"Gnome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about one o'clock, the gnome-like form of the gate-keeper would issue from the little door in the park-fence, and come marching across the grass towards Leopold's chair, which was set near the small clump of trees already mentioned. The curate was almost always there, not talking much to the invalid, but letting him ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... indulgence of a gorgeous taste in colouring and costume. It represented Thomas the Rhymer in Fairyland, at the moment when its glamour is falling from his eyes, when its magic lustre is dying out on all that glittering pageantry and the elfin is fading to a gnome. The handsome wizard turns from a crowd of phantom shapes, half lovely, half grotesque—for their change is even now in progress—to look wistfully ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... deeply interested many men, and though the subject must now be looked at from a somewhat different point of view from what was formerly the case, it is not on that account rendered less interesting." This is mused forth as a general gnome, and may mean anything or nothing: the writer of the letterpress under the hieroglyph in Old Moore's Almanac could not be more guarded; but I think I know ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... huts and castles to try if he could hear some tidings of it, and get it if possible into his power. The moment he heard Hulda mention her gold wand, he became excessively anxious to see it. He was a gnome, and when his malicious eyes gleamed with delight they shot out a burning ray, which scorched the hound who was lying asleep close at hand, and he sprang ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... by-word as the strange creation of a poetical imagination. A mixture of gnome and savage, half daemon, half brute, in his behaviour we perceive at once the traces of his native disposition, and the influence of Prospero's education. The latter could only unfold his understanding, without, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... free-and-untrammeled spaces of nature, and well you know it. But you'll go to-morrow and you'll keep on going until you find out what is behind those brown-green goblin spectacles. If only he didn't look so like a gnome!" ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... quietly, "I got hold of that man Mullens that works for Swain's, the motor people. He worked in an aeroplane factory in France once, he says, for nearly a year. He does not know much about the actual planes themselves, but he knows a lot about the Gnome engine. He says he has invented an aeroplane engine that will lick them all when he gets it right. He is not hard to get going, but he won't stay on the point much. I have been at him half a dozen times altogether, but I wanted to get a few things ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... what that means," cried Fink; "you are in the plot; you are the gnome of this queen. If there be no magic here, let me sleep out the rest of my days. One wave of that wand, and the beams of this great bird-cage will open, and you fly with your whole suite out into the sunshine. Doubtless your palace is on the summit of the fir-trees without; there ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... to mark their displeasure it was decided to take away his she-child and to substitute for it one of demoniac birth. Accordingly Fuh-sang, being of like age, was moulded to its counterpart, and an attendant gnome was despatched with her secretly to make the change. Becoming overwhelmed with the fumes of rice-spirit, until then unknown to his simple taste, this clay-brained earth-pig left the two she-children alone for a space while he slept. Discovering each other to be the creature of another part, they ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... deal of work on hand just now.' I used to wonder what work it was, for he published little enough. But I never ventured to inquire, and indeed rather cherished the mystery: it was a part of the dear little old man; it went with the something gnome-like about his swarthiness and chubbiness—went with the shaggy hair that fell over the collar of his eternally crumpled frock-coat, the shaggy eyebrows that overhung his bright little brown eyes, the shaggy moustache that hid his small round chin. It was a mystery inherent in the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... already traversed several great corridors when a great open door stood before us. I looked in, and descried, at the top of a double ladder, the little gnome Knapwurst, whose strange appearance had struck me the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... dark flood curtained off the sky. Wagner has made familiar the legend of the Rhine daughters, singing impossibly under the river as they swim about the reef of gold,—the treasure stolen by the gnome, Alberich, who in that act brought envy, strife, greed, and injustice into the world, and accomplished the destruction of the gods themselves. The wild tales of Britain and Brittany, of thefts and revenges by the sea-creatures, are ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... horrors of the Hartz forest, and of the benighted traveller's situation therein. Cold sluggish beetles hung to the damp walls,—and these I immediately secured. After due exertions and perseverance with the damp wood, a fire smoked lustily, and, by cajoling the gnome of a housekeeper, I procured the usual roast fowl and potatos, with the accustomed sauce of a strong smoky and singed flavour.