"Fairy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still Theresa's years fell short of twenty, and she was generally recognised as the prettiest girl to be seen at Mass in the small, ugly chapel down beyant near Ballybrosna. Some people, it is true, said that she was "just a fairy of a crathur, and too little for anythin'," and she was, no doubt, diminutive in size. Nor had she any brilliancy of colouring to make amends in a humming-bird's fashion for the insignificance of her proportions, resembling rather, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... resembling an Oriental tale, when I describe the lavish luxury of that period, the disputes for precedence, the claims of rank, the demands of every one." Yes, in all that there was something dreamlike, and the actors in that fairy spectacle which is called the Empire, that great show piece, with its scenery, now brilliant, now terrible, but ever changing, must have been even more astonished than the spectators. Aix-la-Chapelle and the court of Charlemagne, the castle of Fontainebleau ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Monterey is certainly a sweet place; 'tis even now a fairy spot in my recollection, although sobered down, and, I trust, a little wiser than I was at that time. There certainly is an air of happiness spread over this small town. Every one is at their ease, every body sings and smiles, and every hour is ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Heaven, we can enter it almost anywhere—sometimes if we merely close our eyes! And we can be our real selves in this dream-world of ours too, there is nobody to say us nay; there are no laws and no false morals; we are fairy kings and queens in a fairy kingdom. I always pity the man or woman who is no monarch in this very real kingdom of shadows which lies all around us, and which we can enter to reign therein whenever the human "jar" is safely out of the way. There we can be our true selves ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... hours or more Leo and I sat with shaken nerves and frightened eyes, and talked over the miraculous events through which we were passing. It seemed like a dream or a fairy tale, instead of the solemn, sober fact. Who would have believed that the writing on the potsherd was not only true, but that we should live to verify its truth, and that we two seekers should find her who was sought, patiently awaiting our coming in the tombs of ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... haunts the spring beneath a fairy's guise, With unbound golden hair and azure eyes; A wreath of violets in each dainty hand, And round her sunny brow an emerald band; While all day long she strays o'er hill and glen, Through leafy bowers, ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... and Lord Holland. He made two other speeches during the same session, but thenceforth pride or laziness kept him silent. Childe Harold (4to) was published on Tuesday, the 10th of March 1812. "The effect," says Moore, "was ... electric, his fame ... seemed to spring, like the palace of a fairy king, in a night." A fifth edition (8vo) was issued on the 5th of December 1812. Just turned twenty-four he "found himself famous," a great poet, a rising statesman. Society, which in spite of his rank had neglected him, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... greetings, the transports and bliss, Which, of course, duly followed a meeting like this, And come down to business;—for such the intent Of the lady who now o'er the crucible leant, In the glow of a furnace of carbon and lime, Like a fairy called up in the new pantomime;— And give but her words as she coyly looked down, In reply to the questioning glances of Brown: "I am taking the drops, and am using the paste, And the little, white powders that had a sweet taste, Which you told me would brighten the glance of my eye, And ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... 394) the only persons whose friendship Byron never disclaimed. He spoke of Moore ('ibid'., pp. 322, 323) as "a delightful companion, gay without being boisterous, witty without effort, comic without coarseness, and sentimental without being lachrymose. He reminds one of the fairy who, whenever she spoke, let diamonds fall from her lips. My 'tete-a-tete' suppers with Moore are among the most agreeable impressions I retain of the hours passed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... hinted t' me ef we all knowed how de fire done start. I says as how we did, dat we done start it ourse'ves fo' practice, an dat we done expected it all along, an' were ready fo' it. Course I knows dat were a sort of fairy story, Massa Tom, but den dat cigarette-smokin' Frenchman didn't hab no right t' asted me so many questions, ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... azure noons; And, hushed in darkened leaves, the dreaming air Swelled gently to a whispering sound, and died. With joy I wandered on from knoll to knoll And lost in marvel, drank the lisping winds, The fairy winds that lisped me all was good. Nor marked I when the clogged horizon flew In dusky vapour crowding up the skies; But woke anon when deathlike pallor thrown From wrathful drift laid the whole land in gloom; When war, enormous war, broke through the heavens, In sheets and streaking fire and ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... Ricciardetto too, and send for them with all speed, and at any price." Malagigi called up, by his art, a wise, terrible, and cruel spirit, named Ashtaroth;—no light personage to deal with—no little spirit, such as plays tricks with you like a fairy. A much blacker ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Nowhere in the world can one see such a thing as those great gate-piers, with a cognisance a-top, with a grille of iron-work between them, all sweetly entwined with some slim vagrant creeper, that give a glimpse and a hint—no more—of a fairy-land of shelter and fountains within. I have seen such palaces stand in quiet and stately parks, as old, as majestic, as finely proportioned as the buildings of Oxford; but the very blackness of the city air, and the drifting smoke of the town, gives ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... story; and naught is more true than that the land the most down-trodden is also the best beloved. Wrongs beget a passion of affection; and from oppression springs sacrifice. This daughter of the windswept shore, of the misty hills and fairy glens, whose life from infancy had been bare and rugged and solitary, had become, for that reason, a dreamer of dreams and a worshipper of the ideal Ireland, her country, her faith. The salt breeze that lashed her cheeks and tore at her hair, the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... not destroyed. The story is told, and admirably—as Sir Joshua says, "at one blow." We speak of his "Sleeping Beauty." We see at once that the prince and princess are the principal, and they are united by that light and fainter fairy chain intimating, yet not too prominently, the magic under whose working and whose light the whole scene is; nothing can be better conceived than the prince—there is a largeness in the manner, a breadth in the execution of the figure that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... directed me up a side road near by. Three miles of steady travel would bring Monsieur to the chateau where lived the old caretaker and his wife. Aye, he remembered the old gentleman, who was now dead, and the little, fairy-like creature, his ward, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... grew still more beautiful. Orchards were thick about us, though the trees were leafless now. The little thatched cottages had odd fungi sprouting from their roofs like rosy mushrooms; the trees and streams had a silvery shimmer, like a Corot fairy-land. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... were dancing to the moon in Arabia; it was thus the Nixies shook their white limbs on the haunted banks of the Rhine; it was thus the fairy women flashed their alabaster feet on the fairy hills of Connemara; it was thus the Houris were dancing for Mahomet on the palace floors ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... stories of wonderful adventure. Swift had all of De Foe's realism, his power of giving veri-similitude to his narrative by the invention of a vast number of small, exact, consistent details. But underneath its fairy tales, Gulliver's Travels is a satire, far more radical than any of Dryden's or Pope's, because directed, not against particular parties or persons, but against human nature. In his account of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, Swift tries to show—looking ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... almost dear because of the pleasure and inspiration that they occasioned, and at their sale his feeling was akin to regret. Early in the morning, when refreshed and brightened by the night's rest, he would walk through the store as through fairy-land, and, forgetting that he was a humble servitor, would feel as if all were his. But in fact was not his possession truer than that of many whose palace walls glow with every rich gem of art, and yet whose eyes are blind and their hearts ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... powerful policy is an absolute necessity for the German people. This nation possesses an excess of vigour, enterprise, idealism, and spiritual energy, which qualifies it for the highest place; but a malignant fairy laid on its cradle the most petty theoretical dogmatism. In addition to this, an unhappy historical development which shattered the national and religious unity of the nation created in the system of small States and in confessionalism a fertile ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... but what can I do?" Fenneben asked. "Shall I kill the dog and carry off the woman like the regulation grim ogre of the fairy tales?" ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... fairy godfather. He was never happy unless he was buying something. Will Brangwen, with his interest in all wood-work, was getting the furniture. He was left to buy tables and round-staved chairs and the dressers, quite ordinary stuff, but such as ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... ferryman will row you across the bay to Runswick, but a scramble over the rocks on the beach will be repaid by a closer view of the now half-filled-up Hob Hole. The fisherfolk believed this cave to be the home of a kindly-disposed fairy or hob, who seems to have been one of the slow-dying inhabitants of the world of mythology implicitly believed in by the Saxons. And these beliefs died so hard in these lonely Yorkshire villages that until recent times a mother would ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... him that?" said the boy that had a readier tongue than the others. "Curse me if I do! There's no beast in this forest—stag, boar, wolf or lion—with a limb worth more than two or three pence. You speak of some enchantment, and you are a fairy woman. We do not want your ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... take me with you, a bear in chains, to Baron Gondremark. I am become perfectly unscrupulous: to save my wife I will do all, all he can ask or fancy. He shall be filled; were he huge as leviathan and greedy as the grave, I will content him. And you, the fairy of our ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... was like the wave of an enchanter's wand in the realms of Fairy- land; for, where all had been previously quiet and easy-going, with only the helmsman apparently doing anything on board so far as the vessel's progress was concerned, there was now a scene of bustle, noise, and motion,—men darting ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... as stiff as a board, and rustled like the wind. Her head, neck, and bosom were enveloped in clouds of the airiest-looking lace I ever saw, disposed about each part of her with the most exquisite grace and propriety, and glistening at all sorts of unexpected places with little fairy-like toys in gold and precious stones. On her right wrist she wore three small bracelets, with the hair of her three pupils worked into them; and on her left, one large bracelet with a miniature let in over ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... hope without a moment's thought, and if when he is in the crater he does not dig on as a miner does when the earth has fallen in on him; if he contemplates the difficulties before him instead of conquering them one by one, like the lovers in fairy tales, who to win their princesses overcome ever new enchantments, the work remains incomplete; it perishes in the studio where creativeness becomes impossible, and the artist looks on at the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall, gleaming in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Wordsworth was not prone enough to believe in the traditional superstitions of the place, and that there was a something corporeal, a matter-of-fact-ness, a clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... ever such a maid, With the feathers swaling o'er her, And her spangled rich brocade? In her fairy hand a horsewhip, On her foot a buskin small, So she stepped, the stately damsel, Through the ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... as near as I can remember, when a timid knock on the front door startled both of us. I answered the call, expecting to find that fairy Miss Tescheron ready to pop in and oust me like a Republican hold-over on a Tammany Happy New Year's. I peeped out as charily as a jailer. The dim light revealed a tiny messenger boy—something awful had probably happened up home! A messenger boy was ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... say here that Florine was one of the next ship-load of girls who were sent to the colonies. There she found a very worthy young planter who took her to wife, and after the manner of the mistreated girl in the fairy tales you children used to read, "lived happily ever afterward." She became, from all accounts, a good wife and devoted mother; her children yet live in ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver—two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another—for likeness is identity on tea-cups—is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead—a ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... and loved in England as he was on the Continent. Appreciation, fame, and joy, declared the complacent poet, followed his footsteps wherever he went, and his whole life was full of sunshine, like a beautiful fairy-tale. Mary translated his Only a Fiddler; O. T., or Life in Denmark; The True Story of My Life; and several of the Wonderful Stories for Children. The Improvisatore was the only one that went into a second edition, the other works ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... to be 'elpful, to know wot 'is pals is worth (Them golden poppies is blazin' like lamps some fairy 'as lit); I'm fond o' them big white dysies. . . . Now Jim's o' the salt o' the earth; But 'e 'as got a tongue wot's a terror, and 'e ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... round that little fairy nook, wondering at its elegance, wondering at the soft, rosy light, at the fragrance of the white daphnes, but more than all at the queenly loveliness of the beautiful woman ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... awe the good and wise have felt, As reverently their feet have trod On any spot where man hath knelt, To commune with his God; By haunted spring, or fairy well, Beneath the ruined convent's gloom, Beside the feeble hermit's cell, Or the false ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... a fairy, nor a spirit, nor yet a vision," murmurs Molly, now openly amused. "Have no fear. See," holding out to him a slim cool hand; "touch me, and be convinced, I am ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... I've been wanting one all year. You see," she explained to Mary, when she had finished thanking Doctor Bradford, "you hang it up in a window and keep it wet, and it turns into a perfect little hanging garden, so fine and green and feathery it's fit for fairy-land. It will grow as long as you remember to water it. Gay Melville had one last year in her window at school, and I envied her every time ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is the Venice of my youth and age, Its spell a void, its charm a vacancy. Rosy Romance, thou owest many a page, Ay, many that erst grew beneath mine eye, To what was once the loved reality Of this true fairy-land; but I refuse To deck with Art's fantastic wizardry A haunt of Trade. Mine is not Mammon's Muse, She will not sing for hire of Soaps, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... agreed to by the King, how broken, and the wealth she had assured to him. This much curbed their intercourse, as far as Fouquet was concerned, for he, believing the brain of Lauzun completely turned, took for fairy tales all the stories the Gascon told him of what had happened in the world, from the imprisonment of the one to the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... impatient to hear how this change was effected? What little fairy had sprung out of the spring, or come down from the cliffs, to befriend the good field-cornet in his hour of misery? You are impatient to hear! Then you ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... enclosure which seemed consecrated to the highest comers; it was not necessary that they should make the others feel they were not wanted there; the others felt it of themselves, and did not attempt to enter that especial fairy ring, or fairy triangle. Those within looked as much at home as if in their own drawing-rooms, and after the usual greetings of friends sat down in their penny chairs for the talk which the present kodak would not ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... such tales to tell her—of mountain, stream, and lake; of love and revenge; of beings less and more than natural —brownie and Boneless, kelpie and fairy; such wild legends also, haunting the dim emergent peaks of mist swathed Celtic history; such songs—come down, he said, from Ossian himself—that sometimes she would sit and listen to him ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... opened, and some one came in to look at the fire. Justine, through the mazes of her fairy-tale, was dimly conscious that it was Knowles, and not one of the footmen...the proud Knowles, who never mended the fires himself.... As he passed out again, hovering slowly down the long room, she rose, leaving Cicely on the hearth-rug, and ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... well-known one of the abduction of a young mother to be the Queen of Elfland's nurse. Fairies, elves, water-sprites, and nisses or brownies, have constantly required mortal assistance in the nursing of fairy children. Gervase of Tilbury himself saw a woman stolen away for this purpose, as she was ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... counterpart of the hill-side grove, where as a child she had read her fairy tales, and now as a woman turned the first pages of a more wondrous legend still. Lifted above the many-gabled roof, yet not cut off from the echo of human speech, the little grove seemed a green sanctuary, fringed about with violets, and full of summer melody and bloom. Gentle ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... one feels a loathing of the strong meats of literature, and a liking for its milk diet. As to metaphysics, one has had enough and to spare of them when one was delirious; while the 'Fairy Tales of Science' do not strike one just then as being quite so fairylike as the poet represents them. As to science, indeed, there is but one thing clear to us, namely, that the theory of evolution is a mistake; for though one's ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... fairy tale, the sleeping princess of the slumber-bound palace awoke to light and life; when of a sudden the horses began to neigh, and the clocks to tick, and the spits to turn, the brightness and suddenness of the ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... interrupt," said the Dean. "You confuse me, my dear. You want to find this girl and re-establish communication between her and Marmaduke, and—er—generally play Fairy Godmother." ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... feeling for the irony of fate was lost when the motive, that Hagen kills Siegfried because of his treasure, was replaced by the one that he does it at the request of Brunhild. This leads Boer to the conclusion, that Brunhild did not originally belong to the Siegfried story, but to the well-known fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty ("Erlosungsmurchen"), which occurs in a variety of forms. The type is that of a hero who rescues a maiden from a magic charm, which may take the form of a deep sleep, as in the case of Sleeping Beauty, or of being sewed into a garment, as in No. 111 ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... love to hear again and again these charming and thrilling tales that have been handed down through the ages from generation to generation—the best liked and the most famous of the world's myths, legends and fairy lore about animals, birds, witches, fairies, giants, dwarfs and beloved heroes and heroines from many different countries. These are the stories that children read and re-read with wonder and delight. In these volumes they are told ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope
... whose charms had conquered the wisest statesmen and the bravest warriors, who had governed monarchs and ministers, and raised or ruined kingdoms and empires. And often in poetic fancy she had tried to figure to herself one of these fairy forms and faces. But never, in her most romantic moods, had she imagined a creature so perfectly beautiful as this one ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... you've tasted a porterhouse steak grilled by a master hand you'll never mention any other variety again. Come right along, Mr. Handyside. Tell us fairy tales about God's own country. We're in the right mood ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... then, as he dreamed, that the glacier meadows encircled by green walls of forest primeval should seem like fairy rings, visible to mortal eyes only as a special privilege. In the sunlight-gold, the sheets of azaleas, cyclamen, and violets, were embroidered tapestries of pink and purple; the bright rivulets of melting snow that bathed the wild flowers' roots ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... started in life as the cadet of a noble family. The earl, his father, like the woodman in the fairy tale, was blessed with three sons: the first was an idiot, and was destined for the Coronet; the second was a man of business, and was educated for the Commons; the third was a Roue, and was shipped to ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... he said. "I will hang it up in my cottage; surely it is some fairy thing, and will bring me good luck and a fulfilment of my dreams." He was about to walk away with the mantle in his arms, when he heard a ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... nearest haven of his country. So long as sight could read the movements of the man who remained on the decks of the "Dolphin" not a look was averted from the still motionless object. She lay, with her maintop-sail to the mast, stationary as some beautiful fabric placed there by fairy power, still lovely in her proportions, and perfect in all her parts. A human form was seen swiftly pacing her poop, and, by its side, glided one who looked like a lessened shadow of that restless figure. At length ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... them about whether that sub-title meant another sixpence. Yes, she knew the value of money; she had always in the end got the things she wanted, but now she could get them more easily, and it turned her simple life into a fairy tale. So often in those days she went down suddenly upon her knees; we would come upon her thus, and go away noiselessly. After her death I found that she had preserved in a little box, with a photograph of me as a child, the ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... and Tom learned to know experimentally that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and that if the writers of fairy-tales had travelled more they would have saved their imaginations a deal of trouble, and produced ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the camp-followers, all in motion at the approach of a battle. The small garrisons were drawn from the various towns and fortresses, and went to swell the main army. We met baggage waggons, and many females of high and low rank returning to Fairy or Kishan, there to wait the issue of the expected day. When we arrived at Rodosto, we found that the field had been taken, and the scheme of the battle arranged. The sound of firing, early on the following morning, informed us that advanced posts of the armies were ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... believed to be the wife of the robin. In other parts, however, the wren is (or at least was) cruelly hunted on certain days. In the Isle of Man the wren-hunt took place on Christmas Eve and St Stephen's Day, and is accounted for by a legend concerning an evil fairy who lured many men to destruction, but had to assume the form of a wren to escape punishment at the hands ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... frequently does in England is very delightful. To read Dickens' descriptions of journeys up to London is to long to don a greatcoat, wind a muffler about one's neck, and amid the cracking of whips and tooting of horns dash off behind the horses for the fairy city his pen portrays. Who would not have liked, for example, to set out with Mr. Pickwick for the Christmas holidays at Dingley Dell? Why, you cannot even read about it without seeing in your mind's eye the envious throng that ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... In coves of creek the saw-mills sing, And trim the spar and hew the mast; And the gaunt loons dart on the wing, To see the steamer looming past. Now timber shores and massive piles Repel our hull with friendly stroke, And guide us up the long defiles, Till after many fairy miles We reach ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Harmony stewed a chicken for supper, and creamed the breast for Jimmy. She fixed the table, flowers in the center, the best cloth, Peter's favorite cheese. Six o'clock, six-thirty, seven; Marie was telling Jimmy a fairy tale and making the fairies out of rosebuds. The studylamp was lighted, the stove glowing, Peter's slippers were out, his old smoking-coat, ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on the door warned her she had but ten minutes in which to dress; no time to grasp the substance of a dream come true, no time even to prepare a confident attitude with which to salute the fairy godparents of her social debut—time only to struggle into her outer garments and muster a half-timid, deprecatory smile for those whom she was to find awaiting her in the corridor, impatient to be off, none too amiably conscious of foregone beauty sleep, accepting ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... as the forenoon had been, save that the bastings were all out of the new garments, and while Mrs. Seaford still plied her needle, Sprite picked up the book of fairy tales, ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... of the great liners," and as they walked along the Boulevards he told her of the floating palaces, in one of which they were to cross the ocean, and forgetting for a time the questions that absorbed her, she listened with the interest of a child hearing a fairy-tale. When they neared Montmartre they separated, for Minette would never walk with him in her ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... difficult to realize that she is the mother of the six children who are grouped in the background. One lovely little fairy, 'Vera', ages three and a half, runs clinging up to her skirts, and peeps out shyly. Her delicate colouring suggests a bit of dainty Dresden china. Later on, you discover that this is actually the pet name by which she ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... I said to Augustus Hare, who happened to be one of the party, "One would think that we all of us were going to Gretna Green." When we approached the castle, whose towers were blots in the November evening, I felt we were approaching a castle in a child's fairy tale. In point of magnitude, combined with ancient and absolutely continuous occupation, there is, so far as my own experience goes, no private dwelling in the kingdom which excels, or even equals, Raby. The duchess kept a great album in which each of her guests was asked to inscribe some record ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... into philosophy shows how, lamentably philosophy has got itself imprisoned in dull, mechanical, mathematical formulae; in formulae so arid and so divorced from life, that the conception of personality, applied to man or to the gods, seems to us as exciting as an incredible fairy story when brought into relation ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... away to mend walls. If you look at the ordnance map of Penzance you will find large numbers of these circles, but if you visit the spots where they are supposed to be, you will find that many have vanished. The "Merry Maidens," not far from the "Pipers," still remain—nineteen great stones, which fairy-lore perhaps supposes to have been once fair maidens who danced to the tune the pipers played ere a Celtic Medusa gazed at them and turned them into stone. Every one knows the story of the Rollright stones, a similar stone circle in ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... was holding in in a prolonged "whew!" If ever I get the luck to find another Astounding Stories I'll burn up the pages looking for the name Victor Rousseau. Next in order I liked "Brigands of the Moon" and "The Jovian Jest." Thought the story "Into the Ocean's Depths" an awful fairy tale, but otherwise good reading. The painter of the cover design is a real artist and I wish to express my appreciation of his wonderful rendering of a difficult subject.—Fitz-Gerald Grattan, 11 Frankfield Terrace, Summerhill South, ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... a fairy dream to London-reared Inna; the lads showed her a squirrel or two, a dormouse not yet gone to its winter snooze, in its mossy bed-chamber. A snake wriggled past them, which made her shudder; frogs and toads leaped here and there in dark places. ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... upper hall where the sleepy hounds leaned against our chairs looking at us with suppliant eyes, in the evenings when the fire was dying away in the hooded fireplace in the library, stories. Stories, and legends, and fairy tales, while the stiff old portraits changed countenance constantly under the flickering firelight, and the sound of the drifting Inn came softly across the meadows ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... the wood. There a little area had been leveled beneath the trees, surrounded by a painted rail, with a row of benches inside. The music was placed in a slight balcony, built around the trunk of a large tree in the center; and the lamps, hanging from the branches above, gave a gay, fantastic, and fairy look to the scene. How often in such moments did I recall the lines of Goldsmith, describing those "kinder skies" beneath which "France displays her bright domain," and feel how true and masterly ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... all my world survey! Yon vale, bedecked by nature's fairy fingers, Where the still by-road picturesquely lingers, The cottage white whose quaint charms grace the way— These are the scenes that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... four words, we find an allusion to the whole mystery of the drainage of clays—a key which unlocks the secret by which the toughest of these soils may be converted, as by a fairy charm, to fields of ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... a fairy, for when surrounded by his followers, and wishing to confer favors on them, he had a habit of coughing slightly, when there would fly forth from his mouth quantities of silver brooches, ear-bobs, and other ornaments, for which it ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... by the outbuildings from the north and east winds, lay the orchard, neglected and unpruned, but very beautiful with its moss-grown apple trees, its straggling plums, and budding walnuts, and cherries just bursting into an ethereal fairy network of delicate palest pink bloom. Primroses grew here amongst the grass, and clumps of dog violets and little tufts of bluebells were pushing their way up to take the place of the fading daffodils, while a blackthorn bush was a mass of pure white stars. At the far end, instead ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... on gentle inclines in the deeper waters and present a picturesque scene. They look more like a cluster of giant fairy abodes than like New York or London. Nothing in all the world of Stazza resembles a product of our manufacture more than the fine screening that protects every human dwelling from an invasion of small water animals. It reminded me of the mosquito netting as a safe-guard against flies and ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... mounts upward, now he knows The solid gain that from conviction flows; And strengthen'd confidence shall hence fulfil (With conscious innocence, more valued still) The dreariest task that winter nights can bring, By church-yard dark, or grove, or fairy ring; Still buoying up the timid mind of youth, Till loit'ring reason hoists the scale of truth. With those blest guardians, Giles his course pursues, Till numbering his heavy-sided ewes, Surrounding stilness tranquillize ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... here the dirge of the soggy towel; Mrs. Plush placed fluffy stacks of them outside each door each morning. Nor groggy coffee; Mrs. Plush was famous for hers. Drip coffee, boiled up to an angry sea and half an eggshell dropped in like a fairy barque, to ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... have something to read you, something quite fresh. A piece of paper was found on the table this morning—(dropt, we suppose, by a fairy)—containing a very pretty charade, and we ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the battle of Marengo, he had met a goatherd, and entered into conversation with him. The goatherd, not knowing to whom he was speaking, lamented his own hard lot, and envied the riches of some persons who actually had cows and cornfields. Bonaparte inquired if some fairy were to offer to gratify all his wishes what he would ask? The poor peasant expressed, in his own opinion, some very extravagant desires, such as a dozen of cows and a good farmhouse. Bonaparte afterwards recollected the incident, and astonished ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... rose of the garden is given to me, And, to double its value, 'twas given by thee; Its lovely bright tints to my eyesight is borne, Like the kiss of a fairy or blush of morn. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... I also visited some not uninteresting theatres in London, strictly avoiding opera-houses, of course. I was most attracted by the little Adelphi Theatre in the Strand, and I frequently made Prager and Luders go with me. They acted some dramatised fairy-tales there under the title of Christmas. One of the performances interested me particularly because it consisted of a subtly connected conglomeration of the most familiar tales, played straight through, with no break at the end of the acts. It began with 'The Goose that laid ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... anchor in the rifted rock; And higher yet the pine-tree hung, His shattered trunk, and frequent flung Where seemed the cliff to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrow sky, So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... green, red and purplish light, as the iridescence of the purest gem. Was it the airplane of a fairy passing by that gave forth all those gorgeous hues, or had an angel in passing from heaven to earth dropped a jewel from his crown? I saw no wings in motion, but I have grown to know and love the sound I heard; 'tis Sir Knight returning from ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... me allude to one of them whom I knew and dearly loved. Who is there that has not heard of the Ettrick Shepherd—of him whose inspiration descended as lightly as the breeze that blows along the mountain side—who saw, amongst the lonely and sequestered glens of the south, from eyelids touched with fairy ointment, such visions as are vouchsafed to the minstrel alone—the dream of sweet Kilmeny, too spiritual for the taint of earth? I shall not attempt any comparison—for I am not here to criticise—between his genius and that of other men, on whom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... won praise from the greatest musicians, and show merit of a high order. Among her dramatic works, the most successful in point of performance are "Rinaldo and Alcina," a fairy opera (appreciated in its day much as "Hansel and Gretel" is in our own), the melodrama "Ariadne and Bacchus," and the pastoral operetta "Der Schulcandidat." Her other works include a piano trio, a number of sonatas and variations for piano, several songs and other vocal works, besides ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... bank of the river were the dwellings of the Utman Khels, and in an area seven miles by three, I counted forty-six separate castles, complete with moats, towers and turrets. The impression produced was extraordinary. It suggested Grimm's fairy tales. It almost seemed as if we had left the natural earth and strayed into some strange domain of fancy, the ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... last! thou'rt not dead yet, my dear! Look up, thou fairy, or thou mortal child— I scarce know which—assure thyself of life. Look up! look up! It cannot be I see Before me, in this region ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. Valentine's Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of a girl, with her groom, went off like mad across country on her pony, "Guinea Pig," to fetch the mails ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... mind which seem unreal only because they lie beyond the horizon of the every-day world and become visible only when the mirage of fantasy lifts them up and hangs them in an ideal atmosphere. As in the old fairy-tales, the task which the age imposes on its poet is to weave its straw into a golden tissue; and when every device has failed, in comes the witch Imagination, and with a touch the miracle is achieved, simple as miracles always ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... a boat, I waded through clear blue water to a wharfboat, which I found to be snow white, but rough and splintry. The next evening I had a delightful male caller, but he remained beyond the time prescribed by mothers and I was severely censured for it.'' The blue water and fairy white boat were the disappointing prospects ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... world where caution does not play a great part. In war, in business, in sports, the man who looms the biggest after the game is done and people have the time to study things, is the man who had never once failed to exercise a proper amount of caution. In a fairy story this warning is given: "Be bold; be bold ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... from Africa, which had already served for tableaux of Androcles and of Una—-how the boy element had insisted on fun, and the child element on fairies, and how Mrs. William Harewood had suggested Midsummer Night's Dream as the only combination of the three essentials, lion, fun, and fairy, and pronounced that education had progressed far enough for the representation to be 'understanded of the people,' at least by the 6th and 7th standards. On the whole, however, comprehension seemed to have been bounded by intense admiration of the little girl fairies, whom the old women appeared ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Melga, the seventh son of the fairy Queen Flutterlight, who rules all the fairies in the ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... he could have guessed that he would have come to be regarded, even by some who ought to know better, as a sort of giant Cormoran or Eat-'em-alive-oh! a being out of a fairy tale, whom nobody is expected to take seriously; nay, as a symbol, as often as not, for ridiculous and inflated pretension. No one in his own day doubted his existence; no one thought of laughing at his name. Had they done ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... drunken man takes much longer over the sex-act, thereby prolonging the risk of disease, and he runs risks which he would rule out instantly if the fumes of alcohol had not changed the tawdry girl into the glittering fairy. Worse than all, he neglects to apply disinfection properly and promptly—he falls asleep or forgets all about it till too late. Men who are determined to have a "night out" should use calomel ointment (or some other substitute) before they start; and if they have been ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... not interesting because they are known; in a word, by leaving her at liberty to luxuriate in such feelings and images as will feed her mind in silent pleasure. This nourishment is contained in fairy tales, romances, the best biographies and histories, and such parts of natural history relating to the powers and appearances of the earth and elements, and the habits and structure of animals, as belong to it, not as an art or science, but as a magazine of form and feeling. This kind ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... even the crude sentimentalization of here and now that one finds in the popular novels of today. Fenimore Cooper filled his romances, not with the people about him, but with the Indians beyond the sky-line, and made them half-fabulous to boot. Irving told fairy tales about the forgotten Knickerbockers; Hawthorne turned backward to the Puritans of Plymouth Rock; Longfellow to the Acadians and the prehistoric Indians; Emerson took flight from earth altogether; even Poe sought refuge in a ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... surprise to see her dressed in a lovely fairy costume, her lovely curls flying out behind, as she ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... the morning. Opposite the children are their parents, and they are talking of a novel the world is reading. Did Lady Audley murder her husband? Lady Audley! What a beautiful name; and she, who is a slender, pale, fairy-like woman, killed her husband. Such thoughts flash through the boy's mind; his imagination is stirred and quickened, and he begs for an explanation. The coach lumbers along, it arrives at its destination, and Lady Audley is forgotten in the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the American republic, in order that some day, on American soil, two world races may give each to each those characteristics which both so sadly lack. Already we come not altogether empty-handed: there is to-day no true American music but the sweet wild melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales are Indian and African; we are the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal, dyspeptic blundering with the light-hearted but determined Negro humility; or her coarse, cruel wit with loving, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... half-way out to Chevy Chase," she said, "and I was just thinking of paying poor old General Lathom a visit. He does look so well in bronze, poor old dear, and all that ice round him will make him seem like an ogre in fairy-land. He wasn't a bit of an ogre, he was ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Jack," said Mr. Roderick Birch, quickly, "you can't play good fairy for the whole family—and it's not necessary. As soon as I am at work in the office again this close figuring will ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... satisfactory play that I saw, "Bought and Paid For," by George Broadhurst, was not a problem-play, though Mr. Broadhurst is also a purveyor of problem-plays. It was just an unpretentious fairy-tale about the customary millionaire and the customary poor girl. The first act was maladroit, but the others made me think that "Bought and Paid For" was one of the best popular commercial Anglo-Saxon plays I had ever seen anywhere. There were touches of authentic realism at ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... understand—how rare that is! And oh! such good times as they had! They made taffy. Jims had always longed to make taffy, but Aunt Augusta's immaculate kitchen and saucepans might not be so desecrated. They read fairy tales together. Mr. Burroughs had disapproved of fairy tales. They blew soap-bubbles out on the lawn and let them float away over the garden and the orchard like fairy balloons. They had glorious ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bent on mythological comparisons, Capt. L'Estrange, 'tis but a poor compliment to a fair lady when a gallant officer compares her to three old Fates,—unless he qualifies the remark somewhat. Could you not add something about my fairy fingers weaving the destiny of man? I fear your quick French wits have been dulled by that cold British bullet in ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... them utterly. Honor was seven when her own father died and nine when her mother married again. Stephen Lorimer would never forget her first inspection of him. Nursemaids had done their worst on the subject of stepfathers; fairy tales had presented the pattern. He knew exactly what was going on in her mind, and—quite as earnestly beneath his persiflage as he had set himself to woo the widow—he set himself to win her daughter. It was a matter of moments only before he saw the color coming back into her square ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... an unusual choice for the son of fairy-like mother and an Angora cat. But from the first meeting of our eyes, I knew that I would someday bring Joanna to my father's estate to present her as ...
— My Father, the Cat • Henry Slesar
... her absolute enjoyment of the fairy-like spectacle, and was only brought back to a sense of reality by the sound of a voice at her side. Mr. Merivale was speaking—the young man who had escorted her out to dinner, and who now ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... cause him to leap frantically into the gutter. Sunsets over the western dunes and the Bay were hazily wonderful fantasies of crimson and purple and gold and sapphire, with the nets and poles of the distant fish weirs scattered here and there about the placid water like bits of fairy embroidery. And then to end his walk by turning in at the Phipps' gate; the lamplight in the cozy dining room shining a welcome and Martha's pleasant, attractive face above the teacups. It was like coming home, like ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is to be known as an omnivorous reader—you get no mercy shown you. A man who is ready for anything, from the fairy tale to a volume of metaphysics, is naturally one who will make nothing of a fragment ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... something of the fairy godmother in this large-hearted woman, whose modesty equalled her generosity. She dropped gifts by the way, always eager to help, and anxious to keep out of sight. Mrs. Hermann was one of those women who sow the seeds of kindness ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... all was glittering around us; we were in a grotto of diamonds! From the height of the lofty vaulted roof hung innumerable crystals, which, uniting with those on the walls, formed colonnades, altars, and every sort of gothic ornament of dazzling lustre, creating a fairy ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... secret stores let Memory tell, Bid Fancy quit her fairy cell, In all her colours dress'd; While prompt her sallies to control, Reason, the judge, recalls the soul To Truth's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... came up, they stepped in and commenced the beautiful drive of one and one-half miles to "Fairy Fern Cottage," which was charmingly located on the summit of these famously terraced hills. Hills that have been historic since the revolutionary days of General Washington, when their slopes were white with the tents of his soldiers. ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... the change in his host, however, that had really spoiled the visit. Jasper Peyton was a cousin of his mother's, younger than she and very fond of her and her children. At their house he was always a much-desired guest, for he had "the fairy-godfather gift," as their mother put it, and was constantly doing delightful things for them. He was tall and spare, with a thin, sensitive face that, so it seemed to Oliver, was always smiling then, but that ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... its vaults and galleries hung with glittering crystals, its underground river and dark lake, was so like a fairy tale, that Johnnie felt as if she must go right back and tell the family at home about it. She relieved her feelings by a long letter to Elsie, which made them all laugh very much. In it she said, "Ellen Montgomery didn't have any thing half so nice as the Cave, and Mamma Marion ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... section of Japanese literature. Fairy tales and story books abound. Many of them are translated into English; "The Royal Ronans" and other works have recently been published in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... with Greek, but speaks a sort of mixed jargon; they are, however, under the necessity of submitting to any conditions they can get, and the sovereignty of the world is left to the birds. However much all this resembles a mere farcical fairy tale, it may be said, however, to have a philosophical signification, in thus taking a sort of bird's-eye view of all things, seeing that most of our ideas are only true in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... editor. "Marshall's mill, and Mormon island! One would think the famous fairy tale of El Dorado ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... makes a still more curious nest: it actually sews, using its long, slender bill as a needle. Birds that fly, birds that run, birds that swim, and birds that sing are by no means rare; but birds that sew, seem like the wonderful birds in the fairy-tales. Yet they really exist, and make their odd nests with great care and skill. They pick out a leaf large enough for their nest, and pierce rows of holes along the edges with their sharp bill; then, with ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... was like a grand piany, all sorts o' power in it; canary-birds' notes at one eend, and thunder at t'other, accordin' to the humour she was in, for she was a'most a grand bit of stuff was Happy, she'd put an edge on a knife a'most. She was a rael steel. Her figur' was as light as a fairy's, and her waist was so taper and tiny, it seemed jist made for puttin' an arm round in walkin'. She was as active and springy on her feet as a catamount, and near about as touch me-not a sort of customer too. She actilly ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... dinner in my hotel, there came a singular and unexpected response in the person of the General himself. He was introduced by the landlord, and was accompanied by his little daughter, holding in her hand my token, as she smilingly approached me in her fairy-like beauty. A delightful chat ensued, and an urgent request upon his part that I should visit Cresson Springs, to which he had resorted with his family in order to recuperate his health, shattered by the protracted and gallant defense of ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... was a very still morning, but I saw a fishing-smack, which had been lying motionless, catch a sudden rise of wind and come about, leaving a white circle of foam in her wake. From the height where I walked she looked infinitely little, like a ship in a fairy-tale, no bigger than a walnut shell; I could see the clear small reflection of her tiny hull in the smooth water, her sails rosy-tinted in the morning sunlight, very beautiful and magical. There was no fleck of cloud in all the wide blue of the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... soft, cool carpet of velvet grass all inwrought with blossoms that filled the air with fragrance. Over his head, tall trees gently shook their glistening, shadowy leaves, while sweet voiced birds of rare and wondrous plumage flitted from bough to bough. Across a sky of deepest blue, fleets of fairy cloud ships, light as feathery down, floated—floated—drifting lazily, as though, piloted only by the wind, their pilot slept. All about him, as he walked, multitudes of sunlight and shadow fairies danced gaily hand in hand. And over the shimmering ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... the aesthetic room hung with tapestry, whereon citron-trees loaded with golden fruit formed a fairy forest, Therese, her head on the pillow, and her handsome bare arms folded under her head, was thinking, seeing float confusedly before her the images of her new life: Vivian Bell and her bells, her pre-Raphaelite figures, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... down between mosses, and quarrelled, and overcame great smooth dark rocks in busy falls. Indeed, it was like my own country in the north, and a man might say to himself—'After so much journeying, perhaps I am in the Enchanted Wood, and may find at last the fairy Melisaunde.' ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... human being to search for happiness and, in searching, to find it. I am fortunate because I can take you to beautiful places. I can spell out for you the secrets of a new art and a new beauty. We can walk in fairy gardens. I can give you jewels such as Europe has never seen, but I can give you, Maggie, nothing so strange and wonderful, even to me who know myself, as the ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... been hawthorn, but now one jagged, fixed mass of awkward arms and cruel thorns; the third, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to the far verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were like woods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their own particular elves and spirits. Each had a separate character: the first as of the earth, homely, full of gentle russet colours from the juniper and the wild fruit; the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... us. One of them, Mrs. Kinsman, presented me with the cotton quilt under which her uncle had died. Another lady, Miss Louisa Nancrede, who had been educated in France, had seen Napoleon, and often described him to me. She told me many old French fairy-tales, and often sang a ballad (which I found in after years in the works of Cazotte), which made a great impression on me—something like that of "Childe Roland to the dark tower came." It was called Le Sieur Enguerrand, and the refrain was "Oh ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... it fell in a crimson stream on the surface of the sheltered bay, struggling with the light of the gentle moon, and tinging with blood the small waves that twinkled in her silver wake, across which a guard boat would now and then glide, like a fairy thing, the arms of the men flashing back ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... "That's a fairy tale," said Dave promptly. "The average midshipman has about all he can do to hold his place here, without losing any time in running around making the acquaintances of young women who probably don't care at all ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... Ah, Miss Revendal—what a pity you refused that invitation! It was a fairy scene of twinkling lights and delicious darkness—each couple had their own gondola to sup in, and their own side-canal to slip down. ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... house of Julia! The texture of the sunshine came under a spell here; glowing flakes of amber were afloat; a powder of opals and rubies fell silently adrizzle through the trees. The very air changed, beating faintly with a fairy music, for breathing it was breathing sorcery: elfin symphonies went tinkling through it. The grass in the next yard to Julia's was just grass, but every blade of grass in her yard was cut ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... from very acute food shortage, which in certain districts has amounted to famine and wholesale starvation of the poorer classes. But it is unlikely that their needs will be considered at all, for Germany's needs (she, the fairy godmother of the Pan-Turk ideal) must obviously have the first call on such provisions as are obtainable. Thus, in the new preserved meat factory at Aidin, the whole of the produce is sent to Germany. Thus, too, though in February 1917 there was a daily shortage in Smyrna ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... mankind with a strength of which we dreamed not in the day of a wilder freedom and more luxuriant aspirings. In later life, a new spirit, partaking of that which was our earliest, returns to us. The solitude which delighted us in youth, but which, when the thoughts that make solitude a fairy land are darkened by affliction, becomes a fearful and sombre void, resumes its old spell, as the more morbid and urgent memory of that affliction crumbles away by time. Content is a hermit; but so also is Apathy. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... went on, bending over and affectionately patting the hand I held, "a little fairy-tale has been running through my head all day, and I have decided that you shall be the first to hear it and pass on its merits. And because," I added gayly, "if it has your approval I may wish to ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... beauty; another gave her a sweet and gentle disposition; another, charm of manner; a fourth, a quick and intelligent mind. She really was a very fortunate baby, so many and so varied were the gifts bestowed upon her by the fairy folk. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... packed a club bag and suitcase. Could Uncle Tom and Mother have guessed that such a fairy-tale was going to happen when they planned their gifts?—But, of course not. Where were her skates and plenty of handkerchiefs? Silver shoes she must have sometime, but here were the old white ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... exquisite face the air of an elf. All the sweet grace of a child was welling out of her maidenhood. Her apple-green frock fitted the form of a shepherdess. Her pretty grey legs and tiny feet were those of a fairy. Its very artlessness trebled the attraction of her pose. Making his sudden way between the boughs, the sun flung a warm bar of light athwart her white throat and the fallen curl. Nature was honouring her darling. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... platitudes about wealth, about keeping up tradition, about religion, showed that. He even talked vaguely about giving up the army and going into business. 'It must have its fascinations, you know,' he remarked lightly. In the eyes of both of them Morton had become sort of fairy godfather—a mysterious, wonderful gnome at whose beck gold leaped from the mountainside. It was just the illusion he wished to create. In the final analysis the figure of the gnome is the most beloved figure in the rotten class ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... upon his mind is very puzzling. On the one hand, it gave him the solemnity and power which are manifested in the historical compositions of the Liber Studiorum, more especially the Rizpah, the Cephalus, the scene from the Fairy Queen, and the Aesacus and Hesperie: on the other, he seems never to have entered thoroughly into the spirit of Italy, and the materials he obtained there were afterwards but awkwardly introduced in his ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... what you please, but it does the mind good to think of nothing at times; to let the impressions of passing events glide through the soul, and titillate the imagination, but to "leave no trace behind." Oh yes! this fairy dancing on the sands of life's dull shore, is very pleasant occupation for a summer morn, and eke a summer eve. It is poetical, to say the least of it; and day-dreams may sometimes prove not less agreeable than those mysterious scenes of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... arched below us in which the Green mountains joined their bases with still others that seemed like fairy creations floating upon the water. An ideal remoteness and perfection were thrown o'er the landscape by the crystalline atmosphere. Mountains, fields, woods and lake all made "ethereal pictures" in the mild evening light. Above in the blue dome, Nature hung her finely woven drapery of rose-colored ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand |
