"Grey-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an hour later that, after passing grey-headed Bayonne, we came to her smart little sister and the villa ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... was to be a typhoon at all, Joe looked solemn, shook his head, and said he had reasons enough, but they were his own. Had he been explicit, he would have been laughed at, but the sight of an old grey-headed man, who had been at sea forty years, getting ready in this serious manner, set the others at work too; for ships follow each other's movements, like sheep running through a breach in the fence. Well, that night the typhoon came ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... urbanity was then so captivating that now I lacked assurance to protest. I paid the scandalous overcharge with a good grace, finding some solace in the reflection that he was at least a picturesque blackguard, tall and spare, grey-headed, with fine features sharpened by age to the strongest lines; for I am always grateful to the dishonest when they add a certain aesthetic charm to their crooked ways. There is a proverb which says that in Ecija every man is a thief and every woman—no better than ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... FIREWORKS will come out shortly, depend upon it, in the dumb line; and will relate her history in profoundly unintelligible motions that will be translated into long and complicated descriptions by a grey-headed father, and a red-wigged countryman, his son. You remember the dumb dodge of relating an escape from captivity? Clasping the left wrist with the right hand, and the right wrist with the left hand—alternately (to express chains)—and then going round and round ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... religious fervor had done for the young man what a lifetime of political scheming had failed to do for many a grey-headed disappointed adventurer. Then, as in all ages, intrigue regarded the success of sincerity with astonishment.—The Master of the Magicians, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... chapter; and a numerous company had assembled to do honour to their hospitality. Yet the company was very different from that which had assembled round the same hospitable board in the days of King Edred. First, the Churchmen were conspicuous by their absence; and secondly, all the old grey-headed counsellors, who had been the pride and ornament of the reigns of Edmund and Edred, were not seen; for, after the rumour of their marriage had reached Odo, he had pronounced the sentence of the lesser excommunication upon them, severing them from the sacraments; and ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... cry, Leonard did not halt till he reached the great western door of the cathedral, against which he knocked. His first summons remaining unanswered, he repeated it, and a wicket was then opened by a grey-headed verger, with a lantern in his hand, who at first was very angry at being disturbed; but on learning whom the applicant was in search of, and that the case was one of urgent necessity, he admitted that the doctor was in the cathedral ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was a grey-headed tall gaunt figure, who spoke very little; but as the Bosniac frontier is subject to troubles he had been selected for his great personal courage, for he had served under ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... flows in yours, the same fancies and buoyant passions dance in my bosom as in yours; so that when I would persuade you to come with me to the same Saviour, and to walk the rest of your life 'led by the Spirit of God,' I am not persuading you to anything beyond your years. I am not like a grey-headed grandfather,—then you might answer all I say by telling me that you are a boy. No; I am almost as much a boy as you are; as fond of happiness and of life as you are; as fond of scampering over the hills, and seeing all that is to be seen, ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... people who are to be more envied than those who have collected Henry James from the beginning—and these alas! are most of them grey-headed now—are the people who, possessed of the true interior unction, have by some accident of obstructing circumstance been debarred from this voluptuous pleasure until late in their experience. What ecstasies such persons have in store for them, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... come. Armed with the 'rules of the estate' and with a notice to quit, the agent may have almost anything he demands, short of possession of the farm and the home of the tenant. The notice to quit is like a death warrant to the family. It makes every member of it tremble and agonise, from the grey-headed grandfather and grandmother, to the bright little children, who read the advent of some impending calamity in the gloomy countenances and bitter words of their parents. The passion for the possession of land is the chord on which the agent plays, and at his touch it vibrates with 'the deepest ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... beloved by all about him, his Servants never care for leaving him; by this means his Domesticks are all in Years, and grown old with their Master. You would take his Valet de Chambre for his Brother, his Butler is grey-headed, his Groom is one of the gravest Men that I have ever seen, and his Coachman has the Looks of a Privy-Counsellor. You see the Goodness of the Master even in the old House-dog, and in a grey Pad that is kept in the Stable with great Care and Tenderness out of Regard to his past Services, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... evening passed, not long nor tediously to any of the party; and midnight was at hand; when there entered from the atrium a grey-headed slave bearing a tray covered with light refreshments—fresh herbs, endive and mallows sprinkled with snow, ripe figs, eggs and anchovies, dried grapes, and cakes of candied honey; while two boys of rare beauty followed, one carrying a flagon of Chian wine diluted ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... reduced to three loads, and I had four "pull-a-boys," one a Mpongwe, Mwaka alias Captain Merrick, a model sluggard; and Messrs. Smoke, Joe Williams, and Tom Whistle- -Kru-men, called Kru-boys. This is not upon the principle, as some suppose, of the grey-headed post-boy and drummer-boy: all the Kraoh tribes end their names in bo, e.g. Worebo, from "wore," to capsize a canoe; Grebo, from the monkey "gre" or "gle;" and many others. Bo became "boy," even as Sipahi (Sepoy) became Sea- pie, and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... by the rich nor the needy they roam; For the grey-headed Sire [10] has a daughter at home, Who will gladly repair all the damage that's done; And three, were it asked, would be ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... small, so that their feeble wail might well fail to reach the ears even of contemporaries. But there is no reason for questioning the simple truth of a story so like the frantic cruelty and sleepless suspicion of the grey-headed tyrant, who was stirred to more ferocity as the shades of death gathered about him, and power slipped from his rotting hands. Of all the tragic pictures which Scripture gives of a godless old age, burning with unquenchable hatred to goodness and condemned to failure in all its antagonism, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... went; and upon his arrival was at once ushered into a private room. There was but one individual in the apartment, a tall, handsome, grey-headed old gentleman of most aristocratic appearance, who rose to his feet in much agitation as ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... fear I shall be grey-headed before I belong to anything else. He makes much of the ancient customs of the country: I would he would follow them. In the good old times I should have been a squire at least by now, if, indeed, I had not earned my spurs; but his lordship will never be content without me to ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... perhaps not in the most barbarous nations. Between seven and eight of the clock, the same evening, the body was buried by a few individuals, and by the consent of said Benjamin Bangs, Esq., after he had inflicted all the wounds he could on the feelings of the poor grey-headed parents and ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... addressed a grey-headed man on his left. "Did I ever tell you, Mr.—, how I once enjoyed the hospitality of a Cornish village, through the simple accident of being mistaken ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the fish will take it, Mr Cleversides; but not if they see a big lubberly boy staring at them with his arm in a sling, or an old grey-headed man, either, Ralph. There, don't frown. It's very nice to be a big lubberly boy; much better than being a worn-out old man, with not much longer to live. Ah, you laugh at my bumble-bee, and it certainly is not like one, ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... Finally, a grey-headed member of the court allowed himself to be blindfolded. With a sharp sword he pierced the body of Fox Sprite to the heart. Those standing near covered their eyes with their hands, for they could not ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... to thy former loving-kindness, and to all the long-suffering, patience, and pardoning mercy which thy aged servant has experienced through her sinful guilty pilgrimage. Thou hast forgiven me all the way from Egypt. Leave me not now, when I am old and grey-headed; but when strength and heart fail, be thou the strength of my heart ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... here! I'm your old friend Jack," returned the other, and it was a happy meeting between the boy in his sixteenth year and the grey-headed old battered vagabond and fighter, known far and wide in our part of the country as Jack the Killer, and by other dreadful nicknames, both English and Spanish. Now he was lying there alone, friendless, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... wonder at the magistrate not believing you, Jones. You are an infernal, grey-headed, mouldy old liar. That yarn is as old as the hills, and since you cannot speak the truth we will go by ourselves," said Hal, coming forward and taking the keys from ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... His hearers saw these things every day. Perhaps they were in view as He spoke. Finally, the less hackneyed our illustrations are, the better. If this were more generally remembered we would miss, and that with a sense of relief, a few grey-headed similes which, having haunted our youth, threaten to haunt also our age; and which have assailed us so often as to create the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt. In how many Sunday school addresses—and a Sunday ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... But if the incident just recorded abridged his address, and the publication of donors' names by way of stimulus to the less active, it produced a great effect on those who had but smaller donations to drop into the plate; and the grey-headed collector, who could have numbered the scanty coin before the bereaved widow had revealed the pastor's charity, had to struggle his way afterwards through the eagerly outstretched hands that showered their hard-earned pence ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... not know but we might get hold of the schooner itself. Then there was some probability of being put in a coaster; which we might run away with. At all events, any chance seemed better to us, than that of remaining in prison, until the end of war that might last years, or until we got to be grey-headed. I remembered, when the Ville de Milan was brought into Halifax; this was a year, or two, before I went to sea; and yet here were some of her people still, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... may expect to become rich. If a childless spouse see in a dream children running round the fireside, there is reason to fear the little prattlers will never be there in reality. It is unlucky to dream that a girl has a beard, or that a boy is grey-headed. It is unlucky to dream of a minister, but it is not an evil sign for one to suppose he is worshipping in church. If you dream that a watch or clock falls or is broken, be ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... it from him with eager fingers. Place a la poste—in eighteen hundred and sixty-one! She untied the string, emptied letters and papers upon the table beside her, and began to sort them. Julius, a spare and venerable piece of grey-headed ebony, an autocrat of exquisite manners and great family pride, stood back a ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... on the highroad, one was grey-headed and clean-shaven, and wore a German peaked cap, the other young and tall, with a beard and a Polish cap. A two-horse vehicle was drawn up ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... feed on human tears, and human honor, and human blood! Thou art the poor man's phantom—the rich man's curse. Magic is thy power, thou yellow talisman; thou canst cause men and women to forget themselves, their neighbors, their God! See yon grey-headed fool, who hugs gold to his breast as a mother hugs her first born; he builds houses—he accumulates money—he dabbles in railroads. A great man, forsooth, is that miserly old wretch, who stoops from manhood to indulge the dirty promptings of a petty avarice. But ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... of persons, to whom compassion should secure more than common indulgence, determined us to purchase these worst sort of slaves, and in this place we have five who owed their wretchedness to being only three foot high, one grey-headed toothless old man of sixteen years of age, a woman of about seven foot in height, and a man who would be still taller, if the extreme weakness of his body, and the wretched life he for some time led, in the hands of one of these monster-mongers, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... Tsar went to church; the priest was reading from Holy Scripture, and so he needs must listen. Now there were certain words there which pleased him not. "To say such words to me!" thought he, "words that I can never forget, though I grow grey-headed." After service the Tsar went home, and bade them send the priest to him. The priest came. "How durst thou read such and such passages to me?" said the Tsar.—"They were written to be read," replied the priest.—"Written, indeed! And wouldst thou then read everything ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... Jessie. Miss Campbell is easy to do for, and she has bonnie ladylike ways wi' her; but I'd like fine to see that grand, grey-headed auld gentleman laird o' the place. He'd bring a deal ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... sunk almost out of sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale which had blustered against his sire and grandsire. The boy, also in due time, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... show herself a little better trained, Joan joined the County Council Night Schools in the neighbourhood. She would go there five evenings in the week; three for shorthand and two for typing. Her fellow scholars were drawn from all ages and all ranks—clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of shorthand and paying very little attention to what went on all ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... nothing but alarm and perplexity. She drew herself away from him. The chaperone, a little grey-headed woman with mobile features, leant forward to intervene. Her resolute bright eyes examined Denton. "What do you ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... Grey-headed rocks rose everywhere close about the ship; overhead the seagulls cried and circled; no vegetation was visible on either shore, no houses, no abode of man—nothing but the lighthouses, then miles of deserted rock dressed in those splendors of the sun's good-night. The dinner-gong had sounded ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... long companionship, there would be no crippled children, no air-raid children, none of those good fellows in blue with red ties and maimed limbs; and the colony to which the Bishop spoke, standing grey-headed in the sun, would be dissolved. Friendliness seems so natural, beauty so appropriate to this earth! But in this torn world they are as fugitives who nest together here and there. Yet stumbling by chance on their dove-cotes and fluttering ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... conception of nature is so different from our own. For Pico the world is a limited place, bounded by actual crystal walls, and a material firmament; it is like a painted toy, like that map or system of the world, held, as a great target or shield, in the hands of the grey-headed father of all things, in one of the earlier frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa. How different from this childish dream is our own conception of nature, with its unlimited space, its innumerable suns, and the earth but a mote in the beam; how different the strange new awe, or superstition, ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... hats with vigour, whilst the whole orderly mob roared applause at them and Lord Hopetoun himself clapped his hands like a pleased boy at the theatre. All the men in the two brakes were elderly and grey-headed, but as far as I could see, they were all stalwart and able-bodied, and the faces of a good many were bronzed with years of sun and wind. Over the leading vehicle was suspended a strip of white cloth, and on this was painted the words, "The Pioneers." These ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... thought that a blush must be the securely private property of a fellow as black as this grey-headed old friend. "What ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... them on the street. Grey-headed men removed their hats to them and shook their hands and street boys followed in groups at their heels making the air ring with shrill "Vive's." There were not many of them, only three companies. The men looked trim and clean-cut. They were tall and husky-looking ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... There was one little sallow rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow who was introduced to me as Mr. Lestrade, and who came three or four times in a single week. One morning a young girl called, fashionably dressed, and stayed for half an hour or more. The same afternoon brought a grey-headed, seedy visitor, looking like a Jew pedlar, who appeared to me to be much excited, and who was closely followed by a slip-shod elderly woman. On another occasion an old white-haired gentleman had an interview with my companion; and on another a railway porter ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... populous city, and give it his own name. In order to which, after he had measured and staked out the ground with the advice of the best architects, he chanced one night in his sleep to see a wonderful vision; a grey-headed old man, of a venerable aspect, appeared to stand by ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... grey-headed hero of it, in obedience to the whim of a moment, gets out of a night train at the great central junction of the whole railway system of England. A drenching rain-storm and a windy platform, darkness and solitude are, to begin with, the agreeable surroundings ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... she turned away and took her father's arm. The two men watched them disappear—the little grey-headed man with his ill-cut clothes, and hard, shrewd face, and the tall, graceful girl, whose toilette was irreproachable, and whose carriage and bearing moved even Reist to admiration. They passed down the carpeted way and through the swing-doors. Then Reist touched ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... it he saw the light came from a wretched little hut, and through the window he saw an old old, couple inside. They were as grey-headed as a pair of doves, and the old wife had such a nose! why, it was so long she used it for a poker to stir the fire as ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... love of liberty and of country amounted to something more than mere sentiment has been proved conclusively by the war, when the whole male population rose in arms against the invading foe. Touching, indeed, it was to behold boys of twelve and grey-headed men of seventy and eighty years shouldering their rifles and all fighting for one great ideal. When their homes were burned, families removed, and goods taken or destroyed, they exclaimed: "Let the ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... tattered; and some even appear in slippers. All are without stockings, and thus naked feet peer forth every where. The position of the men with regard to each other is just as irregular; a little dwarf may frequently be seen posted next to a giant, a boy of twelve or fourteen years near a grey-headed veteran, and a negro standing next to ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Pen looked about, on his first introduction, not a little amused with the scene which he witnessed. Among his comrades of the student class there were gentlemen of all ages, from sixty to seventeen; stout grey-headed attorneys who were proceeding to take the superior dignity,—dandies and men—about town who wished for some reason to be barristers of seven years' standing,—swarthy, black-eyed natives of the Colonies, who came ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... just come on board from Port Royal, came to me with a cup filled with some sort of herb tea mixed with rum. He requested me to drink it off. This I refused to do. He assured me he had been on shore on purpose to procure it for me, that old Dinah, who was a grey-headed washerwoman, had made it, and I must drink it. I was so weak that I could scarcely answer him, when he put it to my mouth and forced more than half of it down my throat. With the exertion I fainted. He told me the following day he thought he had killed me, and had called the doctor, who gave me ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... that she would work all day and all night rather than leave her; but the more reluctance she showed, the more determined was Perronel, and she could not but submit to her fate, only adding one more entreaty that she might take her jackdaw, which was now a spruce grey-headed bird. Perronel said it would be presumption in a waiting-woman, but Ambrose declared that at Chelsea there were all manner of beasts and birds, beloved by the children and by their father himself, and that he believed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... establishment. Each dropped in, at any hour that chanced to suit him, ate his supper, pushed back his chair, and joined in the general conversation, smoking, and drinking coffee or a little wine, until it was time to go home. There were grey-headed painters who had hardly been absent more than a few days in five and twenty years from their accustomed tables at such places as the Falcone, the Gabbione, or the Genio. But Reanda had never joined in any of these little circles for longer ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... at you, Master Harry," said another, a grey-headed old fisherman. "Here's you, son of the biggest owner here in Carn Du, a young chap as can swim like a seal, and yet never had the pluck to take ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... the means of knowing that the interest of the English national debt was paid every year by fresh borrowing, and that bankruptcy and absolute smash must occur within a few years. "Ah!" said a much older, grey-headed man, who had been listening sitting with his hands reposing on his walking-stick before him, and who spoke with a sort of patient, long-expecting hope and a deep sigh, "ah! we have been looking for that many a year; but I am beginning to doubt whether I shall live to ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... question. At last order was in some measure restored. Agias found himself before a tribunal composed of Falto, the subordinate villicus,[111] as chief judge, and two or three freedmen to act in capacity of assessors. All of this bench were hard, grey-headed, weazened agriculturists, who looked with no very lenient eye upon the delicate and handsome young prisoner before them. Agias had to answer a series of savagely propounded questions which led he knew not whither, and which he was almost too bewildered to answer intelligently. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... have since had proof, of the strongest nature, that such a report was spread in the garrison by that wily and grey-headed malignant, partly to prevail on the soldiers to submit to a diminution of their daily food, partly to detain us before the walls of his fortress until the sword should be whetted to smite and ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... right hand in her left palm so that it rang again, and burst forth eagerly, albeit with roguish good humor and tearful eyes: "If indeed everything good and right that ever was done in Nuremberg must have once been done there for the first time, our good town shall now see that a grey-headed old woman with gout in her toes can sail over seas, from the Pegnitz even to the land of the barbarian Heathen and Cairo! Your hand on it, Young Kubbeling, and yours, Maidens. We will be fellow-travellers. Signed and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... The rector was grey-headed, and a privileged friend. "My dear," he said, "I was just giving it you. However, the object-lesson was going on; the subject being Quadrupeds, which Miss Mary very properly explained to be 'things with four legs.' Presently, she said to her class, 'Tell ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... times in preference to shedding one drop of her blood. But then, he had seen Too-che sauntering home from the well, with her water jar on her head, and her hips the focal point of all eyes in the street. Asha smiled, and took his grey-headed, bent, unnoticed figure down the back streets to the house ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... smartest skipper on th' Front, done in the bloody eye by a bargoo-eatin' son ef a gun ef a grey-headed limejuicer!!!'" ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... and strength. They have the tokens of old age at a season of life when European women have not passed their prime. They are like the fruits of the country, soon ripe and soon decayed. They bear children before fifteen, are generally past it at thirty, and grey-headed and shrivelled at forty. I do not recollect hearing of any woman who had six children except the wife of Raddin of Madura, who had more; and she, contrary to the universal custom, did not ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... disconnected with physical force.[23] From the west came similar stories of violence and trickery. In the West Riding of Halton, the Tories were said to have delayed voting, which seemed to be setting against them, by various stratagems, including the swearing in of old grey-headed men as of 21 years of age, and among the accusations made by the defeated candidate was one that certain deputy returning officers had allowed seven women to vote for the sitting member.[24] On the whole the election ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... not to sleep, for that is a difficult matter here—so I laid and chatted with a trooper of Roberts' Horse, the latest occupant of the next bed to me. He is, or rather was, a schoolmaster, wears spectacles and is grey-headed; what induced him to join in this little game heaven, and he, only know. In the midst of a discussion on the Afrikander Bond and the South African League, the night sister came in and imperiously bade us be silent and go to sleep. So the grey-headed schoolmaster and ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... the funeral procession moving slowly from the house across the grounds, and taking its way towards the village church. The little coffin was carried by four of the grey-headed servants of the house; my uncle and aunt were walking on foot beside it, and my cousin and Henry Lovell were following them. The rest of the servants, among whom was Julia's nurse, and almost all the inhabitants of the village, closed the procession. I watched the funeral train till it was ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... spoke the wraith of a grey-headed man drew near. He had but one arm, for the other was hewn from him, and the byrnie on his left side was ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... man smile when I say that, on reckoning up this Theban band of sound judgment and inestimable fidelity, I found my muster reduced to three, and those three of so unromantic a class as the grey-headed exciseman, the equally grey-headed solicitor, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... Feeble as it was at the first trial of it, her sense of sight was sufficiently restored to enable her to distinguish objects dimly. Of the three persons who had offered themselves to view on the right-hand side of the door, one (Mrs. Finch) was a woman; another (Mr. Finch) was a short, grey-headed, elderly man; the third (Nugent), in his height—which she could see—and in the color of his hair—which she could see-was the only one of the three who could possibly represent Oscar. The catastrophe that followed was (as things were) inevitable. Now that the harm was done, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... game to which I have referred was swimming in the surf. But as this is an amusement in which all engage, from children of ten to grey-headed men of sixty, and as I had an opportunity of witnessing it in perfection the day following, I shall describe it ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... prohibition of speech, nor even perhaps to make me of so much consequence, as that prohibition might seem to imply. Though I was curious, it must not be supposed that I had the object of my enquiry for ever in my mind, or that my questions and innuendoes were perpetually regulated with the cunning of a grey-headed inquisitor. The secret wound of Mr. Falkland's mind was much more uniformly present to his recollection than to mine; and a thousand times he applied the remarks that occurred in conversation; when I had not the remotest idea of such an application, till some singularity in his manner brought ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... up the big, grey-headed fellow I have before mentioned—Jacob Baines. He pulled his fore-lock to Sir Ralph, rather shyly; possibly in his youth he had made the sheriff's acquaintance under less favourable circumstances. But he plucked ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... little fellowship became resentfully self-conscious.... Old wounds reopened; forgotten infirmities lifted up their heads. The three great sailors remembered that they were deaf. The little engineer noticed his trailing leg. The lean, grey-headed joiner thought of the wife who had left him: his fellow recalled the cries of a dying child. Anthony minded Miss French. Only the two old carters were spared the ordeal, their labour keeping them busy under the cover of the woods. Winchester himself felt the unusual exposure most of all. But that ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... be, Aziel bent towards her to reply, when suddenly round a bend in the path but a few paces from them came a body of soldiers and attendants, headed by a man clad in a white robe and walking with a staff. This man was grey-headed and keen-eyed, thin in face and ascetic in appearance, with a brow of power and a bearing of dignity. At the sight of the pair he halted, looking at them in question, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... and arrayed them in their harness, Odysseus and his men being four, and the six sons of Dolius, and likewise Laertes and Dolius did on their armour, grey-headed as they were, warriors through stress of need. Now when they had clad them in shining mail, they opened the gates and went forth and ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... "an old family servant" carries with it a thousand kind associations in all parts of the world; and there is no claim upon the home-bred charities of the heart more irresistible than that of having been "born in the house." It is common to see grey-headed domestics of this kind attached to an English family of the "old school," who continue in it to the day of their death in the enjoyment of steady unaffected kindness, and the performance of faithful unofficious duty. I think such instances of ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... never had a playfellow of his own age, and his eagerness to see Alberic de Montemar was great. He watched from the window, and at length beheld Osmond entering the court with a boy of ten years old by his side, and an old grey-headed Squire, with a golden chain to mark him as a Seneschal or Steward ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green: Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... to return a few minutes later with grey-headed old Kanka, who in response to an inquiring look from his master, bent ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... Solomon's Proverbs in Parchment, it teaches Wisdom, and it is gilded, because Gold is a Symbol of Wisdom. This shall be given to our grey-headed Timothy; that according to the Doctrine of the Gospel, to him that has Wisdom, Wisdom shall be given ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... cried I, "do you call yourself a man, to war with children and old grey-headed men? You must not, shall not, touch these two. You have wreaked your vengeance upon the white men; ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... delighted little lady as she freed herself from her stalwart son's embrace, "art going to celebrate thy return home by beginning to pay compliments to thy old mother? But, indeed," she continued more seriously, "'tis a wonder that I am not grey-headed, for the anxiety that I have suffered on thy account, George, and that of thy brother Hubert, has scarcely suffered me to know a ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... long-bearded, grey-headed supermen, beings possessed of the rounded eyes of happy children, descending from the hills, and decking the earth, and sowing it with sheerly kaleidoscopic treasures, and coating the tops of the mountains with massive layers of silver, and the lower edges with a living web ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... motionless with surprise, the old cheat saluted the forty grey-headed men round the fire: Devout adorers of fire, said he, this is a happy day for us! ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... of dat!" observed one of our captors, a grey-headed old negro with a facetious countenance, looking at the numerous lashings ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... was occupied by three men, who were sitting beside the fire, on blocks of stone which had been rolled from the beach. Two of them were young, and comparatively commonplace-looking persons; the third was a grey-headed old man, apparently of great muscular strength though long past his prime, and of a peculiarly sinister cast of countenance. A keg of spirits, which was placed end up in front of them, served as a table; there were little drinking measures of tin on it, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... Grey-headed men, wonderfully pathetic in their dissipation, stared at her through clouds. Smooth-cheeked boys, some of them with faces of stone and mouths of sin, not nearly so pathetic as the grey heads, tried to ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... parents' loins (a substance unworthy of a word, unworthy of a thought), when I consider what I am now (a volume of diseases bound up together; a dry cinder, if I look for natural, for radical moisture; and yet a sponge, a bottle of overflowing Rheums, if I consider accidental; an aged child, a grey-headed infant, and but the ghost of mine own youth), when I consider what I shall be at last, by the hand of death, in my grave (first, but putrefaction, and, not so much as putrefaction; I shall not be able to send forth so much as ill air, not any air at all, but shall be all insipid, tasteless, savourless, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... many instances were grey-headed men—also gave the authorities much trouble, many of them being addicted to strong drink, and not a few to dilatory habits and dishonesty. One of them was at one time caught in the act of breaking the laws. At that period the bye-posts ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the strength of the Lord God, and make mention of His righteousness only. Thou, O God, hast taught me from my youth up until now. Therefore will I tell of Thy wondrous works. Forsake me not, O Lord, in my old age, when I am grey-headed, till I have shewn Thy strength unto this generation; and Thy power unto those ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... sheer wonder at the lunacy of our dispute and the side he was forcing me to take. Here was I haranguing a grey-headed veteran on his own quarter-deck and exhorting him to valour! In a flash I saw myself befooled, tricked into playing the patronising amateur, complacently posturing for the derision of gods and men. And Captain Colenso, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... town of Fundi, the province of Hispania Tarraconensis was offered him. After his arrival in the province, whilst he was sacrificing in a temple, a boy who attended with a censer, became all on a sudden grey-headed. This incident was regarded by some as a token of an approaching revolution in the government, and that an old man would succeed a young one: that is, that he would succeed Nero. And not long after, a thunderbolt falling into a lake in ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the conclusion that he had either been murdered or kidnapped, and in time he was forgotten by most people, but one day he returned with what he had been sent for in his hand. But so many years had elapsed since he first left home, that he was now an old grey-headed man, though he knew it not; he had, he said, followed, for a short time, delightful music and people; but when convinced, by the changes around, that years had slipped by since he first left his home, he was so distressed at the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... pertinacity; and he began to look towards a different quarter. Among the courtiers of Elizabeth had lately appeared a new favourite, young, noble, wealthy, accomplished, eloquent brave, generous, aspiring; a favourite who had obtained from the grey-headed Queen such marks of regard as she had scarce vouchsafed to Leicester in the season of the passions; who was at once the ornament of the palace and the idol of the city. who was the common patron of men of letters and of men of the sword; who was the common refuge ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Maratha, chiefs. Here I found an old native pensioner, above a hundred years of age. He had fought under Lord Clive at the battle of Plassey, A.D. 1757, and was still a very cheerful, talkative old gentleman, though he had long lost the use of his eyes. One of his sons, a grey-headed old man, and a Subadar (captain) in a regiment of native infantry, had been at the taking of Java,[5] and was now come home on leave to visit his father. Other sons had risen to the rank of commissioned officers, and their families formed the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... ghosts and goblins always post off to Erebus when Aurora's flag gilds the mountains, imagined she might now go to sleep in safety. But she was soon roused by the sound of voices, and beheld an indisputable apparition. An aged grey-headed man, bent double, clad in a loose gown, and leaning on a staff, crept out of the very pile which she had been so fearfully contemplating all night. He was attended by a female figure, who carefully seated him on ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... did was to pour the contents of several bottles down my throat. I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dressing. Then she put me on the sofa, and, acting on the advice of a pleasant-looking, grey-headed gentleman, whom she called "Mr. Dick," heated a bath for me. After that I was enrobed in a shirt and trousers belonging to Mr. Dick, tied up in two or three great ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Atridae have my ruin wrought. Come, ye swift powers of retribution, come, And flesh you on the whole Achaean host. Thou sun, whose chariot traverses the sky, When on my native land thou lookest down, Draw for a while thy glittering rein, and tell The story of my madness and my doom To my grey-headed father, and to her That bare me, and that when she hears this news Will make the city echo with her wail. But to no purpose are these weak laments; The thing must now be done, and done with speed. O death, O death, come ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... is a conceited, headstrong young train. It will not be guided or advised. The traffic superintendent wants it to go to St. Petersburg or to Paris. The old grey-headed station-master argues with it, and tries to persuade it to go to Constantinople, or even to Jerusalem if it likes that better—urges it to, at all events, make up its mind where it is going—warns it of the danger to young trains of having no fixed aim or object in life. Other ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... companion of the young aboriginal came down the hill and joined the group. He was an older man, about fifty years of age, grey-bearded and grey-headed, with a frank and open countenance. He also was permitted to satisfy himself that the Frenchmen were white-bodied as well as white-faced; and being assured that there was nothing to fear from these strange visitors, he signalled to two black women, who had remained hidden ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... windows, that it might itself have appeared only a funeral vault, or mausoleum of larger size. Its little square tower, with the ancient belfry, alone distinguished it from such a monument. But when the grey-headed beadle turned the keys with his shaking hand, the antiquary was admitted into an ancient building, which, from the style of its architecture, and some monuments of the Mowbrays of St. Ronan's, which the old man was accustomed to point out, was generally ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... once more in terror, for what I saw suggested that perhaps I was dead after all and had reached that hell which a certain class of earnest Christian promises to us as the reward of the failings that Nature and those who begat us have handed on to us as a birth doom. It was something unnatural, grey-headed, terrific—doubtless a devil come to torment me in the inquisition vaults of Hades. Yet I had known the like when I was alive. How had it been called? I remembered, "The-thing-that-never-should-have-been-born." Hark! It was speaking ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... steed went our bold lover; all alone, or rather with Love for his companion; and so, riding hard till he came to the Red Sea, he took ship, and journeyed through Egypt, and came to the mountains of Barca, where he overtook an old grey-headed palmer. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... beside the mare, ran in front of her, saw her being whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut with the whip across the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed old man with the grey beard, who was shaking his head in disapproval. One woman seized him by the hand and would have taken him away, but he tore himself from her and ran back to the mare. She was almost at the last gasp, but began ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... should have had no worthier field to strive in. Even when he had fumed away his last coin, and had nothing left in prospective to keep his old age from starvation, hope never forsook him. He still dreamed of ultimate success, and sat down a grey-headed man of eighty, to read over all the authors on the hermetic mysteries, from Geber to his own day, lest he should have misunderstood some process, which it was not yet too late to recommence. The alchymists say, that he succeeded at last, and discovered the secret ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... are a little bilious, or something; for I never heard you talk like this before. I have told you, confidentially sometimes, that I have wanted to rebel against the wishes of my parents on some points, and you have always counselled me, like a sage, grey-headed father, to give up my desire. But now you turn right round, and place me in the position of the parent, and you the rebellious son. I recommend, therefore, that you take two pills, for I am sure bile is at the bottom of this; and then ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... open the cab-door. He was followed by Mr. Gallilee, eager to help the person inside to alight. The traveller proved to be a grey-headed woman, shabbily dressed. Mr. Gallilee cordially shook hands with her—patted her on the shoulder—gave her his arm—led her into the house. The cab with the luggage on it remained at the door. The nurse had evidently not reached the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... deeply pathetic as he referred to the heroic man condemned to death and lying wounded in a Virginia prison; and concluded with an outburst of spiritual triumph like that in Goethe's tragedy of Egmont. "They have brave men in Virginia: it was not an old, grey-headed man entering Harper's Ferry that they were afraid of, it was the John Brown in every man's own conscience that ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... satisfy him, and show him My salvation. We have seen a grey-headed libertine, and we have missed from among the clean-hearted and the faithful some brave young life that was giving itself vigorously to the holy service. But perhaps we have had the grace not to challenge the utter faithfulness of God. The measure of life is ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... Stephen's Porch, stood women pickets, and watched us silently and reproachfully as we went to and fro. They were women of all sorts, though, of course, the independent worker-class predominated. There were grey-headed old ladies standing there, sturdily charming in the rain; battered-looking, ambiguous women, with something of the desperate bitterness of battered women showing in their eyes; north-country factory girls; cheaply-dressed suburban women; trim, comfortable mothers of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green, Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's they ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the bar, or his time of respectability as a Baron of the Exchequer, that Sir R. M. Rolfe was the future Chancellor? Probably there is no sphere in which there is more of disappointment and heartburning than the army. It must be supremely mortifying to a grey-headed veteran, who has served his country for forty years, to find a beardless Guardsman put over his head into the command of his regiment, and to see honours and emoluments showered upon that fair-weather colonel. And I should judge that the despatch written by a General after an important battle must ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd |
