. The day had come on hot and misty. The sun, though it was now high, was a red ball, streaked across with purple clouds. The tall buildings, of which he had heard so much, looked ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... of the day the windows were open; but the curtains of pale blue silk, with silver crescents gleaming on them, were drawn to keep out the afternoon glare; and the subdued, opal-tinted light fell softly on this bower of luxury, which was, however, likely to prove the den ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... Indeed, at that moment that magnificent and peaceful face seemed to have lost—with a few unimportant features—its usual expression of speculative wisdom and intense disdain; its mouth smiled, its left eyelid seemed to droop. As the opal tints of dawn deepened upon it, the eyelid seemed to droop lower, closed, and quickly recovered itself twice. You would have thought ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... current. They are chiefly used for lighting halls and railway stations, streets and open spaces, search-lights and lighthouses. They are sometimes naked, but as a rule their brightness is tempered by globes of ground or opal glass. In search-lights a parabolic mirror projects all the rays in any one direction, and in lighthouses the arc is placed in the focus of the condensing lenses, and the beam is visible for at least twenty or ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... two in a voice that seemed to come from his stomach; it sounded like, "Like you best." But Dr. Lavendar did not hear it, and David ran swiftly back to the rabbits. There Helena found him, gazing through two large tears at the opal-eyed pair behind the wooden bars. Their white shell-like ears wavered at her step, and they paused in their nibbling; then went on again with timid, ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... emeralds and one of the largest pearls in the world were in this Exhibition. So were "le saphir merveilleux"—of amethystine colour by candle-light, once the property of Egalite Orleans, and the subject of a tale by Madame Genlis-and a renowned Hungarian opal. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... views of life as serious, and as earnest, not living for pretence or show, but for the most rational and religious ends. Now, when all this goodness is silvered over, as it were, reflecting like mother-of-pearl or opal, a thousand fanciful shades and changes, is not the result beautiful? Some families into which I have entered, some persons with whom I have talked, have left a most delightful impression upon my mind; and I have talked, by means of imperfect English, French, and interpretations, with ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... her craft into a little cove, opal and pearl in the pageantry of breaking light, and drawing it high on shore, went gathering little sticks for a ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... the sight of the open sea in front of her. A heavy rain towards dawn had washed down mud from the cliffs which the high tide had carried away, so now the water was a milky dun-colour, scattered with millions of opal lights, answering more closely just then to the thought of a jewelled sea than ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... Cordis drew from her delicate finger a ring of twisted gold, in which was set an opal wrought into the shape of a heart, and in it palpitated, like throbbing blood, one scarlet flash ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of course, innumerable substances, more or less, capable of talismanic virtue to particular individuals. But those gems, and similar ones, that are given in "The Light of Egypt," Vol. I, are the most powerful. To these may be added the opal, under Scorpio; the garnet, under Aries; and the turquoise, under Cancer, when Saturn is therein; and the aquamarine, under Pisces; and among the temporary talismans of vegetation we may add that, the young shoots, bearing the flower ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... to come from the live heart of a jewel. Each icy tree and bush emitted thin threadlike flames, high and aerial in tone, but of a piercing intensity. It was as if the quiet valley had been flooded all at once with dust of emerald and opal, of sapphire and amethyst and diamond. And as the light grew the miracle changed slowly, one keen gleam dying out as ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 840 They shoulder'd on towards that brightening cast. At every onward step proud domes arose In prospect,—diamond gleams, and golden glows Of amber 'gainst their faces levelling. Joyous, and many as the leaves in spring, Still onward; still the splendour gradual swell'd. Rich opal domes were seen, on high upheld By jasper pillars, letting through their shafts A blush of coral. Copious wonder-draughts Each gazer drank; and deeper drank more near: 850 For what poor mortals fragment up, as mere As marble was there lavish, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... as a caress. Opal-tinted clouds with violet shadows sailed above the low hills. In the shade of the fence dandelions had burst into bloom. From a bush near by a song-sparrow flung a note of spring ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... above new turned furrows; amid the jewel glint of water in the sun; in the diamond sparkle of the morning; against the changing opal skies of evening; the bees and all their winged kin floated and darted, flashed and danced, and whirled, from flower to flower and field to field, from blossom to blossom and tree to tree, bearing their pollen messages of love and life ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... Queensland Opal Periodical (London) Wind o' the Autumn Periodical (London) Daffodils Periodical (Edinburgh) A Queen of Yore Periodical (Sydney) Drought Periodical (London) The Shadow ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... troth is yet unplighted. This ring," said he, drawing off his glove, "is indifferently well set. The bauble was made by a skilful and cunning workman. The pearls have the true orient tinge, and this opal hath an eye like the hue of the morning, changeable as—woman's favour. How bright at times!—warm and radiant with gladness, now dull, cold, hazy, and"——unfeeling, he would have said, but he leaned on the slender barrier as he spoke, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... ladder we all had to walk under, the peacock's feathers, the black cat, the spilling of salt, breaking of mirrors, presenting of knives, wearing of green ties (not that I wore one—the colour doesn't suit my complexion) or opal rings, are fair fun, and I think that in future it would be as well to limit the satire to these ceremonies, to the exclusion of the funereal part of the business. For badges each wore in his button-hole a small coffin to ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Vallis—her full name was Roberta. There were soft lights and low divans and the strumming of a painted ukulele that sang its little twisted soul out under the caress of Penelope's white fingers. I can still see the big black opal in its quaint setting that had replaced her wedding ring and the yellow serpent of pliant gold coiled on her thumb with two bright rubies for its eyes. Penelope Wells! How little we realized what sinister forces were playing about her that pleasant evening as we smoked and jested and sipped ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... John He eats with His disciples the last and memorial supper. He goes out with them, bids them lift their glances to the wide, extended sky where the jewelry of the night as the scattered largess of a king burns in the fire of opal, the purple and violet of amethyst and the white splendour of uncounted diamonds. He assures them these gleaming things are no fiction fire -flies of gaseous worlds in the making, but illuminated ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... and everywhere sunflecked, warm, dry shade. Nowhere is there a hint of that sinister suggestion of the Reach. Clear, beautiful, limpid, wide-spreading, irregular pools, set in an undulating field of emerald-green mossy surf, shaded with graceful foliage and gleaming in the sunlight with exquisite opal tints—a giant necklace of opals, set in links of emerald green, and thrown down at hazard to fall in loops and curves within a ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... were diamonds, some of them exceedingly large and fine—a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen rubies of remarkable brilliancy; three hundred and ten emeralds, all very beautiful; and twenty one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had all been broken from their settings, and thrown loose in the chest. The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent identification. Besides all ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... about nine P.M.; in the West, a faint saffron flush is lingering above the green and opal sea, while the upper part of the church tower still keeps the warm glow of sunset. The stars are beginning to appear, and a mellow half moon is rising in a deep violet sky. Lamps are twinkling above the dusky cliffs, and along ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... season with an infinite variety of tints; for the tender bloom of an Irish spring is only surpassed in beauty by the glories of an Irish autumn. The undulating masses that would in October glow with a myriad fires were now clad in the colours of the opal, delicate pinks and blues and greys of yet unopened buds forming a background to the pure vigorous green of larch or chestnut in full leaf, while here and there a group of wild cherry-trees—trees which in a few months would be clothed in the hues of the sunset—caught the morning ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Only the opal, with its thin wire loop, would go on her ring finger. And she was superstitious. No, there was ill-portent enough, she would not accept this ring from him ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... and amid the rocks and weedy stones the clear water flowed as it might in an aquarium, the liquid surface reflecting as perfectly as any mirror the sky's blue, with clouds going by and many delicate opal tints, and the forms ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... rocks of Triassic age, but only a small quantity of the wood is fine enough for ornamental purposes. The cellular tissue of the vegetable matter is filled, or even replaced, by various siliceous minerals like chalcedony, jasper, crystalline quartz and semi-opal, the silica having probably been introduced by thermal waters. Some of the agate shows the microscopic structure of araucarian wood. The agatized wood is sometimes known by the Indian ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... diplomacy, the exit of the enraged Bruno, was at once achieved. He had already handed his spear in a lordly style, like a sceptre, to the piteous Parkinson, and was about to assume one of the cushioned seats like a throne. But at this open appeal to his rival there glowed in his opal eyeballs all the sensitive insolence of the slave; he knotted his enormous brown fists for an instant, and then, dashing open the door, disappeared into his own apartments beyond. But meanwhile Miss ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... again—tricked out as a Nautch girl in veils of purple, saffron, gold-tinsel, and grass-green. She postures shamelessly before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black spotted on crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds. 'Notice Me!' She cries, like any other worthless woman. 'Admire the play of My mobile features—the revelations of My multi-coloured soul! Observe My allurements and potentialities. Thrill while I stir you!' ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... strange in cities began to mingle with some sense of what is stern as well as strange. It was one of those queer-coloured winter days when a watery sky changes to pink and grey and green, like an enormous opal. The trees stood up grey and angular, as if in attitudes of agony; and here and there on benches under the trees sat men as grey and angular as they. It was cold even for me, who had eaten a large breakfast ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... been called Shasta Mountain, and it is one of the grandest sights that ever the eye of man beheld. It flouts the skies with its peaks of everlasting snow, gleaming like a vast opal under the sunshine, or peeping out in rainbow-tinted glints, from among the rifts of the clouds that rake along its sides. Often long streams of glittering white stretch from its peaks, far out into space, and ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... into the side of the ship, affording ample illumination during the daytime, while the hours of darkness were provided for by half a dozen electric lights disposed about the cabin, mounted on handsome aethereum brackets, and furnished with opal shades, shaped and tinted to represent flowers. The bulkheads were of frosted aethereum, divided up into panels by fluted Corinthian pilasters of the same metal, supporting a massive cornice and a coved ceiling, the wall panels being enriched with graceful designs in polished ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... is. "Already the pavement was drying; a balmy and fresh breeze stirred the air, purified by lightning; I left the west behind me, where spread a sky like opal, azure inmingled with crimson; the enlarged sun, glorious in Tyrian dyes, dipped his brim already; stepping, as I was, eastward, I faced a vast bank of clouds, but also I had before me the arch of an even rainbow; a perfect rainbow—high, wide, vivid. I looked long; ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... in which there is an elaborate and pathetic account of this scene. The tall, twisted tree-stems, however, that form the background are fine and original in effect, and Mr. Richmond has caught exactly that peculiar opal-blue of the sky which is so remarkable in Greece; the purple orchids too, and daffodil and narcissi that are in the foreground are all flowers which I ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... fleecy clouds ascending from the sun's disc to the zenith, assuming the appearance of a range of snowy mountains, whose summits were heaped one upon another. The dome of clouds was tinged at its base with, as it were, the foam of rubies, fading away into opal and pearly tints, in proportion as the gaze was carried from base to summit. The sea was gilded with the same reflection, and upon the crest of every sparkling wave danced a point of light, like a diamond by lamplight. The mildness of the evening, the sea ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... rude fortress. The river travels along the valley below, now wrestling its way through a narrow passage among the rocks, now spreading out at leisure in a green meadow. As we cross the bridge, the crystal water is changed to opal by the sunset glow, and a gentle breeze ruffles the long pools, and the trout are rising freely. It is the perfect hour for fishing. Would Graygown dare to drive on alone to the gate of the fortress, and blow upon ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... misty but mild, with the moon peering doubtfully through a fleecy veil of fine floating vapour, which, gathering flashes of luminance from the silver orb, turned to the witch-lights of an opal,—and Aubrey made his way to the Casa D'Angeli, which in his own mind he called the "Palais D'lffry," in memory of the old Breton song Sylvie had sung. On giving his name he was at once shown up into ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... that myriads of stars could be descried shining far into the limitless depths of space. The moon silvered the tops of the trees, and touched with its splendor the waters of the brooks that gleamed, luminous and transparent, with colors as changeful and iridescent as the opal. In the leafy groves the nightingales were singing. Herbs and flowers shed a rich perfume. Countless multitudes of glow-worms shone like diamonds or carbuncles among the grass and wild flowers along the banks of the brooks. In this region the winged glow-worm is not found, but another ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... tortoise-shell cat with four blind, squeaking atoms beside her, and as the cat rolled over and the atoms sucked life, Joan saw her shining eyes, afore-time so bright and hard, full of a new strange light, like the cloud that glimmers over the fires of an opal. The cat's green orbs were full of mystery: of pain past, of joy present. So again Joan learned. But a black tragedy blotted out that little happy family in the pigsty, and Death, in the shape of Amos Bartlett, Mr. Chirgwin's head man, fell upon them. Then the farmer ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... lines, which have the power of reflecting, not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal. ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... Dining-room; walls distempered chocolate; gaselier with opal-tinted globes; two cast-iron Cavaliers holding gas-lamps on the mantel-piece. Oil-portrait, enlarged from photograph, of Mrs. TIDMARSH, over side-board; on other walls, engravings—"Belshazzar's Feast," "The Wall of Wailing at Jerusalem," and DORE'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... herself from the observation, from above, of any chance passer-by; and, settling comfortably into the soft hollow, lay back, watching, through half-closed lids, the fleeting shadows, the blue sky, the gently moving sea. Little white clouds blushed rosy red. An opal tint gleamed on the water. The moving ripple seemed too far away ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... was uttered inwardly. She saw Seraphitus standing erect, lightly swathed in an opal-tinted mist that disappeared at a little distance from the body, which seemed ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... its beacon-fires, Driving before it all the fleet-winged host Of chattering birds above the Mission spires, Filling the land with light and joy, but most The savage woods with all their leafy lyres; In pearly tints and opal flame and fire The morning came, but not the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... "My opal ring!" cried Mollie, staring at it unbelievingly. "Oh, I can't believe it. Give it to me, Betty; it has my initials on the inside. Yes, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... which only a few are allotted to each human life. I stood watching the sinking sun throw a crimson net over the snow mountains as the shadow of night crept slowly up the hillside. The sky took on an opal light in which were merged and transcended all the colours of the day. Every pinnacle and rock was lit up as by a heavenly fire, the pines were outlined like black sentinels against the sky, guardians of that merciful green life from ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... fountain which rose from a basin of gold encrusted with pearls, and which was surrounded by figures of every rare quadruped[27] in the most costly materials. Here a golden tiger, with flaming eyes of ruby and flowing stripes of opal, stole, after some bloody banquet, to the refreshing brink; a camelopard raised its slender neck of silver from the centre of a group of every inhabitant of the forest; and brilliant bands of monkeys, glittering with precious stones, rested, in every variety ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... campaniles replied with sympathetic thunder, a solemn diapason of Corybantine brass, to my taste, wonderfully in unison with the funeral mole of the defunct Arsenal, the repose of the purple mountains, and the fainting splendour of that twinned vault and pavement, the opal sea and sky, smooth, soft, and bright enough for Juno and Amphitrite to hold a gossip, each from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... their wide-spread boughs; and the stately chestnuts, with foliage of tawny yellow, opened wide their stinging husks to let the nuts fall for squirrel and blue-jay. Splendid sadness clothed all the world, opal-hued mists wandered up and down the valleys or lingered about the undefined horizon, and the leaf-scented south wind sighed in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... after the bird has been shot. They seem to form part of its life and liberty, and disappear when it is robbed of either. I have often thrust the wild pigeon, freshly killed, into my game-bag, glittering like an opal. I have drawn it forth a few hours after of a dull leaden hue, and altogether ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... clothing shone like the leaf of a palm seen at midnight in the glow of a fire. And her hair was massed like that of an ascetic high over her brow, and on its dull black cloud there shone a gem that resembled a star, shooting and flickering and changing colour like a diamond mixed with an opal: while underneath, her eyes, that resembled pools filled with dusk instead of water, were fixed on me as if in meditation, as if half in doubt as to whether I was I. And yet her lips were smiling, not as if they meant to smile, but just ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... through my open window, along with the sunshine and the crisp freshness of the morning air. My apartment was in the southeast angle of the Chateau, and my bedroom windows—overlooking the inner court—commanded the view along the range of the Alpilles to the Luberoun and Mont-Ventour, a pale great opal afloat in waves of clouds; while from the windows of my sitting-room I saw over Mont-Majour and Arles far across the level Camargue to the hazy horizon below which lay ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... temptation to raise my eyes level with the sill of the window. So did Uncle Jap's Lily. We both peered in. Uncle Jap was facing Leveson; in his hand he held the long-barrelled six-shooter; in his eyes were tiny pin-point flashes of light such as you see in an opal on a frosty morning. Terror had spread a grim mask upon the other; his complexion was the colour of oatmeal, his pendulous lips were quivering, his huge body seemed of a sudden to be deflated. He might have been an empty ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the prize away, and the frost-fish, collecting at a chance of civil war, mingled in the melee, tooth and nail, or rather fin and tail. Then the vapors would darken round them again, till, with the stray rays caught and refracted in their fleece, it seemed like living in an opal full of cloudy color and fire. Far off they heard the great ground-swell of the surf upon the beach, or there came the dull report of the sportsmen in the marsh, or they exchanged first a laugh and then ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... breezes blow through the room, from one verandah to the other, making the flames of the lamps flicker. They scatter the lotus flowers faded by the artificial heat, which, falling in pieces from every vase, sprinkle the guests with their pollen and large pink petals, looking like bits of broken opal-colored glass. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... clear, honest, earnest return of the eye, which has on the Continent most unfairly brought my fair countrywomen under criticism, is quite as common to her more carefully-guarded, tradition-hedged German sisters? No, it is not that. Is it any thing in these emerald and opal tinted skies, which seem so unreal to the American eye, and for the first time explain what seemed the unreality of German art? in these mysterious yet restful Rhine fogs, which prolong the twilight, and hang the curtain ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... writers affirm that the water of a pregnant woman is white and has little specks in it, like those in a sunbeam, ascending and descending in it, of an opal colour, and when the sediment is disturbed by shaking the urine, it looks like carded wool. In the middle of gestation it turns yellow, then red and lastly black, with a red film. At night on going to bed, let her drink water and honey, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... from the burning palace. There is something strange at the bottom of it—something like an opal, with a ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... be seen through the globe. Very roughly speaking, plain white glass, such as that of which the chimneys of oil-lamps and incandescent gas-burners are composed, is quite transparent, and therefore affords no protection to the eyesight; a protective globe should be rather of ground or opal glass, or of plain glass to which a dispersive effect has been given by forming small prisms on its inner or outer surface, or both. Such opal, ground, or dispersive shades waste much light in terms ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... force his eyes away from the unreal beauty of opal walls like the fairy structures they had seen. There was color everywhere that blended and fused to make glorious harmony that was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... park chairs, a sense of stupefaction comes over me—for a hundred or two kilometres away men are killing one another—women are searching for some trace of their homes—the ground is teeming with corpses—the air is foetid with the smell of death! And yet we enjoy the opal sunset at Versailles and smile at the quaint appearance of ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... scorn were the burning shares over which her bare feet trod, and his bitter accents wailed up and down her lonely heart. Through the remainder of that cloudless night she wrestled silently. At last, when the sky flushed rosily, like an opal smitten with light, and holy Resignation—the blessing born only of great trial like hers—shed its heavenly chrism over the worn and weary, bruised and bleeding spirit, she gathered up the mangled hopes that might have gladdened, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... of those wonderful sunsets of the winter-end that throw wine-stains back across this bald old earth and make you remember that although the green hasn't yet awakened into life there's release on the way. It was a sunset with an infinite depth to its opal and gold and rose and a whisper of spring in its softly prolonged afterglow. It made me glad and sad all at once, for while there was a hint of vast re-awakenings in the riotous wine-glow that merged off into pale green to the north, there was also a touch of loneliness in the flat and far-flung ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... bundle to its place, and gone back for the roses and the lilies. It was one of those warm, beautiful nights when everything seems carved of precious stones. Sleuth Wood away to the south looked as though cut out of green beryl, and the waters that mirrored them shone like pale opal. The roses he was gathering were like glowing rubies, and the lilies had the dull lustre of pearl. Everything had taken upon itself the look of something imperishable, except a glow-worm, whose faint ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... her amber cushions, she seemed to shine as a star on the twilight's glow. Perfume came from her hair and robes, music fell from her lips, and in her heavenly eyes all lights changed and gathered as in the ominous opal's disc. ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... sea is flowing, 'Mid long peninsulas of shining sand, From opal unto pearl the moon is growing, Dropped like a shell ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... his speech with a peculiar warble, and at its sound a score of fishes thrust their heads above the surface of the water. Some of them were gold-fish and some silver-fish, but others had opal tints that were very pretty. Their faces were jolly in expression and their eyes, Chubbins thought, must be diamonds, because they sparkled ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... sons of gentle Mrs Constable, were Jasper, otherwise John; Sapphire, whose real name was Robert; Garnet, baptised Wallace; Opal, whose name was ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... some seraphic apparition. Her hair, of velvet blackness, fell in curls half-way down her shoulders; her brow, white as alabaster and polished as a mirror, reflected the rays of the sun; her beautiful and finely arched black eye-brows melted into the opal of her temples; her eyelids were fast down, and the curled black fringe of lashes veiled a glowing and liquid glance of divine emotion; the nose, straight, slender, and cut by two easy nostrils, gave to her profile that character of antique beauty which is vanishing day by day from ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... here that's wanted, missis. Name of Wix or Daverill. Man about five-and-forty. Dark hair and light eyes. Side-draw on the mouth. Goes with a lurch. Two upper front eye-teeth missing. Carries a gold hunting-watch on a steel chain. Wears opal ring of apparent value. Stammers slightly." So the police-officer reads from his warrant or instructions, which he offers to show to Miss Hawkins, who scarcely glances ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... brought many happy excursions up the Peak, never was one so exquisitely enjoyed as this had been. The sun had dropped behind the hill when the tired party reached the Red House, and a big moon was coming up serenely in the opal sky. Mr. and Miss Goldthwaite paused at the avenue gate, saying they would not come any further; so the good-nights were said there and the ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... been laced up and a solitary watch-dog was tied to a stake before the entrance. Down the valley the setting sun shone through the naked trees like a wall of fire, and dyed all the glistening snow-drifts primrose and opal. At one place in the forest the red light burst through and struck against the tent on the hill-top, giving the skins a peculiar appearance of being streaked with blood. The faintest breath of wind, a mere sigh of moving air-currents peculiar to snow-padded areas, came up from ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... What one likes about the birds is that they lay such pretty eggs. Even the duck lays a pretty egg The duck is a plain bird, rather like a char-woman, but it lays an egg which is (or can be) as lovely as an opal. The flavour, I agree, is not Christian, but, like other eggs of which this can be said, it does for cooking. Hens' eggs are less attractive in colour, but more varied. I have always thought it one of the chief miseries ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... that picture-land, abounding in scenes that change like the tints of the opal. Varied is the surface which these pictures adorn. Valleys that open deep into the earth; mountains that lead the eye far up into heaven; plains that stretch to the horizon's verge, until the rim of the blue canopy seems to rest upon their limitless level; "rolling" landscapes, ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... nose up until the automatic alarm-bell rang, and I actually began to slide backwards. My sopped and dripping wings had made me heavier than I thought, but presently I was in lighter cloud, and soon had cleared the first layer. There was a second—opal-coloured and fleecy—at a great height above my head, a white, unbroken ceiling above, and a dark, unbroken floor below, with the monoplane labouring upwards upon a vast spiral between them. It is deadly lonely in these ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Nukalofa, the capital of Tonga, some years ago, I naturally directed my steps towards the residence of the British consul. The route lay along an arc of emerald and opal shore, the swaying cocoa-palms overhead, and native huts and missionary conventicles hidden away in coverts of ti-trees, hibiscus bushes, and limes; the sensuous, perfume- ladened air pervading all. I had seen the British flag from the coral- bulwarked harbour, but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Kenkenes caught a single glance of the eyes under the gray shelter of the heavy brows. Once, the young man had seen hanging from Meneptah's neck the rarest jewel in the royal treasure. The wise men had called it an opal. It shot lights as beautiful and awful as the intensest flame. And something in the eyes of this mighty man brought back to Kenkenes the memory of the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... repeated from one to the other. Her powers of conversation were of the highest order. She could enchain twenty people at once, and keep all their intellects in active exercise. It was with difficulty she did that now; she was thinking so entirely of the golden head, with its opal stars. Then came another stir among the brilliant groups—the entree of a prince, beloved and revered by all who knew him. Leone, with her quick, artistic eye, thought she had never seen a more brilliant picture than ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... hearts that break in twain! — And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye — Says, 'Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart — a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling at my feet In ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... sitting silently opposite her, dreamed—the old dream that comes to most good men and true once in their lives. He scarcely moved until the dawn lightened with opal the dreary plain, bringing back the horizon and day, when he woke from his dream with a sigh, and then a laugh. Then he listened for the sound of distant hoofs, and hearing them, crept noiselessly from the coach. A compact ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... opus 16. They include a blithe "Chansonette" and a "Valse Impromptu," which, unlike the usual impromptu, has the ex tempore spirit. Of her songs, "Mystery" is a charming lyric; "Maisie" is faithful to the ghoulish merriment of the words; and "An Opal Heart" is striking for interesting dissonances that do not mar the fluency of ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... an opal of such marvelous changeability, such milk and fire shot with such shifting rainbows, that it was as though it had had birth of all the moods of all the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... crocodiles, plesiosauri, planulites, and stems of the cycadeae; in the chalk formations, small polythalmia and bryozoa, whose species still exist in our seas; in tripoli, or polishing slate, in the semi-opal and the farina-like opal or mountain meal, agglomerations of siliceous infusoria, which have been brought to light by the powerful microscope of Ehrenberg;** and, lastly, in transported soils, and in certain caves, the bones ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Play were growing in rich profusion. Between the green, green slope and the blue, blue sea lay a stretch of sand that looked like a carpet of jewelled cloth of gold, for it was not greyish as our northern sand is, but yellow and changing—opal-coloured like sunshine and rainbows. And at the very moment when the wild, whirling, blinding, deafening, tumbling upside-downness of the carpet-moving stopped, the children had the happiness of seeing three large live turtles waddle down to the edge of the sea and disappear ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... are others among the work published under his own name. In fact, the writing under the two names never becomes liker in quality and intention than when it is "spiritual." The sketch from Part II of "The Dominion of Dreams" (1899), entitled "The Book of the Opal," for instance, is written on the very key of "Fragments of the Lost Journals of Piero di Cosimo" (1896), far apart their subject material, and "The Hill-Wind" by "W.S." dedicated as it is to "F.M.," might well be a rejected passage from "The Mountain Lovers." There is the color ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... in monosyllables the glory of bluewater before them, the tradition of R. L. S. and Frank Norris, the future of aviation. They gave up the attempt to explain the magic of San Francisco—that city-personality which transcends the opal hills and rare amber sunlight, festivals, and the transplanted Italian hill-town of Telegraph Hill, liners sailing out for Japan, and memories of the Forty-niners. It was too subtle a spirit, too much of it lay in human life ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood .. up with his ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... had set, but in a crotch between two snow-peaks it had kindled a vast caldron from which rose a mist of jewels, garnet and turquoise, topaz and amethyst and opal, all swimming in a sea of molten gold. The glow of it still clung to the face of the broad Yukon, as a flush does to the soft, wrinkled cheek of a girl just roused from ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... replied Miss Allen with provoking coolness. "I can just about afford to lose my place for the sake of an opal ring." ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... pure, because of great illuminations Of dreamy doctrine caught from poets of old, Because of delicate imaginations, Because I am proud, or subtle, or merely cold. Natheless my soul's bright passions interchange As the red flames in opal drowse and speak: In beautiful twilight paths the elusive strange Phantoms of personality I seek. If better than the last embraces I Love the lit riddles of the eyes, the faint Appeal of merely courteous fingers,—why, Though 'tis a quest of souls, and I acquaint My heart with spiritual vanities,— ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... which had been left open. It was a splendid sculptor's studio, the front of which, on the street corner, semi-circular in shape, gave the room one whole wall of glass, with pilasters at the sides, a large, well-lighted bay, opal-coloured just then by reason of the fog. More ornate than are usually such work-rooms, which the stains of the plaster, the boasting-tools, the clay, the puddles of water generally cause to resemble a stone-mason's shed, this one added a touch of coquetry to its artistic purpose. Green ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... seaport to require a detailed description. There, as in all places in close proximity to the ocean, I was spell-bound amid the ceaseless ebb and flow, the endless melody of the waves glowing and scintillating with myriad gem-like hues from the amethyst, the emerald and the diamond, to the many-hued opal, its varied and changing beauty bearing all the brilliant glory of the fabled ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... like an opal with the setting of the sun. I see the flickering of camp-fires and the palm-fringe of an oasis. I see the tapering minarets of a mosque, and the long booths of the bazaars. I smell the scent of the perfume-seller's stall, the heavy ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... alone, of all the maids on earth, could make him happy by her love. He was to roam around the world till he should meet a beautiful woman, wearing on her bosom a jewel in the shape of a heart; whether of pearl, or ruby, or emerald, or carbuncle, or a changeful opal, or perhaps a priceless diamond, Ralph Cranfield little cared, so long as it were a heart of one peculiar shape. On encountering this lovely stranger, he was bound to address her thus: "Maiden, I have brought you a heavy heart. May I rest its weight on you?" ...
— The Threefold Destiny (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cypresses in their cemeteries had here and there streaks and dots of gold, fluttering like bright birds among their gloomy branches. The distant snow-peaks of the Apennines, which even in spring long wear their icy mantles, were shimmering and changing like an opal ring with tints of violet, green, blue, and rose, blended in inexpressible softness by that dreamy haze which forms the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... clearly that he could still recall the tones of Poe's voice, and the peculiar lambent light that flashed from out the poet's dark eyes—the light of a black opal. He settled himself back in his chair to enjoy the treat the better. This was the kind of talk he wanted to-day, and Richard Horn, of all others, was the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... cliques," said Merle quickly. "We had enough of that sort of thing when Opal was there. Miss Pollard told mother that the new mistress, Miss Mitchell, is going to reorganise everything, and bring it up to date, so I expect we shall find a great many changes when we start again. Have ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal!—I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be everything, and their intent everywhere; for that's it that always makes a ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... personal contact. It is said that a man recently went into a jewelry store to buy an opal and rejected all that were presented to him. One of them he rejected instantly. The salesman picked it up and closed it in his hand and finally in a casual way opened his hand and placed the opal upon the counter. "Why," said the customer, "that is the opal ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... yet, and we sauntered about on the flat roof, white as marble in the moonlight. The sky was milk—the desert, honey —far off Cairo with its crowned citadel, pale opal veined with light, and faintly streaked with misty greens and purples; the cultivated land a deep indigo sea. The fantastically built hotel (in its ancient beginnings the palace of a Pasha) was like a closely huddled group of chalets, looked down on from its central roof. On ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the tender palm of a huge master hand with the knuckles of rough blue hills knotted around it, and dotted over the fostering meadows were comfortable homes, each with its morning altar fire sending up opal wreaths of mist smoke from the red brick or stone chimneys. Long creek lines marked their way across the fields which were growing tender green with the upbringing ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... lift was finished, and the Princess and her ladies crowded round to make the first ascent in it, there was Florizel dressed in white satin knee-breeches, and coat with mother-o'-pearl buttons. He had silver buckles to his shoes, and a tiny opal breast-pin on the lappet of his coat, where the white ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... were little irregular rainbow-coloured halos of their own interrupting and variegating the continuous bands of the corona; while throughout all was discernible a perpetual variability, like the flashing or shooting of colour in the opal, the mother-of-pearl, or similarly tinted translucent substances when exposed to the irregular play of bright light—only that in this case the tints were incomparably more brilliant, the change more striking, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... fair, the names of the world's greatest countries at its gilded panels, supported by winged figures, and bearing engraven upon each shining surface the record of some great event. Its medallions and graceful groups, allegorical or symbolic, all mounting high, and higher, until illuminated by the opal-like circle of light at the summit, Dodge's great picture crowns the whole, with its circling procession of arts and sciences, gods and muses, nymphs and graces, and Apollos radiant in ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Oriental embroidery in blue and burnt-orange, and her beauty was further enhanced by a gray hat planned to match her dress, with a plume of shaded orange and blue. On her fingers were four or five rings, far too many—an opal, an emerald, a ruby, and a ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... I could well judge of the feat we had accomplished in our descent. Up to the level of the cave there were shrubs and brush-wood. Higher up, orchids, with their bright flowers and opal-green leaves; higher still rose a perpendicular and almost smooth rampart, utterly impassable except through the fissure which had afforded us egress. Sumichrast guided us through the thicket, where the frangipanni-plants, covered with their sweet-scented ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... against a fathomless sky; and topping the furthermost was a little paring of silver light, the coronet of the rising moon. But the glory of the full orb was in the retrospect; for, closing the savage vista of the ravine, stood up far away a cluster of jagged pinnacles—opal, translucent, lustrous as the peaks of icebergs that are the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... "Ah yes, I recall the case; it was concerned with an opal tiara. I think it was before your time, Watson. I can only say, madam, that I shall be happy to devote the same care to your case as I did to that of your friend. As to reward, my profession is its own reward; but you are at liberty to defray whatever expenses I may be put to, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... end of this town of the dead, the desert again opens before us its mournful whitened expanse. On such a night as this, when the wind blows cold and the misty moon shows like a sad opal, it looks like a steppe ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... pigeon preened his opal breast; And o'er the meads the bobolink, With vexed perplexity confessed His tinkling gutturals in a kink, Or giggled round ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... said one, "to wear a circlet of well-chosen stones to serve as oracle and counsellor. The opal should assure me of my friend's fealty, the invisible slaves of the diamond should guard my fortunes, the serpent that cast its harmful eye on me would be blinded by my emerald, for, in fine, I believe that vassal genii attend each gem, and obey ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... from a jade platter, took a ring. It was made of six little hoops each set with small stones. She put it on. The platter held other rings. There was a sapphire, inch-long, deep and dark. She put that on. There was also an Australian opal and an Asian emerald, the latter greener than the grass. She put these on. Together with the wedding-ring they made quite a show. Too much of a show, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... opal the loveliest thing you ever saw? I'm afraid I'm too dark to wear it, but it would just suit you. You'll need a variety, you know," added Kitty in a significant aside as Rose stood among the white ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... bank covered with brigalow scrub. Nor was I disappointed, for after finding traces of a recent current into the river-bed at that point, I discovered, at less than a hundred yards up, a fine pond of precious OPAL—I mean not crystal, but that fine bluey liquid which I found always so cool and refreshing when it lay on clay in the shady recesses of brigalow scrubs, a beverage much more grateful to our taste than the common "crystal spring." Here, then, we watered our impatient horses, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... generation; and whenever in time he had chanced to exist he would always have lagged a generation behind. But there was that one colourful streak which somehow, as if by a mistake in creation, had shot a narrow rainbow vein through his drab soul, like a glittering opal ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... He would not have understood all she was thinking—he would angrily have hated most of it—but his company would have distracted her mind and occupied her attention. She thought of Toby at sea on this beautiful evening, with the stars pale in an opal sky; and she could see him standing upon the deck of the "Florence Drake" in his blue jersey without a hat, with the breeze playing on his crisp hair and his brown face. A yearning for Toby filled her. Tears started to her eyes. She loved him, she felt, more than she ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... this sketch is by," he asked, stopping before Margaret, and pointing to a small Lambinet, glowing like an opal on the dull-green wall of the studio. "I so seldom see good pictures that a gem like this is a delight. By a Frenchman! Ah! Yes, I see the subtlety of coloring. Marvellous people, these Frenchmen. And this ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... clear sky and a cold of 12 deg. below zero. The Muonio valley was superb, towards sunrise, with a pale, creamy, saffron light on the snow, the forests on the tops of the hills burning like jagged masses of rough opal, and the distant range of Palastyntre bathed in pink light, with pure sapphire shadows on its northern slopes. These Arctic illuminations are transcendent; nothing can equal them, and neither pen nor pencil ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... no click of the horses' feet on the asphalt pavement—no pavement, indeed, and no horses, no twentieth-century rush of life. It is Venice, it is June, and the two combine to make an illuminated chapter. To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the heart of an opal. How wonderful it is to drift—a sky above and a sky below—on still waters at sunset, with the Dream City mirrored in the depths, every shade of gold and rose and amber mirrored back,—the very atmosphere a sea ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... eye other scenes whose beauties will remain with me while life shall last:—The purple and gold of a glorious sunset over Etna, the Greek theatre of Taormina in front of me, with the sea below—a shimmering opal that melted away in the haze beyond Syracuse; the awful rapids raging furiously below Niagara, a very ocean tortured and maddened to blind fury, pouring its irresistible torrents through the chasm above the whirlpool; and again, a cloudless October morning, with just the keen zest of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... our woods show wond'rous sights Such as are read of in "Arabian Nights," When branch and bough are all laden with gems Bright as those that deck Eastern diadems; And the sun sheds a blaze of dazzling light On ruby and opal and diamond bright. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... percolating for centuries, and have given rise to various zeolites— apophyllite and chabazite among others; also to calcareous spar, arragonite, and fluor spar, together with siliceous minerals, such as opal— all found in the inter-spaces of the bricks and mortar, or constituting part of their re-arranged materials. The quantity of heat brought into action in this instance in the course of 2000 years has, no doubt, been enormous, but the intensity of it developed at any one moment ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... longer. She rose from her berth, trailing exquisite silk and lace (for the woman must always frame her beauty worthily, even for her own eyes alone), poured out half a glass of absinthe, dropped in her allowance of the drug, added water, till the mixture looked like liquid opal, and sipped the beverage with ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... with leaf and bird and bloom. The tonic air put to shame the pharmacopaeia. The glades were dark with mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foliage, exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in its opal haze. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... The grassy hills, breeze-haunted on the brow; And sandy deserts hung with stinging stars! Half-vanished hangs the moon, with daylight sick, Wan-faced and lost and lonely: daylight fades— Blooms out the pale eternal flower of space, The opal night, whose odours are gray dreams— Core of its petal-cup, the radiant moon! All, all the unnumbered meanings of the earth, Changing with every cloud that passes o'er; All, all, from rocks slow-crumbling in the frost Of Alpine ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... in the streets, abandon garrets, grisettes, umbrellas, and overshoes to men who pay for their dinners with tickets; and you must also comprehend Love to be a principle which develops in all its grace only on Savonnerie carpets, beneath the opal gleams of an alabaster lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung, before gilded hearths in chambers deadened to all outward sounds by shutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors must be there to show the play of form and repeat the woman we would multiply as love ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... munificent Riza Bey, upon whom the King had already conferred his own portrait set in diamonds, and other gifts worth several millions of francs, placed in the Royal hand several superb fragments of opal and turquoise said to have been found in a district of country bordering on the Caspian sea, which teemed with limitless treasures of the same kind, and which the Shah of Persia proposed to divide with France for the honor of her alliance. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... are opal—no horrid drawing master's line between them—just one fishing boat, going slowly, and drawing the wind after it. I am going ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... eyes again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... into the dining-room, which, by the caterer's art, had been transformed into a kind of jewel-box glowing with flowers, silver, gold, tinted glass, and the snowy whiteness of linen. It reminded her of an opal flashing all its soft fires. She went into the general reception-room, where was a grand piano finished in pink and gold, upon which, with due thought to her one accomplishment—her playing—she had ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... when the stars come out to envy the beauty of the City of Marvel, the King walks to another part of the garden and sits in an alcove of opal all alone by the marge of the sacred lake. This is the lake whose shores and floors are of glass, which is lit from beneath by slaves with purple lights and with green lights intermingling, and is one of the seven wonders of Babbulkund. Three of the wonders are in the city's midst and four are at ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... words or tears or sighs. The doctor's invitation came most opportunely. And presently in silence he turned his back upon that opal sky of dream from which the sun had gone, and walked slowly down ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... trees, each bearing its pure white burden, and decked with glistening fringes of icicles. Towards evening the scene changes, and the snow takes the most gorgeous colouring from the descending rays of the brilliant eastern sun—brilliant even in mid-winter—turning opal, pink, scarlet, and crimson; gradually, as the light wanes, fading into delicate lilacs and grays, which slowly mount upwards, till at last even the highest pinnacle loses the life-giving tints, and the whole snowy range itself turns cold and white and dead against a background of deepest sapphire ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... beautiful presents: a box of expensive sweets, such as Cossethay had never seen; or he gave her a hair-brush and a long slim mirror of mother-of-pearl, all pale and glimmering and exquisite; or he sent her a little necklace of rough stones, amethyst and opal and brilliants and garnet. He spoke other languages easily and fluently, his nature was curiously gracious and insinuating. With all that, he was undefinably an outsider. He belonged to nowhere, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away;—a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,—sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... standing afar, off—small spewings of age-old volcanos dead before man was born—seemed fascinating, unknown islets anchored in a sea of enchantment. Across the valley to the west nearer mountains, all amethyst and opal tinted, stood bold and inscrutable, with jagged peaks thrust into the blue to pierce and hold the little clouds that came floating by. Even the gulch at hand had been touched by the enchanter's wand and smiled mysteriously in the vivid sunlight, the very air a-quiver ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... —The trickling stream's Murmur in its dreams, The shepherd's pipe, far-echoing by chance,— Melt all for thee To one soft harmony, While for the lighting of thy mossy slope The moon thy lover sheds an opal glow, Pale silver-green, the colour of the leaves Of olive-trees, The limelight on the stage for Youth and Joy and Hope? And at the first rose menace of the dawn Must thou go, Fly to thy cave, thou ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... hungry feels the birds must be having. So I do have comes to tie things on the trees for them. Some have likes for different things. Little gray one of the black cap has likes for suet. And other folks has likes for other things."—From The Story of Opal. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... N. semitransparency, translucency, semiopacity; opalescence, milkiness, pearliness^; gauze, muslin; film; mica, mother-of-pearl, nacre; mist &c (cloud) 353. [opalescent jewel] opal. turbidity &c 426.1. Adj. semitransparent, translucent, semipellucid^, semidiaphanous^, semiopacous^, semiopaque; opalescent, opaline^; pearly, milky; frosted, nacreous. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... gold in the dazzling sunshine, stretched away for miles; beyond these a vista of green meadows, with the distant Cotswold Hills rising out of dreamy haze; waters of chrysolite, with fields of malachite beyond; the azure sky overhead flecked with clouds of pearl and opal, and all around the pear orchards in ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... green, All singing in the sun,—as deep and brown As Taka's eyes,—the pool disclosed itself. Across the clear light of the morning, showers Of fiery jewels shone against the trees,— Rubies, bright sapphires, purple amethyst, Topaz, fierce opal, grass-green emeralds Flitting and darting;—were they only birds! Flower made bird or bird made flower, they seemed To eyes newborn upon a world of love. The air was heavy with strange scents, the old Familiar perfumes seemed so rarely sweet, The jasmine was the very breath of ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... and curve resemble tusks. The black proboscis, however, the simply a hollow sheath, which encloses, when not in the act of biting, four reddish and sharp lancets. Under the microscope these four lancets differ in thickness, two are very thick, the third is slender, but the fourth, of an opal colour and almost transparent, is exceedingly fine. This last must be the sucker. When the fly is about to wound, the two horny antennae are made to embrace the part, the lancets are unsheathed, and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley |
