"Indian summer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away like the heat of an Indian Summer's day before the cool of the approaching night. She stared with widening eyes at the figure before her, for she saw, not the young, sturdy, country blacksmith, but a picture of the past, a fugitive from the police, a gaunt tired man, spent and almost ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Gary, of the New York Times, who was with me in Fort Sumter, at the restoration of the flag, and with whom I have foregathered in many a fertilizing conversation. Away off on the slope above beautiful Stockbridge, and surrounded by his Berkshire Hills, Dr. Henry M. Field is spending the bright "Indian summer" of his long and honored career. For forty years we held sweet fellowship in the columns of the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Miss S., was kind enough to accompany us to Greenwich, where, you know, is the Hospital for disabled sailors of the British navy. The day was warm and lovely, like what we call the Indian summer in America. We took an omnibus to London Bridge; from thence we proceeded by railway, and in a few minutes were in Greenwich. We entered the magnificent old Park, and wandered about for a long time, to our hearts' content, among the venerable old trees, admiring the graceful deer that were enjoying ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... rough notes for the following week, I am now puzzled to know what we were hoping for; it must have been a second open season in 1850,—a sanguine disposition, no doubt brought about by a break in the weather, not unlike the Indian summer ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... October had already reached its middle point. The glory of the Indian summer was close at hand. Too quickly the days fled for the little family at the farm, for they knew that each brought nearer the parting of which they could not ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... this moment by the instigation of the French, he appeared before Fort William, seized its settlers, and thrust a hundred and fifty of them into a small prison called the Black Hole of Calcutta. The heat of an Indian summer did its work of death. The wretched prisoners trampled each other under foot in the madness of thirst, and in the morning only twenty-three remained alive. Clive sailed at the news with a thousand Englishmen and two thousand sepoys ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... new role of chaperon. Sometimes the run would be further north, along the route to Milwaukee. Other days they would dip into the beautiful wooded roads that cut through the ravines, leading over towards Lake Delevan. And once, towards the end of November, in the very last spurt of Indian Summer weather, they took a week-end tour up to ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... most interesting of them all; and when I saw its magnificent moraines extending in majestic curves from the spacious amphitheater between the mountains, I was exhilarated with the work that lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the Sierra Indian summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape however rocky and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The path of the vanished glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as if washed with silver. The tall pines growing on the moraines stood transfigured ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... Watson's store, and arranged for several large boxes of soap to be charged to Clara Belle Simpson's account. These were lifted into the back of the wagon, and a happier couple never drove along the country road than Rebecca and her companion. It was a glorious Indian summer day, which suggested nothing of Thanksgiving, near at hand as it was. It was a rustly day, a scarlet and buff, yellow and carmine, bronze and crimson day. There were still many leaves on the oaks and maples, making a goodly show of red and brown and ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of 1897 was the harvest time in Oscar Wilde's Life; and his golden Indian summer. We owe it "De Profundis," the best pages of prose he ever wrote, and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," his only original poem; yet one that will live as long as the language: we owe it also that sweet and charming letter ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Indian summer? Is this a description of an Indian summer day? Sketch the field described, or the sunset. Observe the color ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... stream. Two days they paddled westward, and as many nights they encamped on islands. Fortunately the weather became mild, and when they reached the lake it was found smooth and glassy as a pond. It was the Indian summer, and the calms, and almost the blandness of June, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... from the fog, there was nothing in the weather to suggest shipwreck and horrors. For a fortnight the Islands had lain steeped in the sunshine of Indian summer; a fortnight of still starry nights and days almost without a cloud. As a rule, such weather breaks up in a gale, of which the glass gives timely warning. But the mercury in Mr. Fossell's barometer indicated no depression—or the merest trifle. The drenched ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Ichabod Crane's courtship of Katrina Van Tassel, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, has continued to amuse its readers. The Indian summer haze is still resting on Sleepy Hollow, our American Utopia, where we can hear the quail whistling, see the brook bubbling along among alders and dwarf willows, over which amber clouds float forever in the sky; ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... apples waxed and rounded and ripened and gained stripes of gold and carmine; and the blue eggs broke into young robins, that grew from gaping, yellow-mouthed youth to fledged and outflying maturity. Came autumn, with its long Indian summer, and winter, with its flinty, sparkling snows, under which all Nature lay a sealed and beautiful corpse. Came once more the spring winds, the lengthening days, the opening flowers, and the ever-renewing miracle of buds and blossoms on the apple-trees around the cottage. A year had passed since ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... close of day; candlelight, candlelighting[obs3]; eventide, nightfall, curfew, dusk, twilight, eleventh hour; sunset, sundown; going down of the sun, cock- shut, dewy eve, gloaming, bedtime. afternoon, postmeridian, p.m. autumn; fall, fall of the leaf; autumnal equinox; Indian summer, St. Luke's summer, St. Martin's summer. midnight; dead of night, witching hour, witching hour of night, witching time of night; winter; killing time. Adj. vespertine, autumnal, nocturnal. Phr. "midnight, the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... their torches. At noontide a shimmer of gold, through the haze, pours the sun from his pathway. The wild-rice is gathered and ripe, on the moors, lie the scarlet po-pan-ka; [a] Michabo [85] is smoking his pipe, —'tis the soft, dreamy Indian Summer, When the god of the South as he flies from Waziya, the god of the Winter, For a time turns his beautiful eyes, and backward looks over ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... a sweet way of putting it—Indian Summer. It just describes her. But she's not lazy. She has all the fire and none of the folly. She is very wise, what ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... the week of Indian summer a dream for a poet. Lilian's afternoon hour out of doors was the concentration of delight. The handsome town, the picturesque houses, where late blooming flowers were a delight on many a lawn, the peaceful winding river whose shadows ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the long tables were spread, and still the sweet warm air of the "Indian Summer" made the out-of-door feast not only possible but charming, for the gauzy veil upon the distant forest, and the marine horizon, and the curves of Captain's Hill, seemed to shut in this little scene from all the world of turmoil and danger and fatigue, while ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... taking her hat and cloak as she passed through the hall went at once out into the garden. It was a fine autumn morning, almost with a touch of summer in it. We do not know here that special season which across the Atlantic is called the Indian summer,—that last glow of the year's warmth which always brings with it a half melancholy conviction of the year's decay,—which in itself is so delightful, would be so full of delight, were it not for the consciousness which ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... they saw sheltered slopes of the mountains where the foliage yet glowed in the reds and yellows of autumn, "purple patches" on the landscape. Over ridges to both east and west the fine haze of Indian summer yet hung. It was a wonderful world, full of beauty. The air was better and nobler than wine, and the creeks and brooks flowing swiftly down ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... picking here and there, digging a few tunnels, and much exploring and planning. Hard work it was, too. However, the weather continued to hold fine and sunny and crisp, in the early fall a light snow fell but soon disappeared, and an Indian summer set in. There was hunting for deer and elk, and fun, evenings, in the camp—but something seemed lacking. What that was, Charley found out, when one morning Billy ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... delightful to be once more out in the open—out under the wide sweep of the sky; rid of the choke of narrow streets; exempt of bens, mails, and telegrams, and free of him who knocks, enters, and sits—and sits—and sits. And it was the Indian summer of the year; when the air is spicy with the smoke of burning leaves and the mountains are lost in the haze; when the unshaven cornfields are dotted with yellow pumpkins and under low-branched trees the apples lie in heaps; when the leaves are aflame and the round sun ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Indian summer's glow, Gilding the prairies ere December's snow, Lit with a transient beam Winona's eye. The season for the Maidens' Dance drew nigh, And Redstar vowed, whatever might betide, To claim her on the morrow as his bride. What now to ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... old lichened stone walls are smothered in blackberry vines; the autumn with the goldenrod and blue asters; the woods like conflagrations burning gold and orange, flaming crimson and scarlet; and especially that fifth season, the Indian summer, when the vistas are tunnels of blue haze and the air tastes of honey and wine; then winter and the first snow (does anybody, brought up in snow country, ever outgrow the thrill of the first fluttering flakes?) the marvel of the fairy frost ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... was the sweetest of the Indian summer, and the walk through woods of chestnut and hemlock was as charming as possible, and none the less so for the rustic coquetries of pretty Belle Miller, whose golden hair was the precise shade of a lock once shown to Miselle as a veritable relic of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... around his garden were circling and chattering far up in the sapphire skies of a late September day. Their leaders had sensed the coming frost and were drilling for their long march across the world to their winter home. The chestnut burrs were bursting in the woods. The silent sun-wrapped Indian Summer had begun. Not ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... an afternoon of the Indian summer, sunny and cool, and the maples about the Schuyler villa flamed gold and crimson against a sky of softest blue, when Hetty Torrance sat reflectively silent on the lawn. Flora Schuyler sat near her, with a book upside down upon ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... the finest effects of sunlight on falling water I ever saw in Yosemite or elsewhere I found on the brow of this beautiful fall. It was in the Indian summer, when the leaf colors were ripe and the great cliffs and domes were transfigured in the hazy golden air. I had scrambled up its rugged talus-dammed canyon, oftentimes stopping to take breath and look back to admire the wonderful views to be had there of the great Half Dome, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... Christmas cakes. But when autumn came, the weather grew cold and the snow fell, and then his wife had a new baby who filled the log cabin with fresh crying. This was a Canadian Icelander. After that came Indian Summer with ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... tremendous whiffs and passed it on to Colonel Verney, who in his turn transferred it to the Surveyor-General. When the monster pipe had been smoked by each of the white men, it went the round of the savages. An Indian summer haze began to settle around the company. Through it the patient gazing throng on the outskirts of the circle became shadowy, impalpable; the face of the half king, now hidden in shifting smoke wreaths, now darkly visible, like that of an eastern idol before whom incense is ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... This Indian summer of Mr. Browning's genius coincided with the highest manifestation of public interest, which he, or with one exception, any living writer, had probably yet received: the establishment of a Society bearing his name, and devoted to the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the master. "March! School is dismissed"; and six pairs of bare little legs twinkled along the aisle, across the well-worn threshold, down the big stone step, and into the dusty road, warm with the rays of the Indian summer sun. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... the same here, and perhaps never will be, as in lands where man has mingled his being with hers for countless centuries, where every field is steeped in history, every crag is ivied with legend, and the whole atmosphere of thought is hazy with the Indian summer of tradition. Nature without an ideal background is nothing. We may claim whatever merits we like (and our orators are not too bashful), we may be as free and enlightened as we choose, but we are certainly not interesting ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... bright days in the Indian summer time that Carrie at last slept the sleep that knows no awakening. The evening after the burial I went in at Captain Howard's, and all the animosity I had cherished for Mr. Ashmore vanished when I saw the large tear drops ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... self-confidence, even with some intolerance toward the weaknesses of others, not infrequently displaying merriment over their mischances; but his time had found him at last; the evil day had come. Indian Summer was Indian for him, indeed: sweet death were welcome; no charity was left in him. He leaped no more, but walked broodingly and sought the dark places. And yet it could not be said that times were dull for him: the luckless picket ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... luxury to breathe. These spring days are the perfection of delightful weather. Imagine the delicious temperature of our Indian summer joined to the life and freshness of spring, add to this a sky of the purest azure, and a breeze filled with the odor of violets,—the most exquisite of all perfumes—and you have some idea of it. The meadows are beginning to bloom, and I have ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... lost her love for that other world of freedom and exhilaration. After a brief Indian summer with days of such splendor that it seemed as if the great Artist was using his most magnificent colors, winter set in sharp and with a snap that startled every one. Snow blocked the roads and the sparkling expanse of crust on the top was the delight of the children, who walked and slid ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... days before Dorothy returned to Nashville we spent an evening together, first at Reverdy's home, later in a walk through the country. It was moonlight of middle November, and the air was mild with a late accession of Indian summer. I sensed in Dorothy a complete erasure of everything in my life that had stayed her coming to me as my bride. It was not so much what she said as it was her attitude, her tone of voice, her whole manner. But my own troubles had formed a nuclear hardness of thinking in me, which like a lodestar ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... days could not last long. They came to an end with the big bazaar. The band ceased to play on the lawn, the pleasure boats ceased to ply up and down the Thames, the lovely Indian summer passed into duller weather, the equinoctial gales visited the land, and Ogilvie knew that he must brace himself for something he had long made up his mind to accomplish. He must pass out of this time of quiet into a time of storm. He ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... Indian summer. Uncle William was mending his chimney. He had built a platform to work on. Another man would have clung to the sloping roof while he laid the bricks and spread the mortar. But Uncle William had constructed an elaborate platform with plenty of room for bricks ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... Argument A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign In Memory of a Child Galahad, Knight Who Perished The Leaden-eyed An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie The Hearth Eternal The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit By the Spring, at Sunset I Went down into the Desert Love and Law The Perfect Marriage Darling Daughter ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... mountain home, for he is a rare vocalist, his song mingling with the ripple and gurgle and roar of the streams that he haunts. Nor does he sing only in the springtime, but all the year round, on stormy days as well as fair. During Indian summer, when the streams are small, and silence broods over many a mountain solitude, the song of the ousel falls to its lowest ebb; but when winter comes and the streams are converted into rolling torrents, he resumes his ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... among the Highlands,—spent mostly in the open air, under October's golden sunshine, the slumberous softness of the Indian summer, or the brilliant, breezy skies of November,—were an important era for Margaret. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... "I have neither," and he was lost in thought until Rivers, as usual easily tired, said, "Let us sit down. How hazy the air is, John! It tenderly flatters these wild colour-contrasts. It is like a November day of the Indian summer." ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... quietly and comfortably bivouacked out of sight of rebels on the opposite side. Scarcely had we settled ourselves for a comfortable night's rest, when the clouds, which had been gathering since morning, broke in rain, and the delightful Indian summer gave way to the rainy winter of the south. All night long the rain poured, and all the next day. It was evident we had waited too long. But the commander was determined not to abandon his effort to outflank the enemy. By morning, the roads were so softened by the rain, that horses could not haul ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... McDougall Hart (1828-1901), born in Kilmarnock, brother of William Hart, already mentioned, Academican of the National Academy of Design, was noted for his landscapes and paintings of cattle and sheep. His "Summer Memory of Berkshire" and his "Indian Summer" attracted considerable attention at the Paris Salon in 1878. James David Smillie (1833-1909), son of James Smillie, the Scottish engraver, during the Civil War made designs for government bonds and greenbacks. In 1864 he took up landscape painting and was one of the founders of the American ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... The Indian summer sun was soft and bright; and wistful, soft, and bright were Mrs. Pendyce's eyes, fixed on the letter in her lap. She turned it over and began to read again. A wrinkle visited her brow. It was not often that a letter demanding decision or involving responsibility came to her hands past ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it were sweeter, child, for thee— Sweet as the silver-breaking sea (When Indian summer broods upon it) Doth flute and fife to ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... come through our happinesses, I trust, since Convent days—and what we must hope for now is an Indian summer." ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... it began to be rainy, and the weather grew decidedly unpleasant. But our boarder bade us take courage. This was probably the "equinoctial," and when it was over there would be a delightful Indian summer, and ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... read in their averted eyes and pale faces the feelings with which the recital of the tale of blood had inspired them. And then it was that as they sat beneath the shade of the trees, in the soft misty light of an Indian summer moon, that Catharine, with simple earnestness, taught her young disciple those heavenly lessons of mercy and forgiveness which her Redeemer had set forth by his life, his doctrines, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... fireplace, which showed finely by the evening light. It was simply the portrait of a man with a broad, Flemish hat. There were one or two pictures, also, by Cuyp. I should think he must have studied in America, so perfectly does he represent the golden, hazy atmosphere of our Indian summer. ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... vigorous life; its mature youth, and not the floridity of age, which, like the wide full open petals of a flower, indicates that its glory is about to pass away. There has certainly always been a period like the short warm season the Canadians call the "Indian Summer," which is said to be produced by the burning of the western forests, causing a factitious revival of the dying year: so there always seems to have been a flush of life before the final death of the Arts in each period:—in Greece, in the sculptors and architects of the time after Pericles; ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... warm, beautiful Indian summer day, and a peculiar stillness and Sabbath-like quiet seemed to pervade all nature. The leaves of the scattering birches and alders along the trail hung motionless in the warm sunshine, the drowsy cawing of ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... It was an Indian summer day of the first week in November. That afternoon Abe went to the tavern and asked Ann to walk out to the Traylors' with him. She seemed to be glad to go. She was not the cheerful, quick footed, rosy cheeked Ann of old. Her face was pale, her ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... that the Indian Summer had reached its close. All night long the wind had moaned and lamented in the chimneys, and the sense of dread in the outer atmosphere crept into the house and weighed upon the slumbering inmates. There was a sound in the forest as ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... survey of the Brock, Helton and Saylor properties, and for that purpose chose that delightful season in October; last harvest time for man and beast, when the corn is ripe and the nuts loosened by the early frost are showering upon the ground like manna for all. It is the beginning of Indian summer, when nature, festive and placid of mood, clothes the hills in shades of red and brown; and, fearful that man, who is inclined to overlook nearby joys and pleasures for more distant and less certain ones, might overlook the familiar ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... they were ready. They were, it is true, much behindhand, for though many of them had far greater means than Michael Hale and John Kemp, they had not their experience, and often threw away much labour and time uselessly. They were wrong as to the weather, too, for the Indian summer came, and this year it lasted nearly three weeks. The air was pure and cool, though there was not a cloud in the sky, but there was a haze which made the sun looker redder than his wont, and did not let his rays strike as hot ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... was turning brown; heaps of leaves had already fallen. The village of Creek Bend was sleeping through the Indian Summer day. So was Evan Nelson—he lay sprawled on a hammock swung between two apple-trees behind ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Whip-Poor-Will The Lily of Yorrow The Veery The Song-Sparrow The Maryland Yellow-Throat A November Daisy The Angler's Reveille The Ruby-Crowned Kinglet School Indian Summer Spring in the North Spring in the South A Noon Song Light Between the Trees The Hermit Thrush Turn o' the Tide Sierra Madre The Grand Canyon The Heavenly Hills of Holland Flood-Tide of Flowers God of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... mortals! who drive or are driv by the two contendin' coharts of Imagination, Idealized Fancy and practical Reality. And she always will have the last word, Reality will, and her voice is loud and shrill, and it penetrates into the warm, sweet Indian summer air, where Fancy dwells and where we sometimes visit her for brief intervals. Too brief! too brief! for cold Reality is always hangin' round; she is always up and dressed ready to put ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... his tall figure and striking presence outlined against the gray stone columns of the veranda. All this because it was mid-October, a heaven-made autumn day in Kansas, with its gracious warmth and bracing breath; with the Indian summer haze in shimmering amethyst and gold overhanging the land; and the Walnut Valley, gorgeous in the glow of the October frost-fires, winding down between broad seas of rainbow-radiant prairies. And all this gladness ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... lovely night,' she said, 'like a night in our Indian summer in dear old Massachusetts. Let us talk in ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the faint clashing swinging sound of cymbals, melting the air with his beams, and with such rapid steps the morning travels, that already his rays are gilding the distant western mountains. Meanwhile we step hastily along through the powdery snow, warmed by an inward heat, enjoying an Indian summer still, in the increased glow of thought and feeling. Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves against her heats and colds, but find her our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds. If our bodies were fed with pure and simple ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... passed by, and the autumn, and the Indian summer; and at last the great winter came, and it snowed and snowed, and it was so cold that the snow wasn't off by the Fourth of July; and then it snowed and snowed till the snow never went off at all; and then it got so cold that it snowed all the time, till the snow covered all the animals, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... marvellous efficacy in the chase. In the autumn, in "the moon of the falling leaf," ere he composes himself to his winter's sleep, he fills his great pipe and takes a god-like smoke. The balmy clouds float over the hills and woodlands, filling the air with the haze of the "Indian summer." ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Lost Trail Lake, and, turning to the eastward, were treated to a delightful view of the Kipling Mountains, now snow-capped and cold-looking, but appearing to us so much like old friends that it did our hearts good to see them. It was an ideal Indian summer day, the sun shining warmly down from a cloudless sky. Looking at the snow-capped peaks that bounded the horizon in front of me, I thought of the time when I had stood gazing at them from the other side, and of the eagerness I had felt to discover what ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... lean-to, where she had been sitting on that June day when our story began. She was alone this time, and her look and attitude were sadly at variance with that former time. The November day was not without a charm of its own which might even challenge comparison with the June glory; for it was Indian summer time, and the wonder of soft spiritual beauty which had settled down upon the landscape, brown and bare though that was, left no room to regret the full verdure and radiant sunlight of high summer. The indescribable ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... The Indian summer, with its infinite beauty and tenderness, came like a reproach that year to Virginia. The foliage, touched here and there with prismatic tints, drooped motionless in the golden haze. The delicate Virginia creeper was almost minded to ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... kindred that escapes me, yielded long black beanlike slips which they lighted and smoked, the smaller ones staring and impressed; I at any rate think of the small one I can best speak for as constantly wading through an Indian summer of these disjecta, fascinated by the leaf-kicking process, the joy of lonely trudges, over a course in which those parts and the slightly more northward pleasantly confound themselves. These were the homely ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... and through Indian summer's tulle-like haze a low-swinging sun sent shafts of scarlet light at the highest peaks of the Blue Ridge. The sweet-gum leaves looked like blood-colored stars as they floated slowly to the ground, and brown chestnuts gleamed satin-like through their gaping burs; while over all there rested ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... the Missouri river on the west. We always remembered this scout up in north Missouri with feelings of comfort and satisfaction. Compared with some of our Arkansas marches, it was just a pleasure excursion. The roads were in good condition, and the weather was fine;—ideal Indian Summer days. And in the fruit and vegetable line we lived high. The country through which we passed abounded in the finest of winter apples, Little Romanites and Jennetings being the chief varieties. The farmers had gathered and piled them in the ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... pitiable. I felt that all nature had deserted me, the climate, Indian summer, the harvest moon and my own charm, but my head was up and I was going to crackle pluckily along to my blaze, so I turned towards the door to go across the road and put my fate to the test, even if I took pneumonia standing ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hot and dusty, Indian summer intensified. They had got out of their way through a mistake of the chauffeur, and suddenly just on the edge of a tiny quaint little village the car broke down and refused to go on without a lengthy siege ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... water was yesterday, and smooth as glass it is again today. Indian summer on the island, mild and warm—ah! But there is ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... here for the past five weeks has been like the Indian summer at home. Nearly every day I take a walk up onto the hill back of our cabin. Nobody lives there, it is so very steep. I have a cozy little seat in the fragrant bosom of some evergreen shrubs, where often I remain for hours. It is almost like death to mount to my favorite spot, the path is ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... shadows of the firs they stand as we take our leave of one of them. The Honourable and Sir Duke have had their last words, and Sir Duke has said he will remember about the hunting traps. They understand each other. There is sunshine in the face of all—a kind of Indian summer sunshine, infused with the sadness of a coming winter; and theirs is the winter of parting. Yet it is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... again in mellow vein when youth was gaily run, Has dipped his nose in Gascon wine, and told of Forty Year. But if I worthy were to sing a richer, rarer time, I'd tune my pipes before the fire and merrily I'd strive To praise that age when prose again has given way to rhyme, The Indian Summer days of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... the season of cheer— Life's mild Indian summer, The smile of the year! Which comes when the golden Ripe harvest is stored, And yields its own ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... as to admit of his taking a journey to Walton, Swan determined to do so. But affairs will not always consent to an arrangement; and although he exerted himself to gain a week's leisure, it was not till the Indian summer was past that he took his place in the stage-coach which plied between Boston ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... one of those balmy Indian summer days which, if the eyes were closed, would remind you of Andalusia when the orange trees put forth their blossoms with the matured fruit still clinging to their boughs, burying its golden ripeness among ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... things by the form; obsolete words set in a new setting, modern words introduced into old cadences to freshen them with a bright and delightful varnish, in a word, a language under visible sign of decay ... yet how full of dim idea and evanescent music—a sort of Indian summer, a season of dependency that looked back on the splendours ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... the time of Indian Summer in the land, Mellow haze pervaded earth and sky and sea, White sails drifting over waters calm were mirrored In the blue. The seagulls followed swiftly on. Up James River glided in their well-manned barge Captains twain in search of Wahunsunakok. Heaped ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... was the only croaker. Wesley and Theodosia were married, in the golden prime of the Indian summer, and settled down on their snug little farm. Dosia was a beautiful bride, and Wesley's pride in her was amusingly apparent. He thought nothing too good for her, the Heatherton people said. It was a sight ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the second snowstorm," replied Priest. "After squaw winter's over, there's usually a month to six weeks of Indian summer. It might be as late as the first of December, but it's a good idea to loose-herd awhile; ride around them evening and morning, corral them and leave the gates open, teach them to seek a dry, cosy bed, at least a month before putting the cattle under close-herd. ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... my mind toward the southern end of Lake Huron—it lay before me with its bays and islands; the atmosphere looked hazy, resembling our Indian Summer; my vision terminated a little below the mouth of the St. Clair River—there lay the vessel, disabled! the sailors were busy in repairing spars and sails. My soul knew that they would be ready in two days, and that in seven days she would reach this Island, (Mackinaw,) by the ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... natural opening in the forest, from which, down a still, descending vista, between the trees, could be seen the distant bay, and the open country near it, all glowing under a refulgent sky, and hazy with the golden mist of Indian Summer. Before them the upper branches of the nearest trees formed a natural arch ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... nature ruddy as an Indian summer flushed in all its leaves. The corners of his face had everywhere a frank ambush, or child's hiding-place, for languages and laughter. He could worm with a smile quite his own the humour out of men possessing any; and even under rigorous law, and it could not be disputed that there was rigour ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... forget the suddenly changing seasons of the northern clime. There is no long and lingering spring, unfolding leaf and blossom one by one; no long and lingering autumn, pompous with many-colored leaves and the glow of Indian summer. But winter and summer are wonderful, and pass into each other. The quail has hardly ceased piping in the corn when winter, from the folds of trailing clouds, sows broadcast over the land snow, icicles, and rattling hail. The days wane apace. Erelong the sun hardly rises above the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... sweetest season of all the year in the hills—the Indian summer. The fierce heat had fled to the north, fled beyond the salt plains of San Juan, beyond the wild desert lands of Rioja and arid sands of Catamarca, lingering still, perhaps, among the dreamland gardens of Tucuman, and ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... from Nicolayevsk was like the best of our Indian summer. There was but little wind, the faintest breath coming now and then from the hills on the southern bank. The air was of a genial warmth, the sky free from clouds and only faintly dimmed with the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... activity and beauty with the Indian chief's daughter, and if the chief had no objection he would take them both with him to the beautiful and romantic country he had so graphically described, after their marriage, and the Indian chief could come to visit her every fall and enjoy the Indian summer in hunting deer and procuring ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... the cemetery gate, resting sadly against the lichen-covered stone post, and waiting for her return. Indian summer had come, a last taste of warmth and brightness before the winter closed, and despite their sorrow nature soothed them with her loveliness. In any case, whether from that cause or from her own will, the girl found it easier than she had expected to ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... to gray Our mild sweet day Of Indian summer fades too soon; But tenderly Above the sea Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's moon. The Eve ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... afternoon Conny started on his long ride of ten miles to meet the young gentlemen at Kilbourne, the nearest railroad station. It was almost November, but the blue haze of the Indian summer hung over the landscape, and the air was warm and mellow with sunshine. Any eye but Conny's would have said that the long mountain gorges, and the thickly wooded glens into which they opened, were deserted of all life save the squirrels ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... on the sand looking off over the blue water veiled with the soft haze of Indian summer. A point covered with pine trees stretched boldly out into the lake, its rocky cliffs rising perpendicularly eighty feet above the beach, a sheer precipice from whose summit a pebble dropped would strike the water below. On the west a stream came rippling over the stones between bluffs high ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... misty atmosphere, which idealizes all nature, and a mild, beneficent sunshine, inviting one to lie down in a nook and forget all earthly care. To-day the sky is dark and lowering, and occasionally lets fall a few sullen tears. I suppose we must bid farewell to Indian summer now, and expect no more love and tenderness from Mother Nature till next spring be well advanced. She has already made herself as unlovely in outward aspect as can well be. We took a walk to Sleepy Hollow yesterday, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... spot where his armchair used to be, I felt how well I knew him now from the impressions he made then on my child's mind, though I was not conscious of them for more than twenty years. Nobody told me about him, and he died when I was six, and yet within the last year or two, that strange Indian summer of remembrance that comes to us in the leisured times when the children have been born and we have time to think, has made me know him perfectly well. It is rather an uncomfortable thought for the grown-up, and especially for the parent, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... I went back to the rectory, and sat down in his study, or rather he made me draw a chair to the open door, and sat down himself on a step below the threshold. The day was one of autumnal warmth; the haze of Indian summer blued the still air, and the wind that now and then stirred the stiff panoply of the trees was lullingly soft. This part of Gormanville quite overlooked the busier district about the mills, where the water-power found its way, and it was something of a climb even from the business street of the ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... this is the Indian summer, which is the first summer softened and soberer, and often comes at thanksgiving-time. It always changes the country, as you ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... street. The air was soft and golden; the sun warm with the Indian summer. The clock on the Metropolitan tower was booming nine. As the two set out at a slow saunter down the backwater of the side street, Darrow ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... her own indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at her mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of "the mistress's" moods without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according to the temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian summer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age, the gods sent this equivocal good thing of Archie's presence. She had known him in the cradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fondly to the woods and streams of the Berkshire hills. There was nothing of that urban strain in him which appears in Holmes and Willis. He was, in especial, the poet of autumn, of the American October and the New England Indian Summer, that season of "dropping nuts" and "smoky light," to whose subtle analogy with the decay of the young by the New England disease, consumption, he gave such tender expression in the Death of the Flowers; and amid whose "bright, late quiet," he wished ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Hakon's Lay Flowers Impartiality My Love The Fountain The Shepherd of King Admetus Ode recited at the Harvard Commemoration Prelude to the Vision of Sir Launfal Biglow Papers What Mr Robinson Thinks The Courtin' Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line An Indian Summer Reverie A Fable for ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... appearance of the fall, and the sweet haze of Indian summer lay over the landscape, the horizon only faintly outlined through it. Peter Junior sniffed the air. He wondered if the forests in the north were afire. Golden maple leaves danced along on the path before him, whirled hither and thither by the light breeze, and the wild asters and goldenrod ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... stand in poor Hepzibah's eyes, or overflow them with a too abundant gush, so that she was fain to betake herself into some corner, lest Clifford should espy her agitation. Indeed, all the enjoyments of this period were provocative of tears. Coming so late as it did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its balmiest sunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest delight. The more Clifford seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the sadder was the difference to be recognized. With a mysterious and terrible Past, which had annihilated ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the hickories had turned yellow and the oaks deep red, during the weeks of still, hazy weather that mark the Indian summer, their favorite hunting season, [Footnote: Usually early in November.—McAfee MSS.] the savages again filled the land, and Logan was obliged to repeat his perilous journey. [Footnote: Marshall, 50.] He also continually led small bands of his followers ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... garden lay trim and neat in the sun. Or, rather, to-day, in the warm, hazy, soft October light; the sun's rays could not rightly get through the haze. It was one of the delicious times of October weather, which the unlearned are wont to call Indian summer, but which is not that, and differs from it essentially. The glory of the Indian summer is wholly ethereal; it belongs to the light and the air; and is a striking image and eloquent testimony of how far spirit can overmaster matter. The earth is brown, the trees are bare; the drapery and ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... of the seceders made a slender white line in the wilderness of sage which reached on before them, up and up. Beyond the crest which rose gray-brown against the cloudless Indian summer sky, the desert waited silent as ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... The golden Indian Summer came, and the city blazed in glorious colour. Homecoming began; the big houses on the Avenue were opened. Martie never saw the burning leaves of September in later years without a memory of the poignant uneasiness with which she first had walked beneath them, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... she abounds in sufficient profusion to become a common type instead of an infrequent one. This woman is waging that battle against the mounting birthdays which nobody ever yet won. Her hair has been dyed in those rich autumnal tints which are so becoming to a tree in its Indian summer, but so unbecoming to a woman in hers. Richard K. Fox might have designed her jewelry; she glistens with diamonds until she makes you think of the ice coming out of the Hudson River in the early spring. But about her complexion there is no suggestion of a March thaw. For it is ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... of security. Beverley was not so easy to satisfy; but his suggestions regarding military discipline and a vigorous prosecution of repairs to the blockhouse and stockade were treated with dilatory geniality by his superior officer. The soft wonder of a perfect Indian summer glorified land, river and sky. Why not dream and bask? Why ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Indian summer is perhaps the most delightful period of the year. During most of November the weather is mild and serene; a soft, dry haze pervades the air, thickening toward the horizon; in the evenings the sun sets in a rich crimson flush, and the temperature is mild and genial: the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... these days of Indian summer that Steve cut loose from work and started off on a tramp. He worked in town; he rested ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... milkweed took possession of the place, the mournful purple of their flowering hiding the garden beneath trappings of woe. And at night, when the Autumn moon shone dimly, frail ghosts of dead flowers were set free from the thistles and milkweed. The wind of Indian Summer, itself a ghost, convoyed them about the garden, but they never went beyond it. Each year the panoply of purple spread farther, more surely hiding ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... ever saw," she announced. "A minute ago, I'd 'a' said them blue walls back there, jest like October skies in Indian summer, and the brown rugs, like leaves in the woods, couldn't be beat; but this green and yaller is purtier yet. That blue room will keep the best lookin' part of fall on all winter, and with a roarin' wood fire, it'll be capital, and no mistake; but this here is spring, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... MacCarthy Midsummer John Townsend Trowbridge A Midsummer Song Richard Watson Gilder June, from "The Vision of Sir Launfal" James Russell Lowell June Harrison Smith Morris Harvest Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Scythe Song Andrew Lang September George Arnold Indian Summer Emily Dickinson Prevision Ada Foster Murray A Song of Early Autumn Richard Watson Gilder To Autumn John Keats Ode to Autumn Thomas Hood Ode to the West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley Autumn: a Dirge Percy ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... of these occasions he was smitten to the heart with the beauty of an autumn landscape, where the red maples and sumachs, the purple and crimson oaks, all stood swathed and harmonized together in the hazy Indian summer atmosphere. There was a great yellow chestnut tree, on a distant hill, which stood out so naturally that John instinctively felt his fingers tingling for a basket, and his heels alive with a desire to bound over on to the rustling hillside and pick up the glossy ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... waters. I enjoyed those hours thoroughly, for the silence was profound, and the faint blue of the autumn sky, and the soft blue veil which "spiritualised" the distances, were so exquisitely like the Indian summer. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... the scene the Indian summer sun looked down upon, while the teacher stood gazing fixedly at the message which she held. Curious faces peered out of the windows and through the door, which she left ajar when she came into the hall. She took no note of this infraction ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the period of Indian summer brings a reminiscent warmth and sunshine, so sometimes in late winter a day will come now and then which is a harbinger of the not far-distant springtide, like a promise, during present storm and stress, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... shiver inspires the doubt Whether Indian Summer will come this year; But its warmth can be felt when you don't go out, And it's haze may be seen through ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... he took a dish of salt and started up the hill to a "mountain pasture" where his young cattle were enclosed for the season. It was a beautiful day in October, that queen month of the year. A soft melancholy breathed in the mild air of the mellow "Indian summer," and the varying hues of the surrounding forests, and the signs of decay seen upon every side, all combined to deepen the emotions which the circumstances of ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... very hard, you must not suppose that they left no time to play. Indeed, the weather was so fine that it was hard to stay in the house. The beautiful Indian summer had come and each new day dawned more perfect than the last. The trees had become so gorgeous that it was as if the streets were lined with burning torches. Whenever a breeze came, they seemed to flicker and flame and flare. Maida and Rosie used to shuffle along the ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... really am very proud of my six feet two inches prospective conjugal yoke-fellow; proud of his martial bearing, his brilliant reputation, 'proud of his pride'; and I think I shall grow very fond of him, because in a mild way I think he cares for me'; and we can make a little Indian Summer for each other before the frosts of Winter fall upon us. What else can I do with my life? Think of it. Papa will be married soon, and while I don't propose to tear my hair and insult his bride, nobody can be expected ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... on, hour by hour. The courthouse clock rang out one single deep mellow clang. One o'clock! Lane thrilled to the sound. It brought back the school days, the vacation days, the Indian summer days when the hills were golden and the purple haze hung over the land—the days that were to be no more for ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... tempered by the mellow autumn breezes that had been slow to retreat and abandon the gold and crimson banners still fluttering on the trees. The snap and crackle of the Thanksgiving frost had melted into a long lazy silence of a few more Indian summer days so that, with lungs filled with the intoxicating draught of this late wine of October, everybody had ridden, driven, hunted, golfed ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... smoke ascending Filled the sky with haze and vapor, Filled the air with dreamy softness, Gave a twinkle to the water, Touched the rugged hills with smoothness, Brought the tender Indian Summer To the melancholy north-land, In the dreary ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... dancing and seriously tread A modern measure up and down the grass, Turn, slide with bending knees, and pass With dipping hand and poising head, Float through the sun in pairs, like newly shed And golden leaves astray Upon the warm wind of an autumn day, When the Indian summer rules the air. Others, having found, Lying idly on the sun-hot ground, Shuttlecocks and battledores, Play with the buoyant feathers and stare Dazzled at the plaything as it soars, Vague against the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... everything that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcyons may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather which we distinguish by the name of Indian summer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills, and warm, wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours seems longevity enough. The solitary places do not seem quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... me to say how I know so much, as I certainly do, about my castles in Spain. The sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests. All the sublime mountains, and beautiful valleys, and soft landscape, that I have not yet seen, are to be found in the grounds. They command a noble view of the Alps; so fine, indeed, that I should be quite content with the prospect ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... presumably Italian. Item: Two children indisputably American, one fair, the other dark. Item: A scaldino. Item: Male clothing on the line. Item: A reserved attitude toward her intelligent and cultivated neighbours. Item: Ignorance of the well-known fact that the Indian Summer is now setting in. Item:——shall I go on? Have we not here evidence sufficiently discrepant to ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... forest seemed to be the same; and yet somehow in a manner not to be defined a subtle change was taking place in the wilderness. Nothing definite could be instanced. Each morning of that Indian summer the skies were as soft, the sun as grateful, the leaves as gorgeous in their blazonment, yet each morning an infinitesimal something that had been there the day before was lacking, and for it an infinitesimal ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White |
