"Preternaturally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left him, his senses became preternaturally acute, and a sense of well-being and complete satisfaction pervaded his whole being. The mist into which he was gazing became faintly luminous, and strange shapes began to flit across it; shapes the like of which he had never seen in his life before. Then something approached ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish, and his thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sonya was sitting by the table. He began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... afterwards that her appearance had given her a shock. She was so small and sallow and insignificant, and her short curly hair was parted on one side like a boy, and cropped quite closely behind. The baby was small and brown too, a tiny edition of herself, and they both had dark eyes that looked preternaturally solemn; Babs, indeed, wore an injured expression, and a puckered look of anguish spoke of the pangs of hunger and the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... adoring slave," and all that speech of Hyacinth's which the child had repeated, haunted Angela with an agonising iteration. She had not an instant's doubt as to the scene being faithfully reported. She knew how preternaturally acute Henriette's intellect had become in the rarified atmosphere of her mother's drawing-room, how accurate her memory, how sharp her ears, and how observant her eyes. Whatever Henriette reported was likely to be ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... at the beginning from that holiness which is not of the earth, and which delights only in the contemplation of heavenly things. She could see it now with what painful clearness! for her eyes in such matters were preternaturally sharp, like those of a sailor who has followed the sea all his life with regard to atmospheric changes; no sooner would the lesson begin than all brightness would fade from that too expressive countenance, and the girl would listen with manifest effort, striving to keep ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... for her. There must be endless misery, while there might have been joy, so ecstatic in its nature as to make it seem to her to be perennial. Then she had almost fallen, and had declared him to be preternaturally cruel. But these moments had been short, and had endured only while she had allowed herself to dream of the ecstatic joy, which she confessed to herself to be an unfit condition of life for her. And then she had told herself that Mr Whittlestaff was not cruel, and that she ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... proud of his share in the transaction, and his friends laughed loudly at the adroit turn he had given to the matter. Natt's drowsy eyes were preternaturally ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... opening exercises consisted solely of singing and reading. We had agreed to omit prayer. Neither Felix, Peter nor I felt equal to praying in public. But we took up a collection. The proceeds were to go to missions. Dan passed the plate—Felicity's rosebud plate— looking as preternaturally solemn as Elder Frewen himself. Every one put a cent ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... himself until he throws his leg over the horse he loves. He is facile princeps the light rider of the regiment, and to this claim there are none to say him nay. A tip-top soldier too is Ray. Keen on the scout, tireless on the trail, daring to a fault in action, and either preternaturally cool or enthusiastically excited when under fire. He is a man the rank and file swear by and love. "You never hear Loot'nant Ray saying 'Go in there, fellers.' 'Tis always, 'Come on, boys.' That's why I like him," is the way ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Then from the window I beheld an extraordinary sight! It was Rutli, swaying from side to side, but steadily carrying with outstretched arms two of the squatter party, his hands tightly grasping their collars. Yet I believe his touch was as gentle as with the violets. His face was preternaturally grave; theirs, to my intense astonishment, while they hung passive from his arms, wore that fatuous, imbecile smile seen on the faces of those who lend themselves to tricks of acrobats and strong men in the arena. He slowly ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... as if the ebbing sap of summer still ran high in every fibre; their tint seemed no hectic dying taint, but some inherent chromatic richness. Fine avenues the eye might open amongst the rough brown boles that stood in dense ranks, preternaturally dark and distinct, washed by the recent rains, and thrown into prominence by the masses of yellow and red leaves carpeting the ground, and the red and yellow boughs hanging low above. They dispensed to the light, clarified air an aromatic richness that the lungs rejoiced to breathe, and all their ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... green, or too long drawn, for she seemed preternaturally wakeful afterwards, though Jude, who had not taken any, began to feel heavy; till her ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... of his attire (except a brace of wrinkled cowskin boots, by which the word "polish" would have been considered the meaningless fragment of a lost language) was a tight-fitting black frock-coat, preternaturally long in the waist, the skirts of which fell about his heels, sopping up the dew. This he always wore snugly buttoned from the throat downward. In this attire he cut a tolerably spectral figure. His aspect was so conspicuously unnatural and inhuman that ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... and therefore preternaturally calm. "What d'ye mean by she? Don't fret, that's a good girl, and don't excite yourself. Tell your story your own way, you know, but keep as quiet as you can. You're ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... to it in the way of respect, and, however angry passions might rise, however turbulent the scene, he would never address it looking upon it with the naked eye. As his eye-glass was constantly tumbling out, and as search for it was preternaturally deliberate, it played an appreciable part in the prolongation ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... said the preternaturally hoarse voice of the turnkey through the square hole in the door. 'I will bring you your ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... said Agnes, in that preternaturally calm manner which she had worn from the first. "It ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... species, even while for the present we hold the hypothesis of a further evolution in cool suspense or in grave suspicion. In respect to very many questions a wise mans mind rests long in a state neither of belief nor unbelief. But your intellectually short-sighted people are apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find their way very plain to positive conclusions upon one side or the other of every ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of the patient is characteristic (Fig. 200). The enormous dome of the skull surmounts a puny and preternaturally old face; the eyes are pushed downwards and forwards by the pressure on the orbital plates, and the eyebrows are displaced upwards. The head rolls helplessly from side to side; the child moans and cries a great deal; and vomiting is often a prominent ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Arizona, when I was ranching there, and for the next three years I saw him constantly. He had a place ten miles down the river from me. He was about four years older than I was—a tall, slim, sandy-haired, freckled fellow, preternaturally quiet; a trusty, if there ever was one. Unlike most preternaturally quiet people, however, it wasn't dulness that made him that way; he wasn't dull a bit. Stir him up on anything and you found that he had thought about it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cast a piercing white light. In one corner sat the band, and, obedient to its scraping and blowing, two or three hundred dancers trampled across the dry ground, wearing away the grass with their booted feet. Round this patch of all but daylight, alive with motion and noise, the night seemed preternaturally dark. Bars of light reached out into it, and every now and then a lonely figure or a couple of lovers, interlaced, would cross the bright shaft, flashing for a moment into visible existence, to disappear again as quickly and surprisingly as they ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the interval) a delicate-looking young woman, plain and poor, a widow evidently from the style of her shabby mourning and sad expression of face, bearing in her arms a weird and sickly-looking child, evidently a sufferer from spinal disease—an infant as to size, but preternaturally ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... this time come to the ass, the boy enfolded in his arms the creature's fuzzy head and gently stroked its preternaturally long ears. And the ass, for its part, responded to the caress by rubbing its head against the boy's breast and by most energetically twitching its scrag of a tail. Thus for a little time these friends manifested for each other their affection; and then the boy seated ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... would place those who had it in a false and unsatisfactory state with regard to the world in which they lived. To see this we have only to picture to ourselves the condition of a man living in a savage, or only partially civilized state of society, with his mind preternaturally expanded to that of a Newton, and put into possession of the knowledge which he had on some of those subjects which the Bible touches on. How entirely out of harmony would he be with his fellow-men, and everything around him! and, how unable would he be even to pursue ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... rushed impetuous over the sloping country, till, its force being spent, it waded tediously through the slushing reeds of the hill-land again, and so rolled down to sea. For, while I stood there, it seemed as if my vision were preternaturally sharpened, and I followed the bright river in its course, through the alternating marsh and desert,—through the land where Zeus went banqueting among the blameless Ethiopians, —through the land where the African princes watched from afar the destruction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... mother followed the good, healthy rule of early to bed and early to rise, seemed thrown by fate upon Miss Thusa's miraculous resources for entertainment and instruction. Thus her imagination became preternaturally developed, while the germs of reason and judgment ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... heard or fancied I heard a loud noise of pursuit, a hue and cry behind me. Zeal for your safety had made me preternaturally nervous. I looked about me hurriedly, thrust the negatives I'd recovered into my breast-pocket as fast as ever I could, flung the apparatus away from me with the sixth plate jammed hard in the groove, and made off at the top of my speed for ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... perfectly well—never was better in my life," he said, becoming all at once preternaturally grave. "You were once in the ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... Olimpia had been present at several with success. Lawyers called it a cunning piece of knavery, and all the harder to punish since it was directed against the public; and it had been so craftily contrived that it had escaped unobserved by all except a few preternaturally acute students, although everybody was very wise now and remembered to have thought of several facts which occurred to them as suspicious. But these latter could not succeed in making out any sort of a consistent tale. For was it, for instance, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... in a brilliant and complicated manoeuvre. Tom and Susan Peters flit across the view, and Gene Hollister and Perry Blackwood and the Ewanses,—all of whom had come up in a special car; Ralph Hambleton was "best man," looking preternaturally tall in his frock-coat: and his manner, throughout the whole proceeding, was one of good-natured tolerance toward a folly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rapidity and the look of a preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune, quite legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a director), placed within that cold palm the tips of his still colder fingers and hastily ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... preternaturally acute where Clara was concerned, was already looking toward the hall and was the first to see her. Clad in an evening gown of simple white, to the close-fitting corsage of which she had fastened a bunch of pink roses, she was ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... ears had a sense of hearing that was preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer—nearer—nearer till they stopped outside her cell door. With a clank it was opened. She sprang up. Fortunately she had not undressed. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... once more. On the other side of the grating, dim figures were moving. It was impossible to distinguish whether, behind the thick bars, three or five or twenty veiled women were flitting to and fro like startled ghosts. Indeed, none but Casanova, with eyes preternaturally acute to pierce the darkness, could discern that they were human ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... he looked in at the window he saw the Duchess sitting at the feet of a real gipsy-queen: her head upturned—her whole being expanding—as the gipsy's hands waved over her, and the gipsy's eyes, preternaturally dilated, poured their floods of life into her own. Then the music broke up into words, and he knew what hope and promise that fainting spirit was drinking in: for he heard what the gipsy said. She was telling the young Duchess that she was one of themselves—that ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... conferred a knighthood—the first of a long series similarly bestowed—on an eminent journalist. The friends of the new knight were inclined to banter him, and proposed his health at a dinner in facetious terms. Lord Beaconsfield, who was of the company, looked preternaturally grave, and, filling his glass, gazed steadily at the flattered editor and said in his deepest tone: "Yes, Sir A.B., I drink to your good health, and I congratulate you on having attained a rank which was deemed sufficient honour for Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Isaac ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... course, he is accustomed to looking into the eyes of women and finding love there; when he doesn't find it there he thinks he must have been guilty of some discourtesy and is miserable about it. He has a genuine fondness for everyone who is not stupid or gloomy, or old or preternaturally ugly. Granted youth and cheerfulness, and a moderate amount of wit and some tact, and Adriance will always be glad to see you coming around the corner. I shared with the rest; shared the smiles and the gallantries and the droll little sermons. It was quite like a Sunday-school picnic; ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... aspect of the Roman intellect it is but justice that we should turn away to contemplate those situations in which that same intellect showed itself preternaturally strong. To face a sudden danger by a corresponding weight of sudden counsel or sudden evasion—that was a privilege essentially lodged in the Roman mind. But in every nation some minds much more than others are representative of the national type: they ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... inspiration." Indeed, if she were not constant in love, she would not have spurned the many opportunities in the absence of Khalid; and had she not a fine discerning sense of real worth, she would not have surrendered herself to her poor ostracised cousin; and if she were not intuitively, preternaturally wise, she would not marry an enemy of the Jesuits, a bearer withal of infiltrated lungs and a shrunken windpipe. "There is a great advantage in having a sickly husband," she once said to Shakib, "it lessons a woman in the heavenly virtues of our Virgin ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... feet and bundles in the endeavour to be preternaturally quiet, the crew poured into the warm kitchen. Bearded Oliver, oldest of the clan; stout Edson, big Ralph, tall and slender Guy—and the two daughters of the house, Carolyn, growing plump and rosy at thirty; Nan, slim and girlish at twenty-four—they were all there. Marietta ...
— On Christmas Day in the Morning • Grace S. Richmond
... common experience of mankind. One class of dreams, which may be termed RETROSPECTIVE, is of frequent occurrence. These are characterized by the revival of associations long since forgotten. The faculty of Memory appears to be preternaturally exalted; the vail is withdrawn which obscured the vista of our past life; and the minutest events of childhood pass in vivid review before us. There can be no doubt that something analogous to this occurs in drowning; when, after the alarm and struggle ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... themselves to the level of my eyes, and I felt convinced their owner was staring spectrally behind them. Considering that he measured about thirty-four inches round the chest, his voice was extraordinarily deep and solemn: it sounded preternaturally so as he said very slowly, "There is one face that does not often leave me alone here, and will follow me, I think, when I go to my appointed place: I see it now, as I shall see it throughout ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... a charming person, and he and Tamara were great friends. He chatted on now, and she smiled at him, but with ears preternaturally sharpened she heard the conversation ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... tall, spick and span, self-confident, clever, shining, with his indubitable virtues mainly on the outside. If ever any man of thirty-two in all this world was eligible, Adam Tellwright was. Decidedly he had a reputation for preternaturally keen smartness in trade, but in trade that cannot be called a defect; on the contrary, if a man has virtues, you cannot precisely quarrel with him because they happen to be on the outside; the principal thing is to have virtues. And then Mr Bostock looked uneasily ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... He followed Stoddard, still softly whistling the tune which had, somehow, caught his fancy. They sat down, Charley Stoddard looking preternaturally grave. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... her ear seemed preternaturally attuned to that rising and waning sound without her chamber. It seemed to come toward the door, pass it, move lightly away, and then turn and repass again. It was a ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... from brain-fever, was a startling object to contemplate on a first view of him. His shaven head, tied up in an old yellow silk handkerchief; his tawny, haggard cheeks; his bright brown eyes, preternaturally large and wild; his rough black beard; his long, supple, sinewy fingers, wasted by suffering till they looked like claws—all tended to discompose the rector at the outset of the interview. When the first feeling of surprise had worn off, the impression that followed it was not an agreeable ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the best milliner in New York. Her clothes were so well-worn, and her grooming was so meticulous, her accent so clean and crisp, her manner so devoid of patronage, yet subtly remote, her controlled heart so kind that she perennially fascinated the buxom, rather sloppy, preternaturally acute, and wholly unaristocratic young ladies of the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... a barge for summer waters, this peculiar ship I saw? It had a ruined dignity, a cumbrous grandeur, although its masts were shattered, and its sails rent. It hung preternaturally still upon the sea, as if tormented and exhausted by long driving and drifting. I saw no sailors, but a great Spanish ensign floated over, and waved, a funereal plume. I knew it then. The armada was long since scattered; but, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... advise you all to be preternaturally good and quiet all day," she said, looking back from the doorway. "That would have most effect with him, and he is going to ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... for the cooking of fruits, vegetables, meat, etc., unless cleaned with the utmost call will sometimes impart a sufficiently unpleasant flavor to the food to render it wholly unpalatable to an invalid whose senses are preternaturally acute. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the old gentleman's rosy face; then he became solemn, preternaturally solemn. Harley caught the expression and listened intently. Mrs. Bowdoin, pouring out cream as if it were coals of fire on his head, was not ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... to the spell, feeling almost inclined to enquire "And why may it not be true?''[FN245] His brain is dazed and dazzled by the splendours which flash before it, by the sudden procession of Jinns and Jinniyahs, demons and fairies, some hideous, others preternaturally beautiful; by good wizards and evil sorcerers, whose powers are unlimited for weal and for woe; by mermen and mermaids, flying horses, talking animals, and reasoning elephants; by magic rings and their slaves ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... kinds of natural actions, done by many of the accused in or to their own bodies, as leaning, bending, turning awry, or squeezing their hands, or the like, were presently attended with the like things preternaturally done upon the bodies of the afflicted, though they were so far asunder, that the afflicted could not at all observe the accused."—Magnalia, Book II., ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... in the spacious, high-ceiled dining room with its somber wainscoting. The elder Madame Delaherche was already there, for she was always on foot at daybreak, notwithstanding she was seventy-eight years old. Her hair was snowy white; in her long, lean face was a nose almost preternaturally thin and sharp and a mouth that had long since forgotten how to laugh. She rose, and with stately politeness invited the captain to be seated before one of the cups of cafe au lait that ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... that in her arms she bore a bundle of white linen, and that her form was singularly attenuated. So preternaturally thin and flexible was Elfride at this moment, that she appeared to bend under the light blows of the rain-shafts, as they struck into her sides and bosom, and splintered into spray on her face. There is nothing like a thorough drenching ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... waiting for them; they entered it and the driver, whipped up his horses. A drive of a half mile brought them to an ideal white cottage surrounded by porches and hidden in a tangle of vines. The door was opened for them by the Rev. John Langdon in person. He seemed a preternaturally grave young man to Anna and his clerical attire was above reproach. Any misgivings one might have had regarding him on the score of his youth, were more than counterbalanced ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... that matter, no body understood the reason for the questions about the flowers, and though most of the jury merely looked preternaturally wise on the subject, Mr. Orville scribbled it all down in his little book. I was now glad to see the man keep up his indefatigable note-taking. If the reporters or stenographers missed any points, I could surely ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... much the same ceremonies are gone through. For instance, there was a bead necklace—the light hollowed silver enamel—he wanted fourteen dollars for; he seemed rather glad finally to sell it for four, though you can't say he seemed glad; on the contrary, he seemed preternaturally gloomy and remarked that he and not we would eat bitterness because of this purchase. The funniest thing was once when, after getting sick of bargaining, we put the whole thing down and started to walk away. His movements and gestures would have made an actor celebrated—they ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... accept the invitation. "I am going," she said to herself, "to show Ellen that I am not too obstinate to take her advice, and I don't care how I appear." So she sat still in a corner and listened to the conversation, which was indeed preternaturally stupid. She felt perfectly at her ease and was quite unconcerned about "making conversation." If anybody asked her a question she answered simply without cudgeling her brains for any wise or witty reply. By and by something was said which did attract ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... brought to himself with a jolt that threw him hard upon self-consciousness. "I am superintendent of the public school." The very sound of the words rang as a warning, and he became preternaturally solemn. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... JERVAS. The poor youth is become altogether too preternaturally dignified, too confounded sober, solemn and sedate for this mundane ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... became preternaturally grave, and presented arms. The young surgeon, Dr. Monteith, who had met Ruth the night before, tramped in from ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... "candour" comes in) is at first a protectress, then a schoolmistress of the school of Cupid, in process of time a mistress in the other sense, and always a very good-natured and unselfish helper. In fact, Manette is so preternaturally good (she can't even be jealous in a sufficiently human way), Adolphine so prettily and at last tragically null, that one really feels inclined to observe to Andre, if he were worth it, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... in, that bay, always till now so preternaturally deserted and silent, was alive and bustling with ships and small craft. A launch came along from the Chatham and I jumped in whilst we were still going pretty fast and shot off to see de Robeck. He seemed to think things naval were going pretty well and that ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... was thus abruptly uttered, actually thrust her face through the door; but she again drew back, and, all her senses preternaturally quickened at that name, while she held the door almost closed, listened with her whole ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... trial of the new car: an engine of destruction such as Lancelot had never dreamed of. It was admittedly too high-powered for England; you were across the county in about a minute. And then he had departed in a kind of thunderstorm of his own making. Lancelot, preternaturally moved, said to his mother, "I say, Mamma, what a man—eh?" She, lightly, "Yes, isn't he wonderful?" and Lancelot, with a snort: "A man? Ten rather small men—easily." And James, poor James, saw ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... baby!" cried Celia, and shrieked the information into Lanse's ear. His expression of disfavour relaxed a degree, but he still looked preternaturally severe. Celia hobbled over to the baby, and sitting down in a rocking-chair, held out her arms. But Charlotte shook her head and motioned imperatively toward ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... was up early, preternaturally awake. When he descended the waiters were waiting for him, and the zealous porter stood ready to offer him a Sunday paper, just as though in the night they had refreshed themselves magically, without going to bed. No sign ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... words, but all in vain. I have sat there, drenched by the salt sea-spray, and knew it not. I was called the little bookworm, the prodigy, the dream-girl, a name you have inherited, my darling Gabriella; and my father seemed proud of the reputation I had established. But while my imagination was preternaturally developed, my heart was slumbering, and my soul unconscious of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... only betraying any animation or token of his mission when he saw me coming. This same Chinaman evinced some evidences of regard for a little girl in the family, who in her turn reposed such faith in his intellectual qualities as to present him with a preternaturally uninteresting Sunday-school book, her own property. This book John made a point of carrying ostentatiously with him in his weekly visits. It appeared usually on the top of the clean clothes, and was sometimes ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Moments of Vision. These show a remarkable recovery of spirit, and an ingenuity never before excelled. With the passage of years Mr. Hardy, observing everything in the little world of Wessex, and forgetting nothing, has become almost preternaturally wise, and, if it may be said so, "knowing," with a sort of magic, like that of a wizard. He has learned to track the windings of the human heart with the familiarity of a gamekeeper who finds plenty of vermin in the woods, and who nails what he finds, be it stoat or squirrel, to the barn-door of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... youth of large, palpable bones, joints and knuckles; his face was long and preternaturally pale, and bore an abstracted expression which deepened almost to idiocy when bent above ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to Batouch with intense vivacity in Arabic, at the same time shooting glances half-obsequious, half-impudent, wholly and even preternaturally keen and intelligent at Domini. Batouch replied with the dignified languor that seemed peculiar to him. The colloquy continued for two or three minutes. Domini thought it sounded like a quarrel, but she was not accustomed to Arabs' ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... very small room, which served him for bed and sitting room, in a small cottage upon the outskirts of the little secluded town of Briarwood. He looked extremely ill; his beautiful countenance was preternaturally pale; his large eyes far too bright and large; his form attenuated; and his voice so faint, husky, and low that it was with difficulty he could make himself heard, at least for any length of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the finest feature of the banquet was, that nobody was half so much amazed by everything as John himself, who in his high delight was constantly bursting into fits of laughter, and then endeavouring to appear preternaturally solemn, lest the waiters should conceive he wasn't used to it. Some of the things they brought him to carve, were such outrageous practical jokes, though, that it was impossible to stand it; and when Tom Pinch insisted, in spite ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... deafness, my husband had said: "She sits surrounded by a silent world, and sees people's lips move and their gestures. How difficult it is to imagine such a state of existence! As for me, I suffer from the opposite inconvenience of hearing too well. When I am unwell my hearing is preternaturally acute, so that my watch in my waistcoat ticks as if it were held ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... set eyes on none but the most miserable dregs of struggling humanity, who had seen little else but rags, and faces either cruel or wretched. This man was clad in a huge caped coat, which made his powerful figure seem preternaturally large. His hair was fair and slightly curly above his low, square brow; the eyes beneath their heavy lids looked down on ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... "Glory-in-Thebes") was the most important; he appears to have been the eldest son, exercising the highest offices during his father's life. That the succession fell on the thirteenth son, Mer.en.ptah, was doubtless due to the elder sons having died during the preternaturally long reign ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... back walls of an anther lobe, or rather of that portion of the anther which, under ordinary circumstances, produces pollen. In the malformed flowers no pollen is formed, at least in the more complete states of the malformation, but the walls of the anther lobe become preternaturally enlarged, and petaloid in texture and appearance. This change occurs in some semi-double rhododendrons and azaleas, in crocuses, and in a species of violet found at Mentone by Mr. J. ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... everybody was smiling and chatting; and I noticed that the men weren't so preternaturally alert as the men in New York. Some had actually taken time to get fat, which, so far I'd had reason to suppose, was a thing that never happened ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... instance, is Chevalier Ziegler's picture of "St. Luke painting the Virgin." St. Luke has a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves. The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in her arms. She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who is eying his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call this Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life. First take your colors, and rub them down clean,—bright carmine, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... literal construction, they really did not admit of being fulfilled, or perhaps that they admitted it too much as being capable of fulfilment in two senses, either of them a practicable sense. True it was that my eye was preternaturally keen for flaws of language, not from pedantic exaction of superfluous accuracy, but, on the contrary, from too conscientious a wish to escape the mistakes which language not rigorous is apt to occasion. So far from seeking to "pettifogulize"—i.e., ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of daylight it might seem that he would be prompt to dismiss all memory of these peculiar experiences as fantasies of sleep. But he was satisfied that he had not slept; that on the contrary he had been preternaturally conscious throughout the long, eventful night. In solemn retrospect he retraced his past career. He remembered that for some years he had had symbolic dreams and symbolic hallucinations—as of a golden key, a tongue of flame, and voices—which had ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... well-cut features, a quick, observant eye, and a sailor's upward glance and bearing. The stranger saw a thin, youthful, anxious, yet refined and handsome face beneath straggling damp curls, and dark eyes preternaturally bright with suffering. Perhaps his experienced ear, too, detected some harmony with all ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Queste, the achievement of the task is not preceded by any failure on the part of the hero, and the advantages derived therefrom are personal and spiritual, though we are incidentally told that he heals the Fisher King's father, and also the old King, Mordrains, whose life has been preternaturally prolonged. In the case of this latter it is to be noted that the mere fact of Galahad's being the predestined winner suffices, and the healing takes place before the Quest is ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... respect to the temperature of the surface of oedematous parts not being preternaturally raised, the objection, if of any force, must apply to all, for all have this peculiarity, and yet some cases of oedema confessedly arise from inflammation; differing not, in this respect, from several other morbid states, as those for ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... name, Lanier," almost wailed the colonel, as at last that young gentleman, likewise singed and scorched and soaked and dripping, yet preternaturally cool for one just out of a blazing hell, found his feet and faced his commander—"in God's name, why didn't you jump when they told you? There was ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... horrible mask two vivid eyes looked out preternaturally bright, and from those eyes two tears had ploughed each a furrow through the filth ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... ended, in the fulness of glory; we all feel that we have had an abundant measure of glory, though painfully earned; every body recollects the sort of electric effect produced upon this town the moment the news now under consideration arrived; the funds were raised preternaturally; one cannot indeed on looking back, account for it, how the omnium should have been up to twenty-eight at that time; there was a considerable elevation beyond that price during the course of that day; it rose to ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... been turned loose to graze, under the guardianship of 'Ngulubi, the voorlouper, when the headman of the village, accompanied by some half a dozen minor dignitaries, and followed by ten women bearing baskets containing preternaturally skinny fowls, eggs, green mealie cobs, sugar cane, and calabashes of milk, emerged from the village and advanced upon the wagon. The men were unarmed, and the presence of the women with the baskets—the contents of which were of course ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... for common companionship, too deep and tenacious in her moods, of a delicacy preternaturally lofty and far- reaching in its sensitiveness, was solitary, sad, thoughtful, yearning, prescient of an early death; yet, by the whole impression of her being, she gave birth, in those who lovingly looked on her, to the surmise that she was mysteriously ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... wooden bed. She was glad to feel that, unknown to him, she was his guardian angel. She began to think about the future, and almost to forget Andy and the possible and very great peril of the present, when, shortly before the hour of one, all her senses were preternaturally excited by the sound of a footfall. It was a very soft footfall—the noise made by a bare foot. Nora heard it just where the shadow was deepest. She stood up now; she knew that, from her present position, the one who was making this dead sort of heavy sound could not possibly see her. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... called at Butler's office a long, preternaturally solemn man of noticeable height and angularity, dark-haired, dark-eyed, sallow, with a face that was long and leathery, and particularly hawk-like, who talked with Butler for over an hour and then departed. That evening he came to the Butler house around dinner-time, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... nature likes to eat its cake and have it too; but this time was anything but ordinary. The reaction from old to new ways of thinking, and the unforgotten persecutions of Mary, had made men very fond of their opinions, and preternaturally unwilling to enter into bargains with their consciences. At the same time loyalty to the Crown was still a fetich in England, as indeed it always has been, except at and about the time when Oliver Cromwell and others cut off the head ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... very peaceful and beautiful, however, and very welcome to eyes that had not looked upon sun, moon, or star for eight whole nights and days, and whose ears had grown hardened to the ceaseless clamour of the gale. Nature, indeed, seemed preternaturally quiet, as though exhausted with her previous violence or desirous of wiping out the remembrance of it; just as small humanity after an outbreak endeavours at times to purge the memory of its offence by display ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... impels himself with the ardour of flight—almost vertically—up above the level of the tree-tops. Then, after a momentary, thrilling pause, with a gush of twittering commotion and stiffened wings preternaturally extended over the back and flattened together into a single rigid fin, drops—a feathered black bolt from the blue—almost to the ground, swoops up to a resting-place, and with bowing head and jerking tail gloats ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... freshness of the night to the stale overheated atmosphere of the Haslemere Hotel had checked the preternaturally rapid working of his mind, and he was now scarcely conscious of thinking at all. His head was heavy, and he would have thrown himself on the bed had he not feared to oversleep the hour fixed for his departure. He thought it safest, instead, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... or her husband, and now our German courier, whose stream of thought rushed upon me like a ringing in the ears not to be got rid of, though it allowed my own impulses and ideas to continue their uninterrupted course. It was like a preternaturally heightened sense of hearing, making audible to one a roar of sound where others find perfect stillness. The weariness and disgust of this involuntary intrusion into other souls was counteracted only by my ignorance of Bertha, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... had in any sense of the word been her boy. His feelings for her had passed from the distrust of childhood to the lofty contempt of a schoolboy for all things preternaturally virtuous, finally settling down into the more tolerant contempt of manhood. The dead, however, have perforce to accept much affection which ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Tithes Bill. Not particularly lively. Towards midnight TANNER, preternaturally quiet since House met, suddenly woke up, and, a propos de bottes, moved to report progress. COURTNEY down on him like cartload of bricks; declined to put Motion, declaring it abuse of forms of House. This rather depressing. In good ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... good things and nonsense, Will jumped into bed, where the baby was already laid. It was Cissy's turn next. Ever since it had been so summarily arranged by Mrs Wade that the children were to stay the night at the King's Head, Cissy had been looking preternaturally solemn. Now, when she was desired to say her prayers, as a prelude to going to bed, Cissy's lip quivered, and ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... got to the church, Sunday-school had already begun. There was Lovell Barlow looking preternaturally stiff in his best clothes, sitting with a class of young men. He saw us when we came in, and gave me a look of deep meaning. It was the same expression—as though there was some solemn, mutual understanding ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... will at another table, whither Mr. Fountain removed him and parchments on pretense of inspecting the leases, listened with hearing preternaturally keen—listened ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the western wilderness: other faces than were lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the first day, and the second was very like it, so that it is not necessary to describe it in detail in order to produce an impression of profound dulness in the reader's mind. Lushington's hair continued to be as preternaturally smooth as before, his beard was as glossy and his complexion as blooming and child-like, and yet the look of pain that Margaret had seen in his face was there most of the time during ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... exceedingly intelligent—precociously, nay, preternaturally so, it appeared to Mr. Cardross, who, like many another learned father, had been blessed with rather stupid boys, who liked any thing better than study, and whom he had with great labor dragged through a course of ordinary ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... see patchy fields and fences, For me the mists of Turner swim - MY "azure distance" soon commences! Nay, as I blink about the streets Of this befogged and miry city, Why, almost every girl one meets Seems preternaturally pretty! "Try spectacles," one's friends intone; "You'll see the world correctly through them." But I have visions of my own, And not for worlds ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... time of year, and the exposed situation of the house, the night was almost preternaturally quiet. Throughout the vast open country all round us, not even a breath of air could be heard. The night-birds were away, or were silent at the time. But one sound was audible, when we stood still and listened—the cool ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... life takes us up between her finger and thumb, shakes us furiously, till our poor nodding head is well-nigh rolled from our shoulders, and she sets us down a little hard on the bare earth, bruised and sore, but preternaturally wide awake. ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... he seemed to have borrowed from it a certain strength and intuition. He limped through the thicket not unlike some awkward, shy quadrumane, stopping here and there to peer out through the openings over the marshes that lay beyond. His sight, hearing, and even the sense of smell had become preternaturally acute. It was the latter which suddenly arrested his steps with the odor of dried fish. It had a significance beyond the mere instincts of hunger—it indicated the contiguity of some Indian encampment. And as such—it meant danger, torture, ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... it as suddenly as she had appeared. He stared and listened; listened for some sound, but the silence round him was absolute—as though he had in a moment grown completely deaf as well as dim-eyed. Then his hearing returned, preternaturally sharp. He heard the patter of a rain-shower on the window panes behind the lowered blinds, and below, far below, in the artificial abyss of the square, the deadened roll of wheels and the splashy trotting of a horse. He heard a groan also—very distinct—in the ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... suggestion as one looks into a clear but very deep lake; one can see far down, but not to the bottom of it, which remains mysterious. He invites his own soul, but there is no loafing. Indeed his mind seems preternaturally active, as in a combination of ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... from the Judge who I thought was going mad, but who now seems to be preternaturally and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... of ululation. The women devoid of shawls had nothing around their necks to protect them from the cold, the dusky throats were exposed, and sometimes even the first hooks and eyes of the bodice were unnecessarily undone. The majority wore cheap earrings and black wigs with preternaturally polished hair; where there was no wig, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... "Daddy was busy," or when "poor Daddy was so tired." More than once he found himself looking out of his study window at her quiet play with the little boys in the garden. Solemn little boys they were; and sometimes he wondered whether little Jacky were not too solemn, too preternaturally quiet for four and a half, and rather too fond of holding Gertrude's hand. He remembered how the little beggar used to romp and laugh when Jinny——And remembering he would turn abruptly from the window with a sore heart and a ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... deficient in correctness. This was not the case with a rather famous inscription made by a Frenchman. Monsieur Girardin, who inscribed a stone at Ermenonville in memory of our once famous poet Shenstone, was not stupid, but rather preternaturally clever. This inscription is above all praise for the remarkable manner in which the rhymes appeal to the eye instead of the ear; and moreover it shows how world-famous was that charming garden at Leasowes, near Halesowen, ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... who seems preternaturally keen, swears that on Thirteenth Street between Fifth Avenue and University Place the woman stopped and spoke to him; and he tells his story as though it were ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... fever." I wondered if some fiend were lurking by my side, who kept saying the words over and over in my ear. With that indescribable mixture of dulled and preternaturally sharpened sense which often marks the first moments of such distress, I walked slowly to my room, and in a short time had made all the necessary preparation for leaving home. I felt like a thief as I stole slowly down the stairs, with my travelling-bag in my hand. At ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Bunner's view, that it was a case of revenge on the part of some American black-hand gang. So there's the end of the Manderson case. Holy, suffering Moses! What an ass a man can make of himself when he thinks he's being preternaturally clever!' He seized the bulky envelope from the table and stuffed it into the heart of the fire. 'There's for you, old friend! For want of you the world's course will not fail. But look here! It's getting late—nearly seven, ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... I have endeavored to relate the story of a boy's early experiences in college life—a boy who was neither unnaturally good nor preternaturally bad, wholesome, earnest, impulsive, making just such mistakes as a normal boy would make, and yet earnest, sincere, and healthy. We all have known just such boys and are grateful that they ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... the carriage, Mary was borne swiftly through the town out into the country. It was one of those preternaturally quiet, sultry days when the whole universe appears lifeless and inert, free from loud noise, or sound of any description, days which we occasionally have in early Spring or Summer, when the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... distinctly now, and he became quite sure that they were made by only a single horseman. His own senses had become preternaturally acute, and, with the conviction that he was followed by but one, came a rush of shame. Why should he, strong and armed, seek to evade a lone pursuer? He stopped, holding his rifle ready, and waited, a vague, shadowy figure, black on the ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... fanaticism to the highest pitch. The above incidents were the prelude only to the proper drama of the Salem witches. In 1692, two girls, the daughter and niece of Mr. Parvis, minister, suffering from a disease similar to that of the Goodwins, were pronounced to be preternaturally afflicted. Two miserable Indians, man and wife, servants in the family, who indiscreetly attempted to cure the witch-patients by means of some charm or drug, were suspected themselves as the guilty agents, and ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... suggested vigor of health and constitution, but always seemed to me as if their redundant masses had exhausted hers, and were almost too great a weight for her slim throat and drooping figure. Her complexion was transparently delicate, and she had dark blue eyes that looked almost preternaturally large. It seems strange to remember this ethereal vision of girlish fragile beauty as belonging to my dear cousin, who, having fortunately escaped the doom by which she then seemed threatened, lived to become ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... engines broke the utter stillness. Was I growing deaf? I snapped my fingers to reassure myself, and the sound startled me like the crack of a pistol. Evidently my sense of hearing had become abnormally acute. My mind, too, was preternaturally clear, and the solitude became so irksome that I rose from my seat, and looked out of the scuttles to relieve the ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... had always been fair, clear, and delicate, but now it was so white, wan, and shadowy that her sweet blue eyes seemed preternaturally large, bright, and hollow. She began to speak, but with an effort that ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... boar-like eyes upon her as a preternaturally innocent and trusting companion of Ulysses might have regarded the transforming Circe. Rosey turned away with the faintest sigh. The habitual look of abstraction returned to her eyes as if she had once ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... exercise, overpowering the dictates of his penetrative genius. It is not rashness in Hamlet on one occasion and procrastination on another, but a power of instantaneous action that could be controlled by the very briefest period of reflection, the great feature in his intellect being a preternaturally rapid reflective power, and men of genius almost ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... have been preternaturally sharpened by a long course of sensation novels will probably leap to the conclusion that Batushka was a mysterious individual, very different from what he seemed—either the illegitimate son of some great personage, or a man of high birth who had committed some great sin, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... minute—I can't hardly keep awake," he said. His voice, though feeble, was preternaturally clear. She heard every kind accent, every gentle tone even above the crackle of the fire without and the beat of the rain. "I think it's the limit," he went on. "I believe the tree got me—clear inside—but you must listen to ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... himself followed, and then started off at a break-neck speed, left no doubt in my mind that the doctor had a heart as large as the whole world. Once or twice during the long, warm afternoons, his words came to me through the open windows. I was aware that his almost preternaturally bright, quick eyes flashed a glance or two at me as I once or twice stepped rather close to an open window looking out over the lower roof-tops beyond; and I felt that he had given me a niche in his mind, as I had him in mine. I wondered if he had formed mental ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... M'Corkindale, Esq., Secretary and Projector of the Glenmutchkin Railway, differed from Bob M'Corkindale, the seedy frequenter of "The Crow." In the days of yore, men eyed the surtout—napless at the velvet collar, and preternaturally white at the seams—which Bob vouchsafed to wear, with looks of dim suspicion, as if some faint reminiscence, similar to that which is said to recall the memory of a former state of existence, suggested to them a vision that the garment had once been their own. Indeed, his whole appearance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... stands, and the traveller may stroll in the garden so beautifully described by Gibbon when he walked to the historical berceau and felt that his herculean labour was completed. His heart must be preternaturally dull which does not beat quicker as he walks on that ground. The thought of a visit some years ago forms one of the most vivid of the author's pleasures ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... urchin, who might have been about thirteen years of age, became preternaturally grave all of a sudden, and, looking up earnestly in his questioner's face, said, "Really, Henry, you are becoming unreasonable in your old age, to ask me to give you a reasonable account of a thing, and at the ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... to me to be boys or girls; they are preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and guileless innocence, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... melancholy. Pausanius says that after a while one who had gone through the ordeal could laugh; but Suidas tells us that those who returned from having made the descent never smiled again, and this gave occasion to a saying relative to a preternaturally grave personage, "He has consulted ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... glasses in their hands. 'Michael Slavin, a' promised the lad a'd bear ye nae ill wull, but juist leave ye tae the Almichty; an' I want tae tell ye that a'm keepin' ma wur-r-d. But'—and here he raised his hand, and his voice became preternaturally solemn—'his bluid is upon yer han's. ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... on. It was the old, all but forgotten whirr of bobbins, mingled with the gentle groans of the revolving horizontal wheel, but magnified in the silence of the place, and the echoing imagination of the boy, into something preternaturally awful. Yielding for a moment to the growth of goose-skin, and the insurrection of hair, he recovered himself by a violent effort, and walked to the door that connected the two compartments. Was it more or less fearful that the jenny was not going of itself? that the figure of an old woman ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Keeley, as he called himself upon the stage, was quite unlike his sister. He was short and plump, with a preternaturally solemn face, contradicted by small twinkling eyes. He motioned Joan to a chair and told her to keep quiet and ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... man sixty years of age, clean-shaved, with smooth iron-gray hair and bushy eyebrows, from beneath which shone a pair of preternaturally bright blue eyes. His face was of a strong, even, healthy red; he was stout, but rather thick and massive than corpulent; his hands were of the square type, with thick straight fingers and large nails, the great blue veins showing strongly through the white skin. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... the handle was turned. Eliza had no wish to summon the housekeeper. She stood in the inner hall and listened, that she might hear what rooms had inmates. From the kitchen came occasional clinking of cups and plates; the housekeeper had evidently not swerved from her regular work. With ears preternaturally acute, Eliza hearkened to the silence in the other rooms till some slight sound, she could hardly tell of what, led her upstairs to a certain door. She did not knock; she had no power to stand there ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... prospect of having to drag his additional weight back to the town. The driver sat motionless on the box, watching the caperings of the tipsy tin-miners through the half-open door: a melancholy death'shead of a man, with a preternaturally long white face, and a figure shrouded in a dark cloak, looking as though he might be Death itself, waiting for the carousers to drop dead of apoplexy before carrying them off in his funereal equipage. In reply to Barrant's question he informed him that the vehicle was destined for Penzance, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... in the large room, and there was something so extraordinarily characteristic of her husband in those stooping shoulders, in the head hung a little forward, and in the preternaturally solemn voice, that Sheila had to bend a little over the bed to catch a glimpse of the sallow and keener face again. She sighed; and even on her own strained ear her sigh sounded ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Mitchy loyally responded. "For how CAN, how need, a woman be 'proud' who's so preternaturally clever? Pride's only for use when wit breaks down—it's the train the cyclist takes when his tire's deflated. When that happens to YOUR tire, Mrs. Brook, you'll let me know. And you do make me wonder just now," ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... experiences and discover that when we have been in danger of being contented with moral failure we have been made ashamed and disgusted by it; that when we have been on the verge of yielding to temptation we have been strangely and almost preternaturally protected; that when sorrows have come which would have crushed our unaided strength we have experienced strange peace and have had undreamed-of strength; and that never for a moment have we found rest or peace except as they ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... a local practitioner who had been a friend of Sir Charles Abingdon, shook his head slowly. He was a tall, preternaturally thin Scotsman, clean-shaven, with shaggy dark brows and a most gloomy expression in his deep-set eyes. While the presence of his sepulchral figure seemed appropriate enough in that stricken house, Harley could not help thinking that it must have been far ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... Mrs. Wheaton in making the room and bed a little more like what they should be by means of the articles they had brought. Clara wonderingly saw that her little closet was stocked with supplies for days to come. Her mother's preternaturally brilliant eyes followed every movement, also, with a dumb but eager questioning. Tired Belle in the meantime had drawn a chair to the table, and with her head resting on her arms had dropped asleep ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... unheard of in the shops. Porters bring carpet-bags and strange-looking packages of all sizes, and, to my great inconvenience, keep lifting up the foot-board, to deposit them in the "front boot." A solemn-looking man, whose nose is preternaturally red, holds carefully a silver-mounted whip. Passengers arrive, and climb to the roof of the coach, before and behind, until we are "full outside." Then the guard comes with a list, carefully checks ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... must have been dozing. I am very weak, and oh! so miserable, so miserable and tired—tired. The rustle of the paper, tries my brain. My hearing seems preternaturally sharp. I ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... of several Persons in the Neighbourhood, the Indictment being drawn up, according to the Form in such Cases usual. And pleading, Not Guilty, there were brought in several persons, who had long undergone many kinds of Miseries, which were preternaturally inflicted, and generally ascribed unto an horrible Witchcraft. There was little occasion to prove the Witchcraft, it being evident and notorious to all beholders. Now to fix the Witchcraft on the Prisoner at the Bar, the first ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... never wants a reason, and never loses sight of a reality, amply sustained. Here, then, is a local resource to the British tourist besides the imported one of the bull-dog. And it is remarkable that, except where the dogs are preternaturally audacious, a mere hint of the chermadion suffices. Late in our own experience too late for glory, we made the discovery that all dogs have a mysterious reverence for a trundling stone. It calls off attention ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... not!" Bertram's face was preternaturally grave as he turned to the little music teacher. "I hope, Miss Marie, that you wear rubber heels on your shoes," he ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter |
