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Alabaster   /ˈæləbˌæstər/   Listen
Alabaster

adjective
1.
Of or resembling alabaster.  Synonym: alabastrine.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Alabaster" Quotes from Famous Books



... this country two very fine specimens of inscribed sarcophagi; namely, that of Seti I., of beautiful alabaster, in the Soane collection (xixth Dyn.), and that of Queen Ankhnesraneferab (xxvith Dyn.) in ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... went, and when he got there the whole palace was made of polished marble with alabaster figures and golden ornaments, and soldiers were marching before the door blowing trumpets, and beating cymbals and drums; and in the house, barons, and counts, and dukes were going about as servants. Then they opened the doors to ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... painted, and some pictures by a great old artist. I gave the man who showed them to us 1 stiver; afterwards I bought two ivory combs for 30 stivers. Thence they took me to St. James's and let me see the splendid paintings of Roger and Hugo, who are both great masters. Afterwards I saw the alabaster Madonna in Our Lady's Church that Michelangelo of Rome made; afterwards they took me to many churches and let me see all the fine paintings, of which there is abundance there, and when I had seen the Jan [Van Eyck] and all the other things, we came at last to the Painters' Chapel, in which there ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer

... and Riar each had an alabaster baby, dressed in white Swiss, and they were all just alike, except that they had different colored ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... hear the voice parental Cry, "my youngster shall not row!" Then my wrath is transcendental, Then my words with vigour flow. Sires, with hearts of alabaster, Your stern "vetos" yet you'll rue, When ye see a sixth disaster, Overwhelm ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... adaptation of the native hut: in both, the arrangements are obviously based on Jewish tradition. Church and outer court are usually thatched, with wattled or mud-built walls adorned with rude frescoes. The altar is a board on four wooden pillars having upon it a small slab (tabut) of alabaster, marble, or shittim wood, which forms its essential part. At Martula Mariam, the wooden altar overlaid with gold had two slabs of solid gold, one 500, the other 800 ounces in weight. The ark kept at Axum is described as 2 feet high, covered with gold and gems. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... and the Staedel Gallery. I borrowed a catalogue. I wrestled with Van der Weyden; I toiled like a galley-slave at Meister Wilhelm and Meister Stephan. I have a confused recollection that I saw a number of stiff mediaeval pictures, and an alabaster statue of the lady who smiled as she rode on a tiger, taken at the beginning of that interesting episode. But the remainder of the Institute ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... S. Vitale, a very dark blue, almost black, a pale yellow-green, and a pale purple like chocolate powder. The white is generally mother-of-pearl, or marble, veined with a pale grey, and a good deal of Oriental alabaster is used. The panel above the simple bishop's throne has a hill, with a golden cross on a green ground diapered with mother-of-pearl, and with tall panels at the sides with the seven golden candlesticks. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... we have seen till we have utterly ceased to see them, the things that nobody who really lives in Florence ever dreams of buying, are new to these people. They love them. As a result, you can guess. There will be in their apartments alabaster plates with profiles of Dante and Michelangelo on a black center. There will be mosaic tables with magnolias and irises. There will be Pliny's doves. Think of it! There will be green bronze lamps ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... In the principal one is a group on one wall—a colossal relief—representing Marcus Curtius plunging into the gulf in the Forum. There are busts of the twelve Caesars; there are busts of all the Roman Emperors, with alabaster draperies, placed on pedestals of red granite. There are Bernini's "Apollo and Daphne;" Canova's celebrated statue of Princess Pauline Borghese (the sister of Napoleon I); Bernini's "David" and "AEneas and Anchises;" Thorwaldsen's "Faun;" "Diana," "Isis," ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... thy grieved friends forbear Bubbles and alabaster boys to rear On thy religious dust, for men did know Thy life, which ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... wonder that she lives at all— Tiny alabaster girl, Hardly bigger than a pearl; That is why we take such care, Lest some one ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... Pharisee is related for the sake of the incident and discourse with which it was connected, and which are given in the following words: Behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... beautiful bridge leading to its entrance; of the double flight of steps under the grand portico; of the great hall with its ceiling forty feet high, supported by fluted Corinthian columns of red-veined alabaster; of the rare old tapestries on a golden background in the saloon; of the immense corridors connecting the wings of the structure. The dinner and its guests and its setting were calculated to impress the son of the Boston soap boiler who represented ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... by oxen appeared and halted in front of the church. It held a corpse, whose dull white feet protruded from under the winding-sheet like bits of washed alabaster, while the body itself had the uncertain form peculiar to dressed corpses. The crowd around was silent. The men bared their heads; the priest shook his holy-water sprinkler and mumbled orisons, and the pair of oxen swung ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... seem to have wonderful control over the muscles of the eyelids and brows, which render the eyes dangerously expressive. The habit of artificially blackening the under lid with Surmah, too, adds, to no mean extent, to the luminosity and vivid power of the eyes in contrast to the alabaster-like, really beautiful skin ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... read all; and when they saw that some one had written about a woman removing all her clothing, they were startled enough without going further. It is true that, differing from our great masters, Flaubert has not taken the trouble to describe the alabaster of her bare arms, throat, etc. He has not said, as did a poet ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... middle of the lower court there was a stately fountain of fair alabaster. Upon the top thereof stood the three Graces, with their cornucopias, or horns of abundance, and did jet out the water at their breasts, mouth, ears, eyes, and other open passages of the body. The inside of the buildings in this lower court stood upon great pillars of chalcedony stone and porphyry ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... went up the steps to the rose-twined veranda as though she floated on wings of gossamer. "The roses are all asleep, Billikins," she said. "They look like alabaster, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... indeed it did before, but every part showed its own individual perfection as well, which perfection made it capable of combining with the rest into the higher perfection of a whole. The flower was a lamp itself! The golden heart was the light, and the silver border was the alabaster globe skillfully broken and spread wide to let out the glory. Yes; the radiant shape was plainly its perfection! If, then, it was the lamp which had opened it into that shape, the lamp could not be unfriendly to it, but must be of its own kind, seeing ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... must have understood it. He is my friend of friends as he lies opposite my window in his alabaster sleep, clad in pontifical robes, with unshod feet, a little island of white peace in a many-coloured marble sea. The faithful sculptor has given every line and wrinkle, the heavy eyelids and sunken face of tired old age, but withal the smile ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... decorated in white and gold, with myriads of mirrors, rich silk curtains and furniture with all the soft and brilliant colourings of the old Arabesque style. There were fountains everywhere, and the floors were inlaid marble, porphery and alabaster. ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... were strewn on all sides. With joy I found the fragment of a bas-relief. Convinced that sculptured remains must still exist in some parts of the mound, I sought for a place where excavations might be commenced with some prospects of success. Awad led me to a piece of alabaster which appeared above the soil. We could not remove it, and on digging downward it proved to be the upper part of a large slab. I ordered the men to work around it, and shortly we uncovered ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... interest with certain old willow chairs of an hour-glass pattern, which never stood upright, probably, and have now all a confirmed droop to one side, as from having been fallen heavily asleep in, upon breezy porches, of hot summer afternoons. In the windows are small vases of alabaster, fly-specked Parian and plaster figures, and dolls with stiff wooden limbs and papier- mache heads, a sort of dolls no longer to be bought in these days of modish, blue-eyed blondes of biscuit and sturdy india-rubber brunettes. The show-case is full of an incredible variety, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... is a spreading fortified town, is the tomb of Count Engelbert I. of Nassau, in one of the chapels of the great church. The count and his lady, both sculptured in alabaster, lie side by side beneath a canopy of black marble, which is borne by four warriors also of alabaster. On the canopy are the arms and accoutrements of the dead Count. The tomb, which was the work of Vincenz of Bologna in the sixteenth century, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... intention fell upon a fine and ready ear. Yes! he must marry; he must marry his cousin; he must marry Katherine Grandison. Ferdinand looked around him at his magnificent rooms; the damask hangings of Tunis, the tall mirrors from Marseilles, the inlaid tables, the marble statues, and the alabaster vases that he had purchased at Florence and at Rome, and the delicate mats that he had himself imported from Algiers. He looked around and he shrugged his shoulders: 'All this must be paid for,' thought he; 'and, alas! ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... of white wool, embroidered on the neck and hem, that lay ready for me, and went down the stair to the room whither my hostess had directed me. It was round, all of alabaster, and without a single window: the light came through everywhere, a soft, pearly shimmer rather than shine. Vague shadowy forms went flitting about over the walls and low dome, like loose rain-clouds over ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... used to lie abed all day now. She wasn't ill she said—just tired! She never looked so beautiful to her husband. Two bright pink spots marked her cheeks, and set off the alabaster of her complexion. Her eyes glowed with such a light as Verdi had never before seen. No, she was not ill—she protested this again and again. She kept to her bed merely to be warm; and then if one didn't move around much, less food was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... at the door of the chapel, to avoid disturbing this woman; and also to endeavor to see who was the pious friend who performed this sacred duty with so much zeal and perseverance. The unknown concealed her face in her hands, which were white as alabaster. From the noble simplicity of her costume, she must be a woman of distinction. Outside the inclosure were several horses mounted by servants, and a traveling carriage waiting for this lady. D'Artagnan in vain ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... and eight ounces of Cutle-bone, also eight ounces of Corral, and a pound of Brick if you desire to make them red; but he did oftener make them white, and then instead of the Brick did take a pound of fine Alabaster; all this being throughly beaten, and sifted through a fine searse, the powder is then ready prepared to make up in a paste, which must ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous

... passed in the tenth year of Queen Anne, it was enacted that a duty of twopence per pound should be laid upon all starch imported, and of a penny per pound upon all starch made in Great Britain, that no perfumer, barber, or seller of hair-powder should mix any powder of alabaster, plaster of Paris, whiting, lime, etc. (sweet scents excepted), with any starch to be made use of for making hair-powder, under a pain of forfeiting the hair-powder and L50, and that any person who should ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... Clara, where were you last night? Where were you, Charley, and dear little Alice? You had all gone to rest, and left old Grandfather to meditate alone, in his great chair. The lamp had grown so dim, that its light hardly illuminated the alabaster shade. The wood fire had crumbled into heavy embers, among which the little flames danced, and quivered, and sported ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... which he would have liked to have lived. And as he trod the flagging of the Hospitolarios, good Don Esteban, little, chubby, and near-sighted, used to feel within him the soul of a hero born too late. The other churches, huge and rich, appeared to him with their blaze of gleaming gold, their alabaster convolutions and their jasper columns, mere monuments of insipid vulgarity. This one had been erected by the Knights of Saint John, who, united with the Templars, had aided King James in ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... parquet door, but no ornaments anywhere, save three. On the carved mantelpiece stood two of the old soapstone birds which they used to find at Zimbabwe, and between, on an ebony stand, a half moon of alabaster, curiously carved with zodiacal figures. My host had altered his scheme of furnishing, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... the columns to do. The reredos is alabaster, I believe, and we had nobody fit to undertake that. I so longed for the power! I almost ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in all, is in the perfection of the French art of the time. Another work by Juste now in the Louvre is the monument to Louis de Poncher, one of the ministers of Francis I., and his wife, Roberta. These statues are in alabaster, and were formerly in the Church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, which was built ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... them into the deserted drawing room. The great bunches of golden roses that he and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their petals on the marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated in the alabaster tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the garden blew in on him with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy's little house seemed so like a nest of pleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxes on a console and ran upstairs to collect his last ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... possible for carving in the North to be rendered as deeply and as roundly as the sculptor desired. In Southern countries, however, and chiefly in Italy, the stone used for building was not ordinary, but semi-precious stone. Marble, porphyry, and alabaster were available; and the use of such material led to a different ideal in architecture and decoration,—that of incrustation instead of solid piling. These valuable stones of Italy could not be ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... If I but wave this wand, Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster, And you a statue, or as Daphne was, Root-bound, that fled Apollo. LADY. Fool, do not boast. Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind With all thy charms, although this corporal rind Thou hast immanacled while Heaven sees good. COMUS. Why are you vexed, Lady? why ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... alone, a robust man with disfigured face, and red whiskers, looked like a fresh cut alabaster statue. Cold had blanched him; but a faint steam arose from his armpits, in the sepulchral light of a green-shaded gas-jet. There heat remained to prove that the great furnace in the frame had not ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... flaming chariot of some Heaven-booked Prophet. Already Egerton anticipates its welcome advent. He can hardly sit still on his pro-consular throne; he smiles in dockets and demi-officials; he walks up and down his alabaster halls, and out into his gardens of asphodel, and snuffs the air. It is redolent with some rare effluvium; pomatum-laden winds breathe across the daffadown dillies from the warm chambers of the south. A cloud crosses His Honour's face, a summer ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... pomegranate and almond trees, lemon groves, and hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble- basined fountains, in which chestnut-and-white pond-herons step daintily amid exotic water-lilies, while golden pheasants strut about on alabaster terraces. The whole effect rather suggests the idea that Providence and Norman Wilkinson have dropped mutual jealousies and collaborated to produce a background for an open-air Russian Ballet; in ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... girl with alabaster hair came to take my order. I asked for jaco and bunlets, and carried the food to a wall shelf near the Dry-towners. Their dialect fell soft and familiar on my ears. One of them, without altering the expression on his face or the easy tone of his voice, began ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... large chamber, richly furnished, but dimly lighted, in the mansion in the Rue du Helder, the same apartment once inhabited by the Countess de Morcerf, motionless, and seemingly lifeless, with a countenance as pale as alabaster, and as still, lay M. Dantes, the Deputy from Marseilles. Although, in the ashy pallor of the lips and brow, and the fixed, serene, almost stern aspect of the immovable face, might be read unmistakable evidence of an exhausting and dangerous constitutional ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... It was scrupulously clean, but barren of furniture and even the rudest comforts of a home. The window curtains are pulled down, but a ray of bright sunlight shoots in and lying on the apology for a bed is a babe. Its eyes are closed. Its face is as white as alabaster. The little thin hands are folded across its tiny breast. Its ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... West's Awake," and "Dear Land," and then we all arose and sang together, "God bless the Pope, the great, the good." I was going to say "sang in unison," but I am afraid I should be trespassing on the sacred precincts of truth; yet if that grand old man in Rome, that electric spark in the vase of alabaster, sitting in that lonely chamber, behind the long, empty, gas-lit state apartments, could hear those voices there above the western seas, he would surely realize more keenly what he understands already, that he can always call upon ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... held in a single vessel of alabaster; marriage didn't conveniently create shortsightedness. Lee couldn't pretend to answer all this for women, or even in part for Savina. Her attitude, he knew, in that it never touched the abstract, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... me against over-payment for the place—old Nat. It turned out that he was a farmer, but with artistic leanings in the direction of whitewash. He appeared one morning in a more substantial form, and was presently making alabaster of our up-stairs ceilings, for if ever there was an old master in whitewash it was Nat. Never a streak or a patchy place, and he knew the secret of somehow making the second coat gleam like frosting ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... exquisite hand, slender and tapering, not one of those short fleshy hands with dimpled fingers, which it is now the fashion to admire, but for which no precedent is to be found in the Medicean goddess or in any other standard of beauty. A magnificent bust, an arm like alabaster, a profusion of dark flowing hair, grace in every movement. But—now comes the wonder, my friend—instead of a face corresponding in beauty with this perfect form, there is—a mask. Can you imagine a greater absurdity? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... returns to the city. The relatives who stay take off their shoes, wash their hands, and proceed to gather up the bones—which they cleanse in wine and milk—and the ashes, which they mix with perfume. These remains are then placed in the urn of bronze, marble, alabaster, or maybe of coloured glass, and the urn fills one more niche in the chamber ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... popular life of the Buddha in Siamese is called Pa:thomma Somphothiyan, translated by Alabaster in The Wheel of the Law. But like the Lalita vistara and other Indian lives on which it is modelled it stops short at the enlightenment. Another well-known religious book is the Traiphum (Tribhumi), an account of the universe according to Hindu principles, compiled in 1776 from various ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... these remarkable freaks of Nature: there is one in Walker County, of the former State, which, as a local curiosity, is unsurpassed; and one in the romantic County of Christian, in the latter State, makes a span of seventy feet with an altitude of thirty; while the vicinity of the famous Alabaster Mountain of Arkansas boasts a very curious and interesting formation of this species. Two of these natural bridges are of such vast proportions and symmetrical structure that they rank among the wonders of the world, and have long been the goals of pilgrimage, the shrines of travel. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... unimaginable ones—is filled up with precious matters. Here are Roman and Grecian relics; fragments of vases from Herculaneum; and the far-famed Egyptian sarcophagus brought over by Belzoni. The latter is made of one piece of alabaster, nearly ten feet long. It is inscribed all over with hieroglyphics, and cost Sir John a large sum. I shall see nothing in all Europe that will take my fancy as much as this museum, I am sure. There ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... by. She looked about her, and understood that she was lying in a great and beautiful room beneath a dome which seemed to be fashioned of translucent ivory or alabaster. At the end of the room were curtains woven of some glittering stuff that gave out light. At length these curtains were drawn, and through them, bearing a cup in her hand, passed a shape like to that of a mortal woman, only so radiant that Barbara knew that had ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... a foundation-stone of the new heaven was to be laid! In a week's time Mike would be working at one of the alabaster walls. Perhaps in two years' time, perhaps even in a year, with good fortune, the roof would be on, the door wreathed with garlands, and a modest little heaven ready ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... stream bed you could dig up, occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of gold; and in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, you could dig up little caskets, containing talismans which gave length of days and peace; and alabaster vases of precious balms, which were better than the Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the eyes to see, but the mind to know, whatever it would—I wonder in which of the stream beds there ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... excitement of which we speak pursued Valentine even in her sleep, or rather in that state of somnolence which succeeded her waking hours; it was then, in the silence of night, in the dim light shed from the alabaster lamp on the chimney-piece, that she saw the shadows pass and repass which hover over the bed of sickness, and fan the fever with their trembling wings. First she fancied she saw her stepmother threatening ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... on the mantel-shelf of her bedroom—which was furnished in that vulgar style of mahogany and Utrecht velvet which is seen everywhere, with its high-backed bed and canopy to which embroidered muslin curtains are fastened—stood an alabaster clock between two candelabra covered with gauze and flanked by two vases filled with artificial flowers protected by glass shades, a conjugal gift of the former cavalry sergeant. Above, under the roof, the bedrooms of ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... Street, in his own orchard, at the foot of his Calvary. My mother arrived on the Monday evening, and in the course of Tuesday we saw his body for the last time, in biretta and cassock, with a rosary in his hands. He looked strangely young, like a statue carved in alabaster, with no trace of pain or weariness ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... moments I concluded Emma was the most beautiful creature in the world; I would not even except Carrie Howard. Emma's features were perfectly regular, and her complexion white and pure as alabaster. Her hair, which was a rich auburn, lay around her forehead in thick waves, but her great beauty consisted in her lustrous blue eyes, which were very large and dark. When she was pleased they laughed, and when she was sad they were sad too. Her dress was a white muslin wrapper, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... wing Of Hippogrif bore through the Air sublime Over the Wilderness and o're the Plain; Till underneath them fair Jerusalem, The holy City lifted high her Towers, And higher yet the glorious Temple rear'd Her pile, far off appearing like a Mount Of Alabaster, top't with golden Spires: There on the highest Pinacle he set The Son of God; and added thus in scorn: 550 There stand, if thou wilt stand; to stand upright Will ask thee skill; I to thy Fathers house Have brought thee, and highest plac't, highest is best, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... to the pen and pencil. Now, it has been my inspiration to introduce it into statuary. For this purpose I have invented a peculiar plastic compound which you will permit me not to divulge. That's my secret, signore! It's as light, you perceive, as cork, and yet as firm as alabaster! I frankly confess that I really pride myself as much on this little stroke of chemical ingenuity as upon the other element of novelty in my creations—my types. What do you say to my types, signore? The idea is bold; does it strike you ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... proper music, by the proper persons, and with proper ardor,—all the elements break loose. Mirth and music and bright eyes respectively shower, thunder and lighten. In the old days, it snowed too—for the powder fell in alabaster dust and foamy clouds, and crammed the air ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... as alabaster, looked with great, frightened eyes from her father to Dona Victorina, from Dona Victorina to Linares. The young man reddened; Captain Tiago ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... the boom met, they fitted together as if they had been made for one another from the beginning, they engaged each other like vertebra in a spine, they stiffened. There came a fearful rending of laths; the mopboard buckled; two vases of alabaster fell from the parlor mantel, and almost at the same moment the red plush clock with the stone cuckoo-bird over the dial and the music box "where its gizzard should have been," as Elmer always said, fell ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Those in London, who desire to see the products of these works, may behold them at Mawe's, in the Strand; but all, who visit Derby, will not fail to call upon Mr. Hall, who is as courteous as he is ingenious. Amythistine and other spars, white and variegated marble, alabaster, &c. are here formed in a series of workshops, aided by a steam engine, into vases, columns, obelisks, &c. &c. Tasteful statuaries are also employed, in converting the same materials into dogs, horses, sheep, cows, &c. for chimney ornaments; and Mr. Hall has likewise imitated the best vases, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... plant. The bud was a very large one, perfect and symmetrical; the strong sheath, of a rich and even brown, as yet showed only a few fissures of its surface, but even now a faint odor stole from the travailing sphere, as from a cracked box of alabaster filled with perfume. ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... those figures of undress marble, the wealth of their glorious bodies pressing out into bosoms magnificent as magnolias (nobler lines and curves Greece herself has never known), towering in throats of fluted alabaster, and flowering ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... her through the folding doors into a retiring apartment, set with arabesque designs, and adorned with inlaid tables bearing statues of alabaster and enamel. Purposely he waited before he replied, and was gratified to see how curiously she regarded him when again his ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... the psychic cackle Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle. And the angels say to Yahveh looking down From the alabaster railing, on the town, O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack We wish we ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... cupboard freshly washed soup-bowls and glasses. She is dressed in a tight-fitting black velvet bodice. square-cut at the neck and partly filled in with a gay handkerchief, coloured rose-pink, blue, and golden, like the alpen-rose, the gentian, and the mountain dandelion; alabaster beads, pale as edelweiss, are round her throat; her stiffened. white linen sleeves finish at the elbow; and her full well-worn skirt is of gentian blue. The two thick plaits of her hair are crossed, and turned round her head. As ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... an ice-field engirdling one of the smaller islets, with all sail taken in save the jib. Weymouth was at the wheel; the captain stood near him; Hobbs and Donovan were in the bow; Bonney stood by the jib-halliards. On the port side the ice-field showed like a pavement of alabaster on a sea of ink, contrasting wildly with the black, rolling clouds, which, like the folds of a huge shroud, draped the heavens in darkness. On the starboard, the heaving waters, black as night, were covered with pure white ice-cakes, striking and ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... leathern balls of twelve pieces, variegated in divers colours, of which the colours here—those our painters use—are as it were samples. There, the whole world is formed of such, and far brighter and purer than they; part sea-purple of a wonderful beauty; a part like gold; a part whiter than alabaster or snow; aye, composed thus of other colours also of like quality, of greater loveliness than ours— colours we have never seen. For even those hollows in it, being filled with air and water, present a certain species of colour gleaming ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... gold clasps and pearl-embroidered bindings. On both sides of the fire-place, on stands that were masterpieces of carving, were heaped up the gala mantles exhibited on such occasions; and side by side, along the wall, on raised alabaster pedestals were nine clocks embellished with figures, each more ingenious than the other, which moved and played music every time the hour struck. Four large Venetian mirrors multiplied the extravagant ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... Beside all this there was an old oak Gothic priedieu, a small altar draped in rose color and white lace, a mass of flowers, and numerous crucifixes and Madonnas of various sizes in silver, ivory and alabaster. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... the richest embroideries, silken fabrics, gold, silver, amber and everything else gorgeous. Then there is the new part of Cairo, the broad, long streets lined with magnificent buildin's. The great Citadel of Cairo and the Alabaster Mosque up on a rocky height, six hundred feet above the city. The Citadel wuz built by Saladin in 1100, most a thousand years ago. Where is Mr. Saladin and his folks? and his dynasty? All forgot centuries ago, but the work ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... graven, cunning, and skilful On earth, where his tabernacles are; But the sea is wanton, the sea is wilful, And who shall mend her and who shall mar? Shall we carve success or record disaster On the bosom of her heaving alabaster? Will her purple pulse beat fainter or faster For ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... more fashionable than Shepheard's. Here we have baronets and counts and a few earls. But there they have dukes and kings and emperors, yet there is a gold-and-alabaster mantelpiece which takes your mind even from royalty, it is so beautiful. Ghezireh is situated on the Nile, half an hour's drive away, so that in spite of its royal atmosphere it never will take the ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... that constrained him, yet unable for the moment to restrain it or to turn his eyes away. She had that clear, bright whiteness of skin that is seen only in Frenchwomen, and only here and there among these; whiteness as of fire behind alabaster. Her hair was black and soft, and the lashes lay like jet on her cheek, as she stood looking down, smiling a little, feeling so happy, so pleased that she was pleasing others. And now, when she raised her eyes, they were seen to be dark and soft, too; but ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards

... beauty have gathered? to what eye but hers did the magnificent secrets of Nature reveal themselves, so that out of a whole forest her careless straying hand should bring only its culminating glories, its most perfect results, whether of leaf or flower or fruit. For in an urn of tintless alabaster, that had lain centuries in the breathless dust and gloom of an Egyptian tomb, that hand had set a sheaf of gentians, every fringed cup blue as the wild river when a noon sky tints it, or as the vaulted azure of a June midnight ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... large as a show twelfth-cake, is just and lawful; ditto, an ornamental escrutoire; and a necessaire for the work-table is, if there be meaning in language, perfectly necessary. These, with an adequate contingent of musical snuff-boxes, or molu clocks, China figures, alabaster vases and flower-pots, together with a discreet superfluity of cut-paper nondescripts, albums, screens, toys, prints, caricatures, duodecimo classics, new novels and souvenirs, to cut a dash, and litter the tables, must be allowed to the taste and refinement of the times. But surely some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... tracery of the walls, the heraldic glass, and the clear windows, the profusion of lace-like carving and coats of arms in the stone-work, blossoming with bunches of daisies mingling with labels, mottoes, monograms, Saint Francis' girdles and knots. The colouring was in keeping with the alabaster retables, the black marble tombs, the pinnacled tabernacles with their crockets of curled and dentate foliage. We can then quite easily imagine the columns and walls painted, the ribs and bosses washed with gold, and making ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... with their father to the church. There it was, that handsome church; the evening sun in slanting beams coming through the gorgeous west window to the illuminated walls, and the rich inlaid marble and alabaster of the chancel mellowed by the pure evening light. The east window, done before glass-painting had improved, was tame and ill-executed, and there was, even aesthetically, a strange unsatisfactory feeling in looking ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... were you last night? Where were you, Charley, and dear little Alice? You had all gone to rest, and left old Grandfather to meditate alone in his great chair. The lamp had grown so dim that its light hardly illuminated the alabaster shade. The wood-fire had crumbled into heavy embers, among which the little flames danced, and quivered, and sported about ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... on my right, next beyond the Master, can hardly be more than nineteen or twenty years old. I wish I could paint her so as to interest others as much as she does me. But she has not a profusion of sunny tresses wreathing a neck of alabaster, and a cheek where the rose and the lily are trying to settle their old quarrel with alternating victory. Her hair is brown, her cheek is delicately pallid, her forehead is too ample for a ball-room beauty's. A single faint line between the eyebrows is the record of long—continued anxious ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... long and short whist, and brandy-drinking—at least it painted one little peculiarity of John Fitzwilliam Baring very fairly. Not one accessory which could contribute to his comfort and enjoyment was wanting, from the exceedingly easy chair for his back, to the alabaster lamp for his eyes, and the silver pastile-burner for his nose. On the other hand, there was scarcely an article that had no special reference to John Fitzwilliam Baring which was not in the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... Gebel Abufeda, dreaded by the sailors for its sudden gusts. Limestone predominates throughout, white or yellowish, broken by veins of alabaster, or of red and grey sandstones. Its horizontal strata are so symmetrically laid one above another as to seem more like the walls of a town than the side of a mountain. But time has often dismantled their summits and loosened their foundations. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... yellow marble wall-paper, the mahogany hat-stand, and the elderly barometer in a state of chronic depression which he knew so well, he found an arched octagonal entrance-hall with arabesques of blue, crimson, and gold, and richly-embroidered hangings; the floor was marble, and from a shallow basin of alabaster in the centre a perfumed fountain rose and fell with ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... to be carved out of transparent alabaster, smiled and slowly turned from side to side as it passed by. The thin, fragile hand moved unceasingly, blessing ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... to the foot of that Cross, ran a star of the constellation which is resplendent there. Nor from its ribbon did the gem depart, but through the radial strip it ran along and seemed like fire behind alabaster. Thus did the pious shade of Anchises advance (if our greatest Muse merits belief), when in Elysium ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... our series of episcopal rings with one found in the cathedral at Hereford during the repairs of the choir in 1843, which rendered the removal of the beautifully carved alabaster monument of Bishop Stanbery unavoidable. This bishop held the See from 1452 until his death in May, 1474. Upon opening the tomb a few fragments of bone were discovered, very small portions of the mere remains of the silk of the robes in which the body of the bishop was enveloped, and this beautiful ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... without any thought more of its signifying originally the unmingled, that St. John speaks of {Greek: akratos kekerasmenos} (Rev. xiv. 10), or the unmingled mingled. Boxes in which precious ointments were contained were so commonly of alabaster, that the name came to be applied to them whether they were so or not; and Theocritus celebrates "golden alabasters". Cicero having to mention a water-clock is obliged to call it a water sundial (solarium ex aqua). Columella speaks of a "vintage of honey" (vindemia mellis), and Horace invites ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... of those rare mortals who steal into the soul like a pleasant, beneficent idea, and satisfy its longings with something calmer and holier than mere worldly friendship; for there was that within May's soul—the hidden mystery of faith and religion—which, like a lamp in a vase of alabaster, shone out from her countenance with an influence which none could withstand; it won—it led—it blessed those who yielded to its power. She presided at the head of the table that evening with quiet grace, and ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... box of alabaster; The precious spikenard filled the room With honor worthy of the Master, A costly, rare, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... moreover, is adorned with pillars of Oriental alabaster, and wherever is a space vacant of precious and richly colored marble it is frescoed with arabesque ornaments; and over the whole is a coved and vaulted ceiling, glowing with picture. There never can be anything richer than the whole effect. As to the sculpture here ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... forests. An example of tenderness, gratitude, devotion, heroism, equal to this, the world had never seen. The exquisite inventiveness of a love that lavished tears as water on the feet of Jesus, and made tresses of hair a towel, and broke the alabaster flask for his anointing; the feminine tenderness that lifted his mangled body from the cross and wrapped it in new linen, with costly spices, and laid it in a virgin tomb, have at length been surpassed by the ingenious devotion of the cursed ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... imagined he was a descendant of the Cid Campeador, only to look at him lying there without a quiver of a feature, his face stainlessly white, a little bluish in extreme lack of blood, with all the nobility of death upon it, like an alabaster effigy of an old knight in a cathedral. On the red-velvet hangings of the bed was an immense coat-of-arms, worked in silk and surrounded by a collar, with the golden sheep hanging from the ring. The shield ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... possess Johnson's original sketches of all the monuments, and of the exterior of the building. A fair idea of the extent of the destruction may be gained by the mention of the fact, that six hundred-weight of alabaster effigies were beaten into powder, and sold to line water-cisterns. Some of the figures were rescued by the late Dr. W. Clubbe, and erected into a pyramid in his garden at Brandeston ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... content to stop short with mere impressions and presumptuous hopes. I feel that a great truth is coming. Sometimes it seems as if we should have it among us in a day. Many steps of the Temple have been ascended, steps of purest alabaster, and of shining jasper, also of rough-brick, and slippery moss-grown stone. We shall reach what we long for, since we trust and do not fear, for our God knows not fear, only reverence, and his plan is ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... chalice of crystal is preserved in the Cathedral of the Assumption at Moscow, and the wooden ones of SS. Sergius and Nikon are in the sacristy at Troitsa. On some old icons our Lord is represented as giving the holy communion to the apostles out of narrow-necked vessels which appear to be made of alabaster. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... above, In worship of Venus, goddess of love, *Done make* an altar and an oratory; *caused to be made* And westward, in the mind and in memory Of Mars, he maked hath right such another, That coste largely of gold a fother*. *a great amount And northward, in a turret on the wall, Of alabaster white and red coral An oratory riche for to see, In worship of Diane of chastity, Hath Theseus done work in noble wise. But yet had I forgotten to devise* *describe The noble carving, and the portraitures, The shape, the countenance of the figures That weren in ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... is fair; there is by the sandy ways a paving all alabaster, and the lanterns along it are of chrysoprase, all night long they shine green, but of amethyst are the lanterns ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... terrace are ornamented by figures of the sitting Buddha. Then one visits a score of magnificently decorated shrines, in which are Buddhas in every variety of position. In one is the reclining Gautama in alabaster, in whose honor the pagoda was built. In others are Gautamas of brass, ivory, glass, clay and wood. Before many of these shrines candles are burning and devotees are seated or are praying with their faces bowed to the stone pavement. On one side of the platform is a row ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... lump of ironstone resting on the block, the full flood of moonlight upon her, blinding her eyes, but revealing her against a background of foliage, like a statue of alabaster. Startled by a rustle in the bulrushes and willow growth behind her, Mehetabel turned and looked, but her eyes were not clear enough for her to discern anything, and as the sound ceased, she recovered from her ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... in most of the ancient cities, were simple in external appearance, but exhibited, in the interior, all the splendor and elegance of refined luxury. The floors were of marble; alabaster and gilding were displayed on every side. In every great house there were several fountains, playing in magnificent basins. The smallest house had three pipes,—one for the kitchen, another for the garden, and a third for washing. The same ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... intervals it had to be uprooted to protect the landed rights of the rest of the community. Never were there such beds of lilies! And when they pierced the black loam with their long sheath-like leaves, and broke their alabaster boxes of perfume on the feet of spring, the most careless passer-by was forced to stay his steps for one ecstatic moment to look and to breathe, to forget and to remember. The shadow of the owner's house lay on this garden at the morning hour, and a tall brick building ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall

... offering to Christ. They were all missionaries, and did not go home till their work was done. Each one had a place to fill among the instrumentalities employed by the Master to promote his kingdom in Persia. There was no waste in the breaking of those alabaster boxes of precious ointment. Nestorian parents looked on, to learn how to lay their children into the arms of Jesus, and become more Christ-like themselves. No years of mature toil have been more blessed than the years of those thus early called home; and in this ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... the servants with packets of every kind, and impatiently watching till the clerks left their apartments for the counting-house. At last she herself crept into Anton's room. She gave one more searching glance at the sofa-cushion she had worked, and arranged in an alabaster vase all the flowers that the gardener had succeeded in forcing. While so engaged, her eye fell upon the drawing that Anton had done on his first arrival, and on the rich carpet which Fink had had laid down. Where was Fink now? She felt on this day as if she had been parted from ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... and beyond the dunes the life crew kept a keener watch upon the outer bar. Chunky ice formed near shore, and the tides bore it inward and left it high upon the beach. Day by day it grew in height like a shining, curving line of alabaster, showing where the high-water mark had been. And upon a certain threatening day, John Thomas came off and stopped at the Light to have ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... approached Jesus. According to the custom of those days, he reclined on a couch with his head towards the table and his bare feet away from it. 362:15 It was therefore easy for the Magdalen to come behind 363:1 the couch and reach his feet. She bore an alabaster jar containing costly and fragrant oil, - sandal oil perhaps, 363:3 which is in such common use in the East. Breaking the sealed jar, she perfumed Jesus' feet with the oil, wiping them with her long hair, which hung loosely 363:6 about her shoulders, as was ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... some weeks later, when the trio, Margaret, Freddy and Michael, were busily engaged in sorting and cleaning the day's finds, which had been more than usually interesting, Margaret held up for inspection a tiny alabaster kohl-pot, which she had freed from the incrustations of thousands of years. It was exactly similar to a little green glass bottle which she had bought in the bazaar at Assuan, in which the modern Egyptian, but more especially the Coptic, women carry ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... chiefly modern, from the government studios, but there are a few ancient ones among them. It seems as though the whole civilized world had united to do honour to this noble edifice and the great Apostle in memory of whom it was erected. The alabaster pillars of the high altar were presented by the infidel Pacha of Egypt; a detached altar in the transept was a gift from the heretic Emperor of Russia; the granite pillars in the nave came from the Emperor of Austria. Among them is ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... Messrs O. R. and S.; the peepholes at the side of her machine imply more than mere curiosity, and are said to have been invented by General Ogle, for the use of the ladies when on active service. The beautiful little Water Lily in the chocolate-coloured chariot, with a languishing blue eye and alabaster skin, is Mrs. Ha****y, otherwise K**d***k, of Gr—n-street, a great favourite with all who know her, from the elegance of her manners and the attractions of her person (being perfect symmetry); at present she is under the special protection of a city stave merchant, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... full, dark, and commanding, though occasionally more languor was on it than eyes of that colour are wont to express. She wore a long jacket of russet colour, and a crimson boddice. Her hair, turned back from her brow, hung in dark heavy ringlets below the neck, which, though not of alabaster, was exquisitely modelled. In person she was tall and well-shapen, and her whole manner displayed a mind of no ordinary proportions. She was well-skilled in household duties, her mother having an especial desire ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... graceful than Alice Bridgenorth's; but an exquisite form, though not, as yet, sufficiently rounded in the outlines to produce the perfection of female beauty, was able to sustain and give grace even to this unbecoming dress. Her countenance, fair and delicate, with eyes of hazel, and a brow of alabaster, had, notwithstanding, less regular beauty than her form, and might have been justly subjected to criticism. There was, however, a life and spirit in her gaiety, and a depth of sentiment in her gravity, which made Alice, in conversation with the very few persons ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... his mind divided between hope and fear, and his spirit moved by the passionate exultation of the antiquary whose studies and researches are about to be rewarded with unexpected treasure. Towards sunset the men came upon a large oblong piece of what appeared to be alabaster, closely inlaid with patterns of worn gold and bearing on its surface the sculptured emblems of a cross, a drawn sword and a crown of laurel leaves intertwisted with thorns, the whole most elaborately wrought, and very little injured. As this slowly came ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... bade it go. Her eye beamed bright with beauty; and innocence, Its dulcet notes breathed forth in every word, Was seen in every motion that she made. Her form was faultless, and her golden hair In long luxuriant tresses floated o'er Her shoulders, that as alabaster shone. Her very look seemed to impart a sense Of matchless purity to all it met. I saw her in the crowd, yet none were there That seemed so pure as she; and every eye That met her eye's mild glance shrank back abashed, It spake ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... there, "the iron man" is sitting in his wife's room on a small embroidered armless chair. Opposite to him on a large elevated divan lies his wife, a tiny, elegant, transparent little lady, with a face of alabaster, and wee wee hands which a child of two would not have known what to do with if they had been doled out to her. Her small strawberry-like mouth scarcely seemed to have been made for talking purposes; all the more eloquent, on the other hand, were her large ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... elevated battlements of Aginanwater Court, the ancestral seat of His Grace the Duke of AVADRYNKE, K.C.B., G.I.N., whose Norman features might have been observed convulsively pressed against the plate-glass window of his alabaster dining-hall. There was in the atmosphere a strange electric hush, scarcely broken by the myriad voices of hoarse betting-men, raucously roaring out the market odds of "Fifty to one. Oxbridge!" or "Two ponies to a thick 'un, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various

... penitent to his feet, and which led her, in loving adoration, to wash them with her tears and to wipe them with the hairs of her head! How wonderful the manifestation of that Divine condescension and love which elicited that gratitude which still lingers in the rich perfumes of the alabaster-box of precious ointment! No marvel that women "followed him from Galilee," stood sorrowfully beholding his crucifixion, and when he was taken from the cross, "followed after and beheld the sepulcher, and how his ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... himself waxed the red floor of his garret, beaten the armchair, and knocked off the dust from the chimney-piece, on which might be seen under a globe an alabaster timepiece between a stalactite and a cocoanut. As his two chandeliers and his chamber candlestick were not sufficient, he had borrowed two more candlesticks from the doorkeeper; and these five lights shone on the ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... such surroundings. "And the walls give one a clue to the artistic side of his nature." A poster advertising a summer fair, with a prodigious bull occupying the centre of the picture, hung on one wall, and across from it a lithograph of a young woman, with very bright clothing and very alabaster skin and very decollete costume tendered a brand of beer with the assurance that it goes to the spot. "I ought to drape it," she said, and the curl on her ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... by a friendly shout in his ear. "Ho, ho, Max, reading poetry, are you? What love does for the worst of us!" It was Welsley, who snatched the paper out of his hand, running over the lines rapidly to himself: "Hem, hem, 'carnation, alabaster, gold and fire.' Some queen, that, eh? Have you had your dinner? Well, don't be cross. There's no reason why you shouldn't read verse if you like. And this young man is the latest thing. My wife says they are going to import him here to speak to the ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... horde of savage Scythians from the mountains of the north and east, such people as we now call the Kurds. Its palaces had no lofty Greek columns to stand for memorials, as at Palmyra or Persepolis; and when the outer casings of brick and alabaster were cracked away, and the ashes of the upper stories and the clay of the inner constructions, soaked by the rains, covered the ruins of temple and palace, nothing was left to mark the site but the grass-covered hill. No wonder that the learned scholar of Socrates saw nothing, knew nothing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... of so many connected with our ancient history—the Holtes, the Erdingtons, the Devereux, the Ardens, the Harcourts, the Bracebridgss, Clodshalls, Bagots, &c. Here still may be seen the stone and alabaster effigies of lords and ladies who lived in the time of the Wars of the Roses, two showing by their dress that while one was Lancasterian, the other followed the fortunes of York. The tablets of the Holte' family, temp. Elizabeth and Charles, and the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... I picked up some tesserae of mosaic, and morsels of marble and alabaster,—a piece of the latter now lies on ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... the district eastward to Gloucester Road has no old association. St. Jude's Church, in Courtfield Gardens, was built in 1870. The reredos is of red-stained alabaster, coloured marble, and mosaics by Salviati. St. Stephen's, in Gloucester Road, is a smaller church, founded in 1866. Beyond it Gloucester Road runs into Victoria Road, once Love Lane. General Gordon was at No. 8, Victoria Grove, in 1881. Returning again to Earl's ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... Bacon, in pure white, was the first thing that presented itself. I went there to see his tomb, but I did not expect to see himself; and it impressed me deeply. There he was, a man whose fame extends over the whole civilised world, sitting calmly, age after age, in white robes of pure alabaster, in this small country church, seldom visited except by some stray traveller, he having desired to be interred in this spot, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... The central dome is not remarkable, but on each side of the large flagged space which surrounds it are rows and rows of miniature temples, each with an ornamental cupola, supported upon pillars. Each of these 729 cupolas contains a slab of alabaster, on which is inscribed a chapter of the Pali Bible. The entrance-gates, also, are large, and unusually ornate ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly

... our Lord's teaching, we can make the most of our life by losing it. He says that losing the life for his sake is saving it. There is a lower self that must be trampled down and trampled to death by the higher self. The alabaster vase must be broken, that the ointment may flow out to fill the house. The grapes must be crushed, that there may be wine to drink. The wheat must be bruised, before it can become bread ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... looking; fixedly at him asked him who he was that dared to wear such a costume and to sing of Venice. The young man, overwhelmed by her look, turned pale, bent his head and handed her his guitar. She took it, and drawing her fingers, white as alabaster, across the strings, she intoned in her turn, with a harmonious and powerful voice, a strange and irregular song: 'Dance, laugh, sing, gay children of Venice! For you the winter has no frosts, the night no shadows, life no cares. You are the happy ones of the world, and Venice is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... on one side, so as to make the arrangement correspond with the oval shape of the table. The waiters between the end-pieces were in the form of parallelograms, the ends about one third part of the length of the sides; and the whole of these waiters were filled with alabaster figures, taken from the ancient mythology, but none of them such as to offend, in the smallest degree, against delicacy. On the outside of the oval, formed by the waiters, were placed the various dishes, always without covers; and outside the dishes were the plates. A small roll ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... three painted windows over the altar, the central containing scenes from the life of Christ, those to the north and south representing the Old and New Testaments respectively. To the north of the recess forming the sanctuary there is an alabaster pulpit,[4] and on the south stands ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... o'clock, between the two ancient apartments now converted into dining-room and nursery. The master's children were too familiar with these grim, shadowy corners to feel the slightest dread besides, they were not imaginative children. To Arthur, an "ally taw," that is, a real alabaster marble, such as he now fumbled in his pocket, was an object of more importance than all the defunct bishops, archbishops, kings, queens, and benefactors of every sort, whose grim portraits stared at him by day and night. And Letitia was far more anxious that the candle she carried ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... All that part of the church between the choir and the door del Perdon was occupied by this showy and ponderous fabric. According to their traditional custom all the Toledans gathered to admire—the steps covered with rows of burning lights, the Roman legionaries in alabaster leaning on their lances, and the rich curtain with its innumerable folds that hung from the vaulting down to ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of no consequence (to Everard's intense disgust), telling her to take a glass of wine and go to bed, and she would be none the worse for her fright in the morning—in fact treated the whole thing quite lightly, and laughed at Isabel for her pale cheeks, saying that such an alabaster complexion was not at all becoming. He promised to send her something to prevent the wine making her sleep too soundly, meaning a composing draught to enable her to sleep, as he saw very little chance of her doing so without. Everard volunteered to go with him for ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings

... the silver wand of which he was in search, and persevered. Strong and healthy as he was he began to draw his breath quickly, when the full light of the glorious sun burst on him, and he found himself in a magnificent temple of alabaster, on the ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... for then it might be interpreted that her spirit was still there too, waiting for its final release from the clay which God had sent her to animate for a while, as an artist imprisons a lovely thought in a vase of alabaster. ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... thing of this subject? Have you neither seen nor heard of Alabaster, and had no means of ascertaining any thing in regard to it? If you have, you ought to rise. It is not necessary that you should state a fact altogether new and unheard of, but if you tell me its color, ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... alabaster box that Mary broke so lovingly, While Judas looked so sternly on, the Master so approvingly, Was not so fairly wrought as those that Pilate's wife and daughters had, Or many a dame of Judah's line that drank ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... about in novels and newspapers, for our own amusement; it is the evil that we weakly give way to in our lives; above all, it is the destroying evil that we have refused so much as to know of in our absorbing care for our own alabaster skin—it is that evil which defiles the woman. But the evil that we have grappled with in a life and death struggle to save a soul for whom Christ died does not sully: it clothes from head to foot with the white robe, it crowns with ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... and the pupil of Rienzi sighed deeply as he passed this vehicle of new spoliations, and as a pillar of fluted alabaster, rolling carelessly from the waggon, fell with a loud crash upon the pavement. At the foot of the stairs grouped some dozen of the bandits whom the old Colonna entertained: they were playing at dice upon an ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... garrets; men and women ground and grimed almost out of the semblance of humanity, in the drudgery and darkness of coal mines; hapless suicides, who have rashly fled from this step dame world, and whose alabaster forms, purpled with bruises, are laid on the dismal beds of brass in the morgue, where a ghastly light strains through the grates, and the crowd of gazers sweeps endlessly on; unsuccessful men of genius, unappreciated, neglected, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... first saw the new ornaments. But this moment sped away without any catastrophe, although with much of heart throbbing. Hatszegi observed the jewels in the ears and round the neck of his bride and paid her the compliment of saying that they contrasted admirably with the snowy whiteness of her alabaster neck. ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most delicious retreats in the world. The walls of all the rooms are literally covered with pictures; the architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and the furniture bears the traces of its ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... breaking my pink alabaster vase," she announced. "She's an awful smasher with her duster—just goes surging ahead over our mantelpiece and sends our ornaments flying. Mary's Pompeii pots went to smithereens yesterday. Now, Signorina Anastasia, you won't find your towels in too ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... garden to the seignorial apartments, though there was nothing to take care of in them except a dozen white arm-chairs, upholstered in faded stuff, two podgy chests on carved legs with copper handles, four pictures with holes in them, and one black alabaster Arab with a broken nose. The owner of the house, a careless young man, lived partly at Petersburg, partly abroad, and had completely forgotten his estate. It had come to him eight years before, from a very old uncle, once noted all over the countryside for his excellent liqueurs. The ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev



Words linked to "Alabaster" :   oriental alabaster, whiteness, white, alabastrine, onyx marble, gypsum, calcite, Mexican onyx



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