"Blackness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the cause of the blackness of many burnt bodies, which we may find to be nothing else but this; that the heat of the fire agitating and rarifying the waterish, transparent, and volatile water that is contain'd in them, by the continuation of that action, does so totally expel and drive away all that which before ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... I saw the light! The day when first my mother's nursing care Sheltered my helplessness. Let it not come Into the number of the joyful months, Let blackness stain it and the shades of death Forever terrify it. For it cut Not off as an untimely birth my span, Nor let me sleep where the poor prisoners hear No more the oppressor, where the wicked cease From troubling ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... shadows in the next clause, which substitutes for 'darkness' the still more tragic words, 'the region and shadow of death.' The realm of darkness is the region of death. That dread figure is the lord of it, and, grimly enough, its very intensity of blackness has power to throw a shadow even there where there is no light, and to deepen the gloom. The second clause advances on the first in another respect, for while the former spoke only of 'seeing' the light, the latter tells of the blessed suddenness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... her letters and glancing at the paper. A charming picture she made—the soft, white Valenciennes of her matinee falling away from her throat and setting off the clean, smooth healthiness of her skin, the blackness of her vital hair; from the white lace of her petticoat's plaited flounces peered one of her slim feet, a satin slipper upon the end of it. At the top of the heap of letters lay one she would have recognized, she thought, had she ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... it had appeared, the searchlight was obscured, and the blackness of the night was more ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... from him; and the dark lady, too, shone like silver in the night: and on they flew, over black rocks and black rivers, till they reached a huge mountain, like a mountain of coal, many thousand feet high, for its head was lost in the blackness of darkness. The dark Moon-Lady struck the rock with her ebony wand, and said, "Open!" and the cliffs opened like a door, and they were ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... stood. They were large men, possibly six feet and over in height. Their features were clear cut and handsome in the extreme; their eyes were well set and large, though a slight narrowness lent them a crafty appearance; the iris, as well as I could determine by moonlight, was of extreme blackness, while the eyeball itself was quite white and clear. The physical structure of their bodies seemed identical with those of the therns, the red men, and my own. Only in the colour of their skin did they differ materially from ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... attain the treasure—for so ran the inexorable logic of the shadow-land of the unconscious—or else sink into the all- devouring sea, the blackness eater of the light that swallowed to extinction the sun each night . . . the sun that arose ever in rebirth next morning in the east, and that had become to man man's first symbol of immortality through rebirth. ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... together to prevent the darkness having everything its own way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the awful blackness of that ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... nothing for hundreds of millions of miles. Those first two reflected a tiny amount of light from Ventura B and were visible through telescopes, therefore it would have created suspicion to falsify their position. Past them, however, the blackness was ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... as it seemed to him, she looked steadfastly out of the window at the wall of blackness flitting past, and the steady drumming of the wheels grated on his nerves and got into his blood. When it was about to become unbearable she turned and gave him her hand again. "I'm just as sorry as I can be!" she declared, and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... softens the distances, and while the long road behind him still glitters, it grows darker now at every step—like the past, with its retrospections to him who looks back and regrets. It seems to Monpavon that he is walking into blackness. He shivers a little, but does not falter, and continues to walk with erect ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... boat about as if it were a cork. They could see little of the sea around them, but they could hear the awful noise of it, and they knew they were being swept along on those hurrying waves toward a coast which was invisible in the blackness of the night. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... in a windowless palace whose painted walls she takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base, and through a cleft in the walls she looked out upon life. For the first moment all was indistinguishable blackness; then she began to detect vague shapes and confused gestures in the depths. There were people below there, men like Denis, girls like herself—for under the unlikeness she felt the strange affinity—all struggling in that ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... portion of the extent of the Milky Way in both hemispheres the general blackness of the ground of the heavens on which its stars are projected, and the absence of that innumerable multitude and excessive crowding of the smallest visible magnitudes, and of glare produced by the aggregate light ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... hold of a couple of the camp-stools, and arranged himself comfortably with his back against the cabin wall. The waves bubbled invisibly in the wake beneath. After sitting for a while in the dense blackness, Helwyse began to feel as though his whole physical self were shrivelled into a single atom, careering ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... their leaves like an autumn storm, turning the road into a river, and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunder rolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and a strange glitter of light ran along the ground under the increasing blackness. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... a cry of horror, for the immense stone altar, with a dull rumbling, rolled back as though on wheels, and there, over where it had stood was a hole of yawning blackness, with a flight of stone steps leading down into it. And Tom stood so near the edge that he ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... white character; but even the whiteness of ermine gains by being necked with blackness. "How can he treat me with so little consideration? It is just as if he had said: 'Good morning, mother. I am going to disgrace the family by my marriage, but I know you will ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... even look up. She took his hand in hers, and started walking with him into the darkness. The temperature became as cold as ice. At the first bend the light from the outer world disappeared, leaving them in absolute blackness. Maskull kept stumbling over the uneven ground, but she kept tight hold of him, and hurried ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... upper lip. He had a long chin, beautifully shaped and shaven clean as marble, a mouth like a scarlet line, and a very round, smooth throat, shown by his flaring collar. His complexion kept a cool whiteness which no exposure tanned, and this made striking the blackness of his ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... our shell shook and creaked, and the staunch walls wept, and the garden footways ran with bubbling waters, but we were still to conquer. Our lanthorn gleamed defiance to that brag of night eternal, that pattern-piece of the last triumph of the oldest enemy of man—Blackness the Rider, who is ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... in my Chamber I saw the light over his transom become blackness, and soon after, on opening his door and speaking his name softly, there was no response. I therfore went in and took my Revolver from his bureau, but there was somthing wrong with the spring and it went off. ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... As a matter of fact, the road was not yet legitimately dark. There were still red rays of a sunset in the sky, and the brown gloaming was still warmed, as it were, with a feeling as of firelight. But for three seconds after the lanterns swung and sank, I saw in front of me a blackness blocking the sky. And with the fourth second I knew that this blackness which blocked the sky was a man on a great horse; and I was trampled and tossed aside as a swirl of horsemen swept round the corner. As they turned I saw that they were not black, but ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... beginning to feel a certain numbness of mind as well as weariness of body, that as I struck out in the mechanical and weakening fashion which I kept up from what little determination I had left, I came across my salvation—in the shape of a piece of wreckage that shoved itself against me in the blackness, as if it had been some faithful dog, pushing its nose into my hand to let me know it was there. It was no more than a square of grating, but it was heavy and substantial; and as I clung to and climbed on to it, I knew that it made all the difference ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... narrow tunnel in the hill-side, with its walls and roof lined with slabs of rock, was as uncanny a spot as a man could set foot in, and Elijah shook like one with the ague, as he thrust aside the ferns and peered into the blackness. ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... nations just before the inauguration of Messiah's kingdom and the taking unto himself of his bride for the setting up of his kingdom. St. Paul, referring to that time, by way of comparison says: "Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more (for they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... left the sidewalk that ran past his own home, but a short distance from the Drive. They stared without blinking across that dark border, through the circle of light from the arc lamp and far into the shadows of blackness beyond. It was very dark where he stood. The lake had battered through the sea wall for many rods at this particular point and no one ventured out beyond the bridle path for fear of slipping down into the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... courage to bite; Folly, that knows not the substance of Freedom, but loves the glitter of its name; Fear, that falters; Crime, that seeks in licentiousness an excuse; Disappointment, only craving occasion to rail; Hatred; Sourness, boasting of zeal, but only venting the blackness of rancour and evil passion,—all these make our adherents, and give our foes the handle and the privilege to scorn and to despise. But man chooses the object, and Fate only furnishes the tools. Happy for our posterity, that when the object is once gained, the frailty ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... become almost insupportable. Languor and uneasiness would seize on every one, even the denizens of the forest, betraying it by their motions. White clouds would appear in the cast and gather into cumuli, with an increasing blackness along their lower portions. The whole eastern horizon would become almost suddenly black, and this would spread upwards, the sun at length becoming obscured. Then the rush of a mighty wind is heard through the forest, swaying the tree-tops; a vivid flash of lightning bursts ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... reached the canyon gates. In the blackness of the gorge, with only the light of a narrow strip of stars overhead, he was forced to ride more slowly. But his confidence that he would find her at the Ranger Station had increased as he approached the scenes of her ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... and bidding Malise unlace his helmet in compliment to his guests, he stood presently bareheaded before them, his head appearing above the blackness of his armour, bright as a flower with youth and instinct with all the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... were ever afterward a twilight-place in his soul, hallowed and sanctified by the great revelation they brought him, blending the blackness of despair with the white light of perfect love. Here his thoughts would often turn even in the stress and strain of the daily life, as a devotee stops on his busy round and steps within the dim cathedral to gain strength and inspiration ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... shrouded in impenetrable darkness, except for the faint and quivering radiance which the sphere emitted, and as I plunged my eyes into its depths in an effort to see what lay there, it seemed to me that I had never seen blackness so black. As I stared into it, with straining eyes, a vague form grew dimly visible beside the glowing sphere; and then I recoiled a little, for suddenly it took shape and I saw it ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... that were afterwards so fatal, had made the spirited bid of a thousand pounds for Marmion, and the much more spirited and (it is to be feared) much less profitable one of fifteen hundred for the Swift. He had, however, recently taken into partnership a certain Mr. Hunter of Blackness. This Hunter must have had some merits—he had at any rate sufficient wit to throw the blame of the fact that sojourn in Scotland did not always agree with Englishmen on their disgusting habit of 'eating too much and not drinking enough.' But he was a laird of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... and blackness of the place were uncanny. We all sat looking into the fire. Somebody said, "Injuns would not have such a ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... and my gifts have brought me only this poor, simple boy. Half-witted, they call him; and surely fit for nothing but to be happy. And I accept his aid! To-morrow, to-morrow, I will tell him all! Ah! what a sin to stain his joyous nature with the blackness of a ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... strife, For each has his separate office and station, And each his own work in the congregation; Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears, And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears, Awake in his coffin must wait and wait, In that blackness of darkness that means too late, And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls, As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls, To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... dark, and Paulina felt a momentary terror creep over her as she looked into the massy blackness of the dark alleys which ran up into the woods, forced into deeper shade under the glare of the lamps from the encampment. She now reflected with some alarm that the forest commenced at this point, stretching away (as she had been told) in some directions upwards of fifty miles; and that, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... quite dark. Over in the west a faint, ghostly gleam of light still lingered, seen dimly through the trees; but it only made the utter blackness of the great forest-shadows more horrible. The huge trunks of the pines and maples towered up, up—they could scarcely see how far, grim, and gloomy and silent; here and there a dead branch thrust itself ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... other glad times too in my life; other times of even higher enjoyment. But among all the dried flowers of my memory, there is not one that keeps a fresher perfume or a stronger scent of its life than this one. Those were the days without cloud; before life shadows had begun to cast their blackness over the landscape. And even though such shadows do go as well as come, and leave the intervals as sunlit as ever; yet after that change of the first life shadow is once seen, it is impossible to forget that it may come again and darken the sun. I do not mean that the days of that ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... gloom. As he gazed before him into the dark heavens, the blast furnace winked like an evil eye, then silently belched flame and smoke, then relapsed into its seething self. The monster's breath illumined the dusky sky for a few moments. Blackness then fell over all for two minutes, and again the beast reappeared. Far away to the west came through the night a faint roar, like the raving of men. There was a line of light against the horizon: the mob was burning freight cars. Soon the bonfire died down. The ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the roof-level of this glowed—two luminous rectangles in the blackness of darkness—the windows of the back room on the second storey; and out of these came floating still the song, the laughter, and the jabbered French he had heard in the house next door. It did not take him long to make up his mind. Gripping the swaying supports of the sagging ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... grief that ye may not remove the disgrace, That brands with the blackness of hell all your race; 'Tis the sorrow that nothing may cleanse ye of shame, That has wrought us to madness, and filled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... a speerit," said the good woman, staring out into the blackness in amazement. She never dreamed of such a thing as Ann's going to the North Precinct after the doctor, but that was what the daring girl had determined to do. She had listened to the doctor's wife in dismay, but with never one doubt as to her ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... I excuse it? There are things done which are holy as the heavens,—which are clear before God as the light of the sun, which leave no stain on the conscience, and which yet the malignity of man can invest with the very blackness of hell! I shall know why I pay this L500. Because she who of all the world is the nearest and the dearest to me,"—she looked up into his face with amazement, as he stood stretching out both his arms in his energy,—"has in her impetuous folly committed a grievous blunder, from which she would ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... yellow stars looked down from the blackness above; under the wheels the rotten planking and worn girders of the Long Bridge groaned and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... sunset. And then, not two hours ago, entering the town at dusk, passing along the deserted streets, with only a smoky light here and there under a shrine or in front of a fruit-stall, or a fire reddening the blackness of a smithy; passing beneath the battlements and turrets of the palace.... Ah, that was Italy, it was ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... knew not where we were. Upon the tenth day, a seaman being sent to look out for land from the mast-head, he gave notice that on starboard and larboard he could see nothing but the sky and the sea which bounded the horizon, but just before us, upon the stern, he saw a great blackness. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... trying to swim, Phil lay over on his back, floated and began blinking industriously to get the water out of his eyes. He soon found that he could see once more, though at that moment there was nothing to be seen in the blackness of ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Fakarava. We must, therefore, hug the coast until we gained the western end, where, through a passage eight miles wide, we might sail southward between Raraka and the next isle, Kauehi. We had the wind free, a lightish air; but clouds of an inky blackness were beginning to arise, and at times it lightened—without thunder. Something, I know not what, continually set us up upon the island. We lay more and more to the nor'ard; and you would have thought the shore copied our manoeuvre and outsailed us. Once and twice Raraka headed ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and with a suffocating sensation he began sinking to the floor. He was aware of a feeble gratification as he saw solicitude leap into her eyes; then blackness smote him, and at the moment of smiting him his thought was that at last, and for the first time in his life, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... by the greater blackness ahead, near the outskirts of the city—for Richmond was burning. The towering black mass of smoke was growing more perceptible in the slowly lightening dawn. Elim Meikeljohn could now hear the low sullen uprush of flames, the faint crackling of timbers, and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... coloured skins, they always tend to the yellow, as in the various mulatto shades of the West Indies, and especially in the Southern States of America; and the same is true of the "half-castes" of British India, though with a distinct darkness or blackness, which the descendant of the ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... His passion was veiled under a manner of mock deference, of insolent assurance, but as the hours passed the fears of the girl grew upon her. There were moments when she turned sick with waves of dread. In the sunshine, under the open sky, she could hold her own, but under cover of the night's blackness ghastly horrors would ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... the public peace and the dignity of all laws, let us regard with tenderness and consideration that poor class of oppressed men, our negro population, on whom the statute falls with the terrors and blackness of night. When one of their number, by his industry and abilities has raised himself to the dignity of a place in this bar, it was with mortification I heard him insulted, yesterday, on the stand, by an officer of court, who pointed him out, in giving his evidence, as "the ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... a snow-drift to the knees, and when they had floundered through it for thirty yards or so Weston sank suddenly well over his waist. He flung himself forward, and with the help of Kinnaird wriggled clear, but when they looked down there was empty blackness beneath the hole ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... at the blackness of the wall, when suddenly a light appeared in it. To his immense surprise, he found himself looking up a kind of long, arched tunnel, at whose farther end a man stood in a boat, a light in his hand. Only for an instant did Chippy behold this strange vision. His skiff drifted on, and ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... stray sixpence; and here was this man, as good, so to speak, as any—well educated, full of gifts and accomplishments, well born, well connected, not a prodigal nor open sinner, losing himself in the very blackness of darkness, feeling that a kind of moral extinction was the only prospect before him, for want of this little sum. It seemed incredible even to himself, as he sat and brooded over it. Somehow, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... protected us pretty thoroughly from the front fire and were congratulating ourselves on our haven of safety when Ping! Ping! again from our rear came the messages from a sniper hidden there. In glancing back over my shoulder I noticed in the pitchy blackness the flash of a rifle simultaneously with the report, and it seemed to come from a haystack about 200 ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... under the spruces that he could barely see the shape of her head beside his shoulder. He longed to stoop his cheek and rub it against her scarf. He would have liked to stand there with her all night in the blackness. She moved forward a step or two and then paused again above the dip of the Corbury road. Its icy slope, scored by innumerable runners, looked like a mirror scratched by ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... save me, My wife, child, and hearth, Then my harvest also; Then will I bless thee, Though thy lightning scorch to blackness All the rest of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... rapidly working rowlocks came to the girl's ears. They were slipping along in the dense blackness beneath the walls, making as little noise as possible and constantly on the lookout for the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... lavished on the youthful in this country, she would not have been at all remarked in a large assembly of young American girls. Her face was pleasing nevertheless; and there was a piquant contrast between the raven blackness of her hair the deep blue of her eyes, and the dazzling whiteness of her skin. Her colour, too, was high, and changeful with her emotions. As for teeth, she had a set that one might have travelled weeks to meet with their equals; and, though she seemed totally unconscious of the advantage, she ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... consciousness remains the same in the two acts while what varies are merely the distinctive attributes of consciousness; just as when we see at first a black and then a white cow, the distinction of the two perceptions is due to the varying blackness and whiteness while the generic character of the cow remains the same. The difference of the one permanent factor (from the two—or more—varying factors) is proved throughout by the two varying factors, and vice versa the difference of the latter ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... in Sweden and in Holland. He continued to hold the office of vice-chamberlain of the household till his death in 1766. These two brothers, and their elder brother Daniel, seventh Earl of Winchilsea, are the persons whom Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, calls, on account of the blackness of their complexions, "the dark, funereal Finches." [His widow, Charlotte, daughter of the Earl of Pomfret, was appointed governess to the young ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... out alone, a young man by the looks of him, drawn as he was against the white sand, and a paladin, for he marched to meet alone he knew not what or whom. "Blackamoor!" exclaimed De Arana beside me, but as he came nearer we saw that the dead blackness was paint, laid in a fantastic pattern upon his face and body. Native hue of skin, as we came presently to find in the unpainted, was a pleasing red-brown. He advanced walking daintily and proudly, knowing that his people were watching him. Single Castilian, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... looked to see if the belt was properly fastened, and asked my permission to tie the tongue of the belt to the belt itself; then he passed a strong cord several times around to strengthen the leather, and I was let down, suspended by the rope in the blackness of the crevasse. I extended my arms to the right and the left, as the guardian had told me to do, and even then I got my elbows scraped. At first I thought that the noise I heard was the reverberation of the echo of the blows of the wooden shoes against the edges of the crevasse, but ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... illness I was sent for, and watched beside his death couch. The girl on whom he had so often inflicted punishment, haunted his dying hours; and when at length the king of terrors approached, he shrieked in utter agony of spirit, "Oh, the blackness of darkness, the black imps, I can see them all around me—take them away!" and amid such exclamations he expired. These persons were of one of the first families ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... He must be more careful, he thought to himself, feeling utterly alone and miserable. But in spite of his resolution his eyes soon closed again. He was awakened, this time by his horse stumbling over some unseen obstacle. He could see nothing in any direction. The blackness and rain shut him in like a fog. He turned at right angles to find the trees which lined the road, but there were no trees. He swung his horse around and went in the other direction, but he found no trees—only an impenetrable darkness which pressed in upon him with a heaviness which might almost ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... brethren make moving patterns on the white columns, as the hungry little reptiles hunt ceaselessly for the mosquitos which form their staple diet. Lashing rain and deafening thunder at length cool the fiery furnace, blue lightning flares on the solid blackness of heaven, and the storm only dies away when we start at dawn for Tosari, the mountain sanatorium of the Tengger. The flat and flooded land glows with the vivid green of springing rice, tremulous tamarind ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... from Mr. Bennett's side with the feeling that at last everything is all right with him, we are compelled to return three hours later to discover that everything is all wrong. It is so dark in the room that our eyes can at first discern nothing; then, as we grow accustomed to the blackness, we perceive him sitting bolt upright in bed, staring glassily before him, while with the first finger of his right hand he touches apprehensively the tip of his ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... but owing to the utter darkness of the place I do not know whether I lay there days, or weeks, or months. It was the most horrible experience of all my life and that my mind did not give way to the terrors of that inky blackness has been a wonder to me ever since. The place was filled with creeping, crawling things; cold, sinuous bodies passed over me when I lay down, and in the darkness I occasionally caught glimpses of gleaming, fiery eyes, fixed in horrible intentness ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... went that drifting herd. Sometimes snow-whitened, their backs humped in the wind, their heads lowered and swaying weakly from side to side, the cattle marched and marched before him, sometimes obscured by the blackness of night, a vague procession of moving shadows; sometimes revealed suddenly when the lightning split the blackness. ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... warehouses as if in an uninhabited town of very high buildings dark from basement to roof. You could never have guessed that within a stone's throw there was an open sheet of water and big ships lying afloat. The few gas lamps showing up a bit of brick work here and there, appeared in the blackness like penny dips in a range of cellars— and the solitary footsteps came on, tramp, tramp. A dock policeman strode into the light on the other side of the gate, very ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the community as the assassin of reputations, and in my opinion the man who is capable of taking advantage of a technical immunity from punishment to lie in wait for and destroy in cold blood the whole character and career of another, reveals a blackness of disposition which fits him for the commission of any crime, aye, though it were as heinous as that of which he has accused ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... The blackness of my news, Your Highness, darks my sense!... I saw this much: His charging grenadiers, received in the face A grape-shot stroke that gouged out half of it, Proclaiming then and ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... he swung his huge bulk out of the boat and up the bank by the vines that had served him in coming, disappearing from sight and sound swiftly and silently as a great cat. Little and Barry leaned towards each other, seeking to discern features and expressions. It was hopeless in the blackness, but Barry's feelings were revealed ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... was very black, and Alfonso was very dignified. But his blackness, compared with the blackness of the pilot who came off at St. George's Island, and piloted us through the Narrows, was as that of a kid shoe to a boot that has been polished by blacking. As to dignity, no comparison can be made. The dignity of that nigger ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... transfixed with one idea. Persuasion would have been as effectual in moving yonder blackened corpse into healthy life, as in moving to a sense of duty to themselves, men who could see nothing but the deadness around them, and whose minds saw only, under all, the blackness of immediate destruction. Those who were victors, until now, literally rushed from the fort. The reinforcements of the British soon arrived, but the explosion had again given the defenders heart, and they too, having received reinforcements, after some ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... native African, and a most original and interesting specimen of his race. His thin, close-cut lips, straight nose and European features contrasted strangely with a skin of ebon blackness, and the quiet, simple dignity of his manner betokened superior intelligence. His story was a strange one. When a boy, he was with his mother, kidnapped by a hostile tribe, and sold to the traders at Cape Lopez, on the western coast of Africa. There, in the slave-pen, the mother ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... stage storms and had thrilled ecstatically to the mimic lightning, knowing just how it was made. But when that huge blackness behind and to the left of her began to open and show a terrible brilliance within, and to close abruptly, leaving the world ink black, she was terrified. She wanted to hide as she had hidden from those two men; but from that ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... he muttered a curse. What did that chairborne brass hat know about space cafard? About the depthless blackness, the wretchedness of free fall, the tides of primitive terror that swept you when the animal realization hit that you were away, away, away from the environment that gave you birth. That you were alone, alone, alone. A million, a million-million miles from your nearest ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... who set out with the dawn." Cattraeth is now believed by eminent archaeologists to be a locality situated at the eastern end of Antonine's wall, on the Firth of Forth—Callander, Carriden, or more probably the castle hill at Blackness, which contains various remains of ancient structures. Urien's foes at the battle of Gwen-Ystrad were apparently the Angles or Saxons of Bernicia—this last term of Bernicia, with its capital at Bamborough, including at that time the district of modern Northumberland, and probably ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... like at all. LAVARCHAM. Hang that by the win- dow. That should please her, surely. When all's said, it's her like will be the master till the end of time. OLD WOMAN — at the window. — There's a mountain of blackness in the sky, and the greatest rain falling has been these long years on the earth. The gods help Conchubor. He'll be a sorry man this night, reaching his dun, and he with all his spirits, thinking to himself he'll be putting his arms around her in two days or three. LAVARCHAM. It's more than ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... really out of curiosity that the people of France took to coffee, says Jardin; "they wanted to know this Oriental beverage, so much vaunted, although its blackness at first sight was ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... him, and yet in the inky blackness of the room accurate hunting down was difficult. It was like a duel between blind men. Thor was moving uncertainly, pausing from second to second to fix the object ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... While waiting for a scientific certainty to break through its darkness—for man has the right to hope for that which he does not yet conceive—the only point that interests us, because it is situated in the little circle which our actual intelligence traces in the thickest blackness of the night, is to know whether the unknown for which we are bound ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... light away down, and this beam grew and grew as it slowly moved up and up till it became a great triangular ray. It swept slowly along the top of what I now saw was a steep precipice sloping sheer down into blackness below. One step further and I should have gone hurtling into the sea. For, although I did not then know it, this was the topmost ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... faint flush of the coming dawn two dusky figures slipped, with the silence of shadows, from among the buildings of Tawtry House, sped across the open, and vanished in the blackness of the forest. At the same time Truman Flagg, well satisfied with the act just performed, though wondering as to what would be its results, returned to his own lodging, flung himself on his couch of skins, and was quickly ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... an old dog new tricks?" asked Miss Ocky contemptuously. "You should know better at your age, Janet." She got up and strolled out on the balcony to see the brilliant stars in a sky of velvet blackness. "Quarter past ten already. I shan't need you for anything to-night. If you insist on ruining your eyes with that work any longer, go off to your own room and let ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... are happy there Together—'twas my work—and now I wish That seas convuls'd by tempests were between them; And an eternal veil of blackness girded The one from the other—each in separate light, But still apart! apart! O horror, why Doth their communion cast such hopeless gloom Upon me, more than all a father's guilt, A sovereign's woe?—O daughter of a traitor! Traitoress! Thou lovest him thy friend doth love, And—he loves ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... silence, watching the stars pierce vividly through the blackness of the sky, and presently his thoughts strayed from Jud and from his fair young sister. In fancy he saw the queenly carriage of an imperious little head, the mystery lurking in a pair of purple eyes, and heard the ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Black in blackness, In all their leaves there is no sigh. 'Neath that darkling Cedar who dare wander Now, or under ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... had recoiled upon his own head. "O Lord!" he cried, getting up from the table, "I can't stand that!" The others regarded him, as he felt, even to that weasel of a Hicks, as a sheep of uncommon blackness. He went on deck, and smoked a cigar without relief. He still heard the girl's voice in singing; and he still felt in his nerves the quality of latent passion in it which had thrilled him when she sang. His thought ran formlessly ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... slender and lissome, looking taller than she really was. Her features were chiselled with exquisite delicacy; her hair of a raven blackness, and eyes of that dark lustre which reappears for generations in the descendants of Europeans who have mingled their blood with that of the aborigines of the forest. The Indian eye is preserved as an heirloom, long after all memory of the red stain has vanished from the traditions of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the fouling influences of the sediment-bearing affluents, and the washings of the shores. On a bright and calm day, when viewed in the distance, it had the ultramarine hue; but when looked fair down upon, it was of almost inky blackness—a solid dark blue qualified by a trace of purple or violet. Under these favorable conditions, the appearance presented was not unlike that of the liquid ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... light it up for use by night. Only a sailor knows the peculiar feeling of regard and mystery with which the compass of his craft becomes invested, the companion in past or unknown future perils, his trusty guide over the wide waste of waters and through the night's long blackness. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... passage cautiously and in silence, and I followed her example until she pushed open a door and was swallowed up in the blackness. Then I paused on the threshold while she lighted a candle; and as I entered, she swiftly closed and ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... note that in spite of the harmony of shapes in Fig. 4 some of the pieces of paper seem unduly prominent because of their blackness. They do not seem harmonious with the gray tone of the others. If we replace them with other pieces gray in color, as in Fig. 5, the result will be a more pleasing relationship of tone throughout the design. Thus we have made a simple ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage
... room. It is bare and always cold; always I must shiver some minutes before I shake it back to life. As I close the shutters I see the street again; the massive, slanting blackness of the roofs and their population of chimneys clear-cut against the minor blackness of space; some still waking, milk-white windows; and, at the end of a jagged and gloomy background, the blood-red stumbling apparition of the mad blacksmith. Farther still ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the quarrels of the Three Popes—the idea of three Popes at one time!—the burning alive of John Huss; the advance of the Crescent, and the battle of Agincourt. They were of dark complexion, some of them of nearly negro blackness, and spoke a language of their own, though many could converse in German and other tongues. They called themselves Zingary and Romany Chals, and the account they gave of themselves was that they were from Lower Egypt, and were doing penance, by a seven ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... bright moon which threw into inky blackness the depressions of the rugged mountains and threw up their projections into a blue glare. It was almost as light as day under that wonderful African moon. Had there been any one near the boy must have been able ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... plain that the Middle Ages must have accepted or invented some relief from punishment, or every Christian country would have been overwhelmed with the blackness of despair. Men could not live, if they felt they could not expiate their sins. Who could smile or joke or eat or sleep or have any pleasure, if he thought seriously there would be no cessation or release from endless pains? Who could discharge his ordinary duties or perform ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... simulated madness, foamed at the mouth, and finally tore up the benches in order to attack the judges with the fragments. He was sent first to the castle of Edinburgh and afterward to the Bass (an island), "for a change of air," as the record quaintly says. Finally, he was despatched to Blackness Castle, where he remained close in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... then as it is fierce, it is transient also; should its force continue, it would lose its name, and be no longer anger, but revenge; which, though the worst and most fiend-like propensity of a vicious inclination, is sometimes excited by circumstances, that seem in a great measure to alleviate the blackness of it:—repeated and unprovoked insults, friendship and love abused, injuries in our person, our fortune, or reputation, will sour the softest temper, and are apt to make us imagine it is an injustice to our selves, not to retaliate in kind, the ill treatment we receive. Religion, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... what the Fathers with a witty kind of Zeal have termed the Virtues of the Heathen World, so many shining Sins. It destroys the Innocence of an indifferent Action, and gives an evil Action all possible Blackness and Horror, or in the emphatical Language of Sacred Writ, makes Sin ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the guard-tent. A dim figure loomed out of the blackness. They noted with satisfaction, as it approached, that it was small. Sentries at the public-school camp vary in physique. They felt that it was lucky that the task of sentry-go had not fallen that night to some muscular forward from one of ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... of silence ensued. The streaming windows and blurred fragments of light, against the blackness outside, seemed to mirror the chaotic state of my mind. I ought to turn to him—a thousand times over, I knew I ought—and yet for my life I could not. At ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... timidly, as he guided her with swiftly steady step through the dense blackness, "perhaps I had no right to speak as I did. If I did you ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... The River!" And all that multitude, whom I had seen treading quietly the grass and fallen leaves with prosperous feet, came hurrying, their eyes no longer fixed on the rich plain, but lifted in trouble and defiance, staring at that rushing blackness. And the Voice called: "Hasten, brothers! The dike is broken. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... glad she could dry her eyes undetected by those sightless ones that she knew showed nothing to the singer—nothing but a black void. The pathos of the air backed by the pathos of a voice that went straight to her heart, made of it a lament over the blackness of this void—over the glorious bygone sunlight, never a ray of it to be shed again for him! There was no one in the room, and it was a relief to her to have this right to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... he kept his hand upon it. He had read somewhere that a revolver was quite useable from a pocket. There was no immediate answer to the bell, and he turned and surveyed the man under the tree, faintly distinguishable in the blackness. It had occurred to him that the number of guns a man may carry is only limited to his pockets, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... most dreadful of all, the fall could be heard of pieces of the earth's crust into pits of fire and the vast rumble and groan of a world. Houses crumbled, people were pressed to death and maimed in the blackness, streets cracked asunder, trees were ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... room a clean-edged circle of light blazed in the centre from an acetylene lamp, leaving the walls and corners in a shadow deep by contrast to blackness. Half the length of a rough deal table jutted out of the darkness into the circle of light, and beneath it its black shadow lay solid half-way across the light ring on ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... overhanging roof, and the shingled screen of the veranda; had darted up the dry wooden stairway, devouring banister, railing, and snapping pine floor, and then, billowing forth from every crack, crevice, and casement of the upper floor streamed hissing and crackling on the blackness that precedes the dawn, a magnificent glare that put to shame the feeble signal fires lately gleaming in the mountains. Luckily there was no wind—there never was a wind at Sandy—and the flames leaped straight for the zenith, lashing their ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... Blackness lurks in corners, Wind snatches the sparks, Tongs and poker jangle together Like the iron bones Of a man that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... very distinctly. Its length was equal to that of three of the loftiest trees that grow, and it was as wide as the great hall of audience in your palace, O most sublime and munificent of the Caliphs. Its body, which was unlike that of ordinary fishes, was as solid as a rock, and of a jetty blackness throughout all that portion of it which floated above the water, with the exception of a narrow blood-red streak that completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated beneath the surface, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy "Let there not be," and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... we slowly rose higher, a marvelous scene was disclosed. At first the earth beneath us, buried as it was in night, resembled the hollow of a vast cup of ebony blackness, in the center of which, like the molten lava run together at the bottom of a volcanic crater, shone the light of the illuminations around New York. But when we got beyond the atmosphere, and the earth still continued to recede below ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... once; he felt a desire to wander about a little in the fresh air. He turned back and had hardly got on a level with the house, where was the Rosellis' shop, when one of the windows looking out on the street, suddenly creaked and opened; in its square of blackness—there was no light in the room—appeared a woman's figure, and ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... that outlined itself in the light of the candle, against the blackness of the passageway without was of such a singular and foreign aspect as to fit extremely well into the extraordinary tragedy of which Jonathan was at once the victim and ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... then to Vivie? I suppose you expect the time-worn trick of the weary novelist, anxious to put his pen down and go to his tea: "Then she seemed swallowed up in a cloud of blackness and knew no more"—till it was convenient to the narrator to begin a fresh chapter. But with me it must be the relentless truth and nothing but the truth, in all its aspects. Vivie was deafened, nearly stunned by the frightful noise of the volley in a confined space. Next, she was being unceremoniously ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... with the sun behind, do not gain their eyes. What is of annual interest is the dark. Having fallen asleep all the summer by daylight, and having awakened after sunrise, children find a stimulus of fun and fear in the autumn darkness outside the windows. There is a frolic with the unknown blackness, with the reflections, and with ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... your conduct, Gascoyne," said Mr Mason, earnestly. "The blackness of your sin is too great to be deepened or lightened by what men may have said of you. You are a pirate. Every pirate is ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... another quarter of an hour Hollis saw, during another lightning flash, another of his landmarks, and realized that in the last quarter of an hour he had traveled a very short distance. The continuing flashes of lightning had helped the pony forward, but presently the lightning ceased and a dense blackness succeeded. The pony went forward at an uncertain pace; several times it halted and faced about, apparently undecided about the trail. After another half hour's travel and coming to a stretch of level country, the pony ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... passed and the storm grew more violent. The lightning flashed across the sky and lit up the wreck from end to end. Then a blackness as of ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... voice whispered, "I have come to ask your help...." It was so dark, he could not see her; he knew where she was only by the glitter of the jewel on her neck-chain as it arced through the blackness. ...
— The Blue Tower • Evelyn E. Smith
... to Leyden! Out of the blackness of the past, out of the gloom of the galleys, had arisen this evil genius of her life; yes, and, by a strange fatality, of the life of Elsa Brant also, since it was her, she swore, who had dragged down ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... scarcely anything, in pure, undiseased nature, like positive deformity, but only degrees of beauty, or such slight and rare points of permitted contrast as may render all around them more valuable by their opposition, spots of blackness in creation, to ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... I looked about me. Nothing could be seen but the dim form of a small house.—On every side the land melted into blackness, silent and without boundary. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... been drawn as crew member that the whole trip would be a gamble, a wild gamble with the odds all against them. RS 10—those very numbers on the nose of the ship told part of the story. Ten exploring fingers thrust in turn out into the blackness of space. RS 3's fate was known—she had blossomed into a pinpoint of flame within the orbit of Mars. And RS 7 had clearly gone out of control while instruments on Terra could still pick up her broadcasts. Of the ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... A great blackness fell on her. She had no pride now; she turned and went slowly back, not to the parsonage, but aslant by the bank of a dyke leading to the highroad along which, a few hours ago, she had returned so wearily. She must watch and ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... whoever passed the club doors enjoyed already some of the immunities of the tomb. They drank to each other's memories, and to those of notable suicides in the past. They compared and developed their different views of death—some declaring that it was no more than blackness and cessation; others full of a hope that that very night they should be scaling the stars and commercing with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ghostly forms on horseback loomed suddenly out of the blackness of the veld, momentarily lit up by the glare from the engine. On each occasion they shouted some warning, but what it was nobody could make out. Our engine-driver fully expected to be blown up, and had taken the bit between his teeth, cracking on at a pace that stirred up the living ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... Mr. Stobell, coupled with a word or two which had filtered through the window, that the ingenious Mr. Chalk was using him as a stalking-horse. From the fact that Mr. Stobell made no denial it was none the less evident, despite the growing blackness of his appearance, that he was a party to the arrangement. The captain began to ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... grey colour, half rose to his feet. But as he rose he looked at the man who drove it, and saw that while his jellab was drawn forward over his face to protect it from the sun, his bare legs showed of an ebony blackness against the sand. The donkey-driver was a negro. The Arab sat down again and waited with an air of the most complete indifference for the stranger to descend to him. He did not even move or turn when he heard the negro's feet treading ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... slantwise down the sky as though with some evil purpose, there stood that lonely, gnarled and deciduous tree. It was a bad place to be found in after dark, and night descended with multitudes of stars, beasts prowling in the blackness gluttered [See any dictionary, but in vain.] at Neepy Thang. And there on a lower branch within easy reach he clearly saw the Bird of the Difficult Eye sitting upon the nest for which she is famous. Her face was towards those three inscrutable mountains, far-off ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... scowling brow as black as night. He tears open the envelop! His faithful henchman wonders what can bring night's blackness to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... which had already set, was tingeing the black and threatening clouds with dingy red. Far as the eye could reach, the once green prairie presented an angry sea, whose inky waves were crested and flecked with foam, and the current was drifting the hut away into the abyss of blackness that seemed to gape ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... anything more grand could not be conceived. One moment everything was of a velvety blackness, then in an instant came the flash, the sky seemed to be opened to display the glories beyond of golden mountain, vivid blue sea, and lambent yellow plain. In the twinkling of an eye the sky closed again, and the darkness was more dense than before, while, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn |
