"Spectral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the valley upwards all round the hill were swarming with men, who from this distance looked like pygmies, fussy and irresponsible, spectral too in the rain-laden mist as they appeared to be running hither and thither in compact groups, but with seeming aimlessness, whilst shouting, always shouting, that perpetual call ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that he would not tell me, but that was just like him. For the last twenty minutes, having something to do, he had become himself again, had come to earth from that unsafe country of the brain where beckoned a spectral Steve. Nothing was left but in his eyes that question which pain had set there; and I wondered if his friend of old, who seemed so brave and amiable, would have dealt him that hurt at the solemn end had he known what a poisoned ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... their chant; and, extinguishing their lights, glided one by one, like shadows, through a small door in the side of the choir. A deeper gloom prevailed over the church; the figure opposite me on horseback grew more and more spectral; and I almost expected to ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... flames, creeping out at the four corners, soon made great headway, and, fanned by the wind, spread rapidly to all parts of the building. Vaninka followed the progress of the fire with blazing eyes, fearing to see some half-burnt spectral shape rush out of the flames. At last the roof fell in, and Vaninka, relieved of all fear, then at last made her way to the general's house, into which the two women entered without being seen, thanks to the permission ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... face of the moon, already half-way to the zenith, and she gathered courage and shone, till the mountain looked lovely as a ghost in the gleam of its snow and the glimmer of its glaciers. 'Ah!' thought Falconer, 'such a peace at last is all a man can look for—the repose of a spectral Elysium, a world where passion has died away, and only the dim ghost of its memory to disturb with a shadowy sorrow the helpless content of its undreaming years. The religion that can do but this much is not a very great or very divine thing. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... courtesy, as much as to imply,—"You honor me, Sir," toned or sized, as one may say, with something of the self-assertion of a human soul which reflects proudly, "I am superior to all this,"—when, I say, we were all right, the spectral Mokanna dropped his long veil, and his waiting-slave put a sensitive tablet under its folds. The veil was then again lifted, and the two great glassy eyes stared at us once more for some thirty seconds. The veil then dropped again; but in the mean time, the shrouded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... scarcely lift it. Pausing a moment, and looking forward at its shattered face in utter anguish of despair, I saw again, repeated in a hundred jagged splinters, up and down in zigzag confusion, in demoniac omnipresence, the uncanny eye, the spectral shape, which had so appalled me. The little phantom had arisen, its slim finger was outstretched,—it beckoned, slowly beckoned, growing indistinct, it receded farther and farther out from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... fragrance and beauty to the scene. Flies, snakes and frogs were very numerous, but gave us little trouble, nevertheless, I was not sorry when at dawn on the third day after passing the strange natural phenomenon we saw across the level pasture-like plain, high up, spectral and half hidden in the grey haze, the gigantic walls and high embattlements of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... unheedingly. Night deepened over the river, but the reflection of the lamp-lights on its waves was more visible than that of the stars. The beams showed the darkness of the strong current; and the craft that lay eastward on the tide, with sail-less spectral masts and black dismal hulks, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... straight before him into the moonlit shimmer and white spectral hazes of the valley, his arms ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... without mention. It is a comparatively rare one, but there are enough examples on record to claim our attention, though unfortunately the particulars given do not usually include those which we should require in order to be able to diagnose it with certainty. I refer to the cases in which spectral armies or phantom flocks of animals have been seen. In The Night Side of Nature (p. 462 et seq.) we have accounts of several such visions. We are there told how at Havarah Park, near Ripley, a body of soldiers ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... way back into what we call reality. But it was a reality even more wretched than those recollections to which her dream had recalled her. For it was held and possessed by Winnington, and now by the threatening vision of Monk Lawrence, spectral amid the red ruin of fire. She had stopped the motor that day at the foot of the hill on which the house stood, and using Winnington's name, had made a call on the cripple child. Daunt had received her with a somewhat gruff civility, and was not communicative about the house ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... good-naturedly, and who helped very kindly to wipe off the ablution of tea which she had received. Petrea felt herself quite confidential with this excellent person, and inquired from her what was her opinion of Swedenborg, beginning also to give her own thoughts on spectral visions, ghosts, etc. The lady looked at her, as if she thought she might be a little deranged, and then hastened to ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... on many a bonnet shake, And shouts arise from left and right, "Stick on! Stick on!" "Hould tight! Hould tight!" "Cling round his neck and don't let go—" "That pace can't hold,—there! steady! whoa!" But like the sable steed that bore The spectral lover of Lenore, His nostrils snorting foam and fire, No stretch his bony limbs can tire; And now the stand he rushes by, And "Stop him!—stop ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... gray coat, his white breeches, and his little hat, crosswise on his head. His face expressed neither weariness nor anxiety; smooth and pale as marble, it gave to the whole figure in the simple uniform on the white horse an exalted, almost a spectral, aspect. ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... know. While the cry of his son yet sounded in his ears, another cry like its echo from another world, rang ghastly through the storm like the cry of the banshee. From far away it seemed to come through the world of wet mist and howling wind. The next instant a spectral face flitted swift as a bird up to the window, and laid itself close to the glass. It was a French window, opening to the ground, and neither shutters nor curtains had been closed. It burst open with a great clang and clash and wide tinkle of shivering ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... obliged to drink pure. We certainly cut a strange figure, while thus lunching in our little boat— surrounded by ice, and looking hazy through the thickly falling snow, which prevented us from seeing very far ahead, and made the mountains on shore look quite spectral. ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... look around us, and read the gloomy and dreary records of the old dead and rotten ages. More than eighteen centuries have staggered away into the spectral realm of the Past, since Christ, teaching the Religion of Love, was crucified, that it might become a Religion of Hate; and His Doctrines are not yet even nominally accepted as true by a fourth of mankind. Since His death, what incalculable swarms of human beings have lived and died ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... crucifying her husband under the plea of virtue. This it was that lay at the root of their woes; the young wife saw nothing but duty where she should have given love. Here, one Ash Wednesday, rose the pale and spectral form of Fasting in Lent, of Total Abstinence, commanded in a severe tone—and Granville did not deem it advisable to write in his turn to the Pope and take the opinion of the Consistory on the proper way of observing Lent, the Ember days, and ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... fairy hills or shees are thrown wide open and the fairy host issues forth, as mortals who are bold enough to venture near may see. Naturally therefore people keep indoors so as not to encounter the spectral host. The superstition that the fairies are abroad on Samain night still exists in Ireland and Scotland, and there is a further belief, no doubt derived from it, that the graves are open on that night and that the spirits of the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... the wharf as if to bring us back from dream and mold and death, and we hasten away, walking needlessly fast, looking back furtively to see if grim spectral shapes are following after. None is seen, but we do not breathe freely until aboard the steamer and two short whistles are heard, and the order is given to cast off. We push off slowly from the stone pier, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... therefor? Yet, on the other hand, must he sacrifice honor—yea, his whole future—to the payment of a debt forced upon him before he had reached the age of reason? The oath of ordination, the priest's oath, echoed in his throbbing ears like a soul-sentence to eternal doom; while spectral shades of moving priests and bishops, laying cold and unfeeling hands upon him, sealing him to endless servitude to superstition and deception, glided to and fro through the darkness before his straining eyes. Could he receive the ordination to-morrow? He had promised—but the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... o'clock at night, and the moon was shining with a vaporous, spectral light, when the maddest of chances brought the two husbands together over a body which the tide, with its multitudinous cold fingers, had gently ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... normal standpoint, Beddoes' idea of the drama was something wildly amateurish. As a practical playwright he would be beneath contempt; but what he aimed at was something peculiar to himself, a sort of spectral dramatic fantasia. He would have admitted his obligations to Webster and Tourneur, to all the macabre Elizabethan work; he would have admitted that his foundations were based on literature, not on life; but he would have claimed, and claimed justly, that he had produced, out of many strange elements, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... overwhelming dismay of a person terrified for the first time: he folded his arms, as if endeavouring to collect himself, but his whole frame shook convulsively. He was about to speak, when a noise of workmen approaching up the archway stopped him, and, turning away, he hastened on—that dark spectral woman gliding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... clays Some years ago were hobblin' An elderly ghost of easy ways, And an influential goblin. The ghost was a sombre spectral shape, A fine old five-act fogy, The goblin imp, a lithe young ape, A fine ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... moonlight streamed: its spectral brightness intensifying every patch or streak of shadow. And there, where Kings and Princes had held audience—watched by their womenfolk through fretted screens—was neither roof nor walls; only ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... moisture has had time to disappear, the wafer be thrown off, though now the most critical inspection of the polished surface can discover no trace of any form, if we breathe once more upon it, a spectral image of the wafer comes plainly into view; and this may be done again and again. Nay, more, if the polished metal be carefully put aside where nothing can deteriorate its surface, and be so kept for many months, on breathing ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... with a familiar kindness which reminded him of the days when Hilda and they and he had lived so happily together, before the mysterious adventure of the catacomb. What a succession of sinister events had followed one spectral figure ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... citizens' time, money, energies, &c., is ridiculously out of place in the United States. As if our proper man and woman, (far, far greater words than "gentleman" and "lady,") could still fail to see, and presently achieve, not this spectral business, but something truly noble, active, sane, American—by modes, perfections of character, manners, costumes, social relations, &c., adjusted to standards, far, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the two earliest friendships of his life. He had reached the age of twenty without, as it would seem, having been able to make his inner nature audible to those around him. He had been to the inhabitants of Grimstad a stranger within their gates, not speaking their language; or, rather, wholly "spectral," speaking no language at all, but indulging in cat-calls and grimaces. He was now discovered like Caliban, and tamed, and made vocal, by the strenuous arts of friendship. One of those who thus interpreted him was a young musician, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the noise of the waterfall behind Casa Felice died away, the spectral facade faded and only the plash of the oars and the tinkle of fishermen's bells above the nets, floating here and there in the lake, were audible. The distant lights of mountain villages gleamed along the shores, and the lights of the ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... now came to him that to-morrow was Christmas Day, and he had forgotten it. This was remarkable. He had never forgotten it before, but this year he had been working so hard and had been so engrossed he had not thought of it. Even this reflection brought the spectral figures back sharply outlined before his eyes. They stayed longer now. He ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... dreams resigned, there come and go, 'Twixt mountains draped and hooded night and morn, Elusive notes in wandering wafture borne, From undiscoverable lips that blow An immaterial horn; And spectral seem thy winter-boding trees, Thy ruinous bowers and drifted foliage wet— Past and Future in sad bridal met, O voice of everything that perishes, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... contemplated that the evening should be spent in a ring about our camp fire, singing songs and glees and old familiar melodies; but the oncoming of darkness dispelled in me all desire to uplift the voice in melodious outpourings. The thickening of the shadows along the turf, the spectral gleaming of the lake between the trunks of the intervening trees, the multiplying of mysterious and disquieting night noises, the realisation that we were isolated in the depths of the forest—all these things had a dispiriting influence ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... height of this scene, the wise men came up, and at the gate dismounted from their camels, and shouted for admission. When the steward so far mastered his terror as to give them heed, he drew the bars and opened to them. The camels looked spectral in the unnatural light, and, besides their outlandishness, there were in the faces and manner of the three visitors an eagerness and exaltation which still further excited the keeper's fears and fancy; he ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... since she lived alone. While the tired hands slowly worked, the weary brain ached and burned with heavy thoughts, vain longings, and feverish fancies, till things about her sometimes seemed as strange and spectral as the phantoms that had haunted her half-delirious sleep. Inexpressibly wretched were the dreary days, the restless nights, with only pain and labor for companions. The world looked very dark to her, life seemed an utter failure, God a delusion, and the long, lonely ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... in Mrs. Travers' experience been less spectral than then. He displayed a weakness of the flesh. He was impatient at her intrusion. He divided his attention between the threads of smoke and the face of the watch with such interest that the sudden reports of several guns breaking for the first time for days the stillness of the lagoon and the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of the highest order of literary merit. It is as good a sea-piece as the best of Turner's; and we cannot give it higher praise. We hear the whistling of the wind through the rigging, and the roar of the pitiless sea, bellowing for its prey; we see the white caps of the waves flashing with spectral light through the darkness, and the gallant ship whirled along like a bubble by the irresistible current; we hold our breath as we read of the expedients and manoeuvres which most of us but half understand, and heave a long sigh of relief when the danger is past, and the ship reaches the open sea. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... and sailing westward all day along a solitude of woods, one might reach the English outpost of Pemaquid, and thence, still sailing on, might anchor at evening off Casco Bay, and see in the glowing west the distant peaks of the White Mountains, spectral and dim amid the weird ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... There were hundreds or thousands of these earthy tents stretching away for twenty-five miles. Along the horizon was a gigantic stockade of red, rounded pillars, or a solid line of mosque-like temples. How unreal, how spectral it all seemed! Not a sound or sign of life in the whole painted solitude—a deserted camp, or one upon which the silence of death had fallen. Here, in Carboniferous times, grew the gigantic fern-like trees, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... Japanese woman serving tea. Verily, no small part of the life of the woman of Japan is spent thus in serving little cups of tea. Even as a ghost, she appears in popular prints offering to somebody spectral tea-cups of spectral tea. Of all Japanese ghost-pictures, I know of none more pathetic than that in which the phantom of a woman kneeling humbly offers to her haunted and remorseful murderer ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... my rifle, to see if the woods or the river could furnish us anything. A multitude of quails were plaintively whistling in the woods and meadows; but nothing appropriate to the rifle was to be seen, except three buzzards, seated on the spectral limbs of an old dead sycamore, that thrust itself out over the river from the dense sunny wall of fresh foliage. Their ugly heads were drawn down between their shoulders, and they seemed to luxuriate in the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the leaded windows brilliant; he opened them wide and leaned out on the sill, arms folded. The pale astral light illuminated a fairy world of meadow and garden and spectral trees, and two figures moving like ghosts down by the fountain among the roses—Rosalie and Grandcourt pacing the gravel paths shoulder to shoulder ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... his bed, he went out of doors, and looked up into the dark heavens; and high and spectral among the clouded stars he saw the home-coming of the cranes. He sat on the bench beside his door, and watched them sail past in thousands, filling the night with a fleeting clamour and eerie sounds. As he sat he mused on the strange longing which brought these birds over ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... undulating is the swell, scarce perceptible to inexperienced eyes, such as those of the land-lubbers on the towering decks of the great liners; gleaming dead copper and blue in the morning sun, flecked with spectral white in the distance—the easy roll of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... ambrosia of eternally new knowledge. They drink from the springs of peace, roam on the trackless soil of perceptions, swim in the ocean-endlessness of bliss. Lo! see their bright thought-bodies zoom past trillions of Spirit-created planets, fresh bubbles of universes, wisdom-stars, spectral dreams of golden nebulae, all over the skiey blue bosom ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the tale of him, Back-woodsman brave, who having scaled The mystic mountains ne'er returned To them, though loved yet left behind; But here he chose his last abode, These gloomy woods whose blackness stands Up hard against horizon's slope; Grim, spectral, dreaded, and untrod Save monsters great of savage mien, That prowled, or crouched upon their prey; Sent forth a vicious roar that fairly shook Old Sylvia far and near, from vale Through crag to mountain peak! Upon this spot the redskin oft Has danced his 'War dance' ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... the Arc de Triomphe in exaggerated spectral relief, sprinkled the leaves of the long rows of trees, glistened on the upsweep of the broad pavements, gleamed on the Seine. Paris was majestic, as scornful of Prussian eagles as the Parthenon of Roman eagles. A column of soldiery marching in triumph under the Arc might ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... would sometimes serve you to read by at eleven o'clock at night. The crimson flush has faded from the bosom of the river; if you are alone, its murmur begins to turn to a moan; the white stones of the churchyard look spectral through the trees. I think of poor Doctor Adam, the great Scotch schoolmaster of the last century, the teacher of Sir Walter Scott, and his last words, when the shadow of death was falling deeper—'It grows dark, hoys; you may go.' Then, with the professional bias, I go to a certain ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of doubt.[51] It is hardly needful to recapitulate his terror of the Inquisition, dread of being poisoned, incapacity for self-control in word and act, and other signs of incipient disease. During the residence in S. Anna this malady made progress. He was tormented by spectral voices and apparitions. He believed himself to be under the influence of magic charms. He was haunted by a sprite, who stole his books and flung his MSS. about the room. A good genius, in the form of a handsome youth, appeared and conversed with him. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... oppressed by the thought of his sufferings in that dreary convalescence. At night, when she looked from her window, the fog hung white, like mildew over the pond, and she could not reason herself out of a spectral haunting fancy that sickness lurked in the heavy, misty atmosphere. She dreamt of it and the four babies, started, awoke, and had to recall all her higher trust to enable her vigour to chase off ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sudden as to cause relief from the pressure too rapidly, which might have produced serious disorder in our organisation, and brought on internal lesions, so fatal to divers. Very soon light reappeared and grew, and, the sun being low on the horizon, the refraction edged the different objects with a spectral ring. At ten yards and a half deep, we walked amidst a shoal of little fishes of all kinds, more numerous than the birds of the air, and also more agile; but no aquatic game worthy of a shot had as yet met our ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... gathering; high overhead the domes and pinnacles were each instant taking deeper tinges of rose and violet. It seemed as if a word loudly or carelessly uttered would break the spell of the alpgluhen. It was all like a dream, and it was in his quality of spectral figure in a dream that the driver suddenly turned on the box, and, pointing over his shoulder with the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and snow, the pitiful howling of wolves, and the hoot of owls. The sun to me had long set; the peaks which had blushed were pale and sad; the twilight deepened into green; but still "Excelsior!" There were no happy homes with light of household fires; above, the spectral mountains lifted their cold summits. As darkness came on I began to fear that I had confused the cabin to which I had been directed with the rocks. To confess the truth, I was cold, for my boots and stockings had frozen on my feet, and I was hungry too, having eaten nothing but raisins for fourteen ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... still in the sky, though it only appeared at long intervals. Strangely enough, at the moment when I addressed him, a flash came, and seemed to pass right over his face. It gave such a hideously livid hue, such a spectral look of ghastliness and distortion to his features, that he absolutely seemed to be glaring and grinning on me like a fiend, in the one instant of its duration. For the moment, it required all my ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... sundown skirts the moor, An inner trouble I behold, A spectral doubt which makes me cold, That I should ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... branches fixed his dread abode. The oldest of our villagers relate Strange tales of horror of the Druid tree; Mysterious voices of unearthly sound From its unhallowed shade oft meet the ear. Myself, when in the gloomy twilight hour My path once chanced to lead me near this tree, Beheld a spectral figure sitting there, Which slowly from its long and ample robe Stretched forth its withered hand, and beckoned me. But on I went with speed, nor looked behind, And to the care ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... embodied this tradition in the following ballad, in which he represents the friar as one of the ancient inmates of the Abbey, maintaining by night a kind of spectral possession of it, in right of the fraternity. Other traditions, however, represent him as one of the friars doomed to wander about the place in atonement for his crimes. But ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... highway ran above fields, inundated by recent rains, and marshes converted into shining lakes. Out of the water uprose a grove of trees, spectral-like; screaming wild-fowl skimmed the surface, or circled above. The pastoral peace of the meadows, garden of the wild flower and home of the song-bird, was replaced by a waste of desolation and wilderness. Long they dashed on through the loneliness of that land; a depressing flight—but ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... hour, the noise of the approaching carriage was heard, he had the lights immediately carried to the top of the stairway, and he himself half descended the stairs. Up the stairs and past his very side came the footsteps; but neither living being nor spectral form could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... agreed. "There is a tale of a man who spent his life in wishing he had lived differently; and when he died he was surrounded by a throng of spectral shapes, each one exactly like the other, who, on his asking what they were, replied: 'We are all the different ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the ghostly extremities of these spectral trees over the top of the main tent as he lay crouched in his corner, after devoting an hour to the licking of his sores. Presently, an almost full moon rose among the trees' fleshless limbs, and painted their ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother turning her face away as she passed by. Ghost of a mother—thinnest fantasy of a mother—methinks she might yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through the chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided Hester Prynne leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then at ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... oriole, the nonpareil, took down all its leafy hangings and left it open to the winds and rain of December. The wet ponies and kine turned away from the north and stood in the slanting storm with bowed heads. The great wall of cypress swamp grew spectral. But its depths, the marshes far beyond sight behind them, and the little, hidden, rushy lakes, were alive with game. No snake crossed the path. Under the roof, on the galerie, the wheel hummed, the loom pounded; ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... season was midsummer, husks or twigs. Up went the rooks and down again, rising in lesser numbers each time as the sager birds made ready to settle, for the evening was already spent enough to make the air inside the wood almost dark. The moss was soft; the tree-trunks spectral. Beyond them lay a silvery meadow. The pampas grass raised its feathery spears from mounds of green at the end of the meadow. A breadth of water gleamed. Already the convolvulus moth was spinning over the flowers. Orange and purple, nasturtium and cherry pie, were washed into the twilight, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... shook hands with Elfreda, and all around again for good luck, then linking an arm in each of hers they conducted the rescued prisoner to where the rest of the party awaited them. During their absence the ghosts had doffed their spectral garments and the instant the three joined them the order to march was given. Once fairly in Overton, conversation was permitted, and on the same corner where they had met, the rescuers parted, after ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... like giant eagles and swoop down on their prey from high altitudes to send forth their flaming bombs and death-dealing hand grenades. A lookout on one of the destroyers detected at this moment an aerial fleet looming out of the north like spectral dots in the dim light of the skies. From the masthead of the vessel glowed instantly the light that had been agreed upon ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... French philosopher, Carnot, whose speculations have led to the theory that the sun will finally expend all its heat, and constellated life cease, as the solar system hangs, like a dead orrery, ashy and spectral, the ghost of what it was. So the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... had three of them—nursing the child as tenderly as if it had been their own. It was very much wasted, evidently through want of food and over-fatigue; but we instantly recognised the once sturdy little son of Njamie in the faded little being before us. He, too, recognised us, for his bright spectral eyes opened ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... derisively, "Nothin' doin'!" But he remembered the Boy's injunction, as well as his doubts, and checked himself. A moment later a faint, swirling gurgle of water caught his ear, and he was glad he had kept silence. An instant more, and the form of a beaver, spectral-gray in the moonlight, took shape all at once on the brink of the canal. For several minutes it stood there motionless, erect upon its hind quarters, questioning the stillness with eyes and ear and nose. Then, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... get up at the dairy-house, they seemed to themselves the first persons up of all the world. In these early days of her residence here Tess did not skim, but went out of doors at once after rising, where he was generally awaiting her. The spectral, half-compounded, aqueous light which pervaded the open mead impressed them with a feeling of isolation, as if they were Adam and Eve. At this dim inceptive stage of the day Tess seemed to Clare to exhibit a dignified largeness ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... sought her chamber in yon spectral keep With ivy wreaths now crowned; Whose casket rent By Time's grim hand and strewn by fragments round, Once held a jewel whose rare beauty lent Its light to cheer the sailors ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... a kind of Heaven-scaling Ixion; and to him, as to the old one, the just gods were very stern! The ever-revolving, never-advancing Wheel (of a kind) was his, through life; and from his Cloud-Juno did not he too procreate strange Centaurs, spectral Puseyisms, monstrous illusory Hybrids, and ecclesiastical Chimeras,—which now roam the earth in ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... silent and more ordinary; but somehow he alarmed me much more than poor little Smythe. He was very tall and slight, and light-haired; his nose had a high bridge, and he might almost have been handsome in a spectral sort of way; but he had one of the most appalling squints I have ever seen or heard of. When he looked straight at you, you didn't know where you were yourself, let alone what he was looking at. I fancy this sort of disfigurement embittered the poor chap a little; for while Smythe ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... rigidly inert. His tall slight figure, fully erect, looked almost spectral in the mists of the gathering night. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... ornamented, but without occupants, made one think of the misunderstanding which had gradually arisen for centuries between them and the head of the empire. Their ambassadors had already withdrawn to eat in a side-chamber; and if the greater part of the hall assumed a sort of spectral appearance, by so many invisible guests being so magnificently attended, a large unfurnished table in the middle was still more sad to look upon; for there also many covers stood empty, because all ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... sentinels along the narrow banks confining the river. Presently the sun, red as a glowing coal, dipped behind a jagged mountain peak, and all the life and light deserted the face of nature. Straightway there came upon the valley something dark and threatening—sullen, terrible, full of spectral weapons. The perpendicular cliffs of the barren western mountains seemed like the teeth of a monster lurking to snatch a victim and drag him down into the maw of the deep valley, black with its moaning forests. The pine trees were rows of knife-blades ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... committed on board. A plague broke out amongst the crew, and no port would allow the vessel to enter for fear of contagion, and so she still wanders about the sea with her phantom crew, never to rest, but doomed to be tossed about for ever. She is now a spectral ship, and hovers about the Cape of Good Hope as an omen of bad luck to mariners who are so ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... them and of their life with absolute certainty. Spectral analysis showed the same composition in the stars as on the earth, consequently if life had arisen in our atom, most certainly it must exist in other celestial bodies, though probably in different forms; in many planets it had already ended, in many it was still to come; but surely ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Thus spake the spectral children; thus The Angel made reply: 'They have no part or share with us; They were but passers-by.' 'But may we pray for them?' the phantoms plead. 'Yea, for they need your ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... depth of sadness, very rare with her, weighing on her spirits. The undulating movement of the boat, the splash of the oars, the faint breeze playing over the watery mirror, the sighing of the reeds, the long flight of the birds, the fitful twinkling of the first stars—there was something spectral about it all in the universal stillness. She fancied her friend was bearing her away to set her on some far-off shore, and leave her there alone; strange emotions were passing through her, and she could not give way to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... blessedness while she still lay in her cradle and played with her rattle;— that is, if she ever had unbent so far as to play with anything. Even her walk was not like that of most women; she moved along with a slow, deliberate stride which was at times almost spectral, and reminded one of the resistless, onward march of the fates. Aunt Jane was serious-minded and progressive, and, worst of all, she was conscientious. However great a blessing a conscience must be considered, there are some consciences that make their owners extremely unpleasant. Whenever Aunt ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... a single lantern at the prow, Jabaster watched with some anxiety the slight bark buffeting the waves. A flash of lightning illumined the whole river, and tipped with a spectral light even the distant piles of building. The boat and the toiling figure of the single rower were distinctly perceptible. Now all again was darkness; the wind suddenly subsided; in a few minutes the plash of the ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the spectrum is a narrow field of greenish yellow, grading into darker red on one side and into darker green upon the other, followed by still darker blue and purple. Upon the sphere the values of these spectral colors trace a path high up on the yellow section, near white, and slanting downward across the red and green sections, which are traversed near the level of the equator, it goes on to cross the blue and purple ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... lumps of domino sugar. Pour alcohol in the tray underneath the bowl, light it, and stir the brandy back and forth until it also catches from the flame below. Let burn two or three minutes—if the lights have been extinguished as they should be, the effect is beautifully spectral. After the three minutes pour in strong, hot, clear, black coffee, a small cupful for each person, keep stirring until the flame dies out, then serve literally blazing hot. This "burnt water" known in more ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... suffering, rather than breathe those words which must seal Stanley's fate; but now that she had spoken, though she would not have recalled them if she could—such an overpowering, crushing sense of all she had drawn upon herself, such fearful, spectral shapes of indefinable horror came upon her, that, as the Sub-Prior stood again before her with the uplifted cross, bidding her kneel and acknowledge him whose fate it imaged—she burst into a wild hysteric laugh, and ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... powers of hell, I knew you! The inmost mystery stood clear. In one blinding flash of comprehension I felt the fullness of my calamity. This man that I had seen was not a man, but a malign and jealous spirit—using his spectral influences to crush the mortals bold enough to love the woman whom he had loved on earth. The death of Alresca, the unaccountable appearances in the cathedral, in the train, on the steamer—everything was ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... that the slightest noise was irrelevant, and we felt bound to talk in whispers. We found ourselves upon a gravel walk bordered by cedars; to our left was the road, to our right the white stones of a vast burying ground rose up like spectral sentinels of ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... as light as day. In his delight the dog threw himself on his side to force a way through the snow, and then turned over to repeat the performance, and leap and race round his master, who stood shading his eyes from the light, and staring before him at something misty and spectral-looking in the distance. Finally the dog burst into a joyous peal of barking at the objects which had struck his master, and there came the sharp report of a gun, followed by a ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... the earth. Hilda shivered and drew back, looking rather pale. "What a dreadful place!" she cried. "It looks like a dungeon of the Inquisition. I think you were very brave to go in there, Bubble. I am sure I should not dare to go; it looks so spectral ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... could not be otherwise than full of wickedness, the chastest virgin seemed impure, in a world where such a babe was possible. The governor whispered me, apart, that, like nearly all the rest of them, it was the child of unhealthy parents. Ah, yes! There was the mischief. This spectral infant, a hideous mockery of the visible link which Love creates between man and woman, was born of disease and sin. Diseased Sin was its father, and Sinful Disease its mother, and their offspring lay in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thou com'st for me," Lee's spirit to the Spectre said; "I know that I must go with thee— Take me not to the dead. It was not I alone that did the deed!" Dreadful the eye of that still, spectral Steed! ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... she is neither the wife of Clovis, nor Solomon's friend—this strange princess who stands before us, at once so earthly and yet more spectral than her sisters; for time has marred her features, injured her skin, dotted her chin with hail-specks, vulgarized her mouth, injured her nose, making it look like the ace of clubs, and put the stamp of death ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... I seemed To be transported far away To a bleak desert plain where gleamed One single, melancholy ray. Throughout that darkness dimly shed From a small taper in the hand Of one who pale as are the dead Before me took his spectral stand, And said while awfully a smile Came o'er the wanness of his cheek— "Go and beside the sacred Nile "You'll find the Eternal Life ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... occur, but there is no marked predominance of either in a sun-spot. The velocity of motion thus indicated in the line of sight sometimes appears to amount to 320 miles a second. But it must be remembered that pressure of a gas has some effect in displacing the spectral lines. So we must go on, collecting data, until a time comes when the meaning of all the facts can ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... them all firing, for the first time we had some idea of the number that had been advanced into the conquered territory since July 1st. The ruins and the sticks of trees of Fricourt and Mametz with their few remaining walls stood out spectral in the flashes of batteries that had found nesting places among the debris. The whole slope had become a volcanic uproar. One might as well have tried to count the number of fireflies over a swamp as the flashes. The limitation ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... divine rather than in what you see lies half the charm of Andalusia, in the suggestion of all manner of delicate antique things, in the vivid memory of past grandeur. The Moors have gone, but still they inhabit the land in spirit and not seldom in a spectral way seem to regain their old dominion. Often towards evening, as I rode through the desolate country, I thought I saw an half-naked Moor ploughing his field, urging the lazy oxen with a long goad. Often the Spaniard on his horse vanished, and I saw a Muslim knight riding ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... religious awe, not without its own peculiar attractions. But, at present, under the harsh and repulsive character of the reigning prince, everything took a new color from his un-genial habits. The superstitious legend, which had so immemorially peopled the schloss with spectral apparitions, now revived in its earliest strength. Never was Germany more dedicated to superstition in every shape than at this period. The wild, tumultuous times, and the slight tenure upon which all men held ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... far away I could see faint corruscations of sparks; star shells; coloured fire balls from pistols; searchlights playing up and down the coast. Our fellows were being hard beset to hold on to what they had won; there, where the horizon stood out with spectral luminosity. What a contrast; the direct fear, joy, and excitement of the fighting men out there in the searchlights and the dull anguish of waiting here in the darkness; imagining horrors; praying the Almighty our men may be vouchsafed valour to ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... Saloon Bar rather than the Bar Parlour. Almost the whole frontage was of gilt plaster and figured glass, and between that grey seascape and the grey, witch-like trees, its gimcrack quality had something spectral in its melancholy. They both felt vaguely that if any food or drink were offered at such a hostelry, it would be the paste-board ham and empty mug ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... the cloister open, and dim grey figures, barely visible in the darkness, creep silently out from the graves. Bertram waves his arms over the cloister-garth, and there, too, the tombs gape apart, and more shadowy spectres emerge. Soon the stage is full of these faint grey spectral forms. Bertram lifts his arms. The wicked nuns throw off their grey wrappers, and appear glittering in scarlet and gold; the stage blazes with light, and the ballet, the famous "Pas de Fascination," begins. When really well done, this scene ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... ferine and spectral, and so tremendously violent, that the long attorney, expecting nothing of the sort, was thrown out of his balance ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... their struggles, were rolling down with them and before them in a miniature avalanche. She stood very quietly, holding one hand against her heart and gazing down. But while she saw the real happening, in her eyes was also the vision of her father dealing the spectral blow that had smashed Comanche down in mid-leap and sent horse and ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... study, with his lamp in its wonted place, it was with an expectation of old Hilbrook in his usual seat so vivid that its defeat was more a shock than its fulfilment upon supernatural terms would have been. In fact, the absence of the old man was spectral; and though Ewbert employed himself fully the first night in answering an accumulation of letters that required immediate reply, it was with nervous starts from time to time, which he could trace to no other cause. His wife came in and out, with what he knew to ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... like this view of the works better than when the glare was fiercest? These heavy shadows and the amphitheatre of smothered fires are ghostly, unreal. One could fancy these red smouldering lights to be the half-shut eyes of wild beasts, and the spectral figures their victims in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... more; die &c 360. annihilate, render null, nullify; abrogate &c 756; destroy &c 162; take away; remove &c (displace) 185; obliterate, extirpate. Adj. inexistent^, nonexistent &c 1; negative, blank; missing, omitted; absent &c 187; insubstantial, shadowy, spectral, visionary. unreal, potential, virtual; baseless, in nubibus [Lat.]; unsubstantial &c 4; vain. unborn, uncreated^, unbegotten, unconceived, unproduced, unmade. perished, annihilated, &c v.; extinct, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... line that rims the far horizon-ring, Our saddend sight why haunt these ghosts, whence do these spectral ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... the Dutchmen built their dorp With sturdy wit and will; In Nassau street their spectral feet Are heard to echo still. In many places sure I am New York ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... personages. Sun and moon are husband and wife; the winds have wives; they are addressed by personal names and reverenced.[566] Some spirits may already have had a demoniac aspect in pagan times. The Tuatha Dea conjured up meisi, "spectral bodies that rise from the ground," against the Milesians, and at their service were malignant sprites—urtrochta, and "forms, spectres, and great queens" called guidemain (false demons). The Druids also sent forth mischievous spirits called siabra. In the Tain there are references ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... was the end! With agonising shriek He turned and fled, the spectral perspiration Dewing his brow and coursing down his cheek; Fled, and was lost to man's investigation (For full discussion of his little tricks See Psychical Research Reports, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... told himself, played the mischief with his nerves, and now to this was added the ghastly vista of impending actual beggary. Whatever he did and wherever he went this thought would not be quenched. It was ever with him, gnawing like an aching tooth. Lying awake at night it would glare at him with spectral eyes in the darkness; then, unless he could force himself by all manner of strange and artificial means, such as repeating favourite verse, and so forth, to throw it off, good-bye to sleep—result, nerves yet further ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... assert the white supremacy. There grew up an organization called "the Ku-Klux Klan," designed at first partly as a rough sport and masquerade, partly to overawe the negroes. There were midnight ridings in spectral disguises, warnings, alarms and presently whippings and even murders. The society, or imitations of it, spread over most of the South. It was at its height in 1868-70, and in the latter year it gradually gave way, partly owing to vigorous measures ordered ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... lay. To the hour of his own death, that moment and all he saw was photographed indelibly upon Victor Catheron's mind. The dim gray light of the room, the great white bed in the centre, and the awfully corpse-like face of the man lying among the pillows, and gazing at him, with hollow, spectral eyes. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... as if he were about to awake, and then his eyes opened and he gazed on the spectral pallor of the dawn in the windows, his brain rousing from dreams slowly into comprehension of the change that had come. Then collecting his thoughts he rose and stood facing the dawn. He stood for a moment like one in combat, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... regular. But his sufferings when the clock was going to strike were frightful to behold; and when a Cuckoo looked out of a trap-door in the Palace, and gave note six times, it shook him, each time, like a spectral voice—or like a something wiry plucking at ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... eye caught sight of a man standing under the cypress tree, which rose up gloomy and dark, its branches waving slowly to and fro, looking, to her excited fancy like spectral hands that beckoned ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... fast that the trampled and discoloured road was again whitening beneath it. Half a mile ahead was visible the Stonewall Brigade, coming very slowly, beaten by the wind, blinded by the snow, a spectral grey serpent ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... in, Are now spent forces on the eddying surge Of Thought enfranchised. Agencies emerge Unhampered by the incubus of dread Which cramped men's hearts and clogged their onward tread. Dynasty, Prescription! spectral in these days When Science points to Thought its surest ways, And men who scorn obedience when not free Demand the logic of Authority! The day of manhood to the world is here, And ancient homage waxes faint and drear. . . . . ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... swiftly over rumbling bridges and clicking point, more swiftly still, breaking from the fog-banked Seine valley, through snarling tunnel and chattering cutting, faster now and freer, by long lines of poplar trees, mist-strewn, and moonlit ponds and fields, spectral white roads, little winking towns; and now, as if drawn by the magnetic south, swaying to the rock-a-bye of speed, aiming for the lights of Dijon far away south, to the tune ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is playing, To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist of a wreck at sea, Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers and wafted kisses, and that is the last of them, Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President, Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Jane who wished to seek oblivion in the waters of the Seine? Anselmo listened. The footsteps drew near now—the spectral apparition of a woman went past him and swung ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... the conversation. He was by now extraordinarily pale. All the flushed excitement in which Faversham had found him had disappeared. He was more spectral, more ghostly—and ghastly—than Faversham had ever seen him. His pincerlike fingers played with the jewel which Felicia had thrown down upon the table. He took it up, put on his eyeglass, peered at it, put it down again. Then he turned ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... soothed by the tranquillity of the scene around him as he went on. The west was one sheet of orange. The brilliancy of the sunset had faded to a tenderer tone. The spikes of the pointed firs on the mainland stood dark against it. Over in the east, the moon was rising, pale and spectral, with all her ribs showing like a skeleton leaf. Jupiter shone out more clearly as the darkness deepened and the shadows fell more heavily along the strip ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... getting to their horses and mounting in silence; the Colonel put himself at their head and gave the order of march, and the dark line turned in the darkness, crossed the little plateau between the smouldering camp-fires and the spectral caissons with the harness hanging beside them, and slowly entered the dim charcoal-burner's track. Not a word was spoken as they moved off. They might all have been phantoms. Only, the sergeant in the rear, as he crossed the little breastwork which ran along the upper side and ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Stolz was far more adept at causing pain than at enduring it. Also, from birth, he had had an unconquerable fear of dogs. His nerves, too, were not yet recovered from Bruce's attack earlier in the day. All this, and the spectral suddenness of the onslaught, robbed him of every atom of his usual ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... passed. The suspense continued. Yet the shouts of triumph had ceased. Did it mean repulse or victory? "Victory! victory!" for now a spectral vision of sails could be seen, drawing near the town. They grew nearer and plainer; dark hulls showed below them; the vessels were coming! ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... rock that stood out at sea, about three and a half miles south-east-by-east from our cape, now came in sight ahead of us to the windward. In the spectral light, and beaten on by the waves, it looked like some sea monster moving in the water. As we were going we should probably pass close to its lee side in about ten minutes, but the wind blew a tempest, and the sea increased so in a few minutes that our peril was ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... after the funeral, he steps into his little sail-boat, and stretches away for the shores of Orr's Island. He knows the sun will be down before he reaches there; but he sees, in the opposite horizon, the spectral, shadowy moon, only waiting for daylight to be gone to come out, calm and radiant, like a saintly friend neglected in the flush of prosperity, who waits patiently to enliven our ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... standing in the midst of a desolation and a silence that was profound. There was nothing there that lived, except a few fire-blacked trees that stuck up here and there in the shelter of broken walls. Now I understood the meaning of the spectral shapes. They were nothing but the broken walls of the other houses that were. They were all that remained of nine-tenths ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... into sheaves Of scorpions by spectral arms, Swung to and fro, and whipped the eaves, And filled the house with weird alarms That hissed ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... and constantly begging his pardon with great awkwardness and embarrassment—John led the party to the best bedroom, which was nearly as large as the chamber from which they had come, and held, drawn out near the fire for warmth, a great old spectral bedstead, hung with faded brocade, and ornamented, at the top of each carved post, with a plume of feathers that had once been white, but with dust and age had now ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and getting brighter, and accordingly I knew little fear, though I did think of the ghosts of other parties, flitting in spectral form over the ice-clad wastes, especially of that small detachment of the Italian expedition of the Duke D'Abruzzi, of which to this day neither track, trace, nor remembrance has ever been found. We crossed lead after lead, sometimes like a bare-back rider in the circus, balancing on cake after ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... become infected and infested with these demons, arrive to a capacity of discerning those which they conceive the shapes of their troubles; and notwithstanding the great and just suspicion that the demons might impose the shape of innocent persons in their spectral exhibitions of the sufferers, (which may perhaps prove no small part of the witch-plot in the issue), yet many of the persons thus represented being examined, several of them have been convicted of a ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the spray-swept leagues of water, showing only her reefed topsails and courses. The two pirate sloops vanished beyond the curtain of mist. When last seen, one of them was dismasted and the other was laboring in grave peril. The Revenge loomed as a spectral shape while Blackbeard was endeavoring to get her running free in pursuit of the Plymouth Adventure. But slovenly, reckless seamanship had caught him unready. His sails were blowing to ribbons, ropes flying at loose ends, and it was with great difficulty that the vessel could ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights—he had no appetite for these exploits. He had never had much, and he had lost the habit. He felt that he could never recover it. His hunger could only be appeased by his wife, inexorable and frightened, behind ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
