United States or Cook Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Old brooches, miniatures painted on ivory, silhouettes, hair rings, necklaces, ear-rings, chains, and finger-rings. "Did you wear this?" asked Ann with a longing voice, slipping an immense sapphire ring on her forefinger. "In Mr. Hepburn's day," she answered, taking up a small case, which she unfastened and gave me.
And really they were confronted by the eighteenth century in the very hall, with its low bluish screens, ornamented with black silhouettes cut out of paper, of powdered ladies and gentlemen. Silhouettes, first introduced by Lavater, were much in vogue in the eighties of last century.
With surging blood I listened until I caught the measured tread of padded feet, and saw the black silhouettes of rounded bodies and curving necks. Oh, to be with them, to travel as Marco Polo traveled, and to learn to know the heart of the desert in the long night marches!
More telegrams came in; things must be going badly; silhouettes of couriers, faintly drawn against the uncertain sky line, could be descried, galloping madly. There was the sound of scuffling steps, imprecations, a smothered cry as of a man suddenly stricken down, followed by a blood-freezing silence. What could it be? Was it the end?
At the sound of his voice, the velvet silhouettes stirred. They had turned to look at us, and a glint of moonlight made the two faces white and blank as masks.
London had been reeking in a green-yellow fog, but here the mist was white, and through it I caught glimpses of the silhouettes of stately trees in a park, and presently saw the great house with its clock-tower looming up before me.
The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me. He was quivering with silent laughter. "Well?" said he. "Good heavens!" I cried. "It is marvellous."
But knowing the silhouettes of all the naval types for example, certain kinds of dreadnaughts, powerful cruisers, torpedo boat destroyers I would be able to tell what ships were putting to sea. When I had memorized all the charts, they covered the names of the battle ships thereon and made me repeat the types. For instance, I would say, "That is a Queen Mary type of battle cruiser.
The sands stretched away to east and west, a great "field of Mars" on which an army could have manoeuvred; and the morning exercises of cavalry and infantry began. Against the brown beach the regiments in their dark uniforms looked as black as silhouettes; and the cavalry galloping by in single file suggested a black frieze of warriors encircling the dun-coloured flanks of an Etruscan vase.
Could the case be more complete? Could Silhouettes of Sacrilege cover a wider gamut of hatred and disgust than these silhouettes picture? Two o'clock in the morning on the sea is sometimes cold and disagreeable, and sometimes it is glorious with wonder and beauty.
Word Of The Day