"Gray-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mine in early life (which I never thought about at the time, but which has become evident in the course of this autobiography) to prefer the society of elderly men. In London I had liked to be with Mackay, Robinson the engraver, and Leslie, all gray-headed men, and in Paris I soon acquired a strong liking for M. Ouvrard, M. Gindriez, and Mr. Wyld. They were kind and open, and had experience, therefore they were interesting; my uncles in Lancashire had, no doubt, been kind in their own way, that is, in welcoming me to their houses, but they ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... when Sir Henry Wilding's motor turned its back upon the outskirts of London, and it was a quarter past seven when it whirled up to the stables of Wilding Hall, and the baronet and his gray-headed, bespectacled and gray-spatted companion alighted, having taken five hours and a quarter to make a journey which the trains which run daily between Liverpool Street ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... an instant in his walk, either to look at something or to consult his map, or let him ask the way, and he will have a half dozen of the persistent guild upon him; and they cannot easily be shaken off. The afternoon we arrived, we had barely got into our rooms at Brack's Oude Doelan, when a gray-headed commissionaire knocked at our door, and offered his services to show us the city. We deferred the pleasure of his valuable society. Shortly, when we came down to the street, a smartly dressed Israelite took off his hat to us, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... said an old gray-headed colonel, as he rode along our line,—"gallantly done, lads!" The blood trickled from a sabre cut on his temple, along his cheek, as he spoke; but he either knew it ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was a gray-headed old man of about sixty, who played his cards with great attention, and never spoke a word,—either then or at any other period of his life. He was the most taciturn of men, and was known not at all ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... sideways, and you know them. And the manager couldn't call his soul his own until he had loaded her into a cab and on her way. Wilbur told me that while on the road that between watching the panners in the box offices and keeping her from throwing a fit on the stage he got gray-headed. As for her maid, I can only say, 'Help that poor creature.' One time the maid pinched her foot while buttoning her shoe and what does the prima donna do but bounce her whole makeup box on the top of the maid's defenseless nob. And the way she looks on ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... that struck his fancy; and never did I witness so sudden, so perfect a change of the human countenance. That which was before dull and heavy in a moment became animated, and flashed with the brightest beams of intellect. He stepped up to the old gray-headed gentleman (his companion), and giving him a thundering slap on the shoulder, said, 'Jack, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... now armed, and awaited the victims they were to chastise. These were dragged out of the guard-house. First came tottering the gray-headed Mr. Krause, slowly and sadly; then came Mr. Kretschmer, formerly the brave, undaunted hero of the quill—now a poor, trembling, crushed piece of humanity. They stood in the middle of the square, and, bewildered with terror, their ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries, to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them, came to seek the clue that should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists, whose systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in an iron framework, traveled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thraldom. People that had lighted on ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... "Gray-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well; Small difference lies between thy creed and mine: This beast not unobserved by Nature fell; His death was ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man, Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... of black people he brought over! Old gray-headed uncles, leaning on canes, who told stories of "de good ole times long befo' de wah"; middle-aged men and women who rejoiced in the present good times of freedom, and comical little pickaninnies, who looked forward with eagerness to the good times to come to them ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... and neglect?" She ran to seek the king, and asked for a pension for the poet of one hundred louis a-year from her privy purse. When Crebillon came to Versailles to thank her, she was in bed. "Let him come in," she exclaimed, "that I may see the gray-headed genius." At the sight of the fine old man—Crebillon was then eighty years of age—so poor and yet so proud, she was affected to tears. She received him with so touching a grace that the old poet was deeply moved. As he leaned over the bed ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... gray-headed," Fairchild answered with a little laugh. Then his brow furrowed. "You say you slipped and fell just as you were beginning to ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... stiff upper lip," said Dick. "By the time you get to be a gray-headed veteran, you may get a chance to run errands for some big firm on the Bowery, which is a very ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... than most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations foreign to my own and detecting with a cheerful eye the desirable circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this gray-headed showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe and pleasurable adventure in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through the sands of Cape Cod and sometimes over the rough forest-roads of the north and east, and halting now on the green before a village meeting-house ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it's lovely," nodded Grace. "When I start on my pilgrimage I'm not going to think that I shall ever grow into a staid, stately married person. I'm going to keep the spirit of youth alive until I'm old and gray-headed. Did I dream it, Nora, or did I see you lay your work bag on the hall settee? I hope it's a reality. These are busy times, you know. I'm a hard-working individual. So is Mother. If I see someone else blissfully idle it has a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... gray-headed faither; "She 's less of a bride than a bairn; She 's ta'en like a cowt frae the heather, Wi' sense and discretion to learn. Half husband, I trow, and half daddy, As humour inconstantly leans; A chiel maun be constant and steady, That yokes wi' a mate in her teens. Kerchief to cover so ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... as the same she had one day seen on a writing-desk in the parlor. The boy confessed that he picked it up from the grass, and, after taking out the contents, soaked the case in a bucket of salt-water. Phoebe says the pictures belong to Mrs. Gerome, the gray-headed woman who owns that place on the beach, and I am almost tempted to believe she is Elsie, who may have married again. At all events, I shall soon know where she ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... I doan let nothin worry me. Worry makes folks gray-headed." She scratched her head where three gray braids, about the length and thickness of a flapper's eyebrow, stuck out at ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... northern hemispheres, the eastern and the western continents, and all the islands of the sea. Subalterns wearing this uniform have fronted dangers and responsibilities such as in most other services only gray-headed generals are called upon to face; and, at the head of handfuls of troops, have won for the British crown realms as large, and often as populous, as European kingdoms. The scarlet-clad officers who serve the monarchy of Great Britain ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... at the head of his clan to disturb the serenity which, in spite of himself, was now softening his heart. He did not linger long, but led his horse a little within the woods, and entered the church. The gray-headed priest at the altar was solemnly chanting, from the beautiful liturgy of the Church, as he knelt down on the hard aisle, and the branching ceiling seemed to catch and repeat the notes. Through the stained window, where was pictured in unfading colors many a scene suggesting the goodness and mercy ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... pursuits. We were, if I remember right, in the vicinity of a place called Hythe, in Kent. One sweet evening, in the latter part of summer, our mother took her two little boys by the hand, for a wander about the fields. In the course of our stroll we came to the village church; an old, gray-headed sexton stood in the porch, who, perceiving that we were strangers, invited us to enter. We were presently in the interior, wandering about the aisles, looking on the walls, and inspecting the monuments of the notable dead. I can scarcely state ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... traveler on the system knew Sankey. He was not only always ready to answer questions; but, what is more, ready to answer the same question twice. It is that which makes conductors gray-headed and spoils their chances for heaven—answering the same questions over and over again. Children were apt to be startled a bit at first sight of Sankey, he was so dark. But Sankey had a very quiet smile that always made them friends after the first trip ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... retired street running parallel with the Cabanas river, surrounded by a large garden, at the foot of which was a summer-house, overhanging the river, to which led a flight of steps. Upon our arrival we alighted from our vehicle, paid our driver and rang the gate-bell. A gray-headed negro gave us admission and conducted us to the house, where we were met by ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... sparks that lit up the brown walls, ornamented with the horns of deer and goats, and made it look as cheerful and gay as the faces of the children. Hulda's grandmother had sent her a great cake, and when the children had played enough at all the games they could think of, the old gray-headed servants brought it in and set it on the table, together with a great many other nice things such as people eat in Norway—pasties made of reindeer meat, and castles of the sweet pastry sparkling with sugar ornaments of ships and flowers ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... mild-eyed, brown-faced child reading out of a Book by the light of a kerosene lamp to groups of gray-headed, reverent listeners in lonely cabins. And Peter was always making pictures of them—Mindel at the wash-tub, Emma Campbell picking a chicken, old Maum' Chloe churning, Liza playing with her fat black baby, Joe Tuttle plowing, old Daddy Neptune ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... to tell to while away this tedious hour, good Murdoch?" he asked, after a while, addressing a gray-headed veteran. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man— Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side, By those who in their turn shall follow them. So live that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... there was a garden, and in that garden there grew a tree, and on that tree there grew shining apples. Thou knowst, O well-loved one, that every day that passes makes us older and brings us to that day when we will be bent and feeble, gray-headed and weak-eyed. But those shining apples that grew in Asgard—they who ate of them every day grew never a day older, for the eating of the ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... the terror! Only think of so composite a phenomenon as Mrs. Walters, for instance, adorned with limp nightcap and stiff curl-papers, like garnishes around a leg of roast mutton, waking up beside me at four o'clock in the morning as some gray-headed love-bird of Madagascar, and beginning to chirp ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... that dim outer world—so many cities were burned; legions of men were swept away in battle; in short, the millions of graves which dotted the earth's surface only meant to these Boyers the one possible grave where he might lie. The gray-headed old men went stealthily alone at night sometimes to the big chest and turned over again the poems and essays yellow now with age, and the gilded prize-books. But they never spoke to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... been honoured by the presence of a guest so courtly. The good squire heaped his plate with a profusion of boiled beef; and while the poor earl was contemplating in dismay the Alps upon Alps which he was expected to devour, the gray-headed butler, anxious to serve him with alacrity, whipped away the overloaded plate, and presently returned it, yet more astoundingly surcharged with an additional world of a composition of stony colour and sudorific aspect, which, after examining in mute attention ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Library Association in Cleveland, the first public lectures on science ever given in the city. The following winter the citizens of Cleveland invited him to lecture again on the same subject, and he complied. The city at that time contained mostly young people—only two gray-headed men ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... were changed into tea, tobacco, brandy, cloth, &c., he did not feel a whit happier. Ivan longed for the arid hills, and lofty mountains, and pellucid lakes—for the exciting hunt and the night bivouac, when gray-headed Yakoutas would, with their ganzis—the Irish duddeen—in their mouths, tell terrible and wonderful stories of ancient days. When eating town fare, his stomach yearned after frozen Yakouta butter, cut up with axes, and for strouganina or frozen fish, with reindeer brains, and other northern ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... I," said Luke, "but it don't make much difference. If I had fifty dollars, I'd go off and try my luck somewhere else, but I'll have to wait till I'm gray-headed before I get as ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of service, I first married the three couples, (one of these consisted of an old man and woman nearly seventy years old, both of them gray-headed). The applicants for Christian fellowship were asked to give some public expression of their faith and were received into membership and baptized together with the infants. We, also, at the close of the service elected a deacon, who holds office ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... mess-table sat a gray-headed captain, who had been frost-bitten in Canada, wounded in the Peninsula, and saved by an iron constitution from the regimental doctor and yellow fever on Brimstone Hill, St Kitts; and, despite his varied adventures and ailments, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Dictator, The man of seventy fights; He made AEbutius Elva His Master of the Knights. On the third morn thereafter, At downing of the day, Did Aulus and AEbutius Set forth with their array. Sempronius Atratinus Was left in charge at home With boys, and with gray-headed men, To keep the walls of Rome. Hard by the Lake Regillus Our camp was pitched at night: Eastward a mile the Latines lay, Under the Porcian height. Far over hill and valley Their mighty host was spread; And with their thousand watch-fires The ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with a gloomy, sorrowful air arose—it was the Governor. He told the audience that, as a father, he could not judge impartially in this matter, and that he, for this occasion, would surrender his seat to the oldest of the senators. The latter was a gray-headed man, of at least ninety years. He arose, stooping beneath the weight of age; his temples were covered with thin white hair, but his eyes still burned brightly, and his voice was strong and steady. He began by asking me whether I confessed the murder. I entreated ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... conversed with a gray-headed member of St. Peter's Presbyterian Church who, in his youth, listened to the sainted Robert Murray McCheyne. He spoke of him with the deepest reverence and love; but the one thing that he remembered after forty-six years was that Mr. McCheyne, a few days before his death, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... very well the first ideas I had of God when a boy, which I derived from the preaching and praying of ministers. It was that God and our Lord Jesus Christ were two distinct Beings. We had for a time a venerable gray-headed old man who preached one Sabbath, and a young man who preached the next. I thought the old man represented God the Father and the young man represented ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... column of Federal troops passed us in steady, quiet tramp, followed by the rear guard bringing up about 2,000 stragglers. These stragglers wore a conglomeration of every trashy type to be found in the Yankee army. Foreigners of every tongue, mixed with every American type—old gray-headed men, beardless boys, big, greasy Negroes, etc., etc., all with battered and tattered clothing, some bareheaded and barefooted, and many without coats; some only had one pant leg on—all under a strong guard of peart-proud soldiers marching beside them with fixed bayonets. As they ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... struggling in deep waters; Colonel Russell, who had come home from India on half-pay and his savings, which every year he found more inadequate for the expenses of an increasing family. All these gray-headed men, growing haggard and careworn, agreed that in the present depressed state of the commercial world, young Robinson was showing himself a sensible fellow and ought to be commended for his decision. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... alighted at the dwelling of the former. His young wife fell with a cry of joy upon his neck, embraced him, and then burst into tears of sorrow. The children clung sobbing to his knees, and greedily examined his pockets, to see whether he had brought them any thing. His old gray-headed father next staggered towards him, and shook him mournfully by the hand. The heart of Faustus was moved, and his eyes began to moisten, while he trembled, and looked angrily upon the Devil. When he asked his wife why she wept, she wrung ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... friend, "thet boarders wuz good fer nuthin' 'cept ter be an aggervation an' a plague; but I couldn't think o' nuthin' else ter do, an' I made up my mind I'd ruther put up with 'em than lose Miss Di-an, even ef their antics did make me gray-headed afore the year wuz out. But I needn't hev worritted. Two sech obligin' young fellers I never did see, an' never expect ter agin in this world. They don't never seem comfortable 'cept when they're helpin' a body. An' Mr. John's whistle ez enuff ter put sunshine inter the Deluge! I used ter think we ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... which have frightened away capital and entirely abolished enterprise will continue their work until some measure of Home Rule is given to the country, and then things will come to a head at once. It is barely possible that good might ultimately result, but young men would be gray-headed before things would work smoothly. The posture of the poorer classes is simply absurd. They will have a dreadful awakening, and that will also do good. They are doing nothing now except waiting for the wonderful things they have been ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... are the most learned men of Netherlands. That gray-headed orator is the old Graphaeus, secretary of the city of Antwerp, and the author of several well written Latin works. The young man, on whose shoulder he leans, is his son, Alexander, who is also very learned. ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... was the tall, gray-headed Englishman, who had taken a certain lead at the first discovery of the crime. He called himself General Sir Charles Collingham, an officer of her Majesty's army; and the clergyman who shared the compartment was his brother, the ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... own extraordinary good fortune. Recovering himself, he expressed his gratitude modestly and becomingly. Mrs. Fairbank's ready sympathies overflowed, as usual, at her lips. She talked to him about our home in France, as if the worn, gray-headed hostler had been a child. "Such a dear old house, Francis; and such pretty gardens! Stables! Stables ten times as big as your stables here—quite a choice of rooms for you. You must learn the name of our house—Maison Rouge. Our nearest town is Metz. We are ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... down at once. The gray-headed and sinful man knelt by his side. Then the clergyman hurried away ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... and, besides the county doctor, had two very eminent practitioners from London, one of whom was a gray-headed man, the other singularly young for the fame he had obtained. But then he was a genuine enthusiast in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... his note for one hundred dollars as a memento. I might have been keener, I dare say; but one of the transcendentally lovely things of youth is its perfect faith. These preternaturally wise and prudent young people come into the world mentally gray-headed. But I do it now with my eyes wide open; and, when you are a rich man, I have another scheme I want to take through, a sort of home or hospital of my own planning: so don't fancy I ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... to find there some remnant of a higher race, was disappointed enough at seeing on board only the usual half-dozen of low-browed, dirty Orsons, painted red with arnotto: but a gray-headed elder at the stern seemed, by his feathers and gold ornaments, to be some man of note ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the boatswain's mate, an old, gray-headed man, who had been in the navy from boyhood, as his first lieutenant, and ordered ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... one of the chained line was an old gray-headed man, followed by a slender graceful girl of some eighteen years old, and Amyas' heart yearned over them as they came up. Just as they passed, the foremost of the file had rounded the corner above; there was a bustle, and a voice shouted, "Halt, Senors! there ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... young man, wearing a saffron colored velvet coat, ruffled shirt, buff satin breeches, black silk stockings, and shining shoe-buckles, step in a dignified manner from the chaise and hand the reins to a gray-headed negro, who lifted his ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Chase," captured by the British, escaped from a prison-ship in the harbor of Charleston, S. C., with six comrades, one of whom was drowned. Thus, gradually, originated the traditional career of the men of this family,—"a gray-headed shipmaster in each generation," as the often-quoted passage puts it, "retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast." But the most eminent ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... lightly shaking themselves into shape as they went up the steps. By and by a trumpet sounded, a drum beat, and again appeared a succession of half a dozen royal equipages, each with its six horses, its postilion, coachman, and three footmen, grand with cocked hats and embroidery; and the gray-headed, bowing Grand Duke and his nodding Grand Duchess as before. The Noble Guard ranged themselves on horseback opposite the loggia; but there was no irksome and impertinent show of ceremony and restraint upon the people. The play-guard ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... old-fashioned chair, his inexorable eyes gleaming out of his haggard face. I could read in them a set purpose to devote his life to this quest until the client whom he had failed to save should at last be avenged. The trim Inspector Martin, the old, gray-headed country doctor, myself, and a stolid village policeman made up the rest of that ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be, no third way by which one spirit can influence another. You may study till you are gray-headed or bald-headed, for that matter, and you will ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... of owning that she had never read any, by the appearance of Monsieur, a gray-headed old Frenchman, who went through his task with the resigned air of one who was used to being the victim of giggling school-girls. The young ladies gabbled over the lesson, wrote an exercise, and read a little French history. ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... come riding hastily around a projecting point of the slope and spur at rapid gait towards the spot where the cavalry have dismounted and are breathing their horses. There is hardly time for salutations. A gray-headed, keen-eyed, florid-faced old soldier is the colonel, and he is ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... Countess Marya Borissovna were Minister of War, and Princess Vatkovskaya were Commander-in-Chief," said a gray-headed, little old man in a gold-embroidered uniform, addressing a tall, handsome maid of honor who had questioned ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... return my thanks!" exclaimed the younger sister, rising from the encircling arm of Cora, and casting herself with enthusiastic gratitude on the naked rock; "to that Heaven who has spared the tears of a gray-headed father; has saved the lives of those ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... next afternoon, and took an obscure lodging; the next day I called at the castle and paid my respects to the governor, who invited me to dine with him at noon of the following day. He was an ideal soldier of the time; tall, brawny, gray-headed, rough, full of strange oaths acquired here and there and yonder in the wars and treasured as if they were decorations. He had been used to the camp all his life, and to his notion war was God's best gift to man. He had his steel cuirass on, and wore boots that came above his knees, and was equipped ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... 'em relyin', like Matthews here, on the sign language, although I'll say that Matthews gets plenty far enough with that. Why, they're four girls and a widow at home that if they knew how far Matthews was gettin' with the sign language they'd be gray-headed to-day.... Aw, well, Matthews, quit spoilin' this drawin'. Do you wanta get me and Admiral Sims into trouble with ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... gun," young Bliss whispered to Isabelle, indicating a gentle, gray-headed, smooth-shaven man, who seemed to be taking a nap behind his ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... mentioned by the religious press except by way of ridicule or denunciation. The careless and ungodly, emboldened by the position of religious teachers, resorted to opprobrious epithets, to base and blasphemous witticisms, in their efforts to heap contumely upon him and his work. The gray-headed man who had left a comfortable home to travel at his own expense from city to city, from town to town, toiling unceasingly to bear to the world the solemn warning of the judgment near, was sneeringly denounced as a fanatic, a ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... be the same Johnson whom I used to know," said Holmes to the porter. "A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... must not be forgotten that Philo lived in Alexandria, not in Judaea, and that between the Canaanitish and the Hellenic Jews there existed the most bitter hostility, so that—even were the story of Jesus true—it could not have reached Philo before A.D. 40, at which time he was old and gray-headed. We again quote from Mr. Lake's treatise, who prints the parallel passages, and we would draw special attention to the similarity of phraseology as ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... soon learn. Never let your husband want for anything. Never allow another woman to do anything for him; if you do . . . you are lost. When you have children, my daughter, and they grow up, your sons will always be sons to you, even though they be gray-headed. But with your daughters it will not be so; when they marry, they will be lost to you. Once married, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... a Czar, or the assassination of an Emperor, pales to insignificance before the prosecution of a woman for murder. Some of this interest is fictitious and stimulated merely by the yellow press, but a great deal of it is genuine. The writer remembers attending a dinner of gray-headed judges and counsellors during the trial of Anna Eliza, alias "Nan," Patterson, where one would have supposed that the lightest subject of conversation would be not less weighty than the constitutionality of an income tax, and finding to his ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... anticipation to a degree that surprised me, and was led to ask myself why it is that outdoor pursuits often take so strong a hold upon the fancy. I recalled traits shown by one of my former employers. He was a gray-headed man, possessing great wealth and an elegant city home, while his mind was occupied by a vast and complicated business. When he learned that I was going to the country, he would often come to me, and, with kindling eyes and animated tones, talk of his chickens, cows, fruit-trees and crops. ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... when they saw others sink under labors, and grow effeminate by pleasures, but beheld him unconquered by either; and that, too, not only when he was young and desirous of honor, but also when old and gray-headed, after a consulship and triumph; like some famous victor in the games, persevering in his exercise and maintaining his character to the very last. He himself says, that he never wore a suit of clothes which cost more than a hundred drachmas; and that, when he was general and consul, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... young and able-bodied of the people were slain or absent on distant expeditions, and only old and gray-headed men were to ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... that I secretly congratulated my absent son on the excellent taste he had shown in falling in love with her. Round this bright young creature (Owen, at the foot of the table, and Morgan and I on either side) sat her three wrinkled, gray-headed, dingily-attired hosts, and just behind her, in still more inappropriate companionship, towered the spectral figure of the man in armor, which had so unaccountably attracted her on her arrival. This strange scene was lighted up by candles ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... proudly into the sky. A long, low porch ran across the front of the structure, and a complaining sign hung out announcing, in dim, weather-flecked letters on a cracked board, that this was the "Tutt House." A gray-headed man, in brown overalls and faded blue jumper, stood on the porch and shook his fist at the ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... pass away the time, he lay down and covered himself with a rug. Loshadin went in and out several times, clearing away the tea-things; smacking his lips and sighing, he kept tramping round the table; at last he took his little lamp and went out, and, looking at his long, gray-headed, bent ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... have heard that text except in his youth, and that those who are old enough to remember having heard it, "never considered its precise applicability," are surely rash, in the treatment of a scientific subject. I can assure Mr. Greg that a few gray-headed votaries of the creed of Christendom still read—though perhaps under their breath—the words which early associations have made precious to them; and that in the bygone days, when that Sermon on the Mount was still listened to with respect ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... requires amen first an' hurraih afterward; here's kissin plenty, but I hear nae word o' the minister. Ye'll obsairve, young woman, that kissin's the prologue to sin, and I'm a decent mon, an' a gray-headed mon, an' your licht stories are no for me; sae if the minister's no expeckit I shall retire—an' tak my quiet ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... big enough, she was married and started to go to England, but the vessel went to smash and the crew went to the bottom. Poor gal, she always hated salt, but she's used to it by this time, I reckon. Then there was pap died next, but he was old and gray-headed, and sick-hearted like, and he wanted to go, but it made it jest as bad for me. ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... to-day,—speech demanding growth for a part of a country, denying it for the whole, speech ignoring the nationalist tendency so soon to overwhelm all bounds, all creeds in the making of a mighty America that should be a home for all the nations. But as the gray-headed old doctor went on he only voiced what was the earnest conviction of many of the ablest men of his time, both of the South ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men,— The youth in life's fresh spring and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe and the gray-headed man— Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those who in their turn shall ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Teeven?' she used to say to the gray-headed old gardener, who first taught her to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Her hat and veil were laid beside her, and she had taken off her coat and draped it around her. She had rummaged out a cold pheasant and some salad, and had evidently had a little supper. Supper and a nap, while I worried myself gray-headed ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the world, he seldom changes his servants; and, as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him; by this means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet-de-chambre for his brother; his butler is gray-headed; his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen; and his coachman has the looks of a privy-councillor. You see the goodness of the master even in the old house-dog, and in a gray pad that is kept in the stable with great care and tenderness, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... the moon was riding clear above the houses. I went into the churchyard, and there offered a prayer as holy, if not as deeply true, as any I know now; a prayer, which perhaps took form as the guardian angel of my life. If that word in the Bible, Selah, means what gray-headed old men think it does, when they read aloud, it should be ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Coulson, I believe?" the young man said with conviction, addressing a somewhat stout, gray-headed American, with white moustache, a Homburg hat, and clothes ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Billy's ball for the magnate, who was having the time of his gray-headed life under Billy's and Nickols' enthusiastic direction, the strange alien thing that had been developed in my depths, part unrest and part rebellion, since I had first looked into the eyes of the young Methodist parson, who had intruded ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... be gray-headed when he comes back, soon gets a young wife. But a woman's time is short within which she can expect to obtain a husband. If she allows it to slip away, no one cares to marry her. She sits at home, speculating on the probability of ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... hands soever this shall fall, it may to them be a testimony of my gratitude to your self and Family, who descended to such a degree of humility as to admit me into their friendship in the dayes of my youth; and notwithstanding my many infirmities, have continued me in it till I am become gray-headed; and as Time has added to my yeares, have still increased and multiplied ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... putting forward a claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight, as old houses, here and there about the streets, get covered halfway to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and grandsire. The boy, also, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... that," persisted Bill. "I'll admit that we've found plenty of places where the gold isn't, but that doesn't get us anywhere. And we'll be gray-headed before we can explore the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... which the youthful traveller frequently paused more accurately to survey, and its laughing and sportive beams playing over chink and crevice, seemed almost as insolent and untimeous as the mirth of the young mocking the silent grief of some gray-headed ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and a horn sounding from the judges' stand, the horses are led out in their blankets and head-coverings, and walked up and down before the crowd by their trainers, who are for the most part old gray-headed negroes, born and raised, to the best of their recollection, on the turf. The riders are noble scions of the same ancient stock, and average three feet and a half in height, and twenty pounds in weight. They are clad ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Seth died only fourteen years before Noah's birth. Enosh and the rest of the patriarchs, except Enoch, lived at the same time with Noah. Thus by a comparison of the figures, we shall ascertain that quite a number of gray-headed patriarchs, of whom one lived seven hundred, and another nine hundred years, were contemporaries, and teaching and governing the Church of ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... had first proposed to repair to these subjects, a suitor for their protection, the gray-headed politicians of her court had, it seems, assured her that she could not possibly succeed; that the Hungarians, when the Pragmatic Sanction had been proposed to them by her father, had declared that they were accustomed to be governed only by men; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... attracted to him many admirable persons, as naturally as sweet herbs draw bees, and as naturally he gave them the honey into which fifty years of hard experience had distilled no bitter drop. Earnest young men found the gray-headed scholar as young at heart as they; thoughtful or troubled women instinctively brought their doubts to him, sure of finding the gentlest sympathy, the wisest counsel. Sinners told their sins to the pure-hearted old man and were both ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... lightest tone impress themselves upon you. I felt this very strongly two or three times after the play on Friday night. In her talk with Forbes, for instance, whom she has altogether in her toils, and whom she plays with as though he were the gray-headed Merlin and she an innocent Vivien, weaving harmless spells about him. And then, from this mocking war of words and looks, this gay camaraderie, in which there was not a scrap of coquetry or self-consciousness, she would pass into a sudden outburst of anger ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... came out of prison—for some one interfered, and paid that tax—I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common, such as he observed who went in a youth and emerged a gray-headed man; and yet a change had come to my eyes come over the scene—the town, and State, and country, greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... rounded a crumbly sand bank just in time to see the seven-banded birch canoe of a little old hunter, Sam Ba'tiste Buck—eighty years old he was—squatting in the bottom of the birch canoe, ragged almost to nakedness, bare of feet, gray-headed, nearly toothless but happier than an emperor—the first living being we had seen for a week in the muskegs. We camped together that night on the sandbars—trading Sam Ba'tiste flour and matches for a ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... done for them that could be hoped, they would but grow up miniature Mullers; and to think of that!" said Kitty. She had given her life to him. If she lived to be gray-headed, he alone owned her, mind and body. "If I were dead in my coffin, he would put his mild, fat little hand on me, and look forward to owning me in heaven! Oh-h!" This last was the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... hospital. With her slight form, her bright face, and her musical voice, she seemed a ministering angel to the sick and suffering soldiers, while her sweet womanly purity and her tender devotion to their wants made her almost an object of worship among them. "Ain't she an angel?" said a gray-headed soldier as he watched her one morning as she was busy getting breakfast for the boys on the steamer "City of Alton." "She never seems to tire, she is always smiling, and don't seem to walk—she flies, all but—God bless her!" Another, a soldier boy of seventeen said to her, as she was smoothing ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... coffin, & moved down the same streets in the dead of night under waving black flags, between human walls again, but everywhere was a deep stillness now & a stillness emphasized rather than broken by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over pavements cushioned with sand, & the low sobbing of gray-headed women who had witnessed the first entrance, forty-four years before, when she & they were young & unaware.... She was so blameless—the Empress; & so beautiful in mind & heart, in person & spirit; & whether with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the passageway the servants were grouped—Clara, comely of face and of person, neat notwithstanding the demoralisation of feminine attire incident to prolonged travel. Winter, the Brockhurst butler, clean-shaven, gray-headed, suggestive of a distinguished Anglican ecclesiastic in mufti. Miss St. Quentin's lady's-maid, Faulstich by name, a North-Country woman, angular of person and of bearing, loyal of heart. And Zimmermann, the colossal German-Swiss ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... start and tremble, that stern, gray-headed man? He has lived more than sixty years an unbeliever—a despiser of the lowly Savior. No thought of repentance or remorse has afflicted him—no desire has he ever had to hear the words of eternal life. He has trained up his family in ignorance of God, and only in his memory has ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... and he sed, "We're having a little party down behind the barn; will you dance with me this set?" and she sed, "No, sir, I'm engaged to his nobs for this set." Gosh, I wuz afraid to go out in the barnyard one while, cos one day when I wuz out thar I heerd a hen say to a rooster, "Thar's that old gray-headed cuss ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... to look through the levelling-instrument; and in using it, he was obliged to mount upon a stool, carried by his attendants for that purpose. As the discipline in the Swedish army required that the soldier should always uncover the head in speaking to his superior, gray-headed men came, cap in hand, to receive their instructions from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... beautiful face colorless, and dripping with rain, her husband staring at her as if he could not credit his senses, the child's limp body in his arms, yet not quite freed from hers. In the background were the whitefaced servants and the gray-headed doctor upon whose conversation the newcomers had so ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... self-content, were picking the junk into oakum, a small heap of which lay by their sides. They accompanied the task with a continuous, low, monotonous, chant; droning and drilling away like so many gray-headed bag-pipers playing ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... 477: Uahi pohina. Literally gray-headed smoke. It is said that when studying together the words of the mele the pupils and the kumu would often gather about a fire, while the teacher recited and expounded the text. There is a possible allusion to this in the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... thus affectionately engaged for the good of mankind, he will become seriously impressed with the necessity of early attentions to the young in particular. Many around him are grown gray-headed in sin, and give but little prospect of amendment. Many of the parents and heads of families are so eagerly busied in the profits, pleasures, and occupations of the world, that they heed not the warning ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... "I suppose," said the gray-headed president, "that you will enjoy this scouting expedition all the more because you are on the trail of a white man. But while I am going to trust to your own good sense and your knowledge of your people in running ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... little fire-place near the counter, where Aurelius Attwood, with his good-humoured face, used to stand warming his coat-tails, and greeting the customers as they came in, were all so much in harmony with the staid, gray-headed clerks, and the quiet, methodical ways of the place, that when there, one might fancy he had stepped back for fifty years, or was looking upon a picture ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... an oval silver plate, around the edges of which were raised the square letters of the name "Darrington." The clanging sound startled a peacock, strutting among the verbena beds, and his shrill scream was answered by the deep hoarse bark of some invisible dog; then the heavy door swung open, and a gray-headed negro man, who wore a white linen apron over his black clothes, and held a waiter in one hand, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... gardens was so little frequented, that at the hour when Paris dines, two lovers might fall out and exchange the earnest of reconciliation without fear of intruders. The only possible spoil-sport was the pensioner on duty at the little iron gate on the Rue de l'Ouest, if that gray-headed veteran should take it into his head to lengthen his monotonous beat. There, on a bench beneath the lime-trees, Etienne Lousteau sat and listened ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... fright and disappeared before the jeweller could send for the police, and since that time McFarlane in London, Harrison in Paris, Dennet in Berlin, and Clancy in Vienna had been chasing men with white patches on their hair until no gray-headed patriarch in Europe was free from suspicion. I myself had sleuthed it through England, France, Holland, and Belgium, and now I found myself in Antwerp at the Hotel St. Antoine, without a clew that promised ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... stan' a heap o' knockin' 'round on 'casion. S'long as I keeps my shins safe, I don't seem to keer 'bout much else. Say de word, sah, an' I'se ready to hit um up ag'in right peart," was the reply from the old, gray-headed Toby, who had worked for Frank's father many years—indeed, he was fond of saying he had been a slave in the Virginia branch of the Langdon family "befo' ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... of old age.] geriatrics, nostology|. V. be aged &c. adj.; grow old, get old &c. adj.; age; decline, wane, dodder; senesce. Adj. aged; old &c. 124; elderly, geriatric, senile; matronly, anile|; in years; ripe, mellow, run to seed, declining, waning, past one's prime; gray, gray-headed; hoar, hoary; venerable, time-worn, antiquated, passe, effete, decrepit, superannuated; advanced in life, advanced in years; stricken in years; wrinkled, marked withthe crow's foot; having one foot in the grave; doting &c. (imbecile) 499; like the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and even peasants?" and "What can an official, still more a peasant, understand in such an affair?" All the four officials in the jury were, in fact, men of no consequence and of low rank. Except one who was rather younger, they were gray-headed men, little known in society, who had vegetated on a pitiful salary, and who probably had elderly, unpresentable wives and crowds of children, perhaps even without shoes and stockings. At most, they spent their leisure over cards and, of ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hardly suit you, Mr. Tape," replied the veteran, with a grim smile. "Well, the gray-headed old fox followed up his look with a number of interesting queries concerning my birth, parentage, and present occupation, my answers to which so operated upon him, that I felt quite certain when he shook hands with me, and expressed himself perfectly satisfied, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... prejudice," said Sheriff Tom in the course of one of his numerous arguments with Walter Lowell. "When I see old Crane hanging around Bill Talpers's store, he looks to me jest like the cussed Comanche that rose right out of nowheres and scared me gray-headed when I was riding along all peaceful-like on the Picketwire. And that's the way it goes. Every Injun I see, big or little, resembles some redskin I had trouble with, back in early days. The only thing ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... deception of frank affection, she had been, during the two months of their honey-moon, a model wife. But the discovery that John Arthur could leave her nothing save his blessing, had now been made, and Cora, who was already weary of her gray-headed dupe, had been for a few days past less careful ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch |
