"Complexion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to bloom with cotton, sugar, and every kind of fruit and grain; the untiring industry, exquisite ingenuity, and cultivated taste by which the merchants, manufacturers, and mechanics, guilty of a darker complexion than that of the peninsular Goths, had enriched their native land with splendid fabrics in cloth, paper, leather, silk, tapestry, and by so doing had acquired fortunes for themselves, despite iniquitous taxation, religious persecution, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... large of frame, says Azurara, strong of limb as any. His complexion was fair by nature, but by his constant toil and exposure of himself it had become quite dark. His face was stern and when angry, very terrible. Brave as he was in heart and keen in mind, he had a passion for the doing of great things. ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... he had never seen before. He could have spent an hour in examining all the rich and curious things it contained; but a voice hailed him from the bed, and there lay Lord Claud, in a nest of snowy pillows, his golden head and fair complexion giving him an almost girlish aspect, albeit the square set of the jaw and the peculiarly penetrating glance of the dark-blue eyes robbed the face of ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... rather thin early in the morning, and a trifle corpulent after dinner; in complexion pale, with a suspicion of ruby about the gills. He wears his hair brown, and parted crosswise of his remarkably fine head. His eyes are of various colours, but mostly bottle-green, with a glare in them reminding one of incipient ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... woman of medium height; her complexion was of golden bronze; the flesh had fallen, giving her cheeks a square set, and her dark eyes gleamed brightly beneath a broad wrinkled brow; a cap of black lace surmounted her head, a white net fichu was crossed on her breast and fastened with a cameo pin in a wide gold frame, ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... most piteously bewailing herself, she made her avowal to her mother, and besought her to shield her from the consequences. Distressed beyond measure, the lady chid her severely, and then asked her how it had come to pass. The damsel, to screen Pietro, invented a story by which she put another complexion on the affair. The lady believed her, and, that her fall might not be discovered, took her off to one of their estates; where, the time of her delivery being come, and she, as women do in such a case, crying ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... once upon a time, at the siege of Rochelle, when I was there, when you were there, when we both were there, a certain Arab, who was celebrated for the manner in which he adjusted culverins. He was a clever fellow, although very singular with regard to his complexion, which was the same color as your olives. Well, this Arab, whenever he had done eating or working, used to sit down to rest himself, as I am resting myself now, and smoked I cannot tell you what sort of magical leaves, in a large amber-mouthed tube; and ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... though she never dared to mention them to any save old Judy, the negro woman, she felt satisfied that her sisters and herself could not belong to the same stock or the same race. The transparent delicacy of her complexion, the rosy tint on her cheek, unrivalled by the costly paint of her sisters, the shining blackness of her splendid hair,—all these circumstances pointed her out and proclaimed her as of a different race to those whom she hitherto regarded as her kindred. Long had she mused on the ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... would be running again, exactly as if nothing had happened. Meantime, Marija took Jurgis upstairs to her room, and they sat and talked. By daylight, Jurgis was able to observe that the color on her cheeks was not the old natural one of abounding health; her complexion was in reality a parchment yellow, and there were black rings ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... that "the yellow girl stood up and praised Almighty Allah and magnified His name; after which she pointed her finger at the brown girl and said to her: 'I am the one praised in the Koran, and the Compassionate hath described my complexion and its excellence over all other hues in His manifest Book, where Allah saith, 'A yellow, pure yellow, whose colour gladdeneth the beholders.'[FN377] Wherefore my colour is a sign and portent and my grace is supreme and my beauty a term extreme; for that my tint is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... you would exclaim at my taste, and declare there was no beauty in it. I will even acknowledge that you may be right, and that there is nothing artistically beautiful in the dark-gray eyes, the clear and healthy yet not dazzlingly fair complexion, the straight though glossy dark-brown hair, and the form, rounded and buoyant, but neither tall enough to be dignified nor petite enough to be fairy-like. But sure I am that you could not know the spirit, gentle and playful yet lofty and earnest, which looks out from her ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... was a goodly sight. Few ever looked happier than Dr. and Mrs. May, as they sat opposite to each other, presenting a considerable contrast in appearance as in disposition. She was a little woman, with that smooth pleasant plumpness that seems to belong to perfect content and serenity, her complexion fair and youthful, her face and figure very pretty, and full of quiet grace and refinement, and her whole air and expression denoting a serene, unruffled, affectionate happiness, yet with much authority in her mildness—warm and open in her own family, but reserved beyond it, and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... vigorously that everything was ready—there was nothing to do, no finishing touches, and into her mind came a sudden blank and alarm. All that evening she was unable to settle down either to work or rest. Ellen had gone to bed early, convinced of the good effect of sleep on her complexion, and Joanna prowled unhappily from room to room, glancing about mechanically for dust which she knew could not be there ... the farm was just a collection of gleaming surfaces and crackling chintzes and gay, dashing colours. Everything ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... things, or wind his way into and out of every soul of man undiscovered. And a proof of his flexibility and symmetry of form is his grace, which is universally admitted to be in an especial manner the attribute of Love; ungrace and love are always at war with one another. The fairness of his complexion is revealed by his habitation among the flowers; for he dwells not amid bloomless or fading beauties, whether of body or soul or aught else, but in the place of flowers and scents, there he sits and abides. Concerning the beauty of the god I ...
— Symposium • Plato
... countenanced. Petrarch was by nature of a warm temperament, with vivid and susceptible passions, and strongly attached to the fair sex. We must not therefore be surprised if, with these dispositions, and in such a dissolute city, he was betrayed into some excesses. But these were the result of his complexion, and not of deliberate profligacy. He alludes to this subject in his Epistle to Posterity, with every appearance of ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... in a case closely resembling that of Screws, although the trial judge, while charging the jury that it must find specific intent, nevertheless went on to say:"'The color of the act determines the complexion of the intent. The intent to injure or defraud is presumed when the unlawful act, which results in loss or injury, is proved to have been knowingly committed. It is a well settled rule, which the law applies to both criminal and civil cases, that the intent is presumed ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... ones. They were a boy and girl, nearly of equal size and age. The boy was the elder, perhaps thirteen or more, a handsome lad, with swarth face, coal-black eyes, and curly full-flowing dark hair. The girl, too, who would be about twelve, was dark—that is to say, brunette in complexion. Her eyes were large, round, and dreamy, with long lashes that kept the sun from shining into them, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... of about thirteen was standing before me; her features were very pretty, but with a peculiar expression; her complexion was a clear olive, and her jet black hair hung back upon her shoulders. She was rather scantily dressed, and her arms and feet were bare; round her neck, however, was a handsome string of corals, with ornaments of gold: in her hand she held ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that confront us which we can only solve by the exercise of our utmost courage and wisdom. I do not want anything I say here this evening to have in the least degree the complexion of a political talk. I am like a friend of mine down in Virginia who told me that he never could talk politics with a man, "Because," he says, "I am that sort of a blanked fool that thinks if a man disagrees with him in politics he ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... had a foreign sound, and the man's complexion was swarthy, and in all simplicity I asked if he was a Minorcan. I might as well have touched a lighted match to powder. His eyes flashed, and he came round the tail of the cart, gesticulating ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... portraits, but much finer; the upper part of the forehead and eyes are beautiful, the lower strong and masculine, expressive of a hardy temperament and strong passions, but not in the least coarse; the complexion olive, and the air of the whole head Spanish (as, indeed, she was born at Madrid, and is only on one side of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... was a Samaritan sinner, a sinner of the worst complexion; for the Jews abhorred to have ought to do with them (verse 9), wherefore none more fit than she to be made one of the decoys of heaven, to bring others of these Samaritan wild-fowls under the net of the grace of Christ; and she did ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... forehead with its low masses of dark hair; there the short upper lip, the finely-carved mouth, the beautifully-rounded chin and throat; and there the frank, clear, proud eyes, with their long lashes and highly-curved eyebrows. Sometimes, too, a touch of color added warmth to the complexion, put a glimmer of the blue sea beneath the long black eyelashes, and drew a thread of scarlet round the white neck. But was this Sheila? Could he take this sheet of paper to his friends in London and say, Here is the magical princess whom I hope to bring to you from the North, with all the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... descendants of the wealthy Midianites; they cannot boast of ancient race or of noble blood; and their speech differs in nothing from that of the Arabs around them. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that they represent in any way the ancient Nabathans. In features, complexion, and dress they resemble the half-settled Bedawin around them; and, like these, they show a kind of connection with the Sinaitic tribes. The Magni,[EN117] to whom only the southern clump of huts at Makn belongs, call themselves Faw'idah, Zubidah, and Ramzn, after families of the Juhayni ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... miserly farmer was called, was limping in from the out-houses to his residence, he saw approaching his gate a lad with a pale and dejected face. His hair was flaxen and his skin had in it just the slightest tinge of apple-green. Imagine wasting such an exquisite colour upon the complexion of a robber! He hobbled towards the gate of the stately old mansion, towards which Snarleyow was also hobbling; and he called in a feeble voice in which you could ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... judges." The Fulis are settled on both sides of the river Senegal: Their country, which is very fruitful and populous, extends near four hundred miles from East to West. They are generally of a deep tawny complexion, appearing to bear some affinity with the Moors, whose country they join on the North. They are good farmers, and make great harvest of corn, cotton, tobacco, &c. and breed great numbers of cattle of all kinds. Bartholomew Stibbs, (mentioned by Fr. ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... of Easter week, when Trudi was beginning to feel slightly tired of whitewash and scrambled meals, and to have doubts as to the permanent becomingness of aprons, and misgivings as to the effect on her complexion of running about a cold house all day long, answers to the advertisements began to arrive, and soon arrived in shoals. These letters acted as bellows on the flickering flame of her zeal. She found them extraordinarily ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... merchants should keep their wives from visiting the upper rooms too often, lest they tire their purses by attiring themselves.... There's many gentlewomen come hither that, to help their faces and complexion, break their husbands' backs; who play foul in the country with their land, to be fair and play false ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... "receive no colour of good or evil but according to the application of the individual soul." Did Hamlet learn of him that "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so"?—What we call evil is not so of itself: it depends only upon us, to give it another taste and complexion.—Things, in respect of themselves, have peradventure their weight, measure, and conditions; but when once we have taken them into us, the soul forms them as she pleases.—Death is terrible to Cicero, courted by Cato, indifferent ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... to see what the two women were like. One was a woman of some twenty years of age, and the other was a peerlessly beautiful girl of sixteen; she was neither too fat nor too thin, neither too tall nor too short; her face was oval, like a melon-seed, and her complexion fair and white; her eyes were narrow and bright, her teeth small and even; her nose was aquiline, and her mouth delicately formed, with lovely red lips; her eyebrows were long and fine; she had a profusion of long black hair; ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... feeding that winter. He arrived at Sulphide by coach one morning, and before going on to Marsden's he stepped into Yetmore's store to buy himself a pair of riding gauntlets. Long John was in there, and seeing the well-dressed, dapper little man, with his white collar and eastern complexion—not burned red by the Colorado sun, as all of ours are—he winked to the assembled company as much as to say, "See me take a rise out of the tenderfoot," sidled up to Bertie, who was a foot shorter than himself, leaned over him, and putting on his worst expression, said, in a harsh, ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... attached. This he was inclined to jump at, but, at the time, public feeling ran too high to allow of his making a decision. The fact was that the political speeches delivered by Mr. Gladstone in the south of Scotland, during the months of November and December 1879, were putting a new complexion on affairs. They were reprinted all the world over, and they were profusely circulated among the Boers. The Boer leaders and obstructionists at once saw in this British statesman their saviour, and were convinced that, on the return of Mr. Gladstone to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... of the expression of natural things, which weighs, listens, penetrates, where the earlier mind passed roughly by, is a large element in the complexion of modern poetry. It has been remarked as a fact in mental history again and again. It reveals itself in many forms; but is strongest and most attractive in what is strongest and most attractive in modern literature. It is exemplified, almost equally, by writers as unlike each ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... impressive than charming. Her most striking quality was her freshness; her whole person bespoke physical and moral health. Her face was more gentle than striking; her eyes were very blue and full of animation; she had a rich complexion; her hair was light yellow, but not colorless; her nose, slightly aquiline; her red lips were a trifle thick, like those of all the Hapsburgs; her hands and feet were models of beauty; she had an impressive carriage, and was a little above the medium height. When she ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... to break an engagement; but he did it willingly. Around the hotel in Albemarle Street circled all his thoughts, and he desired nothing more than to direct his steps thither. Arriving with perfect punctuality, he was shown into Lady Ogram's drawing-room, and found Lady Ogram alone. Artificial complexion notwithstanding, the stern old visage wore to-day a look as of nature all but spent. At Lashmar's entrance, his hostess did not move; sunk together in her chair, head drooping forward, she viewed him from under her eyebrows: even to give ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... having obtained the child, soon drenched it with their lacteal streams. The king ascertaining everything, was filled with joy, and addressing that female cannibal disguised as a human being possessing the complexion of gold, asked,—O thou of the complexion of the filament of the lotus, who art thou that givest me this child? O auspicious one, thou seemest to me as a goddess ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... abstract, and 'you catch the sound as though he were communing with himself. It is as though you saw a bright picture through a filmy veil. His countenance, without being strictly handsome, is highly intellectual. His pale complexion, slightly tinged with olive, and dark hair, cut rather close to his head, with an eye of remarkable depth, still more impress you with the abstracted character of his disposition. The expression of his face would be sombre were it not for the striking eye, which has a remarkable fascination. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... but looked tough and wiry; he had a sandy complexion, with light hair and mustache. He had lost one eye, the other was that light gray colour that is usually associated with indomitable nerve. He had a shrewd, rather humorous expression, and gave one the impression of being very capable. Dressed in a neat ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... the Fathers; but the effect of their teaching is different because its proportions are altered. Along with their doctrines, there are other points and another spirit prominent in the writings of the earlier Christians, which give to the whole a different complexion. The Tracts for the Times do not appear to me to represent faithfully the language of Christian antiquity; they are ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... Banks, and service at last for the North. It was a wild, strange story of suffering, hardships, and wonderful escapes. Colonel Lunt said he never should have known the man, nor guessed at him, but for his eyes, he was so altered in every way,—so rough and strong-looking, with his complexion tanned and weather-beaten; and he had always been such a delicate, curled darling of indulgent parents! However, he looked twice the man he was before, Mrs. Lunt whispered me; and Percy could not take her eyes off him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... both in colour and taste. To the Norfolk people, it must be admitted, Camden gives the palm. The goodness of the soil of that country, he argues, 'may be gathered from hence, that the inhabitants are of a bright, clear complexion, not to mention their sharpness of wit and admirable quickness in the study of our common law. So that it is at present, and always has been, reputed the common nursery of lawyers, and even amongst the common people ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... dissolution, a number of persons, supposed to be the aboriginal natives, from their complexion, approaching the door of the assembly, gave the war-whoop, which was answered by a few in the galleries of the house, where the crowded assembly was convened. Silence was commanded, and prudent and peaceable deportment again enjoined. The savages repaired to the ships ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... people had then, as now, the reputation of being great beef-eaters; nor should we blame them, as the florid complexion the Englishman generally wears is mainly owing to the free use of this non-febrile and healthy food, washed down with a few potations ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... addressed some of the sonnets bore his own christian name of Will (see for a full examination of these sonnets Appendix VIII.) Further, it has been fantastically suggested that the line (xx. 7) describing the youth as 'A man in hue, all hues in his controlling' (i.e. a man in colour or complexion whose charms are so varied as to appear to give his countenance control of, or enable it to assume, all manner of fascinating hues or complexions), and other applications to the youth of the ordinary word 'hue,' imply that his ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... appointment?' inquired his friend, a town young man, with a Tussaud complexion and well-pencilled brows half way up his forehead, so that his upper eyelids appeared to possess ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... least) if we both prove bad correspondents. I am decidedly better, but I have been terribly cut up with business complications: one disagreeable, as threatening loss; one, of the most intolerable complexion, as involving me in dishonour. The burthen of consistent carelessness: I have lost much by it in the past; and for once (to my damnation) I have gained. I am sure you will sympathise. It is hard work to sleep; it is hard to be told you are a ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... smartness of expression, which might have been refined into a sharp edge, but for her natural hearty good-humor. Her head was smoothly formed, her face a full oval, her hair and eyes blond and blue in a strong light, but brown and steel-gray at other times, and her complexion of that ripe fairness into which a ruddier color will sometimes fade. Her form, neither plump nor spare, had yet a firm, elastic compactness, and her slightest movement conveyed a certain impression of decision ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... than enough, to set me on fire. I understood in a moment the information conveyed to me by my emotion—the Well-Beloved had reappeared. This second form in which it had pleased her to take up her abode was quite a grown young woman's, darker in complexion than the first. Her hair, also worn in a knot, was of an ordinary brown, and so, I think, were her eyes, but the niceties of her features were not to be gathered so cursorily. However, there sat my ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... know, I thought this young lady was French when I first saw her? she has got the black hair and eyelashes, and grey eyes, and colourless complexion which one meets with in some parts of France, and I knew Lady Cuxhaven was trying to find a well-educated girl who would be a pleasant ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... von Argerlich, pale-faced under his sun-burnt complexion. He had good cause to feel afraid, for he was by no means uncertain that the British possessed a record of his deeds—deeds that might be worthy of the German arms, but certainly would not be regarded ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... round and inscrutably alien. Your complexion is exquisite, matte gold over-lying blush pink, textured like ripe fruit. Your nose is flat, the perfect nose of China. Your eyes—your eyes are witchery! The blank curtain of your upper lid droops sharply on the iris, and when you smile the corners ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... cross-ways of the stream, will often change its whole course, and give it a different direction; haven't you? Don't you know that the smallest and most trivial event often contains colouring matter enough in it to change the whole complexion of our life? For instance, one Saturday, not long before I left school, and when I was a considerable junk of a boy, father gave me leave to go and spend the day with Eb Snell, the son of our neighbour old Colonel Jephunny Snell. We amused ourselves ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... propensity for scribbling, that mental automatism and single-mindedness of purpose constrained and ruled by a fixed idea. In addition to this, he displays the usual physical symptoms, such as insomnia, a pallid complexion, hot-headed, foulness of dress and person,[3101] with, during the last five months of his life, rashes and itching all over his body.[3102] Issuing from ill-matched stock, born of a mixed blood and tainted with serious ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... about that, I fancy," Meddoes answered lightly. "He ran some Austrian fellow off. She was quite the rage, in a small way, you know. Strange, demure-looking young woman, with wonderful complexion and eyes, and a style about her, too. Care for a ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... appearance of M. de Lesseps is very striking. Though long past middle age, he has a fresh and even youthful appearance. Both face and figure are well preserved; his slightly curling gray hair sets off in pleasing contrast his bronzed yet clear complexion, his bright eye, and genial smile. He is somewhat over the medium stature, possessed of a compact and well-knit frame, carries his head erect, and moves about with a buoyancy and animation perfectly ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... sight of her altered appearance; the day before her complexion had been of the most pallid hue; but now her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes enlivened with a false vivacity, an unusual fire. He was not well, his illness was apparent in his countenance, and he owned he had not closed his eyes all night; this roused her ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... occasion we saw a number of Indians, that hallooed to us from Elizabeth's Island. Both the men and the women were of the middle size, well-made, and with smooth black hair; they appear to be of an olive-coloured complexion, but rendered more red than they are naturally, by rubbing a red earth mixed with grease all over their bodies. They are very active and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... notwithstanding the indications of intellect, and of maturity of character, so much in advance of her tender age; her perfectly infantile features, and the extreme delicacy of their texture and complexion, bore witness to the truthfulness of the age, beneath her name on the little coffin: "six years and ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Complexions of his Hawks Castings and Mewtings, to judge of their Maladies, an assured sign of knowing whether they are sick or distempered in this. Take your Hawk, turning up her Train, if you see her Tuel or Fundament swelleth, or looketh red; Or, if her Eyes or Ears be of a fiery Complexion, it is an infallible sign of her being not well and in good health; and then Scouring is necessary first; which is done by Aloes Cicatrine, about the quantity of a Pea wrapt up in her Meat; and this avoids Grease, and ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... In reality, he was taking in every particular about Erica. He looked at her broad forehead, overshadowed by the thick smooth waves of short auburn hair, observed her golden-brown eyes which were just now as clear as amber; noted the creamy whiteness and delicate coloring of her complexion, which indeed defied criticism even the criticism of such a critical man as Mr. Fane-Smith. The nose was perhaps a trifle too long, the chin too prominent, for ideal beauty, but greater regularity of feature could but have rendered less quaint, less powerful, and less attractive the strangely ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... of Balmacminto, who lived at Ladykirk. She was wealthy, but had been so shy of men that she had escaped numberless wooers, sorely enamoured of the Balmacminto estates, and now at the age of forty-five showed the prettiest fringes of white curls in the world, a complexion of seventeen, and something so trustful and rare in the way of brown eyes that Raeburn, at the height of his fame, had painted her for the mere love of winsomeness in ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... was low of stature, but strong and active, of a ruddy complexion, with flaxen hair. His clothes were always of green cloth. His house was of the old fashion; in the midst of a large park, well stocked with deer, rabbits, and fish-ponds. He had a long narrow bowling green in it, and ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... was hardly a love match, but in Brohl, Son & Company's house such folly as love was not considered. Herr Marker was the son of a wholesale coffee-merchant, and was neither handsome nor distinguished-looking; he was small, thin, bandy-legged, with an unwholesome complexion, a ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... separated from him and from the rest of the world by the almost impenetrable barriers of her deafness, sat Jenny Mullion. She was perhaps thirty, had a tilted nose and a pink-and-white complexion, and wore her brown hair plaited and coiled in two lateral buns over her ears. In the secret tower of her deafness she sat apart, looking down at the world through sharply piercing eyes. What did she think ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... prevailed for woman to eat as little as possible; she was to have as "etherial" an appearance as possible; the conception of beauty in our upper class, even to-day, is to the effect that it is "vulgar" if a young girl or young woman have a blooming complexion, red cheeks and a vigorous frame. It is also known, that with numberless women, under otherwise equal social conditions with men, the food is greatly inferior. Out of ignorance and acquired prejudices, women expect incredible things of themselves, and the men encourage them ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show self-control: you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. Then they must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was of so highly amorous a complexion that the distance between Tricca and Paphlagonia was no bar to his union with Alexander's mother. A Sibylline prophecy had also ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... one evening when the calm sea as it heaved seemed in places to glint forth all the glorious colours of a beautiful pearl shell, and the east wind was of a different complexion to that familiar to an English lad, for it was soft, balmy and sweet, suggestive of its having been blowing gently for miles and miles ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... came quickly up, and held out his hand. He was dressed in Egyptian costume, and with his dark complexion and black eyes might easily have passed ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... thing—not a derned thing! Do you want me to get up and leave Miss Mirandy and do things myself? We've got to settle about the colour of this gown. How'd you feel now, if it wasn't becoming to her complexion? Just help yourself to that plug of tobacco, Hance, and lay your ten cents in the cash drawer, and then you can weigh out that butter ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... & face are fled, And my revolted form bespeaks me dead, For fair, and shining age, has now put on A bloodless, funeral complexion. My skin's dry'd up, my nerves unpliant are, And my poor limbs my nails plow up and tear. My chearful eyes now with a constant spring Of tears bewail their own sad suffering; And those soft lids, that once secured my eye Now rude, and bristled grown, do drooping lie, Bolting ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... described as a model son, an affectionate brother and a faithful friend. His eyes were brown; his hair was chestnut, luxuriant and as soft as silk. His complexion was of transparent delicacy; his voice subdued and musical. He moved with grace. Born near Warsaw, in 1809, he was brought up in his father's school with the sons of aristocrats. He had the manners of an aristocrat, and was careful ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... alias Fooe, is charged with writing a scandalous and seditious pamphlet, entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. He is a middled siz'd spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark brown-coloured hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth; was born in London, and, for many years an hose-factor in Freeman's Yard, Cornhill, and is now owner of the brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort, in Essex. Whoever ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... exchanging remarks with some other guest, secretly delighted with the skill which Katie showed in making herself agreeable to bores. Her bright brown hair would have gleamed in the sunlight without the gold-dust it was powdered with. Her complexion, one of Titian's warm blondes, was at its perfection; her eyes were grave enough for steady expression, and at times for a touch of pathos; it was at the sudden curving of her lips they filled with light, which ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... these liberal principles, Congress, in organizing colonies, bound themselves to impart to their inhabitants all the privileges of coequal States.... These privileges are not confined to any particular country or complexion. They are communicable to the emancipated slave, for in the new State of Ohio, slavery ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... fell a victim to all these varieties of torment. Like many contemplative men, who, when lost in thought, acquire a habit of mechanical motion, he had a mania for fidgeting with his shoes, and destroyed them very quickly. His girlish complexion, the skin of his ears and lips, cracked with the least cold. His soft, white hands grew red and swollen. He had perpetual colds. Thus he was a constant sufferer till he became inured to school-life. Taught at last by cruel ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... fine, but a trifle too pointed about the nose to be classically perfect. The corners of his sensitive mouth were depressed. His eyes were ruddy brown and troubled, and the left one was round with more of wonder in it than its fellow. His complexion was dull and yellowish. That, as I have explained, on account of those civil disturbances. He was, in the technical sense of the word, clean shaved, with a small sallow patch under the right ear and a cut on the chin. His brow ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... who fixed sheep-bones beneath his feet, to course more smoothly over the frozen sound, there can be no doubt that winter sports answer their presumed purpose. They keep up that glow which only exercise in the open air can give, and promote the health which shows itself in the complexion. It is the young lady who interprets literally the Scotch invitation "come into the fire," and who spoils the backs of library novels by holding them too near the comfortable hearth, she it is who suffers from the ignoble and unbecoming liberties that winter takes with the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... more animated and decisive, his whole manner more energetic. His face was slightly careworn, his brow had lost something of its unruffled smoothness, and the fresh carnation tints had faded out of his complexion; but the wealth of expression his countenance had gained might atone for heavier losses. In repose, his features wore a shade of habitual sadness; but that disappeared the moment he spoke, and was rather an air of reflection than of sorrow. Indeed, all gloom had vanished from his spirit soon after ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... concerning the honor of women" can hope for but little respect from the civilized world, when it confines itself entirely to the women who happen to be white. Virtue knows no color line, and the chivalry which depends upon complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... and pelted him with it. He gulped. Ordinary speech wasn't going to be adequate. She belonged to this infernal age that lived by phrases. If he told her he was still of the opinion that the world was a disordered place of torment you could only exist in by ignoring its real complexion, she would merely consign him to a cell more scientifically padded, and stand gazing at him through the bars, in solemn sympathy. "So I've gone cafard," he said slowly, looking down at the fire and wondering how to answer a fool according to her folly. Or was she incredibly right? Had ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... grease better than anything else will: but some people will perhaps be somewhat afraid thus to wet the surface, on account of the nature of the paints. The tongue may, however, be used at any rate for the flesh parts, and a small wet sponge can be employed for the rest of the picture. Wet the complexion over with the tongue, then wash in the shadows with some flesh shadow mixture, to which a little canvasine medium and water have been added, and wipe it off again at once. Pay attention to the shadows that they are of the right tints: for fair children ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... only by a slight bow. Her thoughts were instantly driven back to the time when Mr. Bingley's name had been the last mentioned between them; and, if she might judge by his complexion, his mind ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... been taking advantage of its master's slumbers to make a hearty feed on the grass that grew around. He was an active young fellow, of middle height, but powerful in build, and proud and sullen-looking in expression. His complexion, which may once have been fine, had been tanned by the sun till it was darker than his hair. One of his hands grasped his horse's halter. In the other he held a ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... herself. In appearance Miss Fewbanks was a charming girl of the typical English type. She was of medium height, slight, but well-built, with fair hair and dark blue eyes, an imperious short upper lip and a determined chin, and the clear healthy complexion of a girl who has lived much out of doors. The inspector noted all these details; noted, too, that although her breast heaved with agitation she had herself well under control; her pretty head was erect, and one of her small hands was tightly ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... great Whig family can ever be kept together, or that Whig counsels can maintain their ascendency. This is perfectly plain and obvious. It was a party, from the first, made up of different opinions and principles, of gentlemen of every political complexion, uniting to make a change in the administration. They were men of strong State-rights principles, men of strong federal principles, men of extreme tariff, and men of extreme anti-tariff notions. What ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... serious face was chiefly notable for eyes of darkest grey, under brows that were firmly arched and almost black. The hair was a dark brown, the complexion somewhat too pale for beauty. Indeed, that low-toned colouring made some people blind to the fine and regular modelling of the high-bred face; while there were others who saw no charm in a countenance which seemed too thoughtful ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... (to preserve it, as he said) shaved over the temples. Still the glossy dark-brown curls, clustering over his head, gave the finish to its beauty. When to this is added that his nose, though handsomely was rather thickly shaped, that his teeth were white and regular, and his complexion colorless, as good an idea perhaps as it is in the power of mere words to convey may ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the victim of Edward, Henry VI., Henry VIII., Jane Seymour and Charles I. The account of the appearance of Charles' remains when his tomb was examined in 1813 by Sir Henry Halford, accompanied by several of the royal family, is worth quoting. "The complexion of the face was dark and discolored. The forehead and temples had lost little or nothing of their muscular substance. The cartilage of the nose was gone; but the left eye, in the moment of first exposure, was open and full, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... grace of a mountain lion. An old greasy wide-brimmed gray felt hat, pinched to a "Montana peak," was shoved back on his curly black head; his shirt, of light gray wool, had the sleeves rolled to the elbow, revealing powerful forearms tanned to the complexion of those of the Indian. He seemed to revel in the airy freedom of a pair of dirty old white canvas trousers, and despite the presence of a long-barreled blue gun swinging at his hip he would have impressed an observer as the embodiment ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... approached. She thought to herself she should look so pretty in the moonlight, that he would forget to chide her. And certainly she was a pleasant vision. Her fairy figure, enveloped in soft white folds of muslin, her delicate complexion shaded by curls so fair that they seemed a portion of the fleecy nubia, were so perfectly in unison with the mild radiance of the evening, that she seemed like an embodied portion of the moonlight. Gerald absented himself so long that ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... good and pretty, with a peach-bloom complexion, soft blue eyes, and curling auburn hair. Still those were articles that could not well be appraised, as I thought the first minute after we were seated in the parlor. But she had over her shoulders ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... raven hair, Spreading is the parting straight, Mottled the complexion fair, Halting is the ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... mother picture him in whatever color she might, the vain boy would go on hankering after the red moccasins all the same; till, by and by, they took such hold on his fancy that his thoughts by day and his dreams by night assumed the same complexion, and became, so to speak, as red as the reddest of leather. Indeed, there were moments when it did seem to Sprigg as if he would be willing to part with one of his legs for a pair of ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... seemed not to be novices in drinking. The Commodore excused himself in this part of the entertainment, under the pretence of illness; but there being another gentleman present, of a florid and jovial complexion, the chief mandarin clapped him on the shoulder, and told him by the interpreter that certainly he could not plead sickness, and therefore insisted on his bearing him company; and that gentleman perceiving that after they had despatched ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... case with the good-looking?"—the other took it up. "No, indeed, it isn't: that's one thing Cocker's has taught me. Still, there are some people who have everything. Lady Bradeen, at any rate, has enough: eyes and a nose and a mouth, a complexion, a figure—" ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... the problem of Betty's education, Stephen," she admitted, "Betty is a strange child...all Churchill. Her poor father indulged her in everything, and she has a will of her own, I assure you. I have really no control over her, whatever. She does as she pleases, and is ruining her complexion by running and galloping out of doors the whole time. Not that she had much complexion to start with. The Churchills never had, you know."...Sara cast a complacent glance at her delicately tinted reflection in the mirror.... "I tried to ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of art. The most definite instance of it is the dressing of characters of peasantry in an opera or ballet scene; and the walls of our exhibitions are full of works of art which "exalt nature" in the same way, not by revealing what is great in the heart, but by smoothing what is coarse in the complexion. There is nothing, I believe, so vulgar, so hopeless, so indicative of an irretrievably base mind, as this species of Purism. Of healthy Purism carried to the utmost endurable length in this direction, exalting the heart first, and the features with it, perhaps the most characteristic instance ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... refined domestic circle, he was the most charming of guests, hosts or companions. A short and fragile, but well-proportioned frame; a shapely and compact head; a face beaming with intellectual light, with rare, almost feminine beauty of feature and complexion; a fascinating courtesy of manner; and a fulness, swiftness and elegance of silvery speech,—such was the irresistible "mortal mixture of earth's mould" that men named De Quincey. He possessed in a high degree what James Russell Lowell called "the grace of perfect breeding, everywhere ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the two Hammon was the more blameworthy; but his domestic unhappiness in a measure canceled his guilt—so, at least, said the code under which Lorelei lived. What concerned her far more than the moral complexion of the liaison, was her brother's connection with the unlawful scheme of extortion. Jim, she saw, had gone wrong with a vengeance, and the consequences to him troubled her, for in spite of all that he might be or do she cherished a sisterly affection for him. Family ties were very real and very ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Walker was prepossessing, being six feet in height, slender and well proportioned. His hair was loose, and his complexion was dark. His son, the only child he left, is now 18 years of age, and is said to resemble his father; he now resides at Charlestown, Mass., with his mother, Mrs. Dewson. Mr. Walker was a faithful member ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... not really know what I wanted; and that graven image of an English butler set me back so; and then I never saw such a house as that. It is sinful for one man to live there all alone. Powers alive! How well that house would suit my complexion! But I don't believe I'd take it with ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... of that kind might mean little or much: but what he proceeded to remark of the ordinary Parisian workpeople and smaller shopkeepers, had a more grave complexion; and may be thought perhaps still to yield some illustration, not without value, to the story of the quarter of a century that has passed since, and even to some of the appalling events of its latest year ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the flat of one of his schoolfellows and came out, an hour later, irrecognizable, rigged out as an Englishman of thirty, in a brown check suit, with knickerbockers, woolen stockings and a cap, a high-colored complexion and a red wig. He jumped on a bicycle laden with a complete painter's outfit and rode off to ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... His complexion was as fine as Elfride's own; the pink of his cheeks as delicate. His mouth as perfect as Cupid's bow in form, and as cherry-red in colour as hers. Bright curly hair; bright sparkling blue-gray eyes; a boy's blush and manner; neither whisker nor moustache, unless a little light-brown fur ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... like other girls," still ran in Ruth's mind, and going to the wardrobe, she selected her maroon colored merino dress, because Guy said it suited her complexion. ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... that the complexion of the Indian has had the tendency to grow darker and darker, from his having inhabited smoky, bark wigwams, and having held cleanliness in no very exceptional honor; and the contention is sought to be made good by the citing of a case of a young, fair-skinned ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Marya Lanois, a lithe, warm, golden creature with greenish golden eyes that slanted, and the strawberry complexion that goes ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... her. During her lonely confinement, which often lasts seven years, the girl occupies herself in weaving mats or with other handiwork. Her bodily growth is stunted by the long want of exercise, and when, on attaining womanhood, she is brought out, her complexion is pale and wax-like. She is now shown the sun, the earth, the water, the trees, and the flowers, as if she were newly born. Then a great feast is made, a slave is killed, and the girl is smeared with his blood. In Ceram girls at puberty were formerly ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... arrived, and likewise her brother, the artist. Miss Balch was a lady of almost crystalline refinement. She was tall and fair, with a delicacy of complexion that stood in no need of retailed bloom. She might have passed for the daughter of a kindly old Saxon chieftain—it was, indeed, generally known that she sprang from the seed of Saxon kings—who, firm in the belief that no young man was her equal in birth or behaviour, had ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... this time. All the beauty of her large, soft, melancholy, brown eyes beamed on me. Her delicate complexion became suddenly suffused with a lovely rosy flush. Her glorious black hair—no! I will make an effort, I will suppress my ecstasies. Let me only say that she evidently recognized me. Will you believe it?—I felt myself coloring ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... In our bashfulness about these things we talk an abominable lot of nonsense; all this uproar one hears about the Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit and the future of the lower races takes on an entirely different complexion directly we face known, if indelicate, facts. Most of the human types, that by civilized standards are undesirable, are quite willing to die out through such suppressions if the world will only encourage them a little. They multiply ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the 23d of this Instant January, from Silas Crispin of Burlington, Taylor, a Servant Man named Joseph Morris, by Trade a Taylor, aged about 22 Years, of a middle Stature, swarthy Complexion, light gray Eyes, his Hair clipp'd off, mark'd with a large pit of the Small Pox on one Cheek near his Eye, had on when he went away a good Felt Hat, a yelowish Drugget Coat with Pleits behind, an old Ozenbrigs Vest, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... contrary, I should be charmed," replied the Countess. She flushed, and her eyes brightened. Virginia looked at her admiringly, yet sharply, and said to herself: "If that rich, dark complexion of yours is make-up—as it must be to prove my theory right—then it's the cleverest make-up that any woman ever ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... customer, they begged Mr. Houston to excuse them for a few moments, which he did very willingly, and thus was afforded an opportunity to observe the two men closely. Mr. Blaisdell had rather a long and narrow face, and what is called a "sandy" complexion; his hair, face and small goatee (he wore no mustache) were all of the same, light, indefinite color; his eyes were small and pale blue, while his lips were thin and tightly compressed. His face, when at rest, had a sanctimonious expression which was sadly at variance with ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... grounds of their opinions. The unwillingness of the human intellect and conscience, in their present state of "anarchy," to sign their own abdication, lie calls "the insurrection of the living against the dead." To this complexion has Positive Philosophy come ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... mountain-town had all that peculiar beauty of form and attitude which appears in the studies of the antique; and as they poised on their heads their copper water-jars of the old Etruscan pattern, they seemed as if they might be statues of golden bronze, had not the warm tints of their complexion, the brilliancy of their large eyes, and the bright, picturesque colors of their attire given the richness of painting to their classic outlines. Then, too, the men, with their finely-moulded limbs, their figures so straight and strong ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... girl whose conduct was so little likely to ensure affection and respect; and although the pain became every moment more troublesome, she forbore most magnanimously to complain, until the changes in her complexion induced Mrs. Harewood to say,—"I think, Matilda, we had better apply the ointment again to your wound—you are still suffering from the ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... olive complexion proclaimed him to be a half-caste, and whose language showed that he had received at least the rudiments of education, stretched ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... figure, indeed a perfect Magnum among men, with a very apoplectic brevity of neck, and a logwood complexion,—and though a staunch Church-of-England-man, he might have been mistaken, from his predilection for the Port, to be a true Mussulman. To hear him discourse upon the age of his wines—the 'pinhole,' ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... affection that charmed and comforted them. She lived in strict solitude in a small, poor, abandoned apartment in {521} her father's house, and spent her time there in manual labor and prayer. Being very beautiful, she begged of God to change her complexion, and her face became so pale and thin, that she could scarce be known for the same person. Yet a certain majesty of virtue, shining in her countenance, gave her charms conducive to the edification of others by the sweetness, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... tradition by not looking in the least alike. Anne, who was always called Nan, was very pretty, with velvety nut-brown eyes and silky nut-brown hair. She was a very blithe and dainty little maiden—Blythe by name and blithe by nature, one of her teachers had said. Her complexion was quite faultless, much to her ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hair, very, very blue eyes and a lovely complexion. The Indians were crazy about her. It was her fairness they loved. She was engaged to Mr. Furnell and wore his ring. The Indian braves used to ask her for this and for a lock of her hair to braid in with theirs but of course, she would never let ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... hear from Tom?" asked the cousin, feeling about on the mantel for a match. He was a full-bodied, handsome, amiable-looking old fellow, whose breath came in quick sighs with this light exertion. He had a blond complexion, and what was left of his hair, a sort of ethereal down on the top of his head, and some cherished fringes at the temples, was turning the yellowish grey that blond ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... Hydah Indians, a very remarkable race of people. The most common type of the adult unmixed Hydah is about five feet, seven inches in height, thick-set, large-boned, with fairly regular broad features, coal-black hair and eyes, and a bronze complexion. They have generally—both men and women—finely developed breasts and fore-arms, caused by their almost daily use of the canoe paddle from infancy. A few have well-formed legs, though the greater number are defective in this respect, resulting from much sitting, or rather squatting in ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... which seem to point to a remote connexion with the Caucasic races. Such are a very full beard, shaggy or wavy black or dark-brown hair, sometimes covering the back and chest; a somewhat fair or even white complexion, large nose, straight eyes and regular features, often quite handsome and of European type. They seem to be a last remnant of the Neolithic peoples, who ranged in prehistoric times across the northern hemisphere from the British Isles to Manchuria and Japan. They are bear-worshippers, and have other ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... older since Mountjoy had last seen her. Her artificial complexion was gone. The discarded rouge that had once overlaid her cheeks, through a long succession of years, had left the texture of the skin coarse, and had turned the colour of it to a dull yellowish tinge. Her hair, once so skilfully darkened, was now ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... her crimson merino morning-dress, with white linen cuffs and collar, a costume that well became her olive complexion and dark hair ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... master and slave at the same time; the former was an Arab, hard at dealing, but, as I did not wish to drive a bargain, I agreed to the price, thirty-five dollars, 7l. The name of the woman was Barrake; she was about twenty-two years of age, brown in complexion, fat, and strong; rather tall, and altogether she was a fine powerful-looking woman, but decidedly not pretty; her hair was elaborately dressed in hundreds of long narrow curls, so thickly smeared with castor oil that the grease had covered her naked shoulders; in addition to this, as she ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... thoughts of both men were of a very serious complexion, and gave them food for much ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... wonderful deep blue eyes, his dark brown hair thick upon his head, waving and luxuriant like a fine mattress, his tall, slender, alert figure, his bony, capable hands, which neither sun nor wind ever browned, his nervous yet interesting mouth, and his long Roman nose, set in a complexion rich in its pink-and-cream hardness and health—all this made him a figure good ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the beautiful spring-time of May. There were, indeed, some suspicious appearances of a near approach to forty, if not two or three years beyond it; but these were fondly ascribed to his foreign travels in distant and insalubrious climes; he had acquired his duskiness of complexion, and his strength of feature and violence of gesture, and his profusion of beard, in Egypt and Syria, in exploring the catacombs of the one country, and bowing at the shrines of the other. On the other hand, the brilliancy of his eye, the melody ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... for his hair was prematurely white,—not gray, but white as snow. But his eyebrows were still jet black, and his eyes, equally dark, were serenely bright. His forehead was magnificent,—lofty and spacious, and with only one slight wrinkle between the brows. His complexion was sunburnt, showing no sign of weak health. The outline of his lips was that which I have often remarked in men accustomed to great dangers, and contracting in such dangers the habit of self-reliance,—firm ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the tints from which I might select, there is no hue so livid, so jaundice-like, as Alva's complexion, and the colour he is wont to paint with. He regards every one as a blasphemer or traitor, for under this head they can all be racked, impaled, quartered, and burnt at pleasure. The good I have accomplished here appears as nothing seen from a distance, just because it is good. ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Ferrier, in his London frock-coat, appeared rounder and heavier than ever but for the contradictory vigor and lightness of his step, the shrewd cheerfulness of the eyes. It had been a hard week in Parliament, however, and his features and complexion showed signs of ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... found that he had all along been under the power of enchantment; that his passion for the white mouse was entirely fictitious, and not the genuine complexion of his soul; he now saw, that his earnestness after mice was an illiberal amusement, and much more becoming a rat-catcher than a prince. All his meannesses now stared him in the face; he begged the princess's pardon an hundred ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown
... going home for his midday meal, and she stopped him. 'Charles!' she said. She presented to his appreciative eyes a very elegant figure in the habit looped up to show her high slim boots, with her thick plait of hair under the hard hat, her complexion defying the whiteness of her stock; while to her he appeared with something of the aspect of an angel in a long top coat and a hat at the back of his head. 'Charles,' she said again, tapping her boot with her whip, 'I'm in ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... presentable that she took him into her friendship at once. He was that kind of chap anyhow, and in the very first greeting she almost found herself calling him Jack. Just behind him, however, was a little, dried-up man with a complexion the color of old parchment, with sandy, stubby hair shot with gray, and a stubby gray beard shot with red. His lips were a wide straight line, as grim as judgment day. He walked with a slight stoop, but with a quick staccato step which betokened ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... gets meat (outside of soup) but once a week, and the paupers "have nearly all that pallid, pasty complexion which is ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... heat between the sections during twenty-five years, had effected every portion of the Federal system, and created conditions favorable to a violent explosion. Sectional differences of a political and industrial complexion, forty years had sufficed to develop. Sectional differences of a moral and social character forty years had also sufficed to generate. To kindle all those differences, all that mass of combustible feelings and forces into a general ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... of the school if she'd any idea how to use her advantages," sighed Peachy. "Give me her complexion and that classical nose and—well, I guess I'd blaze out into a cinema star before I'd done with life. I hope she won't be all day raking a few girls together. She's not what you'd call quick. I've misjudged her. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... chance to have red hair, big mouths, or mis-shapen feet. If you will pardon personal mention, I would say that in my business as a furniture mover, few customers, indeed, have I among my own people; nor do I ask to remove any man's goods because of the color of my complexion or the texture of my hair; but because I have put brains into my humble calling and made the business of moving furniture a science. What is true in this instance is true in all others, where progress is ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Yasuaki understood well that men who profess to hate women become the slave of the fair sex when their alleged repugnance is overcome. He therefore set himself to lead the shogun into licentious habits, and the lecture-meetings ultimately changed their complexion. Tsunayoshi, giving an ideograph from his name to Yasuaki, called him Yoshiyasu, and authorized him to assume the family name of Matsudaira, conferring upon him at the same time a new domain in the province of Kai yielding 150,000 koku. Thenceforth, the administration fell entirely into the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... temperament and of a tolerably passionate nature. But you are not to blame for this, for it was entailed upon you with your Hohenzollern blood. You are the worthy descendant of your ancestor Albert Achilles; and be glad of this, sir, for by sluggish blood and soft complexion great things have ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... general topic as a pretty woman hates a general mourning when black does not become her complexion." ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... you know of the Princess Caprara at the end of it all? You have told me this morning all you know. I will go bail if the whole truth were out the matter would take a very different complexion." ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... the glass, and looked attentively at the reflection of his own face. No! those were not the features of a man whose life was near its close; the eye was bright, and the complexion indicated vigor and health. Still, it was not a young face. Thought and care had traced their furrows round the mouth and about the temples, and the general expression was one of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... have seen her," returned the girl, "and I must confess, I think she is perfectly lovely. She has such beautiful eyes, such a fair, delicate complexion, and is so peculiarly dainty every way. I do not blame Sir William for falling ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... invested in land. Thinks it will make him rich. He's in poor health too—kidney trouble—and Bim has a baby with all the rest—a beautiful boy. I went up-stairs and saw him asleep in his cradle. Looks like her. Hair as yellow as gold, light complexion, blue eyes, handsome as ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... Gothenburg in forty hours." I listened attentively, and could not even hear her say "We will visit the Church of the Holy Ghost at two." It is strange how the stress of circumstances alters the complexion of a conversation book! All the evening she had studied Swedish, and yet suddenly confronted by a Swedish lady bathing in our kitchen, dish-toweled but unashamed, all she could find to say was "How disgusting!" and "How disgraceful!" ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... young lady, she was so extremely juvenile in her appearance; and her lameness, by giving her an air of childish dependence, added to the illusion caused by her fair, clustering ringlets and infantine rosiness of complexion. She wanted to bring me forward;—she coaxed, caressed, and playfully threatened, nor desisted till her mother ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... shame it has got to be sold," said Gladys bluntly. There was something very taking about her, in spite of red hair and an indifferent complexion; she had honest blue eyes and a pleasant voice. She looked at Kettering a great deal as she spoke; perhaps she noticed how often his eyes rested on Christine. When presently they went out into the garden, she walked between ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... Frau Barbara, that you were never more beautiful and charming than just at this very time? Perhaps it is the mourning which is so becoming to your pink-and-white complexion and the somewhat subdued lustre of your golden hair. But why do I feed your vanity with such speeches? Because I think that our gracious lord, who for many a long day has not bestowed even the least side glance upon any of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seems to me just her mother over again. She don't look like her. I think her hair and complexion comes from the Badger blood; my mother had that sort o' hair and skin,—but then she has ways like Naomi,—and it seems as if the Lord had kind o' given Naomi back to us; so I hope she's goin' to be ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
