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Blues   /bluz/   Listen
Blues

noun
1.
A type of folksong that originated among Black Americans at the beginning of the 20th century; has a melancholy sound from repeated use of blue notes.
2.
A state of depression.  Synonyms: blue devils, megrims, vapors, vapours.



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"Blues" Quotes from Famous Books



... an orchestra clashed out the latest Blues and in the cleared space couples were speeding up and down to the syncopations, while between tables agile waiters balanced overloaded trays or whisked silver covers off scarlet lobsters or lit mysterious little ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... Marian. You are in the blues. Why dont you go to Ned, and tell him that he is a cast-iron walking machine, and that you are unhappy, and want the society of a flesh-and-blood man? Have a furious scene with him, and all ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... the great landscape colorist. In the same way the blue of distance, however intense, is not the blue of a bright blue flower, and it is not distinguished from it by different texture merely, but by a certain intermixture and under current of warm color, which is altogether wanting in many of the blues of Fielding's distances; and so of every bright distant color; while in foreground where colors may be, and ought to be, pure, yet that any of them are expressive of light is only to be felt where there is the accurate fitting of them to their relative shadows which we find in ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... beautiful tall trees, high box hedges, and distant, rolling downs golden with grain and sunlight. Also, whenever our road drew near the railway, we'd caught exciting glimpses of long trains "camouflaged" in blurry greens and blues, to hide themselves from aeroplanes. Nevertheless, Mother Beckett had begun to droop. Her blue eyes hardly brightened to interest when Brian said we were in the famous region of the Meuse, part of the Austrian ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... liqueurs were prepared; and Dr Feasible's heart failed him, when he witnessed the ingress and egress of the pastrycooks, with their boxes on their heads. Among his company he had already mustered up five celebrated blues; four ladies of quality, of better reputation than Dr Feasible's; seven or eight baronets and knights; a bishop of Fernando Po; three or four general officers; and a dozen French and German visitors ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... care for all this sort of thing, of course; he had had quite enough of it as a subaltern, dancing about London all night, and going everywhere—all very well for a young fellow, but you got tired of it. Still, there was a certain flavour about a Court Ball, even for a one-time subaltern in the Blues, who had taken part in everything that was going on. Other people scrambled for such things—they had to if they wanted them, and why they should want them if they didn't come to them naturally, the Squire couldn't tell. To a man of the importance of Edward Clinton of Kencote, they came ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... required. With very strong solutions a large portion of the Prussian blue formed comes off in the washwater, and when printing from glass negatives the fine lines and lighter tints are apt to suffer. The blue color, however, will be deep and the whites clear. With weak solutions the blues will be fainter and the whites bluish. Heavily sized paper gives the best results. The addition of a little mucilage to the solution is sometimes an advantage, producing the same results as strength of solution, by increasing the amount adhering to the paper. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... I had twenty accidents with my chaise, and once saw one of the postilions with the wheel upon his body; he came off with making his nose bleed. My castle, like a little ark, is surrounded with many waters, (and yesterday morning I saw the Blues wade half way up ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... sitting now on the bench round the circle where the fountain was tossing high its jets in play with the sunshine. She was looking very much the woman of the fashionable world, and the soft grays, shading into blues, that dominated her costume gave her an exceeding and entrancing seeming of fragility. Arkwright thought her eyes wonderful; the sweet, powerful yet delicate odor of the lilac sachet powder with which her every garment was saturated set upon his ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... one can look sensible with a nose that turns straight up, and I will have bright colors to wear—I was brought up on wincey, color of mud, and all these London-smoke, battleship-gray colors make me sick. I want reds and blues and greens, and I am gradually ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... La Vieuville, I feel some respect for this Gaston. He behaved well in his command of Guemenee. He had three hundred Blues neatly shot after making ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... reliance must not be placed on its accuracy, for the analysis of the several compounds is too difficult for the results to be fully admitted. The residue left in the retort speedily turns to one of the blues, identical with, or allied to, Prussian blue. This is at best a disagreeable process to conduct, for the hydrocyanic acid formed adheres so strongly to the glass, that, instead of being freely given off, bubbles are evolved suddenly with such explosive violence as occasionally ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... and saw that her mother was sitting in her usual place beside the water. Catharine's hands were resting on a newspaper they had evidently just put down, and she was gazing absently across the lights and shadows, the limpid blues and browns of the tree-locked pool ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. It is the half hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Inn—still wie die Nacht, tief wie das Meer—begins to glow with mauves and apple greens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the world, there are touches of piercing primary colours—red, yellow, violet. Far below, hugging the winding river, lies little Innsbruck, with its checkerboard parks and Christmas ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... age, from the study or stage, From Bar or from Bench—high and low! A green you must use as a cure for the blues - You drive them away as you go. We're outward bound on a long, long round, And it's time to be up and away: If worry and sorrow come back with the morrow, At least ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle

... thinking that he was safe in some one of the other boats, the rough sailors had gone off without him, and he was left alone. So for a whole week he had stayed with the ship, like a whisper of its vanished life amid the blues of a deep calm. And the birds came to the ship only to desert it again quickly, because it stood so still ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman

... Lancaster Gate could ever be a sign of their freedom. They were upstairs, in one of the smaller apartments of state, a room arranged as a boudoir, but visibly unused—it defied familiarity—and furnished in the ugliest of blues. He had immediately looked with interest at the closed doors, and Kate had met his interest with the assurance that it was all right, that Aunt Maud did them justice—so far, that was, as this particular time was concerned; ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... power, and on occasion to play a very respectable part in conversation. She had far more Latin and English scholarship than fell to the lot of most ladies of her day, and wit enough to preserve her from degenerating like some of the "blues," into that most offensive of beings—a feminine prig. Her marriage had been one of convenience, and her husband's want of sympathy, and jealousy of any interference in business matters, forced her, she says, to take to literature as her sole ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... not only that, but true blues. (Three cheers for the Castle Cumber True Blue.) And what's a true blue, gentlemen? I ask you zealously—I ask you as a gentleman—I ask you as a man—I ask you determinedly, as one that will do or die, if it comes to that'—(here there was a thump on the ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... Decorated to the Perpendicular style, are uninterrupted by any chancel arch, and with the clerestory windows sweep from end to end of the building. The east window is filled with stained glass of the richest tints, the blues and greens being particularly striking. This glass has a history. It was made at Gouda in Holland, and was a present from the magistrates of Dort to Henry VIII. for the chapel of Whitehall Palace. The King, however, gave it to Waltham Abbey (doubtless in exchange for something else). The glass suffered ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... a reverential attitude helps to arouse real reverence, and a smiling face and cheery tone actually bring cheerfulness in a case of the blues. Little children are so imitative that they quickly copy the outward manifestations of a feeling, and the inner state tends to follow. This is further a reason for leading them into acts of loving service, that love and kindred ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux

... 'Lamentations of Jeremiah' are not the most cheerful of reading, and Mr Marchurst, imbued with the sadness of the Jewish prophet, drinking strong tea and sitting in a darkened room, was rapidly sinking into a very dismal frame of mind, which an outsider would have termed a fit of the blues. He sat in his straight-backed chair taking notes of such parts of the 'Lamentations' as would tend to depress the spirits of the 'Elect' on Sunday, and teach them to regard life in a proper and ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... balance of which we are speaking is much felt, the scale here being between warm and cold colours. If you divide the solar spectrum roughly into half, you will have the reds, oranges, and yellows on one side, and the purples, blues, and greens on the other, the former being roughly the warm and the latter the cold colours. The clever manipulation of the opposition between these warm and cold colours is one of the chief means used in giving vitality to ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... a great singer, became silent. Jim Crofts was in his bunk "down" with the scurvy, and stout Sam Baker, who was a capital teller of stories, could not pluck up spirit enough to open his mouth. "In fact," as Mr Dicey said, "they all had a most 'orrible fit o' the blues!" The captain and officers were in better health and spirits than the men, though they all fared alike at the same table, and did the same kind of work, whatever that might chance to be. The officers, however, ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne

... colour, perceived from the first and held to the last the fact that shadows, though of course darker than the lights with reference to which they are shadows, are not therefore necessarily less vigorous colours, but perhaps more vigorous. Some of the most beautiful blues and purples in nature, for instance, are those of mountains in shadow against amber sky; and the darkness of the hollow in the centre of a wild rose is one glow of orange fire, owing to the quantity of ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... stupid and the long sands desolate; while we remembered what delightful walks we had taken out Beacon Street to the three roads, and over the Cambridge Bridge. Perhaps we should even be ashamed of the dear old church for being so out of fashion. We should have the blues dreadfully, and think there was no society here, and wonder why we had to live ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... to state that the designs on the bricks are entirely destitute of chiaroscuro. The browns and blacks, like the blues, yellows, and reds, are simply used to express local color. They are employed for hair, eyes, eye-brows, and sometimes for bows and sandals. The other colors are applied as follows: yellow is used for flesh, for shafts of weapons, for horse trappings, sometimes for horses, for chariots, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... remarked the vicar. "I remember once hearing that Sir Baldwin Gibson and Lord Edgeware were the two fairest judges on the bench; and why, do you suppose? Because they are both old athletes and Old Blues, trained from small boys to give ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... Richard William Alexander Dwyer Was footman to Justinian Stubbs Esquire; But when John Dwyer listed in the blues, ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... behind her should follow the other players in the order of their scenes. This preserves the order of the epochs also, and makes an excellent color scheme—the tawny yellows and reds of the Indian garb, the dark Puritan costumes, the pinks and blues of the Colonial period as against the more somber colors of the settler's homespun, etc., etc. In order to give such a procession its full effect it should not seem too stiff and premeditated. Let ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... see, Rosalind spent the afternoon with me yesterday, and I felt suddenly that it wasn't for me to be stuck up about her—what am I too but the pampered female idler, taking good things without earning them? It made me shudder. Hence this fit of blues. The pampered, lazy, brainless animal—it is such a terrific sight when in human form. Rosalind talked about Nan, Pamela. In her horrible way—you know. Hinting that she isn't alone in Rome, but with ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... the crimson chapels, and rows of little red houses with amber chimney-pots, and the gold angel of the blackened Town Hall topping the whole. The sedate reddish browns and reds of the composition, all netted in flowing scarves of smoke, harmonised exquisitely with the chill blues of the chequered sky. Beauty was ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... named the few soothing blues that abound in the ceilings, in the deep recesses of the walls, and the coffered arches, serving as backgrounds for the many ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... together." Three sides of it were covered with books. "No furniture so charming as books," said Sydney, "even if you never open them, or read a single word." He passionately loved light and colour, sunshine and flowers; and all his books were bound in the most vivid blues and reds. "What makes a fire so pleasant is that it is a live thing in a dead room," A visitor thus describes him at ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... the ministers in vain sought to avert. Urged by some of the leading members of the opposition, who as earnestly desired him to adopt this line of conduct, as the king and his ministers entreated him not to resign, he gave up everything except his regiment—the Blues. The ordnance was then offered to General Conway, who refused to accept any of "Lord Granby's spoils," and the fragment of the ministry still left in office had to brave the storm of opposition ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... spirits, drooping spirits, depressed spirits; heart sinking; heaviness of heart, failure of heart. heaviness &c adj.; infestivity^, gloom; weariness &c 841; taedium vitae, disgust of life; mal du pays &c (regret) 833; anhedonia^. melancholy; sadness &c adj.; il penseroso [It], melancholia, dismals^, blues, lachrymals^, mumps^, dumps, blue devils, doldrums; vapors, megrims, spleen, horrors, hypochondriasis [Med.], pessimism; la maladie sans maladie [Fr.]; despondency, slough of Despond; disconsolateness &c adj.; hope deferred, blank despondency; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... know that these preys on the flyin'-fish, they've come down to be nearer thar game. Unless the albacores get thar eyes on the winged fish, and run down among 'em, there'll be no chance for the frigates. They can do nothin' till t' other jumps 'em out o' the water. The sky-blues don't seem to see 'em yet; but I dare say it'll not be long afore they do, judgin' by their manoeuvres. Thar! Didn't I tell thee, lad? See yonder! They ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... could find, and laid them on without regard to time or expense. The wheels, bodies and tongues of the carts; and the canopies that cover those in which women are carried, are nightmares of yellows, greens, blues, reds and purples, like cheap wooden toys. Everything artificial at Jeypore is as bright and gay as dyes and paint can ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... The blues of the country are much brighter than any of the British or continental dyes, and are in consequence much ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... England, after the profitable sale of his South African farm and stud, and observing that the sun seldom shone, Val had said to himself: "I've absolutely got to have an interest in life, or this country will give me the blues. Hunting's not enough, I'll breed and I'll train." With just that extra pinch of shrewdness and decision imparted by long residence in a new country, Val had seen the weak point of modern breeding. They were all hypnotised by fashion and high price. He should buy for looks, and let names go hang! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and cleaning flues, That is the work I love; Brushing away the blacks and the blues, And letting in light from above! I twirl my broom in your tired brain When you're tight in sleep up-curled, Then scatter the stuff in a soot-like rain Over the edge ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... these smaller cracks where they made a crooked natural bridge across the chasm. Even Seppi's stout heart quailed a little as he gazed down into the depths of the huge rifts. The walls of ice gleamed with wonderful greens and blues, but he had no heart to admire the ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... done, but what charm was there in it? All their modern iron and zinc colours, and hydrate of aluminum, and oxide of chromium, and purple of Cassius, and all the rest of it, never gave one-tenth the charm of those old painters who had only green greys and dull blues and tawny yellows, and never could get any kind of red whatever; Olga had meant to please her, but she, for her part, would much sooner have had a little panel of Abruzzi, with all the holes and defects in the pottery, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... poker, they're both the same. I'll deal you a free hand and it won't cost you a cent. Fix your baby blues on the little ball and watch me close. Don't let me deceive you. Now then, which hut hides ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... perhaps had a husband and children likewise disporting themselves, made long rows about the walls of the schoolhouse, looking for the world like orderly flocks of bright plumaged birds in their bravery of many hued calicos and ginghams; a gay display of bold reds and shy blues, of mellow yellows and soft pinks, with the fluttering of fans ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... more purple, and vanishing into the pale yellow above. Though well defined, there was no abrupt division between the belts, and the lowest mingled imperceptibly with the hazy horizon. Gradually the golden lines grew dim, and the blues and purples gained depth of colour; till the sun set behind the dark-blue peaked mountains in a flood of crimson and purple, sending broad beams of grey shade and purple light up to the zenith, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... picked up their play; the frightened Ophelia came out of Nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid thoroughfare whistling the "Memphis Blues" with bird-like virtuosity. The lightness with which Niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... paid the driver, got out, and walked down the busy street. Here and there, nuaniam signs began to flick on, their garish blues, reds, and whites bathing the street in a glow of synthetic light. It was early evening, but already Spaceman's Row was getting ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... wonder of the opal-tinted sea meeting him on every side, it was not strange that the love of colour sank into his very heart. In his pictures we can see the golden glow which bathes the marble palaces, the clear green of the water, the pure blues and burning crimsons all as transparent as crystal, not mere ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman

... falling once more into the hands of the house of Austria. We saw the flags and standards of Spain fluttering on the Pont Neuf, the yellow scarfs of Lorraine appeared in Paris as freely as the isabels and the blues." Dissension, ambition, and poltroonery were delivering ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Milk, Broad, State, Court and Common-streets; to Boylston-street, adjoining the south part of the Common, in the following order—"Three marshals, the Boston corps of Light Dragoons, a battalion of Light Infantry, composed of the Fusiliers, Boston Light Infantry, Winslow Blues, Washington Light Infantry, New-England Guards, Rangers, and City Guards; and a full band of music. Then followed the chief marshal, attended by aids; members of the City Council, Committee of Arrangements, the President of the Common Council and senior ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... Galope-Chopine, also called Cibot the Great. A Chouan implicated in the Breton insurrection of 1799. Decapitated by his cousin Cibot, alias Pille-Miche, and by Marche-a-Terre for having unthinkingly betrayed the brigand position to the "Blues." ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... up and walked out of the garden, surveyed a passing tram-car, laden with warm light, against the deep blues of evening, dripping and trailing long skirts of shining reflection; he crossed the Embankment and stood for a time watching the dark river and turning ever and again to the lit buildings and bridges. His mind began to scheme conceivable replacements of all those clustering ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... until we gazed upon a Grand Canyon a myriad times vaster and more celestial than that of the Colorado. The clouds took on the same stratified, serrated, rose-rock formation, and all the hollows were filled with the opal blues and purple hazes of the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... or had got the blues, when he came back; he lay on his elbow smoking, with his face turned from the camp towards the plain. After a bit I got wild—if Mitchell was going to go on like that he might as well have taken his ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... our native Asters in hand, and we now have several varieties that make themselves perfectly at home in the border. Some of them grow to a height of eight feet. Others are low growers. The rosy-violet kinds and the pale lavender-blues are indescribably lovely. Nearly all of them bloom very late in the season. Their long branches will be a mass of flowers with fringy petals and a yellow centre. These plants have captured the charm of the Indian Summer and brought it into the garden, where they keep it prisoner during the last ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... Persians, are richly adorned and illuminated. The Greek females are kept in utter ignorance; but many of the Turkish girls are highly accomplished, though not actually qualified for a Christian coterie. Perhaps some of our own "blues" might not be ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... the town I found my first green-tailed towhee's nest, which will be described in the last chapter. A pair of mountain bluebirds had snuggled their nest in a cranny of one of the cottages, and an entire family of blues were found on the pine-clad slope beyond the stream; white-crowned sparrows were plentiful in the copses and far up the bushy ravines and mountain sides; western chippies rang their silvery peals; violet-green swallows ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... game is "Riddles." At the top of the paper is written anything that you can think of: "A soldier," "A new dress," "A fit of the blues," "A railway accident"—anything that suggests itself. The paper is passed on and anything else is written, no matter what. It is passed on again and opened. Suppose that the two things written on it are, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... the blues for a day or two—that bit of news. I had known her from a baby as you might say, and had taken an interest in her. You can call it silly, but hotels and restaurants seemed to me less interesting now there was no chance of ever seeing her come into ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome

... for arms, horses, and provisions marked his path. Deserters swelled his ranks. He had enough left-overs from the evacuation to organize what in irony he called his Foreign Legion. At Acambaro a second Republican army, under General Corona—"welcomer than a stack of blues," as Boone said—more than doubled their force, and together they hastened ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... was crimson-lake enough to have emptied all the paint-boxes in the world, you might suppose, and the brightest of goldy yellows, and the greenest of soft transparent greens, such as no paint-box ever did, nor ever will, possess; and over all the most azure of blues, flecked with floating masses of soft indescribable white, looking to Elsie like the foamy soapsuds at the top of the tub when mother had been having a rare wash, but to Duncan like lumps of something he had once tasted and never forgotten, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... air, increased by her awkward deportment, which concealed that she was in reality tall, and on a large scale. She looked to so little advantage in bright delicate colours, that Albinia was often incurring her displeasure, and risking that of Lucy, by the deep blues and sober browns which alone looked fit to be seen with those beetle brows and sallow features. Her face looked many years older than that of her fair, fresh, rosy stepmother; nay, her father's clear olive complexion and handsome countenance had hardly so aged an aspect; and Gilbert, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is hard to battle against the blues, especially when all one's comrades capitulate to them. Each man vied with the other in radiating a blue funk, until the air was as thick as ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... and Re-action. Effect of Color on Mental States and Emotions. How certain tints affect persons favorably and unfavorably. The calming effect of restful greens. "Seeing Red." Gloomy Black. Depressing Grays. Angry Reds. Soothing Blues. Illuminating Yellows. The Psychology of Color. Healing Effect of Colors. The principles of Healing by Colors. Effect of color upon character and morals. Color in Child Life. Interesting and instructive information ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi

... Diaz is only slightly removed from the somber brown of the studio type, it recognizes a new aspect of things which was to be much farther developed than they ever dreamed. Just as Constable shocked his contemporaries by his - for that time - vivid outdoor blues and greens, so the men of the school of 1870, or the impressionists, surprised and outraged their fellowmen with a type of picture which we see in control of this delightfully refreshing gallery. We can testify by this time that Constable, although much opposed in his day, seems ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... up with little Pinkney at Rome, where he made a charming picture of her, representing her as about eighteen, with a cherub in her lap, who has some liking to Bryanstone Bumpsher, her enormous, vulgar son; now a cornet in the Blues, and anything but a cherub, as those would say who saw him in ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the honor of addressing Captain John Ireton, sometime of his Majesty's Royal Scots Blues, and late of her Apostolic Majesty's Twenty-ninth Regiment ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... that occasion, in the midst of a good deal of noise and confusion, to inform me with her usual vivacity of manner that she was to be housekeeper to a man—'a job for life,' she added with the old mischief dancing in her eyes and the merry laugh that is a tonic for the blues. Upon my asking her gravely who was the fortunate man—for I had no one in mind and feared some impulsive decision—she pursed her lips, hesitated a moment, and, manufacturing a charming blush, said:—'I don't ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... long and long under the sun of the old Mexic land, and the high heavens blazed above in yellows and pinks fading into veiled blues and far misty lavenders in the hollows ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... with rolling billows, through which little tongues of flame constantly shot up. Just above them, and almost on a level with their platform, were banks of rolling clouds which constantly shifted position and changed color. The blues and greys were very beautiful, and Dorothy noticed that on the cloud banks sat or reclined fleecy, shadowy forms of beautiful beings who must have been the Cloud Fairies. Mortals who stand upon the earth and look up at the sky ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... "The Blues have took most of it already," wailed the boy. "And just as they were paying me the battle begun, and this horse run away, and I couldn't get him to ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... are always accompanied by mental depression, the blues, homesickness, irritability, fear, ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... contributions and presented that charity with L52 10s. 3d. in gratitude for the benefits they had received, a worthy plan which was followed for several years. These same young men originated the "United Society of True Blues" (composed of members who had been reared in the School) for the purpose of forming a fund for the relief of such of their number as might be in distress, and further to raise periodical subscriptions for their ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... which Evelyn Byrd was presented at the Court of George I. Like a shadowy passing of that famous colonial belle, was the sweep of the faint-flowered gown. A fabric of the patch-and-powder days is this, with embroidered flowers in old blues and pinks clustered on its deep cream ground. Its fashioning is quaint: the Watteau pleat in the back with tiny tucks each side at the slim waist line, the square low neck, the close elbow sleeves, the open front to ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... dear, I'm the best little dressmaker you ever saw, and I do love to lay down the law about clothes. With your hair and complexion, you ought to wear clear blues. Order a well-made—be sure it's well-made, no matter what it costs. Get some clever little Jew socialist tailor off in the outskirts of Brooklyn, or some heathenish place, and stand over him. A well-made tailored suit of not too dark navy blue, with matching blue crepe de Chine blouses with ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... weather in Illinois! Such glorious white clouds floating in the boundless hemisphere of fresh blue! The warmth and the vitality of the air! The glistening leaves of the forest trees! The deep green shading into purples and blues of the distant woodlands! The sweet winds, bending the prairie grasses for miles and miles! Glimpses of cool water in little ponds, in small lakes, in the brook! The whispering of rushes and the song of thrushes, so varied, so melodious! The call of the plowman far afield, urging the horses ahead ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... artists. But in the tomb of Ramses III. the work has already begun to show signs of inferiority, and the majority of the scenes are coloured in a very summary fashion; a raw yellow predominates, and the tones of the reds and blues remind us of a child's first efforts at painting. This decline is even more marked under the succeeding Ramessides; the drawing has deteriorated, the tints have become more and more crude, and the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... with a bodkin and string, or with a long hair-pin, draw the crewel into its case. This case (see Fig. 1) is made by folding together a long piece of thin cotton cloth a foot wide, and running parallel lines across its width half an inch or so apart. When the wools are drawn in in groups—reds, blues, greens, yellows, each by themselves, carefully arranged as to shades—cut the upper end so you need not be tempted to use too long needlefuls, and there your wools are neatly put away, and soon you can distinguish any shade by its position in the case, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest families within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the brighter the diamond. Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have been unfortunate; people do not like to ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... goes without saying that the open-faced, hearty fellow inspires confidence. There is nothing coming to the dried-up, sour chap, and that's what he usually gets. And what we get is largely a matter of our physical well being. A modern philosopher observed that "the blues are the product of bad livers"—and there is no doubt but ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks

... she cried. Things had gone wrong that morning, and an encouraging word would have helped her. The somber tone of her brother's communication threw her into a fit of the blues from which, for the first time, she saw her surroundings in a depressing and distasteful light. And yet he had written as he did with the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... of Impromptu on her taking a villa called 'Il Paradiso' Lines written at the request of Letters to Blinkensop, Rev. Mr., his Sermon on Christianity Bloomfield, Nathaniel ——, Robert Blount, Martha, Pope's attachment to Blucher, Marshal 'BLUES, THE; a Literary Eclogue' 'Boatswain,' Lord Byron's favourite dog Boisragon, Dr. Bolivar, Simon Bolder, Mr., Lord Byron's schoolfellow at Harrow Bologna, Lord Byron's visit to the cemetery of Bolton, Mr., letters of Lord Byron to, respecting his will Bonneval, Claudius Alexander, Count de ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... no larks," said I. "Tempest's down on me because I went out with Crofter, and Crofter's down on me because I cut him for Tempest. That's enough to give a chap blues, isn't it?" ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... a splendid appearance in Saint James's Park. A small body of grenadier dragoons, who came from a lower class and received lower pay, was attached to each troop. Another body of household cavalry distinguished by blue coats and cloaks, and still called the Blues, was generally quartered in the neighbourhood of the capital. Near the capital lay also the corps which is now designated as the first regiment of dragoons, but which was then the only regiment of dragoons on the English establishment. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Captain Day, R.N., first ruled in A.D. 1803. I had much to say to him about sundry of his predecessors. Captain Havelock, who dates only from 1881, has the reputation of being slightly 'black.' The Neri and the Bianchi factions here represent the Buffs and Blues of a land further north. He is yet in the heyday of popularity, when, in the consecrated phrase, the ruler 'gains golden opinions.' But colonial judgments are fickle, and mostly in extremes. After this smiling season the weather lowers, the storm breaks, and all is elemental rage, when from ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... follow individual tastes, as we learned later. Some of them, with an eye to color, salute the sun in the red trousers and black tunic of the artilleryman. Others choose more sober shades, various French blues, with the thin orange aviation stripe running down the seams of the trousers. All this in reference to the dress uniform. At the camp most of the men wear leathers, or a combination of leathers and the gray-blue uniform of the French poilu, which is issued to all Americans at the time ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... twilight fell: Wavered in air the shadowy towers: The city like a gleaming shell, Its azures, opals, silvers, blues, Were melting in more dreamy hues. We feared the falling of the night And hurried more our headlong flight. In one long line the towers went by; The trembling radiance dropt behind, As when some swift ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... a little chateau in front of the Glandaz mountain—himself, his wife, their eldest girl, and Alicia. The adaptation of his famous manner to that strange scenery, its browns and French greys and filmy blues, so preoccupied him that he had scant time for becoming intimate with these hills and valleys. From the little gravelled terrace in front of the annex, out of which he had made a studio, there was an absorbing view over the pan-tiled old town of Die. It glistened below ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... ended so triumphantly, had it not been for Duke Ferdinand's Vanguard, Lord Granby and the English Horse; who, warned by the noise ahead, pushed on at the top of their speed, and got in before the death. Granby and the Blues had gone at the high trot, for above five miles; and, I doubt not, were in keen humor when they rose to the gallop and slashed in. Mauvillon says, 'It was in this attack that Lord Granby, at the head of the Blues, his own regiment, had his hat blown off; a big bald circle in his head ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... powers of enjoying art were so entirely unspoiled by the effect of habit that I was like a young bird in its first spring-time in the woods. I much preferred the beautiful bright pictures in the Academy, with their greens and blues like Nature, to the snuffy old canvases (as they seemed to me) in the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... Green's house Turkey Proudfoot saw such a sight as he had never expected to behold. A big bird stood proudly on the grass plot, looking for all the world as if he owned not only the house, but the whole farm. His colors were like the blues and greens of a rainbow. And behind him he carried aloft a tail that made Turkey Proudfoot all ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... out any longer. What in the world do they banish me for? I am the best nurse in the universe, strong as a lion, and wakeful as an owl. What do they shut you up in this dark room for?—just to give you the blues!—It is all nonsense. I am going to put back these curtains, and let in some light,—you will become etiolated. I want to ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... with porcelain, crystal, silver, and flowers, and every object upon it casting a familiar curved shadow on the whiteness of the damask toward the window! The fresh crimson and blues of the everlasting Turkey carpet (Turkey carpet being the ne plus ultra of carpetry in the Five Towns, when that carpet was bought, just as sealskin was the ne plus ultra of all furs)! The silken-polished sideboard, strange to the company, but worthy of it, and exhibiting a due sense ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... myself. Didn't know anybody on earth. One or two folks finally did allow me to set in a poker game with them when I ast. It wasn't poker, but only a imitation. I won two hundred and fifty dollars and it broke up the game. If a fellow pushes in half a stack of blues over there they all tremble and get pale. This may be a good town for women, but, believe me, sis, it's no town for ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough

... awkward at love-making, and only allowed himself to be occasionally surprised into flashes of tenderness, he was still more awkward in letter-writing; and Ethelyn always indulged in a headache, or a fit of blues, after receiving one of his short, practical letters, which gave but little sign of the strong, deep affection he cherished for her. Those were hard days for Ethelyn—the days which intervened between her lover's bidding her adieu and his return to claim her hand—and ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... regardless of it, intricacies of telephone wires and poles cut blackly into its thin mysteries, and presently, when in a moment the traffic permits you and you look round for it, it has dissolved like a cloud into the grey blues ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... the sky. The little herons and I watched them come—first a single white egret, which spiralled down, just as I had many times seen the first returning Spad eddy downward to a cluster of great hump-backed hangars; then a trio of tricolored herons, and six little blues, and after that I lost count. It seemed as if these tiny islands were magnets drawing all the herons ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... Keyes. Keyes was a far more formidable conspirator than might have been expected from his station in life. The household troops generally were devoted to William; but there was a taint of disaffection among the Blues. The chief conspirators had already been tampering with some Roman Catholics who were in that regiment; and Keyes was excellently qualified to bear a part in this work; for he had formerly been trumpeter of the corps, and, though he had quitted the service, he still kept ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... has three blues: the blue of morning, the blue of midday, and the blue of evening. But the blue of morning is the happiest: the happiest thing in colour—sparkling, vague, newborn—the blue of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... coming on, and the chill winds went through my khaki drill uniform. The sky was overcast, and the bay, generally a kaleidoscope of Eastern blues and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... concerning which we are more at a loss in looking at old pictures, than the blues. Three are mentioned by Cennino—indigo, a cobalt, and ultramarine. With regard to the sparing use of the latter, as the most expensive, some practical hints may be met with. We have often wondered with what blue their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... him. So there were pleasant times, at the Towers—dinners, balls, shooting and hunting parties, and the like. All the eligible society of the country-side found its way to Binfield Towers. Yet somehow George Fairburn did not fall into a fit of the blues when Sir Mark Fieldsend took his sister back to their west-country home; in fact, strange to say, George rather rejoiced to see the back of the retired major, his old comrade-in-arms. Why this was so he would have found it hard to explain, for a more unassuming and agreeable ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead

... BLUES.—A dark-bluish appearance, accompanying arrested development, generally due to unfavorable weather, unsuitable soil or insects at the root. Cabbage and cauliflower plants which are set too early in the spring, especially if they are not well hardened off and are placed in ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier

... navy, in which the army is clothed. The result attained is the conviction that no blue is really inconspicuous, and that some of the harsh new slaty tints are no less striking than the deeper shades they have superseded. But to this scale of experimental blues, other colours must be added: the poppy-red of the Spahis' tunics, and various other less familiar colours—grey, and a certain greenish khaki—the use of which is due to the fact that the cloth supply has given out and that all available materials ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... Corny. "Thad said we were not to speak to you, or we should bust your calculations. We all thought you had the blues." ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic

... a moment to scrutinize the long walls, on which the fabulous blues and pinks of the great Boucher series looked as livid as withered roses. "I suppose they ought to be taken ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... human nature is, in Alaska, particularly interesting in these directions, to the one with his mind's eye open to such things, and I am resolved, come what will, that I will keep the upper hand of my spirit, that it shall do as I direct, and not harbor "blues" nor discouragement. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... brow; Laden with which, as well as tir'd With conquering toil, he now retir'd 300 Unto a neighb'ring castle by, To rest his body, and apply Fit med'cines to each glorious bruise He got in fight, reds, blacks, and blues, To mollify th' uneasy pang 305 Of ev'ry honourable bang, Which b'ing by skilful midwife drest, He laid him down to take his rest. But all in vain. H' had got a hurt O' th' inside, of a deadlier ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... heathen. Threatening fists were shaken in the air, while behind the carceres the drivers and owners of the red party scolded, squabbled and stormed; and Hippias, who by his audacious swagger had given away the race to their hated foe—to the Blues, the Christians—narrowly escaped being torn ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of martial music was heard in the streets. The Blues and the Stafford Militia then did duty at Windsor; and though the one had seen no service since Minden, and most undeservedly bore the stigma of a past generation; and the other was composed of men who had never faced any danger but the ignition of a coal-pit;—they were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various

... she reached Dawson's Landing, she was her old self again; her blues were gone, she was in high feather. She would get along, surely; there were many kitchens where the servants would share their meals with her, and also steal sugar and apples and other dainties for her to carry home—or give her ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... when he became an officer in the Imperial Guard. He was adopted, educated, and trained by Justin I, whom he succeeded as emperor. His long reign (527-565) was disturbed by the sanguinary factions of the Circus—the Greens and the Blues, so named from the colors of the competing charioteers in the games—the suppression of the schools of philosophy at Athens, and by various wars. Nevertheless it was marked by magnificent works, the administrative organization of the empire, and the great buildings at Constantinople. The Church ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... the wonderful scene—three inches of clinging snow having fallen during the night, glittered under the brilliant morning sun. Truly it was a glory to behold—a perfect panorama of rioting greens, yellows, browns, blues, reds, grays, crimsons, purples, in fact, every colour which an artist's palette could carry; and through it all was ever woven a mass of lace-like brilliant white that dazzled the eyes of the beholder. Only once in fifty years have I beheld a ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... the Berrys[31] in the evening, where the blues and the wits were assembled; as Sidney Smith said, 'the conversation raged,' but there ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... contests on fair terms, dispensed with them entirely. He trained dogs to draw chariots and introduced them in place of horses. When this was done, the wearers of the white and of the red immediately entered their chariots: but, as the Greens and the Blues would not even then participate, Nero at his own cost gave the prizes to the horses, and the regular program of ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio



Words linked to "Blues" :   folk ballad, black music, folk song, African-American music, folksong, boogie-woogie, depression, boogie, blue note



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