"Somber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... She passed through a somber little hall, then found herself in a very large room draped with ivory colored cretonne patterned with butterflies in vivid shades. The furniture was ivory colored wood, and the carpet gray, with clusters of wild flowers, primrose, poppies, ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... shortsightedly or conceitedly attributed to the arbitrary initiative of this or that thinker, this or that scientist. We must rather regard it as a natural product, a necessary phenomenon, in the development of that sad and somber department of science which deals with the disease of crime. It is this plague of crime which forms such a gloomy and painful contrast with the splendor of present-day civilization. The 19th century has won a great victory over mortality ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... a gala-night when we rattle down the rough streets, and have pointed out to us the somber government buildings. The Halifax Club House is a blaze of light, for the Governor-General is being received there, and workmen are still busy decorating the Provincial Building for the great ball. The city is indeed pervaded by his lordship, and we regret that we cannot see it in its normal condition ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... transformation. A moment before his face—lined, brooding, somber, oddly pale for that country of universal tan—looked almost old. At least one would have felt it the face of a man who had recently endured a great deal of mental or physical suffering. Now, as he turned with an unconscious straightening of broad shoulders and ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... had been a good deal of snow, and, except where it was brushed away from the foot-path, it lay white and unbroken, the black trunks of the trees among it looking like pillars of ebony in the ivory-paved courts of a temple. Up in the sky winter was passing with all his somber train, the clouds flying rapidly in great grotesque masses, and seeming to touch the tops of the trees like ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... at her white teeth. "It would be death to me if it were known," she said. But still she pondered, her eye alight with somber fire, her dark cheek ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... a woebegone little figure with her dusty shoes, her black stockings, her huddled body, while the big hat threw all into deepest gloom. From hat to drawn-in feet, she was not unlike a narrow edge of darkness splitting the moon-sheen, a somber shadow cast by goodness- knows-what and ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... in another. The poisoned chalice, the glittering dagger suspended over the head of the sleeper; wizards and phantoms with terrific masks, those half-dim shadows more alarming than the approach of fire or the somber face of midnight, these, and such as these, he had made the companions of his more pleasing pictures. No sooner had the king entered his room than a cold shiver seemed to pass through him, and on Fouquet asking ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of flowers and ground pine. The word farvel, "farewell," was worked in green over the front door. The coffin, which was carried on a bier by the neighbors to the little cemetery not far away, was covered with flowers, and following it were a number of women clad in somber black with little white shawls tied under their chins, each carrying a wreath in her hands. The minister led the procession. He was dressed in a long black gown reaching to his heels, like the cassock of ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... though he said little save to guide Beatrice and warn her of unusual difficulties, felt the somber magic of the place. No poet, he; only a man of hard and practical details. Yet he realized that, were he dowered with the faculty, here lay matter for an Epic of Death such as no Homer ever dreamed, no Virgil ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... chill and dank as the breath of a tomb, blew upon the company, and from the deep darkness into which they all stared with straining, unseeing eyes, came the solemn sound of Mr. Smitz, speaking hurriedly in somber tones in some sonorous unknown tongue, and low rustlings and whirrs and soft footfalls and faint rattlings that grew stronger, louder, each moment, swelling up into the stamp of a mailed heel and the clangor of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... from Miss Montandon's comments." Entlore fell silent and Garlock watched his somber thoughts picture Margon Base and his nation's capital being attacked and destroyed by a fleet of invincible and invulnerable starships ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... toward the bright side of life, which is really half the battle, and neither the damp nor the cold was able to take from him the good spirits that were his greatest treasure. Coming from the bare life of a camp and the somber scenes of battlefields, he seemed to have plunged into a very whirlwind of gaiety, and his eyes sparkled with appreciation. He did not notice then that his captain's uniform was stained and threadbare enough to make him a most ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and in the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... of all the characters. When Eustacia fails to go to the door and admit her husband's mother she sets in motion events that bring swift ruin upon her as well as upon others. At every turn of the story the somber Egdon heath looms in the background, more real than any character in the romance, a sinister force that seems to sweep the characters on to their doom. Tess is more appealing than any other of Mr. Hardy's works, ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... from Boccaccio), and was designed as a warning to great men of the fickleness of fortune. The Induction is the only noteworthy part of it. It was an allegory, written in Chaucer's seven-lined stanza and described with a somber imaginative power, the figure of Sorrow, her abode {68} in the "griesly lake" of Avernus and her attendants, Remorse, Dread, Old Age, etc. Sackville was the author of the first regular English tragedy, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... knick-knacks, and against the partition that separated the two rooms stood a quaintly carved old wooden chest. Though the furniture was scanty and made the tent seem even more spacious than it really was, the whole room had an air of barbaric splendour. The somber hangings gleaming with thick silver threads seemed to Diana like a studied theatrical effect, a setting against which the Arab's own white robes should contrast more vividly; she remembered the black and silver waistcloth she ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... building. The place was just at the commencement of the hill country, and where the shores of the Seneca cease to offer those smiling pictures of successful husbandry that so much abound farther north. A somber, or it might be better to say a sober, aspect gave dignity to the landscape, which, if not actually grand, had, at least, most of the elements that characterize the ...
— The Lake Gun • James Fenimore Cooper
... single arch, which reflects in the placid water the outlines of its graceful ogive. On the right, the hills stand close together in the form of a circus, and seemed to join their verdure-clad curves; on the left, they spread out until they become merged in the deep and somber masses of a vast forest. The valley is thus closed on all sides, and offers a picture of which the calm, the freshness, and ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... attempt to impress upon the passerby the fact that this was no ordinary holiday resort but the giant pleasure-ground of all in the world who had money to throw away and the capacity for enjoyment. Only once a more somber note seemed struck when Mrs. Draconmeyer, leaning on her husband's arm and accompanied by a nurse and Lady Hunterleys, passed to their table. Hunterleys' eyes followed the little party until they had reached ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... free from dreams and They have not come near me. I begin to think Dr. Owen is right. I have been suffering from nervous disturbances caused by shell shock, and I am on the road to recovery. I need rest and recreation, especially recreation—anything to divert my mind from fears and somber thoughts. I say this to Seraphine when she warns me that I must not go to Roberta's party. She says I will go at my great peril, but I refuse to entertain these fears. I crave the gaiety and insouciance of Roberta's care-free Bohemians. Besides, I shall see Christopher. ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... the girl retired within herself again and he could get nothing more out of her. He would have believed that she actually disliked him, had it not been for the fact that whatever he said, she took as gospel, that wherever he chanced to be there she was, her ears open, her somber, meditative eyes fixed upon him. Evidently she did not actually dislike him; he decided finally that she was studying him, striving to analyze and to weigh him to her own complete satisfaction before trusting ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... fields are wrapped in somber shroud As fades the light of day; A tender flush is on the cloud ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... confused and dull at first, but growing louder, until it swelled into a deafening roar. "Long live Boulanger!" "Down with Ferry!" "Long live the Republic!" As the great wave of sound rose over the crowd and broke sullenly against the somber masses of the Palace of the Bourbons, a thin, shrill cry from the extreme right answered, "Vive ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... in the smoke," was the somber reply; "the smoke never lies. After I lay down on my skins I could not sleep, I felt there was danger approaching us. From where I knew not. So I made the "fetish" fire. In it I saw a band of men coming toward us down the river and at the head of them was ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... feels the oppression of war more and more each day. There have been so many "morts pour la patrie" that everywhere there are families who have been stricken by the loss of a member. This leaven of sorrow gives to the population as a whole a somber tone. ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... or moralists, and, like them, pushes his stories to an end that is often bitter. His temperament is cast in that brooding, reflective mood that concerns itself less readily with jollity than with grief, and is therefore ever slanting toward pessimism. This, even his style indicates. Like the somber Hawthorne's, his style is brooding, adumbrative, rather than incisive or brilliant, and it often limps among the facts of his story like a man in pain. Indeed, Hardy is seldom a stylist, except when his mood is somber; ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the days that were dead, and of those rushing upon him from the mystic future, "each bearing its burden of sorrow." He trod again life's thorny path, from the cradle to manhood's somber noon, a path strewn with wreck and wraith and wet with blood and tears. Again the well-known forms came from beyond the firelight and, winding their shadowy arms about his neck, wept for his loneliness. He tried to embrace them, to gather them to his heart as in the old days ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... color effect of the marble. Only the light color play of its exterior would do against a placid blue sky to relieve the otherwise exceedingly simple rigidity of its massive forms of construction. To make an imitation of this great building in uncouth, somber, almost black pine logs of dubious proportions is hardly ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... like Jacob did for Rachel. I've lost most things—my memory, my health, my very likeness! but never for five minutes have I lost my love for her. She was the only star in my darkness——" The words fell from him with somber sincerity. "I ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... wardrobe was supplied for years to come from that of the deceased aunt. There were stored away in the garret of the Ackley house enough voluminous black silks and satins and bombazines to keep her clad in somber richness for ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... friends wearied her, she no longer yearned for the sunshine and flowers of the garden; indeed, she showed no desire to be out-of-doors at all, but lay day after day in the wheel-chair by the balcony window, staring with somber, unseeing eyes out over the river. Nothing family or friends could do roused her from her apathy, and despair descended upon the household. Must this little life which they loved so dearly fade away before their eyes, ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... speech than he had made since Sylvie's arrival, and it was not just the speech, in tone or manner, of a fourteen-year-old boy. There was a new somber note in his voice, too—some of the youthful quality had gone out of it. Sylvie took a step toward him, to thank him, perhaps, perhaps to satisfy, by laying her hand upon him, a sudden bewilderment; but in her blindness she stumbled on the edge of the ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... lips red and full as those of a young girl. The age of Madame Cerise might be anywhere between fifty and seventy; assuredly she had long been a stranger to youth, although her dark hair was but slightly streaked with gray. She wore a somber-hued gown and a maid's jaunty apron ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... sang no more. She became a somber girl and a drudge. The birds could not understand. They followed her through the woods, but she was silent, as if she had been stricken dumb, and her eyes always seemed eager to be shedding tears. Also, she was too busy to notice ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... snow line on Pike's Peak. Jennie felt that it must be a cheap affair, but it was decorative, and she wondered where Mrs. Irwin got it. She guessed it must have a story—a story in which the stooped, rusty, somber old lady looked like a character drawn to harmonize with the period just after the war. For the black alpaca dress looked more like a costume for a masquerade than a present-day garment, and Mrs. Irwin ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... she leaned over Channing's shoulder to interpret the difficult manuscript score, he glanced up to meet her eyes, no longer merry and mischievous as was their wont, but curiously somber, languid. He saw that she was giving herself to music as an opium eater surrenders to the drug he loves, indifferent to her surroundings, unaware of them, perhaps; but not unaware of him. It was to him she sang, however unconsciously. Jacqueline had ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... o'clock. It was still daylight—a pale, sad light beneath the blanched sky. The servants had had the forethought to bring up two lamps with them. I had them lighted, thinking that they would brighten up the somber room. Aunt Agathe, who had rolled a table to the middle of the room, wished to organize a card party. The worthy woman, whose eyes sought mine momentarily, thought above all of diverting the children. Her good humor kept up a superb bravery; and she laughed ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... thereby afforded him ample leisure to complete and publish his Lichfield Legislative Papers prior to 1800—the colonel, be it repeated, went everywhere; and people found him no whit the worse company for his black gloves and the somber band stitched to his coatsleeve. So Lichfield again received him gladly, as the social triumph of his generation. Handsome and trim and affable, no imaginable tourist could possibly have divined—for everybody ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... tried to express something like this to Dunkie last night, somewhat apologetically, he looked at me with an odd light in his somber old Scotch Canadian eye. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... human thought and feeling—in the whole melancholy history of the race—where tears and grief, the hard seriousness of life and the terrible and speedy certainty of our common fate of suffering and of death, make somber the master-cord of existence. And the great orator must reflect the deeper ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... somber way, Anderson has here touched upon one of the great themes of American literature, especially Midwestern literature, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the struggle for speech as it entails a search ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... white daylight, courage returned. From her wigwam Diane watched the silent village, wrapped in fog, wake to the busy life of the Glades. Somber-eyed little Indian lads carried water and gathered wood, fires brightened, there was a pleasant smell of pine in the morning air. Later, by Keela's fire, she furtively watched Philip ride forth with a ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... was passing behind the first cloud of the whole day just then. Somehow the added somber conditions had an effect on all the boys; for, with the temporary vanishing of the king of day, the shadows around them appeared to grow bolder, and issue forth ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... which had risen considerably during our conversation, dropped with a slump when Jim's big house loomed up ahead. Already, something of the unhappiness within seemed to have added a more somber touch to the outside. Have you noticed how you can tell from the face of a house what kind of life the inhabitants lead? Happiness or misery, health or sickness, riches or poverty all show as though the walls were saturated from the ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... Sheila shivered, he abruptly closed the door, barred it, and strode to the fireplace, throwing a fresh log into it. For a time he stood silently in front of the fire, his figure casting a long, gaunt shadow at Sheila's feet, his gaze on her, grim, somber lines in his face. Presently he cleared ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... chairs, however, were deep and comfortable, although the yielding upholstery appeared at first sight hard and brittle as metal sheets. The room was perfectly bare, and the color scheme a dull silver and black. To me it seemed extremely somber, but it pleased Edvar ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... his creatures. And more than this; we must conclude that He himself has an infinite taste, which finds an infinite pleasure in making and viewing this magnificent universe of flashing splendor and somber sweetness, this field on field, system beyond system, far off where human eye can never reach, all shining and moving in an infinite variety of forms, colors and movements. Moreover, we can not but feel that God is a lover of Dress. He ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... upon it. The first dress of Belvidera, I remember, was a point of nice discussion between them. Plain black velvet and a lugubrious long vail were considered my only admissible wear, after my husband's ruin; but before the sale of our furniture, it was conceded that I might relieve the somber Venetian patrician's black dress with white satin puffs and crimson linings and rich embroidery of gold and pearl; moreover, before our bankruptcy, I was allowed (not, however, without serious demur on the part of Lawrence) to cover my ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... spring. White sails moved to and fro upon the horizon and a mild air stirred the lace curtains in Olga's window, which undulated lightly, their borders flapping joyously with a frivolous disregard for the somber mood of the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... me to my elbow and then to the window. The little steamer was feeling her cautious way up a river of dull silver between banks of taupe and mauve. After a moment I could pick up objects here and there in somber silhouette—a windmill, a battered barn, crude landings reaching out to graze the boat. In that tremulous moment before the break of day, shore and stream and sky melted and ran together in the liquid pattern of an abalone shell. Then, suddenly, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... depressing prospect of the graves from the vicarage windows and makes the place seem less "a churchyard home" than when the Brontes inhabited it. The dwelling is of gray stone, two stories high, of plain and somber aspect. A wing is added, the little window-panes are replaced by larger squares, the stone floors are removed or concealed, curtains—forbidden by Mr. Bronte's dread of fire—shade the window, and the once bare interior is furbished and furnished in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... free-flowing skirts to the shoulders. The sleeves left off at the elbow and his lower arms were clasped with bracelets of ivory and gold. His ankles were similarly adorned, and his sandals of gazelle-hide were beaded and stitched. His was a somber and barbaric presence. This was Atsu, captain of chariots and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the stranger, pointing out a large, somber building to the left, "is the courthouse. The last time I entered it was to be present at the trial of a young man of my acquaintance who had fallen into evil courses, and, yielding to temptation, had stolen from his employer. It was a sad sight," said ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... had gained the confidence of the old sexton by a few friendly words and the tender of a silver half dollar. The pit of it was about 50 feet in diameter and 4 or 5 feet deep, and it was so heavily roofed with earth that the interior was damp and somber as a tomb. It looked like a low tumulus, and was provided with a tunnel-like entrance about 10 feet long and 4 feet high, and leading down to a level with the floor of the pit. The mouth of the tunnel was closed with brush, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... when he came back to his chamber he found Dandtan and Trar awaiting him there. There was a curious hardness in Dandtan's attitude, a somber sobriety in Trar's carriage. ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... their ease. They both appreciated the painful phenomenon, but they differed toto coelo as to the cause. Mr. Fountain ascribed it to the somber influence of Mrs. Bazalgette, and miscalled her, till Jane's hair stood on end: she happened to be the one at the keyhole that night. Mr. Talboys laid all the blame on David Dodd. The discussion was ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... obliquely, as though in a great hurry to get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a street which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is wide, bright, and crowded; and do they also like to leave a brilliant street and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street cars? Do they yearn to board those cars and be transported by them into the mystic caverns of the night? And when they see strangers who are evidently ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of her father. The year abroad had passed swiftly; the end of it brought them to Paris once more, where, feeling that her time of mourning might be decently terminated, Mrs. Talbot had discarded her somber robes, and had put herself into the hands of the most fashionable dress-maker she ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... in the same somber tone, "I am not contented: so much I can admit to the father of the woman I love. But you know as well as I do that men nowadays are called to my profession not so much by the Divine summons as by the accident of birth. Were it not for the law of primogeniture, Colonel ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... make the same demonstrations, so that the external conduct of so faithful vassals should correspond to the sorrow which palpitated in their hearts and saddened their breasts. Scarcely was the word given before the obedient people changed the precious and fine appearance of their attire with somber mourning garments; and this whole community became a theater of grief—each one showing the loyalty which was as much evinced by his grief as it was wondered at by the barbarous nations who trade in these islands, when they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... conviction that sinners, or at any rate unconscientious persons, have a much easier and pleasanter time of it than those who try to do right. To the imagination of the majority of adults sin is dressed in glittering colors and virtue in gray, somber garments. There are few who do not take credit for right doing as if they had chosen a hard and disagreeable part instead of the more alluring ways of wrong. This is because they have been mis-taught in childhood and have come to think of wrongdoing as pleasant and virtue as hard, whereas the ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... tall and somber, Sobbed through all its robes of darkness, Rattled like a shore with pebbles, Answered wailing, answered weeping, "Take my ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... gloomy side street the blue gleam of the pitiless river showed light against the somber night, the yellow blinking lights of the tugs flitting ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... quick devotion, this distressed her not a little. Was he growing tired of her? Was he ashamed to be seen at the opera with a quiet woman in widow's dress, a touch shabby? Was her much-tired heart to have a last cruel blow dealt it? Accustomed to rather somber pathways of thought, she could not escape this one; yet she loyally endeavored to turn from it, and from time to time she stole a look at the stern, pale face beside her to discover, if she could, what had robbed him of ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... feller," Bruce added, with somber eyes. "I ought to pull out of here. It's no use, we can't hit it off ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... people of Lawrence with Governor Shannon did, however, have a somber and awful background. While this had been going on a boy had been murdered in the vicinity of Lawrence. Some young men rode out to see about it, and one of them was shot and killed. But a still more ghastly crime threw its baleful ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... ink-stained table, littered with pens, papers, and almanacs, an American cloth sofa, three chairs of varying patterns, and a much-worn carpet, constituted all the furniture, save only a very large and obtrusive porcelain spittoon, and a gaudily framed and very somber picture which hung above the fireplace. Sitting in front of this picture, and staring gloomily at it, as being the only thing which he could stare at, was a small sallow-faced boy with a large head, who in the intervals of his art studies ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to say that, does not explain it. It is only a label. You follow me? Yes? Or still more mysterious is your conscious power. You will to raise your hand, and it obeys. Muscular action? Oh yes; but that is but another label." He turned his eyes, suddenly somber, upon the staring, listening young man, and his voice rose a little. "Go right behind all that, Mr. Baxter, down to the mysteries. What is that link between soul and body? You do not know! Nor does the wisest scientist in ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... its noonday feast when Miss Hortensia Price appeared. Miss Hortensia Price was straight and tall, with somber black eyes and thin, serious lips. Many of the children were greatly in awe of the dignified nurse; but Elsie Meyer ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... partly the reflection of his somber eyes and partly from the tawny hue of his saturnine visage, added an inexpressible degree of malignant rancor to ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... him," declared the captain, with a somber brow, "and the deuce of it is that, unless we can detect him, he will walk ashore at Southampton or Cherbourg a ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... forgot the somber garment of womanhood that shadowed her last night, and danced in the very gladness of her heart. Wenonah smiled and then sighed. What if this man of so many years should want to marry the child? Such things had been. And there was that fine young De Ber just come home. But ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... The whole earth, with its trees and buildings, was suspended over his head, seemingly about to fall at any moment with him into the depths; the sun at noon glared upward from the depths of an inferno, lighting from below the somber earth suspended overhead! Thus the warm comfort of the sun, which has cheered the heart of man from time immemorial, now took on an unearthly, unnatural semblance. I learned that he could never quite shake off the feeling ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... town, and hundreds of thousands of Londoners are hunting taxis at eleven at night, and they are hard to catch. So we generally had the fun of walking back to Brook Street in the dark. And it is dark in London toward midnight. Paris is merely gloomy. Rome is a bit somber, but London is as black as the inside of your hat. For London has been bombed and bombed by the German airmen, until London in the prevailing mist which threatens fog becomes mere murk. Night after night we wandered the crooked streets ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... from Cape Charles in the south to Cape Chidley in the north is scoured as clean as the paving stones of a street. Naked, desolate, forbidding it lies in a somber mist. In part it is low and ragged but as we pass north it gradually rises into bare slopes and finally in the vicinity of Nachbak Bay high mountains, perpendicular and grey, ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... I regyards the play as the funniest, ondoubted, that's ever been evolved in Tennessee; but my mood changes as subsequent events assoomes a somber face. Old Jedge Finn goes fumin' about like a wronged lion, an' the rest is as hot as election day in a hornet's nest. Pards, I'm a Mexican! if they don't indict me for piracy on the high seas, an' pledge their words to see me hanged before ever ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... music of some wild orchestra, whose symphonies are heard in the mountain winds. Seen nearer and in detail, these mountains are all in delicious keeping with all of what the imagination in love with the fantastic, attracted by their more distant forms, could dream. Valleys, gorges, somber gaps, walls cut perpendicularly, rough or polished by water, cavities festooned with hanging stalactites and notched like Gothic sculptures—all make up a strange sight which ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... a couple of hundred miles further south, having united with the Grande, and formed the Rio Colorado, does indeed, by dint of burrowing deeper and deeper into the sunless chasms, become at last sublime. But here it gives no hint of its future somber glory. I remained awake till we had crossed Green River, to make sure that no striking scenery should be missed by sleep. But I got nothing for my pains except the moonlight on the muddy water; and next time I shall go to bed comfortably, proving to the conductor that I am ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... of the past and present, O whither, and whence, and where, Demanded my soul, as I scaled the height Of the pine-clad peak in the somber ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Moose, breasting its slow current with steady strokes, startling flocks of waterfowl at every bend, gliding hour after hour along this shadowy waterway that split the hushed reaches of the woods. It was very still and very somber and a little uncanny. The creek was but a thread in that illimitable forest which pressed so close on either hand. The sun at high noon could not dissipate the shadows that lurked among the close-ranked trees; it touched the earth and the creek with patches and streaks of yellow ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... doorway, and then turned a moment with the folds of the big red curtain flung behind her. It forced up the sweeping lines of a figure so delicately molded that its slenderness was scarcely apparent, for Maud Barrington still wore a long somber dress that had assisted in her triumphs in the city. It emphasized the clear pallor of her skin and the brightness of her eyes, as she held herself very erect in a pose which, while assumed in mockery, had yet in it something that ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... growing so thick and rank that it is quite like looking into some vast conservatory, with the blue dome of the sky for glass. And here grow the magnolias in their wild, barbaric splendor of bloom, and the live-oaks, mighty of girth and spread, draped in somber gray moss as if for the funeral of some god of the deep green wood. At the fringe of the swamp, tempting you until near to jumping into the morass after them, are the huge fleurs-de-lis, each gorgeous blossom fully seven inches across ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... I want to know." There was no answering smile on Ellis's somber and earnest face. "I've thought there was hope for you. You've had no sound business training, thank God, so your sense of decency ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in snow-shoes and fur had gone for the day to look after his traps, Claire washed up the tin dishes they used, and sat down before the fire opposite Lawrence. His head was in his hands and his face was somber. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... the western sky, where the sun was sinking behind the amethystine hills. The swallows were darting and twittering over our heads, a somber flock of blackbirds rose from a huge oak tree in the meadow across the road, and darkened the sky for a moment in their flight to the cedars that were their nightly resting place. Gradually the mist changed from amethyst ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... How honor, thrift, and courage made them rise By steps that you can learn if you be wise. First, Pocahontas in a woodland green; Then life among the Pilgrim folk is seen— Thrifty Priscilla, Maid o' Plymouth Town, In Puritanic cap and somber gown! For the next scene comes life in Southern climes— The Ferry Farm of past Colonial times. Then Washington encamped before a blaze O' fagots, swiftly learning woodland ways. Then Boone with Rigdon in the wilderness Dauntlessly ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... led the way doggedly onward, over the rises, through great silent forests, past crystal springs, and down dark, somber ravines. At a quarter of one he emerged from a gorge upon the level acre of a tiny cove, still high in the mountains fastnesses. Here he let out a whoop like an Indian, its ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... were wonderful now, dressed in their gorgeously colored foliage. Brown, orange, scarlet, with just enough somber evergreen to set off the brilliancy of the other trees by contrast, the scene was at the height of its splendor. But so intent were the girls upon watching the water, they hardly ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... her darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw THAT detail perish utterly; all that was left was master—master, pure and simple, and it was not a gentle mastership, either. She saw herself sink from the sublime height of motherhood to the somber depths of unmodified slavery, the abyss of separation between her and her boy was complete. She was merely his chattel now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing and helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious temper ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with somber eyes and a gathering temper: it was, however, impossible to decide whether the implication was deliberately insulting. He wouldn't have any Canton clerk, probably saturated with opium, insinuate that ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... within ten miles of Glastonbury, Connecticut, though they didn't discover this fact until after they'd met a number of times in the social and religious activities of the Moody Institute. The lives of both had been woven in the somber colors of Evangelical religion. With him this ran close to fanaticism and served as an outlet for a very intense emotional life. She was not highly energized enough to go to extremes in anything, but she acquiesced in all his beliefs and practises, made ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... plastic value of the red man, and to find in the expression of the Sioux or Omaha a certain sorrowful dignity which fell parallel with his own grave temperament, for, despite his smiling face, his best work remained somber, almost ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... patron saints of the black men were represented in that handful of fighters in Boston, Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker, whose great courage and sturdiness culminated in that somber giant, John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their eloquence and perseverance undermined the stronghold of the Southern lords. Lincoln and his minions followed only when abolition had become a practical issue, recognized ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... instrument of wood, of considerable more length than breadth, provided with numerous stops and keys, and capable of producing an infinite variety of tones, ranging from the depth of lugubriousness to the highest pitch of vivacity. This particular bassoon was of an appearance that bordered upon the somber, the polished white of his keys emphasizing the solemn black of his long, willowy body. And, as he loomed up above the serene bald head of the musician that played him, Aurora thought she had never seen ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... the regime, as established under the Commonwealth, 1649, was reflected in the dress of both men and women when all finery was discarded. Fabrics became somber in color and unpretentious in texture. Men had their locks shorn close to the head, and women returned to the simple caps or hoods, which held the hair close to the head. Virginia authorities took cognizance of England's turn towards simplicity in dress, and enacted ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... There was just enough light, just enough of sunbeams struggling through the sodden clouds to illuminate, here and there, an alfalfa field, or here and there a grove of trees, so as to bring them out in startling contrast to the somber colors of the shaded portions of the valley. But with it were signs of the dying year, a premonition of storms to come, storms unpleasant while they last, but revivifying ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... early spring filled with wild flowers, stretched down toward the bay, but close around the house were the somber and, to me, more beautiful groves of oaks. To wander away until I had lost sight of the house in their olive glooms and saw nothing around me but dark trunks, crooked elbows of boughs and sweeping leaves, was my delight. I loved to crown myself with their white beards of moss, ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... fiord with wooded walls divides the Carlingford range from the mountains of Mourne. The great dark range thrusts itself forth against the sea in somber beauty, overhanging the wide strand of Dundrum Bay. The lesser bay, across whose bar the sea moans under the storm-winds, is dominated by the hill of Rudraige, named in honor of a hero of old days; but under the shadow of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... late in the afternoon of a hot July day, the hottest day Paris had known that year (1907) and M. Coquenil, followed by a splendid white-and-brown shepherd dog, was walking down the Rue de la Cite, past the somber mass of the city hospital. Before reaching the Place Notre-Dame he stopped twice, once at a flower market that offered the grateful shade of its gnarled polenia trees just beyond the Conciergerie prison, and once under the heavy archway of the Prefecture de Police. At ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... somber speech did not seem to be wholly distasteful to her, though she hid her exact state of mind by taking Marty off to exhibit the studio to her and to explain the mysteries of ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... looking vast, with the furniture taken out of the way, she found the Reverend Arthur Spottiswood, of whom it was not easy to think that eagerness to dance had driven him to come so sharply on time. He looked serious-minded, almost somber, and Leslie, though prepared to be vivacious with peer or pauper, found it all duty and little fun to make conversation with him until the next arrival should come to her relief. The gentleman was Brenda's adorer, but Brenda would never, if ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... angle in the wall. It appeared that the third member had chosen to dally a few moments over his tobacco and a liqueur-brandy. Kirkwood could see him plainly, lounging in his chair and fumbling the stem of a glass: a heavy man, of somber habit, his black and sullen brows lowering and thoughtful above ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... these shots went wild, many times hitting too far away to be heard at all, so our position obviously was as yet undiscovered. The morning sun shone directly in the men's eyes, while the protective coloration of our fort blended most elusively into the background of somber forest. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... earned him the mortal hatred of one man, and the deference shown to him in barracks added bitterness to the jealous antipathy already inspired by him in the hard old heart of Sourdough. Sergeant Moore said nothing, but hate glowed in his somber eyes whenever they lighted ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... room in his house that overlooked the Pasig, Simoun turned his gaze toward the Walled City, which could be seen through the open windows, with its roofs of galvanized iron gleaming in the moonlight and its somber towers showing dull and gloomy in the midst of the serene night. He laid aside his blue goggles, and his white hair, like a frame of silver, surrounded his energetic bronzed features, dimly lighted by a lamp whose flame was dying out from lack of oil. Apparently wrapped ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... months had changed him too. He stood tall and lean, and there was a deep line running from each cheekbone down his face. He looked older, but his eyes were piercing now, while his father's were somber. Strife and hard work had sweated all the fat from his bones. He seemed much stronger than when Odin had first met him. But here was something more than strength. Ato had developed into a first-class fighting man. Wolden could never have ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... enigmatic words, Lahiri Mahasaya's figure trembled as though touched by a lightning current. In an instant everything about him fell silent; his smiling countenance turned incredibly stern. Like a wooden statue, somber and immovable in its seat, his body became colorless. I was alarmed and bewildered. Never in my life had I seen this joyous soul manifest such awful gravity. The other ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... that hadn't been selected by Mrs. MacGregor. It was rather late, but finding the quiet library pleasanter to her mood than her own room, she curled up in a comfortable chair and began to read. The book was Hardy's "Tess," and its strong and somber passion and tragedy filled her with pity and terror. Something in her was roused by the story; she felt that she understood and suffered with ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... of a fairy-book, he went on and on, catching now and again glimpses of the amazing country into which he had penetrated, and perceiving rather than seeing that as the day waned everything grew more grey and somber. As he advanced he heard the evening sounds of the farms, the low of the cattle, and the barking of the sheepdogs; a faint thin noise from far away. It was growing late, and as the shadows blackened he walked faster, till once more the lane began ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... no desire to exchange the noisy, wholesome family life of the Martels for the silent, somber grandeur of the Bartletts. His affections had taken root in the shabby little brown house that always seemed to be humming gaily to itself. When the piano was not being played, the violin or guitar was. There were bursts of laughter, snatches of song, and young ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... an honest living he still must hide his identity and take risks of detection. If he did not work on some distant outlying ranch, how was he to live? The idea of stealing was repugnant to him. The future seemed gray and somber enough. And ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... her at the tawny mountains that rose in the distance,—miles on the other side of the big basin—swimming in the shimmering blur of white sky—somber guardians of a mysterious world. What secret did they guard? What did they know of this world of eternal sunlight, of infinite distance? Did they know as much of the world upon which they frowned as he knew of the heart of the slender, ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... nothing of consternation or perplexity in her face or manner. All around her were the browns of a summer that had come and gone; heaps of dead leaves nestled close to the trees, mute witnesses of a lost beauty; while here and there an ox-eyed daisy glowed from out its somber company as a firefly shines through the dusk of twilight. In the midst of all this sat Nannie in her pretty suit trimmed in scarlet, looking like a bird of paradise amid a flock of sparrows and other soberly clad creatures. Indeed, she reminded one of a bird, with her head ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... moving image of George Prince. He stood somber in the black detention uniform. A dark, almost a girlishly handsome fellow, well below medium height—the rod beside him showed five feet four inches. Slim and slight. Long, wavy black hair, falling about his ears. A pale, clean-cut, really ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... rural districts the hymeneal torch diffusing only pale and somber rays, or, transformed into the flambeaux of furies, the hideous skeleton of superstition seated even on the nuptial couch, placed between nature and the wedded, and arresting, etc.... Oh Rome, art thou satisfied? Art thou then like Saturn, to whom fresh holocausts ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... letter of introduction in his hand, and a feeling of hero-worship in his heart, he was ushered into the presence of the great romancer, who advanced "carrying his head with a heavy forward droop" and with pondering pace. His look was "somber and brooding—the look of a man who had dealt faithfully and therefore sorrowfully with that problem of evil which forever attracted and ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... and freed from the worries of life, but not at all; at the death of a relative the friends are plunged into such grief that they have been known to hire professional mourners, and instead of putting on clothes indicative of joy and thanksgiving array themselves in somber black, the token of woe, and wear it for years. Everything is black, and the more fashionable the family the deeper the black. The deepest crape is worn by the women. Writing-paper is inscribed with a deep band, also visiting cards. Women use jet as jewelry, and white ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... before her, dressed in his usual somber garments, a look almost of humility in those keen grey eyes of his, which a year ago on the cliffs of Calais had peered down at her ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the valley at a brisk pace, becoming more aware of the clouds and atmospheric haze. Distant objects seemed blurred by the mist, taking on a somber, brooding grayness. For all Kolin could tell, he and the others were isolated in a world bounded by the rocky ridge behind them and a semi-circle of damp trees and bushes several hundred meters away. He suspected that the hills rising mistily ahead were part of a continuous slope, but could ...
— The Talkative Tree • Horace Brown Fyfe
... river approaches or recedes from its inclosing bluffs; of hillside fields, tipped at various angles of ascent, sometimes green with springing grain, but oftenest gray or brown or yellow, freshly planted,—charming patches of color, in this somber-hued world of ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... day the simple wedding took place according to Puritan custom. Just as the service was ending, a somber figure clad in steel armor appeared on the threshold. The bridegroom turned pale at the sight and the bride hid her face on his shoulder. When the last prayer had been said, the figure strode into the room, and with amazement the people beheld the Captain of Plymouth ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... li li!" echoed through the somber night, giving courage to the faint of heart and keeping the searching party's spirits up. Stealthily the charm boy crept around the edge of the clearing, examining every possible opening; cautiously he ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... scarlike impression. Overhead elevated trains with a shrill grinding of the wheels stopped at the station, which upon its leglike pillars seemed to resemble some monstrous kind of crab squatting over the street. The quick fat puffings of the engines could be heard. Down an alley there were somber curtains of purple and black, on which street lamps dully glittered ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... had a fortnight of calm, dry, and warm weather. There is a hazy atmosphere, and the sun rises and sets wearing a blood-red aspect. At night the moon, dimly and indistinctly seen (now a crescent), has a somber and baleful appearance. This is strange at this season of the year; it is like Indian summer in May. The ground is dry and crusted, and apprehensions are felt for the crops, unless we have rain in a few days. My poor little garden ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... somber minds feed and grow fat upon their own substance, and it was inconceivable that Stelton's genuine though distorted love, an abnormal product of ten long years, should be dismissed thus with ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... my little Columbine, You go farther and farther away from me, Out where there are no ships And the solemn clouds Soar across the somber horizon. ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... refined are the love scenes—at the ball and in the garden—between the dashing prince-lover in search of his pleasure and the devoted girl with her heart in her eyes, on her lips, in her hand. Behind them, always like a tragic fate, the somber figure of the Spagnoletto, and over all the glow and color and ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... few seconds, however, the tall stranger seemed to lose all of his cockiness, and a somber look crept over his jovial features. "Have you ever heard of the hex ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... around a furnace dimly suggested convey the idea of Industrial Fire in the last of the pictures. There is the same motif of cold in the sky and the fruits, intensified by the somber leafage of fir ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... at first as the sun had not yet set, picking their way through the woods, and soon left their comrades out of sight. The twilight now came fast, adding a mournful and somber red to the vast expanse of wilderness. The simile of an Indian fight returned to Dick with increased force. This was not like any battle with white men in the open fields. It was a combat of raiders who advanced secretly under cover of the ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... The sapphire sun climbs slowly up the Heavens, coloring the atmosphere with a somber and almost melancholy hue. The blue disk attains the zenith, and is beginning its descent toward the West, when the East lights up with the flames of a scarlet sun, which in its turn ascends the heights of the firmament. The West is plunged in the penumbra of the rays of the blue sun, while the ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... comfortable pace lest the "beasties" should suffer, and every now and then a merry party would fly past us scattering snow in our faces and yelling like Comanches. We had a lovely moon then and the snow was so beautiful! We were driving northward, and to the south and back of us were the great somber, pine-clad Uintah Mountains, while ahead and on every side were the bare buttes, looking like old men of the mountains,—so old they had lost all their ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... ever-increasing velocity, was now within half its average distance from the moon. So close was it, that the two poles could not be embraced in one focus. Irregular patches of greater or less brilliancy alternated on its surface, the brighter betokening the continents, the more somber indicating the oceans that absorbed the solar rays. Above, there were broad white bands, darkened on the side averted from the sun, exhibiting a slow but unintermittent movement; these were the vapors that ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... cautiously around the dark and somber cave, and the first thing his eyes rested on were the forms of two dead wolf cubs, evidently belonging to one of the mothers he had slain the week before, and undoubtedly starved to ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold |
