"Indian summer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advocated that the age of sixty was the time for "official death," and had looked forward to a peaceful "Indian summer." With this object in mind and troubled by increasing ill-health, he began in 1885 to give up his work. But to live even in comparative idleness, after so many years of activity, was difficult. "I am sure," he says, "that the ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... his desk in the Damietta office, one beautiful day in Indian summer, attentive as ever to his duties, when a carriage drove up to the door containing a young gentleman and a lady. The former sprang lightly out and ran into the office, after the manner of one who was in a hurry ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... thought and wondered about it since. There was no quarreling, no singing, nor laughing among the men, who were usually ready enough for any of them; and this 'still' feeling, I suppose, was intensified by the weather, and the peculiar atmosphere. For we had come by such slow stages, that it was Indian summer, and if you can imagine an English October day, spiritualized, and wearing a veil of exquisite purply-grey and amber haze, you may have some idea of the lovely melancholy of these dying days of the ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... to be charged to Clara Belle Simpson's account. These were lifted into the back of the wagon, and a happier couple never drove along the country road than Rebecca and her companion. It was a glorious Indian summer day, which suggested nothing of Thanksgiving, near at hand as it was. It was a rustly day, a scarlet and buff, yellow and carmine, bronze and crimson day. There were still many leaves on the oaks and maples, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one of those bright days in the Indian summer time that Carrie at last slept the sleep that knows no awakening. The evening after the burial I went in at Captain Howard's, and all the animosity I had cherished for Mr. Ashmore vanished when I saw the large tear drops as they fell on the face ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... nonchalant and almost haughty grace, The lurking laughter waiting in his eyes, The years had stolen, leaving in their place A settled sadness, which was not despair, Nor was it gloom, nor weariness, nor care, But something like the vapour o'er the skies Of Indian summer, beautiful to see, But spoke of frosts, which had been and would be. There was that in his face which cometh not, Save when the soul has many a battle fought, And conquered self ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... slowly, bringing the drowsy, hazy days of so-called Indian Summer. It was the season of threshing, and all day long to the drowse of the air was added, near and afar, all-pervading through the stillness, the sleepy hum of the separator. Typical voice of the prairie was that busy drone, penetrating to the ears as the ubiquitous ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... to it that every body would get coffee and fritters and Christmas cakes. But when autumn came, the weather grew cold and the snow fell, and then his wife had a new baby who filled the log cabin with fresh crying. This was a Canadian Icelander. After that came Indian Summer with ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... straits to them. Immediately in front is an oak grove, and on the other side a great extent of dark, Indian-looking woods. There are nearer mountains, where we can see all the beautiful changes of light and shade. Yesterday they were wrapped in haze, as in the Indian summer, and every thing was soft and dreamy about them; to-day they stand out bold and clear, with great wastes of snow, ravines, and landslides, and dark prominences, all distinctly defined. When the setting sun lights up the summits, new fields of crystal and gold, and other more ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... had not lost her love for that other world of freedom and exhilaration. After a brief Indian summer with days of such splendor that it seemed as if the great Artist was using his most magnificent colors, winter set in sharp and with a snap that startled every one. Snow blocked the roads and the sparkling expanse ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Very soon, indeed, the dream was dispelled; the tyranny proved to some unbearable; and some it vanquished in their highest part—their inward conscience—making them subservient when they might have shunned the danger altogether. But while the quiet interval lasted, it was like an Indian summer, prolonging the intellectual and tasteful beauty which was soon to be overwhelmed by the vulgar splendours ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... grapes in purple clusters. From his pipe the smoke ascending Filled the sky with haze and vapor, Filled the air with dreamy softness, Gave a twinkle to the water, Touched the rugged hills with smoothness, Brought the tender Indian Summer To the melancholy north-land, In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes. Listless, careless Shawondasee! In his life he had one shadow, In his heart one sorrow had he. Once, as he was gazing northward, Far away upon a prairie He beheld a maiden ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... shooting. On Tuesday, October 14th, he was in the train again, travelling East, in the direction of the Cobalt mining country, buoyed up by the prophecy of the local weather-wise that the cold snap would not endure, but would be followed by the delightfully keen yet warm weather of the "Indian Summer." The local weather-wise were right, but ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... that cry of rending tissues dearer to woman's ear than any earthly sound until she hears the voice of her own first-born,(much of this potentially, remember,)—thoughts of a comfortable settlement, an imposing social condition, a cheerful household, and by and by an Indian summer of serene widowhood,—all these, and infinite other involved possibilities had mapped themselves in one long swift flash before Cynthia's inward eye, and all vanished as the old man spoke those few words. The look on his face, and the tone ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the prairies are rolled, on the somber skies flashing their torches. At noontide a shimmer of gold, through the haze, pours the sun from his pathway. The wild-rice is gathered and ripe, on the moors, lie the scarlet po-pn-ka; [a] Michabo [85] is smoking his pipe, —'tis the soft, dreamy Indian Summer, When the god of the South as he flies from Wazya, the god of the Winter, For a time turns his beautiful eyes, and backward ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... cord-wood for the reg'lar fires. We could stand a siege an' not suffer, though Eunice never does feel content 'less she's got fuel enough ahead to last two years. Hm-m. It's gettin' too hot to chop, anyway. Must be Indian summer comin' on, though I claim 'tain't due till November. Susanna, now, she says October, an' Eunice, she calls that warm spell we always have the first the winter an Indian summer. Seems if there was ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... street. The air was soft and golden; the sun warm with the Indian summer. The clock on the Metropolitan tower was booming nine. As the two set out at a slow saunter down the backwater of the side street, ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... passed by, and the autumn, and the Indian summer; and at last the great winter came, and it snowed and snowed, and it was so cold that the snow wasn't off by the Fourth of July; and then it snowed and snowed till the snow never went off at all; and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... swans had taken their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night with the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the Indian summer, and winter was coming quickly down from his ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... her own indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at her mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of "the mistress's" moods without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according to the temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian summer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age, the gods sent this equivocal good thing of Archie's presence. She had known him in the cradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last serious illness, the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out to Tuft's Hill and looked down on the encamped town, the war ships, and the sea. It was an Indian summer. The trees were scarlet, the orchards were laden with fruit, and the ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... come through our happinesses, I trust, since Convent days—and what we must hope for now is an Indian summer." ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... merry party of little folks, with a tall youth in the midst of them. They had planned a nutting expedition, and were impatiently waiting for the mists to roll up the hill-slopes, and for the sun to pour the warmth of the Indian summer over the fields and pastures, and into the nooks of the many-colored woods. There was a prospect of as fine a day as ever gladdened the aspect of this beautiful and comfortable world. As yet, however, the morning mist filled up the whole length and breadth of the valley, above which, ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gentle humorist, who died In the bright Indian Summer of his fame. A simple stone, with but a date and name, Marks his secluded resting place beside The river that he loved and glorified. Here in the Autumn of his days he came, But the dry leaves of life ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign In Memory of a Child Galahad, Knight Who Perished The Leaden-eyed An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie The Hearth Eternal The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit By the Spring, at Sunset I Went down into the Desert Love and Law The Perfect Marriage Darling Daughter of Babylon The Amaranth The Alchemist's Petition ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... to be looked for in trim gardens, where the soul of the trees is ill at ease perhaps, but their manners are unexceptionable, and a rustling branch or leaf falling out of season is an indecorum. The real forest is hardly still except in the Indian summer; then there is death in the house, and they are waiting for the sharp shrunken months to come with white raiment for the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... abroad her dewy charms, And blushing grew to summer shine, Summer sped on with outstretched arms, To meet brown autumn crowned with vine, The forest glowed in gold and green, The leafy maples flamed in red With the warm, hazy, happy beam Of Indian summer overhead, Bright, fair, and fleet as passing dream. The autumn also hurried on, And, shuddering, dropped her leafy screen; The ice-king from the frozen zone, In fleecy robe of ermine dressed, Came stopping rivers with his hand Binding in chains of ice the land; Bringing, ere early spring he met, ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... afternoon, there were neither lectures nor clinics, and Phebe determined to go for a long walk. It was early November, and the hush and the haze of Indian summer lay over the park, as she halted on the bridge and stood looking down into the river beneath. Not a soul was in sight. The noises of the city were hushed in the distance, and before her the broad reaches of the park stretched out and out under ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... a sheaf of golden arrows fall The last rays of the Indian Summer sun; And hark along the hollow hills they run, Invisible messengers, the battle-call Of coming storms, in pipings faint and small They bring:—the pageant of the ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... cloudless sky. During the day the temperature of about 80 degrees melts much snow, and the rivers carry it away in rushing torrents and falls of icy water. In September the frost turns the leaves of all but the evergreen trees beautiful colors of red and yellow. Indian summer comes during September and October, when the days are sunny and warm, and then the long winter sets in again. Peaks above eight thousand feet are snow-clad on their crests and along their sides by deep drifts ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... is there one who remains e'er cold In the glow of the Indian summer; alas! When the forest flames in crimson and gold, And a beautiful ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... the end of the Indian summer, after having wandered for hours searching for her favorites, she found them all withered. The trees also looked forlorn, shivering in the chill air, with scarce a leaf to cover them: the wind moaned, and the sky was gray instead of the bright ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... passed, and autumn with its flaming colors and hint of frost came to the wilderness. On a warm Indian summer day the Hermit, in his search for healing roots, came out upon the shore of the stream which sheltered the beaver colony. As he approached he heard a resounding slap and saw a number of sleek brown forms dive into the water. Thus, when he stepped out ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... bland Indian summer, Cap'n Sproul and his friend Hiram Look surveyed these arrivals from the porch ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... gate, resting sadly against the lichen-covered stone post, and waiting for her return. Indian summer had come, a last taste of warmth and brightness before the winter closed, and despite their sorrow nature soothed them with her loveliness. In any case, whether from that cause or from her own will, the girl ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... invited to the dance. The invitation reached him through the post: coming home from office early on Saturday he produced it from his pocket. Mrs Murchison and Abby sat on the verandah enjoying the Indian summer afternoon; the horse chestnuts dropped crashing among the fallen leaves, the roadside maples blazed, the quiet streets ran into smoky purple, and one belated robin hopped about the lawn. Mrs Murchison had just remarked that she didn't know why, at this time of year, you always ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... easily now; and while she stood there a quiet happiness shone in her eyes. After the storm and stress of twenty years, life in this Indian summer of the emotions was like an enclosed garden of sweetness and bloom. She had had enough of hunger and rapture and disappointment. Never again would she take up the old search for perfection, for ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... into Indian summer, but it was still hot. With the perspiration dripping from me one afternoon, I whirled and drove the keen axe into a silver birch's side, seldom turning my eyes from the shower of white chips, because looking up between the slender stems one could see the black smoke of a thrasher ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the week of Indian summer a dream for a poet. Lilian's afternoon hour out of doors was the concentration of delight. The handsome town, the picturesque houses, where late blooming flowers were a delight on many a lawn, the peaceful winding river whose ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Indian summer still held carnival in the forests of Virginia, Jackson found himself once more on the Shenandoah. Some regiments of militia, the greater part of which were armed with flint-lock muskets, and a few squadrons of irregular cavalry formed his ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Till the dusk of Indian summer crept athwart the western skies; But a deeper dusk was burning in her dark and dreaming eyes, As she scanned the rolling prairie, Where the foothills fall, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... period of Indian summer brings a reminiscent warmth and sunshine, so sometimes in late winter a day will come now and then which is a harbinger of the not far-distant springtide, like a promise, during present storm and stress, of better things ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... peaceful days could not last long. They came to an end with the big bazaar. The band ceased to play on the lawn, the pleasure boats ceased to ply up and down the Thames, the lovely Indian summer passed into duller weather, the equinoctial gales visited the land, and Ogilvie knew that he must brace himself for something he had long made up his mind to accomplish. He must pass out of this time of quiet into a time of storm. ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... you. And you not wanting to come when I called for you this morning—you trying to dodge me and the swellest Indian summer Sunday ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and the leader-writers revelled in recapitulating the circumstances of "The Big Bow Mystery," though they could contribute nothing but adjectives to the solution. The papers teemed with letters—it was a kind of Indian summer of the silly season. But the editors could not keep them out, nor cared to. The mystery was the one topic of conversation everywhere—it was on the carpet and the bare boards alike, in the kitchen and the drawing-room. It was discussed with science ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... are they not one? A farm cabin in a little valley beyond the mountain. An Indian Summer night in November, but a little fire is pleasant, throwing its cheerful light on a room rough from puncheon floor to axe-hewn rafters, but cleanly-tidy in its very roughness. It looked sinewy, strong, honest, good-natured. There was roughness, but it was the roughness of strength. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the middle of October; the rainy season that usually comes in the end of September and beginning of October in Canada was over. The soft hazy season, called Indian summer, was come again; the few forest leaves that yet lingered were ready to fall—bright and beautiful they still looked, but Lady Mary ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... on his derby hat with a flourish and trotted out the door. I recalled that I had told Mary I would see her, so I dismissed the stenographers and locked up the office. It was a perfect morning, with all the warm spicy perfumes of Indian summer. Overhead, a blue sky was filled with tumbled clouds of snowy whiteness. The rain of the night before was still on the grass and the trees, giving a dewy fragrance to ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... that there is any more to tell. We are going in the big automobile, have a nice trip, and come back when we get ready. It will be Indian Summer most of the time, the nicest part of the year, I think, so we ought to have good weather. Now the rest is in your hands and your mother's—getting ready ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... saw its magnificent moraines extending in majestic curves from the spacious amphitheater between the mountains, I was exhilarated with the work that lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the Sierra Indian summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape however rocky and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The path of the vanished glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as if washed with silver. The tall pines growing on the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... lookout be kept for these ruby-crowned migrants, that too often slip away to the south before we know they have come, we notice that they appear about a fortnight ahead of the golden-crested species, since the mild, soft air of our Indian summer is exactly to their liking. At this season there is nothing in the bird's "thin, metallic call-note, like a vibrating wire," to indicate that he is one of our finest songsters. But listen for him during the spring migration, when a love-song is already ripening in his tiny ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... delayed his departure, and neither the hunter nor the Onondaga could discover any traces of footsteps. Fortunately the air continued to turn warmer and the lower country in which they now were had all the aspects of Indian summer. Robert, shaken a little perhaps by the great hardships and dangers through which he had passed, though he may not have realized at the time the weight upon his nerves, recovered quickly, and, as usual, passed, with the rebound, to the heights ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... This Indian summer of Mr. Browning's genius coincided with the highest manifestation of public interest, which he, or with one exception, any living writer, had probably yet received: the establishment of a Society bearing his name, and devoted to the study of his poetry. The idea arose almost ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... forest seemed to be the same; and yet somehow in a manner not to be defined a subtle change was taking place in the wilderness. Nothing definite could be instanced. Each morning of that Indian summer the skies were as soft, the sun as grateful, the leaves as gorgeous in their blazonment, yet each morning an infinitesimal something that had been there the day before was lacking, and for it an infinitesimal ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... averted eyes and pale faces the feelings with which the recital of the tale of blood had inspired them. And then it was that as they sat beneath the shade of the trees, in the soft misty light of an Indian summer moon, that Catharine, with simple earnestness, taught her young disciple those heavenly lessons of mercy and forgiveness which her Redeemer had set forth by his life, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... have passed away, and twice the wintry storms have swept over the two graves, which, on the prairies of Illinois, were made when the glorious Indian summer sun was shining o'er the earth, and the withered leaves of autumn were strewn upon the ground. Stephen and Eugenia are dead—he, dying as a drunkard dies—she, as a drunkard's wife. Uncle Nat had been to visit the western world, and on his return to Rose Hill, there ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... wonderful in what he said, but his words always had a pleasant savour; and the day seemed brighter after he had spoken to us. He was himself like one of those serene peaceful days that come in the Indian summer near the ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... sapphire skies of a late September day. Their leaders had sensed the coming frost and were drilling for their long march across the world to their winter home. The chestnut burrs were bursting in the woods. The silent sun-wrapped Indian Summer had begun. Not ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... ever saw," she announced. "A minute ago, I'd 'a' said them blue walls back there, jest like October skies in Indian summer, and the brown rugs, like leaves in the woods, couldn't be beat; but this green and yaller is purtier yet. That blue room will keep the best lookin' part of fall on all winter, and with a roarin' wood fire, it'll be capital, and ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... greenish-yellow or pale amber, while the orderly flocks of small overlapping clouds, often seen higher up, are mostly touched with crimson like the out-leaning sprays of maple-groves in the beginning of an Eastern Indian Summer. Soft, mellow purple flushes the sky to the zenith and fills the air, fairly steeping and transfiguring the islands and making all the water look like wine. After the sun goes down, the glowing gold vanishes, but because ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... practical joke, we were soon in motion again, wending our way, with lightened hearts, to our journey's end, which we reached without further let or hindrance. After a brief, but much needed rest, we opened our eyes on a calm fair Sabbath morning, and our new home, in the soft hazy light of an Indian summer sunrise was very lovely. It required no very vivid imagination to fancy ourselves in the happy valley of "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," and it seemed to me impossible that any one could ever desire, like that discontented ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... whole pailful of mushrooms, for an Indian summer seems to have brought on a second crop of them. They were lovely. But she refused to eat any. I asked her why. She heaved her huge shoulders and said she didn't know. But she does, I feel sure, and I've been wondering why ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... the falling leaf," ere he composes himself to his winter's sleep, he fills his great pipe and takes a god-like smoke. The balmy clouds float over the hills and woodlands, filling the air with the haze of the "Indian summer." ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... of the Indian summer, and the walk through woods of chestnut and hemlock was as charming as possible, and none the less so for the rustic coquetries of pretty Belle Miller, whose golden hair was the precise shade of a lock once shown to Miselle as a veritable relic of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... afternoon the clouds melted away, the sun came out, and the purple haze of Indian summer took possession of air and sky. In an hour the weather passed from the crisp and sparkling freshness of winter, to the wistful ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... to speak, but there came only a quiver across her mouth, and a sickly smile that flickered over the ghastly proud face, like the lying sunshine of Indian summer on marble cenotaphs. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... went blackberrying in the ardent July sun. For him the river was gleaming again, turning its million glittering facets to the sun, or, maybe, his eye was delighting in the still sheen of ponds in Indian summer, as they reflected the red glory of the overhanging maple or the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... made her painfully sensitive. St. Paul, our patron saint, I think had just come through such a trial of his nerves when he wrote: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." The memory of the beautiful scenery, the charming Indian summer skies, the restful companionship of our family party in the daily drive, and the generous hospitality of the people of Wisconsin, is one of the pleasantest of a life, as full of sweet memories as of trials, amid and through which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... its delectable way in the Valley of the Moon. The last Mariposa lily vanished from the burnt grasses as the California Indian summer dreamed itself out in purple mists on the windless air. Soft rain- showers first broke the spell. Snow fell on the summit of Sonoma Mountain. At the ranch house the morning air was crisp and brittle, yet mid-day made the shade welcome, and in the open, under the winter sun, roses bloomed and ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... autumn day in the Indian summer time,—that one Saturday. The Grammar Room class of Budville were going nutting; that is, eight of them were going,—"our set," as they styled themselves. Besides the eight of "our set," Bob Trotter was going along as driver, to take care of the horses ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... mild Indian Summer flooded hill and valley now. Where the sombre shades of green had erst clothed the forest, brilliant pennons of flame-colored, and crimson-dyed, and paler tints, shading into amber, and gray, and russet brown, lit up the woods with their ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... himself of his sea-stains, he left his hotel and walked up the Fifth Avenue with all a newly-landed voyager's enjoyment of terrestrial locomotion. It was a charming autumn day; there was a golden haze in the air; he supposed it was the Indian summer. The broad sidewalk of the Fifth Avenue was scattered over with dry leaves—crimson and orange and amber. He tossed them with his stick as he passed; they rustled and murmured with the motion, and it reminded ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... bulk loomed in ghostly grandeur, a solemn sentinel at the meeting place of East and West. The street lights were winking merrily and brougham and limousine passed beneath it, moving rapidly northward. With the setting of the sun a chill had fallen on the wonderful day of Indian summer and people moved briskly on their homeward way. Markham buttoned his light overcoat across his chest and bent his steps in the direction of his apartment, when at the corner of the Avenue he found his way blocked by ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... of the seceders made a slender white line in the wilderness of sage which reached on before them, up and up. Beyond the crest which rose gray-brown against the cloudless Indian summer sky, the desert waited silent ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... to the poor lawyer's hapless passion like the late season known as the Indian summer after a sunless year. He affected to be older than he was, to have the right to befriend Dinah without doing her an injury, and kept himself at a distance as though he were young, handsome, and compromising, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... last week raced by, with all the charm of sky and field that the magic of Indian summer can lavish, and for Benton and Cara, they raced also with the sense of fast-slipping hope and relentlessly marching doom. Outwardly Cara set a pace for vivacious and care-free enjoyment that left Mrs. Porter-Woodleigh, the "semi-professional light-hearted ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... I started to say, was, that I have just read Part II of Indian Summer, and to my mind there isn't a waste line in it, or one that could be improved. I read it yesterday, ending with that opinion; and read it again to-day, ending with the same opinion emphasized. I haven't read Part I yet, because ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the emptied shell of reputation and rank,—these were the things that filled his hours by day, by night; these, and a frightful expectance of one accusing, child-claiming ghost that never came. The air softened to Indian summer; the ice faded off the pool; a million leaves, crimson and bronze, scarlet and gold, dropped tenderly upon its silvering breadth and lay still; and both the joyless master of the larger house and the merry maid of the cottage asked Heaven ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... lovely night,' she said, 'like a night in our Indian summer in dear old Massachusetts. Let us talk in the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... did not appear. Josephine came, however, in riding skirt and gray hat and gauntlets, treading lightly down the path that lay all in a yellow glow which was not so much sunlight as that mellow haze which we call Indian Summer. She looked in at the stable, and then came straight over to Dick. There was, when Josephine was her natural self, something very direct and honest about all her movements, as if she disdained all feminine subterfuges and took always the straight, open trail ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... Steppes of Asia, the Pampas and Llanos of South America, and perhaps the Saharas of Africa. Some think the plains have been originally lake-beds; others attribute the absence of forests to the fires that almost annually sweep over them—(the cause, in vulgar estimation, of Indian summer.) The tree question will soon become a grave one. Although the Atlantic slope, the Rocky mountain region, and the southern portion of the Mississippi valley, are well wooded, there are here stretches of hundreds and thousands of miles where either not a tree grows, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... passed quickly. October had already reached its middle point. The glory of the Indian summer was close at hand. Too quickly the days fled for the little family at the farm, for they knew that each brought nearer the parting of which they could not bear ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... passed in America, I was surprised to find a great and very oppressive return of heat, accompanied with a heavy mistiness in the air, long after the summer heats were over; when this state of the atmosphere comes on, they say, "we have got to the Indian summer." On desiring to have this phrase explained, I was told that the phenomenon described as the Indian Summer was occasioned by the Indians setting fire to the woods, which spread heat and smoke to a great ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... in November, when the smoky haze of the delicious Indian summer overspread forest, stream, and country, Sam Harper came to the house of Nick Ribsam according ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... wine, and told of Forty Year. But if I worthy were to sing a richer, rarer time, I'd tune my pipes before the fire and merrily I'd strive To praise that age when prose again has given way to rhyme, The Indian Summer days of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... long together without her: soon we will be scattered, by the wind far and wide. Life is good! ... Look: there's the sun, the blue sky ... How pure the air is ... Cobwebs are floating—it's Indian summer ... How good it is in this world! ... Only we ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... for crossing the river, and in a few minutes were quietly and comfortably bivouacked out of sight of rebels on the opposite side. Scarcely had we settled ourselves for a comfortable night's rest, when the clouds, which had been gathering since morning, broke in rain, and the delightful Indian summer gave way to the rainy winter of the south. All night long the rain poured, and all the next day. It was evident we had waited too long. But the commander was determined not to abandon his effort to outflank the enemy. By morning, the roads were ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... in some parts of Europe is given to the season we call Indian Summer, in honor of the good St. Martin. The title of the poem was suggested by the fact that the day it refers to was the exact date of that set apart to the Saint, the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... clear and calm and warm to the town,—a belated September day, or possibly an early intimation of Indian summer,—and it promised to be even more delightful in the favored region toward which our friends were journeying. After they had cleared many miles of foundries and railroad crossings, and had paralleled for a last half-hour a distant succession ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... farther southward they saw sheltered slopes of the mountains where the foliage yet glowed in the reds and yellows of autumn, "purple patches" on the landscape. Over ridges to both east and west the fine haze of Indian summer yet hung. It was a wonderful world, full of beauty. The air was better and nobler than wine, and the creeks and brooks flowing swiftly down the ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... something kindred that escapes me, yielded long black beanlike slips which they lighted and smoked, the smaller ones staring and impressed; I at any rate think of the small one I can best speak for as constantly wading through an Indian summer of these disjecta, fascinated by the leaf-kicking process, the joy of lonely trudges, over a course in which those parts and the slightly more northward pleasantly confound themselves. These were the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... and dusty, Indian summer intensified. They had got out of their way through a mistake of the chauffeur, and suddenly just on the edge of a tiny quaint little village the car broke down and refused to go on without a lengthy siege of coaxing ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... gorgeous Indian summer, when the nature of the New World seems to awake, dressing all the trees in fantastic foliage of varied hue, my fancies were recalled to a well-remembered Virginian creeper that ornamented the houses of the Terrace, where my darling lived; for its leafy colouring in the autumn was similar ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... his poetry is all of New England. His heart was always turning back fondly to the woods and streams of the Berkshire hills. There was nothing of that urban strain in him which appears in Holmes and Willis. He was, in especial, the poet of autumn, of the American October and the New England Indian Summer, that season of "dropping nuts" and "smoky light," to whose subtle analogy with the decay of the young by the New England disease, consumption, he gave such tender expression in the Death of the Flowers; and amid whose "bright, late quiet," he wished himself to pass ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... two-thirds of the continent of North America, and to-day owns not so much as would supply burial room for a child! Saxon as I am, I confess I can not go to Montreal or Quebec, nor look upon the regal St. Lawrence, without a sort of Indian Summer regret filling my sky. The French ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Mystery brooded over the land, and they rode as in a dream. The fragrant cedar and pinon-scented smoke mingled with the soft, thin haze of the Indian summer which veiled the land in its golden glow of mystery; the sacred incense, the Red men say, of the gods, burned on their altars in ancient days; a sign to the people to gather each year on the hilltops and mesas, and in the forests and plains during the moon ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... covered o'er With a pale sheet of rime; The earth was like a marble floor, But now is turned to grime. For Autumn rains are falling fast, And swells the running brook; The Indian Summer, too, is past; For snowfall ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... brief period of meditation, took his resolve; and, sending back the brisk October day that had prepared to descend upon earth, he summoned, instead, the first day of the Indian Summer, and bade her go and help to celebrate the bridal of one of his favorite daughters, as she knew so ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... hundred years Ichabod Crane's courtship of Katrina Van Tassel, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, has continued to amuse its readers. The Indian summer haze is still resting on Sleepy Hollow, our American Utopia, where we can hear the quail whistling, see the brook bubbling along among alders and dwarf willows, over which amber clouds float forever in the sky; where the fragrant buckwheat ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the fog, there was nothing in the weather to suggest shipwreck and horrors. For a fortnight the Islands had lain steeped in the sunshine of Indian summer; a fortnight of still starry nights and days almost without a cloud. As a rule, such weather breaks up in a gale, of which the glass gives timely warning. But the mercury in Mr. Fossell's barometer indicated no depression—or the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... with us. You mustn't get tired, will you, Daphne?" Daphne was very sure she would not, and Peter reappearing at the moment, they all started away. They went out into a sunny day left over from the Indian summer. Still there was crispness in the air which exhilarated them, moving Peter to sundry manifestations which Maizie coldly designated as "showing off." He stood on his head, turned somersaults, cast his voice up to the heavens, immediately spoiled the crispness of his clean blouse. He was the ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... An Indian summer of happiness came over them. They were going back to security. Again Father played the mouth-organ a little, and they talked of the familiar city places they would see. They would enjoy the movies—weeks since they had seen ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... hedgerows are still rich with the tawny foliage of the oak, and the rich colouring of the hawthorn and the bramble. It was such weather as the Americans generally enjoy at this season, and call by the pretty name of the Indian summer. And we resolved to avail ourselves of the fineness of the day to drive to Ashley End, and inform Mrs. King and Tom (who we felt ought to know) of the loss of Chloe, and our fear, according with ...
— The Widow's Dog • Mary Russell Mitford
... stand in poor Hepzibah's eyes, or overflow them with a too abundant gush, so that she was fain to betake herself into some corner, lest Clifford should espy her agitation. Indeed, all the enjoyments of this period were provocative of tears. Coming so late as it did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its balmiest sunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest delight. The more Clifford seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the sadder was the difference to be recognized. With ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thirty years, had invaded this sanctuary to slay its lords, who counted age by centuries, and had lived and reigned here before our forefathers first trode the continent. The quietude and hazy light of Indian summer floated through the aisles and arches of the solemn forest city as we first saw it—a leaf falling lazily now and then across the slanting beams of the setting sun—a startled caribou, on the discovery of our approach, hurrying from his ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Elder left the supper-table his daughter and the new schoolmaster went out on the stoop or verandah which ran round the frame-house. The day had been warm, but the chilliness of the evening air betokened the near approach of the Indian summer. The house stood upon the crest of what had been a roll in the prairie, and as the two leant together on the railing of the stoop, they looked out over a small orchard of peach-trees to where, a couple of hundred yards away, at the foot of the bluff, Cottonwood ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... Ned?" said Tom, as they sailed in a small yacht on the bright waters of Penobscot Bay, on one of the soft days of the Indian summer. "You are as blue as ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... time, and her look and attitude were sadly at variance with that former time. The November day was not without a charm of its own which might even challenge comparison with the June glory; for it was Indian summer time, and the wonder of soft spiritual beauty which had settled down upon the landscape, brown and bare though that was, left no room to regret the full verdure and radiant sunlight of high summer. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... window the tawny leaves of the paulownia were swinging in the October sunshine, and so gay they seemed that it was impossible to imagine them insensible to the splendour of the Indian Summer. Under the half bared boughs, on the green grass in the yard, those that had already fallen sped on, like a flock of frightened brown birds, towards the white ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... however, the weather is serene and calm, particularly in autumn, and during the delicious season peculiar to America called the Indian summer, which precedes ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... to call her "mother," for that was the only sweet word life still held; yet of the child's father she did not think, for her mind, without special act of volition, turned and turned again to him upon whom the Indian summer of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... profitless voyage to shipowners. The flow of passengers, at that time of year, sets steadily the other way. Americans are returning from Europe to their own country. Tourists have delayed the voyage until the fierce August heat of the United States has subsided, and the delicious Indian summer is ready to welcome them. At bed and board the passengers by the Aquila on her homeward voyage had plenty of room, and the choicest morsels for everybody alike on the well ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... below the summit. On the eastern side was a more likely place for gray squirrels, coons, and partridges. Foxes were at home on all sides and Old Clump was a favourite ground of the fox hunters. One day of early Indian summer, as we were digging potatoes on the lower side hill, our attention was attracted by someone calling from the edge of the woods at the upper side of the sheep lot. My brothers rested on their hoe handles a moment and I brushed the soil from my hands and straightened up from my bent attitude of picking ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... keys," and left the room. Despatching a servant with the keys, which she had intended to have put into her hands at the earliest opportunity, thereby acknowledging her superior claim at once, she sought Natalie, whom she found seated in the conservatory, enjoying the Indian summer breeze, which stole softly in among the fragrant plants, which were the particular objects of her care. Each knew what was uppermost in the other's mind, but Winnie's heart was ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... own ground and the slopes where the beds of the market garden lay trim and neat in the sun. Or, rather, to-day, in the warm, hazy, soft October light; the sun's rays could not rightly get through the haze. It was one of the delicious times of October weather, which the unlearned are wont to call Indian summer, but which is not that, and differs from it essentially. The glory of the Indian summer is wholly ethereal; it belongs to the light and the air; and is a striking image and eloquent testimony of how far spirit can overmaster matter. The earth is brown, the ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... very proud of my six feet two inches prospective conjugal yoke-fellow; proud of his martial bearing, his brilliant reputation, 'proud of his pride'; and I think I shall grow very fond of him, because in a mild way I think he cares for me'; and we can make a little Indian Summer for each other before the frosts of Winter fall upon us. What else can I do with my life? Think of it. Papa will be married soon, and while I don't propose to tear my hair and insult his bride, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... It was November, Indian summer rather, and a warm, warm night—which was unnecessary, for the work of the summer was done. Babe Ruth had smashed the home-run record for the first time and Jack Dempsey had broken Jess Willard's cheek-bone out in Ohio. Over in Europe the usual number ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and imagine the winter, the fifteen or twenty months of it, they must have every year. I could almost have shed tears over that patch of corn that had escaped the early August frosts. I suppose this is a sort of Indian summer that we are enjoying now, and that the cold weather will set in after a week or two. My cousin and I thought that Tadoussac was somewhat retired and composed last night, but I'm sure that I shall see it in its true light, as a metropolis, going back. I'm afraid that the turmoil and bustle ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... is a false glory and a brief one, with alluring beauty like the music of a swan-song, and it had been in an Indian summer of present possession that she had lived from day to day, refusing to contemplate the future—but that could ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a luxury to breathe. These spring days are the perfection of delightful weather. Imagine the delicious temperature of our Indian summer joined to the life and freshness of spring, add to this a sky of the purest azure, and a breeze filled with the odor of violets,—the most exquisite of all perfumes—and you have some idea of it. The meadows are beginning ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... however, is usually reached in our climate in October, sometimes the most marked in November, forming the delicious Indian summer; a truce is declared, and both forces, heat and cold, meet and mingle in friendly converse on the field. In the earlier season, this poise of the temperature, this slack-water in nature, comes in May and June; but the October calm is most marked. Day after day, and sometimes week ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... died quietly in the deep orchard grass, and tiny apples waxed and rounded and ripened and gained stripes of gold and carmine; and the blue eggs broke into young robins, that grew from gaping, yellow-mouthed youth to fledged and outflying maturity. Came autumn, with its long Indian summer, and winter, with its flinty, sparkling snows, under which all Nature lay a sealed and beautiful corpse. Came once more the spring winds, the lengthening days, the opening flowers, and the ever-renewing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Indian summer sun looked down upon, while the teacher stood gazing fixedly at the message which she held. Curious faces peered out of the windows and through the door, which she left ajar when she came into the hall. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... heat annoyed me at the time. It was the month of November; but it was that peculiar season known as 'Indian summer', and the heat was excessive—not under 90 degrees, I am certain. The shrubbery that encircled me prevented a breath of air from reaching my body; and the rays of the noonday sun fell almost vertically in that ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... evening a fortnight after the furnace had gone out of blast for lack of fuel that Caleb filled his after-dinner pipe and followed his son out on the veranda. The Indian summer was still at its best, and since the first early frosts there had been a return of dry weather and mild temperatures, with warm, soft nights when the blue haze seemed to ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... no way to keep well under the circumstances. At last a day and night of peculiarly agonising depression were succeeded by physical illness; I took perforce to my bed. About this time the Indian summer closed, and the equinoctial storms began; and for nine dark and wet days, of which the hours rushed on all turbulent, deaf, dishevelled—bewildered with sounding hurricane—I lay in a strange fever of the nerves ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... are but scrawny clots of brown, draggled by the tears in which the sudden sun has drowned the pasture. Yet these least of all should be pessimistic in November, for as the sun dries their tears another summer comes back to them and to us, Indian summer, which is the finest season of the year. The Indian winter of the dark hours before dawn steals dawn with all spears pointed for the massacre of the summer flowers that still linger unprotected, and the white magic of its own cold changes the spears to delicate, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Indian Summer came, and the city blazed in glorious colour. Homecoming began; the big houses on the Avenue were opened. Martie never saw the burning leaves of September in later years without a memory of the poignant uneasiness with which she first had walked beneath them, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... Indian summer? Is this a description of an Indian summer day? Sketch the field described, or the sunset. Observe the color ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the moon was shining with her softest lustre through the deep haze peculiar to our Indian summer, he came as usual to our little homestead. Somehow, I can scarcely tell why, I had been expecting him. He had dropped something the previous evening which had awakened in my mind the deepest feeling, and I was half ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... was pleased by the tailor's good pieces of work; showing the neatly-placed patches with as much pride as many matrons take in new clothes now-a-days. And the weather cleared up into a dim kind of autumnal fineness, into anything but an Indian summer as far as regarded gorgeousness of colouring, for on that coast the mists and sea fogs early spoil the brilliancy of the foliage. Yet, perhaps, the more did the silvery grays and browns of the inland scenery conduce to the tranquillity of the time,—the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... demonstrations, one goes to look at the crowd, but here the crowd was the procession. This political fever seemed to work up the enthusiasm of every man, woman, and child when the march was over, on, I may tell you, a bright, hot Indian summer's day in November. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... bright and warm, as the days in Indian summer often are, and the McPherson party stood upon the wharf waving their good-bys as long as Grey and Bessie were discernible among the passengers; then they returned to their Hotel, and Miss Betsey sent the following cablegram to ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... fair and warm, with an almost imperceptible haze in the atmosphere, a veritable Indian summer day if ever there was one. After dinner, a rather more hearty meal than was served to the football players on week-days, Clint went back to his room with the noble intention of writing a fine long letter to his father and mother. There had been complaints from Cedar ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... did some long-distance telephoning. Then immediately after breakfast she sent to the garage round the corner for her runabout and in it she rode up through the city and on into Westchester, now beginning to flaunt the circus colors of a gorgeous Indian summer. An hour and a half of steady driving brought her to the village of Pleasantdale. She found it a place well named, seeing that it was tucked down in a cove among the hills between the Hudson on the one side and ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... The "Indian Summer Calendar" is the best thing you have done yet. I have read it straight through twice, and now it lies on my desk, and I read daily selections from it, as some of the good people read from their "Golden ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... those balmy Indian summer days which, if the eyes were closed, would remind you of Andalusia when the orange trees put forth their blossoms with the matured fruit still clinging to their boughs, burying its golden ripeness among cool, green leaves, and buds of fragrant snow. Still, save in ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... was! It was the rosy dawn of an Indian summer day,—a warm jewel of a day, dropped into the bleak world of yesterday without a hint of beneficent intention; one of those enchanting weather surprises with which Dame Nature reconciles us to her stern ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was with me in Fort Sumter, at the restoration of the flag, and with whom I have foregathered in many a fertilizing conversation. Away off on the slope above beautiful Stockbridge, and surrounded by his Berkshire Hills, Dr. Henry M. Field is spending the bright "Indian summer" of his long and honored career. For forty years we held sweet fellowship in the columns ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... warmth—the really royal weather of the year—red sunshine, the hills purple and blue in the distance, and the still air savory with the smoke of brush-burnings and the wild breath of new-lifed vegetation. Lovelier than the Indian summer, for mingled with all things is the consciousness of the flowering and fruiting to come. The Indian summer has a sweet sadness. The spring is full of hope and promise, and the heart ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was. How widely it departed from the traditional patterns. Here in his own case, that Fate should save the one real passion of his life for the Indian summer of it. And that it should be a reciprocated passion. The wiseacres were smiling at him, he supposed; smiling as the world always smiled at the spectacle of infatuate age mating with tolerant, indifferently acquiescent youth. Smiled and wondered how long ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... children as chickens under shelter. All in the fort were cheerful, and the men joked with the gush of humor which danger starts in Americans. I saw then the ready laugh that faced in its season what was called Indian summer, because the Indian took then advantage of the last pleasant weather to make raids. Such pioneers could speak lightly even of powwowing time—the first pleasant February days, when savages held councils before descending on ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... where a strange country Opened its secret plains about me, One great golden dome stand lonely with its golden image, one Seen afar, in strange fulfilment, Through the sunlit Indian summer That Apocalyptic portent that has clothed her ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... appearance of the fall, and the sweet haze of Indian summer lay over the landscape, the horizon only faintly outlined through it. Peter Junior sniffed the air. He wondered if the forests in the north were afire. Golden maple leaves danced along on the path before ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... as in lands where man has mingled his being with hers for countless centuries, where every field is steeped in history, every crag is ivied with legend, and the whole atmosphere of thought is hazy with the Indian summer of tradition. Nature without an ideal background is nothing. We may claim whatever merits we like, (and our orators are not too bashful,) we may be as free and enlightened as we choose, but we are certainly not ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... candlelighting^; eventide, nightfall, curfew, dusk, twilight, eleventh hour; sunset, sundown; going down of the sun, cock-shut, dewy eve, gloaming, bedtime. afternoon, postmeridian, p.m. autumn, fall, fall of the leaf; autumnal equinox; Indian summer, St. Luke's summer, St. Martin's summer. midnight; dead of night, witching hour, witching hour of night, witching time of night; winter; killing time. Adj. vespertine, autumnal, nocturnal. Phr. midnight, the outpost of advancing day [Longfellow]; sable-vested Night [Milton]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on the sand looking off over the blue water veiled with the soft haze of Indian summer. A point covered with pine trees stretched boldly out into the lake, its rocky cliffs rising perpendicularly eighty feet above the beach, a sheer precipice from whose summit a pebble dropped would strike ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... to four months continuance, with a keen and dry air, and cloudless sky. During summer excessive heat prevails, with heavy dews at night. In the spring there are cold and heavy rains. The autumns are fine, and are followed by what is called "Indian summer," which is truly delightful. Along the route that Mr. Fearon had travelled in this state, there was scarcely an elevation which could be called a hill, with exception of rising grounds on the margins of rivers. The dreary ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... was beautiful in tones of green and stretches of foliage. Whoever calls it monotonous has never watched its varying complexions or the visible breath of Indian summer which never departs from it ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Indian summer is given to almost any autumnal period of exceptionally quiet, dry and hazy weather. In America these characteristic features of late fall were especially associated with the middle West, at a time when the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the harvest time in Oscar Wilde's Life; and his golden Indian summer. We owe it "De Profundis," the best pages of prose he ever wrote, and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," his only original poem; yet one that will live as long as the language: we owe it also that sweet and charming letter to Bobbie Ross which shows him in his habit as he lived. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... signs that the Indian Summer had reached its close. All night long the wind had moaned and lamented in the chimneys, and the sense of dread in the outer atmosphere crept into the house and weighed upon the slumbering inmates. There ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... this Indian Summer dance in the forest was near Cedar House. It was one of the natural open spaces, of which there were many in the wilderness, and it overlooked the river. High walls of thick green leaves enfolded it upon three sides, and it had a broad level floor ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... Governor drew two or three tremendous whiffs and passed it on to Colonel Verney, who in his turn transferred it to the Surveyor-General. When the monster pipe had been smoked by each of the white men, it went the round of the savages. An Indian summer haze began to settle around the company. Through it the patient gazing throng on the outskirts of the circle became shadowy, impalpable; the face of the half king, now hidden in shifting smoke wreaths, now darkly visible, like that of an eastern idol before whom incense is burned. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the day brilliant. The sun shone upon the dark, scarlet-tinged foliage of the oaks, and through the transparent yellow leaves of the maple. A slight frost had appeared for two or three mornings about a month back, and now they were enjoying what was termed the Indian summer, which is a return of fair and rather warm weather for a short time previous to ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... another word, and taking her hat and cloak as she passed through the hall went at once out into the garden. It was a fine autumn morning, almost with a touch of summer in it. We do not know here that special season which across the Atlantic is called the Indian summer,—that last glow of the year's warmth which always brings with it a half melancholy conviction of the year's decay,—which in itself is so delightful, would be so full of delight, were it not for the consciousness which it seems to contain of being the immediate ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... afterward, I found that those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch more of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly by the seam in the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had been very warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not now transparent, showing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, but opaque and whitish or gray, and though twice as thick was hardly stronger than before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat and run together, and lost their regularity; ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Indian summer, when the sharper lines of nature are softened by the haze, some came to us from across the mountains to make up for the deserters. From time to time a little group would straggle to the gates of the station, weary and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... bright, honest eyes of the hardy sailor: there seemed to mingle with it a half-doubting, trembling apprehensiveness; albeit it was not difficult to perceive that, sorrowfully as had passed her noon of prime, an "Indian summer" of the soul was rising upon her brightened existence, and already with its first faint flushes lighting up her meek, doubting eyes, and pale, changing countenance. Willy, her feeble-minded child, frisked and gambolled by their side; and altogether, a happier group than they ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren |
