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More "Crone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... terms to express the word "woman" which we have not. A traveller in the rural districts speaks of a "kindly old wife who received me," or a "wretched old crone," or a "saucy lassie," or a "neat maid," etc. We should use the word "woman," or "old woman," or ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... her, Theron himself the gladest goodliest figure, His honest face ruddy with health and joy, And smiling like the AEgean, when the sun Hangs high in heaven, and the freshening wind Comes in from Melos, rippling all its floor: And there was Manto too, the good old crone, So dear to children with her store of tales, Warmed with new life: how to her old grey face And withered limbs the very dance of youth Seemed to return, and in her aged eyes The waning fire rekindled: little Maeon, That mischievous satyr with his tipsy ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... have said, to adventure on her prologue, because it is too licentious. There Chaucer introduces an old woman of mean parentage, whom a youthful knight of noble blood was forced to marry, and consequently loathed her. The crone being in bed with him on the wedding night, and finding his aversion, endeavours to win his affection by reason, and speaks a good word for herself, (as who could blame her?) in hope to mollify the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of the cabins of the poor, proceeded to rebuke the grumbling old woman for want of order and cleanliness—censured the food which was provided for the patient, and enquired particularly after the wine which she had left to make caudle with. The crone was not so dazzled with Lady Penelope's dignity or bounty as to endure her reprimand with patience. "They that had their bread to won wi' ae arm," she said, for the other hung powerless by her side, "had mair ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Beautiful, nay more than others beautiful, Not meant for marriage, not for one man meant, You know what she will be; At six years old or seven her life is round her; A company, all ages, old men, young men, Whose vices she must prey on. And the bent crone she will be is there too, Patting her head and chuckling prophecies.— O cherry lips, O wild bird eyes, O gay invulnerable setter-at-nought Of will, of virtue— Thou art as constant a cause as is the sea, As ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... in fasting and prayer. A general fast for the colony was ordered. But the "devilism," as Cotton Mather named it, spread instead of abating, the children having any number of imitators so soon as they became objects of general notice and sympathy. Old Tituba, an Indian crone, who had served in Parris's family, was the first to be denounced as the cause. Two other aged females, one crazy, the other bed-ridden, were also presently accused, and after a little while several ladies of Parris's church. Whoso uttered a whisper of incredulity, general or as to the blameworthiness ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... man-at-arms among them, they would have known that mine were not the wounds of a dead but of a living man. The old nurse knew it, when my sweet lady would needs unbind my wrist, to place my hand in its right place. An old crone such as Welsh Winny never stirs without her cordial potion. They poured it into my lips—and if I were never more to awake to the light of day, I awoke to the sound that was yet dearer to me—while, alas! it still was left ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shall hear how he died. It was about two o'clock in the morning that he awoke from an uneasy slumber, and felt his end approaching. The old crone who had been hired as a nurse to watch at night, was fast asleep in her chair. The rushlight had burned low down in the socket, and, through the interstices of its pierced shade, threw a feeble and alternate light and shadow over ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... no relief for poor Fleda. Aunt Syra was her next neighbour, and opposite to her, at Miss Anastasia's left hand, was the disagreeable countenance and peering eyes of the old crone, her mother. Fleda kept her own eyes fixed upon her plate, and endeavoured to ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... once, Jane agreeing pleasantly that it would be better to walk. Michael Daragh had never seen her more alert and alive to the things about her. Nothing escaped her darting glance,—the lyrical, first grass in the Square, the stolid and patient tiredness of an Italian crone on a bench, the pictorial quality of a hurdy-gurdy man, and yet, for all her chattiness, the smart young person beside him seemed leagues upon leagues away from him. He supposed, miserably, that she was aghast at him for this preposterous demand upon her, but he was not ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... German batteries, searching round with apparent aimlessness, would drop a score or so of shells about the neighbourhood; but the peasant, with an indifference that was almost animal, would still follow his ox-drawn plough; the old, bent crone, muttering curses, still ply the hoe. The proprietors of the tiny epiceries must have been rapidly making their fortunes, considering the prices that they charged the unfortunate poilu, dreaming of some small luxury out of his five sous a day. But as ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Then the crone told her the story of Anaxarete who was so cold to her lover Iphis that he hanged himself, and she at the window watching his funeral train pass by was changed to a marble statue. Advising Pomona to avoid such a fate, Vertumnus donned his proper form, that of a handsome young man, and Pomona, ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... men of sense. Renown does not follow all good deeds, if novelty and difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, according to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; nor will they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from an old blear-eyed crone. Those who have known the admirable qualities of Scipio Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, of being abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of his age. We have pleasures suitable ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... down to soothe the weary eyes, How all the griefs and heart-aches we have known Come up like pois'nous vapors that arise From some base witch's caldron, when the crone, To work some potent spell, her magic plies. The past which held its share of bitter pain, Whose ghost we prayed that Time might exorcise, Comes up, is lived and suffered o'er again, Ere sleep comes down to soothe ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... The old crone tottered along the passages, and up the stairs, muttering some indistinct answers to the chidings of her companion; being at length compelled to pause for breath, she gave the light into her hand, and remained behind to follow as she might: while the more nimble superior made her way to the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... was raised with a sharp snap, and the head-mistress appeared, shouting alternately at the children and the parents; but she was neither heard nor understood, and a Polish crone ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... himself with selling and buying; and some days passed by without any such ill case befalling him in the house, as the doorkeeper had mentioned. One day as he sat upon the bench before his door, there came up a grizzled crone, as she were a snake speckled white and black, calling aloud on the name of Allah, magnifying Him inordinately and, at the same time, putting away the stones and other obstacles from the path.[FN225] Seeing the youth sitting there, she looked at him and marvelled at his case; where ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... actress in fact. She indicated each personage, and sustained the character capitally, making full use of the talent of mimicry she had inherited with her Italian blood; she had no mercy on her soft voice or her lovely face, and when she had to represent some old crone in her dotage, or a stupid burgomaster, she made the drollest grimaces, screwing up her eyes, wrinkling up her nose, lisping, squeaking.... She did not herself laugh during the reading; but when her audience (with the exception of Pantaleone: he had walked off in indignation ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... screaming of the children, and the scolding of the mother, which had preceded the dispersion of the family. Edie had arranged his various bags, and was bound for the renewal of his wandering life, but first advanced with due courtesy to take his leave of the ancient crone. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... good-for-little creature. By trade a hurdle-maker, he lived in one of the few remaining mud cottages on the skirts of Hadleigh Upper Wood, and in his hovel he had bred an immense family. His wife had long since died; her mother, a toothless old crone, kept house for him and was supposed to look after the younger children; but generally the Veales and their domestic arrangements were considered as a survival of a barbaric state of society and a disgrace in these highly polished ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... refreshment there. If a Synteng house is visited, it is unusual to find the husbands of any of the married daughters there, although the sons of the family may be seen in the house when they have returned from work. Generally in the day-time you will find in a Synteng dwelling an old crone, who is the grandmother, or even the great-grandmother, of the family, also grandchildren or great-grandchildren; but the husbands of the married daughters are not there. The Syntengs seem to have more closely preserved ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... Preparations for the first War Administration of James at Dublin An auxiliary Force sent from France to Ireland Plan of the English Jacobites; Clarendon, Aylesbury, Dartmouth Penn Preston The Jacobites betrayed by Fuller Crone arrested Difficulties of William Conduct of Shrewsbury The Council of Nine Conduct of Clarendon Penn held to Bail Interview between William and Burnet; William sets out for Ireland Trial of Crone Danger of Invasion and Insurrection; Tourville's ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... L'Olonnois that we were now come into the neighborhood of possible treasure, and the sight of a few pearls, none of very great worth, which the old crone produced from a cracker box, was enough to set off Jimmy L'Olonnois, who was all ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... charm of barbarous words, whereby she could see the answers to questions 'in live images before her eyes, or upon the wall, but the images were not tractable (tangible), which she found by putting to her hand, but could find nothing'. In place of burning this poor crone, Mr. Frazer reasoned with her, 'taught her the danger and vanity of her practice,' and saw her die peacefully ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Cupid's coy advance (Some crone conniving at the fraud), But simply by mechanic chance, I get this handkerchief ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... features met my sight, Grinning back to me as my own; I well-nigh fainted with affright At finding me a haggard crone. ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... thy good wife?" said one old crone. "Did she not take good care of thee? What didst thou lack? Why not have waited another month? Thy daughter-in-law would have borne thee a grandson!" A tall young fellow, Pietri's son, pressed his father's cold hand and cried: "Oh! why ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... down to Ghilendzhik, I said to my husband, 'Let us go and see our house and land.' Accordingly we went along to look. What was our astonishment to find it occupied by another old crone. I went up to ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Thrums at the age of ten for the distant farm of Tirl, and did not return until the old bellman's death, twenty years afterward; but the first remark he overheard on entering the kirk-wynd was a conjecture flung across the street by a gray-haired crone, that he would be "little Snecky ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... woman here came in with a bundle of sticks and began to lay them for a fire. She was an old crone-looking person. Eleanor observed her, and thought what it must be to have no ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... are grown; Fun and frolic no more he knows, Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone; Off he flies, and we sing as he goes: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, When you can pipe that merry old strain, Robert of Lincoln, come back again, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... no comment. The old crone, knuckled, hard-breathing, climbed in, holding uncertainly to the windscreen and pulling after her her basket ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... certainty, however, of one night's continuance in her present abode, she requested to have the room made a little more comfortable by the exhilarating blaze of a fire. For this indulgence there were the principal requisites in a hearth and spacious chimney. And an aged crone, probably the sole female servant upon the premises, speedily presented herself with a plentiful supply of wood, and the two supporters, or andirons (as they were formerly called), for raising the billets so as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... pleasant meeting come to pass," said the aged crone, "according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have of me, for there is but a short hour ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... meeting. Bent almost double, they walked about with a crutch, shaking and mumbling as they went. If any one had an ache or a pain it was easily accounted for. For why, they were bewitched! The poor old crone was the witch who had "cast the evil eye" upon them. And sometimes these poor creatures were put to death for ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... business with his majesty by day: we strolled over the sand and by the dwarfish palms, exchanged a 'Konamaori' with the crone on duty, and entered the compound. The wide sheet of coral glared before us deserted; all having stowed themselves in dark canvas from the excess of room. I have gone to and fro in that labyrinth of a place, seeking the king; ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hand of her the sea beat, and upon the other the dead leaves ran. This was the loneliest beach between two seas, and strange things had been done there in the ancient ages. Now the King's daughter was aware of a crone that sat upon the beach. The sea-foam ran to her feet, and the dead leaves swarmed about her back, and the rags blew about her face in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and rolled down his face. At distant intervals the shadow of some one entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years, would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing and in review of those slips and errors ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... how secondary a place woman holds in this city of well-nourished, self-satisfied men? Is it that they know that a girl's life is so brief: one day as supple and active as they are now and the next a crone? For it is one of the tragedies that the Venetian atmosphere so rapidly ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year, a rose had been unfolding itself at Collingswood, and with every opening petal had grown more and more precious to the blind man, until more than one crone foretold the end; and Grace Atherton, grown fonder of gossip than she was wont to be, listened to the tale, and watched, and wondered, and wept, and still caressed and loved the bright, beautiful girl, whom ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... made her tell her her fortune by means of cards, predict the future, brew potions for her which would make her husband faithful, teach her spells which would cause flies and other vermin to vanish, to concoct balsamic cakes to keep the skin white—in fact, she hung upon every word the old crone uttered. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... milk; vile-smelling compounds that, judged from their outer coating of withered leaves, straw, and dirt, would appear to have been made in a stable and dried on a rubbish heap. The subject of the jotting, busy with his customers, was all unconscious; but an old crone who sat, her feet resting on a tiny charcoal stove, amidst a circle of decadent greens, detecting the Artist's action, became excited, and after eyeing him uneasily for a moment, confided her suspicions as to his ulterior motive to a round-faced young countryman who retailed flowers ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... patriarch, Nestor, elder, oldster, Methuselah, dotard; gaffer, crone, geezer; centenarian, octogenarian, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... dear little Cherry, what nonsense!" Anstice, whose mother had been an Irishwoman, had heard of the superstition before, had even known an old crone in a little Irish cabin high up in the mountains who had, so it was said, practised the rite with success; but to hear the unholy gospel from Cherry's innocent lips was distinctly distasteful; and instinctively he tried to shake ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the wood's maze our eyes delighted stray, To mark the rustics on the market-day. Beneath the branches winds the long white road; Here peeps the rustic cottager's abode; There in the morning sun, the children play, Or the crone creeps along the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... Sienese woman. That I allow. She said, 'Do you call me?' Says I, 'I do.' She says, 'Well?' I reply, 'He is well if you are.' 'Who, then?' says she. I say, 'Your lover.' This makes her jump like a flea on the bed. But she brazens it out finely, turning to her old crone with a 'What does the girl mean?' Bless you, THEY knew well enough. I folded my arms—so; I said, 'He has walked the stony hills barefoot to find you. He will be out of his skin, standing on his head, to know you are here.' She stamped ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... ascribed to her, no doubt, from the fancied resemblance of a lava flow, which, when in the form of a-a, rolls and tumbles along over the surface of the ground in a manner suggestive of the motions and attitude of a palsied crone.] [Page 201] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... its lord. It spares no prejudice, respects no habit, honours no tradition. Institutions are stubble in the fire it kindles. The present and the past it throws without remorse into the jaws of the future. It is the angel with the flaming sword swift to dispossess the crone that sits on ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... and said to him, "O my son, dost thou accept of a fair young lady?" Said he, "Yea, verily," and she continued, "Up with thee and come that I show thee a thing whose like thou hast never seen." Now when the Caliph heard her words he said to himself, "Look at yon foul old crone who playeth bawd when I held her to be a devotee, a holy woman. Indeed I will not give her aught until I see what work is wrought by these twain." The trader then followed the old woman to her home wherein both, youth and crone, entered and the Caliph who pursued them also went in privily ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... his majesty by day: we strolled over the sand and by the dwarfish palms, exchanged a "Konamaori" with the crone on duty, and entered the compound. The wide sheet of coral glared before us deserted; all having stowed themselves in dark canvas from the excess of room. I have gone to and fro in that labyrinth of a place, seeking ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of their own heart, but when one meets Another at the shrine, he inly weets, 1535 Though he says nothing, that the truth is known; Murderers are pale upon the judgement-seats, And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone, And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... their gifts and wishes gave: She waited long to spoil the gifts, and her revenge to have. One gave the Princess goodness, and one gave her beauty rare; One gave her sweetest singing voice; one, gracious mien and air; One, skill in dancing; one, all cleverness; and then the crone Came forth, and muttered, angry still, and good gift ...
— The Sleeping Beauty Picture Book - Containing The Sleeping Beauty; Bluebeard; The Baby's Own Alaphabet • Anonymous
... which he exercised in his calling; qualities in which he appears to have trusted much more than in strength and daring, though well endowed with both. His disguises were innumerable, and all impenetrable; sometimes he would appear as an ancient crone; sometimes as a begging cripple; sometimes as a broken soldier. Though by no means scrupulous as to what he stole, he was particularly addicted to horse and cattle stealing, and was no less successful in altering the appearance of animals than his own, as he would frequently sell ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... she seemed to take joy and brightness with her. In the cottages of the poor her fair face shone like a sunbeam. She would sit for a quarter of an hour talking to some old woman, and apparently as pleased with the admiration of a toothless crone as if she had been listening to the compliments of a marquis; and when she tripped away, leaving nothing behind her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her benevolence), the old woman would burst out into senile raptures with her grace, beauty, and her kindliness, such ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... The crone continued her orgies, one time blowing her fire, again stirring the liquid in the caldron, and then making it run from the end of a stick that she might note its gelidity. All her operations were being gone through to call up certain ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the old crone, before he could arise to leave her sight, "tell me, I pray thee, what hard thing ye seek. I am old, and have had much wisdom. It may happen that I can help you out of the great trouble into which you ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... wenches, what can be more unseemly? Worse it is in women than in men, when she is aetate declivis, diu vidua, mater olim, parum decore matrimonium sequi videtur, an old widow, a mother so long since ([4741]in Pliny's opinion), she doth very unseemly seek to marry, yet whilst she is [4742]so old a crone, a beldam, she can neither see, nor hear, go nor stand, a mere [4743]carcass, a witch, and scarce feel; she caterwauls, and must have a stallion, a champion, she must and will marry again, and betroth herself to some young man, [4744]that hates to look ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... nest," poured out its unseemly denizens, white and black, old and young, male and female, the child of three years old, keen, alert and self-protective, running to see the "row" side by side with the toothless crone of seventy; or most likely passing her on the way. Thieves, beggars, pick-pockets, vile women, rag-pickers and the like, with the harpies who prey upon them, all were ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... here,' returned Roderick, 'what a gem I have got from my tailor, who was just going to cut up this peerless robe into strips. He bought it of an old crone, who must doubtless have worn it on gala days when she went to Lucifer's drawing-room on the Blocksberg. Look at this scarlet bodice, with its gold tassels and fringe, at this cap besmeared with the last fee the hag got from Beelzebub or his imps: it will give me a right worshipful air. To match ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... so—to pay a visit "down-stairs." "Down-stairs" had a distinct meaning in the Compton vocabulary. It was spoken of with significance, and with a laugh, as something half hostile, half ridiculous. It meant a sort of absurd criticism and inspection, as of some old crone sitting vigilant, spying upon everything—a mother-in-law. Phil's cronies thought it was the most absurd weakness on his part to let such an intruder get footing in his house. "You will never get rid of her," they said. And Phil, though he was generally quite ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... stones into my bosom, each stone she wrapped up in purple after she had muttered charms over it; then, directing her hands to my privates, she commenced to try out my virility. Quicker than thought the nerves responded to the summons, filling the crone's hand with an enormous erection! Skipping for joy, "Look, Chrysis, look," she cried out, "see what a hare I've started, for someone else to course!" (This done, the old lady handed me over to ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... to Madame Faure. This was easily managed. I simply went on one of her reception-days. An Elysian master of ceremonies was waiting for me, and I followed him into the salon where Madame Faure sat, surrounded by numerous ladies. A servant wrestled in vain with my name, "Crone" being the only thing he seized, but the master of ceremonies announced to the President that I was the Danish Minister's wife, after which things went smoothly. To leave no doubt in the other guests' minds that I was a person of distinction ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... into the air, but now a deathly silence received them. Silence broken only by the rustling of garments, as a withered old crone shambled forward and cast herself at ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... hall-floor and abided them; and they saw him and his shining war-gear, and ceased their talking and laughter, and drew round about him, and gazed at him; but none said aught till an old crone came forth from the ring, and said "Who art thou, standing ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... her feet and turned her face to the Great Roof, and gazed long at it, not heeding the crone by her side; and she muttered words of whose signification the other knew not, though she listened intently, and gazed ever at her ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... poor Fleda. Aunt Syra was her next neighbour, and opposite to her, at Miss Anastasia's left hand, was the disagreeable countenance and peering eyes of the old crone her mother. Fleda kept her own eyes fixed upon her plate and endeavoured to ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... senorita, holding daintily in her tapering fingers a cigarette, which she occasionally raises to her "ripe red lips", afterwards languidly following with her lustrous black eyes the blue wreaths of smoke as they float above her head and vanish in the air; next, the withered crone, with silver hair, wrinkled skin, and no trace of her early beauty, sitting in the chimney corner, and still smoking, though now it is a clay pipe,—to the amazement and disgust of the villagers. Yet we, believing in the only ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... peevish way, balls of string and ribbons, a pile of magazines called The Warlock Weekly, a broken ukulele, little heaps of powder, colored stones, candle ends, some potted cacti, and an enormous cash register. In the middle of the chamber a little hideous crone in a Mother Hubbard crouched over a saucepan, stirring it with a wooden spoon. The saucepan was resting in the coals of an open fire, and smoke and steam together spread out ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... represented him in pictures as having a bull's head. We know that a man does not turn into a bull, or a bull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the rustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt, may any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why should she not? It is not, then, that a god 'takes upon him the form of a bull,' or is 'incarnate in a bull,' but that the real Bull and the worshipper dressed ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... necks and arms—it was etiquette at Madame Fontaine's receptions—which allowed one to see through filmy lace their flabby flesh or bony skeletons, they were as ridiculous as an elegant cloak would be upon an old crone. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "What!" screamed the old crone, now furious with rage. "Do you dare tell me that—to my face? Never, impudent huzzy—never, while I have strength and spirit and power to say you no—shall you wed this hated ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... merchant have the mosquitoes worried thee?" He replied, "No," and Obayd said, "Belike thou art grown used to them." Then they broke their fast and drank coffee, after which they fared forth to their affairs, and Kamar al-Zaman betook himself to the old crone, and related to her what had passed, And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... A hideous old crone covered with rags knelt beside the Duchesss, who on leaving the ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... about with eyes at once wistful and doubtful. Sometimes she shook her head sadly. And I wondered if ever the poor old stumbling crone, wizened like a two-year-old winter apple, had been as light and gay a thing as our ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... was out on the mountain cutting brush, his old crone took her shallow tub and clothes down to the brook to wash. She had not yet begun, when she saw a peach floating with its stem and two leaves in the stream. She picked up the fruit and set it aside to take home and share it ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... wrestling match in earnest between Thor and the ancient crone Ellie. Round and round the hall they wrestled, and Thor was not able to bend the old woman backward nor sideways. Instead he became less and less able under her terrible grasp. She forced him down, down, and at last he could only save himself from being ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... people goes on, now as it has for hundreds of years. For the piazza, descending in direct tradition from the ancient Forum, is the public hall of citizens, where they trade, gossip, quarrel, plot, love, and hate, from the crone sunning herself in a sheltered nook over her bag of chestnuts to the grandee whose palace windows open above the noisy commonalty. The Chancellor saw this common meeting-ground, this glorified street, filled with a ragged mob of "the baser quality," as on the operatic ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... task is late and lone. All goes well at the castle? say!— Not a word speaks the withered crone, Gray as a ghost in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Romance; Who built 'for you the Hall of Fantasy Through whose bright portals you might pass and see Hester and Miriam and Goodman Brown And Pyncheron, who dwelt in Salem Town— Malvin and Endicott and Ethan Brand, John Inglefield and that old crone whose hand Was lent to fashioning Scarecrows built of straw— All these through the Enchanter's eyes you saw, Strange folk who trod the bleak New England shores, Tithingmen, Sachems, Witches, Sagamores, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... devil I And women love him, always did love him, the fools! Why, I used to love him. You wouldn't think that now, would you? Well, I did." She laughed a broken cackle, and seemed surprised that her listener remained mute. "Did you love him?" demanded the crone sneeringly. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Year was against her nativity. When once this disaffected animal had been conquered and cast out, Asako's future should be a very bright one. The family witch agreed with the Fujinami that the Dog had in all probability departed with the foreign husband. Then the toothless crone breathed three times upon the mouth, breasts and thighs of Asako; and when this operation was concluded, she stated her opinion that there was no reason, obstetrical or esoteric, why the ransomed daughter of the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... noisy crew of children and dogs around him. Raising himself on his elbow, he brushed the clotted blood and hair from his temples, and endeavoured to recall his scattered faculties. Seeing this, the old crone who had saved his life laid down her paddle and handed him a sealskin cup of water, which he seized and drank with avidity. Fortunately the wound on his forehead, although it had stunned him severely at first, was trifling, and in a few minutes after partaking of the cool water, he recovered ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... all thought of speaking, and drew her shawl about her with an air of final reserve. She resembled an old crone as ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... houses, while at the gate stood still another group of women, most of them dressed from the waist to the knees only. Motioning my three friends to follow, I approached these women, whereupon they took fright and hid behind the nearest house. That is, all but one old crone, too feeble to run, who tremblingly awaited her fate until, reassured by the manner of those I had talked to outside the wall, she lifted up her voice in voluble Malay, evidently telling the others that the strange creature neither ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... we approached Versailles. We thought the vicinity of the town seemed unusually deserted. We entered the main street: crowds were assembled; a universal murmur was heard; excitement sat on every countenance. Here an old crone was endeavouring to explain something, evidently beyond his comprehension, to a child of three years old, who, with open mouth and fixed eyes, seemed to make up in wonder for the want of intelligence; there a group of old disbanded ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (extolled and exalted be He!) hath allotted to His creatures four things, disposition, life, daily bread and death; nor is it in man's power to avert that which is decreed. Verily, I was beside myself and could not recover my senses; but, O my nurse, I repent of what deed I did." With this, the crone's anger ceased from her and she rose and kissed the ground before the Princess, who called for a costly robe of honour and threw it over her, whereat she rejoiced with exceeding joy in the presence of the Princess's slaves and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... not, one thing was clear that Mother Jael had gone off with a considerable amount of loose silver in her pocket. The servants knew nothing of her departure, so there was no doubt that the old crone, used to dodging and hiding, had slipped out of the garden by some back way, while the guests had been commiserating the bishop's slight illness. As Cargrim wanted to see the gipsy at once, and hoped to force her into confessing the truth by threatening ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... fortune-teller raised her head, and, shading her eyes with one skinny hand, looked curiously at the new comers. Calton thought he had never seen such a repulsive-looking old crone; and, in truth, her ugliness was, in its very grotesqueness well worthy the pencil of a Dore. Her face was seamed and lined with innumerable wrinkles, clearly defined by the dirt which was in them; bushy grey eyebrows, drawn frowningly over two piercing black eyes, whose light was ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... old crone, the "father and mother" of all corncrakes, who comforted him, cossetted him, and from a fund of deep experience offered him hints on voice production. She also gave him of a nostrum of toadwort and garlic, which mollified his lacerated chords, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... and quiet, did as she was bid, stirred the fire, till its ruddy glow brightened every nook of the little white-washed chamber, and made the old crone beside it wince and mutter in her sleep. Having shielded her from its fierce light, she then, with trembling fingers, opened a little penknife which lay upon the table, and cut the twine with which the cover was sewed at the back. The last stitch severed, the cloth fell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... later, Crone, the advertising manager, came up to Bobby very much worried, to report that not only the First National but the Second Market Bank had stopped their advertising, as had Trimmer and Company, and another of the leading ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... be only an idea of mine, born of after brooding upon the scene. I am inclined to think it must be so, for I was only a child at the time, and would hardly have noticed such a thing. But it seems to my remembrance that as the old crone ceased, another woman in the crowd raised her eyes slowly, and fixed them on a withered, ancient man, who leant upon a stick, and that for a moment, unnoticed by the rest, these two stood ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... senor," the old crone, who has emerged from one of the huts, replies. "God has sent us no rain for many days, but if the senor would like some pulque—" I close with the suggestion and instruct the mozo to try it, to see if, in his experienced judgment, it ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... to get quite interwoven with our impressions of the present; and from that moment the past must share, in a measure, some of the everyday thoughts which we give to the present. In such a city as this, the sudden withdrawal, by sacristan or beggar-crone, of the curtain from before an altar-piece is many a time much more than the mere displaying of a picture: it is the sudden bringing us face to face with the real life of the Renaissance. We have ourselves, perhaps not an ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... her to the care of the old crone, who, to judge from appearances, was hardly an improvement upon the ungracious attendant she had left at the Chateau des Anges. This hag had evidently the worst possible opinion of her guest, and took no ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... robes and her jewels went all the magic arts that gave her youth and beauty. Instead of the dazzling maiden who had wrought so much havoc in the world, there stood before them an old bald-headed shaking crone, that seemed as ancient as the earth itself. Silently they gazed, then turned away in horror, while Duessa wandered into paths of which she alone knew ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... feel his kisses upon her lips, to play the young lover's part if it were but for a day, to this folly her vanity had driven her. And now the opportunities for words were not denied. She had spent the afternoon in the backwaters up by Shiplake; there had been a little dinner afterwards with the old crone who served them so usefully as chaperone—a dependent who had eyes but did not see, ears which, as she herself declared, "would think scorn to listen." Amiable dame, she was in bed by nine o'clock, while Alban and Anna were lying ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... then conceded to the impetuous penitent the kiss of peace, in a slight embrace which was like the accolade given by a monarch to new knights.[308] The whole scene is ignoble. We seem to be watching an unclean cauldron, with Theresa's mother, a cringing and babbling crone, standing witch-like over it and infusing suspicion, falsehood, and malice. When minds are thus surcharged, any accident suffices to release the evil creatures that lurk ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... this old crone?" Beorn said. "It would never do to risk her giving an alarm, and though she looks feeble she might be able ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... scene of bustle and noise, at the door of a small tent, sat two female gypsies. One of these was the queen, an aged crone, who, though bent with age and care, and wrinkled by time and the indulgence of vehement passions, yet prided herself upon the unfrosted darkness of her raven tresses, which fell over her shoulders in profusion. A turban of rich crimson cloth crowned ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... signs with unsparing scrutiny. Upon finding a mole or wart or any similar mark, they tried the 'insensibleness thereof' by inserting needles, pins, awls, or any sharp-pointed instrument; and in an old and withered crone it might not be difficult to find somewhere a ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... you saw all I see in this cup, you would not be so eager to know its contents," said the crone in ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... a witch," she said, with gayety. "You young men, at least, think every old, toothless gray-haired crone like me ready for the ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... horses than of asses," replied the crone, bitterly; and the laugh was raised against Roupall, who, as with all jesters, could ill brook the jest that ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... 'history' and 'story'; 'etiquette' and 'ticket'; 'escheat' and 'cheat'; 'estate' and 'state'; and, older probably than any of these, 'other' and 'or';—or with a dropping of the last syllable, as 'Britany' and 'Britain'; 'crony' and 'crone';—or without losing a syllable, with more or less stress laid on the close: 'regiment' and 'regimen'; 'corpse' and 'corps'; 'bite' and 'bit'; 'sire' and 'sir'; 'land' or 'laund' and 'lawn'; 'suite' and 'suit'; 'swinge' and 'swing'; 'gulph' and 'gulp'; 'launch' and 'lance'; 'wealth' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... stranger to thy peers am I, And slighted, like that poor old crone, And yet some clinging memories try To rate thy conquests as ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... close to the foot of the waterfall. The door was not fastened—for what, in such a place, was there to steal?—and Colonel John thrust it open with his foot. The interior was dark, the place was almost windowless; but he made out the form of an old crone who, nursing her knees, crouched with a pipe in her mouth beside a handful of peat. Seeing him, the woman tottered to her feet with a cry of alarm, and shaded her bleared eyes from the inrush of daylight. She gabbled shrilly, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... taken Aimee back to her apartments he pulled sharply upon a bellcord. In a few moments the slave woman, Fatima, made her appearance, no kindly-eyed old crone like Miriam, but a sallow, furtive-faced creature, with an old disfiguring scar across ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... emotional East, exaggerate these views. Women are mostly "Sectaries of the god Wuensch"; beings of impulse, blown about by every gust of passion; stable only in instability; constant only in inconstancy. The false ascetic, the perfidious and murderous crone and the old hag-procuress who pimps like Umm Kulsum,[FN341] for mere pleasure, in the luxury of sin, are drawn with an experienced and loving hand. Yet not the less do we meet with examples of the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... last, with a sigh, "I must make acquaintance with this caricature of my former self. I must accustom myself to the mortifying fact that this is Maria Theresa, or I might some of these days call for a page to drive out that hideous old crone! I must learn, too, to be resigned, for it is the hand of my heavenly Father that has covered my face with this grotesque mask. Since He has thought fit to deprive me of my beauty, let ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... I began to chafe. 'This is slow work, Elsie!' I said. 'I started out to go round the world; it has taken me eighteen months to travel no further than Italy! At this rate, I shall reach New York a gray-haired old lady, in a nice lace cap, and totter back into London a venerable crone on the verge ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... am decorated with chains of sea-treasures wound about waist and neck and arms, and the old crone stands ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... indeed, but also a woman in the full pride of her beauty and maturity. And this boy would condemn her—the most delightful, the most attractive, the most unselfish companion ever desired by a man—to sit in the chimney-corner like an old crone with a distaff, throughout all the years that fate may yet hold in store for her—with no greater interest in life than to watch the fading of her own sweet face in the glass, and to await the intervals during which he would be graciously ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... the clouds, rising or setting, and the Atheist, falsely so called, starts in wonder and in delight, which his soul, because it is immortal, cannot resist, to behold that Bible suddenly opened before his eyes on the sky. Or some old, decrepit, greyhaired crone, holds out her shrivelled hand, with dim eyes patiently fixed on his, silently asking charity—silently, but in the holy name of God; and the Atheist, taken unawares, at the very core of his heart bids "God bless her," as ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... dreadful little old crone," she says cheerily; "she's like some grotesque dream—why, ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... both down there," replied the old crone, pointing to a richly cushioned couch which was placed against one of the walls. "If ye really wish to know the future I can tell it ye. Oh yes, the Mama can tell ye. You, Don Jorge Montt, have visited me before—seven years ago; and I told you many things about your future. ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... whom Wiltrud had borne to her unfaithful husband was hateful to the second wife, who fondled her lord, and flattered him with the hope of the children she would bear him. Then it was arranged that the knight's first-born should be handed over to the care of an old crone who lived in a remote tower ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... stood a row of worn and dusty figures, decked with the clothes of children whose recovery was supposed to have been due to their influence. It was raining and the shelter was full of children playing in the company of an old crone with a baby on her back. Further on in the village I came across a new public bath. The price of admission was one sen, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... have gotten along without him? How honest and affable! What long ells and heavy pounds he gave! And then his tea! how it inspired the village gossip on long winter nights in a chimney corner! All the matrons of the village were quite in love with Tom, or his tea; and many an old crone, as she sat inhaling cup after cup of the divine beverage, has been known to pause in the midst of her inspirations, and exclaim with uplifted ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... pocket drew Her spectacles, and wip'd them from the dust, Then on her nose endeavour'd to adjust; With difficulty she could find a place To hang them on in her unshapely face; For if the Princess's was somewhat small, This Fairy scarce had any nose at all. But when by help of spectacles the Crone Discern'd a Nose so different from her own, What peals of laughter shook her aged sides! While with sharp jests ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... so sleekly overgrown, That doth not hurt, but kiss, the sole unshod, So soothly kind is Erin to her own! And one, at Hare and Hound, plays all alone,— For Phelim's gone to tend his step-dame's cow; Ah! Phelim's step-dame is a canker'd crone! Whilst other twain play at an Irish row, And, with shillelah small, break one ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... after her long journey, and had come to her room early. Her eyes ran over the familiar objects. Strange to go away for four years, and come back, and find that the candle standing on the dressing-table still cast the shadow of an old crone's head in the corner beyond the clothes-horse. Strange that even a shadow should last longer than a man! She looked about among the old familiar objects; all was there, but the old self ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... pillars of the Custom-house, whence the voice seemed to proceed, he replied very faintly, and in a scarce intelligible voice, "Who is calling me? Who has come to cast my dead body into the sea, for it will soon be all over with me." Then a little shrivelled wrinkled crone came up panting and coughing, hobbling along by the aid of her staff; she approached the wounded youth, and squatting down beside him, she burst out into a most repulsive chuckling and laughing. "You foolish child, you foolish child," whispered the old woman, "are you going to perish ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... idea of its contents upon his recollections of the squalid abode of Marie Torode, where human skulls, skeletons, bones of birds and beasts, dried skins, and other ghastly objects had been so grouped as to add to the superstitious feeling inspired by the repulsive appearance of the crone herself. His astonishment was therefore proportionate when he saw what to his eyes appeared exceptional luxury. A wooden partition divided the room on the lower story into two chambers of unequal ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... to the Prince, and where to find the castle which lay east of the sun and west of the moon. But it was only the same thing once again. "Maybe it was you who should have had the Prince," said the old woman. "Yes, indeed, I should have been the one," said the girl. But this old crone knew the way no better than the others—it was east of the sun and west of the moon, she knew that, "and you will be a long time in getting to it, if ever you get to it at all," she said; "but you may have the loan of my horse, and I think you had better ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... mystic declamations are suited rather to some palsied crone selling charms in the market-place than to the wise Arbaces. Thou hast heard my resolution—it is fixed as the Fates themselves. Orcus has heard my vow, and it is written in the book of the unforgetful Hades. Atone, then, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... I," agreed Joyce. "It looked so picturesque with the tents and the white covered wagons, and that old crone bending over the camp-fire. I know a woman at home who had her fortune told by a gypsy, and every single thing that ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of this black presentiment—just as sometimes on a day of perfect sunshine there is a chill in the wind that tells of approaching storm. All this is warranted by the prophetic rhymes which are several times spoken, beginning—"When the last lord of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride." A crone, Ailsie Gourlay by name, embodied with grim and grisly vigour by Alice Marriott,—whose ample voice and exact elocution, together with her formidable stature and her faculty of identification with the character that she assumes and with the spirit of the story, made her of great ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... a withered crone, who, to his question whether Mr. Froud was in, answered in an injured tone, "Yes, he was in; he always was;" and, as she spoke, she half-pushed the visitor into a room on the left side of the entrance, and vanished from the scene. The room was very dark, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Mackenzie's only daughter. And naturally these rumors and stories were exaggerated by the kindly interest and affection of the people into something far beyond what Sheila's father intended; insomuch that many an old crone would proudly and sagaciously wag her head, and say that when Miss Sheila came back to Borva strange things might be seen, and it would be a proud day for Mr. Mackenzie if he was to go down to the shore to meet Queen Victoria ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... that old crone Marie there. He caught the dope habit evidently from his master and has been to the bad ever since Arsdale senior died. The old lady has been hiding him part of the time in the garret ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... sir Richard Heath, sir Roger l'Estrange William Molineux, Thomas Tynde-sly, colonel Townley, colonel Lundy, Robert Brent, Edward Morgan, Philip Burton, Richard Graham, Edward Petre, Obadiah Walker, Matthew Crone, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to Josette Soubise that he was coming to see her. He wished to make the experiment of a surprise, although he insisted that Stephen should be with him. At the door in the high white wall of the school-garden, he asked an unveiled crone of a porteress to say merely that ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... but his own could remove the intricate fastenings. This expedition had for its object the purchase of bread and animal food at the nearest market; and every time she sallied forth an oath was administered to the crone, the purport of which was, not only that she would return, unless prevented by violence or death, but that she would not answer any questions put to her, as to who she was, whence she came, or for whom the fruits of her ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Mother Gaea loathed him, Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste; A desolating fire to blind the sight With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes; The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice; Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, Heard from the babe as from the broken crone. Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, And tumbled down the cave. But rather look - Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, Of all the Gods to let her secret fly, Hermes, after the thirteen songful months! Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts, And shatter earth's delirious ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shabby now, cracked and peeling for the want of paint, the walks grass-grown, the lawn frowzy, lank and stringy curtains at the dim windows. There were only three bottles of the historic cellar left now, precious, cob-webbed; there was only one of the blacks, an ancient, crabbed crone of the second generation, with a witch's hand at cookery and a witch's temper. And there were only James King III and James King IV, his son, Honor's Jimsy, left of the line in the old home. The negress fed and mended them; an ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the light starkened in her sight and she feared from her mischief with sore affright, and said to her, "O my Lady Budur, what unseemly words are these?" Cried the Princess, "Woe to thee pestilent crone that thou art! I ask thee again where is my beloved, the goodly youth with the shining face and the slender form, the jetty eyes and the joined eyebrows, who lay with me last night from supper-tide until near daybreak?" She rejoined "By Allah, O my lady, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and the singing, a young girl, whose presence in such a company turned my heart sick, played upon a harp, while to serve the crew with liquor there was a mahogany-faced hag whom the men addressed as "Mother Catch." An old crone, bent and doubled like a bow, yet vigorous in her work, and shuffling with quick steps as she laid down the jugs, or took the uncouth orders so freely given to her, she seemed to have the eye of a hawk; nor did I escape her ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... To this old crone Petronella fled with white face and tearful eyes, as the sound of those terrible blows smote upon her ears with the whistling noise that well betrayed the force with which they were dealt. She quickly made the faithful old ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Shebotha's disappearance nor aught out of the way save in the adroitness with which the aged crone contrived to effect her escape. Soon as touching the ground, and feeling herself free from the arms hitherto holding her on horseback, she has darted into the underwood, and off; not even rising erect to her feet, but on all fours, and silently as a snake. For although the hillside is so thickly ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... rock his new treasure in his arms, and to crone over him a little lullaby well known in Tergon, with which his own mother had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... Ifrin with the souls of Odin and of Thor!" answered Cedric impatiently, and would probably have proceeded in the same tone of total departure from his spiritual character, when the colloquy was interrupted by the harsh voice of Urfried, the old crone of the turret. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... here," said Utgard-Loki, looking at the men sitting on the benches, "who would not think it beneath him to wrestle with thee; let somebody, however, call hither that old crone, my nurse Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her if he will. She has thrown to the ground many a man not less ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... crone's skirt and laid it on his head and fell to weeping and craving her protection. When she saw his ardency and transport and anguish and distress, her heart softened to him and she promised him her safeguard, saying, "Have no fear whatsoever." Then she questioned him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... for by the Board of Guardians, to decide the point by her personal testimony. One can imagine the half-dozen portly prosperous figures, and the contrast their appearance offered to that of the bent and withered crone. 'Now, Betty,' said the chairman with unctuous patronage, 'you look hale and hearty enough, yet they tell me that you are a hundred years old; is this really true?' 'God Almighty knows, sir,' was her reply, 'but I feel ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... light of morning showed under the edge of the closed window-blind. In the room day was mingling incongruously with night, for the candle looked sickly, and the aged crone's face was of a leaden colour, lighted by the piercing eyes that brooded hungrily on her son— her only son: the dwarf had told ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... convey to the reader the idea that I was naturally better than other boys, on the contrary, I frequently deserved the rod when I did not get it, but more frequently received a cruel drubbing when I did not deserve it, that, too, at the hands of the old negro crone who was exceedingly violent as well as unjust. This, of course, cultivated in me a hatred against the vile creature which ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... and wholly unsuspected by them, the old crone who was in charge of the gang of female labourers had, for some days past, been keeping a sharply watchful eye upon the investigators, and upon the day in question she had been, if possible, more sharply watchful than ever. So interested in them did she at last become that, turning ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... peculiar to the negro—always, to my thinking, irresistibly touching, and suggestive of dependence on, humility toward, and entreaty for merciful consideration at the hands of a superior race. Perhaps, however, the old folks enjoyed the occasion most, particularly the negresses: one wrinkled crone, of at least fourscore years, her head bound in, the usual gaudy handkerchief, and her hands resting on a staff or crutch, went off into a downright chuckle of irrepressible exultation after the closing benediction, echoed more ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and, after some flattering language about Janet's good nature, retentive memory, and Covenanting lineage, the old crone proceeded to the following purpose; and, as nearly as we can mind, (for it is a tale o' fifty years,) repeated it in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... beauty late had sat: Her ugliness distorted thus; whereat The herald cries: "Who will this woman take With smallest dowry? She can cook and bake, And many household duties well perform, Although she does not claim a beauty's charm. Who wants a wife?" The ugly crone with blinks Doth hideous look, till every bidder shrinks. A sorry spectacle, mis-shapen, gross, She is, and bidders now are at a loss How much to ask to take the hag to wife. At last one cries: "Five bilti,[20] for relief ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... seen a blackcock, invited him forthwith to Charlies-hope, the name of his farm, where he promised him he should both see blackcock, shoot blackcock, and eat blackcock. Dandie Dinmont was going on to tell Brown of his wanderings, when the old crone in the red cloak by the side of the fire suddenly broke silence by asking if he had been recently in Galloway, and if ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... and the reedy swamps; the earth was baked and cracked; everything looked thirsty, withered, pallid, dull, decaying: in the heats of August it is always so desolate wherever Tiber rolls. "Marchioni is out," said the old brown crone whom I had seen the day before. "But come in: bring your fish to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... fifty florins have I in the world. You spoke of servants? Aye, one withered crone To carry water, that is all. And she How long? No wretch abandoned, fed with alms, Feels misery like mine: for I have known The sweets of wealth. Through every night I slept, Contentment round my head, and sweet was morning. But hush! she loves me still, and so my failure Is bright and golden. O, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... pallor moves: there is an old crone wandering in the void, bent and toothless; draped, as well as one can guess, in the coarse brown frock of some religious order. She wanders and wanders in her slow hopeless way, much as a wasp flies in its rapid ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... ye—I'll tell it ye," answered another gossiping crone, standing beside the querist, who, fearful of being forestalled, now eagerly began ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... tales, so that the tire-woman felt wearied and indifferent and, ashamed of having brought the stranger, she stole away unnoticed. Several other maidens followed her example, and, as these withdrew, the old crone twisted her mouth into a smile, and repeated the same hideous confidential wink towards the lady. Hildegardis could not understand what attracted her in the jests and tales of the bronze-coloured ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... we do with this old crone?" Beorn said. "It would never do to risk her giving an alarm, and though she looks feeble she might be able ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... stall with a sort of bird-cage upon it, between the wires of which are glistening a store of coins, gold, and silver, and much copper. I saw an old woman at one of these stalls laying down the rate of exchange. No doubt she knew her arithmetic that old crone, and made no mistake, at least on one side of the account. A couple of lads with a large trayful of spectacles and opera-glasses, were the great opticians of the day. I saw all sorts of men, priests among them, trying ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the lattice of the confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and rolled down his face. At distant intervals the shadow of some one entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years, would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing and in review of those slips and errors ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... amazed—and really startled—the girls most was the figure that sat facing them, as they entered the van. It was that of an old, old crone, sitting on a stool, bent forward with her sharp chin resting on her clenched fists, and her elbows on her knees, while iron-gray elf-locks hung about her wrinkled, nut-brown face, ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... the path, met a woman named Ma' Chik—a very aged, bent, and feeble crone—and her he stabbed in the breast, killing her on the spot. Thence he went to the compound of a pilgrim named Haji Mih, who was engaged in getting his property out of his house in case the fire spread. Haji Mih asked To' Kaya how the fire ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... Gertrude a morsel of bread to eat and a cup of cold water to drink. But no, the wicked old woman refused, and turned our Saviour from the door with revilings and curses. Our Lord stretched forth His hand towards the aged crone, and, as a punishment, she was immediately transformed into a black woodpecker; and ever since that day the wicked old creature has wandered about the world in the shape of a bird, seeking her daily bread from wood to wood and from tree to tree." The red ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... rabbi read the service, with his back to the audience, most followed in their Hebrew books; but one by one many men slipped out, as though they were "on 'Change" and did not care to stay any longer to-day. The women remained, but with a slightly perfunctory air in most cases. One old crone before me seemed touched with the true pathos which belongs to her race and its history. She followed the service intently, swaying her body back and forth in time with the beautiful music, and ever and anon breaking ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... mother bade them give her some hot porridge and an old cloth gown of her own to take home. I remember the time distinctly. Well, this poor thing couldn't tell between a real sin and an alligator. Bony, withered, aged, this crone might have been one of the highest types of human perfection. She wronged nobody; she had no power to wrong. Nobody wronged her; it was never worth it. She really was at peace with all the world. This obeys the most exalted injunctions. Every precept is kept here. But this ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... came to see me at last," exclaimed the old crone; "and who is that young stranger from the far off north that I see ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... ribbons and bold, flushed faces; pale-faced operatives, and strong men whose brawny limbs told of the Titanic labours of the foundry; the clerk from his desk; the shopkeeper from his store; the withered crone, and the careless navvy, swayed and struggled through the living mass; and with them trooped the legions of want, and vice, and ignorance, that burrow and fester in the foetid lanes and purlieus of the large British cities: from the dark alleys where misery and degradation ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... examination of his upper clothing, which, by Dr. Ritchie's directions, had been removed, that the remedies might be more conveniently applied, and the heated blankets the sooner infuse a vital glow through the storm-beaten frame. The ancient crone took them up with the tips of her fingers—ragged coat, vest, and pantaloons—rummaged in the same contemptuous fashion every pocket, and kicked over the worn, soaked boots with the toe of her leather brogan, sniffing her disappointment at the worthlessness of the habiliments and ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... his little suit-case, the portress,—a fat old crone with dusty, frizzled hair whom he had sometimes caught a glimpse of in the depths of her ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... wheels above her were eaten with rust: The hands, that over the dial swept, Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept And still there came that silver tone From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone (Let me never forget till my dying day The tone or the burden of her ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... women who, like the Jigar Khwar of Persia, feed upon man's liver: they are fond of destroying young children; even adults are not ashamed of defending themselves with talismans. In this country the crone is called Bidaa or Kumayyo, words signifying a witch: the worst is she that destroys her own progeny. No wound is visible in this vampyre's victim: generally he names his witch, and his friends beat her to death unless she heal him: many are thus martyred; and in Somali ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... this scene of bustle and noise, at the door of a small tent, sat two female gypsies. One of these was the queen, an aged crone, who, though bent with age and care, and wrinkled by time and the indulgence of vehement passions, yet prided herself upon the unfrosted darkness of her raven tresses, which fell over her shoulders in profusion. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... lads that'll no feel the weight o' your coffin; but if a' tales be true, you'll no' be in want. Ech, they're clever, clever, your lassies. Same to you, McKelvie. Your lass has ta'en the rue the day. Happy New Year, young sir; you'll be a McBride too," and the old withered crone peered at me through eyes bleared, as it seemed to me, with the peat reek ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... vrouw on the opposite side would employ herself diligently in spinning yarn or knitting stockings. The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... strange and wonderful a change that Avilla could hardly believe her own eyes. Instead of the ugly, cross-looking old crone, there stood a beautiful princess, with long golden hair, and tender blue eyes, her face radiant with joy. Her story was soon told. Hundreds of years ago she had been changed into the bent old woman, and shut up in the dark cave ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Still to his haunt he crawls on knocking knees, And envies every sparrow that he sees. A salmon's belly, Helluo, was thy fate; The doctor called, declares all help too late: "Mercy!" cries Helluo, "mercy on my soul! Is there no hope!—Alas!—then bring the jowl." The frugal crone, whom praying priests attend, Still tries to save the hallowed taper's end, Collects her breath, as ebbing life retires, For one puff more, and in that puff expires. "Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke" (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke); "No, let ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... quiet, did as she was bid, stirred the fire, till its ruddy glow brightened every nook of the little white-washed chamber, and made the old crone beside it wince and mutter in her sleep. Having shielded her from its fierce light, she then, with trembling fingers, opened a little penknife which lay upon the table, and cut the twine with which the cover was sewed at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... other sailors, he visited several barrooms where he told the story of his strange loss. In one of the places, in a corner, sat an old Scotch crone, smoking her pipe and quietly listening to the conversation. At midnight when Bob was about to leave, the old woman said, "What will ye gie me if I find yer ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... hear what she said?" mumbled a weak, angry voice somewhere behind Crefton's shoulder. Turning hastily, he beheld another old crone, thin and yellow and wrinkled, and evidently in a high state of displeasure. Obviously this was Martha Pillamon in person. The orchard seemed to be a favourite promenade for the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... girl of their own tribe, and Pemaou could not watch all quarters at once. Now was certainly the time to act; but where was Singing Arrow? My inaction pressed on me like a hideous weight. It seemed days instead of hours that I had sat like a crone by her distaff and let others do my work—or fail to do it. Why was Singing Arrow ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... fists, until the sound of footsteps within, descending the stairs, showed that he had succeeded in rousing somebody. A ray of light shone through the cracks in the rickety old door, then it was cautiously opened just a little, and an aged, withered crone, striving to protect the flame of her flaring candle from the wind with one skinny hand, and to hold the rags of her most extraordinary undress together with the other, peered out at them curiously. She was evidently just as she had turned out of her bed, and a more revolting, witch-like ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... drive her mad. But matters now were changed. Day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year, a rose had been unfolding itself at Collingswood, and with every opening petal had grown more and more precious to the blind man, until more than one crone foretold the end; and Grace Atherton, grown fonder of gossip than she was wont to be, listened to the tale, and watched, and wondered, and wept, and still caressed and loved the bright, beautiful girl, whom ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... Hobart got the name of Snecky. His son left Thrums at the age of ten for the distant farm of Tirl, and did not return until the old bellman's death, twenty years afterward; but the first remark he overheard on entering the kirk-wynd was a conjecture flung across the street by a gray-haired crone, that he would be "little Snecky come to ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... agreed Joyce. "It looked so picturesque with the tents and the white covered wagons, and that old crone bending over the camp-fire. I know a woman at home who had her fortune told by a gypsy, and every single thing that was told ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... meet upon the way, Half-blind and evil-eyed, with matted hair— Workers of spells and witcheries are they— The brood of Calatin—beware! beware! They proffer of their fulsome food a share, And, 'Stay with us a while,' a false crone cries 'Unseemly is the strong who would ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... by them, the old crone who was in charge of the gang of female labourers had, for some days past, been keeping a sharply watchful eye upon the investigators, and upon the day in question she had been, if possible, more sharply watchful than ever. So interested ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... summons. Ellinor sprang forward and detained her: the poor old woman stared at her in amazement, wholly unable to comprehend her abrupt gestures and her rapid language. It was with considerable difficulty and after repeated efforts, that she at length impressed the dulled sense of the crone with the nature of their alarm, and the expediency of refusing admittance to the Stranger. Meanwhile, the bell had rung again,—again, and the third time with a prolonged violence which testified the impatience of the applicant. As soon ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at the last struggle of dying conscience, and bade Angelique go to bed. It was two hours past midnight, and she would bid Fanchon let her depart to the house of an old crone in the city who would give her a bed and a blessing in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... name—send that he has not wandered in the night, and he blind! Alack! that I could not return before the dark. Alack! and alack! what times have we fallen on, when the Holy High Priest and the Governor, by descent, of Abouthis, is left with one aged crone to minister to his infirmity! O Harmachis, my poor boy, thou hast laid trouble at our doors! Why, what's this? Surely he sleeps not, there upon the ground?—'twill be his death! Prince! Holy Father! Amenemhat! awake, arise!" and she hobbled towards the corpse. "Why, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... King Who Kenned the Quintessence of Things d. Tale of the Richard Who Married His Beautiful Daughter to the Poor Old Man e. Tale of the Sage and His Three Sons f. Tale of the Prince who Fell in Love With the Picture g. Tale of the Fuller and His Wife and the Trooper h. Tale of the Merchant, The Crone, and the King i. Tale of the Simpleton Husband j. Tale of the Unjust King and the Tither ja. Story of David and Solomon k. Tale of the Robber and the Woman l. Tale of the Three Men and Our Lord Isa la. The Disciple's Story m. Tale of the Dethroned Ruler ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... dies even in our modern society, is embodied in the gipsy crone who, in rags and scarcely clinging to life, suddenly lifts into youth and queenliness, just as in a society, where romance seems old or dead, it springs into fresh and lovely life. This is the heart of the poem, and it is made to ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... said the crone, "and I'll answer you. You think of nothing but poetry, and only ask about that Story, as if she were the lady of the whole troop. She's the oldest of us all, but she takes precedence of the youngest. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... soon ushered into the kitchen. An aged crone descended, and raking the charcoal embers, kindled a flame, by which the rower was enabled ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... possible answer can I make to him?" Then she called an old woman, who was about her and discovered her secret to her saying, "How shall I act seeing that Kut al-Kulub died by such untimely death?" "O my lady," quoth the old crone, "the time of the Caliph's return is near; so do thou send for a carpenter and bid him make thee a figure of wood in the form of a corpse. We will dig a grave for it midmost the palace and there bury it: then do thou build an oratory over it and set therein lighted ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... He saw tears on Margaret's face; and once he was sure he heard Forsythe's voice in contempt: "Well, he seems to be well occupied for the present! No danger of his waking up for a while!" and then the voices all grew dim and far away again, and only an old crone and the harsh girl's whisper over him; and then Margaret's tears—tears that fell on his heart from far above, and seemed to melt out all his early sins and flood him with their horror. Tears and the consciousness that he ought to be doing something for Margaret now and could ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... woman's cooking, and bearing all her abuse without grumbling. Strange to relate, a battered Bible was seldom out of his sight; and whenever he had leisure, and his mistress' back was turned, he was forever poring over it. This pious propensity used to enrage the old crone past belief; and oftentimes she boxed his ears with the book, and tried to burn it. Mother Tot and her man Josy were, indeed, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... twelve years of age died. In the universal reign of famine there were at last found those who were ready to repeat the horrible crime of feeding upon the flesh of their own kindred. It was discovered that a husband and wife, with a neighboring crone, had endeavored to satisfy the gnawings of hunger by eating a newly dead child. Their guilt came speedily to light, and was punished according to the severe code of the sixteenth century. The father was sentenced by the council to be burned alive; his ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... daintily in her tapering fingers a cigarette, which she occasionally raises to her "ripe red lips", afterwards languidly following with her lustrous black eyes the blue wreaths of smoke as they float above her head and vanish in the air; next, the withered crone, with silver hair, wrinkled skin, and no trace of her early beauty, sitting in the chimney corner, and still smoking, though now it is a clay pipe,—to the amazement and disgust of the villagers. Yet we, believing in the only correct interpretation of noblesse ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... ever thus over the fire like some old crone?" he growled, voicing at last the irritability that so long had ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... about the streets; The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble The lies of their own heart, but when one meets Another at the shrine, he inly weets, 1535 Though he says nothing, that the truth is known; Murderers are pale upon the judgement-seats, And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone, And laughter fills the Fane, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... interwoven with our impressions of the present; and from that moment the past must share, in a measure, some of the everyday thoughts which we give to the present. In such a city as this, the sudden withdrawal, by sacristan or beggar-crone, of the curtain from before an altar-piece is many a time much more than the mere displaying of a picture: it is the sudden bringing us face to face with the real life of the Renaissance. We have ourselves, perhaps not an hour before, sauntered ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... adventure of the second stage of Sir George Grey's Australian explorations. He was to have plenty of opportunity for the study of the Australian Aborigine, who, by and by, received him in better wise than at the point of a spear. Somewhere, an old crone felt inspired to hug and kiss him, in the belief that he was her own dead son, spun white, and back on earth. Having recruited from his earlier sufferings, he had gone by Perth, up the coast to Shark's Bay in an American whaler. He arranged to make a depot ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... Scott. Byron too admired it greatly, and it was by his persuasion that Coleridge finally published it as a fragment, finding himself unable to complete it, and feeling doubtless that the public regarded him much as the urchins in Keats' poem regarded the crone ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... daughter. And naturally these rumors and stories were exaggerated by the kindly interest and affection of the people into something far beyond what Sheila's father intended; insomuch that many an old crone would proudly and sagaciously wag her head, and say that when Miss Sheila came back to Borva strange things might be seen, and it would be a proud day for Mr. Mackenzie if he was to go down to the shore to meet Queen Victoria herself, and the princes and princesses, and many fine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... it was autumn, and the wind blew from the place of rains; and upon the one hand of her the sea beat, and upon the other the dead leaves ran. This was the loneliest beach between two seas, and strange things had been done there in the ancient ages. Now the King's daughter was aware of a crone that sat upon the beach. The sea-foam ran to her feet, and the dead leaves swarmed about her back, and the rags blew about her face in the blowing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... across me, the man who had conducted the horse to the stable entered the apartment, and discovered to me a countenance yet more uninviting than that of the old crone who was performing with such dexterity the office of cook to the party. He was perhaps sixty years old; yet his brow was not much furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, by the advance of age. All his motions spoke strength unabated; and, though rather undersized, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... thought and busied himself with selling and buying; and some days passed by without any such ill case befalling him in the house, as the doorkeeper had mentioned. One day as he sat upon the bench before his door, there came up a grizzled crone, as she were a snake speckled white and black, calling aloud on the name of Allah, magnifying Him inordinately and, at the same time, putting away the stones and other obstacles from the path.[FN225] Seeing the youth sitting there, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... old woman in a workhouse, said to be a hundred years of age, was sent for by the Board of Guardians, to decide the point by her personal testimony. One can imagine the half-dozen portly prosperous figures, and the contrast their appearance offered to that of the bent and withered crone. 'Now, Betty,' said the chairman with unctuous patronage, 'you look hale and hearty enough, yet they tell me that you are a hundred years old; is this really true?' 'God Almighty knows, sir,' was her reply, 'but ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... and elms, the rind below being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald. They were stout-trunked trees, that never rocked their stems in the fiercest gale, responding to it entirely by crooking their limbs. Wrinkled like an old crone's face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above the foliage of their summits, they were nevertheless still green—though yellow had invaded the leaves of ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... an inspiration. Hallock himself had learned the story from a hunchbacked Mexican who had it from his grandmother, and the little Jose, the crippled victim of Starr Wiley's heedless brutality, had been hunchbacked; the old crone in the shack by the zapote trees, his grandmother, looked as if many mysteries and legends might be hidden behind her ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... turning his head towards the pillars of the Custom-house, whence the voice seemed to proceed, he replied very faintly, and in a scarce intelligible voice, "Who is calling me? Who has come to cast my dead body into the sea, for it will soon be all over with me." Then a little shrivelled wrinkled crone came up panting and coughing, hobbling along by the aid of her staff; she approached the wounded youth, and squatting down beside him, she burst out into a most repulsive chuckling and laughing. "You foolish child, you foolish child," whispered the old woman, "are you going to perish here—will ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... filled it with moss, telling him that he must wipe his wound well that the flies might not do their excrements in it, whilst he should go search for some yarrow or millefoil, commonly called the carpenter's herb. The lion, being thus healed, walked along in the forest at what time a sempiternous crone and old hag was picking up and gathering some sticks in the said forest, who, seeing the lion coming towards her, for fear fell down backwards, in such sort that the wind blew up her gown, coats, and smock, even as far as above her shoulders; which the lion perceiving, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... air (appearance), appellant, apple-pie order, baker's dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles, bicker, blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper, clutch, coddle, copious, cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... white, gold-stitched robe, its bodice tight, its skirts voluminous, she welcomed him in the hall. The reception over, old Baldo spoke with the crone who served Madonna ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... dwindles) in the public mind; and what has befallen THE MASTER, and what kind of a Box the Merry Box has been found. It is odd to know nothing of all this. We had an old woman to do devil- work for you about a month ago, in a Chinaman's house on Apaiang (August 23rd or 24th). You should have seen the crone with a noble masculine face, like that of an old crone [SIC], a body like a man's (naked all but the feathery female girdle), knotting cocoanut leaves and muttering spells: Fanny and I, and the good captain of the EQUATOR, and the ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... existed for him—the desolate lake and hills, the childish crone and rude hearth—for these he did not long. It was his home, that place; for into it—into the splashing lake and lonely woods, into the contour of the hills, and into the very logs of which the house was built—he had put as much of himself ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... so shady, And its smirk returned with a novel meaning— For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning; If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow, {430} She, foolish to-day, would be wiser to-morrow; And who so fit a teacher of trouble As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double? So, glancing at her wolf-skin vesture (If such it was, for they grow so hirsute That their own fleece serves for natural fur-suit) He was contrasting, 'twas plain from his gesture, The life of the lady so flower-like and delicate With the loathsome squalor of this helicat. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... was the time of the war. The neighbors told of some maiden aunt, an old crone like herself, who had left Joe's mother aboon ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... 'what a gem I have got from my tailor, who was just going to cut up this peerless robe into strips. He bought it of an old crone, who must doubtless have worn it on gala days when she went to Lucifer's drawing-room on the Blocksberg. Look at this scarlet bodice, with its gold tassels and fringe, at this cap besmeared with the last fee the hag got from Beelzebub or his imps: ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Moi? Ciel! Le pourriez-vous crone? Moi, qui n'ai d'autre objet ni d'autre dieu. . ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... "The old crone is lost on the same day that the young governor was missing, eh? Very significant. I want you to take a paper for me to the Peakeville Gazette. I will advertise a thousand dollars reward for the discovery of that woman. She knows ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... we gathered up the bundles and trudged along until nearly sundown, when we arrived at a tupic under a cliff and between two large lakes. Two young married women and an old palsied crone came out to meet us. "Alex Taylor" told me that I was to stay there all night. The next morning, after walking about nine or ten miles without seeing anything in the way of game except some deer tracks, we ascended a high bluff that had been on our right since leaving ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... sense. Renown does not follow all good deeds, if novelty and difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, according to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; nor will they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from an old blear-eyed crone. Those who have known the admirable qualities of Scipio Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, of being abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of his age. We have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of grandeur: our ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Mabyn addressed a timid remark to Mrs. Trelyon, and that Mrs. Trelyon, in answering it, stopped for a moment; so that Master Harry was sent to Wenna's side, and these two led the way down the wide thoroughfare. There were few people visible in the old-fashioned place: here and there an aged crone came out to the door of one of the rude stone cottages to look at the strangers. Overhead the sky was veiled over with a thin fleece of white cloud, but the light was intense for all that, and indeed the colors of the objects around seemed all the more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... almost meeting. Bent almost double, they walked about with a crutch, shaking and mumbling as they went. If any one had an ache or a pain it was easily accounted for. For why, they were bewitched! The poor old crone was the witch who had "cast the evil eye" upon them. And sometimes these poor creatures were put to death for their so-called deeds ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... looked up at her again. But instead of the withered old crone he expected to see, his eyes fell upon the most beautiful wife that could be imagined; for the old woman was a fairy, and had wished to give him a lesson before he knew her as she really was. No longer now was he ashamed of her, and they lived together ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... hood had fallen away, and the shadows round her blue eyes were as black as pools under hedgerows thawing after a frost, and her lovely face was as white as the snowbanks they bed in. Behind her came another woman in a duffle cloak, a crone with eyes as black as sloes, and a skin as brown as beechnuts, and unkempt hair like the fireless smoke of Old Man's Beard straying where it will on the November woodsides. She too was wet and soiled, but full of life where the young one seemed full ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... an incantation. I got a picture of a nubile waif, too freakish to fit where she'd been raised. What had her Hegira been like? In what frightful places had she found herself welcome? From her talk, it could have been an Ozark backwater. I didn't want to know what backwoods crone had taught her some mnemonic rendition ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Roderick, "what a gem I have got from my tailor, who was on the point of cutting up this peerless treasure into strips. He had bought it of an old crone who must doubtless have worn it on gala-days, when she went to Lucifer's drawing room on the Blocksberg. Look at this scarlet bodice with its gold tassels and fringe, at this cap besmeared with the last fee the hag got from Beelzebub or his imps! it will ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... to her with a rapid flow of soft liquid Spanish and the old crone, weeping and muttering, stood aside to let them enter. Thode was forced to stoop under the low, sagging doorway and he stumbled as he made his way to a rickety bed in the corner ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... idea of mine, born of after brooding upon the scene. I am inclined to think it must be so, for I was only a child at the time, and would hardly have noticed such a thing. But it seems to my remembrance that as the old crone ceased, another woman in the crowd raised her eyes slowly, and fixed them on a withered, ancient man, who leant upon a stick, and that for a moment, unnoticed by the rest, these two stood looking strangely ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... through the hospitable sacred doors to kneel before the blessed Virgin on this morning of her Nativity. On the broad marble steps of the Duomo there were scattered groups of beggars and gossiping talkers: here an old crone with white hair and hard sunburnt face encouraging a round-capped baby to try its tiny bare feet on the warmed marble, while a dog sitting near snuffed at the performance suspiciously; there a couple of shaggy-headed boys leaning to watch a small pale cripple who was cutting a face ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... her lover, but without effect. A few days later she again met her old gipsy crone Hagar Burton, who repeated her sibylline declaration. As Miss Arundell never, by any chance, talked about anything or anybody except Burton, and as she paid liberally for consulting the Fates, this declaration necessarily points to peculiar acumen on the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... him, Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste; A desolating fire to blind the sight With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes; The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice; Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, Heard from the babe as from the broken crone. Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, And tumbled down the cave. But rather look - Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, Of all the Gods to let her secret fly, Hermes, after the thirteen songful months! Prompting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... prophecies I thus destroy," He cried, "thou wretched crone; Threats on my days no more employ, But ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... pay a visit "down-stairs." "Down-stairs" had a distinct meaning in the Compton vocabulary. It was spoken of with significance, and with a laugh, as something half hostile, half ridiculous. It meant a sort of absurd criticism and inspection, as of some old crone sitting vigilant, spying upon everything—a mother-in-law. Phil's cronies thought it was the most absurd weakness on his part to let such an intruder get footing in his house. "You will never get rid of her," they said. And Phil, though he was generally quite civil to his wife's mother ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... ells and heavy pounds he gave! And then his tea! how it inspired the village gossip on long winter nights in a chimney corner! All the matrons of the village were quite in love with Tom, or his tea; and many an old crone, as she sat inhaling cup after cup of the divine beverage, has been known to pause in the midst of her inspirations, and exclaim with uplifted hands, 'God ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... I have something better to do than that!' And slamming the gate in the crone's face she went her way. And she never heard the words that followed her: 'You shall not have done this to ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... selfish laugh, he will not spare a friend: Whate'er he scrawls, the mean malignant rogue Is all alive to get it into vogue: Give him a handle, and your tale is known To every giggling boy and maundering crone." A weighty accusation! now, permit Some few brief words, and I will answer it: First, be it understood, I make no claim To rank with those who bear a poet's name: 'Tis not enough to turn out lines complete, Each with its proper quantum of five feet; Colloquial verse ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... shining perhaps, the trees would wave, and cast flickering shadows on Madelon, as she sat, the pigeons would come fluttering and perching on the window-sill, and Soeur Lucie, whilst paring, cutting, boiling, skimming, would crone out for Madelon's benefit the old tales she knew so well that she could almost have repeated them in her sleep. Madelon only begged to be let off the tragical ending, which she could not bear, at last always stopping her ears when the critical moment of the sword, or the wheel, or the fire approached. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... as the barrier was removed by a leather- skinned old crone, Carroll gazed into a passageway, beyond which stretched a foul mule yard, bordered by what the visitor at first supposed to be stalls, until he saw bedding and utensils in them. The two men lifted the cripple in, amid the outcries ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was a wretched, neglected hovel of a place, in the very last stages of dirt, neglect, and decay, situated on the outskirts of the village, and to this delectable abode the old crone conducted her two "sons" and inducted them therein. But before she took them inside the hut she carefully examined their hurts; and when at length she had satisfied herself that although these were no doubt painful ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... little alley and hidden rookery, "hawk's nest" and "wren's nest," poured out its unseemly denizens, white and black, old and young, male and female, the child of three years old, keen, alert and self-protective, running to see the "row" side by side with the toothless crone of seventy; or most likely passing her on the way. Thieves, beggars, pick-pockets, vile women, rag-pickers and the like, with the harpies who prey upon them, all were there to ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... 'manure';—or with the dropping of the first syllable: 'history' and 'story'; 'etiquette' and 'ticket'; 'escheat' and 'cheat'; 'estate' and 'state'; and, older probably than any of these, 'other' and 'or';—or with a dropping of the last syllable, as 'Britany' and 'Britain'; 'crony' and 'crone';—or without losing a syllable, with more or less stress laid on the close: 'regiment' and 'regimen'; 'corpse' and 'corps'; 'bite' and 'bit'; 'sire' and 'sir'; 'land' or 'laund' and 'lawn'; 'suite' and 'suit'; 'swinge' and 'swing'; 'gulph' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... thinking," said Betsey; "you be wonderin' how I got so much sperrits. Well, p'raps I shall tell 'ee zoon. We sh'll zee, Jasper, we sh'll zee." And with that the old crone chuckled. ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... whose groans and struggles proclaimed the anguish he endured. A lamp was burning on the floor, and threw a sickly light upon the agonized countenance of the sufferer. He was a middle-aged man, with features naturally harsh, but which now, contracted by pain, had assumed a revolting expression. An old crone, who proved to be his mother, and a young man, who held him down in bed by main force, tended him. He was rambling in a frightful manner; and as his ravings turned upon the most loathly matters, it required some ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... thy story?" so I ended. "Decrepit, toothless, shivering crone, now forgotten, going thy ways without so much as a glance from passers-by! Why art thou still alive? What doest thou in that beggar's garb, uncomely and desired of none? Where are thy riches?—for what were they ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... for poor Fleda. Aunt Syra was her next neighbour, and opposite to her, at Miss Anastasia's left hand, was the disagreeable countenance and peering eyes of the old crone, her mother. Fleda kept her own eyes fixed upon her plate, and endeavoured to see nothing ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... developed in her by prosperity, and another by adversity, when her brain had been turned by success and flattery, when her heart had been ulcerated by disasters and mortifications. She lived to be that most odious and miserable of human beings, an ancient crone at war with her whole kind, at war with her own children and grandchildren, great indeed and rich, but valuing greatness and riches chiefly because they enabled her to brave public opinion and to indulge without restraint her hatred to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... feet and turned her face to the Great Roof, and gazed long at it, not heeding the crone by her side; and she muttered words of whose signification the other knew not, though she listened intently, and gazed ever at her as closely as ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... sustained the character capitally, making full use of the talent of mimicry she had inherited with her Italian blood; she had no mercy on her soft voice or her lovely face, and when she had to represent some old crone in her dotage, or a stupid burgomaster, she made the drollest grimaces, screwing up her eyes, wrinkling up her nose, lisping, squeaking.... She did not herself laugh during the reading; but when her audience ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the crone; "I was at my prayers when you came to disturb me, and I'll finish them before I open the door, if you were to burn the house over my head, and myself in it. Up," said she to the Rapparee, "through the roof—get that ould table undher your feet—the thatch is thin—slip out and lie on the ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... certain day as the lady walked abroad, she came to the house of an old crone that dwelt in the town, and that had no tooth in her head. And the queen said to her, "Old woman, tell me that which I shall ask thee, for the love of Heaven. Where are the children of the man who has carried me away by violence?" Said the crone, ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... pockets, staring stolidly at the closed door of the mine. Among them was no impulse toward concerted action. Like animals at the door of a slaughter-house they stood as though waiting their turn to be driven in at the door. An old crone with bent back and a huge stick in her hand went from one to another of the miners gesticulating and talking. "Get my boy—my Steve! Get him out of there!" she shouted, waving ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... as fine a sentiment as the boasted one of the hero endeavouring to fall decently. There may be but little difference, and that only just what we, in our humours, choose to make it. I am sure you, Eusebius, will stand up for the old village crone, and the fine lady, too. But the fraternity of the brush, if they do now and then promote vanity, much more commonly gratify affection. Private portraits seem to me to be things so sacred, that they ought not to survive the immediate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... of the sun and west of the moon. But it was only the same thing once again. "Maybe it was you who should have had the Prince," said the old woman. "Yes, indeed, I should have been the one," said the girl. But this old crone knew the way no better than the others—it was east of the sun and west of the moon, she knew that, "and you will be a long time in getting to it, if ever you get to it at all," she said; "but you may have the loan of my horse, and I think you had better ride to the East Wind, and ask him: ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... night's continuance in her present abode, she requested to have the room made a little more comfortable by the exhilarating blaze of a fire. For this indulgence there were the principal requisites in a hearth and spacious chimney. And an aged crone, probably the sole female servant upon the premises, speedily presented herself with a plentiful supply of wood, and the two supporters, or andirons (as they were formerly called), for raising the billets so ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... open. The hut was much larger than we had expected to find it, and would afford, I saw at a glance, not only shelter for the ladies but for all our party, and for the horses also. At the farther end sat an old crone, her white locks escaping from under her coif; and her bony arms, which were bare to the elbow, extended over a large pan, beneath which were burning coals. She glanced round at us ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... laughter and tramping came from the road—a sound of numerous footsteps. Zora listened, leapt to her feet and started to the door. The old crone threw an epithet after her; but she flashed through the lighted doorway and was gone, followed by the oath and shouts from the approaching men. In the hut night fled with wild song and revel, and day ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... raised her head, and, shading her eyes with one skinny hand, looked curiously at the new comers. Calton thought he had never seen such a repulsive-looking old crone; and, in truth, her ugliness was, in its very grotesqueness well worthy the pencil of a Dore. Her face was seamed and lined with innumerable wrinkles, clearly defined by the dirt which was in them; bushy grey eyebrows, drawn frowningly over two piercing black eyes, whose light was undimmed ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... said an old crone leaning on a crutch. "He has been confined these fifteen years in the house, which he'll never ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... said Utgard-Loki, looking at the men sitting on the benches, "who would not think it beneath him to wrestle with thee; let somebody, however, call hither that old crone, my nurse Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her if he will. She has thrown to the ground many a man not less ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Greeks, the anderoon of the Persians: in the others were collected the whole faction of the dying man. Nine or ten swarthy but handsome countenances were anxiously watching the struggling breath of their unhappy comrade—some sobbing, some grief-stricken, some sombre, none savage. An old crone was administering ineffectual milk, perhaps the very woman who had found the same fluid so nutritious some thirty years ago. Before, or rather, under her lay as noble a form as nature ever moulded, with a fine dark, but thoroughly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... women returned to town, talking gayly, despite the great baskets on their heads, they passed the hut of Faquita and paused at the window to inquire for the child. The little one lay gasping on the bed. Faquita sat beside her with bowed head. An aged crone brewed herbs over a stove. The dingy little house faced the hills and was dimly lighted by the fading rays of the sun struggling through ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... going up to an ancient crone, employed in the manner which I have described, I asked her for water; she looked me in the face, appeared to consider a moment, then tottering into her hut, presently reappeared with a small pipkin of milk, which ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... embrace which was like the accolade given by a monarch to new knights.[308] The whole scene is ignoble. We seem to be watching an unclean cauldron, with Theresa's mother, a cringing and babbling crone, standing witch-like over it and infusing suspicion, falsehood, and malice. When minds are thus surcharged, any accident suffices to release the evil creatures that lurk in ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... magazines called The Warlock Weekly, a broken ukulele, little heaps of powder, colored stones, candle ends, some potted cacti, and an enormous cash register. In the middle of the chamber a little hideous crone in a Mother Hubbard crouched over a saucepan, stirring it with a wooden spoon. The saucepan was resting in the coals of an open fire, and smoke and steam together spread out in a ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... here at sixpence is pretty tidy," said a crone to her companion; "but you may get as good ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... crouching and crawling along; a character and attitude ascribed to her, no doubt, from the fancied resemblance of a lava flow, which, when in the form of a-a, rolls and tumbles along over the surface of the ground in a manner suggestive of the motions and attitude of a palsied crone.] [Page 201] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... we found, to our surprise, two civil inhabitants clinging to their ruinous homes; one who held some vague post of authority called himself a Garde Champetre; another, an aged crone, suddenly emerged cursing from her hovel to expostulate with me for unwittingly stealing her peas and young carrots. They were cleared out immediately after our arrival. The flight of the remainder had been evidently ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... cried an aged old crone, "Take care what you promise," said she. "At first 'twill be fun, But, in the long run, You'll wish you had let the thing be. Through this stick with an eye I look and espy That for ages and ages you'll sit and you'll sew, And longer ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... moth-eaten garment which she has just taken from a chest that Wardour Street might envy; in another she is energetically cuffing the 'foolish fat scullion,' who has let the spotted Dalmatian coach-dog overturn the cauldron at the fire. Here an old crone, with her spectacles on, is cautiously probing the contents of the said cauldron with a fork; here the mistress of the house is peeling pears; here the plump and soft-hearted cheese-wife is entertaining ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... cadaverous as this Once with colours were gay As the flower on its spray? Who would ever believe Aught could bring one to grieve So much as to make Lips bent for love's sake So thin and so grey? O Youth, come away! As she asks in her lone, This old, desolate crone. She loves us no more; She is too old to care For the charms that of yore Made her body so fair. Past repining, past care, She lives but to bear One or two fleeting years Earth's indifference: her ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... have learnt to sit behind the stove like an old crone, and to dangle at the apronstrings of the women. You have been dragged to meeting as tamely as a Spanish monk's mule; that ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... a gift for languages and an energetic mind, accustomed to work, and he had already given much time to the study of the local tongue. Old habit was strong in him and he was gathering together material for a paper on the Samoan speech. The old crone who shared the hut with Sally invited him to come in and sit down. She gave him kava to drink and cigarettes to smoke. She was glad to have someone to chat with and while she talked he looked ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... before his men. He flung off the old crone's cap which he had worn so cleverly. "Come, kill me, then, lord," he called, cheerfully. "Here am I, waiting for your pikes and their pokes. Hasten to make sure business of it, for I ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... also "Buddha's perfect uselessness'' for "Buddha's perfect sinlessness.'' It is rather startling to find a quotation from the Essay on Man introduced by the words "as the Pope says,'' or to find the famous painter Old Crome styled an "old Crone.'' ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... ee,' quavered the crone. 'A pocket-full o' yallow shiners for yourself, me fine dear.' And she waved her withered arm after the robber many times. 'Seventy-two years I've lived in this bush, girl an' woman, an' he's the finest one that ever come into it; barrin' my other son the Slugger that the p'lice bagged when ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Princess was greatly distressed at having to leave her beautiful young Prince in this hurried way, and as she flew past the blind old crone she whispered in her ear, 'I go to my father's house in ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... employ a special messenger, for there was no post in the country. To be sure, no need was felt of one in the villages, for most of the nobility knew no more of reading and writing than the peasants. If any one fell ill, he found no help but the secret remedies of some old village crone, for there was not an apothecary in the whole country. If any one needed a coat he could do no better than take needle in hand himself—for many miles there was no tailor, unless one of the trade made a trip through the country on the chances of finding work. If any one wished ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... dream. An old crone is selling roasted chestnuts in the shadow of the temple of Castor and Pollux; a tipsy soldier is reeling to his quarters with his helmet stuck on wrong side foremost; a knot of Hebrew money-changers, with long ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Walter Scott's romances that this was the proper way to address inferiors, and he prided himself not a little on his jaunty condescension. Imagine then his surprise when the "old crone" suddenly turned on him with ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Bindo so intensely interested in the over-dressed old crone? He walked with her constantly on the Spa, or along the Esplanade; he lounged at her side when she sat to watch the parading summer girls and their flirtations, and he idled at coffee with her every evening. After a few days Sir Charles Blythe, alias Sinclair, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
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