* [Since writing the above a comfortable house has been erected at Senadah, the name now given to what was ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... cheeks, nose, chin, forehead, and part of the brim of his hat and shoulders were brought into brilliant light, while the rest of him was lost in the profound darkness of the level behind, and the flame of his candle rested above his head like the diadem of some aristocratic gnome. ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... Crauford, between his ground teeth, as he left the house, and took his way to his counting-house. There, cool, bland, fawning, and weaving in his close and dark mind various speculations of guilt and craft, he sat among his bills and gold, like the very gnome and personification of that Mammon of gain to which he was the most supple ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... easily accomplished. He was a newly fledged reporter, and Amarilly had all the instinct of the lowly for localities. She turned and doubled and dodged successfully. By a course circuitous she returned to Hebrew haunts, this time to seek, one Abram Canter, a little wizened, gnome-like Jew. Assuring herself that there was no other than the proprietor within, Amarilly entered and handed over the surplice ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... him, each of which led through the wood. He was hesitating which to choose, when he suddenly beheld two people coming towards him, down the track which lay most to his right. They turned out to be the Prince Gnome and his friend, and the sudden desire to get some news of his sister, Princess Argentine, caused the Invisible Prince to follow them and to listen to ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... his in Liverpool put up to it. He used to tell us his experiences in that line. He made us laugh till we cried, and, not altogether displeased at the effect, undersized and bearded to the waist like a gnome, he would tiptoe amongst us and say, "It's all very well for you beggars to laugh, but my immortal soul was shrivelled down to the size of a parched pea after a week of that work." I don't know how Jim's soul accommodated itself to the new conditions ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... about half an hour before nightfall, the dwarf appeared at the mouth of the cave, looking more like a gnome than a man against the lurid background of the angry sky. A buck was tied across his enormous shoulders, and in his hand he held a large bunch of the fragrant ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... equivocal a position, whether in modern mythology, or Hoffman's tales. I should choose to be a gnome. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... I could see large chambers with the larvae in piles, besides being held in the mandibles of the components of the walls and ceilings. Now and then a curious little ghost-like form would flit across the chamber, coming to rest, gnome-like, on larva or ant. Again and again I saw these little springtails skip through the very scimitar mandibles of a soldier, while the workers paid no attention to them. I wondered if they were not quite odorless, intangible ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... things are made new. A race of aerial people never heard of before is presented to us in a manner so clear and easy that the reader seeks for no further information, but immediately mingles with his new acquaintance, adopts their interests, and attends their pursuits, loves a Sylph, and detests a Gnome. That familiar things are made new every paragraph will prove. The subject of the poem is an event below the common incidents of common life; nothing real is introduced that is not seen so often as to be no longer regarded; yet the whole detail of a ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... Baron's chair, his face just showing over his shoulder, seamed with smiles that spoke of some common understanding between him and the daughter of his master; and once, when she thrust more directly at her father, the little servitor deliberately winked to the back of his master's head—a very gnome of slyness. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... unlaid ghost, a | |gnome, a goblin, a swart fairy at the | |least, who has settled down for the | |winter in a perfectly respectable cellar | |over in Brooklyn and whiles away the | |dismal hours of the night by chopping | |spectral cordwood with a phantom axe. | |Instead of going ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... the officers who were commanded by your majesty to guard the public peace and property. Look, your majesty, at our young lieutenant, Von Trenck: in the midst of the crowd, his rich, gold-embroidered scarf has been adroitly removed; in his zeal for your service, he forgot himself, and the merry gnome,—whom Trenck should have kept in order, has made our officer the target for his sleight of hand. This jest, sire, caused the loud ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... casual passers-by like the life of insects. Only by the seaside, where the houses were clustered together above a seawall of cyclopean stones, and on the beach, where the long narrow boats, sharp-prowed and piratical, were drawn up to the shore, the same gnome-like little men, with a generous display of naked brown limbs, were sawing and hammering and ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... while I stared up at it, the moon changed itself into a great, big face; but I didn't mind a bit, 'cause it was a very nice sort of face,—rather like a gnome's face, only without the beard, you know. An' while I looked at it, it talked to me, an' it told me a lot of things,—an' that's how I know that you are—going away, 'cause you are, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... boy drew near. He had limped up on his stick. He spoke like an elderly, affectionate gnome, not like a child. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... from the oscitancy of the transcriber, or from the trepidation which might have overpowered the modest Frenchman, on finding himself in the act of writing to so great a man, I shall not dare to determine. A few Notes are added by Your servant, GNOME. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of fluff round the chin, appeared in the aperture—a walnut of a face, with a pair of shrewd, twinkling eyes, and a pipe in a slit of a mouth. Another call brought on deck a figure which matched the face; and on deck Mr. Paasma (it looked like a gnome, but it could be no other than the caretaker) evidently intended to remain until he got ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... from a great carved chair. He had a thin, leathery face with an exaggerated nose, stretched out as though from sniffing for curios in dusty dim corners. When he smiled his eyes shut and his mouth twisted until he looked like a jolly little gnome. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... a flare of gasolene torches that gave a weird aspect to the plain. The yellow lights; the moving, shadowy forms of the workmen and horses; the cries and shouts—all made a scene gnome-like in character. Frost gleamed upon the earth in a silvery sheen under the torches' smoky flames. The headquarters building and the mess tents now glowed from dusk until dawn. Fires where workmen could warm their cheeks and hands were burning continually, fed from the great piles ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... guise of a green-kirtled enchantress, with wild poppies and primroses wreathed above her starry eyes, Science was luring him through the borderland of her kingdom, toward that dark, chill, central realm where, transformed as a gnome, she clutches her votaries, plunges into the primeval abyss-the matrix of time—and sets them the Egyptian task of weighing, analyzing the Titanic "potential" energy, the infinitesimal atomic engines, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... succeeded with Lady Davenant: it was in vain to say more about it to her, so Helen let it pass. When she mentioned it afterwards to Lady Cecilia, she said—"I am sorry, for your sake, Helen, that this happened; depend upon it, that revengeful little Portuguese gnome will work you mischief some time or other." Helen did not think of herself—indeed she could not imagine any means by which he could possibly work her woe; but the face was so horrible, that it came again and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... peasant-girl. For the first time in her life she saw ferocity in that face. The moonlight seemed to heighten the effect of it. The savage Breton, holding his cap in one hand and his heavy carbine in the other, dumpy and thickset as a gnome, and bathed in that white light the shadows of which give such fantastic aspects to forms, seemed to belong more to a world of goblins than to reality. This apparition and its tone of reproach came upon Francine with the suddenness of a phantom. He turned rapidly ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... an episode in Peer Gynt's life when, in exploring the mountain, he came upon one of the original owners of the country, quite in the manner that happened later to Rip Van Winkle in the Catskills of New York. The gnome took him into the cavern in the mountain where his people had their home, and it is the queer and uncanny music of these humorous and prankish people that Grieg has brought out in this closing movement of the suite. It is ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... than its money value. It stood for a possible, nay, a probable capacity in Armour to take his place in the stable body of society, to recognize and make demands, to become a taxpayer, a churchgoer, a householder, a husband. As I gazed, the signature changed from that of a gnome with luminous eyes who inhabited an inaccessible crag among the rhododendrons to that of a prosperous artist-bourgeois with a silk hat for Sundays. I have in some small degree the psychological knack, I saw the possibilities ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... sanctities of human relationship, with all their immeasurable bliss, their immeasurable woe, into the playthings of an idle dialectic. It is pleasanter, and for us English not less instructive than pleasant, to see this dreaming, restless, thrice ingenious spirit, half Titan of the skies, half gnome of the lower earth, entering joyously or pitifully into the simple charm and natural tenderness of life as it comes and passes. Nothing delights him more than to hear or to tell such a story as this of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... intimate became the forest fear While pillared darkness hatched malicious life At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife And wary slid the glance from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for other hands than his. There were moments when he looked as if not daring to touch her, even with his breath. Then, all at once, he would press her forcibly in his arms, against his angular bosom, like his own possession, his treasure, as the mother of that child would have done. His gnome's eye, fastened upon her, inundated her with tenderness, sadness, and pity, and was suddenly raised filled with lightnings. Then the women laughed and wept, the crowd stamped with enthusiasm, for, at that moment ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... violent emotion would quickly have reached the House. Paul Visire was not uneasy. The European situation was in his view completely reassuring. He was only irritated by the maniacal silence of his Minister of Foreign Affairs. That gnome went to the Cabinet meetings with a portfolio bigger than himself stuffed full of papers, said nothing, refused to answer all questions, even those asked him by the respected President of the Republic, and, exhausted by his obstinate labours, took a few moments' sleep ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... him now—yellow, blue, and blood-red. A more perfect semblance of an evil gnome could not be made than the flickering reflection of the sunlight in the bottle of blood-red liquid. It was never still. It skipped from the bottom of the bottle to the top and from one side to the other, as though in ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... attending to the needs of the diners. He was an admirable servant, deft and handy, but his blue-lined face and squat figure together with the obtrusively golden halo, rather worried Mrs. Jasher. And, indeed, in spite of custom, Lucy also felt uncomfortable when this gnome hovered at her elbow. It looked as though one of the fantastical idols from the museum below had come ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... tower! But, on the other hand, not a gnome, witch, Norna's Head, or other intimation of the underworld. The shore looked like many other Italian shores. It looked not very unlike what we Yankees call salt-marsh. At all events, we should not break our heads against a wall! Nor will I draw out the story of our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... proper Cricket" [another howl] "struggling in the water with the contrary Will, immediately jumped out after them, leaving the rough Archie and forlorn auntie in command of the boat. Suddenly a bold gnome popped up his dainty head from behind a rock, saying, 'Welcome, Englishmen! You are in the cave of accident. Look out for yourselves.' As he spoke, his watery head fell off. He felt around but could not find it, since his eyes had gone with his head, so he said, politely, 'Will some ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... a little gnome who lived in the Bye-bye Meadow, in a fine new house which he loved. To live in the Bye-bye Meadow was sometimes a dangerous thing, for all the big people lived there. Wee-Wun might have lived on the other common with the other gnomes and fairies if he had liked; but he did ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... ends—photographs, souvenirs, boxing-gloves, a litter of pipes and tobacco, a wardrobe of dust-covered discarded coats and hats, and Blackie in the midst of it all, sunk in the depths of his swivel chair, and looking like an amiable brown gnome, or a cheerful little joss-house god come to life. There is in him an uncanny wisdom which only the streets can teach. He is one of those born newspaper men who could not live out of sight of the ticker-tape, and the ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Hester, who had her own share of the same kind of fault, was rather moodily trimming her mother's bonnet with a new ribbon, glancing up from which she at once perceived that something in particular must have exceeded in wrongness the general wrongness of things in the poor little gnome's world. Her appearance was usually that of one with a headache; her expression this morning suggested a mild indeed ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... A heavy, wet, rich vapor shrouded the space about a huge cauldron, from which came a sound of steady plashing. Presently an attendant gnome, stripped to the waist, appeared, nodded to Dr. Surtaine, called to some one back in the mist, and shortly brought Hal a small glass brimming with ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the Gnome engine Carl shyly approached Dr. Bagby. He felt frightfully an outsider; wondered if he could ever be intimate with the magician as was the plump Mexican youth they called "Tony." He said "Uh" once or twice, and blurted, "I want to be ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... wonderful images, seen through tears, that had the mastery over our Northern hearts for so many ages. The powers of sudden destruction lurking in the woods and waters, in the rocks and clouds;—kelpie and gnome, Lurlei and Hartz spirits; the wraith and foreboding phantom; the spectra of second sight; the various conceptions of avenging or tormented ghost, haunting the perpetrator of crime, or expiating its commission; and the half fictitious and contemplative, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the Gnome motor is unusually light, being about three pounds to the horse power produced, as opposed to an average of 4 1/2 pounds per horse power in other makes. This result is secured by the elimination of the fly-wheel, the engine itself ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... safe; then to our task till dawn." Well pleased, Phraerion answered that embrace; All balmy he with thousand breathing sweets, From thousand dewy flowers. "But to what place," He said, "will Zophiel go? who danger greets As if 'twere peace. The palace of the gnome, Tahathyam, for our purpose most were meet; But then, the wave, so cold and fierce, the gloom, The whirlpools, rocks, that guard that deep retreat! Yet there are fountains, which no sunny ray E'er danced upon, and drops come there at last, Which, for whole ages, filtering ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... feet together. The only thing he seemed quite incapable of doing was to use his feet, one after the other, as ordinary people do when they are walking. Indeed, this strange guardian of the enchanted castle of Bradwardine looked like a gnome or fairy dwarf. For he was clad in an old-fashioned dress of grey, slashed with scarlet. On his legs were scarlet stockings and on his head a scarlet cap, which in its turn was surmounted ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... lean, wizen-faced man, with an immense bald head, as round and smooth and shining as a giant soap-bubble, and a pair of beady black eyes, set close together, so that he resembled a gnome of amazing brain capacity and prodigious power of concentration, sat bent over a writing desk with a huge sheet of cardboard before him, on which he was swiftly drawing geometrical and trigonometrical figures. Compasses, T-squares, rulers, protractors, and ellipsographs obeyed ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... opening near the grating, stood a gnome whose duty it was to feed the furnace overhead with soft coal, which must be thrown in at a small door and then pushed up and forward until it lay upon the grating where it was consumed. Around this central fire the glass-pots, ten to each furnace, are arranged, their lower surfaces in actual ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... their first elements their souls retire: The sprites of fiery termagants in flame Mount up, and take a Salamander's name. Soft yielding minds to water glide away, And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea. The graver prude sinks downward to a gnome, In search of mischief still on earth to roam, The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair, And sport and flutter ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... bird told a squirrel, And a squirrel told a jay, That a poor child lived in a city Not very far away, Who never at any Christmas Had a Christmas tree in her home; And the jay bird told a rabbit next, And the rabbit told a gnome. The gnome blew thrice on his fingers For half a dozen elves, And he told them the sorrowful rumor, And he said, 'Now ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... and a morning playing golf amid the immensities of Banff, or travelling in a swift car along its beautiful roads. There are most things in Banff to make man happy, even a coal mine, sitting like a black and incongruous gnome in the heart of enchanted hills, to ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... voice at this juncture, and Louis Gigue came out from the dark embrasure of the Manor's oaken portal into the full splendour of the moonlight—"Et la belle Mademoiselle Vancourt is ze adorable fantome of ze night! Et milord Roxmouth ze what-you-call?—ze gnome!—ze shadow of ze lumiere! Ha-ha! C'est joli, zat little chanson of ze little rose- tree! Ze music, c'est une inspiration de Cicely—and ze words are not so melancolique as ze love-songs made ordinairement en ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... goods, completed the list of all those of the party who were any way worthy of mention. The Frenchman, Monsieur Robineau by name, had a little ugly face, nearly hidden by an enormous beard, wore a red cap upon his head, and looked altogether like a bandy-legged brownie or gnome. The scene at daybreak the next morning is described with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... "and according to the card, she would do better, if it were not for the gnome or wood-spirit, our ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... he suddenly, when about half a mile from the village, struggled through a hedge into a grass-field where, in the corner, sheltered from the wind, stood Noel Barclay's naval monoplane, with its star-like Gnome engine and wide ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... only think it so beautiful because you know it is gold. It is not prettier, in reality, than a bit of brass for it is Transylvanian gold; and they say there is a foolish gnome in the mines there, who is always wanting to live in the moon, and so alloys all the gold with a little silver. I don't know how that may be, but the silver always IS in the gold, and if he does it, it's very provoking of him, for no gold is woven ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... peasant with a long nose, wearing a reefer-jacket and a cap pulled down right over his ears, sat on one of the boxes which they had succeeded in bringing out: his wife was lying on her face, moaning and unconscious. A little old man of eighty, with a big beard, who looked like a gnome—not one of the villagers, though obviously connected in some way with the fire—walked about bareheaded, with a white bundle in his arms. The glare was reflected on his bald head. The village elder, ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and toiled across the interminable flat in their accompanying cloud of dust. The great circle of the world had dwarfed them to a bitter insignificance: a team of crickets, they seemed, driven by a gnome. The hushed tone of Thatcher's voice made unconscious tribute to ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... but for mariage he answered him with thies wise and sweete wordes, as Xen. 8. Cy- // they be vttered by Xenophon, o kuazare, to ri. Pd. // te genos epaino, kai ten paida, kai dora boulomai de, ephe, syn te tou patros gnome kai [te] tes metros tauta soi synainesai, &c., that is to say: Vncle Cyaxeris, I commend the stocke, I like the maide, and I allow well the dowrie, but (sayth he) by the counsell and consent of my father and mother, I will determine farther of thies matters. Strong ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... faced east, and the following morning, at a very early hour, he began to have most unpleasant dreams. He thought a hobgoblin was seated on his chest, and several brownies were pulling him where he did not wish to go, and finally that a gnome of enormous dimensions was dragging him into a dark cavern, where he could never again behold the daylight. At last, in great perturbation, he opened his dazed eyes. The sight he saw seemed at first to be a continuation of his dream, but after a moment or two he discovered ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... no!" cried the ancient gnome, in something between astonishment and horror. "No, Monsieur. 'Pas mon metier, ca!" He shook his head rapidly from side to side like one of those toys in a shop-window whose heads oscillate upon a pivot. But all at once a ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... and lilies, and pansies for remembrance. We didn't see those flowers with our bodies' eyes, but what of that? What did it matter that to the Turnours in their splendid glass cage this was just a road, with queer little gnome dwellings scooped out of solid rock to redeem it from common-placeness, with a fringe of deserted cottages farther on, and some ugly brickworks? My spirit's eyes saw the flowers, and they clustered thicker and brighter about Pieverde, where ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... in the deep shadow, some gnome or evil spirit of earth realised out of the dreams ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... own eyes of golden brown a little spark slowly burst into flame. It was exactly as if a gnome had lighted a lantern at the back of an unknown cave. Mrs. Ennis inwardly shuddered, but outwardly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... at the tight-lipped, elderly face, like the face of a wise and distrustful gnome, and held the pen uncertainly above the ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... his house, Bruce, but I love even the fat angels that are carved on everything from the mahogany chests to the soup tureens. It is all like some old fairy-tale. I shall make few changes; it seems such a perfect setting for Ulrich and his busy old gnome ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... personified by the Odjibwas under the name of Weeng.[88] The power of the Indian Morpheus is executed by a peculiar class of gnome-like beings, called Weengs. These subordinate creations, although invisible to the human eye, are each armed with a tiny war-club, or puggamaugun, with which they nimbly climb up the forehead, and knock the drowsy person on the head; on which sleepiness ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... But something might surely be done for the imagination, if not for the reason. Some mystic formula might be pronounced which might pass sufficiently well for an oracle so long as we are in the charmed world of fiction. Let Sidonia only repeat some magniloquent gnome from Greek, or Hebrew, or German philosophers, give us a scrap of Hegel, or of the Talmud, and we will willingly take it to be the real thing for imaginative purposes, as we allow ourselves to believe that some theatrical goblet really contains a fluid of magical efficacy. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... grotesque, could diminish. He was Shakespeare as he might have appeared at sixty, after years and a return to Ann Hathaway had quenched the taller flames of his poetic fire. The resemblance was haunting and remarkable: there underlay it a hint of gnome-like agility. One suspected that he affected age as a disguise. The pointed beard was white; the scanty hair had receded from the calm forehead; the eyes were blue and faded, and red about the rims with over-much study. The top part of the face ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... savage forms, and their dull thunder fills your ears with a confusion of sound. Your eyes become accustomed to the dimness, and you discern more clearly the features of those swarthy men, bearded and gnome-like. But the molten mass has been put into the mould; you watch it withdrawn, the bottom indented, the mouth cut and shaped. And now it is complete, but still red-hot, and glowing with an infernal transparency, gem-like and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... the vast under-world the mountain Gnome Ruebezahl was lord; and busy enough the care of his dominions kept him. There were the endless treasure chambers to be gone through, and the hosts of gnomes to be kept to their tasks. Some built strong barriers to hold back the fiery rivers in the earth's heart, and some had scalding ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... developed to the same high point in this country as the Liberty motor is the rotary engine, of which the Gnome Monosoupape or Clerget are perhaps the best-known types. These were favorites with airmen flying fighting scout-planes. They weighed practically nothing, for an engine. A one-hundred-horse-power motor weighed only two ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... wizards, prophets, seers and fortune-tellers, but there was a perfect army of fairies which overran the whole land, and the myths concerning which would have filled volumes could they ever have been gathered. The gnome-like spirits of the mountains had peaked heads, and were of a vicious, impish disposition, but were powerless to injure any one who carried a fern leaf ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... sewed at night Without a light Upon an arc of white. If ruff it was of dame Or shroud of gnome, Himself, himself inform. Of immortality ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... said Sedgwick, "and we were neither of us handsomely attired. I thought he was a gnome; he thought me a ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... the earl went down the stair She yielded to her fears. Gave way at last to grim despair, And melted into tears: When suddenly, from out the wall, As if he felt at home, There pounced a singularly small And much distorted gnome. He smiled a smile extremely vapid, And set to work in fashion rapid; No time for resting he deducted, And ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... for joy, and you would never have been able to guess that she had ever known a downhearted moment. So the dryad clapped her tiny hands three times, and out of the open door into the beech-tree stepped a little gnome who came and bowed low before them, holding in his hands a silver salver on ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... judgment came, and anxiously displayed For him submission as for others scorn. Then, peering keenly from his peat-roofed home, Calm in his power he scanned her as he chose, And, if she pleased, the swart and twisted gnome Gave ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.— Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy, That should ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... pyramid the statement that the reason the princess had not conceived was that she had been defiled by an evil genius—an enemy of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross. This put Madame d'Urfe fairly on the way, and she added on her own account that the girl must be with child by a gnome. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... along the side of the flat, through tall grass and all the brilliant blossoms of a mountain meadow in June. Great, graceful mountain lilies nodded from little shady tangles in the bushes. Harebells and lupines, wild-pea vines and columbines, tiny, gnome-faced pansies, violets, and the daintier flowering grasses lined the way with odorous loveliness. Birds called happily from the tree tops. Away up next the clouds an eagle sailed serene, alone, a tiny boat breasting the ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... motion; just a wide opening of the eyes upon the darkness, and a swift beating of the heart, but not the movement of a muscle. It was as though some inward monitor, some gnome of the hidden life had whispered of danger to her slumbering spirit. The waking was a complete emergence, a vigilant ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... transfixed, but only for an instant, rather by the stroke of helplessness than by fear; and then, blindly, without plan or foresight, darted down the covered way. The tiny flame of a pith wick, floating in a saucer of oil, showed Heywood's gatekeeper sitting at his post, like a gnome in the gallery of a mine. Rudolph tore away the bar, heard the heavy gate slam shut, and found himself running down the ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... commenced to be sensible of a shameless appetite again; a ravenous lust of food, which grew steadily worse and worse. It gnawed unmercifully in my breast; carrying on a silent, mysterious work in there. It was as if a score of diminutive gnome-like insects set their heads on one side and gnawed for a little, then laid their heads on the other side and gnawed a little more, then lay quite still for a moment's space, and then began afresh, boring noiselessly in, and without any haste, and left empty ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... to visit the Gnome King, with whom he made a bargain to exchange three drums, a trumpet and two dolls for a pair of fine steel runners, curled beautifully at the ends. For the Gnome King had children of his own, who, living ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... dimly-lighted room for the guide we had bespoken, two gendarmes and a peasant sat listening to, or rather looking at, a vivid account of some shooting adventure given in extraordinary pantomime by a deaf and dumb huntsman. In time a withered gnome trundling a wheelbarrow took possession of us and our light belongings, and led us forth into the night. We traversed the valley, mounted the hill on the other side, and at last entered the deeper night of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... a grim caper in his delight, and the scared deer fled away from the neighbourhood of his path; perhaps they took him for some modern gnome, dancing wild dances in the wet woodland. He laughed aloud, with a hollow, fiendish-sounding laugh, and then clapped his hands together till the noise of his brawny palms echoed in ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... if he found them; but he and Shorty are in perfect accord. They have been associated together ever since Toby was a pup and Shorty went into the hermit business, and that was ten years ago. Sitting cross-legged on a flat rock like a little gnome, with his puckered eyes squinting off at space, Shorty told us how once upon a time ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... after, Peter again went into the deep forest, his brain aching for a rhyme with pine. As he was hurrying along, a gigantic man, with a pole as big as a mast over his shoulder, appeared from behind the pine-trees. Peter was filled with terror, for he felt that it was none other than the giant-gnome, Michael the Dutchman. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... of the earth to the three daughters of the Rhine; he persecutes them with his loathsome wooing; rejected by one, he turns to the other; laughing and teasing, they all refuse the gnome. Then the Rhinegold begins to glow; Alberich is attracted; he inquires as to its meaning; the girls tell him that they use it as a bright plaything, and that its splendour lights up the depth of the waves with ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... sufferers! And how he laughed, watching the two heavy-headed, lolloping, half-grown, bull-dog puppies describe crazy circles upon the smooth turf in the deepening dusk. Seen thus in the half-light they appeared more than ever gnome-like, humorously ugly and awkward. They trod on their own ears, tumbled over one another, sprawled on the grass, panting and grinning, until their ecstatic owner incited them to further gyrations. To Dick this ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... consulting his timepiece, there came to his ears out of the darkness just ahead, a voice, a rich and throaty tenor, singing softly. The sweet sounds pierced his preoccupation. He looked, and some thirty or forty paces distant perceived a gnome-like figure perched atop a fire hydrant, at the edge of ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... wall which may have been there when the other walls were not, and is presumably the cavern where Lob, when alone, sits chatting to himself among the blue smoke. He is as much at home by this fire as any gnome that may be hiding among its shadows; but he is less familiar with the rest of the room, and when he sees it, as for instance on his lonely way to bed, he often stares long and hard at ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... he cried, as he entered the steeple, "They've hanged him at last, the righteous people! His swollen tongue lolls out of his head! Hoo! hoo! at last the old brute is dead! There let him hang, the shapeless gnome, Choked with a throatful of ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald |
