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Sable   Listen
adjective
Sable  adj.  Of the color of the sable's fur; dark; black; used chiefly in poetry. "Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world."
Sable antelope (Zool.), a large South African antelope (Hippotragus niger). Both sexes have long, sharp horns. The adult male is black; the female is dark chestnut above, white beneath.
Sable iron, a superior quality of Russia iron; so called because originally stamped with the figure of a sable.
Sable mouse (Zool.), the lemming.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sable" Quotes from Famous Books



... manner of schemes. He was independent of outside assistance. Steel tweezers, borrowed from his mother's dressing-case and ground to a point, furnished him with a drawing pen, and his compasses were made of birch-wood with needles inserted at the end of the legs. Later on, he robbed his mother's sable cloak of the hairs required for two small brushes, in order to complete his drawings in appropriate colors. The clever lad attracted the notice of some of the greatest mechanical draughtsmen in Sweden, who made him drawings to serve as models, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... up, and, "encore, encore," the forestieri shouted, "encore!" And other gondolas came gliding up, and the spreading fan stretched in ever widening compass, divided now, like the pinions of a great sable bird studded with dots of light. Then, while the flowing moonlight brightened, and a perfumed breeze came wafted over the water from the rose gardens of the Giudecca, the sweet voice again took up the simple and ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... lichen leaves massed on the rocks were dyed as if lying in a yellow bath. The sands were richly colored; the ridges were brown in the shadows and burnished at the tops. In the distance the sea weeds were black, sable furs, covering the velvet robes of earth. The sea out beyond was as rosy as a babe, and the sails were dazzlingly white as they floated past, between the sky and the distant purple ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... turned pale. The period Mr Escot named was so nearly the true one, that he began to suspect the personage before him of being rather too familiar with Hugh Llwyd's sable visitor. Recovering himself a little, he said, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... Caretto, A.D. 1520-1, was thought worthy to be put in competition for the Grand Mastership with the celebrated Villiers de L'Isle Adam, and, as Vertot tells us, only lost that dignity by a very trifling majority. His paternal coat—Sable, a cheveron engrailed argent, between three plates, on each a pale, gules—is impaled with that of his mother, Alice, daughter of Thomas Green, of Gressingham, in Yorkshire; Argent, a bugle-horn sable, stringed gules, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various

... imbrast the night, Commaunds me leaue these vnrenowmed beames, Whereas Nobilitie abhors to stay, And none but base AEneas will abide: Abourd, abourd, since Fates doe bid abourd, And slice the Sea with sable coloured ships, On whom the nimble windes may all day waight, And follow them as footemen through the deepe: Yet Dido casts her eyes like anchors out, To stay my Fleete from loosing forth the Bay: Come backe, come backe, I heare her crye a farre, And let me linke my bodie ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe

... streamlet, however crystal clear, Without a shadow resting in the ripples of its tide; Hope's brightest robes are 'broidered with the sable fringe of fear, And she lures us, but abysses girt ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... assistance of our bearers, in a few hours we had a good-sized hut of bamboos put up, and strongly thatched with palm-leaves. One portion was walled in with a division forming two apartments. The larger was devoted to the accommodation of Ellen and her sable attendant. In the other, our goods were stored; while the rest of us slung our hammocks in a large open verandah, which formed, indeed, the greater part of the building. It was completed before nightfall. In front, between us and the river, a large fire was made up, which, fed by ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... no longer paddling, but was looking straight ahead. To Cardigan her figure was exquisitely girlish as he saw it now. She was bareheaded, as he had seen tier first, and her hair hung down her back like a shimmering mass of velvety sable in the star-and-moon glow. Something told Carrigan she was going to turn her face in his direction, and he dropped his hand over his eyes again, leaving a space between the fingers. He was right in his guess. She fronted ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse. Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother. Death! ere thou hast slain another Fair and learn'd and good as she, Time shall throw a dart ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... by the avenging Furies, "Gorgon-like, vested in sable stoles, their locks entwined with clustering snakes," has fled to Delphi to invoke the aid of Apollo. He clasps the navel-stone and in his exhaustion falls asleep. Around him sleep the Furies. The play opens with a prayer made by the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of the African intellect for improvement." When the Rev. George Whitefield died, at Newburyport, Mass., in 1770, the same writer from whom we quote these facts, says: "It was quite natural, his demise being much talked of in religious families, that our sable Phillis should burst into monody. That expression of grief I have before me. Of the most rhetorical preacher of his age, it is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Bliant that stood in an island beclosed in iron, with a fair water deep and large. And when they were there Sir Launcelot let call it the Joyous Isle; and there was he called none otherwise but Le Chevaler Mal Fet, the knight that hath trespassed. Then Sir Launcelot let make him a shield all of sable, and a queen crowned in the midst, all of silver, and a knight clean armed kneeling afore her. And every day once, for any mirths that all the ladies might make him, he would once every day look toward the ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... Thorer overtook them. They were seldom together, but always in sight of each other. When they came to Bjarmaland they went straight to the merchant town, and the market began. All who had money to pay with got filled up with goods. Thorer also got a number of furs, and of beaver and sable skins. Karle had a considerable sum of money with him, with which he purchased skins and furs. When the fair was at an end they went out of the Vina river, and then the truce of the country people was also at an end. When they came out of the river ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... in 1598 that France could follow up the discoveries of her seamen by an effort to colonize either Acadia or Canada. Abortive attempts had indeed been made by the Marquis de la Roche, but these had resulted only in the marooning of fifty unfortunate convicts on Sable Island. The first real colonizing venture of the French in the New World was that of the Sieur de Monts, the patron and associate of Champlain. [Footnote: See The founder of New France in this Series, chap. ii.] The site of this first colony was in Acadia. ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty

... this ominous dream so ingeniously doubtful. The latter circumstance, where the Emperor recognises his murderer as a personage in his vision, seems to be borrowed from the story of one of the caliphs, who, before his death, dreamed, that a sable hand and arm shook over his head a handful of red earth, and denounced, that such was the colour of the earth on which he should die. When taken ill on an expedition, he desired to know the colour of the earth on which his tent was pitched. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... in the finest garments are in part the pelts of land animals living in polar regions. The sable, stone-marten, otter, beaver, and red fox are the most valuable. The Persian lamb, however, is not a polar animal. The Russian Empire and Canada are the chief sources of supply. The Hudson Bay Company, with head-quarters at Fort Garry, near Winnipeg, controls most of the fur-trade ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... despair & my eyes for ever wet by tears but I was here visited by a lovely spirit whom I have ever worshiped & who tried to repay my adoration by diverting my mind from the hideous memories that racked it. At first indeed this wanton spirit played a false part & appearing with sable wings & gloomy countenance seemed to take a pleasure in exagerating all my miseries—and as small hopes arose to snatch them from me & give me in their place gigantic fears which under her fairy hand appeared ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

... to the material the following articles may be required: Indian ink, a small finely-pointed sable brush, a tube of oil paint, flake white or light red, according to the colour of the ground material, turpentine, powdered charcoal or white chalk for pounce, tracing paper, drawing-pins, and a pricker. ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... of gushing wounds, undaunted of soul, proceeded in the paths[68] of the famed Getis,[69] from the south round Kintire. Our heroes, rousers of the thundering tempest of swords, glutted the swift, sable-clad birds of prey ...
— The Norwegian account of Haco's expedition against Scotland, A.D. MCCLXIII. • Sturla oretharson

... that young Mr. Brudenell's fortune will be a splendid one; for the sun is dazzling!" said Nora, as she wound the long sable plait of hair around her head in the form of a natural coronet, and secured the end behind with—a thorn! "And, now, how do I look? Aint you proud of me?" she archly inquired, turning with "a smile of conscious beauty born" to the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... cross; that on the left is merely a single shield, bearing a chevron ingrailed between three roundles apparently (being somewhat damaged), in chief a plain cross. If the colours were marked, they are indistinguishable,—shield and charges are alike sable now. On the south side are two shields: that on the right has been so much damaged that all I can make out of it is that two coats have been impaled thereon, but I cannot discover whether it had the cross in chief or not; that on the left bears a chevron between ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various

... 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 outpost of advancing day" [Longfellow]; "sable- vested Night" [Milton]; "this gorgeous arch ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... till they with the carriage, into which she was handed by Mazzuolo, with all the deference that her beauty and elegant attire might naturally command. She wore a black velvet bonnet and Chantilly veil, a crimson silk pelisse trimmed with rich furs, a boa of Russian sable; and, over all, a loose pelisse, lined with fur. Mazzuolo and his wife thought that this augured well for the contents of ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... life's curses rock me nightly, And hushed I lie in slumber's hold, Thy sable form comes treading lightly To wrap me ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld

... aglow like morning stars, Delicate brows, a mist of sable tresses, That all the journey of thy lie may be Lit up by love ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope

... a novelty to Anna, who spent many happy hours with her sable-hued companions, never deeming herself the worse for it. Her grandmother's first remark, however, struck her still more forcibly, and she immediately asked, "Grandma, what did you call ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... face above the hills; or at calm eve watch his departure, as with a last, fond, lingering look he takes his leave, as 'twere in sorrow that he could not longer tarry; while earth, not thus to be outdone in point of grief, puts on her sable dress ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... thou no note for joy, thou weeping lyre? Doth yew and willow ever shade thy string And melancholy sable banners fling, Warring 'midst hosts of elegant desire? How vain the strife—how vain the warlike gloom! Love's arms are grief—his arrows sighs and tears; And every moan thou mak'st, an altar rears, To which his worshippers devoutly come. Then rather, lyre, I pray thee, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... Here the resemblance to the Aladdin story ceases and what follows (as well as what precedes) is analogous to the other Asiatic forms. The princess has a black servant of whom she is enamoured. She steals the ring and elopes with her sable paramour to an island in the sea, where she has a castle erected by the power of the ring. The black man sleeps with the ring under his tongue, but the hero's dog takes the cat on his back and swims to the island; and the cat contrives to get the ring and deliver it to her master, who ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... and Horus and the dog Anubis haste. Nor is Osiris seen In Memphian grove or green Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud; Nor can he be at rest Within his sacred chest; Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud. In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark The sable-stole sorcerers ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... her homely attempts to comfort her mistress, who dragged herself about like a sable ghost, "if ye'd only smile once in a while ye'd be surprised ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... deep red heraldry befits A coward lust: the latter "A" in gules Upon thy sable heart. There let it gnaw Forever ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... the mood for decorous jollity; but although his two immediate satellites responded to his lead, and indulged in a few feeble jests, the farmer and foresters hardly vouchsafed a word or a smile. In part, maybe, this was due to the poverty of the wit of their sable companions, but the three were obviously ill at ease. Greed and a sort of religious fanaticism had brought them into the ranks of the conspirators, but their national instincts were rebuking them each moment. They felt traitors, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... as snow, wearing a fine Panama hat. This was in the period before Panamas were commonly worn. He was to the life the elegant and luxurious Southern planter of ante-bellum days. Six months afterward in about the same place I saw approaching me a splendid person in rich sable outer garments who looked for all the world like an exiled Russian grand duke. It was Addicks in winter. You will not surprise his secret from that pleasant, rather ambiguous, but square-jawed face, nor from ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... Mrs. Stowe had carried out the plan she once projected, of being the historian of our sable friend; by her graphic pen, the incidents of such a life might have been wrought up into a tale of thrilling interest, equaling, if not exceeding her world renowned ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford

... The sable guardian appeared to be asleep, and took no notice of the approaching stranger, nor of another creature which left no fool-hardy impertinence untried in order to tax the patience of the huge animal. This was a white cat, which was shameless enough to turn somersaults back and forward ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... sent back to England with the sick; and with the remainder of the fleet, well supplied at St. John's with fish and other necessaries, Gilbert (August 20) sailed south as far as forty-four degrees north latitude. Off Sable Island a storm assailed them, and the largest of the vessels, called the Delight, carrying most of the provisions, was driven on a rock and went ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... There is {103} no great toilette kept at Osbaldistone Hall, you must know; but I must take off these things, they are so unpleasantly warm, and the hat hurts my forehead too," continued the lively girl, taking it off, and shaking down a profusion of sable ringlets, which, half laughing, half blushing, she separated with her white slender fingers, in order to clear them away from her beautiful face and piercing hazel eyes. If there was any coquetry in the action, it was well disguised by the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... me the parson if you please." He spoke, and presently he feels His grazier's coat fall down his heels: He sees, yet hardly can believe, About each arm a pudding sleeve; His waistcoat to a cassock grew, And both assumed a sable hue; But, being old, continued just As threadbare, and as full of dust. His talk was now of tithes and dues: Could smoke his pipe, and read the news; Knew how to preach old sermons next, Vamp'd in the preface and the text; At christ'nings well could act his part, And had the service all ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... ye lads an’ list to me, That’s left your homes an’ crossed the sea, To try your fortune, bound or free, All in this golden land. For twelve long months I had to pace, Humping my swag with a cadging face, Sleeping in the bush, like the sable race, As in my ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson

... and centennial pines, And terraced gardens, and broad steps of stone, And sylvan deities, with moss o'ergrown, And fountains palpitating in the heat, And all Val d'Arno stretched beneath its feet. Here in seclusion, as a widow may, The lovely lady whiled the hours away, Pacing in sable robes the statued hall, Herself the stateliest statue among all, And seeing more and more, with secret joy, Her husband risen and living in her boy, Till the lost sense of life returned again, Not as delight, but as relief from pain. Meanwhile the boy, rejoicing in his strength, Stormed down ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... through the water pale and thin Still shine the unoffending feet And there above the painter set The Father and the Paraclete. . . . . . The sable presbyters approach The avenue of penitence; The young are red and pustular ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot

... One of Astley's tricks had, however, a good motive, as it was intended to cure an old woman of her besetting sin—a tendency to take a drop too much. In order to cure the old woman of this weakness, he dressed himself as well as he could to represent the sable form of his satanic majesty. Alas! instead of being surprised, the old lady was too far-gone for that, and listened with tipsy gravity to the distinguished visitor's discourse. In her case it was true, as ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... listened, and from midst the depth of woods Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears A sable ruff around his mottled neck; Partridge they call him by our northern streams, And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat 'Gainst his barred sides his speckled wings, and made A sound like distant thunder; slow the strokes At first, then fast and faster, till ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... door of that marbled and pictured Vice-president's room many a man has been obliged to wait because of the necessities of business, and to wait a great while before he could get in; but that morning, while the Vice-president was talking about taking a ride, a sable messenger arrived at the door, not halting a moment, not even knocking to see if he might get in, but passed up and smote the lips into silence forever. The sable messenger moving that morning through the splendid Capitol stopped not to look at the mosaics, or the fresco, or the panels ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... object. {zimieren}, wv. furnish with knightly accoutrements. {zinsen}, wv. give as interest, give away. {zir} {ze ir}. {zirke}, wm. garland, circle, prince's crown. {zirkel}, sm. prince's crown. {z[i]t}, sf. time, 19. {zobel}, sm. robe furred with sable. {zorn}, sm. anger. {zornecl[i]che}, av. angrily, violently. {z[u:]cken} (pret. {zuhte}), wv. pull quickly, tear. {zuht}, sf. bringing up, education; good manners, politeness, demeanour; chastisement, punishment; {mit ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright

... remained silent, his travelling-cap drawn deep down over his face, and his whole figure concealed in the ample robe of sable fur, which reached to his feet. He motioned to the host with his hand to leave the room; then, in a few short words, he ordered his valet to see to supper, and to have it served up in an adjoining room, and as at that moment a carriage ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... example, but it is not very intelligible, nor would it be at all amended, if the pronoun were put in the possessive case: "I sympathize with my sable brethren, when I hear of them being spared even one lash of the cart-whip."—REV. DR. THOMPSON: Garrison, on Colonization, p. 80. And this is an other, in which the possessive pronoun would not be better: "But, if the slaves wish, to return to slavery, let them ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... must rise for the first prayer, he saw Gibbie, who had heard a feeble cough, cast a glance round, rise as swiftly as noiselessly, open the door of the pew, get out into the passage, take the old man by the hand, and lead him to his place beside the satin-robed and sable-muffed ministerial consort. Obedient to Gibbie's will, the old man took the seat, with an air both of humility and respect, while happily for Mrs. Sclater's remnant of ruffled composure, there was plenty of room in the pew, so that she could move higher up. The ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... with flowers (Harrington knew them reportorially as caskets), were borne by the band of pall-bearers, stalwart young intimate friends, and lifted by the same hands tenderly into the hearse. The long blackness of their frock-coats and the sable accompaniment of their silk hats, gloves, and ties appealed to the observant faculties of Harrington as in harmony both with the high social position of the parties and the peculiar sadness of the occasion. That a young man and woman, on the eve of matrimony, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... any preventive remedy for this evil been yet discovered. It is well known how they perish, but, once more, how they are produced no one, that I could learn, has as yet been able to trace. The field-mice are undoubtedly something in the nature of those swarms of the sable-mice, that sometimes over-run Lapland and Norway, though I do not know that these return so regularly, and at such stated periods, as those of ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard

... When dark, sable midnight Her mantle had thrown O'er the bright face of nature, How oft we have gone To the famed Houndslow heath, Though an unwelcome guest To the minions of ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... character that cannot be supplied by differentiation within Caucasian limits haunts us as it has done from the very birth of the colonies. Like the Wild Huntsman, we have had the sable spectre close beside us through the whole run. But, more fortunate than he, we see it begin to fade. At least its outlines are contracting. The ratio of colored inhabitants to the aggregate, in 1790 19.26 per cent., or one-fifth, fell in 1860 to 14.12, or one-seventh, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... for the early winter twilight was upon them, and the lights in the waiting car outside suddenly came on with a suggestive completeness. Georgiana assisted her guests into luxurious coats and capes made of or lined with chinchilla, with otter, with sable; handed gloves and muffs; and listened to all manner of affectionate parting speeches, every one of which contained pressing invitations for visits, short or long. Each girl made promises of future calls, and professed herself eager ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... was tall, thin, erect, with a small head, a long visage, lean yellow cheek, dark twinkling eyes, a dust complexion, black bristling hair, and a long sable-silvered beard, descending in two waving ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... thou night so long expected, That long day's labor dost at last defray, And all my cares, which cruel Love collected, Hast summed in one, and cancelled for aye: Spread thy broad wing over my love and me, That no man may us see; And in thy sable mantle us enwrap, From fear of peril and foul horror free. Let no false treason seek us to entrap, Nor any dread disquiet once annoy The safety of our joy; But let the night be calm, and quietsome, Without tempestuous storms or sad affray: ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... O'er Horncliff Hill a plump of spears, Beneath a pennon gay; A horseman, darting from the crowd, Like lightning from a summer cloud, Spurs on his mettled courser proud, Before the dark array. Beneath the sable palisade That closed the castle barricade, His bugle-horn he blew; The warder hasted from the wall, And warned the captain in the hall, For well the blast he knew; And joyfully that knight did call, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... At least, on any other theory I find it difficult to account for an attack which once came to my knowledge. I was at Sand point, on Pend'Oreille Lake, and met some French and Meti trappers, then in town with their bales of beaver, otter, and sable. One of them, who gave his name as Baptiste Lamoche, had his head twisted over to one side, the result of the bite of a bear. When the accident occurred he was out on a trapping trip with two companions. They had pitched camp right on the shore of a cove in a little lake, and his comrades were ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... pored. As he rose to receive us I was almost disappointed to find that he held no wand, wore no robe, and had no volume of mystic lore by his side. The very cat that emerged from underneath his table, and rubbed itself against my legs was not of the orthodox sable hue, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... the foregatherings round the camp-fire, when Night had spread her sable mantle over the sleeping earth, and only the wakeful wood-hen and the hoarsely-hooting owl stirred the silence of the leafy solitude, that Moonlight was "swapping" yarns with the Prospector. As the flames shot up lurid tongues which almost licked the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... warehouses of York factory; twelve months later they reach Red River; twelve months later again they reach Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie. That rough flint-gun, which might have done duty in the days of the Stuarts, is worth many a rich sable in the country of the Dogribs and the Loucheaux, and is bartered for skins whose value can be rated at four times their weight in gold; but the gun on the banks of the Thames and the gun in the pine woods ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... I sauntering move along, The nightingale begins his evening song; Chanting a requiem to departed light, That smooths the raven down of sable night. ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... gravely homeward, while the girls also flutter away after arranging sunset walks with their favored bachelors. The Sabbath eve is the eve of love. At length the whole congregation is dispersed. No; here, with faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable ladies and a sable gentleman, and close in their rear the minister, who softens his severe visage and bestows a kind word on each. Poor souls! To them the most captivating picture of bliss in heaven is "There we shall ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... extraordinary and exclusive powers of government and trade, identical with those granted to Roberval nearly sixty years before. Having fitted out a vessel and placed on board forty convicts gathered out of the prisons of France, he embarked for the northern coasts of America. The first land he made was Sable Island, a most forlorn sand-heap rising out of the Atlantic Ocean, some thirty leagues southeast of Cape Breton. Here he left these wretched criminals to be the strength and hope, the bone and sinew of the little kingdom which, in his fancy, he pictured to himself rising under his fostering care ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... thereabouts, and the shining facets of frost upon the blades of grass seemed to move on with the shadows of those they surrounded. The masses of furze and heath to the right and left were dark as ever; a mere half-moon was powerless to silver such sable features as theirs. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... gigantic Front-de-B[oe]uf, armed in sable armor, was 10 the first who took the field. He bore on a white shield a black bull's head, half defaced by the numerous encounters which he had undergone, and bearing the arrogant motto, Cave, adsum. Over this champion the Disinherited Knight obtained a slight but decisive advantage. Both 15 ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... bleak wind had shrieked and wailed Through leafless forests, and o'er meadows sear; Through the fierce sky great sable clouds had sailed; Outlines were hard—all nature's looks were drear. Gone, Indian Summer's bland, delicious haze, Thickening soft nights and filming mellow days. Then rose gray clouds; thin fluttered first the snow, Then like loose shaken fleeces, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... mud, which he has doctored for them. They believe certain flowers held in the hand will conduct them to anything lost; as also that the voice of certain wild animals, birds, or beasts, will insure them good-luck, or warn them of danger. With the utmost complacency our sable brother builds a dwarf hut in his fields, and places some grain on it to propitiate the evil spirit, and suffer him to reap the fruits of his labour, and this too they call ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... painted: no—nor he of Spain, Glorious Murillo!—and by contrast shown More beautiful. The younger little one, With large blue eyes, and silken ringlets fair, By nut-brown Lizzy, with smooth parted hair, Sable and glossy as the raven's wing, And lustrous eyes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... expected, at this time and place, that any allusion should be made to the public character of Washington; we are all in possession of his history, from the dawn of life to the day that Mount Vernon was wrapped in sable; and, after the exercises of this morning, if any attempt to portray his political or military life were made, it would only be the glimmering light of a feeble star succeeding the rays of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... charge, he must have the post, which he would not and could not any longer do without; that he knew I was the intimate friend of Torcy (who had the post in his department), whose resignation he desired; that he begged me to write to Torcy, and send my letter to him by an express courier to Sable (where he had gone on an excursion); that he should see by my conduct on this occasion, and its success, in what manner he could count upon me, and that he should act towards me accordingly. To this his two slaves added all they ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... the arctic was resolving into the long dark, and the Eskimo women, as is their custom at this time of the year, had gathered along the last lane of open water—which writhed like a sable snake over the ice—to celebrate that period of mourning which precedes the dreadful night, and to give their last messages and farewells to the unhappy and disconsolate souls of the drowned, who, when the ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... you brought him?" inquired his sable majesty of the little old Spaniard, whom Jack heard addressed as ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... lying in my old chamber at Glengoyle, and Heraine was sitting at my bedside. Her garments were sable, her brown hair thin, her face placid, as of yore, but marked by deep-seated grief, and the magnetism of will and courage was gone from it. To the eye she was the same; to the mind, a weak and broken thing. Crime ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... Roissy. Cardinal de Berulle. Pere Joseph. Cardinal de Retz. Marquise de Sable. Marquis de Caumartin. M. de la Vieuville. M. d'Aligre. M. de Marillac. Prince de Chalais. Marechal de Marillac. Duc de Nevers. Marquise de Senecay. Madame de Comballet. M. de Thoiras. Marquis de Spinola. Cardinal Mazarin. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... high, the moonlight gleam And the shadow of a star Heaved upon Tamaha's stream; But the rock shone brighter far, The rock half sheltered from my view By pendent boughs of tressy yew.— So shines my Lewti's forehead fair, Gleaming through her sable hair, Image of Lewti! from my mind Depart; for Lewti ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... just at that date. The untainted leaves of the lime and plane trees and the newly-sprung grass had in the sun a brilliancy of beauty that was brought into extraordinary prominence by the sable soil showing here and there, and the charcoaled stems and trunks out of which the leaves budded: they seemed an importation, not a produce, and their delicacy such as would ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... termination now descended in sable thunder-clouds upon our devoted nobs. As Albert's uncle said, 'School now gaped for its prey'. In a very short space of time we should be wending our way back to Blackheath, and all the variegated delightfulness of the country would soon be only preserved in memory's faded flowers. (I don't ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... Night hung its sable mantle over the earth. A silver moon rode in a clear sky, and the lightning express rattled down through the night with a hiss and screech that rent the silence with an ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton

... greatest use of all to which the sable bird was put was to guide the roving pirates on their expeditions. Before a start was made a raven was let loose, and the direction of his flight gave the viking ships their course. In this manner, according to the old Norse legends, did Floki discover Iceland; and many other extraordinary things ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... blue overarching sky at midday, or the tender rose of dawn, or of the violet clouds that bar the flaming orange-ruby of the sunset: or the mysterious robe of twilight drapes her, or her garment is sable as the Night. The grand sweep of her shoulders and the splendid pillar of her throat reveal the beauty of her form even to the eyes of an untaught, neglected child. Her face is pale, but as full of sunlight as of shadow, and her eyes are really grey and deep as mountain lakes. The ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... man, wheezy and purple with haste, who scudded down the rampart as if he were blown by the wind, his grizzled hair flying and his long black gown floating behind him. He was clad in the dress of a respectable citizen, a black jerkin trimmed with sable, a black-velvet beaver hat and a white feather. At the sight of Chandos he gave a cry of joy and quickened his pace so that when he did at last reach him he could only stand gasping and ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... named Parmenius, who went for the express purpose of singing the praise of Norumbega in Latin verse, but was drowned in Sir Humphrey's great flag-ship, the Delight. This wreck took place near Sable Island, and as most of the supplies for the expedition went down in the flag-ship, the men in the remaining vessels grew so impatient as to compel a return. There were two vessels, the Golden Hind of forty tons, and the Squirrel of ten tons, this ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... moment, in his then excited state, a feeling of superstitious fear stole over him. The next instant he was again at the window, straining his eyes through the gloom. He could see nothing. The night was dark: a few large stars twinkled in the sable canopy, the jasmin bushes in his balcony rustled in the breeze, and brushed their cool leaves against his heated temples. "Who is there?" he cried. His question was unanswered. Closing the jalousies, he took a light and sought about the room till he perceived ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... comrades loudly and eagerly,—Caw, caw, caw! Immediately the whole conclave replies, and you behold them rising above the trees, flapping darkly, and winging their way to deeper solitudes. Sometimes, however, they remain till you come near enough to discern their sable gravity of aspect, each occupying a separate bough, or perhaps the blasted tip-top of a pine. As you approach, one after another, with loud cawing, flaps his wings and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... form as she fluttered onward, wavering and aimless like a wounded bird. And then she fell, turning over and over as with one wing she strove vainly to support herself, until at last, wrapped in the sable shroud of her shield, she plunged with a great ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... the invisible staircase with creeping figures. The darkness grew intense and terrifying, like a rushing black torrent flowing over her head. She was alone, in an empty world ... The torrent ceased, and the darkness took the form of a great sable wing, moving, flapping, seeking to enfold her. She put up her hands to ward ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... hideous storms of never-daunted fate! Now are those eyes, whose sweet reflections cool'd The smother'd rancours of rebellious thoughts, Clad with the sable mantles of the night; And like the tree that, robb'd of sun and showers, Mourns desolate withouten leaf or sap, So poor Cornelia, late bereft of love, Sits sighing, hapless, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... summer day of the Arctic regions. Regularly at that season several English ships cast anchor in the bay. A fair was held on the beach. Traders came from a distance of many hundreds of miles to the only mart where they could exchange hemp and tar, hides and tallow, wax and honey, the fur of the sable and the wolverine, and the roe of the sturgeon of the Volga, for Manchester stuffs, Sheffield knives, Birmingham buttons, sugar from Jamaica and pepper from Malabar. The commerce in these articles was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... guard him, Plates of bone upon his forehead, Down his sides and back and shoulders Plates of bone with spines projecting, 35 Painted was he with his war-paints, Stripes of yellow, red, and azure, Spots of brown and spots of sable; And he lay there on the bottom, Fanning with his fins of purple, 40 As above him Hiawatha In his birch canoe came sailing, With his fishing-line of cedar. "Take my bait!" cried Hiawatha, Down into the depths ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... slightest sound he should betray his presence, and allow his prey to escape. And Michel was as skilled a trapper as he was hunter; from the plump little musk-rat which he caught by the river brink to the valuable marten, sable, beaver, otter, skunk, &c., &c., he knew the ways and habits of each one; he would set his steel trap with as true an intuition as if he had received notice of the coming of his prey. Many a silver fox had found himself outdone in sharpness and cunning by Michel; ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas

... dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... but all the splendour of the creation is extinguished by degrees as we approach the land of ashes and smoke which announces the vicinity of the Volcano. The ferruginous lava of preceding years has traced in the earth deep and sable furrows, and all around them is barren. At a certain height not a bird is seen to fly, at another, plants become very scarce, then even the insects find nothing to subsist on in the arid soil. At length every living thing disappears; ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... more the subterranean avalanche gathered and burst. Once more the ground beneath throbbed and heaved as if with rending travail. Once more heaven and earth seemed to yearn to each other; and the embers of my watch-fire were cast upward and strewn asunder. It was an awful long winter night. The same sable clouds rioting in the sky, the same cruel wind moaning angrily through the chinks and crevices of many a shattered edifice. Solitude, the chillness of night, and the vagueness, even more than the inevitableness, of the danger, wrought fearfully on my exhausted frame. Stupor and lethargy soon ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... creature, the servant of old John Harmon, dustman and miser, and very kind to the miser's son (young John Harmon). After Mr. Boffin came into his fortune she became "a high flyer at fashion," wore black velvet and sable, but retained her kindness of heart and love for her husband. She was devoted to Bella Wilfer, who ultimately became the wife of young John Harmon, alias Rokesmith.—C. Dickens, Our ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... largely of great officials and their families, whose cast-off clothing, toned down by the use of years, often without a blemish or a spot, finds its way into the hands of dealers. The finest furs,—seal, otter, squirrel, sable and ermine,—are brought from Siberia, Manchuria and elsewhere, for the officials and the court, and can be secured for less than half what they would cost in America. Pearls, of which the Chinese ladies ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... a bow which flattered the sable spinster into a broad smile, and almost made her drop the dish-pan, in the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... swerve his chariot from the eternal path. These, monarch, are thy priestess' ancestors, And many a dreadful fate of mortal doom, And many a deed of the bewilder'd brain, Dark night doth cover with her sable wing, Or ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... Nova Scotia consist of some ten or twelve districts of quite limited area in themselves, but lying scattered along almost the whole southeastern coast of the Province. The whole of this coast, from Cape Sable on the west to Cape Canso on the east, a distance of about two hundred and fifty miles, is bordered by a fringe of hard, slaty rocks,—slate and sandstone in irregular alternations,—sometimes argillaceous, and occasionally granitic. These rocks, originally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... window. A gentleman, riding very recklessly, had just dashed through the porte-cochere, and was in the act of pulling up his horse. He was a lean, active man, very richly dressed, and with a face that by its swarthiness of skin and the sable hue of beard and hair ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... of all the hansom cabs in London stopped at the door of the house in Harley Street as the narrow strip of sky between the grim, drab-faced houses began to be dappled with the leaden grey of dawn. A faint moon reeled northwards, hunted by sable shapes of screaming terror, pale Venus clinging to her tattered robe. The house was all black and silent, a dead face with blinded windows. Did Saxham wake behind them? Or did he ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... was also a young man, and a negro, short, thickset, square, tough as india-rubber, and black as the Emperor of Zahara. Good-humour wrinkled the corners of his eyes, the milk of human kindness played on his thick lips and rippled his sable brow, and intense sincerity, like a ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne



Words linked to "Sable" :   ebony, marten cat, Cape Sable, Martes zibellina, black, soot black, coal black, sable brush, sable's hair pencil, jet black, fur, neutral, inkiness, sable coat, pitch black, marten, rigger brush, rigger



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