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More "Magic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clothes. They now wear a white shirt and a standing collar. They change their habits and their methods. They have been used to cheap clothes, coarse fare, and to associating with their fellow workers. After they have been elevated to official position, as if by magic they are recognized by those who previously scorned them and held them in contempt. They find that some of the doors that were previously barred against them now swing inward, and they can actually put their feet under ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... The magic word "option" wakened the drowsy speculator in Edward Henry. And the mere act of looking at the plan endowed the plot of land with reality! There it was! ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... started with the crowd toward the door. A whistle sounded, the walls of the tent fell as if by magic. The Doctor and the boys stood a long time ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... last sentence she transported Dion, as on a magic carpet, to the unwise life. Her husky voice changed a little; her face changed a little too; the one became slower and more drowsy; the other less haggard and fixed in its expression of distress. This woman had her hours of happiness, perhaps even of exultation. For a moment Dion envisaged another ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... dancing all over my page, I went off to regions of enchantment, pleasant to me beyond any fairy tale. I never cared much for things that were not true. No chambers of Arabian fancy could have had the fascination for me of those old Egyptian halls, nor all the marvels of magic entranced me like the wonder-working hand of time. Those books made my comfort and my diversion all the winter. For I was not a galloping reader; I went patiently through every page; and the volumes were many enough and interesting enough to last me long. I dreamed under ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and the nursery and the children in most refreshing order; she amused Una when she was more than usually unwell with a perfect fund of innocent stories; the work flew from her nimble fingers as if by magic. I boasted everywhere of my good luck, and sang her praises in Ernest's ears till he believed in her with all his heart. But one night we were out late; we had been spending the evening at Aunty's, and came in with Ernest's ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... sentiment, and ennobled the lives of every one who has read their works. In this country Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Lowell, Hawthorne, Emerson, Channing, Parker, Clarke, and other illuminated souls, gave all who came under the magic of their words a broader view of life, a truer conception of the universe, and a loftier inspiration than aught that had touched them before. It is doubtful if the great thinkers dreamed that on the current of their thoughts tens of thousands of earnest ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... not unexpected, for astronomers had long surmised the existence of a planet in the wide gap between Mars and Jupiter. Indeed, they were even preparing to make concerted search for it, despite the protests of philosophers, who argued that the planets could not possibly exceed the magic number seven, when Piazzi forestalled their efforts. But a surprise came with the sequel; for the very next year Dr. Olbers, the wonderful physician-astronomer of Bremen, while following up the course of Ceres, happened on another tiny moving star, similarly located, which soon revealed itself ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... wrapper. It contained some light brown fluid, which the bailiff poured into a tumbler. Then adding a small quantity of water, he invited his master to swallow the mixture. A few minutes after doing so, the patient was delighted to find that gloomy thoughts disappeared as if by magic. An unwonted elation of spirits succeeded; he broke into snatches of song, to the intense surprise of the household! His amateur physician left the bottle, advising him to take a similar dose every night; and Nagendra Babu followed the ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... finds often a magic effect in the animated enthusiasm which characterises the different movements of the head—now proudly erect, now tenderly sunk on the bosom, now lightly inclined towards the shoulder, and always depicting in large traits the abundance of life and joy, shaded with simple, graceful, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... was quite delighted with the boat for being late so that I was landed in the middle of a fete champetre as by magic. And Naturally one had a tremendous welcome as the party was in honour of one's ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... "Tam o' Shanter," accompanied by illustrations, made by a magic lantern. When this was over, and lights were again brought into the room, the tubs of water were drawn forward. Twelve apples were set floating in each tub. Three little boys had their arms pinioned, and water-proof capes were put over their clothes. Then each one was led up to a tub, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Catholic, he ought to have believed that it must, as soon as separated from his body, go to Purgatory? Or is there some semi-pagan superstition of the Renaissance (most strange, certainly, in a man who had been a Cardinal) connecting the soul with a guardian genius, who could be compelled, by magic rites ("ab astrologis sacrato," the MS. says of the little idol), to remain fixed to earth, so that the soul should sleep in the body until the Day of Judgment? I confess this story baffles me. I wonder whether such an idol ever existed, or exists nowadays, in the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... blazing in twenty places, and scarcely a minute passed without the crash of an explosion and the roar of flame that followed it, but a magic circle seemed to have been drawn round Westminster. There nothing was touched, and yet the wharves on the other side of the river, and the great manufactories behind them, were blazing and vomiting clouds of flame and smoke towards the clouds as though ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... at Cecil, "the white man," the "long beard," the "man that came from the Great Spirit," the "shaman of strong magic,"—for rumors of Cecil and his mission had spread from tribe ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... disclosed to him in a flutter of triumphant glee that he had a spell to work which naught could withstand—a draught from Herbert's Spring to offer to Otasite. Thither some fifty miles he had dispatched a runner for a jar of the magic water, and after drinking of it Otasite could not quit for seven years the Cherokee nation ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... over the high wall as if they said, "We could tell fine secrets if we chose," and the mullein outside the gate made haste to reach the keyhole, that it might peep in and see what was going on. If it had suddenly grown up like a magic bean-stalk, and looked in on a certain June day, it would have seen a droll but pleasant sight, for somebody evidently was going to have ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the injuries which they had suffered under the preceding reign. [9] The consternation of the Pagan world was dispelled by a wise and gracious edict of toleration; in which Jovian explicitly declared, that although he should severely punish the sacrilegious rites of magic, his subjects might exercise, with freedom and safety, the ceremonies of the ancient worship. The memory of this law has been preserved by the orator Themistius, who was deputed by the senate of Constantinople to express ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... in his arms the Houri of the foreign race; he fastened his burning lips upon her rosebud mouth; and by the magic of her breath she drew him on to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... plenty, ease and indolence, ever after. That's a pretty poetical little romance, and serves to cheer the children, and make their sudden change of circumstance more bearable, but I know they will have to fight the battle of life each by himself, and quite unaided. Neither possesses a magic wand to conjure up ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the house; and it seemed strange to her that the house, which but a short time ago had no existence whatever, and was yet cold and soulless, was destined to be the living home of a family, with history in its walls and memories clinging about it. The formidable magic of life was always thus discovering itself to her, so that she could not look upon even an untenanted, terra-cotta-faced villa without a secret thrill; and the impenetrable sky above was not more charmed and enchanted than those brick walls. When she reflected that ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... into the republican eyes of the Kentuckian with a glowing fire which was contrary to all rules and conventions of the divine right of kings. No common man should have been given such a glimpse of empire; but, in justice to the magic of such glances which come once from the eyes of every good woman, for some good man, in each lifetime, it must be acknowledged that their potent wizardry turns the commonplace, even the tawdry surroundings ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... though it would be comic if the consequences were not so awful, by observing how men shut one another in a delusion and cannot get out of this magic circle. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... sky in color. Golden images of the gods whom they worship, are set up about the vault, and show like stars in the firmament. This is the chamber in which the king delivers his judgments. Four golden magic-wheels hang from its roof, and threaten the monarch with the Divine Nemesis, if he exalts himself above the condition of man. These wheels are called 'the tongues of the gods,' and are set in their places by the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... your own room here. You shall not be bothered with talk till you repose; and you shall have plenty of it, hot and hot, when the appetite does arise in you. "No. 5 Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea": come to the "London Terminus," from any side; say these magic words to any Cabman, and by night or by day you are a welcome apparition here,—foul befall us otherwise! This is the fact: what more can I say? I make my affidavit of the same; and require you in the name of all Lares and Penates, and Household Gods ancient and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the earth with a green carpet Jack was under a spell of something more than the never-ending marvel of dry seeds springing into succulent abundance without the waving of any magic wand. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... great many cut-outs issued nowadays, which may be bought for a small sum at any toy shop. Perhaps the best among these are "The Mirthful Menagerie," "The Agile Acrobats" and "The Magic Changelings." "The Mirthful Menagerie" when properly cut out and pasted together, make a lot of animals that have thickness as well as length and height; "The Agile Acrobats" can be made to assume almost any position, and in "The Magic Changelings," Little Red Riding Hood, for instance, can ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Crossbourne some forty years back. But now, what a marvellous change! Coal has been found close by, and the little village has leapt, as if by magic, into a thriving town. Huge factories and foundries rise from the banks of the stream; the ford is spanned by a substantial bridge; the corn-mill has disappeared, and so have the rheumatic-looking old mossy cottages. A street of prim, substantial houses, uniform, and duly numbered, with brass ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... of His time came to Jesus and said, "Master, we would have a sign of Thee"—meaning that they wanted him to do some magic, to prove to their vulgar minds that his power came from God. He answered by calling them an evil and adulterous generation—which is exactly what I have said about the Papal machine. The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Indian pipes grew; the particular bit of marshy ground where the fringed gentians used to be largest and bluest; the rock maple where she found the oriole's nest; the hedge where the field mice lived; the moss-covered stump where the white toadstools were wont to spring up as if by magic; the hole at the root of the old pine where an ancient and honorable toad made his home; these were the landmarks of her childhood, and she looked at them as across an immeasurable distance. The dear little sunny brook, her chief companion after ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not live through it again, Mate—those remaining hours of agony, when every second seemed the last for Jack. But morning dawned, and with the miracle of a new-born day came the magic gift of life. When Jack opened his eyes and feebly stretched out his hand to me, my singing heart ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... I thought to myself, "Washington Irving, the author of 'The Sketch-Book,' in which is the quaint story of Rip Van Winkle." Rip Van Winkle! There was to me magic in the sound of the name as I repeated it. Why, was not this the very character I wanted? An Ameri can story by an American author was surely just the theme suited to an ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... magic the way that water trough works. No matter how gala some pronghorn of a cowboy may feel, it shore lets the whey out of him. Given the most voylent, it's only a matter of minutes before he's soaked into quietood. Enright himse'f says Moore's entitled to ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... when they say 900 of the great men of the city sit down to table, a great many of them in their fine official and court paraphernalia, so I must not miss it. However, I may yet change my mind and sail Saturday. I am looking at a fine Magic lantern which will cost a deal of money, and if I buy it Sammy may come and learn to make the gas and work the machinery, and paint pictures for it on glass. I mean to give exhibitions for charitable purposes in Hartford, and charge a dollar a head. In a hurry, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... never read a book that would not pass her mother's censorship; she had never seen a work of art; she had never heard any but "sacred" music; she had never perused a journal; she had never been to an entertainment—unless the name could be given to a magic-lantern exhibition of views in Palestine, or the like. Those with whom she associated had gone through a similar training, and knew as ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... have their own special room, while for general purposes, such as music, drilling, gymnastic exercises, games, tableaux, and exhibitions of the magic lantern, the oxyhydrogen microscope, the stereopticon, and the like, they should assemble in a large hall. The details of arrangements will readily suggest themselves. The main feature is to have all things natural, free, pleasant, cheerful, bright, ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... are men enslaved by habits of thought, feeling, and action which are totally inadequate to our present problems and difficulties. War-like emotions, he points out, may have been useful in an earlier civilization, but are now a total disutility. Belief in magic may have been an asset to primitive man in his ignorance; it is not to modern man with his science. The institution of private property may have had its values in building up civilization; its utility is over. We still make stereotyped and archaic reactions where the situation has utterly changed. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... and resolve. We see, after ages of your oppression, the unquenchable desire for Irish independence blaze forth anew, and as it sweeps along the cities and prairies of this vast continent it gathers within its magic influence five millions of Irish hearts and twice five millions of friends of freedom and foes of despotism! Arise, then, my countrymen! Nerve yourselves for the struggle so nobly commenced. Cast aside every consideration that would ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... your acquaintance, Mr. Knight!' she burst out loudly and uncontrollably, as though Geraldine's magic formula had loosened a valve capable of withstanding enormous strains. Then she smiled, laughed, and sniggered: not because she imagined that she had achieved humour, but because that was her way of making herself agreeable. If anybody had told her that she ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... in their rigour. He drinks nothing, and the finest dinner a cook ever conceived would be wasted on him. A single course of the plainest food suffices his appetite, and he grows manifestly uneasy when faced with a long meal. His pipe, his one relaxation, never far absent, seems to draw him with a magic attraction. As it was, his physical resources stood perhaps the greatest strain that has been imposed on any public man in our time. From the moment when he joined the first Coalition Government in 1915 to the day when he laid down office in 1921 he was beset by cares and immersed in labours ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... subsequently able to allay. The Virtuous HEROINE displays a very neat pair of ankles, but without winning "ULLERIC" from the devil of his ways. Half a dozen ballets are successively introduced, in which the skirts of the dancers are seen to decrease as rapidly and steadily as the stripes on ULRIC'S magic collar. Finally, a grand Transformation Scene, which has nothing whatever to do with the play, exhibits the best legs of the company in the most favorable attitudes, and the green baize curtain falls upon the great ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... adventurers; and he who begins the journey without the strength of Hercules, or the wisdom and patience of Ulysses, must be destroyed by the wild beasts of the forest, or perish in the storms of the ocean; must suffer transmutation into a beast through the magic power of Circe, or be exiled for life by the detaining charm of Calypso; and in short must descend into Hades, and wander in its darkness, without emerging from thence to the bright regions of the morning, or be ruined by the deadly melody of the Syren's song. To the most skillful traveler, ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... revel in its palaces of dreams, Lit with lightning-flash of fancy, rosy bloom and starry gleams; Listening to the choral harmonies that filled each lofty dome, Like the clear and liquid music in the Nereid's azure home. And it looked from its proud towers on the Future's magic scene, Till the Present grew all gladsome with the brightness of its sheen; Far off-notes of triumph swelling, floated up from years to come, Silver blast of clarion blending with the roll of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... and then, flashes you a glimpse of a real face from his magic lantern, and then buries the whole scene in mist. The morality of the work is of the most refined and exalted kind; as for the manners, to be sure, I ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the hut and told them the story from beginning to end. The chiefs looked at him with surprise when he told them of the beast's death, and one of them said, "I doubt, sir, you slew him by Roman magic—for he was exceedingly strong, and you look not much of a warrior." "Nay," said Paullinus, smiling, "I doubt he was his own death, as is often the end of evil—he leapt upon the pole: I did but hold it, and the Lord ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by any human being, no matter how exalted his position in evolution, or how sublime his spiritual power, are latent in all human beings and can, in time, be developed and brought into action. Of course there is no magic rule by which the ignoramus can instantly become wise or by which a brutal man can be at once transformed into a saint. It may require scores of incarnations to accomplish a work so great, but when a man reaches the point in his evolution ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... rising youth not only the wonderful truths of the evolution of the cosmos, but also the inexhaustible treasures of beauty lying everywhere hidden therein. Whether we marvel at the majesty of the lofty mountains or the magic world of the sea, whether with the telescope we explore the infinitely great wonders of the starry heaven, or with the microscope the yet more surprising wonders of a life infinitely small, everywhere does Divine Nature ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... five years, Lac Bain listened to the magic of Reese Beaudin's violin. And it was Elise's old love song that he played. He played it, smiling down into the eyes of a monster whose face was turning from red to black; yet he did not play it to the end, nor a quarter of it, ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... may not be, for though these scenes are fair, As fabled Arcady—the sylph and fay, And all their gentle kindred, shun the air, Where car and steamer make their stormy way. Perchance some Cooper's magic art may wake The sleeping legends of this mighty vale, And twine fond memories round the lawn and lake, Where Warrior fought or Lover told his tale: And when the Red Man's form hath left these glades, And memory's moonlight o'er ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... thinking possesses tremendous power; that no sooner he thinks of a certain deed than the same is accomplished; that an enemy, for instance, is actually harmed by merely wishing him harm. This mode of thinking forms the basis for many magic ceremonials. It is this latter mechanism,—i.e., the endowment of one's own thoughts with an omnipotent power,—which is also frequently illustrated in malingering. It is sufficient for the type of individual who malingers to merely say ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... yours. Look how the wind is chased by the mad rain that discharges a thousand arrows after it. Yet it goes free and unconquered. Our sport is like that, my love! You give chase to the fleet-footed spirit of beauty, aiming at her every dart you have in your hands. Yet this magic deer runs ever ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... with the cards, and that few was equal to him in any game with pasteboard or ivory; but, be my conscience, he met his match now, for if it was ould Nick was playin' he couldn't do the thrick nater nor the baron. He made every thing come up just like magic: if he wanted a seven of diamonds, or an ace of spades, or the knave of clubs, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... just cleared away the gray when a crowd of masked men appeared as if by magic and bore down upon the guards. There was an apparent desperate resistance, but, significantly, no cries or shots. The guards ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... were so popular as Americans. Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, by their courtesy and dignity, joined to republican simplicity, had provided passports for their countrymen to the good graces of all Frenchmen: besides, the name "republican" was a word of magic import in France at that time. Barlow's reputation as a poet was also of great service to him at a time when literature exercised a commanding influence both in society and politics. He was presented at court, admitted to the companionship of wits and savants, and was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... adventures The first tones of imitation, Or with magic speed o'ermasters The philosophy of language Twining round the mind of others, Preferences, and pains and pleasures, Tendrils strong, of sentient being, Seeking kindness and indulgence, Loving sports and ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... maidens, young and fair, Held captive long in prison towers; We slay the villain in his lair, For we're possessed of magic powers. And though we desperately fight, When by our foes are we beset, We always triumph for the right; We have not ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... have turn'd me back—I would have fled From that malignant, yet half-syren smile; But magic held me rooted to the spot, And some inquisitive horror led me on.— Entering I stood beneath the spacious dome Of a round hall, vacant, save here and there, Where from the panelings, in mouldy shreds, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... though by magic. You see, we were sitting at the table next the door, and he had every opportunity ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... joys, exposed to the ridicule of the enchantress, and soon to be pelted with the pitiless jests of all who might hear of his adventure. He looked at Lady Mabel, almost expecting to see her undergo some magic transformation. But there she stood unchanged, except that there was a little sneer on her lip, a glance of triumph from her eye, an expression of intense but mischievous enjoyment in her whole air, and, what he had ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... middle of the fifteenth century, was partner with Gutenberg in the new enterprise of printing. Robert Browning, in Fust and his Friends, tells us, with great vivacity, the story of the monks who tried to exorcise the magic spirits from Fust, but forgot their psalm, and so caused an awkward pause during which Fust retired and brought out a printed copy of the psalm for each of them. The only connection with magic which this Fust had, was that so ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... he said, did not interest him; I had wished to see the magic of Zikali, and Zikali had been pleased to show me some very good magic, quite of his best indeed. Also he had conversed alone with me afterwards, doubtless on high matters—so high that he, Saduko, was not admitted to share the ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... creations, wastings and destructions of wealth—Why? Endless rolling cycles of enterprise, stagnation, and decay—Why? Interminable alterations of peace and war, enslavements and emancipations—Why? Age after age of world-wide worship of man-made gods, silly, savage, enthroned by myth and magic, celebrated and supported by poetry and the wayward speculations of ignorant "sages"—Why? Age upon age of world-wide slow developments of useful inventions, craftsmanship, commerce, and art—Why? Ages of dark impulsive groping before the slow discovery of reason, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... and again to Winny Dymond. That recurrent tenderness for Winny, a girl who had no sort of tenderness for him, was a thing he did not mean to encourage more than he could help. Still, it kept him from running after any other girl. He was not in love with Violet Usher, and so, gradually, her magic lost its hold ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... that we should prove possessed of the requisite skill to build her out of the materials at our disposal. At that moment, and under those circumstances, gold was just about as valueless to us as the pebbles on the beach; yet such is the magic of the word that no sooner was gold mentioned than we all incontinently dropped our tools, and, quite forgetting that it might be our fate never to escape at all from the island, eagerly followed Cunningham, consumed ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... mantras, all the tongues of India, and the sciences; to marry a child-wife, no matter how old he may be,—or a score of wives, if he be a Kooleen Brahmin, so that he may drive a lively business in the way of dowries; to peruse the books of magic, and perform the awful sacrifice of the Yajna; to receive presents without limit, levy taxes without law, and beg ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... our "Magic Rings," and other out-of-door games, are put away in the "children's play-house," a little white hut on the borders of the croquet ground, where Ida and dear little Raffie used to keep their toys, and where Gabrielle in later days housed her ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... and he asked every girl he met to dance. It made little difference who she happened to be, for in imagination she was always the same. Annette had secured for him the last dance with Ruth, and he intended to practise every moment until that magic hour ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... losing you I hold you tight to my breast. What magic has snared the world's treasure in ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... it. Here's to the highest score of The Rabbits' wicket-keeper. To-morrow afternoon we put our money on seventeen. Simpson, you have between now and 3.30 to-morrow to perfect your French delivery of the magic word dix-sept." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... forces, if we may so style them, were almost as eagerly investing themselves in—shall we say charms also? or rather with the attributes of manhood? At any rate the glasses seem quite as anxiously consulted in that room as in the other. One might almost imagine them the magic mirrors of prophecy in which anxious eyes caught a glimpse of coming fate. There were certain youthful belles and beaux who turned away with open complacent smiles, vanity whispering plainly to them of noble achievement in the parlors below. There were others, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... had surely by some magic blotted out the past and had awakened to a present which was like new birth and had no past, for she blushed the loveliest, radiant blush—at sight of him—as if she had been no great lady, but ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I want to know, sir. If there was magic in them days in China, mayn't there be some ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... with your soft languor that seems to suspect nothing! You know very well that you ruin, that you destroy, you know that he who touches you will suffer; you know that he dies who basks in your smile, who breathes the perfume of your flowers and comes under the magic influence of your charms; that is why you abandon yourself so freely, that is why your smile is so sweet, your flowers so fresh; that is why you so gently place your arms on our shoulders. O, Heaven! what ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... undefined delights of fame and popular applause; how it anticipates the bright moments of invention, and dwells with prophetic ecstasy on the felicitous execution of particular parts, that already start into existence by the magic touch of a heated imagination. Let it depict the tender feelings of solitude, the breathings of midnight silence, the scenes of mimic life, of imaged trial, that often occupy the musing mind; let it be such a work, so drawn, so coloured, and ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... see the Exposition at night, both of which must be followed if one is to get the fullest appreciation of the magic beauty of the lighting. One is to wander about the palaces and courts in the midst of the soft flood of mysterious light, watching the play of the fountains, the barbaric flames of the Court of Ages, the green shimmer of the waters in ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... made havoc with my tailormade clothes, neither time nor the elements seemed to affect the personal appearance of my big companion; his buckskin suit was apparently as clean and fresh as it was on the day I first met him. There was no magic in this. Big Pete knew how to clamber all day through a windfall without leaving the greater part of his clothes on the branches, a feat few hunters and no tenderfoot have ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... was the heathen Briareus then, with an hundred arms. There was magic in her touch; and no charm of witch or fairy could have mended my bruised limb as ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... esteem them. It is precisely because the life they tell of is so different from my own, in which nothing ever happens, that a book-cover is for me a magic door by whose opening I escape out of the unendurable present. Even more than the novels do I love the plays, and to see them acted is better than to read them, best of all it must be to act in one. Ah! that would indeed be like living ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... surprise, Miss Nippett's fingers at once closed on those of Mr Poulter. As the realisation of his presence reached the dying woman's understanding, a smile of infinite gladness spread over her face: a rare, happy smile, which, as if by magic, effaced the puckered forehead, the wasted cheeks, the long upper lip, to substitute in their stead a great contentment, such as might be possessed by one who has found a deep joy, not only after ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... For one thing, it was held uncanny, in Polpier, to turn the soil by moonlight—a deed never done save by witches or persons in league with Satan. Albeit they may not own to it, two-thirds of the inhabitants of Polpier believe in black magic. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... pantry again for a little round tin box, with a cover full of holes, and shaking this gently over the pan, a fine white shower of flour fell upon the cream. The pan was then replaced on the fire and stirred; and, to Ellen's astonishment, the whole changed, as if by magic, to a thick, stiff, white froth. It was not till Miss Fortune was carefully pouring this over the fried slices in the dish, that Ellen suddenly recollected that breakfast was ready, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... promise of summer and cloudless days was in all the air. Had we been married several years I do not think either Viola or I would have found Mrs. Jevons's cooking good nor praised the dinner that night; the attendance also might have been condemned. But as it was we were in that magic mirage of first days together and ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... her mother wit were to exact their full value, but in which her heart was to count for nothing more. It was to be smothered up within her. That, together with all the best, and sweetest, and truest part of her, once awakened for a brief space by the magic touch of love, was now to be extinguished within her as though ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... a disreputable old woman at Magnolles who performed illegal operations and pretended to work magic. ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... his sword. "Why, gladly," he said; this was a rule of magic he had learned long ago, that three truths were the needful armor to make any guardian charm work. "Imprimis, yours is the ugliest nose I ever saw poking up a fire. Secundus, I was never in a house I cared less to guest at. Tertius, ever among trolls you ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... is it a phanton woman who draws the man from the way he meant to go? So was man created, to hunger for the ideal that is above himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he himself who crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on their ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Chicago, of San Francisco, of Galveston, of Dayton have known the anguish of that first aftermath of hopelessness! How many citizens of Baltimore knew it that day! And yet how bravely and with what magic swiftness have these cities risen from their ruins! Was not Rome burned? Was not London? And is it not, then, time for men to learn from the history of other men and other cities that disaster does not spell the end, but is oftentimes another ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Odysseus with her magic wand and he changes into an old man, not wishing to be recognized on his return to his own palace. Athena's chariot is then drawn back into the grove of trees and Odysseus, now disguised as a beggar, ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... the game acted like magic. The few big boys who had come on this first day, edged near enough to be seen and were speedily brought into the sport. Mamie, venturing languidly to the door to see what had become of Mr. Clay, suddenly decided she was not too big to ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... immense precautions and surrounded by careful ritual. The manifestations of sex were the least intelligible and the most spontaneous. Therefore the things of sex were those that most lent themselves to feelings of horror and awe, of impurity and of purity. They seemed so highly charged with magic potency that there were no things that men more sought to avoid, yet none to which they were impelled to give more thought. The manifold echoes of that primitive conception of sex, and all the violent reactions that were thus evolved and eventually bound up with the original impulse, compose the ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... say that we repose much more confidence in the writer's taste in architecture than in painting. It is enough to say that he evinces no feeling for the more simple and majestic compositions of Raphael; while the powerful contrasts, and magic of light and shadow displayed by Guercino and Tintoret, seem to exercise an undue fascination on his mind. It is only to the injurious effect produced by these blemishes that we can attribute the slender success ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... brother's arrows and shot them all away. He then stood and gazed at the beautiful bird. While standing, he remembered his brother's saying that in their deceased father's medicine-sack were three magic arrows. Off he started, his anxiety to kill the swan overcoming all scruples. At any other time, he would have deemed it sacrilege to open his father's medicine-sack; but now he hastily seized the three arrows and ran back, leaving the other contents of the sack scattered over the lodge. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... from the places of the portages; bridges, steel rails, cars, ready-made structures of twenty stories from the places of the forts; unheard-of fruits from the trees of the new garden of the Hesperides (under the magic of such as Burbank); flowers from wildernesses! Would Whitman were come back to put all together into a song of the valley that should acquaint our ears with that rugged music-that rugged music wakened ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... This magic dawn could not last. It grew lighter; the sun was bestirring himself. I heard oars on the bay; and now that the sounds of men began, the robin mounted the fence and sang his waking song. The rogue!—he had been "laughing" and shouting ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... held the lamp near her face, so that her beauty was illumined and transfigured. 'Twas a beauty most tender—most pure and elfin and religious. 'Tis a mean, poor justification, I know, to say that I was in some mysterious way—by the magic resident in the beauty of a maid, and virulently, wickedly active within its sphere, which is the space the vision of a lad may carry—that I was by this magic incapacitated and overcome. 'Tis an excuse made by fallen lads since treason was writ of; 'tis a mere excuse, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... wonders. A prefect of the palace, M. de Bausset, wrote: "When I recall the memorable times of which I have just given a faint idea, I feel, after so many years, as if I had been taking part in the gorgeous scenes of the Arabian Tales or of the Thousand and One Nights. The magic picture of all those splendors and glories has disappeared, and with it all the prestige of ambition and power." One of the ladies of the palace of the Empress Josephine, Madame de Rmusat, has expressed the same ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... deposited: for example, one will not give back a dagger when one knows that he who has deposited it is about to stab someone. Let us pretend that I have in my hands the fatal draught that Meleager's mother will make use of to kill him; the magic javelin that Cephalus will unwittingly employ to kill his Procris; the horses of Theseus that will tear to pieces Hippolytus, his son: these things are demanded back from me, and I am right in refusing them, knowing the use that will be made of them. But how will ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... contact, and whose nature he did not require to learn, for he had already sounded all that was human in its touching variety. Love and sympathy for man as man, could alone give this knowledge and furnish this magic key to hearts in wilds unknown. No human system of mental training could ever do it. In this connection I smile somewhat at Dr. Leitner's profound German dialectic in the discussion on the paper read by McNair over the preliminary preparation ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... trees, where plovers cry, and stoat and weazel lurk and scamper, while the old poacher's lean, ill-favoured, rusty-coloured lurcher picks up a shrieking hare, and where wandering bands of gypsies—those lithe, onyx-eyed children of the magic East—still pitch their dirty, little, fungus-like tents around the camp-fire,—as the sunset died and the twilight thus softly widened and deepened, Lady Calmady found herself, for the first time during all the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... oracular responses. As Christianity came in, and the eating of horse-flesh was forbidden as impiety by the Church, while his oracles dwindled down to such as that which Falada's dead head gives to the goose-girl in the German tale, the magic power of the horse figured only in ballads and legends: ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... region extends to infinity and, judged by the past, the momentum of discovery will continue to increase for ages to come, unless the human race decays through the comfort and ease gained from utilizing the magic secrets which are constantly being wrested from nature. Among the achievements of science and invention, the production and application of artificial light ranks high. As an influence upon civilization, no single ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... remains on board of the Aspasia, he will distinguish nothing but fire and smoke. Don't be afraid, ladies, if I take you on board of the schooner—"these our actors are all air, thin air," raised by the magic pen for your amusement. Come, then, fearlessly, with me, and view the scene of mortal strife. The launch has boarded on the starboard gangway, and it is against her that the crew of the privateer ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... as tall as he, White Dermid of the magic sword, Or Torcall of the Hebrid Sea Or great Cuhoolin of ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... often born of happiness, As bitter suffering of the world's contempt. Within the magic circle of a home, Happy and loved as mine is, The heart is touched with pity's gentle wand To do her lightest bidding— But in this, There is no kind emotion worth the name; For I would see my school-fellow and friend ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... does, he seems guilty—such is the force of the prejudice against which it is necessary to struggle. But I am innocent, and I shall be myself, firmly confident that my spiritual clearness will destroy the malicious magic of prejudice." ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... There is magic in those letters; Binding men in Friendship's fetters, Wondrous letters; B. P. O. of E. There's "Benevolence," "Protection," Mark you well the close connection As they beam down from above ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... images clashed in my mind. I saw the mystic figure of the mighty Master of the Name standing in the cemetery judging betwixt the souls of the dead; I saw him in the upper world amid the angels; I saw him serene in the centre of his magic circle, annihilating with his glance the flaming hordes of demon boars; and even as the creatures shattered themselves into nothingness against the circle, so must these sublime visions vanish before this genial old ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... as they had finished the colonel left them, and a bugle blew. In a minute all was bustle. Officers were giving orders; horses were saddled and brought out; and by what seemed magic to the boys, the men, who just before were scattered about among the trees laughing and eating, were standing by their horses all in proper order. The colonel and the officers came ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... one after another calmly, serenely. It seems as if the autumn ought never to end. The divine and solemn peace of the nights is beyond the power of words to express, especially now that the moon is shedding its magic silver over all. There are hours in the day when everything is so filled and covered with light and when the silence is so impressive that at moments the light seems to be gone letting the silence blaze forth in the wonderful ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... the Suddha Devas, gathering near, Plucked the red mohra-flowers and strewed them thick Under his tread, while hands invisible Muffled the ringing bit and bridle chains. Moreover, it is written when they came Upon the pavement near the inner gates, The Yakshas of the air laid magic cloths Under the stallion's feet, so that he went Softly ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... service. These companies elected their captains and field officers, the general officers being appointed by the Governor. Immediately after the call of the Governor for troops, a great military spirit swept the country, volunteer companies sprang up like magic all over the land, each anxious to enter the service of the State and share the honor of going to war. Up to this time, few thought, there would be a conflict. Major Anderson, U.S.A., then on garrison duty at Fort ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... shining from the bath, Wary and watchful, quick with arm and eye, After long play clinch close, arms twined, knees locked, Each nerve and muscle strained, and stand as still As if a bronze from Vulcan's fabled shop, Or else by power of magic changed to stone In that supremest moment, when a breath Or feather's weight would tip the balanced scale; And when they fall the shouts from hill to hill Sound like the voices of the mighty deep, As wave on wave ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... stalactite cavern in the Balme, where a couple of tiresome fellows insist on letting off a small cannon for you, to awaken a very disobliging old Echo who refuses to repeat anything more than twice. What a magic there is in hands—in some hands! Lynde could have held Mrs. Denham's hand a fortnight without getting anything so tangible as that ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... things must be combined as well—style, magic of word-painting, harmony, beauty. There are many people whose strong and sincere thoughts cannot be uttered, because they have no power of expression; but even these are all ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... trust Kurt, but he was listening to him attentively. The other's argument sounded convincing to one whose general ignorance of science led him to be as fearful of the whole field as his ancestors had been of black magic. As all his generation, he was conditioned to believe that all kinds of weird inventions were entirely possible and probable—usually to be produced in some dim future, ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... the unlearned. Now when the priests threw down their rods, they became serpents. But Moses was not daunted at it; and said, "O king, I do not myself despise the wisdom of the Egyptians, but I say that what I do is so much superior to what these do by magic arts and tricks, as Divine power exceeds the power of man: but I will demonstrate that what I do is not done by craft, or counterfeiting what is not really true, but that they appear by the providence and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... vanished days rushed upon him with intolerable force. Through his life-work, through his ambition, through helping him as no one else could have done at the time of crisis, she had reached the farthest confines of his nature. She had woven, thread by thread, the magic carpet of that secret companionship by which the best as the worst of souls are sometimes carried into a land enchanted—for a brief moment, before Fate stoops down and hangs a veil of plague over the scene of beauty, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... key of the closet was stained, she tried two or three times to wipe off the stain, but the stain would not come out. In vain did she wash it, and even rub it with soap and sand. The stain still remained, for the key was a magic key, and she could never make it quite clean; when the stain was gone off from one side, it came ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... girl, lent her the touch of magic that transformed her from a creature not too good for human nature's daily food into an ethereal daughter of romance. Her eyes were dark pools of ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... to-day we are scarcely more than heads out of the vast subtle muddle of thinking about spheres and ideally perfect forms and so on, that was the price of this little necessary step to clear thinking. How large a part numerical and geometrical magic, numerical and geometrical philosophy have played in the history of the mind! And the whole apparatus of language and mental communication is beset with like dangers. The language of the savage is I suppose purely positive; the thing has a name, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the violet, drain the nectareous dewdrop from its chalice and kiss the grape until its youthful sap changes to empurpled blood beneath the passionate caress. In the cool shadows by the great spring—a magic mirror in whose pellucid depths are reflected heaven's imperial concave and Eden's virgin splendors—God walks familiar with Adam as with a younger brother, explains to him the use and beauty ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... spring of the following year, however, Napoleon escaped from his island prison and landed on the southern coast of France. The king ordered his soldiers to capture their former emperor. But the magic of his presence was too much for them, and the men who had been sent to put him into chains shed tears of joy at the sight of him, and threw themselves at his feet. One week later, the king of France had fled a second time from his country, and the ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... issue of patient pilgrimage and persistent purpose. There is no mystery in getting to the journey's end. 'One foot up, and the other foot down,' continued long enough, will bring to the goal of the longest march. It looks a weary journey, and we wonder if we shall ever get thither. But the magic of 'one step at a time' does it. The guide is also the upholder of our way. 'Every one of them appeareth before God ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Kitty's possibilities, was, nevertheless, completely carried away by her lover's optimism. For of all optimism that of love is the most convincing. Dear boy!—for he was but a boy in experience—only his love for her could work this magic. So she gave him kiss for kiss, largely believing, largely hoping, that Mrs. Barker was in love with Van Loo and would NOT return. And in this hope an invincible belief in the folly of her own sex soothed and ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... attacking Lawrence again, and he would have slipped back into the sea but for the strong arm about him. The dimly-seen figures grew unreal and as if part of a dream, and he was falling more and more into a state of unconsciousness, when, as if by magic, there was a patch of light in the sky before them, to right of the great cloud; there was a dull murmur ahead; then more light, and, as if by some rapid scenic effect, the stars paled, the sky grew grey, then pink, red, glowing ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... As a matter of fact, Osiris is often represented with black or green hands and face, as is customary for gods of the dead; it was probably this peculiarity which suggested the popular idea of his black complexion. A magic papyrus of Ramesside times fixes the stature of the god at seven cubits, and a phrase in a Ptolemaic inscription places it at eight cubits, six palms, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... rapidly forward. Aunt Betsy, as chief directress, was in her element, for now had come the reality of the vision she had seen so long, of house turned upside down in one grand onslaught of suds and sand, then righted again by magic power, and smelling very sweet and clean from its recent ablutions—of turkeys dying in the barn, of chickens in the shed, of ovens heating in the kitchen, of loaves of frosted cake, with cards and cards of snowy biscuit piled upon the pantry shelf—of jellies, tarts and chicken ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... booths. All ordinary employments were laid aside. Ships were deserted by their crews, who ran to the mines, sometimes, it is said, headed by their officers. Soon streets were laid out, houses erected, and from this Babel, as if by magic, grew up a beautiful city. For a time, lawlessness reigned supreme. But, driven by the necessity of events, the most respectable citizens took the law into their own hands, organized vigilance committees, and administered a rude but prompt ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... good deal," he claimed for himself. "It shows a beginning of understanding. And—given the opportunity—I hope to know more." He questioned of her eyes how far he might go. "It's the incomprehensible that lures. It piques interest and lends magic. Behind those eyelids a little weary all the subtle hidden meaning of the ages shadows. The gods forbid that I should claim to hold the answer to ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... to the proper medication for John Porter stood a chance of being fulfilled in one day. Allis's telegram proved that the doctor had understood the pathology of Porter's treatment, for he became as a cripple who had touched the garment of a magic healer. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... for some days. Our garrison I'll post Distributively on the distant hills; While from the Vulture half a thousand men Land in the darkness. Thus without a blow, But with the magic of a countersign, West Point ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... Montfort, a magic, that does not always put itself into words. The perfect day, the perfect vision, will ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... time were called alchemists, and the art which they practiced was called alchemy. The alchemists gradually became convinced that the only way common metals could be changed into gold was by the wonderful power of a magic substance which they called the philosopher's stone, which would accomplish this transformation by its mere touch and would in addition give perpetual youth to its fortunate possessor. No one has ever found such a ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... that Christopher had not been buried in the grave where he was said to be buried, and that he had been taken wounded aboard the ship Great Yarmouth, of the fate of which ship fortunately she had heard nothing. Still, slight as they might be, to Cicely these tidings were a magic medicine, for did they not mean the rebirth of hope, hope that for nine long months had been dead and buried with Christopher? From that ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... of the bite of a serpent, which had till then been considered to be mortal; and that the poets gave an hyperbolical version of the story, in saying that he had rescued her from Hell. He says, too, that he had learned in Egypt the art of magic, which was much cultivated there, and especially ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... that I should?" said he. "Your words have come true. You predicted that I should fly from 'that woman,' as you called her, and come to you. See! here it is exactly as you willed it. You—you are changed. You throw your magic on me, and then you are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fram'd and sung? Who was it op'd to me the store Of dark unearthly Runic lore, And taught me to beguile my time With Denmark's aged and witching rhyme; To rest in thought in Elvir shades, And hear the song of fairy maids; Or climb the top of Dovrefeld, Where magic knights their muster held! Who was it did all this for me? O, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the secret of the Gretchen magic; it is all in the 'Save me, Mr Hercules!' phrase. Her shyness, her timidity, her trustfulness, her tears foster my own strength and grandeur. I am the positive half of the universe. But so I am, if it comes to that, just as positive as ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... before Tolly or Betty could warn their friends of what was coming, the surrounding foliage parted, as if by magic, and a circle of yelling and painted Redskins sprang upon the white men. Resistance was utterly out of the question. They were overwhelmed as if by a cataract and, almost before they could realise what had happened, the arms of all the ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... Magic springs from this eternal yearning of the human mind. Its value has no doubt been exaggerated, but it is not a falsehood. Some Orientals who are skilled in it perform prodigies. All travellers have vouched for its existence, and at the Palais Royal M. Dupotet moves with ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... lists. De Jarnac was not so confident, though perhaps more desperate. At noon, on the day appointed, the combatants met, and each took the customary oath that he bore no charms or amulets about him, or made use of any magic, to aid him against his antagonist. They then attacked each other, sword in hand. La Chataigneraie was a strong robust man, and over confident; De Jarnac was nimble, supple, and prepared for the worst. The combat lasted ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... equally with superstitious ones. Yes, I am convinced of it; our gross rationalism is the inauguration of a period which, thanks to science, will become truly PRODIGIOUS; the universe, to my eyes, is only a laboratory of magic, from which anything may be expected. . . . This said, I return to ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... consideration. The room emptied as if by magic; and no one was left at the table but Pascal, who scarcely knew what to do with all the gold piled up before him. He succeeded, however, in distributing it in his pockets, and was about to join the other guests in the dining-room, when Madame ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Indian youth finds himself at once, as if by magic, translated from a state of poverty to one of affluence. He is well fed and clothed and lodged. Books and all the accessories of learning are given him and teachers provided to instruct him. He is educated in the industrial arts on the one hand, and not only in the rudiments ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... You know the magic ring and her distress? Well, when she had recover'd this same ring, It so increas'd her pride and haughtiness, She seem'd too high for any living thing. She goes alone, desiring nothing less Than a companion, even though a king She even scorns to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... with soft wool-fillet bind These altars round about, and burn thereon Rich vervain and male frankincense, that I May strive with magic spells to turn astray My lover's saner senses, whereunto There lacketh nothing save the ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... Percival—did the death of Lord Hartledon leave its effects as it did on Lady Kirton and her daughter Maude. To the one it brought embarrassment; to the other, what seemed very like a broken heart. The countess-dowager's tactics must change as by magic. She had to transfer the affection and consideration evinced for Edward Lord Hartledon to his brother; and to do it easily and naturally. She had to obliterate from the mind of the latter her overbearing dislike to him, cause her insults to be remembered no more. A difficult task, even for ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... circle of old smokers, Of secret treasures found in hidden vales, Of wonderful replies from Arab jokers, Of charms to make good gold and cure bad ails, Of rocks bewitch'd that open to the knockers, Of magic ladies who, by one sole act, Transform'd their lords to beasts (but that 's ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... strong from the leeward; but the boat was swift and light and dry, and skimmed the waves. The wizard had a lantern, which he lit and held with his finger through the ring; and the two sat in the stern and smoked cigars, of which Kalamake had always a provision, and spoke like friends of magic and the great sums of money which they could make by its exercise, and what they should buy first, and what second; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... favoring an "organization of labor." They aim at the destruction of the present social system, which, at most, needs only to be reformed and rejuvenated; and to galvanize the dead body into a new and different life (Medea's magic cauldron!). Compare Corvaja, Bancocrazia o il gran ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... along the coast from cape to cape, The weird mirage crept tremulously on, In many a magic change and wondrous shape, Throbbing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... an inner sense of some existence, apart from the one that wears away our days: an existence that, afar from St. James's and St. Giles's, the Law Courts and Exchange, goes its way in terror or mirth, in smiles or in tears, through a vague magic-land of the poets. There, see those actors—they are the men who lived it—to whom our world was the false one, to whom the Imaginary was the Actual! And did Shakspeare himself, in his life, ever hearken ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Ahab's needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as true as any. Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow. But Starbuck looked away. With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade him hold it upright, without its ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... The days pass one after another calmly, serenely. It seems as if the autumn ought never to end. The divine and solemn peace of the nights is beyond the power of words to express, especially now that the moon is shedding its magic silver over all. There are hours in the day when everything is so filled and covered with light and when the silence is so impressive that at moments the light seems to be gone letting the silence blaze forth in the wonderful harmony ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... claims the possessions and everything as the rightful heir. Henry asks whether she is willing that some champion should fight on her behalf. She consents. The herald calls for the champion; no one appears, and the case is about to be decided against her when a knight is seen in a magic boat on the river drawn by a swan. He offers to fight for her on one condition: that she will never ask his name or whence he comes. She promises, and in a few minutes Frederick is overcome and, with his wife, disgraced, and the act ends with a regular opera finale. ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... night, with a violent north-wind, the thermometer fell forty degrees, to -8 degrees. Everything was frozen; birds, quadrupeds, and seals disappeared as if by magic; the holes for the seals were closed, the crevasses disappeared, the ice became as hard as granite, and the waterfalls hung like long ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... upon them, or rather did not fall upon them directly, they appeared dark and earthy. Each time, however, the sun's rays soon came to undeceive him; and that which had so lately been black and frowning was, as by the touch of magic, suddenly illuminated, and became bright and gorgeous, throwing out its emerald hues, or perhaps a virgin white, that filled the beholder with delight, even amid the terrors and dangers by which, in very truth, he was surrounded. The glorious Alps themselves, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... cold. Lastly, we are compelled to say that we repose much more confidence in the writer's taste in architecture than in painting. It is enough to say that he evinces no feeling for the more simple and majestic compositions of Raphael; while the powerful contrasts, and magic of light and shadow displayed by Guercino and Tintoret, seem to exercise an undue fascination on his mind. It is only to the injurious effect produced by these blemishes that we can attribute the slender success with which the volumes have been attended; for at this moment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... both boys flicked their density controls and zoomed upward. The sub at once seemed to betray a hostile intent. It blew its tanks and planed upward in pursuit. But Tom and Bud easily pulled away. Their density units worked like magic, shooting them straight toward ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... pictures straight, and lighting candles; he was a most uncomfortable little Colonel of militia. And with every movement he revolved nearer and nearer to a certain table. The table stood in the background; Durant recognized it as the kind that opens and discloses the magic circle, the green land of whist. The table had a sweet and sinful fascination ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... again to his paper, and Harry tried to eat his breakfast, but was getting or very badly indeed, until, looking towards his father, he caught his eye. Mr Inglis smiled, and that smile seemed to act like magic upon the lad, for he finished his breakfast in good style—well making up for the lost time; while the sobs gradually ceased to interrupt his meal, and by the time he rose, Harry looked ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... upon mine, so pitiful, so anxious for my recovery. Oh, lovely angel, I would be a leper again, a plague-stricken wretch, only to drink a cup of water from that dear hand—only to feel the touch of those light fingers on my forehead! There was a magic in that touch that surpassed the healing powers of kings. There was a light as of heaven in those benignant eyes. But, oh, she is changed since then. She is plague-stricken with the contagion of a profligate ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... high-hung tokens of its pride Left in the elms on either side; The daisies coming out at dawn In constellations on the lawn; The glory of the daffodil; The three black windmills on the hill, Whose magic arms, flung wildly by, Sent magic shadows o'er the rye. Within the leafy coppice, lo, More wealth than miser's dreams could show, The blackbird's warm and woolly brood, Five golden beaks agape for food; The Gipsies, all the summer seen Native as poppies to the Green; The winter, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... the castle window saw the fair face and the strong limbs of the hero, and demanded that he should be brought into her presence, and as a sign of her favour she showed the young Prince her magic ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... UFO reports dropped off considerably. During May, June, and July of 1952 we'd received 637 good reports. During the same months in 1953 we received only seventy-six. We had been waiting for the magic month of July to roll around again because every July there had been the sudden and unexplained peak in reporting; we wanted to know if it would happen again. It didn't— only twenty-one reports came in, to make July ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... herself by a sudden throe, for a brisk breeze, which was highly refreshing to our senses, and which was attended by the loud hollow subterranean sound I have before referred to, unexpectedly sprang up, and swept off, as if by magic, the inertia of nature. What made the phenomenon more extraordinary, was the total absence of thunder or lightning. My companions shouted for joy when the hollow moan of the embryo tempest was heard to move off to the eastward ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... free fight, and the men swore and shouted in vain, till the lady with the baby suddenly went to the rescue. Planting the naked cherub on the door-step, this energetic matron charged in among the rampant animals, and by some magic touch untangled the teams, quieted the most fractious, a big grey brute, prancing like a mad elephant; then returned to her baby, who was placidly eating dirt, and with a polite 'Voila, messieurs!' she whipped ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... propriety, and chooses his means skilfully for that end, he is sure to charm doubly the connoisseur, by moral and by natural propriety. The first satisfies the heart, the second the mind. The crowd is impressed through the heart without knowing the cause of the magic impression. But, on the other hand, there is a class of connoisseurs on whom that which affects the heart is entirely lost, and who can only be gained by the appropriateness of the means; a strange contradiction resulting from over-refined ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a moment, when, by magic, every little dissonance in all the town seemed blended into a harmony of silence, as it might be the very death ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... who wished to witness the exhibition, and who selected him as the medium of communication, because she said that she knew he would tell her the truth. The ceremonies, therefore, commenced; but though anxiously looking into the magic mirror, he declared that he saw nothing: afterwards, he continued, "A boy was called out of the bazaar, who saw all that the man told him." But while Mohammed expressed his entire disbelief in the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... every nook of the charming place in which she was received. Highly gratified to see me admire the grace of her person, she wanted me likewise to admire in her attire the taste and generosity of her lover. She was surprised at the almost magic spell which, although she remained motionless, shewed her lovely person in a thousand different manners. Her multiplied portraits, reproduced by the looking-glasses, and the numerous wax candles disposed to that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... theosophy and Christian Science. The playwrights are touched by it; and the action, instead of being all on the stage, is thrown out into the spirit of the audience. The play in a modern theatre is not on the stage but in the stalls. Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Shaw, merely use the stage as a kind of magic-lantern or suggestion-centre for the real things that, out behind us in the dark, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... single day; the roof spreads its saving shelter as easily as though it were a huge umbrella; the windows open their eyes in new-born wonder; the chimneys breathe the blue breath of home life out into the world; the painter touches the clapboards with his magic wand; and, with one accord, all men cry out, and especially all women, "Wal, I do declare! That air house goes up in a hurry, don't it? Guess there hain't much but green lumber gone into that. Folks'll be movin' in 'n a few days. Ketch ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... who belonged to the great school of Seekers of the Great Work, though the particulars of her life and name are lost to history, stated that the last crowned child would be assassinated. Having placed the queen-mother in front of a magic mirror, in which was reflected a wheel on the several spokes of which were the faces of her children, the sorceress set the wheel revolving, and Catherine counted the number of revolutions which it made. Each revolution was for each son one year of his reign. Henri ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... just that particular number, three thousand, as if that figure had some necessary connection with the exact number of gentlemen in the State, making it impossible to discover any respectability outside or rascality within the magic number. And in the second place," he continued, "I see we are trying to do two things, diametrically opposed; we are manufacturing a government, which is based on force, and at the same time inferior in strength to those ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... a little blaze in the choint here"—the Baron touched his thumb—"where the bane remained—a roomadic bane. He burgessed a gopper ring for it. It did him no goot." Luckily Rosalind had discarded the magic ring long since, or it might ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... was a kind of magic remarkably common in the world; but even her displeasure could not give her courage to speak. It gave her courage to be silent, however; and Mr. Thorn's best efforts in a conversation of some length could gain nothing ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... stretched so invitingly from the Rebel main, the horizon glimmered so low around me,—for it always appears lower to a swimmer than even to an oarsman,—that I seemed floating in some concave globe, some magic crystal, of which I was the enchanted centre. With each little ripple of my steady progress all things hovered and changed; the stars danced and nodded above; where the stars ended, the great Southern fire-flies began; and closer than the fire-flies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thing. I expect that as soon as N'Komo was settled, the usual row and the usual murders began by various would-be successors. By night they had all started north again, on a hot-foot race to occupy and hold the head kraal, and the country was clear of them, and the white man's credit as a magic worker stood higher than ever. He could have had anything he liked in any of the kraals for the asking; he could have been law-giver, king, and god. But he was off in the bush again, alone and restless and mysterious, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... been here for five years? They have their language—but enough of that now. They are angry. They sent Frithjof away; they tell me now that he escaped; they think you are he—that you have changed your appearance with magic—that the ship they saw was summoned by your magic. They say they will kill us both; throw us ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... face, richly dressed and jewelled, the Lady Eleanore was the admired of the whole assembly, and the women were especially curious to see her mantle, for a rumor went out that it had been made by a dying girl, and had the magic power of giving new beauty to the wearer every time it was put on. While the guests were taking refreshment, a young man stole into the room with a silver goblet, and this he offered on his knee to Lady Eleanore. As she ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... outlandish names of the chiefs, armed with spears, who were to accompany him. The power of Mohammed the Lame was on the wane; for, during the three months which Alec had spent in England, an illness had seized him, which the natives asserted was a magic spell cast on him by one of his wives; and a son of his, taking advantage of this, had revolted and fortified himself in a stockade. The dying Sultan had taken the field against him, and this division of forces made ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... must always seem to us. It tells of flashing temples and cities of marble overlooking singing seas of sapphire, of stately ships venturing over dark waters and landing on unknown islands, of siege and sword-fights and caves and giants and sea-goddesses and magic songs, and all that sunnier and simpler life which the world, as a prosaic old grown-up, has ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... the one, and ingenious as is the invention of the other, both are of slight account in the presence of the great fact of nature observed by the English nobleman and humoured by the Scottish artisan. The genie whom the one captured and the other tamed, is the great magic worker, apart from whose subtle strength their ingenuity had been wasted, and ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... desolation, it was French and foreign; it welcomed us with an unmistakably friendly, companionable air. Why is it that one is made to feel the companionable element, by instantaneous process, as it were, in a Frenchman and in his towns? And by what magic also does a French village or city, even at its least animated period, convey to one the fact of its nationality? We made but ten steps progress through these silent streets, fronting the beach, and yet, such was the subtle enigma of charm with which these dumb villas and ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Book. The Priests write Books of Bonna. The Kings Warrants how wrapped up. They write upon two sorts of Leaves. Their Skill in Astronomy. Their Almanacks. They pretend to know future things by the Stars. Their AEra. Their Years, Months, Weeks, Days, Hours. How they measure their Time. Their Magic. The Plenty of a Country destroyed by Magic. Their Charm to find out a Thief. The way to dissolve this ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... his strength, only to be overcome at last. The memory of that fierce struggle was upon him now, chilling his veins and clutching his heart with terror. And he would have to fight that invisible, relentless power over and over again to save himself from the black-magic destiny that threatened. Then, suddenly, fear and horror were swept away by a frenzy of rage that ramped through him all the more fiercely because there was nothing upon which it ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... hour, weary grown, When curfew o'er the wold is blown, He sees, as in a magic glass, Some lost and lonely mountain-pass; And lo! a sign of deathful rout The mocking vine has wound about,— An earth-fixed arrow by a spring, All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing; That stifled shaft no more shall sing! He shakes his head in doubt. "Laugh and sigh, live and die,— The hand ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... the Ptolemaic system, and Mr. Newbold, after most painstaking research, failed to discover any regular treatise on astronomy, though Arabic and Hindu tracts on interpretations of dreams, horoscopes, spells, propitious and unpropitious moments, auguries, talismans, love philters, medicinal magic and recipes for the destruction of people at a distance, are numerous. They acknowledge the solar year, but adopt the lunar, and reckon the months in three different ways, dividing them, however, into weeks of seven days, marking them by the return of the Mohammedan Sabbath. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... was of a temper too stolid and sensible to waste his time on random treasure hunting. Blackbeard might have chosen his hiding-place anywhere along hundreds of leagues of coast. He could understand the agitation of these two adventurous lads to whom this memorandum was like a magic spell. Of such was ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... when I tell you, you cannot do too much on your parts to show that we are still cordial and loving friends. To you, ladies of the Institution, I am deeply and especially indebted. I sometimes [pointing to the word 'Boz' in front of the great gallery] think there is some small quantity of magic in that very short name, and that it must consist in its containing as many letters as the three graces, and they, every one of them, being ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... said: "Come then, I will redeem thee from thy distress, and bring deliverance. Lo, take this herb of virtue, and go to the dwelling of Circe, that it may keep from thy head the evil day. And I will tell thee all the magic sleight of Circe. She will mix thee a potion and cast drugs into the mess; but not even so shall she be able to enchant thee; so helpful is this charmed herb that I shall give thee ... Therewith the slayer of Argos gave me the plant that he had plucked from the ground, and he showed ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... are shabby black. The naked face is of a pale mustard colour, as are the bill and legs. The feathers on the back of the head project like the back hairs of an untidy schoolboy. Its walk is an ungainly waddle. Nevertheless—so great is the magic of wings—this bird, as it soars high above the earth, looks a noble fowl; it then appears to be snow-white with black margins ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... Alberich also has begotten a son, Hagan, to achieve for him the possession of the ring. He is partly of the Gibichung race, and works through Gunther and Gutrune, half-brother and half-sister to him. They beguile Siegfried to them, give him a magic draught which makes him forget Brunhild and fall in love with Gutrune. Under this same spell, he offers to bring Brunhild for wife to Gunther. Now is Valhalla full of sorrow and despair. The gods fear the end. Wotan murmurs, "O that she would give back the ring to the Rhine." But Brunhild will ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... out from various stacks. In scarcely more than a moment, the room was completely transformed. It was no longer a storeroom for surplus stock, for the storage of bulky and empty packing cases! From the cases the men had picked out, like a touch of magic, appeared a veritable printing plant, an elaborate engraver's outfit—a highly efficient foot-power press, rapidly being assembled by Whitie Burns; an electric dryer, inks, a pile of white, silk-threaded bank-note paper, a cutter, and a score of ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... amongst nervous and impressionable races like the Anglo-American. In England it is the reverse; the obtuse sensitiveness of a people bred on beef and beer has made the "Religion of the Nineteenth Century" a manner of harmless magic, whose miracles are table-turning and ghost seeing whilst the prodigious rascality of its prophets (the so-called Mediums) has brought it into universal disrepute. It has been said that Catholicism must be true to co-exist ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... city awakened by enchantment. Natives appeared upon all sides, hailing each other with the magic cry "Ehippy"—ship; the Queen stepped forth on her verandah, shading her eyes under a hand that was a miracle of the fine art of tattooing; the commandant broke from his domestic convicts and ran into the residency ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the Piazza, the beautiful outline of St. Mark's Church was perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the snow-fall were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around a structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic loveliness to be anything but the creation of magic. The tender snow had compassionated the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the hands of the builder—or, better said, just from the brain ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... west of Admiral; while the Pennsylvania Railroad junction on the main line between Baltimore and Washington is at Odenton, about one and one-half miles east of Admiral. Naval Academy Junction is near Odenton and is the changing point on the electric line between the two chief cities. The magic-like upbuild of the cantonment, moreover, was the signal for the extension of the electric line to encircle the very center of the big military city, thus adding ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... were all dressed alike, in chequered blue and white cotton dresses; the boats are propelled with sculls used as oars, the men keeping time to a monotonous song. Forts, or rather the ghosts of forts, appeared as if raised by magic; they were easily distinguished to be formed out of immense screens of coloured cotton, and they were surrounded by flags and pennons. Although not effective, their effect was ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... portrait was in the very house to which she had come through no more romantic means than a chance advertisement in the "Morning Post!" And Miss Lavinia—her "fairy godmother"—could she have found a better friend, even in any elf stepping out of a magic pumpkin? ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... vision we saw life like the treasure cave of the Arabian thief, and we said to our beating hearts that we had the secret of the magic word: that the 'Open Sesame' ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... in hope and courage more and more as they drew nearer to the notary's, poor Kit was looking earnestly out of the window, observant of nothing,—when all at once, as though it had been conjured up by magic, he became aware of the face ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... a magic bun," she said, "and a bite was as much as a whole dinner. I should be overeating myself if ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... chemical affinity, the deep beneath deep of the telescope, the world within world of the microscope,—in these and many other fields it is hard to tell whether it is the scientist or the poet we are listening to. What greater magic than that you can take a colorless ray of light, break it across a prism, and catch upon a screen all the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... hope of the Emperor, was nothing but an illusion, as soon as the charm was dissolved which had called it into existence; by Wallenstein it had been raised, and, without him, it sank like a creation of magic into its original nothingness. Its officers were either bound to him as his debtors, or, as his creditors, closely connected with his interests, and the preservation of his power. The regiments he had entrusted ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... pulsing of his heart against her bosom, the caressing touch of his hands, the warm flutter of his breath in her hair and upon her cheek, as in that last dance; and with an inexpressible hunger at once of flesh and soul she yearned to feel them all again, to be once more within the magic circle of his arms, to live once more in the light of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... everything. He took my hand and hers, and for the moment it seemed that this little circle was my real family, and that my father and mother, standing over us, were hardly more than law-given preceptors. Before our guest's expanding smile and the magic of his tongue the clouds fled. Those which hung heaviest he brushed away with his restless hands. Soon, very soon, I was to go to that bustling, pushing town of Pittsburgh and with Penelope explore its wonders. We should ride behind the fastest pair of trotters in the State—his trotters; we ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... their own body lay at home apparently dead or asleep, wandered under other forms into distant places and countries. Such wanderings were called hamfarir by the old northmen; and were held to be only capable of performance by those who had attained the very utmost skill in magic. ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... the friends whom fame Had linked with the unmeaning name, 65 Whose magic marked among mankind The casket of my unknown mind, Which hidden from the vulgar glare Imbibed no fleeting radiance there. My darksome spirit sought—it found 70 A friendless solitude around. For who that might undaunted ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of St. Liborus! I swear, that I also will not pity Danveld. They said of him that he practiced black magic, but God's power and justice is mightier than black magic. As to Zygfried, I am not sure whether he also served the devil or not. But I shall not hunt for him, because first, I have no horses, and on the other hand, if what you said is true that he ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... personal psychology, is to be still occupied with the main question of things, to keep to the subject, to feel one's self in the center of the universal drama. There is comfort in the idea. Everything else may be taken away from us, but if thought remains we are still connected by a magic thread with the axis of the world. But we may lose thought and speech. Then nothing remains but simple feeling, the sense of the presence of God and of death in God—the last relic of the human privilege, which is to participate in the whole, to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... voice, and as she besought me in the most touching manner in a glorious adagio movement (very ridiculously it seemed to me, as if I had composed it myself) to save her, I soon resolved, like a second Astolpho,[2] to penetrate into Krespel's house, as if into another Alcina's magic castle, and deliver the queen of song from her ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... in regard to eating slowly, and the viands disappeared like frost in the beams of a July sun. The lettuce and stewed pears had disappeared like magic, and but one piece of the veal and ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... evening, thanks to a few sous, which he always finds means to procure, the homuncio enters a theatre. On crossing that magic threshold, he becomes transfigured; he was the street Arab, he becomes the titi.[18] Theatres are a sort of ship turned upside down with the keel in the air. It is in that keel that the titi huddle together. The titi is to the gamin ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... feeling, his careless manner changing as by magic: "I have very grievous news to impart to you. I would not enter upon it before my mother: though she must be told of it also, and ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... his success, foolishly, to "his star," or to any magic. He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... other French delegates, with a single exception, not alone by the magic of his personality but by the grip which he had on the imagination of France. The people remembered that long career, beginning with the early days of the Republic and culminating with the miracle of the political salvation he brought to France in the dark days of 1917, when the morale ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... that blessed word, So quickly said, so easy, as 'twere magic Breaks sorrow's spell and bids her phantoms fly! That word, that word, that one, one little ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... you an Easter egg up there?" he called, rather crossly. She only laughed. The family expected, after that time of preparation, something like magic. At last she came, looking very nice in a ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... inadequacy of the proposed remedial legislation; upon the high probability that more could be got for the minority by negotiation; upon the suggestion that, negotiation failing, remedial legislation that would really accomplish something could still be invoked. This argument, plus the magic of Laurier's personality and Tarte's organizing genius, did the business. Futile the sniping of the cures; vain the broadsides of the bishops; empty the thunders of the church! Quebec went to the polls and ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... secret drawer in his desk, inserted his forefinger and, apparently, pressed a button. The doors of the bookcase flew open as if by magic, and, at the same time, a bell inside the bookcase rang sharply. Miss Dana watched each motion of ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... at the tiny vision. Who was she? From whence had she come? Was she only a magic child come to mock us in our loneliness, or was she a real, ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... always beautiful and always tranquil; to those who know aught of wood magic it is as fair in cold midwinter as in autumn, when the leaves are no longer green leaves, but a rich mosaic of russet and orange and sullen red. My most wonderful memory is of a November day when a fine snow was falling, ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... mountain-pass from another. We had seen nothing like this; nothing, perhaps, so purely beautiful. One could not imagine that winter snow and ice could still the pulse of summer here. It was as if we wandered from one green glade to another in fairyland, where all the little people who owned the magic land had turned themselves hurriedly into strangely delicate ferns and bluebells to watch us, laughing, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... light that enchants you and tells you where you are. See it come filtering down through a vine-covered trellis on the red handkerchief with which a ragged contadina has bound her hair, and all the magic of Italy, to the eye, makes an aureole about the poor girl's head. Look at a brown-breasted reaper eating his chunk of black bread under a spreading chestnut; nowhere is shadow so charming, nowhere is colour so charged, nowhere has ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... O skill'd with magic spell to roll The thrilling tones, that concentrate the soul! Breathe through thy flute those tender notes again, While near thee sits the chaste-eyed maiden mild; And bid her raise the poet's kindred strain In ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... a man here, posing as a merchant. Claggett Chew. You will see him in the town when you walk there, which you shall do, presently. But he has some magic powers, and knows me well. Too well." Mr. Wicker shook his head and his eyes became slits of rage. "We have been enemies for long," said Mr. Wicker, "but he has yet to get ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... Tull of the Horseshoeing Husbandry to unloose in England the long spell of the magic of Virgil's poetry upon ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... of her mind being fixed on her new pattern and only one-tenth upon her grandchild's peculiar fancy for Victorian photographs. So Mollie wrote a short letter to her brother, enclosing the group which had worked the magic charm for herself that afternoon. She put it into the evening post-bag with a sigh. "If that doesn't do it I can't think of anything else," ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... in Magic," by Charles B. Loomis, the widely known humorist, is an extremely original and clever juvenile, Mr. Loomis's first piece of long fiction. It has a fairy-tale motive in an entirely realistic setting. A country boy, who has a marvellous power of plucking fruit ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... they are made perfect at death, it is plain that in the case of many, perhaps of all, perfection is not attained. Imagine a Christian, but one beset with many imperfections. In a moment some accident cuts him off. Are we to imagine that the mere passing through the gates of death works some magic change in his character? Surely not. What then becomes of him? He does not go to hell, for he is a Christian. Yet he is not fit for heaven. What remains, but some preliminary stage of preparation ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... and a purpose. They stopped at Wilberforce, the oldest of Negro schools, where a black bishop blessed them. Then they went, fighting cold and starvation, shut out of hotels, and cheerfully sneered at, ever northward; and ever the magic of their song kept thrilling hearts, until a burst of applause in the Congregational Council at Oberlin revealed them to the world. They came to New York and Henry Ward Beecher dared to welcome them, even though the metropolitan dailies sneered at his "Nigger Minstrels." So their ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... some magic vehicle, transported them in a second to the torrid zone, where the various tropical flowers and fruit, the towering cocoa-nut, the spreading palm, the broad-leaved banana, the fragrant pine—all that was ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... at first been only terrible, but with such thunder they seemed sinister and menacing. Their magic light pierced through closed eyelids and sent a chill all over the body. What could he do not to see them? Yegorushka made up his mind to turn over on his face. Cautiously, as though afraid of being watched, he got ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... shouted over by the Boulevard St. Germain. As if by magic the streets were filled with people,—shivering, chattering ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Youth and wealth and love were all his, and his all together. He was but eight-and-twenty, was a member of Parliament, solicitor-general, owner of a house in Eaton Square, and possessor of as much well-trained beauty as was to be found at that time within the magic circle of any circumambient crinoline within the bills of mortality. Was it not sweet for him to wander through the rye? Had he not fallen upon an Elysium, a very paradise of earthly joys? Was not his spring-tide ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... swooning. But now, in this my great extremity, of a sudden, from somewhere on the outskirts of the crowd rose a shrill cry of "Fire!" the which cry, being taken up by others, filled the air with panic, the crowd melted as if by magic until the village green and the road were quite deserted. All this I noted but dimly (being more dead than alive) when I became conscious of one ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... that of day; then the music, which, in itself a treat sufficient in every other situation, our inexperience mistakes for the very play we came to witness; then the slow rise of the shadowy curtain, disclosing, as if by actual magic, a new land, with woods, and mountains, and lakes, lighted, it seems to us, by another sun, and inhabited by a race of beings different from ourselves, whose language is poetry,—whose dress, demeanor, and sentiments seem something supernatural,—and whose whole actions and discourse ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... passed, and there was no sign of the miracle she had confidently expected. The magic of the marriage vow failed to transform her; Pauline Dumont was still Pauline Gardiner in mind and in heart. There was, however, a miracle, undreamed of, mysterious, overwhelming—John Dumont, the ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... had made itself comfort able in one end of the quarry and up one side, sat in awed silence, watching him closely, like a theatre audience waiting for some wonder-worker to perform his feats of magic. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... once, to exorcise the powers of darkness. Though I had been cured, long since, of my passion for such investigations, I still felt a certain attraction and curiosity with regard to all superstitions, and I was delighted to have this opportunity of discovering how far the magic art had ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... amazing calm Miltoun remained after he had gone away, till about half-past nine in the evening, he started forth, to walk down to the House. It was now that sort of warm, clear night, which in the country has firefly magic, and even over the Town spreads a dark glamour. And for Miltoun, in the delight of his new health and well-being, with every sense alive and clean, to walk through the warmth and beauty of this night ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... us all are spread The ruins and the symbols of the winter that is dead. But the bleak and barren picture very shortly now will pass, For the halls of life are ready for their velvet rugs of grass; And the painters now are waiting with their magic to replace This dullness with a beauty that no mortal ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... asked Nydia, 'can induce the beautiful and wealthy Julia to ask that question of her servant? Has she not money, and youth, and loveliness? Are they not love-charms enough to dispense with magic?' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... peasant girl becomes an ambassadress of heaven, gifted with second sight and the power of working miracles. She not only leads the French troops in battle, but she herself fights with a magic sword and kills English soldiers with the ruthlessness of a veteran in slaughter. Through it all, however, she is supposed to remain a tender-hearted and lovable maiden, such as the highest officers ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... long hair, in a black doublet, who approached the foot of the bed where Sainte-Croix lay. Brave as he was, this apparition so fully answered to his prayers (and at the period the power of incantation and magic was still believed in) that he felt no doubt that the arch-enemy of the human race, who is continually at hand, had heard him and had now come in answer to his prayers. He sat up on the bed, feeling mechanically at the place where the handle of his sword would have been but ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... did not put the honor very high. "I am," he said, "the mat before the door." Tarte, a Quebecker and a Bleu, became Montreal's representative at Ottawa. Disappointment among the Liberals led first to rage and then to rage plus fear as Tarte with the magic wand of the patronage and power of the public works department, began to make over the party organization in the province. Open rebellion under Francois Langelier broke out in December: "A coalition with Chapleau," Langelier informed the ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... collected about them other members of the searching party, who stuck their heads out of ports and doors now and then to see that no evil magic had set the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... sustained no injury to his pride and vanity of sex. And Mercier's flabbiness did more for him than that. It took the sharpest sting from Violet's infidelity. It removed it to the region of insane perversities. It removed Violet herself from her place in memory, that place of magic and of charm where if she had remained she would have had power to ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... danger in allowing ourselves to be so narrowed by our own virtuousness, viciousness being conventionally banished to the remoter region of the third person, as to forget the presence of "the brute brain within the man's." In Rousseau's case, at any rate, it was no wicked broth nor magic potion that "confused the chemic labour of the blood," but the too potent wine of the joyful beauty of nature herself, working misery in a mental structure that no educating care nor envelope of circumstance ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... kept up for some hours. As we were in the height of the amusement, the cathedral bell struck three slow measured sounds, the signal of the Oration. It was repeated by the belfries of all the churches in the city. Instantly, as if by magic, every movement was suspended. Each one said the evening prayer in a low whisper, and then made the sign of the cross; those of most consequence turning to the persons near them, uttering the words buenas noches (good night), which was repeated by all present. It is a simple but beautiful custom, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... International, a call was sent out for a congress to be held in Geneva in 1873. The congress that assembled there was not a large one, but, with no exaggeration whatever, it was one of the most remarkable gatherings ever held. For six entire days and nights the delegates struggled to create by some magic means a world-wide organization of the people, without a program, a committee, a chairman, or a vote. No longer oppressed by the "tyranny" of Marx, or baffled by his "abominable intrigues," they set out to create their "faithful image" of the new world—an ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... time at the window, so long indeed that Maizie feared she was lost to all materialities. Suzanna, wonderful one, who could strike from dull stuff magic dreams; who could vivify and gloriously color the little things of life; who could into the simplest happenings read thrilling interpretations! What bliss to accompany her upon her wanderings, and what sadness ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... at regular intervals by short and somewhat thicker lines. It was the shadow of a field-telephone and its poles! And the airplane from which that photograph was taken was so high that it must have looked like a mere speck to one on the ground. There's war magic for you. ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... a match, the leaves were wet and the twigs soggy, but by some magic a tiny spark glows under some shadowy figure, bites at the twigs, snaps at the branches, and wraps a ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... its deeper meaning, saved Stephen from becoming a dunce. He still blundered and boggled over his lessons, and still kept pretty near to the bottom form in his class, but he felt that his master had an interest in him, and that acted like magic to his soul. He declined Master Raddleston's professional assistance for the future, and did the best he could by himself. He now and then, though hesitatingly, availed himself of Mr Rastle's offer, and took his ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... any other genius, Lord Byron had the magic power of conjuring up before our imagination the ideal image of his subject. He was not at all perplexed how to clothe his ideas. That quality, so sought after by other writers, and so necessary for hiding faults, was quite natural to him. When he describes women, a few rapid strokes suffice ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... more of an automaton than a human being, more dead than alive, and yet—greatest of all miseries!—he is not allowed to die. For he has a mother, the witch Uraka, who keeps him artificially alive by anointing him every night with magic salve and giving him such diabolic advice as will be useful to him during the day. By means of the sham health she gives to her son, the magic bullets she casts for him, the tricks and wiles she teaches ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... love? Sing winter, summer-sweets, the vernal air, Or the soft Sofa, to delight the fair[5]? Laugh, e'en at kings, and mock each prudish rule, The merry motley priest of ridicule[6]? With modest pencil paint the vernal scene, The rustic lovers, and the village green? Bid Mem'ry, magic child, resume his toy, And Hope's fond ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a tangled string or an obstinate button hindering the performer. All this is opposed to the real purpose of playing, and injurious to the actor's art, to say nothing of the interests of the dramatist. Illusion is the special object of the theatre, and this forfeits its magic when once inquiry is directed too curiously to its method of contrivance. Still doubling of this kind has always been in favour both with actors and audiences, and many plays have been provided especially to give dual occupation to the performers. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... prepared to scale an upper sphere: - By stirring up a lower, much I fear! How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom! That long-shanked dapper Cupid with frisked curls Can make known women torturingly fair; The gold-eyed serpent dwelling in rich hair Awakes beneath his magic whisks and twirls. His art can take the eyes from out my head, Until I see with eyes of other men; While deeper knowledge crouches in its den, And sends a spark up:- is it true we are wed? Yea! filthiness of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... those of ancient Sparta, and, though in a different way, quite as repugnant to the essential principles of our nature. The institutions of Lycurgus, however, were designed for a petty state, while those of Peru, although originally intended for such, seemed, like the magic tent in the Arabian tale, to have an indefinite power of expansion, and were as well suited to the most flourishing condition of the empire as to its infant fortunes. In this remarkable accommodation to change of circumstances we see the proofs ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... staircase, and along the narrow passage. "A bas les Huguenots! Mort aux Huguenots!" they shouted; and shrieking, sweating, spurning with vile hands, viler faces, they poured pell-mell into the street, and added their clamour to the boom of the tocsin that, as by magic and in a moment, turned the streets of Paris into a hell of blood and cruelty. For as it was here, so it was in ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... breast of this Mohican warrior of the Siwanois clan, which is called by the Delawares "The Clan of the Magic Wolf," outlined in scarlet, I saw the emblem of his own ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Chancellorship, or the gold medal at the musical academy, vanish as if by magic. There is no more talk about bishoprics or artistic fame. The parents settle down to the conventional task of having the child fitted for something it has no desire to be; and the notion that the particular faculties they observed—or thought they observed—during ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... which most resemble modern savages, speech was personified by the necessity of the perceptive faculty, a vague power was certainly ascribed to it, and even a simple murmur or whisper was supposed to have a direct and personal influence on things, men, and animals. Magic, which is the primitive expression of fetishtic power, embodied in a man, had its most efficacious form in the utterance of words, cries, whispers, or songs, referring to the malign or to the healing and beneficent arts, and it was employed to arouse or to calm storms, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... are the magic handiwork of the nymphs and fays who for ages have lain hidden in the springs that burst out into little lakes upon the birch-crowned summits, and come rushing and tumbling down the rocky defiles to join the waters of the Housatuck. School-house ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... spring, always icy cold and crystal pure, in a certain birch-screened hollow of Rainbow Valley in the lower corner near the marsh. Not a great many people knew of its existence. The manse and Ingleside children knew, of course, as they knew everything else about the magic valley. Occasionally they went there to get a drink, and it figured in many of their plays as a fountain of old romance. Anne knew of it and loved it because it somehow reminded her of the beloved Dryad's Bubble at Green Gables. Rosemary ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he caught in his arms the Houri of the foreign race; he fastened his burning lips upon her rosebud mouth; and by the magic of her breath she drew him on to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... words disarmed that great crowd as if by magic; the men who had just now shouted, "Long live Wat Tyler!" now shouted with a mighty shout, "Long live our ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... I traversed Tower Hill, my mind wandered back for centuries, and dwelt upon the strange events in history which had been enacted there; of the soil where I stood, that had been moistened by the blood of monarchs, soldiers and statesmen. As I gazed upon the massive gray walls of the Tower, the magic scenes of Shakspeare arose, and passed in review before me. I thought of Gloucester, Clarence, Hastings, Henry VI., his two murdered nephews: then came forth the unhappy Jane Shore, pale, exhausted, and starving; no one ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... reduced them to fibres, as he had seen ropemakers do. For he intended to make a cord, to replace that which the devil had stolen. The demons were somewhat displeased at this; they ceased their clamour, and the girl with the theorbo no longer continued her magic arts, but remained quietly on the wall. The courage and faith of Paphnutius increased whilst ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... of the most beautiful and magnificent sights in Nature, all admit. But, I think, to those who know its story its beauty and magnificence are ten-fold increased. Its saltness it due to no magic mill. It is the dissolved rocks of the Earth which give it at once its brine, its strength, and its buoyancy. The rivers which we say flow with "fresh" water to the sea nevertheless contain those traces of salt which, collected over the long ages, occasion the saltness of ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... in its simplest form the genius of Commerce at the work of Civilization. Trade is the magic that keeps all at peace, and unites these discordant elements into a well-behaved community. All are traders, and know that peace and order are essential to successful trade, and thus a public opinion is created which puts down all lawlessness. Often in former year, when ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... ship in which he sailed moved very slowly; for he longed to reach the land which he could see through his magic spectacles: it was a beautiful kingdom, rich with mines of ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... with him at the city, whose thousands of tinned roofs, rising one above the other from the water's edge to the citadel, were all a splendor of argent light in the afternoon sun. It was indeed as if some magic had clothed that huge rock, base and steepy flank and crest, with a silver city. They gazed upon the marvel with cries of joy that satisfied the driver's utmost pride in it, and Isabel said, "To live there, there in that Silver City, in perpetual sojourn! To be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "anything they pleased," said the magistrates of Frankfort, "as long as they and the French kept the peace." They decided to adopt the English Order, barring responses, the Litany, the surplice, "and many other things." {54} The Litany was regarded by Knox as rather of the nature of magic than of prayer, the surplice was a Romish rag, and there was some other objection to the congregation's taking part in the prayers by responses, though they were not forbidden to mingle their voices in psalmody. Dissidium valde absurdum—"a very absurd quarrel," among exiled ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... conversation of which he was heartily tired. But Mrs. Brand, in the half-bewildered condition of mind to which long anxiety and sorrow had reduced her, did not know the virtue of silence, and did not possess the magic quality of tact. ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... small golden Cross which hung at his girdle, and laid it upon the Mirror. Instantly a loud noise was heard, resembling a clap of thunder, and the steel shivered into a thousand pieces. This circumstance confirmed the suspicion of the Monk's having dealt in Magic: It was even supposed that his former influence over the minds of the People was entirely ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... and Follies vain, Pleasures soon exchanged for pain, Doubt, and Jealousy, and Fear In the magic dance appear. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that a'thing wes ready, and the next aifternoon the Doctor comes himsel', an' the first thing he dis is tae lay the stick on the table an' gin he hed never said a word, tae see it lyin' there wes a veesitation. But he 's a weel-meanin' bit craturie, Maister Peebles, an' handy wi' a magic lantern. Sall," and then Hillocks became incapable of speech, and you knew that the thought of Dr. Davidson explaining comic ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... law at the bottom of a barrel of trash discovered at a venture and taking instant possession of the discoverer's mind! Like the genius issuing grandly in the smoke cloud from the vase drawn up out of the sea by the fisher in the Arabian tale! But this great book was not the only magic casket discovered by the idle store-keeper, the broken seals of which released mighty presences. Both Shakespeare and Burns were revealed to him in this period. Never after did either for a moment cease to be his companion. These literary treasures ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... has nothing to do with. Novelists and lawyers understand the art of "cramming" better than any other persons in the world. Why should not this young man be working up the picturesque in this romantic region to serve as a background for some story with magic, perhaps, and mysticism, and hints borrowed from science, and all sorts of out-of-the-way knowledge which his odd and miscellaneous selection of books furnished him? That might be, or possibly he was only reading for amusement. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the boys are lying, in their low and narrow tents, And no battle-cry can wake them, and no orders call them hence; And the yearnings of the mother, and the anguish of the wife, Can not with their magic presence call the soldier back to life; And the brother's manly sorrow, and the father's mournful pride, Can not give back to his country him who for his country died. They who for the trembling Nation in its hour of trial bled, Lie, in these its years ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... wonderful things, and at the red flannel shirts, and at the four flint guns and the spotted cotton handerchiefs, each worth a sable skin at one end of the fur trade, half a six-pence at the other. There was tea, too—tea, that magic medicine before which life's cares vanished ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... a nobleness and grandeur which it had never before exhibited. There was a lightning in his eye that seemed to rive the spectator. His action became graceful, bold and commanding; and in the tones of his voice, but more especially in his emphasis, there was a peculiar charm, a magic, of which any one who ever heard him will speak as soon as ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... As if by magic, every ship in the air above the city shot downward, dropping suddenly out of sight. In seconds, the air ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... see a wonderful row of little lights rise smoothly out of the ground, before a vast green curtain. Now, a bell rings—a magic bell, which still sounds in my ears unlike all other bells—and music plays, amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell of orange-peel and oil. Anon, the magic bell commands the music to cease, ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... which they were. He recognised that between them there was something which had never existed between Lois and himself, something which made their friendship a natural and significant thing. It was the freemasonry of class again, the magic ring against which he had ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... savants much earlier; yet when Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini, visits Roger Bacon at Oxford about 1258, and is shown the black stone, he speaks of it as new and wonderful, but certain, if used, to awake suspicion of magic. "It has the power of drawing iron to it, and if a needle be rubbed upon it and fastened to a straw so as to swim upon water, the needle will instantly turn towards the Pole-Star. But no master mariner could use this, nor would the sailors venture themselves to sea under his ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... dominion over lake and forest. Occasionally a lily-pad would brush along the bottom, and stooping low I could hear a faint murmuring of the water under the bow: else all was still. Then almost as by magic, we were encompassed by a huge black ring. The surface of the lake, when we had reached the center, was slightly luminous from the starlight, and the dark, even forest-line that surrounded us, doubled by reflection in the water, presented a broad, unbroken belt of utter blackness. The effect was ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... yet it could bear no fruits—the door could not open till the pope pronounced the magic words which held it closed. Neither Philip nor Mary was in a position to use violence or ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... it and took it to the fire's edge, where, opening its pages one by one, so that each would get the warmth, she held it as close as she opined was safe. Having dried it until she no longer feared the wetting it had had would seriously harm its usefulness (the lovely smoothness of its magic leaves was gone, alas! beyond recall) she paused there for a moment, herself still far from dry, with a bare foot held out to the blaze, and studied curiously one ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... mother, the home-maker. She is the mystery of the ideal home. Each day her divine art grows more perfect because her heart is consecrated to the work. She may not be surrounded with material splendor. The miracle is in the soul she possesses. Love is the magic wand she yields. She loves her home, her children, her husband. She is the queen mother in the paradise ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... And hurls defiance at the caitiff's den. The First on fancy'd giants spent his rage, But This has more than windmills to engage: He combats passion, rooted in the soul, Whose pow'rs, at once delight ye, and controul; Whose magic bondage each lost slave enjoys, Nor wishes freedom, though the spell destroys. To save our land from this MAGICIAN's charms, And rescue maids and matrons from his arms, Our knight poetic comes. And Oh! ye fair! This black ENCHANTER's wicked arts ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... within hearing of his magic song. About the middle of this busy summer, the revisal of the Iliad was brought to a close; and on the very next day, the 24th of July, the correction of the Odyssey commenced,—a morning rendered memorable by a kind and unexpected visit from the patroness of that work, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the palm to him, since Parrhasius painted a curtain which deceived his rival, whereas the grapes of Zeuxis had deceived only birds. Parrhasius was exceedingly arrogant and luxurious, and boasted of having reached the utmost limits of his art. He combined the magic tone of Apollodorus with the exquisite design of Zeuxis and the classic ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... upon tier of windows winking in the setting sun. On every hand were dazzling peaks piled against a turquoise sky, yet drawn respectfully apart from the incomparable Matterhorn, that proud grim chieftain of them all. The grand spectacle and the magic air made me thankful to be there, if only for their sake, albeit the more regretful that a purer purpose had not drawn me ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, on which Sir John Goss played, and which had felt the magic touch of Mendelssohn, had 13 stops on the Great, 7 on the Swell, 8 on the Choir and only one on the Pedal. It stood in a case on the screen between the choir and the nave of the Cathedral. We have noted elsewhere in this book how Willis had this screen removed, and rebuilt the organ on each side ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... Trove had risen early and was walking out on a long pike that divided the village of Hillsborough and cut the waste of snow, winding over hills and dipping into valleys, from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario. The air was cold but full of magic sun-fire. All things were aglow—the frosty roadway, the white fields, the hoary forest, and the mind of the beholder. Trove halted, looking off at the far hills. Then he heard a step behind him and, as he turned, saw a tall man approaching at a quick pace. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... my mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road. At intervals, some one among them would stop, as it were, in its restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to look at it, quite steadily, and behold it in full distinctness. After a few moments, it would dissolve, like a view in a magic-lantern; and while I saw some part of it quite plainly, and some faintly, and some not at all, would show me another of the many places I had lately seen, lingering behind it, and coming through it. This was no sooner visible than, in its turn, it ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... services at the church were well attended, and there were generally upwards of thirty at the Holy Communion. At Christmas time we had a great feast; nearly a hundred of the people came, and after partaking of the good things, we gave them a magic lantern exhibition, which pleased them greatly. Then we always had service in the schoolhouse every Wednesday evening, at which there was an exceedingly good attendance; and on Friday evenings we held a cottage lecture, sometimes ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... upon the correct usage of these magic bits of pasteboard will not seem unnecessary when it is remembered that the visiting card, socially defined, means, and is frequently made to take the place of, one's self. It will be seen, therefore, that one of the first requisites for social success is to understand the language, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... some Cooper's magic art may wake The sleeping legends of this mighty vale, And twine fond memories round the lawn and lake, Where Warrior fought ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... it is magic. But I am no fool. I know John Gaviller make the laktrek in an engine in the mill. Me, I have seen that engine. I see blue fire inside lak ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... partly from a desire to escape the monotony of old scenes and familiar faces; and partly because one day while in "town" he had listened attentively to a desert nomad, or "drifter," who had told a tale of a country where water was to be the magic which would open the gates of fortune to the eager ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the mystery of that nocturnal minstrelsy. Seventy-three bells in chromatic diapason—with their tinkling, ringing, tolling, knolling peal! Was not that a chime? a chime of chimes? And all these goblin hammers, like hands and feet of sprites, rising and falling, by magic, by hidden mechanism. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... forms, and even to-day we are scarcely more than heads out of the vast subtle muddle of thinking about spheres and ideally perfect forms and so on, that was the price of this little necessary step to clear thinking. You know better than I do how large a part numerical and geometrical magic, numerical and geometrical philosophy has played in the history of the mind. And the whole apparatus of language and mental communication is beset with like dangers. The language of the savage is, I suppose, purely positive; the thing has a name, the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... replied the other captain, solemnly, "the fog and all disappeared as if by magic, the whole horizon was clear and there ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... each other rapidly. That beautiful Milky Way, which has for ages been the object of admiration to all lovers of nature, never disclosed its true nature to the eye of man till the astronomer of Padua turned on it his magic tube. The splendid zone of silvery light was then displayed as star-dust scattered over the black background of the sky. It was observed that though the individual stars were too small to be seen severally without optical ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... step beside her. They walked toward the Platform. And it was still magic, no matter how often Joe looked at it. It was huge beyond belief, though it was surely not heavy in proportion to its size. Its bright plating shone through the gossamer scaffolding all about it. There was always a faint bluish mist in the air, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... fall upon them directly, they appeared dark and earthy. Each time, however, the sun's rays soon came to undeceive him; and that which had so lately been black and frowning was, as by the touch of magic, suddenly illuminated, and became bright and gorgeous, throwing out its emerald hues, or perhaps a virgin white, that filled the beholder with delight, even amid the terrors and dangers by which, in very truth, he was surrounded. The glorious Alps themselves, those wonders of the earth, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... remain insensible to this magic spectacle of the starry Heavens? Where is the mind that is not attracted to these enigmas? The intelligence of the amateur, the feminine, no less than the more material and prosaic masculine mind, is ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... time it had begun to dawn upon me that there was a difference among books, not only in regard to the things told, but also in regard to the way of the telling. Unconsciously I became sensitive to the magic of style, and, wandering freely through the library, was drawn to the writers whose manner and accent had a charm for me. Emerson and Carlyle I liked no better than I liked caviar; but Lamb's Essays and Irving's Sketches were fascinating. For histories of literature, thank Heaven, I never ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... month with me, and I know the nature of his changes throughout; but I have not yet had the revised proofs. He was in a better state at Knebworth than I have ever seen him in all these years, a little weird occasionally regarding magic and spirits, but perfectly fair and frank under opposition. He was talkative, anecdotical, and droll; looked young and well, laughed heartily, and enjoyed some games we played with great zest. In his artist ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... single ship till it came to the island of Aeaea, where Circe, the dreadful daughter of the Sun, dwelt. She was deeply skilled in magic, a haughty beauty, and had hair like the Sun. The Sun was her parent, and begot her and her brother Aeaetes (such another as herself) upon Perse, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... Fastened to this magic wand were also many strange shells and charms which the earth children did not understand and which the strange prince did ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... at Mingham! What a destiny! Certainly Blent was in the same valley, but—— Well, a "seat" is one thing, and a farm's another; the world is to blame again, no doubt. And with men who want nothing, for whom the word "opening" has no magic, what is to be done? Abstractly they are seen to be a necessary element in the community; but they do not make good sons or sons-in-law for ambitious men. Janie, when she had seen Bob, an unrepentant cheerful Bob, on his way, came back to find her ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Wizard-Dame, the Lover's ancient friend, With magic charm has deaft thy husband's ear, At her command I saw the stars descend, And winged lightnings stop in mid ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... adventures, king AEtes promised to deliver to Jason the golden fleece, provided he yoked two fire-breathing oxen with brazen feet, and performed other wonderful deeds. Here, also, as in the legend of Theseus, love played a prominent part. Medea, the daughter of AEtes, who was skilled in magic and supernatural arts, furnished Jason with the means of accomplishing the labours imposed upon him; and as her father still delayed to surrender the fleece, she cast the dragon asleep during the night, seized the fleece, and sailed away in the Argo ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... made to live Past kingdoms, with his vivid brain! Who could such warmth to shadows give, By the mere magic of his pen, That Charles and England rose again! Well sleeps he 'mid the Abbey's dust: And, Laureate! thy funereal verse Shall have such echo as it must From hearts just wrung at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... to make them so, but because they already were so. So that this argument seems more than all others demonstrative for the Anabaptist, and to prove that Baptism derives all its force if it be celestial magic, or all its meaning if it be only a sacrament and symbol, from the presumption of actual sin ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... the pea, and the pyramid, flash into existence. In some branches of traffic the wearer calls loudly for new fashions; but in this, the fashions tread upon each other, and crowd upon the wearer. The consumption of this article is astonishing. There seem to be hidden treasures couched within this magic circle, known only to a few, who extract prodigious fortunes out of this useful toy, whilst a far greater number, submit to a statute ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... of an attitude to science, but he did have such an attitude. Life was to him a story told by God: the people in it the characters in that story. But since the story was told by God it was, quite literally, a magic story, a fairy story, a story full of wonders created by a divine will. As a child a toy telephone rigged up by his father from the house to the end of the garden had breathed that magic quality ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... damp. In future she would wear leather boots with goloshes over them during the day, and only put on moccasins when it became cold in the evening. She knew that in a few days the snow would have disappeared as if by magic, and that a thousand green living things would be rushing up from the brown, steaming earth, and broidering with the promise of a still ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Messenger looked him full in the eyes; then, as by magic, the loveliest of smiles transfigured the dull, blank features; her round shoulders, pendulous arms, slouching pose, melted into superb symmetry, quickening with grace and youth as she straightened up and faced ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... ranchward. Once more the smiles filled out his wrinkles. Very suddenly, by the magic of kinship and the good that lies somewhere in all hearts, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... simply! First my liquid positive, then my magic spectacles. I photograph the story in a liquid with light-sensitive chromates. I build up a complex solution—do you see? I add taste chemically and sound electrically. And when the story is recorded, then I put the solution in my spectacle—my ...
— Pygmalion's Spectacles • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... opportunity of stealing the novel in question. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently. I read its successor and its successor. I read until I came to a book called "The Doctor's Wife"—a lady who loved Shelley and Byron. There was magic, there was revelation in the name, and Shelley became my soul's divinity. Why did I love Shelley? Why was I not attracted to Byron? I cannot say. Shelley! Oh, that crystal name, and his poetry also crystalline. I must ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... to Cheyenne," interrupted Potter, who had shown deep interest in the conversation, "we'll get you over if we have to use a snow plow. Maybe you've got the magic to get this row settled. At any rate, it's ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... better worth telling than those of Count Antonio.... The author knows full well how to make every pulse thrill, and how to hold his readers under the spell of his magic."—Boston Herald. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... from their stands, right-turned like a military line, and walked in procession round the stage. At a halt and a signal each pussy put its front paws on its front neighbour and the march began again. Then Lola did something with voice and whip, and each cat dropped on its paws, and as if by magic there appeared a space between ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... started on their hike to the old camp. Excepting their tents they carried full camping equipment, blankets, cooking utensils, first aid kit, lanterns, changes of clothing, and plenty of those materials which Roy's magic could conjure into luscious edibles. The raw material for the delectable flipflop was there, cans groaning with egg-powder, raisins for plum-duff, savory bacon, rice enough for twenty weddings and chocolate enough to corner the market ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... furnished another volume for my garden studies. From him I inherited some of that taste which finds a magic attraction in dictionaries and grammars; and I only wish that I had properly mastered about half the languages in which it was the delight of my girlhood to dabble. As yet, however, I only looked at the 'grammar corner' with ambitious eyes, till one day there ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... random treasure hunting. Blackbeard might have chosen his hiding-place anywhere along hundreds of leagues of coast. He could understand the agitation of these two adventurous lads to whom this memorandum was like a magic spell. Of such was the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... of Max toward Yolanda was a real triumph of skill and adroitness over inherited convictions and false education. She had brought him from condescension to deference solely by the magic of her art. Or am I wrong? Was it her artlessness? Perhaps it was her artful artlessness, since every girl-baby is born with a modicum of ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Mahadeo's hair in King Burtal's story, she put her two thumbs to her ears, and spread out all her fingers from her head saying, "His hair stood out like this," and in "Loving Laili," after moving her hand as if she were pulling the magic knife from her pocket and unfolding it, she swung her arm out at full length with great energy, and then she said, "Laili made one 'touch'" (here she brought back the edge of her hand to her own throat), "and the head fell off." Dunkni sometimes used an English word, such as ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... breakfast, now becoming a very important consideration, assailed by a good natural appetite, sharpened in the shrewd air of a clear, cold morning. At last, ring goes the bell; and the deck, already thinned of the more anxious, or more provident, of the party, becomes, at that magic tinkle, a desert. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... seemed forgetful of the existence of anybody but himself, forgetful almost of himself as well: sitting low in his great chair, his body as stirless as it were bound by some spell of black magic, his far gaze ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... burden. The twins could hear her surprised exclamation, and see the hitch of the shoulders with which she freed her right arm for the attack. Down she bent, panting louder than before, until, even as her envious fingers approached the prize, it leapt into the air, and as by some magic process disappeared from sight. Jack was bursting with pride at his own adroitness, and Jill nudged in enthusiastic approval. This came of fishing by the river-banks in the last summer holidays, and gaining dexterity in the art of casting lines! It was wonderful how useful such accomplishments ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Odo spent many blissful hours. His fancy ranged in the wake of heroes and adventurers who, for all he knew, might still be feasting and fighting north of the Alps, or might any day with a blast of their magic horns summon the porter to the gates of Donnaz. Foremost among them, a figure towering above even Rinaldo, Arthur and the Emperor Frederic, was that Conrad, father of Conradin, whose sayings are set down in the old story-book ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... death stalked everywhere, grinning with malicious triumph, for he had but one more battle to fight. Already his grisly clutch was closing on the standard of victory. Man had mastered life but he had not conquered death. With the magic wand of science he had reached out into space and viewed the life of far-off worlds. He had routed superstition and fear and selfishness. He had banished disease and learned all nature's secrets; had even visited other worlds and had come to know and understand his God, but still ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... reluctantly to the capital; but very soon escaped back to the things he loved: the mountains, and his chrysanthemum garden, and the country, where he could hear the dogs barking in the far farms, and see the chickens scratching in the lanes. We do not find in him, perhaps, the flood of Natural Magic that came with the poets of the Great Age three or four centuries later; but we do find a heart-felt worship of the great unspoiled world under the sky: he is there to say that China was returning to her real strength, which is Nature-worship. While he ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... junk, stands on a rock in a fish-pond reflecting the rosy sky, and the fretted marble of a beautiful Arabian tomb gleams from a clump of white-starred sumboya exhaling incense on the air. As the magic and mystery of night shroud Makassar in a mantle of gloom, the surrounding sea becomes a vision of phosphorescent flame to the furthest horizon. The sheet-lightning of the tropical sky repeats the wonders of the deep, the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... ragged walls, All unawares before his half-shut eyes, Comes in upon him in the dead of night, And with th' excess of sweetness and of awe, Makes the heart tremble, and the eyes run over Upon his steely gyves; so those fair eyes Shone on my darkness forms which ever stood Within the magic cirque of memory, Invisible but deathless, waiting still The edict of the will to reassume The semblance of those rare realities Of which they were the mirrors. Now the light, Which was their life, burst through the cloud of thought Keen, irrepressible. It ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... somewhere read, many years ago, but cannot recollect the authority, "That, when Alexander besieged a certain city in India, the Brachmans, by the power of magic, raised a cloud of smoke around the walls, whence broke frequent flashes of lightning, with thunder, and the thunderbolts slew many of his soldiers." This would infer the very ancient use of fire-arms ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... Baliol; "you must get over all these scruples, if you would thrive in the character of a romantic historian, which you have determined to embrace. What is the classic Robertson to you? The light which he carried was that of a lamp to illuminate the dark events of antiquity; yours is a magic lantern to raise up wonders which never existed. No reader of sense wonders at your historical inaccuracies, any more than he does to see Punch in the show box seated on the same throne with King Solomon in his glory, or to hear him hallooing out to the patriarch, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... "There are many among the Norman men-at-arms who talk, over their wine-cups, how that Damian de Lacy is in love with his uncle's betrothed bride; ay, and that they correspond together by art magic." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... toy human being seemed full of intelligence, and after the first protest examined me fearlessly, with enchanting smiles about the mouth and eyes. I noticed even then an upward curling of the mouth corners and a kind of magic in the liquid blue gaze, of which Paul might never be conscious, but which would work ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... shanties and booths. All ordinary employments were laid aside. Ships were deserted by their crews, who ran to the mines, sometimes, it is said, headed by their officers. Soon streets were laid out, houses erected, and from this Babel, as if by magic, grew up a beautiful city. For a time, lawlessness reigned supreme. But, driven by the necessity of events, the most respectable citizens took the law into their own hands, organized vigilance committees, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... romance. Thus it has always been nor can the peopling of many lands and the finding and exploring of all continents and islands check this. However it may be with the cattle it is this which gives tang to our salt hay and touches the reviving coolness of the spray and the east wind with the rainbow magic of dreams. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... me; I have stolen away from you, but only for a few days, and only in order to see if we cannot gain the magic home where I am to be the Genius, and you the Princess. I go forth with such a light heart, Sophy dear, I shall be walking thirty miles a day, and not feel an ache in the lame leg: you could not keep up with me; you know you could not. So think over ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... west is a mysterious sea, (What sails have seen it, or what shipmen known?) With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be, With islands where a Goddess walks alone, And in the cedar trees the magic winds make moan. ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... scattered remnants of the tribes East and West owned his rightful authority as chief. The Canaghwagas were one of these. So these lost ones had come straight to the official and actual head of their people when they were stranded in the great city. They knew it when they heard the magic name of Donegahawa, and sat silently waiting and wondering till he should come. The child looked up admiringly at the gold-laced cap of Inspector Williams, when he took her on his knee, and the stern face of the big policeman ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... these circumstances to display his genius and to delight his hearers with a piece of genuine music. This he did and his operatic overtures are of such distinct import and self-sufficiency that they are often detached from the opera itself and played as concert numbers. The Magic Flute Overture is also noteworthy because of the polyphonic treatment of the first theme which is a definite fugal presentation in four voices. The second theme, beginning in measure 64, and soon repeated, is light and winning, meant to supplement rather than to contrast strongly with ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... frozen skin, Old friends and dear came trooping in, And light and laughter filled the room.... Voices and faces, shapes beloved, Babbling lips and kindly eyes, Not ghosts, but friends that lived and moved ... They brought the sun from other skies, They wrought the magic that dispels The bitterer part of loneliness ... And when they vanished each man dreamed His dream there in the wilderness.... One heard the chime of Christmas bells, And, staring down a country lane, Saw bright against the window-pane The firelight beckon warm and red.... ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... able to tread in that magic circle only by an exquisite refinement of taste, and by a delicate sense of humour, which is the best preservative against all extravagance. Both qualities combine in that tender delineation of character which is, after ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... dwellings and shops, store-houses of food, imposing temples, and lordly mansions. The anvils rang merrily as the armorers forged weapons for the troops, merchants sought the new city with their goods, heavily laden boats flocked into its harbor, and almost as if by magic a great city, the destined capital of the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... for astronomers had long surmised the existence of a planet in the wide gap between Mars and Jupiter. Indeed, they were even preparing to make concerted search for it, despite the protests of philosophers, who argued that the planets could not possibly exceed the magic number seven, when Piazzi forestalled their efforts. But a surprise came with the sequel; for the very next year Dr. Olbers, the wonderful physician-astronomer of Bremen, while following up the course of Ceres, happened on another tiny ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... yet—the distinction struck her hard—that was perhaps only true if personal charm merely meant charm of person, for she herself had experienced something of the strange impressiveness which men—men of imagination—submitted to in Emily's presence. Where did it lie, this magic? It was indefinite, indefinable; perhaps a tone of the voice represented it, perhaps a smile—which meant, of course, that it was inseparable from her being, from her womanhood. Could one attribute to Emily, even after the briefest acquaintance, a thought, an ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... bad luck. My wife and the neighbour women play the lottery, by combining the numbers of their birthdays, and the ages of their fathers, their mothers, and their children. When some relative dies, they make a magic combination of the dates of birth and death, the day and the month, and buy a lottery ticket. They never win; and instead of realizing that their systems are of no avail, they say that they omitted to count in the number of letters in the name or something of that sort. It ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... were undertaken and executed in Napoleon's short and eventful reign! To obviate the difficulty of communication between Metz and Mayence a magnificent road was made, as if by magic, across impracticable marshes and vast forests. Mountains were cut through and ravines filled up. He would not allow nature more than man to resist him. One day when he was proceeding to Belgium by the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... day, did her spell weave round me its magic, and all the hidden things of her being grew more lovely and strange. Did I commune with a spirit? Often I thought that Paradise had overtaken me on earth, and that Yillah was verily an angel, and hence ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... shall lose the sight. Quite a number of people are come from inland. How wonderfully quickly these things spread! They came the first day, and then made up their minds that nothing could be done, and so they stopped at home. But now, here they are again, as if by magic! If the ship gets off, it will be known halfway to London before nightfall. But I see Captain Stubbard going up the hill to your charming battery. That shows implicit faith in Tugwell, to return the salute of the fair captive! It is indeed ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... When spreads abroad the lofty lay, The Human kindles to the Holy, And into Spirit soars the Clay! One with the Gods the Bard: before him All things unclean and earthly fly— Hush'd are all meaner powers, and o'er him The dark fate swoops unharming by; And while the Soother's magic measures flow, Smooth'd every wrinkle on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... were the friends whom fame Had linked with the unmeaning name, 65 Whose magic marked among mankind The casket of my unknown mind, Which hidden from the vulgar glare Imbibed no fleeting radiance there. My darksome spirit sought—it found 70 A friendless solitude around. For who that might undaunted stand, The saviour of a sinking land, Would crawl, its ruthless ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... glancing from Paul to Hazel. "You are better, Paul. Has Hazel been treating you again with some of her magic suggestion business? At any rate, I cannot deny its power." She flittered over to the bed and playfully buried Paul's face in the bouquet. "There! Aren't they splendid? And you would never guess who sent ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... power of expression. That is before you which never can be painted or chanted, because there is no cunning of art or speech able to reflect it. Nature realizes your most hopeless ideals of beauty, even as one gives toys to a child. And the sight of this supreme terrestrial expression of creative magic numbs thought. In the great centres of civilization we admire and study only the results of mind,—the products of human endeavor: here one views only the work of Nature,—but Nature in all her primeval ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the spot. Voice, accent, and manner had alike jarred on his nerves: she had appeared in every respect the opposite to the decorous, soft-voiced, highly-bred, if somewhat inane, damsel who represented his ideal of feminine charm. One week ago! What magic did she possess, this little red-haired, white-faced girl, to make such short work of the scruples of a lifetime? What was this mysterious feminine charm which blinded his senses to everything but just herself, and the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... jokes which make the blood run cold. Lastly, we are compelled to say that we repose much more confidence in the writer's taste in architecture than in painting. It is enough to say that he evinces no feeling for the more simple and majestic compositions of Raphael; while the powerful contrasts, and magic of light and shadow displayed by Guercino and Tintoret, seem to exercise an undue fascination on his mind. It is only to the injurious effect produced by these blemishes that we can attribute the slender success with which the volumes have been attended; for at this moment we do not recollect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... misery, moaning and bewailing continually. Through the intervention of Myuingwa (a vague conception known as the god of the interior) and of Baholikonga (a crested serpent of enormous size, the genius of water), the "old men" obtained a seed from which sprang a magic growth of cane. It penetrated through a crevice in the roof overhead and mankind climbed to a higher plane. A dim light appeared in this stage and vegetation was produced. Another magic growth of cane afforded the means of rising ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... happy sleeper passes into unconsciousness, passes through the flowered border of the ancient square, into the scene beyond, becomes one of those storied persons in the enchanted land and lives with them in jousts and tourneys or in fetes champetres at lovely chateaux. The magic spell of the house of tapestries has fallen like the dew from heaven to bless the striver in our modern ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... division of the subject is represented by the religious literature. With this literature as a guide, the views held by the Babylonians and Assyrians regarding magic and oracles, regarding the relationship to the gods, the creation of the world, and the views of life after death have been illustrated by copious translations, together with discussions of the specimens chosen. The translations, I may add, have been made direct from ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... usual tribute. Dr Schweinfurth has given a vivid picture of this man in the heyday of his power. Chained lions formed part of his escort, and it is recorded that he had 25,000 dollars' worth of silver cast into bullets in order to foil the magic of any enemy who was said to be proof against lead. Strong as this truculent leader was in men and money, the Khedive Ismail did not believe that he would dare to resist his power. He therefore decided to have recourse to force, and in ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... softened by distance, and to imbibe the finest aerial hues. In common also with other mountains, their apparent forms and colours are perpetually changed by the clouds and vapours which float round them: the effect indeed of mist or haze, in a country of this character, is like that of magic. I have seen six or seven ridges rising above each other, all created in a moment by the vapours upon the side of a mountain, which, in its ordinary appearance, shewed not a projecting point to furnish even a hint for such ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... into a quasi-Dictatorship, was suddenly lowered from his high position, and his late Troops march to this last Review with the quiet formality of a dress parade. What cared those stern, self-sacrificing men in ranks, from whose bayonets that brilliant sun glistened in diamond splendor, for the magic of a name—the majesty of a Staff, gorgeous, although not clothed in the uniform desired by its late Chief. The measure of payment for toil and sacrifice with them, was progress in the prosecution of their holy cause. The thunders of the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... from the battlements seen Parsifal approaching, who, thrust out from the Castle of the Grail, had, by the peculiar magic of the place, found the path to it obliterated. He had come forth with the exalted but undefined sense of a great task to perform. But, even as the road to the Castle of the Grail was difficult to find, the road to Klingsor's castle was easy ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... foot. 'Vive Labeur, Vive le Roy Louys!' I do not wonder this skilful craftsman 'of the empire and the rule' lamented on his death-bed in 1483, at Plessis-les-Tours, that he could not live to crown the edifice he had so well begun. We in England and America know him only in the magic mirror of the Wizard of the North. But France owes him a great debt. He was cruel, but in comparison with the cruelty of Lebon, of Barere, of Billaud-Varennes, his cruelty was tender mercy, He was a hypocrite, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... uneasy air, and their laughter was not quite genuine at its best, and died away altogether when they came near the schoolhouse, and they hardly recovered from the effects of the preaching till a mile or two had been spun behind the shining runners. It took all the magic of the jingle of the bells and the musical creak of the polished steel on the snow to win them ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... content; the quiet, the magic veil of oblivion, of the woods, of the immobile mountains, enveloped and soothed him, released his heart from its oppression, banished the fever, the struggle, from his brain. The barrier against which he still fished was mauve, the water black; the moon appeared ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ensued. Cards, chips, and money were swept as by magic from the board. A dozen dog-eared and filthy magazines and newspapers were snatched from a hiding place beneath the table, and in the fraction of a second the room was transformed from a gambling place ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the forfeiture of his folly, acknowledged, before he died, that his reasons for believing in a mine were extracted from the lips of a sibyl, who, by looking in a magic glass, was enabled to discover the hidden treasures of the earth. Such superstition was frequent in the new settlements; and, after the first surprise was over, the better part of the community forgot the subject. But, at the same time that it removed from ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... There was nothing of melancholy in it, nor in the expression of the New Englander as he sprang, cutlass in hand, through the gap. Slow to take fire, when Toley's anger was kindled it blazed with a devouring flame. The crowd of assailants dissolved as if by magic. Before the last of the crew of the Hormuzzeer, lascars and Europeans, had passed into the inclosure, the men of the Good Intent and their Bengali allies were streaming over and under the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... consternation into which the court was thrown. The most sinister rumors circulated darkly; a base intrigue caused the Duke of Orleans to be accused; people called to mind his taste for chemistry and even magic, his flagrant impiety, his scandalous debauchery; beside himself with grief and anger, he demanded of the king to be sent to the Bastille; the king refused curtly, coldly, not unmoved in his secret heart by the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... boy chums watched the flames spread as if by magic till in a few minutes a towering wall of fire was ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... should be invented, or some magic made, whereby the brown rot would be banished from our orchards then a great many of the fine varieties of hybrid plums would be transferred from the "plums that are on the way" to the list of "plums that we already have." The brown ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... with weary surprise, prepared to put him back in his proper place. But she must have seen again something of the magic crown about the boy's head, for she had patience with him. He meant nothing. He had to talk as he did. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... confess that the Italian sky, in the daytime, is bluer and brighter than our own, and that the atmosphere has a quality of showing objects to better advantage. It is more than mere daylight; the magic of moonlight is somehow mixed up with it, although it is so transparent a ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... So, all these magic memories which link eight generations of Americans are summed up in the inscription just above me. How many times have we seen it? "In ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... more a blessing than a curse to Judea! The soldiers of Charles II. were justified in shooting the Covenanters on the muirs of Scotland, if they thought his rule was better, on the whole, for England, than anarchy! According to this theory, the moment the magic wand of Government touches our vices, they start up into virtues! But has Government any peculiar character or privilege in this respect? Oh, no—Government is only an association of individuals, and the same ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... being avoided. For the same reason, by this process positive impressions can be obtained not only upon wet paper, &c., but also upon hard inflexible substances, such as porcelain, ivory, glass, &c.,—and upon this last, the positives being transparent are applicable to the stereoscope, magic ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... constraint between Lord Earle and his daughters wore away; Ronald even wondered himself at the force of his own love for them. He had made many improvements since his return. He did wonders upon the estate; model cottages seemed to rise by magic in place of the wretched tenements inhabited by poor tenants; schools, almshouses, churches, all testified to his zeal for improvement. People began to speak with warm admiration of the Earlescourt estate ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... middle of which are four high black pillars; within which there are neat fire-places for preparing tea, coffee and punch; and all around, also, there are placed tables, set out with all kinds of refreshments. Within these four pillars, in a kind of magic rotundo, all the beau-monde of London move perpetually ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... power, whose sole function is to form such conceptions as the intellect imperatively demands. Imagination, thus exercised, never really severs itself from the world of fact. This is the storehouse from which its materials are derived; and the magic of its art consists, not in creating things anew, but in so changing the magnitude, position, grouping, and other relations of sensible things, as to render them fit for the requirements of the intellect in the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... truth telling, industrious, courageous Americans—plain and unlettered, many of them, but full of the sterling virtues. Yes, he would have written poems out of these people; and he would have done something more—he would have given us symbols, songs of eternal truth, of unutterable magic and profound meaning like "La Belle Dame sans Merci." I am sure he would have done something of this kind—though it is idle to say he would have written anything as immortal as that. You must only indulge me in my partiality for Mitch, and my belief in his genius, ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... possessing so great a treasure as this magic ring, the Prince went on his way rejoicing, but by and by, as he trudged along the road, he began to feel hungry, and thought he would put his ring to the test. So, making a holy place, he put the ring in the ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... France, few save Mr. Michelet could have produced. Founded on truth and close inquiry, it still reads more like a poem than a sober history. As a beautiful speculation, which has nearly, but not quite, grasped the physical causes underlying the whole history of magic and illusion in all ages, it may be read with profit as well as pleasure in this age of vulgar spirit-rapping. But the true history of Witchcraft has yet to be written ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... by the buffalo, every bush and low tree had been stripped bare. Multitudes of rocks blackened by the sunlight were to be seen on every side. No scouts were sent in advance and none acted on the flanks. The contagious example of Major McGary acted like magic, and men and horses went forward as if every one was doing his utmost to outstrip ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... His touch was so exquisite, his interpretation so masterly, that presently the second violinist laid down his instrument and listened breathlessly, while Wolfgang played on and on, forgetful of everything but the magic spell of the music, and as his father listened, his heart throbbed with pride and joy, and tears rolled down his face, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... surpass all the mermen of legend in the depths they go in their coral-studded lagoons in search of the jewels that hide in gold-lipped shells? Was it for me to wander among those fabulous coral isles flung for a thousand miles upon the sapphire sea, like wreaths of lilies upon a magic lake? ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... heart is to be expressed; pictured to yourself the very looks by which those words will have their sweetest reply. The scene you have thus imagined appears to you vivid and distinct, as if foreshown in a magic glass. And suddenly, after long absence, the meeting takes place in the midst of a common companionship: nothing that you wished to say can be said. The scene you pictured is painted out by the irony of Chance; and groups and backgrounds of which you ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at bay From the roseate splendour of the cheek so tender, And the silver threads from the gold away. And the tell-tale years that have hurried by us Shall tip-toe back, and, with kind good-will, They shall take the traces from off our faces, If we will trust to thy magic skill. ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... no bridges across the little river, nor were there boats enough to carry the army across. But under the direction of skillful engineers, the best in the world, pontoon bridges sprang up as if by magic. Before the Germans were fully aware of what was going on, several thousand men had been ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... consulting party, and sauntered idly towards them, but they were about as sharp as himself, in practice if not in name. The lisps and drawls returned as if by magic, and the turf became the subject of interest ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... this book, especially the account of the pilgrimages to Stratford-on-Avon, and the Leasowes, and Olney, and other places memorable for their literary associations, are as fine pieces of descriptive writing as the English language possesses. This magic of style characterized all his works, whether those of a more popular kind, or his scientific treatises, such as the "Old Red Sandstone," and "Footprints of the Creator," a volume suggested by the "Vestiges of Creation," and subversive ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
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