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More "Altar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though scenes of wrath and passion yet lowered in the future, and I was again speedily called forth to act, to madden, to contend, perchance to sin, the Image is still unbroken, and the Votary has still an offering for its Altar! ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dinner, The pilot seizes the king-pin—he heaves down with a strong arm, The mate stands braced in the whale-boat—lance and harpoon are ready, The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches, The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar, The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First Day loafe, and looks at the oats and rye, The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case, He will never sleep any ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... turned eyes to the painter. The blue eyes met mine—there rose the rushy pool, there dozed the broken boat. Manuel Rodriguez spoke in his voice that was at once cool and fine and dry and warm. "It is best to dare thoroughly! Perhaps I may help you—as thus! Wishing to speak with Don Enrique of an altar painting for the Church of Saint Dominic, I asked him here and he came. We talked, and he will give the picture. Then, hearing the Queen's approach, he would instantly have been gone, but alack, the small ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... some inkling of what had happened. It was shortly after this notable event that Myles was formally initiated into squirehood. His father and mother, as was the custom, stood sponsors for him. By them, each bearing a lighted taper, he was escorted to the altar. It was at St. Mary's Priory, and Prior Edward blessed the sword and girded it to the lad's side. No one was present but the four, and when the good Prior had given the benediction and had signed the cross upon his forehead, Myles's mother stooped and kissed ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... promised, but I am not satisfied. I want you to swear. I want to feel that you are as much mine as if we had stood at the altar together. Otherwise how can I go away? How can I leave you, knowing there are three men at least in this town who would marry you at a day's notice, if you gave them full leave. I love you, and I would marry you to-night, but you want a home of your own. Swear that you will ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... turned and entered the old church—one of the first that ever was in Britain, rough-built of Roman stone by the very hands of Chad, the Saxon saint, more than five hundred years before their day. Here they knelt a while at the rude altar and prayed, each of them in his or her own fashion, then crossed themselves, and rose to seek their horses, which were tied in the ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... Sutherland does, if you don't, and that's much more to the point. And he'll marry her yet; he can't help it. Why, she'd witch the devil into leading her to the altar if she took a notion to ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... fitter for a monarch than a subject; the finest pictures the world afforded, flowers in-laid with silver and ivory, gilded roofs, carved wainscot, tables of plate, with all the rest of the movables in the chambers of the same, all of great value, and all was perfumed like an altar, or the marriage bed of some young king. Here Sylvia was designed to lodge, and hither Octavio conducted her; and setting her on a couch while the supper was getting ready, he sits himself down by her, and his heart being ready to burst with grief, at the thought ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... loving companionship of a tender, chaste and Xtian wife. Such an one could guide him into Green Pastures—and such an one only. Secure in the gratitude of his inferiors, the respect of his peers, reconciled to the Altar, and his God, one sees before Nevile the upright, prosperous, honoured career of an English Gentleman. There is no higher, I believe. But it is clear to all of those who truly love you, my child, that you only can ensure him these advantages. He is sincerely penitent now—of that I am sure. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... his desire to be a monk, the Prior repudiated the notion with contempt. Dino Vasari a monk, after this lapse from obedience and humility? He was not fit to do the humblest work of the lowest servant of those who lived by the altar. He had not even shown common penitence for his sin. Let him do that: let him humble himself: let him sit in dust and ashes, metaphorically speaking: and then, by-and-bye, the Church might open ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... incomparable set of his trousers spoilt by the perching of any dear little child upon his knee. And so, now that he is stricken with seventy years, he knows none of the bitterness of eld, for his toilet-table is an imperishable altar, his wardrobe a quiet nursery and very constant harem. Mr. Le V. has many disciples, young men who look to him for guidance in all that concerns costume, and each morning come, themselves tentatively clad, to watch the perfect procedure of his toilet and learn invaluable lessons. I myself, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... quietly and sensibly, and loved her more and more as the winter and spring went by and brought the day when he stood again at the altar and for the second time took upon him the marriage vow. It was a very quiet wedding, with only a few friends present, and Miss Frances was the bridesmaid, in a gown of silver gray; but Julia's face was bright with the certainty of a happiness long desired; ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... their way as the bell clanged, and the throng filed into their places most reverently. It was a pleasant sight. I came into rank unobtrusively at the back, among the rustling and nudging lay brethren. In other circumstances it would have amused me to see the grave faces they turned towards the altar, and to hear all the while the confused scuffling as they trod on each other's toes, trying whose skin was the tenderest or whose sandal soles were the thickest. One or two even tried conclusions with me, but ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... did not oblige him to continue or renew a tie which bound him to so much misery, and that he might end his days in a tranquillity which his past life required, and his wife's presence would have precluded. He made a good end; he had been allowed to take the blessed sacrament from the altar to his own home on the last time he had been able to attend a synaxis of the faithful, and thus had communicated at least six months within his decease; and the priest who anointed him at the beginning of his last illness also took his confession. He died, begging forgiveness ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Between dark stems the forest glows, I hear a noise of hymns: Then by some secret shrine I ride; I hear a voice, but none are there; The stalls are void, the doors are wide, The tapers burning fair. Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, And solemn ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... not been suddenly converted into a great preacher without continuing in the practice of the said iniquities, whensoever the same was privily possible. And withal, having got himself made priest, as often as he celebrated at the altar, he would weep over the passion of our Lord, so there were folk in plenty to see, for tears cost him little enough, when he had a mind to shed them. In short, what with his sermons and his tears, he duped ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... brought him a transient sense of peace—the peace which his wearied soul had never fully known. Peace brooded over the great nave, and hovered in the soft air that drifted slowly through the deserted aisle up to the High Altar, where lay the Sacred Host. A few votive candles were struggling to send their feeble glow through the darkness. The great images of the suffering Christ, of the Saints and the Virgin Mother had merged their outlines into the heavy shadows ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in the dark, ghostly nave of a huge Church. The long rows of columns stretched out in the distance, tall and stately like pines in a forest; the aisles were broad and shadowy, leading far off in a distant perspective to the outline of an altar and a high cross suspended. They ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... existence for men. Pull yourself together, Mannering, for Heaven's sake. Yours is the faineant spirit of the decadent, masquerading in the garb of a sham primitivism. Were you born into the world, do you think, to loiter through life an idle worshipper at the altar of beauty? Who are you to dare to skulk in the quiet places, whilst the battle of life is fought ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... &c., and her musical instruments were as she had left them, and everything wore an appearance of comfort which is seldom seen in the midst of such magnificence. Through folding doors you enter into a smaller room hung with pictures. C. was her chapel; before a little unostentatious altar, which had every appearance of having daily witnessed her devotions, was a beautiful Raphael; the walls were hung with seven small Scripture subjects by Poussin. I would have given a great deal to have been her invisible observer in this sacred retirement. She must have been alone, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... school were contemporaries of Immanuel Kant. He witnessed the crash which accompanied the downfall of the old regime in France, the enthronement of anarchy in the place of government, the complete eclipse of religion, and the worship of reason symbolised on the altar of Notre Dame as my tongue refuses to describe. It was the era of the deluge: the water-flood had burst upon Europe; and there was nothing, no institution of State or Church, no philosophy, no religion then extant ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... hero—sometimes it is a heroine—meets with a strange and terrifying adventure in a mysterious Chapel, an adventure which, we are given to understand, is fraught with extreme peril to life. The details vary: sometimes there is a Dead Body laid on the altar; sometimes a Black Hand extinguishes the tapers; there are strange and threatening voices, and the general impression is that this is an adventure in which supernatural, and evil, forces ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... for the two great ceremonials were carried on. At daybreak the body of the dead king was borne to the noble minster, that had been the chief object of his life to raise and beautify, and there before the great altar it was laid to rest with all the solemn pomp of the church. A few hours passed away and the symbols of mourning were removed. Then the great prelates of the church, the earls and the thanes of England, gathered for the ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... seven years hence At the altar, I would kill him there:—I had Forgot to tell you, the design we had, To carry Julia by force away, Will now be needless: she'll come to the rock To see me; you, unseen, shall stand behind, And carry ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... the fullest of fun you ever see, though generous and good hearted; but he boasted on not believin' anything, and Faithful's father, bein' a church member of the closest kind, and she brung up as you may say, right inside the tabernacle, with her Pa's phylakracy hangin' on the very horns of the altar, you may know what opposition Richard got from her Pa and her own conscience. Her conscience, as so many good girl's consciences are, wuz a perfect tyrant, and drove her round—that, and her Pa. He ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... sceptre of mercy and an iron rod of justice. After that a naked sword was presented to him, and a helmet put on his head. Then, laying aside all these, St. Edmund stepped forward, and standing before the altar declared solemnly that by the grace of God he would fulfil all the duties of a good King. The Bishop placed the crown upon his head, saying, "Live the King for ever," and the people all ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... a true republic, the church and the home must undergo the same upheavings we now see in the State;—for, while our egotism, selfishness, luxury and ease are baptized in the name of Him whose life was a sacrifice,—while at the family altar we are taught to worship wealth, power and position, rather than humanity, it is vain to talk of a republican government:—The fair fruits of liberty, equality and fraternity must be blighted in the bud, till cherished in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and the constitution of it had not yet been altered. The Presbyterian platform threatened to take the place of Episcopacy, and soon did take it; but the clergyman was still a priest and was still regarded with pious veneration in the country districts as a semi-supernatural being. The altar yet stood in its place, the minister still appeared in his surplice, and the Prayers of the Liturgy continued to be read or intoned. The old familiar bells, Catholic as they were in all the emotions which ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... wild. People not only claimed these devilfish could drag ships under, but a certain Olaus Magnus tells of a cephalopod a mile long that looked more like an island than an animal. There's also the story of how the Bishop of Trondheim set up an altar one day on an immense rock. After he finished saying mass, this rock started moving and went back into the sea. The ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the table and the ends of the benches, leading from the door to the improvised altar at the farther end of the room, was carpeted with blankets from the bunk-house, and suspended from the ceiling immediately in front of the altar swung the massive horseshoe, fresh and green ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... must! 'Tis Christ says, "Love thy brother," Yet on the altar of the Heavenly King No rival place, no alien incense fling! Through Him—by Him—for Him—all goodness know! 'Tis from the source alone each stream must flow. To please Him, wife, and wealth, and rank, and ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... way to ascending any higher. He had already, acting always in perfect good faith and conscientious desire for the right, made his pretty little church obnoxious to many of the simple old Foresters, to whom a pair of brazen candlesticks on an altar were among the abominations of Baal, and a crucifix as hateful as the image of Ashtaroth; obstinate old people of limited vision, who wanted Mr. Scobel to stick to what they called the old ways, and read the Liturgy as they had heard it when they were children. In the minds ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... night we never returned to that spot. That rock was an altar which has retained its purity; it is one of the visions of my life, and it still passes before my eyes wreathed ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... After prayer, they cleansed themselves with water from the holy well, and offered up sacrifices. Certain ceremonial acts were then performed by the priests, and the patients were put to sleep on the skins of the animals offered at the altar, or at the foot of the statue of the divinity, while the priests performed further sacred rites. The son of Apollo then appeared to them in dreams, attended to the particular ailments of the sufferers, and specified further sacrifices or acts which would restore health. In ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... reverse!—what have I to expect, but, after a deal of flimsy preparation with a bishop's license, and my aunt's blessing, to go simpering up to the altar; or perhaps be cried three times in a country church, and have an unmannerly fat clerk ask the consent of every butcher in the parish to join John Absolute and Lydia Languish, spinster! Oh that I should live to hear ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... who lays her daughters and her nieces Upon the altar of her boarders' bliss,— She frown at such ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Triplet, with tears in his eyes. "It is I who have been rough and brutal. Poverty tried us too hard; but we were not like the rest of them—we were always faithful to the altar. And the Almighty has seen us, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... much for Doyle. Dignified protest was not sufficient now. To be any longer identified with a paper which could use such language was intolerable to the faithful soul. To ply his skilful fingers and busy inventive brain in behalf of those who scoffed at the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar was out of the question. His connection with Punch must cease. But is he bound in conscience to throw away a good income and congenial work, because there were expressed opinions different from his ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... attired as usual, except that she was now engaged in substituting for her green kid gloves a pair of white. The Aged was likewise occupied in preparing a similar sacrifice for the altar of Hymen. The old gentleman, however, experienced so much difficulty in getting his gloves on, that Wemmick found it necessary to put him with his back against a pillar, and then to get behind the pillar himself and pull away at them, while I for my part held the old gentleman round ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... by tactical mistakes, occasioned by want of knowledge of the theatre of action, and it is to be feared that Time, when he renders his verdict, will declare the gallant dead who fell at Gaines's Mill, Cold Harbor, Frazier's Farm, and Malvern Hill, to have been sacrificed on the altar of the ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... advancement of Christianity and the downfall of that pestilent heresy which proclaimed that Mahomet was the prophet of God. Against all who bowed the knee in the mosques of the false prophet their lives were vowed, and it is but the barest justice to them to record that on the altar of this their faith these ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Annie Gray, even if all they believed about her were true? Pearl wondered about the religion of people like the group who were so busily talking just outside the window. Did it not teach them to be charitable? The Good Shepherd, in the picture above the altar, had gone out to find the wandering sheep, even leaving all the others, to bring back the lost one, sorry that it had been wayward, not angry—but only sorry—Pearl hoped that they would look at it when they came in. She hoped too, that they would look at the few scattered tombstones ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... angels fair and tall, Each robed as priestly seneschal, On altar-suns burn incense daily, As wheel the systems to ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... Smoke upon Your Altar Dies (from "Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-room ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... that if Lescuyer explained, Lescuyer was saved. That was not what they wanted. They flung themselves upon him, tore him from the pulpit, and thrust him into the midst of this howling mob, who dragged him to the altar with that sort of terrible cry which combines the hiss of the serpent and the roar of the tiger, the murderous zou! zou! peculiar to the people ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... had the gardeners quitted the arena, than a solemn and imposing train appeared to occupy the sward. Four females marched to the front, bearing an antique altar that was decorated with suitable devices. They were clad in emblematical dresses, and wore garlands of flowers on their heads. Boys carrying censers preceded an altar that was dedicated to Flora, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... reminded him of our meeting above, and endeavoured to urge upon him a preparation for it.—On reviewing the week, I have endeavoured to walk circumspectly, redeeming the time, and enjoyed union with God, both in private, and at the family altar; but yet I want more uniformity in my walk with God. Mrs. H. accompanied me to see two poor widows; and, inviting some of the neighbours in, we read and conversed, and prayed with them. I felt inclined to go ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... twenty years was the new temple in building, and each of its columns was the gift of a prince. All that the art of Greece could give was lavished upon the building. The hand of Praxiteles carved the altar, the magic pencil of Apelles adorned its walls with a picture of Alexander. Ephesus was also famous for its magic arts; and when the people had been turned to Christ by the preaching of S. Paul, they brought their books of conjuring and curious ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... lips when Myra welcomed her, but Lady Roehampton would not permit this, and kissed her. Everybody was calm during the ceremony except Endymion, who had been silent the whole morning. He stood by the altar with that convulsion of the throat and that sickness of the heart which accompany the sense of catastrophe. He was relieved by some tears which he easily concealed. Nobody noticed him, for all were thinking of themselves. After the ceremony, they all returned to the vestry, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... upon the table, and the white-robed servant reentered, and, bowing low, held open the door. The little yellow man, first kneeling upon the carpet before the divan as before an altar, hurried from the apartment. As the door was reclosed, and Madame found herself alone again, she laughed lightly, as Calypso laughed when Ulysses' ship appeared off the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... of the church has nothing remarkable, excepting a wooden image of St. George vanquishing the Dragon, which is erected over the high altar, and is the admiration of the good people of Palos, who bear it about the streets in grand procession on the anniversary of the saint. This group existed in the time of Columbus, and now flourishes in renovated youth and splendor, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... walk around to the north of the altar you will find yourself treading on tiles not so very far short of twice that antiquity. Gentlemen, do not think that I would ever speak lightly of our lineage: only let us make as certain as we may what ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... accident an only son. My mother, in two years after she had sworn obedience at the altar, presented her liege lord with a couple of pledges of connubial love, and the gender of both was masculine. Twelve years elapsed and no addition was made to the Hamiltons; when lo! upon a fine spring morning a little Benjamin ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... that moment several persons appeared in the nave, drawn by curiosity. They could not be turned out, so the executioner, to save the marquise from being annoyed, shut the gate of the choir, and let the patient pass behind the altar. There she sat down in a chair, and the doctor on a seat opposite; then he first saw, by the light of the chapel window, how greatly changed she was. Her face, generally so pale, was inflamed, her eyes glowing and feverish, all her body ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... first painting we can discover which shows any sign of independent effort is the series which Paolo da Venezia painted on the back of the Pala d' Oro, over the high altar of St. Mark, when it was restored in the fourteenth century. This reveals an artist with some pictorial aptitude and one alive to the subjects that surround him. It tells the story of St. Mark's corpse transported to Venice. The first panel ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... him by the elbow and led him over to the south wall, on which was arranged a number of ancient tablets, grouped around a great altar-tomb whereon were set up the painted effigies of a gentleman, his wife, and several sons and daughters, all in ruffs, kneeling one after the other, each growing less in size and stature, in the attitude of prayer. He ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... huge bunches of grapes and large fasces of flowers; they saw Barnes talking in the most respectful manner to Madame de Florac: and when they went downstairs and had their work before them—Liddy her gilt music-book, Lizzy her embroidered altar-cloth, mamma her scarlet cloak for one of the old women—they had the agony of seeing the barouche over the railings whisk by, with the Park people inside, and Barnes ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... evil demons were read—Bael, Forcas, Buer, Marchocias, Astaroth, and Behemoth. A prayer was read to ward off the effects of Good. And Uncle Ingemar apologized for not having a virgin to sacrifice on the Red Altar. ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... the chancellor promised I should be recompensed; strictly, however, forbidding me to take any revenge on the Prussian ambassador, I having sworn, in the first transports of anger, to punish him wherever I should find him, even were it at the altar's foot. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... had already seized Ismene—and menace Oedipus himself. Theseus hearing the alarm rushes back, reproaches Creon for his insolence and quickly returns with the two girls. He has strange news to tell; another Theban is a suppliant at the altar of Poseidon close by, craving speech with Oedipus. It is Polyneices, whom Antigone persuades her father to interview. The youth enters, ashamed of his neglect of his father, and begs a blessing on the army he has mustered against Thebes. He is met by a terrible curse which Oedipus ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... hauing the crosse, holie water and censures carried afore them, came to fetch him vnto the doore of his priuie chamber, and there receiuing him, they led him vnto the church at Westminster, till he came before the high altar with a solemne procession. [Sidenote: Rog. Houed.] In the middle of the bishops and cleargie went foure barons, bearing candlesticks with tapers, after whom came Geffrey de Lucie bearing the cap of maintenance, and John Marshall next to him, bearing a great ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... that after the war ended, when Weatherford (Red Eagle), who commanded the Indians on the shore in this battle with Dale, was about to marry, he asked Dale to act as his best man, and the two who had fought each other so desperately stood side by side, as devoted friends, at the altar. ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... foreign prince, evinced such marks of tenderness, that Hamlet could not but perceive the depth of his conquest. He was not insensible to her attractions; and receiving the king's assent, in the course of a few days led her to the nuptial altar. Amidst all joys, he was, however, like a perturbed ghost that could not rest; and before many suns had rose and set, he obtained a hard wrung leave from his bride, once more set sail, and appeared at Elsineur just in time ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... enslaved, I would have, in a moment, obeyed the impulse. I had no idea of any crime, or a wish to witness the sufferings of the individual. I felt as a patriot might feel who sacrifices all for the good of his country—immolating my own feelings at the altar of science, and deeming the realization of my dreams of vital importance to mankind, who had hitherto been unable to discover the mysterious link that bound soul ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... on teak piles, and teak pillars supported the triple roof. It was like a barn or lumber room but for the gilt Buddhas on the altar and the gilt cabinets by its side, containing many smaller gilt images of Buddha and his disciples. Umbrellas, flags, and the tawdry paraphernalia used in processions were hanging from the beams. Sacerdotal vestments of dingy yellow—the yellow of turmeric—were tumbled over bamboo rests. When ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... one Beauty of the world entire, 650 The universal Venus, far beyond The keenest effort of created eyes, And their most wide horizon, dwells enthroned In ancient silence. At her footstool stands An altar burning with eternal fire Unsullied, unconsumed. Here every hour, Here every moment, in their turns arrive Her offspring; an innumerable band Of sisters, comely all! but differing far In age, in stature, and expressive mien, 660 More than bright Helen from her new-born ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... evening, we accompanied a friend to the Wesleyan chapel, of which the Rev. James Cox is pastor. The minister invited us to a seat within the altar, where we could have a full view of the congregation. The chapel was crowded. Nearly twelve hundred persons were present. All sat promiscuously in respect of color. In one pew was a family of whites, next a family of colored persons, and behind that perhaps might be seen, side by side, the ebon ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... glad melodies. The eager crowd fell into line and walked slowly to the altar to lay their roses there. Children with half withered blossoms, maidens with bunches of crimson flowers, here and there a stranger with gorgeous hot-house roses, older men and women with the products of the gardens of the little town—all ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Titanic bloom, The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, And stamened with keen flamelets that illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea— For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... a silken altar, From oaths and covenants, and being pounded in a mortar, From contributions, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... were Paul's or not the French book maketh no mention, all the estates were long or day in the church for to pray. And when matins and the first mass were done, there was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone four square, like unto a marble stone, and in midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword, and letters there were written in gold about the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... violent, but it was short. A few days before the one which was to seal her fate she granted an interview to her lover, who, young, thoughtless, and enamoured as herself, easily succeeded in persuading her to elope with him to Scotland. There, at the altar of Vulcan, the beautiful daughter of the Earl of Courtland gave her hand to her handsome but penniless lover; and there vowed to immolate every ambitious desire, every sentiment of vanity and high-born pride. Yet a sigh arose as she looked on the filthy hut, sooty priest, and ragged witnesses; and ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and yet perennially, radiantly young. Look at her now," he cried, circling the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, "look at her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,—one would say a bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety. Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the sweetness of her,—oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the blossoming tree, the singing bird,—I could build ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... purpose of ancestral worship, which had been practised from the earliest ages, the Emperor had seven shrines, each with its altar representing various forefathers; and at all of these a sacrifice was offered every month. Feudal nobles could have only five sets of these, and the various officials three or fewer, on a descending scale in proportion to their rank. Petty officers and ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... (and a Barnacle) would be freed from any little filial inroads, when her Henry should be married to the darling only child of a man in very easy circumstances; the third, that Henry's debts must clearly be paid down upon the altar-railing by his father-in-law. When, to these three-fold points of prudence there is added the fact that Mrs Gowan yielded her consent the moment she knew of Mr Meagles having yielded his, and that Mr ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... they must support the church. I hope they will see that all the prayers have to be paid for, although not one has ever been answered. I hope they will perceive that the church is on the side of wealth and power, that the mitre is the friend of the crown, that the altar is the sworn brother of the throne. I hope they will finally know that the church cares infinitely more for the money of the millionaire than for the souls ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the daughter, the beautiful Amalie, learned to admit more than gratitude. She gave her heart to the brave, persistent and determined young man who had done her and her mother such signal service, and it was a glorious occasion when Jack led to the altar the bride he had won in such a strange and weird manner. We could write more, but we believe we have told the whole tale as concerns facts, and comments we ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... seemingly just as absurd to consider in advance such sordid matters in connection with any one of a dozen couples among his friends whose matrimonial enterprises had gone smash? It was said that nowadays girls went to the altar thinking that if the husbands they were taking proved unsatisfactory they would soon be free again, the better off by the title of Mrs. and a good stiff alimony and some invaluable experience. "I must keep my head," thought he. "I must consider how I'd feel ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... the sacrament after a long and serious course of reading; and, having made my vows at the altar, with the help of God, they are unchangeable. Dramatic works, the pernicious study and poison of my youthful ardent mind, I have long since discarded; and I had resolved never to see you again, until after your marriage with ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... perishable. It raises him out of the tyranny of the flesh to the service of his ideals. It makes him sure that there are things worth fighting and dying for. The fighting and the dying, for the cause of justice and liberty, are sacrifices on the Divine altar ...
— What Peace Means • Henry van Dyke
... came forward and gave to the priests a great chain of gold links, bidding them lay it on the altar for a gift towards rebuilding ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... me— You—you, who sit there, traitors as ye are! From my equality with you in birth, And my superiority in action, You drew me from my honourable toils In distant lands—on flood, in field, in cities— You singled me out like a victim to Stand crowned, but bound and helpless, at the altar Where you alone could minister. I knew not, I sought not, wished not, dreamed not the election, 210 Which reached me first at Rome, and I obeyed; But found on my arrival, that, besides The jealous vigilance which always led you To mock and mar your Sovereign's best intents, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... finding the service more satisfying.) The face of this erect figure was blurred in the dream. It was full of qualities, but lacked defining shape: it was "manly," "generous," "high-spirited," "rich," "successful," etc., etc. But the nearer she approached in her vision to the altar amid the crash of organ music, the more indefinite became the face. She tried on the figure various faces she knew, but none seemed to fit exactly. No ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... parent stream, catch inspiration in the devious walk, till he finds Lord Buchan sitting on the ruins of Dryburgh. There the Commendator will give him a hearty welcome, and try to light his lamp at the pure flame of native genius, upon the altar of Caledonian virtue." Such was the invitation of the Earl of Buchan to Burns. To request the poet to lay down his sickle when his harvest was half reaped, and traverse one of the wildest and most untrodden ways in Scotland, for ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the hill, connected with the chateau by a narrow path, lies a pretty village, whose white houses seem to have sprung from the golden sand; a chapel stands halfway up the hill; the lords descended and the villagers ascended to its altar-the region of equality, situated like a neutral spot between poverty and riches, which have been too often opposed to each other in ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... sepulchre in the N. wall of chancel, the Norman window close to it, the piscina, ambry and credence table, discovered during the restoration of the church by Sir A. W. Blomfield in 1873. There are also memorial windows to members of the Lushington family, and an altar tomb, under a canopy of marble, to "Sir Robert Clyfford" (d. 1508), who built the church porch in 1500, and to his wife Elizabeth. The tomb bears brass effigies of these worthies, which were once in the Church of St. Michael, Cornhill, but were brought to Aspenden at the time of ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... General told me that he should never see me more; for he was going with a handful of men to conquer whole nations; and to do this they must cut their way through unknown woods. He produced a map of the country, saying at the same time: 'Dear Pop, we are sent like sacrifices to the altar,'"[195]—a strange presentiment for a man of his ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... eyes of posterity, with the objects in which they take delight. James II. was inexorable toward his brother's favorites. Monmouth was beheaded, and the triumph of legitimacy was commemorated by a medal, representing the heads of Monmouth and Argyle on an altar, their bleeding bodies beneath, with the following: "Sic aras et sceptra tuemur." ("Thus we defend our ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... supported Fitzgerald, but all the poorer electors, headed by their priests, flocked to the poll and voted for O'Connell, who, on Fitzgerald's retirement, was triumphantly elected. The violence of O'Connell's language was unmeasured, and as was said by Sheil, "every altar became a tribune," but perfect order was maintained throughout. The terrorism which has since disgraced Irish elections and vitiated the whole representation of Ireland had no place in this startling victory, and the impression produced by it was ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... occasion when it all has to be paid for, whether it is drunk or not; but he is a very steady man, and does not easily lose his temper. Only once there is a tight shave—and that is the fault of Marija Berczynskas. Marija has apparently concluded about two hours ago that if the altar in the corner, with the deity in soiled white, be not the true home of the muses, it is, at any rate, the nearest substitute on earth attainable. And Marija is just fighting drunk when there come to her ears the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... St. Sophia's." [2] I have been in both, surveyed them inside and out attentively. St. Sophia's is undoubtedly the most interesting from its immense antiquity, and the circumstance of all the Greek emperors, from Justinian, having been crowned there, and several murdered at the altar, besides the Turkish Sultans who attend it regularly. But it is inferior in beauty and size to some of the mosques, particularly "Soleyman," etc., and not to be mentioned in the same page with St. Paul's (I speak like a Cockney). ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... pine-branches were fetched by women called 'drawers,' who, after observing, rules of ceremonial purity for three days, descended into the caverns, and, frightening away the serpents by clapping their hands, brought up the remains and placed them on the altar. Whoever got a piece of the decayed flesh and cakes, and sowed it with the seed-corn in his field, was believed to be ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... rigorously insisted on, that the communion table should be removed from the middle of the area where it hitherto stood in all churches, except in cathedrals.[**] It was placed at the east end, railed in, and denominated an "altar;" as the clergyman who officiated received commonly the appellation of "priest." It is not easy to imagine the discontents excited by this innovation, and the suspicions which it ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... diabolical. She was like a bloated spider, slowly entwining those threads for her victim which were to entrap him to his destruction, for she had vowed that she never would again be led to the hymeneal altar until Mr Vanslyperken was hanged. Perhaps, the widow Vandersloosh was in a hurry to be married, at least, by her activity, it would so appear—but let us ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... year the Israelite tribes gathered round this hill of Shiloh, to bring gifts, and offer worship to God, and hold councils of war. Then little Samuel was glad, for his mother came to see him; and he ran gaily about, now looking at the leaping fires on the brass altar, now watching the clouds of sweet smoke rolling out from behind the blue curtains of the holy place ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous
... endless, groping, dumb desires,— The climbing incense thick and sweet, The lovely purpose that aspires, The wraiths of vapor wing'd and fleet That rise and run with eager feet Forth from a myriad altar fires: All these become a mist that fills The vales and chasms nebular; A shaping Soul that moves and thrills The wastes between red ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... only village where God's holy temple has been polluted by money-changers and them that sell doves. Many a sweet little dove of a girl is made by her father and mother, and other old money- changers, to walk up to God's holy altar, and swear to a lie. They think her tellin' that lie, makes the infamous bargain more sacred, makes the infamous life they have drove her ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... ever invented. The liability to strain, and even serious internal injury, which is incurred in gymnastic exercises, ought to induce sensible people to be extremely careful how they permit their daughters to sacrifice themselves on this scientific altar. Buy them horses to ride, if you want them to enjoy good health and sound constitutions. Nothing like horses for women. Send the professors to Suakim, and put the girls on horseback. Whether Brighton grows handsome girls, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... philosopher—that a woman would want the cleverest man in the world to be a boy and play the fool sometimes; that she would rather, if she was a healthy woman, go to a circus than to a revelation of the mysteries of the mind from an altar of culture, if her own beloved man ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Rome—from the very pope himself Came notice of a conspiracy against him in which he was told that the very highest in the land were engaged. From Embrun, Bayonne, and Douai came messages of like purport, and early in May a note was found one morning on the altar of the church of Montargis announcing the King's ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... versification, by quoting a speech which he puts into the mouth of an Angel, in the Destruction of Jerusalem. The Angel is represented as descending over the altar prophesying the fall of that ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... were; and when I had taught you, not only to trust me, but to love me, so that you saw no evil even when it existed—I very nearly betrayed you. It wasn't my strength that saved us both—it was your wonderful love and faith. There's no desire in the world that would profane such an altar of holiness as you unveiled before me that night." He lifted her soft dress, and kissed the hem of her skirt. "I haven't forgiven myself about—what happened before I knew you, either," he whispered; "you're wrong there. I used those arguments, once, myself, but I can't any more. We'll ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... which took place in Corfu, I think. And what does that little prosperous woman's "interesting time" signify, in comparison with that poor creature there,—that helpless, homeless, friendless Margaret—lying as still on that sofa as if it were an altar-tomb, and she the stone statue on it. I tell you, Mrs. Shaw shall come. See that a room, or whatever she wants, is got ready for her by to-morrow night. I'll take care ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... there?" asked he. "Ah," she answered, "I was only thinking of Maid Maleen." Then he took out a precious chain, put it round her neck, and fastened the clasp. Thereupon they entered the church, and the priest joined their hands together before the altar, and married them. He led her home, but she did not speak a single word the whole way. When they got back to the royal palace, she hurried into the bride's chamber, put off the magnificent clothes and the jewels, dressed ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... was a robust man, a few years older than Hollister. The cares of a rapidly developing business and certain domestic ties had prevented Mr. Lewis from offering himself upon the altar of his country. The responsibility of eight per cent. investments entrusted to his care was not easily shaken off. Business, of course, was a national necessity. However, since the armistice, Mr. Lewis had ceased to be either explanatory or inferentially ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... this controversial mood that free-thinkers are often tempted to be unfair to the Reformation. This is a fault; for after all it is something, even for ingrained sceptics prepared to offer incense at any official altar, to be saved from the persecuting alliance ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... pope. And it must be remembered that his motives were not purely selfish. The alternative seemed to be indefinite civil war with all its horrors, and Henry deliberately but regretfully sacrificed his confessional convictions on the altar of his country. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Moerens, who lived there on the products of their lands. There was a portico round the interior court the columns of which were painted red, half their height upwards from the base. A fountain made of shells stood against the wall and under the portico there rose an altar with a niche in which the master of the house had placed some little idols made of baked earth and whitened with whitewash. Some represented winged children, others Apollo or Mercury, and several were in the form of a naked ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Shakespeare's heroes who is so. And a long life of absolute power, in which he has been flattered to the top of his bent, has produced in him that blindness to human limitations, and that presumptuous self-will, which in Greek tragedy we have so often seen stumbling against the altar of Nemesis. Our consciousness that the decay of old age contributes to this condition deepens our pity and our sense of human infirmity, but certainly does not lead us to regard the old King as irresponsible, and so to sever the tragic nexus ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... end of the long church was swarming with pirates; there was no mistaking those bold, cruel faces, blackened by sun and wind, half covered with ragged hair. They stood on the benches, they bestrode the railing, they swarmed over the altar, shouting and carousing in riotous wassail. Their coarse red shirts were flung back from hairy chests, their faces were distorted with rum and sacrilegious delight. Every station, every candlestick, had been hurled to the floor and trampled upon. The crucifix stood on its head. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... blame not your child, if then on bended knees I dropped, and thought of Abelard, and also Eloise; Or when, beside the altar high, he bowed before the pyx, I envied that seraphic ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... the Persians discouraged, though it did not prohibit, the erection of temples: their sacred architecture scarcely included more than an altar and pedestal. The palace of the monarch was the structure that absorbed the best efforts ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... seen the new king with his own eyes and had recognized in him the younger son of his benefactor. Prexaspes made no objection to this proposal, took a tender leave of his family while the people were being assembled, uttered a short prayer before the sacred fire-altar and walked proudly to the palace. On his way thither he met the chiefs of the seven tribes and seeing that they avoided him, called out to them: "I am worthy of your contempt, but I will try to deserve ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... honour an altar was erected for his having taught mankind that the sun was greater than Peloponnesus, that snow was black, and that the heavens were of stone, affirmed that the soul was an aerial spirit, but at the same time immortal. Diogenes (not he who ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... and by the reproaches and menaces of the Count, he might proceed to extremities, of which Herrera shuddered to think. The fevered and excited imagination of Luis conjured up the most maddening visions. He saw Rita dragged half-lifeless to the altar, compelled by atrocious menaces to place her hand in that of her abhorred kinsman, whilst a venal priest blessed the unholy union. He heard the cries of the trembling victim imploring mercy from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... pride in his scientific achievements, and her mortification at finding them but little known out of his own country, were genuine feelings. Never had Captain Wragge burned his adulterated incense on the flimsy altar of human vanity to better purpose than he ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the very altar!" she thought, with something like despair. "I can't marry him—I can't! It sets me wild to think of it. What a wretch I am! What a weak, miserable, cowardly wretch, not to be able to face the fate I have chosen for myself! I don't know what to do, and I have no one to consult—no ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... those occupying the centre of the church, and is just across the aisle from the pulpit, and is the best of all for the purpose of seeing and hearing the clergyman, and likewise as convenient as any, from its neighborhood to the altar. On the other side of the aisle, beneath the pulpit, is Lady Fleming's pew. This and one or two others are curtained; Wordsworth's was not. I think I can bring up his image in that corner seat of his pew—a white-headed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Lord will work through me is the property of the humblest soul in his kingdom. When I see one flower rarer than another, or a bird singing on a twig, I take note of the same, and say, 'This lovely work of God shall be for some shrine, or the border of a missal, or the foreground of an altar-piece, and thus shall his saints ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... him. He even lured Harold, the heir apparently, to Normandy, and while under the influence of stimulants compelled Harold to swear that he would sustain William's claim to the throne. The wily William also inserted some holy relics of great potency under the altar used for swearing purposes, but Harold recovered when he got out again into the fresh air, and snapped his fingers ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... the same minute a brother, who had a beard like seaweed growing from a face like a pear, took up to the altar of St. Joseph a small rustic table on which he placed a basin, a towel, two vases and ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... the champions of the apostolic decrees alone he persisted in waging war. Accordingly, during the whole period of his reign the altar fire was lit, libations and sacrifices were offered to idols, public feasts were celebrated in the forum, and votaries initiated in the orgies of Dionysus ran about in goatskins, mangling dogs ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... true that many of Martial's lyrics would be thought disgusting in any well-regulated convict establishment. His gallantry is rarely "honourable." Scaliger used to burn a copy of Martial, once a year, on the altar of Catullus, who himself was far from prudish. But Martial, somehow, kept his heart undepraved, and his taste in books was excellent. How often he writes verses for the bibliophile, delighting in the details of purple and gold, the illustrations and ornaments for his ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands, and, finally, a copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior," overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran." Upon their arrival in Canaan, the divine declaration respecting his future possession of the country was renewed, and he erected an altar to the Lord in the plain of Moreh. The same act of devotion was performed at the next stage of his journey, on a mountain to the east of Bethel; for no change of place could obliterate his ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... mess did not occupy us long: thence to the Chapel, where a first row in the balconies was kept for us. Madame du Barri arrived over against us below, without rouge, without powder, and indeed sans avoir fait sa toilette; an odd appearance, as she was so conspicuous, close to the altar, and amidst both Court and people. She is pretty, when you consider her; yet so little striking, that I never should have asked who she was. There is nothing bold, assuming or affected in her manner. Her husband's sister was along with her. In the Tribune above, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... and the breath of sweet water-lilies, heaped in a great bowl upon the communion table of common stained cherrywood, floated up and filled the place. The minister, a quiet, gray-haired man, stayed his foot an instant at that simple altar, before he went up the few steps to the desk. He had a sermon in his pocket from the text, "The hairs of your heads are all numbered." He changed it at the moment in his mind, and, when presently he rose to preach, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and feeling assured that your prayers and kind wishes have followed us through "changing skies," as we have sped across "distant seas,"—upon our safe return, I am truly happy in being able to imitate the custom of mariners of more sunny climes, and to place this offering of affection upon the altar of Gratitude. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... slept, Pericles dreamed a dream which made him resolve to go to Ephesus. His dream was, that Diana, the Goddess of the Ephesians, appeared to him, and commanded him to go to her temple at Ephesus, and there before her altar to declare the story of his life and misfortune; and by her silver bow she swore, that if he performed her injunction, he should meet with some rare felicity. When he awoke, being miraculously refreshed, he told his dream, and that ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... found, to his utter mortification, that he was driving matters somewhat too fast, and that his daughter's health must unquestionably be restored before he could think of outraging humanity and public decency by forcing her from the sick bed to the altar. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... foreboding that he would not be permitted to attain the end of his labours, or to see otherwise than afar off the promised land. When he left Carthage he enjoined his son Hannibal, nine years of age, to swear at the altar of the supreme God eternal hatred to the Roman name, and reared him and his younger sons Hasdrubal and Mago—the "lion's brood," as he called them—in the camp as the inheritors of his projects, of his ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and Prince Martin Lubomirski met us at the palace gate.... The night was dark, the wind blew, and the cold was intense. We went on foot to the Carmelite church, because it is the nearest: our good priest already stood before the altar. If the prince royal had not supported me, I should have fallen many times ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... profusely decorated with vines, ferns and potted plants, while a wealth of cut flowers adorned the altar, the front of the new organ, which rose towering to the very top of the church, and the pews ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... islands and channelled zones of the alabaster, and the time-stains on its translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the color of seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light fades away into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye can hardly trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of Christ: but on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and there are seen upon it two great circles, one surrounded by the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... called Azariah, to succeed him at sixteen years old. Uzziah met with such success at first, that his heart was lifted up, and in his pride he endeavoured to intrude into the priest's office, and burn incense on the Altar; but even while striving with the High Priest, the leprosy broke out white on his brow, setting him apart, to live as an outcast from religious services for ever. His son Jotham became the governor of the kingdom during his lifetime, and afterwards reigned ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Two ladies have come with posies in tall silver vases and a white altar cloth for this table. The preacher's coming over from Folsom, and there will be church held here in one hour. He's a busy man today. An infant will be given a license to travel the long and uncertain road ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... wise, sagacious, brilliant as you are, you have employed your gifts to reconcile yourself to a common lot. Still let me look up to you when I would despise the circles in which you live, and say: 'On that pedestal an altar is yet placed, to which the heart may bring the offerings of ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which enjoys such unhappy popularity at this hour; which, under the mask of Science, and under the specious name of Progress, is spreading like a fatal contagion through the length and breadth of the land; and which, if suffered to go unchastised and unchecked, will end by shaking both the Altar and the Throne!.... Look well to it, Sirs, if you care for the safety of the Ark of GOD. For my part,—like one of old time whose words I am not worthy to take upon my lips,—"I cannot hold my peace: because thou ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... not tell me so; he is not open with me, as I with him, but I see his heart. And yet—figure to yourself—he has but to keep silence, and I must go away, I must give up all. I am still married—Ou!—while he—But he is noble, he is sublime. He sacrifices love on the altar of honor, of truth. He tells all to me, his rival. He shows me I am free. He thinks I do not know his heart. But it is not only he who can be noble." (Dare smote himself upon the breast.) "I also can lay my heart upon the altar. Ruth,"—with great solemnity—"do you love ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... he is called, who bears the candle or taper in God's ministries when the Gospel is read, or when the housel is hallowed at the altar: not to dispel, as it were, the dim darkness, but, with that light, to announce bliss, in honour of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... case," said the barrister for the Crown, looking his softest at the lovely Rachel, "but the importance I attach to the evidence I believe you will give, is so great that I am forced to sacrifice my private feelings upon the altar of Justice. I believe you know ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... vastness was damp like a vault. And she lay in the midst listless, heavy-lidded, apart, with the half-smile, as it seemed, of some secret mirth. Round her the great candles smoked and flickered, and mass was sung at the High Altar for her soul's repose. Sandro stood alone, facing the shining altar, but looking fixedly at Simonetta on her couch. He was white and dry—parched lips and eyes that ached and smarted. Was this the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... whereof, and the assistance of that Spirit that seemed to inspire the author, the reader may attain habits of peace and piety, and all the gifts of the Holy Ghost and Heaven: and may, by still reading, still keep those sacred fires burning upon the altar of so pure a heart, as shall free it from the anxieties of this world, and keep it fixed upon things that are above. Betwixt this George Herbert and Dr. Donne, there was a long and dear friendship, made up by such a ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... think that our only safety will be in first framing certain models for composers. One of these models shall be as follows: If when a sacrifice is going on, and the victims are being burnt according to law—if, I say, any one who may be a son or brother, standing by another at the altar and over the victims, horribly blasphemes, will not his words inspire despondency and evil omens and forebodings in the mind of his father and ...
— Laws • Plato
... gold, enriched with jewels so large and rare, that of itself it would have constituted a prize of great magnitude. Yet this was left untouched, though suspended in a little oratory that had been magnificently adorned by the elder of the maiden sisters. There was an altar, in itself a splendid object, furnished with every article of the most costly material and workmanship, for the private celebration of mass. This crucifix, as well as everything else in the little closet, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... such a degree, the condition you imposed upon me is fulfilled, and to-morrow I hope through your favor to receive the sweetest reward. Tell Donna Anna, my adored betrothed, that I would fain lead her to the altar early to-morrow morning, for the d'Avennes are influential and the following day my safety will perhaps be imperilled. As for the rest, I hope I may be permitted to rely upon the fairness and generosity ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bearded god, probably squatting, with horns from each of which hangs a torque, is represented on an altar found at Paris.[87] He is called Cernunnos, perhaps "the horned," from cerna, "horn," and a whole group of nameless gods, with similar or additional attributes, have ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... high altar, on the left, in the aisle along the Rue de St. Sulpice; the lamps of the choir organ were lighted. Far off, in the almost empty nave, an ecclesiastic was preaching. He recognized, by the unctuousness of his delivery, and his oily accent, a well-fed priest who poured on his audience, according ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Empress a present of a valuable diamond cross, of which he had pillaged the statue of a Madonna, he obtained the dignity of a grand vicar, to the great edification, no doubt, of all those who had seen him before the altar or in the camp, at the brothel, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... woman rather sternly, "and I am greatly displeased at your stubbornness. Ordinarily I would not ask you to betray any of your schoolmates, but in this instance I am justified, and you are making a serious mistake in sacrificing your duty upon the altar of school-girl honor." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... ON WEDDING-DAY. It is not customary for the bride to see the groom on the wedding-day till she meets him at the altar. ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... as the parents seemed to have very little appreciation of danger from this source. Had greater vigilance been exercised, we doubt not that the discovery of the vice at the beginning would have resulted in the salvation of these two beautiful boys, who were sacrificed upon the altar of concupiscence. Two or three years after we first saw the cases, we heard from them, and though still alive, their condition was almost too horrible for description. Three or four similar cases have come to ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... laced with gold: but this was taken off by the bridegroom, who threw over her shoulders a fur cloak of American sables, valued at fourscore guineas, a present equally agreeable and unexpected. Thus accoutred, she was led up to the altar by Mr Dennison, who did the office of her father: Lismahago advanced in the military step with his French coat reaching no farther than the middle of his thigh, his campaign wig that surpasses all description, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... giving this Sufficient thing — to travel still Over the plain, beyond the hill, Unhesitating through the shade, Amid the silence unafraid, Till, at some sudden turn, one sees Against the black and muttering trees Thine altar, wonderfully white, Among the ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... while Blaithmaic was at the altar, having just offered the Holy Sacrifice, the pagans rushed upon him and the few companions who remained, and slaughtered all except Blaithmaic. They offered him life and liberty if he would show them the shrine of St. Columba with its treasure of gold and gems. ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... as pure gold! She knows not the meaning of fear, and rides an Arab charger, who knows every movement of her mistress's hand. She is betrothed to the scion of a noble house, and will shortly be led to the hymeneal altar, when we shall attend as maids of honour, clad in the sheen of satin and glimmer of pearls. Gabriella, the second, is mignonne in stature, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... good as gold on top, and one does poker-work, and another binds books, and a third embroiders altar-cloths, and the fourth knits ties—all for charities, and they ask every one to subscribe to them directly they come to the house. The tie and the altar-cloth ones were sitting working hard in the drawing-room—Kirstie and ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... pleurisy, and being given over by everybody, received from the god this oracle, that he should come and take the ashes off his altar, and mixing them with wine, apply them to his side. Which done, he was cured, and returned thanks to the god, and the people congratulated him ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... flat embroidery—altar covers, palls, bishops' vestments... With little grasses, with flowers, little crosses. In winter, you'd be sitting near a casement; the panes are small, with gratings, there isn't much light, it smells ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... money to help her, and not expect to find her name down in his will. He felt the honour of a family alliance with me as sincerely as ever. But he must abide by the conditions that he had stated. On those terms, he would be proud to give me the hand of Regina at the altar, and proud to feel that he had done his duty by his adopted child. I let him go on till he had run himself out—and then I asked quietly, if he could tell me the way to increase my income to two thousand a year. How do you think he ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... which seemed all the more imperative because newly discovered. Her zeal, indeed, for the time being was like that of an early Christian, who was more willing than not to die for his faith. Rena had fully and firmly made up her mind to sacrifice her life upon this altar. Her absorption in the work had not been without its reward, for thereby she had been able to keep at a distance the spectre of her lost love. Her dreams she could not control, but she banished Tryon as far as possible from ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... many a year Saint Christopher Served God in many a land; And master painters drew his face, With loving heart and hand, On altar fronts and churches' walls; And peasants used to say,— To look on good Saint Christopher Brought luck ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... no reason to believe that the staid and devout Sophronia would have loved her adorer at all, but for the circumstance that first dooms them both to a shocking death, and then sends them, with perfect warrant, from the stake to the altar. Clorinda is an Amazon, the idea of whom, as such, it is impossible for us to separate from very repulsive and unfeminine images; yet, under the circumstances of the story, we call to mind in her ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... not averse to easing her mind of. I am not quite sure, in fact, that I could find it possible to lend an ear to the gossipings of a servant. And yet—and yet, there are a few things I'd like to find out. And dignity may still be slaughtered on the altar of curiosity. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... feeling and passion that the human face could express, and she would insure its truthfulness to life by copying life itself—the reality. Dennis Fleet was the human victim that she was offering on the altar of her ambition. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... him, they say is still preserved among the inhabitants of Delos, consisting in certain measured turnings and returnings, imitative of the windings and twistings of the Labyrinth. And this dance, as Dicaearchus writes, is called among the Delians, the Crane. This he danced round the Ceratonian Altar, so called from its consisting of horns taken from the left side of the head. They also say that he instituted games in Delos, where he was the first that began the of giving a palm ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... collected a fresh heap of twigs and leaves in the lap of her gown, groping in the dusk for them; and his first sight of her had been as she stood high emptying them in a red stream to feed the flames. A witch she seemed, pouring sacrifice on that wild altar, while the light of it danced upon her face and figure. Having gained the ledge of the second cascade, he anchored himself on good foothold and stared up, catching breath before ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Dead, where no one ventured except in high noon. Cattle were slain in honour of Thor, the God who watched over forays, and likewise a great boar for Frey. The blood was caught up in the sacred bowls, from which the people were sprinkled, and smeared on the altar of blackened fir. Then came the oath-taking, when Ironbeard and his Bearsarks swore brotherhood in battle upon the ship's bulwarks, and the shield's rim, and the horse's shoulder, and the brand's ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... strange room, his eyes staring and fearful, he would reach suddenly for Anna, embracing her almost as if she were beside him. Her smile that forever shone upon him like the light of lilies and candles from a sad, quiet altar; her words that forever flowed like a dream from her heart, the warmth of her body that she offered him as if it no longer existed for herself—to these his loneliness sought vainly to carry him. And he would find ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... be repaired by marriage. They threatened the elector they would wash out this stain in his blood and their sister's, unless he either abandoned all further connexion with the countess, or consented to re-establish her reputation at the altar. The elector, indifferent to all the consequences of this step, listened to nothing but the voice of love. Whether it was in consequence of his previous inclination to the reformed doctrines, or that the charms of his mistress alone ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... their Christian flocks, and their own brother pastors? Have not such men been made bishops to administer in temples in which (if the patriotic donations have not already stripped them of their vessels) the church-wardens ought to take security for the altar plate, and not so much as to trust the chalice in their sacrilegious hands, so long as Jews have assignats on ecclesiastic plunder, to exchange for the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... she had been kneeling to pray, alone, in a dark, devastated church, trembling, and fearing the darkness, not daring to approach the unseen altar; and that then her husband's hand had lighted all the high tapers one by one, so that the church was filled with radiance and the divine made manifest to ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... weep. Her face was very pale. But it was set and expressionless. Save for its big eyes it seemed a lifeless mask. The eyes alone were alive. And never for one instant did they move from the flower banked casket in front of the altar rail. They were tearless. But in their soft depths lurked the awed, unbelieving horror of a little child's that is for the first time brought face to face with the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... architecture of debased wedding-cake style, thick with innumerable elastic-legged, goggled-eyed, beastly, indecent Hindoo divinities. Thence to a Roman Catholic church in St Thome, the old Portuguese quarter—very pretty and simple in appearance. The half near the altar full of veiled European nuns in white and buff dresses. Nearer the door, where we sat, were native women and children, mostly in red, a few of them with antique European black bonnets and clothes; and in their withered old faces you could ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the land of luncheons and dinners, to the country of thought and vision." But, alas! he does not reflect on the fact that the god Belial does not feed all his votaries; that he has his elect; that the altar of his inner-temple too often smokes with no sacrifice of which his poor meagre priests may partake. They must uphold the Divinity which has been good to them, and not suffer his worship to ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... in her, son. That family is like a secret sanctuary; and she is the holy thing behind the altar. She's unattainable." ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... the fourteenth century chiefly to its brewers, at times five hundred or more in number, one hundred and twenty-six of whom supplied the market of Amsterdam alone. Not only representatives of the higher industrial arts, such as goldsmiths, metal workers, picture carvers, paternoster makers, and altar makers, but shoemakers and other handicraftsmen were to be found in the Far North, which, at that time, was still somewhat deficient in these matters. There is report of a worthy shoemaker, who, after ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... the altar and read aloud the sixty-seventh Psalm—Michael had requested it in preference to the hundred and twenty-eighth, which is perhaps the more usual—Hadassah saw the bride and bridegroom smile happily to each other. They smiled, because Michael had often read ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... that Miss Fancy was illustrious in the press of the United States as having been engaged to be married more often than any other actress. Yet she had never got as far as the altar, though once she had reached the church-door—only to be swept away from it by a cyclone which unhappily finished off the bridegroom. (What grey and tedious existences Eve and Sissie had led!) Her penultimate engagement had been to the late ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... your valor won. Let independence be our boast, Ever mindful what it cost; Ever grateful for the prize, Let its altar reach the skies. ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... that cut her to the heart. Still, her love for him was so intense that she obeyed his order. Soon after she took the vows; and in the convent chapel, shaken with sobs, she knelt before the altar and assumed the veil of a cloistered nun. Abelard himself put on the black tunic of a Benedictine monk and entered the Abbey ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... just gods! With righteous grace On me, on me look down! Grant not to youth its heart's unchaste desire, But, swiftly spurning lust's unholy fire, Bless only love and willing wedlock's crown The war-worn fliers from the battle's wrack Find refuge at the hallowed altar-side, The sanctuary divine,— Ye gods! such refuge unto me provide— Such sanctuary be mine! Though the deep will of Zeus be hard to track, Yet doth it flame and glance, A beacon in the dark, 'mid clouds of chance That wrap mankind Yea, though the counsel fall, undone it shall not be, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... in their prayers and on the very steps of the altar by Holy Church, were soon able to come together again under the spacious, hospitable roof of Herr Kappler, the wirth. Innumerable clean wooden tables, forms, and stiff, high-legged wooden chairs were ranged up stairs and down stairs and in the orchard ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... back from the river's brink, as she had so often done before. Cold had settled in all the broken places of his poor body, and he slipped away from her, a sacrifice to his fight against evil on the altar of his nation's good. In his feverish wanderings he returned to the tongue of his childhood, the beautiful, dulcet Mohawk. Then recollecting and commanding himself, he would weakly apologize to Lydia with: "I forgot; I thought it was my mother," and almost his last words were, "It ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... It was Miss Fotheringay. The year before she had been led to the altar by Sir Charles Mirabel, G.C.B., and formerly envoy to the Court of Pumpernickel, who had taken so active a part in the negotiations before the Congress of Swammerdam, and signed, on behalf of H.B.M., the Peace ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was finished, and the minister was opening his lips to say: "Let us pray." Straight down the aisle came Kate, her bare, gold head crowned with a flash of light at each window she passed. She paused at the altar, ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and the careless observer would miss those initials altogether and would be contemptuously inquiring, "Who did this old daub, I wonder?" And nobody would know who did the old daub, or that the old daub for thirty years had been an altar for undying affection, and also a distinguished specimen—admired by a whole generation of townsfolk—of the art ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... this Realm; wherefore all you who have come this day to do your homage, are you willing to do the same?" Ringing acclamations of "God save the King," to the sound of trumpets strongly blown, greeted this part of the ceremony. The Bible, Patina, Chalice and Regalia were then borne to the Altar, and the Communion service of the Church of England proceeded with. Then followed the taking of the Coronation Oath, the Archbishop of Canterbury first asking His Majesty if he was willing to do so and receiving an affirmative reply. The questions and answers were as follows, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... the evening, there crept into the church a little figure familiar to the painted saints and the waxen Virgin. But to-day it wore a changed aspect. It moved slowly at first, reluctantly; the brilliant little face was pale; the eyes wild with torture. A moment it stood before the altar, and then flung up its arms with a ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... by a gilt figure of Christ, made of lead, by Clodion. Between the pillars, we remark two marble altars, each ornamented with a white marble statue. That to the right is the statue of the Virgin, a much esteemed sculpture by Lecomte. This altar has retained the name autel da vaeu (or the altar of the vow) since 1637, on account of a grand procession, which took place at that time, to obtain the cessation of the plague. The procession, in reentering the church stopped before this altar, ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... and earnestly did he work, so lost was his mind that he never heard the accustomed warning sound which announces that the Museum is about to close. Hidden behind an altar as he was, in his distant, shadowed corner, the guardian of the room never saw him as he cast a last perfunctory glance about the place before departing till the Saturday morning; for the morrow was Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath, on which the Museum remains shut, and he would not be ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... time gone by, when thought of Christ Made His Yoke easy and His Burden light; When my heart stirred within me at the sight Of Altar spread for awful Eucharist; When all my hopes His promises sufficed, When my Soul watched for Him by day, by night, When my lamp lightened and my robe was white, And all seemed loss, except the Pearl unpriced. Yet, since He calls me still with ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... conscience. It had been much easier to be quite frank with Isabella, whose love for Francis swept aside every scruple, every obstacle, but with Marion it was different. It was not that she could not understand the power of love, or was incapable of sacrificing herself on love's altar; she was essentially a woman who knew love at its very best and strongest, and who would at any time have laid down her life for the beloved; but there was another thing more precious to her than life, and that was righteousness. She had in her some of the stuff of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... apparent, however, that there was no time to be lost. I beckoned Josh and his wife out into the kitchen, and left Father Friday to hear her confession. Soon he recalled us. I have but to close my eyes to see it all as if it were yesterday: the altar hastily arranged upon a small deal table; the flickering tallow dips, the only light to do homage to the divine Guest; the angelic expression of the dying girl as she received ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... village where God's holy temple has been polluted by money-changers and them that sell doves. Many a sweet little dove of a girl is made by her father and mother, and other old money- changers, to walk up to God's holy altar, and swear to a lie. They think her tellin' that lie, makes the infamous bargain more sacred, makes the infamous life they have drove ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... free the city from the ghoul, beyond which nothing could be done, had been utterly unavailing, successful as they had proved in every other known case of the kind. For, urged as well by various horrid signs about his grave, which not even its close proximity to the altar could render a place of repose, they had opened it, had found in the body every peculiarity belonging to a vampire, had pulled it out with the greatest difficulty on account of a quite supernatural ponderosity; which rendered the horse which had killed him—a strong ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... mutual agreement, they went to church, and as there was no priest to marry them, and nobody to witness the plighting of their faith, they stepped alone together to God's altar, and extended to each other a hand, whilst Halgrim said with a solemn voice, "In the name of God the Father, and of the Son, and ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... churchyard; but the spirits which hold her under their spell will seek in every way to hinder her deliverance. On the Mueggelsberg is, or was (for it is said to be now destroyed), a large stone under which a treasure lies. It was called the Devil's Altar; and at night it often seemed, from the neighbouring village of Mueggelsheim, to be in a blaze; but on drawing near the fire would vanish from sight. At Koepenick, another village not far off, it was called the Princesses' ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the roof with his head; around him were a hundred Nereids, riding on dolphins. Outside the temple were placed golden statues of all the descendants of the ten kings and of their wives; there was an altar too, and there were palaces, corresponding to the greatness and glory both of the ...
— Critias • Plato
... prince, evinced such marks of tenderness, that Hamlet could not but perceive the depth of his conquest. He was not insensible to her attractions; and receiving the king's assent, in the course of a few days led her to the nuptial altar. Amidst all joys, he was, however, like a perturbed ghost that could not rest; and before many suns had rose and set, he obtained a hard wrung leave from his bride, once more set sail, and appeared at Elsineur ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... these poulps can draw down vessels, but a certain Olaus Magnus speaks of an octopus a mile long that is more like an island than an animal. It is also said that the Bishop of Nidros was building an altar on an immense rock. Mass finished, the rock began to walk, and returned to the sea. The rock was a poulp. Another Bishop, Pontoppidan, speaks also of a poulp on which a regiment of cavalry could manoeuvre. Lastly, the ancient naturalists speak of monsters whose mouths were like gulfs, and which were ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... most magnificent. It is built in the Gothic style, with a fine large tower rising above half-a-dozen smaller ones. There are other churches with Gothic towers, but these edifices are all extremely simple in the interior, with the exception of the Armenian church, which has the wall near the altar crowded with pictures ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... violin, and is said to have added something to the development of its technique. An anecdote is told of him to the effect that one day during mass a theme for a fugue struck him. He immediately quitted the altar at which he was officiating, for he united clerical with musical duties, and, hastening to the sacristy to write down the theme, afterwards returned and finished the mass. For this he was brought before the Inquisition, but being considered only as a "musician," a term synonymous with "madman," ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... you please, the supernatural principle; or, as our scientists would say, with proper environments, "That have the divine initial impulse," but as our fathers would have said, "They got through at the altar"; born of God, and then cleansed of God in the true process of education and faith, they matured at the harvest. God gives us the start and the cleansing, and we have to do all the rest of it. He will give us opportunity for growth by ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... waistcoats. And there were liberal touches of crimson toward the chancel, for the pulpit and Mr. Donnithorne's own pew had handsome crimson cloth cushions; and, to close the vista, there was a crimson altar-cloth, embroidered with golden rays by ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... warlike Aztec race in Nicaragua held that the shades of those who died in their beds went downward and to naught; but of those who fell in battle for their country to the east, "to the place whence comes the sun."[246-1] In ancient Mexico not only the warriors who were thus sacrificed on the altar of their country, but with a delicate and poetical sense of justice that speaks well for the refinement of the race, also those women who perished in child-birth, were admitted to the home of the sun. For are not they ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Protestants they could not countenance any additional ceremonial of a like nature. Lady Burton next visited Ilkeston, in Derbyshire, where she had implored "Our Lady of Dale" to bring about her husband's conversion. Entering the Catholic Church there, she knelt before the altar and cried "Here I asked! Here I obtained! Our Lady of Dale, deliver his ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... objects such books tend; and who would hesitate at any sacrifice of his prejudices in favor of privacy, when such is the end to be obtained? Breathes there the man with soul so dead who would not lay upon the altar his father, his mother, his sisters, not to say his uncles and cousins, nay, the inmost sanctities of his home, to enable American boys to fasten their eyes upon the White House? Would he refuse, at the call of patriotism, to spread before the public the very secrets ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Gout was added to his troubles; then he was palsied; and he died at Westminster, at the age of sixty-six, on September 11, 1677. He was buried in St. Margaret's Church, by the grave of Sir Walter Raleigh, on the south side of the altar. ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... mad? You're idle Till they have forced him To cancel his late lawless bond he sealed At the high altar to his Florentine strumpet, And in his bed ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... enhances the impression. The meanness of its appointments—the bare and scanty pulpit, with the paltry painted pillars on either side—the women's gallery with its great heavy curtain—the men's with its unpainted benches and dingy front—the tottering little table at the altar, with the commandments on the wall above it, scarcely legible through lack of paint, and dust and damp—so unlike the velvet and gilding, the marble and wood, of a modern church—are strange and striking. There is one object, too, which rivets the attention ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... never in a place of worship so gorgeous as this. Over the main altar there is a magnificent picture on the largest scale, purporting to represent the Progress of Civilization from Christ's day to Bonaparte's, Napoleon being the central figure in the foreground, while the Saviour and the Virgin ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... all three entered. The building had considerable architectural pretensions. A light groining sprang from six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from the centre of the vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a round end, embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in relief, and pierced by many little windows shaped like stars, trefoils, or wheels. These windows were imperfectly glazed, so that the night-air circulated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to some ears, but is it really so? When a man has all but immolated himself for ten or eleven months, it may be, on the altar of business, art, and social duty, is a tremendous thirst for Nature and solitude altogether selfish? We think not. And evidently MacRummle thought not, as he wandered one soft, delightful morning, rod in hand, down ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... procession falling off to the right and left, to the side aisles, and mixing for the time with the spectators. As the prisoners entered the Cathedral, they were led into their seats, those least guilty sitting nearest to the altar, and those who were condemned to suffer at the stake being placed the farthest ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... might, if revealed, attaint the lady's character. I therefore choose to keep them to myself. It is very certain that Mildred was forthwith accepted, and that, after a courtship of three months, he led to the altar a woman of whose beauty and talents a monarch might justly have been proud. It is not to the purpose of this narrative to describe the wedding guests and garments—the sumptuous breakfast—the continental tour. It was a fair scene to look ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... leastways, if it ain't quite blue, it's a much lighter black than the rest of the sky, and that's something. Eat a bit of Perrigorge pie, or a thin wafer of a slice off that Strasbog 'am, Miss Laura, do now. You'll be ready to drop with feelin' faint when you get to the altar-rails, if you persist on bein' married on a empty stummick, Miss Laura. It's a moriel impossible as you can look your best, my precious love, if you enter the church in a state of starvation, just like one of them respectable beggars wot pins a piece ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... bee. Here we fly from the dull uniformity, the polished monotony of Europe, to the racy freshness of an original, unchanged country, where antiquity treads on the heels of to-day, where Paganism disputes the very altar with Christianity, where indulgence and luxury contend with privation and poverty, where a want of all that is generous or merciful is blended with the most devoted heroic virtues, where the most cold-blooded cruelty is linked with the fiery ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the monastery, under whose silent shadows this murderous duel had taken place, roused by the clashing of swords and the angry shouts of combatants, issued out with torches to find one only of the four officers surviving. Every convent and altar had a right of asylum for a short period. According to the custom, the monks carried Kate, insensible with anguish of mind, to the sanctuary of their chapel. There for some days they detained her; but then, having furnished her with a horse and some provisions, they turned her adrift. Which ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... into the cathedral in 597 by Gregory II., bishop of Girgenti. Both temples belong to the best period of the Doric style and are among the finest in existence. In front of the former, as in front of those of Heracles and Zeus, stood a huge altar for burnt offerings, as long as the facade of the temple itself. The cella of the temple of Heracles underwent considerable modifications in Roman times, and the discovery in it of a statue of Asclepius seems to show that the cult of this deity ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... into a cough and tried to smile.) "I would like to ask you, however, HOW you would like it to be divided. There are a number of worthy causes: the furnishing of the church, which is in charge of the Ladies' Aid Society; they are very hard workers, the ladies of our church. And there is the Altar Guild, which has the keeping of the altar in order. They are mostly young girls, and they used to wash my things—I mean the vestments" (blushing)—"but they—they were so young they were not careful, and my wife thought she had best wash the—vestments herself, but she allowed them ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... cheer us. Mont Blanc has the smile of the morning sun to greet us withal. Monte Rosa chides us for not partaking of her prepared visions. The kingdoms of the world—France, Switzerland, Italy—are at our feet. One hundred and twenty snow-peaks flame like huge altar piles in the morning sun. The exhilarant air gives ecstasy to body, the new visions intensity of feeling to soul. The Old World has sunk out of sight. This is Mount Zion, the city of God. New Jerusalem has come down out ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... in darkness. But already some poor men were waiting in the courtyard of the Loove, to whom Charles gave alms on his way to early Mass in the Church of St. Donatian. Then he went along a private passage which led into the church, and knelt in prayer before the Lady Altar. It was his custom to give help to the needy when in church, and he had just put some money into the hands of a poor woman, when suddenly she called out: 'Beware, Sir Count!' He turned quickly round, and there, sword in hand, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... are willing to act the part of traitors to our laws and Constitution, for the sake of profitable offices; and they are willing to sacrifice the Protestant Religion, on the ancient and profligate altar at Rome, if they may but rise to distinction on ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... The altar and the throne being deposited on the sward, the priestess offered sacrifice, hymning the praise of the goddess with mountain lungs. Then followed the dance of the haymakers, as in the preceding exhibition, and the train ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... splintered stone, Martha is literally entombed. Her life is sacrificed on the altar of devotion. She has lived a Christian and ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... authorship as to forego the pleasure of a ball or evening entertainment. Little wonder, when one looks back at the brilliant young officer surrounded and petted by the great hostesses of Russia. On the other hand, he was no devotee at the literary altar. No patron of literature could claim him as his constant visitor; no inner circle of men of letters monopolised his idle hours. Afterwards, when he left the capital and settled in the country, he was almost ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... midst of a more advanced religious development, an original relationship with the like conceptions of the other Semites. Fifthly, even in the orthodox Jahveh-worship, some symbols, as the twelve oxen in the porch of the temple,[25] the horns of the altar for burnt-offerings,[26] perhaps also the in part oxlike form of the cherubim,[27] point to an earlier worship of the deity under the form of an ox, the symbol of the highest might, especially among ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... this spot, upon an altar placed between the two stelae, that the commemorative ceremonies were celebrated, and the provisions renewed on certain days fixed by the religious law. Groups of private tombs were scattered around,—the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... thy children dwindled, Therefore is thine altar bare; Wheat, and rye, and millet spindled, And the fruits ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... Cathedral, at the door stood the Archbishop with a horn of oil in his hand, accompanied with other bishops, superintendents, and many clergymen. He received the Prince at the church door, and conducted him up to the high altar, where they had prayers, and then the Archbishop anointed the Prince with the oil. They put upon him the royal apparel, put the crown upon his head, the sceptre in his right hand, and the ball into his ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... floor only appeared to be open to the public. Its tessellated pavement and ample courts suggested the idea of a temple where great multitudes might kneel uncrowded at their devotions; but from appearances about the place where the altar should be, I judged, that, if one asked the officiating priest for the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, his prayer would not be unanswered. The edifice recalled to me a similar phenomenon I had once looked upon,—the famous Caffe Pedrocchi at Padua. It was the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... generous than their Master, render all to Caesar; a cause seems sacred to them from the moment that they are asked to immolate themselves to it. To the ignominy of war they piously kindle the flame of their faith, and throw their bodies on the altar. The people bend their backs, and accept with a passive, ironic resignation.... "No need to borrow trouble." Ages and ages of misery have rolled over this stone, but in the end stones do wear ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... agony. With bowed head and uplifted hands, and with a voice trembling with almost uncontrollable emotion, he delivered one of the most fervent and impressive invocations ever heard by the audience. Had the dead body of the president been placed in front of the altar, the solemnity of the occasion could not have been greater. In the discourse that followed, Mr. Noble briefly sketched the early history of the president, and then devoted some time to the many grand deeds he had accomplished during the time he had been in the presidential ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... conclusion. There is no reason to believe that the staid and devout Sophronia would have loved her adorer at all, but for the circumstance that first dooms them both to a shocking death, and then sends them, with perfect warrant, from the stake to the altar. Clorinda is an Amazon, the idea of whom, as such, it is impossible for us to separate from very repulsive and unfeminine images; yet, under the circumstances of the story, we call to mind in her behalf the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... a tradition in this parish that on All-Hallows' Eve a Spirit announced from the altar the names of those who were doomed to die in the coming year. The Spirit was locally called Angelystor. Those who were anxious to know whether they or their neighbours had a longer time to live stood underneath the east window on that eve, and anxiously listened for the dreaded ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... entering from the bright sunshine of the piazza, I could scarcely see, so dim was the huge interior, but slowly my vision, rather bad since my strange adventure, grew accustomed to the half-darkness, and I saw that upon the high altar there were many long candles burning in their brass sconces and before the high altar three priests in ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... clergyman and the sudden peal of the organ in the well-known wedding march recalled my attention to the occasion itself, and as at that moment the bridegroom stepped from the vestry to await his bride at the altar, I was absorbed by his fine appearance and the air of mingled pride and happiness with which he watched the stately ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... principle of State-ownership than he is to-day with a British Parliament hostile to "Home Rule," but apparently not altogether unwilling to make the landlords of Ireland an acceptable burnt-offering upon the altar of imperial unity. Probably he sees this himself, and the existing state of things may not be wholly displeasing to him, as holding out a hope that the flame which he has been helped by British legislation to kindle in Ireland may already be taking hold ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... The spot is cool and pleasant. Round us are picketed elephants, camels, bullocks, and horses, all enjoying the shade. Our servants are cooking their food on the precincts; each is busy in front of his own little mud fireplace. On a larger altar greater sacrifices are being offered up for our breakfast. A crowd of nearly naked Bheels watch the rites and snuff the fragrant incense of venison from a respectable distance. Their leader, a broken-looking old man, ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... easily. "She's coming around," she replied as though she were used to discussing her private affairs with Patricia. "She is so pleased with my altar-piece in All Saints that she's ready to forgive me anything. Auntie is ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... scales that overlapped like a serpent's; the scales were roughly hammered gold and silver, richly chased, and studded thickly with gems—without any conjecture she knew them to be precious vessels that should have graced an altar, split, perhaps with a bloody cutlass, and beaten out into irregular plates to gratify some grim humor of the terrible old corsair in the long ago. Neither hinges, handle, lock, nor latch appeared on the surface; apparently the door was solidly embedded in the mighty rock itself. The giant ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... a nice present, though strictly necessary, you see. Oh, I haven't told you about the diamonds! Helena Desmond was so funny about them! 'Hilda,' she said, 'it was clear from the beginning that I must be offered up on the altar of diamonds. I detest diamonds. They are absolutely uninteresting; they are almost vulgar. Never mind, you have to have some, and nobody else will be stupid and commonplace enough to give them to you. I had hopes of your Aunt Emily, but she has expended herself in lace, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... and the tomb of the poet himself, near the southeast window, completes the impression of the scene. It is a plain brick altar tomb, covered with a blue slate slab, and, besides his own ashes, contains those of his mother and aunt. On the slab are inscribed the following lines by Gray himself: "In the vault beneath are deposited, in hope of a joyful resurrection, the remains of Mary Antrobus. She died unmarried, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... scarcely less afflicted than myself, determined to absent herself for some time from so fatal a place. She had a very fine estate in the neighbourhood of Gaeta. We embarked on board a galley of the country which was gilded like the great altar of St. Peter's at Rome. A Sallee corsair swooped down and boarded us. Our men defended themselves like the Pope's soldiers; they flung themselves upon their knees, and threw down their arms, begging of the corsair an absolution in ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... his mother's language and manner had at times made him suspect that she was not so well born as his father. But it was not the discovery that she was a tradesman's daughter that galled him; it was the thought that his father was bought for the altar out of the county jail! It was those cutting words, "Sold even your name." His face, before very crimson, became livid; his head sank on his breast. He walked towards the old gloomy house by Fairthorn's side, as one who, for the first ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have had a change of heart when they met again. Echo was young. Dick had wandered far. Both had lost touch with common interests. Jack Payson had entered her life as a factor. He was eager and impetuous; Dick was settled and world-worn by hardship and much physical suffering. Now Jack was at the altar racked with mental torture, while Dick waited in the garden for his traitorous friend. The innocent cause of the tragedy was sweetly and calmly replying to the questions of the marriage-ritual, while Jack was looking, as Allen said to ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... after a time, "you will see a considerable body of water. That is the upper part of Lake Balah, through which the canal passes. About a mile and a half distant is a lot of sandstone rocks like that of the Memnon statues. They appear to belong to an altar, and the inscription informs the visitor who can read it that they were parts of a temple erected by Seti I. in honor of his father, Ramses I., and completed by Ramses II., his son. There may have been a city here, but there are ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... Perkins, after this domiciliary visit, consented to go with our hero on Sunday to Kensington Gardens, Monday to Sadler's Wells, Tuesday on the water, Wednesday to the play, Thursday the Lord knows to what ball, Friday to Vauxhall, and on Saturday to—the altar! ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Your Government recommended him to the Duke of Ormond, and he thought they would grant it; and by the time it was refused, the fellowship by rigour is forfeited. I dined with Dr. Arbuthnot (one of my brothers) at his lodgings in Chelsea, and was there at chapel; and the altar put me in mind of Tisdall's outlandish would(16) at your hospital for the soldiers. I was not at Court to-day, and I hear the Queen was not at church. Perhaps the gout has seized her again. Terrible rain all day. Have oo such ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-Dieu. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... allegiance of the race by an appeal to the religious instinct; that all men naturally seek God, and long to know Him. But if we try to define the religious instinct, we shall find it a hard task. What might be called a religious instinct leads to human sacrifice upon the Aztec altar; directs the Hindu to cast the new-born child in the stream, the friend to sacrifice his best friend to a ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... possible delays. If so, there will be time for you to look around you, and think of the days when you wandered along the shore, hand in hand with your chosen one. You will, perhaps, go over those wanderings again—along the sands leading past Druse's olive grove to the altar ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... kerchief which had been her only headgear for years. The Carmelite meanwhile detached two heavy silver sconces from a great candelabrum and set them by her feet. But we could find no tinder-box to light the candles—big enough for an altar. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... religious motive held strong, and art was the servant of the Church. It taught the Bible truths, but it also embellished and adorned the interiors of the churches. All the frescos, mosaics, and altar-pieces had a decorative motive in their coloring and setting. The church building was a house of refuge for the oppressed, and it was made attractive not only in its lines and proportions but in its ornamentation. Hence the two motives of the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... to be read in the outward room, where hung a naked Venus. Mrs. Selwyn, bedchamber-woman in waiting, was one day ordered to bid the chaplain, Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, begin the service. He said archly, "And a very proper altar-piece is here, Madam!" Queen Anne had the same custom; and once ordering the door to be shut while she shifted, the chaplain stopped. The Queen sent to ask why he did not proceed. He replied, "he would not whistle the word of God ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... curious resemblance to the Liberalia of the ancient Romans, a festival in honor of Bacchus, which was celebrated every year on the 17th of March, when priests and priestesses, adorned with garlands of ivy, carried through the city wine, honey, cakes, and sweetmeats, together with a portable altar, in the middle of which was a small fire-pan, (foculus,) in which, from time to time, sacrifices were burnt. The altar has now become a booth, the foculus a caldron, the sacrifices are of little fishes as well as of cakes, and San Giuseppe has taken the place of Bacchus, Liber Pater; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... side of her bed stood a big yellow chest-of-drawers of lemon-wood, and a table which served at once as pharmacy and as high altar, on which, beneath a statue of Our Lady and a bottle of Vichy-Celestins, might be found her service-books and her medical prescriptions, everything that she needed for the performance, in bed, of her duties to soul and body, to keep the proper times for pepsin and for ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... beloved Victorine, she was certainly more composed. They had now reached the chapel of St. Medard where the Rosiere was to be crowned, and gradually did the procession enter the ready open doors. The Seigneur led Lisette to the high altar, where Monsieur le Prieur was ready to receive her. Here she was bid to kneel before the priest, and, for the first time that day did the cheek of Lisette turn paler than heretofore. She bent her beautiful head upon her bosom, whilst her ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... of becoming a soldier, and not to break her heart with grief and anguish. My mother begged and wept, my father scolded and threatened, and thus I was obliged to yield and be a dutiful son. Three days ago my father administered the sacrament to me, and I swore an oath to him at the altar to remain faithful to the avocation he had selected for me, and never ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... would have known of Achilles, Ulysses, and all the other Greek and Trojan chiefs? Who would have heard of all those great soldiers, the wise and the heroes of the earth, if they had not been placed amongst the stars and deified by the oblation of praise which has lighted the fire on the altar of the heart of illustrious poets and other singers, so that usually, the sacrificant, the victim and the sanctified deity, all mounted to the skies, through the hand and the vow of a worthy and ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... writers it became mere extravagance. Thus Phineas Fletcher—a cousin of the dramatist—composed a long Spenserian allegory, the Purple Island, descriptive of the human body. George Herbert and others made anagrams and verses shaped like an altar, a cross, or a pair of Easter wings. This group of poets was named, by Dr. Johnson, in his life of Cowley, the metaphysical school. Other critics have preferred to call them the fantastic or conceited school, the later Euphuists, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... remarked what a wonderful woman this was and poked fun at himself and at the new house, and asserted that Mary could be as simple as ever she liked, he insisted on thick soup for dinner and would not sacrifice his beloved old smoking jacket upon the altar of any ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... mountains just as grey and shadowy when evening falls. Nothing is changed—except ourselves. I expect to find a statue of Priapus or pastoral Pan, hung with wreaths of flowers—the meal cake, honey, and spilt wine upon his altar, and young boys and maidens dancing round. Surely, in some far-off glade, by the side of lemon-grove or garden, near the village, there must be still a pagan remnant of glad Nature-worship. Surely I shall chance upon some Thyrsis piping in the pine-tree shade, or Daphne flying from the arms of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... whole three verses, that I may by the way offer a conjectural emendation, purely my own, upon each: First, oris should be read aris, it being, as we see, Aen. ii. 513, from the altar of Jupiter Hercaeus that Aeneas fled as soon as he saw Priam slain. In the second line I would flatu for fato, since it is most clear it was by winds that he arrived at the shore of Italy. Jactatus, in the third, is surely as improperly applied to terris, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... derive a revenue from "those who ask them to offer the Holy Sacrifice 'for their special intention.'" In such cases it is customary to offer a sum, usually of two shillings, but sometimes of half-a-crown, which is intended both as a remuneration for the priest, and to cover the cost of altar requisites. ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... their souls, I, unhappy wretch, full of guilt, am justly denied any share of these comforts that are common to the Christian world. O my God, I am an unclean worm, a dead dog, a stinking carcass, justly removed from that society of saints who this day kneel about Thine altar. But, oh! suffer me to look toward Thy holy Sanctuary; suffer my soul again to be in the place where Thine honour dwelleth. Reject not the sacrifice of a broken heart, and do Thou be with me in secret, though I am not fit to appear in Thy public ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... the laws alone, for those you have strained 250 (I do not speak of you but as a single Voice of the many) somewhat beyond what I could enforce for my authority, Were I disposed to brawl; but, as I said, I have observed with veneration, like A priest's for the High Altar, even unto The sacrifice of my own blood and quiet, Safety, and all save honour, the decrees, The health, the pride, and welfare of the State. And now, sir, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... been left to her she would have found it to be very difficult to escape from the Castlewell difficulty. She would have escaped, she thought, though the heavens might have been brought down over her head. When the time had come for appearing at the altar, she would have got into the first train and disappeared, or have gone to bed and refused to leave it. She would have summoned Frank at the last moment, and would submit to be called the worst behaved young woman that had ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... refused to sacrifice ourselves upon the altar of Brown's originality. We decided to be content ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... wonder of erudition. His fame reached Italy, and at the request of Pope Sergius I. (687-701) he paid a visit to Rome, of which, however, there is no notice in his extant writings. On his return, bringing with him privileges for his monastery and a magnificent altar, he received a popular ovation. He was deputed by a synod of the church in Wessex to remonstrate with the Britons of Domnonia (Devon and Cornwall) on their differences from the Roman practice in the shape of the tonsure and the date of Easter. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and bishops, liquor-dealers and wine-bibbers dignified and honored as elders and deacons in churches, they called on the women to leave all such unholy organizations. Thus besieging legislators for a "Maine Law," demanding purity at the family altar, denouncing the Church for its apathy, and the clergy for their hostility to the public action of woman, this State Temperance Society roused the enmity of many classes, and was the target ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... contain no salt at all—"Sports," Hephaestio calls them. Of these devices may be mentioned the "Wings of Love" by Simmias, a Rhodian, who lived before 300 B.C. The verses are graduated so as to form a pair of wings. "The first altar," written by Dosiadas of Rhodes, is the earliest instance of a Greek acrostic, or of any one which formed words. An acrostic is a play upon spelling, as a pun is upon sound; and in both cases the complication ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... quatern. Hope had always her place at the domestic hearth. The garret was peopled with illusions; the wife promised herself that she would eclipse her neighbors with the splendor of her attire; the son saw himself drum-major, and the daughter felt herself carried toward the altar in the arms of her betrothed. To have a ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... think. Coming to an open Catholic church, he went in and prayed for enlightenment, the growing dusk of the interior, the single everlasting lamp before the repository of the chalice, and the high, white altar set with candles soothing ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... curb; and a young man with plastered hair and a gardenia led them, Mariana on his arm, to a place on the centre aisle. The church had a high nave newly vaulted in maple, and stained glass windows draped with smilax, garish in colour against electric lights. Above the altar a great illuminated cross maintained an unsteady flickering; and—it was unseasonably cold—heating steam pipes gave out ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... after a "company tea" wanted her supper: by a footpath through the churchyard, closely mown and planted with rosebushes: and so into the church, where, after dropping a hurried professional curtsey to the altar, she set about her evening duties. Isabel called herself the curate, but she did a good deal which is not expected of a curate, such as shutting windows and changing lesson-markers, propping up the trebles when they went astray in the pointing of the Psalms, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... consisted of three acts, showing the progress of courtship and marriage at the altar, country and town life with growing children, work, poverty, and final windup of the husband driven from home by the scolding wife, bruised in an alehouse, dead and followed to the graveyard by the Beadle, undertaker ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... refined, more winning. If he remained true to the little friend of his boyish years, his faith had been obscured for a moment by this superb apparition of a young girl's beauty, enshrined upon the altar of riches and endowed with those qualities which wealth alone could purchase. Anna, indeed, held him for a little while spellbound, and now he listened to Forrest as though a heresy against ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... they professed a hatred of the tyranny of Napoleon, were themselves the greatest tyrants in the universe, and whose sole aim in destroying Napoleon's power was to rivet the chains of slavery upon the inhabitants of the whole civilized world, and who have since sworn upon the altar of the Holy Alliance to maintain an indissoluble union, for the purpose of extinguishing every spark of freedom, wherever it may arise. Napoleon was the enemy, the successful enemy of these tyrants; and under his sway, despotic as it might ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... become a mother. How strange and unreasonable it seemed, that a young man of Edwards' position in society, with a lovely and loving wife, with business prospects of the most excellent character, could sacrifice all upon the altar of a base and ignoble ambition to be suddenly rich. That he could at one fell blow cast away the ties of kindred, the love of a devoted wife, the blissful anticipation of becoming a happy and proud father, ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... waiting for the decision of the "satrap," "devoted themselves to prayer and psalm-singing, and daily offered to God the sacrifice of the Saving Victim, having with them sacred vessels and a hallowed table to serve as an altar." ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... the night morbidly berating the American father who is so afraid of his wife that he lets her bully him into sacrificing their joint flesh and blood upon the altar of social ambition. She had said that her father was opposed to the match from the beginning. Then why, in the name of heaven, wasn't he man enough to put a stop to it? Why—But what use is there in applying whys to a man who doesn't know what God meant when He fashioned two sexes? ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... meets the bride at the altar, where he must take especial care to arrive in good ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... passed, and the chancellor promised I should be recompensed; strictly, however, forbidding me to take any revenge on the Prussian ambassador, I having sworn, in the first transports of anger, to punish him wherever I should find him, even were it at the altar's foot. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... power to make the life of the prisoners happy. But as the train pounded along in the darkness I seemed to see a face before me which I could not banish. It was the face of a Belgian, kneeling at the altar in the Catholic chapel, his eyes riveted on his Saviour on the Cross, his whole being tense in fervent supplication, his lips quivering in prayer. My companions had gone, but I was held spellbound, feeling "How long! How long!" was the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... took a seat in full view of the altar where the priest was saying Mass. Every shape and every colour of this church, its slightest characteristics, brought back an impression of long ago; the very wording of her childish thoughts was suddenly ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... now rolled out into the centre of the saloon, laid with a snowy-white damask cloth, and covered with the equipage for a banquet. At either corner were noble branches of solid silver candelabra, which would have graced an altar, as perhaps they had, and holding clusters of wax-lights, which shed their rays over the display below. In the centre arose a huge epergne of silver, fashioned into the shape of a drooping palm-tree, whose leaves were of frosted ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Hail, thou home circle, where, at day's decline, Her moulding power, her radiant virtues shine! Not in the church to rule or teach, her place; Not in the mart of trade, or senate halls; Not the wild, festive scene is hers to grace; Not Fashion's altar her its victim calls; Not here her field of triumph; but alone She moves the queen ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... years of life before him; and after repairing for a time to recruit his health at Montpellier, where then, as in after ages, the medical science eminently flourished, he in the autumn arrived at Vincennes, and after prostrating himself before the altar of St. Denis and restoring the oriflamme to the abbot, he proceeded to Paris, where he was received with profound respect. But the saint-king bore on his brow traces of the sorrow caused by the multiplied disasters of his expedition, and still wore ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... liveliest season of the year. It is then that the wild, demi-savage colonist leads the blushing half-breed girl to the altar, and the country about his house rings with the music of the sleigh bells, as his friends assemble to congratulate the happy pair, and dance for three successive days. It is at this season the hardy voyageurs rest from their toils, and, circling ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mr. Latham, usually so immovable, during the ceremony as he stepped back from the altar into the shadows, when he left Sylvia finally with Horace. His shoulders lost their squareness, his head drooped; but when I saw that it was to hide the tears that filled his eyes, I looked away. Father says he has seen this type of man, contracted by money-getting, hardened by selfish misunderstanding, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... far-off waters and gorsy hollows. At whatever season, at whatever hour you come, you are pretty sure to find one or two votaries—poets like Mrs. Barbauld, or commonplace people such as her friends—watching before this great altar of nature; whether by early morning rays, or in the blazing sunset, or when the evening veils and mists with stars come falling, while the lights of London shine far away in the valley. Years after Mrs. Barbauld wrote, one man, pre-eminent amongst poets, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... think,—I am quite sure,—the time you pushed that wheel up the hill. I adored you, Ben, at that moment. If you'd asked me to marry you on the spot I'd have responded, 'Yes, thank you, sir,' as one of my great-grandmothers did at the altar." ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... happy, proud, almost intoxicated with delight. She could find nothing to say in reply; her pride and her thirst for homage were satisfied. "I shall fail," she said, raising her beautiful black eyes, "but not as you beg me, for all this incense which you wish to burn on the altar of another divinity. Ah! sire, I too shall be jealous of it, and want restored to me; and would not that a particle of it should be lost in the way. Therefore, sire, with your royal permission, I will choose one who shall appear to me the least likely to ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... period Marguerite de Valois began to divide her existence between the most exaggerated devotional observances and the most sensual and degrading pleasures. Humbly kneeling before the altar, she would assist at several masses during the day; but at twilight she cast off every restraint, and careless of what was due, alike to her sex and to her rank, she plunged into the grossest dissipation; and after having played the guest at a riotous banquet, she might be seen sharing ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... figure who walks before them, a beardless boy, and yet with the frame and stature of a Hercules, towering, like Saul of old, a head and shoulders above all the congregation, with his golden locks flowing down over his shoulders? And why, as the five go instinctively up to the altar, and there fall on their knees before the rails, are all eyes turned to the pew where Mrs. Leigh of Burrough has hid her face between her hands, and her hood rustles and shakes to her joyful sobs? Because there was fellow-feeling of old in merry ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... a long time I thought that I loved you better than anything else; and so long as I believed in my affection for you, I told you that I loved you. I could have sworn it on the altar; but a day came ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the sacred altar strows? To all the seagods Charles an offering owes; A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain; A ram to you, ye ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... priest felt all this, as, melancholy and envious, he turned from the door in that November day, to find himself thoroughly alone. He now began seriously to muse upon those fancied blessings which men wearied with celibacy see springing, heavenward, behind the altar. A few weeks afterwards a notable change was visible in the good man's exterior. He became more careful of his dress, he shaved every morning, he purchased a crop-eared Welsh cob; and it was soon known in the neighbourhood that the only journey the cob was ever condemned to take was ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... purpose of keeping their wives and daughters from contact with the populace. The latter, swaying back and forth at the rear of the nave, with a noise like that of a rising surf, broke out into joyous acclamations as the archbishop was seen to come in. That dignitary seated himself near the high altar under a scarlet canopy, surrounded by his attendants, and three times blessed ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... Mr. Vereker, is somewhat overpowering, such magnanimity I find vastly touching. But Diana, I am assured, had no idea of permitting you thus to immolate yourself on the altar of duty." ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Jesus Christ is the Divine answer to this great and exceeding bitter cry of our suffering, struggling, sinful humanity. For the Cross is not merely an altar, but a battlefield, by far the greatest battlefield in all human history. That was the crisis of the conflict between good and evil which gives endless interest to the most insignificant human life, which is the source of the pathos and the tragedy, ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... the right to love me? When I promised a love I knew could be given to no other than to him? Why on the day of that fatal marriage did I see him only when I was about to leave the church? I would have broken off had I stood at the foot of the altar—I would have told him who was about to give me his name—ask me not to perjure myself! do not ask me to pledge you a faith I cannot keep! my heart, my soul, my love are his. I thought, alas! because he ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... appear at the altar: the good man of modest cloth takes his place, the ceremony commences; and as it proceeds, and the solemn words fall upon her ear, "Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," she raises her eyes upwards, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... and Bobsey and Winnie waked up for a time at the word "supper." Then we knelt around our hearth, and made it an altar to God, for I wished the children never to forget our need of His ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... who have a fondness for our incense and the sound of our sacrifice when it squeals upon the altar." ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Worship of Heaven by Yuan Shih-kai in 1914: Scene on the Altar of Heaven, with Sacrificial Officers clothed in costumes dating ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... we had no more powerful auxiliaries, and no more faithful executors of the will of the nation, than the women of Hungary. You know that in ancient Rome, after the battle of Cannae, which was won by Hannibal, the Senate called on the people spontaneously to sacrifice all their wealth on the altar of their fatherland. Every jewel, every ornament was brought forth, but still the tribune judged it necessary to pass a law prohibiting the ladies of Rome to wear more than half an ounce of gold, or particoloured splendid dresses. Now, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... actually succeeded in making an entry into Miss P-ml-co's mansion, where he stopped one week exactly; having time to win his bet, and to save the life of the lady, whom we hear he is about to lead to the altar. He disarmed the Prince of Borodino in a duel fought on Calais sands—and, it is said, appeared at the C—— club wearing his PLUSH COSTUME under a cloak, and displaying it as a proof that ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... personages priests or kings. Above all, the dignity of this magnificent permanent scene was in keeping with the devotional solemnity of the early theatre: when an inaugural sacrifice was celebrated upon an altar standing in front of the stage, and when the play itself was in the nature ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... was always dull now. She had lifted herself up to the altar, but there was no exaltation of sacrifice; possibly because she considered her sacrifice a punishment for her sin, but also because she was still physically and ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... Egbert set to work to assist the weeping monks in making preparations for their departure. A boat was laden with the relics of the saints, the muniments of the king, and the most precious vessels. The table of the great altar covered with plates of gold, which King Wichtlof had presented, with ten gold chalices, and many other vessels, was thrown into ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... prayer during the past week? What wanderer have we tried with love to lead to the Saviour? Have we given the cost of the trimmings of a dress? Have we made any sacrifices for Him who gave Himself for us? May I not ask you to-day here beside God's altar to consecrate all you have ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... is in the church another and a larger brass, from which it appears that Selwyn not only had a wife, but also eleven children, who are depicted in successive grandeur or gradation. There are monuments by Roubiliac and Chantrey in the church, and on the left side of the altar lies buried William Lilly, the great astrologer, the Sidrophel of Butler's "Hudibras." And look into the chancel. There is a tablet to his memory, which was put up by Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, who has left it in print that this "fair black marble stone" cost him 6 pounds 4s. 6d. When I was ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... Ado about Nothing is the same with the story of Ariodante and Ginevra in Ariosto; the secondary circumstances and development are no doubt very different. The mode in which the innocent Hero before the altar at the moment of the wedding, and in the presence of her family and many witnesses, is put to shame by a most degrading charge, false indeed, yet clothed with every appearance of truth, is a grand piece of theatrical effect in the true and justifiable ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... sena Torcuata, unica persona 20 que ya sabia en el mundo la historia del fatal pergamino, guardose muy bien de volver a mentarlo en toda su vida, por juzgar que todo aquello habia sido obra del diablo y consecuencia necesaria del trato de su marido con los enemigos del Altar y del Trono. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... vacant space, and he went on speaking in that direction as if he had been continuing the conversation with some third person in the room. "We shall part," he said, slowly and softly, "when the empty place is filled in Wincot vault. Then I shall stand with Ada before the altar in the Abbey chapel, and when my eyes meet hers they will see the tortured ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... chintz coat, allowing his beard and moustache to grow, and eating rice by handfuls from the general dish. Meantime he was hospitably entertained, the Armenian ladies came in a body to kiss his hand, and the priest placed him beside the altar in church, and incensed him four times over, for which he was not grateful on being told "it was for the honour of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the above categories may be mentioned the moors and open places affected by the Cornish fairies, and lastly the curious residences of the Kirkonwaki or Church-folk of the Finns. "It is an article of faith with the Finns that there dwell under the altar in every church little misshapen beings which they call Kirkonwaki, i.e., Church-folk. When the wives of these little people have a difficult labour, they are relieved if a Christian woman visits them and lays her hand upon them. Such service is always rewarded ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
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