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More "Indescribable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... destruction is this; that the agricultural capital, or rather the ground itself—which, in a rapidly increasing degree, is daily swept away by the waters—is totally lost. Signs of unparalleled destitution are visible in all the mountain zone, and the solitudes of those districts are assuming an indescribable character of sterility and desolation. The gradual destruction of the woods has, in a thousand localities, annihilated at once the springs and the fuel. Between Grenoble and Briancon, in the valley of the Romanche, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Ah, then! moment so meet for the sweet question of questions, place so appropriate for the delicate, bashful, murmured popping thereof!—suddenly from the sward before, from the groups beyond, there floated to the ears of Richard Avenel an indescribable, mingled, ominous sound,—a sound as of a general titter, a horrid, malignant, but low cachinnation. And Mrs. M'Catchley, stretching forth her parasol, exclaimed, "Dear me, Mr. Avenel, what can they be all ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... quiet, Florence disengaged herself, as soon as she could, from the ministration of Mrs Pipchin and her attendants. Left alone, she thought of what had happened on the staircase, at first in doubt of its reality; then with tears; then with an indescribable and terrible alarm, like that she had felt ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon me, I thrust my way through to a gray patch which marked a break in the elmen roof. At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham. Then Smith plunged into view. Lastly, Edwards ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments. With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face, were no less apt a type of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... barbed-wire entanglements and into crowded trenches the human masses dash and scramble. Here, with heavy toll, they advanced; there, and with costlier sacrifice, they were driven back. Fiery Magyars, mechanical Teutons and stolid muzhiks mixed together in an indescribable hellbroth of combative fury and destructive passion. Screaming shells and spattered shrapnel rent the rocks and tore men in pieces by the thousand. Round the Lupkow Pass the Russians steadily carved their way forward, and at the close of the day, March 29, 1915, they had taken ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... catbird, silence, broken only by the soft, indescribable utterances that are at the same time the delight and the despair of the bird-student. Some birds, upon entering this solitary retreat, announced themselves by a single note, or call, as effectually as if they had sent ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... unexpectedly, and led the way along the military road in her front. Though this sudden and startling movement of the Indian produced no sound from the other, in the surprise her veil also was allowed to open its folds, and betrayed an indescribable look of pity, admiration, and horror, as her dark eye followed the easy motions of the savage. The tresses of this lady were shining and black, like the plumage of the raven. Her complexion was not brown, but it rather appeared ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... anguished but stifled moan of the childless father, who had apparently expended his hard-got earnings for the interment of his child—I not only repassed the gates considerably affected, but overpowered with an indescribable dread of impending death. I was now possessed with a servile love of God, arising from fear; an anxiety to please and obey him, to an infinite degree. Alas! even at this early age, how worldly-minded, how pitiful, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... of the long trench, hands emerge that protrude from gray sleeves with red facings, and booted legs. In places the embankment is destroyed and its woodwork splintered—all the flank of the trench collapsed and fallen into an indescribable mixture. In other places, round pits are yawning. And of all that moment I have best retained the vision of a whimsical trench covered with many-colored rags and tatters. For the making of their sandbags the Germans had ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... The noise was indescribable, because compound. There was the boisterous hilarity of people who felt their feet once more on solid ground, after a long and weary voyage; the shouting of sailors and bargemen in the boats, and of soldiers and natives on the beach; the talking and laughing of men and women who had struck up ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... about among trunks with such unwonted zeal, that I was sure something exceptional was going to happen. At the last minute just as She came in, calling: "Toby's collar and the cat's basket! Quick! put the cat in his basket!"—just as she was saying that, my chum disappeared. It was indescribable! He, terrible to see, swore by all the gods, and struck the floor with his cane, furious because they had allowed his Kiki to get away. She called "Kiki!" at first supplicatingly, then in threatening tones, and the maids brought empty plates, meant to deceive, and yellow paper from ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... favourite pastimes. Twenty times a-day he declared himself the happiest of mortals; and when Julie heard the declaration, she cast her eyes to heaven, and her little mouth assumed an expression of indescribable contempt." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... I saw was, for the moment, quite indescribable. I was completely dazed and bewildered, and it was only when some involuntary movement of my head at last flashed the light from the professor's face to the table top that a measure of sanity returned, which proves at least that tables do not ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... alive, but delirious. Of that ghastly battlefield, or the long agony of that wounded boy, I hesitate to speak. No pen can describe, either, and to even faintly portray them is but to add gloom to a narrative already replete with it. The twenty-four hours of his indescribable pain and torturing thirst were only broken by a few hours of merciful delirium, when he was once more a boy and living his simple, care-free life on the farm, or happy with Liddy. When found he knew it not. When examined ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... day at San Diego, I walked in the morning sunshine on Coronado Beach. The beauty of the sea and shore was almost indescribable: on one side rose Point Loma, grim and gloomy as a fortress wall; before me stretched away to the horizon the ocean with its miles of breakers curling into foam; between the surf and the city, wrapped in its dark blue mantle, lay the sleeping bay; eastward, the mingled yellow, red, and white ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... thing (she said to Mrs Boffin); she was foolishly susceptible of the power of beauty, but it wasn't altogether that; she never had been able to resist a natural grace of manner, but it wasn't altogether that; it was more than that, and there was no name for the indescribable extent and degree to which she was captivated by this ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... renaissance—it may be said that his wide reading, his loving study, among the authors of our richest literary periods went far towards forming his style, though it must be remembered—it cannot be forgotten with a volume of his essays or letters in hand—that there is always that marked but indescribable "individuality of manner" which pervades the ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... against the fellow or his existence is a menace to you. Revenge or fear; he wants your money, or he's taken your wife! But what revenge can there be upon a poor devil without the price of a bed on his indescribable person? He hasn't anything to bless himself with, and he makes it a bit too hot for somebody who has, eh? So you whittle it down. And then perhaps by sheer luck you run your blade into the root of ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... townspeople, great and small, going decorously up the street in their best clothes to church—most of them he recognised, and among them Elizabeth's old aunt going up by herself, with her psalm-book and her white folded handkerchief in her hand—an indescribable feeling came over him, and his eyes filled so that he could hardly see. Here passing before him were all the gentleness and the purity that he had once believed in, when his young faith had as yet received no shock, and when he was as joyous and credulous as the rest; and he could ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... began to flow from his eyes. Many of the ladies were weeping, and at length, as if by inspiration, Mrs. Thompson kneeled on the floor of the saloon, all kneeling with her, even the saloonist, and prayed, pleading with indescribable pathos and earnestness for the conversion and salvation of this and all saloon-keepers. When the amen was sobbed rather than spoken, Mrs. Washington Doggett's sweet voice began, "There is a fountain," etc., in which all joined; the effect was most solemn, and when the hymn was ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... with indescribable furtivity, "I cannot see that I am entitled to communicate my client's name. I will sound him for you with pleasure, if you care to instruct me, but I cannot see that I can give ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the stream of moonlight with a curiously careful tread. He was in his shirt and trousers only, and her first flush of joy died when she perceived that his eyes were fixed in an unnatural stare on vacancy. When he reached the middle of the room he stood still and murmured in tones of indescribable sadness— ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... the case with water, which as a liquid is to all appearance formless. When sufficiently cooled the molecules are brought within the play of the crystallizing force, and they then arrange themselves in forms of indescribable beauty. When snow is produced in calm air, the icy particles build themselves into beautiful stellar shapes, each star possessing six rays. There is no deviation from this type, though in other respects the appearances of the snow-stars are infinitely various. In the polar regions these exquisite ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... none of us sorry to exchange our saddles for our berths in the Camoens, having been on horseback the greater part of the day, on a road the roughness of which is indescribable. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... board was indescribable; and as night closed in, and we stood out on the starboard tack, the certainty that daybreak would discover the enemy was almost as great a cause for jubilation as if we had already won ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... this, Lord Chetwynde, which will account for my last letter to you. Crushed by the loss of my only friend, I reflected upon the difference between you and him, and the thought brought a bitterness which is indescribable. Therefore I wrote as I did. My sorrow, instead of softening, imbittered me, and I poured forth all my bitterness in that letter. It stung you. You were maddened by it and outraged. You saw in it only the symptoms and the proofs of what you chose to call a 'bad mind and heart.' If you reflect ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Indescribable emotion had now come over both men. As Guillaume heard his brother's broken words, the cry of a love that trembled at the thought of possible weakness, he did for a moment waver. With a dreadful heart-pang he stammered despairingly: ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... an indescribable mental headiness in the admiration we inspire, or in the effect of playing a part, which fends off criticism from reaching the idol. An atmosphere, produced perhaps by unceasing nervous tension, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... again on the important face that indescribable shade of embarrassment. "Waal,"—the youngster balanced this word judicially,—"I forgot 'bout'n the tur-key whings till this minute. I reckon ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... prophetic fancy. There is a Hindoo saying, "Do not strike a woman, even with a flower;" but we have seen that these Hindoos often do physically abuse their wives most cruelly, besides subjecting them to indescribable mental anguish, and mental anguish is much more painful and more prolonged than bodily torture. Fine words do not make fine feelings. From this point of view Dalton was perhaps right when he asserted that the wild tribes of India ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to us then. Suddenly, above the roar of the wind and the thumping of our car on the rocks, even above the tumult of our spirits, there came to us the strains of more than earthly music. Whether it was from voice or instrument we could not tell, and in its sweetness and power it was absolutely indescribable. At first we did not try to discover its source but were content to sit and quietly enjoy it, as it fell gently upon us, pervading our whole being and so filling us with courage and strength that we seemed to ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... and I instantly discovered that the instrument on which he played had organ pedals attached, otherwise some of the effects he produced could not have been even hinted at. His touch was weird, his technique indescribable, and one no longer listened to the piano, but to one of those instruments of Eastern origin in which glass and metal are extensively used. The quality of tone emanating from the piano was brittle, so to speak; in a word, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the church walls remained, and the sun slanted in through the ruined windows on to a scene of indescribable wreckage. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... fully displayed in 'Don Juan' than in 'Childe Harold.' Byron was Don Juan, mocking, satirical, witty, pathetic, dissolute, defiant of all conventional opinion. The ease, the grace, the diablerie of the poem are indescribable; its wantonness is not to be excused. But it is a microcosm of life as the poet saw it, a record of the experience of thirty years, full of gems, full of flaws, in many ways the most wonderful performance of his time. The critics who were offended by its satire of English ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the cylinder went round and round, and the shrill performance continued, the dog's howling grew wilder; it reached a point where it broke into a hoarse cough, then again it recommenced lower in the scale, carrying over a gamut of indescribable, audible misery. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... slightly above the average height and solidly built, but he was not tall. His face had often been described as a "perfect blank." No one saw anything of what lay within by merely looking into his eyes, and yet there was a certain indescribable something that appealed to one from those eyes. An elderly German lady once remarked to his mother: "Ihr Sohn hat ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... turned toward Joan, who stood next him on his right hand, with an indescribable look of tenderness and grief. She was of a beauty so unusual and so marvellous, that her grandfather was fascinated by the dazzling sight, and mistook her for an angel that God had sent to console him on his ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... beauty had caught the glory of Switzerland, and the soft, fairy charm of Dauphine. Its guardian mountain was a miniature Matterhorn of indescribable grace and airy stateliness; its lesser attendants formed a group of peaks, grey and green and rose. As if enough gifts had not yet been bestowed upon the little place at its christening, a playground of forest land, rolling up over grassy slopes, had been given, with ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the shrill notes of fifes, the beating of drums, the rattle of stones shaken in empty gourds, and whistling on elephants' teeth, all of which combined created an infernal din. The swarm was swept by an indescribable fervor. Some threw themselves on their knees; others shouted ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... through the crowd, but a shot, aimed in the direction of his head brought the driver tumbling from his seat, terror-stricken but unhurt; and almost at the same time, the further progress of the van was effectually prevented by shooting one of the horses through the neck. A scene of indescribable panic and confusion ensued; the policemen scrambled hastily to the ground, and betook themselves to flight almost without a thought of resistance. Those in the cab behind got out, not to resist the attack, but to help in running away; and in a ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... of all things. And now suddenly came darkness; and in this darkness her hand found mine and nestled there. Thus we remained a great while hearkening to the awful booming of this rushing, mighty wind, a sound indescribable in itself, yet one to shake the very soul. In a while, the tumult subsiding a little we might distinguish other sounds, as the rolling of thunder, the rending crash of falling trees hard by, and the roar of mighty waters. And presently her voice ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... and I did not leave until the last player had entered the "bus" and it drove off. Crowds of Yale men and spectators gave the players cheer after cheer as they rolled away. The flags with which the "bus" was decorated waved in the breeze, and I watched them with indescribable fascination until they were out of sight. The noise made by the Yale students I learned afterwards was college cheering, and college cheers once heard by a ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... bent forward more than usual, and his voice had a note of terrible hurt. It was as if all the ties of seven years of vicissitude had been arbitrarily cast off by his old partner; that they had become master and man. His words conveyed an indescribable ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... The cover of the basket was loose, and at this moment one, two, three, and then two more, and again more kittens came suddenly tumbling on to the floor and racing about the room in every direction, and with such indescribable rapidity that it seemed as if the whole room was full of them. They jumped over the tutor's boots, bit at his trousers, climbed up Fraulein Rottenmeier's dress, rolled about her feet, sprang up on to Clara's couch, scratching, scrambling, and mewing: it was a sad scene of confusion. ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... made towards final dissolution of form—but all the time, with my fingers pushed hard into my ears, lest the faintest sound should invade the silent citadel of my soul. If inadvertently I removed one of my fingers, the agony of terror I instantly experienced is indescribable. I can compare it to nothing but the rushing in upon my brain of a whole churchyard of spectres. The very possibility of hearing a sound, in such a mood, and at such a time, was almost enough to paralyse me. So I could scare myself in broad daylight, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... after her father's death, that she was advancing rapidly in strength of character, and in the influence and ascendency which she was acquiring over all around her. Her beauty, her accomplishments, and a certain indescribable charm which pervaded all her demeanor, combined to give her great personal power. But, while these things awakened in other minds feelings of interest in Cleopatra and attachment to her, they only increased the jealousy ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... wistfulness in the blue depths of her eyes, with the something tragic in the lines of her face that little Patience's death had written there irradicably, with poverty speaking from every fold of the blouse and skirt, yet with all the indescribable charm of girlish beauty at fifteen, Lydia was more ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... vices of Nero are indescribable, and that word must suffice. His extravagances, whether in lavish presents or in personal expenditure, soon rendered him bankrupt. He had no means of paying the soldiers or meeting his own appetites. Then began, or increased, his attacks on wealthy ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... again. What he said, wild and wanton though it was, was beginning to fill me with a sense of the most extreme discomfort. His sentences, in some strange, indescribable way, seemed, as they came from his lips, to warp my limbs; to enwrap themselves about me; to confine me, tighter and tighter, within, as it were, swaddling clothes; to make me more and more helpless. I was already conscious that ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... time, in all his long watches by that bed, that John Saltram had recognised him. The sick man had talked of him often in his delirium; but never before had he looked his former friend in the face with one ray of recognition in his own. An indescribable thrill of pain went through Gilbert's heart at the sound of that calm utterance of his name. How sweet it would have been to him, what a natural thing it would have seemed, to have fallen upon his old friend's ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... within. The heart determines the worth and beauty of life. It makes all the difference whether the physical determines its circumference or whether you have an intellect that is reaching out to the things unmeasurable and a soul that grows into glory indescribable. ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... scudding before the gale; and a pretty crew of scarecrows we looked when the morning at length dawned and disclosed us to each other's vision, drenched to the skin with flying spray, haggard and red-eyed with fatigue and the want of sleep, and each wearing that peculiar and indescribable expression of countenance that marks the man who has been face to face for hours with imminent death. But about four bells in the forenoon watch the gale suddenly broke, the sky cleared, and the wind moderated so rapidly that just before noon, by carefully watching ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... covered with scrub, "a din which completely astonished" him; on crawling onwards he beheld, to his amazement, about one hundred and fifty of the magnificent lyre-cocks, "ranged in order of battle, and fighting with indescribable fury." The bowers of the Bower- birds are the resort of both sexes during the breeding-season; and "here the males meet and contend with each other for the favours of the female, and here the latter assemble and coquet with the males." ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... steward went down into the refrigerator, which was somewhere below the quarter-deck, to get provisions for the day, every woman held a bottle of salts to her nose, and the officers fled to the forward part of the ship. The odor which ascended from that refrigerator was indescribable: it lingered and would not go. It followed us to the table, and when we tasted the food we tasted the odor. We bribed the steward for ice. Finally, I could not go below at all, but had a baked sweet potato brought on deck, and lived several days ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... extraordinary feature of this indescribable satire lies in Chapter XII, "THE WAGES Of SIN IS DEATH," contributed by the TK. This chapter is a masterpiece of concept, treatment and beauty, setting forth the meaning and purpose of the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... Campbell approached her in a most respectful manner, and inquired if she had found a ring the previous day. It was scarcely necessary for her to return an answer, because there before him, on her ungloved hand, the ring appeared. As she handed it to him, an indescribable sensation ran through her whole frame. They entered into conversation; and how long they walked and chatted together, and what were the subjects of their conversation, we shall not pause to mention: sufficient to say that, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... wholly indescribable surprise and delight that Macleod came upon the life and stir and gayety of London in the sweet June time, when the parks and gardens and squares would of themselves have been a sufficient wonder to him. The change from the sombre shores of lochs Na Keal, and Iua, and Scridain ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... live with him; both had died before they were fifty; and here he was the sole owner of a wonderful young head, with hair that reached to the waist, with lips like cool fruit from an orchard-tree, and the indescribable charm of youth and loveliness which the young themselves never really understood. That was what he used to say to himself; it was only age could appreciate youth and beauty; youth did ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... scrambling to go to supper that there was some danger of being squeezed to death. The vice-president handed in Mrs. Washington, and the president immediately followed. The applause with which they were received is indescribable. The same was shown on their return from supper. The music added greatly to the interest of the scene. The president staid until between twelve and one; the vice-president till near two. Both were serenaded with ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... and went on. It was not more than a hundred yards to where the grass grew on firm ground. Racey and his horse reached solid earth without incident. Then—a scramble, a scraping, and a clattering followed in a breath by the indescribable sound of a mass ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... upon the Douro, covered with the Quintas, or villas, of the wealthier inhabitants of the adjoining city. Most of the Quintas at the mouth of the river command delightful prospects of the Atlantic Ocean, and the splendid effects produced on these scenes at sunset, in this glowing climate, are almost indescribable. Some idea of its beauty may be formed by reference to Colonel Batty's view from this point.[3] The appearance of the Douro, with its numerous shipping, and the variety of interesting objects scattered on its cheerful banks, render this one of the most pleasing scenes in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... countenance; also his shortness of stature; the dignity, grace, and repose of his incomparable manner, too. She was a plump, petite, and rosy girl; but there was that in her demeanor which became the daughter of an affluent home, and a certain assured, indescribable expression of face which seemed to say, Here is a maiden who to the object of her affection could be faithful against an execrating ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... short of a revelation of the never-ceasing bounty of Nature, who endows successive generations of children with this instinctive ear for the deep harmonies of her laws. People sometimes speak of the indescribable beauty of children's innocence, and insist that there is nothing which calls for more constant thanksgiving than that influence on mankind. But I will venture to say that no one quite knows what it is who has foregone the privilege of being ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... them. In the midst of this torment the man kicked down the stool which had supported his feet, so that he hung upon the cords with his whole weight, which suddenly increased their tension, and gave indescribable aggravation to his pain. Next followed a new kind of torment. An instrument resembling a small ladder, consisting of two parallel pieces of wood, and five transverse pieces, with the anterior edges sharpened, was placed before him, so that when the tormentor struck it heavily, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... Wix was as safe as Clara Matilda, who was in heaven and yet, embarrassingly, also in Kensal Green, where they had been together to see her little huddled grave. It was from something in Mrs. Wix's tone, which in spite of caricature remained indescribable and inimitable, that Maisie, before her term with her mother was over, drew this sense of a support, like a breast-high banister in a place of "drops," that would never give way. If she knew her instructress was poor ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... looked up, and stared for some time with a wild glance at the apparition which met her there. Then she arose hastily, pressed her hands to her breast, uttered a faint cry of horror, and sank lifeless to the floor. Susanna pushed her angel violently aside, and rushed to her mistress, who with indescribable feelings of anguish she raised in her arms and carried to bed. Harald, on the contrary, busied himself with the poor angel, who with his crown had lost his balance, and while the hot tallow ran down over brow and cheeks broke out into the most deplorable tones ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... question authority, thus fettering her will, together with a false interpretation of Scripture, have been the instruments to hold her, body and soul, in a slavery whose depths of degradation can never be fathomed, whose indescribable tortures can never be understood ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... man of large ideas, was Jones, to call that mass of rock a hill)—shining red-hot in the last light against a topaz or turquoise sky, and the gulch that ran up to it in a mystery of dark green gloom offering up an evening prayer of indescribable odors—those appeals to a life in former spheres which no other sense remembers; the ceaseless roar of the wind in the pines, so steady that it formed a background for other sounds almost as good as silence itself; the evening pipe, ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... hope: a genuine, material convalescence had commenced. It was not merely Caroline's smile which was brighter, or her spirits which were cheered, but a certain look had passed from her face and eye—a look dread and indescribable, but which will easily be recalled by those who have watched the couch of dangerous disease. Long before the emaciated outlines of her aspect began to fill, or its departed colour to return, a more subtle change took place; all grew softer and warmer. Instead of a marble mask and glassy ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... with any one, and for five weeks his door was closed to all comers. The whole flood of difficulties against which he had so long fought desperately was at once let loose upon him. In England the feeling was indescribable. All the religious fervour of the people was passionately thrown on the side of the martyr. The church of Canterbury closed for a year. The ornaments were taken from the altar, the walls were stripped, the sound of the bells ceased. Excitement was raised to its utmost ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... little orchestra in their same absurd "monkey clothes," the same motley crowd of half foreign, wholly happy men and women, the same indescribable odor of un-American cooking—she even rejoiced in that—and, best of all, on the long shelf that ran around the four sides of the room were the same little, fat, bright blue pitchers with great naming vermilion roses on either side. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... and a little to one side. As usual, she was in black; but now it was some sort of dinner-gown that left her arms and neck bare. The line of the chin and the throat and the sweet round curve of the shoulder had in it something indescribable—something that was related to music, and that eluded speech. Her hair was nothing more than a warm colored mist without form or outline. The sloe-brown of her little eyes and the flush of her cheek were mere inferences—like the faintest ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... and the last were alike informed by the spirit of one woman; visible then, invisible now; yet sensibly present in every haunt she had made her own. The house was full of her; the wood was full of her. But the pangs of reminder he had so dreaded resolved themselves, rather, into a sense of indescribable, ethereal reunion. He asked nothing better than that his life and work should be fulfilled with her always: her and Tara—if she ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... pellet called Earth, and become immediately wholly concerned, aye, engrossed, with any individual worshipper's woes or desires,—a readiness to notice a fellow when he is going to bed. This will bring indescribable comfort to simian hearts; and a god that neglects this duty won't last very long, no matter how competent he may be in ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... account for the uneasy tone of a letter written by Michelangelo to Buonarroto. Prato had been taken by assault upon the 30th of August, and was now prostrate after those hideous days of torment, massacre, and outrage indescribable which followed. In these circumstances Michelangelo advises his family to "escape into a place of safety, abandoning their household gear and property; for life is far more worth than money." If they are in need of cash, they ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... emotion or passion which was suited to his ends. Not less indispensable, secondly, was a matchless perfection of the organs of expression, including the entire apparatus of voice, intonation, pause, gesture, attitude, and indescribable play of countenance. In no instance did he ever indulge in an expression that was not instantly recognized as nature itself; yet some of his penetrating and subduing tones were absolutely peculiar, and as inimitable as they were indescribable. ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... beneath it; so we both knelt down, and bodily lifted the light but hideous occupant of this awful pit, and placed it in a sitting posture in one corner. As we did so, first a foot and then a leg dropped off at the knee joint, and fell back into the hole, which sent an indescribable thrill of horror through me, and no doubt it acted upon Alec ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... always been able to live up to my ideal. But in my own real world I have never done anything wrong, never denied my faith, never been untrue to myself. Ive been threatened and blackmailed and insulted and starved. But Ive played the game. Ive fought the good fight. And now it's all over, theres an indescribable peace. [He feebly folds his hands and utters his creed] I believe in Michael Angelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... Wordsworth in an observation he once hazarded, that a tree is a more poetical object than a prince in his coronation robes. His taste in landscape gardening was honoured with the approbation of Horace Walpole, and he spent 1,000 pounds upon a grotto, which incurred the ridicule of Johnson. Of that indescribable something, that 'greatness' which causes Dryden to uplift a lofty head from the deep pit of his corruption, neither Pope's character nor his style bears any trace. But still, both as a poet and a man we must give place, and even high place, to Pope. About ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... recondite meaning. They are simply indications of the thorough and utter immorality which prevailed throughout the race. And a still more disgusting proof of it is seen in the frequent appearance among diverse tribes of men dressed as women and yielding themselves to indescribable vices.[149-1] There was at first nothing of a religious nature in such exhibitions. Lascivious priests chose at times to invest them with some such meaning for their own sensual gratification, just as in ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... enters in his diary, "I resolved to go west to Lualaba and buy a canoe for its exploration. The Manyuema country is all surpassingly beautiful. Palms crown the highest heights of the mountains, and the forests about five miles broad are indescribable. Climbers of cable size in great numbers are hung among the gigantic trees, many unknown wild fruits abound, some the size of a child's head, and strange birds and monkeys ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... and dropped it again, all were turned to sapphire, while articles under the sea gleamed with a beautiful silver shade. The girls bared their arms and enjoyed dipping them to obtain this effect. The glorious blue of the cave was indescribable. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... fact nevertheless remains that one of the huge buttresses of the Coumelie became detached from the main summit, and dashed down in enormous blocks to the valley below. There they lie, the road passing between, in the wildest and most indescribable confusion. Here a heap piled one above another, there a mighty shoulder split in twain by a conical fragment which rests in the breach that it made; some towering above the road, others blocking the river below, a few isolated and many half-buried; but all combining to ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... blacksmith's forge, only much larger, and over these smoke-hoods are suspended, connected with the cavernous chimneys. At each corner of these hearths are iron cranes hung with chains, and between two of these cranes the intendant pointed out an indescribable mass of something supposed to be a stag roasted whole—not at present a very toothsome-looking morsel. Dozens of pots and kettles hang from the chains, and scores of pans and ovens stand in rows underneath. Thickly scattered over the floor near these fireplaces are the bones of game and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... air with noises, Strange and indescribable voices, From Hags, in a diabolical clatter— Cats that spit curses, and apes that chatter Scraps of cabalistical matter— Owls that screech, and dogs that yell— Skeleton hounds that will never be fatter— All the domestic tribes ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... announced "Free hot soup to-night!" The swing doors, snapping to and fro like ravenous lips, made gratified smacks as the saloon gorged itself with plump men, eating with astounding and endless appetite, smiling in some indescribable manner as the men came from all directions like ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... hills, covered with scraggy trees, crosses the Zambesi, and confines it within a narrow, rough, and rocky dell of about a quarter of a mile in breadth; over this, which may be called the flood-bed of the river, large masses of rock are huddled in indescribable confusion. The drawing, for the use of which, and of others, our thanks are due to Lord Russell, conveys but a faint idea of the scene, inasmuch as the hills which confine the river do not appear in the sketch. The chief rock is syenite, some portions of which have a ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... feasting went on for some time; but Hermann's heart was sick within him; he had no spirit left for the revelry. An indescribable feeling of terror and anxiety possessed him. The clock struck twelve; the guests dispersed. They had hardly left the house when a terrific storm broke forth, appalling in its awful violence; the house shook, trees were uprooted, lightning blazed continually. The tempest was nothing, however, ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... the privilege of listening to Ole Bull's witchery with his violin, he gave an hour to Norwegian folk-songs, his wife at the piano. She played with finish, feeling, and restraint. She first went through the air, then he joined in with his violin with indescribable charm. Critics said he lacked technique. I am glad he did: his music went straight to the heart. At the last he told us he would give the tune always played after a wedding when the guests had ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... with the rain pouring in torrents. I had tried to buy a pair of shoes before going to sleep, but they brought me a pair for a boy of twelve and assured me that there were no others in the town, and those I had come with were in tatters which were hardly to be kept on my feet. The mud was indescribable,—the entire country flooded, and all the bridges across a river we must pass carried away, except one over a narrow gorge where the rocks approached so closely that a couple of logs reached from side to side, and over these the horses must be led. To say ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... his eyes were fixed with cold intensity upon a fringe of gray across the coulee below the little pasture. To the nostrils of the outraged Happy Family was borne that indescribable aroma which betrays the presence of sheep; that aroma which sheepmen love and which cattlemen hate, and which a favorable wind will carry ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... held up again by the ice, a little below Black Cape, a dark cone-shaped mountain standing alone, on the eastern side washed by the waters of the sea, on the west separated by deep valleys from the adjacent mountains. It was a scene of indescribable grandeur, for the coast was lined for miles with bergs, forced shoreward, broken and tilted at right angles. At Black Cape we had made half the distance between our former position at Lincoln Bay and the longed-for ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... was the reply. Turning the pages, Heidi found a song about the sun, and decided to read that aloud. More and more eagerly she read, while the grandmother, with folded arms, sat in her chair. An expression of indescribable happiness shone in her countenance, though tears were rolling down her cheeks. When Heidi had repeated the end of the song a number of times, the old woman exclaimed: "Oh, Heidi, everything seems bright to me again and ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... the suit gradually disappeared. First, the wall against which it hung shone mistily through it. Then there was wall, slightly outlined by a greyish cast. And at last, only an indescribable fuzziness that had to be sensed rather ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... man may even, if he gets into the groove, be gradually pushed on till he reaches an eminence which probably surprises himself as much as any one else. A good speaker in Parliament may at sixty or seventy be made a Cabinet Minister. And we can all imagine what indescribable pride and elation must in such cases possess the wife and daughters of the man who has attained this decided step in advance. I can say sincerely that I never saw human beings walk with so airy tread, and evince so fussily their sense of a greatness more than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... our entering dry-dock, August 1st, was eventful, as it was arranged we should make an excursion to view one of Nature's greatest wonders—Niagara Falls—a sight unlike any other on the surface of the globe. The indescribable grandeur of the whole overwhelms the soul—to contemplate that tremendous torrent which never stops! No rest in the ages of the past—no promise of a moment's stay in all the years to come—but on, on, ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... and the spring developed. His letters were regular though formal; and it is not to be wondered that the uncertainty of her position, linked with the fact that there was not much passion in her thoughts of Humphrey, bred an indescribable dreariness in the heart of Phyllis Grove. The spring was soon summer, and the summer brought the King; but still no Humphrey Gould. All this while the engagement by letter was ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... at every bridge was indescribable confusion. Every kind of vehicle that you could imagine—ox carts, buffalo wagons, Red Cross carts, troikas, foorgans like prairie schooners, hay-wagons, Russian phaetons and many others invented and fitted up for the occasion. The animals—donkeys, horses, ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... sitting, reading a fiscal report of one of his companies and meditating on his affairs. By now they had become somewhat more sympatica than formerly, and Berenice had an easy, genial way in his presence. She liked him, rather. With an indescribable smile which wrinkled her nose and eyes, and played about the corners of her mouth, she said: "Now I am going ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... of applause, enthusiasm, and wonder afterwards was indescribable. The gentlemen crowded round the singers—even the parliamentary gentlemen had lost their self-control, while the young lady who had wept forgot her timidity to make an eager approach to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... An indescribable succession of dull blows, perplexing in their regularity, sent their sound with difficulty through the fluffy atmosphere. It was a neighbouring clock striking ten. The bell was in the open air, and being overlaid ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... comfortable posture; I would be fevered and weary of the staring sun; and just then he would begin courteously to withdraw his countenance, the shadows lengthened, the aromatic airs awoke, and an indescribable but happy change announced the coming of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the third time, passing over sundry remarks made by myself to the young lady. That done, I added the account of my expedition to Eaton, and the certainty at which I had arrived that my fellow-traveller was not the person she represented herself to be. After which, I inquired with indescribable anxiety if Mr. Huntingdon's order ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... of Parliamentary Debate, of Public Business which the Convention has to do. A question emerges, so small at first; is put off, submerged; but always re-emerges bigger than before. It is a curious, indeed an indescribable sort of growth which ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... goodness and nobility of mind impressed upon her features. She introduced to us three girls between eighteen and twenty years of age as her daughters, of whom only one—Bertha—resembled her and her sons. This one, a young copy of the mother, at once embarrassed me by the indescribable charm of her presence. She was so little like the others—Leonora and Clementina—that I could not refrain from remarking upon it to David. 'These two are not blood-relations to us, but pupil daughters of my mother; what that means I will tell you ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the habitual deference and attention that marks your manner to your mother the indescribable tenderness and rendering back of care and watchfulness that betokens remembrance of early days. No other woman should ever induce you to forget this truest, most disinterested friend, nor should your manner ever indicate even momentary indifference ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... the pirate in a circle, stamping time slowly with their feet while the women and children stood in a larger circle, marking time with hands and voices. Presently the dance grew more furious, and ultimately attained to a pitch of wild violence which is quite indescribable. At the height of the paroxysm, a warrior would ever and anon dart out from the circle with whirling club, and bring it down as if on the prisoner's skull, but would turn it aside so deftly that it just grazed his ear and ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... his arm, appeared up the beach. I knew instantly that I must be in England. He was staring most intently at the sphere and me. He advanced staring. I dare say I looked a ferocious savage enough—dirty, unkempt, to an indescribable degree; but it did not occur to me at the time. He stopped at a distance of twenty yards. "Hul-lo, my ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... helplessness with which the figure rested in the chair, there was less outward token of suffering than he had often seen about her,—more appearance almost of youth and beauty. But it was not an earthly beauty; there was something about it which filled him with a kind of indescribable undefined awe, together with dread of a sorrow towards which he shrank from looking. She thought him fatigued with the exertion he had made, and allowed him to rest, while she contemplated with pleasure even the slight ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... president of the State university, or of the Normal School, or of Purdue University, school commissioners and county superintendents. But the legislature should give them the power to rescue our prisons, hospitals and asylums from the indescribable horror of filth, neglect and cruelty which hangs like a murky cloud over many of them. Men have tried it and failed. Stupidity or partisanship or brutality or avarice, has transformed many a noble foundation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... at Galland's picture, his effort to "transplant into European gardens the magic flowers of Eastern fancy," still compare his tales with the sudden prospect of magnificent mountains seen after a long desert-march: they arouse strange longings and indescribable desires; their marvellous imaginativeness produces an insensible brightening of mind and an increase of fancy-power, making one dream that behind them lies the new and unseen, the strange and unexpected—in fact, all the glamour of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... happen again later, one of them, Mr. Bowline Greene, carried him off to his own secluded home and watched him carefully. He said "the thought that the snows and rains fell upon her grave filled him with indescribable grief." Two years later he told a fellow-legislator that "although he seemed to others to enjoy life rapturously, yet when alone he was so overcome by mental depression, he never dared to carry a pocket-knife." Later still Greene, who had helped ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... watching the movements of the multitude, apparently counting them as then entered the house of God, looking for the last one to darken the door. The impatience and anxiety with which they waited, and the bliss they anticipated on the eventful day, is altogether indescribable. Those that have been so fortunate as to embark in such a noble enterprise know all its realities; and those who have not had this inestimable privilege will have to taste its sweets before they can tell to others its joys, its comforts, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no little confidence commended me in dumb show to the landlady of the Inn, a Mrs. Nature, if I understood him aright. This person was still comely, though of uncertain age, wore cherry ribbons, smiled rather vacantly from vague, wonderful, indescribable eyes that seemed to change colour, like the chameleon, according ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... peatstack-like architecture, its countless population, its temples, prisons, flower-junks, mandarins, pig-tailed street-boys, &c. Most of the members of the expedition made an excursion thither, and were rewarded with innumerable indescribable impressions from Chinese city life. We were everywhere received by the natives in a friendly way,[385] and short as our visit was, it was yet sufficient to dissipate the erroneous impressions which ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... reflection, I again observed the melancholy expression upon her countenance; and once more the resemblance to her of whom I was thinking! My interest in the beautiful huntress was every moment augmenting. I felt an indescribable yearning to hear the story of her misfortunes: for in no other light could I regard the situation in which I ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... forward, as so many of the church members had done in the morning, and seriously, solemnly, tenderly, took the pledge to do as Jesus would do. A deep wave of spiritual baptism broke over the meeting near its close that was indescribable in its tender, ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... the lawn was a scene indescribable. The long line was broken. Men and women ran hither and thither, for the most part aimlessly, as though in some strange state of coma where the mind refused its functions. They talked and cried and shouted at each other ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... of wonder and a faint relief; then she gave back the other's scrutiny in a glance of indescribable reproach. "Ah, you might have waited!" ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... attempted, again and again, to obey the mysterious mandate—by some dreadful process the burthen was replaced with a more stupendous weight of injunction, and an apalling conviction of the impossibility of its fulfilment. My mental anguish was indescribable;—the mighty agonies of souls tortured on the supernatural racks of sleep are not to be penned—and if in sketching those that belong to blood-guiltiness I have been at all successful, I owe it mainly to the uninvoked ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... summoned from the depths below a landlord or landlady to be specific about times and terms, to show the rooms, and conceal the extras. The entry was oftenest dim and narrow, with a mat sunk into the floor at the threshold and worn to the quick by the cleansing of numberless feet; and an indescribable frowziness prevailed which imparted itself to the condition of widowhood dug up by the young foreigner from the basement. Sometimes there responded to his summons a clerical, an almost episcopal presence, which was clearly that of a former butler, unctuous ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... the landlady of the "Golden Sun," when she saw the procession coming towards her house, is quite indescribable. Whenever the question arose concerning any wedding, low or high, she ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... read the differing temperaments necessary to this relation in the differing voices. That which bore mastery was a low, thick murmur, coming from deep in the throat, and flowing out in a steady stream of indescribable coaxing and drolling. The owner of that voice had imagination and humor which could charm with absolute control her companion's lighter nature, as it betrayed itself in a gay tinkle of amusement and a succession ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... with any of the fruit. It is a delightful change from the hot stuffy August Paris I left yesterday. My street is absolutely deserted, every house closed except mine, the sun shining down hard on the white pavement, and perfect stillness all day. The evenings from seven till ten are indescribable—a horror of musical concierges with accordions, a favorite French instrument. They all sit outside their doors with their families and friends, playing and singing all the popular songs, and at intervals all joining in a ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... to this proposal—than which nothing can be more rational—let our new life of mutual confidence date from this moment. Tell me then, my Fernand," she proceeded, assuming a winning manner, and throwing as much pathos as possible into her sweetly musical voice—that voice which gave new and indescribable, charms to the soft Italian language—"tell me then, my Fernand, wherefore thou quittest me at certain intervals—why thou invariably seekest on those occasions the opposite side of the island—and whether thou wilt in future suffer me to be ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... pallid river winds slowly to the sea. The gulf, stretching limitless, shines like a slab of salt strangely bespangled. In this atmosphere without mists, the sharp outlines of the coast, the dense movelessness of the aspect, has an indescribable effect. It is like a hitherto unknown and virginal revelation of the earth. Then the stars bloom out, with a flame, an hallucinating palpability. Charles's Wain, burning low on the gorges of the Edough, seems like a golden waggon rolling through the fields of Heaven. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... looking up at me frankly and affectionately. "I wish I could tell you how much I appreciate your goodness to me, and all your disinterestedness. I wish I deserved it!" She clasped my hands warmly as she spoke, then dropped them; and instantly I became conscious of an indescribable sense of relief; and prepared to depart at once; but she stopped me again with a word ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... beauty that it now possesses can be advantageously exchanged for the wholeness of a finished narrative. In its present form it lays irresistible hold of the imagination. It interests even by what it leaves untold.—The story is like a dream of lovely forms, mixed with strange and indescribable terrors. The scene, the personages, are those of old romantic superstition; but we feel intimate with them, as if they were of our own day, and of our own neighbourhood. It is impossible not to suppose that we have known ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... mostly upon the Tornea River, sometimes taking to the woods on either side, to cut off bends. The morn was hours in dawning, with the same splendid transitions of colour. The forests were indescribable in their silence, whiteness, and wonderful variety of snowy adornment. The weeping birches leaned over the road, and formed white fringed arches; the firs wore mantles of ermine, and ruffs and tippets of the softest ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... design. More often I would sit at his feet, and he, between whiffs at his pipe, would discourse to me of the differences between his Old World and this new one, into which I providentially had been born. He talked of his past, of my future, and together with this was put forth an indescribable wealth of reminiscence, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Miller's real life began. In after years she used to say, "I was born first in my native town; second, in the Atlantic Ocean!" The effect of the strong sea air upon her was something indescribable; joy seemed to radiate from her whole being. She smiled whenever she saw the sea. She walked on the beach; she sat on the rocks; she learned to swim in one lesson, and swam so far out that her uncle dared not follow, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... With timid reluctance, he confessed that he had been reading clandestinely Morse's large geography, of which there was a copy in a society-library kept at his father's house. The book, he added, had an indescribable attraction for him; and even at that almost infantile age he was familiar with its contents. It was this reading of Morse, perhaps, which determined his taste for those geographical studies in which he subsequently became so distinguished. With him, as with Humboldt and Guyot, geography ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... library, no matter what storm and tumult may be in his heart, he has come to the inmost chamber of Peace. The indescribable, musty odour which breathes from the printed page is fragrant incense to him who loves his books. In unseemly caskets his treasures may be hidden, yet, when the cover is reverently lifted, the jewels shine with no fading light. The old, immortal beauty is still there, for any one ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... screaming chant and drone of his instrument. When he danced, he was like a whirlwind that had caught up the contents of an old-clothes-shop. It is no wonder that he should have produced in our minds an indescribable mixture of awe and delight—awe, because no one could tell what he might do next, and delight because of his oddity, agility, and music. The first sensation was always a slight fear, which gradually wore off as we became anew accustomed to the strangeness of the apparition. Before the visit ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... Sojourner, carried away with her own feeling, sang it from beginning to end with a triumphant energy that held the whole circle around her intently listening. She sang with the strong barbaric accent of the native African, and with those indescribable upward turns and those deep gutturals which give such a wild, peculiar power to the negro singing,—but above all, with such an overwhelming energy of personal appropriation that the hymn seemed to be fused in the furnace of her ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... They never exchanged more words and looks than were absolutely necessary. Vance realized it more than ever as he looked up to the tall athletic figure. And he realized also that since he had last looked closely at Terence the latter had slipped out of boyhood and into manhood. There was that indescribable something about the set of the chin and the straight-looking eyes that ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... dead and most untouched deep water of the sea had been heaved to the top by the submarine volcano—the chill still water that kills all life and smells of desolation and emptiness. We did not need either the blinding fog or that indescribable smell of musk to make us unhappy—we were shivering with cold and ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... to be rebuilt with great magnificence. He arranged great celebrations, in which the people were entertained with an endless succession of games, spectacles, and public feasts. When his daughter Julia, Pompey's wife, died, he celebrated her funeral with indescribable splendor. He distributed corn in immense quantities among the people, and he sent a great many captives home, to be trained as gladiators to fight in the theatres for their amusement. In many cases, too, where he found ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... dredging-machine was destined to arouse. When Mr. Roscorla read that simple narrative, he first stared with astonishment as though she were making some foolish joke. Directly he saw she was serious, however, his rage and mortification were indescribable. Here was this young man, not content with hanging about the girl so that neighbors talked, but actually imposing on her credulity, and making a jest of that engaged ring which ought to have been sacred to her. Mr. Roscorla at once saw through the whole ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... would not be so impolite as to infer your age by asking that of your son,—the susdit George will come home late from play some afternoon, languid, pale, and disinclined for tea. He will indignantly repel the accusation of feeling ill, and there will lurk about his person an indescribable odor of stale cinnamon, which you will be at a loss to account for, but which his elder brother will recognize as the natural result of smoking "cinnamon cigars," wherewith certain wicked tobacconists of this city tempt curious ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... not altogether be repressed, he was about to pass on; but at that moment the cottage-door opened, and a woman, whose sour, unpleasant countenance Ellen recognized, came hastily forth. She seemed not to heed the travellers; but the angler, his voice thrilling and quivering with indescribable emotion, addressed her. ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Page Avenue, too new for wall paper, still exuding the indescribable cold, white smell of mortar in the drying, was none the less—-and with the flexible personality of houses—taking on the print of the family. A mission dining-room set, ordered wholesale through the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Prussian to do the like: "Jagers, Hussars, a ducat for every traitor you shoot down!" continues Wolfersdorf (and punctually paid it afterwards): unable to prevent an almost total dissolution of Grollmann. For some minutes, there is a scene indescribable: storm of vociferation, menace, musket-shot, pistol-shot; Grollmann disappearing on every side,—"behind the Redoubt, under the Bridge, into Elbe Boats, under the cloaks of the Croats;"—in spite of Wolfersdorf's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... had been brought about. The cracks in the pavement of his cell, the chinks in the wall where stone was joined to stone, the bars in the window, the iron ring upon the floor,—such things as these, subsiding strangely into one another, and awakening an indescribable kind of interest and amusement, engrossed his whole mind; and although at the bottom of his every thought there was an uneasy sense of guilt, and dread of death, he felt no more than that vague consciousness ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... appealed to him, and a moisture formed in his eyes. A new side to the problem of the morning came to him. These sounds—he realized now how he loved them. Verily they were a part of his life. Mid them he had been bred; of them as of food he had grown. That whistle, thin and unmusical; that elusive, indescribable call of prairie male; all these homely sounds that meant so much ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... stood still. Into the rattle, the boom, the explosion of artillery there leaped suddenly a new tone. It rose clearly above the rest of the din, which had almost ceased to penetrate the consciousness. It approached with such a shrill sound, with such indescribable swiftness, with so fierce a threat, that the sound seemed to be visible, as though you could actually see a screaming semicircle rise in the air, bite its way to one's very forehead, and snap there with ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... almost speechless admiration, and without the slightest warning of treasure yet in store, the white beam was stabbed by a narrow, gleaming shaft of yellow sunlight. The glorious, radiant beauty of the picture presented is utterly indescribable, but it was of short duration, and in a few seconds the golden blade was withdrawn as suddenly as ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... shake and tremble, till strong men became seasick, and women clung to trees to escape falling, and cattle were thrown down off their feet. I beheld myself a young calf so thrown. A night of terror indescribable followed. The land was in motion like a canoe in a Kona gale. There was an infant crushed to death by its fond mother stepping upon it whilst fleeing her ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... that first year's battle with the unbroken passes are indescribable. Thousands of dead pack-horses marked the way. And the mountains once crossed and the waters reached new troubles arose. Boats had to be built for the long reach of navigation down the chain of lakes and the Yukon—many having brought the necessary ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... oppressed me in conducting our ordinary opera, was often interrupted by an indescribable enthusiastic feeling of happiness, when here and there, in the performance of nobler works, I became thoroughly conscious, in the midst of the representation, of the incomparable influence of dramatic-musical combinations—an influence ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... in her with wonder and admiration was the absence of weediness and flabbiness. Better known, she stirred in him, as a child might, an altogether indescribable sense of tenderness and absurdity. She stood out for him simply by the fact that, of all the young ladies of the Polytechnic, she was the only one he really knew—barring Maudie Hollis, and Maudie, though she was the proud beauty of the ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... her surprise was great to recognise Waunangee, who was even then looking at her with the same softened and eloquent expression, which had given her so much anxiety on a former occasion. The impression produced upon her was exactly what it had been then—indescribable—inexplicable ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... when the chess and checker enthusiasts get together. Games are rescued from the bottom of the trunk or box. Ponchos and rubber boots are now in popular favor. Thunder and lightning but add to the boys' enjoyment. What indescribable excitement there is in the shivers and shudders caused by an extra flash of lightning or a double fortissimo roll of thunder! There is also the delight, of playing in the puddles of water and wearing a bathing suit and enjoying ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... prolonged and shrill. His enormous jaws are widely opened at each expiration, his under-lip hangs over the chin, and the hairy ridge and scalp are contracted upon the brow, presenting an aspect of indescribable ferocity. ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... gave George the pre-arranged signal that all was well. Just then our partner appeared but with telltale face. It was flushed with chagrin and vexation, and there was gone from the contour of his body that indescribable port that tells, better than words, of confidence ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... on anything less practical than the movements of the solitary horseman below! Hills on hills piled about a verdant basin in whose depths nestled a scanty collection of houses, in number so small they could be told upon the fingers of the right hand, but which notwithstanding lent an indescribable aspect of comfort to this remote region ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... perceived a week, and is not scattered but abides, one living body of remembrance. The untravelled spirit of place—not to be pursued, for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never absent, without variation—lurks in the byways and rules over the towers, indestructible, an indescribable unity. It awaits us always in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble within its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them. Long white roads outside have mere suggestions of it and prophecies; ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... in real life was very pale, and had exquisitely chiselled features, and the ones I now looked upon were of the same cast. The height was also similar, and an indescribable atmosphere of refinement, purity, and quiet dignity, for which she had been remarkable; all this was present with this materialisation. More than this I cannot say, for no materialisation I have ever seen could be truthfully considered identical ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... clad in deep mourning, weeping over it; at each arm of the cross was suspended a garland of flowers; we were about to retire again immediately, from the fear of disturbing their melancholy devotions, when the concierge, with a brutality indescribable, rushed forward, and removing the garlands, threw them among the shrubs at a considerable distance. The friend who accompanied me, after searching, recovered one of the garlands, and with more gallantry perhaps than policy, immediately replaced it, and ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... his knowledge breathed from them. The impressions left on my mind were, above all others, two; first, the call to thorough diligence in preparation, if the preacher is to give his account with joy; and then, the indescribable solemnity and greatness of the work of a ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... emphatically by the presence of the corpse, and here was the country buzzing about him, and young ladies already proposing pleasure parties to surround his house at night. Well, that meant the gallows; and much he cared for that. What troubled him now was Julia's indescribable levity. That girl would scrape acquaintance with anybody; she had no reserve, none of the enamel of the lady. She was familiar with a brute like his landlord; she took an immediate interest (which she lacked even ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a periwinkle out of his shell. But even as I did so, I caught sight of Mashune's stalwart form advancing with his 'bangwan,' or broad stabbing assegai, raised above his head. In another quarter of a second I had fallen from the horn, and heard the blow of the spear, followed by the indescribable sound of steel shearing its way through flesh. I had fallen on my back, and, looking up, I saw that the gallant Mashune had driven the assegai a foot or more into the carcass of the buffalo, and ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard
... silence ensued, broken only by the heavily drawn breath of the sufferer. Two hours elapsed and there by the couch sat the motionless watcher, noting the indescribable but unmistakable change creeping on. The feeble, threadlike pulse fluttered irregularly, but the breathing became easy and low as a babe's, and occasionally a gentle sigh heaved the chest. She knew that the end ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... As the austerity of tragedy was not incompatible with the joyous views of the Greeks, so that romantic poetry whose origin I have been describing, can assume every tone, even that of the liveliest joy; but still it will always, in some indescribable way, bear traces of the source from which it originated. The feeling of the moderns is, upon the whole, more inward, their fancy more incorporeal, and their thoughts more contemplative. In nature, it is true, the boundaries of objects run more into one another, and things ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... be so impolite as to infer your age by asking that of your son,—the susdit George will come home late from play some afternoon, languid, pale, and disinclined for tea. He will indignantly repel the accusation of feeling ill, and there will lurk about his person an indescribable odor of stale cinnamon, which you will be at a loss to account for, but which his elder brother will recognize as the natural result of smoking "cinnamon cigars," wherewith certain wicked tobacconists of this city tempt curious youth. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... to each other without commingling, making the theory of them as a matter of fact, but not by a lying imagination and vain combinations of the mind; but in nowise separating them, since now the division into two has been destroyed on account of the indescribable and incomprehensible union; saying with the holy Athanasius, for there is now flesh and again the flesh of God the Word, now flesh animated and intelligent, and again the flesh of the animated and intelligent God the Word; but should under such expressions understand ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... know." She hung her head a little, and it gave her a still more winsome expression. There was an indescribable ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... bodies, wrapped in blankets or waterproof ground-sheets, are lifted over the parados, and carried back a convenient twenty yards or more. The desolation of that garden, choked with weeds and a wild growth of self-sown crops, is indescribable. It was wreckage-strewn, gaping with shell holes, billowing with innumerable graves, a waste land speechlessly pathetic. The poplar trees and willow hedges have been blasted and splintered by shell fire. Tommy calls ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... doffed its cap of vapour quite suddenly, producing an indescribable transformation scene which no fairy's wand could have accomplished in less time ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... communicating with several others that form a chain of many miles in extent. That swelling knoll that slopes so gently to the water would be such a pretty site for a cottage-orn, and the back-ground of hanging wood has an indescribable beauty in it, especially in the autumn, when the trees are one complete mass of variegated hues. He warms on the theme as he dilates on it, and sings as he turns to ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... procession. But within there was just one packed army, going eight abreast, of seminarians and clerics. These were just passing as the priest looked again, and close on their heels came the Court and the Cardinals; the latter an indescribable glory of scarlet, riding four abreast in broad hats and ample cloaks. But he gave scarcely more than a glance at these; for, full in sight for at least half a minute, advancing straight towards him down the roaring street, moved a canopy held by figures he could not clearly make out, and ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... knowledge that his confession would be inviolate as if locked in the heart of mountains. He knew her for a steadfast friend, and he t'elt that she was beautiful, not only in face and form, but in all those little indescribable mannerisms which stamp the individual. And this girl was here alone with him, so close that by stretching out his arms he might enfold her. She allowed him to come and go at will; her intimacy with him was almost like that of an unspoiled boy—yet different, so different that he thrilled at ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... which they always select in preference to a valley. The yellow tussocks were bending all one way, perfectly flat to the ground, and the shingle on the gravel walk outside rattled like hail against the low latticed windows. The uproar from the gale was indescribable, and the little fragile house swayed and shook as the furious gusts hurled themselves against it. Inside its shelter, the pictures were blowing out from the walls, until I expected them to be shaken off ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... mean time they turn his whims to the best account, particularly Laclos, who is a kind of subordinate Macchiavelli, capable of anything, profound, depraved, and long indulging his fondness for monstrous combinations; nobody ever so coolly delighted in indescribable compounds of human wickedness and debauchery. In politics, as in romance, his department is "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Formerly he maneuvered as an amateur with prostitutes and ruffians in the fashionable world; now he maneuvers in earnest with the prostitutes and ruffians ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... most famous Gascon that has ever gasconaded on the earth; with that, a figure indescribable and assurance unbounded; and as to the ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... after considerable labour, in the hope of its leading to the northward, which it did for about one mile, and we then came to the same kind of loose ice as before. On the morning of the 9th July, we enjoyed the indescribable comfort of two or three hours' clear, dry weather, but had scarcely hung up our wet clothes, after halting at five A.M., when it again came on to rain; but, as everything was as wet as it could be, we left them out to take their chance. The rain ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... taking care of him, and of the other wounded, during the dreadful days that followed, during which the sufferings of the wounded from the intense heat, and the scarcity of medical and other supplies were almost incredible, and altogether indescribable. It was after this battle that the efficient aid, and the generous supplies afforded by the Sanitary Commission and its agents, were so conspicuous, and the results of this beneficent organization in the saving of life and suffering perhaps more distinctly seen than on ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... for you must know that unless it be accompanied with imagination, memory is cold and lifeless. The forms it brings before us must be inspired with beauty—that is, with affection or passion. All minds, even the dullest, remember the days of their youth; but all cannot bring back the indescribable brightness of that blessed season. They who would know what they once were, must not merely recollect, but they must imagine, the hills and valleys—if any such there were—in which their childhood played, the torrents, the waterfalls, the lakes, the heather, the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... entered the state parlour of Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender olykoek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and delight with which the touch of water affected us is indescribable; transported at our good fortune, we flung ourselves overboard and swam, the weather being calm and the sea smooth. Alas, how often is a change for the better no more than the beginning of disaster! We ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... harmonises with the mud—the peculiar pepper-and-salt which is warranted not to grow gray with age—the indescribable mixtures, which have evidently been compounded for the sake of economy, must ever be exiled from the wardrobe and legs of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... you saw them, they are perfect beauties, you would say. The oldest boy is as noble-looking a lad as ever you did see—Roman nose, raven hair, delightfully-carved mouth, and lips, and eyes, and eyelashes quite indescribable, so beautiful are they. The little girl is a perfect Venus; while the two younger children, Patrick and Eugene, are as if they came from the chisel of Powers, or some ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... There is an indescribable feeling of solitude in all houses in the environs of Mexico, a vastness, a desolation, such as I never before experienced in the most lonely dwellings in other countries. It is not sad—the sky is ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... truly call them, are of different forms, straight, spiral, and otherwise curved, and of varied length and colours. They are set in motion by the impulsion of thought. When we talked to the patient on a particular subject, one series of lines would be set in motion with indescribable rapidity; other topics would call into play other series of straight or curved lines. They can also be set in motion under ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... they howled about the tree, but after a few attempts to reach us they confined their efforts to terrorizing shrieks and screams, to horrid growling on the part of the great white apes, and the fearsome and indescribable ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... infirmary. At last they became desperate. A general and thorough investigation was instituted, and there, in a dark corner, under a hair mattress, and flat as a pancake, lay the poor puffin, alive!—but not with the life wherewith it had lived before it was shot—and emitting an odour that is indescribable, a description of which, therefore, would be quite unprofitable. The puffin was pitched overboard, and it was half insinuated that they ought to pitch the naturalist overboard ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... no one seems to have thought of putting Davy's suggestion to the test, and the surgeons of Europe had acknowledged with one accord that all hope of finding a means to render operations painless must be utterly abandoned—that the surgeon's knife must ever remain a synonym for slow and indescribable torture. By an odd coincidence it chanced that Sir Benjamin Brodie, the acknowledged leader of English surgeons, had publicly expressed this as his deliberate though regretted opinion at a time when the quest which he considered futile had already led to the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... work? Worship has always played an important part in the life of human beings. Whether man is in Babylonia worshipping the stars, or in Egypt at the Isis-Osiris shrine, or whether he ascends Mount Olympus with Homer, he is a worshipper. He may ascend to the indescribable, unthinkable realms with Plotinus or he may with twentieth century enlightenment claim allegiance to the God designated Father of all. Yet he worships. It will prove interesting to note the stimulation ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... drug-inspired dream or nightmare of an Oriental Dante. The fact that I have sacrificed my human appearance in the Great Cause cannot overcome the shrinking aversion that normal men would feel, if they could see me. I say only this, that my mutilation is indescribable. As the officer and gentleman I know you to be, you won't ask me to expose ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... of the principles of good breeding? I have seen numbers, who have been made sick, dizzy, and pale, by the breath of a smoker; and I have seen a person vomit out of a stage-coach, from the influence of that indescribable breath, which results from alcoholic liquor ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... and then I heard an indescribable fluttering rush that told as plainly as sight could have done that a woman had answered her heart's call. Looking up involuntarily, I saw a sight that for a long moment held my eyes as if I had been fascinated. It was ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... countenance showed no emotion. Then the features broke into an expression of indescribable malice. With gestures of demoniac triumph he mocked the solemnity of the bier, and showered upon it every scornful indignity that ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... head, and though the pulpit was on the right, as I very well knew, I sought it on the left, and entangling myself among the benches I was completely lost. Unable to find either pulpit or door, I fell into an indescribable state of mind. At last I found the door and managed to get out of the church and run away as I had done before, quite determined never to enter the church ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... The indescribable yet almost overwhelming pathos of the tones affected Dr. Grey much as the tremolo-stop in some organ-overture in a dimly-lighted cathedral; and, as the singer seemed to pour her whole aching heart and wearied soul into the concluding "Ah! tutto-tutto fini!" he turned, and involuntarily ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Brunswick, as emperor, and him, Duke Biron of Courland, as absolute regent of the empire during the minority of the emperor, who had now just reached the age of seven months. The joy of the magnates was indescribable; they sank into each other's arms with tears of joy. At this moment old enemies were reconciled; women who had long nourished a mutual hatred, now tenderly pressed each other's hands; tears of joy were trembling in eyes which had never before been known to weep; friendly smiles were seen on ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... cannot understand the grandeur of wild sports in a wild country. There is an indescribable feeling of supremacy in a man who understands his game thoroughly, when he stands upon some elevated point and gazes over the wild territory of savage beasts. He feels himself an invader upon the solitudes of nature. The very stillness of the scene is his delight. There ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... proceed to Abyssinia, and see if he could settle the dispute or misunderstanding that had arisen between Johannis the King and the Khedive. He proceeded on that very risky mission as he states in his letters; the journey was "indescribable in its solitary grandeur. These interminable deserts, and arid mountain passes fill the heart with far different thoughts than civilized lands do." With few attendants, he writes:—"We are still slowly ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... can hardly explain this appearance to himself, nor understand the noise and surging of the stream. The little bridge in the centre would be taken for the ruins of a fallen bridge, and the chasm is not seen from the shore, because the foaming waves overtop it. An indescribable fear would seize upon the traveller when he beheld the venturous guide ride into the stream, and was obliged to ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... brushed and combed back from his wide brow, and there was about him that indescribable 'something' which separated him from the throng of youths who collected in Bristol streets on Sundays, some on the College Green and many in Redcliffe Meadows, talking and laughing with the girls who were, like themselves, occupied in the week in shops and warehouses ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called—then silence through all the ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... countenance, and of very agreeable manners. His hair curled slightly over his forehead, and he had a dark and intelligent eye, full of vivacity and meaning. There was, besides, in the expression of his face, and in his air and address, a certain indescribable charm, which prepossessed every one strongly in his favor, and gave him, from his earliest years, a great personal ascendency over all who ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... a similar purpose, and left the room with myself. At the door he inquired if I could tell him in which of the neighbouring hotels M. Tieck resided, I showed him the house and paused a moment to watch his manner, which was entirely free from pretension, but which preserved an indescribable expression of reverence. "Was it possible to get a glimpse of the person of M. Tieck?" "I feared not; some one had told me that he was gone to a watering-place." "Could I tell him which was the window of his room?" This I was able to do, as he had been pointed out to me at it a ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... real sympathy of condolence in the greetings of all but the hard-a-weather master, the witty purser, and the obdurate first. The invalid was apparelled in an ancient roast-beef uniform coat, bottle-green from age; the waistcoat had flaps indicative of fifty years' antiquity, and the breeches were indescribable. He wore large blue-worsted stockings folded up outside above the knee, but carefully wrinkled and disordered over the calf of the leg, in order to conceal its healthy mass of muscle. Big as was the doctor, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... victors combined with the Richards' party, and chased the thoroughly demoralized Rawdonites, whose guns and pouches strewed the ground, to a desolate rocky spot beside a swamp, where felled trees lay in indescribable confusion, over which the fugitives scrambled in desperate haste for home. The lawyer caught sight of a figure that he knew, far up the rocky slope, preparing to leap down from a prostrate trunk resting on three or four others, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... or are distinguished only by peculiarities of the most glaring kind. But the dialogue is resplendent with wit and eloquence, which indeed are so abundant that the fool comes in for an ample share, and yet preserves a certain colloquial air, a certain indescribable ease of which Wycherley had given no example, and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate. The author, divided between pride and shame, pride at having written a good play, and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... folks is universally excused as self-defense and secretly applauded as a public service. The born novel reader needs no guide, counsellor or friend. He is his own "master." He can with perfect safety and indescribable delight shut his eyes, reach out his hand, pull down any plum of a book and never make a mistake. Novel reading is the only one of the splendid occupations of life calling for no instruction or advice. All that is necessary is to bite the apple with the largest freedom possible ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... probably knows—was that of a blacksmith. As for external polish, or mere courtesy of manner, he never possessed more than a tolerably educated bear; although, in his gentler moods, there was a tenderness in his voice, eyes, mouth, in his gesture, and in every indescribable manifestation, which few men could resist and no woman. But he now looked stern and reproachful; and it was with that inauspicious meaning in his glance that Hollingsworth first met Zenobia's eyes, and began his influence upon ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... explication of the scene. The nature of his frenzy, as described by my uncle, was remembered. I, who had sought death, was now thrilled with horror because it was near. Death in this form, death from the hand of a brother, was thought upon with indescribable repugnance. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... went close under them. On landing at the other side, we had to ascend a ladder about 200 feet high. We ordered a carriage at the Cataract Hotel, and drove to the whirlpool, four miles down the Rapids. This is an awful place, and indescribable. We then walked over Bath Island and Iris (or Goat) Island: here again is a splendid view. We saw Gull Island, where man has never been; and in the Rapids we saw the hull of the ship Detroit, fitted up in 1841 for the purpose of being sent over the Falls, ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... the hours of twilight and night. The last fading light of the setting sun is reflected upon the waters of the Truckee River, in a silvery, rose-tinted hue, indescribable in its delicate beauty. There is a strange lady seated on the veranda of an imposing Colonial home overlooking the river. She is writing; sometimes she stops to gaze upon the glory of the sunset ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... easy-chairs, windows, and everything were draped in some old-fashioned kind of white cloth which always seemed to be waving and moving about of itself. The carpet was most singularly colored with dark reds and indescribable grays and browns, and the pattern, after a whole summer's study, could never be followed with one's eye. The paper was captured in a French prize somewhere some time in the last century, and part of the figure was shaggy, and therein little spiders found ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... However much his life was apart from the lives of other men, he did not therefore live alone. Was he not still of more value than many sparrows? And Kirsty's love for him had in it no shadow of despair. Her pain at such times was but the indescribable love-lack of mothers when their sons are far away, and they do not know what they are doing, what they are thinking; or when their daughters seem to have departed from them or ever the silver cord ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... be landed were in the boats. Israel had the tiller of the foremost one, waiting for his commander to enter, when just as Paul's foot was on the gangway, a sudden squall struck all three ships, dashing the boats against them, and causing indescribable confusion. The squall ended in a violent gale. Getting his men on board with all dispatch, Paul essayed his best to withstand the fury of the wind, but it blew adversely, and with redoubled power. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... set out there myself at twelve o'clock (nothing would induce Fustov to go with me, he only begged me to give him an exact account of everything), when round the corner of the street their house glared at me in the distance with a yellowish blur from the coffin candles at one of the windows, an indescribable panic made me hold my breath, and I would gladly have turned back.... I mastered myself, however, and went into the passage. It smelt of incense and wax; the pink cover of the coffin, edged with silver lace, stood ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... how can you," said Miss Peppy, who talked with great volubility, and who never for a moment ceased to bustle about the room in a series of indescribable, as well as unaccountable, not to say unnecessary, preparations for the morning meal, which had already been prepared to perfection by Mrs Niven; "you surely don't forget—things do happen so surprisingly at times—really, you know, I can ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... idle; on the little finger of her left hand twinkled a brilliant garnet ring, set with diamonds. Her face was colorless, the forehead extremely low, the nose and mouth finely cut, the eyes of heavenly blue. Although youth had gone, she was beautiful, with an indescribable air of individuality. She influenced all who were near her; her atmosphere enveloped them. She was not aware of it, being too indifferent to the world to observe what effect she had in it, and only realized ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... two drums, or rather of two hollow trunks, by a hundred and five performers, supported by a vocal choir. Cook reciprocated these demonstrations by putting his soldiers through their artillery exercises, and letting off fireworks, which produced indescribable astonishment in the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... in this state of indescribable horror, I saw the light gradually fade away from the tops of the mountains, giving the scene around me a dim and spectral ghastliness, which, to those who were never in such a situation, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... cord that served as its bowstring. And there was a shaft whose splendour looked like that of the sun or of the fire that appears at the end of the Yuga. Verily, that shaft was the excellent Pasupata that mighty and terrible weapon, which is without a second, indescribable for its power, and capable of striking every creature with fear. Of vast proportions, it seemed to constantly vomit sparks of fire. Possessed of one foot, of large teeth, and a thousand heads and thousand Stomachs, it has a thousand ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Middle-age caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps of maintenance), Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps. Fancy all the jackets you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen can describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and finally rose and got off an impromptu piece of doggerel with exactly ten verses, and each child's name and some peculiarity brought out in a way to convulse even mammas and the maids, was as indescribable as delightful. I am not sure that he did not enjoy it more than any of the grand entertainments that he had been asked to; and as for the children, they remember it to this day, although they are on the verge of young-ladyhood ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... valley. Under the mustering shadows, the pallid river winds slowly to the sea. The gulf, stretching limitless, shines like a slab of salt strangely bespangled. In this atmosphere without mists, the sharp outlines of the coast, the dense movelessness of the aspect, has an indescribable effect. It is like a hitherto unknown and virginal revelation of the earth. Then the stars bloom out, with a flame, an hallucinating palpability. Charles's Wain, burning low on the gorges of the Edough, seems like a golden waggon ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... It was past twelve. The well of my eloquence was running drier and drier, and yet no sound outside! I wondered how long they would stand it and how long I could stand it. At 12.15 I began my peroration. Hardly had I done so, when one of the young men started in a gentle voice an utterly indescribable ditty. One by one they took it up, till the rising tide of voices drowned my fervent periods. Perforce I stopped. They were all on their feet now. Did they mean to break up? In despair at the idea I lifted up my voice, loud ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... bottom of her belly. I was several times in the same room with her, and was permitted the same liberties, but no others. I lent her Aristotle, which I had borrowed, and one day recollect my prick stiffening, and a strange overwhelming, utterly indescribable feeling coming over me, of my desire to say to her "cunt," and to make her feel me, and at the same time a fear and a dread overtook me, that my cock was not like other cocks, and that she might laugh at me. After that, I used to pull ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... forest of candelabra shone like a conflagration kept within bounds; when the courtiers seemed to sink into the carpets and divans and silken and down coverlets; when the sweet-smelling incense rose from the golden censers and intoxicated the brain; when a hundred servants made ready the banquet of indescribable luxury, and carried it in silver dishes, alabaster bowls, and crystal goblets; when youths and maidens, with arms entwined, crowned each other with wreaths of roses; when the fanfares sounded, and the cymbals clashed, and song gushed from maidens' ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... dreadful dreams became continually more appalling: single scenes, or passages in these dreams, were sufficient to compose the whole course of mighty tragedies, the impression from which was so profound as to stretch far into his waking hours. Amongst other phantasmata more shocking and indescribable, his dreams constantly represented to him the forms of murderers advancing to his bedside; and so agitated was he by the awful trains of phantoms that swept past him nightly, that in the first confusion of awaking ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... massive character of her features, her aggressive jaw and evasive blue eyes. But as she grew interested and earnest in conversation, a great light flashed over or out of her face, till it seemed transfigured, while the sweetness of her rare smile was something quite indescribable. But she seemed to me to the last lofty and cold. I felt that her head was among the stars—the stars of a wintry night." Another American, Miss Kate Field, in writing of the English authors to be seen in Florence half a dozen years after George ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... royal, indeed, in its type of queenly beauty. The wine-colored stipes of the uncoiling fronds shooting up in early spring, lifting gracefully their pink pinnae and pretty panicles of bright green spore cases, throw an indescribable charm over the meadows and clothe even the wet, stagnant swamps with beauty nor is the attraction less when the showy fronds expand in summer and the green sporangia are turned to brown. The stout rootstocks are often erect, rising several inches to a foot above the ground, ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... shocked, for he proceeded with some haste to explain to me how what he had said was true. 'Whatever belongs to God is essential to God,' he said. 'He is one pure, clean essence of being, to use our poor words to describe the indescribable. Nothing hangs about him that does not belong to him,—that he could part with and be nothing the worse. Still less is there any thing he could part with and be the worse. Whatever belongs to him is of his own kind, is part of himself, so ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... me that it was you, my dearest!" she exclaimed, and her glorious blue eyes gazed upon him with an indescribable ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... country because its beauty is as that of a dream. Sometimes it is black, wildly inhospitable and dispiriting - and suddenly, in calm, mild weather, the entire country with its trees, canals, cities and inhabitants sparkles in an indescribable tender radiance, enhancing everything with a deep mysterious meaning impossible to explain or describe more fully, and resembling the peculiar beauty of dreams. One must have seen my little city from the sea on a still, clear September eve, when the sun goes to bide behind ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... somber majesty of these giant groups, and the varieties of the undulating ground on which they stood, there was little that could be deemed attractive in the place. A certain air of neglect and decay, and an indescribable gloom and melancholy, hung over it. In darkness, it seemed darker than any other tract; when the moonlight fell upon its glades and hollows, they looked spectral and awful, with a sort of churchyard loneliness; and even when the blush of the morning kissed its broad woodlands, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... beyond my line of vision. The Martinez heeled over, sharply, and there was a crashing and rending of timber. I was thrown flat on the wet deck, and before I could scramble to my feet I heard the scream of the women. This it was, I am certain,—the most indescribable of blood-curdling sounds,—that threw me into a panic. I remembered the life-preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept backward by a wild rush of men and women. What happened in the next few minutes I do not recollect, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... seldom to be deceived respecting the good or evil tendency of any measure which Napoleon engaged in; and I remember she told me that when informed of the intention of the Emperor to bestow the throne of Spain on Joseph, she was seized with a feeling of indescribable alarm. It would be difficult to define that instinctive feeling which leads us to foresee the future; but it is a fact that Josephine was endowed with this faculty in a more perfect decree than any other person ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... gazed at her with an exalted look. Then drawing himself to his full height, he said, with an exaggerated and indescribable gesture, "Go, my child, go. Tell your father that you have been alone and unprotected in the abode of poverty and suffering, but—that it was in the presence of ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... dead, so many years had elapsed since my mother's flight. I had thought of him as a fabulous being. I dreamed not of encountering him, and if I had, I should have felt secure, for how could he recognize me? My father! cold and sick I turned away, shivering with indescribable apprehension. He had destroyed my mother,—he had come to destroy me. That secret note,—that note which I was to conceal, or meet so awful a penalty, seemed to scorch the bosom that throbbed wildly against ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... unusual.—Ver. 309. 'Nescio quid.' This very indefinite phrase is repeatedly used by Ovid; and in such cases, it expresses either actual doubt or uncertainty, as in the present instance; or it is used to denote something remarkable or indescribable, or to show that a thing ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... fell upon my ear with peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a brook stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel's whisper in the bright joyous dream of sleeping innocence. Duluth! 'T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Southern speech, indescribable and impossible in cold type. The softening of the consonants, the slipping away of the terminals, the slurring of vowels, and all in that low, musical voice born out side of the roar and crash of city streets and crowded drawing-rooms with each ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and wagon of the flying division disappeared over the hill toward health and home, a despairing wail went up from the doomed 350 left in this condition of indescribable horror. 'We are abandoned to die!' they cried; 'we are deserted by our own comrades in the hour of danger and left ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... father's teaching and influence were not forgotten. Generations of Quaker influence and blood were not without effect. War was born in hell. It was an act of savagery, and not of Christian nations. He pictured the awful carnage, the indescribable butchery, the untold horror which were entailed. He saw hordes of men fighting like devils; realised the lust for blood which was ever the concomitant of war. Besides, they settled nothing. Wars always bred wars, one always sowed ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... vice and infamy on their foreheads? "Drunkards and tipplers," he adds, "have been searched out with such unerring certainty as to show that the arrows of death have not been dealt out with indiscrimination. An indescribable terror has spread through the ranks of this class of beings. They see the bolts of destruction aimed at their heads, and every one calls himself a victim. There seems to be a natural affinity between cholera and ardent spirit." What, then, in days of exposure to this ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the Boarding House. Mrs. Considine, herself compelled to live in these homes for the homeless, gladly accepted the proposal, came down, interviewed her charge, who happened then to be in a mood of meekness indescribable, and went away, so to speak, with her contract in her pocket. It was part of the programme that Mrs. Considine should tactfully carry on Liosha's education, which had been arrested at the age of twelve, instil into her a sense of Western decorum, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... of the setting sun fell full upon her face it seemed almost transparent, and even the unobserving must have perceived that some deep experience of the sadness of life had added to her character an indescribable charm. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... than a cannon-shot would shatter, guards the entrance to this passage, which is the only accessible entrance to the place. Following it along for perhaps thirty yards, we emerge upon a scene of almost indescribable squalor—a scene that instantly suggests an overcrowded "rookery" in the tenement-house slums of New York. The place is simply swarming with people, who, like rabbits in an old warren, seem to be moving about among the tumble-down mud huts, anywhere ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... entered an extraordinary chamber. The sides were covered with strange diagrams, grotesque drawings, lettered inscriptions. Some were sketched rudely upon the plastering with colored chalk; others were designed upon paper, and pasted on the wall. In the centre of the room sat an indescribable human figure, with its face buried in its hands. It wore an anomalous garment, slashed with various colors, like a harlequin's coat. Upon one shoulder was sewed the semblance of a door cut out of blue cloth; on the other, a crescent cut out of green. Upon the head was set a tinsel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and confusion came, he drove the hook into poor old Mole's wig, while he rubbed it dexterously with phosphorus, and then with a jerk he hauled it up to the ceiling, where he set it dancing about, to the indescribable ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... constituted and governed by the Almighty, and behold the real order and harmony therein established. The ideal creations of the poet and the philosopher sink into perfect insignificance beside the actual creation of God. Where clouds and darkness once appeared the most impenetrable, there scenes of indescribable magnificence and beauty are now beheld with inexpressible delight; the stupendous cloud of evil no longer hangs overhead, but rolls beneath us, while the eternal Reason from above permeates its gloom, and irradiates its depths. We ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... magnificence. He arranged great celebrations, in which the people were entertained with an endless succession of games, spectacles, and public feasts. When his daughter Julia, Pompey's wife, died, he celebrated her funeral with indescribable splendor. He distributed corn in immense quantities among the people, and he sent a great many captives home, to be trained as gladiators to fight in the theatres for their amusement. In many cases, too, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Dolores; oh, see how handsome he is!" (Valga me, Dios, que lindo es, pobrecito!)And the way the young lady gazed was a revelation to me. The fire of her limpid black eyes struck me as a ray of glorious light. An indescribable thrill, never before known, rose in my breast and she held me enthralled under a spell which I had not the least desire to break. And they said that it was I who had the evil eye! To say that these people were lacking in the virtues and accomplishments of modern ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... motioned to us to enter. Never shall I forget the sight that greeted my eyes. Upon the bed lay a childish form, with a small, refined face, the pallor of which was intensified by contrast with the large dark eyes, that now had a half startled, expectant, indescribable expression. The sufferer had evidently reached the crisis of a malarial fever; reason had returned unclouded; but from that strange, bright look, I felt that there was ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... way for several weeks, always hoping some good luck would happen. At last, one day, they saw a ship a few miles from the shore. They all ran to the top of a rock, and shouted and waved their hats. Soon, to their indescribable joy, they saw a boat approaching the shore. They did not wait for it to reach the land, but being all good swimmers, with one accord plunged into the sea and swam to the boat. The sailors in the ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... words, and with a grin upon his features altogether indescribable, but which seemed to be compounded of every monstrous grimace of which men or monkeys are capable, the dwarf slowly retreated and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of those prophets whose model he had proclaimed himself to be. Jesus and John were in the second or third—he was not quite sure which—Moses was in the sixth, while Abraham alone had the supreme distinction of residing in the Seventh Heaven. There, at the apex of indescribable glory, Mohammed had entered the awful presence of his Maker, Who, after some chit-chat, charged him to see that all Moslems should hereafter prostrate themselves in prayer toward the Temple of Solomon five times a day. The truth of this narrative rests upon two solid facts: from that day ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... who was preferred before all others in the sight of the whole city. In truth, there was about Ellen a majesty and nobility of youth and innocence and beauty which overawed. The other girls of the class were as young and as pretty, but none of them had that indescribable quality which seemed to raise her above them all. Ellen still kept her blond fairness, but there was nothing of the doll-like which often characterizes the blond type. Although she was small, Ellen's color had the firmness and ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said, but undistinguishable by mortal ear; and after gazing with an expression of indescribable anxiety in the scared face of his awe-struck listener, the wearied eyes slowly reclosed—the deep silence flowed past; then the convulsive shudder came again, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... entire system of the universe and power producing all creation, true Son of a true Father, the invisible of the invisible and incorruptible of the incorruptible, the immortal of the immortal, the eternal of the eternal"). The begetting is an indescribable act which can only be represented by inadequate images: it is no emanation—the expression [Greek: probole] is not found, so far as I know[740]—but is rather to be designated as an act of the will arising from an inner ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... a brief instant no more to him that his embrace enfolded her than if she had been the veriest stranger. A hideous din of yells, of crashing wood and rending iron, of shivering glass, of escaping steam, of indescribable sounds which had no resemblance to anything which he had ever heard or dreamed of, and which seemed to beat upon his ears and his brain like blows of bludgeons wielded by the hands of infuriate giants. The end of the car before him ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the passion which her ingenuous story about the dredging-machine was destined to arouse. When Mr. Roscorla read that simple narrative, he first stared with astonishment as though she were making some foolish joke. Directly he saw she was serious, however, his rage and mortification were indescribable. Here was this young man, not content with hanging about the girl so that neighbors talked, but actually imposing on her credulity, and making a jest of that engaged ring which ought to have been sacred to her. Mr. Roscorla at once saw through the whole affair—the trip to Plymouth, the purchasing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... have been a Goth, and worn the horned bull-pate helmet of Alaric's warriors; or stood at the prow of one of the swift craft of the Vikings. His eyes, which have been variously described, were, it seemed to me, of an indescribable depth of the bluish moss-agate, with a capacity of pupil dilation that in certain lights had the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... godfather, are hovering over the crib like twin guardian angels. And Mildred sits en grande tenue on her cricket, in a speechless trance of delight, and nurse rustles about in her new silk gown and white lace cap with an air of importance and self-complacency almost indescribable. The domestic picture only wants papa and mamma ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... you a few of its items: delicious coffee, "white bread and brown," or rather black, and unlimited butter, make up our breakfast. Dinner always commences with a soup, usually made from meat, sometimes from herbs, lemon, sweet fruit, or other ingredients utterly indescribable. Meat, to be fit for a German table, must be carefully pared of every vestige of fat; if boiled it is underdone, unless expressly devoted to the soup, when the juiceless shreds that remain are served up with plums or prepared vegetables; if it be baked (roasting is almost unknown) it ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... taken Vooda's measure accurately. He knew the Constable to have a persuasive tongue, to be honest, loyal, and discreet, and, above all, to possess that nameless and almost indescribable quality of imparting trustfulness in those with ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... they could hear one another's teeth chatter. They were too frightened to call for help; they could only lie still, hoping and praying it would not come nearer to them. The sufferings of these two ladies were indescribable, for the ghost remained in their room all night, moving restlessly about until daybreak. It was not until some days later, when other people in the house had experienced the phenomenon, that they were told the story of the notorious ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... world cannot grasp all its features of wall and butte and canyon, of winding ridge and curving ravine, of fell precipice and rocky gorge, in a week, a month, a year, or a lifetime. Hence words can but suggest; nothing can describe the indescribable; nothing can picture what no man ever has seen ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the air was warmed; only, Lavienne strewed straw on the wet floor. By long use the benches were as polished as varnished mahogany; at the height of a man's shoulders the wall had a coat of dark, indescribable color, given to it by the rags and tattered clothes of these poor creatures. The poor wretches loved Popinot so well that when they assembled before his door was opened, before daybreak on a winter's morning, the women warming themselves with their foot-brasiers, the men swinging their ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... of the Covenanting imagination. But John Graham was more human: he might not see visions, and there never came into his face that light of the other world which she had seen on Pollock's, but he knew when a woman was walking by his side, and his eyes caressed her. His voice never had that indescribable accent of eternity which thrilled Henry Pollock's hearers, and was to them as a message from God, but Graham's speech could turn from grave and courteous mockery, which was very taking in its way, to a gentle deference and respectful appeal, which, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... the poetry is not great: it does not awaken the "transcendental feeling."[22] The moments when this condition is most fully attained by Wordsworth occur when, by sheer force of poetic imagination combined with spiritual insight, in some mysterious and indescribable way, he flashes upon us a sensation of boundless infinity. Herein consists the peculiar magic of such a poem as Stepping Westward; and there is a touch of the same feeling ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... band played 'Come back to Erin,' and the scene was indescribable. Nothing could have induced me to witness it had I realised what it was to be, for I wept at Holyrood when I heard the plaintive strains of 'Bonnie Charlie's noo Awa' floating up to the Gallery of Kings from the palace courtyard, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... gloriously glad concert, hundreds or thousands of exulting voices with sweet gurgling baumpalees mingled with chippy vibrant and exploding globules of musical notes, making a most enthusiastic, indescribable joy-song, a combination unlike anything to be heard elsewhere in the bird kingdom; something like bagpipes, flutes, violins, pianos, and human-like voices all bursting and bubbling at once. Then suddenly some one of the joyful congregation shouts Chirr! Chirr! and ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... lost in the flood of melody was of two notes, the second a fifth higher than the first, with a "grace-note," very low indeed, before each one. The other beginning was also two notes, the second at least a fifth lower than the first, with an indescribable jerk between, and uttered so softly that if I had been a little further away I could not have heard it. It ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... set the pines whispering for a moment; then all was silent. With eyes half closed, Darrell raised the violin and, drawing the bow softly across the strings, began one of his own improvisos, the exquisite, piercing sweetness of the first notes swelling with an indescribable pathos until Kate could scarcely restrain a cry of pain. Higher and higher they soared, until above the clouds they poised lightly for an instant, then descended in a flood of liquid harmonies which alternately rose and ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... The feeling of joy which I experienced on the occasion of this reunion with my own kith and kin—people who had stood shoulder to shoulder with me in the desperate struggles of the 1896-97 revolution—is simply indescribable. Words fail to express my feelings—joy mingled with sadness and strong determination to accomplish the salvation, the emancipation, of my beloved countrymen. Hardly had I set foot in the Naval Headquarters at Cavite, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, than I availed ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... costume-colors of Martinique-always relieved by brilliant yellow stripings or checkerings, except in the special violet dresses worn on certain religious occasions—have an indescribable luminosity,—a wonderful power of bringing out the fine warm tints of this tropical flesh. Such are the hues of those rich costumes Nature gives to her nearest of kin and her dearest,—her honey-lovers—her ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... perspiring squad scrambled down the bluff, and made for the cool waters of Lake Conowingo, a mysterious silence, like a mighty wave, literally surged toward them. Camp Bannister seemed deserted, the sun was still shining, the birds sang as cheerily as ever, but instinctively the collegians felt an indescribable loneliness, a sense ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... day which it had never before entered into the brain of the wildest scientist to conceive. The hissing of the hot shower and the vigour of the cold shock were only equalled by the unearthly yelling of the foe, whose miraculous bounds and plunges formed a scene that is altogether indescribable. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... to Jove that day according to his vow, and a long line of wagons loaded down and groaning under the weight of the vast spoil; the Roman army, horse and foot, the Senate and the people, a million, perhaps, all following the indescribable magnificence of the great triumph, along the Sacred Way, that was yellow with fresh strewn sand and sweet ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... without the slightest compunction. And when it was finished he idled the time away smoking one of Iredale's best cigars with the utmost enjoyment. He watched the shadows grow and deepen. He waited until the blue vault of the sky had changed its hue to the indescribable shadow which follows in the wake of the daylight, and the sparkling diamonds of night shone out upon its surface; then he called for his horse and set out ostensibly ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... rather reclining on a low ottoman close by, something that caused her to start as if the gallant officer was not altogether unknown to her, but her memory would not at the moment serve her, yet a feeling of mistrust, a sort of almost indescribable sensation of disquietude came over her as she listened to the polite nothings that issued from his lips; but fearing to attract observation she quietly withdrew, and entering the upper end of the ball room summoned ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... wound upon his body; but before he could strike again, and before either of the others could strike at all, Caesar stretched the three miscreants at his feet with as many blows of his powerful fist. By this time the Senate was in an indescribable uproar; the throng of citizens is the lobbies had blockaded the doors in their frantic efforts to escape from the building, the sergeant-at-arms and his assistants were struggling with the assassins, venerable senators had cast aside their encumbering robes, and were leaping over benches ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he struggled with his misery. Then, to his indescribable joy, there came a message ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... others followed with a similar result. Then came Mercy, the housemaid, and as her trembling fingers poured the liquid forth, behold the powder changed and turned to black! The commotion was indescribable, and Mercy was about to have a nervous fit when Dr. Rutherford, fixing his eyes on her, said in a tone of command, "Be quiet—be perfectly quiet, and in two hours I will destroy the spell. Go over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... The sun dance is performed by young warriors who dance, at intervals of five minutes, for several days. They hop on one foot and then on the other, keeping time to the drum, and making indescribable gestures, each having a small whistle in his mouth, with his face turned towards the sun. The singing and other music is performed by the medicine men. The drum used is a raw hide stretched over a keg, on which a regular beating of time is made with a short stick with a head to it. Women ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... moment she saw the spider herself—very near, under a blackberry leaf. At sight of the great monster, silent and serious, crouching there as if ready to pounce, Maya's horror was indescribable. The wicked shining eyes were fastened on the little bee ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... water, sparkling with golden fishes, in the centre of which is a fairy-like island, teeming with flowers of numerous kinds. The general effect of the view was like that of enchantment, or like one of those indescribable scenes that sometimes visit us in dreams, the beauty of which surpasses reality. But my time will not allow me to indulge very largely in detail. From the "Generaliffe" we proceeded to several of the churches, and afterward to an extensive mad-house. We were not a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... of food, and the revellers, with their flushed faces and feverish eyes and loud laughter. Above all the tumult was the voice of the orchestra, calling, calling, like the storm wind upon the mountains; the music was wild and chaotic, and produced an indescribable sense of pain and confusion. When one realized that this same thing was going on in thousands of places in this district it seemed that here was a flood of dissipation that out-rivalled ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... forgotten almost as soon as done, was in an exceedingly short time known to every cadet throughout the camp, and I had the indescribable pleasure, some days after, of knowing that by it I had been raised many degrees in the estimation of the corps. Nor did this knowledge remain in camp. It was spread all over the Point. The act was talked of and praised by the cadets wherever ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... for any wingless creature: thus the strange birds which haunt the wild recesses of the rocks do so in perfect security, and their varied cries, along with the roar of the water, are the only sounds that issue from below. The mysterious gloom is indescribable, and the look down into the depths fills one with awe; and yet this singular view is obtained from the very town itself, from the courts and windows ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... am never to see him any more; I am never to speak of him again"—those were the words I repeated to myself, with indescribable terror and confusion, the moment I was alone. There was something unspeakably horrible to my young mind in this mystery which I was commanded always to respect, and which, so far as I then knew, I could never hope to see revealed. ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... saddle-bags, were tied to posts. On the sand were numbers of animals for sale—oxen, cows, calves, goats, kids, great black hogs covered with bristles like wild boars, and tiny pigs which, when bought, were popped into bags with their heads and the two front feet peeping out. The noise was indescribable. Cattle lowed, pigs squealed and grunted, men shouted, children cried, and musicians sang and rattled tambourines. Beggars of all descriptions, the blind, the halt, and the maimed were there, clamoring for alms, and calling attention ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... in this little speech, but it was spoken in a low, sweet voice; and Rachel looked down on the ferns before her feet, as they walked on side by side, not with a smile, but with a blush, and that beautiful look of gratification so becoming and indescribable. Happy that moment—that enchanted moment of oblivion and illusion! But the fitful evening breeze came up through Redman's Dell, with a gentle sweep over the autumnal foliage. Sudden as a sigh, and cold; in her ear it sounded like a whisper or a shudder, and she lifted up her ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... cum privilegio dunder-headed. I make no pretensions to understand her, but as I am neither her lover nor her husband it does not matter. She says nothing diabolical or eerie or fantastic or feline or pre-Adamite or uncanny or spiritual; and yet she is, in a queer, indescribable ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... in an avenue of dark trees, the end of which was far off. Thither she went walking, the only living thing, crossing strange shadows from the moon. At the end of it she was in a place of tombs. Terror and a dismay indescribable seized her; she turned and fled back to the company of her kind. But for a long time she sought the house in vain; she could not reach it; the avenue seemed interminable to her feet returning. At last she was again upon the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... and faster flies the comet, for as we have seen it is a consequence of the law of gravitation that the nearer planets are to the sun the faster they move in their orbits, and the same rule applies to comets too. As the comet dashes up to the sun his pace becomes something indescribable; it has been reckoned for some comets at three hundred miles a second! But behold, as the head flies round the sun the tail is always projected outwards. The nucleus or head may be so near to the sun that the heat it receives would be sufficient to reduce molten iron to ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... and garner, so as to be tucked in stray corners, memories of a flower in a hedgerow, a boat on the wing, a look in a dog's eyes, and the indescribable smell of a mixture of tobacco, sea air, and leather; and all the other little genuine antique, and ever new odds-and-ends of the collection labelled Love in ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... discharge of large bodies of turbid fresh water in the sea may be still more fatal to marine tribes. In the "Principles of Geology" I have shown that large quantities of mud and drowned animals have been swept down into the sea by rivers during earthquakes, as in Java in 1699; and that indescribable multitudes of dead fishes have been seen floating on the sea after a discharge of noxious vapours during similar convulsions. But in the intervals between such catastrophes, strata may have accumulated slowly in the sea of the Lias, some being formed chiefly of one description ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... deserved the name. Here the guard said they were directed to detain them till the arrival of their lord, who had appointed this the place of rendezvous. He was expected to meet them in a few hours, and these were hours of indescribable torture to Julia and madame. From the furious passions of the duke, exasperated by frequent disappointment, Julia had every evil to apprehend; and the loneliness of the spot he had chosen, enabled him to ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... full of heart, and of indescribable delight that he has given his bread to the starving man. He stands up, brightly, with his back to the fire for a moment, and then goes back and brushes off the snow from the man's matted hair, then back ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... And oh! the indescribable ecstasy of it, the joy of it, just to lie there, trembling with weakness, and drink in great drafts of that life-giving air, thinking of nothing, caring for nothing but that they were alive there in their great out-of-doors. One never comes ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... us on going into the so-called hospital grounds was something indescribable. The land was perfectly level; no drainage whatever; covered with long, tangled grass; skirted by trees, brush, and shrubbery; a few little dog-tents not much larger than could have been made of an ordinary table-cloth thrown over a short rail, and under these lay huddled together the men ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... Spaniards was indescribable. There was mutiny and rebellion among them. The soldiers of Narvaez, who looked for a pleasant promenade through a land of peace and plenty, were appalled. There was daily, desperate fighting. The Mexicans had manned the temple of the war-god which ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... various entries, and little knots of people, evil-looking and unclean for the most part, lurked in the background or sat on benches and diffused through the stale, musty air that distinctive but indescribable odour that clings to police vans and prison reception rooms; an odour that, in the present case, was pleasantly mingled with the suggestive aroma of disinfectants. Through the unsavoury throng we hurried, and up a staircase to a landing from which several passages diverged. Into one of these ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... shoes before going to sleep, but they brought me a pair for a boy of twelve and assured me that there were no others in the town, and those I had come with were in tatters which were hardly to be kept on my feet. The mud was indescribable,—the entire country flooded, and all the bridges across a river we must pass carried away, except one over a narrow gorge where the rocks approached so closely that a couple of logs reached from side to side, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... important face that indescribable shade of embarrassment. "Waal,"—the youngster balanced this word judicially,—"I forgot 'bout'n the tur-key whings till this minute. I ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... the roar of the conflict was incessant, and its violence indescribable. It was broken now and then by a kindly soul among the elderly women raising ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... all the conveniences of a city, and with excellent railroad facilities, the hospital grounds were perfectly secluded by surrounding walls. As one entered through the high gates, an indescribable repose was felt, enhanced by the charm with which Nature has endowed the spot, in the abundant shade, evergreen, and fruit trees, and rose-bushes, holly, and other shrubbery. The classical naval monument, formerly at the Capitol in Washington, has within a few years been removed, and with two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
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