"Spectre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our boys are coming to, as if we had any right to expect better treatment of them. I doubt if Jacob, in the whole course of his wizened little life, had ever a hand in an honest game that was not haunted by the spectre of the avenging policeman. That he was not "doing anything" was no defence. The mere claim was proof that he was up to mischief of some sort. Besides, the policeman was usually right. Play in such a setting becomes a direct incentive to mischief ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... Dave early on the trail, leading a saddled horse by his side. The hours were leaden for the girl all that day, and looking into the future she saw the spectre of her life shadowed down the years by an unutterable loneliness. How could she ever drop it all—all this wild freedom, this boundless health, this great outdoors, this life, life, how could she drop it all and go back into the little circle where ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... skeleton hands from their mittens, and raising them in an imploring gesture, Mookoomahn looked, as he stood there in the dim candlelight under the low log ceiling, more a spectre—a ghostly phantom visitor—than ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... portion of the tribe swept off by the fell disease which had left such marks on all who survived. There were no trees on this hill save one quite dead, which seemed to point, with its hoary arms, like a spectre to the tombs. A melancholy waste, where a level country and boundless woods extended beyond the reach of vision, was in perfect harmony with the dreary foreground of the scene. (See ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... regards ornamental design, and took the Great Exhibition to witness the fact. We have also pointed to that strange phenomenon, the rise anew of monastic institutions among us, long after their object is accomplished, giving a spectre-like expression to an obsolete idea; we have exposed, likewise, the inclination of the working-classes to trust to the protection, and, on every emergency, claim as a matter of right the aid of the wealthy, thus wilfully and deliberately returning to the condition of serfdom: we have now to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... retorted. "I never does hear of but one; that's a apparition which enlists the attentions of Peets and Old Man Enright a lot. It's a spectre that takes to ha'ntin' about one of Enright's Bar-B-8 sign-camps, an' scarin' up the cattle an' drivin' 'em over a precipice, an' all to Enright's disaster an' loss. Nacherally, Enright don't like this spectral play; an' him an' Peets lays for the wraith ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... opening the flood-gates of language, as the Spanish say. Rembrandt exerts an especial fascination. Fra Angelico is a saint, Michelangelo is a giant, Raphael is an angel, Titian a prince, Rembrandt is a spectre. What else can this miller's son be called? Born in a windmill, he arose unexpectedly without a master, without example, without any instruction from the schools, to become a universal painter, who depicted life in every aspect, who painted figures, landscapes, sea-pieces, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... which may satisfy it, have undoubtedly the effect of binding us to earth and earthly conditions; they come between us and faith in true immortality. They cannot restore to us what death takes away. They cannot lay the spectre ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... gradually a strange, unreasoning fear came upon me. I suppose it was the immensity of the prairies, the terrible loneliness of it all, and my own state of health, but the dread grew from day to day and from night to night. I tried to busy self, to keep my mind active, to throw off the spectre that haunted me, but day and night I was oppressed with a sense of impending danger. We had no wooden door on the house; we hadn't money to buy the boards to make one, and all my protection was a blanket hung in the doorway. I used to watch that ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... That old Greek question again;—yet unanswered. The unconquerable spectre still flitting among the forest trees at twilight; rising ribbed out of the sea-sand;—white, a strange Aphrodite,—out of the sea-foam; stretching its grey, cloven wings among the clouds; turning the light of their sunsets into blood. This has ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... of our orgies—one of our high festivals, I mean—he glided in, like the ghost in "Macbeth," and seated himself, as usual, a little back from the table, in the chair we always placed for "the spectre," whether it chose to fill it or not. I saw by his face that he was suffering from the effects of an overdose of his insidious comforter; but nobody spoke to him, and he spoke to nobody. A few sidelong glances, and a whispered observation, that "the ghost ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... while her excitement and enthusiasm died away, and life began to look gaunt and bare. Even her Saviour's face seemed hidden, and she only saw an ugly spectre in the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... like a human being—it was nothing but seaweed. Still she felt frightened, and hastened on; and as she hurried on, many things she had heard in her childhood recurred to her thoughts, especially all the superstitious tales about "the apparition of the beach"—the spectre of the unburied that lay washed up on the lonely, deserted shore. The body thrown up from the deep, the dead body itself, she thought nothing of; but its ghost followed the solitary wanderer, attached itself closely to him or her, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... that glance, and he trembled like a leaf. He gazed upon the stranger like one who sees a spectre. And she met his glance, boldly at the first; then the light faded from her eyes, her head drooped, and she fell in a swoon upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... those things for which he is most fitted, let them be what they will. He now felt free to tell the vicissitudes of thought and will he had passed through this twelvemonth, and how the idea of giving up all had affected him.] "The spectre of a wasted life has passed before me—a vision of that servant who hid his talent in a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... grief-stricken man, whose eyes seemed quenched in tears, passed often down the street, hardly able to drag himself along; it was Monsieur de Lamotte, who lodged, as we have said, in the rue de la Mortellerie, and who seemed like a spectre wandering round a tomb. The crowd made way and uncovered before him, everybody respected such terrible misfortune, and when he had passed, the groups formed up again, and continued ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... private they besought the latter that to the double merit of having vanquished the enemy and reconciled the parties he would add the third and yet greater service of preserving internal peace to his country, and banishing the fearful spectre of civil war with which they were threatened. Whatever could tell on a vain, unskilful, vacillating man—all the flattering arts of diplomacy, all the theatrical apparatus of patriotic enthusiasm—was put ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Ha Balder! thou hast slain him! Ah, forgive me! My dream confuses me—thou see'st I tremble. I heard the fall of gods—the gods lamenting; And bloody by the Hall there stood a spectre: Big was the ruddy wound whereto it pointed. Like one deep musing it conceal'd its visage; But big the tears were through its fingers streaming: Ah, the pale son of night was ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... matter how the wind blew. Hanz Toodleburg called the Fire Fly an invention of the devil, and nobody else. The bright blaze of her furnaces, and the long trail of fire and sparks issuing from her funnel of a dark night, gave a spectre-like appearance to her movements, that rather increased a belief amongst the superstitious that she was really an invention of the evil one, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... certainty, all friends, far and near, were roused, and thronged along the banks of the stream. Torches flashed in boats that put off in the terrible search. Hawthorne, then living in the Old Manse, was summoned, and the man whom the villagers had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in his garden, now appeared among them at night to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their service. The boats drifted slowly down the stream—the torches flared strangely upon the black repose of ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... a battalion was pressing past, the spectre of annihilation. West groaned. Then a figure sprang from the shadowy ranks and called West's name, and when he saw it was Trent he cried out. Trent seized him, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... had listened in an agony of terror to the colloquy, and at the exclamation of Primus, availing himself of his post as steersman, turned the bow of the boat towards the opposite shore, to place as great an interval as possible between himself and the spectre. The action had not passed unnoticed, though neither of his companions made any remark upon it. Repeatedly his head had flown round over his shoulder, to catch a glimpse of what he dredded to see, but, notwithstanding the excitement of his ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... so much pain, judge what I must suffer. The affection you show them makes me feel most acutely my unhappiness in having none." These words sounded in Josephine's ears like a funeral knell. She saw the spectre of divorce rising before her, and turned pale. From Genoa they went to Turin. Napoleon heard there of the coalition preparing against him, and left suddenly for France with Josephine. Non-commissioned officers of the Grenadiers ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house as to my thoughts and remembrances of it, any ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Another spectre that rose to haunt my last days in prison, and long stood between my parole and final pardon, was the story of one John McMath, a corporal in an Indiana cavalry company, in Pleasanton's command, ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... remained only for a time. I kept up secret devotions very carefully. I never missed my daily prayers, but my life was inconsistent and God-dishonoring. The lives of real Christians rebuked me, and the mockery of my empty profession haunted me like a spectre. ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... of the first week of war was indeed serious, and the grim spectre of unemployment was in the air. But ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... this was one of the last he would have wished to meet at any time; but, now that he recognised in him only the patron and protector of Nicholas, he would rather have seen a spectre. One beneficial effect, however, the encounter had upon him. It instantly roused all his dormant energies; rekindled in his breast the passions that, for many years, had found an improving home there; called up all his wrath, hatred, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... to leave Mount Music on Wednesday, and on Thursday, Larry was to be married to Tishy Mangan. What room was there for phantom fears when these things were certainties? What spectre from the other world has power to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... one, the glorious day, the burning one, the founder of cities, the renewer of sanctuaries, the provider of feasts for all the Igigi, without whom no feast took place in E-kura. Like Nebo, he bore the glorious spectre, and it was said of him that he attacked mightily in battle. Without him the sun-god, the judge, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... to see a coral dawn Gladden to a crocus glow! Day's a spectre dim and wan, Dancing on the furtive snow; Night's a cloud upon my brain: Oh, to see the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... dress'd in blue; I've seen a cupid burn a wing; I've known a Neptune lose a shoe; I've heard a guilty spectre sing. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... dashed into the valley, below us now, as if this rolling along of a heavy victoria, a lot of luggage, and three travellers, was an agreeable episode in her career of toil. But on the mind of her owner, the spectre of the free-thinkers was still hovering like an evil spirit. During the next hour he gave us a long and exhaustive exposition of the changes wrought by ces messieurs qui nient le bon Dieu. Among their crimes was to be numbered that of having disintegrated the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... 'Between them and me there is a great gulf fixed. I watch them pass, and I say to myself: "There are the living—that is how they look, how they speak! Realise once for all that you have nothing to do with them. Life is theirs—belongs to them. You are already outside it. Go your way, and be a spectre among the active ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... must be mad, and I retreated backward before this advancing spectre. I kept moving away, making a sign with my hand,' as if to drive the phantom away, that gesture which you have noticed—that gesture which has remained with me ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... building which evidently had once been a dwelling of importance, but for quite a century it had been tenantless and almost entirely dismantled: the home of the owl and the lizard, of the spectre and ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... me. No longer guest-right I bestow; The door is open, art free to go. But what do I see in the creature? Is that in the course of nature? Is't actual fact? or Fancy's shows? How long and broad my poodle grows! He rises mightily: A canine form that cannot be! What a spectre I've harbored thus! He resembles a hippopotamus, With fiery eyes, teeth terrible to see: O, now am I sure of thee! For all of thy half-hellish brood The Key of Solomon ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... weeks kept Amy company. Through her nights and days it had stalked, a pale spectre. And now Maxwell was saying: "You'll be well in a month. Of course you'll come! There's room for half a dozen. You three ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... the focal and foremost fire, Out of the hospital walls as dire, Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene— Eighteenth battle and he sixteen— Spectre such as you seldom see, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... dread of some indefinable tragedy. Mobs and riots of much greater magnitude than the John Brown uprising had frequently occurred in the free States, and they were put down by the firm authority of law, without the dread hand of a spectre behind which might in a moment light the horizon with the conflagration of homes, and subject wives and daughters to a fate of nameless horror. Instead, therefore, of arresting the spread of Republican principles, the mad scheme of John Brown tended to develop and strengthen ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a stout, stumpy fellow, about four feet ten, with a head somewhat too large for his body, and extremely long arms. Ever since the plague had broken out in Drury-lane, it haunted him like a spectre, and scattered the few faculties he possessed. In vain he tried to combat his alarm—in vain his mother endeavoured to laugh him out of it. Nothing would do. He read the bills of mortality daily; ascertained the particulars of every case; dilated upon the agonies of the sufferers; ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... carried her long hair to her lover, who, urged by a frantic despair, hurried to the spot to assure himself of the truth of the tale, and shortly after threw himself, in battle, on the swords of his countrymen. After this event, the Indians were never successful in their warfare, the spectre of their victim presenting itself continually between them and ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... it was a spectre-play of some sort; but this was nothing to be afraid of, thought he. It wasn't any dangerous trolls, or any other evil—such as he always dreaded to encounter at night. Both the wall and the gate were so beautifully ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... counsel, as one of them told Sir Walter Scott, knew that their clients were guilty. A witness had seen them in the act. But the advocate (Lockhart, a Jacobite) made such fun out of the ghost that an Edinburgh jury, disbelieving in the spectre, and not loving the House of Hanover, very logically disregarded also the crushing evidence for a crime which was actually described ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... of adoration—that it alone proves him incapable of so refined a sentiment. If any doubt remained, it would be removed by his utter inability to rise above the sensual sphere. The Australian is absolutely immoral and incredibly licentious. Here, however, we are confronted by a spectre with which the sentimentalists try to frighten the searchers for truth, and which must therefore be exorcised first. They grant the wantonness of savages, but declare that it is "due chiefly to the influence of civilization." This is one of the favorite subterfuges of Westermarck, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... more solitary by the knowledge that between the benighted sojourner herein and all kindred humanity are those three concentric walls of earth which no being would think of scaling on such a night as this, even were he to hear the most pathetic cries issuing hence that could be uttered by a spectre-chased soul. I reach a central mound or platform—the crown and axis of the whole structure. The view from here by day must be of almost limitless extent. On this raised floor, dais, or rostrum, harps have probably twanged more or less tuneful notes in celebration of daring, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... evil and apparent injustice, there rises up before us at the very outset the threatening spectre of universal evil and injustice. This problem is so closely bound up with our subject that we are compelled to spend a short time in ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... thrown into the streets here, or reduced to borrow, and become the slave of somebody, for a morsel of bread. Thank God, no! Nay, of late I begin entirely to despise that whole matter, so as I never hitherto despised it: "Thou beggarliest Spectre of Beggary that hast chased me ever since I was man, come on then, in the Devil's name, let us see what is in thee! Will the Soul of a man, with Eternity within a few years of it, quail before thee?" Better, however, is my good pious Mother's version of it: "They cannot take God's ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in the body,—in the very body, as to all essential properties, and to all practical intents and purposes, in which you live now. I am not to live as a ghost, a spectre, a spirit, I am to live then as I live ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... ship the Topaze, and on his way home. He was buried at sea on the 2nd of May, 1872. Poor fellow! He was the smallest in size of all the children, in his manhood reaching only to a little over five feet; and throughout his childhood was never called by any other name than the "Ocean Spectre," from a strange little weird yet most attractive look in his large wondering eyes, very happily caught in a sketch in oils by the good Frank Stone, done at Bonchurch in September 1849 and remaining in his aunt's possession. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... had been easily arranged. On that foggy night when she had fled from Leonard Dowson, terrified by the spectre of a future life which his words had evoked, she had run, without in the least realizing her direction, straight to the railway station; and the idea of London had at once presented itself to her mind. A train was just starting, and Toni hastily took a ticket and jumped into a carriage ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... me in the face every waking hour, like a grisly spectre with bloody fang and claw, is the extermination of species. To me, that is a horrible thing. It is wholesale murder, no less. It is capital crime, and a black disgrace to the races of civilized mankind. I say "civilized mankind," because ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... can also Partly see what causes this. 'Tis men; 'Tis men that force you to it: they themselves Have cast away their own nobility, Themselves have crouch'd to this degraded posture. Man's innate greatness, like a spectre, frights them; Their poverty seems safety; with base skill They ornament their chains, and call it virtue To wear them with an air of grace. Twas thus You found the world; thus from your royal father Came it ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... burned in his mouth at the sight of it. He turned away and saw the hot, unshaded mountains wrinkled in the sun, glazed and shrunk, gullied like the parchment of an old man's throat; and then he saw a man in a steeple-hat. He could no more lay the spectre that wasted his mind than the thirst-demon which raged in his body. He shut his eyes, and then his arm was beating at something to keep it away. Pillowed on his saddle, he beat until he forgot. A blow at the corner of his eye ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... for hours and for hours You are alone with your husband and lord. There is a skeleton hid in yon flowers; There is a spectre at bed and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... to indulge fresh hopes of fortune in another place. He would again offer himself to the Medici. In April he set off for Tuscany, and alighted at the convent of Monte Oliveto, near Florence. Nobody wanted him; he wandered about the Pitti like a spectre, and the Florentines wrote: actum est de eo.[59] Some parting compliments and presents from the Grand Duke sweetened his dismissal. He returned to Rome; but each new journey told upon his broken health, and another ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... The sulphurous steam of Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. But he has not a word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce; he crosses the wood of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman, and wanders up and down Rimini without one thought of Francesca. At Paris, he had eagerly sought an introduction to Boileau; but he seems not to have been at all aware that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau could not sustain a comparison, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fields it is not Vintage, Drunk and weary wavers home— 'Tis a spectre, meagre, gloomy, As a ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... 'Thereupon the spectre told me exactly where the treasure lay, and how to find it. It might be only yesterday so well do I remember every word ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... is it not a doom to be Solecism incarnate! A new Roi Faineant, King Donothing; but with the strangest new Mayor of the Palace: no bow-legged Pepin now, but that same cloud-capt, fire-breathing Spectre of DEMOCRACY; incalculable, which is enveloping the world!—Was Louis no wickeder than this or the other private Donothing and Eatall; such as we often enough see, under the name of Man, and even Man of Pleasure, cumbering ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Torch out of his Hand into the River. The God after having regarded you with a Look that spoke at [once [1]] his Pity and Displeasure, flew away. Immediately a kind of Gloom overspread the whole Place. At the same time I saw an hideous Spectre enter at one end of the Valley. His Eyes were sunk into his Head, his Face was pale and withered, and his Skin puckered up in Wrinkles. As he walked on the sides of the Bank the River froze, the Flowers faded, the Trees shed their Blossoms, the Birds dropped from off the Boughs, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... But now the common life has come, The blotting cloud a dappled pack, The grasses one vast underhum. A City clothed in snow and soot, With lamps for day in ghostly rows, Breaks to the scene of hosts afoot, The river that reflective flows: And there did fog down crypts of street Play spectre upon eye and mouth:— Their faces are a glass to greet This magic of the whirl for South. A burly joy each creature swells With sound of its own hungry quest; Earth has to fill her empty wells, And speed the service of the nest; ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... in the two sexes; and we should, therefore, expect to find that in some cases the special protection given to the female was in the male less in amount or altogether wanting. The facts entirely confirm this expectation. In the spectre insects (Phasmidae) it is often the females alone that so strikingly resemble leaves, while the males show only a rude approximation. The male Diadema misippus is a very handsome and conspicuous butterfly, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... what they can do to us. That accounts for our politeness. Death, universal and inevitable, is none the less a villainous institution. Every other antagonist can be ignored or bribed or circumvented or crushed outright. But here is a damnable spectre who knocks at the door and does not wait to hear you say, 'Come in.' Hateful! If other people think differently it is because they live differently. How do they live? Like a cow that has stumbled into a dark hole, and now spends its time wondering how it managed ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... mine, unknowing and unknown, [45]With deans deceased, to sleep beneath the stone." As tearful thus, and half convulsed with spite, He lengthen'd out with plaints the livelong night, At that still hour of night, when dreams are oft'nest true, A well-known spectre rose before his view, As in some lake, when hush'd in every breeze, The bending ape his form reflected sees,[46] Such and so like the Doctor's angel shone, And by his gait the guardian sprite was known, Benignly bending o'er ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... dog we have, no spectre, here! He growls and stops, crawls on his belly, too, And wags his tail,—as ...
— Faust • Goethe
... returned forthwith to Thomas Putnam's house. Ann told them that Goody Corey had not troubled her, nor her spectre appeared, in their absence. She was not inclined to afford them an opportunity to apply the test of the dress. Both the women showed great acuteness and caution. As Corey expected the visit, and had heard ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... dead, then, since he rose of a sudden, like a spectre, took up his wife in his arms, and descended from the pyre in the midst of the clouds of smoke, which only heightened ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... hideous images of Death. Its name was Contagion—it rushed forward with an indescribable movement. Dismay and confusion overwhelmed all that quarter of the crowded scene, that was particularly threatened by its first advance. The affrighted multitude rolled back like a tumultuous sea. The horrid spectre stopt; and left a wide interval between itself and the retiring host. A ray of heavenly light illumined the vacant space. I fixed my eye on the brilliant spot, and soon beheld the meek and gentle form of HOWARD advancing, without fear or arrogance, ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... remorse attends, While his heart loaths the cause his tongue defends; Hourly he acts, hourly repents the sin, And is all over grandfather within: By day that ill-laid spirit checks,—o' nights Old Pickering's ghost, a dreadful spectre, frights. Returns of spleen his slacken'd speed remit, And crump his loose careers with intervals of wit: While, without stop at sense, or ebb of spite, Breaking all bars, bounding o'er wrong and right, Contented Roger ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... aunt, preceding me, had taken possession. Mr. Warder was reduced to a condition of abject obedience, and for a month and more my aunt hardly left her girl-boy's pillow. Indeed, it was long before I was let to see him, and then he was but a spectre of himself, with not enough blood to blush with. Our officers very promptly left for New York the day after our fight, and we heard ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... though he beheld a spectre, but seeing that the young man was about to sink to the floor exhausted, he sprang to his feet and ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... good scene supposed to have happened between Sam Rogers and a lady of fashion—the reporter, Lord Dudley. Sam enters, takes a stool, creeps close to the lady's side, who asks his opinion of the last new poem or novel. In a pathetic voice the spectre replies—"My opinion? I like it very much—but the world don't like it; but, indeed, I begin to think the world wrong in everything, except with regard to you." Now, Rogers either must have said this somewhere, or he has it yet to say. We ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... at the blacksmith's, to whom the passing of the coach is an event fruitful of much speculation. The smith, with the horse's heel in his lap, pauses as the vehicle whirls by; the Cyclops round the anvil suspend their ringing hammers, and suffer the iron to grow cool; and the sooty spectre in brown paper cap, labouring at the bellows, leans on the handle for a moment, and permits the asthmatic engine to heave a long-drawn sigh, while he glares through the murky smoke and sulphureous gleams ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... made up in the castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... moon or stars, without cloud or sky, with only a blank density around and about, Ralph seemed to see in fitful flashes that came and went—now on the right and now on the left of him, now in front and now behind, now on the earth at his feet and now in the dumb vapor floating above him—the spectre of that riderless horse. Sometimes he would stop and listen, thinking he heard a horse canter close past him; but no, it was the noise of a hidden river as its waters leapt over the stones. Sometimes he thought he heard the neigh of a horse ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... besides the characters already named, Rolla, Penruddock, Lothaire, Othello, George Barnwell, Octavian, Osmond (Castle Spectre) Hotspur, Frederick in Lovers Vows, Petruchio, Gondebert, and many others, if not all with equal excellence, at least with so much as to rank him among the first masters ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... interrupted yesterday. The ghost is laid for a time in a red sea of port and claret. The spectre is the famous Wilkes. He appeared the moment the Parliament was dissolved. The Ministry despise him. He stood for the City of London, and was the last on the poll of seven candidates, none but the mob, and most of them without votes, favouring him. He then offered himself to the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... in the bottom of a bucket overnight was frozen into a thick cake in the morning, the thermometer indicating 18 degrees. The nights I pass in these fearful regions are more dreadful than the days, for "night is the time for care, brooding o'er days misspent, when the pale spectre of despair comes to our lonely tent;" and often when I lay me down I fall into a dim and death-like trance, wakeful, yet "dreaming dreams no mortals had ever dared ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... stalactites. blaze in front of you; fluted columns and draperies in broad folds with a formation that resembles the finest hemstitching may be seen all around you, while Pluto's chasm, a wide rift in the walls, contains a spectre clothed in shadowy draperies. One wonders how long this grim, ghastly person has stood here. Long ages came and went in that shadowy and evanescent time with no record save these stony ghosts, and over all a black pall of mystery ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... hair. Dry sorrow in his stupid eyes appears, For, wanting nourishment, he wanted tears: His eye-balls in their hollow sockets sink, Bereft of sleep, he loathes his meat and drink. He withers at his heart, and looks as wan As the pale spectre of a murder'd man: That pale turns yellow, and his face receives 530 The faded hue of sapless boxen leaves: In solitary groves he makes his moan, Walks early out, and ever is alone: Nor, mix'd in mirth, in youthful pleasures shares, But sighs when songs and instruments he hears. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... a sight that made those present tremble when they saw the old gray woman, a sublime spectre, standing beside her grandchild's pillow. Terror and vengeance wrote their fierce expressions in the wrinkles that lined her skin of yellow ivory; her forehead, half hidden by the straggling meshes of her gray hair, expressed a solemn anger. She read, with a ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... because her heart is lonely, And yet she hath no strength to stand alone,— Once she had playmates, fancies of her own, And she did love them. They are past away As fairies vanish at the break of day; And like a spectre of an age departed, Or unsphered angel woefully astray, She glides ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... by rappings, it is a curious fact that there is not a ghost in the House of Strange Stories. On my earliest visit to this mansion, I was disturbed, I own, by a not unpleasing expectancy. There must, one argued, be a shadowy lady in green in the bedroom, or, just as one was falling asleep, the spectre of a Jesuit would creep out of the priest's hole, where he was starved to death in the "spacious times of great Elizabeth," and would search for a morsel of bread. The priest was usually starved out, sentinels being placed in all the rooms and passages, till at last hunger ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... 'Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor; And the first wisdom, to be fool no more. But to the world no bugbear is so great, As want of figure, and a small estate. To either India see the merchant fly, Scared at the spectre of pale poverty! See him, with pains of body, pangs of soul, Burn through the Tropic, freeze beneath the pole! Wilt thou do nothing for a nobler end, Nothing, to make philosophy thy friend? To stop ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... stairs, I darted up towards my own room. My hand was already on the lock of the door before I recollected myself. I then paused, and a cold shivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as children are accustomed to do when they expect a spectre to stand in waiting for them on the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped fearfully in: the apartment was empty, and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous guest. I could hardly believe that so great a good fortune could have ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... to meet with the less credit among all men of sense; and nothing but the duke's imprudent bigotry could have convinced the whole nation of his change of religion. Popery, which had hitherto been only a hideous spectre, was now become a real ground of terror being openly and zealously embraced by the heir to the crown a prince of industry and enterprise; while the king himself was not entirely free from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... wish to go in. He declared that the door was closed. She pushed it, and slipped into the immense nave, where the inanimate trees of the columns ascended in darkness. In the rear, candles were moving in front of spectre-like priests, under the last reverberations of the organs. She trembled in ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... to the mind. In Pump Court we encounter the brisk little spectre of Mr. Frederick Minchin, and who can forget that his club was The Oxford and Cambridge, than which what better could he desire? Mr. Thackeray himself was a member of The Garrick, The Athenaeum, and The Reform, but the clubs of many of his characters, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... men, however, were less distinguished for cleverness than for malignity, and shrieked for blood and the display of brute force in terms that would have done dishonor even to a St. Bartholomew assassin or anti-Albigensian crusader. Monsieur Romieu held up Le Spectre Rouge to the eyes of a generation incapable, from fright, of distinguishing between a scarecrow and the Apollo. The Red Spectre haunted him, and the people for whom he wrote, as relentlessly as the Gray Spectre came upon the chiefs of Ivor. He ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... debauchee with dreams, Of the victim of his schemes; Paint her with dishevelled hair, Streaming eyes, and bosom bare, And with aspect pale and sad, As a spectre's from the dead, Weeping o'er her new-born, child, Her name reproached, her fame despoiled: Let her groanings reach his ear, Pierce his heart, and rouse his fear Of the retribution given, To such deeds ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... balustrades, and broken windows of which seemed ready to fall at the first tempest. The north wind whistled through these ruins, to which the moon, with her indefinite light, gave the character and outline of a great spectre. But the colors of those gray-blue granites, mingling with the black and tawny schists, must have been seen in order to understand how vividly a spectral image was suggested by the empty and gloomy carcass of the building. Its disjointed stones and paneless windows, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... spectacle of horror, where Were six score loathsome corpses upright there, Whilst jammed between them, in the filthy den, Were twenty-three more miserable men, Who hardly could be said to be alive, So fearfully did death among them strive To make them all his own, leaving no trace Of aught but spectre life in that vile place. This dreadful history cannot fail to show, How fatal consequences surely flow, From disregard of the Creator's laws, For these foul poisonous vapours were the cause Of five score agonising deaths, within The space ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... still stood by her door, like a spectre in the sunshine, her thin hands clasped together as she gazed away over ...
— The Indian's Hand - 1892 • Lorimer Stoddard
... will solve the enigma. Here, without doubt, has occurred some grand disturbance of nature. The walls of this apartment, its casements, its decorations, have been witness to some fell crime. The spectre of ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... is the name of a night spectre, said to have been Adam's first wife, but who, for her refractory conduct, was transformed into a demon endowed with power to injure and even destroy infants unprotected by the necessary ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... through the stalwart figure's heart, and he bows his head, and thinks—it is but justice! In the same instant, a cry of intensest pain and horror escapes him: the deadly arrow, additionally poisoned by the blood it has just shed, has passed quite through the spectre of his former pupil, and is buried up to the feather in Professor Valeyon's own vitals! This shock effectually wakened the old gentleman—for, after all, he had only been having an uneasy nap in his straight-backed chair!—and he started ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... strained and quivering, his eyes were lit with something very much like horror. Some words certainly left his lips, but they did not carry to the hearing of any one of those three people. He looked at Maraton with the fierce, terrified intentness of one who looks upon a spectre! ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... distressed, and would have clasped her, but upon her appearance of loathing it desisted, only moving its jaw upward and downward, as if it would cry for help but could not for want of its parts of speech. At length, she growing more and more faint, and likely to die of fear, the spectre suddenly, as if at a thought, began to swing round its hand, which was loose at the wrist, with a brisk motion, and the finger bones being long and hard, and striking sharply against each other, made a loud noise like to the springing of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... were a mass of acicular crystals; it was a true easterly fog. I galloped on, hoping to get through it, unable to see a yard before me; but it thickened, and I was obliged to subside into a jog-trot. As I rode on, about four miles from the cabin, a human figure, looking gigantic like the spectre of the Brocken, with long hair white as snow, appeared close to me, and at the same moment there was the flash of a pistol close to my ear, and I recognized 'Mountain Jim,' frozen from head to foot, looking a century old with his snowy hair. It was 'ugly' altogether, certainly a 'desperado's' grim ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... lying on the floor, holding the half- perused paper in my hand. Grief and horror had locked up the avenues of complaint, and I sat as one petrified to stone. My father entered. At the sight of me, he started as if he had been a spectre. His well- known features opened at once my agonized heart. With fearful cries I cast myself at his feet, and putting the letter into his hand, clung, almost expiring, to ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... will be disappointed. The government will make sure work this time, and leave not a clan in all the Highlands able to do them hurt. As for me, it will not matter. I shall either be dead or taken by this time to-morrow. I have seen the Bodach Glas—the Grey Spectre." ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... experiments in the "explained" supernatural; The Romance of the Forest, and her use of suspense; heroines: The Mysteries of Udolpho; illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; The Italian; villains; her historical accuracy and "unexplained" spectre in Gaston de Blondeville; her reading; style; descriptions of scenery; position in the history of the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... something induced him to do that again. At the same moment another mighty roar ascended from the crowd, and the head of the great fire-escape rose like a solemn spectre through smoke, fire, and steam, not ten ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... frozen with horror as he remembers the doom. For the first time the grey spectre of Death confronts him face to face as ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... yet I shall return To dare the weeds of death, And plunge through the coned pink bloom, And cry on that spectre set In its silent ring of gloom, And stay my youth to learn The thing ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... for a Ceylon elephant-hunter would be the first view of a herd of African elephants—all tuskers! In Ceylon, a "tusker" is a kind of spectre, to be talked of by a few who have had the good luck to see one. And when he is seen by a good sportsman, it is an evil hour for him—he is followed till ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... who cares fur kings or queens, Mix'd in a nation's broil, They nivver benefit the poor— The poor mun ollas toil. An' thou gilded spectre, royalty, That dazzles folks's een, Is nowt to me when I'm wi thee, Sweet Lass o' ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... "all augurs ill for this affair. The strange discovery by the instinct of a dog, the revival of this Scottish knight, who comes into the lists like a spectre,—all ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... was unnecessary," said the Lord Keeper, relieved from his silence, as a spectre by the voice of the exorcist, "and I am obliged to you, Master of Ravenswood, for breaking the ice at once, where circumstances—unhappy circumstances, let me call them—rendered self-introduction ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... black, and that the innumerable white Americans she saw at our house were merely a multitude of exceptions. But with all her ignorance, she had no superstitions of a gloomy kind: the only ghost she seemed ever to have heard of was the spectre of an American ship captain which a friend of Piero's had seen at the Lido. She was perfectly kind and obedient, and was deeply attached in an inarticulate way to the baby, which was indeed the pet of the whole palace. This young lady ruled arbitrarily over them all, and was forever being ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... man fell forward on the floor so prone that the agitated spectators thought him dead. At that instant Madame de la Chanterie appeared like a spectre at the door of her room, against the frame of which she ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... business life. The cloud which, under certain atmospheric conditions, rests like a pall over our great cities, will not even permit at times of a single ray of sunshine permeating it. No one knows whence it rises, nor at what hour to expect it. It is like a giant spectre which, having lain dormant since the carboniferous age, has been raised into life and being at the call of restless humanity; it is now punishing us for our prodigal use of the wealth it left us, by clasping us in its deadly arms, cutting off our brilliant sunshine, ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... he considered the utmost indelicacy, and he pitied poor Felicite. How was it possible to be beloved by that sublime creature and not adore her on his knees, not believe her on the faith of a glance or a smile? He felt a desire to turn and rend that cold, pale spectre of a man. Ignorant he might be, as Felicite had told him, of the tricks of thought of the jesters of the press, but one thing he ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Spectre she espied, The fear-struck damsel faintly said, "What wou'd my Thomas?"—he replied, "Oh! Molly Dumpling! I ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail, A spectre at my door, Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail— I shall but love you more, Who, from Death's house returning, give me still One moment's comfort in ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... putting on the glasses that suit him best, (ay, using a spy-glass, if he likes,)—and make a full report. What, probably, will he spy?—what will he select to look at? Of course, he will see a Brocken spectre of himself. He will see several meeting-houses, at least, and, perhaps, that somebody ought to be assessed higher than he is, since he has so handsome a wood-lot. Now take Julius Caesar, or Immanuel Swedenborg, or a Fegee-Islander, and set him up there. Or suppose all together, and let them compare ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... The Spectre Butterfly.—Another butterfly, but belonging to a widely different group, is the "sylph" (Hestia Jasonia), called by the Europeans by the various names of Floater, Spectre, and Silver-paper fly, as indicative of its graceful flight. It is found only in the deep shade of the damp ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... if Cedric's words had raised a spectre; for, scarce had he uttered them ere the door flew open, and Athelstane, arrayed in the garments of the grave, stood before them, pale, haggard, and like something arisen from ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... shallow waters, experience strange things when none are by to credit them," suddenly exclaimed his assistant—a mentally deficient youth of the villages whom Ten-teh charitably employed because all others rejected him. "Behold, master, a spectre ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... cannot have them sooner in readiness. If you, Mr. Temple, can contrive to pass this week at Mr. Percy's, let me not detain you. There is no fear," added he, smiling, that "in solitude I should be troubled by the spectre which haunted the minister in Gil ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... existence, with its ordinary pleasures and interests, did not satisfy her at all. Clancy's former question in regard to her devotion to the past and the dead, "What goodwill it do?" haunted her like a spectre. He had again made the dreary truth more clear, that there was nothing in the future to which she could give the strong allegiance of her soul. She would work for nothing, suffer for nothing, hope for nothing, except her daily bread. As she said, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not superstitious, yet he felt his heart move quickly when the horseman galloped past him, and old legends about spectres rose up in his mind. Perhaps the rider was the wild huntsman of whom he had heard so much, or what was more likely, it was no spectre, but a robber. This last possibility frightened Pierre very much. He bent down and took a pistol out of the saddle-bag. He cocked the trigger and continued on his way, while he muttered ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... lord, the landlord began a weird tale, suggested by the speech of the Palmer. As Marmion listened, he gathered from the legend that not far from where they sat, a knight might learn of future weal or woe. He might, perchance, meet "in the charmed ring" his deadliest foe, in the form of a spectre, and with it engage in mortal combat. If victorious over this supernatural antagonist, the omen was victory ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... Stone steps, leading down to a trap-door. Shall I help you down, or—no, I will go alone. When I open the door, a hollow groan will be heard, and the clank of iron fetters. Would you rather have me descend to Hades with a loud squeak, or shall a headless spectre arise, grinning and—beg pardon! anatomy at fault; grinning requires a head. That's the way! my genius is always checked in its soaring flight, and pulled back to earth by ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... had strength to quell Hope the spectre and fear the spell, Clear-eyed, content with a scorn sublime And a faith superb, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... spectre at their licentious feasts; a something in the midst of their revelry and riot that chilled and haunted them; but out of doors he was the same. Directly it was dark, he was abroad—never in company with any one, but always alone; never lingering ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... sharp, beady eyes looked straight into those of the youth, and held him. His small, round head, with its low brow and grizzled locks, waved snake-like on the man's long neck. His tall form, in its black cassock, bent over the lad like a spectre. His slender arms, of uncanny length, waved constantly before him; and the long, bony fingers seemed to reach into the boy's very soul and choke the springs of life at their origin. His reasoning took the form of suggestion, bearing the indisputable ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... pledged himself to make all that good with a few yards of tarpauling, and Aunt M'riar and Dolly went to bed, with sore misgivings as to whether they would wake alive next day. Dolly woke in the night and screamed with terror at what she conceived was a spectre from the grave, but which was really nothing but a short length of scaffold-pole standing upright at the foot of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... back to the fireplace and placed several chunks of wood on the blaze. A bright orange glow leaped out from the hearth and danced mockingly over his pallid brow, hiding his lank jowls in the shadows cast by the cheekbones. Like some grim spectre he rose up, towering above the little Dutchman. Peter had only to look into his eyes to see the imperative request that lingered behind ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... and confusion, and distraction bound his senses; he refused all company, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor talk, and he looked as white and wan as a spectre. A stupid weight, a dismal sullen stillness succeeded the storm of shame and grief; and he felt himself to be the most forlorn of human beings. If it had been only possible to undo things done! he would have bought the privilege ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... whole literature of wonder and imagination. Such sagas as that which Dr Douglas Hyde has translated with consummate art from the Irish, "Teig O'Kane and the Corpse," which Mr W.B. Yeats called a little masterpiece; or Boccaccio's story of the spectre-hounds that pulled down the daughter of Anastasio, or Scott's "Wandering Willie's Tale," or Hawker's "Cruel Coppinger," or Edgar Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher," are of their kind not to be beaten. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... their admiration of so much gorgeous wall-colouring; there were flaunting ladies in bonnets of the latest fashion and marvellous petticoats, who criticized the curtains and pointed the parasol of scorn at faded draperies; people who felt the heavy hand of the spectre of departed glory, and people who exulted at beholding the hidden recesses of an Imperial mansion laid bare to the jokes and ribaldry of Belleville and La Villette. Every class of Parisian society was represented in the throng that swayed and hustled ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... book. A man cannot have a sensuous nature and be pachydermatous at the same time, and if he be imaginative as well as sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the amount of his imagination. It is perfectly true that what we call the world, in these affairs, is nothing more than a mere Brocken spectre, the projected shadow of ourselves; but as long as we do not know it, it is a very passable giant. We are not without experience of natures so purely intellectual that their bodies had no more concern in their mental doings and sufferings than ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... had passed her by when she missed her little brother from the cradle; but still it had never stood by her side and said, "Lo, I am here!" Her circle of love was so small that it seemed as though the dread spectre could not enter. She saw it afar off; she thought upon it sometimes in her poetical dreams, which clad the imaginary shape of grief with a strange beauty. It was sweet to be sad, sweet to weep. She even tried to make a few delicious sorrows ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... that dreadful apparition; its attitude seemed to be either menacing or warning. The terrified woman, under the influence of a painful fascination, could not avert her gaze from it; and the spectre stood until the candle was entirely consumed, and the room was wrapped in profound darkness. Then the Form glided to the bedside, and laid its cold hand upon her brow. 'Thou shalt see me again!' it whispered, and then ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... The boy, grown old in lust, goes thence to be an hour alone, to ponder for an hour on this God, this resurrection, and this truth, of which the Jew, in such uncourtly phrase, has harangued him. To be alone, until the spectre of a dying mother rises again to haunt him, to persecute him and drive him forth to his followers and feasters, where he will try to forget Paul and the Saviour and God, where he would be glad to banish them forever. He does not banish ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... the boy led the pair of us a lively dance. I shall not soon forget the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night Andy had the scarlet-fever—an anxiety which so infected me that I actually returned to the tavern the following afternoon earlier than usual, dreading to hear that the little spectre was dead, and greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey at the door-step with his face wreathed in smiles. When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet-fever that ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
