"Crone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came in with a bundle of sticks and began to lay them for a fire. She was an old crone-looking person. Eleanor observed her, and thought what it must be to have no nurse or companion ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... souls of Odin and of Thor!" answered Cedric impatiently, and would probably have proceeded in the same tone of total departure from his spiritual character, when the colloquy was interrupted by the harsh voice of Urfried, the old crone of the turret. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... ruler, boy and maid Followed the dismal cavalcade; And from door and window, open thrown, Looked and wondered gaffer and crone. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... stood before me jealously closed, and the lower windows were shut with shutters, so that all I could do was to cause Jumbo to awake the echoes with a lusty peal on the knocker, which he repeated at intervals, until there hobbled forth to open it a crone as wrinkled and crabbed as one of Macbeth's witches. I demanded whether my Lady Belamour lived there. She croaked forth a negative sound, and had nearly shut the door in my face, but I kept her in parley by protesting that I had often visited my Lady there, and offering a crown-piece ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what you be thinking," said Betsey; "you be wonderin' how I got so much sperrits. Well, p'raps I shall tell 'ee zoon. We sh'll zee, Jasper, we sh'll zee." And with that the old crone chuckled. ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... amphitheatre of some sixty yards across; and Captain Lake, glancing from the corners of his eyes, this way and that, without raising or turning his face, stopped listlessly at the time-worn white stone, and turning to the old crone, who was by his ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... sea beat, and upon the other the dead leaves ran. This was the loneliest beach between two seas, and strange things had been done there in the ancient ages. Now the King's daughter was aware of a crone that sat upon the beach. The sea-foam ran to her feet, and the dead leaves swarmed about her back, and the rags blew about her face in the blowing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... handkerchief tied round it, was so nearly of the colour of the carvings that she might easily have passed as of a piece with them. The aged woman continued motionless, the remains of her eyes being bent upon Paula, who asked her in Englishwoman's French where the sketcher had gone. Without replying, the crone produced a hand and extended finger from her side, and pointed towards the lower ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... hermit's mass. A hideous old crone covered with rags knelt beside the Duchesss, who on leaving the church ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... on her prologue, because 't is too licentious: there Chaucer introduces an old woman of mean parentage, whom a youthful knight of noble blood was forc'd to marry, and consequently loath'd her; the crone being in bed with him on the wedding night, and finding his aversion, endeavors to win his affection by reason, and speaks a good word for herself (as who could blame her?) in hope to mollify the sullen bridegroom. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... lurked within her heart, and she did not seem to feel much interest in the affairs of the Moors. These considerations, together with the imminency of her danger, led Theodora to throw herself on the protection of the crone, and beseech her pity and commiseration. But before she could try the effect of her persuasion, the door suddenly swung open, and the dreaded figure of Caneri presented itself to ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Could from the watery element Draw fire, and with her magic breath, Seal up a dragon's eyes in death. Could from the flint-stone conjure dew; The moon and seven stars she knew; And of all things invisible To human sight, this crone could tell. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... take care!" cried an aged old crone, "Take care what you promise," said she. "At first 'twill be fun, But, in the long run, You'll wish you had let the thing be. Through this stick with an eye I look and espy That for ages and ages you'll sit and you'll ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... know the stepping-stones across the ford. There as I passed, a certain aged crone, Whom I had fed, and nursed, year after year, Met me mid-stream—thrust past me stoutly on— And rolled me headlong in the freezing mire. There as I lay and weltered,—'Take that, Madam, For all your selfish hypocritic pride Which thought it such a vast humility ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... but the natives have shrewdly observed that the spirits shew a decided preference for plump young women. Hence when such a damsel is passing near a plot of haunted ground, if she does not wish to become a mother, she will disguise herself as an aged crone and hobble past, saying in a thin cracked voice, "Don't come to me. I am an old woman." Such spots are often stones, which the natives call child-stones because the souls of the dead are there lying in wait for women in order to be born as children. One such stone, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... playground was raised with a sharp snap, and the head-mistress appeared, shouting alternately at the children and the parents; but she was neither heard nor understood, and a Polish crone shook ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... according to the testimony of the old deaf servant, who had been fifty years at Wauling, that identical piece of "holy candle" which had stood in the fingers of the poor lady's corpse, and concerning which the old Irish crone, long since dead, had delivered the curious curse I ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... rock his new treasure in his arms, and to crone over him a little lullaby well known in Tergon, with which his own mother had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... if novelty and difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, according to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; nor will they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from an old blear-eyed crone. Those who have known the admirable qualities of Scipio Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, of being abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of his age. We have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of grandeur: our own are more ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... down to Ghilendzhik, I said to my husband, 'Let us go and see our house and land.' Accordingly we went along to look. What was our astonishment to find it occupied by another old crone. I went up to the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... melancholy. Why is this? Is it because they know how secondary a place woman holds in this city of well-nourished, self-satisfied men? Is it that they know that a girl's life is so brief: one day as supple and active as they are now and the next a crone? For it is one of the tragedies that the Venetian atmosphere ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... of bustle and noise, at the door of a small tent, sat two female gypsies. One of these was the queen, an aged crone, who, though bent with age and care, and wrinkled by time and the indulgence of vehement passions, yet prided herself upon the unfrosted darkness of her raven tresses, which fell over her shoulders in profusion. A turban of rich crimson cloth crowned her ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... heard Forsythe's voice in contempt: "Well, he seems to be well occupied for the present! No danger of his waking up for a while!" and then the voices all grew dim and far away again, and only an old crone and the harsh girl's whisper over him; and then Margaret's tears—tears that fell on his heart from far above, and seemed to melt out all his early sins and flood him with their horror. Tears and the consciousness that he ought to be doing something for Margaret now and could not. Tears—and ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... devoted mother, indeed, but also a woman in the full pride of her beauty and maturity. And this boy would condemn her—the most delightful, the most attractive, the most unselfish companion ever desired by a man—to sit in the chimney-corner like an old crone with a distaff, throughout all the years that fate may yet hold in store for her—with no greater interest in life than to watch the fading of her own sweet face in the glass, and to await the intervals during which he would be graciously ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... looked up at her again. But instead of the withered old crone he expected to see, his eyes fell upon the most beautiful wife that could be imagined; for the old woman was a fairy, and had wished to give him a lesson before he knew her as she really was. No longer now was he ashamed of her, and ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... oomiak with his old grandfather by his side, and a noisy crew of children and dogs around him. Raising himself on his elbow, he brushed the clotted blood and hair from his temples, and endeavoured to recall his scattered faculties. Seeing this, the old crone who had saved his life laid down her paddle and handed him a sealskin cup of water, which he seized and drank with avidity. Fortunately the wound on his forehead, although it had stunned him severely at first, was trifling, ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... locksmithing and copper-smithing go on there, touching elbows with frying and feeding, and the vending of all the strange and hideous forms of flesh, fish, and fowl. If you wish to know how much the tentacle of a small polyp is worth you may chance to see a cent pass for it from the crone who buys to the boy who sells it smoking from the kettle; but the price of cooked cabbage or pumpkin must remain a mystery, along with that of many raw vegetables and the more revolting ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Jenner, sir Nicholas Butler, sir William Herbert, sir Richard Holloway, sir Richard Heath, sir Roger l'Estrange William Molineux, Thomas Tynde-sly, colonel Townley, colonel Lundy, Robert Brent, Edward Morgan, Philip Burton, Richard Graham, Edward Petre, Obadiah Walker, Matthew Crone, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... barrier was removed by a leather- skinned old crone, Carroll gazed into a passageway, beyond which stretched a foul mule yard, bordered by what the visitor at first supposed to be stalls, until he saw bedding and utensils in them. The two men lifted the ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... dreadful little old crone," she says cheerily; "she's like some grotesque dream—why, what's ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... knew enough of magic or of Witchcraft To change them into gold. Then suddenly A tree shook down some crimson leaves upon me, Like drops of blood, and in the path before me Stood Tituba the Indian, the old crone. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... heavy pounds he gave! And then his tea! how it inspired the village gossip on long winter nights in a chimney corner! All the matrons of the village were quite in love with Tom, or his tea; and many an old crone, as she sat inhaling cup after cup of the divine beverage, has been known to pause in the midst of her inspirations, and exclaim with uplifted hands, 'God ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... in earnest between Thor and the ancient crone Ellie. Round and round the hall they wrestled, and Thor was not able to bend the old woman backward nor sideways. Instead he became less and less able under her terrible grasp. She forced him down, down, and at last he could only save ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... crone, before he could arise to leave her sight, "tell me, I pray thee, what hard thing ye seek. I am old, and have had much wisdom. It may happen that I can help you out of the great trouble ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... with eyes at once wistful and doubtful. Sometimes she shook her head sadly. And I wondered if ever the poor old stumbling crone, wizened like a two-year-old winter apple, had been as light and gay a thing as ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... some small Estate there still: Madam says he, I am very glad to see you; It is not an hour ago since I was Drinking your Health: I hope your good Daughter's very well: She's very well at your Service, Sir, replyed the old Crone; and I hope, Sir, you'l do me the honour to go and see her: I'll wait upon you another time, Madam, said he, but I an't in a condition to wait upon a young Lady now; O you are very well, reply'd she; come, you shall go along with me; and taking him by the Hand, leads him along with her: ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... who lay last night in my bosom? Tell me whither he is gone." Now when the duenna heard this, the light starkened in her sight and she feared from her mischief with sore affright, and said to her, "O my Lady Budur, what unseemly words are these?" Cried the Princess, "Woe to thee pestilent crone that thou art! I ask thee again where is my beloved, the goodly youth with the shining face and the slender form, the jetty eyes and the joined eyebrows, who lay with me last night from supper-tide until near daybreak?" She rejoined "By ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of nothing for hours together; the goede vrouw on the opposite side would employ herself diligently in spinning yarn or knitting stockings. The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, horses without heads, and hair-breadth escapes and bloody encounters ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hint of this black presentiment—just as sometimes on a day of perfect sunshine there is a chill in the wind that tells of approaching storm. All this is warranted by the prophetic rhymes which are several times spoken, beginning—"When the last lord of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride." A crone, Ailsie Gourlay by name, embodied with grim and grisly vigour by Alice Marriott,—whose ample voice and exact elocution, together with her formidable stature and her faculty of identification with the character that she assumes and with the spirit of the story, made her of great value to this play—hovered ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... An old crone with a face like a withered apple followed her, whining for a nickel. The others stared at her with the stolid dignity of their race. She gave the woman the nickel ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... thinking, irresistibly touching, and suggestive of dependence on, humility toward, and entreaty for merciful consideration at the hands of a superior race. Perhaps, however, the old folks enjoyed the occasion most, particularly the negresses: one wrinkled crone, of at least fourscore years, her head bound in, the usual gaudy handkerchief, and her hands resting on a staff or crutch, went off into a downright chuckle of irrepressible exultation after the closing benediction, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... riding forth in no amiable mood, when an old gipsy woman, well known in the neighbourhood, accosted him with the usual prayer for alms. He was curtly dismissing her, when she mentioned her desire to pay her respects to the young Duchess. It then occurred to him that the sight of this ragged crone, and the chronicle of her woes, might be an excellent medicine for his "froward," ungrateful wife, and teach her to know when she was well off; and after speaking in confidence with the old woman, he bade him who recounts the adventure escort her into ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... between the thoughts within her and the world without. On our first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us, and showed herself ready to engage in conversation; but suddenly, while we were talking with the century-old crone, the poor actress began to weep, contorting her face with extravagant stage-grimaces, and wringing her hands for some inscrutable sorrow. It might have been a reminiscence of actual calamity in her past life, or, quite as probably, it was but a dramatic woe, beneath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of an Irish jig, the player seemed, as it were, to run wild through all the floating fancies of his memory; now breaking suddenly off in the saddest cadence of a song, the notes would change into some quaint, old-fashioned crone, in which the singer seemed so much at home, and gave the queer drollery of the words that expression of archness so eminently the character of certain Irish airs. "But what the deuce is this?" said I, as, rattling over the keys ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... An aged crone sat on the beach, And, pointing to the ship, "She'll never return again," she said, With a scorn upon ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... chaste and true! In thy still house shall sit The careful crone who guards thy virtuous bed; She tells thee tales, and when the lamps are lit, Reels from her ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... escape to her own apartment, and to forget her wretchedness over a book, the execrable old woman railed and stormed, and complained that she was neglected. Yet, when Frances stayed, she was constantly assailed with insolent reproaches. Literary fame was, in the eyes of the German crone, a blemish, a proof that the person who enjoyed it was meanly born, and out of the pale of good society. All her scanty stock of broken English was employed to express the contempt with which she regarded the author of Evelina and Cecilia. Frances detested cards, and indeed knew nothing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an old, broken-down crone whose toilet astonished me as much as her person. In spite of her wrinkles, her face was plastered with red and white, and her eyebrows were indebted to India ink for their black appearance. She exposed one-half of her flabby, disgusting bosom, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... you saw all I see in this cup, you would not be so eager to know its contents," said the crone ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... hurdle-maker, he lived in one of the few remaining mud cottages on the skirts of Hadleigh Upper Wood, and in his hovel he had bred an immense family. His wife had long since died; her mother, a toothless old crone, kept house for him and was supposed to look after the younger children; but generally the Veales and their domestic arrangements were considered as a survival of a barbaric state of society and a disgrace in these highly polished modern times. People said that Veale ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... loathed him, Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste; A desolating fire to blind the sight With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes; The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice; Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, Heard from the babe as from the broken crone. Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, And tumbled down the cave. But rather look - Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, Of all the Gods to let her secret fly, Hermes, after the thirteen songful months! Prompting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... here," said Utgard-Loki, looking at the men sitting on the benches, "who would not think it beneath him to wrestle with thee; let somebody, however, call hither that old crone, my nurse Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her if he will. She has thrown to the ground many a man not less strong ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and gave the old crone the balance of my lunch, and told her I was going to see that mountain some day and see their houses, but she held up her hand and said, "Away up mountain long time ago, ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... during his father's last illness, he happened to pass the door of the grandmother's hovel while the crone was administering to Tommy a severe punishment with a piece of thick rope: she had been sharp enough to catch him stealing from herself. Clare heard his cries. The door being partly open, he ran in, and gave him such ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... in feeling than is Wagner. The other generation, with its pride of material power, its sense of well-being, its surge toward mastery of the terrestrial forces, its need of luxury, was unable to comprehend one who felt life a grim, sorrowful thing, who felt himself a child, a crone, a pauper, helpless in the terrible cold. For that was required a less naive and confident generation, a day more sophisticated and disabused and chastened. And so Moussorgsky's music, with its poor and uncouth and humble tone, its revulsion from pride ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... good you saw that, my lady," said the crone; "something terrible is coming; it's a sign, my lady—a sign ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... At intervals, the German batteries, searching round with apparent aimlessness, would drop a score or so of shells about the neighbourhood; but the peasant, with an indifference that was almost animal, would still follow his ox-drawn plough; the old, bent crone, muttering curses, still ply the hoe. The proprietors of the tiny epiceries must have been rapidly making their fortunes, considering the prices that they charged the unfortunate poilu, dreaming of some small luxury out of his five sous a day. But as one of them, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... would have answered to the higher term of fidelity, or, perhaps, heroism. Jim was very like his mother, old Nancy said, despite Dame Nature's habit of branding. Surely Nancy ought to be authority, for when the boy was left, at two months old, on the town, old Nancy Piatt, a drunken old crone, who washed the clothes of the rich all the week, and drank her earnings Saturday evenings, was the only one who offered to "take the cub" whom the authorities were ready ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... as a particular man's thrall and chattel, that she could not even go out to visit a friend without these degrading subterfuges of creeping in unperceived by a back entrance, and talking low under her breath, lest a lodging-house crone should find out what she was doing. And all the world of England was so banded in league with the slave-driver against the soul he enslaved, that if Miss Blake had seen her she could hardly have come in: while, once in, she must tremble and whisper and steal about with muffled feet, for fear ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... at the age of ten for the distant farm of Tirl, and did not return until the old bellman's death, twenty years afterward; but the first remark he overheard on entering the kirk-wynd was a conjecture flung across the street by a gray-haired crone, that he would be "little Snecky come to bury ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... stood the silent miners, their hands in their trousers pockets, staring stolidly at the closed door of the mine. Among them was no impulse toward concerted action. Like animals at the door of a slaughter-house they stood as though waiting their turn to be driven in at the door. An old crone with bent back and a huge stick in her hand went from one to another of the miners gesticulating and talking. "Get my boy—my Steve! Get him out of there!" she shouted, ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... down. They crone their wild refrain, praising the one who wins in strife and love. They seize in their right hand the hula gourd, clattering with pebbles inside. They whirl it aloft, they shake, they swing, they strike their palms, they thump the mat; ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... horde of dirty, ragged youngsters on the place, who were in the habit of running loose all day, shrieking after passing vehicles, and calling the occupants bad names; there was an old crone, who usually sat by the roadside, tipsy; and there were a husband and wife who were always quarrelling and fighting, and who had never been known to do any honest work. No one could say whether they begged more than they stole, or stole more ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... the wood's maze our eyes delighted stray, To mark the rustics on the market-day. Beneath the branches winds the long white road; Here peeps the rustic cottager's abode; There in the morning sun, the children play, Or the crone creeps ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... man. "Mark you, it is a creature that anybody can make for himself, but it must be done so secretly that no human eye sees it. Its body is a broomstick, its head a broken jug, its nose a piece of glass, and its arms two reels which have been used by an old crone of a hundred years. All these things are easy to procure. You must set up this creature on three Thursday evenings at a cross-road, and animate it with the words which I will teach you. On the third Thursday the creature will ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... brothers passed was shedding the golden grain from the ripened ears, and flocks of birds were gathering it up. When they passed the farmstead they saw the reason for this. Not a sign of life was there about the place. No cattle lowed, no dog barked; and an old crone who sat by the wayside with a bundle of ripe ears in her lap shook her head as she saw the wondering faces of the boys, ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... An hour later, Crone, the advertising manager, came up to Bobby very much worried, to report that not only the First National but the Second Market Bank had stopped their advertising, as had Trimmer and Company, and another of ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... unsparing scrutiny. Upon finding a mole or wart or any similar mark, they tried the 'insensibleness thereof' by inserting needles, pins, awls, or any sharp-pointed instrument; and in an old and withered crone it might not be difficult to find somewhere a ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... beauty late had sat: Her ugliness distorted thus; whereat The herald cries: "Who will this woman take With smallest dowry? She can cook and bake, And many household duties well perform, Although she does not claim a beauty's charm. Who wants a wife?" The ugly crone with blinks Doth hideous look, till every bidder shrinks. A sorry spectacle, mis-shapen, gross, She is, and bidders now are at a loss How much to ask to take the hag to wife. At last one cries: "Five ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... shall hear how he died. It was about two o'clock in the morning that he awoke from an uneasy slumber, and felt his end approaching. The old crone who had been hired as a nurse to watch at night, was fast asleep in her chair. The rushlight had burned low down in the socket, and, through the interstices of its pierced shade, threw a feeble and alternate light and ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be only an idea of mine, born of after brooding upon the scene. I am inclined to think it must be so, for I was only a child at the time, and would hardly have noticed such a thing. But it seems to my remembrance that as the old crone ceased, another woman in the crowd raised her eyes slowly, and fixed them on a withered, ancient man, who leant upon a stick, and that for a moment, unnoticed by the rest, these two stood ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the meeting, there arrived a message from Crone, the Head of Police, which was delivered verbally in this incredibly irregular form—that the Head of Police was as good a Scandinavian as anyone, but he begged the students for their own sakes to ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... "O merchant have the mosquitoes worried thee?" He replied, "No," and Obayd said, "Belike thou art grown used to them." Then they broke their fast and drank coffee, after which they fared forth to their affairs, and Kamar al-Zaman betook himself to the old crone, and related to her what had passed, And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... word to Josette Soubise that he was coming to see her. He wished to make the experiment of a surprise, although he insisted that Stephen should be with him. At the door in the high white wall of the school-garden, he asked an unveiled crone of a porteress to say merely that two ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that gentleman's family, whether there were men servants in the house, and whether a dog was kept. In fact, she made herself fully acquainted with Mr. Yates' domestic arrangements. This was thought nothing of at the time, but the old crone's curiosity was recalled to mind after the event took place, which I shall ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... that old crone Marie there. He caught the dope habit evidently from his master and has been to the bad ever since Arsdale senior died. The old lady has been hiding him part of the time in the garret ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... colours were gay As the flower on its spray? Who would ever believe Aught could bring one to grieve So much as to make Lips bent for love's sake So thin and so grey? O Youth, come away! As she asks in her lone, This old, desolate crone. She loves us no more; She is too old to care For the charms that of yore Made her body so fair. Past repining, past care, She lives but to bear One or two fleeting years Earth's indifference: her tears Have lost now their heat; Her hands and her feet Now shake but to be Shed as leaves ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... yesterday," the crone answered. "They warped her out on the afternoon ebb. 'Tis said she sails under a privateer's commission ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... last struggle of dying conscience, and bade Angelique go to bed. It was two hours past midnight, and she would bid Fanchon let her depart to the house of an old crone in the city who would give her a bed and a blessing in the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... come. Instead came a beggar and the cobbler gave him shoes; instead came an old crone with a heavy load of faggots. He gave her a lift with her load and some of the food that he had prepared for the Christ when he should come. Finally a little child came, crying along the streets, ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... stilts," said the crone, "and I'll answer you. You think of nothing but poetry, and only ask about that Story, as if she were the lady of the whole troop. She's the oldest of us all, but she takes precedence of the youngest. I know her well. I've been young, too, and she's no chicken now. I was once ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... months had scarcely elapsed, when the anxious mother spied an old crone moving about in the court-yard; their eyes happening to meet, Zebah screamed and fell into a swoon. The young heir was instantly hurried away, but not before the old hag had cast a withering glance on the boy's beautiful face; every one was now fully convinced ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... I have something better to do than that!' And slamming the gate in the crone's face she went her way. And she never heard the words that followed her: 'You shall not have done this to ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... women than in men, when she is aetate declivis, diu vidua, mater olim, parum decore matrimonium sequi videtur, an old widow, a mother so long since ([4741]in Pliny's opinion), she doth very unseemly seek to marry, yet whilst she is [4742]so old a crone, a beldam, she can neither see, nor hear, go nor stand, a mere [4743]carcass, a witch, and scarce feel; she caterwauls, and must have a stallion, a champion, she must and will marry again, and betroth herself to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... years of age, was sent for by the Board of Guardians, to decide the point by her personal testimony. One can imagine the half-dozen portly prosperous figures, and the contrast their appearance offered to that of the bent and withered crone. 'Now, Betty,' said the chairman with unctuous patronage, 'you look hale and hearty enough, yet they tell me that you are a hundred years old; is this really true?' 'God Almighty knows, sir,' was her reply, ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... stared at her in amazement, wholly unable to comprehend her abrupt gestures and her rapid language. It was with considerable difficulty and after repeated efforts, that she at length impressed the dulled sense of the crone with the nature of their alarm, and the expediency of refusing admittance to the Stranger. Meanwhile, the bell had rung again,—again, and the third time with a prolonged violence which testified the impatience of the applicant. As soon as the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enough, ma'am," he said, civilly enough. "This old crone has a crazy spell whenever a stranger comes nigh. She's nutty. It ain't safe to ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... answer can I make to him?" Then she called an old woman, who was about her and discovered her secret to her saying, "How shall I act seeing that Kut al-Kulub died by such untimely death?" "O my lady," quoth the old crone, "the time of the Caliph's return is near; so do thou send for a carpenter and bid him make thee a figure of wood in the form of a corpse. We will dig a grave for it midmost the palace and there bury it: then do thou build ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the population of a capital. But where is the taste of the Ariccia and Genzano? Where are the choice spirits for whom Antonio Raggi modelled the garlands of his dome and a hundred clever craftsmen imitated Guido and Caravaggio? Here and there, from the pavement, as you pass, a dusky crone interlards her devotions with more profane importunities, or a grizzled peasant on rusty-jointed knees, tilted forward with his elbows on a bench, reveals the dimensions of the patch in his blue breeches. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... "it was the time of the war. The neighbors told of some maiden aunt, an old crone like herself, who had left Joe's ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the shingle roof for an armful of fuel. Returning, he entered the wigwam and knelt beneath the smoke-hole. And while he arranged the sticks carefully upon a twist of grass, the aged crone hovered, hawk-like, over him, ready with fist or foot for any lack of haste, or failure with the fire. Not until, with flint and steel, he lighted a strip of spongy wood and thrust it under the dry hay, and a flame leaped up and caught the soot on a hanging kettle, did she leave him ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... And its smirk returned with a novel meaning— For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning; If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow, {430} She, foolish to-day, would be wiser to-morrow; And who so fit a teacher of trouble As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double? So, glancing at her wolf-skin vesture (If such it was, for they grow so hirsute That their own fleece serves for natural fur-suit) He was contrasting, 'twas plain from his gesture, The life of the lady so flower-like ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... least, anything but a comfortable sensation; but their hostile intentions, if ever entertained, were immediately removed by a wave of the hand from our conductress, who, leading my companion towards the sibyl, whispered something in her ear. The old crone appeared incredulous. The 'Unknown' uttered one word; but that word had the effect of magic; she prostrated herself at his feet, and in an instant, from an object of suspicion he became one of worship to the whole family, to whom, on taking leave, he made a handsome present, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... moment twenty years have passed; your hair is grey, you are matronly, stout, your face is no longer oval; yet unmistakably it is you yourself, the same woman. Slam! 'Scene IV.' You are enfeebled, a crone, toothless, tottering on a stick. Once more! It is the last effect—the door flies ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... 'story'; 'etiquette' and 'ticket'; 'escheat' and 'cheat'; 'estate' and 'state'; and, older probably than any of these, 'other' and 'or';—or with a dropping of the last syllable, as 'Britany' and 'Britain'; 'crony' and 'crone';—or without losing a syllable, with more or less stress laid on the close: 'regiment' and 'regimen'; 'corpse' and 'corps'; 'bite' and 'bit'; 'sire' and 'sir'; 'land' or 'laund' and 'lawn'; 'suite' and 'suit'; 'swinge' and 'swing'; 'gulph' and 'gulp'; 'launch' and 'lance'; 'wealth' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... loud laughter and tramping came from the road—a sound of numerous footsteps. Zora listened, leapt to her feet and started to the door. The old crone threw an epithet after her; but she flashed through the lighted doorway and was gone, followed by the oath and shouts from the approaching men. In the hut night fled with wild song and revel, and day dawned again. Out from some fastness of the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... sugar of me the other day? saying as she took up my watch from the table and looked at it, 'Ah? I need not look at this, I have almost done with time!' Was not that striking from such a poor old ignorant crone? ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... whose harmless play Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When, drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged crone and thoughtless lout, And child upon his three-foot stool, Waiting until his supper cool, And maid whose cheek outblooms the rose, As bright the blazing fagot glows, Who, bending to the friendly light, Plies her task with busy sleight, Come, show thy tricks and sportive ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... milk; vile-smelling compounds that, judged from their outer coating of withered leaves, straw, and dirt, would appear to have been made in a stable and dried on a rubbish heap. The subject of the jotting, busy with his customers, was all unconscious; but an old crone who sat, her feet resting on a tiny charcoal stove, amidst a circle of decadent greens, detecting the Artist's action, became excited, and after eyeing him uneasily for a moment, confided her suspicions as ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... ribbons, a pile of magazines called The Warlock Weekly, a broken ukulele, little heaps of powder, colored stones, candle ends, some potted cacti, and an enormous cash register. In the middle of the chamber a little hideous crone in a Mother Hubbard crouched over a saucepan, stirring it with a wooden spoon. The saucepan was resting in the coals of an open fire, and smoke and steam together spread out ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... maiden for the Prince Zayn al-Asnam. Whatever notable beauty she saw she would set before Mubarak; but each semblance as it was considered in the mirror showed exceedingly dark and dull, and the inspector would dismiss the girl. This endured until the crone had brought to him all the damsels in Cairo, and not one was found whose reflection in the mirror showed clear-bright and whose honour was pure and clean, in fact such an one as described by the King of the Jann. Herewith ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... had summoned all the women of Tanis to meet her in the Temple of Osiris, he had another thought. Hurrying to that place where he hid in the city, he ate and drank. Then he put off his beggar's rags, and robed himself afresh, and over all drew the garment of an aged crone, for this was told him, that no man should be suffered to enter the Temple. Now the day was dying, and already the western sky was red, and he hurried forth and mingled with the stream of women who passed ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... the morning bell Its service-sound has chimed well; The aged crone keeps house alone, The reapers to the fields are gone. Lose not these hours, so cool and gay: Lo! while thou sleep'st they ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... crone told me, 'I've done had sixteen picaninnies, Mars' Cap'n, but I nebber seed none o' dem after dey was 'bout six weeks old. Dey was in de nussery, an' I was a rale smart cotton-picker, and couldn't be spar'd ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... waved his hand in assent, and Renwick followed him into the house, where his host made a motion for him to be seated. A girl and a woman sat by the table knitting, and an old crone sat in a large chair by the fireplace, in which some embers still glowed. Renwick was hungry, but not nearly so hungry as impatient for the crumbs of information that these worthy people might possess, and so he ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... it would be better to walk. Michael Daragh had never seen her more alert and alive to the things about her. Nothing escaped her darting glance,—the lyrical, first grass in the Square, the stolid and patient tiredness of an Italian crone on a bench, the pictorial quality of a hurdy-gurdy man, and yet, for all her chattiness, the smart young person beside him seemed leagues upon leagues away from him. He supposed, miserably, that she was aghast at him for this preposterous demand upon her, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... his best beaded caribou-skin moccasins and, motioning to his wife, moved slowly toward the shore where a small bark canoe nestled in the long reeds. A few moments later they slid silently up stream, the aged crone kneeling in the bow, a red shawl enveloping head and shoulders, her thin and bony arms wielding a narrow paddle with smooth agility. In the stern squatted Shingwauk, his ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... which stood ajar, sat the little priest, behind the lattice of the confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and rolled down his face. At distant intervals the shadow of some one entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years, would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing and in review of those slips and errors which prove ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... their bare necks and arms—it was etiquette at Madame Fontaine's receptions—which allowed one to see through filmy lace their flabby flesh or bony skeletons, they were as ridiculous as an elegant cloak would be upon an old crone. ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... born, than they exposed the babe (And that in winter), in an earthen crock, lest he should grow a man, and slay his father. Then with both ankles pierced and swoln, he limped away to Polybus: still young, he married an ancient crone, and her his mother too. Then scratched ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... goede vrouw, on the opposite side, would employ herself diligently in spinning yarn or knitting stockings. The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in the corner of a chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, horses without heads, and hair-breadth escapes ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... she would oppose him as an eel, a wolf, and a red heifer—an incident which is probably a variant of that already described.[460] In each of these shapes she was conquered and wounded by the hero, and knowing that none whom he hurt could be healed save by himself, she appeared to him as an old crone milking a cow. At each draught of the milk which he received from her he blessed her with "the blessing of gods and not-gods," and so her wounds were healed.[461] For this, at a later time, she tried to ward off his death, but unsuccessfully. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... all the million That looked on the dark dead face, 'Neath its sable-plumed pavilion, The crone of a humbler race Is saddest of all to think on, And the old swart lips that said, Sobbing, "Abraham Lincoln! Oh, he is ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... time that he was not in reality so—to pay a visit "down-stairs." "Down-stairs" had a distinct meaning in the Compton vocabulary. It was spoken of with significance, and with a laugh, as something half hostile, half ridiculous. It meant a sort of absurd criticism and inspection, as of some old crone sitting vigilant, spying upon everything—a mother-in-law. Phil's cronies thought it was the most absurd weakness on his part to let such an intruder get footing in his house. "You will never get rid ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... one day an old woman to the stuff-bazar, with a casket of mighty fine workmanship, containing trinkets, and she was accompanied by a young baggage big with child. The crone sat down at the shop of a draper and giving him to know that the girl was pregnant by the Prefect[FN74] of Police of the city, took of him, on credit, stuffs to the value of a thousand diners and deposited ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... moves: there is an old crone wandering in the void, bent and toothless; draped, as well as one can guess, in the coarse brown frock of some religious order. She wanders and wanders in her slow hopeless way, much as a wasp flies in its rapid busy way, until she blunders against the thing ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... florins have I in the world. You spoke of servants? Aye, one withered crone To carry water, that is all. And she How long? No wretch abandoned, fed with alms, Feels misery like mine: for I have known The sweets of wealth. Through every night I slept, Contentment round my head, and sweet was morning. But hush! she loves me still, and so my failure Is bright ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... which never dies even in our modern society, is embodied in the gipsy crone who, in rags and scarcely clinging to life, suddenly lifts into youth and queenliness, just as in a society, where romance seems old or dead, it springs into fresh and lovely life. This is the heart of the poem, and it is made to beat the more quickly by the wretched attempt ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... woods and slowly approached the white men who stepped forward to meet her, desiring Squanto to assure her of welcome. Coming so close to the little group that Standish muttered, "Sure she is minded to salute us," the poor old crone peered into the face of one after another of the white men, then wofully shook her head and began to mutter in her own tongue with strange gesticulations, but as he heard them Squanto uttered a shrill cry of terror, and the sachem ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... were collected the whole faction of the dying man. Nine or ten swarthy but handsome countenances were anxiously watching the struggling breath of their unhappy comrade—some sobbing, some grief-stricken, some sombre, none savage. An old crone was administering ineffectual milk, perhaps the very woman who had found the same fluid so nutritious some thirty years ago. Before, or rather, under her lay as noble a form as nature ever moulded, with a fine dark, but thoroughly Indian face, covered with the clammy sweat of apoplectic death. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... to Thy bosom fly To slink off till the storms go by. If you are like the man you were You'ld turn with scorn from such a prayer, Unless from some poor workhouse crone, Too toil-worn to do aught but moan. Flog me and spur me, set me straight At some vile job I fear and hate: Some sickening round of long endeavour, No light, no rest, no outlet ever: All at a pace that must not slack, ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... spares no prejudice, respects no habit, honours no tradition. Institutions are stubble in the fire it kindles. The present and the past it throws without remorse into the jaws of the future. It is the angel with the flaming sword swift to dispossess the crone that sits on ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... dear little Cherry, what nonsense!" Anstice, whose mother had been an Irishwoman, had heard of the superstition before, had even known an old crone in a little Irish cabin high up in the mountains who had, so it was said, practised the rite with success; but to hear the unholy gospel from Cherry's innocent lips was distinctly distasteful; and instinctively he tried to shake her faith ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... thus over the fire like some old crone?" he growled, voicing at last the irritability that so long had been ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... same idea to the old crone—in all save the divinity, for I scarce could tell which was the most hellish—the harsh, malicious, satisfied, cruel laugh, or the leering grin, and the horrible square opening of the mouth like a tragic mask, and the yellow gleam of the few discoloured ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... mother, your task is late and lone. All goes well at the castle? say!— Not a word speaks the withered crone, Gray as a ghost in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... similar ballad, of repartees between an old crone and a wee boy, was found at the ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... show her the towers," explained the old crone with a cunning wink at the girl. "I tell her it's hard for you to leave your candles, especially now when people are coming in for high mass, but I can take your place, and," with a servile ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... across me, the man who had conducted the horse to the stable entered the apartment, and discovered to me a countenance yet more uninviting than that of the old crone who was performing with such dexterity the office of cook to the party. He was perhaps sixty years old; yet his brow was not much furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, by the advance ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... he said, at the conclusion of the narrative, to the old crone who was still seated by the fire, "thy prophecy has come true sooner than ye expected, and it has come doubly true, for though the good luck in store for me was a matter of small general importance, no one can deny that it ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dream. An old crone is selling roasted chestnuts in the shadow of the temple of Castor and Pollux; a tipsy soldier is reeling to his quarters with his helmet stuck on wrong side foremost; a knot of Hebrew money-changers, with long curls and high caps, are ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... my malamute "Muk" plainly outdid all competitors. How much longer the noise would have kept up it is hard to say—dogs never seem too tired to howl—but when the limit of Indian patience was reached, an aged crone rolled out of the bed into which she had rolled "all standing," seized a staff and went outdoors to lay it impartially upon the backs of all the disturbers of the peace, domestic and foreign, with a screech that was as formidable as the blows. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... the pits of despondency, even as one that yieldeth without further struggle to the waves of tempest at midnight, when he was ware of one standing over him,—a woman, old, wrinkled, a very crone, with but room for the drawing of a thread between her nose and her chin; she was, as is cited of them who ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... young girls with flaunting ribbons and bold, flushed faces; pale-faced operatives, and strong men whose brawny limbs told of the Titanic labours of the foundry; the clerk from his desk; the shopkeeper from his store; the withered crone, and the careless navvy, swayed and struggled through the living mass; and with them trooped the legions of want, and vice, and ignorance, that burrow and fester in the foetid lanes and purlieus of ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... had you known the girl better, you would excuse me. I loved her as my own daughter; indeed, I had formed a resolution to take the creature into my own house, and save her from the hands of that old crone Barbara, her confidante; but my wife died, and so the project came to nothing. At the end of our stay in your native town, I noticed a visible sadness about her. I questioned her, but she evaded me. At last we set out on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... excellently—quite like an actress in fact. She indicated each personage, and sustained the character capitally, making full use of the talent of mimicry she had inherited with her Italian blood; she had no mercy on her soft voice or her lovely face, and when she had to represent some old crone in her dotage, or a stupid burgomaster, she made the drollest grimaces, screwing up her eyes, wrinkling up her nose, lisping, squeaking.... She did not herself laugh during the reading; but when her audience (with the exception of Pantaleone: he had walked off in indignation ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... crone, who sat winking her bleared eyes, and warming her bleared hands over a little heap of peat in the middle of the cabin, entered another crone, if ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... cast a glance of stupid hate Behind him, every step he took, Where followed him, like following fate, An aged crone, with bloated look: A something checked his listless gait; She neared ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... crone now stood before Hildegardis, and winked to her, in the midst of her low and humble salutation, in a strangely familiar manner, as though there were some secret between them. The lady felt an involuntary shudder, and could not withdraw ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Fuerstenberg. The little boy whom Wiltrud had borne to her unfaithful husband was hateful to the second wife, who fondled her lord, and flattered him with the hope of the children she would bear him. Then it was arranged that the knight's first-born should be handed over to the care of an old crone who lived in a ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... public mind; and what has befallen THE MASTER, and what kind of a Box the Merry Box has been found. It is odd to know nothing of all this. We had an old woman to do devil- work for you about a month ago, in a Chinaman's house on Apaiang (August 23rd or 24th). You should have seen the crone with a noble masculine face, like that of an old crone [SIC], a body like a man's (naked all but the feathery female girdle), knotting cocoanut leaves and muttering spells: Fanny and I, and the good captain of the EQUATOR, and the Chinaman ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of these houses hung a mysterious taint as of something weakly and commonly and dustily evil; the women who negotiated the rooms looked out through a friendly manner as though it was a mask, with hard, defiant eyes. Then one old crone, short-sighted and shaky-handed, called Ann Veronica "dearie," and made some remark, obscure and slangy, of which the spirit rather than the words penetrated to ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... offered to take him as gardener. He readily assented; but after some weeks he began to be homesick, and, taking leave of his mistress, went home. On arriving there he was astounded that he knew no one, and no one knew him, save an old crone, who at length came to him and said: "Where have you been? I have been looking for you for two hundred years." Thus saying, she took him by the hand and he fell dead; for the crone who had sought him so long ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... very old man, so as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you left children have become sage matrons, while you are tarrying there. The blooming Miss W——r (you remember Sally W——r) called upon us yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out,—I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends. The departure of J.W., two springs back corrected my delusion. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... their nose-bags, while their drivers were perhaps gone through the hospitable sacred doors to kneel before the blessed Virgin on this morning of her Nativity. On the broad marble steps of the Duomo there were scattered groups of beggars and gossiping talkers: here an old crone with white hair and hard sunburnt face encouraging a round-capped baby to try its tiny bare feet on the warmed marble, while a dog sitting near snuffed at the performance suspiciously; there a couple of shaggy-headed boys leaning to watch a small pale cripple ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... infirm woman, crouching and crawling along; a character and attitude ascribed to her, no doubt, from the fancied resemblance of a lava flow, which, when in the form of a-a, rolls and tumbles along over the surface of the ground in a manner suggestive of the motions and attitude of a palsied crone.] [Page 201] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... by them, the old crone who was in charge of the gang of female labourers had, for some days past, been keeping a sharply watchful eye upon the investigators, and upon the day in question she had been, if possible, more ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Roderick, 'what a gem I have got from my tailor, who was just going to cut up this peerless robe into strips. He bought it of an old crone, who must doubtless have worn it on gala days when she went to Lucifer's drawing-room on the Blocksberg. Look at this scarlet bodice, with its gold tassels and fringe, at this cap besmeared with the last fee the hag got from Beelzebub or his imps: it will give me ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... agreed Joyce. "It looked so picturesque with the tents and the white covered wagons, and that old crone bending over the camp-fire. I know a woman at home who had her fortune told by a gypsy, and every single thing that was ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to feel. Men avoided him with instinctive reverence at first, and afterwards with fear, as he wandered, muttering to himself, among the sandhills and along the beach. After a while the power of thought and a sense of the outward things of life returned to him. He found that an aged crone from the village had established herself in his house, and was caring for Hyacinth. He let her stay, and according to her abilities she cooked and washed for him and the boy, neither asking wages nor taking orders from ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... embrace. Almost all the children under twelve years of age died. In the universal reign of famine there were at last found those who were ready to repeat the horrible crime of feeding upon the flesh of their own kindred. It was discovered that a husband and wife, with a neighboring crone, had endeavored to satisfy the gnawings of hunger by eating a newly dead child. Their guilt came speedily to light, and was punished according to the severe code of the sixteenth century. The father was ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... "A shattered knee-cap to remind me of my vivid youth, an awkward limp to keep in my mind the lovely cause—aha, she was all clinging tenderness and plump as a partridge then. I was her Eugenio and she my Sacharissa—a withered crone to-day, sir, and, alas, most inelegantly slim, I hear—bones, a temper, an eagle's beak and nut-cracker chin! Aye, me—what changes time ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... blazing flare of star-shells. We went out gladly and left behind the dug-out in which we cooked our food but never slept, the old crazy sandbag construction, weather-worn and shrapnel-scarred, that stooped forward like a crone on crutches on the wooden posts ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... a fragrant, steaming bowl, the old crone made her slow entrance upon the scene, peering with dim eyes, and dropping tremulous curtseys every two or ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... themselves. About the outskirts loafed a dozen or so of the less socially eligible of Newbern. Above a fire at the camp centre a kettle simmered on its pothook, being stirred at this moment by a brown and aged crone in frivolous-patterned calico, who wore gold hoops in her ears and bangles at her neck and bracelets of silver on her arms—bejewelled, indeed, most unbecomingly for ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... precious tallow and smacked their lips over it as a great delicacy. A lot of potatoes about the size of walnuts, boiled and peeled and added to a potful of salmon, made a savory stew that all seemed to relish. An old, cross-looking, wrinkled crone presided at the steaming chowder-pot, and as she peeled the potatoes with her fingers she, at short intervals, quickly thrust one of the best into the mouth of a little wild-eyed girl that crouched beside her, a spark of ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... swung she on; The garland beneath her had fallen to dust; The wheels above her were eaten with rust: The hands, that over the dial swept, Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept And still there came that silver tone From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone (Let me never forget till my dying day The tone or the burden of her ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... sick. At once the poor, gaunt, dirty lad, whom Northbourne would have refused to recognise as the smart Alick Carnegy, always trig and trim, was hustled off to the squalid room of an old Whitechapel crone who, for the five shillings in the pocket of his torn coat, agreed to nurse him through his trouble. If he had the luck to live through it, the show-folk intended to have him back. If he died—well, there was the parish ready ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... no feel the weight o' your coffin; but if a' tales be true, you'll no' be in want. Ech, they're clever, clever, your lassies. Same to you, McKelvie. Your lass has ta'en the rue the day. Happy New Year, young sir; you'll be a McBride too," and the old withered crone peered at me through eyes bleared, as it seemed to me, with the peat reek of a ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... many terms to express the word "woman" which we have not. A traveller in the rural districts speaks of a "kindly old wife who received me," or a "wretched old crone," or a "saucy lassie," or a "neat maid," etc. We should use the word "woman," or "old woman," ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... rakehelly dog, who leads a wild town life to the great anger of old Sir Rowland. George, who whilst secretly leading a gay life under the name of Lejere, appears before his father as a demure and sober young prentice, is designed for Lady Youthly, an ancient, toothless crone, palsied and blind with extreme old age, whose grand-daughter, Teresia, is to be married to Sir Rowland himself. George, however, falls in love with Teresia, who is also pursued by Sir Merlin, and finally weds her in despite ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... in drily—" and a house full of work, and only one old crone in the kitchen to help. Still, I have no doubt she has thought of the cordials too. Women are the slaves of custom—ah, here they are, as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... light; I saw the red flame mount up; I got out at the door, but then I fell down; I lay there, I could not get up again. But the flames burst out through the window and over the roof; they saw it down below, and they all ran as fast as they could to help me; the poor old crone they believed would be burned; there was not one who did not come to help me. I heard them come, and I heard, too, such a rustling in the air, and then a thundering as of heavy cannon-shots, for the spring-flood was loosening the ice, and ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... name—send that he has not wandered in the night, and he blind! Alack! that I could not return before the dark. Alack! and alack! what times have we fallen on, when the Holy High Priest and the Governor, by descent, of Abouthis, is left with one aged crone to minister to his infirmity! O Harmachis, my poor boy, thou hast laid trouble at our doors! Why, what's this? Surely he sleeps not, there upon the ground?—'twill be his death! Prince! Holy Father! Amenemhat! ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard |
