"Grey-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still had the dreamy sensation of returning to a life forgotten. The guests, however, were strangers. Mrs. Verdon, in a white silk gown embroidered with bunches of poppies, had never seemed less known. The grey-headed man with the rosy face was Mr. Danforth, and the two auburn-haired young ladies were ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet-meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London bridge) a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like, I made him a present of—the whole cake! I walked on a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... heard it, her grey-headed figure straightened, and clasping her two hands above her head, she panted in wild ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... of persons, to whom compassion should secure more than common indulgence, determined us to purchase these worst sort of slaves, and in this place we have five who owed their wretchedness to being only three foot high, one grey-headed toothless old man of sixteen years of age, a woman of about seven foot in height, and a man who would be still taller, if the extreme weakness of his body, and the wretched life he for some time led, in the hands ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... Sir Henry Wilding's motor turned its back upon the outskirts of London, and it was a quarter past seven when it whirled up to the stables of Wilding Hall, and the baronet and his grey-headed, bespectacled and white-spatted companion alighted, having taken five hours and a quarter to make a journey which the trains which run daily between Liverpool Street and Darsham ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... festivities with their presence and patronage. Pen looked about, on his first introduction, not a little amused with the scene which he witnessed. Among his comrades of the student class there were gentlemen of all ages, from sixty to seventeen; stout grey-headed attorneys who were proceeding to take the superior dignity,—dandies and men—about town who wished for some reason to be barristers of seven years' standing,—swarthy, black-eyed natives of the Colonies, who came to be called here before they ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a smile as his eyes fell on the slim figure of the poor, grey-headed, homely old artist. Was this the noble young foreigner, the handsome German music master he had pictured to ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... marriages cannot apply to . . . indeed, madam, vigour, they say . . . though youth, of course . . . yet young people, as you observe . . . and I have, though perhaps my reputation is against it, I was saying I have a natural timidity with your sex, and I am grey-headed, white-headed, but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... steed went our bold lover; all alone, or rather with Love for his companion; and so, riding hard till he came to the Red Sea, he took ship, and journeyed through Egypt, and came to the mountains of Barca, where he overtook an old grey-headed palmer. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... thousandfold, our length of life, based upon perception of events, would be no longer than 25-1/2 of our present days; if our life were actually reduced to that period (so as to regain our present units of perception) we should be old and grey-headed before the sun had risen for the twenty-fifth time since our birth. If our unit of perception, with our length of life, were again reduced a thousandfold, the whole of our life of seventy years would now only ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... If she is neglectful upon this point, she exposes herself to scolding, and sometimes to severe beating by her husband or nearest relation, because the boys are told from their infancy, that if they see the blood they will early become grey-headed, and their strength will fail prematurely." The Dieri of Central Australia believe that if women at these times were to eat fish or bathe in a river, the fish would all die and the water would dry up. The Arunta of the same region forbid menstruous women to gather the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... thoroughfares of that awakened city. There was no confusion, this was not a mob. These were men of mind, purpose, prayer, and peace; they knew their rights and commanded respect. They carried their Bibles to show their authority. Resolution gleamed in the face of the grey-headed and flashed from the eyes of the young men as they stood side by side. Their adversaries were overawed and made conciliatory promises. The ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... of "an old family servant" carries with it a thousand kind associations in all parts of the world; and there is no claim upon the home-bred charities of the heart more irresistible than that of having been "born in the house." It is common to see grey-headed domestics of this kind attached to an English family of the "old school," who continue in it to the day of their death in the enjoyment of steady unaffected kindness, and the performance of faithful unofficious duty. I think such instances of attachment speak well for master and servant, and the ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... you're here! I'm your old friend Jack," returned the other, and it was a happy meeting between the boy in his sixteenth year and the grey-headed old battered vagabond and fighter, known far and wide in our part of the country as Jack the Killer, and by other dreadful nicknames, both English and Spanish. Now he was lying there alone, friendless, penniless, ill, on a rough bed the stableman had given him in his room. My brother ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... men go gathering fire-wood on the hill. So far from the town Government affairs are few; So deep in the hills, man's ways are simple. Though they have wealth, they do not traffic with it; Though they reach the age, they do not enter the Army. Each family keeps to its village trade; Grey-headed, they ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... a bell, and a grey-headed, florid old gentleman, called Mr. Dick, who had the appearance of a grown-up boy, and who lived with my aunt, appeared. When my aunt asked his opinion about what to do with me, his advice was to ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... conceited, headstrong young train. It will not be guided or advised. The traffic superintendent wants it to go to St. Petersburg or to Paris. The old grey-headed station-master argues with it, and tries to persuade it to go to Constantinople, or even to Jerusalem if it likes that better—urges it to, at all events, make up its mind where it is going—warns it of the danger to young trains of having no fixed aim ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... burned clear in him through all the weary years of unjust imprisonment; and when he was a grey-headed old man, the base son of a bad mother used it to betray him. The success of his last enterprise was made the condition under which he was to be pardoned for a crime which he had not committed; and its success depended, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... near the beach fishing, and being alone, he feared they might come ashore and attack him: He said, that these people were very dark-coloured, but not black; that the man and woman appeared to be very old, being both grey-headed; that the hair of the man's head was bushy, and his beard long and rough; that the woman's hair was cropped short, and both of them were stark naked. Mr Monkhouse the surgeon, and one of the men, who were with another party near the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... and addressed a grey-headed man on his left. "Did I ever tell you, Mr.—, how I once enjoyed the hospitality of a Cornish village, through the simple accident of being mistaken ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he went; and upon his arrival was at once ushered into a private room. There was but one individual in the apartment, a tall, handsome, grey-headed old gentleman of most aristocratic appearance, who rose to his feet in much ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... if my admiration of him has on this occasion transported my style beyond the sober gravity which becomes the philosophic recorder of historic events, I must plead as an apology that though a little grey-headed Dutchman, arrived almost at the down-hill of life, I still retain a lingering spark of that fire which kindles in the eye of youth when contemplating the virtues of ancient worthies. Blessed thrice, and nine times blessed be the good St. Nicholas, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... words of congratulation and sympathy were spoken by another grey-headed deacon, after which a silence fell upon the meeting, the preacher making no comment upon what he had heard. The tick of the clock on the gallery, the distant swish of the waves, and the soft sighing of the ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... all and had reached that hell which a certain class of earnest Christian promises to us as the reward of the failings that Nature and those who begat us have handed on to us as a birth doom. It was something unnatural, grey-headed, terrific—doubtless a devil come to torment me in the inquisition vaults of Hades. Yet I had known the like when I was alive. How had it been called? I remembered, "The-thing-that-never-should-have-been-born." Hark! It was speaking in that full deep ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... are the men in whom the country has placed its trust?" muttered a grey-headed old gentleman, who, while apparently absorbed in his newspaper, had been listening ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... mail-bag. Miss Lucy, laying down her knitting, took it from him with eager fingers. Place a la poste—in eighteen hundred and sixty-one! She untied the string, emptied letters and papers upon the table beside her, and began to sort them. Julius, a spare and venerable piece of grey-headed ebony, an autocrat of exquisite manners and great family pride, stood back a little and ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... old pranks and escapades as she walked slowly home alone. The full moon peeped through the scudding clouds with sudden floods of weird illumination, the telephone wires sang a shrill weird song in the wind, and the tall spikes of withered, grey-headed golden-rod in the fence corners swayed and beckoned wildly to her like groups of old witches weaving unholy spells. On such a night as this, long ago, Carl would come over to Ingleside and whistle her out ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... force. Had they been called up but one week since, where would have been those who have now been, as it were, intrusted to my weak help? The father, the mother, the children, the infant at the breast, and I, the grey-headed old man,—all buried fathoms deep, awaiting our summons; but they were restrained by his will, and by his will we were saved. Will those timbers which bore us here so miraculously hold together till morning? I should think not. What are ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... war-rounds the mighty, against the hall's wall. Then bow'd they to bench, and rang there the byrnies, The war-weed of warriors, and up-stood the spears, The war-gear of the sea-folk all gather'd together. The ash-holt grey-headed; that host of the iron 330 With weapons was worshipful. There then a proud chief Of those lads of the battle speer'd after their line: Whence ferry ye then the shields golden-faced, The grey sarks therewith, and the helms all bevisor'd, And a heap of the war-shafts? ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... respectability as a Baron of the Exchequer, that Sir R. M. Rolfe was the future Chancellor? Probably there is no sphere in which there is more of disappointment and heartburning than the army. It must be supremely mortifying to a grey-headed veteran, who has served his country for forty years, to find a beardless Guardsman put over his head into the command of his regiment, and to see honours and emoluments showered upon that fair-weather colonel. And I should judge that the despatch written by a General ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the scholar. If now and then you fumble among papers, whilst addressing the jury, that is perhaps for fear it should be observed that you have no beard; in order that proper attention may be paid to your learning, which is that of a grey-headed man; and though it may be said, that the Eureka Stockade was hoggledy enough, yet your pop, pop, ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... the office door, and a moment later returned with a tall, grey-headed man, with closely cropped beard and gold-rimmed eyeglasses. He shook hands with Vine warmly, and nodded ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... distinctly Jewish proclivities, to a sporting lord who had been killing lions. For a few minutes the platforms were given over altogether to a sort of pleasurable confusion, a vivid scene, full of colour and human interest. Then the people thinned away, and, very nearly last of all, a wizened-looking, grey-headed man, carrying a black bag and a parcel, left the platform with hesitating footsteps and turned towards the bridge. He was followed almost immediately by Hiram Da Souza, who, curiously enough, seemed to have been on the platform when the train came in and to have ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... persons were saying and doing formal and insignificant things. It was like hearing voices through the noise of leaves in spring. "Wawawawa—-" What did it matter? People in the audience talked to one another. "Wawawawawa—-" the thing went on. Would that grey-headed duffer never have done? Interrupting? Of course they were interrupting. "Wa, wa, wa, wa—-" But shall we ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Bay Company pessimist, or to the grey-headed sage, the greatest disturbers of this Eden were two Englishmen, Messrs. Buckingham and Coldwell, who, in 1859, entered Red River Colony, and established that organ for good or evil, the newspaper. This first paper was called "The Nor'-Wester." It is amusing to read the comments ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... the chaste sheen of silver, the dance and sparkle of light in multitudinous gems, arrested his attention as he one evening perambulated the streets of a great city. He beheld a jeweller's shop. The grey-headed, spectacled lapidary sat at a bench within, sedulously polishing a streaked pebble by the light of a small lamp. A sudden thought struck Otto; he entered the shop, and, presenting the ring to the jeweller, inquired in ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... considerable time after the singing had ceased, there was a slow, heavy step heard approaching the rick; an exclamation in Gaelic followed; and then a rough hard hand grasped Walter by the naked heel. He started up, and found himself confronted by an old, grey-headed man, the inmate of a cottage, which, hidden in the neighbouring ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... children, he or she may expect to become rich. If a childless spouse see in a dream children running round the fireside, there is reason to fear the little prattlers will never be there in reality. It is unlucky to dream that a girl has a beard, or that a boy is grey-headed. It is unlucky to dream of a minister, but it is not an evil sign for one to suppose he is worshipping in church. If you dream that a watch or clock falls or is broken, be sure ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... reduced to three loads, and I had four "pull-a-boys," one a Mpongwe, Mwaka alias Captain Merrick, a model sluggard; and Messrs. Smoke, Joe Williams, and Tom Whistle- -Kru-men, called Kru-boys. This is not upon the principle, as some suppose, of the grey-headed post-boy and drummer-boy: all the Kraoh tribes end their names in bo, e.g. Worebo, from "wore," to capsize a canoe; Grebo, from the monkey "gre" or "gle;" and many others. Bo became "boy," even as Sipahi (Sepoy) became Sea- pie, and Sukhani ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... in these vehicles and waved their hats with vigour, whilst the whole orderly mob roared applause at them and Lord Hopetoun himself clapped his hands like a pleased boy at the theatre. All the men in the two brakes were elderly and grey-headed, but as far as I could see, they were all stalwart and able-bodied, and the faces of a good many were bronzed with years of sun and wind. Over the leading vehicle was suspended a strip of white cloth, and on this was painted the words, "The Pioneers." These ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... bright as ever, to the surface of memory, under this starry sky, whose face has in no wise changed since then, and whose serene and immutable lights will doubtless see many other schoolboys such as I was slowly turn into grey-headed ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, Came children walking two and two, in read, and blue, and green: Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... on the "Matterhorn" which comes to my mind as a fitting expression of what I think we feel. He was on his way to climb the mountain, when, on one of its lower slopes, he saw standing lonely in the evening light the figure of a grey-headed man. It was Whymper, the conqueror of the Matterhorn—Whymper grown old, standing there in the evening light and gazing on the mighty rock that he had vanquished in his prime. His climbing days were done, and he sought no more victories ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Dean-street! FIREWORKS will come out shortly, depend upon it, in the dumb line; and will relate her history in profoundly unintelligible motions that will be translated into long and complicated descriptions by a grey-headed father, and a red-wigged countryman, his son. You remember the dumb dodge of relating an escape from captivity? Clasping the left wrist with the right hand, and the right wrist with the left hand—alternately (to express ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut with the whip across the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed old man with the grey beard, who was shaking his head in disapproval. One woman seized him by the hand and would have taken him away, but he tore himself from her and ran back to the mare. She was almost at the last gasp, but began ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... preference to shedding one drop of her blood. But then, he had seen Too-che sauntering home from the well, with her water jar on her head, and her hips the focal point of all eyes in the street. Asha smiled, and took his grey-headed, bent, unnoticed figure down the back streets to ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... knowledge of God, and the hopes of immortality, can be either unworthy of study, or, if rightly explained, uninteresting in the acquisition. In fact, on the principles I am about to advocate, I have seen the deepest interest manifested, from the small child to the grey-headed sire, from the mere novice to the statesman and philosopher, and all alike seemed to be edified and improved by the attention bestowed upon ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... ever known, and declaring that she would work all day and all night rather than leave her; but the more reluctance she showed, the more determined was Perronel, and she could not but submit to her fate, only adding one more entreaty that she might take her jackdaw, which was now a spruce grey-headed bird. Perronel said it would be presumption in a waiting-woman, but Ambrose declared that at Chelsea there were all manner of beasts and birds, beloved by the children and by their father himself, and that he believed the daw would be welcome. At any rate, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Master in the World, he seldom changes his Servants; and as he is beloved by all about him, his Servants never care for leaving him; by this means his Domesticks are all in Years, and grown old with their Master. You would take his Valet de Chambre for his Brother, his Butler is grey-headed, his Groom is one of the gravest Men that I have ever seen, and his Coachman has the Looks of a Privy-Counsellor. You see the Goodness of the Master even in the old House-dog, and in a grey Pad that is kept in the Stable with great ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... others from Timbuctoo, the greater part from Bornou. About a score of them were present; their greatest delight was in exchanging their various lingos. When they heard I was going to Kanou, one jumped up like a fury, saying, "Oh, I must send something to my mother." This was a poor grey-headed wrinkled-faced old man! His poor mother, alas! may have been long ago whipped to death upon the cotton plantations of South Carolina, where the blood of the slave is poured out to fertilize the fields of pampered ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Grey-headed men, wonderfully pathetic in their dissipation, stared at her through clouds. Smooth-cheeked boys, some of them with faces of stone and mouths of sin, not nearly so pathetic as the grey heads, tried to find the girl's eyes in the smoke wreaths. Maggie considered she was not what they thought ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... stood leaning against a great gun aloft on the heights of Quebec. The air of an October morning fluttered the lace at their breasts and lifted the long brown hair of the younger man from his shoulders. His companion was tall, alert, bronzed, grey-headed, with an eagle eye and a glance of authority. He laid his hand on the shoulder of the younger man and said: "I am glad you have come, Iberville, for I need you, as I need all your brave family—I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dying husband, she knew practically nothing. Cicely and Marsworth, with Farrell to help them at the other end of a telegraph wire, did everything. Passports and special permits were available in a minimum of time. In the winter dawn at Euston Station, there was the grey-headed Miss Eustace waiting; and two famous Army doctors journeyed to Charing Cross a few hours later, on purpose to warn the wife of the condition in which she was likely to find her husband, and to give her kindly advice as to how she ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... prohibition might seem to imply. Though I was curious, it must not be supposed that I had the object of my enquiry for ever in my mind, or that my questions and innuendoes were perpetually regulated with the cunning of a grey-headed inquisitor. The secret wound of Mr. Falkland's mind was much more uniformly present to his recollection than to mine; and a thousand times he applied the remarks that occurred in conversation; when I had not the remotest idea of such an application, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... "I have since had proof, of the strongest nature, that such a report was spread in the garrison by that wily and grey-headed malignant, partly to prevail on the soldiers to submit to a diminution of their daily food, partly to detain us before the walls of his fortress until the sword should be whetted to smite and ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... big, grey-headed fellow I have before mentioned—Jacob Baines. He pulled his fore-lock to Sir Ralph, rather shyly; possibly in his youth he had made the sheriff's acquaintance under less favourable circumstances. But ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... I fear I shall be grey-headed before I belong to anything else. He makes much of the ancient customs of the country: I would he would follow them. In the good old times I should have been a squire at least by now, if, indeed, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... hastily, and saw the funeral procession moving slowly from the house across the grounds, and taking its way towards the village church. The little coffin was carried by four of the grey-headed servants of the house; my uncle and aunt were walking on foot beside it, and my cousin and Henry Lovell were following them. The rest of the servants, among whom was Julia's nurse, and almost all the inhabitants of the village, closed the procession. I watched the funeral ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... turned away and took her father's arm. The two men watched them disappear—the little grey-headed man with his ill-cut clothes, and hard, shrewd face, and the tall, graceful girl, whose toilette was irreproachable, and whose carriage and bearing moved even Reist to admiration. They passed down the carpeted ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... when suddenly Nicolete, who had been gazing out idly into the road, gave a little cry. I followed her glance. A carriage with arms on its panels had stopped at the inn, and as a smart footman opened the door, a fine grey-headed military-looking man stepped out and strode hurriedly up ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... mountain, and on the other side of the mountain he beheld a castle in the valley, wherein was a river. And he went to the castle; and as he entered it, he saw a hall, and the door of the hall was open, and he went in. And there he saw a lame grey-headed man sitting on one side of the hall, with Gwalchmai beside him. And Peredur beheld his horse, which the black man had taken, in the same stall with that of Gwalchmai. And they were glad concerning Peredur. And he went and seated himself on the other side of the hoary-headed man. ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... the fish will take it, Mr Cleversides; but not if they see a big lubberly boy staring at them with his arm in a sling, or an old grey-headed man, either, Ralph. There, don't frown. It's very nice to be a big lubberly boy; much better than being a worn-out old man, with not much longer to live. Ah, you laugh at my bumble-bee, and it certainly is not like one, but the best I can do, and I find it a great bait for a chevin, if used with ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... falling into the hands of my God than into the hands of my enemies. My danger was so great that I forgot the danger of others; besides, sir, I knew my comrades were soldiers, and feared death as little as I do." My answer pleased the fine grey-headed general, and he gave me a recommendation to the chancellor Bestuchef ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... over the round-headed yellow flowers that grew between it and the farmhouse. Among the flowers the white butterflies hovered and on the old kraal mounds three white kids gambolled, and at the door of one of the huts an old grey-headed Kaffer-woman sat on the ground mending her mats. A balmy, restful peacefulness seemed to reign everywhere. Even the old hen seemed well satisfied. She scratched among the stones and called to her chickens when she found a treasure; and all the while tucked to herself ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... frequented the same establishment. Each dropped in, at any hour that chanced to suit him, ate his supper, pushed back his chair, and joined in the general conversation, smoking, and drinking coffee or a little wine, until it was time to go home. There were grey-headed painters who had hardly been absent more than a few days in five and twenty years from their accustomed tables at such places as the Falcone, the Gabbione, or the Genio. But Reanda had never joined in any of these little circles for longer than a month or two, by which time he had exhausted the stock ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with his commander the surliest chief officer I've ever seen, would tell the story with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he came on deck in the morning Brierly had been writing in ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... change of air. I traveled into Virginia, and one evening I entered the town of G——h. I inquired for the family of my friend, and was directed to a fine-looking building upon the principal street. I advanced and rang the bell, and anxiously waited an answer. At length the door opened, and an old grey-headed man stood before me, the lines of his face marked by care, and his whole appearance betokened one who had a deep grief ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... spectators and overlookers of the every action of such incomprehensible beings as we must have appeared; and the relation to their comrades of the wonders they had witnessed could not have been to them a whit less marvellous than the tales of the grey-headed Irish peasant, when he recounts the freaks of the fairies, "whose midnight revels by the forest side or fountain" he has watched intently from ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... substance unworthy of a word, unworthy of a thought), when I consider what I am now (a volume of diseases bound up together; a dry cinder, if I look for natural, for radical moisture; and yet a sponge, a bottle of overflowing Rheums, if I consider accidental; an aged child, a grey-headed infant, and but the ghost of mine own youth), when I consider what I shall be at last, by the hand of death, in my grave (first, but putrefaction, and, not so much as putrefaction; I shall not be able to send forth so much as ill air, not any air at all, but shall be all insipid, tasteless, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... endeavour to describe a small part of what met my eye on that occasion. In one locality (and this was a specimen of the rest) I saw fourteen different squads of masons at work, with the natives attending them. Old grey-headed men, worn down by previous hardship and present want, were to be seen carrying stones, and wheeling them and other materials on barrows, or conveying them on their backs to the buildings, and with their tottering limbs and trembling hands straining to raise them on the walls. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... solicited during twelve years with such meek pertinacity; and he began to look towards a different quarter. Among the courtiers of Elizabeth had lately appeared a new favourite, young, noble, wealthy, accomplished, eloquent brave, generous, aspiring; a favourite who had obtained from the grey-headed Queen such marks of regard as she had scarce vouchsafed to Leicester in the season of the passions; who was at once the ornament of the palace and the idol of the city. who was the common patron of men of letters and of men of the sword; who was the common refuge of the persecuted ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... both had snub noses, and I was awfully shy of them because they were always whispering and giggling together. The master of the house usually sat in his study on a leather couch in front of the table with some grey-headed gentleman, usually a colleague from our office or some other department. I never saw more than two or three visitors there, always the same. They talked about the excise duty; about business in the senate, about salaries, about promotions, about His Excellency, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... before them certain noteworthy views of the subject as it affected the poor of London. What attracted Mr. Snowdon's attention was the voice of the speaker who next rose. Pressing a little nearer, he got a glimpse of a lean, haggard, grey-headed man, shabbily dressed, no bad example of a sufferer from the hardships he was beginning to denounce. 'That's old Hewett,' remarked somebody close by. 'He's the feller to let 'em 'ave it!' Yes, it was John Hewett, much older, much more broken, yet much fiercer ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... and the Duke of St. James took his seat in the Edinburgh and York Mail. He had two companions: the first, because apparently the most important, was a hard-featured, grey-headed gentleman, with a somewhat supercilious look, and a mingled air of acuteness and conceit; the other was a humble-looking widow in her weeds, middle-aged, and sad. These persons had recently roused themselves from their nocturnal slumbers, and now, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... with us; but according to thy former loving-kindness, and to all the long-suffering, patience, and pardoning mercy which thy aged servant has experienced through her sinful guilty pilgrimage. Thou hast forgiven me all the way from Egypt. Leave me not now, when I am old and grey-headed; but when strength and heart fail, be thou the strength of my heart and portion for ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... will give me great, deep lines in the forehead; and last of all, you will do vulgar things, that will make my mouth get into the 'don't' shape, which is so ugly, you know; and, by and by, when I look at myself in the glass, I shall find myself turned into a grey-headed old woman, and I shall say, 'Sissy gave me those wrinkles between my eyes, I always had to frown at her so;' and then, 'Those ugly lines by my mouth came when Lottie vexed me so.' What a funny thing it will be to have to remember you in that way ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... as I was not so elderly, I took it "cum grano salis." He was a charming old gentleman, the perfect beau ideal of the true old style of Turk, but few specimens of which remain; all that he had said was spoken in sincerity, and I resolved to collect as much information as possible from the grey-headed authorities before I should commence the expedition. I was deeply impressed with one fact, that until I could dispense with an interpreter it would be impossible to succeed, therefore I determined to learn Arabic as speedily ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... order, or you are a little bilious, or something; for I never heard you talk like this before. I have told you, confidentially sometimes, that I have wanted to rebel against the wishes of my parents on some points, and you have always counselled me, like a sage, grey-headed father, to give up my desire. But now you turn right round, and place me in the position of the parent, and you the rebellious son. I recommend, therefore, that you take two pills, for I am sure bile is at the bottom of ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... her with. One of these individuals told me and the rest of his audience, that he had the means of knowing that the interest of the English national debt was paid every year by fresh borrowing, and that bankruptcy and absolute smash must occur within a few years. "Ah!" said a much older, grey-headed man, who had been listening sitting with his hands reposing on his walking-stick before him, and who spoke with a sort of patient, long-expecting hope and a deep sigh, "ah! we have been looking ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... might be, Aziel bent towards her to reply, when suddenly round a bend in the path but a few paces from them came a body of soldiers and attendants, headed by a man clad in a white robe and walking with a staff. This man was grey-headed and keen-eyed, thin in face and ascetic in appearance, with a brow of power and a bearing of dignity. At the sight of the pair he halted, looking at them in question, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... he had been attached from his infancy. He had often made excursions to it when a boy, and the impressions of delight given to his mind by the homely kindness of the grey-headed peasant, to whom it was intrusted, and whose fruit and cream never failed, had not been obliterated by succeeding circumstances. The green pastures along which he had so often bounded in the exultation of health, and youthful freedom—the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Also she knew well that this would have been the desire of my dear father, who was killed in the Zulu war with his father, the Ralph Kenzie of the story, whom, by the way, I can remember as a handsome grey-headed man. For my father was a thorough Englishman, with nothing of the Boer about him, moreover he married an English lady, the daughter of a Natal colonist, and for these reasons he and his grandmother did ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... already said, was grey-headed, and florid: I should have said all about him, in saying so, had not his head been curiously bowed—not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr. Creakle's boys' heads after a beating—and his grey eyes ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... upon himself the office of tapster when the punch was ready, and after dispensing it all round, led the conversation to the antiquities of York, with which both he and the grey-haired gentleman appeared to be well acquainted. When this topic flagged, he turned with a smile to the grey-headed gentleman, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... now oppressed my heart; my poor wife, my dear children, and my grey-headed parents, were all at once plunged into want and misery, instead of the ease and happiness which we were expecting; for we were just arriving at the height of our earthly wishes. I had, however, one consolation left—that I knew I was innocent; and I trusted that by persevering ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... us the way. This is a bad omen, Hugh, to find that Jack Dunning, of all men in the country, should have changed his servant—good, quiet, lazy, respectable, old, grey-headed Garry the nigger—for such a bogtrotter as that fellow, who climbs those stairs as if accustomed ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... like her,' declared a grey-headed man saved from great depths, whose tottering steps she taught to walk the ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... in the full season, when all the world is in St. James's Street, and the carriages are cutting in and out among the cabs on the stand, and the tufted dandies are showing their listless faces out of 'White's,' and you see respectable grey-headed gentlemen waggling their heads to each other through the plate-glass windows of 'Arthur's:' and the red-coats wish to be Briareian, so as to hold all the gentlemen's horses; and that wonderful red-coated royal porter is sunning himself before Marlborough ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The grey-headed giant writhed on the ground convulsively, and smote his bosom with his clenched fists. One could now catch a glimpse of his face. It was a hard, weather-beaten countenance, bronzed by the suns of many a year, large patches of his beard were grizzled, but his eyebrows were of a deep black. He was ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... principles clean through; it's we what puts them ar' old Union haristocrats, what spiles all the nigger property, into the straight up way o' doing things! Now, feller voters, free and independent citizens-freemen who have fought for freedom,—you, whose old, grey-headed fathers died for freedom! it takes you t' know what sort a thing freedom is; and how to enjoy it so niggers can't take it away from you! I'ze lived north way, know how it is! Yer jist the chaps to put niggers straight,—to vote for my man, Colonel Mohpany," Mr. M'Fadden cries out at ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... of her being sold, acted as salesman, and bill of saleman. While this cruel business was being transacted, my master stood aside, and the girl's father, a pious member and exhorter in the Methodist Church, a venerable grey-headed man, with his hat off, besought that he might be allowed to get some one in the place to purchase his child. But no; my master was invincible. His reply was, "She has offended in my family, and I can only restore confidence by sending her out of hearing." After lying in prison a ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... evening passed, not long nor tediously to any of the party; and midnight was at hand; when there entered from the atrium a grey-headed slave bearing a tray covered with light refreshments—fresh herbs, endive and mallows sprinkled with snow, ripe figs, eggs and anchovies, dried grapes, and cakes of candied honey; while two boys ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... these things every day. Perhaps they were in view as He spoke. Finally, the less hackneyed our illustrations are, the better. If this were more generally remembered we would miss, and that with a sense of relief, a few grey-headed similes which, having haunted our youth, threaten to haunt also our age; and which have assailed us so often as to create the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt. In how many Sunday school addresses—and a Sunday school address is preaching in a way—in ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... look in vain for the helmet on the tower, the ancient signal of hospitality to the traveller, or for the grey-headed porter to conduct him to the hall of entertainment. Instead of the disinterested usher of the old times, he is attended by a valet to receive the fees of admittance.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... little sallow rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow who was introduced to me as Mr. Lestrade, and who came three or four times in a single week. One morning a young girl called, fashionably dressed, and stayed for half an hour or more. The same afternoon brought a grey-headed, seedy visitor, looking like a Jew pedlar, who appeared to me to be much excited, and who was closely followed by a slip-shod elderly woman. On another occasion an old white-haired gentleman had an interview with my companion; ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... return of dawn; and as ghosts and goblins always post off to Erebus when Aurora's flag gilds the mountains, imagined she might now go to sleep in safety. But she was soon roused by the sound of voices, and beheld an indisputable apparition. An aged grey-headed man, bent double, clad in a loose gown, and leaning on a staff, crept out of the very pile which she had been so fearfully contemplating all night. He was attended by a female figure, who carefully seated him on a bank opposite ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... them he was getting ready for the typhoon; but when they inquired his reasons for believing there was to be a typhoon at all, Joe looked solemn, shook his head, and said he had reasons enough, but they were his own. Had he been explicit, he would have been laughed at, but the sight of an old grey-headed man, who had been at sea forty years, getting ready in this serious manner, set the others at work too; for ships follow each other's movements, like sheep running through a breach in the fence. Well, that night the typhoon came in earnest, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... time. And Peredur went along the mountain, and on the other side of the mountain he beheld a castle in the valley, wherein was a river. And he went to the castle; and as he entered it, he saw a hall, and the door of the hall was open, and he went in. And there he saw a lame grey-headed man, sitting on one side of the hall, with Gwalchmai beside him. And Peredur beheld his horse, which the black man had taken, in the same stall with that of Gwalchmai. And they were glad concerning Peredur. And he went and seated himself on ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... never had a playfellow of his own age, and his eagerness to see Alberic de Montemar was great. He watched from the window, and at length beheld Osmond entering the court with a boy of ten years old by his side, and an old grey-headed Squire, with a golden chain to mark him as a Seneschal or Steward of ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it he saw the light came from a wretched little hut, and through the window he saw an old old, couple inside. They were as grey-headed as a pair of doves, and the old wife had such a nose! why, it was so long she used it for a poker to stir the fire as she ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... to me that a good deal of kissing and embracing went on. One old grey-headed gentleman was constantly walking up to the cabinet and being embraced by a white figure, whose arms we could just see, thrown round his neck, in the dim light. (I note that the light here was much less than with Mrs ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... not amongst them that met them; but whenas they sat at the banquet in the hall, and Goldilind was in the high-seat, gloriously clad and with the kingly crown on her head, there came a tall man up to the dais, grey-headed and keen-eyed, and he was unarmed, without so much as a sword by his side, and clad in simple black; and he knelt before Goldilind, and laid his head on her lap, and spake: "Lady and Queen, here is my head to do with as thou wilt; ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... that when I would persuade you to come with me to the same Saviour, and to walk the rest of your life 'led by the Spirit of God,' I am not persuading you to anything beyond your years. I am not like a grey-headed grandfather,—then you might answer all I say by telling me that you are a boy. No; I am almost as much a boy as you are; as fond of happiness and of life as you are; as fond of scampering over the hills, and seeing all that is to be ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... Aebutius Elva 135 His Master of the Knights. On the third morn thereafter, At dawning of the day, Did Aulus and Aebutius Set forth with their array. 140 Sempronius Atratinus Was left in charge at home With boys, and with grey-headed men, To keep the walls of Rome. Hard by the Lake Regillus 145 Our camp was pitched at night: Eastward a mile the Latines lay, Under the Porcian height. Far over hill and valley Their mighty host was spread; 150 And with their ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... "In sum," says the grey-headed stockbroker, "there disengages itself from the totality of the facts an impression, tolerably clear, that all goes very well on ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... leading off the main street to the water's edge, and terminating in steps where as a rule the watermen wait to take off passengers to the Packets. A lamp-post stands in the middle of it, and by the base of this the preachers—a grey-headed man and two women in ugly bonnets— were already assembled, with but a foot or two dividing them from the crowd. Close behind the lamp-post stood a knot of men conversing together one of whom stepped forward for a word with the grey-headed preacher. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the orders of Admiral Roussin, returned, I went over those fine ships, and especially the Algesiras, with many a regret that the Arthemise had had no share in the fray. The commander of the Algesiras, M. Moulac, a tall, strongly built, grey-headed man, the bravest of the brave, who had fought boldly in all our naval struggles with England, told me a story which impressed me deeply, and which I here transcribe just as it remains fixed ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... and bearded, that were to be seen on all sides. The Mount Nelson Hotel, which had been opened just before the war, was crowded with them—some very youthful, who had early acquired manhood and selfreliance in a foreign land; others grey-headed, with rows of medal ribbons, dimmed in colour from exposure to all weathers, whose names were strangely familiar as recording ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... bridal bed, Birdie, say truly?'— 'The grey-headed sexton That delves the grave duly. The glowworm o'er grave and stone Shall light thee steady; The owl from the steeple sing ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... wept; and many women who exclaimed, "Charmant! Tout-a-fait charmant!" but who did not weep. Jasmin next recited Ma Bigno, which has been already described. The contributor to Chambers's Journal proceeds: "It was all very amusing to a proud, stiff, reserved Britisher like myself, to see how grey-headed men with stars and ribbons could cry at Jasmin's reading; and how Jasmin, himself a man, could sob and wipe his eyes, and weep so violently, and display such excessive emotion. This surpassed my understanding—probably clouded by ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Not as a woman grows withered, grows he. He, when returned from the war, though grey-headed, yet if he wishes can choose out a wife. But she has no solace save peering for omens, wretched and lonely the ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... know, my dear sir!" said the bluff, red-faced, grey-headed man. "I've gone through it all. Last winter I saw my poor fellows go down one by one, till I was the only man about who tried to fight the darkness and depression; and all the time so utterly weak and despairing that I could at any time have lain down and given up all hope. But ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... have often heard the grey-headed General in Public Meetings. For the first time on Saturday evening I got near to him in a more private way. And then it seemed to me like a picture, as when a grey warrior, a commander with snow-white beard and keen profile, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... to begin his military career as an exiled prince in the train of the Macedonian generals. Soon his personality asserted itself. He shared in the last campaigns of Antigonus; and the old marshal of Alexander took delight in the born soldier, who in the judgment of the grey-headed general only wanted years to be already the first warrior of the age. The unfortunate battle at Ipsus brought him as a hostage to Alexandria, to the court of the founder of the Lagid dynasty, where by his daring ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the man! Mr. Sabin did not neglect his luncheon, nor was he ever for a moment unmindful of the grey-headed princess who chatted away by his side with all the vivacity of her race and sex. But he watched ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... asking him anything you want to know. You may live a long time on board ship, and still learn nothing about seamanship, if you do not keep your eyes open, and try to get others to explain what you do not understand." As Mr Schank spoke, he beckoned to a grey-headed old mate who just then came on deck. "This is the youngster I spoke to you about, Mr Oldershaw," he said. "You will have an eye on him, and I hope you will be able to give a good report of his behaviour." I naturally looked up at my ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... be worth a straw in the world at present. I am better where I am. Truth will never be had where there are many poets, nor fair dealing where there are many lawyers; no, nor health where there are many physicians." At this moment, a little grey-headed hobgoblin, who had heard that a living man was arrived, flung himself at my feet, weeping abundantly. "Dear me," said I, "what are you?" "One who is grievously wronged every day in the world," said ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... Meanwhile Astley whispered to me, as he walked by my side, that he looked for much to happen that morning. Behind the old lady's chair marched Potapitch and Martha—Potapitch in his frockcoat and white waistcoat, with a cloak over all, and the forty-year-old and rosy, but slightly grey-headed, Martha in a mobcap, cotton dress, and squeaking shoes. Frequently the old lady would twist herself round to converse with these servants. As for De Griers, he spoke as though he had made up his mind to do something (though it is also possible that he spoke in this ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... similar stories of violence and trickery. In the West Riding of Halton, the Tories were said to have delayed voting, which seemed to be setting against them, by various stratagems, including the swearing in of old grey-headed men as of 21 years of age, and among the accusations made by the defeated candidate was one that certain deputy returning officers had allowed seven women to vote for the sitting member.[24] On the whole the election went in favour ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... chance of dat!" observed one of our captors, a grey-headed old negro with a facetious countenance, looking at the numerous lashings which ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... had had a good deal of experience of it. And I am not alone. Every other medical man, if not a grey-headed fossil or a wizened woman-hater, has had similar episodes; many strange—some ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... habits should be formed, and turbulent passions restrained, so that when manhood and old age come, the mind be not enervated by the follies and vices of youth, but, supported and strengthened by the Divine Being, be enabled to say, "O God, thou hast taught me from my youth, and now when I am old and grey-headed, O God, thou ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... this seems to be a grey-headed form of the last species, but with larger ears; the head is iron grey; round the eyes and a patch above and below orange fulvous or chestnut; the base of the ears the same. Regarding this Dr. Anderson, on comparing it with the last, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Baron of Attinghausen. A Gothic Hall, decorated with escutcheons and helmets. The Baron, a grey-headed man, eighty- five years old, tall and of a commanding mien, clad in a furred pelisse, and leaning on a staff tipped with chamois horn. Kuoni and six hinds standing round him with rakes and scythes. Ulrich of Rudenz enters in the costume of ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... the two old gentlemen lives a great friend of theirs, a maker of rag-dolls—a grey-headed, bent-back old veteran named Mr. Kight. I happened to be calling on the two old gentlemen on the Fifth of November last year, and, entering the kitchen, and while shaking hands with Joe (who always roars with laughter when he clutches your hand, and shakes it backwards and forwards as ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge. Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals —morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... to the stables, Preston sent a boy in search of "Darius." Darius, he told me, was the coachman, and chief in charge of the stable department. Darius came presently. He was a grey-headed, fine-looking, most respectable black man. He had driven my mother and my mother's mother; and being a trusted and important man on the place, and for other reasons, he had a manner and bearing that were a model of dignified propriety. Very grave "Uncle Darry" was; stately and almost courtly in ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... ferry sped on its way swiftly, and in a minute or two had stayed itself at the landing-stair, whereabout were gathered a score of men, some armed some unarmed, and they seemed for the more part to be grey-headed and past middle-age. ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... of the pick, the rattle of the cradle, the splashing of the water-buckets—all were still. Outwardly the day had been kept strictly as a day of rest by all. Beneath a tall tree stood, in the dress of a minister of the gospel, a middle-aged but grey-headed man. A rough stool served him for a seat, and a few upturned buckets, supporting some loose planks, were appropriated to the few women and children, while the men stood behind these in various attitudes, but all very attentive; for in such a congregation as this there were none but ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... eye, which, as they entered, first followed Master Mumblazen slowly to a large oaken desk, on which a ponderous volume lay open, and then rested, as if in uncertainty, on the stranger who had entered along with him. The curate, a grey-headed clergyman, who had been a confessor in the days of Queen Mary, sat with a book in his hand in another recess in the apartment. He, too, signed a mournful greeting to Tressilian, and laid his book ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... dressed, a stately glittering figure in a gown of shimmering black which seemed at every moment on fire. Her beautiful neck and shoulders were uncovered and undecorated; she walked between a grey-headed man, who wore the orders of an ambassador and a blue sash on his evening clothes, and his wife. Every one turned to look at her, every one was watching when she stopped for a moment before Drexley's table, but every one did not see the flash ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... stockings, and thus naked feet peer forth every where. The position of the men with regard to each other is just as irregular; a little dwarf may frequently be seen posted next to a giant, a boy of twelve or fourteen years near a grey-headed veteran, and a negro standing next to a ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... the way from Baboeuf joined the main road that ran parallel with the canal, stood a single British lorry. A grey-headed lieutenant, who was lighting a cigarette, came up when I hailed him, and told me our waggons had passed. He had pointed out the way, and they had gone to the left. "The first turning on the right after that will bring you to ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... was a grey-headed tall gaunt figure, who spoke very little; but as the Bosniac frontier is subject to troubles he had been selected for his great personal courage, for he had served under ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... Small wonder, then, that field naturalists fight rather shy of this family. Of the 110 species of warbler which exist in India, I propose to deal with only one, and that favoured bird is Hodgson's grey-headed flycatcher-warbler (Cryptolopha xanthoschista). My reasons for raising this particular species from among the vulgar herd of warblers are two. The first is that it is the commonest bird in our hill stations. The second is that it is distinctively ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... Tsar went to church; the priest was reading from Holy Scripture, and so he needs must listen. Now there were certain words there which pleased him not. "To say such words to me!" thought he, "words that I can never forget, though I grow grey-headed." After service the Tsar went home, and bade them send the priest to him. The priest came. "How durst thou read such and such passages to me?" said the Tsar.—"They were written to be read," replied the priest.—"Written, ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... brawling mouths stopped with nose-gays; while portraits of the Emperor and the Empress, busts, colours draped with Parisian cunning, gave to the scene an appearance of festivity that looked quite fairy-like in so sombre a region. As for our gallant host, I never saw such spirits; he is a fine old grey-headed blow-hard of fifty odd, talking English like a native, and combining the frank open-hearted cordiality of a sailor with that graceful winning gaiety peculiar to Frenchmen. I never saw anything more perfect ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... moments when I feel so great a repugnance to it as to make me question whether it were not better to renounce it than to become the instrument of Miss Roselaer de Werve's vengeance on this side the grave. The idea of having to drive a grey-headed old man from his manor-house, and to render a poor young lady, who has a family claim on her aunt's inheritance, houseless, is too much for me, though a whimsical old woman and the law have done their utmost to set my conscience ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... watcher, was a grey-headed man, slack in the twist but limber in the joints—distinguished by a constant lowering of the eye and a spasmodic twitching of the corners of the mouth. He was active and nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths like a wild-cat. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... favourable account of the music in the village church. In the essay just referred to he mentions the fact that he attended a service in a West of England church where the service 'was spoken—not merely read—by a grey-headed minister.' ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood |
