"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be no miracle, but the mere natural effect of natural causes! none the less, however, did he dread what might happen: he feared Isy herself, and what she might disclose! For a time he did not dare again go near the place. The girl might be in a trance! she might revive suddenly, and call out his name! She might even reveal all! She had always been a strange girl! What if, indeed, she were even being now kept alive to tell the truth, and disgrace him before all the world! Horrible as was the thought, might it not be well, in view of the possibility ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... up like a boy with the cholera infantum, his hind leg cramps and his head lops over on one side, and he looks sick, his back humps up like a case of chronic inflammatory rheumatism, and he is ready. The girl who is with him, when he begins to have spasms, at once seems to go into a trance. Her back gets up like a cat, she bends over towards him, her forward leg gets out of joint at the knee, her neck takes a cramp, her mouth opens and she lolls, her eyes roll like a steer that has turned the yoke, and just before she ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... by his longing, yet fearful of leaving the old woman with the demoniac creature. But Madame von Marwitz lay as if in a trance. Her lids were closed. Her breast rose and fell ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of the early seminary days of the priest Romuald, his complete seclusion and ignorance almost of the very names of world and woman, the tale goes on to the day of his ordination. He is in the church, almost in a trance of religious fervour; the building itself, the gorgeously robed bishop, the stately ceremonies, seem to him a foretaste of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... in a low, even voice, like one in a trance, "that you are a Messalina, a Julia, a Joan of Naples, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... [LL.fo.87b.] Cuchulain laid Ferdiad there on the ground, and a cloud and a faint and a swoon came over Cuchulain there by the head of Ferdiad. Laeg espied it, and the men of Erin all arose for the attack upon him. "Come, O Cucuc," cried Laeg; "arise now [2]from thy trance,[2] for the men of Erin will come to attack us, and it is not single combat they will allow us, now that Ferdiad son of Daman son of Dare is fallen by thee." "What availeth it me to arise, O gilla," moaned Cuchulain, "now that this one is fallen ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... fateful night, it seemed to Stella that she must indeed have slept the sleep of the lotus-eater, for no misgivings pierced the numb unconsciousness that held her through the still hours. She lay as one in a trance, wholly insensible of the fact that she was alone, aware only of the perpetual rush and fall of the torrent below, which seemed to act like a narcotic upon ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... with dew-wet roses and jasmine, harmonious with the clear tinkle of mandolin and guitar. Then a lethargy, like unto that which steeps the senses, and benumbs the faculties of the lotus-eaters, enveloped her brain, and she lay as one in a trance,—awake, yet sleeping; conscious, yet ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... and the splendid claret and honey color of his cheeks went a dark shade more to claret. He had come to from his trance, and remembered me. "I don't know why I'm telling you all these details," he declared abruptly. "I suppose you're tired to death listening." His ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... folk a-listening Hear the seed sprout in the spring. And for music to their dance Hear the hedgerows wake from trance, Sap that trembles into buds Sending little rhythmic floods Of fairy sound in fairy ears. Thus all beauty that appears Has birth as sound to finer sense And ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... nor shall the stone which is placed over the spot be larger than would be sufficient to receive the praises of the dead included in four heroic lines. Nor shall the laying out of the dead in the house continue for a longer time than is sufficient to distinguish between him who is in a trance only and him who is really dead, and speaking generally, the third day after death will be a fair time for carrying out the body to the sepulchre. Now we must believe the legislator when he tells us that the soul is in all respects superior to the body, ...
— Laws • Plato
... overcome, they fell at last into a deathlike trance and stupor, till the sunlight woke them lying on the heathery hillside, ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... the trance created by this scene, and by gazing in that unusual manner at the bot tom of the lake, be the hoarse sounds of Benjamins voice, and the dashing of oars, as the heavier boat of the seine-drawers approached the spot where the canoe lay, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... trouble in order to cross on this particular evening, and as any one who was even slightly acquainted with Miss Fitzroy must have been aware that she would decline to talk of anything else, sympathy for him is not altogether deserved. The boat swung softly in a trance of speed, and Miss Fitzroy, better known to a large circle of intimates as Fanny Fitz, tried to think the motion was pleasant. She had made a good many migrations to England, by various routes and classes. There had indeed been times of stress when she had crossed unostentatiously, third ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... together by the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep—it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being deaf—then the night came suddenly, and struck you blind as well. About three in ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... York, hey?" he pipes through his nose the minute we get outside the station. He stops dead in the street, gazin' up at the big buildin's and then down at the crowds like a guy in a trance. All he needed was a streamer of hay in his mouth and the first seven guys that passed would of offered to sell him the Bronx. He gasps a couple of times and ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... him that question, I expected to hear from Dante a mocking answer, but instead, to my surprise, he sat quite still for a little while, almost like a man in a trance, with his hands clasped about his knees, and it seemed to me as if he were seeing, as indeed he was seeing, things that we who were with him did not see and could not see. After a while he spoke in a soft voice, and for the most part his words ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the voyage and at quarantine. The name at once attracted him, being one well known both to him and to us. At last they all died, or were supposed to have died, at the quarantine station. Langhetti, however, found that one of them was only in a 'trance state,' and his efforts for resuscitation were successful. This one was a young girl of not more than sixteen years of age. After her restoration he left the quarantine bringing her with him, and came up to the city. Here he lived for a month or so, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... impersonal self, which in academical language is called the subliminal consciousness. The work of the subliminal consciousness exhibits itself in various ways, such as clairvoyance, clair-audience, and conditions of trance; all of which either occur spontaneously, or are induced by experimental means, such as hypnotism; but the similarity of the phenomena in either case shows, that it is the same faculty that is ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... impossibility of obtaining an effective revenue from the Colonies; when these things are pressed, or rather press themselves, so as to drive the advocates of Colony taxes to a clear admission of the futility of the scheme; then, Sir, the sleeping trade laws revive from their trance, and this useless taxation is to be kept sacred, not for its own sake, but as a counterguard and security ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... the papers wich didn't get me the post orifis I wuz seekin, and in my mind wuz chaotic confusion. Wuz the dream prophetic, or wuz it merely a vagary uv the mind, wich, wen loosed from its clay, sores off onto its own hook, without any restraint. Is the giant Republican actually dead, or is he in a trance? Will it arise, and scatter them ez hez appinted themselves administrators uv its estate, and wich are beginnin to divide the assets, or will he stay ded? Wood, oh wood, ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... smashed most of the furniture, and went to bed with their boots on. Then his kindly good-nature rebelled. "I felt that this was running hospitality into the ground, so I pulled them out and left them on the floor to cool off from their alcoholic trance." ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... summer sun, though sloping in the sky, beat down upon them as hot as fire; but neither of them noticed it. Neither did they notice hunger nor thirst nor fatigue, but sat there as though in a trance, with the bags of money scattered on the sand around them, a great pile of money heaped upon the coat, and the open chest beside them. It was an hour of sundown before Parson Jones had begun fairly to examine the books ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... last chest was shut again and locked, and I had exhausted my ingenuity at commendation, and my patience also, he turned to me as a man come out of a trance. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hast heard all men speaking of Pantheia The woman who at Agrigentum lay Thirty long days in a cold trance of death, And whom Empedocles call'd back to life. Thou art too young to note it, but his power Swells with the swelling evil of this time, And holds men mute to see where it will rise. He could stay swift diseases in old days, Chain madmen ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... of the best mediums mentioned by Dr. Osty, is given an object which belonged to or which has been touched and handled by a person about whom it is proposed to question her. Mme. M— operates in a state of trance; but there are other noted psychometers, such as Mme. F— and M. Ph. M. de F—, who retain all their normal consciousness, so that hypnotism or the somnambulistic state is in no way indispensable to the awakening of ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... it. He was too nervous and excited to go to bed, and, without lighting his candle, he opened the French window that gave upon the balcony, drew a chair in the recess behind the curtain, and gazed upon the night. It was very quiet; the moon was high, the square was sleeping in a trance of checkered shadows, like a gigantic chessboard, with black foreshortened trees for pawns. The click of a cavalry sabre, the sound of a footfall on the pavement of the distant Konigsstrasse, were distinctly ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... picture had a poetic audacity that defied the criticism it provoked. If you looked long enough, you saw that a youth and a maiden were lying in a trance that was half sleep, half death; while their souls, diaphanous forms with indefinite legs, hovered above them in mid-air, each leaning towards the other's body. The souls described two curves that crossed like the intersecting of rainbows; and where they met, their wings mingled in ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... hirsute as a goat's; now one leaped up agile as a panther; now one turned topsy-turvy; now groups of them swirled together like whimsical eddies in a pool. Some went slowly, their arms outspread in silent ecstasy; some stalked on with parted lips and staring eyes, trance-like or in dead drunkenness of soul; nevertheless the great majority of them, too weary and far spent for violent exertion, marched with their faces raised, and clapping their hands or beating their breasts, now barking short and sharp, like old hounds ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... yourself up?" echoed Burrell, vaguely. "How do you mean?" He had sat like one in a trance during the long recital, only his ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... leaning with unstudied grace, Rests her white elbow on a column's base; Awhile reflecting takes her silent stand, Her fair cheek press'd upon her lily hand; Then, as awaking from ideal trance, On the smooth floor her pausing steps advance, Waves high her arm, upturns her lucid eyes, Marks the wide scenes of ocean, earth, and skies; 440 And leads, meandering as it rolls along Through Nature's walks, the shining stream ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... the trance towards an open room, and on entering it they met a fair damsel in the garb of a handmaid, to whom the knight spoke in familiarity, and kittling her under the chin, made her giggle in a wanton manner. By her he was informed that the Archbishop was in the inner chamber at dinner with her mistress, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... was old and feeble, and her daughter was the comfort of her life; if she should die, she knew not what to do: she besought God upon her knees in prayer, that he would be pleased to spare her daughter's life, and take her to him: at this very time, the daughter fell into a trance, which continued about an hour: they thought she had been dead: when she recovered out of it, she declared the vision she had in this fit, viz. that one in black habit came to her, whose face was so ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... to the door with a light step, so light upon the smooth solid gravel that the footman heard nothing until she was on the broad stone step under the porch, when the fluttering of her skirt, as it brushed against the pillars, roused him from a species of trance or reverie. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... same towel dressing-gown, and he moved swiftly and silently as if in a trance. I watched him take the alabaster moon from the mantelpiece and drop it in his pocket. A glimpse of white skin showed that the gown was his only clothing. Then he moved past me to the window, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... had never seen massed together, sounded like the murmur of troubled waters. She stood with Cuthbert's hand in hers, gazing at him as one in a dream, and it was only when Lady Humbert took her hand and imprinted a kiss upon her cheek that she seemed suddenly to awake from her trance. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... In a kind of trance he heard a knocking on the door and a lot of hearty, clamoring, bantering voices. They did not seem at all like robbers and cut-throats. They were not stealthy—a couple of million miles from it. Pee-wee rubbed his glistening eyes with that ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... from the furnace, wherewith they beat them so that their howls resounded throughout all Hell, so inexpressibly excruciating was the pain, and then they seized hot irons to sear the bloody wounds. No swoon or trance is there to beguile with a moment's respite, but an unchanging strength to suffer and to feel; though one would have thought that after one awful wail there never could be the strength to raise another as weirdly-loud; yet ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... such an extent that, carried away as I was by my own thoughts, I imagined I SAW as well as HEARD myself before the breathless multitude. While I thus appeared objectively to myself I remained in a sort of trance, during which I seemed to be waiting for something to happen, and felt quite a different person from the man who was supposed to be standing and speaking there. It was neither nervousness nor absent-mindedness on my part; only at the end of a certain sentence ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... personality, and is permanently attached to the body; the other has the power of leaving the body, carrying with it an appearance of physical form, which accounts for a person being seen in two different places at once. Cases of catalepsy or trance are explained by the Chinese as the absence from the body of this portion of the soul, which is also believed to be expelled from the body by any violent shock or fright. There is a story of a man who was so terrified at the prospect of immediate execution that his ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... executioner. Would it had done so! But let me do my duty as I ought—let me repress the horror which one scene of this dreadful drama never fails to throw over my spirit—that I may tell my story as a man—and my confession at least be clear. When the felon awoke out of the deathlike trance into which this assault had thrown him, his hardihood was gone; and he was reconveyed to the cell, in which he was destined agonizingly to struggle out his last hideous and distorted hours, in a state of abject horror ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... Malachi sent for a doctor who placed a glass before my face, an' moisture gathered on it. He tole 'em it was not entirely cole over de heart, an' da mus'n't bury me until decomposition took place, cuze it might be a trance. An' da kep' me in de kitchen wid Aunt Milla, de cook, to watch me. It 'peared like I's goin' down into a horrible place of awful soun's an' rattlin' of chains; an' I prayed mightily for help, an' Jesus reached down an' took my han' an' lifted me up to a glorious palace so beautiful, an' ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... knew how the day went, by the imperious clangour of midday and evening bells striking down upon the houses and the edge of the lake. Yet it did not occur to me to ask where these bells rang. Till at last my everyday trance was broken in upon, and I knew the ringing of the Church of San Tommaso. The church became a living connexion ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... their senses. And all the combatants and all the animals shook with terror. And in consequence of Bhimasena wandering in that battle through many paths or rushing on all sides like a prince of elephants, or frequently jumping up, a trance seemed to be engendered there that deprived his foes of their senses. And the whole (Kalinga) army shook with terror of Bhimasena, like a large lake agitated by an alligator. And struck with panic in consequence ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... did not move. As though he had never before seen a woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a trance, he stood still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn, Winnie beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery, so overcome by her mere presence as to be struck motionless and inarticulate. For protection ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... succeeded qualm, but in the intervals my mouth was dry and burning, and I felt a frantic desire to drink, but no water was at hand, and to reach the spring once more was impossible; the qualms continued, deadly pains shot through my whole frame; I could bear my agonies no longer, and I fell into a trance or swoon. How long I continued therein I know not; on recovering, however, I felt somewhat better, and attempted to lift my head off my couch; the next moment, however, the qualms and pains returned, if possible, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... and it seems to him as if barely five minutes had passed, so rapt is he in his exalted theme. When you reach the heights of sublimity and are expressing your highest and best, you are in a partial trance condition. And all men who enter this condition surprise themselves by the quantity of knowledge and the extent of insight they possess. And some going a little deeper than others into this trance condition, and having no knowledge ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... senile tones wakened Basil as if from a trance. He thrust his dagger into its sheath, stepped to the back of the room, and bent over the white loveliness ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... her childhood she showed an intense and ever-increasing devotion to things holy; her delight in prayer became almost a passion. She never wearied of visiting the churches in and about her native village, and she passed many an hour in a kind of rapt trance before the crucifixes and saintly images in these churches. Every morning saw her at her accustomed place at the early celebration of her Lord's Sacrifice; and if in the afternoon the evening bells sounded across the fields, she would kneel devoutly, and commune in her ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... anything properly to be called Spanish or Italian exists at all—anything but dialects of the lingua rustica showing traces of what Spanish and Italian are to be; though the originals of the great Poema del Cid cannot be far off. German is in something the same trance between its "Old" and its "Middle" state as is English. Only in France, and in both the great divisions of French speech, is vernacular literature active. The northern tongue, the langue d'oil, shows ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... motion, threw down his burden, and would have betaken himself to flight, had not Crabshaw laid fast hold on his leg, that he himself might not be deserted. The sound of the pieces clattering on the pavement roused Captain Crowe from a trance or slumber, in which he had lain since the apparition vanished; and he hallooed, or rather bellowed, with vast vociferation. Timothy and his friend were so intimidated by this terrific strain, that they thought no more of the armour, but ran home arm in arm, and appeared in the kitchen ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... been a bad, bad lassie, but I'm all right now; and if you'll listen, daddy mine, and if the others will hold their peace for a minute, I 'll let my great secret out.' There was a new sound in Hollyhock's voice. Old Duncan stood in a kind of trance of wonder. To be sure, things were coming round, and that week of misery was over. 'Daddy,' said Hollyhock, 'I didn't think you'd enjoy my absence as much as you will. I talked a lot of nonsense, and said I'd see to you, Daddy Dumps; but what's the use? I 'm ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... found herself a seat on a projecting rock, from which a wild, wooded ravine of the hills stretched out before her eyes. The sides were so bold, the sweep of them so extended, the woods so luxuriantly rich, the scene so desolate in its loneliness and wildness, that she sat down to dream in a trance of enjoyment. Not a sound now but the plash of the water, the scream of a wild bird, and the rustle of leaves. Not a human creature in sight, or the trace of one. Wych might imagine the times when red Indians roved among those ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... voice, started up like one awakened from a trance. "What is it?" said she in emotion, "what is it I behold? Art thou the departed shade ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... of her bending neck, informed the silence of the woods with life and charm. Meynell watched her a few moments in a trance of pleasure. But memory broke in upon the trance and scattered all his pleasure. What reasonable hope of winning the daughter of that quiet, indomitable woman, who, at their first meeting, had shown him with such icy gentleness the gulf ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... violent jar to be awakened so rudely from a trance of love, to turn suddenly from the one you care for most in all the world, and behold the one you have best reason to hate. Nevertheless, it is not in human nature to descend rocket-wise from the ethereal heights of love. I was still in an exalted state of mind when I turned ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... here is money ready too, If you have lost in play. You're even welcome to my handsome slave, With jet black hair, and eyes so grave." "No!" said the other, "I need naught, But ere I slept to-night, I thought, Being in a trance, that you were sad, And as the thought nigh drove me mad, I hurried to your tent, And found ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... none too gentle. She gave a start, seemed to come out of her trance, and opened her eyes. Say! They were big and black and beautiful. Believe me, she ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... home with you. It was from grief at your absence that she went into a trance, and we, thinking she was dead, left her for such. Hadn't it been for your friend here, she would surely have been a corpse now. So take her and keep her with you always, and take as a present from me fifty ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... ahead and kicked the man down through the open hatchway of the conning-tower. He himself followed, and the hatch closed. The helmsman was standing, staring at the compass like a man in a trance. ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... we are therefore unable to get accustomed to it. She was conscious of intense pressure within her brain, of a hopeless weight upon her heart, but she could define neither. She rose at length, and mechanically went to bed like one in a trance. In the same way ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... when Nimrod and I started out next morning to look for mountain sheep. I followed Nimrod's horse for several miles as in a trance, the white flakes falling silently around me, and wondered how it would be possible for any human being to find his way back to camp; but I had been taught ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... from a babe, in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters to articulate and walk. All this ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... leave that warm recess—vibrating far into the tremulous air. Here, even here are pleasures; those stray[17] forms of joy, which Nature spreads throughout the world, that he who seeks may find them. When the Sun, uprising from his long and gloomy trance, beams through the clearer air, how beautiful, in some obscurest dell[18] of that lone land, led by the music of an unseen river to see fair flowers, with light-awakened buds, salute the spring tide. Happily, they smile in the midst of nakedness, like sweet memories of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the vast ocean of empyreal flame, From whence thy essence came, Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed From matter's base encumbering weed? Or dost thou, hid from sight, Wait, like some spell-bound knight, Through blank oblivion's years th' appointed hour, To break thy trance and reassume thy power? Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be? O say what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee? Life! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... portrait—my ugliness in paint, and on ivory too, dearest, you shall have yet, as you desire it," he added, forcing pleasantry; "only do not fall into that frightful sort of trance again." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... discovered and demonstrated to be a case of gross, willful attempted fraud. The evidence is strong that the organized system of spiritualism in America, with its associations and lyceums and annual camp-meetings, and its itinerancy of mediums and trance speakers, is a system of mere imposture. In the honest simplicity of many of its followers, and in the wicked mendacity of its leaders, it seems to be on a par with the other American contribution to the religions ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... key withdrawn. After a few ineffectual attempts to open it, Mrs. Lane went into the parlour, and, standing there, debated for some moments whether she should leave the house by passing through the bar-room, or wait for another opportunity to get away by the private en-trance. While still bewildered and undetermined the landlady came in from ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... Miss A. was "under the control" of Stillman's dead cousin "Harvey." The "possession" seems to have been throughout free from trance. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... step-mother, and that she had already poisoned my grandparents Barrois in the same manner. He had himself given me an antidote. But the means he had were not sufficient to shield me from all danger, and he begged me to drink a potion, which would put me in a trance for the space of three days. I took the potion which the count gave me; I lost my senses. How long I lay thus I do not know, but when I woke I found myself in a coffin in a church, and the count standing beside me. A new and powerful potion restored me to my former vitality. The count brought me ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Lutwyche, telling Gottlieb, has told us; but Jules must glean it from her puzzled, broken utterance, filled with allusions that mean nothing until semi-comprehension comes through the sighs of tortured soul and heart from her who still is, as it were, in a trance. And this dream-like state causes her, now and then, to say the wrong words—the words he spoke—instead of those which had "cost such pains to ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... pretty verses, attributed to Alaric A. Watts, commemorate a similar incident, said to have happened to two sisters who were nuns at Beverley Minister. They disappeared one evening after vespers. After some months they were found in a trance in the north tower. On being aroused they declared they had been admitted into Paradise, whither they would return before morning. They died in the night; and the beautiful monument called the Sisters' Shrine still witnesses to the truth ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... soft, terraqueous chaunt I hear In choral, and the nuptial planet-dance I mark. With puissant sceptre o'er each sphere, Life thrones in music and in wonder's trance. Hail! vessels solar and terrestrial, hail! Whose prows shall cross the dim, celestial bars With helm sidereal and cloudy sail, Bannered with youth and lanterned with the stars. What fates for ballast? by what ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... after her arrival at Weinsberg, and being in the trance condition that was now frequent with her, she announced to him that she had been visited by a ghost, which insisted on showing her a sheet of paper covered with figures and begged her to give it to his wife, who was still alive and would understand its significance and ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... a trance; and Mac threw a sharp, searching glance at me, as I sat curled up against a swag. "You're right," he laughed; "there's not a trace of the towney left." And rising to "see about fixing up camp," he added: "You'd better look out, missus! Once caught, you'll never get free again. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... not naming the condition; I only say that I have seen some very hard-headed and self-contained people cut strange capers. The trance and 'impersonation' usually ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... the water thrice, rose like one in a trance, and advancing to Dingaan placed the brimming bowl ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... some moments after the departure of Captain Griffiths and his myrmidons, remained in a sort of nerveless trance. The crisis, with its bewildering denouement, had affected her curiously. Lessingham ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hilt, girt for the fray Freedom demands, he cannot stay: Forward his motion, keen his glance: 'Tis victory painted in a trance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... his trance-like slumber, John Madison, or what remained of him, lifted his head and painfully raised himself on one elbow. He was a pitiable-looking object. His hair, all dishevelled and matted, hung down over haggard-looking eyes; his cheeks were hollow ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... freedom from all cares and sufferings. Sweet, lovely beings, let them have husbands to lift them above all earthly cares and trials! Oh! angels of our homes," says he, liftin' his eyes to the heavens, and kinder shettin' 'em, some as if he was goin' into a trance, "fly around, ye angels, in your native haunts! mingle not with rings, and vile laws; ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... pirouetting of half a dozen notes, each treading on its own heels, in those accursed tunes which ram themselves into our memories, yea, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood, so that one cannot get rid of their taint for many a miserable day after—this to me is the very trance of madness; and if I could ever bring myself to think dancing endurable, it must be dancing to the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... beheld, either in a dream, or in a trance, vast oceans full of tempests and of rocks, desart islands, barbarous countries, hunger and thirst raging every where, nakedness, multiplicity of labours, with bloody persecution, and imminent dangers of death and of destruction. In the midst of this ghastly apparition, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Much in the manner of your American mediums, he would be seized by a controlling power,—would snatch a pencil, and dash out upon paper the wildest discords. These we would play for him, at his request, from morning till night,—during much of which time he would seem to be in a happy trance. Of this music no chord or melody was true; they were jangling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... problems that could not be solved during the waking state. There are madmen who have ceased to be mad during somnambulism; persons of rudimentary intelligence have proved themselves to be profound thinkers during the mesmeric trance; when under somnambulism vision is possible to those born blind and certain people can see things that are happening a great distance away, and their reports have been proved correct; certain phenomena of double-consciousness cannot be explained ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... an ankle turned for an angel, and, as she bends forward to chastise you with her fan, your vagrant gaze rests for a fleeting moment on alabaster hemispheres rising in a billowy sea of lace, like Aphrodite cradled in old ocean's foam. You are now far advanced in the hypnotic trance, and very fond of it as far as you've got. Her every posture is a living picture, her slightest movement a sensuous symphony, her breath upon your cheek a perfumed air to waft you to the dreamy but dangerous land of the lotus-eaters. You drift nearer, and ever nearer, like a moth ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the table know that?" he asked. "Ursa, a bear, you know. And then, while we were sitting there, the Princess went off into a trance. She said there was a beautiful spirit present, who blessed us all. She called Mrs Quantock Margarita, which, as you may know, is the ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... would ever be drawing out of the geometrical figures, even in the very imbers of the chimney. And while they were anointing of him with oils and sweet savours, with his finger he did draw lines upon his naked body: so far was he taken from himself, and brought into an ecstasy or trance, with the delight he had in the study of geometry, and truly ravished with the love of the Muses. But amongst many notable things he devised, it appeareth, that he most esteemed the demonstration of the proportion between the cylinder (to wit, the round column) and the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Saunders. Thanks, awfully, old fellow." He gathered up the rupees which the boy's partner had pushed toward him. The boy himself sat as though frozen to stone. Only when Saunders gave him a friendly nudge, he started and looked about him as though he had been awakened out of a trance. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... poor orphan, weak and timid, called Evsey Klimkov, whom his uncle, the forger Piotr, has taken into his house and brought up with his son, the strong and brutal James. Beaten by his schoolmates and by his cousin, the child lives in a perpetual trance. Life seems formidable to him, like a jungle in which men are the pitiless beasts. Everywhere, brute force or hypocrisy triumph; everywhere, the weak are oppressed, downtrodden, conquered. And in his feverish imagination, daily excited ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... increased by the perverted softness of their sex, howled out the same curses and incantations with greater clamor.[15] Astonished at this sight, the Romans for some time neither advanced nor returned the darts of the enemy. But at length, rousing from their trance, and animating each other with the shame of yielding to the impotence of female and fanatical fury, they found the resistance by no means proportioned to the horror and solemnity of the preparations. These overstrained efforts had, as frequently ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in a trance—she must have been resuscitated by those people who found her. As sure as you and I both live, she is living also," Mr. ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... that part of Scotland of his rank generally speak. "The young leddy, they told me, no sooner heard that the vessel was in safety, than she gave way to a sorrow which it was pitiful to witness. They tried to comfort her, but she was not to be comforted. She had gone off into a sort of trance when the vessel brought up this morning under ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... once, very slightly. He put out a hand to pick up his pen and resume writing; but in the act fell back into the brown study, the trance, the rapt gaze at a knot in the woodwork of the table. His hand rested for a moment by the ink-pot around which his fingers felt, like a blind man's softly making sure of its outline and shape. He withdrew it to his tunic-pocket, pulled out pipe and tobacco-pouch ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and beat up for another. I saw the buildings; the architecture doubtless was the same, but the scene was changed! The beauties of Oxford were vanished! I was awakened from the most delightful of dreams to a disgusting reality, and would have given kingdoms to have once more renewed my trance. The friends of Hector, though not all of them his equals in turbulence profaneness and folly, were of the same school. Their language, though less coarse, was equally insipid. Their manners, when not so obtrusive, were more bald. They all cursed blustered and behaved with ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... do; these sights and sounds did not come to her common, hackneyed. Why, sometimes, out in the hills, in the torrid quiet of summer noons, she had knelt by the shaded pools, and buried her hands in the great slumberous beds of water-lilies, her blood curdling in a feverish languor, a passioned trance, from which she roused herself, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... transportation to heaven or paradise was more difficult. The candidate for a tour into heaven would retire to some isolated spot, fast until the brain was maddened with delirium and the nerves excited to second sight by the loss of sleep. Then, in that state of trance, he would sit down on the ground, draw up his knees, bend down his head between them, and murmur magic spells, until, through the reversed circulation of the blood, the maddened brain, and the unstrung nerves, he would imagine that he saw the heaven opening to his inspection, palace ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... me that I had been sitting in this trance-like condition for hours, when I was roused by hearing an engine give a certain number of whistles, which indicated it wanted the switch opened. The next moment a man rushed into the office. "Open the switch ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... words he subsided into a deep trance, which lasted till the faithful grew tired of waiting, and shuffled slowly out of the door. When the last guest had gone, he rose from his chair, with no pretence of spiritual dignity, and counted his money and his tickets. He stretched himself ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... year after year. Then I wanted you to be ill—very, very ill for a long time, and weak, till your heart could hardly beat at all for want of blood, and you lay in a trance. Then the doctors would say, if anyone would give their blood he might come to life again. But no one could be found, for there were only strangers there. Then I hear about it, and come quickly, and the doctors start at once, for there is no time to ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... time, quite dazed; partly because his pupil was so dilated he could hardly see—partly (he thinks) because he in some way became unconscious; although when he woke from this little seeming trance, which may have lasted for more than a minute, he found himself still standing upright on his legs. What woke him was the sudden consciousness of the north, which he hadn't felt for many years; and this gave him extraordinary confidence ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... my mother, 'tis the King; The King himself comes to see you. The great Yupanqui is now here. Speak to him. Awake from thy trance. ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... over and who ate the food offered to it on the further bank was doomed to abide in Hades. Any spirit who refused returned to its body on earth and awoke. This is the meaning of what White men call a trance. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... plain when he realized this was no ghost of Steele, but the Ranger in the flesh. Blome's whole frame rippled as thought jerked him out of his trance. His comrades sat stone-still. Then Hilliard and Pickens dived without rising from the table. Their haste broke ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... serious mischief to her neighbours. For this reason, she was indicted for holding communication with demons. She admitted having intercourse with the Queen of Elfland and the good neighbours. When she fell into a trance, which happened often, she saw her cousin, William Sympsoune, of Stirling (who had been conveyed away to the hills by the fairies), from whom she received a salve that could cure every disease; and from this ointment ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... I think I am not very strong this morning." And presently she stood on her feet again and steadied herself. "You will please tell Evelyn before—before I see her." And she walked out of the room as one in a trance. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... manifestations, could for one moment believe in the genuineness of the phenomena produced at seances. They have never deceived me, and I am of the opinion spirits cannot be convoked to order, either through a so-called medium falling into a so-called trance, through table-turning, automatic writing, or anything else. If a spirit comes, it will come either voluntarily, or in obedience to some Unknown Power—and certainly neither to satisfy the curiosity of a crowd of sensation-loving men and women, nor to be ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... down between the horns of a bleached buffalo skull, but Venning stood like one in a trance. His hand had been swallowed up by a huge palm and thick iron-like fingers, and he was staring down on a pair of the broadest shoulders he had seen, with an arching chest to match. This was the pigmy he had imagined—this man with the shoulders of a giant and the chest of a Hercules. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... it ought to have been for perfect beauty; the chin round, with a well-defined dimple in its centre. Altogether, it was the loveliest face I had ever seen; and I stood for some time gazing in a trance of admiration on it, the feeling being mingled with one of deep regret that fate had, in snatching away the living original, deprived me of such rich possibilities of mutual love. I felt keenly that, had she continued to live, my life would, in all probability, have been widely different and very ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... thou?" cried Manfred, starting from his trance in a tempest of rage, and seizing the young man by the collar; "how darest thou utter such treason? Thy life shall ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... instead of reading as usual, to go downstairs and into the street. He stood at a bar and tossed off two or three glasses, then unconsciously sauntered along till he came to a spot called The Fourways in the middle of the city, gazing abstractedly at the groups of people like one in a trance, till, coming to himself, he began talking to the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... come through the Valley of the Shadow into which I ventured with a light heart, and those who know me might point and say what was said of a giant: "There is the man who has been in hell." It was true. Through the dim and sordid inferno, I moved as in a trance for awhile, and that is what makes me so keen to warn those who fancy they are safe; that is what makes me so discontented with the peculiar ethical conceptions of a society which bows down before the concocter of drink and spurns the lost one whom ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the full flush of life and health,—that soft and consecrating spell which falls upon us, drawing in all our thoughts from the present, arresting, as it were, the current of our being, and turning it back and holding it still as the flood of actual life rushes by us,—while in that trance of soul the beings of the past are shadowed—old friends, old days, old scenes recur, familiar looks beam close upon us, familiar words reecho in our ears, and we are closed up and absorbed with the by-gone, until tears dissolve the film from our eyes, and some shock of the actual wakes ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... note-books, specimens of dried plants, insects, fragments of minerals, etc., and, hanging these satchels on my arms, called on Copernicus to fulfil his promise. Instantly all things disappeared again from my view; I was floating with my satchels in mid-ether, and fell into a trance. When I awaked, I was in my father's house in New York. How long the passage required, I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... rollicking Sir Toby; Judith had eyes and ears for Viola only, and as the play progressed she envied passionately the Duke who seemed criminally stupid in his misunderstanding of Viola's love. The surprise of the play was Genevieve Singleton's Malvolio. Even Judith was moved out of her trance of adoration ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... diseases and all persons. For example, it matters not how new associational systems are formed so long as they are substituted for the pernicious ones. It may be in the common experiences of every-day life, through the pleading of a friend, during sleep or trance, in some abnormal state of a hypnotic character, or during religious ecstasy, and we cannot well say in any given case that one form will be more efficacious than another. Mental healing creates nothing new, but simply makes use of the normal ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... midst of human activities, and to draw his inspiration not from a mountain or the stars, but from all sorts and conditions of men. Thus, in the poem, How It Strikes a Contemporary, the poet lives in a noisy city, spends his time walking the streets, and instead of being lost in a trance, he is intensely aware of everything that happens in the town. The poet is an observer, not a dreamer. Indeed, the citizens think this old poet is a royal spy, because he notices people and events with such sharp attention. Browning ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... a chair—Mr. Percy sat down. His lordship recovered gradually from the species of trance into which he had fallen. The cataleptic rigidity of his figure relaxed—the colour of life returned—the body regained its functions—the soul resumed at once her powers. Without seeming sensible of any interruption or intermission ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... one let lovers cry, Alas! Since passion's leaguer shall break through in vain To that cold centre of bright adamas.— Storm through her being, rapturous spears of pain! Ye shall not wound that queen of gracious guile, The soul that with immortal trance keeps troth: For Helen is in Egypt all the while, Learning great magic from the Wife of Thoth. Throned white and high on red-rose porphyry, And coifed with golden wings, she lifts her eyes O'er Nile's green ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... appeared to her very pretty, pinky like shells, delicate and attenuated like the tiny hands of an infant Christ. Then too the fresh air, the gigantic trees around her, and the warmth, had lulled her somewhat into a trance. Sleep, she imagined, had come upon her, and yet she could still see and hear. It all seemed to her ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... imitation, repetition, uniformity and social collectivity, have been found by the experience of all time to have a twofold influence—they inhibit the intellect, they stimulate and suggest emotion, ecstasy, trance. The Church of Rome knows what she is about when she prescribes the telling of the rosary. Mystery-cults and sacraments, the lineal descendants of magic, all contain rites charged with suggestion, with symbols, with ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the atmic; and provided that the person whose consciousness is spoken of does not need to leave his active body, his body of action, in using his consciousness on any of these planes, does not have to throw the body into trance in order to be conscious on any or on all of them, we speak always, then, of that consciousness as being "his waking consciousness." Some disciples, for instance, will often include in the waking consciousness ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... morning, Lady Helen (who the night before had been removed into the quiet cell appointed for her) slept long and sweetly. Her exhausted frame found renovation; and she awoke with a heavenly calm at her heart. A cheering vision had visited her sleeping thoughts; and a trance of happy feelings absorbed her senses, while her hardly disengaged spirit still hovered over its ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter |
