Suburban SketchesOsgood, 1875 - 255 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
aboard afternoon amusement answered appeared arms asked Aunt Melissa baby beach beauty behold Benicia Street boat Boston Bowdoin Square burlesque Calchas canker-worms character Charles Lamb Charlesbridge charm cheerful Coliseum contributor Cousin Lucy crowd dance day's pleasure door doubt dressed Dublin eyes face fact fancy feel felt flattering Freddy friends gayety gentleman girl grace hand Hapford heart hope horse-car Irish Italian Johnson Jonathan Tinker Jubilee kind kitchen knew La Belle Hélène lady living look lost child ment mind morning moving Nahant Nantasket Beach ness never night opéra bouffe passed passengers pathetic perhaps person pleasant poor pretty race Sallie scene seats second mate seemed sentiment sort soul spectacle spirit suburban summer things thought Thucydides tion turned walk wander Wharf whole whooping-cough women young
Popular passages
Page 152 - Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho...
Page 147 - Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 35 When he comes back...
Page 19 - In the streets branching upwards from this avenue, very little colored men and maids play with broken or enfeebled toys, or sport on the wooden pavements of the entrances to the inner courts. Now and then a colored soldier or sailor — looking strange in his uniform, even after the custom of several years — emerges from those passages ; or, more rarely, a black gentleman, stricken in years, and cased in shining broadcloth, walks solidly down the brick sidewalk, cane in hand, — a vision of serene...
Page 21 - ... mature age and portly figure, with a complexion like coffee soothed with the richest cream; and her manners were so full of a certain tranquillity and grace that she charmed away all our will to ask for references. It was only her barbaric laughter and...
Page 11 - Charlesbridge, through a storm of snow and rain so finely blent by the influences of this fortunate climate that no flake knew itself from its sister drop, or could be better identified by the people against whom they beat in unison. A vernal gale from the east fanned our cheeks and pierced our marrow and chilled our blood, while the raw, cold green of the adventurous grass on the borders of the sopping sidewalks gave, as it peered through its veil of melting snow and freezing rain, a peculiar cheerfulness...
Page 31 - I mean that this was his figurative attitude ; his actual manner, as he lolled upon a chair beside the kitchen window, was so eccentric, that we felt a little uncertain how to regard him, and Mrs. Johnson openly described him as peculiar. He was so deeply tanned by the fervid suns of the New Hampshire winter, and his hair had so far suffered from the example of the sheep lately under his charge, that he could not be classed by any stretch of compassion with the blond and straight-haired members of...
Page 32 - ... unpleasant notice to our place, no less by his furtive and hangdog manner of arrival than by the bold displays with which he celebrated his departures. We hinted this to Mrs. Johnson, but she could not enter into our feeling. Indeed, all the wild poetry of her maternal and primitive nature seemed to cast itself about this hapless boy; and if we had listened to her we should have believed there was no one so agreeable in society, or so quick-witted in affairs, as Hippolyto, when he chose . . ....
Page 172 - But the stranger's manner put both his face and his clothes out of mind, and claimed a deeper interest when, being answered that the person for whom he asked did not live there, he set his bristling lips hard together, and sighed heavily.
Page 22 - Through the same primitive instincts, no doubt, she loved praise. She openly exulted in our artless flatteries of her skill; she waited jealously at the head of the kitchen stairs to hear what was said of her work, especially if there were guests; and she was never too weary to attempt emprises of cookery. While engaged in these, she wore a species of sightly handkerchief like a turban upon her head, and about her person those mystical swathings in which old ladies of the African race delight. But...
Page 14 - We played a little at gardening, of course, and planted tomatoes, which the chickens seemed to like, for they ate them up as fast as they ripened ; and we watched with pride the growth of our Lawton blackberries, which, after attaining the most stalwart proportions, were still as bitter as the scrubbiest of their savage brethren, and which, when by advice left on the vines for a week after they turned black, were silently gorged by secret and gluttonous flocks of robins and orioles. As for our grapes,...