I shall conciliate her presently; the divine pout (so childish it was!) is fading from her lips; the starlight is on the tulle and lace and roses of her pretty evening dress, with its festooned skirts and
obsolete flounces; and I am watching her, ay, and worshipping her, though I do not know it yet.
Denis, where the marble effigies of thirty generations of kings and queens lay stretched at length upon the tombs, and the sensations invoked were startling and novel; the curious armor, the
obsolete costumes, the placid faces, the hands placed palm to palm in eloquent supplication--it was a vision of gray antiquity.
It trained his ear and gave him a fine appreciation for noble English; withal it introduced into his mind much that was archaic and
obsolete.
To common language, the word is now completely
obsolete. When the polite landsman first hears it from the gaunt Nantucketer, he is apt to set it down as one of the whaleman's self-derived savageries.