"Spectacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... buildings were not supposed to keep dogs at all, while the idea of an Irish Wolfhound, thirty-two inches high the shoulder!—— But it was little the Master cared that night. The meeting between Tara and the Mistress of the Kennels was a spectacle which afforded him real joy. The flat seemed ridiculously tiny when once Tara was inside it; but, like all her race, this mother of heroes was a marvel of deftness, and could walk in and out of the Mistress's little drawing-room without so much as brushing a chair-leg. There was great ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... boatswain's whistle of some old naval uncle, or his silver tobacco-box, redolent of Oroonoko, happily grouped with the mother's ivory comb-case, still odorous of musk, and with some virgin aunt's tortoise-shell spectacle-case, and the eagle's talon of ebony, with which, in the days of long and stiff stays, our grandmothers were wont to alleviate any little irritation in their back or shoulders! Then there was the silver strainer, on which, in more economical times than ours, the lady of the house placed the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... harm was like to come to them, pressed forward once more, and gazed with open-mouthed wonder—and also, as it seemed to me, with awe—at the prodigious spectacle which Pablo, gravely riding upon the ass's back, presented to them. And so, with the guards before and behind us, we marched onward into the ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... a singular spectacle to see men who were raising the cry of "aristocracy" against those who happened to be richer than themselves, while they did not possess a single privilege or power that, substantially, was not equally ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... deeper significance than has generally been admitted. It reveals the fact that the sentiment of Union, in distinction from the belief in the Union, had become a real force in American life. There could be no clearer testimony to the strength of this feeling than this spectacle of a great congregation of moderate people, unable to agree upon anything except this sentiment, stepping between the sectional parties like a resolute wayfarer going forward into darkness along a perilous ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... ornery outfits I ever saw—" began the man at the table, grinning from ear to ear at the spectacle ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... remarkable spectacle, this rediscovery of nature in an age supposed to be given over to materialism, and its influence appears in every branch of our literature. The nature writers have evidently done a greater work than they knew; they have helped a multitude of people to enjoy ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... solidity in an ancient idea that congregations of men into cities and nations are the most pleasing objects in the sight of superior intelligences, but this is very certain, that to a benevolent human mind there can be no spectacle presented by any nation more pleasing, more noble, majestic, or august, than an assembly like that which has so often been seen in this and the other Chamber of Congress, of a Government in which the Executive authority, as well as that of all the branches of the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Grandmother and the Philosopher. It was well worth listening to. The Philosopher, while wholly deferential, held his ground staunchly, but Grandmother worsted him in the end. Her cheeks grew pink, her black eyes shone. It was a captivating spectacle. ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... a neophyte was needed, one who knew each individual personally and could expose substitutes. What better man than the new brother? In vain Giuseppe protested. The Prior would not hearken. And so in lieu of offering the sublime spectacle of an unpaid apostleship, the powerless instigator of the mischief, bent over his desk, certified the identity of the listless arrivals by sidelong peeps, conscious that he was adding the pain of contact with an excommunicated Jew to the sufferings of his brethren, for ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the kid's collar, and was being dragged all across the flower-beds. "Give my salaam to the long Councillor Sahib, and ask him to help me take Moti back!" gasped Tods. The Council heard the noise through the open windows; and, after an interval, was seen the shocking spectacle of a Legal Member and a Lieutenant-Governor helping, under the direct patronage of a Commander-in-Chief and a Viceroy, one small and very dirty boy in a sailor's suit and a tangle of brown hair, to coerce a lively and rebellious kid. They headed ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... this subject gives their charm in retirement, to the relations of history and to the fictions of poetry; sends forth the tear of compassion, gives to the blood its briskest movement, and to the eye its liveliest glances of displeasure or joy. It turns human life into an interesting spectacle, and perpetually solicits even the indolent to mix, as opponents or friends, in the scenes which are acted before them. Joined to the powers of deliberation and reason, it constitutes the basis of a moral nature; and, whilst ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... divergent as those presented to us by variety of species. But embryology answers by showing us the highest and most complex forms of life attained every day from very elementary forms; and palaeontology, as it develops, allows us to witness the same spectacle in the universal history of life, as if the succession of phases through which the embryo passes were only a recollection and an epitome of the complete past whence it has come. In addition, the phenomena of ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... of the night was indeed distressing. I did not—could not—return home. I have an indistinct recollection of walking swiftly up and down the deserted streets and far out into the country. Daylight found me several miles from the town; hatless, wild-eyed, a sorry spectacle, at whom one or two farmers, on their way to early market, gazed in amazement. When I turned back, the sun was high in the heavens. I went again to Doctor Matthai's. A crowd stood about the door. I was rudely seized and placed under arrest, charged—oh, my God!—with ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... magnificence and of sordid, bestial poverty. The statistics of the Parisian working classes in the way of lodgings are not of an encouraging nature, and reflect great discredit on the powers that be, who can be stern enough in the case of any political question, but are blind to the spectacle of fellow creatures living the life of beasts under their very eyes. In 1880, the Prefect of Police gave licenses to 21,219 arrivals in the city of French origin, and to 7,344 foreigners. In the succeeding year, the former had increased to 22,061, while the latter had somewhat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... from New Jersey; in the Second Brigade three from New Hampshire; in the Third two from Pennsylvania, and an artillery regiment; and what with other corps and the train, boatmen, guides, workmen, servants, etc., it made a great and curious spectacle even before ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the present state of things in Italy, but you would if you were here. It is a fine time to see the people. As to the Pope, it is as difficult here as elsewhere to put new wine into old bottles, and there is something false as well as ludicrous in the spectacle of the people first driving their princes to do a little justice, and then evviva-ing them at such a rate. This does not apply to the Pope; he is a real great heart, a generous man. The love for him is genuine, and I like to be within its influence. It was his heart that gave the impulse, and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of his health, and the footman forced the spoon into his mouth, while the old man blew energetically, so as not to swallow the soup, which was thus scattered like a stream of water onto the table and over his neighbors. The children shook with delight at the spectacle, while their father, who was also amused, said: "Is not the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... esculent called warran. As they were few in numbers our abrupt appearance would have too much terrified them to leave any chance of an interview; and we accordingly did not disturb them, but contented ourselves with watching their movements for a while. The spectacle was an interesting one. Both men and women were engaged in delving for their food, whilst a little beyond a few more were burning the bush, and looking out for game and snakes. It does not often fall to the lot of the white man to behold the wild people ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... terrible spectacle, and shocked even the Assyrians, accustomed as they were to horrors of this sort. Most of the numerous victims to pestilence or famine lay about the streets or in the public squares, a prey to the dogs and swine; such of the inhabitants and of the soldiery as were comparatively ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... [357] {468} This spectacle I have seen, such as described, beneath the wall of the Seraglio at Constantinople, in the little cavities worn by the Bosphorus in the rock, a narrow terrace of which projects between the wall and the water. I think the fact is also mentioned in Hobhouse's ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Mitchin's ballet of hobohemians been tough newspapermen they wouldn't have been drawing-cards for a tea-room. But these literary ewe-lambs were a spectacle to charm the languishing eyes of the spinsters who filled the Old Harbor Inn and the club-women from the yellow water regions who were viewing the marvels of nature as displayed on and adjacent to the ocean. Practically without exception these ladies put vine leaves in their hair—geranium ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... It was in society, however, that they presented the most curious spectacle. I sometimes caught sight of them at the theatre. No one would have recognized the timid and shy young woman, who formerly accompanied the maestro, lost in the gigantic shadow he cast around him. ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... lips took a different color when every woman's part was acted by a boy."[3] Why, in the name of all moral sense, should it be less dreadful that gross and obscene passages should be uttered at a public spectacle by young and unformed boys than by adult women, who at least would have the safeguard of mature knowledge and instincts to teach them their full loathsomeness? Do we really think that boys are born less pure than girls? Does the mother, when her little son is born, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... a melancholy spectacle. Evidently had spent his nights and days in preparation of speech on Compensation Bill; brought it down in large quarto notes. OLD MORALITY glanced across House with sudden access of interest; thought it was a copy-book; Speech evidently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... embankment. This sentinel of the land had a weirdly impressive effect. It was the only fixed object in the waste of foam-capped waves. Not a vestige of the Sirdar remained seaward, but the sand was littered with wreckage, and—mournful spectacle!—a considerable number of inanimate human forms lay huddled up amidst the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... gallantly assisting her to a settee, which he lashed securely. "You are perfectly safe now," he added, holding the end of the rope in his hand to allow a slight sliding movement of the seat as the vessel rolled. "And here is a glorious spectacle for you. Look! the sun is ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... places was foul in both—she was all these things in an age when crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black with unimaginable treacheries, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the American pro-German pause and meditate upon a future United States where native individualism was less and less reluctantly heading for the iron jaws of the Prussianized American machine; and, furthermore, upon the weird spectacle of the real gladiatorial contest—German sentimentality wrestling in a death grapple with ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... understood the meaning of this spectacle, and with loud shouts they began to make preparations for battle. One of their number, the augur To-lum'ni-us, cried out to them to take up their swords and fall upon the Trojan foreigner after the example of the birds who, by united action, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... "What a spectacle!" he murmured. "Holy Church, assuming spiritual leadership of the world, sunken in idolatry, and publicly parading her fetishism in these lingering echoes of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... which soon followed, when Parma came upon the scene, that 'spectacle of human energy, human suffering, and human strength to suffer, such as has not often been displayed upon the stage of the world's events' the town had its share of the persecutions and exactions which followed the march of the Spanish soldiery; but for more than ten ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... the Holy Spirit and have Him as the earnest of our inheritance. A Christian who professes to have such an inheritance and who professes to wait for the redemption of the purchased possession and who grasps after the honors of the world and runs after its riches is a sad spectacle indeed. ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... plenty smiles throughout the laud. Our commerce and manufactures have been prosecuted with energy and industry, and have yielded fair and ample returns. In short, no nation in the tide of time has ever presented a spectacle of greater material prosperity than we have done until within a very ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... as imaginary, 241:9 whimsical, and unreal as his pleasures. Falsehood, envy, hypocrisy, malice, hate, revenge, and so forth, steal away the treasures of Truth. Stripped of its coverings, what 241:12 a mocking spectacle is sin! ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... a savage spectacle: Our reasons are so full of good regard That were you, Antony, the son of Caesar, You ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... burst in on a spectacle, strange, serious, on the point of becoming terrible, and yet almost laughable. In the middle of the room, a stout, shock-headed, red-elbowed woman stood, a pikel in her strong outstretched hands. The sergeant of dragoons, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... something beyond either. It was something imposing, majestic. So perilously adjusted is the ludicrous to the sublime, that while the secretary wondered dumbly whether the word "housekeeper" might also in Skale's new world connote "angel," he could have laughed aloud, had not the nobility of the spectacle hinted at the same time that he should have wept. For the tears of a positive worship started to his ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... there is no sadder spectacle of artistic debauchery than a London theatre; the overfed inhabitants of the villa in the stalls hoping for gross excitement to assist them through their hesitating digestions; an ignorant mob in the pit ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... made to keep their rooms tidy, encouraged in piety and decorum. In these strenuous times it sounds a little old-fashioned, and as a matter of fact a school of this kind fits a girl for a sheltered home but not for the open road. For everyone concerned about the education of women the interesting spectacle in Germany to-day is the campaign being carried on by Helene Lange and her party, the support they receive from the official as well as from the unofficial world, and the progress they make year by year ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... rain, ten mice, brass kettle, small grains, Mansard roof, some feeling, all men, hundredth anniversary, the Pitt diamond, the patient Hannibal, little thread, crushing argument, moving spectacle, the martyr president, tin pans, few people, less trouble, this toy, any book, brave Washington, Washington market, three cats, slender cord, that libel, happy children, the broad Atlantic, The huge clouds were dark and threatening, Eyes are bright, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... that has degraded them. The ruin of worldly expectations, the death of those they loved, the sorrow that slowly consumes, but will not break the heart, has driven them wild; and they present the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly dying by their own hands. But by far the greater part have wilfully, and with open eyes, plunged into the gulf from which the man who once enters it never rises more, but into which he sinks deeper and deeper down, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... America is, as a rule, anything but a pleasure. It is true that the chance of being held up by "road agents" is to-day practically non-existent, and that the spectacle of a crowd of yelling Apaches making a stage-coach the pin-cushion for their arrows is now to be seen nowhere but in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. But the roads! No European who has done much driving in the United States can ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... This was the uttermost length that he could go towards political corruption. He became for a few weeks tolerably civil of speech, which after all was much for him to do and doubtless cost him no insignificant effort. Since the days of Washington he alone presents the singular spectacle of a candidate for the Presidency deliberately taking the position, and in a long campaign really never flinching from it: "that, if the people wish me to be President I shall not refuse the office; but I ask nothing from any man or from any body ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... a like appreciation of any other form of art. The growth of English novel-writing and its healthy development, accompanied, it may be, by many fungus-growths due to over-fertility, afford us the spectacle of a contemporary yet spontaneous English art, unforced by hothouse cultivation, uninfluenced by theories. A century or so hence the hearty, unconscious bloom of narrative literature in our day and language may seem as strange as seems to us the spontaneous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... recall of such matters. He wished that he might have forgotten them wholly. Yet so was he turned again to better things. Gradually he began to have an inkling of a possibility that made his blood icy—a possibility that not even the spectacle of Milo Barrus having interesting things done to him could mitigate—namely, a vision of himself in the same ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... The wealthy Kunbi proprietor is occasionally rather spoilt by good fortune, or, if he continues a keen cultivator, is apt to be too fond of land-grabbing. But these are the exceptional cases, and there is generally no such pleasing spectacle as that afforded by a village in which the cultivators and the proprietors are all Kunbis living in harmony together." The feeling [40] of the Kunbi towards agricultural improvements has hitherto probably been something the same as that of the Sussex farmer who ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... were thus sure to become offences: 'Here, in my island, I 'peak,' he once observed to me. 'My chieps no 'peak—do what I talk.' He looked at the missionary, and what did he see? 'See Kanaka 'peak in a big outch!' he cried, with a strong ring of sarcasm. Yet he endured the subversive spectacle, and might even have continued to endure it, had not a fresh point arisen. He looked again, to employ his own figure; and the Kanaka was no longer speaking, he was doing worse—he was building a copra-house. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... extent that he preaches it, why does he not make some arrangement by which it would be possible to instil a portion of the sentiment into some of his erring children? Then we should have no more racial hatred to concern ourselves with; we should have instead the inspiring spectacle of a reclaimed Dutchman falling upon the neck of his English ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... little effect on me, not merely from their being common, but principally because, like certain light wines that will not bear water, these arguments of the Stoics are pleasanter to taste than to swallow. As when that assemblage of virtues is committed to the rack, it raises so reverend a spectacle before our eyes that happiness seems to hasten on towards them, and not to suffer them to be deserted by her. But when you take your attention off from this picture and these images of the virtues to the truth and the reality, what remains without disguise ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... opens before our view so magnificent a spectacle of order, variety, beauty, and conformity to ends, that whether we pursue our observations into the infinity of space in the one direction, or into its illimitable divisions in the other, whether we regard ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... the group—among them Amattagoa, whose summit was veiled in clouds, and was rightly supposed to be a volcano. Many of the islands in the South Seas are volcanic, and in some of them the volcanoes are in full activity. That of Kilanea, in the Sandwich Islands, often presents a spectacle of awful fury ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... the light of day, presented a wonderful spectacle. It was a mining camp positively crystallizing into being before the very eyes of all beholders. It was nearly all tents and canvas structures—a heterogeneous mixture of incompleteness and modernity to which the telegraph wires ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Paul drives Hazeltine and myself down the nearly deserted Champs-Elysees for lunch at the Cafe Royal. We must make an absurd spectacle with so much dignity on the box and a total lack of it behind, for Hazeltine and I, relaxing from the strenuous work of the morning, lounge in the seat with our feet far out in front, as we discuss with ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... Homeward bound, the six o'clock throng bumped and jostled. Light overcoats were turned up about the ears, hats were pulled down. Little shop-girls went fluttering by in pairs and fours, chattering, laughing. It was a spectacle of warm-blooded humanity. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... nothing more pathetic than the spectacle of world-wide fetichism. It is not to be contemplated with derision, but with profoundest sympathy. We all remember the pathos of Scott's picture of his Highland heroine, with brain disordered by unspeakable grief, beguiling her woes with childish ornaments of "gaudy broom" ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Hell, and leave to come Into the Heav'n of Heavens; thou com'st indeed, 410 As a poor miserable captive thrall, Comes to the place where he before had sat Among the Prime in Splendour, now depos'd, Ejected, emptyed, gaz'd, unpityed, shun'd, A spectacle of ruin or of scorn To all the Host of Heaven; the happy place Imparts to thee no happiness, no joy, Rather inflames thy torment, representing Lost bliss, to thee no more communicable, So never more in Hell then when in Heaven. 420 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... divine, explorer, and gentleman of leisure, as he settled back in his armchair in the fashionable Weltmore apartments and exhaled a long stream of tobacco smoke through his wide nostrils. "And, if I can procure a ticket, I shall give myself the pleasure of witnessing this sacred spectacle, produced under the deceptive mask ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... speaks the prophet concerning those who keep not their seal; Their worm shall not die, and their, fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be for a spectacle unto all flesh. ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... this case were a group of the mightiest battleships then afloat. Nelson's sudden movement was a breach of orders; it left a gap in the British line; to dash unsupported into the Spanish van seemed mere madness, and the spectacle, as the Captain opened fire on the huge Santissima Trinidad, was simply amazing. Nelson was in action at once with the flagship of 130 guns, two ships of 112 guns, one of 80 guns, and two of 74 guns! To the spectators ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... bivouac of the immense horde of ragged and miserable men that Wat Tyler and his fellow-insurgents had brought to London. But how changed now was the scene! Then the country was excited by the deepest anxiety and alarm, and the spectacle on the field was that of one immense mass of squalid poverty and wretchedness, of misery reduced by hopeless suffering to recklessness and despair. Now all was gayety and splendor in the spectacle, and the whole country was excited to the highest ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... As we were all sitting upon deck drinking tea in the morning, a large, very large, woman who was reading opposite to us, fell from her seat with a terrible noise. We all thought she had fallen down dead: the gentlemen gathered round her, and when she was lifted up, she was a shocking spectacle, her face covered with blood, she had fallen upon one of the large nails in the deck. She recovered her senses, but when she was carried down to the cabin she fainted again, and remained two hours senseless. "She has a mother, ma'am," said the steward, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... certainly making progress; there can be no spectacle more delightful to a rightly constituted mind, than that of a hopeful young nation approaching its puberty. You Servians are in a considerable minority here in Ushitza. I hope you live on good terms ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... poor appearance your refusal made, the other evening. You could not see it for yourself; but it made you seem awkward, and foolish, and ill-bred. I am sure everybody would have laughed, if it had not been for politeness towards your mother; for the spectacle was ludicrous, thoroughly. You like to make a ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... occasion we cannot but observe, that we once esteemed ourselves happy in the relation that subsisted between us and the Government of Great Britain—But the multiplied oppressions which characterized that Government, excite in us the most painful sensations, and exhibit a spectacle as disgusting in itself, as dishonourable to ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... either appears to us or it does not appear. So that we ought not to pursue it with a view of detecting its secret source, but to watch in quiet till it suddenly shines upon us; preparing ourselves for the blessed spectacle as the eye waits patiently for the rising sun." They and they only can acquire the philosophic imagination, the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... whirl of books, logarithms, and calculations in the University Library, and constituted himself an unmitigated, if respected, pest at the Cambridge Observatory. Moreover—and this was the most iconoclastic spectacle of all to his conservative pedagogical neighbours in the Appian Way—telegraph boys on bicycles kept rushing to and fro in a stream between the Hooker boarding-house and Harvard Square at all hours of the day ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... the arrival of the Vice-Chancellor. When he came, our freshman and two other white-tied fellow-freshmen were summoned to the great man's presence; and there, in the ante-chamber of the Convocation House, the edifying and imposing spectacle of Matriculation was enacted. In the first place, Mr. Verdant Green took divers oaths, and sincerely promised and swore that he would be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Victoria. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... course) pocketed the spectacle case, and the whole five of us set out at the double, Jean trotting in front between Jack and me, and Sir Francis and the doctor clattering behind. My cousin and I each tried a question, but we saw that Jean's breath would be better saved for whatever was ahead, and so our voices ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... to me that, what with child-bearing and hard field labour, her back was almost broken in two. With an almost savage vehemence of gesticulation she suddenly tore up her scanty clothing, and exhibited a spectacle with which I was inconceivably shocked and sickened. The facts, without any of her corroborating statements, bore tolerable witness to the hardships of her existence. I promised to attend to her ailments and give her proper remedies; ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Mr. Yolland, that he only parted with me at Randall Horsman's door, where I was gladly welcomed by the master of the house, and found my poor little niece a grievous spectacle, and so miserable with the horrible illness, that she only showed her pleasure in my coming by fretting whenever ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the Spaniards, alas, are preparing for the people, on whom they are about to trample, a terrible spectacle, in order to crush for ever, by a violent blow, each heart that yet pants ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... fashion, with us, have always had wings, and fly from one public spectacle to another so wantonly, that I have been informed by those who remember it, that a famous puppet-show in Salisbury Change (then standing where Cecil Street now is), so far distressed these two celebrated companies, that they were reduced to petition the king ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... The spectacle of their youthful ruler-elect in sackcloth as the future bride of a business man had more than disconcerted them. The amazing announcement of Quarrier's engagement to Agatha Caithness stupefied the elect, rendering in one harrowing instant null ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Shropshire Lad illustrates better than any theory how poetry may assume the attire of reality, and yet in speech of the simplest, become in spirit the sheer quality of loveliness. For, in these unobtrusive pages, there is nothing shunned which makes the spectacle of life parade its dark and painful, its ironic and cynical burdens, as well as those images with happy and exquisite aspects. With a broader and deeper background of experience and environment, which by some divine special privilege belongs to the poetic imagination, it is easier to set ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... There were neither salt spoons nor mustard spoons, the knives the gentlemen were eating with serving in their stead; and, by the aid of nature's forks, the slices of beef and mutton were transferred to the plates of those who desired to eat. While your correspondent stood looking at the spectacle, the Duke of Newcastle came in, and he sat looking too. He was evidently trying to look democratic, but could not manage it. By his side stood a man urging him to try the lager beer, and cabbage also, I suppose. Henceforth, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... evening he spent on the Place du Carrousel with the crowd outside the Tuileries, watching the departure from the palace of the infirm King of France and of his Court. The crowd was silent and obviously deeply moved. The spectacle before it of an old, ailing monarch, driven forth out of the home of his ancestors, and forced after an exile of three and twenty years and a brief reign of less than one, to go back once more to misery and exile, was pitiable in ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... crowded with soldiers in gala uniforms, burning to reach the enemy. I hear them all night long from my parents' home—those wheels rolling, rolling westward; no hurry, no confusion; the mighty machine moves majestically on its way. Show us another nation which could duplicate that spectacle! ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... it, with light winds from the south-west. The sun shone on the sails of the enemy; and their well-formed line, with their numerous three-deckers, made an appearance which any other assailants would have thought formidable; but the British sailors only admired the beauty and the splendour of the spectacle; and in full confidence of winning what they saw, remarked to each other what a fine sight yonder ships ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... say so, scarcely respecting your friends, scarcely respecting those who have cared deeply for you—I refer to your family—scarcely respecting your birth, bringing-up, and opportunities. It was distinctly out of place. The spectacle was not only shocking to me, it was painful. Not that what I think carries any weight with you. I have been made keenly aware of how little my opinions ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... the only God we can ever know, is by His own authority represented for all time by the poorest of the poor. Yet whosoever fails to recognise in the marred visage of any social derelict the image of Him who was despised and rejected of men—whosoever resents not the spectacle of that image weighted down by fraternal neglect and oppression till a human heart pulses with no higher aspiration than that which prompts a persecuted animal to preserve its life for further persecution—such a person, I say, can have no ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... strange spectacle in this closing fifteenth century: All the concentrated splendor from the fall of Byzantium hanging over her like a luminous cloud before dispersing as the Renaissance; Lorenzo de' Medici, at Florence, directing the intellectual ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... tyrants." The king caused him to be buffeted with the buskins of his slaves; his body to be immersed in melted wax, and his beard interwoven with waxed threads, which were set on fire, and in this manner he was led through the army as a spectacle. Being brought back, the king cut off his head with his own hand, and caused the body to be quartered and exposed on poles. Where the head fell, it is said that there gushed out a spring of water which cured many diseases. On the same hour, a tree was torn out by the roots ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... no object, nothing grotesque makes me smile: that which formerly made me burst out in a roar of spontaneous laughter, and filled my soul with cheerful animation, now passes before my eyes as though I saw it not, and my mouth, cold and rigid, finds no longer a word to say at the very spectacle which formerly possessed the secret of filling my heart with ecstasy. O my youth! O my ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... not cramped for room? Have you not to bathe with discomfort? Are you not drenched when it rains? Have you not to endure the clamor and shouting and such annoyances as these? Well, I suppose you set all this over against the splendour of the spectacle and bear it patiently. What then? have you not received greatness of heart, received courage, received fortitude? What care I, if I am great of heart, for aught that can come to pass? What shall cast me down or disturb me? What shall seem painful? Shall I not use the power to the ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... surgeon climbed up to the deck of the wreck. A desolate spectacle presented itself. Everything was charred ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... word was spoken; the solemn silence, the immobility and deathlike pallor of the objects, was awful—they were as breathing corpses. The clay-cold nuns evoked from their tombs, presented not a more unearthly spectacle to Robert of Normandy. The free-and-easy expressions of Dr B., however, which first broke the silence, instantly dissolved the spell. "That woman," he said, pointing to her on the floor, "has a disease of the liver, and her left lung is somewhat affected. I think ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... the patient can swallow neither solid nor liquid food, and sits bent forward, with saliva running out of the mouth. The secretion of saliva is increased, but is not swallowed on account of the pain produced by the act. Sleep is also impossible, and altogether a more piteous spectacle of pain and distress is rarely seen. Having reached this stage the inflammation usually goes on to abscess (formation behind or above or below the tonsil), and, after five to ten days from the beginning of the attack, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... reached the yamen, and arrested the Prefect. Without form of trial but simply with a curt announcement from the Prime Minister that he was acting upon instructions from the Emperor, the mandarin was dragged unceremoniously through the gaping crowds that rushed from their doors to see the amazing spectacle. ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... arrivant sur le bastion o'u commen'ca le carnage, j'apperus un groupe de quatre femmes 'egorg'ees, entre lesquelles cet enfant, d'une figure charmante, cherchait un asile contre la fureur de deux Kosaks qui 'etaient sur le point de la massacrer: ce spectacle m'attira bient'ot, et je n'h'esitai pas, comme on peut le croire, prendre entre mes bras cette infortun'ee, que les barbares voulaient y poursuivre encore." Lord Byron has paraphrased the affecting incident in the eighth ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the apostle's blood,—everything else against it. "But prayer was made unto God without ceasing." And what the sequel? The prison open,—the apostle free,—the Jews baffled,—the wicked king eaten of worms, a spectacle of hideous retribution, and the Word of God rolling on ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... eight-thirty and ten P.M. the Union Passenger Station at the capital presents a moving and spirited spectacle. Within the hour and a half, four through and three local trains are due to leave, and the space within the iron grille that fences off the track platforms from the public part of the station is filled with ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... picture of the Roman grandeur) the abstraction had been made from a base of thirty years in extent, and had there been added to the picture (according to his precedent) the many and remote embassies to and from independent states, in all quarters of the earth, with how many more groups might the spectacle have been crowded, and especially of those who fall within ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... technically necessary that a Freeman of the City of London should belong to one or other of the City Companies, the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers through their clerk (with very great appropriateness) enquired whether it would be agreeable that that Company should have the privilege of conferring their Honorary Freedom on him, and added: "In soliciting your acquiescence ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... opinions of his class which the clergy are content to ignore so long as they remain esoteric. At present the world has advanced to where Lessing stood, while the Church has done its best to stand stock-still; and it would be a curious were it not a melancholy spectacle, to see the indifference with which the laity look on while theologians thrash their wheatless straw, utterly unconscious that there is no longer any common term possible that could bring their creeds again to any point of bearing on the practical life of men. Fielding never ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... went on deck the sky presented a really magnificent spectacle, the vast masses of heavy, electrically-charged cloud being piled one above the other in a fashion that resembled, to me, nothing so much as a chaos of titanic rocks of every conceivable shape and colour, the forms and hues of the clouds being ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... superior officers fly at one another's throats the spectacle may be interesting, and even amusing, to the onlooker; but I never heard of it doing anything towards the promotion of discipline or the encouragement of good tone among the rank and file. The quarrel of the two masters at Grandcourt certainly failed ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... body, and gold and red upon the under carriage. The natural elegance of this arrangement of colouring is heightened by the beautiful heraldic paintings of the City arms and those of the Fishmongers' and Spectacle Makers' Companies, of which Mr. Alderman Lusk is a member. These have been executed by Mr. D. T. Baker, the celebrated deaf and dumb ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... custom for the monks to assist at all fires. It appeared to me a very whimsical spectacle to see monks of all colours, white, black and brown, running hither and thither with their frocks tucked up and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she urged. "Stay and witness a spectacle of industry that should nerve you up to starting on that book Dick has ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... which gave, for a moment, repose to the troubled imagination of Athos; and as he felt that that which he saw was not terminated, he applied more attentively the eyes of his understanding on the strange spectacle which his imagination had presented. This spectacle was soon continued for him. A mild pale moon rose behind the declivities of the coast, streaking at first the undulating ripples of the sea, which appeared to have calmed after the roaring it had sent forth during the vision of Athos—the moon, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chanced to arrive in Cetinje on the occasion of a great feast. A stranger happened to be with us, a German, and we were showing him the sights. Naturally we also wended our way to the prison, hoping to be able to give him the unique spectacle of the prisoners strolling freely up and down their garden. As we neared the square sounds of singing and music assailed our ears, and in front of the women's quarters a large ring was swaying to ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... the spectacle was, perhaps however, it passed unheeded. Those eyes were watching all for another object, which now drew near. In an open space behind the constable there was seen approaching "a white chariot," drawn by two palfreys in white ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... only the bachelor asks, "Where shall I dine? Shall I spend two shillings in a chop-house, or five in my club, or ten at the Cafe Royal?" For two or three more shillings one may sit on the balcony of the Savoy, facing the spectacle of evening darkening on the river, with lights of bridge and wharf and warehouse afloat in the tide. Married folk know their bedfellows; bachelors, and perhaps spinsters, are not so sure of theirs: this is a ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... crosses of St. Andrew and St. George. I have also referred to the claim that the combination of the stars and stripes was probably adopted out of love and respect for Washington. If this claim is true, then we would have, according to the Ross claim the spectacle of Washington complimenting and honoring himself, when, as a matter of fact, his whole life disproves such conduct on his part. Now, let us see if this argument as to the origin of the combination is born out by facts. We find ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... were most habituated to contemplate with coolness the horrors of war. The smoking ruins of Ligny and St. Amand were heaped with the dead and dying: the ravine before Ligny resembled a river of blood, on which carcasses were floating: at Quatre Bras there was a similar spectacle! the hollow way, that skirted the wood, had disappeared under the bloody corses of the brave Scotch and of our cuirassiers. The imperial guard was every where distinguished by its murderous rage: ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... and my young friend entered the apartment. It is impossible to describe the emotions of the stranger, when he fixed his eyes upon my companion. He was motionless with surprise. He was unable to conceal his feelings, but sat silently gazing at the spectacle before him. At length he turned to Mrs. Baynton, and more by his looks and gestures than by words, besought her for an explanation of the scene. He seized the hand of the girl, who, in her turn, was surprised by his behaviour, and drawing her forward, said in an eager and faultering tone, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... gliding along, neared the vicinity of Sprakers when suddenly the "heaven grew black again with the storm-cloud's frown," and a flash of lightning illuminated the sky with crimson radiance. It is for a moment as if the horizon was in flames, a spectacle glorious to behold. Another minute and a peal of thunder reaches our ears. Then the dark, heavy clouds discharge ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... founded quite recently, in November, 1916. At the inaugural ceremony, the president, Julius Schmidhauser, delivered a speech in which he sounded an excellent European note. He contrasted the union of the three races of Switzerland with the spectacle of contemporary Europe still living in the prehistoric age, a Europe "wherein the Frenchman can see in the German nothing but an enemy, wherein the German can see in the Frenchman nothing but an enemy, and wherein neither can regard the other ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... Dark Master, settling back and stroking his wolfhound as if he were watching some curious spectacle, "do with him as we did with Con O'More last Candlemas. But let us work slowly, for there is no haste, and we must break his will. In the end we will nail him to the door, and finish by breaking all his bones. It will ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... part was all the elder tourist could manage. Norman simply said "Tell Her Radiancy we are transfixed by the spectacle of Her Serene Brilliance, and bid an agonized farewell to her ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... snatch her prey from a puma robbed of her whelps, as to turn them from their purpose. With the men it was otherwise, however. Some of them mingled in the orgie indeed, but more stood aloof watching with a fearful joy the spectacle in which they did not share. Near me was a man, a noble of the Otomie, of something more than my own age. He had always been my friend, and after me he commanded the warriors of the tribe. I went to him and said, 'Friend, for ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... the Indian village across the creek from us, we came to a most revolting spectacle. Two or three Indians had just killed an ox, and were slashing and cutting off pieces of the almost quivering flesh, in a way that left little pools of blood in places on the side. There were two squaws with them, squatted on the ground by the dead animal, and those hideous, fiendish creatures ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... crowned with a tuft of white down. Both men and women wear armlets and fillets of skin or feathers according to the animal character they represent. When in the full swing of the dance with fur and feathers streaming they present a pleasing spectacle, a picture full of the same wild grace and poetic motion which characterizes the animal forbears from which ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... were chasing each other across the muslin shades of the windows. The objectionable young women were evidently enjoying themselves. In some conditions of the mind there is a certain exasperation in the spectacle of unmeaning enjoyment, and he shut the window sharply. At the same moment some ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Temple, the seven sciences, the seven virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place. The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling agitated me all the time I was alone with him in the dark chamber. I caught myself harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I vainly tried to overcome. That ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... truth is, to be forty and a failure is an affliction that might sour even a healthy nature. The effect on a man of Donne's ambitious and melancholy temperament, together with the memory of his dissipated health and his dissipated fortune, and the spectacle of a long family in constant process of increase, must have been disastrous. To such a man poverty and neglected merit are a prison, as they were to Swift. One thinks of each of them as a lion in a cage, ever growing less and less patient of his bars. Shakespeare ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... considerable time staring at the strange spectacle I proceeded. Presently meeting a lad, I asked him what was the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the switch that opened the shutters, Barrent was able to look out on the vast spectacle of stars glowing in the blackness of space. Stars without end stretched past the furthest limits of his imagination. Looking at this, Barrent felt a strong surge of pride. This was where he belonged, and those unknown stars ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... from the store, the counting house, the office and the institution of learning they came—the black thousands to strike for their altars and their homes; to fight for Uncle Sam. How splendid was the spectacle of their response! "Their's not to ask the WHY; their's ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... yellowish stone, which is seen, as you draw near, in strong contrast with the vivid green of the tropical waters. We approached it by water, taking a rowboat from the Alameda. As we passed, we had a good view of a daily Havana spectacle, the washing of the horses. This being by far the easiest and most expeditious way of cleaning the animals, they are driven daily to the sea in great numbers, those of one party being tied together; they disport themselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Gajah the Elephant and Rimau the Tiger were sworn friends. But one day they came to a clearing and presently encountered Lotong, the long-tailed Spectacle-monkey. And when he saw the Monkey, the Elephant said, "Mr. Lotong yonder is far too noisy; let us try and shake him off; if he falls to me I am to eat you; and if he falls to you, you are to eat me—we will make a wager ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... age of cruelty. The shows of gladiators, the sanguinary combats of wild beasts, the not unfrequent spectacle of savage tortures and capital punishments, the occasional sight of innocent martyrs burning to death in their shirts of pitchy fire, must have hardened and imbruted the public sensibility. The immense prevalence of slavery tended still more inevitably to the general corruption. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... of your situation. You haven't to be taught what money means. With money—and a wife to take care of it, mind you—you are pre-eminently the man for which you want to be recognized. Without it—Harry 'll excuse me, I must speak plainly—you're a sort of a spectacle of a bob-cherry, down on your luck, up on your luck, and getting dead stale and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... quietly spent. There was much noisy revelling in the city, and the guards in the castle had their feastings, but Warwick was daily expected to return from France, and neither his brother nor the Archbishop thought that there was much policy in making a public spectacle of a ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of horror, swelling by degrees into a roar of rage, burst from hundreds of throats as that spectacle was seen; and in a moment, as it seemed, the town drums had beat to arms, the bells were clanging, and all Boston was pressing tumultuously into King Street. The Twenty-ninth regiment was hurriedly ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... underground chamber with a hole letting in the sunlight high up on one side. Casey was positive there was a hole up there, because the sun shone in his eyes and to avoid it he moved aside and fell over a bucket or a keg or something. Hank laughed loudly at the spectacle, and Paw swore because the fall startled him; but it was ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... ball at Manilla, we presented some of them to the ladies, whose first movement was to put them to their mouth; but soon finding out their mistake, they entreated to be allowed to keep them, to have them, as they said, converted into ear-ring drops. Having fully enjoyed the beautiful and brilliant spectacle presented to our eyes, we now began to feel the effects of hunger and fatigue. We had been walking in this subterraneous domain to the extent of more than three miles, had taken no rest or refreshment since morning, and the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... sympathy, than excited detestation of the crime that had brought them to servitude; and, perhaps, it would be a wiser enactment of the Norwegian Government to forego the system of task-work thus publicly, and adopt some other method of punishment less exposed to the popular eye; for, I believe, the spectacle of an old man submitted to daily penal labour, and burdened with clanking chains, is recognised by the public more with a tendency to sympathise with his fate, than ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... a spectacle Major Bell found himself forced to tell them that brutal acts are not precisely a recommendation for a country that wished to be free and that they, the Americans, do not arrest any one without ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester |
