Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Blues   /bluz/   Listen
Blues

noun
1.
A type of folksong that originated among Black Americans at the beginning of the 20th century; has a melancholy sound from repeated use of blue notes.
2.
A state of depression.  Synonyms: blue devils, megrims, vapors, vapours.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Blues" Quotes from Famous Books



... volunteer cohort which had been lately embodied, and shunned joining the convivialities of either of the two parties which then divided Fairport, as they did more important places. He was too little of an aristocrat to join the club of Royal True Blues, and too little of a democrat to fraternise with an affiliated society of the soi-disant Friends of the People, which the borough had also the happiness of possessing. A coffee-room was his detestation; and, I grieve to say it, he had as few sympathies with the tea-table.In ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... McClellan comes along, he'll admire us as much as the English General, old Sir Goutby Slogo, did the Seventh Regiment when they paraded before the Prince. 'Really, most extraordinary style of marching these American troops have,' said he, 'most hequal to the 'Orse Guards and the Hoxford Blues ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... surface in passing through the air. By this process walls, embankments and terraces are built up, and as the minerals through which the water passes are varying greatly in color, so the deposits left on the surface are some of them red, other pink and others black, with yellows, greens, blues, chocolates and mixed colors abounding in immense numbers, sometimes harmonizing beautifully and sometimes ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... body of youths as one could easily encounter in the course of a long day's march. The picture of health and physique, they seemed almost like some of those heroes of old beside whom poor everyday man was wont to shrink into insignificance. Among the blues towered Jim, among the reds Charlie, two by no means the least ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... Reservation, too, sent a delegation for the occasion and mingling in the jostling but good-natured crowd were chiefs, bucks and squaws, who, in a riot of war bonnets, porcupine waistcoats, gay trappings and formal blankets, lent yellows and reds and blues to the scene. All entrances to the Mountain House were decorated and a stream of visitors poured in and out, with congratulations for Tenison, who received them at the bar in the big billiard hall ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... sight it was just a blur of blues and greens, with irregular patches of white, and gay tiny dashes of strong colour, pinks and purples and yellows. But when, as Anne had bidden him, he held it at arm's length he saw it all—the garden with its box-bordered ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... (According to compact) the wit in the dungeon— Pray Phoebus at length our political malice May not get us lodgings within the same palace! I suppose that to-night you're engaged with some codgers, And for Sotheby's Blues have deserted Sam Rogers; And I, though with cold I have nearly my death got, Must put on my breeches, and wait on the Heathcote. But to-morrow at four, we will both play the Scurra, And you'll ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... But in the tomb of Ramses III. the work has already begun to show signs of inferiority, and the majority of the scenes are coloured in a very summary fashion; a raw yellow predominates, and the tones of the reds and blues remind us of a child's first efforts at painting. This decline is even more marked under the succeeding Ramessides; the drawing has deteriorated, the tints have become more and more crude, and the latest paintings seem but a lamentable ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... brilliant azure, level save for the slight swaying of the surface, which every little space showed a flag of white. The evaporation caused by the blazing sun of these tropics made the water a deeper blue than in cooler latitudes, as in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans the greens are almost as vivid as the blues ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... retreat. He mounted and rode for his life, till he was joined by Lord Grey and a few other officers; but his brave infantry still made a gallant stand. They were charged right and left by the Life Guards and Blues, but the Somersetshire clowns, with their scythes and butt-ends of their muskets, fought to the last. At length their powder and ball were spent, and cries were heard of "Ammunition; for God's sake give us ammunition!" But no ammunition was at hand. The ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... the Times. There are symptoms which show That the ministers now are preparing to go, And finish their feast of the loaves and the fishes. It is evident that they are clearing the dishes, And cramming their pockets with bonbons. Your news Will be always acceptable. Vere, of the Blues, Has bolted with Lady Selina. And so You have met with that hot-headed Frenchman? I know That the man is a sad mauvais sujet. Take care Of Matilda. I wish I could join you both there; But before I am ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... Hospital." In 1823 there is a second essay on the same subject by Lamb, under the assumed title of "Elia,"—Elia supposed to be intimate with Lamb and Coleridge. This second account, entitled "Christ's Hospital five-and-thirty years ago," gave umbrage to some of the "Blues," as they termed themselves, as differing so much from the first in full praise of this valuable foundation, and particularly as a school from which he had benefited so much. In the preface to the second series, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... delicate women. It is a type very difficult to dress effectively. The black of velvet may be worn, and soft wools relieved by velvet or lace; creamy white, by casting reflected lights, clears the complexion. Be careful of this however. Warm, pale pink may be worn with it. Invisible blues and greens (in other words, very dark shades). The palest possible pink may be combined with these as linings, vests or ribbons. Pale pink, lined with a pink almost white; pale, but not chalky blues. Blue should not ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... vouch for, showing the strenuous time the whole army had about food that winter: One day Major-Quartermaster John Ludlow, of Norfolk, met a Captain of Artillery from his own town of Norfolk—Capt. Charles Grandy, of the Norfolk Light Artillery Blues. The Major invited the Captain to dine with him on a certain day. He did not expect anything very much, but there was a seductive sound in the word "dining" and he accepted. Grandy told the story of his experience on that festive occasion. He walked two ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame

... stirrups, and then suddenly and yet very gently rested upon the bed, upon the alarum clock, and upon the butterfly box stood open. The pale clouded yellows had pelted over the moor; they had zigzagged across the purple clover. The fritillaries flaunted along the hedgerows. The blues settled on little bones lying on the turf with the sun beating on them, and the painted ladies and the peacocks feasted upon bloody entrails dropped by a hawk. Miles away from home, in a hollow among teasles beneath a ruin, he had found the commas. He had seen a white ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... prime minister, no doubt, rejoiced in finding for the public service a young man of this high promise, sprung out of the same class, and bred in the same academic traditions as his own.[66] The youthful minister's path was happily smoothed at Newark. This time blues and reds called a grand truce, divided the honours, and returned Mr. Gladstone and Sergeant Wilde without a contest. The question that excited most interest in the canvass was the new poor law. Mr. Gladstone gave the fallen ministers full credit ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... She likes appreciation just the same ez me an' you, And it's only right and proper that yer give her what is due. Don't wait until her lamp o' life is burnin' dim an' low, Afore you tell her what you orter told her long ago— Now's ther time ter cheer her up an' put her blues to rout— You've lost ther chance to do it When the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... black tree stump at the roadside seemed to spring out of the ghostly twilight, and Nick, who never had the blues, amused himself by shying at it. Ned caught the spirit of the lark and over the next mile these two good friends of Katherine's supplied her with just the kind of ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... furnished you with a little court of people who, for the sake of friendship to me, let themselves be lured into admiring you. I set you to rule me and my house. Then I painted my best pictures, glimmering with reds and blues on backgrounds of gold, and there was not an exhibition then where I didn't hold a place of honour. Sometimes you were St. Cecilia, and sometimes Mary Stuart—or little Karin, whom King Eric loved. And ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... so superb that I gaped at it with my mouth open. So far away, so far below, that it was as if we looked down from a balloon sailing among the clouds, two lakes were set like sapphires in a double ring of mountains, whose greens and blues and purples were dimmed by a falling veil of twilight. But through the veil, white villas gleamed on the dark hillsides, like pearls that had fallen down the mountain-side, scattering as they fell; ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... in the fray, and the din and confusion was torture to the spirit. Even the furniture caught the spirit of discord and made fierce attacks upon everything else in the room. The reds, and yellows, and blues, and greens whirled and swirled about in such a dizzy and belligerent fashion that I wondered how the people ever managed to escape nervous prostration. But the daughter went right on with the five-finger exercise as if nothing ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... constructed. Most of them had gables and fronts, edged with carved mouldings, and glass doors, with here and there a coloured pane, opening on verandas. The walls were painted in light oil-colours; the doors and window-frames shone in blues and greens, and even in reds. While the boy walked about and viewed the houses, he could hear, all the way out to the road, how the people who sat in the warm cottages chattered and laughed. The words he could not distinguish, but he ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... tired, worn out. Indulging myself in a thoroughly enjoyable fit of the blues." His voice broke ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... that until I wrote for it. I wrote to a Boston bookstore that I'd heard about and told 'em I wanted two books to cheer up a fool with the blues, and another to take him into a strange world—and keep the change out of five dollars. They sent me 'The Bab Ballads' and this, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... solicit me or Captain Harris to advise you as to what to next do. Well, as Harris says he has always had the heft of the load on his shoulders, I will try and respond myself and let Harris rest. Ha! ha! Well, Marble, we must joke a bit; did we not, we should have the blues, as do you some of those rainy days when you see no living person at the rock, save your own dear ones. Not a sound do you hear, save the woodpecker and that little gray bird [Mr. Marble's pet canary], that sings all day long, more especially wet days, tittry, ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... dilute the Blue into as pale a one as you please, which you cannot do by laying the colour thin; for wheresoever any single particle is, it exhibits as deep a Blue as the whole mass. Now, there are other Blues, which though never so much ground, will not be diluted by grinding, because consisting of very small particles, very deeply ting'd, they cannot by grinding be actually separated into smaller particles then the operation ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... it was coming," she said, "and I am sure it will prove an antidote for your blues. I had a letter from the same place last week, and I've been in the ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... angels below, and at the sides St. Laurence, St. Zenobi, and St. Benedict; the "Coronation of the Madonna," once in the lunette of the Acciajoli chapel: another with the "Virgin and two saints," painted "con azzurri oltramarini bellissimi," (with beautiful ultramarine blues): and the pictures in the dividing wall of Santa Maria Novella opposite the choir. The "Annunciation," which according to Vasari was in the church of San Francesco at San Miniato, and which Milanesi believes to be in the Museum of Madrid, is instead now in the National Gallery at London. ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... themselves of the utmost and most mighty importance, and that every man in Eatanswill, conscious of the weight that attached to his example, felt himself bound to unite, heart and soul, with one of the two great parties that divided the town—the Blues and the Buffs. Now the Blues lost no opportunity of opposing the Buffs, and the Buffs lost no opportunity of opposing the Blues; and the consequence was, that whenever the Buffs and Blues met together ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... an acid redden a vegetable-blue, had something to communicate; and the man who first saw (mentally) that all acids redden vegetable-blues, had something to communicate. But no man can do this again. In the course of his teaching he may have frequently to report the fact; but this repetition is not of much value unless it can be made to disclose some new relation. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... the yellow fever. His course was rapid, and he had been very foolish; but I believe there was more of kindness and warmth in him than in almost any other of our schoolfellows. The annual meeting of the Blues is to-morrow, at the London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined with them two years ago, and attracted the notice of all by the singular foppishness of his dress. When men go off the stage so early, it scarce seems a noticeable thing in their ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... you have carte blanche to come here whenever you choose. I was fast falling into the blues when I heard you knock, so you may fancy how welcome you were, almost as ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... students and to the colour manufacturer than to the ordinary reader. Many of the names of the bases of various dyes are unknown outside the chemical dyeworks, although each and all have complicated; reactions of their own. In the reds are rosanilines, toluidine xylidine, &c.; in the blues—phenyl-rosanilines, diphenylamine, toluidine, aldehyde, &c.; violets—rosaniline, mauve, phenyl, ethyl, methyl, &c.; greens—iodine, aniline, leucaniline, chrysotoluidine, aldehyde, toluidine, methyl-anilinine, &c.; yellows and orange—leucaniline, phenylamine, &c.; browns—chrysotoluidine, ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... seen many modern pictures, and my own powers of enjoying art were so entirely unspoiled by the effect of habit that I was like a young bird in its first spring-time in the woods. I much preferred the beautiful bright pictures in the Academy, with their greens and blues like Nature, to the snuffy old canvases (as they seemed to me) ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... increasing fondness for Miss Carrington's society, which she, on her part, seemed to accept with placid equanimity. They rode, they drove, they walked, they sailed when the weather warranted—and the weather had recovered from its fit of the blues, and was lazy and warm and languid. In short, they did everything which is commonly supposed to denote a growing fondness for ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott

... cost its original owner more than this humble relative could earn in a year. Miss Cottle's gloves were always expensive, and always dirty, and her elaborate silk petticoats were of soiled pale pinks and blues. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... him were the greens of the grasses and leaves and the yellows and blues of the field flowers. It was warm, a spring day, with none of the discomfort of summer heat. Jubilant, Roger spun around in circles, inhaling the fragrance of the field, listening to the hum of insect life stirring back to awareness ...
— Pleasant Journey • Richard F. Thieme

... wall of the cave was an exquisite fall of crystal! Minerals glowed there, giant crystals, like jewels, crusted with strange lichen-like growths and colors. There were pale blues and greens and, shimmering among them, a strangely colored crystalline mineral that he had never seen before. It was blue—No, Bart thought, that's just the light, it's more like red—no, it can't be like both of them at ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... ran the spectrum gamut of the yellows and oranges and greens and blues and purples to the solitary star above the opaline peak, he had wanted to wait and see—what? He did not know. It had always seemed, if he watched, the primrose veil would lift and release some phantom with noiseless tread on a ripple of night wind. In his lonely vigils he ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... to be named the few soothing blues that abound in the ceilings, in the deep recesses of the walls, and the coffered arches, serving as backgrounds for the many richly-modeled terra ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... the Light Blues went out a second time R.C. Barrett, of the winning trial eight crew, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... richness of the old Moorish Fez presses upon one with unexpected beauty. Here is the graceful tiled fountain of Nedjarine, glittering with the unapproachable blues and greens of ceramic mosaics, near it, the courtyard of the Fondak Nedjarine, oldest and stateliest of Moroccan inns, with triple galleries of sculptured cedar rising above arcades of stone. A little farther on lights and incense draw one to a threshold where it is well not to linger unduly. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... which they are soaked, while others are set by the use of salt. It is necessary to try a small amount of the material before dipping in the entire garment, in order to be sure of satisfactory results. Vinegar should be used for blues, one-half cup to one gallon of water. Salt is most effective for browns, blacks, and pinks. In most cases, two cups of salt to one gallon of cold water will ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario

... beautiful background of the prospect—massing the clouds and scattering the light, effacing and reviving, making play with their wonderful machinery of mist and haze. The mountains rise, one behind the other, in an enchanting gradation of distances and of melting blues and greys; you think each successive tone the loveliest and haziest possible till you see another loom dimly behind it. I couldn't enjoy even The Swiss Times, over my breakfast, till I had marched forth to the office of the Saint- Gothard service of coaches and demanded the banquette for to- ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... is of no real importance, but I may as well add that he never completed the reading of that summer's most popular novel) and sought the smoking-room, where, with the aid of a fat perfecto and a liberal stack of blues, he proceeded to divert himself till the boat reached quarantine. I shall not say that he left any of his patrimony at the mahogany table with its green-baize covering and its little brass disks ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... privileges of Lancaster Gate could ever be a sign of their freedom. They were upstairs, in one of the smaller apartments of state, a room arranged as a boudoir, but visibly unused—it defied familiarity—and furnished in the ugliest of blues. He had immediately looked with interest at the closed doors, and Kate had met his interest with the assurance that it was all right, that Aunt Maud did them justice—so far, that was, as this particular time was concerned; that they ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... broke in Mrs. Thomson, "there are beautiful green banks with the most beautiful flowers. You will see the prettiest birds in all the world dressed in the brightest reds and greens and blues and purples. You will see the long-legged cranes and the funny pelicans with their ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann

... of travel in various parts of the world, and proved himself an able leader. It was not long, however, before the party of the Monagas rose in rebellion against his authority. These adherents of the Monagas were now known as the "Blues," and the party of Guzman-Blanco was ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... the base by two spurs of the lake, and clothed by a plumage of woods, except upon spaces near the centre of its slope. Here green fields disclosed themselves and two farm-houses were nested, basking in the light of a sky which deepened and deepened through infinite blues. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... (Physcomitrium), immense splashes of what seemed to be the scarlet-crested Cladonia, traceries of huge moss veils, crushings of teeth (peristome) gigantic; spore cases brown and white, saffron and ivory, hot vermilions and cerulean blues, pressed into an astounding mosaic ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... was also a dressy dame, and burdened her podgy fingers and broad bosom with too much gold and too many precious stones—yellow, blue, and red; and her silk dresses were also too bright-hued for a lady of her years and figure. Her favourite strong blues and purples would have struck painfully on the refined colour-sense of an aesthete. On the other hand, to balance these pardonable defects, she was kind-hearted; not at all artificial in her manner and conversation, or unduly puffed up with her position, as one might have expected her to ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... defeated heathen. Threatening fists were shaken in the air, while behind the carceres the drivers and owners of the red party scolded, squabbled and stormed; and Hippias, who by his audacious swagger had given away the race to their hated foe—to the Blues, the Christians—narrowly escaped being ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... one can't get something for nothing. There's a price mark on it somewhere, always. We've got all our lives before us, little person, and a better chance for happiness than most folks have. Don't let little things throw you into the blues. Be my good little pal—and see if you can't make one of these stores dig up a white waist and a black skirt, like you had on the first ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... various forms of flower, color and shape—the tones of color being a mingling of blues, pinks and mauve, some in the most lovely combinations imaginable. They will all bloom the first year from seed if sown in February or March in a greenhouse or hot-bed, but will not all bloom at once, so that for at least a period of one month, new blooms are opening each ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan

... has been proclaimed among the wits concerning Lord Lyttelton's "Life," by Dr. Johnson, and which a whole tribe of "blues," with Mrs. Montagu at their head, have vowed to execrate and revenge, now broke out with all the fury of the first actual hostilities, stimulated by long concerted schemes and much spiteful information. Mr. Pepys, Dr. Johnson well knew, was one of Mrs. Montagu's steadiest ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... to. 'Catherine was fifteen, not a bit like a child. You used to see her everywhere with her father. To my mind he was always exciting her brain too much, but he was a man you could not say a word to. I don't care what William says about his being like Wordsworth; he just gave you the blues ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... low-necked woollen bags, of soldiers in uniform, of bold-eyed, scantily-clad children, and of dyed sheep and goats, that the car had to pass at a walk. Nevill bought a good deal of Kabyle jewellery, necklaces and long earrings, or boxes enamelled in crude greens and reds, blues and yellows. Not that he had not already more than he knew what to do with; but he could not resist the handsome unveiled girls, the wretched old women, or pretty, half-naked children who offered the work of the neighbouring hill villages, or ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... girl, with your theories of colour," said Mrs. Beecham. "In my time, fair girls wore greens and blues, and dark girls wore reds and yellows. It was quite simple. Have a white tarlatan, then; every girl looks ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... a doll's garden, with an imitation stalactite grotto, and groups of miniature statues among box-tree animals, its door is always open to welcome visitors and allure them. Within, vague splashes of color against a dim background; blues that mean old Delft; yellow that means ancient brass; and all gleaming in the dusk with the strange values ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... perhaps, ample recompense. As for the Americans, they follow individual tastes, as we learned later. Some of them, with an eye to color, salute the sun in the red trousers and black tunic of the artilleryman. Others choose more sober shades, various French blues, with the thin orange aviation stripe running down the seams of the trousers. All this in reference to the dress uniform. At the camp most of the men wear leathers, or a combination of leathers and the gray-blue uniform of the French poilu, which is issued ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... Little cones stud its surface, each of which is the home of a living, star-like flower, a flower which has the power of displaying and withdrawing itself, and of waving its fringed rays. Each flower is self-coloured, and may represent a group of animals. There are blues of various depths and shades from cobalt to lavender, reds, orange and pinks, greens, browns and greys, each springing from a separate receptacle. All are alike in shape—viewed vertically, many-rayed stars; horizontally, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... are named after them, partly because human emotions must have something to attach themselves to, they are said to be developing a fierce local patriotism, and West Bromwich is said to hate Aston as the Blues hated the Greens in the Byzantine theatre. In London, largely under the influence of the Birmingham instance, twenty-nine new boroughs were created in 1899, with names—at least in the case of the City of Westminster—deliberately selected in order to revive half-forgotten emotional associations. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... too lively and vigorous to remain clouded for long. By the time the red disk of the sun had crept above the eastern horizon he had shaken off his fit of the blues. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... unusual number, while for common work even eight may be sawn at one time, and the various sheets are pinned together only with a stiff backing of common veneer of good thickness to steady the work. Dye woods are used as far as possible, and holly stained to the required colour serves for greens and blues and a few other tints. Pearl is always cut in one thickness, and is glued down on a backing of wood ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson

... the philibegs, And skyrin tartan trews, man; When in the teeth they dar'd our Whigs, And covenant True-blues, man: In lines extended lang and large, When baiginets o'erpower'd the targe, And thousands hasten'd to the charge; Wi' Highland wrath they frae the sheath Drew blades o' death, till, out o' breath, They fled like frighted dows, man! La, la, la, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... rose in the east and set in the west, because the sun neither rises nor sets, the earth simply turns on its axis, and we know, because we are Pure(i)tans." The spokesman of the party was named (I think I remember his name because it always gave me the blues when I heard it) Horrors Greeley; and another person by the name of Charles Sumner, said there ain't any north or south, east or west, and you shan't say so, either. Now, the other people who lived in the ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... answered Clifford. "I had an attack of the blues, but my cousin hath charmed them away. We were trying ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... colours run together and intermix, outlines disappear, blues and reds and yellows become russets or browns, the lamps or candles of an illumination spread into an unmeaning glare, or dissolve into a milky way. He takes up an eye-glass, and the mist clears up; every image stands out distinct, and the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... the first glow of coming daylight on the summit of Ruapehu, and again, at the end of a long summer day when the smoke of many bush-fires was in the air, he had watched for an hour or more the delicate lilacs, the greens and blues, reds and golds, the shadows deepening beneath the buttresses, and the slow melting of the last warm glow into the cold steely ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... lady's-maid has the highest privileges; it is she who bathes Lady Theresa's eyes with eau-de-cologne after her ladyship's quarrel with the colonel; it is she who administers sal-volatile to Miss Fanny when Count Beaudesert, of the Blues, has jilted her. She has a hundred methods for the finding out of her mistress' secrets. She knows by the manner in which her victim jerks her head from under the hair-brush, or chafes at the gentlest administration of the comb, what hidden tortures are racking her breast—what ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... promised. She adored shopping, and this would be a labor of love. So she went off to dress for dinner, full of visions of bright pinks and blues and laces and ribbons that would have made Halcyone shrink if she ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... all to be provided for anyhow; and Jane, being very useful and handy at work, got a place when she was a little girl, and had no time for learning. Afterwards my father made a lucky hit, in getting my Lord Lansmere's custom after an election, in which he did a great deal for the Blues (for he was a famous electioneerer, my poor father). My Lady stood godmother to Nora; and then all my brothers, and two of my sisters, died off, and Father retired from business; and when he took Jane from service, she was so common-like that Mother could not help contrasting her with ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... fire imparted a rich pictorial effect to the interior, the one costume being of a canary tint, with bretelles and girdle of brown velvet, while Mrs. Briscoe's striking beauty was accentuated by the artistic blending of two blues. In the interval, while his attention was diverted from the scene without, a change had supervened there, and he experienced a sudden disquieting monition as he observed that the groom, who had been hovering in the road at some distance, had been ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... had you seen the philibegs, And skyrin tartan trews, man, When in the teeth they dared our Whigs, And Covenant TRUE-BLUES, man; In lines extended lang and large, When bayonets opposed the targe, And thousands hasten'd to the charge, Wi' Highland wrath, they frae the sheath Drew blades o' death, till, out o' breath, They fled like frighted ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... side was to follow along these smaller cracks where they made a crooked natural bridge across the chasm. Even Seppi's stout heart quailed a little as he gazed down into the depths of the huge rifts. The walls of ice gleamed with wonderful greens and blues, but he had no heart to admire the ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... spent the afternoon with me yesterday, and I felt suddenly that it wasn't for me to be stuck up about her—what am I too but the pampered female idler, taking good things without earning them? It made me shudder. Hence this fit of blues. The pampered, lazy, brainless animal—it is such a terrific sight when in human form. Rosalind talked about Nan, Pamela. In her horrible way—you know. Hinting that she isn't alone in Rome, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... greet his visitors, and ask them for the news, And said he was so lonesome that he always had the blues; He hadn't seen a paper for eighteen months, he said, And that had been in Japanese—a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... seemed fuller, the traffic was more dense, and the shops offered visions to please every sense. Wine shops were here, curio shops, shops all golden and tempting with cheeses and butter, and hat shops that foretold the spring in a glitter of blues and greens. He passed on, jostling the crowd good-humoredly, being jostled in the same spirit, hugging his freedom with ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... work of Lemoine, came with the use of G. papilio, pale lilac, blotched and overlaid with dull red. In many of its hybrids the primitive colors have separated, resulting in an attractive series of rich purple and heliotrope blues, quite new to the genus. True bright blues, free from red and purple tones, have not yet been obtained, but the blue kinds—issue of Papilio and the Lemoine varieties—are ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford

... read this, she cried. Things had gone wrong that morning, and an encouraging word would have helped her. The somber tone of her brother's communication threw her into a fit of the blues from which, for the first time, she saw her surroundings in a depressing and distasteful light. And yet he had written as he did with the kindest ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... interesting in these directions, to the one with his mind's eye open to such things, and I am resolved, come what will, that I will keep the upper hand of my spirit, that it shall do as I direct, and not harbor "blues" nor discouragement. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... about that," said Howard; "do make that plain to Guthrie. I am out of sorts, I think; one gets bothered, you know—what is called the blues." ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... else in proportion, I've a notion. He loves Sal, the worst kind; and if she gets up there, she'll think she has got to Palestine (Paradise); ain't she a screamer? I were thinking of Sal myself, for I feel lonesome, and when I am thrown into my store promiscuous alone, I can tell you I have the blues, the worst kind, no mistake—I can tell you that. I always feel a kind o' queer when I sees Sal, but when I meet any of the other gals I am as calm and cool as the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... the night you burn, Manhattan, In a vesture of gold— Span of innumerable arcs, Flaring and multiplying— Gold at the uttermost circles fading Into the tenderest hint of jade, Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues, Robing the far-flung offices, Scintillant-storied, forking flame, Or soaring to luminous ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... impulsively. "I was having one of my silly fits of blues. I am glad you came in. You always make ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... sight of Nunsmere more than the next Saturday afternoon when the trap turned off the highroad and the common came into view. The pearls and faint blues of the sky, the tender mist softening the russet of the autumn trees, the gray tower of the little church, the red roofs of the cottages dreaming in their old-world gardens, the quiet green of the common with the children far off at play and the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... it Sunday or on some holiday. It is not a question of mirth so much as of cheerfulness; not alone that which accompanies laughter, but serenity,—a calm, sweet soul-contentment and inward peace. Are there not multitudes of people who have the "blues," who yet wish well to their neighbors? They would say kind words and make the world happier—but they "haven't the time." To lead them to look on the sunny side of things, and to take a little time ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden

... French Royal Marine wore red breeches, and, if by chance a democrat were given a commission, he had to appear in blue small-clothes throughout his entire career. Very few of the "Blues" ever came to be an Admiral, for the odds ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... They seem to have melted away. There's never a one comes near me. I could do without their money or their help, somehow, but it's damned hard to lie here for ever and have not one of 'em drop in just now and then for a bit of a talk and a cheering word. That's what gives me the blues! I always was fond of company; I hated being alone, and it's like hell to lie here day after day and see no one but a cross landlady and a miserable servant girl. Lately, I can't bear to be alone with Freddy. He's so damned like his ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... itself; for it needs no relief from other flowers, its own soft leaves afford background enough, and though the white variety rarely occurs, yet the varying tints of blue upon the same stalk are a perpetual gratification to the eye. I know not why shaded blues should be so beautiful in flowers, and yet avoided as distasteful in ladies' fancy-work; but it is a mystery like that which repudiates blue-and-green from all well-regulated costumes, while Nature yet evidently prefers it to any other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... consequently, no one could be more generally cheerful and contented. There is nothing so conducive to true, healthful cheerfulness, as the consciousness of time well-spent: there is no better cure for the dull spirit of French ENNUI, or the gloom of English BLUES, than regular, useful occupation, followed ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... No, Harold, thank you all the same. I know I'm dull, cheerless; you mustn't mind me, it is only a fit of the blues; it will wear off. One of these days I ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... got together a collection of bits of color of every shade and tint, in order to see what we could discover about visual sensations. Leaving aside the question of elements for the moment, we might first try to classify the bits of color. We could sort out a pile of reds, a pile of blues, a pile of browns, a pile of grays, etc., but the piles would shade off one into another. The salient fact about colors is the gradual transition from one to another. We can arrange them in series better than we can classify them. They ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... what "blues" meant, except to dye stocking yarn. She was sunny as a dandelion and gay as a bobolink. Her sweet good nature never failed through the long day's journey, and when night came she made a pot of tea at the campfire, roasted a row of apples, and broiled a partridge John shot by the wayside, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... paint-boxes in the world, you might suppose, and the brightest of goldy yellows, and the greenest of soft transparent greens, such as no paint-box ever did, nor ever will, possess; and over all the most azure of blues, flecked with floating masses of soft indescribable white, looking to Elsie like the foamy soapsuds at the top of the tub when mother had been having a rare wash, but to Duncan like lumps of something he had once tasted and ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... bad enough if a man feels called upon to act that way before 2 P.M. When he puts in an order for such after 6 in the evening—then indeed it is a case for tears. I would get the blues wondering whatever could ail adult humanity that it ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... satisfied after all with the colour-scheme," he said, glancing askance at Elma. "I fancy it's, perhaps, just a trifle too green. It looks all right, of course, out here in the open; but the question is, when it's hung in the Academy, surrounded by warm reds, and purples, and blues, won't it look by comparison much too ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... Vendean, "perhaps you have heard that my brother was captured near Bressure, and shot by the Blues?" ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... which are the prerogative of the poet,—Emma Lazarus was a poet. The beauty of the world,—what a rapture and intoxication it is, and how it bursts upon her in the very land of beauty, "where Dante and Petrarch trod!" A magic glow colours it all; no mere blues and greens anymore, but a splendor of purple and scarlet and emerald; "each tower, castle, and village shining like a jewel; the olive, the fig, and at your feet the roses, growing in mid-December." A day in Pisa seems like a week, so crowded is it with sensations ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... energetically, "I guess if ye goes on in that style ye'll turn into a riglar hiplecondrik—ain't that the word, Bounce? I heer'd the minister say as it was the wust kind o' the blues. What's your opinion ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... The uglier she is the praktischer she is. Oh," said Trudi, casting up her eyes, "how terrible, how tragic, to be an ugly woman!" Then, bringing her gaze down again to Anna's face, she added, "My flat in Hanover is all pinks and blues—the most becoming rooms you can imagine. I look ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... country inns with their wooden benches and deal tables spread under the shade of the trees; parties of pedestrians, members of Alpine clubs, taking their vacations by tramping through this wonderful district; the sloping hills over and around which the road winds; the blues and greens and shadows of the more distant mountains, all combine to make this road from Salzburg to the salt mines one of the most interesting to be found ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... blues, sat at the extreme end of the porch, pretending to read the morning paper which had come in that afternoon's rural mail. Jane and Ann were near by, and Jane was noticeably quiet. Bob, having in mind his tobacco crop, called ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... the Chassaigne photographs are not nearly as fine as those of Kurz, of New York. These latter are obtained by making three negatives of a subject—one which photographs only the yellows, one the reds, and the third the blues in a picture. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... their height of autumnal glory, and when—as though to add still more to the wonderful scene—three inches of clinging snow having fallen during the night, glittered under the brilliant morning sun. Truly it was a glory to behold—a perfect panorama of rioting greens, yellows, browns, blues, reds, grays, crimsons, purples, in fact, every colour which an artist's palette could carry; and through it all was ever woven a mass of lace-like brilliant white that dazzled the eyes of the beholder. Only once in fifty years have I beheld a scene ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... picture. Strains of music or bursts of applause, float out on the night air from the places of amusement, not all of which are reputable. The street is full of all kinds of people, all of whom seem to be in high spirits, for Broadway is a sure cure for the "blues." One feature mars the scene. At every step, almost, one passes women and girls, and even mere children, seeking for company, and soliciting passers by with their looks and manner, and sometimes by open words. The police do not allow ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra the modern fox-trot has been evolved from a primitive negro dance called "The Blues." The theory that the Blues are the logical outcome of a primitive negro dance called the fox-trot is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various

... tailor, "something in a dark blue, perhaps." He says it with all the gusto of a new idea, as if the thought of dark blue had sprung up as an inspiration. "Mr. Jennings" (this is his assistant), "kindly take down some of those dark blues. ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock

... instil the mood the artist desires without the other. Piero di Cosimo and Pintoricchio can place delightful nymphs and fairy princesses in idyllic scenes, and they stir no emotion in us beyond an observant pleasure, a detached amusement; but Giorgione's gloomy blues, his figures shining through the warm dusk of a summer evening, waken we hardly know what of vague ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... contests on fair terms, dispensed with them entirely. He trained dogs to draw chariots and introduced them in place of horses. When this was done, the wearers of the white and of the red immediately entered their chariots: but, as the Greens and the Blues would not even then participate, Nero at his own cost gave the prizes to the horses, and the regular program of the circus was ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... leading members of the opposition, who as earnestly desired him to adopt this line of conduct, as the king and his ministers entreated him not to resign, he gave up everything except his regiment—the Blues. The ordnance was then offered to General Conway, who refused to accept any of "Lord Granby's spoils," and the fragment of the ministry still left in office had to brave the storm of opposition ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... thought you needed something to kinder knock the blues that you brought back with you tonight—'tain't much fun to have 'em, is it? Sometimes I get 'em myself, so I know what they're like. But now to be honest, and not fool no more, didn't you ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey

... German scrap-iron rushed in great stupid bundles, crushing everything. The masterpieces, which no one will ever reproduce, have scattered their fragments on the flagstones, forever impossible to separate, the golds, the reds, the blues, whose secret is lost. Ended, the rainbow transparencies, ended, the graceful, naive attitudes of all these holy people, with their pale little ecstatic faces; the thousands of precious fragments of these stained glass windows which, in the course of centuries, had little by little ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... vapoury hills; but as these, drawing nearer, turned green, there suddenly opened magnificent chasms between them on both sides—mountain-gates revealing league-long wondrous vistas of peaks and cliffs and capes of a hundred blues, ranging away from velvety indigo into far tones of exquisite and spectral delicacy. A tinted haze made dreamy all remotenesses, an veiled with illusions of colour the rugged ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... know ye what an era of confusion hath begun. I myself shall flee from Cambridge, sick at heart and sorely vexed, Ere I see my University disestablished and unsexed.'" Thus she spake, and I endeavoured to console the weeping Muse: "Dry your tears, beloved Clio, drive away this fit of blues. Cease your soul with gloomy fancies and forebodings to perplex; You are doing gross injustice to the merits of your sex. Know you not that things are changing, that the Earth regains her youth, Since Philosophers have brought to light the one primeval ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... buffalo steak now first-rate," said Dave, smacking his lips. "It would touch the spot and chase away the blues." ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer

... is so fond of singing to me sometimes, when she thinks I've got the blues. As if I ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... beyond the vision of the nations in the vast forests of the north. The story of this Homeric struggle, however, with its romantic episodes and opposing heroes—Cuthbert Grant, Colin Robertson, Duncan Cameron, and the rest—the battle of Greys against Blues, in which the chiefs of the north, issuing with their wild bois brules from the stronghold of Fort William,[43] raided and harried the despised "old countrymen," the "Pork-eaters," the "Workers in gardens," or suffered reprisals from these underestimated ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... has three blues: the blue of morning, the blue of midday, and the blue of evening. But the blue of morning is the happiest: the happiest thing in colour—sparkling, vague, newborn—the blue of heaven ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... Washington on sick-leave, and then a winter of keen delight, a social campaign in which he won fame, honors, friends at court, and a transfer to the artillery, and then, joining his new regiment, he plunged with eagerness into the gayeties of city life. The blues were left behind with the cold facings of his former corps, and hope, life, duty, were all blended in hues as roseate as his new straps were red. It wasn't a month before all the best fellows in the batteries swore by Sam Waring and all the others at him, so that where there ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... their hands. The whole yellow regiment, the finest of all that distinguished themselves in this dreadful day, lay dead on the field, covering the ground almost in the same excellent order which, when alive, they maintained with such unyielding courage. The same fate befel another regiment of Blues, which Count Piccolomini attacked with the imperial cavalry, and cut down after a desperate contest. Seven times did this intrepid general renew the attack; seven horses were shot under him, and he himself was pierced with six musket balls; yet he would not leave the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... BLUES.—A dark-bluish appearance, accompanying arrested development, generally due to unfavorable weather, unsuitable soil or insects at the root. Cabbage and cauliflower plants which are set too early in the spring, ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier

... your mistress? Abandoned to dark, profound and incurable ennui, I yawn my life away, as some one said, I yawn it away even to the point of dislocating my jaw. The days seem dull to me, people stupid, books insipid, while fools seem idiots and witty people fools. It is to have the blues, if you will, or rather to have the grays, to hate colorless objects, to be weary of the commonplace, to thirst for the impossible. A thirst that cannot be allayed, let me add. The pure, fresh spring that should slake my thirst has ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... back, his knees clasped between interlacing fingers, Benton sat on the stone sea-wall and affected to whistle up a lightness of heart. Near at hand sprawled a picturesque city, its houses tinted in pea-greens, pinks and soft blues, or as white and decorative as though fashioned in ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... me believe," answered Browne, "that the sun will invariably shine when I chance to be in good spirits, and that a thunder-storm would be the natural consequence of my having a fit of the blues?" ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... transition from Decorated to the Perpendicular style, are uninterrupted by any chancel arch, and with the clerestory windows sweep from end to end of the building. The east window is filled with stained glass of the richest tints, the blues and greens being particularly striking. This glass has a history. It was made at Gouda in Holland, and was a present from the magistrates of Dort to Henry VIII. for the chapel of Whitehall Palace. The King, however, gave it to Waltham Abbey (doubtless ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... tawdry splendours of what the vulgar world calls virtues. It requires an educated eye to see the harmony of the sober colouring of some great painter. A child, a clown, a vulgar person—and there are such in all ranks—will prefer flaring reds and blues and yellows heaped together in staring contrast. A thrush or a blackbird is but a soberly clad creature by the side of macaws and paroquets; but the one has a song and the others have only a screech. The gentle virtues are the truly Christian virtues—patience ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... one must be content to learn," he said. "A modern fish wants a modern shell, my dear Anne. I may have been foolish to forget it. The atmosphere that you enjoy gives Adelaide the blues. Come, I will quote Scripture. 'New wine must ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... Scarlet, clapping the new man on the back. "He will keep Friar Tuck and Much the miller's son from having the blues." ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... must have had great dignity; but in Blair's childhood its day was over. Above the dingy white wainscoting the landscape paper his grandfather had brought from France in the thirties had faded into a blur of blues and buffs. The floor was uncarpeted save for a Persian rug, whose colors had long since dulled to an even grime. At one end of the room was Mrs. Maitland's desk; at the other, filing cases, and two smaller desks where clerks worked at ledgers or drafting. The four French windows were ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... of her now, fresh, smiling, robust, with his look of suddenly arrested energy, and the dark red of his hair, which was still moist from his bath, striking a vivid note against the cool grays and blues of the background. The sunshine, falling through the open window, warmed the ruddy tan of his face, and made his eyes like pools of clear light in which the jubilant spirit of the spring was reflected. "After all, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... from the Blues," several of them said confidently. "It does not matter a bit. They will only have time to fire one volley, in these lanes of ours, and then we shall be among them; and a pike or pitchfork are just as good, at close ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... good enough for an old timer like me. Don't tell me you have the blues—your face isn't ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... more painful mood to-night," responded Liddy, glad to talk about anything. "You have the worst case of blues I ever saw;" and then she added, after a pause, and in a low voice: "It makes me ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... interesting example of this kind of simulation in Java. While pursuing a large butterfly through the jungle, he was stopped by a dense bush, on a leaf of which he observed one of the skipper butterflies sitting on a bird's dropping. "I had often," he says, "observed small Blues at rest on similar spots on the ground, and have wondered what such a refined and beautiful family as the Lycaenidae could find to enjoy, in food apparently so incongruous for a butterfly. I approached with gentle steps, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... hospital were brilliantly lighted up, and through them floated the strains of a piano and occasional bursts of laughter. Number One Ward, however, was quite empty except for my friend, Private McPhee, stalking majestically up and down as if on sentry go, wearing a "fit of the blues" several sizes too large for him and an expression which would, I believe, be described by kailyard ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various

... the water helps to set black. A tablespoonful of spirits of turpentine to a gallon of water sets most blues, and alum is very efficacious in setting green. Black or very dark calicoes should be stiffened with gum arabic—five cents' worth is enough for a dress. If, however, starch is used, the garment should be turned wrong ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... this great, calm city, with its vaporous browns and slaty blues, and its characteristic acrid smell of gasoline fumes, was another Paris, a terrible Paris, which I was that night to see. Early in the afternoon a dull haze of leaden clouds rose in the southwest. It ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... now in great force at Saumur, under Generals Coustard and Quetineau, had sent small parties of soldiers into the town of Vihiers and Doue, the inhabitants of which were mostly republican. Before the arrival of M. de Larochejaquelin, the blues, as the republican troops were called by the Vendeans, had been driven out of Vihiers by a party of royalists under the direction of Stofflet, who had raised himself to distinction soon after the commencement of the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... with or from any one I cared for." Gladys was eager for the conversation to turn from the general to the particular. She went on, forcing her voice to hide her interest: "And you, why don't you cure your blues?" ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... Mrs. Lynde's house she found that lady gone. Nothing daunted, Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch she found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in whites and blues and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this stranger in their midst, with her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea little girls had already heard queer stories about Anne. Mrs. Lynde said she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables, said she talked all the ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... my brother and I were riding along the road at about the same place, and we met a very miserable-looking specimen of humanity, driving a poor limping horse to a rickety wagon in which were some pieces of driftwood. My brother was in a "spell of the blues" at this time, and he remarked that he was coming to just that condition as fast as he could. The image and memory of this incident also came into consciousness as if it had been waiting repressed just under ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... the Arctic current. Some of them were small and insignificant. Others towered in massive majesty and grandeur high above the sea, miniature mountains of ice. Some were of solid white, but the greater part of them reflected marvelous blues and greens and were ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace



Words linked to "Blues" :   folksong, black music, vapours, boogie-woogie, blue note, folk ballad, folk song, African-American music, depression, boogie



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com