ink trees

“Alone in the empty shell of a house the squatter watched through the
moteblown glass a rimshard of bonecolored moon come cradling up over
the black balsams on the ridge, ink trees a facile hand had sketched
against the paler dark of winter heavens.”

—Cormac McCarthy, Child of God, 1973.

a different colored pair of drawers for every day of the week

“He had eyes for a long blonde flatshanked daughter that used to sit
with her legs propped so that you could see her drawers, She laughed
all the time. He’d never seen her in a pair of shoes but she had a
different colored pair of drawers for every day of the week and black
ones on Saturday.”

—Cormac McCarthy, Child of God, 1973.

night of the large few stars!

“Press close bare-bosomed night—press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds—night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.”

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1892 edition.

one pale star

“Across the narrow, quivering line of water, the delicate budding
branches of young trees were limned black against the gold,
orange,—what word is there to tell the color of that morning sky! And
steeped in the splendor of it hung one pale star; there was not another
in the whole heaven. . . .
    She stayed there motionless upon the brink of the
river till the star melted into the brightness of the day and became
part of it.”

—Kate Chopin, ‘Tante Cat’rinette’, from A Night in Acadie, 1897.

a purple mist

“The excitement was all over, and they were gone. How still it was when
they were gone! Mamzelle Aurélie stood upon the gallery, looking and
listening. She could no longer see the cart; the red sunset and the
blue-gray twilight had together flung a purple mist across the fileds
and road that hid it from her view. She could no longer hear the
wheezing and creaking of its wheels. But she could still faintly hear
the shrill, glad voices of the children.”

—Kate Chopin, ‘Regret’, from A Night in Acadie, 1897.

green tea

“She would not permit green tea to be introduced into her house, and
those who could not or would not drink coffee might drink tisane of fleur de Laurier for all she cared.”

—Kate Chopin, ‘A Matter of Prejudice’, from A Night in Acadie, 1897.

Vernacular Baton Rouge: AVOs FOOD MART

the color of café-au-lait

“‘La belle Zoraide had eyes that were so dusky, so beautiful, that any
man who gazed too long into their depths was sure to lose his head, and
even his heart sometimes. Her soft, smooth skin was the color of café-au-lait.’”

—Kate Chopin, ‘La Belle Zoraide’, from Bayou Folk, 1894.

‘Here’s money!’

“He went and stood at the foot of the table, opposite to where Madame Delmandé sat, and let fall the box upon it.
    The thing in falling shattered, and from its
bursting sides gold came, clicking, spinning, gliding, some of it like
oil; rolling along the table and off it to the floor, but heaped up,
the bulk of it, before the tramp.
    ‘Here’s money!’ he called out, plunging his old hand in the thick of it.”

—Kate Chopin, ‘A Wizard from Gettysburg’, from Bayou Folk, 1894.

white, bursting cotton, with the dew upon it

“When she had made her way through the brush and scrub cottonwood-trees
that lined the opposite bank, she found herself upon the border of a
field where the white, bursting cotton, with the dew upon it, gleamed
for acres and acres like frosted silver in the early dawn.”

—Kate Chopin, ‘Beyond the Bayou’, from Bayou Folk, 1894.