"Ebony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apprehended no danger. The head man of the village had not yet appeared, and until he came this wild license of behaviour would continue. At last the natives became silent and parted to the right and left as Tahori, the head man, his fat body shining with coconut oil, and carrying an ebony-wood club in his hand, stood in front of the white man and eyed him up and down. The scrutiny seemed satisfactory. He stretched out his huge, naked arm, and shook Probyn's hand, uttering his one word of Samoan—"TALOFA!" [Lit., "My love to you", ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... Brahmins are subject to us. The palace in which our Super-eminency resides, is built after the pattern of the castle built by the Apostle Thomas for the Indian king Gundoforus. Ceilings, joists, and architrave are of Sethym wood, the roof of ebony, which can never catch fire. Over the gable of the palace are, at the extremities, two golden apples, in each of which are two carbuncles, so that the gold may shine by day, and the carbuncles by night. The greater gates of the palace are of sardius, with ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... treated wrongly, that the artery was severed, etc., and operated on him. The operation itself was successful, but as regards other matters, it is touch and go with him, his arm is black up to a little above the elbow, in places it is ebony, and, I understand, amputation, if the worse comes to the worst, is almost out of the question. So, with others, I go in to keep him cheered up, and chaff him over the champagne and other luxuries he is on, suggesting what ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... conducting. With my hands I indicated the approximate length and thickness of a medium-sized wooden rod, such as our choir-attendant was in the habit of supplying, freshly covered with white paper. He sighed, and asked if I thought it possible to procure him by to-morrow a baton of black ebony, whose very respectable length and thickness he indicated by a gesture, and on each end of which a fairly large knob of ivory was to be affixed. I promised to have one prepared for the next rehearsal, which should at least be similar in appearance to what he desired, and another of the specified ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... many barbarous nations that he would never reach his father's. It was a year's journey from the city where he was to any country inhabited only by Mussulmans; the quickest passage for him would be to go to the Isle of Ebony, whence he might easily transport himself to the Isles of the Children of Khaledan: a ship sailed from the port every year to Ebony, and he might take that opportunity of returning to those islands. 'The ship departed,' said the gardener, 'but a few days ago: if you had come a little ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... tie round their heads like a turban, and Syahi the ink with which they draw a black line on their foreheads, though this is in fact usually made with charcoal. They carry a wallet in which these articles are kept, and also the two small ebony sticks which they strike against each other as an accompaniment to their begging-songs. The larger stick is dedicated to Nanak and the smaller to the Goddess Kali. They are most importunate beggars, and say that the privilege of levying a pice (farthing) ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... In this statue, Phidias essayed to embody the Homeric ideal of the supreme divinity of the people of Greece sitting on his throne as a monarch, and in an attitude of majestic repose. The throne, made of cedar-wood, was covered with plates of gold, and enriched with ivory, ebony, and precious stones. It rested on a platform twelve feet high, made of costly marble and carved with the images of the gods who formed the council of Zeus on Olympus. The feet of the god rested on a footstool supported by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... soon came in sight of tall cliffs which overlooked the sea, and which formed a natural harbour, wherein lay a vessel richly beseen. Its sails were of spun silk, and each plank and mast was fashioned of ebony. Dismounting, Gugemar made his way to the shore, and with much labour climbed upon the ship. Neither mariner nor merchant was therein. A large pavilion of silk covered part of the deck, and within this was a rich bed, the work of the cunning artificers of the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Catania, nestling into cracks and ridges of the stiffened flood, are marvellously brilliant with spurge and fennel and valerian. It is impossible to form a true conception of flower-brightness till one has seen these golden and crimson tints upon their ground of ebony, or to realise the blueness of the Mediterranean except in contrast with the lava where it breaks into the sea. Copses of frail oak and ash, undergrown with ferns of every sort; cactus-hedges, orange-trees grafted ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Maru, Tanenashi. Most all bear heavily, in fact usually overbear. They stand our dry weather better than does the native persimmon. The very large fruit usually in colors of yellow and red attract much attention from visitors who think they are oranges. The persimmon belongs to the ebony family. The fruit contains as high as 40% sugar and in the Orient is a national dish. We propagate them by ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... upon a cloak of woven camel-hair amid luxuriating fern and samphire, on the very edge of the shelf of cliff to which he had climbed. On either side of him squatted a negro from the Sus both naked of all save white loin-cloths, their muscular bodies glistening like ebony in the dazzling sunshine of mid-May. They wielded crude fans fashioned from the yellowing leaves of date palms, and their duty was to wave these gently to and fro above their lord's head, to give him air and to drive ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... her wonder. He explained most patiently a great compass set on a tripod in one corner. After she had roamed and gazed to her heart's content, he opened the locked cabinets, and let her take miniature ebony elephants from Siam into her hands. He had her look through a reading glass at intricate ivory carvings, so tiny, it did not seem that human fingers could ever have wrought them. There were boxes of sandalwood and ugly heathen ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... Gripping an ebony handle, he tugged upward. The huge metal door oiled slowly back. "Time," said Cydwick Ohms simply, gesturing toward the gray ...
— Of Time and Texas • William F. Nolan
... ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in various stations about—and there was the couch, too—bridal couch—of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture. But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... cause of the violent hatred of the Society for our family. Thank Heaven, these papers have been placed in safety, and if my last will is executed, will be found marked A. M.C. D. G., in the ebony casket in the Hall of Mourning, in the house ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... manner, calmly reclines on the quarter-deck of the schooner, toying lightly ever and anon with the luscious fruits of the vicinity, held in baskets of solid gold by Nubian slaves? or at intervals, with daring grace, guides an ebony velocipede over the polished black walnut decks, and in and out the intricacies of the rigging. Who is it? well may be asked. What name is it that blanches with terror the cheeks of the Patagonian navy? Who but the Pirate Prodigy—the relentless Boy Scourer of ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... Glory had that moment left the room. The door of a little ebony cabinet stood half open and he could see inside. Its lower shelves were full of shoes and little dainty slippers, some of them of leather, some of satin, some black, some red, some white. They touched him with an indescribable tenderness and he turned his eyes away. Under the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... expression, had something of the character of a woman's. One detail alone gave it or rather would give it at certain moments a touch of singular firmness. Beneath the beautiful fair hair waving on his brow and temples, as was the fashion at that period, eyebrows, eyes and lashes were black as ebony. The rest of the face was, as we have said, almost feminine. There were two little ears of which only the tips could be seen beneath the tufts of hair to which the Incroyables of the day had given the name of "dog's-ears"; a straight, perfectly proportioned ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... have not found one-tenth of all their works; and then, let any lover of art go to Florence and see Michael Angelo's Penseroso, or to the Cathedral of Mainz, and behold the Virgin by Albert Durer, who has created a living woman out of ebony, under her threefold drapery, with the most flowing, the softest hair that ever a waiting-maid combed through; let all the ignorant flock thither, and they will acknowledge that genius can give mind to drapery, to armor, to a robe, and fill it with a body, just as a man leaves the stamp of his ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... daughter's meeting with the sheriff's officer, he was sitting up in his carved ebony bedstead. A black skull-cap was drawn over his little head, and the long, white hair fell to his shoulders, where it curled up at the ends. His sunken eyes gleamed like a hawk's, and his dry, parchment skin was stretched tightly over the prominent bones. His nose ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... water, ever tranquil and ever flowing. Then, in the interior of the solid earth, or perhaps on the other side of its plane—under world, as it was well termed—is the realm of Hades or Pluto, the region of Night. From the midst of his dominion, that divinity, crowned with a diadem of ebony, and seated on a throne framed out of massive darkness, looks into the infinite abyss beyond, invisible himself to mortal eyes, but made known by the nocturnal thunder which is his weapon. The under world is also the realm to which spirits retire after death. At its portals, beneath ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... unburdened of their heavy freight of massive Tantes and comely daughters, followed by swarms of children of all sizes, dressed in all manner of print and moleskin, who are taken care of by Hottentot, Kaffer, and half-caste nurses, whose many-shaded complexions, ranging from light yellow up to ebony black, add variety ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... I thought to myself, if the cadet here is like to the thing I used to be at the U. S. N. A. that won't keep him in. I went through a lot of yards till I was ushered into a room finished in black ebony and was greeted very warmly by the Director. We took seats on a raised platform—Chinese style and pretty soon an interpreter came, one of the Chinese professors, who was educated abroad, and we talked and drank tea. He said I had done well, that he had the authority of the Viceroy ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... varied phrases of meaning, according to the attitude of the speaker, has been one of the greatest barriers to the progress of the Negro, especially of the women and girls. It has colored everything they have to do. Their place, like the ebony of their skin, is a dark place. In the home, and in social life, "their place" is confined to colored society, colored schools and colored churches. Be it understood, I am not reflecting upon colored society, but am pointing out the limitations ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... floor there were some rather good and very effective Oriental rugs. The only flowers in the room were bright yellow tulips, grouped together in a mass on an oak table a long way from the fire. Opposite to the piano there was a large ebony crucifix mounted on a stand, and so placed that anyone seated at the piano faced it. The room was lit not strongly by oil lamps with shades. A few mysterious oil paintings, very dark in color, hung on the walls between the bookcases. Mrs. Mansfield could not discern their subjects. On ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... dollars. All of it lies there before him, his victories and his defeats, his millions come, and his millions going—going?—yes, all but gone. Yonder that deep gash in the sod at the left hides a woman's face—pale, wasted, dead on her pillow; and that clean black streak on the ebony cane—that is a tear, and in the tear is a girl's face and back of hers shimmers a boy's countenance. All of John Barclay's life and hopes and dreams and visions are spread out before him on the ground. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... activity, which has sprung up on the sandy bank within two or three years. Beyond, we swept by the mouth of the Black Creek, the water of which, probably from the color of the mud which forms the bed of its channel, has to the eye an ebony blackness, and reflects objects with all the distinctness of the kind of looking-glass called a black mirror. A few hours brought us to Picolata, lately a military station, but now a place ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... curtain, wrought in glittering black, were seven characters, apparently Chinese; before it, supported upon seven ebony pedestals, burned seven golden lamps; whilst, dotted about the black carpet, were seven gold-lacquered stools, each having a black cushion set before it. There was no sign of the marmoset; the incredible room of black and gold was quite ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... looked at his watch, which hung within a beautiful little ebony temple, supported by four Ionic columns. He then laid his hand on the golden locks of little Alice, whose head had sunk down upon the arm of ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ivory, gold, gems, precious stuffs, teak and cedar wood, Lebanon pine, apes, peacocks, sandal-wood, camel's hair, goat's hair, frankincense, pearl, dyes, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, Balm of Gilead, calamus, spikenard, corn, ebony, figs, fir, olives, olive-wood, wheat, amber, copper, lead, tin, and precious stones were the chief articles of exchange. A very little sufficed the poor; the rich were housed in palaces and panoplied ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... troops. Not above two hundred had the arms or accoutrements of soldiers; but there were dresses and weapons of every kind, leather, cloth, and linen; short jackets and long Scotch plaids, and every tint of colour in their faces, from the sallow European to the ebony African. Military honours were paid us by these ragged regiments, and we were conducted to the palace square, where Mr. Dance and Mr. Caumont dismounted, and I determined to await the issue of their conference, with my ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the landing-stage. Beneath them the Pool slept, a sheet of polished ebony, whispering to itself, lapping with small stealthy gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther bank tall warehouses reared square old-time heads, their uncompromising, rugged profile relieved here and there by tapering ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... it and at the head thereof rose a mansion towering from the dust and hanging from the necks of the clouds. Its whole length was of sixty cubits whereas its breadth was of twenty ells; its gate was of ebony inlaid with ivory and plated with plates of yellow brass while athwart the doorway hung a curtain of sendal and over it was a chandelier of gold fed with oil of 'Iraki violets which brightened all that quarter with its light. The King Harun al-Rashid and the Wazir and the Eunuch stood marvelling ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... were of black oak, with cushions of green velvet. A few valuable cabinet pictures, by the old masters, set in deep frames of ebony and gold, hung at wide distances upon the wall. There was the head of an ecclesiastic, cut from a large picture by Spagnoletti; a Venetian senator by Tintoretto; the Adoration of the Magi by Caravaggio. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of grip—this well-knit form erect and proud of bearing. Yes!—I am alive, though declared to be dead; alive in the fullness of manly force—and even sorrow has left few distinguishing marks upon me, save one. My hair, once ebony-black, is white as a wreath of Alpine snow, though its clustering curls ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... remained at home, would have just as good a claim to their share of the public funds as those who were serving at sea, in garrison, or in the field. The different materials used, such as stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, cypress-wood, and so forth, would require special artizans for each, such as carpenters, modellers, smiths, stone masons, dyers, melters and moulders of gold, and ivory painters, embroiderers, workers in relief; and also men to bring them to the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... manners of the fifteenth century. The long brown rafters of the ceiling, the deal table, the ashen chairs with the carved backs, the tin drinking-cups, the sideboard with its old-fashioned painted plates and dishes, the crucifix with the Saviour carved in box on an ebony cross, and the worm-eaten clock-case with its many weights and its porcelain dial, ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... bier, with a brocade cover. Boris could not imagine how any human being could sleep in such a catafalque. Under the baldachin hovered a gilded Cupid, spotted and faded, with his arrow aimed at the bed. In the corners stood carved cupboards, damascened with ebony and mother-of-pearl. Veroshka opened a press and put her little face inside, and a musty, dusty smell came from the shelves, laden with old-fashioned caftans and embroidered uniforms ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... war were too insignificant to detain a mind which was occupied in recording the scandal of club-rooms and the whispers of the back-stairs, and which was even capable of selecting and disposing chairs of ebony and shields ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... coast, in the rich tobacco-fields of Madura and Coimbatore, in the plantations of cinchona, pepper, cardamoms, and other spices on the slopes of the Nilgiri highlands, and in the splendid growths of teak, ebony, and sandalwood that clothe the Western Ghats. The population, which in some parts attains extraordinary density and lives almost exclusively on the fruits of the soil, is of the old Dravidian stock, industrious and frugal as in other parts of India, and of a placid and gentle ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... of sunlight falling through the door Signora Teresa, kneeling before the chair, had bowed her head, heavy with a twisted mass of ebony hair streaked with silver, into the palm of her hands. The black lace shawl she used to drape about her face had dropped to the ground by her side. The two girls had got up, hand-in-hand, in short ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... them like a piece of bark. Like a marine reptile he had even penetrated certain caves of the coast, drowsy and glacial lakes illuminated by mysterious openings where the atmosphere is black and the water transparent, where the swimmer has a bust of ebony and legs of crystal. In the course of these swimming expeditions he ate all the living beings he encountered fastened to the rocks by antennas and arms. The friction of the great, terrified fish that fled, bumping against him with the violence of a projectile, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of a dark and faded green, wrought to correspond with the tapestry, but by a more modern and less skilful hand. The large and heavy stuff-bottomed chairs, with black ebony backs, were embroidered after the same pattern, and a lofty mirror, over the antique chimney-piece, corresponded in its mounting with that on the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... watched the sainted Beatrice pass by; I have floated on the waters that once bore the barge of Cleopatra; I have stood where Caesar fell; I have heard the soft rustle of rich, rare robes in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, and I have heard the teeth-necklaces rattle around the ebony throats of the belles of Tongataboo; I have panted beneath the sun's fierce rays in India, and frozen under the icy blasts of Greenland; I have mingled with the teeming hordes of old Cathay, and, deep in the great pine forests of the Western World, I have lain, wrapped ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... gorgeous East in fee in the year of grace 1268. In that year traders in great stone counting-houses, lapped by the waters of the canals, were checking, book in hand, their sacks of cloves, mace and nutmegs, cinnamon and ginger from the Indies, ebony chessmen from Indo China, ambergris from Madagascar, and musk from Tibet. In that year the dealers in jewels were setting prices upon diamonds from Golconda, rubies and lapis lazuli from Badakhshan, and pearls from the fisheries of Ceylon; and the silk merchants ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... from that of the author of "Richard Feverel," who is said to have written that novel on a diet of oatmeal and cold water, to that of the luxurious author whose seances with the Muses are decorously conducted in irreproachable interiors, with much garnishing, old rose and ivory, ebony carvings, and inlaid desks, at which the marvelous being who now and then condescends to "dictate" a "best seller," is apt to be surprised by a local photographer. But as a noted educator defined a University as "a log,—with ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... sat at an immense ebony flat-topped desk. The room was furnished like his mind, that is to say, sparsely, and without any southern exposure. A peculiarly terrifying feature of the scene was that the top of the desk was completely bare, not a single paper lay on it. Remembering ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... the end held in the hand to the point. Batons of this kind can be manufactured easily at any ordinary planing mill where there is a lathe. The kinds sold at stores are usually altogether too thick and too heavy. If at any time some adulating chorus or choir should present the conductor with an ebony baton with silver mountings, he must not feel that courtesy demands that it should be used in conducting. The proper thing to do with such an instrument is to tie a ribbon around one end and hang it on the wall ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... went up to my rooms. I was surprised to see a man seated in an easy chair, with his back towards us, reading a newspaper. He rose. It was the Count de St. Alyre, his gold spectacles on his nose; his black wig, in oily curls, lying close to his narrow head, and showing like carved ebony over a repulsive visage of boxwood. His black muffler had been pulled down. His. right arm was in a sling. I don't know whether there was anything unusual in his countenance that day, or whether it was but the effect of prejudice arising from all I had heard in ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... five and six o'clock, made his coffee, and then went through his devotions, a black ebony crucifix, with the figure of our Lord in brass, on the table before him. Wherever he went he had this carried with him. [Footnote: This particular crucifix, however, was only used by Mr. Hope-Scott after his first wife's death. It was the one which she held in her hands when dying.] His ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... waving at him her ebony crook, "do not run away, young gentleman. I see that you admire my garden. Pray step inside and look more ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... detaining D'Artagnan's envoy, placed in the hands of that messenger a letter from himself, and a small coffer of ebony inlaid with gold, not very important in appearance, but which, without doubt, was very heavy, as a guard of five men was given to the messenger, to assist him in carrying it. These people arrived before the place ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... — N. blackness &c. adj.; darkness &c. (want of light). 421; swartliness[obs3], lividity, dark color, tone, color; chiaroscuro &c. 420. nigrification[obs3], infuscation[obs3]. jet, ink, ebony, coal pitch, soot, charcoal, sloe, smut, raven, crow. [derogatory terms for black-skinned people] negro, blackamoor, man of color, nigger, darkie, Ethiop, black; buck, nigger [U. S.]; coon [U. S.], sambo. [Pigments] lampblack, ivory black, blueblack; writing ink, printing ink, printer's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of the heavy beams in the ceiling. The furnishings were in keeping, but dust obscured the mirror-like surface of the mahogany tables, the heavy draperies were in need of renovation, while a housewife would have viewed with despair the condition of brass and ebony inlaid cabinets, ancient tapestries, and pictures, well-nigh defaced, but worthy, even in their faded aspect, of the brush of Sir Godfrey Kneller, Benjamin ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... tea-drinking people had disappeared. Many of the crowding chairs had been taken away from the little tables and pushed back against the irregular wall of the house. The floor was being slowly inlaid with strips of shadow-ebony and moon-silver. Even the perfume of the flowers seemed changed. Those which had some quality of mystery and sensuous sadness in their scent ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... (descendants of the slaves of the French times); then French; then English. There was an American, but he is dead or mislaid. The mongrels are the result of all kinds of mixtures; black and white, mulatto and white, quadroon and white, octoroon and white. And so there is every shade of complexion; ebony, old mahogany, horsechestnut, sorrel, molasses-candy, clouded amber, clear amber, old-ivory white, new-ivory white, fish-belly white—this latter the leprous complexion frequent with the Anglo-Saxon long ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... taken the day after the execution. Many other interesting portraits grace the walls of this room. But by far the finest apartment in the building is the Drawing-room, with a lofty ceiling, and furnished with antique ebony furniture. After passing through the Library, with its twenty thousand volumes, we found ourselves in the Study, and I sat down in the same chair where once sat the Poet; while before me was the table upon which was written the "Lady of the Lake," "Waverley," and ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... sea, she walked always close to the wall, and looked always down to the sea. Within a short time, two or three minutes, she came in sight of the lakelike inlet, a miniature fiord which lay at the feet of the woods where hid the Casa delle Sirene. The water here looked black like ebony. She stared down at it and saw a boat lying on the shore. Then she gazed for a moment at the trees opposite from which always, till to-night, had shone the lamp which she and Maurice had seen from the terrace. All was dark. The thickly growing trees did not ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the boats together and put off into the slow current. A haggard, eerie fragment of moon slinked westward. Stars glinted in the flawless chilly blue. The surface of the river was like polished ebony—a dream-path wrought of gloom and gleam. The banks were lines of dusk, except where some lone cottonwood loomed skyward like a giant ghost clothed with a mantle that glistered and darkled in the ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... to ladies of his acquaintance on their birthdays, bought cups, stands for glasses, studs, ties, walking-sticks, scents, cigarette-holders, pipes, lap-dogs, parrots, Japanese bric-a-brac, antiques; he had silk nightshirts, and a bedstead made of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. His dressing-gown was a genuine Bokhara, and everything was to correspond; and on all this there went every day, as he himself expressed, "a ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... were a number of grotesque Chinese idols. The floor was jet black and polished like ebony. Several tiger-skin rugs were strewn about it. But, dominating the strange place, in the center of the floor stood an ivory pedestal, supporting a golden dragon of exquisite workmanship; and before it, as before a shrine, an enormous Chinese vase ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... which they had penetrated fled away,—not indeed entirely, but forsaking the bright spot thus created in the wilderness, it encircled the camp as with a wall of ebony. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... haberdasher's, I 'spose.' The lady, however, coaxes him to go in; for although she has lost no friends, she longs to see the 'improvements in mourning,' which she can do by 'cheapening a few articles, and buying a penny-worth of black pins.' The worthy pair enter, take an ebony chair at the counter, while a clerk in a suit of sables addresses the lady, and in sepulchral tones inquires if he 'can have the melancholy pleasure of serving her.' 'How deep would you choose to go, Ma'am? Do you wish to be very poignant? We have a very extensive assortment of family and complimentary ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the storm raged, lifting them only to breathe at intervals. This creature was six feet long from the tip of its round, {33} cat-shaped nose to the end of its stumpy, beaver-shaped tail, with fur the colour of ebony on the surface, soft seal-colour and grey below, and deep as sable. Quite unconscious of the worth of the fur, the castaway sailors fell on these visitors to the kelp-beds and clubbed right and left, for skins to protect their nakedness from ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... then over my eyes. Then I held them over my mouth. Stuart thought it wonderfully smart of me, and so did Sim, when he found that it was a trick that Stuart's grandfather had taught me. The old man had an ebony paper-weight on his library table, which he called "the three wise monkeys of Japan." They were carved sitting back to back. The first one had its paws folded over its eyes in token that it must never see more than it ought to see, the second covered its ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... side by side on couches in the vestibule, which was a lofty chamber, panelled in ivory and ebony, with inset opals of enormous size and a ceiling of dull silver. The Duchess was a short, spare, grey-haired and rather homely-looking woman in a black demi-toilette with priceless old lace. Lady Muscombe was about twenty-six, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... the background stood the palace, built of yellow mottled Numidian marble, broad courses supporting its four terraced stories. With its large, straight, ebony staircase, bearing the prow of a vanquished galley at the corners of every step, its red doors quartered with black crosses, its brass gratings protecting it from scorpions below, and its trellises of gilded rods closing the apertures above, it seemed to the soldiers in its haughty opulence ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... like a castle. Here a happy-faced Italian women exhibited trays of uncut stones, semi-precious ones, explained Mr. Bartlett, and strings of beads, coral, pearl, flat turquoise, topaz, and amethysts. There were bits of old porcelain, crystal cups, and oriental embroideries, and little carved gods on ebony pedestals. The place reminded Suzanna of Drusilla's historic old pawn shop ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... suppose he understood anything, or ever could understand anything. But if he meets an Abolitionist a minute after, his black face laughs all over, and his roguish eyes twinkle like diamonds, while he recounts how he 'come it' over the Southern gentleman. That bright soul of his is a jewel set in ebony." ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... a probationer, and is admitted to the "degree" of a probationer at a special service. The year of probation having come to an end, she is again presented to the bishop, and is set apart as a deaconess by the laying on of hands. This time the habit is changed from gray to blue, and a black ebony cross, with one of gold inlaid, is hung ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... fallen in pleasant places. She was young and healthy, and, in the eyes of her friends, beautiful. Still, the startling pallor of her face was in vivid contrast with the dead black dress she wore, a dress against which her white arms and throat stood out like ivory on a back-ground of ebony and silver. There was no colour about the girl at all, save for the warm, ripe tone of her hair and the deep, steadfast blue of her eyes. Though her face was cold and scornful, she would not have given the spectator the impression of coldness, only utter weariness ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... of a small tumble-down house. She drew a rusty old hook from her pocket and stuck it into a little hole in the door, which suddenly flew open. How surprised Jem was when they went in! The house was splendidly furnished, the walls and ceiling of marble, the furniture of ebony inlaid with gold and precious stones, the floor of such smooth slippery glass that the little fellow tumbled down ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... antidote that its virtues were famed. A small portion of its hard and corneous kernel, triturated with water in a vessel of porphyry, and mixed, according to the nature of the disease and skill of the physician, with the powder of red or white coral, ebony, or stag's horns, was supposed to be able to put to flight all the maladies that are the common lot of suffering humanity. Even the simple act of drinking pure water out of a part of its polished shell was esteemed a salutary remedial process, and was paid for at ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... man crossed the room to where there stood on a shelf a little ebony cabinet, clamped with dull silver of foreign workmanship. He unlocked it, and withdrew from it a letter, the paper faintly yellowed and brittle with ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... And turning earthward they all wept again. And the gods tore white clouds out of the sky and draped them about the body of Morning Zai and bore him forth from his valley behind the hills, and muffled the mountain peaks with snow, and beat upon their summits with drum sticks carved of ebony, playing the dirge of the gods. And the echoes rolled about the passes and the winds howled, because the faith of the olden days was gone, and with it had sped the soul of Morning Zai. So through the mountain passes the gods came ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... two kneeling figures; and here lay the family Bible of Leo's great-grandfather, Duncan Gordon, with tall bronze candelabra on each side, holding wax candles. At the right of two marble steps that led to the altar, was spread a rug, and upon this stood an ebony reading-desk where a prayer-book rested. Filling a niche in the wall on the left side, the gilded pipes of an organ rose to meet a marble console that supported a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ladies passed, with fan and mantle; to them came three or four dandies, dressed smartly in the French fashion, with strong Jewish physiognomies. There was one, a solemn lean fellow in black, with his collars extremely turned over, and holding before him a long ivory-tipped ebony cane, who tripped along the little place with a solemn smirk, which gave one an indescribable feeling of the truth of "Gil Blas," and of those delightful bachelors and licentiates who have appeared to ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Eudemius, covered with tawny leopard skins, lay stretched on a couch of carven ebony in the library of the villa, of which the windows overlooked the great central courtyard. He was a tall man, spare, with black, sombre eyes, a high nose, and a wiry black beard, close clipped. His hands, long and white and nervous, held a scroll which he kept slowly ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... window, "if ever I beheld so ugly a witch as yourself! Pious friend! thy chaplet of roses was ill bestowed, and thou needest not have travelled so far to light thy wax tapers at the shrine of the Black Lady at Altoting; for by the beauty of holiness! an image of ebony is mother of pearl to that soot-face whom thou callest thy wife. Fare thee well! thou couple of saintly sinners! and may the next traveller who tarries in the den of thieves qualify thee for canonisation by thy wife's admiring pastor, the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... century, the great hall of audience of the Norman parliament was renowned for its beauty. The ceiling was of ebony, studded with graceful arabesques in gold, azure, and vermilion. The tapestry worked in fleurs-de-lis, the immense fireplace, the gilded wainscot, the violet-coloured dais, and, above all, the immense picture in which were represented Louis XII., the father ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... polished and partially covered by three good-sized mats. There was a writing-table on one side of the room with an ebony-and-gold crucifix standing upon it. Opposite to it, on the other side of the room near the fireplace, was a bookcase. On the shelves were volumes of Shakespeare, Dante, Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Christina Rossetti, Newman's "Dream of Gerontius" and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Oceanica especially that this taste seems to be nationally developed, and from the narrative of Cook we know that the Tahitian belles use in their toilet the perfumed flowers of the pua and tiare (Carissa grandis and Gardenia Tahitensis), whose dazzling whiteness renders still more marked the ebony blackness of their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... snake and white water-lilies, and her dress now shone white, now red, now golden; and in her hand was the golden pitcher that sheds the dew, and a golden wand. The other lady was as dark as night—dark eyes, dark hair; her crown was of poppies. She held the ebony Wand of Sleep. Her dress was of the deepest blue, sown with stars. The king knew that they were the maidens of the bright and the dark side of the moon—of the side you see, and of the side that no one has ever seen, except King Prigio. He stopped the Flying Horse by turning the other knob ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... head to foot in a long black mantle, sat on the farther side. There were a few implements of her profession about her—one or two big books, a crystal bowl containing some black fluid very clear and sparkling, an ebony wand, and a dusky mirror in a silver frame. She fixed her bright bead-like eyes upon her guests as they advanced, and asked ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... straws to buoy his new hopes; whether he was so recently away from Lana's dark eyes that the encouragement in them lingered with him, he was not sure. He felt, however, that the Senator's eyes did seem a little less hard than the polished ebony they ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... had on his new blue frock-coat, and a buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, over which his watch-chain was gracefully arranged. His pantaloons were strapped clown very tightly over his polished boots; a shining new silk hat was on one side of his head; and in his hand he was dangling an ebony cane. In spite, however, of all these gaudy trappings, he could not muster up an easy air; and, as he knocked, he had that look proverbially attributed to dogs who ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... rice-powder, damped, so that it might the better adhere. Her eyebrows were shaven, as those of all married ladies are. Her lips were dyed of a bright red colour, and her teeth were black and polished as ebony. Yet we could judge of what she would have been by her exquisitely-chiselled nose, and black expressive eyes. We saw also several of her children, the younger ones dressed in crape of various colours, the others dressed much as their mother; but their teeth were beautifully white, their eyebrows ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... shapely hands resting on his knees, and his handsome face turned toward the hearth, where the logs had burned down and emitted only a low and fitful flame. The little room was scarcely lighted by it, and looked all the darker for the blackness of the small uncurtained window, through which the ebony face of night was peering in. This bare, uncovered casement troubled him, and from time to time he turned his eyes uneasily toward it. But what need could there be of a curtain, when they were a mile ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... sex, why 'twas perhaps natural to her circumstances and needs no further excuse. Her worst detractors never denied her a good heart, and an ear open to the lament of misery. In her hand she carried a cane of fine ebony, and altogether appeared a radiant vision of a fine woman in the purlieus of Britain Street. She paused and ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... the dwelling, leaped the garden-wall, and finally, undiscovered, but pallid and remorseful, gained the casement. Softly raising his head, he peeped within. The room was full of music; he seemed to grow blind for a moment, when lo! upon the kitchen-table sat the mysterious songster, an ebony-hued negress, scouring the tinware, and singing away. Just as he was peering through the window, the ebony songster discovered him. The soldier's limbs sank beneath him, and the black ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... this disorder could mean, he rushed into the house and through several deserted and wrecked apartments. At last, seeing light in one of the rooms, he went in, and there found his mother sitting on the remains of a chest made of ebony all inlaid with ivory and silver. When she saw Caesar, she rose, pale and dishevelled, and pointing to ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wide and ample head, which was again surmounted by a peaked hat, having a band and buckle above its brim, and a black rose in front. He looked an elderly and well-ordered gentleman, mighty spruce, and full of courtesy; and his cane was black as ebony, with a yellow knob that glittered like gold. He had a huge beaked nose, and a little black ferrety eye, which almost pierced what it gazed upon. Every one made way for the stranger, who sat down, not in the full ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... beautiful young woman, wearing a wonderful lantern crown, sat on an ebony throne. On each side of the throne stood a tall soldier, clad in scarlet and holding a long ebony staff surmounted by a round lantern ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... you," she replied. "I do not know. It is something in the wine. In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him. But see." And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial half filled with ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... his naked feet resting on the flowers, was seated on a chair of ebony inlaid with gold; he had on his knees seven or eight young spaniels, who were licking his bands. Two servants were curling his hair, his mustachios, and beard, a third was covering his face with a kind of cream, which ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... on a path betwixt two deep waters, which never moved, shining as black as ebony where the eyelight fell. But they saw ere long that this path kept growing narrower and narrower. At last, to Alice's dismay, the black waters met in ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... of ebony furniture or other articles of ebony, you will have many distressing disputes and ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... The words specified are "sa" or "issa," "passur," and probably "ebony"; the others have not ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... here that the most fascinating hour in the "Mouse Trap" is in the late afternoon, when no one is there, and the ebony hand-maiden in the big back kitchen is taking the fat, delicious-smelling cakes from the oven. Drop in some afternoon and sniff the fragrance that suggests your childhood and "sponge-cake day." You ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... although nearly all shaped in the European style, have almost the whole of their rigging constructed of ropes made from the bamboo, and are fitted with anchors made from ebony or some other heavy wood, having occasionally a large piece of stone fastened to them, to insure their sinking. The cables to which they are attached are generally of a black rush, like sedge, or of bamboo; but ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... the eyeless hopeless dark The nights that are black and grey Never a moon or faint star-spark Or a lonely glimmer of day. Oh! my love, I have come, love, From the ebony gates of death For the sake of the red crown I called your hair And ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... vnarmed, and could not finde any track or path, eyther to direct me forward, or lead me back againe. But a darke wood of thicke bushes, sharpe thornes, tall ashes haled of the Viper, towgh Elmes beloued of the fruitfull vines, harde Ebony, strong Okes, soft Beeche, and browne Hasils, who intertaining one anothers branches, with a naturall goodwill opposed themselues, to resist the entrance of the gratious sunne shine, with the greene couerture of their innumerable leaues. And in this sort I found my selfe in a fresh shadowe, ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... ebony face," he said angrily to the negro, in a manner which proved that his equanimity was considerably disturbed. "You jest stow that, and hold your rampagious cacklin', or I'll soon make you rattle your ivories to another toon, I ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... She had reached the first landing, where the stairway curved. She saw me, and peered forward, holding the candle above her head. The loose sleeve of her dress fell back with the motion, and the bare symmetry of her rounded forearm gleamed upon the blackness like ivory upon ebony. I waved my hand; she ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... frequently they were made to contain the store of house-linen which a bride took to her husband upon her marriage. In the 17th century Boulle and his imitators glorified the marriage-coffer until it became a gorgeous casket, almost indeed a sarcophagus, inlaid with ivory and ebony and precious woods, and enriched with ormolu, supported upon a stand of equal magnificence. The Italian marriage-chests (cassone) were also of a richness which was never attempted in England. The main characteristics of English domestic chests (which not infrequently are carved ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... explosives. The nerve of the French sailors, fortunately for the British, failed them, and they fired the ships too soon. But the spectacle of these flaming monsters as they drifted towards the British fleet was appalling. The river showed ebony-black under the white flames. The glare lit up the river cliffs, the roofs of the city, the tents of Montcalm, the slopes of the distant hills, the black hulls of the British ships. It was one of the most stupendous exhibitions ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... night began to envelop her surroundings, Madeline marked that the fir-trees had given place to pine forest. Suddenly a pin-point of light pierced the ebony blackness. Like a solitary star in dark sky it twinkled and blinked. She lost sight of it—found it again. It grew larger. Black tree-trunks crossed her line of vision. The light was a fire. She heard a cowboy song and the wild chorus of a pack of coyotes. Drops ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... mysterious depths haunts me like music. I don't know what it is. I have loved many a girl, from the northern with arsenic complexion, china-blue eyes, and canary-coloured hair, to the divine image cut in ebony, as some one piously and prettily says, but I doubt that I have felt quite in this way before. Yet she is not clever, as she says, and is only a poor shop-girl, her surname Affleck—that quaint, plebeian ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... office by an ex-Mayor and late member for the city, P. A. Tourangeau, Esq., N.P. Vividly, indeed, can we recall the busy aspect of its former counter, studded with gilt madonnas, rosaries, some in brass mountings, variegated Job beads for the million; others set in ebony and silver for rich devotes, flanked with wax tapers, sparkling church ornaments, bronze crucifixes—backed with shelves of books bearing, some, the visa of Monseigneur de Tours—the latter for the faithful; others in an inner room, without the visa—these for city litterateurs; ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... "despised race;" but the girl was whiter and fairer than many a proud belle who would have scorned her in any other capacity than that of a servant; and one of the boys was very nearly white, while the other was as black as ebony undefiled. They were fugitives and wanderers from the far south-west; and the story which they told to Mr. Grant and his happy family will form ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... to his choice, my only stipulation being that it should be made of wood. He therefore first attempted to work in boxwood. Meanwhile, during my absence in the country, Sicinius Pontianus, my step-son, wishing to gratify me,[22] procured some ebony tablets from that excellent lady Capitolina and brought them to his shop, exhorting him to make what I had ordered out of this rarer and more durable material: such a gift, he said, would be most gratifying to me. Our artist did as Pontianus suggested, as far as the size of the ebony ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... eyes like glassy streams, Her teeth are pearl, the breasts are ivory Of fair Samela; Her cheeks like rose and lily yield forth gleams; Her brows bright arches framed of ebony. Thus fair Samela Passeth fair Venus in her bravest hue, And Juno in the show of majesty (For she 's Samela!), Pallas in wit,—all three, if you well view, For beauty, wit, and matchless dignity, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Made in ebony and ivory, for use over the face and neck, for preventing and removing wrinkles, and restoring its ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... of establishing a line of steamers between several American ports and the coast of Africa, Gibraltar, and England,—familiarly known as the "Ebony Line,"—has been strongly recommended to Congress by petitions from all quarters. The Legislature of Virginia, and the Constitutional Convention of the same State, now in session, have both passed resolutions in its favor. Several other ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary, there lived a mysterious personage, who was known in those countries as the Fairy Blackstick, from the ebony wand or crutch which she carried; on which she rode to the moon sometimes, or upon other excursions of business or pleasure, and with which ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... linen jacket over his flannel shirt, inside of which some of the greedy leeches had crawled, while the rest hung round his neck and throat, their black bodies quickly swelling out and looking like so many pendants of polished ebony. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... with one who personated Mahomet. Mahomet himself is never present, but some one is substituted in his place, to the end that those who are lately deceased may as it were see him. This substitute, after I had been talking with him at a distance, sent me an ebony spoon and other things, which were proofs that they came from him; at the same time a communication was opened for the heat of their conjugial love in that place, which seemed to me like the warm stench of a bath; whereupon I turned myself ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... matron; on the second floor are generally situated the show- and reception-rooms. The first saloon is sombre: the ceiling appears, in the daytime, blackened by gas; the walls are wainscoted in imitation ebony with gold fillets, and large panels above the chair-rail are filled with verdure tapestries of the most dismal green, chosen expressly to throw into relief the freshness and gayety of the dresses; on the chimney-piece, and reflected in the glass, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Cyrus; followed in distant wars the standard of the great king, and presented him every fifth year with one hundred boys, and as many virgins, the fairest produce of the land. [76] Yet he accepted this gift like the gold and ebony of India, the frankincense of the Arabs, or the negroes and ivory of Aethiopia: the Colchians were not subject to the dominion of a satrap, and they continued to enjoy the name as well as substance of national independence. [77] After the fall of the Persian empire, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... outer covering of which was of cloth of gold. Removing this and a second wrapping of some silken fabric, he placed a little box, or casket, on my table, most beautifully and richly inlaid in jewels, on an ebony ground. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... inlaid with gold, yet doth the workmanship exceed the matter."—The ceiling which excited Heylin's admiration still exists. It is a grand specimen of the interior decoration of the times. The oak, which age has rendered almost as dark as ebony, is divided into compartments, covered with rich but whimsical carving, and relieved with abundance of gold. Over the bench is a curious old picture, a Crucifixion. Joseph and the Virgin are standing by the cross: ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the mother I saw the downcast look, and noticed the sigh that escaped a heavy heart, as she listened to the claim and price set upon her little darling. It's mother, Mary, was ebony black, her child was a light mulatto, which was in keeping with the story of abuse to which she was compelled to submit, or else lay ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... seventeen hundred in six months, and there was an article about it. All the Monday-morning idiots have just been swooning away about M. Scribe's Une Chaine. France is ill, very ill, whatever they say; and my thoughts are more and more the color of ebony. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... threw open the outer door, to which we ascended by a wide staircase. We entered, and found ourselves in a very dark hall. All the woodwork was black as ebony, with silver lines on the panels. The floor was polished work of parquetry, but black also. The roof was of black wood. The house seemed to be a great coffin. Next we went into a richly furnished dining-room. There were small ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... orchards which arched and overshadowed its entire length. The sturdy over-reaching boughs hung heavy with myriads of green balls. Now and then one dropped noiselessly on the thick turf in the lane, and a noble Holstein mother, ebony banded with ivory white, her swollen cream-colored bag and dark-blotched teats flushed through and through by the delicate rose of a perfectly healthy skin, lowered her meek head and, snuffing largely, caught sideways as she passed ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... stands up silently out of all the trees, like a yellow pagoda above many green pagodas. But the skies are sometimes blue like porcelain, and sometimes green like jade, and sometimes red like garnet. But the night is always ebony and always ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... Charley, with a glance at the grinning ebony face, the very picture of health. "He never had a real ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below; Whose silken fins, and golden scales' light Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow: There saw the swan his neck of arched snow, And oar'd himself along with majesty; Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show Beneath the waves like Afric's ebony, And on his back a fay ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... the drawing room; a lofty saloon, the woodwork of which is entirely of cedar, richly wrought; probably another of the author's favorite poetic fancies. It is adorned with a set of splendid antique ebony furniture; cabinet, chairs, and piano—the gift of ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... of ebony, but more commonly of some other wood. The grasp for the hand is cylindrical. The handle is often bound with a braid of rattan, or a band or two of steel or of brass, to prevent splitting, or less commonly with silver bands for ornament's ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... remoter islands of the Eastern seas, and their adventures there are told in a truthful and vastly interesting fashion, which will at once attract and maintain the earnest attention of young readers. The descriptions of Mr. Ebony, their black comrade, and of the scenes of savage life, are full of ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... drew a tooth from the lively jaw Of the Prester's ebony Aunt-in-law; And he bubbled and laughed so long, d'you see, That his wife looked glum and I had to flee. So I fled to the place where the Rajahs grow, A place where they ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... ramparts far above frowned bold and black at a few cold stars, and the blue of its sky was without the usual velvety brightness. How far it was up to that corrugated rim! All of a sudden Bostil hated this vast ebony pit. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... the rare and weird sight of a black from Abyssinia whose splendid ebony hide has been tattooed in white. Furthermore, a young girl of scarcely fourteen summers will astound you by entering the cage of the ferocious beasts, whose terrible roarings reach you here! The programme ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... chiefs were brought on board the Commodore's ship, the Nelson, by the Rev. W. G. Lawes. To Boevagi, the chief of the Port Moresby tribe, was entrusted the responsibility of upholding the authority and dignity of England in the island. He was presented with an ebony stick, into the top of which had been let a florin, with the Queen's head uppermost. Mr. Lawes conveyed to Boevagi the meaning of the Commodore's words when he gave the stick. "I present you with this stick, which is to be an emblem ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... matters, in 1872 had thought this instrument to be worth 600 pounds, so that its value had trebled in less than twenty years. The celebrated violinist, Ole Bull, owned a Stradivarius violin, dated 1687, and inlaid with ebony and ivory, which is said to have been made for a king of Spain. In the "Tales of a Wayside Inn" Longfellow ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... Have clear-cut and handsome features; their eyes are well set and large, though a slight narrowness lends them a crafty appearance. The iris is extremely black while the eyeball itself is quite white and clear. Their skin has the appearance of polished ebony. (See ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the savanna regions. The bombax or silk-cotton tree attains gigantic proportions in the forests, which are the home of the indiarubber-producing plants and of many valuable kinds of timber trees, such as odum (Chlorophora excelsa), ebony, mahogany (Khaya senegalensis), African teak or oak (Oldfieldia africana) and camwood (Baphia nitida.) The climbing plants in the tropical forests are exceedingly luxuriant and the undergrowth or "bush'' is extremely dense. In the savannas the most characteristic trees ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have been mistakenly blocked. In order to do this, he used the same method of entering terms into the Google search engine and surfing through the results. He used the following terms to compile this list: "breast feeding, bondages, fetishes, ebony, gay issues, women's health, lesbian, homosexual, vagina, vaginal dryness, pain, anal cancer, teen issues, safe sex, penis, pregnant, interracial, sex education, penis enlargement, breast enlargement, ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... if you like," she returned, gaily, and held up the two ebony canes which had been hidden by the tall grass. They told the story of Mercy Curtis' look of pain, but once she had had to hobble on crutches and, as she pluckily declared, canes were "miles ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... of foam. The women, that strong woman cacique ahead, left water, raced across sand toward forest. Two men were gaining, they caught at the least swift woman. The dark, naked form broke from them, leaped like a hurt deer and running at speed passed with all into the ebony band that was forest. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... quarrel with Blackwood in consequence of some critical remarks of his on the end of the Black Dwarf,—remarks certainly not inexcusable,—and of Scott's famous letter in reply, will doubtless receive further elucidation in the forthcoming chronicle of the House of 'Ebony'; but it is told with fair detail, in the second edition of Lockhart, from the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... received many messengers from Octavianus. To avoid his anger, therefore, she fled to a monument which she had built near the temple of Isis, and in which she had before placed her treasure, her gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory, and cinnamon, together with a large quantity of flax and a number of torches, as though to burn herself and her wealth in one flame. Here she retired with two of her women, and secured herself ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... reputation for beauty which has not yet died out in her province. She was rather tall, slender, and remarkable for the easy grace of her movements. Her complexion was very fair, while her eyes were dark and her hair like ebony. Her glance and her smile showed a union of goodness and acuteness which it was almost impossible to conceive; it was as if Heaven had given her two souls, one wholly of intellect, the other wholly of feeling. She was naturally cheerful and brave—an angel, indeed, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... by ere the blacks ventured far into the territory surrounding their new village. Several had already fallen prey to old Sabor, and because the jungle was so infested with these fierce and bloodthirsty cats, and with lions and leopards, the ebony warriors hesitated to trust themselves far from the safety ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... He was as ebony as a negro can get and as nattily dressed as only Savile Row can turn out a man. He said, "My name is Loo Motlamelle." He looked at them ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... he spoke, there came a flash of lightning which revealed a solid black bank of clouds which seemed a wall of ebony. It was moving rapidly toward them; was ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... you am gwine to New York," came a voice from the entrance to Dick's bedroom, and looking up from the suitcase he was packing, the oldest Rover boy saw Aleck Pop standing there, an anxious look on his ebony face. ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... the ebony-skinned man. He grinned, showing startlingly white teeth. Then he began ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and a fern. They knew she collected ferns on the sly, but never before had they seen her bring home such a prize. Usually she found only crumpled things like old bits of wrinkled brown paper which she called "specimens." This one was marvellously beautiful. It had a dainty, slender stalk of ebony black, and its hundred tiny leaves quivered like a shower of green water-drops in the air. There was actual joy in every trembling bit ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... they stood in the shadow of a great tree and watched the weird scene in the thick of the forest. There were several fires, and about each squatted a ring of wild black men. Their skins glistened like ebony from the fat they had liberally rubbed in, and their teeth and eyes gleamed in the reflection of the fires. Their hair, fizzled out in mops, had the appearance of fantastic Scotch bonnets; but apparently all their vanity had been lavished on their ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... conquest. On the Portuguese going among them, no arms were found in their possession except a few guns they had procured from the Moors and Hollanders, which they knew not how to use, and were even fearful of handling. They have excellent amber[5], white sandal, tortoises, ebony, sweet woods of various kinds, and abundance of slaves, with plenty of cattle of all kinds, the flesh of their goats being as sweet as mutton. The island likewise produces abundance of sea cows, sea-horses, monkeys, and some say tigers, with a great many snakes which are not very venomous. It has ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... satin coverlet, the bare floor, the simple furniture, were in semi-darkness; only on the altar in the corner were candles burning. Above it hung paintings of saints, finely executed by Mexican hands; an ebony cross spread its black arms against the white wall; the candles flared to a golden Christ. He caught her hands and led ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... had three cross-legged chairs, besides several stools; the table, as usual upon trestles, was provided with delicate napery, and there was a dainty perfume about the whole; a beautiful crucifix of ivory and ebony, with images of Our Lady and St. John on either side, and another figure of St. Helena, cross in hand, presiding over the holy water stoup, were the most ecclesiastical things in the garniture, except the exquisitely illuminated breviary that lay ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... being driven towards the centre by the gradual and regular approach of these fires, till at last they are confined within a circle of about two miles; they are then driven by the same means into a space made by the erection of immense logs of ebony and other strong wood, bound together by cane, and of the shape (in miniature) of the longitudinal section of a funnel, towards which they rush with the greatest fury, amidst the most horrid yells on the approach of fire, of which they stand in the greatest dread. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... wind. It was a slender violet wind. The sunset, however, was in the act of disappearing for the Scaffolding of Dusk was passing through the air—he saw the slung trellis-work about him, the tracery of a million lines, the guy-ropes, uprights, and the feathery threads of ebony that trailed the Night behind them like a mighty cloth. There was a fluttering ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... biographers, are harsh and disagreeable; even the nightingale has an ugly, guttural "chuck." The missel-thrush has a harsh scream; the jay a note like "wrack," "wrack;" the fieldfare a rasping chatter; the blackbird, which is our robin cut in ebony, will sometimes crow like a cock and cackle like a hen; the flocks of starlings make a noise like a steam saw-mill; the white-throat has a disagreeable note; the swift a discordant scream; and the bunting a harsh song. Among our song-birds, on the contrary, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... conversing more freely with our men, many particulars and secrets respecting their religion were discovered, and many circumstances of the nature of the country: Particularly that it contained mines of copper, azure, and amber, and that it produced ebony, cedar, frankincense, and other rich gums, and spice of several kinds, but wild, and which might be brought to perfection by cultivation; as cinnamon of a good colour but bitter, ginger, long pepper, abundance of mulberry trees for making silk which bear leaves all the year, and many ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... there is surely one of those accidents to be counted on at least as often as fire, shipwreck, or the cattle-disease; and the man who chooses to put his money into these images of his Maker cut in ebony should be content to take the incident risks along with the advantages. We should be very sorry to deem this risk capable of diminution; for we think that the claims of a common manhood upon us should be at least as strong as those of Freemasonry, and that those whom the law of man turns ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the young brave overawes when in need of a squaw, Till he thinks it a shame to wed one of his name, and his conduct you blame if he thus breaks the law? For you still hold it wrong if a lubra {10} belong to the self- same kobong {11} that is Father of you, To take HER as a bride to your ebony side; nay, you give her a wide berth; quite right of you, too. For her father, you know, is YOUR father, the Crow, and no blessing but woe from the wedding would spring. Well, these rules they were made in the wattle-gum ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... Black mammy's ebony face shone with delight, too, as she related how peacefully her charge had slumbered, without a single ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller |
