"Shrivelled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beneath the shrivelled eyelids. If Truth had appeared above him in the clouds now he could not have seen her, the mist of ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... clad. The curious sun closed his great eye for a few hours in the twenty-four; the remainder of the time he glared down upon his victims with a malevolence that knew no bounds. Soft, sweet winds came with the typhoon season, else the poor whites must have shrivelled and died while nature revelled. Rain fell often in fitful little bursts of joyousness, but the hungry earth sipped its moisture through a million greedy lips, eager to thwart the mischievous sun. Through it ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... restrain all signs of feeling, but this was too much. He had been placed so that he stood almost breast to breast with the most dreadful and grisly horror that the mind of man could conceive. He looked upon the horrible, dry, shrivelled mummy of something which had been a man. The shape of the villager hung there in the bonds, but it was a mere framework of bones, upon which hung wrinkled brown folds of shrivelled skin. The haunting terror of the vision ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... clean work. The reek of the fish-raw, cooked, smoked, and drying in the sun-saturated everything, even the damper. The brown, shrivelled things were scattered in orderly profusion wherever the sun could catch them to top them off prior to bagging. The bitter, eye-searing smoke from the red mangrove fire in the hold, where the meagre catch of yesterday was lying on a couple of trays, stung the nostrils. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... nigh to the other side o' the river, drop yer anchor on the flat right opposite thet little sort o' bay yonder, and then put down yer net to good business. D'ye understand whar I mean, lads?" and the Captain pointed with his long, water-shrivelled forefinger, adding, "It seems purty far to go, but it'll pay when you git thar—it'll pay;" and leaning forward, Sam gave the Sarah a shove that sent her clear of the shore, out into the centre of the cove which served as the harbor for all ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... not to belong to himself at all. A strange, shrivelled creature had taken possession of it. He raised his head and peered about him. He and three soldiers—youngsters, like himself, who had never before been under fire—appeared to be utterly alone in that hell. They were the end men of the regiment, and the configuration ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... A tall, thin, shrivelled, but exceedingly stately old man on a gray horse was in the centre. Clad in a purple velvet mantle, and bowing as he went, he looked truly the Kaisar, to whom stately courtesy was second nature. On one side, in black and gold, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the fire Of life, are cold upon her marble heart— Like ashes on the altar—just as she stops, That something will escape of soul or essence,— The sum of life, to kindle otherwhere: Just as the fruit of a high sunny garden, Grown mellow with autumnal sun and rain, Shrivelled with ripeness, splits to the rich heart, And looses a gold kernel to the mould, So the old world, hanging long in the sun, And deep enriched with effort and with love, Shall, in the motions of maturity, Wither and part, and the kernel of it all Escape, a lovely wraith of spirit, to latitudes ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... began earlier, and her waning youth had shrivelled in the anguish she was then compelled to endure. Cecilia, from the first, had been deaf to her mother's most tender tones, winced and screamed at the touch of her fingers, even when lying with closed eyes. Mrs. Denvil, in the awful and solemn ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... higher the fog was scorched and shrivelled upward by the fierce heat below, glowing through and through with red reflected glare, till it arched itself into one vast dome of red- hot iron, fit roof for all the madness down below—and beneath it, miles away, I could see the lonely tower of Dundie ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... sat on the hatch, was the brig's binnacle, and in it I could see the shrivelled remnant of what had been the compass-card; and the sight of this put into my head presently the thought—that might have got there sooner had my wits been sharper—to look for a compass still in working order ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... language in which it is asked?—Be wise, old man; discharge thyself of a portion of thy superfluous wealth; repay to the hands of a Christian a part of what thou hast acquired by the usury thou hast practised on those of his religion. Thy cunning may soon swell out once more thy shrivelled purse, but neither leech nor medicine can restore thy scorched hide and flesh wert thou once stretched on these bars. Tell down thy ransom, I say, and rejoice that at such rate thou canst redeem thee from a dungeon, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... orders to take the robe to Heracles who was to allow no light of the sun or fire to fall upon it before wearing it. After a short interval, she returns in the greatest agitation; a little tuft of wool which she had anointed with the monster's blood had caught the sunlight and shrivelled up to dust. If the robe proved a means of death, she determined to slay herself rather than live in disgrace. At that moment Hyllus bursts in to describe the horrible tortures which seized Heracles when he put on the poisoned mantle; the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... searching eye to perceive that the little one was not thriving; in truth, she was dwindling away day by day, and those who were in the habit of visiting the Camp gazed sadly at the little pinched face and shrivelled limbs, and foreboded that it would not be long before Michel's child rejoined its mother in the 'silent land.' "Owindia" was the name given by the Indians to their deceased sister's child; and in truth, Owindia, "weeping ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... and Cree, gasping for breath, would stop in the middle of a brae, unable to push his load over a stone. Then he laid himself down behind it to prevent the barrow's slipping back. On those occasions only the barefooted boys who jeered at the panting weaver could put new strength into his shrivelled arms. They did it by telling him that he and Mysy would have to go to the "poorshouse" after all, at which the grey old man would wince, as if "joukin" from a blow, and, shuddering, rise and, with a desperate effort, gain the top of the incline. Small blame perhaps attached ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... 'comedor' taking their early supper of thick chocolate and new milk rolls. Dona Belen is a corpulent lady, with a couple of last century side-curls, and a round, good-natured face. Don Severiano is a short, shrivelled old gentleman, with a sallow countenance, closely shaved like a priest's, and a collar and cravat of the latest fashion. These worthy people are at present ignorant of their daughter's attachment, and ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... my Mehaley she des done bake 'em in de cabin over yonder." He lifted his shrivelled hand and pointed, with a tremulous gesture, to a log hut ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... soaking his crusts, without taking his eyes off the wonderful picture. One would have said that the sight of it gave the crusts an unexpected relish, for he chewed them slowly, and emptied his glass by little sips. His shrivelled features became smooth, his nostrils expanded; it was indeed, as he said himself, "a feast ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... turned from the priest, and grasping the strong right arm of Warwick with her shrivelled and trembling fingers, resumed in a voice that struggled to repress the gasps which ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the ensuing season, but they were all destroyed by the ground mice, who hid themselves under the stumps which we had not rooted out, and infested our garden. With all the care we could bestow on them during the passage from New York, only twelve potatoes were saved, and even these so shrivelled up, that we despaired of raising any from the few sprouts that still gave signs of life. Nevertheless we raised one hundred and ninety potatoes the first season, and after sparing a few plants for our ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... skin has sustained little injury, it is of a dusky colour, but the natural hue cannot be decided with exactness from its present appearance. The scalp, with small exceptions is cohered with sorrel or foxy hair. The teeth are white and sound. The hands and feet, in their shrivelled state, are slender and delicate. All this is worthy the investigation of our acute and perspicacious colleague, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... nearly swooned at the idea, that he would sooner have a pig-sty than a batch of heroes. Perhaps the heroes of Master Mayor's day had sometimes wallowed in the mire to suggest the comparison. And Clarissa Gage would have her bower done—her clematis bower before the leaves were brown and shrivelled and there only remained the loving spindle-shanked stems clinging faithfully to the half-rotten framework which they could no longer clothe ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... eyes shrivelled to the size of a snake's, as, with no tenderness, the youth grappled with him still entangled, and with hands, feet, and knees drove him into his shell as a hasty traveller tramples his effects ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... haunting waltz-refrain, now near, now far, now summoning, now eluding. She stood gripping the curtain till she could bear it no longer, and then with a great sob she mustered her resolution; she stepped out upon the verandah, and passed down between shrivelled trailing roses to ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... models impossible to reproduce or to rival in any generation of poets or readers, actors or spectators, after the decadent forces of English genius in its own most natural and representative form of popular and creative activity had finally shrivelled up and shuddered into everlasting inanition under the withering blast of Puritanism. Before that blight had fallen upon the country of Shakespeare, the variety and fertility of dramatic form and dramatic ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the forest prowl, Fish prey on fish, and fowl regale on fowl; How Lybian tigers' chawdrons love assails, And warms, midst seas of ice, the melting whales; Cools the crimpt cod, fierce pangs to perch imparts, Shrinks shrivelled shrimps, but opens oysters' hearts; Then say, how all these things together tend To one great truth, prime object, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... science of botany. "I observe that the corollas are well nigh closed, which they should not be at this hour of the day, if the tree is in a healthy condition. It's the uinay; I know it well. We have passed several on the way as we started this morning, but I noticed none with the flowers thus shrivelled up." ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... preserved. They are of a quaint and antique fashion, and seldom seen except in pictures. White has turned yellow, and brighter hues have faded. Do you wonder, child? The wrinkled face was once as smooth as yours, the eyes as bright, the shrivelled skin as fair and delicate. It is the work of hands that have ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... like a plantain tree, without enduring strength. Since the wise and the foolish, the rich and the poor, all, divested of their anxieties, sleep on the crematorium, with bodies reft of flesh and full of bare bones and shrivelled sinews, whom amongst them will the survivors look upon as possessed of distinguishing marks by which the attributes of birth and beauty may be ascertained? (When all are equal in death) why should human beings, whose ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... but I don't'—she broke off, and looked at the little pinched face and shrivelled arms of the tiny creature, which she pressed more closely to her; then, with a hesitating voice, 'Only, if it ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bird, except that they have more flesh upon the lowest joints and are covered with this soft down. Its front limbs, my father says, seem as if nature had hesitated between wings and arms. They have attached to them several long, sharp, featherless quills starting from a shrivelled membrane, which make them very powerful and formidable weapons, so that no animal likes to attack it; while the foot has four fingers or claws with, which it clasps fish or small dragons, especially those electric dragons of which you have ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... sweeps through the soul at times as a desolation, like the blast from the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent in our loneliness; that which has touched us in our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, and our mortal affections have shrivelled up with pain; that which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness and conceptions of superhuman excellence? Shall we say It or He? What is It? Who is He? Those anticipations of Immortality and God—what are they? Are ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... before we reached the Temple-gate, and brushing in between me and Madame de Boufflers, seized her hand, and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a rusty brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose. A considerable crowd of people gathered round, and were not a little struck ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of the sun. Slowly the earth cooled, until great masses of solid matter, rock as we call it, still penetrated with intense heat, rose to the surface of the boiling sea. Forces of inconceivable magnitude moved through the mass. The outer surface of the globe as it cooled ripped and shrivelled like a withering orange. Great ridges, the mountain chains of to-day, were furrowed on its skin. Here in the darkness of the prehistoric night there arose as the oldest part of the surface of the earth the great rock bed that lies in a huge crescent ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... empty cradle, sat a shrivelled hag—a gaunt, forbidding anatomy, with hooked nose and brown skin. Tousled grey hair, like that of a Skye terrier, hung over her forehead, half concealing a pair of coal-black eyes. She rose up, barred the entrance with one claw-like ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... thing but herself, to wander among a few mouldy ruins, that are only imperfect indexes to lost volumes of glory, and meet at every step the more melancholy ruins of human nature—a degenerate race of stupid and shrivelled slaves, grovelling in the lowest ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... moment, all was again silence. Mr B——, without uttering a word, raised his feeble body from the bed, and came forth, the spectre of what he was only a few weeks before. His limbs, which were reduced to bony shanks, covered with shrivelled skin, seemed totally unable to support even the decayed, emaciated frame. He staggered as he reached the floor; but, recovering himself, stood firm, and then proceeded to his wardrobe, from which he drew his vestments, and proceeded to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... had time to reach maturity and drop. Come to this country below the heavens. What do you wish? What is your desire? I have come to heal the sick one who lies on the floor, feeble and unable to rise, thin and shrivelled like a floating log. Have pity from your heart and prevent my soul from parting from my skin and my bones from failing away. This sickness is very severe and I am unable ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... several lying upon the ground, and Ruby wondered at the girls for picking them up so eagerly. They were all shrivelled, and the least touch would break their skins. Indeed some of them in falling had broken, and were lying in bunches, all mashed together. Ruby did not want any such looking persimmons as those, and she looked carefully about for nice round ones, ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... longer here," said Ripple. So steadily she floated on, till straight before her lay a broad, bright path, that led up to a golden arch, beyond which she could see shapes flitting to and fro. As she drew near, brighter glowed the sky, hotter and hotter grew the air, till Ripple's leaf-cloak shrivelled up, and could no longer shield her from the heat; then she unfolded the white snow-flake, and, gladly wrapping the soft, cool mantle round her, entered through the ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... again, gently interrupting her, and patting the old woman's shrivelled hand, "you're forgetting the basket,—you haven't found ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... host were bearded men, old men, youths, fluttering robed bare-armed women, girls. Men and women of the new age! Rich robes, grey rags fluttered together in the whirl of their movement amidst the dominant blue. A monstrous black banner jerked its way to the right. He perceived a blue-clad negro, a shrivelled woman in yellow, then a group of tall fair-haired, white-faced, blue-clad men pushed theatrically past him. He noted two Chinamen. A tall, sallow, dark-haired, shining-eyed youth, white clad from top ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... wrought strange things with her father, mother, and brothers. They say she bound them to her; that the little one could not brook to have her out of sight; yet she worked on him so that he was crooked and shrivelled. Yet he wept and cried to have her ever with him, while he peaked and pined and dwindled away. And her mother, who was once a fine, stately, masterful dame, pined to mere skin and bone, and lay in lethargy; and now she is winding her charms on ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... down Snow-hill, did not stop till he reached Holborn Conduit, where, seizing a leathern bucket, he filled it with water, and plunged his head into it. Refreshed by the immersion, he now glanced at the document committed to him by Grant. It was a piece of parchment, and showed by its shrivelled and scorched appearance the agony which its late possessor must have endured, Leonard did not open it, but thrust it with ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... nineteenth century had undertaken to relate them, his account, we may depend upon it, would have been put together upon one or other of these principles. Yet, by the side of that unfolding of the secrets of the prison-house of the soul, what lean and shrivelled anatomies the best ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... had put on, in order to pry lovingly into his face. So what with her failing sight, and her tear-blinded eyes, she gave up the attempt of learning his face by heart through the medium of that sense, and tried another. She passed her sodden, shrivelled hands, all trembling with eagerness, over his manly face, bent meekly down in order that she might more easily make her strange inspection. At ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... operator cracks the nuts before weighing there is almost sure to be loss of fragments of shell. Trying to correct the original weight in any way is necessarily inaccurate. Deciding whether or not the kernel of a nut is sufficiently shrivelled to deserve a penalty is a matter of judgment which is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... of splendid yellow lights and pleasant winds—when the teak wood trees dropped their big dusty leaves, and the nights were sharply cold, and Rajputana pretended that it was winter. Dr. Roberts and Sunni were very well then, but Moti shrivelled up and coughed the day through, and the Maharajah, when he went out to drive, wrapped himself up in Cashmere shawls, ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... out, And lead a universal freedom on. And heaven wants souls—fresh and capacious souls; To taste its raptures, and expand, like flowers, Beneath the glory of its central sun. It wants fresh souls—not lean and shrivelled ones; It wants fresh souls, my brother, give it thine. If thou indeed wilt be what scholars should; If thou wilt be a hero, and wilt strive To help thy fellow and exalt thyself, Thy feet at last shall stand on jasper ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... as she did in a state bordering on petrification, he came forward to the bedside. He did not speak, however; merely looking down at his patient in a silence whose delicacy was worthy of honor, even in a shrivelled little snuff-taking, French, village doctor. The pretty young mademoiselle would be calmer before many minutes had elapsed—his experience had taught him. And so she was. At least, her first shock of terror wore away, and she was calm ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the air around him a tenuous and deadly exhalation and He found himself glancing from one casual word to another on his right or left in stolid wonder that they had been so silently emptied of instantaneous sense until every mean shop legend bound his mind like the words of a spell and his soul shrivelled up sighing with age as he walked on in a lane among heaps of dead language. His own consciousness of language was ebbing from his brain and trickling into the very words themselves which set to band and ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... frequently on those sorrowful roadside cairns, surmounted by a wooden cross with an obliterated inscription and a shrivelled wreath, marking the spot where some peasant or mountaineer had been crushed by a land-slide or smothered in the merciless winter drift. As the carriage approached Cluses, the road crept along the lips of precipices and was literally overhung by the dizzy walls of the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... golden hair is grey, And all the body's lovely line In wrinkled meanness slipped astray; The limbs so round and ripe and fine Shrivelled and withered; quenched the shine That made your eyes as bright as day: So, ladies, hear these words of mine, Love, ere ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... but, it must be confessed, that his apartment, and furniture, and morning dress, were sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of cloaths looked very rusty; he had on a little old shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment that he began to talk. Some gentlemen, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... simple though it be, is fully successful. For a long time the body is repeatedly shaken, but in vain; the tibiae or tarsi, unduly hard, refuse to yield to the patient saw. Sparrows and Mice grow dry and shrivelled, unused, upon the gibbet. Sooner in one case, later in another, my Necrophori abandon the insoluble problem in mechanics: to push, ever so little, the movable support and so to ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... gilding upon it, sat a meagre lady clad in black silk, with a silvery grey shawl about her shoulders, and an other of the same kind across her knees. She had the aspect of extreme age and of out-worn health; the skin of her face was like shrivelled parchment; her hands were mere skin and bone; she sat as though on the point of sinking across the arm of her chair for very feebleness. But in the whitish-yellow visage shone a pair of eyes which had by no means lost their vitality; so keen were ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Doris almost cried aloud. Nancy old! Nancy lean and shrivelled with her pretty back bent to—the burden ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... here for debt; but what were their names, or what Princes they served, I could not learn. Our guide next showed us the body of King Henry the Fifth's Queen, Catherine, in an open coffin, who is said to have been a very beautiful Princess; but whose shrivelled skin, much resembling discoloured parchment, may now serve as a powerful antidote to that vanity with which frail beauty is apt to ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... see the red sparks going about," he said, looking at the wandering points of light in the blackening scrolls of shrivelled paper. ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... four and a half, Hezekiah launched the celebrated "Grindley's Sauce." It added a relish to chops and steaks, transformed cold mutton into a luxury, and swelled the head of Hezekiah Grindley—which was big enough in all conscience as it was—and shrivelled up his little hard heart. The Grindleys and the Appleyards visited no more. As a sensible fellow ought to have seen for himself, so thought Hezekiah, the Sauce had altered all things. The possibility of a marriage between their children, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... guests at Hurdley Castle, he had met a woman, beautiful but predatory, whose looks were taking on an autumnal tint, and whose banking account had shrivelled ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... having hastily dismounted, a most touching scene of motherly affection ensued, for, as the old man explained to me, he was her son. The poor shrivelled creature threw her arms around his neck and kissed him fondly, first on one cheek and then upon the other, after which, having affectionately taken his face between her hands, she impressed another long, long kiss in the middle ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... at her incoherent earnestness, but the lady, with true feminine condescension, informed her, in a loud voice, that Allan had an engagement in Scotland on St. Lawrence's Eve. She then started up, extended her shrivelled hands, that shook like the aspen, and panted out: "Aih, aih? Lord preserve us! Whaten an engagement has he on St. Lawrence's Eve? Bind him! bind him! Shackle him wi' bands of steel, and of brass, and of iron! O may He ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... ingenuous look in her eyes, as I glanced into them, disarmed my momentary suspicion, and a few seconds later, animated by the intensity of my desire to learn what I might regarding poor Nell's whereabouts, I found myself stretched at full length upon the divan, with the little, shrivelled, decrepit figure of the queen bending over me as, in obedience to her command, I stared intently at the jewel on her right thumb, which she held within a few inches of ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... shall never find her again. I will therefore disguise myself." As she was thus thinking she saw by the side of the road the corpse of a poor old beggar woman, who had evidently died from want and poverty. The body was shrivelled up, and nothing of it remained but the skin and bones. The Princess took the skin and washed it, and drew it on over her own lovely face and neck, as one draws a glove on one's hand. Then she took a long stick and began hobbling along, leaning on it, toward the town. The old woman's skin was ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... one could have told by her outward appearance that any change had taken place. The beautiful girl was now in reality the sly Fox Sprite, but in one way only did she look like a fox. When the fox-spirit entered her body, her feet suddenly shrivelled up and became very similar in shape and size to the feet of the animal who had her in his power. When the fox noticed this, at first he was somewhat annoyed, but, feeling that no one else would know, he did not ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... of papers from the pocket of his captive. One by one he glanced them through and flung them on to the floor. As he came towards the end of his search, however, his expression of confident complacency vanished. His lips shrivelled up a little, his eyes narrowed. The last folded sheet of paper—a little perfumed note from Peggy, thanking Sandy for his beautiful roses—he crumpled fiercely into a little ball. He opened his lips to speak, then he paused. A new light broke in upon him. The fury ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... discovered this genius; but the ring in his voice gave her pause. Twice in the course of their short walk he had shown feeling; and she wondered at it, having hitherto regarded him as a cynical old fellow with a wit which cracked himself and the world like two dry nuts for the jest of their shrivelled kernels. She did not, know that a kind word of hers had unlocked his heart; and before she could recall her question they had reached the stable-yard of "The Dogs." And after stabling Mercury it was but a step ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... business to Charley, in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated, and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop and splash, and sidle into corners, like a saddle donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters Charley's young hands had made. They, so shrivelled and tottering; it, so plump and round. Yet Charley was uncommonly expert at other things, and had as nimble little fingers ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... I should have bantered aside. I seemed to realize the torture described in the dream of Dante,—two souls struggling together in one frail body. I had been applauding good and condemning evil when it cost me nothing but the sentiment; but when the fiery test came, my purpose cracked and shrivelled before it. Yes, I conquered; but the scars that purchased the victory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... before the fire; upon which were a candle, stuck in a ginger-beer bottle, two or three pewter pots, a loaf and butter, and a plate. In a frying pan, which was on the fire, some sausages were cooking, and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand, was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villanous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... and bound up their wounds, that the Fairy Violet thought of herself. Then she discovered that her delicate gossamer wings were gone! Evidently they had been caught on a crooked stick as she fell to the ground and torn violently off, for there the remnants now hung, shrivelled and useless, flapping in the breeze. At this sight the hapless fairy threw herself by the side of the now withered Violet, and wept bitterly. When spring and the spring flowers were gone, and their work was ended, Violet and her ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... cells, we may infer that it resembles in nature not saliva, {22} but pancreatic secretion; and we know from Fredericq that a secretion of this kind is found in the intestines of worms. As the leaves which are dragged into the burrows are often dry and shrivelled, it is indispensable for their disintegration by the unarmed mouths of worms that they should first be moistened and softened; and fresh leaves, however soft and tender they may be, are similarly treated, probably from habit. The result is that they are partially digested before they ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... every push she had given to her old flowers, vainly striving to bring them back to their old forms; but still she had persevered. With long tedious care she had mended the old gloves which would hardly hold her fingers. She had carefully hidden the rags of her sleeves. She had washed her little shrivelled collar, and had smoothed it out painfully. It had been a separate grief to her that she could find no cuffs to put round her wrists;—and yet she knew that no cuffs could have availed her anything. Nothing could avail her now. She expected nothing ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... was over, Hoffmann cried, "Can you smell the flavour of roast meat?" and he said that whilst the doctors were burning him, the thought entered his mind that the "Minister of Police was having him leaded lest he should slip out as contraband;"—he was shrivelled up to a mummy almost, so that, owing to his small size as well, a woman could carry him in her arms. Though his body was thus a perfect wreck, his mental powers were as brilliant and keen as ever; and when his hands proved ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... a crowd of two sorts of women. Some were young, quaint, clever, neat, pretty, juicy, tight, brisk, buxom, proper, kind-hearted, and as right as my leg, to any man's thinking. The rest were old, weather-beaten, over-ridden, toothless, blear-eyed, tough, wrinkled, shrivelled, tawny, mouldy, phthisicky, decrepit hags, beldams, and walking carcasses. We were told that his office was to cast anew those she-pieces of antiquity, and make them such as the pretty creatures whom we ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... for all you'd notice. Look at Isaphine, and Gabella Sarah. Little lambs,—as likely as not they've taken their deaths. It shan't happen again, though. Give me that book—" And, snatching Mell's treasure from her hands, Mrs. Davis flung it into the fire. It flamed, shrivelled: the White Cat, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast,—all, all were turned in one moment into a heap of unreadable ashes! Mell gave one clutch, one scream; then she stood quite still, with a hard, vindictive look on her face, which ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... mesdemoiselles!" cried Madame, and we filed out into the dusty street, at the corner of which sat another of our visible tokens of the coming of the season of flowers; a dirty, shrivelled old Irishwoman, full of benedictions and beggary, who, all through the summer, sold "posies" to the passers-by. We school-girls were good customers to her. We were all more or less sentimental, more or less homesick, and had more or less of that susceptibility to ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... purpose, and of but little intellect. Such men never occupy the public attention—are altogether negative, as well in action as in mind. The enemies of Prentiss were such from envy, or political hatred. His great abilities, when brought in contact with those suing for popular favor, so shrivelled and dwarfed them as to inspire only fear and hatred. But men of this character were scarce in that day in Mississippi. Such was the tone of society, and such the education of her sons, that traits ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... roots of one of the shrubs. This particular one was much smaller than the rest, perhaps because it was a native of the torrid zone, and required greater care than the others to make it nourish; so that, shrivelled, cankered, and scarcely showing a green leaf, both Pansie and the kitten probably mistook it for a weed. After their joint efforts had made a pretty big trench about it, the little girl seized the shrub with both hands, bestriding it with her plump little legs, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Eating and hunger, labor and rest, gathering and spending, there is no gain. Life is consumed in getting a living. After laborious years our money is ready in bank, but the man who was to enjoy it is gone from enjoyment, shrivelled with care, every appetite dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... as New York and Chicago, and they are the forerunners of Oriental child debauchery. These little girls are seldom seen on the streets, but may be recognized when seen, by their deformed, bowed legs, bent backs and shrivelled little, old faces—such faces as we find in cripples aged by pain. Our hearts have been almost stilled as we have listened to the terrible stories of the hundreds of little girls in the ghastly fleshmarkets of India and China who, by the knife and the insertion into their ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... man's breath came gustily, his cheeks flamed, the hectic burned like fire in his shrivelled cheeks. He loosed his clinging hold and tried to ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... and packing it full, and it was a perfect purgatory of dust and confusion and gritting of teeth and soft, sweet, and low profanity. I asked the young man in the ticket-office if I could have a sleeping-section, and he answered "No," with a snarl that shrivelled me up like burned leather. I went off, smarting under this insult to my dignity, and asked another local official, supplicatingly, if I couldn't have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car; but he cut me short with a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wine-skin,—and do you admire dear brave Miguel's knowledge of thirsty nature when he tells you that the Drinker, having seriously considered for a space the Pleiads, or place where they should be, fell, as he slowly returned the shrivelled bottle to its donor, into a deep musing of an hour's length, or thereabouts, and then ... mark ... only then, fetching a profound sigh, broke silence with ... such a piece of praise as turns pale the labours in that way of Rabelais and the Teian (if he wasn't a Byzantine monk, alas!) and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... think I did. What a light! That lamp wants a drink. And what makes Simon so pale? He is shrivelled up to nothing. That comes of his worries; there is nothing else the matter with him, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... abundant stream from an abundant and unknown source, into the malarial districts, the genuine African has gradually degenerated into the typical Negro. His blood infected with the poison of his low habitation, his body shrivelled by disease, his intellect veiled in pagan superstitions, the noblest yearnings of his soul strangled at birth by the savage passions of a nature abandoned to sensuality,—the poor Negro of Africa deserves more our pity than ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... is not a very pretty thing to look at; but, considered properly, it is certainly interesting. That stiff form, wrapped up tightly in ever so many dirty cloths, with a black shrivelled face which looks as if it had been cut out of a piece of wood and then smoked, was once, no doubt, a very pleasant person to know. If it was a woman, it played with the children; sewed a little, perhaps; complained of the heat, and went to parties. If it was a man, it probably ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the hoariest local liar. However, she had a new clothes-line bent on to the old horse's front end—and we fancy that was the reason she didn't recognise us at first. She had never looked younger than a hard hundred within the memory of man. Her shrivelled face was the colour of leather, and crossed and recrossed with lines till there wasn't room for any more. But her eyes were bright yet, and twinkled ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... be that asafoetida-like creature known as a stink-bug he made no further efforts in that direction. He also bit off a tender tip from a ground-shoot, but instead of a young poplar it was Fox-bite, and shrivelled up his tongue for a quarter of an hour. At last he arrived at the conclusion that, up to date, the one thing in Neewa's menu that he COULD eat ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... like a tossed bundle, into a chair. It seemed that the woman ceased to breathe. In a second the peculiar freshness of her beauty had shrivelled as if scorched by a rushing flame. Only her eyes were alive. They moved wistfully from Peter to Vanno, and from Vanno to the half-open door, as if seeking mercy or escape. She looked agonized, broken, like a fawn caught in ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... heavens are still and far; But, not unheard of awful Jove, The sighing of the island slave Was answered, when the AEgean wave The keels of Mithridates clove, And the vines shrivelled in the breath ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... family, the head of which, a shrivelled old fellow, was busy making a paddle with his crooked knife, the materials of a birch-bark canoe lying beside him—and most beautifully they make the canoe in this region. His wife was standing close by, a smudged hag of most sinister aspect; also a son and his wife. On stages, and on the shrubs ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... Kirkshaw, who lent me the two hundred and fifty, can only spare it for a month; but no doubt the bank will do a bill for part of it by that time. But sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Here is the money for Hornby at all events: and here at last comes the shrivelled atomy; I hear his horse. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... a handsome, well-grown man in our livery will look better than that shrivelled old porter creature!" ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spot where I had lain were crushed to the earth: but I saw that they would soon lift their heads and rejoice again in the sun and air. Not so those on which my shadow had lain. The very outline of it could be traced in the withered lifeless grass, and the scorched and shrivelled flowers which stood there, dead, and hopeless of any resurrection. I shuddered, and hastened away ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... which they must take me to Cairo. They have eaten all, and are now obliged to stop and make bread here, but they are as good-humoured as if all were well. My fleet consisted of my dahabieh, flag ship; tender, a kyasseh (cargo boat) for my horse and sais, wherein were packed two extremely poor shrivelled old widows, going to Cairo to see their sons, now in garrison there; lots of hard bread, wheat, flour, jars of butter, onions and lentils for all the lads of 'my family' studying at Gama'l Azhar, besides in my box queer little stores of long hoarded money for those megowareen ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... alight, but had been lighted only occasionally. This suggestion was borne out by a further examination of the rooms. In the kitchen there were practically no stores and hardly any arrangements even for simple bachelor cooking; the bedroom offered the same suggestion; the soap in the wash-stand was shrivelled and cracked; there was no cast-off linen, and the shirts in the drawers, though clean, had the peculiar yellowish, faded appearance that linen acquires when long out of use. In short, the rooms had the appearance of not having been lived in ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... bear only male flowers, which have four stamens producing a rather small quantity of pollen, and a rudimentary pistil; other holly-trees bear only female flowers; these have a full-sized pistil, and four stamens with shrivelled anthers, in which not a grain of pollen can be detected. Having found a female tree exactly sixty yards from a male tree, I put the stigmas of twenty flowers, taken from different branches, under the microscope, and on all, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... the soul of a girl? Aie! Aie! Hath His magical power been slain by the sin? Aie! Aie! Hath a prophet made words in the act of a goat? Aie! Aie! Does a saviour in hairs thirst the blood of a King? Aie! Aie! Shall we hearken, O Chiefs, to the wish of the One? Aie! Aie! Or be shrivelled and die in the drought ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... which had come to gloat over the murdered Terrorist stood about whispering, with heads averted, engrossed in their own affairs. He slid his hand surreptitiously over that of the dead man. With dexterous manipulation he lifted the finger round which glistened the metal ring. Death appeared to have shrivelled the flesh still more upon the bones, to have contracted the knuckles and shrunk the tendons. The ring slid off quite easily. Mole had it in his hand, when suddenly a rough blow struck him ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the men were well-dressed and prosperous-looking; while the fourth, a shrivelled old fellow, in faded clothes which seemed several sizes too large for him, looked needy and ill-fed as he nervously ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... antithesis, as he is the antipathy, of the prince. It is the careful portrait of what Hamlet would hate—a remnant of senile craft in the method with folly in the matter—a shy look in the dull and glazing eye, that insults the honesty of Hamlet as much as the shrivelled meaning with its pompous phrase insults his intelligence. So with the other characters; they are all made to justify his demeanour towards them. The queen is heard to confess her guilt, Ophelia is seen to act as a decoy; his college friends attempt ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... to which his baldness lent a deceptive appearance of intellect, and his expression was of such bland and smiling goodness that it was impossible to resent the tedious garrulity of his conversation. In the midst of his shrivelled countenance his eyes looked like little round blue buttons which had been set there in order to keep his features from entirely slipping away. He was the oldest member of the Wilde family, and he had lived in the house in Gramercy ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... another, he will not venture on those meads where the latter walks securely, but rather leave the cranberries which grow there unraked by himself. Perchance, some spring a higher freshet will float them within his reach, though they may be watery and frost-bitten by that time. Such shrivelled berries I have seen in many a poor man's garret, ay, in many a church-bin and state-coffer, and with a little water and heat they swell again to their original size and fairness, and added sugar enough, stead mankind for ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the distances of the sidereal universe. As had she been a dog, he kicked the ugly little bushwoman to her feet and compelled her to start with him on an encirclement of the base. Part way around, he encountered horrors. Even, among the others, did he recognize the sun-shrivelled remnant of the nine-years girl who had accidentally broken Chief Vngngn's personality taboo. And, among what was left of these that had passed, he encountered what was left of one who had not yet passed. Truly had the bush-folk ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... pots, a loaf and butter, and a plate. In a frying-pan, which was on the fire, and which was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were cooking; and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand, was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair. He was dressed in a greasy flannel gown, with his throat bare; and seemed to be dividing his attention between the frying-pan and the clothes-horse, over which a great ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... could be chewed and swallowed. Daylight prospected through the snow, and found occasional patches of mossberries. At the best, mossberries were composed practically of seeds and water, with a tough rind of skin about them; but the berries he found were of the preceding year, dry and shrivelled, and the nourishment they contained verged on the minus quality. Scarcely better was the bark of young saplings, stewed for an hour and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... razor-edged. They were long, and they looked out of narrow windows, and they seemed to be lighted by some internal radiance, for they shone out like lamps in a lighthouse tower. Escape them I could not, while, as I endeavoured to meet them, it was as if I shrivelled into nothingness. Never before had I realised what was meant by the power of the eye. They held me enchained, helpless, spell-bound. I felt that they could do with me as they would; and they did. Their gaze was unfaltering, having the bird-like trick of never blinking; ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... speech the girl's heart shrivelled within her until it touched the lowest depths of terror and despair. She cowered against the horse, pressing her knuckles into her lips till the blood came—and, suddenly, as he finished, she felt an insane ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... emissary's continuous winnings, disastrous losses of the young subalterns inveigled into gambling through fear of his official displeasure, were not unknown to Hugh. A civil declination was on his lips; but keenly searching the shrivelled face leering into his own, Hugh saw written there something that compelled consideration, challenged a refusal. Promptly and in affirmative speech he reversed ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the sun darting between them clothed the spaces between in dazzling splendor. Our enjoyment of natural beauty was not marred by considerations about the elements which produced it: whether the rich color of the shrivelled ferns on the hillside had been given by the fierce heat of a sun which, at the same time, had dried up the streams and parched the meadows, we did not inquire; and if the grandeur of the stormy lake on a dark night, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... some of the strange instruments we have described; and took from the recesses in the rock several scrolls. The old man lay at his feet, ready to obey his behests; but, to all appearance, rigid and motionless as the dead, whom his blanched hues and shrivelled form resembled. It was, indeed, as the picture of the enchanter at his work, and the corpse of some man of old, revived from the grave to minister to his ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and heroic, and we should say: Oh, fat soul, oh, fecund spirit, oh, fine nature, oh, divine intelligence, oh, clear mind, oh, blessed repast, fit to spread before lions, or verily for a banquet for dogs. On the other hand, an old man shrivelled, weak, of failing strength, would be held to be of little savour and of small account. ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... the family meal to cook bread for the troops. An old, toothless, grinning African stood at every lane and gate, selling buttermilk and corn-cakes. Poor mortal, sinful old women! They had worked for nothing through their three-score and ten, but avarice glared from their shrivelled pupils, and their last but greatest delight lay in the coppers and the dimes. One would have thought that they had outlived the greed of gold; but wages deferred make ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... great length and describe the triumphal entry of Commodore Gibney and Captain Scraggs into the capitol of Kandavu; of how the king, an undersized, shrivelled old savage, stuck his bushy head out the window of his bungalow when he saw the procession coming; of how a minute later he advanced into the space in the centre of his wari, where in the olden days the populace was wont to gather for its cannibal orgies; how he greeted his ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Samuelsen did the work of three. He was a little grey shrivelled man, with a face like a dried fig. He might be forty, or he might be sixty, it was not easy to tell. In his monotonous life there had only been one single event which he particularly remembered, and that was the afternoon when he had taken his books and calculations in to Mrs. Worse, and since ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... man employed by Montague Tigg (manager of the "Anglo-Bengalee Company") to make private inquiries. He was a dried-up, shrivelled old man. Where he lived and how he lived, nobody knew; but he was always to be seen waiting for some one who never appeared; and he would glide along apparently taking no notice of any one.—C. Dickens, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... me by Prof. Frankland).—Three leaves were immersed in this acid; some inflection was almost immediately caused, which increased slightly, but then ceased, and the leaves seemed killed. Next morning they were rather shrivelled, and many of the glands had fallen off the tentacles. Drops of this acid were placed on the discs of four leaves; in 40 m. all the tentacles were greatly inflected, excepting the extreme marginal ones; and many of these after 3 hrs. became inflected. ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... which connects the traveller with humanity, is a long row of the skeletons of mules and horses, which have here left their bones for a guide across the desert. The dead animals lie like mummies, dried and shrivelled; hair, eyes, muscles, all are there. Their appearance presents a remarkable peculiarity. One might suppose, that having been overtaken by death under similar circumstances, the last struggle over, their inanimate bodies would be marked ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... not mean only as a change. I believe she would be much happier living there, with this great place off her hands. It is enough to depress any one's spirits to live in a corner like a shrivelled kernel ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... curtains, and saw, wrapped up in linen, a yellowish-red object, exceedingly shrivelled-looking, which had a bad smell, and which ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... wing touch the branch, and form a perfect stalk to the leaf, which is supported in its place by the claws of the middle pair of feet, which are slender and inconspicuous. The irregular outline of the wings gives exactly the perspective effect of a shrivelled leaf. We thus have size, colour, form, markings, and habits, all combining together to produce a disguise which may be said to be absolutely perfect; and the protection which it affords is sufficiently indicated by the abundance of ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... such a sun, who knew not how men lived at all in such a furnace and could neither guess the alleviations nor get them, is beyond the imagination of man. They arrived dying with thirst, dropping with weariness, lamenting the loss of the dead that rotted along their road; they arrived shrivelled to rags or already raving with fever and they did what they ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... every now and then visiting his hoards and fingering the fat pieces, and thinking ever all that they represent of earthly and angelic and diabolic energy. A miser pouring out his guineas into his palm and bathing his shrivelled and trembling hands in the yellow heaps before him, is not the prosaic being we are in the habit of thinking him. He is a dreamer, almost a poet. You and I read a novel or a poem to help our imaginations to build up palaces, and transport us into the emotional states and the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was helping unload the wagon, half a dozen children came to the gate and looked in; they did not speak; they only pointed at her and laughed—then ran away. But in a moment or two they came back. This time they had with them a little faded and shrivelled old man, who strutted along, his head thrown back and his feet striking the ground with the measured tread of a ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... received him politely and asked what he wanted. "Could Camilla enter the Conservatory?" The little shrivelled up gentleman opened his small eyes as wide as he could and said, in a squeaking voice, "Camilla! That's a girl!" Yes. Camilla was a girl. How very shocking in her. Why was she not a boy? A girl. Oh! No it couldn't be considered for a moment. ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... feet, and soon after the thighs, arms, and surface assumed a leaden, blue, purple, black, or deep brown tint, according to the complexion of the individual, or the intensity of the attack. The fingers and toes were reduced in size; the skin and soft parts covering them became wrinkled, shrivelled, and folded; the nails assumed a bluish, pearly white hue; the larger superficial veins were marked by flat lines of a deeper black; the pulse became small as a thread, and sometimes totally extinct; the voice sunk into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to pieces the things she loved—delicate leafy things—as if they were tissue-paper and he had walked through it. Her pleasures seemed to mean nothing when he was with her and before his loud laughter her wonderful faery-haunted days shrivelled. All she knew was that, now she lived at Undern, she never went out in the green dawn or came home wreathed in pansy and ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... charm was certainly inconspicuous. What had she then come back for?—he had asked himself that; with the effect of deciding that it probably would have been, a little, to "look after" her remnant of property. Perhaps she had come to save what little might still remain of that shrivelled interest; perhaps she had been, by those who took care of it for her, further swindled and despoiled, so that she wished to get at the facts. Perhaps on the other hand—it was a more cheerful chance—her investments, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... "Stranger, who loathest life, there lies Masar. Begone, nor tarry longer, or ere morn The cormorant in his solitary haunt Of insulated rock or sounding cove Stands on thy bleached bones and screams for prey. My lips can scatter them a hundred leagues, So shrivelled in one breath as all the sands We tread on could not in as many years. Wretched who die nor raise their sepulchre! Therefore begone." But Dalica unawed (Though in her withered but still firm right-hand Held up with imprecations hoarse and deep Glimmered her ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... quits His grasp upon the winds And gives them all their fury; bids a plague Kindle a fiery boil upon the skin, And putrefy the breath of blooming health. He calls for Famine, and the meagre fiend Blows mildew from between his shrivelled lips, And taints the golden ear. He springs His mines, And desolates a nation at a blast. Forth steps the spruce philosopher, and tells Of homogeneal and discordant springs And principles; of causes how they work By necessary laws their sure effects; Of action and reaction. He has ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... a moment as to which it shall be. If a peach does not become sweetmeat, it will become something, it will not stay a withered, unsightly peach; but for souls there is no transmigration out of fables. Once a soul, forever a soul,—mean or mighty, shrivelled or full, it is for you to say. Money, land, luxury, so far as they are money, land, and luxury, are worthless. It is only as fast and as far as they are turned into ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... autumn the mellowed tints of the stone houses are contrasted with the fierce yellows and browny-reds of the foliage, and the villages become full of bright colours. At all times, except when the country is shrivelled by an icy northern wind, the scenery of the dales has ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... when the old man calculated that even with the utmost economy Bruce must have been two days without food. He looked pinched and shrivelled as he stared vacantly at the mouth of the canyon into which ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... on across white open spaces of shrivelled grass and sand, amidst trees where shadows made black patternings upon the silver, and then it plunged into obscurities. For a time it lifted, and then on one hand the bush fell away, and he saw across a vast moonlit valley wide undulations of open cultivation, belts of jungle, copses, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... three species of currant borers with unpronounceable names. Their presence is shown by yellow foliage and withering fruit in summer, and by brown, shrivelled branches in winter. Cutting out and burning is the only remedy. Usually, a vigorous bush will outgrow the attacks of this enemy; and good cultivation gives vigor, and also disturbs and brings to the surface the worms that have entered the soil to undergo their transformation. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... doubt, whose lot is to wait until the last day of autumn: and at the same time they become ripe, yellow, and shrivelled. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... between astonishment, fear, and fascination. It was light, much lighter I should say than it had been in the living state, and the flesh to all appearance was still flesh, though about it there clung a faintly aromatic odour. For the rest it was not shrunk or shrivelled, or even black and unsightly, like the flesh of Egyptian mummies, but plump and fair, and, except where it had been slightly burnt, perfect as on the day of death—a very ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... does not set in such glory beyond Gilmore-hill, as behind the glowing granite of Goatfell; and the trunks of the trees round Glasgow are (if truth must be spoken) a good deal blacker than might be desired, while their leaves are somewhat shrivelled up by the chemical gales of St. Rollox. No wonder, then, that the purest of pure air, the bluest of blue waves, the most picturesque of noble hills, the most purple of heather, the greenest of ivy, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... turned its back on Resolution. This riled the Radicals; not to be soothed even by Mr. G. interposing in favourite character as Grand Old Pacificator. Storm raged all night; division after division taken; finally, long past midnight, Directors again brought up to the Bar, the worn, almost shrivelled, appearance of Conacher's umbrella testifying to the mental suffering undergone during the seven hours that had passed since last they ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... resounding from all quarters of the camp Craven wrote on steadily for some time longer. Then with a short sigh he shuffled the scattered sheets together, brushed clear the clinging accumulation of scorched wings and tiny shrivelled bodies, and without re-reading the closely written pages stuffed them into an envelope, and having closed and directed it, leaned back with ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... dry and shrivelled and hard as shot, sometimes they are large and full and have a juiciness about them, sometimes they are a little bit red, others are golden, many white. The sack stands open in the market—you can thrust ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... predecessors; if the leading lady was plain, they said so, whilst if one of us were to suggest that the heroine, whose beauty is talked of tiresomely during the play, in real life might sit in unflattering safety under mistletoe till the berries shrivelled he would be regarded as an ungentle manlike brute. This is ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... up to where she sat looking curiously, apathetically at him; her gray hair straggling down on her dirty cotton frock open at the neck over shrivelled yellow skin; soiled old hands hanging carelessly over slatternly garments; stockingless feet stuck into a great tattered pair of men's shoes. Nothing seemed changed since he saw her last save that the hair had been black ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... buried in the yellow sand. The fisheries are gone, the papyrus has withered; for centuries no native prince has been seated on the throne. It is a land of the dead. The dead are everywhere. At every step you stumble over a mummy, the mummy of a dead cat, a dead dog, or a dead and shrivelled Pharaoh. Its greatest asset is its departed glory, and every grain of sand blown from the mighty desert, and every wave of reflected light flung back from the Lybian hills, proclaims the terrific fulfilment ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... his unheard step, In darkness shrouded, yet approaching fast, Death, from amidst the sunny flowers, lifts up His giant dread anatomy, and smites, Smites the fair prospect once, whilst every bloom 110 Hangs shrivelled, and a sound of mourning fills The lone and blasted valley: but no sound Is here of sorrow or of death, though she, The country Kate, with shining morning cheek (Who, in the tumbril, with her market-gear, Sits seated ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... weeks together. Game is coming, too,—roebuck and deer,—in the young forests. The climate itself is changing; more rain falls in midsummer, when it is needed. The sand-blast has been checked, the power of the west wind broken. The shrivelled soil once more takes up and holds the rains, and the streams will deepen, fish leap in them as of yore. Groves of beech and oak are springing up in the shelter of their hardier evergreen kin. "Make the land furry," Dalgas said, with prophetic ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... becomes still more frightful from the great loss of flesh, and the dark skin hanging loose on his bones. The fat not only seems to have disappeared, but the muscular substance also—the whole frame being shrivelled. The patient complains of increasing weakness, diminished appetite, flying pains often concentrated at the pit of the stomach; and coughs much. The expectoration is for the most part difficult, and consists ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher's stone. The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character. Living all ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the ladies eke to-brent,** *shrivelled **very burnt That they knew not where they might them bestow; The knightes swelt,* for lack of shade nigh shent** *fainted **destroyed And after that, within a little throw, The wind began so sturdily to blow, That down went all ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the shortest way. The cavalry dashed off amid a jingling of swords and accoutrements. The Maharajah followed their departure with lowering, flashing eyes. He then ordered his servant to fetch his body physician, Mohammed Bhawon. And when, a few minutes later, the lean, shrivelled little man, with his wrinkled brown face and penetrating black eyes, dressed entirely in white muslin, was ushered into his presence, he beckoned to him graciously, inviting him to be seated by him on ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... scorched, and she cried out at that discovery. Oh, the poplars! the poplars! How they must suffer! And how their leaves would drop, black and shrivelled, a black harvest to strew the lawn. She thought she heard the shouting of the Pinderwells, but she knew their agony would be short, and already they were silent. The poplars were still in pain, and she ran to the front of the house that she might ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... man! his eyes are sunk, and his hands shrivelled; his legs dwindled, and his back bow'd. Pray, pray, for a metamorphosis—change thy shape, and shake off age; get the Medea's kettle and be boiled anew; come forth with lab'ring callous hands, and chine of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... indifference to what confronted his eyes, added to his dull regard for the verbal accuracy of ancient verses, shrivelled the modern poet's ardent humour. Was this an example of the intellectual enlightenment awaiting him, he had so fondly hoped, in Athens? With apprehension he remembered what his father's friend, a rich dilettante, one of ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... drum. She talked to the people in their own language; the "open air" was designed for the people. "Kiko! Kiko!" (Why! Why!) Lindsay heard her cry, where he stood in the shadow, on the edge of the crowd. He looked down at a coolie woman with shrivelled breasts crouched on her haunches upon the ground, bent with the bricks of half a century, and back at the girl beside the torch. "Do not delay until to-morrow!" Laura besought them. "Kul-ka dari mut karo!" A sensation of ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... credibility of the testimony brought forward to prove the habitual cruelty of his client, he gave utterance to a withering torrent of invective and sarcasm, in which the character of the main hostile witness shrivelled and blackened like paper in a flame. Then—having been eight hours on his feet—he began to avail himself of that last dangerous resource which genius only may use,—the final arrow in the lawyer's quiver, which is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... You might be useful to her in many ways, with that brain of yours, but it was given to you for another purpose, and you'd end by leaving her. You'd come home like a sick dog to its kennel—and become a hack. Your genius would have shrivelled to the roots. If you give her up now your very unhappiness and baffled longings will make you do greater and greater things. Talent needs the pleasant pastures of content to browse on but they sicken genius. If you married her you wouldn't ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton |
