"Spectre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sight that made those present tremble when they saw the old gray woman, a sublime spectre, standing beside her grandchild's pillow. Terror and vengeance wrote their fierce expressions in the wrinkles that lined her skin of yellow ivory; her forehead, half hidden by the straggling meshes of her gray hair, expressed a ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... ploughshare is buried in rough, unyielding soil. A single figure is joyous and alert in that scene of sweat and toil. It is a fantastic personage, a skeleton armed with a whip, who runs in the furrow beside the terrified horses and belabors them, thus serving the old husbandman as ploughboy. This spectre, which Holbein has introduced allegorically in the succession of philosophical and religious subjects, at once lugubrious and burlesque, entitled the Dance of ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... was no less a person than Marshal Saxe. One night, on the march, he bivouacked in a haunted castle, and slept the sleep of the brave until midnight, when he was awakened by hideous howls heralding the approach of the spectre. When it appeared, the Marshal first discharged his pistol point-blank at it without effect, and then struck it with his sabre, which was shivered in his hand. The invulnerable spectre then beckoned the amazed Marshal to follow, and preceded him to a spot where the floor of the gallery suddenly ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... on me, and was resolved to invest my little fortune in such a way that I might have a modest competence, so that the dreadful spectre of poverty might never ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... is haunting Europe,'' it begins, "the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre—Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the party ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... were naturally extremely annoying, but what really distressed him most was that he had been unable to wear the suit of mail. He had hoped that even modern Americans would be thrilled by the sight of a Spectre in armour, if for no more sensible reason, at least out of respect for their natural poet Longfellow, over whose graceful and attractive poetry he himself had whiled away many a weary hour when the Cantervilles ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... first appearance of a handful of soldiers, were represented as the prelude to a vast Socialist revolution from which the coup d'etat, and that alone, had saved France. Terrified by the re-appearance of the Red Spectre, the French nation proceeded on the 20th of December to pass its judgment on the accomplished usurpation. The question submitted for the plebiscite was, whether the people desired the maintenance of Louis ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... true that he entered the dreaded shades with fear, yet no spectre ever crossed his path. But perhaps that was because the thoughts of the old man were pure, or perhaps because he never entered the forest without singing a hymn in ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... from the shrine Not aid but agony is mine. As a spider he creeps and he clutches his prey, And he hales me away. A spectre of darkness, of darkness. Alas and alas! well-a-day! O Earth, O my mother! O Zeus, thou king of the earth, and her child! Turn back, we pray thee, from us his ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... not see; they were so real that I knew just where they were in the room, and the peculiar terror they excited lay largely in the feeling that I was just going to see them. If by chance I came across a ghost story it haunted me for months, for I saw whatever unpleasant spectre was described; and there was one horrid old woman in a tale by Sir Walter Scott, who glided up to the foot of your bed and sprang on it in some eerie fashion and glared at you, and who made my going to bed a terror to me for ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... a wraith, no grisly spectre, no half-nebulous Shape. He was Peter Grimm, rugged, homespun, the man whose iron individuality had undergone and ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... the sack had completely whitened his fellow-traveller and given him a most unearthly appearance. The frightened miller was "putrified," as Mrs. Malaprop would say, at the sight, and a push from the white spectre brought the unfortunate man to the ground, when away rode the gallant quartermaster with his sacks of flour, which, at length bursting, made a ludicrous spectacle ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... ravaged rack and box as if it had been the wreck of weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays of the setting sun flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire had been added to the ruin. But even this presently faded, leaving the abandoned coach a rigid, lifeless spectre on ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his voice the spectre started and looked up; and then, without betraying either surprise or a disposition to beat a mysterious retreat, advanced to meet the soldier, walking rapidly, and waving his hand all the while with an impatient gesture, as if commanding ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... of the skeleton which hung in the mahogany case in the waiting-room, had lighted it up behind the eyes and the ribs, and was carrying it aloft before him, approaching round the corner, and thus confronting the effigy. The spectre moved steadily on, while the people fled. It made straight for Sir William Hunter, who now seemed for the first time disposed to shift his place. He did so with as much slowness and dignity as were compatible with the urgency of the circumstances, edging his horse ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Street; too ill, in real truth, for Potsdam society on those new terms. Does not quit Francheville's "till March 5th;" and then only for another Lodging, called "the Belvedere", of suburban or rural kind. His case is intricate to a degree. He is sick of body; spectre-haunted withal, more than ever;—often thinks Friedrich, provoked, will refuse him leave. And, alas, he would so fain NOT go, as well as go! Leave for Plombieres,—leave in the angrily contemptuous shape, "Go, then, forever and a day!"—Voltaire can at once have: but to get it in the friendly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... were gray days, too, which only served to make more golden the sun-kissed ones; days when no observations could be taken with the sextant, to the huge disgust of the officer in charge of such work; days when the distant mountains loomed spectre-like through the mist, their sharp outlines vignetted into the sky. Occasionally the fog would lift a bit, just enough to reveal the rain-drenched islands around us, and then suddenly wipe them out of existence again, leaving the ship alone on ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... Elizabeth's treatment, might join the French and the exiles.[310] Perplexed to know how to dispose of her, the ambassador and the chancellor thought of sending her off to Pomfret Castle; doubtless, if once within Pomfret walls, to find the fate of the second Richard there: but again the spectre of Lord ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Perpetua," over which thou porest, for under all thy dignity and formalism there beats a loving father's heart. The shadows are gathering, dear sir, around thy fifth son in a far country, and in the gathering shadows there stalks, noiselessly, relentlessly, that grim, gray spectre, Death. On thy knees, then, oh Rector of St. Agnes, and blend thy prayers with the feeble petitions of her who even now, for thy house, entreats the Throne of Grace. Pray, oh thou on whom the bishop's hands have been laid, that the golden bowl be not broken ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... steppe of Debreczin, and which a young Prussian Baron, a great traveller, whom he met at Constantinople in '44, told him he always carried in his valise. And in conclusion he will say, in order to show the opinion which he entertains of the power of Scott as a writer, that he did for the spectre of the wretched Pretender what all the kings of Europe could not do for his body—placed it on the throne of these realms, and for Popery what Popes and Cardinals strove in vain to do for three centuries—brought back its mummeries and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... dreaded spectre, though a beneficent angel with healing on his wings in truth, will push yet many traitorous or cowardly sycophants from the stools they disgrace, and substitute in their stead men who will quiet Agitation by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... parting breath, Whilst thou wert struggling in the pangs of death. Could tears have turn'd the tyrant in his course, Could sighs have check'd his dart's relentless force; Could youth and virtue claim a short delay, Or beauty charm the spectre from his prey. Thou still had'st liv'd, to bless my aching sight, Thy comrade's honour, and thy friend's delight: Though low thy lot, since in a cottage born, No titles did thy humble name adorn, ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... my jewel. Some dark oaken room, with ugly wo-begone portraits that stare dismally at one, and about which the housekeeper has a power of delightful stories of love and murder. And then a dim lamp, a table with a rusty sword across it, and a spectre all in white to draw aside one's ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... it—and how it was written when the plague was raging at Florence, the great plague that carried off Petrarch's Laura, and those other thousands of whom the world knew nothing then and knows nothing now. Some, too, have heard that the plague swept over Europe—desolating, devastating—the spectre with the swinging scythe mowing down broad swathes of men. Some, when they hear of it, picture to themselves Pope Clement VI. at Avignon, sitting in that vast palace that overlooks the Rhone, the ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... was undoubtedly saved by a French Canadian. But for Jacques Baby, the grim spectre Starvation would have stalked through the little fortress. Baby was a prosperous trader and merchant who, with his wife Susanne Reaume, lived on the east shore of the river, almost opposite the fort. He had a farm of one thousand acres, two hundred of which were under ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... supernatural; The Romance of the Forest, and her use of suspense; heroines: The Mysteries of Udolpho; illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; The Italian; villains; her historical accuracy and "unexplained" spectre in Gaston de Blondeville; her reading; style; descriptions of scenery; position in the history ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... at the small bridge near Olevano where the road takes a turn. A few hundred yards up the glen on your left is a fountain whose waters are renowned for their purity; the bridge itself is not a favourite spot after sunset; it is haunted by a most malignant spectre. That adds considerably, in my eyes, to the charm of the place. Besides, here stands an elder tree now in full flower. What recollections does that scent evoke! What hints of summer, after ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... last year began, after four months of sickness and idleness, all my plans gone to water, myself starting alone, a kind of spectre, for Nice - should I not be grateful? Come, let us ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... faded. It made a difference, certainly—but was it right to try to make one's hair look thicker and wavier than it really was? Between that and rouging the ethical line seemed almost impalpable, and the spectre of her rigid New England ancestry rose reprovingly before her. She was sure that none of her grandmothers had ever simulated a curl or encouraged a blush. A blush, indeed! What had any of them ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Phoebe heal'd the wound, With vigour arm'd him, and with glory crown'd. This done, the patron of the silver bow A phantom raised, the same in shape and show With great AEneas; such the form he bore, And such in fight the radiant arms he wore. Around the spectre bloody wars are waged, And Greece and Troy with clashing shields engaged. Meantime on Ilion's tower Apollo stood, And calling Mars, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... is formed of flakes of black cloud, with rents and openings of intense and lurid green, and at least half of the impressiveness of the picture depends on these openings. Close them, make the sky one mass of gloom, and the spectre will be awful no longer. It owes to the light of the distance both its size and its spirituality. The time would fail me if I were to name the tenth part of the pictures which occur to me, whose vulgarity is redeemed by this circumstance alone, and yet let not the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... guise of the beloved. The result would be his death within three days, and, as a matter of fact, he died. This is the groundwork of the old Breton ballad of Le Sieur Nan, who dies after his intrigue with the forest spectre.(1) A tale more like a common modern ghost-story is vouched for by Mr. C. J. Du Ve, in Australia. In the year 1860, a Maneroo black fellow died in the service of Mr. Du Ve. "The day before he died, having been ill ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... saw rising the wistful figure of the poor man doomed to conditions which he could not change—born, it may be, like Pinetop, self-poised, yet with an untaught intellect, grasping, like him, after the primitive knowledge which should be the birthright of every child. Even the spectre of slavery, which had shadowed his thoughts, as it had those of many a generous mind around him, faded abruptly before the very majesty of the problem that faced him now. In his sympathy for the slave, whose bondage he and his race had striven ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... away than they were. Some of these men, however, were less distinguished for cleverness than for malignity, and shrieked for blood and the display of brute force in terms that would have done dishonor even to a St. Bartholomew assassin or anti-Albigensian crusader. Monsieur Romieu held up Le Spectre Rouge to the eyes of a generation incapable, from fright, of distinguishing between a scarecrow and the Apollo. The Red Spectre haunted him, and the people for whom he wrote, as relentlessly as the Gray Spectre came upon the chiefs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... highways, On the road are many wonders, Three times Death appears to frighten, Thrice destruction hovers over!" Spake the reckless Lemminkainen, These the words of Kaukomieli: "Death is seen by aged people, Everywhere they see perdition, Death can never frighten heroes, Heroes do not fear the spectre; Be that as it may, dear mother, Tell that I may understand thee, Name the first of all destructions, Name the first and last destroyers!" Lemminkainen's mother answered: "I will tell thee, son and hero, Not because I wish to speak it, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... was that night when there was an alarm of fire. I went close up to you to take Master Archibald from your arms; and, as sure as I am now standing here, I believe that for the moment my senses left me. I thought I saw a spectre—the spectre of my dead lady. I forgot the present; I forgot that all were standing round me; that you, Madame Vine, were alive before me. Your face was not disguised then; the moonlight shone full upon it, and I knew it, after the first few moments ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... angry bearing of the cardinal, in the scornful face of Eck, even in the thoughts of his own soul. He knew how powerful they had been in Rome. Even in his youth apparitions had tormented him; now they reappeared. From the dark shadows of his study the spectre of the tempter lifted its claw-like hand against his reason. Even while he was praying the Devil approached him in the form of the Redeemer, radiant as King of Heaven with the five wounds, as the ancient Church ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... his eyes; then, as he partook of our breakfast, he cross-examined us on my statement, and even tried to persuade us that the phantom in the ruin was Emily; and on her observing that she could not have seen herself, he talked of the Brocken Spectre and fog mirages; but we declared the night was clear, and I told him that all the rational theories I had ever heard were far more improbable than the appearance herself, at which he laughed. Then he scrupulously demanded whether this—this (he failed to ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cognisant of the report, which was confirmed in their minds by the late duke's conduct at her death. Lady Elizabeth, as we shall still by way of distinction call her, was then so emaciated as to resemble a living spectre; but the lines of a rare and commanding beauty still remained. Her features were regular and noble, her eyes magnificent, and her attenuated figure was upright and dignified, with the step of an empress. Her complexion of marble ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... under the table. The intrepid Don opens the door. There is a clap of thunder, and there enters the ghost of the Commandant in the form of his statue as seen in the churchyard. The music which has been described in connection with the overture accompanies the conversation of the spectre and his amazed host. Don Giovanni's repeated offer of hospitality is rejected, but in turn he is asked if he will return the visit. He will. "Your hand as a pledge," says the spectre. All unabashed, the doomed man places his hand in that of the statue, which closes upon it ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... gazed searchingly at the little old ghost, but to save his life he could not utter a word. He nearly suffocated with longing to possess the secret and know where the treasure lay, but he dared not ask; and all the time the spectre stood staring at him with unwinking scornful eyes, as if the sight of the cowardly, trembling man gave ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... difficult to distinguish a dream from a reality. On the contrary, he that composes himself to sleep, in case of any uncouth or absurd fancy, easily suspects it to have been a dream."[88] On this principle, Hobbes has ingeniously accounted for the spectre which is said to have appeared to Brutus; and the well-known story told by Clarendon, of the apparition of the duke of Buckingham's father will admit of a similar solution. There was no man at that time in the kingdom so much the topic of conversation as the duke; and, from the corruptness ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the River. The God after having regarded you with a Look that spoke at [once [1]] his Pity and Displeasure, flew away. Immediately a kind of Gloom overspread the whole Place. At the same time I saw an hideous Spectre enter at one end of the Valley. His Eyes were sunk into his Head, his Face was pale and withered, and his Skin puckered up in Wrinkles. As he walked on the sides of the Bank the River froze, the Flowers faded, the Trees shed their Blossoms, the Birds dropped from off the Boughs, and fell ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... assassinate him. Seizing the Persian cimeter [156] that lay beside him, he plunged it in the breast of the intruder, and the object of his passion fell dead at his feet. "From that hour," says the biographer, "he could rest no more!" A spectre haunted his nights—the voice of the murdered girl proclaimed doom to his ear. It is added, and, if we extend our belief further, we must attribute the apparition to the skill of the priests, that, still tortured by the ghost ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Sally, jolted by the train, which towards the small hours seemed to be trying out some new buck-and-wing steps of its own invention, slept ill, and presently, as she lay awake, there came to her bedside the Spectre of Doubt, gaunt and questioning. Had she, after all, wrought so well? Had she been wise in tampering with this ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... panic-terror pervaded the halls, and like an evil-announcing night-spectre passed over the heads of the stiffened, lifeless crowd the dismal rumor—"The regent and the princess are at variance; the regent is speaking to her with vehemence, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... fashion, to congenial wayfarers. The more Field saw of the Waller lot, the more completely did the old New England hankering after a homestead, with acres instead of square feet of lawn and trees, take possession of him; and the spectre of ten years' rent for inconvenient flats and houses rose in his memory and urged him to buy land and build for himself. This finally resulted in the following letter to the old friend to whom he always went in any financial emergency, and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... climbing over the roof, making branches creak, springing out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the flue, and shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As in the old story, the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen. She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit as she was now. She seemed ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be that his pathway through life was haunted thus by a spectre that had stolen out from ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... will be banished from among mortals. God, take yourself away! for, from this day forth, cured of your fear and become wise, I swear, with hand extended to heaven, that you are only the tormentor of my reason, the spectre of my conscience. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... up like a plug in his throat to hinder his breathing, for he saw a headless horseman coming over the ridge behind him, blackly defined against the starry sky. Setting spurs to his nag with a hope of being first to reach Sleepy Hollow bridge, which the spectre never passed, the unhappy man made the best possible time in that direction, for his follower was surely overtaking him. Another minute and the bridge would be reached; but, to Ichabod's horror, the Hessian dashed alongside ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... shutting out every ray of light and hope. It makes the wretched falsely believe they will be wretched ever. It is the most fatal of all dangerous delusions; and it is only when this necromantic night-mare of the mind begins to vanish, by being resisted, that it is discovered to be but a tyrannic spectre. All grief, like all things else, will yield to the obliterating power of time. While despair is preying on the mind, time and its effects are preying on despair; and certain it is, the dismal vision will fade away, and Forgetfulness, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, And vesper bell's that rose the boughs along; The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng Which learn'd from this example not to fly From a true lover,—shadow'd my ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... suspicious significance of the disappearance of the will, which was the sole obstacle that debarred her from her grandfather's wealth. Although sustained by an unfaltering trust in the omnipotence of innocence, she was tormented by a dread spectre that would not "down" at her bidding; how could she prove that the money and jewels had been given to her? Would the shock of the tidings of her arrest kill her mother? Was there any possible way by which she might be kept in ignorance of this ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... vain struggles, his love for Anne grew stronger, more overpowering. He was hollow-eyed and gaunt, ravenous with the hunger of love. A spectre of his former self, he watched himself starve with sustenance at hand. Bountiful love lay within his grasp and yet he starved. Full, rich pastures spread out before him wherein he could roam to the end of his days, blissfully gorging himself,—and yet he starved. ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... the picquet line which extended from Pembina Mountain to Lake of the Woods (150 miles), was nowhere visible, and I. began to think that the whole thing was only a myth, and that the Red River revolt was as unsubstantial as the Spectre of the Brocken. But just then, as I stood on the high roof of the "International," from whence a wide view was obtained, I saw across the level prairie outside the huts of Pembina the figures of two horsemen riding at a rapid pace towards the north. They were on the road ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... pursue in order to elude the vigilance of McDermot, the detective; and then, if all proved vain, I could but perish! For I would have walked cheerfully over the burning ploughshares of old, lived again through the hideous nightmare of the burning ship and raft, nay, clasped hands with the spectre of La Vigne himself, had it offered to lead me to purgatory, rather than have married the knave, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Sidorovitch?" Razumov was conscious of meeting this advance with odious, muttering boorishness. The professor was obviously too astonished to be offended. All this was bad. And all this was Haldin, always Haldin—nothing but Haldin—everywhere Haldin: a moral spectre infinitely more effective than any visible apparition of the dead. It was only the room through which that man had blundered on his way from crime to death that his spectre did not seem to be able to haunt. Not, to be exact, that he was ever completely absent from it, but that there he had ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... Because, in the first place, such homes are being destroyed and made impossible now by the very causes against which Socialism fights, and because in this world at the present time very few homes are at all like this ideal. In reality every poor home is haunted by the spectre of irregular employment and undermined by untrustworthy insurance, it must shelter in insanitary dwellings and its children eat adulterated food because none other can be got. And that, I am sorry to say, it is only too easy to prove, by a second appeal ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... for a moment spell-bound; for she beheld in that countenance without the possibility of doubt, the resemblance of the deceased Lady Greville, whose portrait, in a similar dress, hung in the picture gallery at Silsea Castle. She shuddered; for the eyes of the spectre remained steadfastly fixed upon her; and its lips moved as if about to address her—"Mother of God—protect me!" exclaimed Helen convulsively, and she fell ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... feet. But she, for whom the greeting was intended, did not observe this mute courtship, for her eyes followed the travellers, and especially the young man, as if spellbound. As soon as the three were far enough off not to hear her, the girl asked with a shiver, as if some desert-spectre had passed by-and in a low voice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... from his ship the Topaze, and on his way home. He was buried at sea on the 2nd of May, 1872. Poor fellow! He was the smallest in size of all the children, in his manhood reaching only to a little over five feet; and throughout his childhood was never called by any other name than the "Ocean Spectre," from a strange little weird yet most attractive look in his large wondering eyes, very happily caught in a sketch in oils by the good Frank Stone, done at Bonchurch in September 1849 and remaining ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house as to my thoughts and remembrances of it, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... made himself emperor. He did not take up the crown that had fallen from the head of the Bourbons; he created a new one for himself—a crown which the French people and Senate had, however, offered him. The revolution still stood a threatening spectre behind the French people; its return was feared, and, since the discovery of the conspiracy of Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru, the people anxiously asked themselves what was to become of France if the conspirators ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... I was a boy," said Rev. J. A. James, "a school-fellow gave me an infamous book, which he lent me for only fifteen minutes. At the end of that time it was returned to him, but that book has haunted me like a spectre ever since. I have asked God on my knees to obliterate that book from my mind, but I believe that I shall carry down with me to the grave the spiritual damage I ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... book before her. They both looked very sad, I thought. I tapped at the window, which opened to the ground, to call their attention, and grinned a "How-d'ye-do" through the glass. No sooner did Alice see my face, than letting her book fall, she gave a loud scream, as if she had seen a spectre. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... be so immune from timidity Never a spectre could fill them with fright, Men who could keep their accustomed placidity Were they to meet in the gloom of the night Lady Hermione tramping the corridor, Wicked Sir Guy with his fetters adrag, Or a plebeian who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... supporters were estranged from them or had actually turned {112} against them. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel probably thought that their wisest course would be to let Lord Grey and Brougham and their friends try what they could do with the monstrous spectre of reform which they had conjured up, and wait till the country had recovered its senses before again undertaking to act ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... any one enter her apartments. When the mulatto chambermaid came there, in the ordinary course of her duties, she would shrink back in her chair and shade her eyes, as if some hideous spectre had crossed her path; but, if Agnes Barker entered, this nervous shock became unendurable, and it was with the greatest effort that she could refrain from rushing madly into the next room, and holding the door against ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... interest produced by that dreadful scream. All turned their eyes for a moment in the quarter whence it proceeded; when presently, from behind the groups of Canadians crowning the slope, was seen flying, with the rapidity of thought, one who resembled rather a spectre than a being of earth;—it was the wife of Halloway. Her long fair hair was wild and streaming—her feet, and legs, and arms were naked—and one solitary and scanty garment displayed rather than concealed ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... of our thoughts; it was the atmosphere of our feelings; a something as all-pervading and impalpable as the air we drew into our lungs. And suddenly this danger, this breath of our life, had taken this material form. It was material and expected, and yet it had the effect of an evil spectre, inasmuch as one did not know where and how it was vulnerable, what precisely it would do, how one should defend ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... make the best of my life and could when by myself be cheerful, even in the recollection of the past fun; but there was that about me now which brought sorrow over to me. The instant I saw her, she checked my smile, sneered at my past, moaned over my future, was a nightmare to me, a very spectre. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the dead man, 'mid that beauteous scene Of trees and hills and water, bolt upright Rose, with his ghastly face, a spectre ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... accept any sort of a task whatever. And all the more so, since his mother had not given up hope of making him accept one of those fine careers in which an industrious young fellow may win esteem and fortune. The "spectre of the daily grind" stared him in the face, and although he had escaped a notary's career, through the death of the man to whose practice he was to have succeeded, they gave him to understand that the sombre portals of a government position ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... rabbits' tails behind their backs, who fishes for their wigs, who sticks up pins in his friends' chairs, who carries a hideous mask in his pocket to frighten little children, and who is himself frightened into repentance by a spectre with a speaking trumpet, is a very objectionable, though an excellent dramatic character. The part of the spectre is played by the groom; this is ill contrived in a drama for children; grooms should have nothing to do with their entertainments; and Caesar, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... un long bruit de taillis qui tressaille, Comme si quelque bete en passant l'eut trouble, Et l'ombre du rocher tenebreux a semble Plus noire, et l'on dirait qu'un morceau de cette ombre A pris forme et s'en est alle dans le bois sombre, Et maintenant on voit comme un spectre marchant La-bas dans la clarte sinistre ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... the shouts of "The granaries, the granaries—merciful heaven, all is consumed!" came with such appalling consciousness on every ear, that for a brief while, the stoutest arm hung powerless, the firmest spirit quailed. Famine stood suddenly before them as a gaunt, terrific spectre, whose cold hand it seemed had grasped their very hearts. Nobles and men, knights and soldiers, alike stood paralyzed, gazing at each other with a blank, dim, unutterable despair. The shrill blast of many trumpets, the roll of heavy drums, broke ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... tormenting them until suitable burial was performed. Pliny the Younger[113] relates the story of a ghost which haunted a house and terrified to death all the inhabitants of the dwelling; a philosopher who was brave enough to follow it discovered at the place where the spectre stopped some bones which had not been buried in the proper manner. The shade of the Emperor Caligula wandered in the gardens of the palace; it was necessary to disinter the body and bury it anew in ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... by what he had been doing, for it was inevitable that there should be a certain emotion in calling up the spectre of dishonor before a family a thousand years old. But he went back to the inn and contrived to wait there, deliberately, for the next two hours. He thought it more than probable that Urbain de Bellegarde would give no sign; for an answer to his challenge, in either sense, would be a confession ...
— The American • Henry James
... hands of the hateful Gaveston. They bid higher and higher, but at length Dickson stops, unable to go farther. Gaveston feels assured of his triumph, when George Brown, recalling his vow to the white Lady, advances boldly, bidding one thousand pounds more. Anna is beside him, in the shape of the spectre, and George obediently bids on, till the castle is his for the price of three hundred thousand pounds. Gaveston in a perfect fury, swears avenge himself on the adventurer, who is to pay the sum in the afternoon. Should he prove unable to do so, he shall be put into prison. George, who firmly ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... wish to go in. He declared that the door was closed. She pushed it, and slipped into the immense nave, where the inanimate trees of the columns ascended in darkness. In the rear, candles were moving in front of spectre-like priests, under the last reverberations of the organs. She trembled ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... during that eventful journey,—that youth, whose features are imprinted on my memory, is the very individual forester who this day rescued us in the forest. I cannot be mistaken; and connecting these marvellous appearances with the spectre which I saw while at Gay Bowers, I cannot resist the conviction that Heaven has permitted my guardian angel to assume mortal shape ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... yet be no voluntary accomplice in the Sacrilege. With the commencement of a PUBLIC, commences the degradation of the GOOD and the BEAUTIFUL—both fade and retire before the accidentally AGREEABLE. "Othello" becomes a hollow lip-worship; and the "CASTLE SPECTRE," or any more recent thing of Froth, Noise, and Impermanence, that may have overbillowed it on the restless sea of curiosity, is the true Prayer of Praise ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... ever in Bryant's and Carrigan's minds was of that grim and implacable enemy, cold. Autumn had lasted amazingly; November yielded to December, with the days still fine; but who could tell when the white spectre, Winter, would lay his icy hand upon the earth? The peaks and upper slopes of the mountains were already mantled with snow. Each morning the engineer and the contractor marked with care the fall of the thermometer during the night, examined ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... Martineau—was in real fact the basic cause of the war, seemed to her as clear as anything in reason[857]. She had no patience with English anti-slavery people who believed Northern protestations, and she did not express concern over the horrors of a possible servile insurrection. Nevertheless this spectre was constantly appearing. Again the Spectator sought to allay such fears; but yet again also proclaimed that even such a contingency was less fearful than the consolidation of the slave-power in ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... goest," said Lord Huntinglen; "and I will have thee try, moreover, whether a cup of sack cannot bring some colour into these cheeks of thine. It were a shame to my household, thou shouldst glide out into the Strand after such a spectre-fashion as thou now wearest—Look to it, Dalgarno, for the honour of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... his ragged uniform, haggard but eager, was standing like a gaunt spectre in the sunlight that flooded the terrace. The vagabond, with the eyes of all upon him, raised and lowered his arms thrice, and the face of ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... had appeared at the doorway, a worn, and troubled spectre of dismay, now put in a confirmatory word. "You are quite right, Simeon. That house reeks with the talk of wine-bibbers and those who make life a witticism. Such ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... stirred and sprung and answered Dane's words in her heart as he spoke them. And yet the sudden whirlabout to all her thoughts and habits and ways, was very confusing. So she sat thinking,with every dress she had in the world gravely presented itself, like a spectre, and all the glove buttons insisting upon being counted then and there. Suddenly, from the waves of blue silk a little foot started out into the firelight,a foot half smothered in trimming; rosetted, buckled, beribboned, belaced. Hazel gazed at it,and then gave up, and broke into a ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... language thus became a means for preserving the records of history, and it has also been a treasure house of stories, furnishing material for much of the poetry of Europe. One of these legends gave Scott the story of the combat between Marmion and the Spectre Knight. ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... himself trying to take an inventory of his own stock. And since the material question of money did not come in to cloud the horizon, he felt he could do it impartially. There are many now who, having sacrificed every prospect, find their outlook haunted by the spectre of want; there are many more, formerly engaged in skilled trades such as engineering or mining, who find that they have four years of leeway to make up in their profession—four years of increased knowledge and mechanical improvements—unknown to them, but not to their competitors, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... rather than obtruded upon us are kept in the background, so as not to invite, nor indeed to render possible, the application of scientific tests. We may compare him once more to Miss Bronte, who introduces, in 'Villette,' a haunted garden. She shows us a ghost who is for a moment a very terrible spectre indeed, and then, very much to our annoyance, rationalises him into a flesh-and-blood lover. Hawthorne would neither have allowed the ghost to intrude so forcibly, nor have expelled him so decisively. The garden in his hands would have been haunted by a shadowy terror of which we could render ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the sacred mission has been fulfilled. By signs that cannot be doubted has it been shown that the spectre that brought desolation to the earth was slain by the magic arrow just seven settings of the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... a hand as though he feared another blow. The gesture was so human and yet so humble that Mary looked into his face. Time, which turns the sweet-eyed girl into a withered spectre, must have touched him with its thumb. His eyes were ringed and ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... she felt frightened, and hastened on; and as she hurried on, many things she had heard in her childhood recurred to her thoughts, especially all the superstitious tales about "the apparition of the beach"—the spectre of the unburied that lay washed up on the lonely, deserted shore. The body thrown up from the deep, the dead body itself, she thought nothing of; but its ghost followed the solitary wanderer, attached itself closely ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... mercy, Mr. M'Crie!' And at morn they will rise with bloodshot eyes, And the very first thing they will see, When they dare to descend to their coffee and rolls, Sitting down by the scuttle, the scuttle of coals, With a volume of notes on its knee, Is the spectre ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... as to assist. She detested Mara, and Mrs. Hunter's ghastly face and white hair embodied to her mind the terror of which all were in dread. The bright sunshine and homely work were suggestive of rural pleasures rather than of dire necessity, and helped, for the time, to retire the spectre of danger to the background. The coming and going of many acquaintances and friends also helped to rally her spirits, and incite her to the semblance of courage. Mrs. Willoughby, Mrs. Bodine, and Mara had stanch friends who sought them out the moment comparative safety ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... bent for a few seconds over the still sprawling fakir, whipped him again twice, cursed him and kicked him, until he got up and ran like a spectre for the gloom beyond the trees. Then, with a rather stately sweep of the lamp, and a tremble in his voice that was probably intentional—designed to make Cunningham at least aware of the existence of emotion before he looked—he let the light fall on the ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... containing the inhabitants of the South understands better than you do the gravity of that great problem which confronts them. It is "like the pestilence that walketh in darkness, the destruction that wasteth at noonday." It confronts us all the day; it is the spectre that ever sits beside our bed. No doubt we make mistakes about it; no doubt there are outbreaks growing out of some phases of it that astound, and shock, and stun you, as they do ourselves. But believe me, the Anglo-Saxon race has set itself, with all its power, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... in a tone of such reverence that one might have imagined my father's spectre stood before him. 'It symbolises that base Darwinian cosmogony which Carlyle spits at, and the great and good John Ruskin scorns. But this design is only the predella beneath the picture "Faith and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... grandfather's—a colonel of West India Militia, I believe. Now my grandfather had been a rather short man, but very broad and stout, particularly round the stomach. Old Clump was tall and thin as a spectre, so the epaulettes fell over his shoulders, the waist flapped loosely eight inches above his trousers, and the short swallow-tails did not sufficiently cover the spot which the venerable darky usually placed on the chair to hide a patch, the bigness of a frying-pan and of a different ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... dream of such a spectre at his heels to disturb his imagination, Alfred Stevens was pursuing his way toward Ellisland, at that easy travelling gait, which is the best for man and beast, vulgarly called a "dog-trot." Some very fine and fanciful people insist upon calling it a "jog-trot." We beg leave, in this ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... Bridge, our Bridge of Sighs. How many of these my brethren have sought refuge in the cold grey arms of the river from something worse than death? What drove them to this dreadful resting-place? What spectre hurried them to the leap? These things, too, are ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... of Finance-Minister Creutz, once a poor Regiment's Auditor, when his Majesty, as yet Crown-Prince, found talent in him? Can readers fish up from their memory, twenty years back, anything of a terrific Spectre walking in the Berlin Palace, for certain nights, during that "Stralsund Expedition" or famed Swedish-War time, to the terror of mankind? Terrific Spectre, thought to be in Swedish pay,—properly a spy Scullion, in a small concern ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it were a world that had come to me and sought me out—wanted me to live in it. Hundreds and hundreds of times, when I am being civilised, have I not tried to do otherwise? Have I not stopped my poor pale, hurried, busy soul (like a kind of spectre flying past me) before a great book and tried to get it to speak to it, and it would not? It requires a world—a great book does—as a kind of ticket of admission, and what have I to do, when I am being civilised, with a world—the ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... night before, offered up to God in the solitude of his own chamber. And not only are the fables, which the chronicles of the times have handed down to us, enacted as veritable facts, but the poet has added miracles and prodigies of his own invention; and in particular, a certain spectre of a black knight—who appears to us to have been introduced as much for the sake of supporting the supernatural character of the piece as for any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... that glance, and he trembled like a leaf. He gazed upon the stranger like one who sees a spectre. And she met his glance, boldly at the first; then the light faded from her eyes, her head drooped, and she fell in a swoon upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... finest connaisseuses in Europe, or else is traveling about in Italy, Austria or England. Indeed the only contemporary of the old Emperor who still remains at Berlin, and who is occasionally to be seen at court, giving one the impression of a spectre of the past, is Prince George, who bears a startling resemblance to the old kaiser particularly when arrayed ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... became more threatening, the talk of peaceable secession growing out of a disinclination to accept civil war, commended itself to persons who thought a peaceful dissolution of the Union, if the slave-holding South should seek it, preferable to such an alternative.[634] But as the spectre of dismemberment of the nation came nearer, concessions to the South as expressed in the Weed plan, and, later, in the Crittenden compromise, commended itself to a large part of the people. A majority of the voters at the preceding election undoubtedly favoured such an adjustment. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Grim, relentless spectre who pursues them unceasingly, and from whose menacing, shadowy presence they are never free—from whom, so the Senator has now despairingly come to believe, they ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... spears, and other implements of destruction. The second column was commanded by a majestic matron, whose noble figure was clothed in a sacerdotal robe. On her right stood Superstition, a gloomy-eyed spectre, bearing in his hand a bow formed from the bones of the dead, and on his back a quiver filled with poisoned arrows. On her left hovered a wild, fantastically clothed figure, called Fanaticism, bearing ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... creation of human hands conquers the spectre, and, puffing and whistling, the locomotive breaks through the dark haze. Once again the iron serpent disappears into the bowels of the rock, and as it emerges it crosses another valley and is greeted by a clear heaven and a ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... stairs, I darted up towards my own room. My hand was already on the lock of the door before I recollected myself. I then paused, and a cold shivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as children are accustomed to do when they expect a spectre to stand in waiting for them on the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped fearfully in: the apartment was empty, and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous guest. I could hardly believe that so great a good fortune could have befallen me, but when I became assured ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... back from their country haunts, and Celeste and Mimi from Ostende. How gay it will be—this Quartier Latin then! How gay it always is in winter—and then the rainy season. Ah! but one can not have everything. Thus it was that Lachaume and I sat talking, when suddenly a spectre passed—a spectre of a man, his face silent, white, and ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... and something induced him to do that again. At the same moment another mighty roar ascended from the crowd, and the head of the great fire-escape rose like a solemn spectre through smoke, fire, and steam, not ten yards ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the case of Glam, the terrible spectre which Grettir had so much difficulty in overcoming. To all who appreciate a shudder may be recommended chap. xxxv. of "The Story of Grettir the Strong," translated from the Icelandic by E. Magnusson and W. ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Almighty Homer is twice far above Troy and her towers, Olympus and Jupiter. First, when Priam bends before Achilles, and a second time, when the shade of Agamemnon speaks among the dead. That awful spectre, called up by genius in after-time, shook the Athenian stage. That scene was ever before me; father and daughter were ever in my sight; I felt their looks, their words, and again I gave them form and utterance; and, with proud ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... death No ghastly spectre stood—but from the porch Of life, the lip—one kiss inhaled the breath, And the mute graceful Genius lower'd a torch. The judgment-balance of the Realms below, A judge, himself of mortal lineage, held; The very Furies at the Thracian's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... a certain "wicked Lady Ferrers," who, disguised in male attire, robbed travellers upon the highway, and being wounded in one of these exploits, was discovered lying dead outside the walls of the house; and the malignant nature of this lady's spectre is said to have had so firm a hold upon the villagers that no local labourer could be induced to work upon that particular ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... we can do?" demanded Glaudot, whose dreams of galactic conquest were fading before the spectre ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... intrigues, the confidence of the people. Conspiracies against his life were formed: fortune no longer favoured his arms. His attempts to compel the Marquis Spinola to raise the siege of Breda were unsuccessful. This reverse of fortune preyed upon his mind. He thought himself haunted by a spectre of Barneveldt: he was frequently heard, during his last illness, to exclaim, "Remove this head from me!" "This anecdote," says the author of the Resume de l'histoire de la Hollande, "is related by all the republican historians of the United ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them all: but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... through the doorway from the outer world, or whether the vaults were open and they were the ghosts of some dead-and-gone congregation of long ago. And when I looked round again, there was the clergyman in a dingy surplice, as if he had risen like a spectre in his place. He stared at us all with his dull old eyes, and turned the leaves of a great book. And all at once he began to read, in a piping voice so thin and weak that it sounded just like the echo of some former service—as if it had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the idea of the means had come to him, came now the spectre of the consequences to affright him. How would it fare with him on Robespierre's return? How angered would not Robespierre be upon discovering that his wishes had been set at naught, his very measures contravened—and this by fraud? And than Robespierre's anger there were few things ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... radiated in arid Tibet, than in the wooded and grassed mountains of Sikkim.] From the elevation of about 19,300 feet, which I attained on Donkia, I saw a fine illustration of that atmospheric phenomenon called the "spectre of the Brocken," my own shadow being projected on a mass of thin mist that rose above the tremendous precipices over which I hung. My head was surrounded with a brilliant circular glory or rainbow.* [Probably caused by spiculae of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... advanced his face slowly towards that of the Indian, put on a dark frown, and stood for a few seconds without uttering a word. The savage shrank back and shuddered from head to foot. Then, with a noiseless step, Martin retreated slowly backward towards the door and passed out like a spectre—never for a moment taking his eyes off those of the savage until he was lost in darkness. On gaining the forest he fled with a beating heart to his former retreat; but his fears were groundless, for the Indian firmly believed ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... for the wind was contrary to them. And about the fourth watch of the night he comes to them, walking on the sea, and would have passed by them. (49)And they seeing him walking on the sea, supposed it was a spectre, and cried out; (50)for all saw him, and were troubled. And immediately he talked with them, and says to them: Be of good cheer; it is I, be not afraid. (51)And he went up to them into the ship; and the wind ceased. And they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered. ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... was burning. He entered his chamber, which was hung around with purple, but the walls of which now seemed to distil blood. He advanced a few steps, when, lo! a corpse appeared to rise slowly on his golden couch; his bed was occupied by a spectre, and near the costly lamp, which shed a pale light round the chamber, the chains of the martyr seemed to descend from the ceiling. Diocletian uttered a cry that might have penetrated the grave. His guards ran in, but instantly grew pale, drew back, and, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... slumber bound. Or, panting like the ocean, when a dream Of storm awakes her:—Heaven and Earth are still; In radiant loveliness the stars pursue Their pilgrimage, while moonlight's wizard hand Throws beauty, like a spectre light, on all. At Judah's tent the lion-banner stands Unfolded, and the pacing sentinels,— What awe pervades them, when the dusky groves, The rocks Titanian, by the moonshine made Unearthly, or yon mountains vast, they view! But soon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... a somewhat more agreeable life, as of late I have been associating more with other people. You could scarcely believe what a sad and dreary life mine has been for the last two years; my defective hearing everywhere pursuing me like a spectre, making me fly from every one, and appear a misanthrope; and yet no one is in reality less so! This change has been wrought by a lovely fascinating girl [undoubtedly Giulietta], who loves me and whom I love. ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... the Comitia, the magistrates would cease to be ministers of the senate; for it was chiefly through a system of judicious prize-giving that the senate attached to itself the loyalty of the official class. There was perhaps less fear of what Gracchus himself might do than of the spectre which he was raising for the future. For in Roman history the events of the past made those of the future; there were few isolated phenomena in ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... running two fingers thoughtfully into his crisp, brown hair; "that would never do. How would it work to see the same ghost again, minus the overalls, and have gold bricks in the hod? That would elevate the spectre from degrading toil to a financial plane. Don't you think that would ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... a starr'd night. The fiend, tired of his dark dominion, swung above the rolling ball, part screen'd in cloud, where sinners hugg'd their spectre of repose. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... gone to Naples. He had been turned back by a spectre evoked from his own conscience—coward fear. He was on his way to the station when he suddenly discovered that he had lost the sheath of his dagger. A cold perspiration broke out on his forehead as this fact flashed upon him. What had he ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... vagabond, or worse!" Turned the great key and flung the portal wide; A man rushed by him at a single stride, Haggard, half naked, without hat or cloak, Who neither turned, nor looked at him, nor spoke, But leaped into the blackness of the night, And vanished like a spectre ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... are, and I bet you do a jolly rank paper too,' I said, remembering that the sceptic is sometimes vouchsafed revelations to which the most devout believer may not aspire. It is, for instance, always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre chooses as his audience. But it required more than a mere sneer or an empty gibe to pump information out of Bradshaw. He took me up ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... a gaunt, yellow spectre of a man, reduced to his last chemise, and that a sad spectacle of ancient purity, starting from Lincoln's-Inn, and making all haste for Waterloo-bridge, the inference is rather natural, that he is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... lacked food amid even the unproductive flora and meagre fauna of the Coal Measures. With these ancient cockroaches a few locusts and beetles have been found associated, together with a small Tinea,—a creature allied to the common clothes-moth, and a Phasmia,—a creature related to the spectre insects. But the group is an inconsiderable one; for insects seem to have occupied no very conspicuous place in the carboniferous fauna. The beetles appear to have been of the wood and seed devouring kinds, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller |
