"Silhouette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lighted, and even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest, and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... are two portraits of Branwell in existence, both of them in the possession of Mr. Nicholls. One of them is a medallion by his friend Leyland, the other the silhouette which accompanies this chapter. They both suggest, mainly on account of the clothing, a man of more mature years than ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... posted. The perfectly evident pleasure of the little ones in the mere looking, to say nothing of their joy in telling at one time or another something they have seen before, shows with what keenness they observe. At the Buffalo Public Library there have been on exhibition some excellent silhouette pictures made by cutting figures, trees, etc., from black paper and pasting them on white backgrounds. "The pied piper" was one subject illustrated. To appreciate this it should be understood that the figure of the piper and of ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... the heart of the wooded crest of the little promontory. Then the fringing woods on the opposite shore became a dark level line across the landscape, and the color seemed to fade out of the moist shining gravel before his cabin. Presently the silhouette of his dark face disappeared from the window, and Mr. McGee might have been gratified to know that he had slipped to his knees before the chair whereon he had been sitting, and that his head was bowed ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... above the open-air gambling games; there were even smoked-chimney lamps, and candles, set on pedestals, signalizing other centers. The walls of the tent store-buildings glowed spectral from the lights to be glimpsed through doorways and windows, and grotesque, gigantic figures flitted in silhouette. While through the interstices between the buildings I might see other structures, ranging from those of tolerable size to simple wall tents and ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... scattered over the slope, upon the soldiers moving about, and upon our two guns, which seemed to crane their necks as they rested motionless on the earthwork two paces from us. The infantry picket, stationed on the knoll at the left, stood in perfect silhouette against the light of the sunset; no less distinct were the stacks of muskets, the form of the sentry, the groups of soldiers, and the smoke ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... they wanted to go? They stopped and wondered. The poor horse's bones stood out in strange projections, the round-shouldered little fly-man sat grinning on his box, showing three long yellow fangs. The vehicle, the horse, and the man, his arm raised in questioning gesture, appeared in strange silhouette upon the grey clouds, assuming portentous aspect in their tremulous and excited imaginations. 'Take you to Southwater in ten minutes!' The voice of the fly-man sounded hard, grating, and derisive in ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... Beatrice of "Much Ado about Nothing"; but in this I think Coleridge goes too far. Unformed as Biron is, he is Shakespeare in early youth, whereas in Benedick the likeness is not by any means so clear. In fact, Benedick is merely an admirable stage silhouette and needs to be filled out with an actor's personality. Beatrice, on the other hand, is a woman of a very distinct type, whereas Rosaline needs pages of explanation, which Coleridge never dreamed of. A certain similarity rather of ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Outline. — N. outline, circumference; perimeter, periphery, ambit, circuit, lines tournure[obs3], contour, profile, silhouette; bounds; coast line. zone, belt, girth, band, baldric, zodiac, girdle, tyre[Brit], cingle[obs3], clasp, girt; cordon &c. (inclosure) 232; circlet, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in which I have attempted to preserve no chronological sequence, ends with the silhouette of Dr. ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dancing! The ladies do certainly seem superfluous!" With a playful feint of pique they pass without further notice the lighted, noisy ship, and go toward the Hollander, whose blood-tinted sails and black masts form but a grim silhouette against the star-sown sky. "Hi, girls,—stop! Where are you going?" the simple-minded sailors cry after them. But the girls do not abandon their small vengeance of serving the strangers first. "You have a mind ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... went vacantly through the process of dressing the soil in autumn, every moment expecting to see the tall gesticulating silhouette of his father rising up at the end of a plain. To kill time, he entered the houses of his neighbors, told about the accident to all who had not heard of it, and sometimes repeated it to the others. Then, after he had finished his occupations and his reflections, he would ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... sat staring in amaze; the blacksmith strode to the door and looked out, himself a massive, dark silhouette upon the shimmering neutrality of the background. There was no figure in sight; no faint foot-fall was audible, no rustle of the sere leaves; only the voice of the mountain torrent, far below, challenged the ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of curtain rings. The dim violet rectangle of a window appeared in the darkness, the figure of the woman in vague silhouette against it. A sash was lifted noiselessly, rain-sweet air breathed into the apartment. Athenais returned to his side, pressed into his ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... it, so that she would be less observed. It seemed to her important to get as far from East Sixty-seventh Street as possible before letting a human glance take note of her personality, even as a drifting silhouette. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... again, and only felt safe when he at last stood before the great doorway, where he could not be seen from the parsonage. The front of the church, quite bare and worn by the sunshine and rain of years, was crowned by a narrow open stone belfry, in which a small bell showed its black silhouette, whilst its rope disappeared through the tiles. Six broken steps, on one side half buried in the earth, led up to the lofty arched door, now cracked, smothered with dust and rust and cobwebs, and so frailly hung upon its outwrenched hinges ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... exaggeration. And what made the picture complete, she came driving a yoke of oxen—for Dinky-Dunk will have need of every horse and hauling animal he can lay his hands on. I simply held my breath as I stared up at her, high on her wagon-seat, blocked out in silhouette against the pale sky-line, a Brunhild with cowhide boots on. She wore a pale blue petticoat and a Swedish looking black shawl with bright-colored flowers worked along the hem. She had no hat. But she had two great ropes of pale gold ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... manner brooked no delay, and her ladyship thinking that even now Katherine was Cantemir's wife, spoke out with a semblance of injured dignity that melted under Sir Julian's scathing contempt to silly simpering. The noble character of Sir Julian seemed to silhouette that of her ladyship ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... more violent. The pariah dog, who had come to investigate with his tail in the air, went away again, and quickly, with his tail between his legs; and in the same moment the king's son's head appeared over the top of the corrugated iron wall in silhouette against the staring, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... the darkened town, where nothing lighted the fronts of the houses, save the hanging-lamps of the streets and the pink and green bottles of the pharmacy Bezuquet, which projected their reflections on the pavement, together with a silhouette of the apothecary himself resting his elbows on his desk and sound asleep on the Codex;—a little nap, which he took every evening from nine to ten, to make himself, so he said, the fresher at night for those who might need his services. That, between ourselves, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... a shot!" somebody said enviously. The men on the little deck looked across at the slow-moving silhouette. One of them, a cigarette behind his ear, smiled ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... on the long slope to the library; and straight ahead, in the circle beneath the statue of Washington, the bronze silhouette of a great Virginian stood sharply cut against the luminous haze of the street. From the chimney-stack of a factory near the river a wreath of gray smoke was flung over the tree-tops, where it broke and drifted in feathery garlands. Across the road a group ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the park and cantered into the broad red highway, he turned in his saddle and looked towards the Chateau de Nesville. At first he could not see it, but as he rode over the bridge he caught a glimpse of the pointed roof and single turret, a dim silhouette through the mist. Then it vanished in the ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... embarrass her at the very beginning. Yates was naturally too much of a diplomat to begin awkwardly. As he stood there, wishing chance would bring her out of the house, there appeared a light in the door-window of the room where he knew the convalescent boy lay. Margaret's shadow formed a silhouette on the blind. Yates caught up a handful of sand, and flung it lightly against the pane. Its soft patter evidently attracted the attention of the girl, for, after a moment's pause, the window opened carefully, ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... saw anybody moving about on it. I think, myself, that this is an exaggeration, as their line of observation must be at least seven or eight miles removed and at that distance, even with a very strong glass, it would be almost impossible to distinguish a human silhouette. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... unclenched about his rifle-barrel in an agony of indecision, his eyes perceiving the silhouette of the girl against the lighter arc of sky. No, not that—not that! They must hide their trail, leave behind no faintest trace of passage for these hounds to follow. Yet how could the miracle be accomplished? Out from the mists of tortured memory ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... as he confesses, not systematically spread over his various subjects; and his energy was fitful, though it was energy that struck his contemporaries, who gave the name of the "Sign of the Head and Microscope" to the familiar silhouette of him as he sat before a window poring over his dissections, while they swarmed out into the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... of the teenager's car. The older officer walked back to the portable warning light and rolled it on its four wheels to the rear plate of the jalopy where another magnalock secured it to the car. Beulah's two big rear warning lights still shone above the low silhouette of the passenger car, along with the mobile lamp on the jalopy. Martin walked back to the ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... thumping noise from the direction of Brineweald announced the usual morning visit of young Stephen Fearwell, and sure enough, up the main drive, at top speed, there appeared the familiar silhouette of the youth on his motor-cycle. This time, however, he did not seem to be alone, fair arms seemed to be clinging to him, and the flutter of a dress and a sun-bonnet seemed outlined at ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... person was in the room, too, and by the silhouette on the blind I could see that he was industriously applying himself to some task, the nature of which I could not determine. The longer I watched the shadow on the blind, the more puzzled I grew. I could imagine no occupation that would account for ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... lamp and the window, deliberately went through a pantomime of putting herself to bed. She took care that the shadow of the brushing of her hair should be seen upon the window-curtain. She measured the distance, and threw her silhouette clearly upon it while she took off one or two of her outer garments. Her face had resolution and nervous eagerness written in it, but there was nothing of inward disquiet there; she was wholly satisfied in her own mind as to what she was doing. It was not ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... shadow upon the earth. When she re-opened her eyes at dawn, her looks wandered from the enormous wardrobe to the odd carved chest, from the porcelain stove to the little toilet-table, as if surprised at not seeing there the mysterious silhouette, which she could have so easily and precisely traced from memory. In her sleep she had seen it gliding among the pale heather-blossoms on her curtains. In her dreams, as in her waking hours, her mind was filled with it. It was a companion shadow to her own. She had ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... copper-colored silhouette of the island (the name Cyprus is derived from the Greek word for copper) above two green crossed olive branches in the center of the flag; the branches symbolize the hope for peace and reconciliation between the ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... for a space. The only movement in the night was the faint gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed in black silhouette between them ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... on the hearth, and listened. He was a tall, straight negro of powerful build, and although his features were African, they were not gross in character. The candle on the mantel near him brought out his profile in fine silhouette, while his quiet steady eyes indicated a nature not stirred ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... suddenly. They were in the library now, and sat down on a little sofa in front of the window. The moon was high and brilliant and the great expanse of water with the high clusters of lights on the islands, the sharp hard silhouette of the encircling mountains, the green and silver stars so high above, the moving golden dots of an incoming liner from Japan, the long rows of arc lights along the shore, made a landscape of the night that Mrs. Thornton with all her millions ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Embajadores lane and walked up the Paseo de las Acacias. The rain came down harder; here and there a faint light shone in the distance; against the intense darkness of the sky loomed the vague silhouette of a high chimney.... ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... about two o'clock, and the afterglow had moved around to the north-east. In an hour it would be light again. The island objects loomed twice their size in this dusk of dusk. Sam kept close under the willows to avoid making a silhouette against the sky. As he drew close to Bela's camp he saw that her fire was out, from which he argued that she had ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... later than was actually the case. The minister was of the same opinion as myself, told me that there would not be the slightest difficulty involved, and assured me that my fortune was made. In a week afterwards his place was taken by M. de Silhouette, and when I called on the new minister he told me coldly that when my scheme became law he would tell me. It became law two years afterwards, and when, as the originator of the scheme, I attempted to get my just reward, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... long corridor was very dim and gloomy, and the deep-toned bell in the tower was ringing slowly. Looking back into the cell, he saw that Beryl had risen, and against the sullen red glow on the western window, her face and figure outlined a silhouette ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Stas' black silhouette was outlined on the brighter background of the cave's entrance. A second more and he would be on the outside, and would hide in the rocky fissure. And then, even though one of the outlaws should wake, before he realized what had ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... forever. His instinct was all to protect her. But how? To slap at the insect with his cap or his hand was unthinkable. He found himself blushing at the very thought! Yet how to warn her without acknowledging that his attention had been concentrated on the lower graceful silhouette? He might offend her irreparably. Even if he exclaimed, "Look out, there's a 'skeeter,'" what would he answer if she in her ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... house and down to the corral, where she paused, her ear arrested by the steady drone of milking. A lantern sitting on the black earth, cast a little circle of light, and threw a docile cow in dreadful silhouette against the barn. And by that dim light Beulah discerned the bent form of ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... went and fetched some wood. He was going to take possession of the fire. Janet kept her eye to the knot-hole. When he had the fire burning better, he straightened up and wandered round to the other side of it. At this, the sinister silhouette, acting as a sort of dissolving view, came out in favor of the old maxim that "there is a bright side to everything." It was no less a person than Jonas Hicks. ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... Place Clichy, the two lanterns casting their clear light into the obscurity. The coupe then took the road to Maisons-Lafitte, crossing the plain and skirting wheat-fields and vineyards, with the towering silhouette of Mont Valerien on the left, and on the right, sharply defined against the sky, a long line of hills, dotted with woods and villas, and with little villages nestling at their base, all plunged in a ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... pathway we were not slow to perceive the Sphinx itself, half hill, half couchant beast, turning its back upon us in the attitude of a gigantic dog, that thought to bay the moon; its head stood out in dark silhouette, like a screen before the light it seemed to be regarding, and the lappets of its headgear showed like downhanging ears. And then gradually, as we walked on, we saw it in profile, shorn of its nose—flat-nosed like a death's head—but having already an expression even when seen afar off and ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... definitely and shortly as possible. Simplicity has always been held to be a mark of truth; it is also a mark of genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought it expresses; but with sham-thinkers the thoughts are supposed to be fine because of the style. Style is nothing but the mere silhouette of thought; and an obscure or bad style means a ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in particular to the Committee of British and Foreign Bible Society for placing at my disposal the copies of the Borrow Letters, and also for permission to reproduce the interesting silhouette of the Rev. Andrew Brandram, and to the Rev. T. H. Darlow, M.A. (Literary Superintendent), whose uniform kindness and desire to assist me I find it impossible adequately to acknowledge. My thanks are also due to the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Grey, M.P., for permission ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... that looked down upon it, hung the mountains themselves, their giant crests pitched like mighty tents drowsing placidly between earth and heaven. Now their four o'clock veil of blue-purple mist lay filmed about their shoulders, but later they would stand out in bold silhouette cutting into the twilight sky. Everywhere was the soft smell of new-mown hay; everywhere the silences of the eternal, broken only by the muffled noises of Transley's outfit trailing down ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... The little fires were dying down. Still Kingozi, tortured by his headache, wandered about. Upward of two hours passed. Then at last the crouching Nubian saw dimly the silhouette of the white man returning, caught in the glimmer of coals the colour of the khaki coat he wore. The moment was at hand. Chake arose to his knees, his spear in his right hand. As soon as his victim should lie down on the cot, it was his intention to thrust him through ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... great city, which I had not visited before, I ask the way to the cathedral, for it is no longer visible; its silhouette which, seen from a distance, so completely dominates everything, as a giant's castle might dominate the dwellings of dwarfs, its high gray silhouette seems to have bent down to hide itself. "The cathedral," the people reply, "at first straight on; then you must turn to the left, then to the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... the committee-man harshly, bringing his dirty fist down on the other's knee. "Did you ever hear of Frank Pixley weakenin'? Did you ever see the man that said Frank Pixley wasn't game?" He rose to his feet, a ragged and sinister silhouette against the sputtering electric light at the alley mouth. "Didn't you ever hear that Frank Pixley had a barrel of schemes to any other man's bucket o' wind? What's Frank Pixley's repitation, lemme ast you that? I git what I go after, don't I? Now look here, you listen to me," he ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... little mazurka of two lines, the seventh prelude, is a mere silhouette of the national dance. Yet in its measures is compressed all Mazovia. Klindworth makes a variant in the fourth bar from the last, a G sharp instead of an F sharp. It is a more piquant climax, perhaps not admissible to the Chopin purist. In the F sharp minor ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the booths in the garden. Young couples wandered about and had their fortunes told; they ventured themselves on the Wheel of Happiness, or had their portraits cut out by the silhouette artist. By the roundabout was a mingled whirl of cries and music and brightly colored petticoats. Now and again a tremendous outcry arose, curiously dreadful, over all other sounds, and from the concert-pavilion one heard the cracked, straining voices of one-time "stars." Wretched little ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the incline of cross-street into this petty Bagdad of the petty wise, the voice of the street corner lifted itself above the inarticulate din of the thoroughfare. A youth, thewed like an ox, surmounted on a stack of three self-provided canned-goods boxes, his in-at-the-waist silhouette thrown out against a sky that was almost ready to break out in stars; ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... corner, and then another. The moment was terrible for her. She could only distinguish in the room the blur of a man's shape against the light-coloured wall-paper, and the whiteness of the counterpane, and the dark square of the window broken by the black silhouette of the mirror. She slipped off the bed, and going in the direction of the dressing-table groped for a match-box and lit the gas. Dazzled by the glare of the gas, she turned to look at the corner where ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... no longer unknown to Parisians. Every year at Colonne's or Chevillard's we see his tall, thin silhouette reappear in the conductor's desk. There he is with his abrupt and imperious gestures, his wan and anxious face, his wonderfully clear eyes, restless and penetrating at the same time, his mouth shaped like a child's, a moustache so fair that ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... young man walked wearily up the dusty road toward the Waring farmhouse. In each hand he carried a brimming pail and as he stepped along the milk in them flopped softly against their tin sides. Out from the white streak of sky behind his figure stood strongly relieved in silhouette, large, stooping, dispirited. The whole attitude was one of extreme fatigue, though for the silence and automatic movement of him you might almost think him a piece of ambulatory mechanism. Once or twice, to be sure, he turned his head, perhaps to look off over the cultivated fields ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Because there, peeping at him from the tender green of the young beeches, was the lady in black. She looked down upon him through the parted boughs, her black hat and long black veil making a sharp silhouette against the vivid verdure, her whole face in tender shadow and framed in the ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame's silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad high-way I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... her mobile lips and the faint wrinkles of a frown, coming and going in various heraldry, formed a vividly sentient and versatile expression of emotions while she watched his silhouette against the sky as he turned ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... in upon the land, and soon has the two-headed hill abeam, its singular silhouette conspicuous against the moonlit sky. All the more from the moon being directly beyond it, and low down, showing between the twin summits like a great globe-shaped lamp ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... inter-communication. In fact, the influence of Oriental work upon European has been so great that even experts hesitate sometimes to say whether a particular piece of work is Turkish or Italian. In Italian work, at least, it was usual to get over the angularity of silhouette inherent in canvas stitches by working an outline separately. When that is thin, the effect is proportionately feeble. The broader outline (shown at A, Illustration 10) justifies itself, and in the case of a stitch which falls into horizontal lines, it appears to be necessary. This is ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... is nowhere swept from palace windows than this, which Castiglione touched in a memorable passage at the end of his Cortegiano. To one who in our day visits Urbino, it is singular how the slight indications of this sketch, as in some silhouette, bring back the antique life, and link the present with the past—a hint, perhaps, for reticence in our descriptions. The gentlemen and ladies of the court had spent a summer night in long debate on love, rising to the height of mystical Platonic rapture on the lips of Bembo, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... silhouette of Spurling loomed up, with the drifting dimness of the starlight for background, and the square of surrounding darkness for a frame of sombre plush; he seemed a man-portrait whom some painter had condemned forever to motionlessness ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... the saddle the better to obtain the silhouette of the sky-line. The sound which had held him came up on the southern night breeze. It was a low murmur, or rumble, and, to his accustomed ears, it suggested the speeding of hoofs over the green clad earth. He waited for many moments, but the sound ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... by a commotion which was insulting to her egotism, jumped down from the cushion, stretched into a fine curve, and made a silhouette of herself in a corner of the hearth. Amelia, a little ashamed, and not very well understanding what it was all about, came back, with shaking limbs, and dropped upon the settle, striving now to remember the conventionalities of saner living. Laurie was a kind man. At this moment, he thought ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... on the threshold, measuring the tall disordered stranger who stood there, his figure a black silhouette against the window by which he ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... He had walked about a hundred and fifty yards down the track and was standing in the shelter of the Pullman office building. It was very dark there—just enough light for me to make out his silhouette. I started ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... hurled down upon the heads of the enemy, and the dilapidated gate of Kublai, the grandson of Jenghiz Khan. Against the greenish sky drenched with the rays of the moon stood out the jagged line of the mountains and the black silhouette of the tower with its loopholes, through which the alternate scudding ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... clanged through the empty house! I saw who it was, however, when I went into the hall; for the middle panels of my door are of glazed glass, so that I can always study a silhouette of my visitors before ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... its mite. There is a dull roar far in the rear of the German trenches, followed by a whirring squeak overhead. Then comes an earth-shaking crash a mile behind us. We whip round, and there, in the failing evening light, against the sunset, there springs up the silhouette of a mighty tree in full foliage. Presently the silhouette ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... been upon the face of my uncle as he listened, but now as I turned them from him they fell once more upon the thin, wolfish face of Sir Lothian Hume. He stood near the window, his grey silhouette thrown up against the square of dusty glass; and I have never seen such a play of evil passions, of anger, of jealousy, of disappointed greed upon a ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of violet dusk at the bottom of the small ravine Naginlta's eyes regarded him knowingly. Travis signaled with his hand and thought out what would be the coyotes' part in this surprise attack. The prick-eared silhouette vanished. Uphill the chitter of a fluff-fur ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... evening papers add anything material to the account, except to say that Brandes had been interviewed in his office at the Silhouette Theatre and that he stated that he had not engaged in any personal encounter with anybody, had not seen Max Venem in months, had not been near the Hotel Knickerbocker, and knew nothing about the affair ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... a group in the stern beside the wheel watches a glorious sunset, which fills the space we sit in under the awning with a dull red and across the light a missionary paces, aloof and alone; a melancholy stooping silhouette against the glorious afterglow—to and fro—to and fro—a lanky, long-haired youth, his hands behind his back, looking into his particular future, a life devoted to convert the gracious, charitable followers of Gautauma Buddha to—his ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the ferries he loved so well, in New York and Philadelphia, he would find the former strangely altered in aspect. The New York skyline wears a very different silhouette against the sky, with its marvelous peaks and summits drawing the eye aloft. But Philadelphia's profile is (I imagine) not much changed. I do not know just when the City Hall tower was finished: Walt speaks of it as "three-fifths built" in 1879. That, of course, is the dominant unit ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... the road where he stopped, and here the shadows which enwrapped the forest were not so heavy. The lingering light of departing day was still in the west and touched this part of the highway with its faint glow. It brought out into clear relief the silhouette of the old man as he stood there with his right hand placed to his ear so as not to miss the least sound drifting down ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... sight of a shadowy, graceful figure crossing the avenue—a lithe young silhouette against the gas-light—and his heart stood still for an instant but it was not she, and he swayed where he stood, under the agony of reaction, dazed by the ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... for a moment, listening to the distant music, then, without speaking, turned and walked toward the distant flare of light which threw great trees into tangled and grotesque silhouette. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... in the lagoons—Venice no longer visible behind; the Alps and Euganeans shrouded in a noonday haze; the lowlands at the mouth of Brenta marked by clumps of trees ephemerally faint in silver silhouette against the filmy, shimmering horizon. Form and colour have disappeared in light-irradiated vapour of an opal hue. And yet instinctively we know that we are not at sea; the different quality of the water, the piles emerging here and there above the surface, the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the Time Machine itself?' asked the Time Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... before my little room in the hotel are pushed away; and the morning sun immediately paints upon my shoji, across squares of gold light, the perfect sharp shadow of a little peach-tree. No mortal artist—not even a Japanese—could surpass that silhouette! Limned in dark blue against the yellow glow, the marvelous image even shows stronger or fainter tones according to the varying distance of the unseen branches outside. it sets me thinking about the possible influence on Japanese ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Persian rug lay in the center, and took the fullest light. There were no sharp edges of shadow, but instead there was a softly graduated penumbra, deepening into murk. Straight across was a doorway with a portiere, beyond was another, and still farther, a third, all made visible in silhouette by the light in a fourth room, seen as at the end ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... creek where the boats were moored; and there was the wonderful lake before us, with its mountains, and islands, and trees. Unluckily, however, the mountains happened to be invisible; the islands looked like gray masses in the fog, and all that we could see for some time was the gray silhouette of the boat ahead of us, in which a passenger was engaged in a witty conversation with some boat still farther in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... began to roar and vibrate again. The noon recess was over. She went back to her job. Her broad, heavy hands began once more to serve a company on whose moderate remuneration she depended for her daily bread. Her silhouette against the window where she stood was no longer an object for my vain eyes to look upon with a sense of superiority. I could hear the melancholy intonation of her voice, pronouncing words of courage over her disfigured underlip. She was one ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... darkening, drowsing city, her round, strong chin propped upon her hand. She was just close enough for Candy to catch the sweet, delicious feminine perfume that came indefinitely from her clothes, her hair, her neck. From where Condy sat he could see the silhouette of her head and shoulders against the dull golden blur of the open window; her round, high forehead, with the thick yellow hair rolling back from her temples and ears, her pink, clean cheeks, her little dark-brown, scintillating eyes, and her firm red mouth, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... group of family photographs, in oval frames, hung the copy of a Madonna by Gabriel Max, two etchings after Defregger, several large group-photographs of Schwarz's classes in different years, a framed concert programme, yellow with age, and a silhouette of Schumann. Over one of the doors hung a withered laurelwreath of imposing dimensions, and with faded silken ends, on which the inscription was still legible: DEM GROSSEN KUNSTLER, JOHANNES SCHWARZ!—Open on a chair, with an embroidered book-marker between its pages, lay ATTA TROLL; and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... don't suppose you can make much of it; it is merely blocked in, and seems quite mad. You see my idea was to make her leaning against a wall—there was one hung with yellow that seemed almost brown—so as to bring out the silhouette. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... He had only to cover another yard of space when he could look into the room of the lighted window. That was where fresh peril must lie, because his figure would be outlined in silhouette, and any one moving about the grounds might discover ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... figure appeared as a massive silhouette under the lintel. St. Genis had the candle in his hand. He dropped ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and, for the first time in life, perhaps, failed to meet the demands of society; they also, respecting a frame of mind which they divined in him, troubled the man in no way. He remained resting against the wall, and, from a distance, resembled a silhouette outlined on it darkly, as on a background. He looked on the brilliant assembly, from which he was separated by half the chamber, and felt that he was divided from those people by a space as great ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... of her chief ambitions seems to have been the winning over of the father and the sister. The visit home was to be in November, 1782, but the weather grew very cold, and the wife's condition forbade. Mozart writes to his father that his wife "carries about a little silhouette of you, which she kisses twenty times a day at least." His letters are full of little domestic joys, such as a ball lasting from six o'clock in the evening until seven in the morning,—a game of skittles of ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Power! How came that shadow on the wall, No woman was in the room! His tall Chiffonier stood gaunt behind His chair. His old cloak, rabbit-lined, Hung from a peg. The door was closed. Just for a moment he must have dozed. He looked again, and saw it plain. The silhouette made a blue-black stain On the opposite wall, and it never wavered Even when the candle quavered Under his panting breath. What made That beautiful, dreadful thing, that shade Of something so lovely, so exquisite, Cast from a substance ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... moments. The morning sun streamed into my little oak-panelled dining-room and caught the silver and fruit on the breakfast table and made my frieze of old Delft glow blue like the responsive western sky. With his back to the vivid window, Leonard Boyce stood cut out black like a silhouette. That he, too, felt the tension, I know; for a wasp crawled over his face, from cheek-bone, across his temples, to his hair, and ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... from the row boat, though the engine's rapid pulsations indicated the line of Carey's pursuit. To shout to the daring women that help was at hand would only alarm them, and Archie crouched in the bow, peering ahead for the silhouette of the Governor as his ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... mounted the next ridge, still distancing our pursuers, I saw suddenly, on its crest, defined against the livid red sky like a silhouette, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... one sees also the silhouette of a majestic figure, whose school of philosophy became a religion, which interested the world because it spoke ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... frock of her own unaided making. Her eyes, of the one deep Tasmanian blue, were still open very wide, but no longer with the same apprehension; for a step there was, but a step that jingled; nor did they recognize the silhouette in top-boots which at length stood bowing on ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... portrait on the opposite side of the room was painted by Joseph Lindon Smith, an artist of celebrity, who is a relative of Whittier's. Portraits of Whittier's brother, his sisters, his mother, and his old schoolmaster, Joshua Coffin, are shown in this room. The silhouette on the mantelpiece is of aunt Mercy, his mother's unmarried sister. A sampler worked by Lydia Aver, the girl commemorated in the poem "In School Days," is exhibited in this room. She was a member of the family who were the nearest neighbors of the Whittiers—a family still ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... sparkling blast of auxiliary rocket tubes moved the spaceship away. O'Brine was putting a little distance between his ship and the asteroid before turning on the nuclear drive. The ship decreased in size until Rip saw it only as a dark, oval silhouette against the Milky Way. Then the exhaust of the nuclear drive grew into a mighty column of glowing blue, and the ship flamed ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... above the ridge, glimmered the river, winding along by peaceful forest and meadows edged with grass and mint. There was moon-bright dew upon the clover and high upon the ridge a tree showed dark and full against the moon in lonely silhouette. It was an enchanted wood of moonlit depth and noisy quiet, of shrilling crickets, the plaintive cries of tree frogs, the drowsy crackle of the camp fire, or the lap of water by the shore, with sometimes the lonely hoot of ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Nourrice" and "Le Petit Epicier." How anyone could bring himself to acknowledge the vulgar details of our vulgar age I could not understand. The fiery glory of Jose Maria de Heredia, on the contrary, filled me with enthusiasm—ruins and sand, shadow and silhouette of palms and pillars, negroes, crimson, swords, silence, and arabesques. As great copper pans go the clangour of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... angel of deliverance he looked to her as he stood in the starlight, outlined in silhouette against the wide, wonderful sky: broad shoulders, well-set head, close-cropped curls, handsome contour even in the darkness. There was about him an air of quiet strength which gave ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... too, were wearing these caps, but theirs were yet smaller and tipped over their noses, like the pork pie hat of our grandmothers. One closely veiled woman showed the silhouette sticking up through her veil just like a ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... but without disquieting the eye, like the tower of Asinelli at Bologna, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Seen two or three miles away, these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to nod at the horizon, present a droll and hilarious silhouette. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... you." Scotty seemed terribly far away. Then Rick saw his friend's silhouette, as a dark shape against the lesser darkness of the sky. At a guess ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... music from afar, Hung the new moon and one white star, Above the poplars black and tall That sentineled the garden wall; Four black poplars beyond the wall, Two on each side of the garden gate, In silhouette against the wide Pale sky of the late eventide. Close was the garden and serene. The leaning reeds in quiet state About the pool, merged in the green Of misty leaves and hanging vines. The fireflies spun their silver lines Across the deeper ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... heard that name before? Slowly Frederick-Christian recalled the silhouette of a young woman ... with a fair skin and light ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... for exerting an influence, for conferring happiness, for encouraging the arts. She had a kind of ideal of conduct for a young man who should find himself in this magnificent position, and she tried to adapt it to Lord Lambeth's deportment as you might attempt to fit a silhouette in cut paper upon a shadow projected upon a wall. But Bessie Alden's silhouette refused to coincide with his lordship's image, and this want of harmony sometimes vexed her more than she thought reasonable. When he was absent it was, of course, less striking; then he seemed to her a sufficiently ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... widening pools of deep sky, glinting here and there, with the weak radiance of half-drowned stars, opened and closed again behind dispersing wreaths of mist. While in the west, a heaped indigo gloom that might in that light have been mistaken for the silhouette of a vast impending forest, revealed at one edge a thin haze of yellow silver that stretched weak exploring arms of light towards the mysterious obscurity of the upper clouds. I knew precisely how that sky would ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... man who was about to die, a silhouette against the soft blue holding its own balance resolutely in the face of peril. She could not watch any longer; she could not wait on the catastrophe. She was living the part of the aviator more vividly than ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... saturated with moisture. The leaves of the trees glistened with heavy drops. Along the balcony to the right showed the light from Therese's room in a bar across the wet stone. Her curtains had not been drawn, and for a few seconds he could see her silhouette framed in the window.... What was she thinking? what was going on in that brain, which he now felt he had never understood? Was it possible she was guilty of the cold-blooded act Esther had accused her of? ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... mark never missed by Stevenson's father's son; above Fife rise the twin breasts of the Lomonds. Or turn round and look across the Esk valley to the Moorfoots; or more westerly, where the back range of the Pentlands—Caernethy, the Scald, and the knife-edged Kips—draw a sharp silhouette of Arctic peaks against the sky. In the cloven hollow between is Glencarse Loch, an ancient chapel and burying ground hidden under its waters; on the slope above it, not a couple miles away, is Rullion Green, where, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... a few strokes of his magical charcoal a sharp silhouette of Brownson upon the wall of our waiting curiosity, fills in his sketch of Parker with a whole wilderness of classical shades, disposes of Willis with a kiss and a blow, gives pages of sharp pleasantries to Emerson, pays a graceful tribute ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... upon his solitary repast in the restaurant of the Hotel Villa d'Este had seated herself in such a way that her profile was detached against the window; and thus viewed, her domed forehead, small arched nose, and fastidious lip suggested a silhouette of Marie Antoinette. In the lady's dress and movements—in the very turn of her wrist as she poured out her coffee—Danyers thought he detected the same fastidiousness, the same air of tacitly excluding the obvious and unexceptional. Here was a woman who had been much bored and ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Uncle Shadrach from behind the Governor's chair. He was so like his master—commanding port, elaborate shirt-front, and high white stock—that the Major, in a moment of merry-making, had once dubbed him "the Governor's silhouette." ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... replied. "I saw little more than a silhouette against the window. He was of medium height, slight of build and ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... almost infantine sketches. Exorbitant fancy is here much less striking than sureness of touch, outlined figures drawn between the age of five and ten displaying remarkable precision and point, each line of the silhouette telling. At six he celebrated his first school prize with an illustrated letter, two portraits and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the sky-line; more shells; back goes the stretcher laden, a thicker horizontal line than before. Then—a rush of crotchets rearwards—one leading two mules, mules terrified, jibbing, hanging back—all in silhouette one moment, the next all smudged with dust cloud; God help the driver; shadows clear again; driver still dragging mules—no, only one mule now; other figures still running rearwards. Suddenly reinforcements arrive, hundreds of them; the whole sky-line bristles with crotchets moving ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... The black silhouette against the darkness shook its head. "The pleasures even of these contacts are much exaggerated," said the polite level voice. "It seems to me doubtful whether they are equal to the pleasures of private reading and contemplation. Human contacts have been so highly valued ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... statuesque group the outline is important because this is seen against the background of wall, or sky, and frequently in silhouette. Any fault in its contour as a mass is therefore emphasized. This consideration applies pictorially to groups which are complete in themselves and have no incorporation with backgrounds, such for instance as the photographic group of a number of people. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... beckoned to him from the other side of the room, and with whom in another moment I saw him step out. Thus deserted, I sank into a chair near one of the windows. Never had I felt more uncomfortable. To attribute guilt to a totally unknown person—a person who is little more to you than a shadowy silhouette against a background of snow—is easy enough and not very disturbing to the conscience. But to hear that person named; given positive attributes; lifted from the indefinite into a living, breathing actuality, with ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... of the Potlatch-house, it was good to draw in the freshness of the out-of-doors. The two tall totems framed a golden naked moon that hung above the hills across the bay. The shimmering path from its glow threw into silhouette the prows of the big canoes drawn up on the beach. Ellen walked down the sandy path toward them. Pausing she leaned against one and gazed idly out ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... fluttered up then, a vivid italicized prototype, on slim tall heels that clicked and a very small red hat set just at the angle of sauciness. They moved off together after a bickering over luggage, the slim silhouette with the chin sharply flung up and the accentuated sway-back figure of the little mother, her skirt sagging over run-down heels, and, for want of a free hand, blowing up the loose strands of hair ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst |
