"Gray-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... right. We can lose a game, and to lose one like that—it's as good as winnin'. Say! I'm a liar if I didn't see 'em Place hitters turnin' gray-headed! Listen! That game over there was tough on all the kids, you most of all, of course. But you all stood the gaff. You've fought out a grillin' big game away from home. That's over. You'll never go through that again. But it was the makin' of you.... Here, look this over! Mebbe ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... low posts with willow withies, some twenty of them, naked all, and twisted and screwed into every strange shape which an agonised body could assume. In front where the buzzard had perched was the gray-headed commandant, with two cinders thrust into his sockets and his flesh hanging from him like a beggar's rags. Behind was the line of men, each with his legs charred off to the knees, and his body so haggled ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hastily around a projecting point of the slope and spur at rapid gait towards the spot where the cavalry have dismounted and are breathing their horses. There is hardly time for salutations. A gray-headed, keen-eyed, florid-faced old soldier is the colonel, and he is snapping ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... crumbly sand bank just in time to see the seven-banded birch canoe of a little old hunter, Sam Ba'tiste Buck—eighty years old he was—squatting in the bottom of the birch canoe, ragged almost to nakedness, bare of feet, gray-headed, nearly toothless but happier than an emperor—the first living being we had seen for a week in the muskegs. We camped together that night on the sandbars—trading Sam Ba'tiste flour and matches for a couple ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... he start and tremble, that stern, gray-headed man? He has lived more than sixty years an unbeliever—a despiser of the lowly Savior. No thought of repentance or remorse has afflicted him—no desire has he ever had to hear the words of eternal life. He has trained up his family in ignorance of God, and only in his memory has the blessed ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... gazed upon the open country before him with very mingled emotions. He had been there before at the head of his clan to disturb the serenity which, in spite of himself, was now softening his heart. He did not linger long, but led his horse a little within the woods, and entered the church. The gray-headed priest at the altar was solemnly chanting, from the beautiful liturgy of the Church, as he knelt down on the hard aisle, and the branching ceiling seemed to catch and repeat the notes. Through the stained window, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... gray-headed faither; "She 's less of a bride than a bairn; She 's ta'en like a cowt frae the heather, Wi' sense and discretion to learn. Half husband, I trow, and half daddy, As humour inconstantly leans; A chiel maun be constant and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... described. We were ordered out of the cars, and marching a few rods, came in sight of another of those hateful Stockades, which seemed to be as natural products of the Sterile sand of that dreary land as its desolate woods and its breed of boy murderers and gray-headed assassins. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... really had a chance of an existence through Harnett's illness, for he stoutly contended that had the senior owner been well, he would have been so cautious about opening it on credit, that all of them would have grown gray-headed before they saw ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... a good speculation," said the gray-headed money-lover, when his agent informed him of what he ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... accepted bill, face downwards, on the bank counter, took a pen, indorsed, and passed it to the managing clerk. The gray-headed man glanced sharply at the signature, and then at Burton, "Why, surely this is not Mr. Hornby's signature? It does not ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the clergymen, who came out to meet us, and I remember stopping, just to be introduced to a most delightful family who came out, one by one, gray-headed father and mother, with comely brothers and fair sisters, looking all so kindly and home-like, that I would have been glad to use the welcome that they gave me ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... branches, lay about in picturesque confusion. A wheelwright's shed and yard adjoined the cottage, and Mr. Carnegie, halting without dismounting, whistled loud and shrill to call attention. A wiry, gray-headed man appeared from the shed, and came forward with a rueful, humorous twinkle ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... "in poverty and neglect?" She ran to seek the king, and asked for a pension for the poet of one hundred louis a-year from her privy purse. When Crebillon came to Versailles to thank her, she was in bed. "Let him come in," she exclaimed, "that I may see the gray-headed genius." At the sight of the fine old man—Crebillon was then eighty years of age—so poor and yet so proud, she was affected to tears. She received him with so touching a grace that the old poet was deeply ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the chained line was an old gray-headed man, followed by a slender graceful girl of some eighteen years old, and Amyas' heart yearned over them as they came up. Just as they passed, the foremost of the file had rounded the corner above; there was a bustle, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... I, too, am a trifle plain. Do you consider yourself as competent to form an opinion concerning politics as gray-headed students of affairs?" ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... around on England. A happy and prosperous country, and strangely altered. Schools everywhere, and several colleges; a number of pretty good newspapers. Even authorship was taking a start; Sir Dinadan the Humorist was first in the field, with a volume of gray-headed jokes which I had been familiar with during thirteen centuries. If he had left out that old rancid one about the lecturer I wouldn't have said anything; but I couldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prison—for some one interfered, and paid that tax—I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common, such as he observed who went in a youth and emerged a gray-headed man; and yet a change had come to my eyes come over the scene—the town, and State, and country, greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... for, as they readied the spot where grave-looking John Willows stood looking like a patriarch amongst his people, beside his friend the gray-headed Vicar, a short, almost dwarfed, thick-set, large-headed man, with a shiny bald head fringed by grisly, harsh-looking hair,—and whose dark, wrinkled face was made almost repellent by the shaggy brows that ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... the old man shaking his hand!" ejaculated Gridson, as a very erect gray-headed officer came down off the bridge and extended his hand. "You wouldn't think he had cashiered him six ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... in the silence of the wide field, and saw an elderly man, bent in the shoulders as fishermen often are, gray-headed and clean-shaven, and with a timid air. It was William. He looked just like his mother, and I had been imagining that he was large and stout like his sister, Almira Todd; and, strange to say, my fancy had ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... can be, no third way by which one spirit can influence another. You may study till you are gray-headed or bald-headed, for that matter, and you will discover no ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... private bank, it was whispered darkly, was struggling in deep waters; Colonel Russell, who had come home from India on half-pay and his savings, which every year he found more inadequate for the expenses of an increasing family. All these gray-headed men, growing haggard and careworn, agreed that in the present depressed state of the commercial world, young Robinson was showing himself a sensible fellow and ought to be commended for his decision. They declared that they were the more inclined to take him ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... served the greater part of your lives with me. We have grown gray-headed in the service of our country, and we therefore know best ourselves the dangers, difficulties, and glory in which we have shared. While we maintain the discipline of the army, we may defy any power that Europe can ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... immediate female attendants of the Princess, and one or two men-servants, left with her. The silver plate, and all objects of particular value, were buried in the garden. This being done, the keys of the house were intrusted to a gray-headed servant, who with his wife had grown old in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... correspondent who went over the field of battle, saw a gray-headed soldier spreading the blanket over the corpse of a fallen comrade. "I rode up to him", wrote the reporter to his newspaper, "and asked him whether that was an officer. He looked up, and every lineament of ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... to fancy what George's or Gibbes's looked like. It was pleasant to watch the barefoot soldiers race around like boys let loose from school, tossing caps and chips at two old gray geese that flew in circles around the encampment, just as though they had never had more earnest work. One gray-headed man stood in the door of his tent, while a black-headed young one danced before him, to his own whistle, with his arms akimbo. Altogether it was a very pretty picture; but poor men! how can they be ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... gray-headed officer of soldierly bearing, bowed low to this compliment from the Governor. "I ask the Count de Lusignan," continued the Governor, "what he thinks would result from our withdrawing the garrison from Carillon, as is suggested ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... at once. The gray-headed and sinful man knelt by his side. Then the clergyman hurried away ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... the people of England— herself persecuted all but to the death, and purified by affliction, like gold tried in the fire. She gathers round her, one by one, young men of promise, and trains them herself to their work. And they fulfil it, and serve her, and grow gray-headed in her service, working as faithfully, as righteously, as patriotically, as men ever worked on earth. They are her 'favourites'; because they are men who deserve favour; men who count not their own lives dear to themselves for the sake of the queen and of that ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... say? What weapons has he? The sword of the Spirit is in his hands, but he has not tried it; he has no confidence in it. The awful truths of the Bible, which smite the stoutest sinner to the earth, these he might utter, if he dared; but he knows not how. And yet he is the teacher of these gray-headed men, and their only teacher. Had he gone out as Jesus sent his disciples, without purse or shoes or two coats, and preached the gospel for ten years by the way-side, in cottages, in school-houses, living hard, sleeping on the floor, seeing men and women everywhere without disguise, and taking ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of investigation. Holmes sat in a great, old-fashioned chair, his inexorable eyes gleaming out of his haggard face. I could read in them a set purpose to devote his life to this quest until the client whom he had failed to save should at last be avenged. The trim Inspector Martin, the old, gray-headed country doctor, myself, and a stolid village policeman made up the rest of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... t' harness on, all but their bridles"—to an old gray-headed hostler. "Whisp off their legs a bit; Ay will be ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the most learned men of Netherlands. That gray-headed orator is the old Graphaeus, secretary of the city of Antwerp, and the author of several well written Latin works. The young man, on whose shoulder he leans, is his son, Alexander, who is also very learned. Before him is seated Abraham Ortelius, ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... world, he seldom changes his servants; and, as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him; by this means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet-de-chambre for his brother; his butler is gray-headed; his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen; and his coachman has the looks of a privy-councillor. You see the goodness of the master even in the old house-dog, and in a gray pad that is kept in the stable with great care and tenderness, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... glint of laughter shone in her eyes. "I would claim to be another Pythoness if only it did not sound so snaky and wriggling. So, from my trident—or was it a Triton they used to stand on?—I announce that you and your Augustus are worrying yourselves gray-headed over an idiotically simple problem. Now, I disposed of it offhand when I ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... two lovers might fall out and exchange the earnest of reconciliation without fear of intruders. The only possible spoil-sport was the pensioner on duty at the little iron gate on the Rue de l'Ouest, if that gray-headed veteran should take it into his head to lengthen his monotonous beat. There, on a bench beneath the lime-trees, Etienne Lousteau sat and listened to sample-sonnets from ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the first ideas I had of God when a boy, which I derived from the preaching and praying of ministers. It was that God and our Lord Jesus Christ were two distinct Beings. We had for a time a venerable gray-headed old man who preached one Sabbath, and a young man who preached the next. I thought the old man represented God the Father and the young man represented ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... should exhibit a proper temper in this unfortunate contest, because many professed Christians and ministers of the gospel at the North are breathing out, in their very prayers and sermons, threatenings and slaughter against us. Oh! how painful that a gray-headed pastor should publicly exclaim, "I would hang them as quick as I would shoot ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... religious services, and by the great devotion of the Rev. Mr. Viljoen, clergyman of Reitz, in the Orange Free State, who is a fellow-prisoner of ours. The gaiety is kept up by sports and by the companionship of many children. The sorrow is enhanced by the presence of many gray-headed old men and by sad and heart-breaking tidings. 'Guard, is there any ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... ladies wear them in their hair, upon their bosoms, and carry them in their hand, the gentlemen will carry button-hole bouquets, and many even stick them upon their hats. They are fashionable with all ages and all classes. From blooming maidenhood to gray-headed age, all will adorn themselves with flowers. The English seem to cultivate the most flowers, while the French and the Italians, and (lately?) the Germans, wear most upon their persons. In England, every available spot of spare soil about the yard, is planted with flowers; on the continent, ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... narrow trail until the precipitous canyon walls finally halted their disorganized flight, and from sheer necessity compelled a rally in hopeless battle. Sixteen,—ten infantrymen from old Fort Bethune, under command of Syd. Wyman, a gray-headed sergeant of thirty years' continuous service in the regulars, two cow-punchers from the "X L" ranch, a stranger who had joined them uninvited at the ford over the Bear Water, together with old Gillis the post-trader, and his silent chit ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... supplying himself with plenty of food, a good boat, a sword, and a sharp axe, Pedro embraced his brothers and departed, never to return. He took a longer and safer route than that of his predecessors. He had no sooner arrived at the mountain than an old gray-headed man in tattered clothes came limping towards him and asking for help; but the selfish Pedro turned a deaf ear to the supplications of the old man, whom he pushed away with much disrespect. Ignorant of his doom, and regardless ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... us out. Ef this dog-gone skunk's let be, ther' ain't no stock safe. Guess I've had my med'cine from 'em, and I'm jest crazy fer more. I've had to do wi' fellers o' their kidney 'fore, I guess. We strung six of 'em up in a day on the same tree down Arizona way, as that gray-headed possum, Joe Nelson, well remembers. Say, we jest cleaned our part o' that country right quick. Guess ther' wa'n't a 'bad man' wuth two plugs o' nickel chawin' around when we'd finished gettin' 'em. Say, this ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... using it, he was obliged to mount upon a stool, carried by his attendants for that purpose. As the discipline in the Swedish army required that the soldier should always uncover the head in speaking to his superior, gray-headed men came, cap in hand, to receive their instructions from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... myself in my stoicism as best I can," he writes to Voltaire. "If you saw me you would hardly know me: I am old, broken, gray-headed, wrinkled. If this goes on there will be nothing left of me but the mania of making verses and an inviolable attachment to my duties and to the few virtuous men I know. But you will not get a peace signed by my hand except on conditions honorable to my nation. Your people, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... if my fates call me forth. Yet, I protest, it is no salt desire Of seeing countries, shifting a religion, Nor any disaffection to the state Where I was bred, and unto which I owe My dearest plots, hath brought me out; much less, That idle, antique, stale, gray-headed project Of knowing men's minds, and manners, with Ulysses! But a peculiar humour of my wife's Laid for this height of Venice, to observe, To quote, to learn the language, and so forth— I hope you travel, sir, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... grew dark; but they could not go to their homes until they knew the result; but round and round the Hall, and through the avenues of the Park, they wandered, watching the dim light in the jury room, and wondering what the verdict would be. One of them stole up to the gray-headed constable who watched at the door, and inquired what the chance was; and as the old man shook his head, and muttered that they leaned toward a fatal verdict, he rubbed his hands with glee, and hastened to communicate the tidings to those below. Twelve—one—two—three o'clock ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the gray-headed president, "that you will enjoy this scouting expedition all the more because you are on the trail of a white man. But while I am going to trust to your own good sense and your knowledge of your people in running this lie ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the house she saw a bare hall covered with slate-colored oil-cloth, and with a table against the wall. A gray-headed man came out of one of the rooms, and advanced to meet Sir Lionel, who shook hands with him very cordially, and whispered to him a few words. The gray-headed man wore spectacles, was clean shaven, with a double chin, and a somewhat sleek ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Great Spirit were fixed in the boy's mind, for his mother was always repeating them to him. She would say as he left the wigwam: "Honor the gray-headed person," or "Thou shalt not mimic the thunder;" "Thou shalt always feed the hungry and the stranger," or "Thou shalt immerse thyself in the river at least ten times in succession in the early part of the spring, so that thy body may ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... to while away this tedious hour, good Murdoch?" he asked, after a while, addressing a gray-headed veteran. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... than five years ago, and what would I have thought if I had known 'he' and I were going to keep a lighthouse and be contented there, what's more, and sometimes not get ashore for a fortnight; settled, gray-headed old folks! We were gay enough in those days. I know old Miss Sabrina Smith warned me that I'd better think twice before I took up with Tom Kew, for he was a light-minded young man. I speak o' that to him in the winter-time, when he sets reading the almanac ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... much as putting forward a claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight, as old houses, here and there about the streets, get covered halfway to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... combine the functions of station agent and baggage hustler approached, wheeling a truck. He was a small man, gray-headed, with a wrinkled, wizened face, and eyes of faded blue. To him ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... freely, and, besides the county doctor, had two very eminent practitioners from London, one of whom was a gray-headed man, the other singularly young for the fame he had obtained. But then he was a genuine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... traveller was thus talking, I had time to observe that the woman of the house was a cleanly-looking creature, with something of a sickly appearance. An old gray-headed man sat in something between a chair and a stool, formed of one solid piece of ash, supported by three legs sloping outwards; the seat of it was quite smooth by long use, and a circular row of rungs, capped by a piece of semicircular wood, shaped to receive ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... and gave the war-whoop, she stepped forward and shook her club towards the Sioux lines, and related that a war party of Chippewas had gone to the Warwater River, and killed a Sioux, and when they returned they threw the scalp at her feet. A very old, deaf, and gray-headed man, tottering with age, also stepped out to tell the exploits of his youth, on ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... more accurately to survey, and its laughing and sportive beams playing over chink and crevice, seemed almost as insolent and untimeous as the mirth of the young mocking the silent grief of some gray-headed and ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there some remnant of a higher race, was disappointed enough at seeing on board only the usual half-dozen of low-browed, dirty Orsons, painted red with arnotto: but a gray-headed elder at the stern seemed, by his feathers and gold ornaments, to be some man of note ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... ornamented with the horns of deer and goats, and made it look as cheerful and gay as the faces of the children. Hulda's grandmother had sent her a great cake, and when the children had played enough at all the games they could think of, the old gray-headed servants brought it in and set it on the table, together with a great many other nice things such as people eat in Norway—pasties made of reindeer meat, and castles of the sweet pastry sparkling with sugar ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... pilgrimages to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries, to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them, came to seek the clue that should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists, whose systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in an iron framework, traveled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thraldom. People that had lighted on a new thought, or a thought that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Cleveland, the first public lectures on science ever given in the city. The following winter the citizens of Cleveland invited him to lecture again on the same subject, and he complied. The city at that time contained mostly young people—only two gray-headed men attended the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... I turned her off? I've been carrying that mortgage for so long it's gray-headed. I can't be Santa Claus for the whole town. Business is business, and I've got to look ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... must be the same Johnson whom I used to know," said Holmes to the porter. "A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... how much had they left unlearned! Mr. Eliot would put into their hands some of the pages, which he had been writing; and behold! the gray-headed men stammered over the long, strange words, like a little child in his first attempts to read. Then would the apostle call to him an Indian boy, one of his scholars, and show him the manuscript, which had so puzzled the ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fox-hound with more pride and affection than the Filipino bestows on his favorite chicken. In grassy yards you will see the rooster tied by one leg and turned out to exercise, as we would stake a cow to graze, while his owner watches and fondles him. I shall never forget a gray-headed, bright-eyed, barefooted old codger I saw near Tarlac stroking the feathers of his bird, while in his eyes was the pride as of a woman over {160} her first-born. A man often carries his gamecock with him as a negro would ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... street running parallel with the Cabanas river, surrounded by a large garden, at the foot of which was a summer-house, overhanging the river, to which led a flight of steps. Upon our arrival we alighted from our vehicle, paid our driver and rang the gate-bell. A gray-headed negro gave us admission and conducted us to the house, where we were ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... improving!" she murmured. "We shall begin moralizing soon. Presently I really think we shall compare notes about the books we have read and the theatres we have been to, and before we are gray-headed I think one of us will allude to the weather. Now isn't my brother a wonderful man? Look at that flush upon Miss Lalonde's ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the churchyard at Grasmere, and my companion wove a chaplet of flowers and placed it on the headstone. Afterwards we went into the old church and sat down in the poet's pew. "They are all dead and gone now," sighed the gray-headed sexton; "but I can remember when the seats used to be filled by the family from Rydal Mount. Now they are all outside ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... boulevards stretching away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... (which I never thought about at the time, but which has become evident in the course of this autobiography) to prefer the society of elderly men. In London I had liked to be with Mackay, Robinson the engraver, and Leslie, all gray-headed men, and in Paris I soon acquired a strong liking for M. Ouvrard, M. Gindriez, and Mr. Wyld. They were kind and open, and had experience, therefore they were interesting; my uncles in Lancashire had, no doubt, been kind in their own way, that is, in welcoming me to their ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... man killed?' Michael asked; but he feared what the answer would be. Was the gray-headed sinner summoned in this terrible manner to the bar of his ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of barbarous empires; a uniform known to the southern and the northern hemispheres, the eastern and the western continents, and all the islands of the sea. Subalterns wearing this uniform have fronted dangers and responsibilities such as in most other services only gray-headed generals are called upon to face; and, at the head of handfuls of troops, have won for the British crown realms as large, and often as populous, as European kingdoms. The scarlet-clad officers who serve the monarchy of Great Britain have conquered many a barbarous people in all ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... of sale there were slave traders and speculators on the ground to buy. The slaves were offered on the auction block one after another, until they were all sold before their old master's face. The first man offered on the block was an old gray-headed slave by the name of Richard. His wife followed him up to the block, and when they had bid him up to seventy or eighty dollars one of the bidders asked Mr. Young what he could do, as he looked very old and infirm? Mr. Young replied by saying, "he is not able to ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... persisted Bill. "I'll admit that we've found plenty of places where the gold isn't, but that doesn't get us anywhere. And we'll be gray-headed before we can explore the whole coast ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... Max Mueller who gave us an introduction to Madame Mohl. She sent us an invitation to one of her Friday evenings, and we duly mounted to the top of the old house in the Rue du Bac which she made famous for so long. As we entered the room I saw a small disheveled figure, gray-headed, crouching beside a grate, with a kettle in her hand. It was Madame Mohl—then eighty- one—who was trying to make the fire burn. She just raised herself to greet us, with a swift investigating glance; and then returned ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The gray-headed crow of the cliff lighted on a spar of rock and made herself an interpreter between the two. "Shaggy beast of the Island," said the seal, "friend and follower of men, tell me about ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... last, come the days when the gray-headed youngsters, from hanging out of the window, boldly open their wings and launch into the air. Anxious times these are for old birds,—times when the watcher's admiration may be roused by heroic deeds of parental love; for many a parent bird fairly flaunts in the face of the enemy, as if ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... seen on a writing-desk in the parlor. The boy confessed that he picked it up from the grass, and, after taking out the contents, soaked the case in a bucket of salt-water. Phoebe says the pictures belong to Mrs. Gerome, the gray-headed woman who owns that place on the beach, and I am almost tempted to believe she is Elsie, who may have married again. At all events, I shall soon know where ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... out from the more worldly successes, attracted to him many admirable persons, as naturally as sweet herbs draw bees, and as naturally he gave them the honey into which fifty years of hard experience had distilled no bitter drop. Earnest young men found the gray-headed scholar as young at heart as they; thoughtful or troubled women instinctively brought their doubts to him, sure of finding the gentlest sympathy, the wisest counsel. Sinners told their sins to the pure-hearted ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Grace. "When I start on my pilgrimage I'm not going to think that I shall ever grow into a staid, stately married person. I'm going to keep the spirit of youth alive until I'm old and gray-headed. Did I dream it, Nora, or did I see you lay your work bag on the hall settee? I hope it's a reality. These are busy times, you know. I'm a hard-working individual. So is Mother. If I see someone else blissfully idle it has a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... of Billy's ball for the magnate, who was having the time of his gray-headed life under Billy's and Nickols' enthusiastic direction, the strange alien thing that had been developed in my depths, part unrest and part rebellion, since I had first looked into the eyes of the young Methodist parson, who had intruded himself and his ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with his loved daughter, when his worst fears were aroused for her safety, caused the revulsion of feeling in Captain Prescott, and his pleasantry is perhaps excusable when all the circumstances are considered. The tears of joy coursed down the gray-headed soldier's cheeks as he pressed his cherished daughter to his bosom, and murmured, "God bless you! God bless you!" while the hardy soldiers ranged behind him smiled, and several rubbed their eyes as if dust ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... the music from the common room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray-headed negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neighbourhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bow with a motion of the head; bowing almost ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... denying it for the whole, speech ignoring the nationalist tendency so soon to overwhelm all bounds, all creeds in the making of a mighty America that should be a home for all the nations. But as the gray-headed old doctor went on he only voiced what was the earnest conviction of many of the ablest men of his time, both of the ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... flashing eye of their mother. The tale of the pirate's death, and the fate of poor Florette, is a tale that never wearies their fire-side circle, and there, tears are still shed for the dark scourge of the ocean, and his devoted mistress; and very often is an old and gray-headed man, in whom the reader would hardly recognize our old friend, John, asked to recount his perilous achievements on the pirate's deck, and his wonderful escape, obtained by his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... lightest tone impress themselves upon you. I felt this very strongly two or three times after the play on Friday night. In her talk with Forbes, for instance, whom she has altogether in her toils, and whom she plays with as though he were the gray-headed Merlin and she an innocent Vivien, weaving harmless spells about him. And then, from this mocking war of words and looks, this gay camaraderie, in which there was not a scrap of coquetry or self-consciousness, she would pass into a sudden ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the grim-visaged, gray-headed turnkey, as soon as he had ushered Steggars into his snug little quarters; "here ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... fellow: that was in my college days, and I have his note for one hundred dollars as a memento. I might have been keener, I dare say; but one of the transcendentally lovely things of youth is its perfect faith. These preternaturally wise and prudent young people come into the world mentally gray-headed. But I do it now with my eyes wide open; and, when you are a rich man, I have another scheme I want to take through, a sort of home or hospital of my own planning: so don't fancy I shall let ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... "boys" in the tent into which he was conducted, and they were almost old enough to be gray-headed; and as they were getting ready to go on post, Rodney had little more than time to say he was glad to know them. Then Dick said he had some writing to do for the captain that would keep him busy for ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... her feelings were so intense she could only say, "Thank God," over and over, and weep. Her husband was moved by his child's anxiety for his salvation. Once, when she urged him to pray, he replied, "I cannot; but you may pray for me." She at once knelt and interceded for him, with many tears. The gray-headed man knelt also, deeply moved, and tears flowed from eyes not used to weep. When she ceased praying, she rose; but his strength was gone; he could not rise. Yet the love of the world was strong within him, and it is to be feared that he resisted ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... call his soul his own until he had loaded her into a cab and on her way. Wilbur told me that while on the road that between watching the panners in the box offices and keeping her from throwing a fit on the stage he got gray-headed. As for her maid, I can only say, 'Help that poor creature.' One time the maid pinched her foot while buttoning her shoe and what does the prima donna do but bounce her whole makeup box on the top of the maid's defenseless nob. And the way she looks on the street compared to what she ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... and, with a sort of stoical self-content, were picking the junk into oakum, a small heap of which lay by their sides. They accompanied the task with a continuous, low, monotonous, chant; droning and drilling away like so many gray-headed bag-pipers ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... distant panorama grew stronger and stronger in him, till at length the accidental sight of a passage in Livy, where King Philip, the enemy of Rome, ascends the Haemus, decided him. He thought that what was not blamed in a gray-headed monarch might be well excused in a young man ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... occupation that is not useful in this world of vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations foreign to my own and detecting with a cheerful eye the desirable circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this gray-headed showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe and pleasurable adventure in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through the sands of Cape Cod and sometimes over the rough forest-roads of the north and east, and halting now on the green before a village meeting-house and now in a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Marya Borissovna were Minister of War, and Princess Vatkovskaya were Commander-in-Chief," said a gray-headed, little old man in a gold-embroidered uniform, addressing a tall, handsome maid of honor who had questioned him ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... again. See these hands? Well, they've been doing honest work, even if it was in a convict barrel factory. I'm ten times stronger than I was before. There isn't a soft muscle in my body. What you miss is the fat—the whiskey fat. I'm gray-headed, but who wouldn't be? But that is not what I'm trying to get at. I saw Dick Cronk this morning. I don't know how he found me. He told me you were up here to take a hand in my affairs. What I want to know, right here, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the queen roused the quick Andalusian spirit. Warriors who had long since given up fighting and had sent their sons to battle now seized the sword and lance rusting on the wall, and marshalled forth their gray-headed domestics and their grandchildren for the field. The great dread was, that all aid would arrive too late; El Zagal and his host had passed like a storm through the mountains, and it was feared the tempest had already ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... the clear fresh stream was running at his feet. He drank deeply of it, and throwing his aching limbs upon the bank, sank into a delicious trance. The sound of approaching footsteps roused him. An old gray-headed man tottered forward to slake his burning thirst. It was HE again! Fe wound his arms round the old man's body, and held him back. He struggled, and shrieked for water—for but one drop of water to save his life! But ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... amusedly, "you see now what your attitude has led to. You began with no backbone. So, now, you have no principles. Oh, you nice, sweet-faced, gray-headed, ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... the mess-table sat a gray-headed captain, who had been frost-bitten in Canada, wounded in the Peninsula, and saved by an iron constitution from the regimental doctor and yellow fever on Brimstone Hill, St Kitts; and, despite his varied adventures and ailments, had contrived to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... bad weather. The "poetry" expressed what he wanted to say—which, in his view, was sufficient apology for it. It was sung in revival meetings like others that he wrote, and a few hymnbooks now long obsolete contained it; but of Leland's hymns only one survives. Gray-headed men and women remember being sung to sleep by their mothers with that old-fashioned evening ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... none; I doan let nothin worry me. Worry makes folks gray-headed." She scratched her head where three gray braids, about the length and thickness of a flapper's eyebrow, stuck out ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... the big gun," young Bliss whispered to Isabelle, indicating a gentle, gray-headed, smooth-shaven man, who seemed to be taking a nap behind his ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... believe?" the young man said with conviction, addressing a somewhat stout, gray-headed American, with white moustache, a Homburg hat, and clothes of distinctly ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... asleep. Her hat and veil were laid beside her, and she had taken off her coat and draped it around her. She had rummaged out a cold pheasant and some salad, and had evidently had a little supper. Supper and a nap, while I worried myself gray-headed about her! ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Introduction to The Scarlet Letter is very delightful. As their representative, he declares that he takes shame to himself for their sake, on account of these relentless persecutions; but he thinks them earnest and energetic. "From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a gray-headed ship-master, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... and able-bodied of the people were slain or absent on distant expeditions, and only old and gray-headed men were to ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... lavish, by the mere attractions of simplicity and youthful innocence, and finding so much interest in the bare circumstance of being a traveller at a childish age. Then what blooming young handmaidens! how different from the knowing and worldly demireps of modern high roads! And sometimes gray-headed, faithful waiters, how sincere and how attentive, by comparison with their flippant successors, the eternal "coming, sir, coming," of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... educated Englishman can ever have heard that text except in his youth, and that those who are old enough to remember having heard it, "never considered its precise applicability," are surely rash, in the treatment of a scientific subject. I can assure Mr. Greg that a few gray-headed votaries of the creed of Christendom still read—though perhaps under their breath—the words which early associations have made precious to them; and that in the bygone days, when that Sermon on the Mount was still listened to with respect by many not ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin |
