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More "Fascination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... families of high position and honorable lineage. Such families are to those cities what the Knickerbockers are to New York. They give a gracious flavor to society; they are a link between the dim and heroic past and the dashing, eager, practical present; they add a dreamy fascination to the social landscape, like the lingering haze of morning illumined by the rays of the sun fast mounting to zenith. Where Duquesne stood, neither track nor mark remains of the volatile, daring and glory-loving race whose lily flag greeted the bearers ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... not crazy. I knew the old lady well, and at one time we were very good friends. She was the last daughter of an old, once prosperous family; a woman of bright, even brilliant mind, unhinged by misfortune, disappointment, loneliness, and the horrible fascination which an inherited load of litigation exercised upon her. The one diversion of her declining years was to let various parts and portions of her premises, on any ridiculous terms that might suggest themselves, to any tenants ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... happened to fit a certain vague feeling of uneasiness that possessed him. He laid it down on his desk, walked up and down behind his counter, and then returned and read it again. The sprawling words seemed to possess a fascination for him. He read them again and again, and turned them over and over in his mind. It was characteristic of his simple nature that he never once attributed the origin of the note to the humor of the young men with whom he was so familiar. He regarded ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... caused her to prefer to pass as much of her time as was possible in this desolate and unvisited spot. First, because Mr. Layard was less likely to find her when he called, and secondly, that for her it had a strange fascination. Indeed, she loved the place, clothed as it was with a thousand memories of those who had been human like herself, but now—were not. She would read the inscriptions upon the chancel stones and study ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... on the same attractive theme by Marie de France, the first woman, as M. de Roquefort says,who ever wrote French verse, the Sappho of her age.* Nor was Marie herself the only minstrel of that early time who yielded to the fascination of this legend. Two anonymous Trouveres of a little later period were unconsciously her rivals in the attempt. M. l'Abbe de la Rue, in his valuable work on Norman ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... herself slip, while she did so, to some doom as yet incalculable; she went on very much as she had done for Mr. Pitman and Mrs. Drack, with the rage of desperation and, as she was afterward to call it to herself, the fascination of the abyss. She didn't know, couldn't have said at the time, why his projected benevolence should have had most so the virtue to scare her: he would patronize her, as an effect of her vividness, if not of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... called principles of knight errantry. His greatest victories were won against overwhelming odds, at the head of followers who were resolved to conquer or die. And in three years he had conquered all Hindustan. His figure stands out with an extraordinary fascination, as an Oriental counterpart of the Western ideal of chivalry; and his autobiography is an absolutely unique record presenting the almost sole specimen of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... and power, and fascination, and I know not what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than children. So, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking at the rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy herself with her own thoughts as if ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... in living expresses itself in almost everything the Thoracic does, especially when he is young. Such people appear almost electrical. These are traits of great fascination and the Thoracic uses them freely upon ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... masculine and searching logic, the vast extent and variety of his research, the large stores of his affluent knowledge, marshalled and arranged with consummate skill and judgment, together with the fascination of his purely unaffected, earnest manner, the magic power of his unstudied action, and the thrilling intonations of his deep rich voice, rendered him, in his best days, "before public assemblies, almost irresistible." ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... its forked tongue played around its open mouth, flashing in the sunlight like a small lambent flame, while its eyes were intently fixed upon the bird. There was a clear, sparkling light about those eyes that was fearful to behold—they fairly flashed with their peculiar bending fascination. The poor sparrow was fluttering around a circle of some few feet in diameter, the circle becoming smaller at each gyration of the infatuated bird. She appeared conscious of her danger, yet unable to break the spell that bound her. Nearer and still ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... confined to the domain between the mountain range and the river; she was forbidden to ford the one or climb the other. Perhaps if such a prohibition had never been made Capitola would never have thought of doing the one or the other; but we all know the diabolical fascination there is in forbidden pleasures for young human nature. And no sooner had Cap been commanded, if she valued her safety, not to cross the water or climb the precipice than, as a natural consequence, she began to wonder what was in the valley behind the mountain ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... acts effects a strange fascination upon the mind and very often induces imitation of the same acts. When a suicide or murder, in fact any crime, is committed by a member of a family the other members either, according to their moral disposition, experience ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... the girl was watching him, and, with the fascination peculiar to such a situation, he could not forbear a quick glance at her. Interest and concern showed in the brown eyes, and she smiled frankly, as ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... stranger to the stirring impulses of a high ambition, though the world to him was as yet only a world of books, and all that he knew of the schemes of statesmen and the passions of the people, were to be found in their annals. Often had his fitful fancy dwelt with fascination on visions of personal distinction, of future celebrity, perhaps even of enduring fame. But his dreams were of another colour now. The surrounding scene, so fair, so still, and sweet; so abstracted from all the tumult of the world, its strife, its passions, and its cares: had fallen on his heart ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... which it was inextricably blended in his fancy were hers; she was more like his ideal than the other, though he owned that the other was a charming girl too, and that in the thin treble of her voice lurked a potential fascination which might have made itself ascendently felt if he had ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... flesh Beats the active ecstasy. In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer, The fascination of the quick, restless Creator moving through the mesh Of men, vibrating in ecstasy ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... its windows you look across the brown-red tiles to S. Miniato. The pictures, although so few, are peculiarly attractive, being the work of two very rare hands, Piero della Francesca (? 1398-1492) and Melozzo da Forli (1438-1494). Melozzo has here a very charming Annunciation in two panels, the fascination of which I cannot describe. That they are fascinating there is, however, no doubt. We have symbolical figures by him in our National Gallery—again hanging next to Piero della Francesca—but they are not the equal of these in charm, although very charming. These grow more attractive ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... place; while around and around the reptile circling nearer and ever nearer, walked the hermit's crooked-tailed, cropped-eared cat, its back arched, tail erect, fur standing stiff all over its body, and round yellow eyes glued in fascination to the enemy luring her to death. Not a sound did the poor cat make, but continued her march with a spasmodic rhythm that would have seemed ludicrous had it not been so pathetically fearful. Even Aunt Maria's arrival upon the scene did not break the charm, and the horrified woman ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the Bar, both before juries and the full Court. He is the only advocate I ever heard who had the imperial power which would subdue an unwilling and hostile jury. His power over them seemed like the fascination of a bird by a snake. Of course, he couldn't do this with able Judges, although all Judges who listened to him would, I think, agree that he was as persuasive a reasoner as ever lived. But with inferior magistrates and juries, however intelligent, however determined they ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... give effect to what he is saying. Not long ago I met him on 'Change, at a business hour, when all the commercing multitudes of the city were together, and you could scarcely turn, for the people. The old fellow fixed his eye on me; there was a fatal fascination in it. Getting off without recognition, would have been unpardonable disrespect. In a moment, his finger was in my button-hole, and his rheumy optics glittering with the satisfaction of your true bore, when he has met with an unresisting ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... he caught a view of her face—shaded his eyes with his hands as if to gaze more intently—and at length burst into an exclamation of surprise and pleasure. At that instant Alice turned, and her gaze met that of the stranger. The fascination of the basilisk can scarcely more stun and paralyse its victim than the look of this stranger charmed, with the appalling glamoury of horror, the eye and soul of Alice Darvil. Her face became suddenly locked and rigid, her lips as white as marble, her eyes almost ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... going right away, as it seemed to him, at night over the dark water to fish by the light of a lanthorn was startling, and sent a curious shiver through him; but at the same time it attracted him with a strange fascination that forced him to keep to his determination of being one of the party, as often as his old timidity made him disposed to say he would stay ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... strange that among all his father's collection of drawings and engravings nothing had such fascination for him as an engraving of a picture of Andromeda and Perseus by Caravaggio. The story of the innocent victim and the divine deliverer was one of which in his boyhood he never tired of hearing: and as he grew older the charm of its pictorial presentment had for him a deeper ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... boy, (as you remember, no doubt,)—handsome as she is, fit for a sea-king's bride, it is not her beauty alone that holds my eyes upon her. Let me tell you one of my fancies, and then you will understand the strange sort of fascination she has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... long, tense silence. Not a man in the group of riders moved a finger. All were gazing, with a sort of dread fascination, at the holster at Sanderson's right hip, and at the butt of the gun in it, projecting far, ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his waiting companion, who had touched a match to the firewood as he sighted the numerous packages in the forager's arms, he was repeating, over and over, as though the words held him in the thrall of fascination: "There ain't no sweet Penelope somewhere that's ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Vienna, made away with a very considerable quantity. He felt the loss so acutely, that he vowed to think no more of the philosopher's stone. This wise resolution he kept for two months; but he was miserable. He was in the condition of the gambler, who cannot resist the fascination of the game while he has a coin remaining, but plays on with the hope of retrieving former losses, till hope forsakes him, and he can live no longer. He returned once more to his beloved crucibles, and resolved to prosecute his journey in search of a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to Brent that every soul in that place, from the grey-haired chairman on the bench to the stolid-faced official by the witness-box was holding his breath, and that every eye was fastened on Krevin Crood with an irresistible fascination. There was a terrible silence in the court as Krevin paused, terminated by an involuntary sigh of relief as he made signs of speaking again. And, in that instant, Brent saw Mrs. Elstrick, the tall gaunt woman of whom he had heard at least one mysterious piece of ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... enchantress is utterly ignorant of the duties required of her, and confidingly seeks manly encouragement and guidance. Controlled by the hand of beauty, the cue becomes a magic wand, and the balls are no longer bits of inanimate ivory, but, poked restlessly hither and thither, circulating messengers of fascination. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... of those who hold that all that is related of vampires is the effect of imagination, fascination, or of that disorder which the Greeks term phrenesis or coribantism, and who pretend by that means to explain all the phenomena of vampirism, will never persuade us that these maladies of the brain can produce such real effects as those we have just recounted. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... she was of their number, or the links Of threescore years and ten, indeed had wound Their coil around her, with such warmth the heart, And cloudless mind retained their energies. Beauty and grace were with her to the last, And fascination that withheld the guest Beyond the allotted time. More would we say, But her affections 'tis not ours to touch In lays so weak. He of their worth might tell, Whose dearest hopes so long with hers entwined, And they who shared the intense maternal love, That knew no pause of effort, no decay, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... about him was intensely still. Not even the twitter of a snow-bird marred its silence. For a long time Wabi sat as immovable as the log upon which he had seated himself, resting and listening. Such a day as this held a peculiar and unusual fascination for him. It was as if the whole world was shut out, and that even the wild things of the forest dared not go abroad in this supreme moment of Nature's handiwork, when with lavish hand she spread the white mantle that was to stretch from the ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... about education suddenly occurs to him, and for a time exercises a sort of fascination over his mind, though in the later books of the Laws it is forgotten or overlooked. As true courage is allied to temperance, so there must be an education which shall train mankind to resist pleasure as ...
— Laws • Plato
... of pleasure; especially when, by the process, we bring to view or to operation, new powers, or powers heretofore hidden, whether they are our own powers, or those of objects upon which we act. Experimenting has a sort of magical fascination for all. Some do not like the trouble of making preparations, but all are eager to see the results. Contrive a new machine, and every body will be interested to witness, or to hear of its operation;—develope any heretofore unknown ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... marched off to his dormitory with fifty-five others, and lay for a long time listening with the fascination of innocence whilst Clem in a low voice described with much detail the scenes of "human nature" which he had recently witnessed down hopping with his people. Almost before he was well asleep, as it seemed, the strange new life began again with the bray of a bugle and the flaring ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... offence, Clayton took a swallow of the liquid, which burned him like fire. He had scarcely recovered from the first shock, and he had listened to the man and watched him with a sort of enthralling fascination. He was Easter's father. He could even see a faint suggestion of Easter's face in the cast of the features before him, coarse and degraded as they were. He had the same nervous, impetuous quickness, and, horrified by the likeness, Clayton watched ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... The unholy fascination of dread dwells in the thought of the last moments of a ship reported as "missing" in the columns of the Shipping Gazette. Nothing of her ever comes to light—no grating, no lifebuoy, no piece of boat or branded oar—to give a hint ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... uninformed. It passed through at least eight editions, by which the bookseller, as WOOD records, got an estate; and, notwithstanding the objection sometimes opposed against it, of a quaint style, and too great an accumulation of authorities, the fascination of its wit, fancy, and sterling sense, have borne down all censures, and extorted praise from the first Writers in the English language. The grave JOHNSON has praised it in the warmest terms, and the ludicrous STERNE has ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... rainproof from her throat to the hem of a tweed walking-skirt, and wearing boots both stout and brown. And at sight of him she paused and instinctively stepped back, groping blindly for the knob of her bed-chamber door; while her eyes, holding to his with an effect of frightened fascination, seemed momentarily to grow more large and dark in her face of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Fatal fascination! It was his last gaze. A bright flash shot up— something struck him through the heart, and he saw ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... Castle, Sidney became more and more in love with the little Penelope; but when he declared his passion, she held him off, like the coquette that she was, while she took pains to spin the web of her fascination more hopelessly about him. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... will not do any of these things unless you have much leisure, and an eager thirst for knowledge. Some new fascination— society and pleasures—or special duties and pressing occupations will drive the fervid desires of your school-days quite from your hearts, or make it impossible for you to gratify them. At any rate, in attempting to ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... of whom people say, "It is impossible to tell what attracts men in a woman." She was indifferent, she was casual, she was even cruel; yet every male creature she met fell a victim before her. Her slightest gesture had a fascination for the masculine mind; her silliest words a significance. "I declare men are the biggest fools where women are concerned," Miss Priscilla had remarked, watching her; and the words had adequately expressed the opinion of the feminine ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... The fascination of choosing new garments for personal wear was upon Walter Hepburn, and he spent a whole hour in the shop, selecting an outfit which did credit to his taste and discernment. Before that hour was over he had risen very considerably in the opinion of those who served him—his ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... in which he had been permitted to act as her escort, the luncheons and dinners at restaurants, although they were not many, were expensive. Yes, Rice was right. To be near Emily de Reuss was to live within a maze of fascination, but the end to it could only be the end of the others. Already he was in debt, a trifle behind with his work—a trifle less keen about it. Already the memory of his sufferings seemed to lie far back in ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... patience of the littler boy, who decided that he wished never to eat breakfast again. During the ten days that he had been a member of the household a certain formality observed at the beginning of each meal had held him in abject fascination, so that he looked forward to it with pleased terror. This was that, when they were all seated, there ensued a pause of precisely two seconds—no more and no less—a pause that became awful by reason of the fact that every one grew instantly solemn and expectant—even ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... of cheated creditors. In 1699 two other attractive and plausible scamps—Kingsbury and May—garbed and curried themselves as ministers, and went through a course of unchecked villany, building only on their agreeable presence. Cotton Mather wrote pertinently of one of these charmers, "Fascination is a thing whereof mankind has more Experience than Comprehension;" and he also wrote very despitefully of the adventurer's scholarly attainments saying there were "eighteen horrid false spells and not one point in one very short note I received from him." As the population increased, so also ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... to the door, but on Ford's assurance that her child had nothing to fear from him, she paused with her hand on the knob to look in curiosity at this wild young man, whose doom lent him a kind of fascination. Again, for a minute, all three were silent in the excess of their surprise. Wayne himself sat rigid, gazing up at the new-comer with strained eyes blurred with partial blindness. Though slightly built ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Joiner, with whom Mary eloped, was one of those two or three gentlemen, and what fascination she had that was strong enough to overcome all those physical disabilities ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... Mendana excited no enthusiasm, in spite of the name of Solomon which he gave to the archipelago discovered by him, to make it believed that from thence came the treasures of the Jewish King. Marvellous recitals had no longer any fascination for men glutted with the riches of Peru. Proofs were what they demanded; the smallest nugget of gold, or the least grain of silver would have been more satisfactory ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Some of it was in his ears, muffling them, so the first intimation he had that the door was opened was the sound of Mikah's hoarse shout. He was standing in the doorway, finger pointed and shaking with wrath. Narsisi was standing behind him, peering over his shoulder with fascination at this weird ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... news of the murder had spread with lightning-like rapidity, and already crowds of people, drawn by that strange fascination which always exists for a certain class in scenes of this kind, were gathering on the grounds outside the house, forming in little groups, conversing with the servants, or gazing upward with awe-stricken ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... charming in the surroundings of the mountain Lake; but as soon as one walks to the beach of it, and surveys its expanse, it is the color, or rather the colors, spread out before the eye, which holds it with greatest fascination. I was able to stay eight days in all, amidst that calm and cheer, yet the hues of the water seemed to become more surprising with each hour. The Lake, according to recent measurement, is about twenty-one miles in length, by twelve or thirteen in breadth. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... a second huge wave was overtaking us. I half hoped that it would drown me. With a curious fascination I watched its awful advent. The moon was nearly hidden now by the wreaths of the rushing storm, but a little light still caught the crest of the devouring breaker. There was something dark on it—a piece of wreckage. It was on us now, and the boat was nearly full of water. But ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... started the break-up of the party. She was attacked by a craving to yawn that gradually became irresistible. I saw the incipient symptoms of the attack and watched her with a sympathetic fascination, as she clenched her jaw, put her hand up to her lips, and made little impatient movements of her head and body. I knew that it must come at last, and it did, catching her unawares in the middle of a sentence—undertaken, I fancy, solely as a defence ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... it is felt by a man intoxicated with love, and full of religious respect for the virgin of his election. This feeling is, from a rational point of view, absurd, and in its tendencies, immoral; but it is delicious in its sacredly voluptuous subtlety. Defloration thus has its powerful fascination in the respect consciously or unconsciously felt for woman's chastity. In marriage, the feeling is yet more complicated: in deflowering his bride, the Christian (that is, any man brought up in a Christian civilization) has the feeling of committing a sort of sin (for the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... every boy of intelligence in the land. We have seen a highly intellectual and world-weary man, a cynic whose heart was somewhat imbittered by its large experience of human nature, take up one of Oliver Optic's books and read it at a sitting, neglecting his work in yielding to the fascination of the pages. When a mature and exceedingly well-informed mind, long despoiled of all its freshness, can thus find pleasure in a book for boys, no additional words ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... he was free of it, he realized that there was that within him which responded to the call of the catacombs; there was a fascination in the fume-laden air of those underground passages; there was a charm, a mysterious charm, in the cave of the golden dragon, in that unforgettable place which he assumed to mark the center of the labyrinth; in the wicked, black eyes ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... to capture and retain all the wonder and mystery of these grand old strongholds, which must be seen in order to leave upon the imagination and memory the full impress of their weird and extraordinary fascination. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Mrs. Rushmore could not help looking at it, and in her prim way she wondered how any man who was not an adventurer or a sort of glorified commercial traveller could carry such a thing. There was an unpleasant fascination in the mere look of it, and she watched it ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... the fascination of historic association that I am sure, if I could drag my beloved but conscientious Salemina from some foreign soup-kitchen which she is doubtless inspecting, I could make even her mourn the vanished past with me this morning, on the Beacon's towering head. For ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... for several days I worked in the bandaging room directly under Nikitin. The work had a peculiar and really unanalysable fascination for me. It was perhaps the directness of contact that pleased me. I suppose one felt that here at any rate one was doing immediate practical good, relieving distress and agony that must, by some one, be immediately relieved; and, at any rate, in the first days at M—— when ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... human mind to seek the end of things; if this woman had worn a suit of tights and nothing else, she would have been as uninteresting as an underwear advertisement in a magazine; but this incessant not-quite-revealing of herself exerted a subtle fascination. At frequent intervals the orchestra would start up a jerky little tune, and the two "stars" would begin to sing in nasal voices some words expressive of passion; then the man would take the woman about the waist and dance and swing her about and bend her ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... because he had heard a woman murmur: "He is as beautiful as Jesus Himself!" The expression of the dominating soul in him had become more marked; the nose had grown more prominent through his increased fleshlessness, there were great dark rings under his eyes. The eyes had an ineffable fascination. They still wore an expression of sadness, but of sweet sadness, full of vigour, of peace, and of mystic devotion. Standing there, under the little white cloud of the flowering apple tree, in the midst of the prostrate crowd, surrounded by sunshine and moving shadows he seemed an apparition ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... but too well aware of the influence which these parades were exerting on the minds of the people; he knew the fascination which his person produced not only on his soldiers, but the public generally, and he wished to profit by it, in order to conquer the civilians after conquering their army. Every one, therefore, had free access, and the subtle invader had always a kind glance and an affable smile ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... and they went on along the edge of the tremendous cliff till they came above the canyon, down into which Bart, never seemed weary of gazing. For the place had quite a fascination for him, with its swift, sparkling river, beautiful wooded islands, and green and varied shores. The sides of the place, too, were so wondrously picturesque; here were weather-stained rocks of fifty different ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... hair. He held the locket open in his hands for several minutes, wondering who she could be, and what possible connection she could have held with the dead. Something about that face smiling up into his own held peculiar fascination for him, gripping him with a strange feeling of familiarity, touching some dim memory which failed to respond. Surely he had never seen the original, for she was not one to be easily forgotten, and yet eyes, hair, expression, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... ask?" she whispered from the shelter of his arms. "It is the same old fascination of our girl and boy days. Do you remember how completely I lost my head about you?" She laughed softly. "I used to think you wore a football suit better than anybody in the world! Sometimes I suspect that it is merely that same girlish ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... knee, and, suddenly extending her arm, she pressed her hand to my lips. Lighted up from below, the picturesque aspect of her figure took on something of a transcendental grace; the unusual upward shadows invested her beauty with a new mystery of fascination. A minute passed. I could hear her rapid breathing above, and I stood up before her, holding ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... to her feet in terror at the first sign of the coming strife, but she did not cry out, nor call in the slaves or guards. She stood, holding the tent-pole with one hand, and gathering her mantle to her breast with the other, gazing in absolute fascination at the fearful life and death struggle, at the unspeakable and tremendous strength so silently exerted by the two ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... is called an ideal beauty, there was a fascination about this winsome little maid which few could resist. She had all her brother's impulsiveness, all his enthusiasm, and, it may be safely asserted, all his abiding faith in the sacred and unimpeachable character of cadet friendships. If ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... itself felt in New York and Boston starts up for your astonishment out of all the fastnesses of the continent. Virgin Nature wooes our civilization to wed her, and no obstacles can conquer the American fascination. In our journey through the wildest parts of this country, we were perpetually finding patent washing-machines among the chaparral,—canned fruit in the desert,—Voigtlander's field-glasses on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... particular than I am really," he said, lightly. "I don't in the least mind going to the Casino." Why should he be a spoil-sport? "But I confess I cannot understand the kind of attraction play has for some minds. For instance, I cannot understand the extraordinary fascination it seems to exercise over such an intelligent man as is ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... was angry, but impressed. There is a fascination in learning how others see us, even if the lesson is unpleasant. She heard the two neighbors who talked together before Mama came down, and their talk was of her—and of how they ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... opposed to his convictions—he had vainly expected, could no longer escape him. The Alexandrian fellow-artists who belonged to his party would gratefully welcome this special work; for what grew out of it would have nothing in common with the fascination of superhuman beauty, by which the older artists ensnared the hearts and minds of the multitude. He would create a genuine woman, who would not lack defects, yet who, though she inspired neither gratification nor rapture, would touch, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... art which now appears in Garhwal. Among the Guler painters was a master-artist and although his first Garhwal pictures are concerned with passionate romance, devotion to Krishna quickly becomes apparent.[107] The great Alaknanda River which roared through Srinagar, the capital, had a special fascination for him and just as Leonardo da Vinci evinced at one time a passionate interest in springing curls, the Guler artist found a special excitement in winding eddies and dashing water. The result was a sudden new interpretation of the Krishna theme. In two pictures where Krishna ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... such tales as these were in those early days of the West, I still remained boy enough in heart to feel a fascination in Thockmorton's narrative. Besides, there was at the time so little else to occupy my mind that it inevitably drifted back to the ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... lends its aid to swell the interest of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. The looking, from either ruined city, into the neighbouring grounds overgrown with beautiful vines and luxuriant trees; and remembering that house upon house, temple on temple, building after building, and street after street, are still lying underneath the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... however, when McWha resumed his old seat and his old attitude on the bench. Rosy-Lilly avoided him for two evenings, but on the third the old fascination got the better of her pique. McWha saw her coming, and, growing self-conscious, he hurriedly started up a song with the full ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hear him preach,—he resolved to address the people in the open air. The excitement he produced was unparalleled. Near Bristol, he sometimes assembled as many as twenty thousand. But they were chiefly the colliers, drawn forth from their subterranean working places. But his eloquence had equal fascination for the people of London and the vicinity. In Moorfields, on Kennington Common, and on Blackheath, he sometimes drew a crowd of forty thousand people, all of whom could hear his voice. He could draw tears from Hume, and money ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... toward his sister, who was sitting far back in her seat, as though trying to shut out the scene which had such a fascination for her. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... body on the rocks. His knees buckled and Glaudot caught him, stopping him from falling. Chandler tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come. He stared with horrified fascination at the body, which was an exact copy of himself—or a copy of the dead man from whom the ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... With a species of fascination, the Worm-suspect would then watch her turn out the hideous, sticky liquid, till the tablespoon was full and crowning over the brim of it all around. Why, even to this day, as the picture rises in memory, I feel my stomach roll ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... French. It was a wonderful and brilliant Paris which Mickiewicz entered. This was the time when the city was first called "the stepmother of Genius." Heine was here in exile, and Boerne. It knew the personal fascination and the denunciative writings of Ferdinand la Salle. It was the day, too, of Eugene Sue, Berlioz, George Sand, de Musset, Dumas, Gautier, the Goncourt Brothers, Gavarni, Sainte Beuve, Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Ary Scheffer, Delacroiz, Horace Vernet—to mention only a few great names ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... wife, he is little more than an agent, a frame of bone and sinew for her fiery spirit to command. The nature of his feeling towards her is rendered with a most precise and delicate touch. He always yields to the woman's fascination; and yet his caresses (and we know how much meaning Salvini can give to a caress) are singularly hard and unloving. Sometimes he lays his hand on her as he might take hold of any one who happened to be nearest to him at a moment of excitement. Love has fallen out of this ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as the gaze of the story-teller was again finding a fascination in her face, Irene took refuge behind her veil, but ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... seen the familiar realities of school life thus brought low and lying in inglorious disorder at his feet. It gave him a feeling of triumph and had a fascination for him. Damp smelling books were here and there among the ruins, histories, arithmetics, algebras and grammars. He could tread upon these with his valiant heel. A huge roll call book (ah, how well he knew it even in the darkness) lay charred and soggy near the assembly-room ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the sub-title says, "an historical novel" of the days of Aaron Burr, when he was conspiring to create a western empire. A young fellow full of enthusiasm and patriotism, named Tom Edwards, comes under the fascination of Burr, and works with him for quite a period before considering his true aims and real character. When the day of awakening comes, the fight with his conscience is thrilling. No better book for boys can be mentioned, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... blew the scarf from her neck. He took it and replaced it, and his hand touched the soft warm flesh. It stayed there. He had no power to remove it. This girl of unearthly beauty and fascination paralyzed him. To think that he should be sitting there with the perfectest woman God ever made——! The storm within him broke. His body quivered, and his great hand took the warm slim one and held ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... to his like a baby's. There was a sweet hollow under her chin, above her fine lace collar. Her soft, fair curls smelt in his face of roses and lavender. The utter daintiness of this maiden Dorothy Fair was a separate charm and a fascination full of subtle and innocent earthiness to the senses of a lover. She appealed to his selfish delight like a sweet-scented flower, like a pink or ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... as well to show her independence by returning, as she had set out, alone, she consented to go. Miss Amelyn showed her a short cut across the park, and they separated—to meet at dinner. In this brief fellowship, the American girl had kept a certain supremacy and half-fascination over the English girl, even while she was conscious of an invincible character in Miss Amelyn entirely different from and superior to her own. Certainly there was a difference in the two peoples. Why else this inherited conscientious ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... hope in our stroll I have been able to give you a new insight into the fascination of ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... to bear it. When she turned her miserable eyes toward them again, allured by some strange fascination she was powerless to analyse, Edith was in his arms, her mouth crushed ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... it was no place for her, yet no one waited for her, no one would care if she staid for ever, and, yielding to the perilous fascination that drew her there, she lingered with a heavy throbbing in her temples, and a troop of wild fancies whirling through her brain. Something white swept by below,—only a broken oar—but she began to wonder how a human body would ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... render the evasive charm of the cloistered life. But George Moore has two grave faults; he is sometimes vulgar and he is sometimes brutal. Evelyn's worldly lover is a man who makes one's flesh creep, and yet one feels he is intended to represent the fascination of the world. Then it does not seem to me to be true realism to depict scenes of frank animalism. Such things may occur; but the actors in such a carnival could not speak of them, even to each other; it may be prudish, but I cannot help feeling ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sly look did Cuthbert flash over that way, for somehow there seemed to be a wonderful fascination about Owen's personality that appealed strongly to him, though he found it utterly impossible to analyze this feeling, in order to make out whether it was pure sympathy toward one who had evidently rubbed up against the hard places ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... be with an effort that Gifford released himself from the fascination that held his gaze to the tragedy. "It is an absolute mystery," he replied, moving to where his ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... answered yes, and you showed that you doubted me. You were justified in your doubts. I did love her once, or thought so, but my feelings changed. A great temptation came into my life. Carmel returned from school and—you know her beauty, her fascination. A week in her presence, and marriage with Adelaide became impossible. But how evade it? I only knew the coward's way; to lure this inexperienced young girl, fresh from school, into a runaway match. A change which now became perceptible in Miss Cumberland's manner, only egged me on. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... fell from his fingers. He was very intent, and in spite of herself Muriel became intent too, held by a most unaccountable fascination. So handicapped was he that he could not even pull a flower to ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... virtue. "I have just seen Charles and Mary Lamb," Crabb Robinson had written (20th October, 1831), "living in absolute solitude at Enfield. I find your poems lying open before Lamb. Both tipsy and sober he is ever muttering Rose Aylmer. But it is not those lines only that have a curious fascination for him. He is always turning to Gebir for things that haunt him in the same way." Their first and last hour was now passed together, and before they parted they were old friends. I visited Lamb myself (with Barry Cornwall) the following ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... advanced toward Harris with his hand outstretched in adieu, the face of the consul halted him. With the letters, the clerk had placed upon the table a visiting-card, and as it lay in the circle of light from the lamp the consul, as though it were alive and menacing, stared at it in fascination. Moving stiffly, he turned it so that Hemingway could see. On it Hemingway read, "George S. Sheyer," and, on a lower ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... and had interposed between the poor girl's frightened English and the dreadful Ticinese French of the functionaries in the post-yard. At the custom-house on the Italian frontier I was of peculiar service; there was a kind of fateful fascination in it. The wardrobe was voluminous; I exchanged a paternal glance with my charge as the douanier plunged his brown fists into it. Who was the lady at Cadenabbia? What was she to me or I to her? She wouldn't know, when she rustled down to dinner ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... warmed by imagination or tempered by charity the child had been a ductile substance in his hands; but the shadow of the Council of Trent still hung over the Church in Savoy, making its approach almost as sombre and forbidding as that of the Calvinist heresy. As it was, the fascination that drew Odo to the divine teachings was counteracted by a depressing awe: he trembled in God's presence almost as much as in his grandfather's, and with the same despair of discovering what course of action was most likely to call down the impending wrath. The beauty of the Church's ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... comfort to administer to the affliction of his companion, was somewhat relieved by the change in his mood, though his more grave and sensitive nature was a little startled at its suddenness. But, as we have before seen, Montreal's spirit (and this made perhaps its fascination) was as a varying and changeful sky; the gayest sunshine, and the fiercest storm swept over it in rapid alternation; and elements of singular might and grandeur, which, properly directed and concentrated, would have made him the blessing and glory of his time, were wielded with a boyish ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... allowed to lie scattered about over a large surface, it is liable to have much of its value washed out by the rain. In a compact heap of this kind, the rain or snow that falls on it is not more than the manure needs to keep it moist enough for fermentation. 3d. There is as much fascination in this fermenting heap of manure as there is in having money in a savings bank. One is continually trying to add to it. Many a cart-load or wheel-barrowful of material will be deposited that would otherwise be allowed to run ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... earnest struggles of intellect seem to be calmed and made gentle in their vehemence, by a more essential rationality of taste. That imperious mind, which seems fit to defy the universe, is ever subordinate, by a kind of fascination, to the perfect law of grace. In the highest of his intellectual flights—and who can follow the winged rush of that eagle mind?—in the widest of his mental ranges-and who shall measure their extent?—he is ever moving within the severest ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... whose favourite disguise was that of an itinerant preacher, cherished no less a project than an insurrection of negroes and the capture of New Orleans. The robber of to-day is a stern realist. He knows nothing of romance. A ride under the stars and a swift succession of revolver-shots have no fascination for him. He likes to work in secret upon safe or burglar-box. He has moved with the times, and has at his hand all the resources of modern science. If we do not know all that is to be known of him ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... and fascination into the face of the youth who spoke. It was a refined and beautiful face, notwithstanding the evidences of long exposure to sun and wind. The features were finely cut, sensitive and expressive, and the eyes were very luminous in their glance, and ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in their terrible hand-to-hand encounters, they looked more like demons than human beings. I felt my heart grow sick at the sight of this bloody battle, and would fain have turned away, but a species of fascination seemed to hold me down and glue my eyes upon the combatants. I observed that the attacking party was led by a most extraordinary being, who, from his size and peculiarity, I concluded was a chief. His hair was frizzed out to an enormous ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the sleeper, without any starting or turning round, awoke. There was a kind of fascination in meeting his steady gaze so suddenly, which took from the other the presence of mind to withdraw his eyes, and forced him, as it were, to meet his look. So they remained staring at each other, until Mr Chester at last broke silence, and asked him in a low ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... some ceremony was observed. Then it was that Paslew raised his eyes, and beheld standing before him a tall man, with a woman beside him bearing an infant in her arms. The eyes of the pair were fixed upon him with vindictive exultation. He would have averted his gaze, but an irresistible fascination withheld him. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... brow. In his heart he wanted to be pottering about among these ocean treasures which had a peculiar fascination for his doggy soul. But a greater call was upon him, keeping him where he was. Though she had not uttered one word to detain him, he had a strong conviction that his mistress wanted him, and so, stolidly, he remained beside her, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... not bear the 'Tannhauser;' it seems to paint with a fatal fascination the beauty of wickedness, the rightness, so to speak, of sensuality. I feel after it as if I had been yielding to a luscious temptation; unnerved, ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... already to climb the ladder, and he would raise Stella with him, Stella and that other being upon whom he sometimes suffered his thoughts to dwell with a semi-humorous contemplation as—his son. A fantastic fascination hung about the thought. He could not yet visualize himself as a father. It was easier far to picture Stella as a mother. But yet, like a magnet drawing him, the vision seemed to beckon. He walked the desert with a lighter step, and Tommy swore that ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... upon its top an urn, Serpent-begirt; each urn upon its front A face—and such a face! I turn'd away— Then gazed again—'twas not to be forgot:— There was a fascination in the eyes— Even in their stony stare; like the ribb'd sand Of ocean was the eager brow; the mouth Had a hyena grin; the nose, compress'd With curling sneer, of wolfish cunning spake; O'er the lank temples, long entwisted curls Adown the scraggy neck in masses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept fixed on the ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by the dome of St. Paul's. It had a peculiar fascination for him, that old dome, and not once, but twice or three times a week, would he halt in his daily pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop in the side aisles for five or ten minutes, scrutinizing the names and epitaphs on the monuments. The attraction ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... into Naples, "as the mandatory of Europe.''13 Metternich's opposition to this, illogical, but natural from the Austrian point of view, first opened his eyes to the true character of Austria's attitude towards his ideals. Once more in Russia, far from the fascination of Metternich's personality, the immemorial spirit of his people drew him back into itself; and when, in the autumn of 1825, he took his dying empress for change of air to the south of Russia, in order—as all Europe supposed—to place himself at the head of the great army concentrated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... also be a good reader. Given these two indispensable elements, other parts may be added as players become available; and although the larger the number of wind instruments admitted, the greater the likelihood of out-of-tune playing, yet so great is the fascination of tonal variety that our inclination is always to secure as many ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... felt the cold perceptibly grow upon me till it seemed to grip me by the heart. Then while the flood of moonlight still fell on the marble tomb, the storm gave further evidence of renewing, as though it was returning on its track. Impelled by some sort of fascination, I approached the sepulchre to see what it was, and why such a thing stood alone in such a place. I walked around it, and read, over the ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... me a morbid, unhappy feeling, while yet it had something of the fascination of the "Pilgrim's Progress," of which it is an imitation. I fancied myself followed about by a fiend-like boy who haunted its pages, called "Inbred-Sin;" and the story implied that there was no such thing as getting rid of him. I began to ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... silent for yet a few more moments. Then, completely her dignified and composed self, she stepped toward her bedroom. Olivetta's eyes followed her in wondering, worshipful fascination. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... then I sadly trace— That love's a fluttering thing of air; And yonder lurks the viper base, Who would my gentle bird ensnare! 'Twas in the shades of Eden's bower This fascination had its birth, And even there possessed the power To lure the ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... daughter, Maria Theresa, who now succeeded to the crown of Austria, was twenty-four years of age. Her figure was tall, graceful and commanding. Her features were beautiful, and her smile sweet and winning. She was born to command, combining in her character woman's power of fascination with man's energy. Though so far advanced in pregnancy that she was not permitted to see her dying father, the very day after his death she so rallied her energies as to give an audience to the minister of state, and to assume the government with that ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Dexie closely following. They hurried away to where the noise of the worshippers was not quite so audible, and by degrees Elsie grew quiet and calm. Leaving them seated on the grass by the roadside, Lancy re-entered the church, the strange doings having a certain fascination which he could neither ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... who welcomed me and showed to our table found his little flow of small talk arrested by that first glimpse of our companion. He accepted my orders in a chastened manner, and I noticed his eyes straying every now and then, as though in fearsome fascination, to Mrs. Bundercombe, who was sitting very upright at the table, with her bony fingers stretched out and a good deal of gold showing in her teeth as she talked with Eve in a high nasal voice concerning the absurd food ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from his strange and chivalrous friendship for the Mainwarings—which was as incomprehensible to Sir Robert as Sir Robert's equally eccentric and Quixotic speculations had been to Bradley—he began to feel a singular and weird fascination for the place. A patient martyr in the vast London house he had taken for his wife and cousin's amusement, he loved to escape the loneliness of its autumn solitude or the occasional greater loneliness of his wife's social ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... good father was too cunning for him, and that he must give in at last. Nevertheless, like a rabbit who runs squealing round and round before the weasel, into whose jaws it knows that it must jump at last by force of fascination, he parried and parried, and pretended to be stupid, and surprised, and honorably scrupulous, and even angry; while every question as to her being married or single, Catholic or heretic, English or foreign, brought his tormentor a step nearer the goal. At last, when Campian, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... were running the rapids, and we watched them with an untiring fascination. That was the most exciting spectacle in the whole world. The issue was life or death, ruin or salvation, and from dawn till dark, and with every few minutes of the day, was the breathless climax repeated. The faces of the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... but this, surely, was the strangest thing of all, that Jack Osborne, who had persuaded me to help him in his self-imposed task of tracking down these people, should actually have come under the spell of Jasmine Gastrell's beauty and undeniable fascination. I recollected now his saying, when, weeks before, he had spoken of Jasmine Gastrell for the first time, that everybody on board the ship had fallen in love with her, and that he himself had been desperately attracted by her. But I had thought that he spoke in jest; it had not occurred ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... hours. He rose at mid-day, and dressed to go into the Bois with Delphine if the day was fine, squandering in this way time that was worth far more than he knew. He turned as eagerly to learn the lessons of luxury, and was as quick to feel its fascination, as the flowers of the date palm to receive the fertilizing pollen. He played high, lost and won large sums of money, and at last became accustomed to the extravagant life that young men lead in Paris. He sent fifteen hundred francs ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... glimpses of a people and a mode of life that were comparatively new to my observation, a sort of sombre phantasmagoric spectacle, exceedingly undelightful to behold, yet involving a singular interest and even fascination in its ugliness. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shrouded from his view, and imagination allowed him to think himself standing on the shore of some almost boundless lake. Seen under such conditions, the Serpentine put off the cheerful vulgarity of its everyday aspect, and exercised over the spirit of the watcher the same fascination as a mountain tarn or some deep, quick-flowing stream. "Come hither and be at rest," it seemed to whisper, and Stafford, responsive to the subtle invitation, for a moment felt as if to die in the thought of his mistress would ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... Horace had a subtle appreciation of the beauty and grace, the sweetness and the fascination, of womanhood. Poet as he was, he must have delighted to contemplate the ideal elevation and purity of woman, as occasionally depicted in the poetry of Greece, and of which he could scarcely fail to have had some glimpses in real life. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... been able to give proof that it was withdrawn, even when he was overwhelmed with disaster which drained his empire of vast masses of its population. No cruel inhuman despot could magnetise with an enduring fascination multitudes of men and women as he did. It was not his incomparable genius, nor his matchless military successes in battle. He was loved because he was lovable, and was trusted because he inspired belief in his high ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... I spoke often of Vence. Twice we planned to go to Vence, but found the fascination of Villeneuve-Loubet and ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... but no one who knew her well ever gave her looks a thought, so genial was her smile, so hearty her hand-clasp, so sympathetic her words. She was beloved by her husband's parishioners, and in especial she was loved by Lucy Merriman, who had a sort of fascination in watching her ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... adore, before the timid, yet playful little girl, who now asked Edward to mend her pen, now to construe a stanza in Tasso, and now how to spell a very—very long word in her version of it? All these incidents have their fascination on the mind at a certain period of life, but not when a youth is entering it, and rather looking out for some object whose affection may dignify him in his own eyes than stooping to one who looks up to him ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... stay out long! We will only go around that point that I see before us. What a fascination there is in a turning point! We always want to see what is on the other side," ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... was past praying for. Long before 1795 the Irish aristocracy had lost whatever power for good it ever possessed, and most of the resolute reformers of Wolfe Tone's middle-class Protestant school had turned, under the enthralling fascination of the French Revolution, into revolutionaries. Reform had been refused in 1782; again, and without coercion from the Volunteers, in 1783. It was refused again in 1784, against the advice of Pitt and at the instigation of Pitt's own ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... interests were two—one, the fascination which the giant computer at Moscow University held for her; and two, the students around her. People, she had noted, had behavior patterns very similar to the complex computer; not as individual units, though as individual units they could also ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... visitor—Prince Immanuel Osipovitch Davidov, celebrated as author and preacher, a man of a distinguished family and democratic views, a man beloved of many and possessed of the mystery of extraordinary fascination, attracting ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... Netherlands' was begun in the summer of 1787 and grew out of the reading of Watson's 'Philip the Second'. This book impressed Schiller strongly and he attributed its fascination to the working of his own imaginative faculty. He wished that others might see and feel what he had seen and felt. So he began to retell the story in his own way, intending at first only a brief sketch. As he proceeded, he found gaps ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... flight of stairs gave access, and suspended over all an enormous extinguisher-shaped sounding-board. It looked large and heavy enough to crush any clergyman who should be caught by its fall while in act of preaching; and Candace watched its slight oscillations with an apprehensive fascination, till she recollected that it must have hung there for a hundred years at least, so there was no reason to suppose that it would drop ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... aborigines before the coming of the whites. And we have another source of information in the quaint tales and legends that drift to us out of the dim shadows of the past, which will always have peculiar fascination for the student of ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... my fellow-victim, to the top of the hill, and placed us in seats upon the platform; they spoke bracingly and gave us good advice; they described the delight of the experience before us—the fascination of flying through the air, bird-like; some one said it was 'the very poetry of motion'; no one mentioned that there was much prose to be gone through before one could hope to become one of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... chief packer and old Ordnance Sergeant Shell, they made up a little middle class of their own, when Dora's heart had gone out, ungrudgingly, to handsome, clever, educated George Rawdon, whom all men could see had been reared among gentlefolk, and who, as further fascination, was supplied from some unknown source with money which he spent ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... part, under the powers, at Bellinzona, and had interposed between the poor girl's frightened English and the dreadful Ticinese French of the functionaries in the post-yard. At the custom-house on the Italian frontier I was of peculiar service; there was a kind of fateful fascination in it. The wardrobe was voluminous; I exchanged a paternal glance with my charge as the douanier plunged his brown fists into it. Who was the lady at Cadenabbia? What was she to me or I to her? She wouldn't know, when she rustled down to dinner next ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... a husband soon becomes nothing but a habit. Listen: I suppose this detestable fascination you have ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... and courage, and she had heard me tell her brother of Ashley's perfection in such matters. On his part, Ashley, like every one else who saw her, was evidently greatly struck with her beauty and fascination of manner. I cannot say that I was jealous; I had no right to be so, for Dora had never given me encouragement; but I certainly more than once regretted having introduced a third person into what—honest ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the device that gives fascination to the figures of Richelieu in Marion Delorme, and of Captain ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... in helpless fascination. The body of the constable garbed in plain clothes followed the face and, standing before him in a menacing fashion, held out a broken ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Doctor, that this objection is rather formal than substantial. It is true, that such slight compositions might not suit the severer genius of our friend Mr Oldbuck. Yet Horace Walpole wrote a goblin tale which has thrilled through many a bosom; and George Ellis could transfer all the playful fascination of a humour, as delightful as it was uncommon, into his Abridgement of the Ancient Metrical Romances. So that, however I may have occasion to rue my present audacity, I have at least the most ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... way, all the American speed, and proceeded to overwhelm the household with his attentions. It was a case of swift enthusiasm about the whole family. Unlike Kirtley he did not care how many of the members accompanied the Fraeulein and him. All were welcome. Though he openly displayed his fascination about the Fraeulein, it had none of that tender sentiment which Gard was dissembling before his friend. Nevertheless it appeared to be a violent case of love at first sight, and ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... and the fidelity of his descriptions of northern Scotland have met with the questionable reward of converting a poet's haunt into a tourist's camp. Not that Mr. Black's is a game-keeper's catalogue of the phenomena of forest or stream, or the poetic way of depicting nature by similes. The fascination of his writing lies in our conviction that it is the result of minute observation, with a certain atmospheric quality that makes the picture alive. More, one is conscious of a sensitive, pathetic thrill in his writing; these sights and sounds, when they ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... gradually, as the fascination of his work grew upon him, Owen became more and more absorbed in his book. He was always planning some incident, rehearsing, mentally, some situation or some telling dialogue; and the outer life around him receded into a dim and misty distance, in ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... reward of perseverance, Injun did get something on Dorgan, though it didn't amount to much. Injun averred, and it may have been true, that Monty had a deadly fascination for Dorgan; that when Monty was around, Dorgan couldn't keep his eyes off him. And Injun said that he saw Dorgan approach Monty in the corral, probably to admire him more closely, and that Monty showed great hatred for Dorgan; laid back ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... and startling, are concealed in every chapter of this completely engrossing detective story. The horrible fascination of the tragedy holds one in rapt attention to the end. And through it runs the thread ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... quite probable," and she let her eyes rest approvingly for a moment on his face; "but it is well to consider the girls who make those avowals before you place full credence on the statement—not that they always mean to deceive," she amended, "but those three words have a most peculiar fascination for girlhood—they like to use them even when they ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... has a singular sound. It stands for all the mystery and fascination connected with the Sahara It leads the thoughts to the greatest expanse of desert in the world, to long and lonely roads, to bloody feuds and treacherous ambushes, to the ring of caravan bells and the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... insufficient force to accomplish this, and, as always, he had been instructed by the "statesmen" to do it without violence—that is to say, he must never shoot the poor Indian until after the poor Indian had shot him; he must make him do something he did not want to, pleasantly, by the fascination of argument, in the way a "statesman" would achieve it. The force at the General's disposal was the garrison at Boise Barracks—one troop of cavalry and one company of infantry. The latter was not adapted to the matter in hand—rapid ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... dead."[15] In the same spirit is the fruitless appeal so often made over the haste of Death; /mais que te nuysoit elle en vie, mort?/ Was he not thine, even had he died an old man? says the mourner over Attalus.[16] A subject whose strange fascination drew artist after artist to repeat it, and covered the dreariness of death as with a glimmer of white blossoms, was Death the Bridegroom, the maiden taken away from life just as it was about to be made ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... chase without having a cent in my pocket, stop to discuss terms with a woman in front of some window display, or around a corner, only soon to turn away from her on the pretense that I had expected to be taken to her residence while she proposed going to some hotel. Thus, held by a dull, dogged fascination, I would tramp around, sometimes for hours, until, feeling on the verge of a fainting-spell with hunger and exhaustion, I would sit down on the front ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the guard. Of course there was none. I was alone for an indefinite time with a dead man. But was he dead? I had little doubt, from the way his head hung, that his throat was cut, and a horrible fascination drew me to his side to examine. No; there was no sign of the hideous fissure I expected to find beneath the gray bristles of his beard. His head fell forward again into the same position, and I saw with horror that I had left two bloody fingermarks upon the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the strangest illness under which mortal ever suffered. There was an unaccountable fascination in its earlier symptoms that more than reconciled me to the incapacitating effect of that stage of the malady. This fascination increased for a time, until it reached a certain point, when gradually a sense of the horrible mingled ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... with which Fiona Macleod opens the magic door of that which is felt but not seen in earth and sky. He misses the mystic hour when ghosts of the green life are about. That hour has been seized by Algernon Blackwood, who makes us feel the fascination, the vague dread of the elemental powers. There is a dream-wood in which the souls of all things intermingle, and once imprisoned there, the nature-lover may not escape until he has paid ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... him frankly. He noticed this and bent upon her a calm glance that brought a guilty flush to her cheek. Quickly she averted her eyes, but, nevertheless she had a feeling that the young laird of Tyee was still appraising her, and, unable to withstand the fascination peculiar to such a situation, she looked at him again to verify her suspicions—and it was even so. In great confusion she turned to her stock, and Donald, satisfied that he had squelched her completely, went into the manager's office, wrote, and sealed the following note ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... replenished the cup and quaffed it thirstily. He was rapidly compensating for his earlier abstinence. Plutina, studying him covertly, noted the beginnings of drunkenness and its various stages. There was gruesome fascination in her scrutiny; for she knew that her honor rested on the hazard of a ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... indifferently all ties with her (they had been engaged), Margaret still clung to him, and ever since has refused all comers for his sake. Her face is long and utterly devoid of colour; her nose is too large; her mouth a trifle too firm for beauty; her eyes, dark and earnest, have, however, a singular fascination of their own, and when she smiles one feels that one must love her. She is a very tall woman, and slight, and gracious in her ways. She is, too, a great heiress, and a woman of business, having been left to manage a huge property at the age ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... such a system must be a high, ethical ideal. We must really envisage the wants of humanity. We must want the wants of all men. We must get rid of the fascination for exclusiveness. Here, in a world full of folk, men are lonely. The rich are lonely. We are all frantic for fellow-souls, yet we shut souls out and bar the ways and bolster up the fiction of the Elect and the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the Nebraska who had never before traversed the "Inside Passage" were loud in the praises of its picturesqueness, while those to whom the route was familiar seemed to find an ever-fresh fascination in its shifting scenes. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... mouth, fresh as a flower, ripe and ruddy as a fruit, slightly opened by a half smile, and illuminated by a gleam of mother-of-pearl; and above all, the eyes, whose glances, passing between a thick double fringe of black lashes, possessed an irresistible fascination. It was the Greek form with the Arab character: the style of beauty would have had something startling in a London or Paris drawing-room, but was perfectly in its place at a bull-fight and under the ardent sky ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... endure. Indeed, if this gentleman practised such a barbarism in my own country he would find himself with a duel on his hands before he had gone far. However, the next instant his voice resumed its original fascination, and I listened to it as to some ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... voice, exquisitely modulated, yet resonant as the twang of a harp, now seemed of itself to draw and hold each listener; while a certain extravagance of gesticulation—a fantastic movement of both form and feature—seemed very near akin to fascination. And so ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... and, guided by her sister, carried her to her chamber. I had now leisure to contemplate the changes which a few months had made in this lovely frame. I turned away from the spectacle with anguish, but my wandering eyes were recalled by some potent fascination, and fixed in horror upon a form which evinced the last stage of decay. Eliza knelt on one side, and, leaning her face upon the bed, endeavoured in vain to smother her sobs. I sat on the other motionless, and holding the passive and withered hand of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... atrocity of the cruelest murderers. If the Salem-born Hawthorne ever visited that church in remembrance of the fact that his people came from the same parish; if he saw the mortal relic which held me in such fascination that I could scarcely leave the place even when the glass box had been locked back to its cupboard, and if the spirits of the dead sometimes haunt their dust, there must have been a reciprocal intelligence between the dead and the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... always possessed a fascination for George and an attraction for the Professor as well. George, particularly, was anxious to penetrate the river, and sail up to the falls, but Harry's more practical views prevailed. "If we want to explore the river we can do it any day with a wagon, or ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... viewed as a national prejudice. Those who have happened, like ourselves, to see the effect of passionate music and "deep-inwoven harmonics" upon the feeling of an idiot, we may conceive what we mean. Such music does not utterly revolt the idiot; on the contrary, it has a strange but a horrid fascination for him; it alarms, irritates, disturbs, makes him profoundly unhappy; and chiefly by unlocking imperfect glimpses of thoughts and slumbering instincts, which it is for his peace to have entirely obscured, because for him they can be revealed only partially, and with the sad effect of throwing ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the narrow limits which they chose to impose on their work. Their sculpture shares with the paintings of Botticelli and the churches of Brunelleschi that profound expressiveness, that intimate impress of an indwelling soul, which is the peculiar fascination of the art of Italy in that century. Their works have been much neglected, and often almost hidden away amid the frippery of modern decoration, and we come with some surprise on the places where their fire still smoulders. ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... nothing. The orderly, well-dressed servants, the punctual meals, the good and abundant food, the nice dresses, the parties, the solid education, the discipline so foreign to her own existence, all—all held their proper fascination. But although she listened with delight to these stories of a bygone time, she never envied her mother those periods of prosperity. Such a life would have been a prison to her; so she thought, although she never ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... first place, "The Children's Crimson Series" is designed to please and interest every child, by reason of the sheer fascination of the stories ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... David ever explained to you what fatal fascination a semi-satanic man has for nice, white women? I have been at father many times on the subject, and he says, 'Connie, be reasonable, what do I know about semi-satanics?' Then he goes down-town. See if you can get anything out of David on the ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... attributes of mind and heart. A year spent in her society had done much for him, and he loved her with a strange mingling of passion, reverence, and gratitude. He knew why Edith Snowdon came, he felt that the old fascination had not lost its charm, and though fear was unknown to him, he was ill pleased at the sight of the beautiful, dangerous woman. On the other hand, he saw that Lady Treherne desired her daughter to shun him and smile ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... rounded cheeks, the ivory neck, the parted lips, and the glow of health and exercise over all. He fell in love with himself. He brought his lips near to take a kiss; he plunged his arms in to embrace the beloved object. It fled at the touch, but returned again after a moment and renewed the fascination. He could not tear himself away; he lost all thought of food or rest, while he hovered over the brink of the fountain gazing upon his own image. He talked with the supposed spirit: "Why, beautiful being, do you shun me? Surely my face is not ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... repeated. She put out her hand and touched him, but she did not look at him, being unable to resist the fascination of the sight ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... in the world today with sufficient strength of character to relinquish his own selfish desires for the good of his species? Can it be that not one Apeman exists whom nature can rely upon for the great work of uplifting humanity, who is brave enough to resist the temporary fascination of a lovable woman? And have I lived to see the reincarnated soul of the bravest and noblest man that ever breathed, bound within the flesh of a wretched coward incapable of living for any greater purpose than his own self-gratification? ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... A curious fascination stole over Mr. Fogo as he looked earnestly at the house round which these memories hung. Standing on an angle formed by the bending river, and the little creek, and behind a screen of trees—elms almost too old to feel the sap of spring, a chestnut ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and the venereal sense in religions. The hermaphrodite gods. The virgin mother. Mohammed was the first to proclaim a deity above sex. The conversion of sexual and religious emotion exemplified from insane delusions. The element of fascination. The love of God. Other emotional elements ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... his dazzling wares upon the patchwork counterpane, then stepped back to observe the effect. Ma Briskow's hands fluttered toward the gems, then reclasped themselves in her lap; she bent closer and regarded them fixedly. The Juno-like daughter also stared down at the display with fascination. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... railway, and be ready to accept the rough and the smooth of unbeaten trails. But the compensations are many: changing scenes, long days out of doors, freedom from the bondage of conventional life, and above all, the fascination of living among peoples of primitive simplicity and yet of a civilization so ancient that it makes all that is oldest in the West seem raw and crude and unfinished. So when two years ago my feet sought again the "open road," it was towards the East that I naturally turned, and this ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... nevertheless make an effort to understand the delights of robbery considered as a fine art. Some cynics there are who will tell us that the only reason we are not all thieves is because we have not pluck enough; and there must certainly be some fascination, apart from natural depravity or original sin, to make a man prefer to run countless risks in an unlawful pursuit sooner than do an honest day's work. And in this sentence we have the answer: It is precisely the risk, the uncertainty, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... in the new epoch of liberty and well-dressed poverty. Of these buildings, the cathedral has the right to be named first. As a whole it cannot be called a beautiful structure, for its form is graceless; but what a charm there is in its details! Even its incongruity has a singular fascination. This most evident incongruity arises from the combination that it expresses of the Gothic and Byzantine styles. The facade is very early Gothic (about the year 1200), still full of Romanesque feeling, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... interest, and a survey I strove to make impartial, I compared Lady Ellinor with my mother; and I comprehended the fascination which the high-born lady must, in their earlier youth, have exercised over both brothers, so dis-similar to each other. For charm was the characteristic of Lady Ellinor,—a charm indefinable. It was not the mere grace of refined breeding, though that went a great way, it was a charm that seemed ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Calthrop in the trench. Morality, as well as misery, loves company. But Mr. Calthrop saw the Misses Pringle coming. He swiftly rose, passed them by with his face averted, and went aboard the Annabel Lee. It was evident that he believed that his fatal gift of fascination had attracted these ladies towards him in spite of himself. Elmer and the Misses Pringle sat gloomily on a clean plank in the trench while the dance ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... outlines of ideas that have at any time visited my brain about this tremendous mystery of human life have all been sad and dreary, and most bitterly and oppressively unsatisfactory; and therefore I rejoice that no mental fascination rivets my thoughts to the brink of this dark and unfathomable abyss, but that it is on the contrary the tendency of my nature to rest in hope, or rather in faith in God's mercy and power, and moreover to think that the perception we have (or as you would say, imagine we have) of DUTY, of right ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... of the wild come up from the forest but Victor no longer heeds them. The hiss and crackle of the burning house permeate his brain. His eyes watch the smoke with a dreadful fascination. He cannot think, he can only watch, and he is gripped by a ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... acknowledge myself defeated. With a stolen invention, an old gentleman found shot in his room, and a son under a vow to avenge his father, the story provides plenty of thrills, and the "Silver Tea-shop" itself has the fascination that business ventures in books often exercise. It seems to be run on such lavish lines for the prices charged that I found myself looking hungrily for its address. I wish the author had not referred to her hero as having "mobile digits" and burdened her ingenuous story with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... need to ask?" she whispered from the shelter of his arms. "It is the same old fascination of our girl and boy days. Do you remember how completely I lost my head about you?" She laughed softly. "I used to think you wore a football suit better than anybody in the world! Sometimes I suspect that it is merely that same girlish hero-worship and can't last. But ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... expects him to be interested in a wretched old bit of scrap-iron. He is right. It would be as rash to suppose that he would find interest in an ancient sword in its rusted condition as it would be to expect the spectator at Rheims to find fascination in the nuts and screws. The true archaeologist would hide that corroded weapon in his workshop, where his fellow-workers alone could see it. For he recognises that it is only the sword which is as good as new that impresses the public; ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... looked attractive, smiling under the December sun. I wondered if I had really grown to love the desert. I had read somewhere that people did. But I was not paying much attention in those days to the analysis of my feelings. I did not stop to question the subtle fascination which I felt steal over me as we rolled along the smooth hard roads that followed the windings of the Gila River. I was back again in the army; I had cast my lot with a soldier, and where he was, was ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... kind of fascination. What was he thinking of—only of the flavor of the coffee and the liqueur? Had the morning's meeting left no more trace in his thoughts than on his face? Had his wife so completely passed out of his life that even ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Garden of Eden." And in another place he thinks that "the site of Eden will ever rank with the quadrature of the circle, and the interpretation of unfulfilled prophecy among those unsolved, and perhaps insoluble, problems which possess so strange a fascination." It is, however, to be remarked, (1)that all that was written before Professor Delitzsch's researches were made known; and (2)that really a great mass of the conjecture and speculation has been purely in the air—undertaken ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... through which was obtained the view of the Hut. In turning from one to the other of the two soldiers, his quick eye took in this glimpse of the buildings, and it became riveted there as by the charm of fascination. Gradually the ferocity left his countenance, which ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched the regiment dwindle. They appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal fascination. They stared woodenly at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face. It was a strange pause, and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... noticed this in English travelers of intelligence before. Crude as the country is, and uninteresting according to certain established standards, it seems to have a "drawing" quality, a certain unexplained fascination. Morgan says that it is the social unconventionality that attracts, and that the American women are the loadstone. He declares. that when an Englishman secures and carries home with him an American wife, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... her," said Georgiana to herself. "Who cares how a woman talks when she looks like that? Every line of her is absolute grace and beauty, every turn of her head is fascination itself. I never saw such eyes. That little twist in the corner of her lip when she smiles is the most delicious thing I ever saw. Jimps looks at it forty times in every five minutes and I can't blame him. Mr. Jefferson keeps his chair facing that way ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... of Europe. Judging from human nature, I thought that a little country girl, for the first time in a situation so well calculated to excite curiosity, and to distract attention, would lose all remembrance, for a time at least, of distant and familiar objects, and give herself up entirely to the fascination of those scenes which were then presented to her view. Your kind, interesting, and most welcome epistle showed me, however, that I had been both mistaken and uncharitable in these suppositions. I was greatly amused at the tone of nonchalance which you ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... brilliant, but it was the sound of her rich, calm, rather lazy voice, the different lights which glanced and gleamed in her eyes, the dimples about her mouth, the attitude she put herself in. Maggie had a way of changing color, too, which added to her fascination. Sometimes the beautiful oval of her face would he almost ivory white, but then again a rosy cloud would well up and up the cheeks and even slightly suffuse the broad, low forehead. Her face was never ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... the home of the drama. There was something weird to her in the alternate spaces of light and shade. Without any feeling of its ugliness, she looked at the curtain as at a door that should presently open between her and a house of wonders. She looked at it with the fascination that one always experiences for what either brings near or ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... a considerable fascination about the speculation that in such cases we see the resurrection of a dead world, a means of renewing the population of the universe. What happens is that in some region of the sky where no star, or only ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... you know, said I was fascinating, and I determined to use my powers of fascination to regain my husband's heart; how little I knew that heart! I dressed to please him—oh! I never dressed myself with such care in my most coquettish days;—I gave a splendid ball; I dressed to please him—he used to be delighted with ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... and far-distant scenes. But the moment the first spark of fire sends a fitful gleam of light upwards, these thoughts and feelings take wing and vanish. The indistinct scenery is rendered utterly invisible by the red light, which attracts and rivets the eye as if by a species of fascination. The deep shadows of the woods immediately around you grow deeper and blacker as the flames leap and sparkle upwards, causing the stems of the surrounding trees, and the foliage of the overhanging branches, to stand out in bold relief, bathed in a ruddy glow, which converts ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... opinions, or in disparagement of dear Dykelands; and Kate thinks herself the most lovely creature upon earth, and the only useful person in the house; and Harriet believes no one her equal in the art of fascination; and Mrs. Woodbourne thinks no children come within a mile of hers in beauty ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the front kitchen, glancing askance at several rosy, curly-headed children who were shyly huddled together by the door. The fascination of new surroundings and possible new playmates had diverted their minds from their misfortunes, and the Captain heaved a sigh of relief as he passed into the ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... game, and, from the very fact of its fascination, it is extremely dangerous for boys. It is usually associated with drinking saloons, where the air is filled with evil influences and the fumes of rum and tobacco; and, aside from these degrading surroundings, it is a very expensive game. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... from Ferdinand, Chloe from her Corydon, Pierrette from Pierrot—ay, even Heloise from Abelard. I never could find it in my heart to blame Henriette for losing her heart to him, even though she had already promised it to me, for I myself could not resist the fascination of the man at whose side I faithfully worked even after he had stolen from me this dearest treasure of my heart. And yet who else could it be if not the lovely Henriette? Surely the combination of Raffles, with ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Mayhew's guidance to learn to sail a boat; this woman who was a spinster in years, and a child in simplicity and directness; who was beautiful, and never once thought of her beauty; who was alone, and never seemed lonely: she was a perpetual problem and fascination to him. Dr. Eben was not usually given to concerning himself much as to other people's opinion of him: but he found himself for ever wondering what Hetty Gunn thought of him; whether she were beginning to lose any ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... a work of rare interest; at times having the fascination of a romance, and again suggesting the profoundest views of education and of science. The ex-mason holds a graphic pen; a quiet humor runs through his pages; he tells a story well, and some of his pictures of home life might almost be classed ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... People turned to him as to the master of whom all felt the need. But then he was already there, and what we wish to discover is the cause of his rapid ascent. I would willingly suppose in him the existence of a species of personal fascination which escapes us to-day. His successes with women might be quoted in support of this theory. On the days when he speaks "the passages are choked with women . . . there are seven or eight hundred in the tribunes, and ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... based on the theory of the arithmetical rhythm of time, contains much of the same fascination that attaches to the tales of Poe. Simply told, yet dramatic and powerful in its unique conception, it has a convincing ring that is most impressive. The reader can not evade a haunting conviction that this wonderful experiment must in reality have taken ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... agreed eagerly, his eyes burning like two coals of fire, so intense was his interest. "I have been from boyhood," he added, noticing my glance, "a lover of tales of mystery. They have for me a fascination I cannot explain; there is in my blood something that responds to them. I feel sometimes that I would have made a great detective—or a great criminal. Instead of which, I am merely a dealer in curios. ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... that countenance could have possessed an instinct which was in any wise childish, so strong and purposeful were his sharply cut features. Indeed, the face was one to make an impression under any circumstances. In the present instance, and with such an expression stamped upon it, it exerted a fascination which disturbed the current of the detective's thoughts whenever by any chance he allowed it to get between him and his duty. To attribute folly to a man with such a mouth and such a chin was to own one's self a poor judge of human nature. Therefore, the lamp overhead, with its electric ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... whom they followed. His house at Shalford was a den of profligacy and vice. No woman could cross that threshold and depart unstained. In some strange fashion, inexplicable and yet common, the man, with all his evil soul and his twisted body, had yet some strange fascination for women, some mastery over them which compelled them to his will. Again and again he had brought ruin to a household, again and again his adroit tongue and his cunning wit had in some fashion saved him from the punishment of his deeds. His family was ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which had an inexhaustible fascination for Nora herself, although there were times when the isolation, and above all the unbroken stillness got badly on her nerves. But she could not rid herself of an almost superstitious feeling that the prairie had a lesson to teach her. Twice they went in to Prentice. With these exceptions, ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... such a wretch as to blame you, for you could not help what has happened. I was away at the antipodes—had been there for years. He was in the house with you for three months. And—and—I have noticed—even I—what a fascination some of these handsome, brilliant soldiers exercise over young girls! You were fascinated, and your affections were won before you knew it. You did not mean to be drawn away from me any more than the boat means to be sucked into the whirlpool! You could not avert your fate any more than the boat ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... opposition to such a scheme. A large surplus in the Treasury is the parent of many ills, and among them is found a tendency to an extremely liberal, if not loose, construction of the Constitution. It also attracts the gaze of States and individuals with a kind of fascination, and gives rise to plans and pretensions that an uncongested ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... know," he proceeded, his eyes sparkling with that light which is so often the beacon of death—"you do not know the fatal fascination by which a mind, set to the sorrows of a melancholy temperament, is charmed out of its strength. But no matter how dark may be my dreams—there is one light for ever upon them—one image ever, ever ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... through the sunny day. It was a simple tale, with few, few facts; A life that clomb one mountain and looked forth; Then sudden sank to a low dreary plain, And wandered ever in the sound of waves, Till fear and fascination overcame, And led her trembling into life and joy. Alas! how many such are told by night, In ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... looked at the forehead, low, but square and broad, the eyes, blue, yet deep-set and intense, the whole aspect of the man, of indomitable energy, hiding, behind a perfectly acted comedy, his almost superhuman strength of will and marvellous ingenuity, she understood the fascination which he exercised over his followers, for had he not also cast his spells over ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... has done. She cannot, when she looks upon the beautiful girl who comes each day to her lonely hut, and whom she worships with a species of wild idolatry. Maggie knows not why it is, and yet to her there is a peculiar fascination about that strange old woman, with her snow-white hair, her wrinkled face, her bony hand, and wild, dark eyes, which, when they rest on her, have in them a look of ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... was fast asleep, stretched on a sofa in the salon. Angelot looked in upon him as he lay snoring. With his eyes shut, he was more like the Emperor than ever; and as with Napoleon, there was a sort of fascination in the brow, the chin, the shape of the head, though here there was coarseness instead of refinement, the power ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... unaffected by the fact of Iris Cheniston's residence in the land of Egypt. Although he had no expectation of meeting her—for she and her husband were still somewhere in the desert, a couple of days' journey from Cairo—there was an odd fascination in the bare idea of inhabiting, even for a few weeks, the land which held the girl he still loved. For although he had long since determined that he must avoid Bruce Cheniston's wife if he wished to keep his secret inviolate, and incidentally attempt, by starving his passion ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... awed even the warlike Barsoomian. The mad rending, the hideous and deafening roaring, the implacable savagery of the blood-stained beasts held him in the paralysis of fascination, and when it was over and the two creatures, their heads and shoulders torn to ribbons, lay with their dead jaws still buried in each other's bodies, Carthoris tore himself from the spell only by an ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ship—the machine that brought forth life from nature's bountiful storehouse—was of little use now that both atmosphere and moisture were nearly gone. Yet Omega cherished this machine, and aside from its associations with the past, it held for him a fascination ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... fashioned to do both harm and good, and more of harm than of good; but never to sanction a scheme of evil or blink at it in alliance with another: a woman, in contact with whom you were soon resolved to your component elements. Separated from a certain fascination that there was for her in Edward's acerb wit, she saw that he was doing a dastardly thing in cold blood. We need not examine their correspondence. In a few weeks she had contrived to put a chasm between them as lovers. Had he remained in England, boldly facing his own evil actions, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... blind rage, charging through thick and thin, has had a fascination for me as long as I can remember. The true aurochs and this, the European Bison, ceased to exist in the British Isles, except in the Zoological Gardens; but the latter is still found wild in Lithuania, and is also carefully preserved in other parts of Russia, of which ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... style and circumstantiality of detail that give such charm to the works of Defoe. In spite of the fact that Cooper and Marryat had created a taste for sea-tales, this story never became popular. It is superabundant in horrors—a vein that had a fatal fascination for the morbid ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... gentlemen, I mention these trivial things as an assurance to you that I never have forgotten the fascination of that old pursuit. The pleasure that I used to feel in the rapidity and dexterity of its exercise has never faded out of my breast. Whatever little cunning of hand or head I took to it, or acquired in it, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... that certain individuals possess an inherent power, or fascination, over certain creatures, otherwise I should be unable to account for many feats which I have witnessed, and, indeed, borne a share in, connected with the taming of brutes and reptiles. I have known a savage and vicious mare, whose stall it was dangerous to approach, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... however vivid, can hope to capture and retain all the wonder and mystery of these grand old strongholds, which must be seen in order to leave upon the imagination and memory the full impress of their weird and extraordinary fascination. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... received visitors as if she granted an audience; this manner was natural to her; it was only the manner of one whose thoughts have dwelt more on heroic deeds, and lived more with heroes than with actual living men and women; the effect of this, however, soon passed away, but not so the fascination which was in all she said and did. Her voice was soft and musical, and her conversation addressed to one person rather than to the company at large, while Maria talked rapidly to every one, or for every one who chose to listen. How ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... creature—excepting monkeys—as it had been hard at first to sleep, on account of the voices of all creation after sundown. To approach undiscovered, and to lie out and watch undiscovered, taxed and developed all their faculties; the fascination and excitement of it stretched their powers; and their successes enriched them both ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... something about Andrew C. P. Haggard's book, Madame de Stael: Her Trials and Triumphs. But so profoundly convinced am I of the book's fascination that I shall reprint the first chapter. If this is not worthy of Lytton Strachey, I am ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... intellectual and world-weary man, a cynic whose heart was somewhat embittered by its large experience of human nature, take up one of OLIVER OPTIC'S books, and read it at a sitting, neglecting his work in yielding to the fascination of the pages. When a mature and exceedingly well-informed mind, long despoiled of all its freshness, can thus find pleasure in a book for boys, no additional words of recommendation are ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... said very emphatically, "one day would be enough for any fellow I know, and the idea of going where there is likely to be plenty of chance for adventure will never again have any fascination for me." ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... indolent, and the refuge of the uninformed. It passed through at least eight editions, by which the bookseller, as WOOD records, got an estate; and, notwithstanding the objection sometimes opposed against it, of a quaint style, and too great an accumulation of authorities, the fascination of its wit, fancy, and sterling sense, have borne down all censures, and extorted praise from the first Writers in the English language. The grave JOHNSON has praised it in the warmest terms, and the ludicrous STERNE has interwoven many parts of it into his own popular ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... dimension, beauty of plan, unity of workmanship, and distinction of form." Any one of these attributes, were it literally so, might well turn a commonplace structure into an unapproachable masterpiece. In a measure, all of his eulogy is quite true, and the pity is that more do not know of its fascination and charm. ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... of the Swarm were, in the midst of the excitement of Mr. Crabtree's change of residence. In all their young lives of varied length they had never before had an opportunity to witness the upheaval of a moving and this occasion was frought with a well-nigh insupportable fascination. The General's remaining at the post of family duty and his command of his henchman to the same sacrifice was indeed remarkable, though in ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... speaking impetuously, but he stopped as suddenly, for the senator was not listening to him. He had lowered his eyes and was looking with a glance of mingled fascination and disgust at Arkwright's hands. In his earnestness the young man had stretched them out, and as they showed behind the line of his ragged sleeves the others could see, even in the blurred light and falling snow, that the wrists of each hand were gashed and cut in ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... mind on this point in the train. There is a certain fascination about making the very worst of a bad job. Achilles knew his business when he sat in his tent. The determination not to play cricket for Sedleigh as he could not play for Wrykyn gave Mike a sort of pleasure. To stand by with folded arms and a sombre frown, as it ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... expression in the two languages that were native to him; and the accomplishments which would have made him a good clerk or a successful journalist made him in the eyes of Frederick William a counsellor for kings. The history of his mission to Brussels gives curious evidence both of the fascination exercised by Napoleon over common minds, and of the political helplessness which in Prussia could now be mistaken for the quality of a statesman. Lombard failed to obtain from Napoleon any guarantee or security whatever; yet he wrote back in terms of the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... martial cap; the mouth, a feature seldom beautiful in men, blending sweetness and firmness in rare degree, now compressed and almost colorless; but the eyes! the "empty, melancholy eyes"! what strange, glassy, introspective fixedness! what inexplicable fascination, as if they were riveted on some object unseen by other mortals! A glance sufficed to show to myself, at least, that he was in a state of tense nervous excitation, similar to that of a subject of mesmerism. A preternatural ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... bigger, stronger than any man she had seen before, and altogether different from all those she knew. He was of the victorious race. With a vivid remembrance of the great catastrophe of her life he appeared to her with all the fascination of a great and dangerous thing; of a terror vanquished, surmounted, made a plaything of. They spoke with just such a deep voice—those victorious men; they looked with just such hard blue eyes at their enemies. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... natural fear and of interests so powerful to detain me, I have completed my task, and I will confess that as it grew it enthralled me. There is in Nothing something so majestic and so high that it is a fascination and spell to regard it. Is it not that which Mankind, after the great effort of life, at last attains, and that which alone can satisfy Mankind's desire? Is it not that which is the end of so many generations of analysis, the final word of Philosophy, and the goal of the search ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... looked beyond, she might have seen cause for thankfulness that the thing most hotly desired was withheld for this early love had not root enough for the wear and tear of life. It was a hob day romance, born of the senses, the bewildering fascination of a graceful presence and winning voice, and well for her if her guardian angel stood with even a ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... I wasn't wanted, so I shut the door, and I hopped it. I went and saw the last half of a music-hall. But, I don't know, it didn't kind of have no fascination for me. You've got to give your mind to it to appreciate ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... though she coloured a good deal, she made no objection and showed no displeasure. Alice and she now busied themselves with getting the cups and saucers out of the cupboard, and setting the table; but all that evening, through whatever was doing, Ellen's eyes sought the stranger as if by fascination. She watched him whenever she could without being noticed. At first she was in doubt what to think of him; she was quite sure from that one look into his eyes that he was a person to be feared; there was no doubt of that, as to the rest ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... these paperasses is not perhaps so disgusting as the impatient Pere Daniel imagined; there is a literary fascination in looking over the same papers which the great characters of history once held and wrote on; catching from themselves their secret sentiments; and often detecting so many of their unrecorded actions! By habit the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... such a fascination in making the rubbing-stick fire that one of my Western cooks, becoming an expert, gave up the use of matches for a time and lit his morning fire with the fire-drill, and, indeed, he did not find it much slower ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... a woman was ill calculated to restrain the turbulent Persian nobles. Two instances had now proved that a mere noble might ascend the throne of the son of Babek; and a fatal fascination was exercised on the grandees of the kingdom by the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... came he watched her in silent fascination while her hands flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and slender in contrast to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It seemed wonderful to him that any one should perform with such careless ease the difficult task of making tea in public in a lurching train. He ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... hour and got a complete impression; the place was perfectly soundless, and for the time, at least, lonely; the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaption ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... melancholy occasion," he admitted, his voice shaking with emotion. "Still, I felt it my duty to support my brother through the trial. Apart from that, you know, Mr. Quest, a scene such as we have just witnessed has a peculiar—I might almost say fascination for me," the Professor continued, with a little glint in his eyes. "You, as a man of science, can realise, I am sure, that the criminal side of human nature is always of interest ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the two last words, and their imploring accent was almost piteous. There must have been a strange fascination about Livingstone, for, saint as she was, no other living creature would have won such a concession from the Christian charity of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the sympathy due to vast services requited by murder. Against accusing humanity his plea is far weaker, or rather he has no plea but one of extenuation. If there is a gloomy majesty about him the fascination of which we cannot help owning, if he was the noblest spirit that served evil, still it was evil that he served. The bandit hordes which he led were the scourges of the defenceless people, and in making ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... you mean, though," admitted Spence, "there is nothing like the fascination of the unknown. It very nearly ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Beethoven's Seventh. There is a wonderful difference, an immeasurable gulf between the good and the bad in art; yet the apparent line is of the subtlest. Most street songs may be poor; but some are undoubtedly beautiful in a very high sense. It is a problem of mystic fascination, this question of the value of contemporary art. It makes its appeal to the subjective view of each listener. No rule applies. Every one will perceive in proportion to his capacity, no one beyond it. So, a profound work may easily fail of response, as many works in ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... The dressing-case was complicated and large, having several compartments, none of which were fastened. In the first opened, he saw a miniature of a female so beautiful, that his eve rested on it, as it might be, by a fascination.—Notwithstanding some difference produced by the fashions of different periods, the resemblance to the object of his love, was obvious at a glance. Borne away by the pleasure of the discovery, and actually believing that he saw a picture of Eve, drawn in a dress that did not in a great degree ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... was the work of the form of magic popularly known as Simiya fascination, for which see vol. i. 305, 332. It is supposed to pass away after a period of three days, and mesmerists will find no difficulty in recognising a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... imagination, insight, grace, intense emotion, and melancholy refinement. In Hamlet, Richelieu, Othello, Iago, Lear, Bertuccio, and Lucius Brutus they were conspicuously manifest. But the controlling attribute,—that which imparted individual character, colour and fascination to his acting,—was the thoughtful introspective habit of a stately mind, abstracted from passion and suffused with mournful dreaminess of temperament. The moment that charm began to work, his victory was complete. It was ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... unlikely that I shall ever be compelled to paint furniture for a living, but it is a consolation to me to feel that I could do so if called on. There is a fascination about painting furniture, Adams. I have painted the whole of my bedroom at Blandings and am now engaged on the museum. You would be surprised at the fascination of it. It suddenly came back to me the other day that I had been inwardly ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... his means of preservation were. He must play the fiddle till some help arrived. Ere long, yielding to the fascination of the art, the musician completely forgot the danger he incurred. Indulging all the fancies of his imagination, he gave his four-footed audience a concert in which he surpassed himself. Never had he played with more taste, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... What right had any one to stop him here at the very door, when just inside great things were happening? Past that white-and-purple barrier which he could see against the sky a new land lay, a radiant land of promise, of mystery, and of fascination; Pierce vowed that he would not, could not, wait. Fortunes would reward the first arrivals; how, then, could he permit these other men to precede him? The world was a good place—it would ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... have thought me unsympathetic and disapproving about that which holds for you so great a fascination. Disapproving, yes; I can't help disapproving of gambling, especially in a woman; but unsympathetic, no—a thousand times no. Sympathy is understanding, and, believe me, I do understand, and therefore ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... shilling a day, if it would make the old man comfortable for life; and why not my soul too? Don't that belong to me as much as any other part of me? Why am I to be condemned to sacrifice my prospects in life to a girl of whose honesty I am not even sure? What is this intolerable fascination? Witch! I almost believe in mesmerism now!— Again, I say, why should I not sell my soul, as I'd sell my coat, if the bargain's but a ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... rapidly over its face and the rabbit made no attempt to move. Whether it was the effect of some anaesthetic quality in the breath of the snake or the traditional charm of the serpent, it was hard to say, but the rabbit made no move to escape. Slowly but surely it yielded to the fascination of the snake, the large transparent ears dropped to the side of the head and the body muscles relaxed until the tickling of the serpent's tongue caused no reflex ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... though from a very different motive. Nothwithstanding all the gossip, and the many ludicrous opinions of her companions, her eyes scarcely turned an instant from the lugger, on which they seemed to be riveted by a sort of fascination. Had there been one there sufficiently unoccupied to observe this interesting girl, he might have been struck with the varying expression of a countenance that was teeming with sensibility, and which too often reflected the passing emotions of its mistress's mind. Now an ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her voice was no longer soft and alluring; it was metallic and menacing. For the second time, first in Venner, now in Tomlin, she had seen the true source of their fascination. "No, it is not the treasure-house. It is the council hall, where thou wert lodged." She snatched her gaze from the compass and fixed him with the cold, unwinking stare of a snake. "Where thou wert lodged, my friend who would renounce all for me. Where, had I cared to, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... this. A recollection of his vow, together with a sense that to gaze on the festival of this Bona Dea was, though so innocent and pretty a sight, hardly fair or gentlemanly, would have compelled him to withdraw his eyes, had not the sportive fascination of her appearance glued them there in spite of all. And as if to complete the picture of Grace personified and add the one thing wanting to the charm which bound him, the clouds, till that time thick in the sky, broke away from the upper heaven, and allowed the noonday sun to pour ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... hurried books of travel, nor help seeing from my point of observation the sham and cheapness with which Venice is usually brought out, if I may so speak, in literature. At the same time, it has never lost for me its claim upon constant surprise and regard, nor the fascination of its excellent beauty, its peerless picturesqueness, its sole and wondrous grandeur. It is true that the streets in Venice are canals; and yet you can walk to any part of the city, and need not take boat whenever ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... her late thirties, a man in the early twenties possesses a peculiar fascination; and to the Baroness, clothed in weeds for a husband who died on the eve of his seventieth birthday, the possibility of winning a young man like Preston Cheney overbalanced all other considerations in her mind. She had never been ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... words stopped for a moment, biting his lips and staring out before him; then, eagerly returning to an idea which seemed to possess a strange fascination for him, he continued,— ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... heart; and that was because I had heard these tiny outcasts shouting with glee. I wondered if the glitter and shadow of such sordid things were thronged with magnificence and mystery for those who were unaware of a greater light and deeper shade which made up the romance and fascination of my own life. In imagination I narrowed myself to their ignorance, littleness, and youth, and seemed for a moment to flit amid great uncomprehended beings and a ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... he described this journey, one of the most charming among poems of travel, and one of the most interesting of the fragments of early mediaeval literature. Nowhere else can we see portrayed so strongly the fascination which Rome then still possessed for the whole of Western Europe, and the adoration with which she was still regarded as mother and light of the world. The magical statue had been cast away, with other heathen idols, from the imperial ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... admiration became an instinctive zeal for this man, a boundless love for and belief in him, such a love as soldiers feel for their leader when he has the power of swaying other men, when the halo of victories surrounds him, and the magical fascination of genius is felt in all that he does. The poor outcast ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... curious riot of tobacco-girls, had paused on the sidewalk across the street, among the newspaper stands. A strange fascination it had for him, that moving mass of white handkerchiefs drawn tightly over pretty foreheads! What a bedlam! A regiment of females in mutiny! A nunnery gone mad! A meteor-shower of black eyes, that stared ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... greet the Bellamys; Harriet fixed her eyes with a sort of fascination upon the man to whom she presently saw him talking. Almost everyone else in the group was looking at him, too; Royal Blondin was used to it; one of his favourite affectations was an apparent unconsciousness ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... penetrated its lair. My situation became unpleasant in the extreme. Turn in whichever direction I might, those fiery eyes followed me, and at last I found that I was being subjected to the influence of a horrible fascination. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... first and second stories there were wide piazzas running around the house, and for hours at a time with my marine glasses at hand to look at passing steamers, I sat and enjoyed, what has always been a fascination to me, watching the magnificent surf crashing and dashing on the beach below. The house was protected by a formidable bulkhead, but it was no uncommon occurrence to have great showers of spray ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... Frenchwoman celebrated for her wit and fascination, born at Chalons-sur-Marne; came to Paris in the reign of Louis XIII., where her drawing-room became the rendezvous of all the celebrities of the time, many of whom were bewitched by her charms; she gave harbour to the chiefs ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... fascination. And now he reached for the tremendous glass sitting on the table in front of him. But his fingers didn't quite make it. Somehow, the glass was heavy and slippery, and it eluded him, rolled over on its side, ...
— Poppa Needs Shorts • Leigh Richmond
... believed in their existence as an article of faith, and when the boldest shuddered to hear them named. What are now idle fancies were once the most portentous of realities; and in this lies the secret of the almost universal diffusion of certain typical tales, beliefs, and observances, and of the fascination which they have not ceased to exercise over ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
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