"Lilac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lilac bush. Robin learned that if you laid a leaf flat on the seat of a bench you could prick beautiful patterns on the leaf's greenness. Donal had—in his rolled down stocking—a little dirk. He did the decoration with the point of this while ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... life," she thought, and the regret was still in her mind when one of those miracles which in our ignorance we call accidents occurred. Out of the lilac-scented twilight, out of the wild, sweet spirit of spring, a voice said in her ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... a red gleam of fire athwart the moonlight and the old house of Luella Miller was burned to the ground. Nothing is now left of it except a few old cellar stones and a lilac bush, and in summer a helpless trail of morning glories among the weeds, which might be considered emblematic ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... shine with pale and tender glory, In the lilac-scented stillness, let us listen to Earth's story. All the flow'rs like moths a-flutter glimmer rich with dusky hues, Everywhere around us seem to fall from nowhere the sweet dews. Through the drowsy lull, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... excellent shelter from the sun. It has the advantage also of not engendering insects; for, in consequence of its poisonous qualities, no insect can live upon it. When in blossom, the large clusters of its flowers resemble those of the lilac; these are succeeded by bunches of yellow berries, each about the size of a small cherry. It is a deciduous tree; but the berries remain during the winter, and drop off ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... suddenly turned up. She looked at the sea again. The rift in the leaden sky had lengthened and widened, and the first pale primrose of the dawn showed beyond. A faint flush followed, and then it seemed as if the night sky slowly rolled itself up and was put away, leaving a floor of silver, deepening to lilac, for the first bright beam to disport itself upon. Then the sea smiled, and the weariness of it, back and forth, back and forth, passed into animation. Its smooth surface became diapered with light airs, and moved with a gentle roll. The sullen murmur rose to a morning ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... to have. Jennie enjoyed this room very much indeed; but still, after all, notwithstanding the expensiveness and beauty of the decorations which adorned it, I do not know that Jennie enjoyed it any more than she did a little seat that she had under some lilac bushes, near the brook at the bottom of her father's garden, ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... their fine fresh faces, and their many petticoats - striped petticoats, red petticoats, blue petticoats, always clean and smart, and never too long - and their home-made stockings, mulberry-coloured, blue, brown, purple, lilac - which the older women, taking care of the Dutch-looking children, sit in all sorts of places knitting, knitting, knitting from morning to night - and what with their little saucy bright blue jackets, knitted too, and fitting close to their handsome figures; ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... face. He lived in a tiny cottage all by himself, and every day he worked in his garden. In all the country-side there was no garden so lovely as his. Sweet-william grew there, and Gilly-flowers, and Shepherds'-purses, and Fair-maids of France. There were damask Roses, and yellow Roses, lilac Crocuses and gold, purple Violets and white. Columbine and Ladysmock, Marjoram and Wild Basil, the Cowslip and the Flower-de-luce, the Daffodil and the Clove-Pink bloomed or blossomed in their proper order as the months ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... dusk. She did not ask herself why it was there was a new note in nature that year, nor did she trouble herself about time or eternity. Her eternity was the exquisite monotony of tranquil days, her time-keepers the spring flowers, the apple-blossom and quince, daffodil, wallflower, lilac and laburnum, the perfumed calycanthus, forget-me-nots, pansies, hyacinths, lilies-of-the-valley in the woods, and early roses on a warm south wall; and over all the lark by day, and again at night the nightingale. In a life like hers, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... on the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived Nutting and Le Grosse. But ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... right side of Perseus. Lilac in color and approaching the earth at the rate of six miles per second. It culminates Jan. 1st. This star is ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... up heights of marvelous beauty, along the edges of deep defiles that opened below our feet like valleys of Paradise. The candlenut, the ama, with its lilac bloom, the hibiscus and pandanus, green and glossy, the petavii, a kind of banana the curving fronds of which spread high in air, the snake-plant, makomako, a yellow-flowered shrub, and many others none of us could name, carpeted the farther ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and the whole exterior is a beautiful "mosaic" of green, gray, and glaucous lichen. The eggs are a rich delicate cream color, ornamented by a "wreath" round the larger end of madder-brown, purple, and lilac spots. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... girls had just time to take one more deep breath, full of the fragrance from the lilac blossoms, before ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... snake to be poisonous which was not so. However, we had the mata hari, sun-snake, black and coral colour, and a metallic green flat-headed creature, Fortrex trigonocephalus, which were venomous enough. I once had a little flower-snake for a pet. It was beautifully marked with green and lilac, and used to catch flies climbing about the room; but one day it mounted to the top of a high door, the wind blew the door to, and my pretty snake was thrown to the ground and ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... opposite direction to the house, into what was called the Ash Copse. The dark green of our winter shrub, the spotted laurustinus, was relieved by the golden tassels of the laburnum, just opening into bloom; the hawthorn contended for beauty and perfume with the delicate blossoms of the purple lilac; while its modest sister, the white, sent forth her pale green leaves, and delicate buds, over a bed ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... great Tower of Talbot (who alas! never was in Falaise in his life) stood out against a faintly moonlit sky. And glancing over his right shoulder at the mantling west, Theo hurried Brigit past the Breach of Henri IV., with its crown of lilac trees, up the steep causeway to the Tower itself. "We must climb to see the sun, dearest," he said, "let us make haste. I am glad to be with you while you for the first time see it come up over the edge." He was very happy and looked rather splendid in his triumphant ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... purity of a white Aster. It has those spotless flowers that bring thoughts of heaven. Asters have many blue and lavender tints. None of them are muddy, or metallic, or dingy, as are too many blues and lavenders. They show the blue of a June sky, or the blue of the amethyst, or the color of the lilac of spring, together with soft lavenders, pale blues and deep indigo. Sulphur and primrose tints are the nearest yellow, but in reds they run the gamut from rosy flesh and palest apple-blossom through ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... hands with the lady on the car platform, and then looked past her in confused surprise. A girl stood in the vestibule, clad in garments of pale lilac tint which fell about her figure in long sweeping lines, emphasizing its fine contour against the dark brown paneling. She had a large hat of the same color, and it enhanced the attractiveness ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... genus is South Africa, centering in Cape Colony and Natal, though there have been recent finds of value on the mountains of tropical Africa and in Madagascar. The European and Asiatic species run to purple and lilac in coloring, though white varieties occur in cultivation. Flowers and plants are rather small, rendering them most useful for pot or frame culture and for naturalizing in protected borders where the deeply planted corns can ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... warming-pan; by pond after pond, where not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hobnailed shoes flew up in the air; the air frosty with a lilac haze, through which villas, and commons, and churches, and plantations glimmered. We drive up the hill, Bob and I; we make the last two miles in eleven minutes; we pass that poor, armless man who sits there in the cold, following you with his eyes. I don't give anything, and Bob looks ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the doll that was choicest we offered a prize: There were wee mites of dollies, and some of great size. Some came in rich purple, some lilac, some white, With ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1875 • Various
... that she was well and becomingly dressed. She had intended dropping in informally on Sibyl Forbes, still an outcast, in spite of her intercession, and wore a gown of dove-colored cashmere and a hat of the same shade with a long lilac feather. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... was very bright and clear, and the sun shone through soft lilac leaves on more important folios, while Mr. Jellicorse, with happy sniffs—for his dinner was roasting in the distance—drew a single line here, or a double line there, or a gable on the margin of the paper, to show his head clerk what to cite, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... I have discovered one thing about Belgium. Everything smells exactly alike. To-day there have been presented to my nose four different things purporting to have different odours, drains, some cheese, tobacco, and a bunch of lilac. There was no difference at all in ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... washed clothes in a large wooden tub set on a bench nailed between the two china-berry trees in the yard. Peter loved those china-berry trees, covered with masses of sweet-smelling lilac-colored blossoms in the spring, and with clusters of hard green berries in the summer. The beautiful feathery foliage made a pleasant shade for Emma Campbell's wash-tubs. Peter loved to watch her, she looked so important and so cheerful. While she worked she sang endless ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... towers and a balcony, rise before him. Vines and climbing roses ran up the towers, and beneath the balcony was a vestibule well filled with flowers. In short, to our Anton, brought up as he had been in a small town, it all appeared beauteous and stately in the extreme. He sat down behind a bushy lilac, and gave himself up to the contemplation of the scene. How happy the inhabitants must be! how noble! how refined! A certain respect for every thing of acknowledged distinction and importance was innate in the son of the accountant; and when, in the midst of the beauty around him, his thoughts ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... no fresh winds were borne to us from the ocean. The sun shone hot on the stunted cedars. The tides crept in lazily. All one weary afternoon, in the hum and stir of the dusty school-room, little Bessie Sartell—Captain Sartell's youngest, and his darling—sat stringing lilac blossoms together in a chain. She was such a cunning edition of the big Captain. She had the same strong Saxon physique in miniature, the same clear pink and white complexion, eyes hardly more limpidly blue than his, and hair that was sunniest flax, like the ends of the Captain's ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... enter the dining-room, a cheerful apartment looking on to the beautiful lawn at the back, which has at the end the arched conservatory of lilac-tinted glass at top, in which the novelist took so much interest, and where he hung some Chinese lanterns, sent down from London the day before his death. We are informed that in this building he signed the last cheque which he drew, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... that hanging on the arm of our dear Prince?" asked a little fat man, girt in a white satin waistcoat, and a spray of white lilac in ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... scarcely any markings elsewhere. As a rule the markings are of an olive-brown of one shade or another; but when the ground is at all pinkish then the markings are more or less of a reddish brown. Besides these primary markings, all the eggs exhibit a greater or smaller number of faint lilac or purple spots or blotches, which chiefly occur where the other markings are most dense. In length they vary from 1.06 to 1.22, and in breadth from 0.8 to 1.0, but the average of 34 eggs is ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... found it necessary to have some place he could get through in a hurry to go after the school children who delighted in teasing him. So now quick as a flash he ran for this hole, which was well hidden by a big lilac bush, and before the tramp even knew he was coming, Zip was through the hole and had his little, sharp teeth buried in his shin. With a cry of surprise and pain, the tramp turned to see what had hurt him. When he saw the little dog, he raised his cane to strike ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... Wish I had a daughter just like her," he said, and took himself off to make up for a broken night's rest. But Dr. Lavendar and Danny still sat in front of the lilac-filled fireplace, and thought of old Henry Roberts listening for the Voice of God, and of his Philippa. The father and daughter had lately taken a house on a road that wandered over the hills between ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... him as his own name; he reconstructed in his thought all the old well-known furniture, and replaced it precisely as it had stood long ago. He passed again a childish finger over the rough surface of the faded Utrecht velvet chairs, and smelled again the strong fragrance of the white lilac tree, blowing in through the open parlour-window. He savoured anew the pleasant mental atmosphere produced by the dainty neatness of cultured women, the companionship of a few good pictures, of a few good books. Yet this home had been broken up years ago, the dear familiar things had been scattered ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... known and lived with, and turn her face to meet new things and new people. Nothing would be familiar to her in that strange world, not even tea-cups with blue rims like these she was washing up for the last time. Everything new, down to the two lilac prints, made longer than ever before, lying at the bottom of the new black box. It was wonderful to think of, and very confusing to the mind. There would even be a new baby to look after. But when Biddy ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... muftis, bright green tents for the viziers, scarlet tents for the kiayaks, dark blue tents for the great officers of state, the Emirs, the Mecca, Medina, and Stambul justiciaries, the Defterdars, and the Nishandji; lilac-coloured tents for the Ulemas, bright blue tents for the Muederesseks, azure-blue tents for the Ciaus-Agas, and dark green designates the tent of the Emir Alem, the bearer of the sacred standard. And high above them all on a hillock towers the orange-coloured pavilion of ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... the stale cake and muddy coffee that the slatternly landlady produced, and afterwards, as she was being helped to get back into her riding dress, bestowed upon her a little lilac wool frock from her trunk that the woman admired greatly. From that moment the landlady of the stopping place was a new creature. Missions and missionaries had been nothing to her through the years, but ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... little summer-house in the garden, which the speculator's trowel had spared by some fancy of the builder's, who believed that he was preserving these hundred feet square of earth for his own pleasure, they were admiring the first green shoots of the lilac-trees, a spring festival which can only be fully appreciated in Paris when the inhabitants have lived for six months oblivious of what vegetation means, among the cliffs of stone where the ocean of humanity tosses to ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Then he put on his hat, came down off the platform, and shuffled out of the open door, his violin in one hand, its box in the other. There were not more than a dozen of us who followed him into the little churchyard. The moon was rising, and the shadows of lilac and rose bush, of slab and monument lay long across the green mounds. Standing there between the graves of the dead he began to play. I shall never forget that solemn calling of ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... get you some flowers," she said eagerly, "some out of our garden. Oh, we had such lots there, such lovely ones, roses, and violets, jessamine and lilac, and may—oh, all sorts. I had a garden of my own, too. Oh, I'd love to take you to granny's, and let ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... remember, Laura,' Dick goes on, 'I kissed you once. It was under a lilac in the Loudon Woods. I knew at the time that you were angry, and I should have apologised. ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... together, through a windy night which was bringing out April scents even from the London grass and lilac-bushes. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... somewhat musty odour of old country houses, ascended from the tiled and ruddled floor that glistened like a mirror. On the chest of drawers a tall statuette of the Immaculate Conception rose greyly between some porcelain vases which La Teuse had filled with white lilac. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... were my love yon lilac fair, Wi' purple blossoms to the spring; And I, a bird to shelter there, When wearied on my little wing! How I wad mourn, when it was torn By autumn wild, and winter rude! But I wad sing on wanton wing, When youthfu' May its ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to the lady and to her father, and had gone out of the room and down the lilac-bordered path and through the gate, and when the three at the window had watched him turn into Duke of Gloucester Street, the master of Westover looked at the master of Fair View and burst out laughing. "Ludwell ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Blanchard! I scolded her all the time she was assisting me to put it on! Oh! since then how sincerely have I forgiven her! She had brought me a fashionable sash to wear with the dress, but I resisted the temptation, and casting aside the elegant ribbon, I put on an old lilac belt and descended to the parlor where the company ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... after, full bloom, and they will set a bumper crop of peaches. We have had two years of late spring frosts at the time nut trees were in bloom, and we have had bumper crops of peaches each year. Apples were badly hit, so many have failed to bear. Lilac blossoms failed to come out and be showy because of these severe frosts. However, I know of a peach tree heavily loaded right now growing between two Persian walnuts that haven't had a single nut either year, though they have borne nuts previously. Thus, peaches will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... feathered tribes are discovered in great numbers. Penguins are very plenty, and of these there are four different kinds. The royal penguin, so called from its size and beautiful plumage, is the largest. The upper part of the body is usually gray, sometimes of a lilac tint; the under portion of the purest white imaginable. The head is of a glossy and most brilliant black, the feet also. The chief beauty of plumage, however, consists in two broad stripes of a gold color, which pass along from the head to the breast. The bill is long, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... endure white." "Your rose-colored, then, the best of the batch"— "I haven't a thread of point-lace to match." "Your brown moire antique"—"Yes, and look like a Quaker." "The pearl-colored"—"I would, but that plaguy dressmaker Has had it a week." "Then that exquisite lilac, In which you would melt the heart of a Shylock;" (Here the nose took again the same elevation)— "I wouldn't wear that for the whole of creation." "Why not? It's my fancy, there's nothing could strike it As more comme it faut"—"Yes, but, dear me, that lean Sophronia ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... her coming departure. Noons were hot, and nights were chill; bird carols were infrequent; chrysanthemums were unfurling their buds. The vines that festooned the windows of the children's convalescent ward sent an occasional yellow-coated messenger to the lilac bushes below—a ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... in autumn; the lights various; the mountains in the richest colouring, fern covering them with reddish gold in great part; here and there, trees in every variety of autumn foliage; and the rock itself of a kind of lilac tint; the outlines of the mountains very fine; the Tarn, which might almost be called a lake for size and abundance of water, with no culture, or trees, or habitation around it, here and there a great rock stretching into it like a promontory, and high mountains surrounding it on three sides, on ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of chatter rose and swelled and ebbed and suddenly sank away. At six o'clock, the minister and two maiden ladies in black silk with lilac ribbons, laid down their last plates of ice-cream and said they thought they must be going. Amanda and her mother preened their dresses and patted their hair. "Come into the study," said Mr. Wilson to Luke. "I want to ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... to rise, and at the same time the full moon, impelled softly upward by force as unseen as thought. Charlotte's fair head gleamed out abruptly in the moonlight like a pale flower, but the folds of her mottled purple skirt were as vaguely dark as the foliage on the lilac-bush beside her. All at once the flowering branches on a wide-spreading apple-tree cut the gloom like great silvery wings of a brooding bird. The grass in the yard was like a shaggy silver fleece. Charlotte paid ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sunset, far and low, On its westward windows dashes Primrose or pomegranate glow; And above, in glimmering splashes, Lilac ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... had gone by seemed floating before my eyes. I saw myself in the convent garden, with all my little world enclosed in those four walls, and I heard the shrill laughter of the girls with whom I was walking, and I even fancied that I could catch the perfume of the lilac trees which drooped over the smoothly kept lawn. And then the picture faded away, and from the vessel's side I saw Cruta, a purple-topped island rising like some precious jewel from the sea! I shuddered at the memory ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mademoiselle ran around ringing her hands and talking about it. Then I went up to Mrs. Bolling's room, and we talked. I told her how to make mustard pickles, and how my mother's grandpa's relation came over in the Mayflower, and about our single white lilac bush, and she's going to get one and make the pickles. Then I played double Canfield with her for a while. I'm glad I didn't go home before I knew her better. When she acts like Mrs. O'Farrel's aunt I pretend she is her, and we don't quarrel. ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... anona, the water-loving tupelo, the catalpa with its large trumpet flowers, the melting liquidambar, and the wax-leaved mangolia. Blending their foliage with these fair indigenes are an hundred lovely exotics—the orange, lemon, and fig; the Indian-lilac and tamarind; olives, myrtles, and bromelias; while the Babylonian willow contrasts its drooping fronds with the erect reeds of the giant cane, or the lance-like blades ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... paradise after our starved lives in the smoky city. My apple tree still grew at the east end of the house. There was a willow tree mother had planted, which now swept the ground with its long, graceful branches. There were quantities of rose and lilac bushes, a walled spring of delicious water in the cellar, and a whole world of wealth; but the potato lot looked up in despair—a patch of yellow clay. Mother put a twelve years' accumulation of coal ashes on it, and thus proved them ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... and a young lady—like a butterfly awakened by the brightness of the day—fluttered forward from the porch of Surbridge Hall, dressed in all the hues of the rainbow. A green bonnet, a pink pelisse, a red shawl, and lilac parasol, were scarcely in keeping with the sylvan scene on which she hurriedly entered. She was very tall and very thin, and had been taught to walk by a Parisian promeneuse at a guinea a lesson; so that the tail of her gown described a half circle every time she stept, and her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... have hung festoons from laburnum trees, And clothed the lilac, the birch and broom; I've wakened the sound of humming-bees, And decked all nature ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... stream, O diamond day, O charm of lilac-time and May. O whispering meadows green and gay, O fair things past believing! Could but the world stand still, stand still When over wood and stream and hill This morn's eternal miracle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... rather later than usual, and as Lawrence looked out on the bright morning, with the mists just disengaging themselves from the many-hued foliage which crowned the tops of the surrounding hills; and on the recently risen sun, hanging in an atmosphere of grey and lilac, with the smile of Indian summer on its face; he thought he would like to take a stroll, before that meal; but either the length of his walk on the previous day, or the rapidity of the latter portion of it, had ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... overalls and went out in his shirt sleeves a hoeing in the front garden. And I and my chum helped Ma carry water to wash. She said it seemed like the longest week she ever saw, but when we brought the water, and took a plate of pickles to the hired girl that was down with the mumps, we got in the lilac bushes and waited for the curtain to rise. It wasn't long before folks began going to church and you'd a dide laughing to see them all stop in front of where Ma was washing and look at her, and then go on to where Pa was hoeing weeds ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... lawn was hedged with a fringe of lilac and syringa bushes, with one great, spreading horse-chestnut tree at the corner. The house did not stand far back from the street. The little girl could see a generous section of Main Street sloping past, dark already under ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... hand on his shoulder, a hand protruding from a well tailored gray sleeve and lilac striped cuff, that caught Hamdi Bey by the epauleted shoulder ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... bushes, recalled the flowery fields and lanes of England, and yet told us that we were not there. The meadows had also their moist emerald sward scattered with the grass of Parnassus, and an autumnal crocus of a particularly delicate lilac. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... The rising sun made a golden path across the tranquil bay and lighted up the three forts and the starry battlecross softly stirring over each. Dauphin Island and Mobile Point were moss-green and pearly white. The long, low, velvety pulsations of the bay were blue, lilac, pink, green, bronze. But angry smoke poured from the funnels of the Tennessee and her three dwarf consorts, they four also showing the battle-flag, and some seven miles away, out in the Gulf, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... feeling of discomfort. Wounded in all her feelings, full of repugnance, she could not get used to it all. She had grown up full of affectionate admiration for a very different style of art—her mother's fine water-colours, those fans of dreamy delicacy, in which lilac-tinted couples floated about in bluish gardens—and she quite failed to understand Claude's work. Even now she often amused herself by painting tiny girlish landscapes, two or three subjects repeated over and over again—a lake with a ruin, a water-mill beating a stream, a chalet ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... eaten by buffaloes. A tree commonly planted near wells and villages in the submontane tract is the dhrek (Melia azedarach, N.O. Meliaceae), which is found as far west as Persia and is often called by English people the Persian lilac. The bahera (Terminalia belerica, N.O. Combretaceae), a much larger tree, is Indo-Malayan. Common shrubs are the marwan (Vitex negundo, N.O. Verbenaceae), Plumbago Zeylanica (Plumbaginaceae), the bansa or bhekar (Adhatoda ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... going this evening to eat toasted cheese with that celebrated poet Bernard Barton. And I must soon stir, and look about for my great coat, brush myself, etc. It blows a harrico, as Theodore Hook used to say, and will rain before I get to Woodbridge. Those poor mistaken lilac buds there out of the window! and an old Robin, ruffled up to his thickest, sitting mournfully under them, quite disheartened. For you must know the mild winter is just giving way to a remarkably severe spring. . . . I wish you were here to smoke a pipe with me. I play of evenings some ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... the Saturday previous to her mistress. She was dressed in lilac damask, trimmed with swansdown, and her hair, for the last time in her life, streamed over her shoulders and fell at its own sweet will. Matrons always tucked away their hair in the dove-cote, while widows were careful not to show a single ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Jack. 'Now, don't get excited; your bird is all right, though I'm sorry to say he's in rather low company,' And he led her to the dining-room window that looked into the garden, and there, sure enough, was Tufty on a lilac-bush. Brownie was there too. She was hopping about and talking in a most earnest and excited manner. It was easy to see that she was using all her powers of persuasion to coax Tufty not to go back to his old home, but to help her ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... dimly lit corredor had a restful mysteriousness of a forest glade, suggested by the stems and the leaves of the plants ranged along the balustrade of the open side. In the streaks of light falling through the open doors of the reception-rooms, the blossoms, white and red and pale lilac, came out vivid with the brilliance of flowers in a stream of sunshine; and Mrs. Gould, passing on, had the vividness of a figure seen in the clear patches of sun that chequer the gloom of open glades in the woods. The stones in the rings upon ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... marvellous sight in his rapid motion through the air. The kingbird is preeminently a bird of the garden and orchard. The nest is open, though deep, and not carefully concealed. Eggs are nearly round, bluish white spotted with brown and lilac. With truly royal exclusiveness, the tyrant favors no community of interest, but sits in regal state on a conspicuous throne, and takes his grand flights alone or with his queen, but never with a ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... not get up, he sat on as though he were waiting for something. He was an old man of sixty-five, prematurely aged, with a bent and bony figure, with a sunken face and the dark skin of old age, with red eyelids and a long narrow back like a fish's; he was dressed in a smart cassock of a light lilac colour, but too big for him (presented to him by the widow of a young priest lately deceased), a full cloth coat with a broad leather belt, and clumsy high boots the size and hue of which showed clearly that Father ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ambassador at Constantinople about the middle of the sixteenth century—whose letters contain one of the best accounts of Turkish life which have appeared down to the present day—brought home from the Ottoman capital the lilac and the tulip. The Belgian Clusius about the same time introduced from the East the horse chestnut, which has since wandered to America. The weeping willows of Europe and the United States are said to have sprung from a slip received ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... chaise longue. His white lilac and fuchsia—those were her favourite flowers he had discovered—were on a small table by her side, scenting the room faintly but definitely. She had a letter in her hands, which she asked him to ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... morning-glories, and lilacs grew in the yard. They company had planted those lilacs to nourish the souls of the worker's children. They gave me joy, and that is why the Mooseheart grounds are filled with lilac bushes. ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... Lilacs," which Arthur Hughes had painted for him, and how he dwelt with intense pleasure on the exquisite contrasts of colour which it contained—the gold hair of a girl standing out against the purple of lilac-blossom. But with those who find in such things as these a complete satisfaction of their desire for the beautiful he had no sympathy; for no imperfect representations of life could, for him, take the place of life itself, life as God has made it—the babbling of the brook, the singing of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... on steadily for days. Frogs flop round and round your room, and you can almost hear the trees growing. In the rains the forests are a wonderful sight, such dense masses of foliage and flowers. Can you imagine great trees entirely covered with exquisite blooms, and garlands of pink and lilac creepers interlacing ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... seemed to hear the fine East-Anglian accent of the well-remembered voice—I seemed to see the mighty figure, strengthened by the years rather than stricken by them, striding along between the whin bushes or through the quags, now stooping over the water to pluck the wild mint he loved, whose lilac-coloured blossoms perfumed the air as he crushed them, now stopping to watch the water-wagtail by the ponds as he descanted upon the powers of that enchanted bird—powers, like many human endowments, more glorious than pleasant, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... a family of my knowledge has held it necessary, for its proper conduct, to have in order certain floral drives. First the apple blossom drive introduces the spring, and the lilac drive confirms the impression that really the season is advancing; but the locust drive is the sweetest of all, taking these nature lovers along some shady lanes, beside the east bank of a great river, and in places where, the trees planted only for the fence utility of the hard yellow wood, ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... there, and so they do here. Everybody has it. My prettiest one is much like yours, only it's poppy-coloured. Katherine's is cornflower blue this year, and she's got a black one and a lilac one. When you see all the others prancing about in the same sort of things, you won't feel ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... but I'm afraid Mr. Starr guessed, for in the afternoon he gave me a water-color sketch he had made in the morning, on deck. He called it a "rough, impressionist thing," but it is really exquisite; the water pale lilac, with silver frills of foam, just as it looked in the light when he sat painting; fields of cloth-of-gold, starred with wild flowers in the foreground; far-off trees in soft gray and violet, with a gleam of rose ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... into his coupe—very conspicuous here for a civilian with such an old hat as I generally wear. In the evening I was, of course, on the islands, on a lively dark-brown horse, and drank tea there with a nice, old, white-haired Countess Stroganoff. The lilac, I must tell you, has flowered here as beautifully as in Frankfort, and the laburnum, too; and the nightingales warble so happily that it is hard to find a spot on the islands where one does not hear them. In the city, during these days, we had such unremitting heat as we almost never ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... hands he had held in his the previous day. Charles must go for Jerry—go at once, for he wanted her, and as when Arthur wanted a thing he wanted it immediately, Charles was soon on his way to the cottage in the lane, where he found the little girl under a tall lilac bush, busy with the mud pies she was making, and talking to herself, partly in English and partly in broken German, which she had ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... green here and there, and into a birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the forest it was almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with their sticky green leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers and the first blades of green grass were pushing up and lifting last year's leaves. The coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees scattered here and there among the birches was an unpleasant reminder of winter. On entering the forest the horses began ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... (Melia Azadirachta) is the "Persian lilac" whose leaves, intensely bitter, are used as a preventive to poison: Gur is the Anglo-Indian Jaggeriraw sugar and Ghi clarified butter. Roebuck gives the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the wild comfrey grow in bunches here and there; the leaves are attached to the stem for part of their length, and the stem is curiously flanged. The bells are often greenish, sometimes white, occasionally faintly lilac; they are partly hidden under the dark-green leaves. Where undisturbed the comfrey grows to a great size, the stems becoming very thick. Green flags hide and almost choke the shallow mouth of a streamlet that joins the brook coming from the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... of the Arctic regions is quite different. There is much more land, and no such enormous solid cap of ice. Spitzbergen, the land of "pointed mountains," is said to be very beautiful. Lord Dufferin describes his first view of it as "a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so pale, that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline one could have deemed them as unsubstantial as the ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... grown over lushly with grass; but at the end where Eric stood there was a square, treeless place which had evidently once served as a homestead garden. Old paths were still visible, bordered by stones and large pebbles. There were two clumps of lilac trees; one blossoming in royal purple, the other in white. Between them was a bed ablow with the starry spikes of June lilies. Their penetrating, haunting fragrance distilled on the dewy air in every soft puff of wind. Along the fence rosebushes grew, ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and round the garden among the rose-bushes that hadn't any roses yet, only buds, and the lilac bushes and syringas and American currants, and the more she thought of the doctor's bill, the less she liked the thought ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... savage. I did as you told me, dear aunty. Not one tiny little frog even have I carried in my pockets, not even a beetle; and this is the result. I will not tell you all the things I had found; I couldn't bear to describe them. Two such beauties of beetles—bright red wings, the body lilac blue, and glittering as any precious stone! Such a rare species! And an oleander-sphinx! And my magnificent caterpillar of the humming-bird moth!—you know, aunty, that one with yellow stripes and blue eye-spots. All trodden to ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... ran to the left. Nekhludoff ran fast to the right, trying to escape from the artist, but when he looked round he saw the artist running after Katusha, who kept well ahead, her firm young legs moving rapidly. There was a lilac bush in front of them, and Katusha made a sign with her head to Nekhludoff to join her behind it, for if they once clasped hands again they were safe from their pursuer, that being a rule of the game. He understood the sign, and ran behind the bush, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... * * Forgive the past! Henceforth flowers shall bloom upon the surface Of your dwellings. The lilac in the spring Shall blossom, and the sweet briar shall exhale Its fragrant smell. E'en the drooping fuchsia Shall not be wanting to adorn your tombs; While the weeping willow, pointing downwards, Speaks significantly to the living, That ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... Mrs. Hurd's kitchen Marcella found the air of the February evening tonic and delightful. Unconsciously impressions stole upon her—the lengthening day, the celandines in the hedges, the swelling lilac buds in the cottage gardens. They spoke to her youth, and out of mere physical congruity it could not but respond. Still, her face kept the angered look with which she had parted from Mrs. Jellison. More than that—the last few weeks ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... forms of pumpkins, millet, sorghum, kidney-bean, dolichos, capsicum, and indigo. Nor does he include flowers; and several of the more anciently cultivated flowers, such as certain roses, the common Imperial lily, the tuberose, and even the lilac, are said (9/3. 'Hist. Notes' as above by Targioni-Tozzetti.) not to be known in the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... which surrounded the hill, while the feet pressed at every step upon the soft green elastic turf, that here grew of the finest texture, and in the shortest strands. Nowhere else could be found such large heaths, with their beautiful pinky lilac bells looking as though moulded in wax; while harebells, orchids, anemones, arums, formed only a tithe of the rich banquet of flowers which awaited the collector—and a most staunch collector was Mr Inglis. He used to say that he was one of the most ignorant of men, and the more he collected ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... platform built around it with a flight of steps leading up to it. It was what the children called the apple tree house. Here Clara and Alice were playing dolls. Peggy could seldom be induced to play dolls. She ran up the steps and made a dash for Clara. Clara, in a lilac frock, was sitting primly on one of the wooden chairs with which the platform was furnished. Her hair was a darker brown than Alice's, and her face had the pallor of the city child who has lived indoors all winter. She was rather a stiff little girl in her manners, ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... said the lady, as she trilled out a little tune by whistling until it sounded like a bird in the lilac bush. "Have you any apples?" she asked, puckering ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... the package that had made them so much trouble was hastily thrust far under a broad-spreading lilac bush, and with a gasp, Helen started on a mad run down the street followed closely by Bessie. Not until they had turned a corner and passed into another street, did the two culprits dare to take a long breath ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... mountains or rocky capes and islands rise, but the snow seldom looks white, and if carefully looked at will be found to be shaded with many colours, but chiefly with cobalt blue or rose-madder, and all the gradations of lilac and mauve which the mixture of these colours will produce. A White Day is so rare that I have recollections of going out from the hut or the tent and being impressed by the fact that the snow really looked white. When to the beautiful tints ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... very distance it put between them and her. Diana was different from them, and growing more different; yet it was hard to find fault. She was so handsome, too; that helped the effect of superiority. And her dress; what was there about her dress? It was a pale lilac muslin, no way remarkable in itself; but it fell around lines so soft and noble, and about so queenly a carriage, it waved with so quiet and graceful motions, there was a temptation to think Diana must have called in dressmaking aid that was not lawful—for the minister's wife. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two score centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his disciples are fed on lilac-blossoms—"the white and pinkish for males, the blue-tinted for females". He wears a long flowing robe of pale grey cashmere, faced with white, and flexible white kid shoes, and he sells his lady adorers a book called "Inner Studies", price five dollars ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... a few minutes later into the street. A threatening shower had passed away. The sky overhead was wonderfully soft and blue; the air was filled with sunlight, fragrant with the perfume of barrows of lilac drawn up in the gutter. Eve walked by my side, her head a little thrown back, her eyes ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... world. Into which peaceful Eden stole at this point the serpent, and, as is usual, in the shape of woman. Little Eleanor, long-legged, slim, fresh as a flower in her crisp, faded pink dress, came around the corner. In one hot hand she carried, by their heads, a bunch of lilac and pink and white sweet peas. It cost her no trouble at all, and about half a minute of time, to charge the atmosphere, so full of sweet peace and rest, with a saturated solution of bitterness and disquiet. Her presence alone was a bombshell, and with a sentence ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... doing?" asked Phillis, trying to peep between the lilac-bushes, but failing to discover more than the white glimmer ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... kind to the Mozarts, and sent them costly dresses. 'Would you like to know,' writes Leopold to Hagenauer, his host at Salzburg, 'what Wolferl's (a pet name for Wolfgang) dress is like? It is of the finest cloth, lilac-coloured, the vest of moire of the same colour. Coat and top-coat with a double broad border of gold. It was made for the Hereditary Duke Maximilian Franz.' In the picture which is preserved in the Mozart collection at Salzburg, Mozart is painted in this dress. ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... moment, plucked a small sprig from a lilac-bush, smelled it and threw it away. "I am not very sure of anything!" ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... seemed to have forgotten the incident at the foot of the stair. A softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the ship, and Alan fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she looked about her upon the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like a lilac ribbon, ran the narrow waterway to Skagway's door, while on both sides rose high mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds. In this melting ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... trim, white-painted, "genteel" houses, which, being more gossipy and less nicely bred, crowded close up to the street, instead of standing back from it with arms akimbo, like the mansion-houses. Their little front-yards were very commonly full of lilac and syringa and other bushes, which were allowed to smother the lower story almost to the exclusion of light and air, so that, what with small windows and small windowpanes, and the darkness made by these choking growths of shrubbery, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ride?' You can judge for yourself how disconcerting the inquiry must have been from such lips: I felt rooted to the saddle—a sensation which, with me, was sufficiently rare. I looked round in helpless bewilderment, at the shimmering Serpentine, and the white houses in Park Lane gleaming out of a lilac haze, at the cocoa-coloured Row, and the flash of distant carriage-wheels in the sunlight: all looked as usual—and yet, there was I on the back of a horse which had just inquired 'whether I thought ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... and the bushes nearest to the window yielded a series of useful clews. For example, Dukovski succeeded in discovering a long, dark streak, made up of spots, on the grass, which led some distance into the center of the garden. The streak ended under one of the lilac bushes in a dark brown stain. Under this same lilac bush was found a top boot, which turned out to be the fellow of the boot already found in ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the Pine Street house he had trusted it to no hands but his own, and finding it hard to hold had carried it on his head. He had also elected to wait on the table—the reunion had a character of intimacy upon which no second boy should intrude—and to do the occasion honor had put on his lilac crepe jacket and green silk trousers. From behind the chairs he looked approvingly at the glistening spread of silver and glass, the flowered mound of the Silver Queen bowl, the ring of faces, and "Miss Lolly" and "Miss Clist" in the dresses he ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... wander, Thro' the groves of verdant green; Toying with the lilac yonder— Here, with the rose of ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... berth in the gun-room. Neither Jack nor Murray had seen him, nor had they heard his name before they sailed. The next morning, after they had lost sight of the rock, when they went on deck, who should they see walking up and down, with an air of no little consequence, and having a pair of lilac kid gloves on his hands, but Bully Pigeon. Jack and Murray forgot all his bad qualities, and only thought of him as an old schoolfellow. So they went up to him, and cordially put ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... then stay to hear any further. But since that we have talked a great deal about love and forgiveness; and I find I must love Ben Hunt, even though I now see poor Hector's tomb in the garden. For John went to fetch him, and we buried him under the lilac-tree, on the right hand side, just by the large sun-flower. And we cried a great deal, and made a card tomb-stone over his grave; and father gave us an old hatband and we cut it into pieces and we went as mourners. His coffin was carried by Tom Wood, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... except return these salutations, as she could not yell an aside to Mrs Quantock, screaming out "Who is that Indian"? for if Mrs Quantock heard the Indian would hear too, but as soon as she could, she turned back towards the house again, and when once the lilac bushes were between her and the road she walked with more than her usual speed, in order to learn with the shortest possible delay from Peppino who this fresh subject of hers could be. She knew there were some Indian ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... trees. On one side a magnificent cedar; on the other a great copper beech. Here and there among the tombs and headstones many beautiful blossoming trees rose from the long green grass. The laburnum glowed in the June afternoon sunlight; the lilac, the hawthorn and the clustering meadowsweet which fringed the edge of the lazy stream mingled their heavy sweetness in sleepy fragrance. The yellow-grey crumbling walls were green in places with wrinkled harts-tongues, and were topped with sweet-williams and spreading ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... come from Vienna, where they had been fitted with completely new uniforms, Their outfit, although a little theatrical, looked very handsome: the pelisse and dolman in white and the trousers and the shako in lilac; all clean bright and shining. One might have thought they were going to a ball, or to play in a musical comedy. This brilliant appearance contrasted somewhat with the more modest toilette of our Chasseurs, many of whom were still dressed in the worn clothing in which ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... I love best is the walk to Saint-Jean, for there, about a hundred yards from the town is a little wood, or rather a little half-wild cluster of hornbeams, maples, limes and lilac bushes, a bouquet that murmurs in the breeze. The very first day I discovered it, I felt its charm. I determined to make love to it; I made up my mind to know it tree by tree, to search out its humblest plants, its vetches, its saxifrages, and to see whether there was no Solomon's seal to be found ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... beach we went, and walked it all over again, finding, of course, many things which had escaped us the night before. We saw our first Melocactus, and our first night-blowing Cereus creeping over the rocks. We found our first tropic orchid, with white, lilac, and purple flowers on a stalk three feet high. We saw our first wild pines (Tillandsias, etc.) clinging parasitic on the boughs of strange trees, or nestling among the angular limb- like shoots of the columnar ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... of old Mosey's cabin was a mass of purple lupine. Behind the house the wild oats were dotted with brodiaea, waving on long, glistening stems. The California lilac was in bloom on the trail, and its clumps of pale blossoms were like breaks in the chaparral, showing the ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... eighteen inches or so high and broad, covered with loose clusters of pansies in the most brilliant and harmonious contrasts of color, and the most delicate blendings of rare shades, such as snow white and lilac. Unfortunately, these marvelous blossoms remain but a few weeks at most, and then there is a year's care and waiting. As with the fantastic cacti, all their blossoming energy and beauty seems to be concentrated ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... of the lilac screen and found a little summer-house occupied by Sammy and Winnie, and the low mellow voice of Winnie was flowing on and ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... Lahens got up from the piano. She was tall and well-made; perhaps too full in the bosom, perhaps too wide in the hips, and perhaps the smallness of the waist was owing to her stays. Her figure suggested these questions. She wore a fashionable lilac blue silk, pleated over the bosom; and round her waist a chatelaine to which was attached a number of trinkets, a purse of gold net, a pencil case, some rings, a looking-glass, and small gold boxes jewelled— probably containing powder. Her hair was elaborately arranged, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... played at shinty, with loud shouts and violent rushes after a little wooden ball. The town's cows were wandering in for the night from the common muir, with their milkmaids behind them in vast wide petticoats of two breadths, and their blue or lilac short-gowns tucked well up at their arms. Behind, the windows revealed the avenue, the road overhung with the fresh leaves of the beeches, the sunlight filtering through in lighter splashes on the shade. Within, the drink was running to its dregs, and piles of oatcake ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... rounded the point and turned into Avalon Bay. Almost a perfect semicircle, the beach of glistening white sand enclosed a basin of turquoise sea in which were reflected the dark, rich tones of the cliffs, all glowing like an opal beneath the sun, while above rose the hills covered with the wild lilac and greasewood of California. Even the tame sea-lions which frequent the harbor and follow incoming boats, and which frequently are to be seen hauled up on small fishing-craft, seemed to fit wonderfully into the scene. A passenger who heard the boy's exclamation of delight, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... found this afternoon upon the Rocky river, in full flower: it was a tall slender stalked bush, about six or eight feet high, growing almost in the bed of the river, with leaves like a geranium, and fine delicate lilac flowers about an inch and a half in diameter; here, too, we found the first gum-trees seen upon any of the watercourses for many miles, as all those we had recently crossed, traversed open plains which were quite without either trees or shrubs of ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Representative of the Old Family would take a Garden Rake and pattern all this hateful Currency into a neat Mound, after which a milk-fed Secretary would iron it out and disinfect it and sprinkle it with Lilac Water and tie it into artistic Packets ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... came along the path leading from the barn, he stood near a lilac bush for a few moments watching the pretty group under the trees. But he couldn't understand having breakfast outside ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... pierces snow, though I have seen gentians filling thawed hoof-prints. Crocuses are languid till they have had sun for a day or two. But the soldanella enjoys its snow, at first, and afterwards its fields. I have seen it make a pasture look like a large lilac silk gown. ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... satin piece hangs over the front parlor mantel. It is much prettier and better done than the one Miss Longstitch worked of Charlotte at the tomb of Werter, though she did sew silver spangles all over Charlotte's lilac gown, and used chenille, at a fi'-penny-bit a needleful, for all the banks and the large tree. Now, as the mantel-piece is provided for, I wish a landscape for each of the recesses, and a figure-piece to hang on each side of the large looking-glass, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... thrill came to me when I saw the house and the popple tree and the lilac bushes—they looked so friendly! Old Shep came barking up the road to meet us and ran by the buggy side with joyful leaps and cries. With what affection he crowded upon me and licked my face and hands when my feet were on ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... least suggest, to the unbitten or unblighted human intellect, the notion of development into anything other than their like: one does not expect a mushroom to translate itself into a pineapple, nor a betony to moralize itself into a lily, nor a snapdragon to soften himself into a lilac. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... earnest. By 4.15 A.M. they had most of it littered over the drive, but had struck some granite boulders which defied even the crowbars. A further conference was then held, but at this point Edward made a dramatic appearance, clad in lilac pyjamas, odd boots and a kimono of the Aunt's, which he had worn as King Alfred in some charades the night before, and in the darkness had donned in mistake for his dressing-gown. His address was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... flowers in the garden, but more sweetly scented for all that; hyacinths in early spring that flooded with waving purple the cool glens, and grassy knolls; yellow primroses that nestled in little clumps round the gnarled roots of the oak-trees; bright celandine, and blue speedwell, and irises lilac and gold. There were grey catkins on the hazels, and the foxgloves drooped with the weight of their dappled bee-haunted cells. The chestnut had its spires of white stars, and the hawthorn its pallid moons of beauty. Yes: surely she would come if ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... the things we meet in sleep was still upon him. He got up and flung open his lattice window. From the garden beneath rose the sweet scent of May flowers, very different from that of his dream which yet lingered in his nostrils, whilst from a neighbouring lilac- bush streamed the rich melody of the nightingale. Presently it ceased before the broadening daylight, but in its stead, pure and clear and cold, arose the notes of the mavis, giving tuneful thanks ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... night's sleep was as a moment. He opened his eyes to see the crags and towers and peaks and domes, and the lofty walls of that vast, broken chaos of canyons across the river. They were now emerging from the misty gray of dawn, growing pink and lilac and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... sweet to him, all manifestations of femininity in a woman very dear. There were four long windows in the dining-room, but the roof of the verandah, the thick vines springing from pillar to pillar, the lilac-trees and willows just beyond, chastened the light in the room. Magdalena looked almost pretty, with her air of proud reserve, the roses nestling in her dark hair. Ten years ago he might have loved her, perhaps, in spite ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... eyes toward the crests we stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked red and notched like festoons of coral, for all the summits are made of porphyry; and the sky overhead seemed violet, lilac, discolored by the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we were walking over shining powder. At our right, along a long and irregular course, a tumultuous torrent ran ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... moment. "Going to play garden around the house. This is a—a lilac tree!" And he set the flower-pot down close to Bert's elbow. Bert was now busy trying to put a pasteboard chimney on his house, and did not notice. A moment later Bert's elbow hit the flower-pot and down ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... matters. Bobby trotted quietly about, sniffing at everything with the liveliest interest, head on this side or that, alertly. His business, learned in his first summer in Greyfriars, was to guard the nests of foolish skylarks, song-thrushes, redbreasts and wrens, that built low in lilac, laburnum, and flowering currant bushes, in crannies of wall and vault, and on the ground. It cannot but be a pleasant thing to be a wee young dog, full of life and good intentions, and to play one's dramatic part in making an old garden of souls tuneful with bird song. A cry of alarm from parent ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... porch and porch, Thou and thy fellow—when the pale stars fade At dawn, and when the glowworm lights her torch, O Beadle of the Burlington Arcade? —Who asketh why the Beautiful was made? A wan cloud drifting o'er the waste of blue, The thistledown that floats above the glade, The lilac-blooms of April—fair to view, And naught but fair are these; and such, I ween, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... These streamers, or "merry dancers," as they are sometimes termed, were at times peculiarly bright. Their colour was most frequently yellowish white, sometimes greenish, and once or twice of a lilac tinge. The strength of the light was something greater than that of the moon in her quarter, and the stars were dimmed when the aurora passed over them as if they had been covered ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... polished, a blaze of the most exquisite and unrivalled tint. It is, however, more or less pale, and mixed with blue in various proportions; hence it occurs rose-red and reddish white, crimson, peach-blossom red, and lilac blue—the latter variety being named oriental amethyst. A ruby perfect both in colour and transparency, is much less common than a good diamond, and when of the weight of three or four carats, is even more valuable than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... upturned, making vain efforts to lure down the elusive creature. The haze of very early morning pervades the garden which is the scene of their faint aspiration. One cannot see very clearly there. The ladies' furbelows are blurred against the foliage, and the lilac-bushes loom through the air as though they were white clouds full of rain. One cannot see the ladies' faces very clearly. One guesses them, though, to be supercilious and smiling, all with the curved lips and the raised eyebrows of Experience. For, in their time, all these ladies, and all their ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the terrace step, close to the marble vases where heliotropes swung their dainty lilac chalices against her shoulder, and the scarlet geraniums stared unabashed, Beryl's gaze wandered from the lovely park and ancient trees, to the unbroken facade of the gray old house; and as, in painful contrast she recalled ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of alighting forms of both sexes which followed the entry of the huge concatenation into the station, Ned Hipcroft soon discerned the slim little figure his eye was in search of, in the sprigged lilac, as described. She came up to him with a frightened smile—still pretty, though so damp, weather-beaten, and shivering from long exposure to ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... college in an automobile, stopping at Mrs. Eichelberger's only long enough to get my suitcase. As I drove on past the next corner I chanced to look up the intersecting street. There, by a lilac bush, stood my companion. He was not alone. With him was a very pretty girl wearing a soft black dress and a corsage of narcissus. But the corsage was now smaller, by one flower, than it had been before, for, as I sighted them, she was in the act of placing one ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... shifted. Cassy was in a room floored with thick rugs, hung with heavy draperies, and in that room the catamount had hired her to sing! But the disgust of it passed. The curtain fell. Cassy turned to the window, through which a breath of lilac blew. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... began to feel very strange. Everything about her seemed to grow larger and larger, except Andy. The entrance to the basement seemed as wide as the barn door; the lilac bush over her head looked as big as an oak tree, and the piece of cooky in her hand as big ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... silvery echo and ran rippling over the stones into the river. Somewhere above the cliff a negro was playing a banjo and far down the river, beside a little cottage torn with shot and shell, but still standing, a mocking-bird was singing in the lilac bushes. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... later the east wind was still blowing, and the chilled sunshine still feebly shining down upon the nipped lilac and laburnum blossoms. The garden at Walpole Lodge was shorn of half its customary beauty, yet to Helen Romer, pacing slowly up and down its gravel walks, it had never possibly presented a fairer appearance. For Mrs. Romer had won her battle. All that she had waited for so long and ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... tone, Ascott stopped in the act of putting on his lilac kid gloves. "What have I done? I may be a very bad fellow, but I'm not quite so bad ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... not readily yield an essential oil, so in such oases we have to rely altogether upon more or less successful substitutes. For instance, the perfumes sold under the names of "heliotrope," "lily of the valley," "lilac," "cyclamen," "honeysuckle," "sweet pea," "arbutus," "mayflower" and "magnolia" are not produced from these flowers but are simply imitations made from other essences, synthetic or natural. Among the "thousand flowers" that contribute to the "Eau de Mille Fleurs" ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... turn inebriated with the hard glare and deep shadows of abundant light, with the infinite contrasts of the streets, with the far-ranged dignity of domes and towers swimming in the golden haze of midday, or melting in the lilac mists of evening. I felt also, in this vast congregation of my fellow-creatures, the exhilarating sense of my own insignificance. Of what value were my own opinions, hopes, or programmes in this huge concourse and confusion ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... understood and with a quick exclamation he stopped the car. And there, behind a great clump of tall lilac bushes, he put his arms around them both. He kissed them both, too, Mary Rose first and hurriedly and then Miss Thorley, ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... savage landscape, over which a brilliant sky, of luminous indigo and lilac, was bending to the vague edge of the world. Serious though the situation was, the Frenchman could not repress a thought of the untamed beauty of that scene—a land long familiar to him, in the days when he had flown down these ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the long brown legumes hanging from their branches, told they were the famous "mezquite" trees—the American acacia. The red mulberry could be seen in the creek bottoms, and here and there the beautiful wild-china-tree with its pretty lilac flowers. The whole surface both of hill and valley was clad in a rich mantle of short buffalo grass, which gave it the aspect of a meadow lately mown, and springing into fresh verdure. It was a lovely landscape, and ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... Basset or Dame Deborah dream that the lame pedlar-woman, in the lilac print dress and white mob-cap, whom they passed in the park, and who curtsied so low as the great coach lumbered past, was the Royalist leader whom everyone was searching for; neither did they dream ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... for he has said all things and made the advent of another painter impossible, inconceivable. He who could never do a right thing can now do no wrong one. Canvases beside which the vaguest of Mr. Whistler's nocturnes are clear statements of plain fact, lilac-coloured canvases void of design or tone, or quality of paint, are accepted by a complacent public, and bought by American millionaires for vast sums; and the early canvases about which Paris would not once tolerate ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... of delicious death, a swooning ecstasy, an absorption of her individuality in his. Just as the spring gradually displaced the winter by a new branch of blossom, and in that corner of the garden by the winsome mauve of a lilac bush, without her knowing it his ideas caught root in her. New thoughts and perceptions were in growth within her, and every day she discovered the new where she had been accustomed to meet the familiar idea. She ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... another, whose greens are softened and shaded, and seem to be seen through a purplish veil; behind that rises another, of a decided cloud-like purple; and in the next still the purple tint changes to rosy lilac; while above all, like another world up in the sky, mingling its tints with the passing clouds, sometimes obscured by them, and then breaking out between them, lie the glacier regions. These glaciers, in the setting sun, look like rivers ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ensure her poorliness being over. I had not left her Fanny Hill, but why I cannot tell, for I knew how baudy books excited a woman. The night before my next attack, I wrapped up the book, directed it to her, gave a boy sixpence to deliver it, hid myself by a lilac which was in the front-garden close to the road, and saw the boy give it to her, and go off quickly as I had told him. It was just dark, and too dark inside the passage of the house to see; for Jenny ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... "why, because they look just like her. If I were to see that lilac muslin in China, I should say it was meant for Rose. Now this is mine, I know,—this bright pink; isn't it, mamma? No half shades ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... it in some form for my children.—It seems an injustice that they should miss it, and yet it is probable that they are getting an equal joy of life, an equal exaltation from the opening flowers of the single lilac bush in our city back-yard or from an occasional visit to the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland |
