"Velvety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gate guarded the drive from the country road, beyond which there stood a regular George Morland village pond, a pond with muddy water, and fat geese, and ducks standing on their heads, and great sleek cart-horses pausing knee-deep to drink, with velvety distended nostrils, and, in fact, all the proper pond accessories. A little way up the road stood the curate's neat red house, and beyond that the village post-office and grocery store. Further away still were the substantial rectory, the model cottages, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... dining-room to the lawn, which ran along all that side of the house. The drawing-room, too, opened upon it, and one window of the rector's study; and the line of limes, very fine trees, which stood at a little distance, throwing a delightful shadow with their great silken mass of foliage over the velvety grass, made the lawn into a kind of great withdrawing-room, spacious and sweet. Mrs. Wilberforce had a little settlement at one end of this, with wicker-work chairs and a table for her work and one for ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... orchard than garden, with patches of smooth turf, through which daffodils and lilies were scattered, and little clusters of carnations occasionally showed where flower-beds had once existed. 'What would I not give,' thought Joe, as he strolled along the velvety sward, over which a clear moonlight had painted the forms of many a straggling branch—'What would I not give to be the son of a house like this, with an old and honoured name, with an ancestry strong ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... through dinner mademoiselle talked of the beaux Spahis—in the plural, with a secret reservation in her heart. After Algiers our Parisians went by way of Constantine to Biskra. Now they saw desert for the first time—the curious iron-grey, velvety-brown, and rose-pink mountains; the nomadic Arabs camping in their earth-coloured tents patched with rags; the camels against the skyline; the everlasting sands, broken here and there by the deep green shadows of distant oases, where the close-growing ...
— The Figure In The Mirage - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... little wicked. His full soft crimson lips were faintly quivering. The youth smiled as one possessing power—self-confidently and languidly; a magnificent wreath of flowers rested lightly on his shining tresses, almost touching his velvety eyebrows. A spotted leopard's skin, pinned up with a golden arrow, hung lightly from his curved shoulder to his rounded thigh. The feathers of his wings were tinged with rose colour; the ends of them were bright red, as though dipped in fresh-spilt scarlet blood. From ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... painter. The malicious ingenuity of Rops never failed him. He produced for years numerous anecdotes in black and white. The elasticity of his line, its variety and richness, the harmonies, elliptical and condensed, of his designs; the agile, fiery movement, his handling of his velvety blacks, his tonal gradations, his caressing touch by which the metal reproduced muscular crispations of his dry-point and the fat silhouettes of beautiful human forms, above all, his virile grasp which is revealed in his balanced ensembles—these prove him to be one of the masters ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... similar dimensions now belonging to M. Gustave Dreyfus. Both have vivacity and movement, but both have also a fat stubby appearance; the flesh has the consistency of pudding, and though soft and velvety in surface is without the inner meaning of the children on the Cantoria. In this work, where Donatello has carved some three dozen children, we have a series of instantaneous photographs. Nobody else had enough knowledge or courage to make rigid bars of children's ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... I remember well. We were drifting along and we came on a lovely glade where a creek joined the river. It was a green, velvety, sparkling place, and by the creek were two men whipsawing lumber. We hailed them jauntily and asked them if they had found prospects. Were they getting out ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Jess!" There was an insinuating sweetness in his voice as it echoed through the hall. Jesse, doubtless recognizing the velvety quality of the tone, made his appearance promptly. "Jess," said the major softly, "I wish you'd please fetch me my shotgun. Make 'aste, Jess, ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... beside the brook, his feet treading the elastic, velvety turf, and crushing heedlessly late primrose and stray violet, his blood quickened by the soft spring breeze, fragrant with hawthorn and the smell of the moist brown earth, La Boulaye's happiness gathered strength from ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... the pie would shoot from the shingle and it was like pulling eye teeth to go fast that morning. I loved the soft warm dust, that was working up on the road. Spat! Spat! I brought down my bare feet, already scratched and turning brown, and laughed to myself at the velvety feel of it. There were little puddles yet, where May and I had "dipped and faded" last fall, and it was fun to wade them. The roadsides were covered with meadow grass and clover that had slipped through the fence. On slender green blades, ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... morning near the end of March. A light breeze caresses with its velvety hand the sleepy faces of the pilgrims; and the intoxicating perfume of tuberoses mingles with the pungent odors of the bazaar. Crowds of barefooted Brahman women, stately and well-formed, direct their steps, like the biblical ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... bird flew that way! Rubato should be employed, for, as Kleczynski says, "Here everything totters from foundation to summit, and everything is, nevertheless, so beautiful and so clear." But only an artist with velvety fingers should play this ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... of these meetings, we shall venture to interpolate an anecdote which deserves to be recorded for the sublimity of impudence which it displays. The railway from London to Plymouth skirts the park of Powderham, running so close beside it that each train sends a herd of deer scampering down the velvety glades. One afternoon a bouncing young lady, who belonged to a family which had lately emerged from the class of yeoman into that of gentry, and whose "manners had not the repose which stamps the caste of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... black cavernous hole of the farther barn. At first the darkness stopped him; but he knew his way, found the steps that led up to the loft, and was soon perched high behind a little square window that was now blue and gold against the velvety blackness behind him. This was his favourite spot in all the farm. Here, all the year, they stored the apples, and the smell of the fruit was thick in the air, sweet and strong, clinging about every fibre of the place, so that you could not disturb a strand nor a ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... take up water rapidly, and consequently only a few of its flowers open at once. These are smaller than those of the Gandavensis, and more arched in form. Many of them, perhaps the majority, have rich velvety blotches on some or all of the petals, darker in color than the petals themselves, thus giving the flowers a very striking appearance. The well known Marie Lemoine was one of the earliest varieties of this new hybrid, and its dark velvet ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... looking towards Nevers, our eyes rest on the same broad sheet of blue; before us, straight as an arrow, stretches the French road of a pattern we know so well, an apparently interminable avenue of plane or poplar trees. The river is low at this season, and the velvety brown sands recall the sea-shore when the tide is out. Exquisite, at such an hour are the reflections, every object having its mirrored self in the transparent waves, the lights and shadows ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... with the graceful assurance of a yacht running aslant a craft-swarming harbor, cut into the crowd that surged through the Union Station. She brought up in an empty corner of the iron fence, close beside the exit gate through which passengers were hurrying from the last train that had arrived. Her velvety black eyes flashed an eager glance at the out- pouring stream, perceived a Mackinaw jacket, and turned to make swift comparison of the depot clock and the tiny bracelet watch on her ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... this uncommonly interesting playground, as a field of action, came, in the children's opinion, the "secret spot." There was a velvety stretch of ground in the Sawyer pasture which was full of fascinating hollows and hillocks, as well as verdant levels, on which to build houses. A group of trees concealed it somewhat from view and flung ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... imagination for his facts, but the poet of nature must first of all be true, and incidentally as beautiful and good as may be; and a half-truth or a truth with a reservation may be as dangerous as falsehood. The poet who should so paint the velvety beauty of a rattlesnake as to make you long to coddle it would hardly be considered a safe character to be at large. Likewise an ode to the nettle, or to the autumn splendor of the poison-sumac, which ignored its venom would scarcely be a ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Little Colonel put her arm around her pony's neck, and for a moment her fair little head was pressed disconsolately against its velvety black mane. ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... corral and leaned against the fence, studying the filly thoughtfully, while Captain Jack with a friendly whinny came and nosed at the fingers thrust through the bars. After a time the mare cautiously moved up beside the roan stallion and stretched her own velvety muzzle toward the hand the Ramblin' Kid ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... entrenched in prehistoric times. Two small streams, the Byle brook and the Steeple brook, run northwards on each side of the mount, uniting just below it to form the Corve River. At first sight the mound appears to be artificial, so velvety smooth and regular are its green sides in contrast with the pile of ruin on ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... better than great," said Marta. "You soothe; you help; you have—what shall I call it?—the wisdom of mothers! Minna has it, too." She ran a tattoo of kisses along the velvety skin of Mrs. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... tropical clouds added obscurity to the darkness of the sky, so that the night fell with even more startling quickness than usual. The blackness was very dense. Now and then a group of drifting stars swam out of a rift in the vapors, but the night was curiously silent and of a velvety darkness. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... her usual seat under the broad velvety sky spangled with gold. And with a movement which bespoke her solicitude she turned towards the bright little light shining on the verge of the sombre woods, a light telling of the quietude of the room in which it burnt, the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... and smooth, was black as night—wonderful hair. But still more wonderful were those great, dark, velvety eyes, deep and unfathomable. In them the tragedy of life was tumultuously visible, yet they were serene, self-possessed, even steady in their quiet simplicity. To describe her features is not an easy task. They were clear-cut, with a purity of the lines of the nose and ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... velvety voice, as he would have shivered had his hand touched suede. "Well," his voice was too natural to be natural, "you don't want to say good-bye ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... which her mind had pictured in her idle hours and in the long, quiet nights. She was like a portrait by Veronese with her fair, glossy hair, which seemed to cast a radiance on her skin, a skin with the faintest tinge of pink, softened by a light velvety down which could be perceived when the sun kissed her cheek. Her eyes were an opaque blue, like those of Dutch porcelain figures. She had a tiny mole on her left nostril and another on the right of her chin. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... By-the-way, John has kept the grounds looking well, hasn't he? The lawn doesn't seem to have a weed on it," said Bessie, walking to the window and gazing out at the soft velvety sward in the glow ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... is looked upon with a grateful feeling by the flower, which is thus kindly relieved from the attacks of her destroyers. . . . . . . . Its gorgeous throat in beauty and brilliancy baffles all competition. Now it glows with a fiery hue, and again it is changed to the deepest velvety black. The upper parts of its delicate body are of resplendent changing green; and it throws itself through the air with a swiftness and vivacity hardly conceivable. It moves from one flower to another like a gleam of light, upwards, downwards, to ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... exclaimed. "I don't think so at all! Look at his delicate hoofs, his elegantly-tufted tail, the soft, silvery gray of his coat with the velvety, black markings, and his ears are very becoming to him. It is such an injustice always to compare him with the horse. He is altogether a different type, but quite ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... maiden aspirant for putting excellence at the end of the yard-wide velvety strip leading to the green and "hole," Dam gave his best advice, bade her smite with restraint, and then proceeded to the "hole" to retrieve the ball for his own turn. Other couples did "preliminary canters" somewhat similarly ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... with my finger and thumb working as on the previous morning I threw her into an extasy of delight, until again she had a delicious discharge. Then creeping up, I thrust my prick into her well-moistened and velvety cunt—as you may imagine it was rampant as ever after my mouth contact with the exquisite quim I ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... most masterly creations; here many of the great legal luminaries of the last few centuries walked and talked; and here the infantile footsteps of the subsequently famous "Elia" chased butterflies across the velvety sward. "The Temple Garden," says Mr. Walter Thornbury, "has probably been a garden from the time the white-robed Templars first came from Holborn and settled by the river-side." It covers an expanse of three acres, and its gay flower-beds, umbrageous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... The strong quinine flavor is like a spring tonic. Cut a branch of the black cherry, peel back the bark, and smell the pungent, bitter almond aroma, which of itself is enough to identify this tree. Every sense tells of life; the smell of the cherry, the taste of the aspen, the touch of the velvety mosses and the gummy buds on the poplars, the color of the twigs and buds, the music of the birds, all these say, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... social center. Lawanne would come in after supper, sometimes inert, dumb, to sit in a corner smoking a pipe,—again filled with a curious exhilaration, to talk unceasingly of everything that came into his mind, to thump ragtime on the piano and sing a variety of inconsequential songs in a velvety baritone. Myra came often. So did Bland. So did Charlie Mills. Many evenings they were all there together. As the weeks went winging by, Doris grew less certain on her feet, more prone to spend her time sitting back in a deep arm chair, and Myra began to play for them, ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... just below us. It was about as big as a crow, but with a strange iridescent plumage. When it flitted into the sunshine its back and wings shone like a rainbow, and the next moment it looked perfectly black and velvety in the shade. Now a turquoise-blue tint comes out on its spreading wings, and a slant in the sunshine turns the blue into a chrysoprase green. Nobody could tell me its name: our Dutch host spoke exactly like Hans Breitmann, and declared it was a "bid of a crow," and so we had to leave it and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... turf, and in it grew all kinds of straight aspiring things: their ambition seemed—to get up, not to spread abroad. He stepped out of the window, drawn as by the enchantment of one of childhood's dreams, and went wandering down a broad walk, his foot sinking deep in the velvety grass, and the loveliness of the dream did not fade. Hollyhocks, gloriously impatient, whose flowers could not wait to reach the top ere they burst into the flame of life, making splendid blots of colour along their ascending ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... the wings are spotted like the upper, the only difference being, that round the whole disc of the four wings there runs a band of ashy-green atoms. The antennae and feet are black, and the breast whitish. The vivid colour of the yellow spots on the velvety black of the wings distinguish it at once from every ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... Racer and Pacer, Reckless and Speckless, Fearless and Peerless, and Ready and Steady, who, with Glossie and Flossie, made up the ten who have traversed the world these hundreds of years with their generous master. They were all exceedingly beautiful, with slender limbs, spreading antlers, velvety dark eyes and smooth coats of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... did come back soon, this worthy woman, with triumphant bearing and flashing eyes, looking as the cat looks when it has a mouse in its soft velvety paws, and is going to push its poisonous claws into the quivering flesh. She took her knitting-work up and bade Tison to go up again to ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... slowly with the people, hung with garlands and painted on the face and sides; holding up the traffic as, unafraid, they snuffled their velvety muzzles in the unguarded baskets of grain, and pushed their way unconcernedly and by holy right across the human stream into the Cow Temple as they passed the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... handsome birds have the entire head, neck and breast velvety black, abruptly defined against the white underparts. The back, wings and tail are greenish or bluish black, and the scapulars, white; length of bird 20 inches. They are well known throughout the west, where their bold and thievish ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... as they got out of the last tram, the rain ceased. At the worst it had been a mild night of velvety darkness and soft airs, the reflection from the lamps swimming in a haze of gold across the wet pavement; but now, just as they reached the end of his own street, the black sky opened upon a wide sea of ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... race as vocalists depend. But to one class of listener the opera is decently if not scientifically constituted. There is the loud and cheerful, if not shrill, bleating of the soprano, the strenuous booming of the bass, the velvety softness and depth of the contralto and the thin high tenor. Hordes of the alert, sharp-featured, far-leaping grass frog represent the chorus, and they have a perfectly rehearsed theme. Down on the flat along the edge of the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... after a while and found that night had fallen. The sky was a dark, velvety blue blazing with white stars. The cool wind tugged at her hair, and through waving strands she saw Stewart's profile, bold ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... slope, I climbed the hill which directly overhangs the hamlet. It was church-time as I sat down on the top, and slowly drank in the charms of that celebrated landscape. To such a scene, at such an hour, the very heart-strings grow. The fields were clothed with a dense velvety-green. Across the narrow glen, on the strange cone of Dinas Bran, frowned threateningly, in dark mass, unsoftened by distance, the huge, bare fragments of an old castle, the immemorial type of an iron ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... through the pillared portal and was immediately swallowed up by a shroud of silent, velvety darkness. Wes could not see her, but her soft hand touched his arm lightly to guide him forward, and he sensed the girl's warm body close to his. Where was she going? Inevitably they would be trapped in the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... morn our way still lay among apples and honey, hives and orchards; a land of prosperous farms, sumptuous rolling downs, rich woodland, sheep, more pigs, more apple-barrels and velvety sunshine. The old ruined houses had ceased, and the country had taken on a more generous, broad-shouldered, deep-bosomed aspect. Nature was preparing for one of her big Promised Land effects. We were coming to the valley of the Genesee River. We made a comparison of two kinds of prosperity in ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... swollen flood, which the poor thing had not the courage to brave. This day, for the first time, I heard the song of the Canada sparrow, a soft, sweet note, almost running into a warble. Saw a small, black velvety butterfly with a yellow border to its wings. Under a warm bank found two flowers of the houstonia in bloom. Saw frogs' spawn near Piny ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... immature in coloring, being olive-yellow on the breast, brown on wings and tail, with a black mask over eyes and chin; the other was older, and a model of oriole beauty, being bright chestnut on the lower parts, with velvety black hood coming down on the breast. With them was one female, and though far from being friends, the three were never separated. The trouble seemed to be that both males were suitors, and notwithstanding the pretty little ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... burst from the center of the oval while a strange figure bent over it as he performed his weird mystical rites. Now the light from the red and yellow flames fell upon a vast group of dark figures and a thousand gleaming eyes peered out of the velvety canopy around us. The mournful distressing notes of the ghost bird broke the stillness. The scream of some passing night bird replied as if in answer to their weird calls. A great horned owl made ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... took a good look round on all sides. There was, however, nothing to be seen save a vast sea of cloud beneath his feet and on all sides, as far as the eye could reach, softly illumined by the light of the star-studded heavens above. But even as he looked a just perceptible paleness in the deep velvety blue of the sky to the southward attracted his attention. He looked more intently. Yes, there could be no mistake about it; that pallor of the southern sky was undoubtedly the first faint indication of the approaching dawn; and he at once struck two strokes—the appointed ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... medium height, well formed, and with fine, clear-cut features. Her forehead was high, and her eyes both intelligent and beautiful. Exposure to the sun had browned a smooth and velvety skin to a shade which seemed to enhance rather than mar an altogether lovely picture ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... colour in the maiden's face, and saw also in the great dark, velvety eyes, the reflection of her thoughts as they came and went, plainly as you may see the shadows upon an autumn day chase each other over ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... beaten vessel. The lower branches were white and shining, relieved here and there by brown patches of bark which curled up like old parchment as they shelled away from the inner bark. The ground beneath the tree was carpeted with a velvety moss with little plots of grass and clusters of maiden-hair fern growing on it. From under an overhanging rock on the bank a spring of crystal water ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... when they wish to delay a difficult negotiation. Booted and spurred, he scrambled into the hammock with undignified haste. His handsome face had turned yellow with the strain of weighty cares. The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp; the audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched. The velvety, caressing glance of his fine eyes seemed dead, and even decomposed; for these almond-shaped, languishing orbs had become inappropriately bloodshot with much sinister sleeplessness. He addressed the surprised ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... was full of water-cresses, while the burnt-up little garden contained an abundance of beautiful flowers. There were scarlet and yellow mimosas, of many kinds, combining every shade of exquisite green velvety foliage, alpinias, with pink, waxy flowers and crimson and gold centres, oleanders, begonias, hibiscus, allamandas, and arum and ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... of a summer night without stars. And into this darkness she felt herself sinking, sinking, with the gentle sense of security of one upheld from beneath. Like a tepid tide it rose around her, gliding ever higher and higher, folding in its velvety embrace her relaxed and tired body, now submerging her breast and shoulders, now creeping gradually, with soft inexorableness, over her throat to her chin, to her ears, to her mouth.... Ah, now it was rising too high; the impulse to struggle was renewed;... ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... bit." Whatever was to be his ultimate decision, the wisdom of this course was incontestable. As she paused, smiling, expecting him to stop, he lifted his hat and drove onward. Perhaps it was only his imagination that caught in her great, velvety brown eyes an expression of surprise and pain; but whether his sight was accurate or not, the memory of the moment smote him. The process of "easing the first one off" would probably prove difficult. "I shall have to explain to her that I was in a hurry," he said, to comfort himself, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... who sat near the window, her furs thrown back from her shoulders, a huge muff dangling from her hand, was a few years younger and exceedingly pretty. Her skin was unusually white, her hair unusually black, her velvety eyes unusually large and dark. In. her attitude, lounging, graceful, indifferent, in her delicate face, the straight, sulky brows, the coldly closed lips, the coldly observant eyes, a sort of permanent discontent ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... first sight of the sea-girt City of Pearl through a fairy veil of haze; the windy approach to the lovely island over the velvety soundless brown stretch of sand; the weird majesty of the giant gate of bronze; the queer, high-sloping, fantastic, quaintly gabled street, flinging down sharp shadows of aerial balconies; the flutter of coloured draperies in the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the Chatham Road Presbyterian, was one of the largest and richest, one of the most oaken and velvety, in Zenith. The pastor was the Reverend John Jennison Drew, M.A., D.D., LL.D. (The M.A. and the D.D. were from Elbert University, Nebraska, the LL.D. from Waterbury College, Oklahoma.) He was eloquent, efficient, and versatile. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... light; and the impression produced varies in apparent force from a faint and hardly perceptible picture to one of the highest conceivable fulness and richness both of tint and detail, the color being in this case a superb velvety brown. This extreme richness of effect is not produced unless lead be present, either in the ingredients used, or in the paper itself. It is not, as I originally supposed, due to the presence of free tartaric acid. The pictures in ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... look for these things: a slightly creamy cast—dazzling whiteness shows bleaching, as a gray-white, or black specks mean grinding from spoiled grain. The feel should be velvety, with no trace of roughness—roughness means, commonly, mixture with corn. A handful tightly gripped should keep the shape of the hand, and show to a degree the markings of the palm. A pinch wet rather stiff, and stretched between thumb and finger, will show by the length of ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... just sinking to rest when they entered the outskirts of the city and drew up before a rambling white house set well back on a velvety lawn. Two great elms stood in the front of the yard and rhododendrons bloomed against the wide porch, their fragrance lingering ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... near the post-office, and whose simple life was a mixture of very plain, prosaic poverty, and very high and lofty romance. From this Miss Levis, who was a confirmed novel-reader, Alice learned that "she had the face and form of an angel"; that "her eyes had a velvety softness that drew you like an enchanted lake"; that these same eyes were "starry in their lustrous beauty"; that she had "the complexion of a creole, or rather the healthy pallor of the high-born aristocracy of England"; that "her ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... was that within a few minutes they found themselves seated side by side on one of the benches of the terraced promenade where they had met on the previous day. Though the row of shining spiritual presences had withdrawn, the valley was spanned by a Velvety luminosity, through which the lights of the lower town shone like stars reflected in water. The talk was of the conference. The ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... hot that night. Both she and her mother had put on thin, pale low frocks. The dinner flowers were pale. Fleur was struck with the pale look of everything; her father's face, her mother's shoulders; the pale panelled walls, the pale grey velvety carpet, the lamp-shade, even the soup was pale. There was not one spot of colour in the room, not even wine in the pale glasses, for no one drank it. What was not pale was black—her father's clothes, the butler's clothes, her retriever stretched ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... about them. The sea was black and the sky was black, a thick velvety black that turned to ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... evening time they wandered up the stone stairways of the great houses, and paused on the landings before the different homes. If all was still they passed on, but if there was noise, laughter, sound of voices, they laid aside their penitential manner, and struck into dance music, flashing their velvety eyes, and striking pretty attitudes, aided greatly by their Alpine hats and ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... then she wouldn't know when to wake me, and even if I could teach her to wake me the moment Agnes cried, I don't think she would be a nice one to do it; for if I didn't come awake with a pat of her velvety pin-cushions, she might turn out the points of the pins in them, and scratch me awake. There's the clock; it's always awake; but it can't tell you the time till you go and ask it. I think it might be made to wind up a string that ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... of her beautiful arms hung negligently over my shoulder, and now she would draw me with a fond pressure to her side, and now her exquisite hand would dally with the ringlets on my forehead, and then its velvety softness would crumple up and indent my blushing cheek, that burned certainly more with pleasure than with bashfulness. I cannot say that the usher bore all this very stoically, but he betrayed his annoyance by his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... terrific strength, as scientific tests have proven, is one-fifth greater than that of the African lion. His massive head was erect; his eyes shone, and his sinewy, graceful body, covered with its soft, velvety and spotted fur was like the beauty of some deadly serpent. His long tail slightly swayed from side to side, and, although the boys could not hear it, they were sure he ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... Mucedines, we shall obtain some notion of the prevalent structure. In the former the threads are more or less carbonized, in the latter nearly colourless. One of the largest genera in Dematiei is Helminthosporium. It appears on decaying herbaceous plants, and on old wood, forming effused black velvety patches. The mycelium, of coloured jointed threads, overlays and penetrates the matrix; from this arise erect, rigid, and usually jointed threads, of a dark brown, nearly black colour at the base, but ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... misunderstood. Learning—learning was what Maggie craved, and she sat there alone that bright June afternoon, holding upon her lap the head of her sleeping brother, and watching the summer shadows as they chased each other over the velvety grass in the meadow beyond, she wondered if it would ever be thus with her—would there never come a time when she could pursue her studies undisturbed, and then, as the thought that this day made her fifteen ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... rather, long; and it's very white, but one's bound to admit that it doesn't spoil the landscape," said Howard; "in fact, standing there amidst the dark-green trees, with its pinnacles and terraces, it's rather an ornament than otherwise. I suppose there are flowers on those velvety lawns; and the interior, I'll wager my life, matches the exterior. Fortunate youth to possess a Croesus ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... The velvety darkness of a southern night, with its sense of rich, luscious, breathing intensity, lay over that romantic spot in Southern Rhodesia where the grey walls of the Zimbabwe ruins, with a sublime, imperturbable indifference, continue to baffle the ingenuity ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... in a joyous voice, as she sprang out of the buggy and let Eureka run frolicking over the velvety grass. ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... man, which is above his consciousness, is not to be touched by the acts of the body. These things which men call sin are not of the slightest feather-weight to the soul in the innermost tabernacle. It is of no real consequence," the speaker went on, warming with his theme until his velvety eyes shone, "what the outer man may do. We waste our efforts in this childish care about apparent righteousness. The real purity is above our acts. Let the man do what he pleases; the soul is ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... conscious of a good deal of interior commotion. 'By Jove, she's magnificent, she's really stunning,' he exclaimed to himself. He perceived that she was rather a big woman, tall, with finely-rounded, smoothly-flowing lines. Her hair,—velvety blue-black in its shadows,—where the light caught it was dully iridescent. Her features were irregular enough to give her face a high degree of individuality, yet by no means to deprive it of delicacy ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... to the care of an experienced boatwoman, and are soon in a fairy-like scene, a long sheet of limpid water surrounded by verdant ridges, amid which peep chalets here and there, and velvety pastures slope down to the water's edge; all is here tenderness, loveliness, and peace. As we glide from the lake to the basins, the scenery takes a severer character, and there is sublimity in these gigantic walls of rock rising sheer from the silvery lakelike sheets of water, each ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... classes together. Three generations back the families of these two women were probably on the same level of society. And, as woman to woman, the schoolteacher, who travelled the dreary path between the dingy cottage and the Everglade School, was as full of power and beauty as this velvety specimen of plutocracy. It was sentimental, however, to ignore the present facts. Evidently Miss Hitchcock had followed the same line of reasoning, for when she spoke again she referred distantly ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... which cousins to the third and fourth generation were invited. Everything was at its loveliest, and the Mall just across the street was resplendent in beauty. Even then it had magnificent trees and great stretches of grass, green and velvety. Already it was a favorite ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... walk down to the beach over a shadow carpet of Japanese filigree. The air over the white sand is as quiet and feelingless to my skin as complete, comfortable clothing. On one side is the dark river; on the other, the darker jungle full of gentle rustlings, low, velvety breaths of sound; and I slip into the water and swim out, out, out. Then I turn over and float along with the almost tangible moonlight flooding down on face and water. Suddenly the whole air is broken by the chorus of big red baboons, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Sandho for fear he should answer me in his own way and reach round his soft, velvety muzzle to touch my expected hand, now so painfully held back. These seemed the worst, the most agonising, moments of my flight; and I felt sick with pain, too. If the horse whinnied, all my desperate struggle would have been in vain; and I was ready in my anguish to ask ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... that had almost no longer anything material about them, and, like the imponderables, seemed to act on one's being without passing through the senses. Sometimes one thought one heard the joyous tripping of some amorously- teasing Peri; sometimes there were modulations velvety and iridescent as the robe of a salamander; sometimes one heard accents of deep despondency, as if souls in torment did not find the loving prayers necessary for their final deliverance. At other times there breathed forth from his fingers a despair so mournful, so inconsolable, that one ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... on this sill and looked out into the velvety darkness. A great silence seemed to brood over the country which she could not see. She remembered how lonely the ranch house seemed to be when she had first seen it the previous afternoon. Even the bunk houses where the help slept were at ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... and velvety-brown eyes, this combination is beautiful, and may wear the black of silk, or velvet with creamy lace to relieve the face. Dark reds, purples and maroons, peacock-green, olive-green, ambers, violet, rose pink, with pearls, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... sooner conceived a project than he promptly carried it out. His brow shone in that clear light which seems to serve as a halo of success to natures so privileged as his; his fine eyes, of a soft and velvety black, subdued the hearts of men who could not resist their charm, and his caressing smile made conquest sweet. A child of destiny, he had but to use his will; some power unknown, some beneficent fairy had watched over his birth, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of wild rhapsodies. Both the eye and the ear of the artist receive refreshment and stimulus here. The garden is a bath of verdancy and coolness even upon the most torrid day. The very light which filters through the dense foliage is tinged with green. The marbles are velvety and moist with moss, and the maidenhair fern drips lush and dank. Here Liszt drew inspiration from the harmonies of water notes blended with the chiming of distant bells, and Watteau showed in the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... will not matter. One common mistake in lawn-making is to use too little seed. A thinly-seeded lawn will not give you a good sward the first season, but a thickly-seeded one will. In fact, it will have that velvety look which is one of the chief charms of any lawn, after its first mowing. I would advise you to tell the dealer of whom you purchase seed the size of your lot, and let him decide on the quantity of seed required to make a ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... I have seen them keep absolutely quiet on fragments of an Anthophora on a thorax long since nibbled and emptied by the Mites. By what sense then can they distinguish the thorax of an Anthophora from a velvety pellet, when sight and touch are out of the question? The sense of smell remains. But in that case what exquisite subtlety must we not take for granted? Moreover, what similarity of smell can we admit between all the insects which, dead or alive, whole or in pieces, fresh or dried, suit the Meloes, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... plain green, soft and velvety, like moss; and the furniture, of a light cream-colored wood, was in dainty shapes, with delicate spindle-legged tables and chairs. The dressing-table was furnished with ivory-backed brushes and mirrors, and there was a charming little ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... that was about his eyes and mouth in these days. After a little he closed his eyes softly, enjoyingly. From the library came the carolling sweetness of Piney's tenor. And by and by, following it, soaring up with it, the glorious fulness of Salome Madeira's velvety soprano. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... the Htel des Rois, Monsieur Duchanel himself doing them the honor of serving the repast, which Hermia soon discovered had none of the characteristics of the vagabond fare promised her—a velvety soup—petits pois la crme, an entre, then poulet rti, salade endive, cheese and coffee—a meal for the gods, which these mortals partook of with unusual enjoyment. The coffee served, their host departed with ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... we rode over many suspension bridges and crossed the backbone of Japan in unforgettable scenes of romantic beauty. From the craggy paths of our highlands, amid a wealth not only of gorgeous flowers and greenery but of great velvety butterflies, we saw the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the dry, springy heather among the flint boulders. Gerhardt, with his Stetson over his eyes, was presumably asleep. They were having fine weather for their holiday. The forest rose about this open glade like an amphitheatre, in golden terraces of horse chestnut and beech. The big nuts dropped velvety and brown, as if they had been soaked in oil, and disappeared in the dry leaves below. Little black yew trees, that had not been visible in the green of summer, stood out among the curly yellow brakes. Through the grey ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... to sleep. She threw back the carefully tucked in covers and got up out of bed, draping the new "counterpin" around her shoulders, and paddled, bare-footed, over to that window of her room which looked in the direction of Timothy's house. It was velvety black over on that horizon, but Arethusa could find the place where the house ought to be. It was a very beautiful night, cold and clear and starry. Arethusa put her head down on the window-sill and gazed up at the stars. There were millions of them, and they all seemed to be winking straight ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... were mantling their green, and here and there an early bud was making its appearance. He walked on for some distance, until the high road was hidden by a bend in the lane, and the green trees began to arch overhead; and on each side, the road was bordered with grass and green, velvety moss; the birds were warbling soft songs in the branches, and from the wood hard by the sweet cooing of the pigeons could be heard. It was a very pleasant spot, so much so, that when Arthur threw himself down on the grass to rest, he said with a deep sigh, "Well, it might be worse; and ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... the green sheath, which in its early stage is not unlike that of a water-lily, but which as the bloom opens splits into four portions and curls back gracefully towards the stem. Then comes the bloom itself, a single dazzling arch of white enclosing another cup of richest velvety crimson, from the heart of which rises a golden-coloured pistil. I have never seen anything to equal this bloom in beauty or fragrance, and as I believe it is but little known, I take the liberty to describe ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... whalebone; Father, pleased and radiant; Flora and Mr Keith both seemed rather puzzled. Angus was in a better temper than usual. Charlotte was evidently full of something very funny, which she did not want to let out; Cecilia, soft, serene, and velvety; Fanny looked nervous and uncomfortable; Hatty, scornful; while Amelia ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... is not thy heart or thy hand that is at my service?" and Priscilla raised a pair of such melting and velvety brown eyes to the somewhat offended face of the young giant that he at once tumbled into the depths of abject submission, and trying to ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... fine, clear, starlit night, without the faintest suspicion of a cloud anywhere in the soft, velvety blue-black dome of the sky; and presently, when the professor's eyes had grown accustomed to the dim, mysterious radiance of the twinkling constellations, he was able to see the landscape steadily unfolding around him like a map, in a rapidly ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood |
