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Olden   /ˈoʊldən/   Listen
Olden

adjective
1.
Long past.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Olden" Quotes from Famous Books



... and Uncle Amos chuckled. "We're peaches there, ain't? I guess if abody thinks back right you see there were as many crazy styles in olden times ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... with minds softened and elevated by the loveliness and solemnity of the scenes around, we would get into our carriage, and drive back to Naples beneath the bright full moon; and, by the way, we would "talk the flowing heart," and make our recollections of the olden time, our deep impressions of the past, heighten our enjoyment of the present: and this would be indeed a day of pleasure, of such pleasure as I think I am capable of feeling—of imparting—of remembering with unmixed delight. Such was ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... accordingly, you will soon hear him, at your concert, try it to a song of mine in the Museum—"Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon". One song more and I have done: "Auld lang syne". The air is but mediocre; but the following song, the old song of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript, until I took it down from an old man's singing, is ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... observe in passing that no gingerly nicety of regard in calling those who served by any other name than servant, was shown or heeded in olden times. They believed with St. Paul, "Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it." All hired workers in the house, hired laborers in the field, those contracting to work under a master at any trade for a period of time, apprentices, and many whom ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... year—how earnest was my desire to look upon it again! There was the deep, pure spring, in which, as I bent to drink, I had so often looked upon my mirrored face; and the broad flat stone near by, where I had sat so many times. I would sit there again, after tasting the sweet water, and think of the olden time! The dear old mill, too, with its murmuring wheel glistening in the bright sunshine, and the race, on whose bank I had gathered wild flowers ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... Snakes (though the only anacondas and adders now found in the arsenals there are great guns and pistols); and Lord Wood's Nose—a lofty eminence said by seamen to resemble his lordship's conch-shell; and the Prays do Flamingo—a noble tract of beach, so called from its having been the resort, in olden times, of those gorgeous birds; and the charming Bay of Botofogo, which, spite of its name, is fragrant as the neighbouring Larangieros, or Valley of the Oranges; and the green Gloria Hill, surmounted by the belfries of the queenly Church of Nossa Senora de Gloria; and the iron-gray ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... city has been promised me. The archaeology of New Rome only waits for wealthy patrons to enable it to reach a position similar to that occupied by archaeological research in other centres of ancient and mediaeval civilizations. But the monuments of the olden time are perishable. Of the churches described by Paspates in his Byzantine Studies, published in 1877, nine have either entirely disappeared or lost more of their original features. It was no part of wisdom to let the books of the cunning Sibyl become rarer and knowledge poorer by neglecting ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... connected, however remotely, with the land of the Puritans. The accomplished author of 'The Life of Jean Paul' has produced an American novel which we should like to see followed by others illustrative of the facts and manners of the olden time."—Christian Inquirer. ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen

... broad-leaved or wych elm (Ulmus montana), indigenous to Scotland. Forked branches of the tree were used in the olden time as divining-rods, and riding switches from it were supposed to insure good luck on a journey. In the closing stanzas of the poem (vi. 846) it is called the "wizard elm." Tennyson (In Memoriam, 89) ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... in the days of his greatest insolence, to speak of the most eminent nobles as zanies, lunatics, and buffoons. The embroidered fool's cap was supposed to typify the gibe, and to remind the arrogant priest that a Brutus, as in the olden time, might be found lurking in the costume of the fool. However witty or appropriate the invention, the livery had an immense success. According to agreement, the nobles who had dined with the treasurer ordered it for all their servants. Never did a new dress become ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... from full to full—never new and never old! Strephon woos Chloe as of yore. The lover, as in some antique picture, is ever kneeling at the feet of his mistress, and she, through the gathering of years, looks down on him with the olden tenderness and the April blushes of womanhood! To such as they, life plays on a dulcimer. The golden age is not dead to them. They see the shepherd Daphnis seated on the slopes of AEtna, and hear him pipe to the nymph Eschenais. ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... With look as pert as the pouncing glede When he eyeth the chick below,— Scraped his crowd, And clear and loud, As the merle-cock shrill, Or the bell from the hill, Thus tuned his throat to his rough sire's praise— His sire the swineherd of olden days:— ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... bear; "Gudrid" means Gunnr's rider; "Gudrod" means Gunnr's land-clearer. (Most of the land in old Norway was covered with forests. When a man got new land he had to clear off the trees.) In those olden days a man did not have a surname that belonged to everyone in his family. Sometimes there were two or three men of the same name in a neighborhood. That caused trouble. People thought of two ways of making it easy to tell which man was being spoken of. Each was given a nickname. Suppose the ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall

... "In olden days husbands loved. Sho God did tend to wife and took care of them and they had to stay home cause it wuz always a new baby. I tell you, Miss Sue, man ought not never had you to find history 'cause you gwine tell it all. As I said, we loved. Is de young folks marrying ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... observed frequent hollow rings of rough blocks, circles measuring about a cubit in diameter: I had not time to excavate them, and the End of Time could only inform me that they belonged to the "Awwalin," or olden inhabitants. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... malefactor is not to excuse robbery and murder. Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence of the evil-doer at a time when mortals were divided into almost equal troops. The age of Philip II. was also the age of William of Orange and his four brethren, of Sainte Aldegonde, of Olden-Barneveldt, of Duplessis-Mornay, La Noue, Coligny, of Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, Walsingham, Sidney, Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth, of Michael Montaigne, and William Shakspeare. It was not an age of blindness, but of glorious light. If the man whom the Maker of the Universe had permitted ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Lake Tahoe, and four miles further is Al-Tahoe, a new and well-equipped hotel, standing on a bluff commanding an expansive view of the Lake. It practically occupies the site of an old resort well-known as "Rowland's." It is near to Freel's Peak (10,900 feet), which in olden days was known as Sand Mountain, on account of its ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... his own arbitrary invention. It was by no means the object of Euripides to represent the race of heroes as towering in their majestic stature above the men of his own age; he rather endeavours to fill up, or to build over the chasm that yawned between his contemporaries and that wondrous olden world, and to come upon the gods and heroes in their undress, a surprise of which no greatness, it is said, can stand the test. He introduces his spectators to a sort of familiar acquaintance with them; he does not ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... followed had the hearers of Jesus given the parable of the Prodigal Son its full significance! They would then have found in the happy, loving father and his full forgiveness of the son who "came to himself" a type of the Heavenly Father. The shadow of the olden fear still persists, chilling human life. We do not trust the love of God and bear life's burdens with cheerful courage. From lurking fear of the jealous king of Hebrew tradition, we are even afraid to be happy when we might. We fail of faith in the reality of God's love. We ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... could artistically describe Squire Osbaldistone. I can only say he was a "fine old English gentleman, one of the olden time." It was in a billiard-room at Leamington where I first met him, and as he was as indifferent a player as you could meet, he thought himself one of the best that ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... opportunity of shining in winter on the house and greenhouse adjacent, as well as to assist in the more picturesque grouping of the two. On this side is placed, approached by porch and lobby, the hall with a fireplace of the "olden time," lavatory, etc., butler's pantry, w. c., staircase, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... say that there are only two sensible modes of punishment—those that have been used in olden times: corporal punishment and capital punishment. But with the advance of civilization they have gone out ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... is not so high as the Brenner, but it has a grand, wild look in winter, remote as it is from the haunts of men. A fitting refuge, it might be, for a great spirit heavy with the sins of the world below. Such a place might have been chosen, in the olden time, for a monastery—a gray fastness built against the black forest over the crag looking down upon the green clumps of spruces against the snow. Some vague longing for such a refuge was in Cynthia's heart as she gazed upon that silent place, and then the waters had already begun to run westward—the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... illustration of patriotism, you point us to some Horatius or Leonidas of the olden times; or to some William Tell, or Ulysses Grant, of these more modern days. We do not say that these men were not patriots, and patriots of a high order too. But their circumstances were exceptional, and under ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... in marriages as they were in the olden days. "Ef two people felt they wuz made for each other, they wuz united within themselves when they done git the master's 'greement, then live together as man and wife, an' that was all. Now, you got to buy a license and pay ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... to our authoress, dearer still to her heart was the true Father-Land, "the heavenly country" for which the children of faith in the olden time looked. Being born again she bore such a relationship to the world to come that we may say of her, as she does of "the bride of Christ": "The Cross was infinitely dearer to her than ten thousand ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... rough and irregular voices, until he brought them into that stream of perfect unison. I can imagine what patience he exercised, what subtle flatteries he administered, what gentle sarcasm he applied, before he succeeded in modulating the hoarse thunders of Dave Olden's voice, that rose like a fog-horn over the winds and waves whenever he ventured upon the high seas; and how he cut off remorselessly the grace-notes of Abby Lyden, who has begun to think herself an Albani; and how he overcame the shyness of the fisher lads, and brought clear to the front the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... Bhon"[2] illustrates the belief in the metamorphosis of these demons. po Bhon was a Manbo of the Kasilaan River. One day, in the olden time, he went forth to hunt but had no luck, though three times he had offered his tributes to the Lord of the Agibwa marshland. Wearied with this hunt, he lay down to rest toward evening when lo! ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... used by Queen Marie-Antoinette at Trianon; her gown (the favorite color was pale-brown, the shade of dead leaves) fell from her hips in those inimitable folds the secret of which the dowagers of the olden time have carried away with them. She retained the black mantilla trimmed with black lace woven in large square meshes; her caps, old-fashioned in shape, had the quaint charm which we see in silhouettes relieved ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... application of cold water to awaken subjects, but this is rarely necessary. In olden times a burning coal ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... print of olden wars; Yet all the land was green; And love we found, and peace, Where fire and war had been. They pass and smile, the children of the sword— No more the sword they wield; And O, how deep the corn Along the battlefield! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers so blue and golden Stars that in ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... stately old negro who occupied the porter's lodge at Woodlawn, and who told you with such pride that he and his ancestors had always occupied a favored post near the great house? You remember, too, his grand air, fashioned after the gentlemen of the olden time, the contemporaries of Washington, Rutledge and Pinckney? And in what awe and reverence his fellow-servants stood of him! Well, when the war fairly began, and all hope of amicable adjustment was exhausted, I did what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... etc., and adds further on, "my father had a drawer full of them [Newbury's little books] very smartly bound in gilt paper." Priceless now would this collection be, mixed up with horn-books—a single copy of which is one of the rarest relics of the olden time. ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson

... were those who had hoped to see the Navy win. There were no cheers, save from the visitor-howlers. The best that the leader of the band could do, was to swing his baton and start in the strains of "'Twas Never Thus in Olden Times." ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... grows olden, Hopes that are golden decay; Suns that are bright, and embolden The tourist to go on his way, Leaving his gingham tight folden, Turn to a drizzling grey. But gold of the Mint is all-golden, Safe in the ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various

... of the island of Luzon, flourishing through its products and its active trade with the capital, of extensive territory and densely populated, the discalced Augustinians were not assigned with the intention of a permanent stay, in the olden times, to preach the gospel ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... shores; the thousands of acres which formerly produced rice for a dense population are now matted over by a thorny and impenetrable jungle. The wild buffalo, descendant from the ancient stock which tilled the ground of a great nation, now roams through a barren forest, which in olden times was a soil glistening with fertility. The ruins of the mighty cities tower high above the trees, sad monuments of desolation, where all was once flourishing, and where thousands dwelt within ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... replied Southwold; "and many is the time—that is, in the olden time, before I was regenerated—many is the day of revelry that I have passed there; many the cup of good ale that I ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... at the pictures he recalled the things that he had seen and the impressions he had experienced. There was a band of collegians in little capes and short trousers taking their walk; they wore buckled shoes, like the abbes of olden times, and nothing could be more droll than to see these childish priests play leapfrog. There, upon the Riva dei Schiavoni, he had followed a Venetian. "Shabbily dressed, and fancy, my friend, bare-headed, in a yellow shawl with ragged green fringe! No, I do not know whether she was pretty, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Darwin's answer is, that the best parts of the testimony have been lost. He is confident that intermediate forms must have existed; that in the olden times when the genera, the families, and the orders, diverged from their parent stocks, gradations existed as fine as those which now connect closely related species with varieties. But they have passed and left no sign. The geological ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... eagle on watch eyes the stag cold and stiff; The deer-hound, majestic, looks lofty around, While he lists with delight to the harp's distant sound; Is it swept by the gale, as it slow wafts along The heart-soothing tones of an olden times' song? Or is it some Druid who touches, unseen, "The Harp of the North," ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... lakes. Here the tribes from the north to the south could assemble at a very short notice and decide on questions of trade or war. It was long the metropolis of a large portion of the Huron {175} and Ottawa nations, and many a council, fraught with the peace of Canada, was held there in the olden times. It was on the north side of the straits that Father Marquette—whose name must ever live in the west—some time in 1671 founded the mission of St. Ignace, where gradually grew up the most important settlement which the French had to the northwest of ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... of ornamentation; for the Celtic illuminator was imaginative rather than realistic, and aimed altogether at achieving beauty by means of color and design. The Book of Kells is the Mecca of the illuminative artist, but it is the despair of the copyist. The patience and skill of the olden scribe have baffled the imitator; for, on an examination with a magnifying glass, it has been found that, in a space of a quarter of an inch, there are no fewer than a hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a ribbon pattern of white lines edged by black ones on a black ground. Surely ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... From time to time, as we two went on our way, the bright figure of the child paused, hovering low in the cloudless sky. Its radiant face looked down smiling on me; it beckoned with its little hand, and floated on again, leading me as the Star led the Eastern sages in the olden time. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... of olden days considered the potato most essential for bread making. It is possible to make good bread by using 1/3 as much mashed potato as wheat flour. Potato bread is moist; it keeps better than bread made entirely with wheat. It has been observed that bread ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... long until the flying rumors settled down into positive facts, and Clayton was thrilled to its willow-fringed circumference. There was to be a wedding! Not a Nelson wedding of the olden times, when a special car brought grand folk down from the city, and the townspeople stayed apart and eyed their fine clothes and gay behavior with ill-concealed disfavor. This was to be a Clayton wedding for high ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... olden days ... when Helgi the stout of heart was born of Borghild, in Braeholt. Night lay over the house when the Fates came to forecast the hero's life. They said that he should be called the most famous of kings and the best among princes. With power they ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... the room was a picture of the capital of the German Empire, Berlin, showing the bridge across the Spree, with the renowned statue of the Great Elector; behind this the great Royal Palace; also a picture of the "Hohkonigsberg," in olden times a mighty castle in German Alsatia, which for centuries has been a desolate ruin, but now is built anew in its old pomp and splendor. The series of pictures was concluded by a view of a plaza ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... holiday was spent after the fashion of such holidays, over the buffoonery enjoyed by the crew, especially in olden days, in crossing the line; and then it was onward again amidst glorious sunrises and sunsets, amidst calms and fervent seas that seemed to blaze back the heat ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... they seemed to be wasted on Anna. After jesting with the servant had failed, scolding was next tried, but nothing seemed to bring back the girl's usual cheerfulness. "Oh, Anna," said the mistress at length, "you make me think of the olden days, when such disagreeable whims on the part of frowning maids used to be ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... Gothic descent, a notary, and then a monk[47], on the alleged request of his friend Castalius, 'compressed the twelve books of Senator, de origine actibusque Getarum, bringing down the history from olden times to our own days by kings and generations, into one little pamphlet.' Still, according to his statement, which there can be little doubt is here thoroughly false, he had the loan of the Gothic History for only three days from the steward of Cassiodorus, and wrote chiefly ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... Gueldres, Utrecht, and Over-Yssel, almost without resistance and through unheard-of poltroonery, if not treason, on the part of certain people, have more and more convinced me of the truth of what was in olden times applied to the Roman republic: Successes are claimed by everybody, reverses are put down to one (Prospera omnes sibi vindicant, adversa uni imputantur). That is my own experience. The people of Holland have not only laid ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... old-fashioned; over the mantel-piece a portrait, ruffled and powdered, hung; in the corner a huge clock ticked; by the window stood a japanned cabinet; and more than one china ornament, in deplorably grotesque taste, spoke of the olden time. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... of Grandfather Parlen's little boy life, of the days of knee breeches and cocked hats, full of odd incidents, queer and quaint sayings, and the customs of 'ye olden time.' These stories of SOPHIE MAY'S are so charmingly written that older folks may well amuse themselves by reading them. The same warm sympathy with childhood, the earnest naturalness, the novel charm of the preceding volumes will be ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May

... brave deed, Senor—of how you rode into the midst of the Vigilantes and snatched your friend from under the very shadow of the oak. I did not hear that you escaped their vengeance afterwards, and I feared greatly lest harm had befallen you. Dios! It was gallantly done, like a knight of olden times—" ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... me stood the walled-in town that paid tribute to the good and bad Rothhoefens in those olden days: a red-tiled, gloomy city that stood as a monument to long-dead ambitions. A peaceful, quiet town that had survived its parlous centuries of lust and greed, and would go on living to the ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... finds insurmountable; a woman's hand opens the way and you shrink back! Why, you are sure to succeed! You will have a brilliant future. Success is written on that broad forehead of yours, and will you not be able to repay me my loan of to-day? Did not a lady in olden times arm her knight with sword and helmet and coat of mail, and find him a charger, so that he might fight for her in the tournament? Well, then, Eugene, these things that I offer you are the weapons ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... the olden days who sought to find security in falsehood, and to construct a sovereignty by the aid of broken covenants. Let me read to you their boasts as it is recorded by the prophet Isaiah: "We have made a covenant with death, and with ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... ancient sorcerers of Brittany deserve a word of notice. Magic among the Celtic peoples in olden times was so clearly identified with Druidism that its origin may be said to have been Druidic. Whether Druidism was of Celtic origin, however, is a question upon which much discussion has taken place, some authorities, among them Rhys, believing it to have been ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... beautifully situated in the quiet cathedral city of the same name. The house is a picturesque and venerable mansion, covered with clinging green vines, opening out into a garden which in olden times belonged to the convent. There is in connection with the home an institution for training girls for domestic service, supported by the funds of a charity given for that purpose. The whole service of ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... be a matter deserving the serious consideration of all good housewives. It is no longer a luxury, as in olden times, but a positive necessity; upon it depends the health of all mankind. It is, therefore, highly important that its ingredients should be of the very best quality. At no time is this question more seriously to be considered than when changing the food of infants ...
— Breakfast Dainties • Thomas J. Murrey

... the fields far off an ancient windmill stood, and his honest hand-made sails went round and round in the free East Anglian winds. Close by, the gabled houses leaned out over the streets, planted fair upon sturdy timbers that grew in the olden time, all glorying among themselves upon their beauty. And out of them, buttress by buttress, growing and going upwards, aspiring tower ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... the ends with cotton-wool. The sound is wild and weird, but if well played very beautiful indeed. The gipsies seldom compose music. The songs come into life mostly on the spur of the moment. In the olden days war-songs and long ballads were the most usual form of music. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were specially rich in the production of songs that live even now. At that time the greatest gipsy musician was a woman: her name was "Czinka ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... grandfather," thought he, "once the friend of the Ironside, of whose wondrous exploits he often told me in olden days around our winter fire. Would his spirit were with me now, and a little of his ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... as I've heard say, of many a deed of darkness, not omitting murder, and other crimes not less foul and hateful to Him who made this beautiful world, and gave to man a religion of love and purity. There the rollicking, roaring, bullying, fighting, harum-scarum Irishman of olden days had full swing for all the propensities and vile passions which have ruined him at home, and gained him a name and a fame not to be envied throughout the world. Often have I wondered whether, had a North American Indian, or a South-Sea ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... below, we felt the atmosphere of the olden time. Perhaps passing the ancient clock on the landing helped to set us back a century or two. We were quite prepared for the quiet, old-fashioned upper hall, with its richness half lost in the shadows and with its sleepy night-stand holding a brass house lantern and a prim array ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... chosen to render the Indian's speech as though it was translated from Ojibway into English, rather than at any time render it in broken English, as the former is not only easier to read, but is more expressive of the natural quality of the Indian's speech. In olden days some of the chiefs who could not speak English at all were, it is claimed, eloquent orators—far outclassing ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... to 1787, and that an English firm obtained permission to establish itself in 1809. In 1789 a foreign ship was allowed to enter the port of Manila and to discharge a cargo. This would appear to have been the first. In olden times the demand for ordinary foreign commodities was supplied by the Chinese traders and a few Americans and Persians. During the latter half of the 18th century a Spanish man-of-war occasionally arrived, bringing European manufactures ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... known as the South-Downs in Sussex is a range of hills of a general height of seven hundred feet. This section is about five miles wide and fifty miles long. Four rivers flow through these downs to the sea. In olden times their lower courses must have been deep inlets of the sea, thus dividing those hills into five groups, each separated from the other by a wide extent of water and marsh land. To the north of these hills was a vast expanse of densely wooded country. It ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... have a song of spring, wrote hundreds of years ago. I tell it to you in the language of to-day, but it is ten times sweeter in the beauteous rhythm of the olden time.' ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall

... chevalier say at a ball, "You are delightfully well-dressed!" she was more pleased at such praise than she would have been at mortifying a rival. Monsieur de Valois was the only man who could perfectly pronounce certain phrases of the olden time. The words, "my heart," "my jewel," "my little pet," "my queen," and the amorous diminutives of 1770, had a grace that was quite irresistible when they came from his lips. In short, the chevalier had the privilege of superlatives. His compliments, of which he was stingy, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... the stubborn soil, Whose hard hands guide the plow, Who bend beneath the summer sun, With burning cheek and brow!—Ye deem the curse still clings to earth From olden time till now; But, while ye feel 'tis hard to toil And labor all day through, Remember, it is harder still To have no work ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... night—none of your silent idiot "communings" for us—of the olden time. We rolled a stream of ancient anecdotes over our tongues and drank till the Lord Archbishop grew so mellow in the mellow past that Dublin ceased to be Dublin to him, and resumed its sweeter, forgotten name of New York. In truth he almost got back into his ancient religion, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... again. He had been enchanted, like Reymond of Lusignan in olden times, by a creature that was half a monster. The Boy had been a reality to him, but the lady had never been more than a lovely dream, and the monster—well, the monster had not yet appeared, for that dark haired girl in the unwomanly clothes, with pride on her lips and pain ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... on the earth below Have scarcely a chance to sin, Churched, belled and gowned, they mope around By precept, all sealed in; There is never a sin for lust of flesh Nor sin for a man struck blow, And the red blood crime of the olden time Has ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter

... dark sky, and enjoyed the stillness and solitude of this deserted place. Within the recess of a large doorway, the varied sculptures of which he had often contemplated with pleasure, while calling up visions of the olden times and the arts that adorned them, he now again took his stand, to give himself up for a few ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... Adam Bell, Clym o' the Clough, and William of Cloudesly were three noted north-country bowmen whose names have been celebrated in many ballads of the olden time. ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... the enclosed Dedication to be printed, unless you dislike it. I like it. It is in the olden style. But if you object to it, put forth the book as it is. Only pray don't let the Printer mistake the word ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... silver mines, and sat on the great rocks at Port Gorey which had in those olden times served for a jetty, while he told them how Peter Le Pelley had mortgaged the island to further his quest after the silver, and how a whole ship-load of it sank within a stone's throw ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... some of the business men of the present day is largely to be attributed to the fact that the instructors of the youth in the olden time never taught them how to carve a dog. How many times have we been in positions since arriving at man's estate, when poring over some great problem of science, where we would have given ten years of the front end of our life if we knew how to make ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... events amongst the Fezzaners, and their traditions are so disfigured, and so strangely mingled with religious and superstitious falsehoods, that no confidence can be placed in them. Yet the natives themselves look with particular respect on a man capable of talking of the people of the olden time. Several scriptural traditions are selected and believed. The Psalms of David, the Pentateuch, the Books of Solomon, and many extracts from the inspired writers, are universally known, and most reverentially considered. The New Testament, translated into the Arabic, which Captain Lyon took ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... T. A. Buckley; Episodes in the Life of a Freemason; The Countess and the Serf, by Miss Pardoe; The Knights of St. Helen's; On Symbols and Symbolism; A Relic of the Pretender; Eleanora Ulfeld; The Prison Flower, by Miss Pardoe; Olden Holiday Customs; Si j'etais Roi; Correspondence. Masonic Intelligence:—Supreme Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of England; United Grand Lodge; Grand Conclave of Masonic Knights Templar; The Ancient and Accepted Rite; Royal Freemasons' ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various

... to death on circumstantial evidence. Many of its injunctions are intensely minute and hair-splitting to the extreme of casuistry. Yet these elements are familiar in the interpretation of law, not only in the olden time, but in some measure even to-day. There are instances where Talmudic law is tenderer than the Biblical; for example, the lex talionis is ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... Eight principal Points of the Compass. Even Chemistry, which was once the favourite Science of these people, is at present only applied to the Distilling of a little Rose-water. The Physicians chiefly study the Spanish Translation of Dioscorides (that was a Learned Leech in Olden Times); but the Figures of the Plants and Animals are more consulted than the Descriptions: yet are these Knaves naturally Subtle and Ingenious; wanting nothing but Application and Patronage to cultivate and improve their Faculties. They are for the most part Predestinarians, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... about it who talk of something else beyond? It is for the ignorant common people that a future life has been invented, but who really believes in it? What watcher in the cemetery has seen Death leave his tomb and hold consultation with a priest? In olden times there were phantoms; they are interdicted by the police in civilized cities, and no cries are now heard issuing from the earth except from those buried in haste. Who has silenced death, if it has ever spoken? Because funeral processions are no longer permitted to encumber our streets, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... try it with her thumb, and shot it into place in its new home. Then she slipped the sheath along the belt to its customary resting-place, just above the hip. For all the world, it was like a scene of olden time,—a ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... >From Kara Dagh, where leafy wings Of flowers fall and gloaming steals The colors of the blowing rose, Old were the wharves and woods and ways— Older the tale of steel and fire, Involved intrigue, envenomed plan, Man marketing his brother man By dread duress to glut desire. No peace was in those olden days. Hope like the gorgeous rose sun-warmed Blossomed and blew away and died, Till gentleness had ceased to be And Tarsus knew no chivalry Could live an hour by Cydnus' side Where all the heirs of evil swarmed. And yet—with every swelling spring Each pollen-scented zephyr's breath Repeats ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... Margaret Countess of Buchan with Sir William Comyn, a knight of goodly favor and repute. This interpolation and ascendency of strangers was a continual source of jealousy and ire to the ancient retainers of the olden heritage, and continually threatened to break out into open feud, had not the soothing policy of the Countess Margaret and her descendants, by continually employing them together in subjecting other petty clans, contrived to keep them in good ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... first vessel with these women, there came other women—loving hearts drawn from the olden land by those silken threads which afterwards harden into golden chains. For instance, Governor Bradford, a lonesome widower, went down to the sea-beach, and, facing the waves, tossed a love-letter ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... in her career. Midnight was gathering slowly over the earth; the beautiful, the mystic hour, blent with a thousand memories, hallowed by a thousand dreams, made tender to remembrance by the vows our youth breathed beneath its star, and solemn by the olden legends which are linked to its majesty and peace—the hour in which, men should die; the isthmus between two worlds; the climax of the past day; the verge of that which is to come; wrapping us in sleep after a weary travail, ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... warrior, as his father had been—and his—and his—away back to the days of the Crusades. Pons Motier de la Fayette fought at Acre; Jean Motier de la Fayette fell at Poitiers. There were marshals who bore the banner in many a combat of olden times when the life of the country was at stake. It was a Lafayette who won the battle at Beauge in 1421, when the English Duke of Clarence was defeated and his country was compelled to resign hope of a complete conquest ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow

... of Hainault, of Holland, and of Zealand?" The audience cheered these words; the commune of Ghent forthwith assembled, and on January 3, 1337, reestablished the offices of captains of parishes according to olden usage, when the city was exposed to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... leaning towards the mystic and psychic. In fact, it has been stated that the Kaiser's claim to a partnership with The Almighty was the result of delusions formed in his consultations with mediums—the modern descendants of the soothsayers of olden times. ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... his pulses to beating in tune with the throbbing of the music and transported him again into the realms of youthful dreams. They were quaint plaintive songs of old France that the Marquis chose to play that evening, folk tunes of the Vendee, love songs of olden time. ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... the strangers who were present at the festival of the Gymnopaedia: while the profuse hospitality of Kimon, both to strangers and his own countrymen, far surpassed even the old Athenian traditions of the heroes of olden days; for though the city justly boasts that they taught the rest of the Greeks to sow corn, to discover springs of water, and to kindle fire, yet Kimon, by keeping open house for all his countrymen, and allowing them to share his crops in the country, and permitting his friends to partake of all ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... I say. I do not belong to your nation, though I understand your language well enough to be able to converse in it intelligibly. In olden times the Apostles of our Holy Faith received direct from Heaven the gift of tongues, we, their unworthy successors, must, with great labour and weariness, acquire the languages of those to whom we have to preach the Gospel. I am the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... and, to make that feature still more objectionable, two large teeth, like two fangs, stuck out at a considerable angle from her upper jaw and rested on the lower lip. Altogether the face was repulsive. Added to this, she was tall and bony, and would have passed anywhere for one of the witches of olden time. ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... the past, past time; days of yore, times of yore, days of old, times of old, days past, times past, days gone by, times gone by; bygone days; old times, ancient times, former times; fore time; the good old days, the olden time, good old time; auld lang syne[obs3]; eld|. antiquity, antiqueness[obs3], status quo; time immemorial; distance of time; remote age, remote time; remote past; rust of antiquity [study of the past] paleontology, paleography, paleology[obs3]; paleozoology; palaetiology[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... came down to her feet, covered with wampum and such beautiful moccasins, embroidered with the quills of the porcupine, with a border of the same around the bottom of her flowing dress. Had he seen one of the fairies of olden times, a fabled goddess of the sylvan shade, or had he seen a human being in this image of beauty that appeared before his father and welcomed him to her home and then glided away to ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes

... pity. "Poor human reason! It will reel into madness sometimes for a mere trifle—an overdose of alcohol will sometimes upset it altogether—what a noble omnipotent thing is human reason! But let me not detain you. Good-bye, and—as the greeting of olden times used ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... I saw this extraordinary being whenever it was possible. But her chef-d'oeuvre, in my eyes, was the "wife of Macbeth." The character seemed made for her, by something of that instinct which in olden times combined the poet and the prophet in one. It had the ardour and boldness mingled with the solemnity and mystery that belonged to the character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... and was king of the Goths: in Rome the Patricius sought to protect and maintain. When, in 500, he visited Rome, he was received before its gates by the senate, the clergy, the people, and welcomed like an emperor of the olden time. Arian as he was, he prayed in St. Peter's, like the orthodox emperors of the line of Theodosius, at the Apostle's tomb. Before the senate-house, in the forum, Boethius greeted him with a speech. The German king admired the forum of Trajan, as the son of Constantine, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... world, with great portals far outflung, Holding a hope more sweet than time had sung, To which the Jew, of life's high quest a part, A pilgrim came, the Torah in his heart. A land of promise, and fulfillment too; Where on a sudden olden dreams came true.... Here grew we part of an ennobled state, Gave and won honor, sat among the great, And saw unfolding to our 'raptured view The day long prayed ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... day delight in relating the various exploits of the Cid. In a celebrated battle with Count Berenger, Rodrigo captured a vast store of treasure, and many swords made in olden days. Among these was the wonderful blade, Colada, worth a thousand marks in silver. With this weapon, he afterwards slew many score of ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... on the western side of Italy a large and fertile plain, wherein lie a tower and town founded long ago by the men of the olden days. The name of this noble country is Saluzzo. A worthy marquis called Walter was once lord of it, as his fathers had been before him. He was young, strong, and handsome, but he had several faults for which he was to blame; he took no thought for the ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... whom we shall speak as Mrs. Mingess of Kinyuchar. There is not a man in the house; even the Boots is a girl, so that 22 Breadalbane Terrace is as truly a castra puellarum as was ever the Castle of Edinburgh with its maiden princesses in the olden time. ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... olden days, before men with strange languages and customs entered their country and disturbed the serenity of their life, the Boers were accustomed to make annual trips to the north in search of game, and to exterminate ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... smart to speak to you, but when I gets tired, I just get all fray up somehow. My sister, she come to see me Sunday en I had dem all laughin bout what I say dat I had tell you. My sister, she make out like she don' know nothin bout dem olden times. Her husband, he done gone en die en she out lookin round for another one. Reckon dat what ails her. I tell her, I ain' see none nowhe' dat I would be pleased to take in. But I don' care what she say, us sho been here in slavery time cause my mother didn' have but one free born ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... quick as his flickering tongue, had caught that panic-born thought. "You are of the blood of this space wanderer. Men from the riven colonies must have escaped to safety. Look at this man, is he not like the men of Memphir—as they were in the olden days of ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton

... hat (a hat which is not new)". Li estas maljuna sinjoro, "he is an old (aged) gentleman". Li estas malnova amiko mia, "he is an old friend of mine (a friend of long standing)". La hxinoj estis kleraj ecx en la antikva tempo, "the Chinese were learned even in the olden time (in ancient time)". La antikvaj kleruloj jam sciis tre multe, "the ancient learned (enlightened) men already knew a great deal". La maljuna sinjoro en la malnovaj vestoj estas antikvisto, "the old gentleman with the old clothes is ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman

... to tell about the universal struggle of the people for the right to life, about the conflicts of the German peasants in the olden times, about the misfortunes of the Irish, about the great exploits of the workingmen of France in their frequent ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... it was not true. Accident may have obliged him to take his seat in this ungainly form, but he had no purpose of deviating from the ancient full-bottom, and he is now to be seen in all the amplitude of the olden fleece. In like manner he observes the strict regime, so fantastical to a stranger, of causing counsel to be shouted for from without, although they are actually present; and he adds to the oddness of this custom by receiving ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various

... scelerisque purus. You have vowed your life to England; give it her wholly—a bright, stainless, perfect life—a knightly life. Because you have to fight with machines instead of lances, there may be a necessity for more ghastly danger, but there is none for less worthiness of character, than in olden time. You may be true knights yet, though perhaps not equites; you may have to call yourselves 'cannonry' instead of 'chivalry,' but that is no reason why you should not call yourselves true men. So the first ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... memories olden If they do not teach the truth That within the city golden Only, dwells ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass

... Philip and Ruth Van Doren chose their abode. And you may see them any day that you care to penetrate to their broad pastures, riding together, viewing with contemplative eyes the distant peaks or the cattle that are the Governor's delight, a link, he says, between the present and the olden times when the world was young. And often at night, when they are not with the Congdons or the Bennetts, they ride for hours in silence, so great is their happiness, so perfect their understanding, so deep ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... affectionate son he wrapped her shawl about her and led her gantry from the spot which held for her so great a terror. It was not physical fear; she had never been afraid of bodily harm, even when fully in his power. It was rather the olden horror stealing back upon her, the pain which comes from the slow grinding out of one's entire will and spirit. She had forgotten the feeling, it was so long since it had been experienced, but one sight of him brought it back, and all ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes



Words linked to "Olden" :   past



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