"Dusky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... known in every dusky Northwold lane or alley, where she always found or made a welcome for herself. The kindly counsel and ready hand were more potent than far larger ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the dusky wrinkles lapsed into gentler lines, for some one had the audacity to touch mademoiselle's hand with a birdlike tap of ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... as we turned to go Amid fair meadows, dusky in the night, The mists fell back upon the road below; Broke on our tired eyes the western light; The very graves were for a moment bright: And ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... and Kimberley he had carried on negotiations which had finally culminated, five years previously, in his leading a column of 500 hardy pioneers to the promising country of Mashonaland, which up to that time had lain in darkness under the cruel rule of the dusky monarch. During three strenuous years Dr. Jameson, with no military or legal education, had laboured to establish the nucleus of a civilized government in that remote country; and during the first part of that period the nearest point of ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... often comes as the result simply of an over-wearied body and mind, without any pain or accident whatever. It appears as an inability to see small distant objects, or to see at all in dusky twilight. The sight is also variable—good when the patient is not wearied, and bad when he is tired. When this comes on under thirty years of age, the eyes have almost certainly been overworked, and need rest. Rest from all reading and other work trying for the eyes is the ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... there was no reply. Everything was still but the bird, and the sparks that crackled now and then from the fire. The heavy gray shadows grew purple and grew black. The little foot-paths in the woods were blotted out of sight, and the far sky above the tree-tops grew dusky ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... for others! In vain, you will have harassed your mind with cankering thoughts for half a lifetime; for it will be just as if you had gone through the confused mazes of a dream on the third watch! Sudden a crash (will be heard) like the fall of a spacious palace, and a dusky gloominess (will supervene) such as is caused by a lamp about to spend itself! Alas! a spell of happiness will be suddenly (dispelled by) adversity! Woe is man in the world! for his ultimate doom is difficult ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... I stumbled as best I could into the Rue de Rivoli, across the Place de la Concorde and on to the Quai. I looked with sick eyes upon the sun, shining through the white foam of the fountain, pouring over the backs of the dusky bronze river-gods, on the far-away Arc, a structure of amethyst mist, on the countless vistas of grey stems and bare branches faintly green. Then I saw him again coming down one of the chestnut alleys ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... unfortunately happened that the portion of sky in that quarter was bare of stars over a space very considerably larger than would have been covered by the ship's canvas, and consequently I was without the assurance that would have been afforded me had the faint, dusky appearance that I took to be her sails alternately eclipsed and exposed a star. But I afterwards had reason to believe that I had really seen her, for when we had arrived within about a mile of the spot where I supposed her to be, a faint, wailing cry, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... fostered in Biblical times, expanded in China and Egypt, living on the painted jar, and breathing in the oaten reed, deified in Greece, and analyzed to-day, are natural cousins at the least, and they have come from the spacious home of their progenitor, upon our dusky and silent sphere, like Peace and Goodwill, with hands bound in an oath and contract never to part. We will spare a dissertation on chaos; we will not speak of matter and inertia; but as our greatest and purest fountain of ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... on whirring pinions, Scattering all of Hiisi's terrors, Brought the hissing of the serpents, And of snakes the dusky venom, 240 And of ants he brought the acid, And of toads the hidden poison, That the steel might thus be poisoned, In the tempering of ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... are clad in moccasins and beads. Her dress? Oh, next to nothing. Though undressed, Her slender arms are circled round with vine And dusky locks cling close ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... immediately surrounded, at a very respectable distance, by a cordon of Samoans. These were splendid-looking fellows. Their dusky bodies were strong and stalwart, and their faces were intelligent-looking. It was plain to be seen that they had not the slightest hostile intentions toward the aviators. On the contrary their features expressed clear friendliness, although ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... of such youth and loveliness, the dusky figure of Phoebus appears to great disadvantage. It is not happily conceived. Yet his air is noble and godlike, and his free commanding action, and conscious ease, as he carelessly guides, with one hand, the fiery steeds that are harnessed to his ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... over his shoulder, and, brave man as he was, it almost made him shudder. The whole party of Indians was on his track. He could see their dusky faces, distorted by wrath, and the longing for a savage revenge. He knew that Tom and he had little to hope for if they were caught. Fortunately their horses were strong and fleet, and not likely ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... render back their long committed dust. Now charnels rattle; scatter'd limbs, and all The various bones, obsequious to the call, Self-mov'd, advance; the neck perhaps to meet The distant head; the distant legs the feet. Dreadful to view, see thro' the dusky sky Fragments of bodies in confusion fly, To distant regions journeying, there to claim Deserted members, and complete the frame. When the world bow'd to Rome's almighty sword, Rome bow'd to Pompey, and confess'd her lord. Yet one day lost, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... ignorance are generally willing to trust to the pundits of the place,—look doubtful, uneasy, and bewildered. But they all do get properly placed and unplaced, so that the spectator at last acknowledges that over all this apparent chaos there is presiding a great genius of order. From dusky morn to dark night, and indeed almost throughout the night, the air is loaded with a succession of shrieks. The theory goes that each separate shriek,—if there can be any separation where the sound is so nearly continuous,—is a separate notice to separate ears of the coming or going ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Sincerity, clarity, candour, power, seem real once more, real and easy. In the light of great literary achievement, straight and wonderful, like the roads of the ancient Romans, barbarism torments the mind like a riddle. Yet there are the dusky barbarians!—fleeing from the harmonious tread of the ordered legions, running to hide themselves in the morass of vulgar sentiment, to ambush their nakedness in the ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Pers., is another edible species. It grows on the ground in woods. It is of a dusky or dark smoky color, and is deeply funnel-shaped, resembling a "horn of plenty," though usually straight. The fruiting surface ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... knew that; but she did not know that a quarter-strain of tropic sunshine streamed in his veins, and she knew that that was sufficient to put him outside the marriage pale. It was a strange world. There was the Honourable A. S. Cleghorn, who had married a dusky princess of the Kamehameha blood, yet men considered it an honour to know him, and the most exclusive women of the ultra-exclusive "Missionary Crowd" were to be seen at his afternoon teas. And there was Steve. No one had disapproved of his teaching her to ride a surf-board, nor of his leading ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... library is a kind of Greenwich Hospital for disabled novels and romances. Each of these books has been in the wars; some are unquestionably antiques. The tears of three generations have fallen upon their dusky pages. The heroes and the heroines are of another age than ours. Sir Charles Grandison is standing with his hat under his arm. Tom Jones plops from the tree into the water, to the infinite distress of Sophia. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... and shows me a little brigantine, he'd chartered, and with three dusky lads for a crew and some grub and two big chests on her quarter-deck we sail out. And the first thing I says when we were clear o' the harbor was: "What's them chests for?" And he opens up one of 'em and says: "Behold, senor, ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... it was, that cluster of white marble relics of the past on the bosom of dusky Pisa. It reminded me," said momma, poetically, "of an ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... great fortress, and the courtyard within the main gate is a gloomy, ill-shaped little paved space, barely big enough to give fifty men standing room. Nothing can give any idea of the crookedness of it all, of the small dark corridors, the narrow winding steps, the dusky inclined ascents, paved with broad flagstones that echo the lightest tread, and that must have rung and roared like sea caves to the tramp of armed men. And so it was in the cities, too. In Rome, bits of the old strongholds survive still. There were more of them thirty years ago. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... A dusky form, prone upon the ground, began to squirm under Wampus, who was then discovered to be sitting upon a big Indian and holding him prisoner. The chauffeur, partly an Indian himself, knew well how to manage his captive and quieted the fellow by squeezing his throat with ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... its crown, or its rind be peeled off, or if it be split, or bored, or if ever so little be wanting, it is disallowed. If a stain be spread over the smaller part of it, if it have lost its stalk, or if it be bored so that no part however small be wanting, it is allowed. A dusky citron is disallowed. A leek green one R. Meier "allows," but ...
— Hebrew Literature
... been a great success, and the Colonel knew he ought to be the happiest man in town, whereas he was the most miserable. He could not hear Mandy Ann's curses as she knelt on her mistress's grave, nor see her dusky arms swaying in the darkness to emphasize her maledictions. He didn't know there was a grave, but something weighed him down with unspeakable remorse. Every incident of his first visit South came back to him with startling ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... The dusky face grew very sad for a moment, tears springing to the dark eyes; but the voice was almost cheerful as she answered, "Yes, you's right, honey darlin' you's all right to go and see 'bout dem poor souls and let 'em see dere ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... trigger when "my purpose," he says "was checked by MacLeay, who called to me that another party of blacks had made their appearance on the left bank of the river. Turning round, I observed four men at the top of their speed." These were the dusky delegates, and the description given by Sturt of the conduct of the man who saved the situation is ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... that it was not out of their thoughts; and however dear what we are going to leave may be, all that is not particularly dear must cease to interest us much. If those reflections blend themselves with our gayest thoughts, must not their hue grow more dusky when public misfortunes and disgraces cast a general shade?(458) The age, it is true, soon emerges out of every gloom, and wantons as before. But does not that levity imprint a still deeper melancholy on those who do think? Have any of our ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... lake, known to the English as George and to the French as Saint Sacrement. Now, though, they traveled by night and slept and rested by day. But Lake George in the moonlight was grand and beautiful beyond compare. Its waters were dusky silver as the beams poured in floods upon it, and the lofty shores, in their covering of dark green, seemed to hold up ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... which the waves dashed and roared. On their left and far above them towered a great and isolated rock, its precipitous sides scored here and there with twisted lines of red and yellow quartz; and on the summit of this bold headland, amid the dark green of the sea-grass, they could see the dusky ruins—the crumbling walls and doorways and battlements—of the castle that is named in all the stories of King Arthur and his knights. The bridge across to the mainland has, in the course of centuries, fallen away, but there, on the other side of the wide chasm, were the ruins of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... dark through a distance of about twenty yards, occupying an intermediate portion of the tunnel. When the sun is near the meridian, and his rays fall upon both entrances, the light reflected from both extremities of the tunnel contributes to mollify the darkness of this interior portion into a dusky twilight. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... a whole day, he went dashing madly through the forest, a piece of hide around the colt's neck his only accoutrements. Then he was in his element and free, with the fresh mountain air fanning his dusky brow, infusing into his stalwart frame ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... attention to this region, and observed several changes in the Lacus Moeris, to the east of Syrtis Major. The lake disappeared altogether for some considerable time, then reappeared. Last September he saw it again, and it was evident some further changes had occurred; and he also saw some dusky shadings on the adjacent desert of Lybia. There seems little doubt but that he actually saw, though imperfectly, the new canals which Professor Lowell's much clearer atmosphere and larger instrument enabled him ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... soft hands, fair, Brush his cheeks like a feather, And bright brown tresses and dusky hair Meet ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... overwhelming odds. In spite of the danger of our position, I could not help being struck with the magnificence of the spectacle presented by the great fleet of boats now fast advancing towards us. The warriors had all assumed their fighting decorations, with white stripes painted round their dusky bodies to strike terror into the beholder. Their head-dress consisted of many-coloured feathers projecting from the hair, which they had matted and caused to stand bolt upright from the head. Each boat ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... at once, and to fear nothing, but be bold and true. And Perseus knew that she was none other than Athena, the queen of the air, and that her companion was Mercury, the lord of the summer clouds. But before he could thank them for their kindness, they had vanished in the dusky twilight. ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... is turned towards us, and lo! it is the face of Atene, and amid her dusky hair the aura is reflected in jewelled gold, the symbol of her royal rank. She looks at the shaven priest; she laughs as though in triumph; she points to the westering sun and to the river, and ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... fire—without evil intent, I do truly believe. Surely it was by chance that he found its waxen face softening under the stove's glow—and has Heaven affixed nails to any boy of seven that, in a dusky room at a quiet moment, would have behaved with more restraint? I trow not. One surprised dig and all was lost. Of that fair surface of rounded cheek, fattened chin, and noble brow not a square inch was left ungouged. It was indeed a face ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... was seen, would have attracted notice—slim and erect and trim in figure, and a decided brunette, a real "nut-brown maid", with a pale olive complexion, the brightest of soft, dark, southern eyes, and a quantity of fluffy, silky, dusky curls, tied—American fashion—with two big bows of very wide scarlet ribbon, one on the top of her head and one at the nape of her neck. She smiled as the others entered, showing an even little set of white ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... an occasional partaker, and whereof I may well say, that the deep afflictive tale which awakeneth our sorrows, is so relieved with brilliant similitudes, dulcet descriptions, pleasant poems, and engaging interludes, that they seem as the stars of the firmament, beautifying the dusky robe of night. And though I wot well how much the lovely and quaint language will suffer by my widowed voice, widowed in that it is no longer matched by my beloved viol-de-gamba, I will essay to give you ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... to the barn. There was still only dusky half-light. He pulled the doors almost shut behind him, leaving only a four-inch gap to see through. Now the car was safely out of sight and there was no sign that any living ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... railroad iron. Hence, also, is obtained a plentiful supply of fuel for the use of the engines. Whoever had gazed into the dismal obscurity of the broad cavern mouth, whence ever and anon darted huge tongues of dusky flame, and had seen the strange, half-shaped monsters, and visions of faces horribly grotesque, into which the smoke seemed to wreathe itself, and had heard the awful murmurs, and shrieks, and deep, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... more," thought Mrs. Morrison, watching their dusky golden curve, "and the girl would have had scarlet hair and white-eyebrows and masses of freckles and been frightful." And she sighed an impatient sigh, which, if translated into verse, would ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Exploring far and wide the watery waste, For sight of ship from England. Every speck Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale With conflict of contending hopes and fears. But comes at last the dull and dusky eve, And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepared To dream all night of what the day denied. Alas, expect it not. We found no bait To tempt us in thy country. Doing good, Disinterested good, is not our trade. We travel far, 'tis true, but not for naught; ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... said Jeanie, gazing on the dusky ocean of Highland hills, which now, piled above each other, and intersected by many a lake, stretched away on the opposite side of the river to the northward. "Is yon high ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... with human fears. Then watch the new-born glories in thine eye, Glancing like lightning from its chariot cloud, And list these words, which know not how to die,— Joy's inspiration gushing forth aloud: Then back again unto the world and sigh, And wrap my heart up in a dusky shroud. ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... convention is made betwixt man and woman, it sanctifies their most private walks: so, notwithstanding it was dusky, yet as both our roads lay the same way, we made no scruple of walking along the Quai ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... summoned one tall form after another out of the dusky surroundings, and around the blazing logs robes were spread here and there, on which the men reclined. By and by the women came and dropped down near the fire, and added the treble of their voices to the deep tones of the ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... the church door and peeped in. The dusky glow from the western sky, entering through a narrow window, illuminated the shafts and arches, the old oak carvings, and the discoloured monuments, with the melancholy glare ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... in opening wide The door that had been fast; And I could see Those crickets three Like dusky ghosts flit past. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... longing for moisture, and a face worthy of a murderer, holding a bloody cup in its clawed hands, out of which it seemed eager to drink. The shape was strange enough and the coloring splendid,—a kind of glistening green and dusky gold,—beautifully varnished. It was in fact the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the couch of his beloved maiden, one dreaming over dreams of war and slaughter, another of love and wedded joys, one in fancy grasping the spear and the war-club, another and a younger the bosom of a dusky maiden of his tribe. Over their heads the tall forest tree waved in the night wind, giving the melancholy music of sighing branches; beside them ran the clear waters of the river, slightly murmuring as they rolled away to the land, which our nation gave to their good brother Miquon[C]. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... read those tales from the old school reading book, or heard them recited as we sat at grandfather's knee, what pictures impressed themselves on our eager minds! The log meeting-house, and before it the stacked muskets and pacing sentinel; the dusky savage faces hiding behind every tree; the midnight assault: the lurid fire, and the brandished tomahawk—these are pictures that have sometimes come with startling vividness to our youthful imaginations. And then our fancies have seen the so-called witches of Salem, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... excitement, and there was a dusky glow in her eyes that Tom could not translate with certainty, but there seemed to be something threatening about it. The handbill had the usual rude woodcut of a turbaned Negro woman running, with the customary bundle on a stick over her shoulder, and the heading in bold type, "$100 REWARD." Tom ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... time to think. As he glanced round the room at the flushed faces of the boys, some of whom he could not recognise in the dusky atmosphere, a qualm of disgust and shame passed over him. Several of them were smoking, and, with Ball and Brigson heading the line on each side of the table, he could not help observing what a bad set they looked. The remembrance ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... horizontal ridge by confining it between two boards, one running back from the forehead at an angle of about forty degrees, and the other up perpendicularly from the back of the neck. When a head had been shaped artistically the dusky maiden owner was marked as a belle, and one could become reconciled to it after a time, but when carelessness and neglect had governed in the adjustment of the boards, there probably was nothing in the form of a human being on the face of the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... European to catch a glimpse of Georgian Bay, and a missionary was probably the first of the French race to launch his canoe on the lordly Mississippi. As a father the priest watched over his wilderness flock; while the French traders fraternized with the red men, and often mated with dusky beauties. Many French traders, according to Sir William Johnson—a good authority, of whom we shall learn more later-were 'gentlemen in manners, character, and dress,' and they treated the natives kindly. At the great centres of trade—Montreal, ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean—they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses—even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... all good judgments that lay torpid have been awakened, and the light prevails against the darkness. But as bats and owls, the haters of light, are ever most restless in the season when nights are shortest, so are purblind egotists most uneasy when their dusky range is contracted by the near approach and sustained ascendancy of genius. We now put up a screen for the weak-sighted, now withdraw it from stronger eyes; thus we plague and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... first dusky chalets of the hamlet of Bel-Oiseau straggled towards me, and it was music in my ears to hear the cattle blow and rattle in their stalls under the sleeping lofts as I passed outside in the moonlight. Five minutes more, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... he was quite a fine fellow For the country he lived in—but, ah! His skin was a dull, dusky yellow, And his hair was as long as 'twould grow. ('Tis the fashion in ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... into the past, and the days and nights spread into minutes. The sun had ceased to have the appearance of a tail; and now rose and set—a tremendous globe of a glowing copper-bronze hue; in parts ringed with blood-red bands; in others, with the dusky ones, that I have already mentioned. These circles—both red and black—were of varying thicknesses. For a time, I was at a loss to account for their presence. Then it occurred to me, that it was scarcely likely that the sun would cool evenly all over; and that these markings were due, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... colored glass—and bearing transparencies inscribed with trenchant sentiments. The houses of their adherents along the route were illuminated from attic to cellar with rows of candles, and the atmosphere wore a dusky glow of red and green fire. To Selma all this was entrancing. She revelled in it as an introduction to the more conspicuous life which she was about to lead. She showed herself a zealous and enthusiastic partisan, shrouding the house in the darkness of Erebus on the occasion when the ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... phantom, rising as they advanced nearer, suddenly caught a trumpet, and blowing through it a blast of superhuman strength, plunged into the Rubicon, passed to the other bank, and disappeared in the dusky twilight of the dawn. Upon which Csar exclaimed:—"It is finished—the die is cast—let us follow whither the guiding portents from Heaven, and the malice of our enemy, alike summon us to go." So saying, he crossed the river with impetuosity; and, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... in the woods, and vie with each other in telling extravagant stories, until the whip-poor-will began his nightly moaning, and the fireflies sparkled in the gloom. Then came the perilous journey homeward. What delight we would take in getting up wanton panics in some dusky part of the wood; scampering like frightened deer; pausing to take breath; renewing the panic, and scampering off ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... framed in soft, silky masses of dusky auburn hair which hung over the broad, white forehead, but at the back was scarcely longer than a boy's. The features, though not regular, were delicate and piquant; the usual faint rose-flush on the cheeks deepened now to carnation, perhaps because of the slight contretemps, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... to adoration by his dusky-hued friends, and in the dark days of the beginning of the war, which every Wilmingtonian will remember with a shudder, in those days of doubt, confusion, and suspicion, without his knowledge or consent, Thomas Garrett's house ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... overhead as one or two belated little creatures, scarcely visible, pass quickly for the cover of the furze on the hill. The short January evening is of but a few minutes' duration; just now it was only dusky, and already the interior of the wood is impenetrable to the glance. There rises a loud though distant clamour of rooks and daws, who have restlessly moved in their roost-trees. Darkness is almost on them, yet ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... War's dreadful lord proclaim. Bursts out by frequent fits the expansive flame. Whirl'd in tempestuous eddies flies The surging smoke o'er all the darken'd skies. The cheerful face of heaven no more is seen, Fades the morn's vivid blush to deadly pale: The bat flits transient o'er the dusky green, Night's shrieking birds ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... Sierra Leone, where the negro claims to be civilised, a dusky belle, after dropping her napkin at a Government House dinner, has been heard to say to her neighbour, 'Please, Mr. Officer-man, pick up my towel.' The other day a dark dame who missed her parasol thus addressed H.E.: ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... something moving in a corner of the chamber. This began to alarm him, for it was not natural that the senses, one after the other, should conspire to deceive him. Raising his eyes, and shading them with his hand from the glare of the lamp beside him, he observed a dusky object advancing towards him with short hops like those of a raven. As the apparition approached him, its aspect became more terrifying; for it took the unmistakable form of a human head separated from the trunk and dripping with blood; and when at length, with a spring, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... this agitation of the world, threatens to rouse himself into preternatural wakefulness. Shallower but also louder, there is magnetic D'Espremenil, with his tropical heat (he was born at Madras); with his dusky confused violence; holding of Illumination, Animal Magnetism, Public Opinion, Adam Weisshaupt, Harmodius and Aristogiton, and all manner of confused violent things: of whom can come no good. The very Peerage is infected with the leaven. Our Peers have, in too many cases, laid aside ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To he a moment's ornament; Her eyes, as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. * * * * * And now I see, with eye serene, The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveler between life and death; The ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... moment. He wanted a fuller sense of that ebony-bottomed abyss, with its pale encircling walls reaching up to the dusky blue sky and the brilliant stars. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... gathered in a Caspian shell to make the charm withal, when she had first bathed in seven ever-flowing streams, and had called seven times on Brimo, nurse of youth, night-wandering Brimo, of the underworld, queen among the dead,—in the gloom of night, clad in dusky garments. And beneath, the dark earth shook and bellowed when the Titanian root was cut; and the son of Iapetus himself groaned, his soul distraught with pain. And she brought the charm forth and placed it in the fragrant band which engirdled ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... door. The walk was brown and slippery with pine needles. Tall old pine trees stood in groups about the yard. There were also elm and horse-chestnut trees. The horse-chestnuts were in blossom, holding up their white bouquets, which showed dimly. It was now quite dusky. ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... puts the thing on with three Hamlets, two ghosts, and a pair of blood-hounds. It's called the Uncle-Tom-Hamlet Combination, and instead of my falling in love with one crazy Ophelia, I am made to woo three dusky maniacs named Topsy on a canvas ice-floe, while the blood-hounds bark behind the scenes. What sort of treatment is that for a ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... life and ourselves. Never can we know the majesty of the will of God concerning us except by understanding Jesus and the work the Father gave Him to do. Now, nothing is of a more heavenly delight than to enter into a dusky room in the house of your friend, and there, with a blow of the heavenly rod, draw light from the dark wall—open a window, a fountain of the eternal light, and let in the truth which is the life of the world. Joyously would ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... crack sprinter of his town—somewhere in the South—was unfortunate enough to have a very dilatory laundress. One evening, when he was out for a practice run in his rather airy and abbreviated track costume, he chanced to dash past the house of that dusky lady, who at the time was a couple of weeks in ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... Origanus, Galileo, and others, maintain of the earth's motion, that 'tis a planet, and shines as the moon doth, which contains in it [3118]"both land and sea as the moon doth:" for so they find by their glasses that Maculae in facie Lunae, "the brighter parts are earth, the dusky sea," which Thales, Plutarch, and Pythagoras formerly taught: and manifestly discern hills and dales, and such like concavities, if we may subscribe to and believe Galileo's observations. But to avoid these paradoxes of the earth's motion (which the Church of Rome ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and over; Swinburne's "Triumph of Time," and four lines of it rang in his memory afterward on warm nights when he saw the fireflies among dusky tree trunks and heard the low drone of many frogs. Then Eleanor seemed to come out of the night and stand by him, and he heard her throaty voice, with its tone of a fleecy-headed ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... ceased speaking, when a human figure of a dusky hue appeared before him, and said, "My sovereign, here is a confection left me by my ancestors, with an assurance, that whoever might eat of it would have offspring." The sultan eagerly took the confection, and by the blessing of Allah, one of the ladies of his haram conceived that very night. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... of you who have been on its rivers know there is but one Florida, with its bearded oaks and fronded palms; its dusky woods, carpeted with glassy waters; its cypress bays, where lonely cranes pose, silently thoughtful (of stray polliwogs); and its birds of wondrous plumage that rise with startled splash when the noiseless canoe glides down upon ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... was asleep, and his little granddaughter sat quietly down on a chair by the bedside to watch by him, in that gentle sorrowful patience which women often know but which hardly belongs to childhood. Her eye and thoughts, as she sat there in the dusky twilight, fell upon the hand of her grandfather which still fondly held one of her own; and fancy travelled fast and far, from what it was to what it had been. Rough, discoloured, stiff, as it lay there now, she thought ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... was a simple, but a marvellously poised thing of black and silver: in the words of the correct journal. With her tight, black, bright hair, her arched brows, her dusky-ruddy face and her bare shoulders; her strange equanimity, her long, slow, slanting looks; she looked foreign and frightening, clear as a cameo, but dark, far off. Julia was the English beauty, in a lovely blue ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... protectors that would be peer to the fiercest denizens of the forest. The wolves, taking the hint conveyed by the dogs, stopped in their mad career, and, after a moment's consideration, turned and fled. I watched them until their dusky forms disappeared over a neighboring hill; then, taking off my skates, I wended my way to the house, with feelings which may be better imagined than described. But, even yet, I never see a broad sheet of ice in the moonshine, without thinking of the sniffling breath, and those fearful things ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... From glossy evergreens; the mistletoe Pearl-studded, and the holly's lustrous bough Gleaming with coral fruitage; but we muse Of laurel blent with cypress. Gaze we down Yon crowded aisle? the mourner's dusky weeds Sadden the eye; and they who wear them not Have mourning in their hearts, or lavish tears Of sympathy on griefs too deeply lodged For man's weak ministry. A happy Christmas! Ah me! how many hearths are desolate! How many a vacant seat awaits in vain ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... soon began, but I knew the MOON'S path now, and followed the dusky, coppery spot without difficulty. At 1.33 it emerged, and in a very few moments I saw the solid column pass from Circle No. 3 again, deploy on the edge again, and ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... pillow beside her sleeping sister, it was long before her eyes closed and she sunk into utter forgetfulness. Her mind seemed crowded with vague images and disconnected thoughts. Recollections of the hours spent in Sheen Valley, the weird effect of the dusky figures passing and repassing in the dim, uncertain light, the faint streaks of light across the snow, the dull winter sky, the eager welcome of the lonely girl, the long friendly talk ripening into budding intimacy, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... how there hove a dusky barge, Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, Beneath them; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms, Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream—by these Three Queens with crowns of gold: and from them rose A cry that shiver'd to the tingling ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... to show himself in the neighbourhood of Hale Castle while Geraldine Challoner was there. He had an opportunity of talking confidentially to Clarissa once after dinner, when Mr. Granger, who had not fairly finished his nap in the railway-carriage, had retired to a dusky corner of the drawing-room and sunk anew into slumber, and when Miss Granger seemed closely occupied in the manufacture of an embroidered pincushion for a fancy fair. Absorbing as the manipulation of chenille and beads might ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... suggested that a glass of hot brandy and water would do him no possible harm after his drive, and stepped to the corner cupboard without waiting for an answer. It was a piece of furniture of some value, lacquered over with Chinese figures in dusky gold. But the doctor's gaze travelled rather to the gun-racks. He counted a dozen firearms, antique but serviceable, and suggested that, with powder and shot, Landeweddy was capable of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... an anxious lookout for the Maine hills that push so boldly down into the sea. At length we saw them,—faint, dusky shadows in the horizon, looming up in an ashy color and with a most poetical light. We made out clearly Mt. Desert, and felt repaid for our journey by the sight of this famous island, even at such a distance. I pointed out the hills to the man at the wheel, and asked if we should ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Zulus on the hill appeared, a dusky host, They found our gallant English boys' 'pale faces' at their post; But paler faces were behind, within the barricade— The faces of the sick who rose ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... certainty it was not made by one of those black-coated birds calling to its mate or the flock from which it had strayed. Neither Boone nor Kenton distinguished any difference between the tone and what they had heard times without number, and yet neither held a doubt that it was emitted by a dusky spy stealing through the woods, and that it bore a momentous message to others of his kith ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... bird of song, there's one in this caique The Rose would also seek, So he might learn like you to love and speak." Then answered me the bird of dusky beak, "The Rose, the Rose of Love ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... has imprudently married a tempestuous tyrant, Montoni, who, to further his own ends, hurries his wife and niece from the gaiety of Venice to the gloom of Udolpho. After a journey fraught with terror, amid rugged, lowering mountains and through dusky woods, we reach the castle of Udolpho at nightfall. The sombre exterior and the shadow haunted hall are so ominous that we are prepared for the worst when we enter its portals. The anticipation is half pleasurable, half fearful, as we shudder at the thought of what may befall us within its ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... the trusty almanac Of the punctual coming-back, On their due days, of the birds. I marked them yestermorn, A flock of finches darting Beneath the crystal arch, Piping, as they flew, a march,— Belike the one they used in parting Last year from yon oak or larch; Dusky sparrows in a crowd, Diving, darting northward free, Suddenly betook them all, Every one to his hole in the wall, Or to his niche in ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... how fortunate I am to experience these emotions in Hyde Park, whereas my fellows have to go to Switzerland and to climb up Mont Blanc, to feel half what I am feeling now, as I stand looking across the level park watching the sunset, a dusky one. The last red bar of light fades, and nothing remains but the grey park with the blue of the suburb behind it, flowing away full of mist and people, dim and mournful to the pallid lights of Kensington; and its crowds are like strips of ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... obelisk. That Rodney was angry with her and had made this opportunity for speaking to her, Katharine knew very well; she was neither glad nor sorry that the time had come, nor, indeed, knew what to expect, and thus remained silent. The carriage grew smaller and smaller upon the dusky road, and still Rodney did not speak. Perhaps, she thought, he waited until the last sign of the carriage had disappeared beneath the curve of the road and they were left entirely alone. To cloak their silence she read ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... for selfish gain Beneath the garb of sacrificial faith— Sin so distasteful to the Lord that Saul Sat in the dark displeasure of his God. (d) And out from this displeasure, like the dawn From dusky night, the youthful David sprang— The Lord's anointed, yea, the Lord's beloved: Sweet Bard of Bethlehem! whose harp divine, Tuned to the throbbings of a guileless heart, Soothed the dark spirit of the sinful King, And woke his life to light and hope again, (e) ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... smiled tenderly upon Athanasia, and she durst not look at the reeds as she talked, lest their crescendo sadness yield a foreboding. Just then a wee girl appeared, clad in a multi-hued garment, evidently a sister to the small fishermen. Her keen black eyes set in a dusky face glanced sharply and suspiciously at the group as she clambered over the wet embankment, and it seemed the drizzling mist grew colder, the sobbing wind more pronounced in its prophetic wail. Athanasia rose suddenly. "Let us go," she said; ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... was hovering near in his surplice, and the pew-opener was all in a fluster at the idea of a runaway marriage. Brian came out of the dusky background—the daylight being tempered by small painted windows in heavy stone mullions—as Ida entered the church. Everything was ready. Before she knew how it came to pass, she was standing before the altar, and the fatal words ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... you are!' he cried, when the dusky yellow form at last turned the corner. 'I had nearly given you up! Indeed, I almost wish you had not come, for I hardly know ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... an exclamation as he turned his face towards her. Round his eyes were traced two yellow circles, and his mouth was enclosed by a parenthesis of vermilion; an arabesque pattern adorned each dusky cheek. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... is reared at the expense of two or more song-birds. For every one of these dusky little pedestrians there amid the grazing cattle there are two or more sparrows, or vireos, or warblers, the less. It is a big price to pay,—two larks for a bunting,—two sovereigns for a shilling; but Nature does not hesitate occasionally to contradict ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... bright and strong by the constant bath and the temperate breeze. They were not cumbered with clothing; they wore no long, sweating gowns, but their smooth, shining skins reflected back their sun, which gave them such a rich and dusky charm. ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... of the horizon behind him faded to a dusky gray and the dusk thickened from twilight to dark while he stood there waiting, leaning heavily upon the pike-pole, shifting more and more uneasily from one tired foot to the other. He had turned at last to go and set a light ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... good deal that Alec Flandrau, Billy Mackenzie, and Luck Cullison were known to be backing him, but it was worth much more that his wife of a week sat beside him in the courtroom. Every time they looked at the prisoner the jurymen saw too her dusky gallant little head and slender figure. They remembered the terrible experience through which she had so recently passed. She had come through it to happiness. Every look and motion of the girl wife radiated love for the young scamp who had won her. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... conventional number of hours in my cot, in the operation of what is facetiously called sleeping, I mounted on deck at about 5 A.M.... I wish I could send you a sketch of that gloomy hill at the foot of which Victoria lies, as it loomed sullenly in the dusky morning, its crest wreathed with clouds, and its cheeks wrinkled by white lines that marked the track of the descending torrents. It was still blowing and raining as hard as ever, but I took my two ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Scornfully calm and cold as before, "Friedrich, you Count of Telramund, for what reason," she asks, "do you distrust me?" Hotly he pours forth his reasons. "Do you ask? Was it not your testimony, your report, which induced me to accuse that innocent girl? You, living in the dusky woods, did you not mendaciously aver to me that from your wild castle you had seen the dark deed committed? With your own eyes seen how Elsa drowned her brother in the tarn? And did you not ensnare my ambitious heart with the prophecy that the ancient ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... insects, however high the instinct of the one, and however low the instincts of the other. With respect to the differences of race, a conjecture has occurred to me that much may be due to the correlation of complexion (and consequently hair) with constitution. Assume that a dusky individual best escaped miasma, and you will readily see what I mean. I persuaded the Director-General of the Medical Department of the Army to send printed forms to the surgeons of all regiments in tropical countries to ascertain this point, but I daresay I shall never get any ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... poor man's heart; 240 Thither no more the peasant shall repair To sweet oblivion of his daily care; No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, No more the wood-man's ballad shall prevail; No more the smith his dusky brown shall clear, 245 Relax his pond'rous strength, and lean to hear; The host himself no longer shall be found Careful to see the mantling bliss go round; Nor the coy maid, half willing to be press'd, Shall kiss the cup to pass ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... All three had been born in a single night: the eldest at evening, the middle one at midnight, and the youngest just as the sky was lightening with the dawn. For this reason they were called Evening, Midnight, and Sunrise. Evening was dusky, with brown eyes and hair; Midnight was dark, with eyes and hair as black as charcoal; while Sunrise had hair golden as the sun, and eyes blue as morning sky. And all three were as strong as any of the strong men and mighty bogatirs ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... innocent and lovely race, adorned only with shells and the flowers of hibiscus; and, intermingled with that race, in accordance with indigenous marriage ceremonies, the crew of the Santa Margherita now rear a dusky brood. In her last extant letter, addressed to the leader of the corps de ballet at the Ring Theatre in Vienna, Madame Milli Orth herself hinted at a No-Man's Land, which they were seeking as the home of their future happiness. They have found it now, having trodden ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... school-boys faintly swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away; the bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the dusky hall. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... in the midst of an eager explanation to us when there was a rustling in the bushes below, and a dusky figure came up, caught sight of us behind the barricade, and stopped short. But our prisoner uttered a call, and the dark, pleasant-faced figure came on fearlessly, found the opening we had left, and the next moment was down upon her knees wailing softly and passing her hands ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... whatever point you will and she will satisfy. For the rustic the fields of corn, the craggy mountain, the blossomy lane, or the rush of water through the greenwood. But for your good Cockney the shoals of gloom, the dusky tracery of chimney-stack and gaswork, the torn waste of tiles, and the subtle tones of dawn and dark in lurking court and alley. Was there ever a lovelier piece of colour than Cannon Street Station at night? Entering ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... round the bingo,—of a gun, You musty, dusky, husky son! John Bull, who loves a harmless joke, Is apt at me to grin; But why be cross with laughing folk, Unless they laugh and win? John Bull has money in his box; And though his wit's divine, Yet let me laugh at Johnny's locks, And John may ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... awoke, late in the day, he found Mafuta sitting at his feet with a broad grin on his dusky countenance. ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... prevail, and that Britain, "the fond ally," will display her blundering heroism in vain. Being against the government, he is against the war. History has falsified his politics, but his descriptions of places and scenes, of "Morena's dusky height," of Cadiz and the bull-fight, retain their freshness and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... gleaming above the dusky pine trees. The soft December air, mild as spring on that sheltered coast, scarcely stirred the drooping boughs that overshadowed the terrace. Colonel Estcourt lit his cigar, and began to pace with slow and thoughtful steps beneath the many lighted ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... sheep. At length, descending by a very steep road, I reached a beautiful little stream, over which a rustic bridge was thrown. As I looked down upon the rippling stream beneath, on the surface of which the dusky evening flies were dipping, I made a resolve, if I prospered in his lordship's good graces, to devote a day to the "angle" there, before I left the country. It was now growing late, and remember Lord Kilkee's ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... clubbing those who resisted, he kept pace with the foremost. In his left hand, however, he carried his trusty revolver, for he did not propose to be assassinated by skulkers in the dark passage-ways. Seeing a man levelling a gun from a dusky corner, he fired instantly, and man and gun dropped. As the guardians of the law approached the scuttle, having fought their way thither, the ruffians stood ready to hurl down bricks, torn from the chimneys; but two or three well-aimed shots cleared the way, and the ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... missionaries translated my simple address to the dusky congregation, who listened with wondering awe to the ever-new story of Jesus. As the Lengua language contains no word for God, the Indians have adopted our English word, and both that name and Jesus came out in striking distinctness ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... swept around the projecting corner and lost to view. It looked, at the very least, treasons, conspiracies, and mutinous outbursts—that shadowy multitude surging up that narrow and steep and desperately crooked dusky footway. I felt that just around the lighted turn, where the impetuous forms appeared clearly in the moment of their disappearance, surely must be the royal palace they were bent upon sacking; and it was with a sigh ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... has heard the words that entered his ears, whether the facts were facts and the idea is indeed an idea, then he resumes his wonted bearing, thinks of his worldly interests, obeys some envoy of death and of oblivion whose dusky mantle covers like a pall an ancient Humanity of which the moderns retain no memory. Man never pauses; he goes his round, he vegetates until the appointed day when his Axe falls. If this wave force, this pressure of bitter waters prevents all progress, no doubt it ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... grand dashes made by cords of folks, from snob to nob, patrician to plebeian, in their gyrations to form a circle, in which they might be the centre pin! This desire, or feeling, is a part and parcel of human nature; you will observe it every where—among the dusky and man-eating citizens of the Fejee Islands—the dog-eating population of China—the beef-eaters of England, and their descendants, ye Yankoos of the new world; all, all have a ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... a dusky-haired senorita, Her dark, misty eyes near your own, And her scarlet-red mouth, Like a rose of the south, The reddest that ever was grown, So close that you catch Her quick-panting breath As across your own face it is blown, With a sigh, and ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... with "God, Freedom, Immortality" still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... crimson head, neck, and breast, and a yellowish olive-coloured belly, from which last circumstance it might, perhaps, not improperly be called the yellow-bellied wood-pecker. The other is a larger, and much more elegant bird, of a dusky brown colour, on the upper part, richly waved with black, except about the head, the belly of a reddish cast, with round black spots, a black spot on the breast, and the under-side of the wings and tail of a plain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... customary fee, he walked about half- way across it, and stood for a while listening to the incessant swift rush of the river beneath him. Lights twinkled from the boats moored on either side,—the moon poured down a wide shower of white beams on the rapid flood,—the city, dusky and dream- like, crowned with the majestic towers of the Dom, looked picturesquely calm and grand—it was a night of perfect beauty and wondrous peace. And he was to die!—to die and leave all this, the present fairness of the world,—he ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... shore brilliant boats glided to the rendezvous; some hung with luminous globes of blue and silver, some with lanterns fiery-red, flower-shaped, golden, green, or variegated, as if a rainbow were festooned about the viewless masts. Up and down they flashed, stealing out from dusky nooks and floating in their own radiance, as they went to join the procession that wound about the island like a splendid sea-serpent uncoiling itself ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... composed enough to observe delicately the face of his new acquaintance. He had but little time, for of course he could not stand for long babbling stupidities with a country girl. The face was strong and dark, with composed, full lips, and a dusky glow in the cheeks. The eyes which had at first put him to such confusion looked liquid and strangely attractive when the light of laughter was in them. Mr. Ellington had fallen in with a beautiful girl. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... great requisites for a Polynesian beauty are to be fat and as fair as their dusky skins will permit. To insure this, favorite children, whether boys or girls, were regularly fattened and imprisoned till nightfall when a little gentle exercise was permitted. If refractory, the guardian would whip the culprit for ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of medium height, often of superb physical development; of a dusky bronze colour, piercing eyes, low forehead, lank hair, which is dressed as a chignon and hangs down the back of the neck. The body is agile, the whole movement is rapid, and they have a wonderful power of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... am now in Florida in my little hut in the orange orchard, with the broad expanse of the blue St. John's in front, and the waving of the live-oaks, with their long, gray mosses, overhead, and the bright gold of oranges looking through dusky leaves around. It is like Sorrento,—so like that I can quite dream of being there. And when I get here I enter another life. The world recedes; I am out of it; it ceases to influence; its bustle and noise die away ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... underbrush, Beaudry took stock of this dusky nymph with surprise. In her attitude was something wild and free and proud. It was as if she challenged his presence even though she had summoned him. Across his mind flashed the thought that this was woman primeval before the conventions of civilization ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... is become a lavender; the outlines of earth and sky are become more distinct; the mountain peaks, the dusky veil being rent, are separating themselves from the heaven's embrace; the trees in the distance no longer seem like rain-clouds; and the silhouettes of the monasteries are casting off the cloak of night. The lavender is melting now into heliotrope, and the heliotrope ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... they were seated, and clinging with their little dusky arms round his legs, "are the very rummest little kids I ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... "Dusky-radiant, far, and somber, In the coolness of thy state, From my eyelids chasing slumber, Thou dost smile upon ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... came into touch with other vessels engaged in loading hides and tallow, and as this was the work in which we were soon to be engaged, we looked on with some curiosity, especially at the labours of the crew of the Ayacucho, who were dusky Sandwich Islanders. And besides practice in landing on this difficult coast, we experienced the difficulties involved in having suddenly to slip our cables and then, when the weather allowed of it, coming to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... new thirst for adventure and gain. They had been told of fertile plains, of splendid tropical forests, of the beauty of the Indian maidens, of romantic incidents and hair-breadth escapes, of the wonderful influence exercised by a white man on tribes of dusky warriors, and who knew what fairy marvels or unimagined wealth might be found in the deep interior of this land of hope and mystery. Thus when Hernando de Soto, who had been with Pizarro in Peru and seen its gold-plated temples, called for volunteers to explore and conquer the unknown ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I was aroused by the crew getting up the anchor: in a few minutes, the head of the 'fire-boat,' as my dusky neighbours termed it, was turned down the coast, and on we went, steaming, smoking, and splashing, after the most orthodox fashion of fire-boats in general. I had now time and opportunity to look around me. Every available spot of the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... gloom under the crowns of the foliaged trees and palms. It is the home of shadows. Only lianas, these parasites of the vegetable kingdom, raise their stems above the dusky vault to open their calyces in the sun. Round them flutter innumerable butterflies in gaudy colours. On the border between sunlight and shade scream droll parrots, and busy pigeons steer their way among the trees on rustling wings. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the foremost boat, as Law could now clearly see, sat a slender young man, clad in the uniform, now soiled and faded, of a captain in the British army. His boat was propelled by four dusky paddlers, Indians of the East. Stalwart, powerful, silent, they sent the craft on down stream, their keen eyes glancing swiftly from one point to the other of the ever-changing panorama, yet finding nothing that would seem to ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... the Rajah she was frankly disappointed. He had been educated in England, and had acquired a patronizing condescension of demeanour which she found singularly unattractive. He never treated her with familiarity, but she did not like the look of his dusky eyes. They always smiled, but to her there was something unpleasant behind the smile. In her private soul she deemed ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Wiggins? Even in the sadness of hope deferred, those ladies who had entertained him once, and speculated on his possible return, declared Mr. Jordan a 'thorough gentleman'. Lodgers, as a class, do not recommend themselves in Islington; Mr. Jordan shone against the dusky background with almost dazzling splendour. To speak of lodgers as of cattle, he was a prize creature. A certain degree of comfort he firmly exacted; he might be a trifle fastidious about cooking; he ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... now and then to breathe deeply, and to try and still the excessive beating of my heart. The drums continued to sound, the notes becoming harsher and more distinct as I approached. At the top of the steps I found myself before a little stone doorway, through which a very faint dusky glimmer emerged. I passed in, treading on tiptoe, and came along a narrow stone passage, down which the sound of the drumming made a dismal echo. At the further end of the passage the way was closed by a thick curtain made of a substance that felt like stiff leather, and was, I believe, the hide ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... A dusky courier, fleet-footed and wary-eyed, dashed swiftly along the roadway that, three spear-lengths wide, spanned the green plain and led from the royal city to the Palace of the Hill, the wonderful rural retreat of the good ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... little cup-bearers, black, brown, and yellow, who always flew like shuttles back and forth between the big house and the distant kitchen while Miss Penelope was making the breakfast coffee. It required much flying of small dusky legs, to and fro, before the cold water was cold enough, the hot water hot enough, and the fresh egg fresh enough, to satisfy Miss Penelope that the coffee would be all ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... will understand, was not the deep night of the other side of the planet; it was rather a dusky twilight, and as our eyes became accustomed to it, we could begin to discern something of the character of our surroundings. We flew within a hundred yards of the ground, which appeared to be perfectly ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... brunettes; the Syrian spears, so limber and so straight, Tell of the slender dusky maids, so lithe and proud of gait. Languid of eyelids, with a down like silk upon her cheek, Within her wasting lover's heart she queens ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... died away into a hopeless wail. Frank knelt by her side, his faithful heart breaking with pity, great tears rolling untouched down his dusky cheeks. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... lovely lady; Oh, the sweet and winsome lady; With a smile of gentle goodness Like the lovely Laughing Water. Oh, the day the lovely lady Went to ride upon a tiger. Came the tiger, back returning, Homeward through the dusky twilight; Ever slower, slower, slower, Walked the tiger o'er the landscape; Ever wider, wider, wider, Spread the smile o'er ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells |
