"Nocturnal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought that such madmen might well be left to themselves, that no one would listen to their ravings, and that the glorious machinery of Justice need no more be used against them than a crusader's glittering battle-axe need be brought forward to exterminate the nocturnal pest of our couches. This indeed has been, I must say unfortunately, the view taken by our rulers till quite recently. But times have changed, gentlemen; for need I tell you, who in your character of shrewd and successful men of business understand human nature so well, that in this ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... silence. 7. Concerning humility. 8. Concerning the Divine Offices at night. 9. How many Psalms are to be said at night. 10. How in summer the Nocturnal Praises shall be carried on. 11. How Vigils shall be conducted on Sunday. 12. Concerning the order of Matins on Sunday. 13. Concerning the order of Matins on week days. 14. Concerning the order of Vigils on Saints' days. 15. Concerning the occasions when the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... from Amsterdam in a mysterious manner, almost in disguise. Had his nocturnal dealings with the French minister been known, he would have been rudely dealt with by the East India Company. He was a native of Tournay, not a sincere republican therefore, was very strongly affected to France, and declared that all his former fellow-townsmen, and many more, had the fleur-de-lys ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... so-called simple eye, or ocellus. These have been historically derived from one and the same organ. In order to exercise the function of sight the facets need a greater pencil of light rays by night than by day. To obtain the same result we dilate the pupil. But nocturnal insects are dazzled by the light of day, and diurnal insects cannot see by night, for neither possess the faculty of accommodation. Insects are specially able to perceive motion, but there are only very few insects that ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... call around near midnight, some time after I have retired to sleep; they awaken me with their garrulous observations concerning the bicycle, which they are critically examining close to my head with a classic lamp; but I readily forgive them their nocturnal intrusion, since they awaken me to the first opportunity of hearing women wailing for the dead. A dozen or so of women are wailing forth their lamentations in the silent night but a short distance from the khan; I can ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of a ruddy colour. At its height it is of brilliant whiteness, because there the nature of the aether is purer, and far away, he avoids {all} infection from the earth. Nor can there ever be the same or a similar appearance of the nocturnal Diana; and always that of the present day is less than on the morrow, if she is on the increase; {but} greater if she is contracting ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... cut blubber, completely severed his penis, beside inflicting a wound in the abdomen through which the intestines protruded. After recovery there was a distinct increase of sexual desire and frequent nocturnal emissions. In the same report there is recorded the history of a man who had entirely lost his penis, but had supplied himself with an ivory succedaneum. This fellow finally became so libidinous that it was necessary to exclude ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... great city must have been built by night. At least, it is only at night that every part of a great city is great. All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks. At least, I think many people of those nobler trades that work by night (journalists, policemen, burglars, coffee-stall keepers, and such mistaken enthusiasts as refuse to go home till morning) must often ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... street which bounds the Prim estate upon the south. The streets of Oakdale are flanked by imposing battalions of elm and maple which over-arch and meet above the thoroughfares; and now, following an early Spring, their foliage eclipsed the infrequent arclights to the eminent satisfaction of those nocturnal wayfarers who prefer neither publicity nor the spot light. Of such there are few within the well ordered precincts of law abiding Oakdale; but to-night there was at least one and this one was deeply grateful for the gloomy walks along ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... promised his followers an easy victory over their enemies. A battle was fought—the Indians were defeated—and the gory form of many a gallant, but credulous "brave," attested that the renowned Prophet had lost, amid the carnage of that nocturnal conflict, his ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... sixteen, but in this fair-weather sailing, he might safely sleep between his tricks of wheel, leaving orders to be called on any sign of squalls. So far he could trust the men, between whom and himself a close relation had sprung up. With Uncle Ned he held long nocturnal conversations, and the old man told him his simple and hard story of exile, suffering, and injustice among cruel whites. The cook, when he found Herrick messed alone, produced for him unexpected and ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... criticised it with great cheerfulness and freedom, and somewhat irritated me by frequently ejaculating "Bosh!" when I explained why in fishing at a depth of 100 to 150 fathoms for a certain species of Ruvettus (a nocturnal-feeding fish that attains a weight of over 100 lb.) a heavy wooden hook was always used by the natives in preference to a steel hook of European manufacture. I saw that it was impossible to convince him, so dropped the subject; and showed him other gear of mine—flying-fish tackle, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... justice, her nocturnal harangues upon such occasions not unfrequently terminated with this sage apophthegm, which always prefaced the producing of some provision a little better than ordinary, such as she now placed before him. In fact, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... straight to the dance hall, closed at this hour to its nocturnal patrons, where she knew she would find Tom Martin in the office back of the main room. He was there as she expected—a keen-eyed, sharp-featured little cockney whose history from the time he disappeared from London in a fog to the day when he emerged in this unlikely corner of the great United ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... bars and ham-and-beef shops were brightly lit up, while a noisy mob of women hung obstinately round the doors of the cafes. This suburb was the only corner of night Paris which was still alight and still alive, the only market still open to nocturnal bargains. These last were openly struck between group and group and from one end of the street to the other, just as in the wide and open corridor of a disorderly house. On such evenings as the pair came home without having had any success they used to wrangle ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Since the nocturnal scene at the inn near Loudun, he had not been able to resume sufficient empire over his mind to occupy himself with anything save his cherished though sad reflections; and consumption was already threatening him, when happily he arrived at the camp of Perpignan, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... motor-car stop outside. No one, however, thought it worth while to discontinue his labours for long enough to look out and see who this nocturnal visitor might be. In a very short time, however, these labours were disturbed. From room to room, Julian, with Catherine and the Bishop, for whom they had called on the way, passed with a brief message. No one made any difficulty about coming to the Council ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in an elegy in which he narrated a nocturnal promenade between Rome and Tibur. Observe the word Scythiae instead of Scythicis, and especially, feriat, which is the true reading,—the printed texts say noceat. Thus an excellent correction has been preserved ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... upon after reaching the foot of the fells was Wythburn, at the head of Thirlmere Lake, quite near Amboth Hall, with its strange legends and associations. The mansion was said to be haunted by supernatural visitors, midnight illuminations, and a nocturnal marriage with a murdered bride. The most remarkable feature of the story, however, was that of the two skulls from Calgarth Hall, near Windermere, which came and joined in these orgies at Amboth Hall. These skulls formerly occupied a niche in ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... these singular bodies surpassed the light of our terrestrial moon, by reason of their closeness to the surface of Mars, while the more rapid motion of the inner satellite causes the most weird and beautiful changes of effect in the nocturnal glory they both lend to the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... was in the inn at Randsfjord where we spent our first night out! Vast, bare, primitive, with eight windows to admit the persistent nocturnal twilight; a sea-like floor of blue-painted boards, unbroken by a single island of carpet; and a castellated stove in one corner: an apartment for giants, with two little beds for dwarfs on opposite shores of the ocean. There was no telephone; ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... resettled themselves comfortably on their perches as if not to be disturbed by such nonsense. The calf resting at the end of his pegged rope arose, looked about him and lay down again as if he would not be a party to poor Peter's absurd nocturnal enterprise. The darkness and the vastness of the wooded country seemed to chill Peter's hopes. Now that the gripping spell was over he ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... could hardly create the havoc which the Baylor pup, with his one hundred and seventy-five pounds of animal spirits, wrought in our lawn. Next morning the lawn looked as if it had been honored with a nocturnal visitation from Burr Robbins' galaxy ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... glare of the terrace—in solemn silence; and there was indeed a great deal of critical silence, every way, between the companions, even till they gained the Place de l'Opera, as to the character of their nocturnal progress. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Elysium." Still, Elysium should have no mosquitoes, and they are nearly insupportable here; big spotted fellows, with a greed for blood, and a specially poisonous bite, taking the place at daylight of the retiring nocturnal host. The Chinese attendant is not careful, and lets mosquitoes into my net, and even one means a sleepless night. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... distressing was the condition of the besieged. While the garrison soldiers on guard were constantly compelled to face death in nocturnal sallies, or led a pitiable existence in damp huts, having inevitable surrender constantly before their eyes, and disarmament and imprisonment as the reward of all their struggles and exertions, the citizens in the towns, the women and children, were in constant danger of being ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... the accompaniment of his impetuous aspirations, broke in upon the series of his attempts on fortune; and when he returned to the task, the lamps were already lighted, and the nocturnal crowd was dense upon the pavement. Before a certain restaurant, whose name will readily occur to any student of our Babylon, people were already packed so closely that passage had grown difficult; and ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... was incensed by a nocturnal desecration of the statue of Duguesclin which stands at Dinan in the very lists in which five hundred years ago the Breton hero met and vanquished 'Sir Thomas of Canterbury.' The indignation of France was righteous, and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... C. Barlow says that it is found in deserted rabbit burrows and in all probability often excavates its own burrows. It also nests among the cliffs placing its eggs among the rocks in any crevice or tunnel which may offer a dark retreat during the day for they are nocturnal in their habits. The single egg which they lay is dull white in color, the inside of the shell being a pale green, which color can only be seen by holding the egg to the light. They are generally slightly nest ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... a quarter-past eleven. I don't know whether you think that a respectable hour for a young lady's evening ride. May I ask the motive of this nocturnal expedition?" ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... he ushers him directly into the new life over a bridge of symbolism. The restoring process which in real life takes many years he concentrates into a single night and represents it as the work of kindly nocturnal fairies and the glorious Alpine sunrise. Faust awakens healed and reinvigorated, and the majesty of Nature inspires in him a resolve to "strive ever ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... as absolutely of the lives and fortunes of his conquered subjects as an eastern monarch; and forbade, upon pain of death, the English either fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock; whether was this to prevent their nocturnal meetings, or only to try, by an odd and whimsical prohibition, how far it was possible for one man to extend his power over his fellow-creatures. It is true, indeed, that the English had Parliaments before and after William the Conqueror, and they boast of them, as though these assemblies ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... connected with the Witness newspaper; but in the following year removed to Glasgow, to assist in the establishment of the first Scottish daily newspaper. With that journal, the Daily Mail, he continued two years, till severe nocturnal labour much affecting his health, obliged him temporarily to abandon literary pursuits. He has been a contributor to Tait's Magazine, and was intrusted with the literary superintendence of Major De Renzy's "Poetical Illustrations and Achievements of the Duke of Wellington," a work to which ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... my nun, pretending not to be anxious to know who I was, approved of my choice, and feigned indifference for nocturnal meetings; but she seemed certain that after seeing her I would visit her. I knew very well what to think of it all, for the intrigue was sure to have an amorous issue. Nevertheless, her assurance, or rather confidence, increased my curiosity, and I felt that she had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Beauty triumphantly refused to give up the ghost. At first, he kicked and fought against it lustily, and yelled murder with all his might; but after a little practice the malefactor acted more philosophically, regarding the performance quite as part of his nocturnal programme. He never allowed it to make him late for breakfast, nor take away his appetite. Each morning, after execution, the moment the bell rang for prayers, in marched Beauty with a swollen head well on one side, growling anathemas from somewhere round the corner all prayer-time; ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... in this branch of their duty must be laid on the latter, which is even nowadays not yet sufficiently the case. Further, there must be thorough training in duties of security and reconnoitring at night, and in particular of the defence of cantonments against nocturnal attacks. ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... contained a specimen of the South African anteater. I do not know whether any such institution contains one now. However, a very liberal price was offered for a live specimen. This extraordinary creature is almost strictly nocturnal in its habits, and is consequently extremely difficult to capture. One day a man with whom I was acquainted was riding through the veld a few miles from his camp. To his surprise he noticed a large ant-eater. Mindful of the reward offered, he sprang from his horse and seized ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... throbbed; for might not one of those grates have been so tampered with as to give entrance to the nocturnal visitant? But they returned to the experienced ear of Master Clink, when he struck them in turn with the hammer, a clear and ringing sound, which assured ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the number of which he could not in one moment ascertain. He however discriminated in numerous places the inscriptions: The Board of Lustful Love; the Board of contracted grudges; The Board of Matutinal sobs; the Board of nocturnal tears; the Board of vernal affections; and the Board of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... remained fairly orderly and loyal. And yet on the other hand we find many of the phenomena which have been characteristic of later periods of Irish political agitation, already flourishing. Boycotting existed in fact, though the name was not yet invented; also nocturnal raids for arms, the sacking of lonely farmhouses, the intimidation of witnesses and the mutilation of cattle. Again, we see all through the history of Irish secret societies that their organization has been so splendid that the ordinary law has been powerless against them; ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... deemed a heresy; and then the very house rang with their disputes. Again, his bed must necessarily be made at a certain angle from the pillow to the footposts; and the slightest deviation from this disturbed, he said, his nocturnal rest, and did certainly ruffle his temper. He was equally whimsical about the brushing of his clothes, the arrangement of the furniture in his apartment, and a thousand minutiae, which, in conversation, he seemed ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... buried—and the chattering little opossums stripped the peach-trees of their wealth, in which labour of love they were eagerly assisted by the flying-foxes during the night, whilst any that had escaped these nocturnal depredators became the spoil of two or three idle boys, who loafed about all day, seeking mischief, and, as always happens, succeeding in finding it, even in this sequestered region. From this it will be seen that my efforts in the direction of husbandry ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... of poachers and deer-stalkers, who made use of such hiding-places to screen their nocturnal depredations. He might be gotten unknowingly into one of their retreats, and he knew the character of such men too well to venture farther into their privy places without leave. But it was strange this ugly and insane thing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... in England is a meeting avowedly for merriment; in Ireland it is a nocturnal meeting avowedly for the purpose of watching and bewailing the dead; but, in reality, for gossiping and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... supreme. These dogs are half wolf in breed, and very destructive, as I can testify. When I wildly brandished my umbrella, which could not possibly have harmed them, they jumped through the closed window leaving not a pane of glass behind. This, I suppose, is merely a nocturnal interlude to break the monotony of life in a ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... very camp. Troops of rollicking wa-was or gibbons frequented the forest; squirrels, tupaias, birds and insects in myriads were everywhere during the day. Great fruit-bats, flying lemurs, owls and other nocturnal creatures made the evenings ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... stormed by the Latin conquerors. The indolence of the Christians has been accused for not destroying these unfinished works; [511] but their fire, by a superior fire, was controlled and silenced; nor were they wanting in a nocturnal attempt to burn the vessels as well as the bridge of the sultan. His vigilance prevented their approach; their foremost galiots were sunk or taken; forty youths, the bravest of Italy and Greece, were inhumanly massacred at his command; nor could the emperor's grief be assuaged by the just though ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... is an easy prey during its hours of somnolence. Every Cigale encountered by the ferocious grasshopper on its nocturnal round must miserably perish. Thus are explained those sudden squeaks of anguish which are sometimes heard in the boughs during the hours of the night and early morning, although the cymbals have long been silent. The sea-green bandit has fallen upon some slumbering Cigale. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... and began to call to mind all the circumstances which in a short time had carried her so far. It was not three weeks since the time when she had first seen the young officer from the window—and yet she was already in correspondence with him, and he had succeeded in inducing her to grant him a nocturnal interview. She knew his name only through his having written it at the bottom of some of his letters; she had never spoken to him, had never heard his voice, and had never heard him spoken of until that evening. But, strange to say, that ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... slept the disciples of them both. When, now, Benedict, the man of God, was keeping the time of his nightly prayer during the brethren's rest, then stood he all vigilant at a window praying to the Almighty Lord; and then suddenly, in that time of the nocturnal stillness, as he looked out, he saw a light sent from on high disperse all the darkness of the night, and shine with a brightness so great that the light which then gleamed in the midst of the darkness was brighter than the light of day. Lo then, in this ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the eyes of pedestrians, because the civil code gives a right to provoke, or beat, or kiss, a wife in a carriage or elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere! How many secrets must be revealed in this way to nocturnal pedestrians,—to those young fellows who have gone to a ball in a carriage, but are obliged, for whatever cause it may be, to return on foot. It was the first time that Jules and Clemence had been together thus,—each ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... goods and chattels of your subjects; on the proofs of guilt continually afforded by the insensibility of the marks upon the accused; on the sudden transportation of bodies from one place to another; on the sacrifices and nocturnal assemblies, and other facts, corroborated by the testimony of ancient and modern authors, and verified by so many eyewitnesses, composed partly of accomplices and partly of people who had no interest in the trials beyond the love of truth, and confirmed ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... I informed my family of what it was possible might happen, and this I did, not to alarm them, but to put them upon their guard, that they might not lose presence of mind in case of any nocturnal assault being made upon my house. In my own mind I had firmly settled how to act: if any messenger from the Secretary of State's office came to apprehend me in the day time, I should attend him very quietly and peaceably; but if any nocturnal visit was intended me by the officers of the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... like a red pulsating ball, lighting up the vast white silence of the night in a shimmering glow. Not a sound broke the stillness of the desolation. It was too late for the life of day, too early for the nocturnal roamings and voices of the creatures of the night. Like the basin of a great amphitheater the frozen lake lay revealed in the light of the moon and a billion stars. Beyond it rose the spruce forest, black and forbidding. Along its nearer edges stood hushed walls of tamarack, ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... unarmed. And he thought that it would be well for the protege to watch over the patron without seeming to do so, to be the clear-sighted Telemachus of that blind Mentor, to point out the pitfalls to him, to defend him against the brigands, in short to assist him to fight in that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt to be lurking savagely about the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... neighbourhood was invited. Among these, commodore Trunnion and Mr. Hatchway were not forgotten, being the sole companions of the bridegroom, with whom, by this time, they had contracted a sort of intimacy at their nocturnal rendezvous. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... current as to his occasional appearance on earth. This was always at night and in the gloom of the forest. The hunter would hear a sound like the crash of falling trees, which would be nothing else than the mighty breathings of the giant form of the god on his nocturnal rambles. Were the hunter timorous he would die outright on seeing the terrific presence of the god; but were he of undaunted heart, and should rush upon him and seize him around the waist, the god was helpless and would grant him anything he wished. "Ask what you please," the captive ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... dispenser of nocturnal visions delights in joking, and though impalpable arms may seem to surround the sleeping spinster and a tender kiss may be imprinted upon her lips, it is not once in seventeen days that the caresses are bestowed by the writer ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... In these nocturnal regions and with the winds of dispersion that blow, meetings are almost impossible. The lovers see each other in dreams. In all probability the woman will never set eyes on the man. Is he young? Is he old? Is he handsome? Is he ugly? She does not know; she knows nothing about him. She adores ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... marching in Indian file, and heavily clad in their night-gear. They come to replace the guardians of the day by those of the night. One of the number falls out of the line on the terrace, where he commences his nocturnal wanderings, and guarantees the peace and safety of the inhabitants for the succeeding eight hours: the rest tramp onwards to their distant stations. The echoes of their iron heels have hardly died away, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... gently into Bursley, crossing the top of St. Luke's Square and turning eastwards into Market Square, ruled by the sombre and massive Town Hall in whose high tower an illuminated dial shone like a topaz. To Hilda, this nocturnal entry into Bursley had the romance of an entry into a town friendly but strange and recondite. During the few days of her stay with the Orgreaves in the suburb of Bleakridge, she had scarcely gone into the town once. She had never seen it at night. In the old ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... identifies, as he always has identified, Kerberos with the Vedic stem carvara, from which is derived carvar[i], "night." To quote his own words: "The germ of the idea ... must be discovered in that nocturnal darkness, that c[a]rvaram tamas, which native mythologists in India had not yet quite forgotten in post-Vedic times." With such a view my own has not the least point of contact. Cabala, the name of one of the dogs, means "spotted, bright"; it is the name of the sun-dog; it is quite the opposite ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... that the particular toad-in-a-hole had or had not access to air and food, the ordinary conditions of toad life are exactly those under which the delusive appearance of venerable antiquity would be almost certain frequently to arise. The toad is a nocturnal animal; it lives through the daytime in dark and damp places; it shows a decided liking for crannies and crevices; it is wonderfully tenacious of life; it possesses the power of hibernation; it can live on extremely small quantities of food ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... in the poor light of the guard's lantern. All the rooms on every floor opened each into the other;—but why should I give such a minute description, making my reader expect a ghost story, or at least a nocturnal adventure? I only want him to feel something of what our party felt as they entered this desolate building, which, though some hundred and twenty years old, bore not a single mark upon the smooth floors or spotless walls to indicate that article of furniture ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... autobiography, Dr. Cuyler tells how he "used to make nocturnal explorations of some of those satanic quarters" to keep public interest awake in the mission work at the Five Points. New Yorkers who remember the House of Industry of thirty years ago and who now look ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... me, Sorrow! Why have you left me? It is by grief alone that man is great." This is worthy of Chateaubriand. The theme of melancholy is as follows: "The moon appeared. . . . What is the moon, and what is its nocturnal magic to me? One hour more or less is nothing to me." This might very well be Lamartine. We then have the malediction pronounced in face of impassible Nature: "Yes, I detested that radiant and magnificent Nature, for it was there before me in all its stupid beauty, silent and ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... are common, as is the ubiquitous squirrel. The badger, however, is seldom seen by the chance visitor by reason of its nocturnal habits, but it is said to be more numerous than in any similar wild tract in the south. The smaller wild mammals, carnivorous and herbivorous, and a truly representative family of birds, including one or two rare visitors, have here a perfect sanctuary. The forest is obviously a happy hunting ground ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... of human being too tender to go on living? I stuck for a time as one does on these nocturnal occasions at the word "hypersensitive," going round it ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... enrich themselves with the spoils of a wealthy and effeminate people; but he exhorted them at the same time to spare the lives of the unresisting citizens, and to respect the churches of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul as holy and inviolable sanctuaries. Amidst the horrors of a nocturnal tumult, several of the Christian Goths displayed the fervor of a recent conversion; and some instances of their uncommon piety and moderation are related, and perhaps adorned, by the zeal ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... The nocturnal visitors seemed unacquainted with the building, for, after two or three steps had been taken, one lighted a match. It was evident to the detective that these visitors were reading the names on the doors as they progressed ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... your patrimony upon the most ordinary articles of every-day use. If in despair you turn for refuge to the booths, you will but have delivered yourself into the embrace of still more irresistible fascinations. For the nocturnal squatters are there for the express purpose of catching the susceptible. The shops were modestly attractive from their nature, but the booths deliberately make eyes at you, and with telling effect. The very atmosphere is bewitching. The lurid smurkiness ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... of opening windows, and the nocturnal head-dresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments of the Nightblooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... from one of his nocturnal expeditions, Jeffreys found his fellow-lodger up, with ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... hand of the justice suddenly began to waver as the hand trembled. Then Brown dropped it, squared away his chair, and looked grimly at his nocturnal visitor. For some moments his gaze was concentrated on Rathburn's face. Then he slowly read the poster offering a reward of five hundred dollars for The Coyote. He wet his lips ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... have known an owl of this species live a full year without any water. Perhaps the case may be the same with all birds of prey. When owls fly they stretch out their legs behind them as a balance to their large heavy heads; for as most nocturnal birds have large eyes and ears they must have large heads to contain them. Large eyes I presume are necessary to collect every ray of light, and large concave ears to command the smallest ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... and there a few sepulchral stones and monuments in the very last stage of irretrievable dilapidation. Add to these sombre surroundings the melancholy sighing of the night-wind through the branches of the trees overhead, and the occasional weird cry of some nocturnal bird, and it will not be wondered at if I confess I felt a strong desire to get beyond the precincts of the eerie place with ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... sleep. We confess we cannot understand how we can reconcile him to the human nature he despises, or make him sensible of the sufferings of the poor wretch whom he dreads, by showing him this wretch in the guise of the escaped convict or the nocturnal burglar. The hideous phantom Death, under the repulsive aspect in which he has been represented by Holbein and his predecessors, gnashing his teeth and playing the fiddle, has been powerless to convert the wicked and console their victims. And ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... opinion, Cleek," put in Narkom, "that strangulation is merely part of the procedure of the rascal who makes these diabolical nocturnal visits. In other words, that he is armed with some quick-acting infernal poison, which he forces into the mouths of his victims. That paralysis of the muscles of the throat is one of the symptoms of prussic acid poisoning, you ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... these nocturnal visits continuing, and wished that I could help her. I thought if I could only find out whose the photograph was, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... "For heaven's sake, Connie, don't stand here any longer. Our reputations are bad enough as it is. Good night—Roxbury!" He distinctly heard the heartless Edith giggle. Then came the soft, quick swish of garments and the nocturnal visitors were gone. He picked up the envelope and, waiting until they were safely down the hall, turned ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... painted, feature by feature, these nocturnal scenes on the Orinoco, because, having but lately embarked on it, we were as yet unaccustomed to their wildness. They were repeated for months together, every night that the forest approached the edge of the river. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... height of summer there is always a feeling of ghostliness about nocturnal parades. The darkness was intense. As might be expected, the men had not by any means recovered from the heat and exertion of the previous day, and were not in the best of tempers. The Subaltern himself was so tired that he had to lie down on the cold road at each hourly halt ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... scrotum, perineum and, where thought best, also to the lumbo-sacral region. Where, as is usual, the impotency is accompanied by a certain degree of cutaneous anaesthesia of the penis, but especially where the seminal secretion is scanty, the board should be positive (ascending current); where however nocturnal spermatorrhoea, premature discharges (before coition is possible) or other irritable phenomena characterize a case, the surface board should be negative (descending current). The head of the patient should rest ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... days after this nocturnal decision that the knouting had taken place at which our readers have assisted. It was for some slight fault, and Gregory had been the victim; Vaninka having complained to her father about him. Foedor, who as aide-de-camp had been obliged to preside over Gregory's punishment, had paid no more ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the mast of the Loulia. He put his hand down to his hip-pocket. Yes, his revolver was safely there. He lit a cigar, then, moved by an after-thought, threw it away. Its tip hissed as it struck the river. He looked at that blue jewel, at the diaper of yellow below it, and he set out upon his nocturnal journey. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... of these, all stout, hulking young fellows nearly as old as Bog. They took a fancy to bill posting, and worked industriously and faithfully at it, because it was nocturnal, mysterious, romantic. The half dollar which they each received for a night's labor, enabled them to lounge about the streets all day in glorious indolence. Sometimes there was a prodigious rush of business, and then the firm were obliged to hire ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... it would not be prepared for him, and partly in order to give Henry the full advantage of his society. They sat on the terrace of the Cafe de la Paix, after a very late dinner, and drank bock, and watched the nocturnal life of the boulevard, and talked. Henry gathered—not from any direct statement, but by inference—that Tom must have acquired a position in the art world of Paris. Tom mentioned the Salon as if the Salon were his pocket, and stated casually ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... am not fond of such nocturnal visitors myself, not being much gifted with physical strength or courage, I listened a moment to hear if any one was coming. The sound of approaching footsteps along the passage greatly aided the desperate effort I made to leave my comfortable ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... murmuring waterfall, along the rocky face of the towering precipice, with fleeting glimpses of the myriad monkeys eternally flitting through the tropical forest, with the discords of nocturnal animals, and the squawking and cries of disturbed birds of a hundred different species, amid the soft moonlight and deep shadows, our friends threaded their way, listening and peering into the gloom, their hopes high, and yet with misgiving ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... having a beautiful time. Sincerely, he appreciated the playful grab his nocturnal friend had made in his general direction. Lad had countered this, by frisking away for another five or six feet, and then wheeling about to face once more his playfellow and to await the next move in the blithe gambol. The pup ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... bank of the Nile, he cut for himself a magnificent rock-tomb with galleries, halls, and deep pits, the walls being decorated with representations of the Voyage of the Sun through the regions which he traverses during the twelve hours of his nocturnal course. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... November night. A soft continuous downpour was soaking the London streets, without, however, affecting their animation or the nocturnal brightness of the capital, for the brilliance of the gas-lamps was flashed back from innumerable patches of water, and every ray of light seemed to be broken by the rain into a hundred shimmering reflections. ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I have taken liberty to omit a good many of the introductory stanzas of the famous Coplas de Calainos. The reader will remember that this ballad is alluded to in Don Quixote, where the Knight's nocturnal ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... should scarcely have troubled so much about that. But I thought that, as a friend of the family, it was my duty to supply you and Tesman with a full account of his nocturnal exploits. ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... size his penis and testicles hardly exceeded those of a boy of eight. He had never felt desire for sexual intercourse until he became acquainted with his intended wife, since when he had erections and nocturnal emissions. The patient married and became the father of a family; those parts which at twenty-six were so much smaller than usual had increased at twenty-eight to normal adult size. There are three cases on record in the older literature of penises extremely primitive in development. They ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rights begin; 'Tis only daylight that makes sin, Which these dun shades will ne'er report. Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame, 130 That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the air! Stay thy cloudy ebon chair, Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... after another, the innumerable lamps which (contained, mostly, in porcelain vases) burned singly or in pairs upon the different pieces of furniture as upon so many altars, rekindling in the twilight, already almost nocturnal, of this winter afternoon, the glow of a sunset more lasting, more roseate, more human—filling, perhaps, with romantic wonder the thoughts of some solitary lover, wandering in the street below ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... be the situation of such as are exposed to the open air and burning sky in all seasons? The mean diurnal heat of the different seasons has been, upon the most careful observation, fixed at sixty-four in spring, seventy-nine in summer, seventy-two in autumn, and fifty-two in winter; and the mean nocturnal heat in those seasons at fifty-six degrees in spring, seventy-five in summer, sixty-eight in autumn, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... come, the nocturnal visitation wore such a different aspect to both our minds that we decided to say nothing to our parents, who, said Clarence, would simply disbelieve him; and, indeed, I inclined to suppose it had been an uncommonly vivid dream, produced in that sensitive ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... than had been his wont for many seasons. The two young-lady cousins whom he had brought and installed in his home thirsted for that gorgeous, nocturnal moth life in which no thirst is truly slaked, and dragged him with them into the iridescent, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... receiver and pass out of the hall. Sahwah sat up quickly and bumped her head sharply on the back of the settle. Then, as the significance of the conversation she had just overheard sank into her mind she remembered Veronica's mysterious nocturnal errands, and it came to her in a startled flash that Veronica was carrying on something which was a secret from the others—was stealing away from the house to meet someone. She sprang out from behind ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... away, she heard the dull sound, as if nocturnal women were beating great carpets. There was Morty lost, and Seabrook dead; her sons fighting for their country. But were the chickens safe? Was that some one moving downstairs? Rebecca with the toothache? No. The nocturnal women were beating great carpets. Her hens ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... much less innocent nature; they were illegal in their principle, and in their consequences might become dangerous; nor were the emperors conscious that they violated the laws of justice, when, for the peace of society, they prohibited those secret and sometimes nocturnal meetings. The pious disobedience of the Christians made their conduct, or perhaps their designs, appear in a much more serious and criminal light; and the Roman princes, who might perhaps have suffered ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... when they heard the name of the place, they all at once begged of him not to return at night, as he must necessarily pass through a wood, where no Greek would ever remain, after the day had closed, upon any consideration. They described it as the resort of the vampyres in their nocturnal orgies, and denounced the most heavy evils as impending upon him who dared to cross their path. Aubrey made light of their representations, and tried to laugh them out of the idea; but when he saw them shudder ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... the costumes, wigs, etc., to-day. I've got them up-stairs—knee-breeches, stockings, buckled shoes, and all that sort of thing. It's a rare chance. If you wait a bit, I'll give you a full dress rehearsal, entitled "Jerry Bundler, or the Nocturnal ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock
... Greenwich and Peckham. But playing a one-stringed violin at fairs and public-houses could not be more than a relaxation to a man of Peace's active temper, who had once tasted what many of those who have practised it, describe as the fascination of that particular form of nocturnal adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the portico of a house and from that point of vantage make his entrance into the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... lecture at Exeter Hall on some instances of the "power of God as manifested in His animal creation"—for a very nice notice of this curious quadruped. In one of the French journals, there was an excellent account given of the peculiar habits of the little nocturnal creature. In those tropical countries the trees are tenanted by countless varieties of created things. Their wood affords rich feeding to the large, fat, pulpy grubs of beetles of the families Buprestidae, Dynastidae, Passalidae, and, above all, that glorious group the ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... to the Christian army, and to the tent in which the Spanish king held nocturnal counsel with some of his more confidential warriors and advisers. Ferdinand had taken the field with all the pomp and circumstance of a tournament rather than of a campaign; and his pavilion literally blazed with purple ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of tea became more and more in fashion, the monks and their kindred having discovered its property of keeping them awake during long vigils and nocturnal prayers. ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... the cause of alarm or inconvenience to others. Our little foot-page, with a courage beyond his years, and a spirit worthy of a better cause, very nearly transfixed me with the kitchen spit as I was trying, upon one occasion, the door of his own pantry. Upon another nocturnal expedition, I ran against a human body in the dark—that turned out to be my brother-in-law's, who was also in search of robbers—with a shock to both our nervous systems such as they have not yet recovered from. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... disturbance. However, I went to bed, grumbling against Tenterden Street,[102] and all its works. If there was no entrance but the keyhole, I should warrant myself against the ghosts. We have a set of idle fellows called workmen about us, which is a better way of accounting for nocturnal noises than any that is to be found in Baxter ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... would be possible to dismiss from her thoughts the fellow creature who had destroyed her joy of life and worked evil so far reaching. She could leave him now to his destiny and feel under no compulsion to relate the incidents of her nocturnal search. Had he been there, she would have risked the meeting, urged him to surrender and then left him if he allowed her to do so. She would never have given him up, or broken her ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... or letting fall of this pipe was a common incident in the captain's nocturnal history, but he had got used to it, from long habit, and regarded the event each time it occurred with the philosophic composure of one who sees and makes up his mind to endure an inevitable ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... for;—nay more, a preferment which, if allowed, should crown the hopes, past, present, and to come, of the son of a Kirk-vassal! By Heaven, but that I find in me a reluctance to practise their acts of nocturnal rapine, I would rather take the jack and lance, and join with the Border-riders. —Something I will do. Here, degraded and dishonoured, I will not live the scorn of each whiffling stranger from the South, because, forsooth, he wears tinkling spurs on a tawney boot. This ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... of never relaxing their vigilance. Notwithstanding this care it was not an infrequent thing for the watch to be caught napping. On one occasion a collier brig had been windbound for several days in the Yarmouth roads. The mate was accustomed to pay nocturnal visits on deck, and had suspected that a great deal of napping was done before the galley fire, and he had his suspicion confirmed when coming up one night unexpectedly, and, stealthily making his way to the galley, he found both doors closed; ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... which came to be very annoying to the Hermit. On warm summer nights the man slept in a hammock swung between two trees in front of his cabin. Ringtail, returning from his nocturnal hunting, would run along the low branch of one of these trees until he stood directly above the sleeper. Then he would let go and fall with a thud, sometimes into the springy hammock, but more often upon ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... amusement, between schools, pelting the body with stones. The old trunk has disappeared, but the spot is still haunted in the belief of the people of the neighborhood, and he is a bold man who dare risk a nocturnal encounter with the bloody Fagan, instead of avoiding the direct road, at the expense of half a mile's additional walk. No persuasion or force will induce a horse raised in the neighborhood to ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... celestial nights, known only in the tropical regions, I set forth on my travels, directing my course to the Portuguese settlement, which the youthful vigour of my wing enabled me to reach by the break of morning. Having refreshed myself with a breakfast of fruit, after the exhaustion of my nocturnal flight, I ascended a spacious palm tree, which afforded an admirable view of the adjacent country, and a desirable shelter from the ardours of the rising sun. My first impulse was to take a bird's-eye view of the novel scene which lay before me, and I gazed around ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... yielded to the semi-involuntary deception of the imagination ... but "he" would suddenly turn a little on his chair, raise his hand slightly, and again I almost cried aloud, again I beheld before me my "nocturnal" father! At last he noticed my importunate attention, and, first with surprise, then with vexation, he glanced in my direction, started to rise, and knocked down a small cane which he had leaned against the table. I instantly sprang to my feet, picked it up and handed it ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... severe weather may be prevented by the use of calcium chloride, or preferably, perhaps, methylated spirit in the water (cf. Chapter III., p. 92). The disfavour with which cycle and motor acetylene lamps are frequently regarded by nocturnal travellers, other than the users thereof, is due to thoughtless design in the optical part of such lamps, and is no argument against the employment of acetylene. By proper shading or deflection of the rays, the eyes of human beings and horses can ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... for the sake of peace and quietness, To' Kaya abandoned his nocturnal prowls among the graves, and settled down to live the orderly domestic life for which he was best fitted, and which he had only temporarily forsaken when the Sultan's ill-advised selection of him to fill a high post, and to bear a great name, had interrupted ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... merrymaking are nowhere discoverable. Des Moines, Iowa, or Camden, New Jersey, would present quite as festive a spectacle, he thinks, as he gazes up at the sepulchral shadows on the gigantic Opernhaus before him. He cannot understand the nocturnal solitude of the streets. There is actual desolation about him. A chlorotic girl, her cheeks unskilfully painted, brushes up to him with a careless "Geh Rudl, gib ma a Spreitzn." But that might happen in Cleveland, Ohio—and Cleveland is not ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... of his friend. Both went first to the village church, where the dead Jagers lay in two long black rows. A solemn stillness pervaded the little house of God, which had become during this night the abode of death, and the nocturnal visitors gazed silently at the pallid, rigid features of one lifeless young form after another, but without finding him whom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... goose-feet upon the road, and watch how those webs laid hold of the earth like a hand. He would struggle to enter into their feelings in folding their wings properly on their backs. He would calculate, on chemical and arithmetical grounds, whether one might not hear the nocturnal growth of plants in the tropics. He was quite elated by the discovery, as ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... females had become a prey to the subtle perversions of the ecclesiastics, and had openly apostatized, all save my new friend, who with a better informed mind and more scriptural knowledge withstood their sophistries, until sundry mock miracles performed by means of saintly relics and a well-contrived nocturnal visitation from the ghost of her father whom she fondly loved, had so unnerved and frightened her that she too fell a prey to the delusion. They ended by admitting her into the sisterhood of this convent, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... progress down the Ohio had been tedious; how much more so the interminable windings on the Mississippi, and the long, lonesome nights, made sleepless by the cries of birds that flit in darkness, and by the howls of wild beasts. Evaleen's nocturnal fears, when the barge lay moored, were not so well founded as were the apprehensions which daylight renewed, of disaster on the treacherous flood. The more she learned of the river, the more she realized the risks of ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... very like "Midsummer Night's Dream;" but Mary Ogilvie, who was a good way behind, felt a start of dismay as the clear notes pealed back to her. She longed to suggest a little expediency; but she was impeded; for poor Miss Ray, entirely unused to long country walks and nocturnal expeditions, and further tormented by tight boots, was panting up the hill far in the rear, half-frightened, and a good deal distressed, and could not, for very humanity's ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Nevis is wholly visible there is always a white cloud above her head. As night falls it becomes evident that this soft aggravation of her beauty is but a night robe hung on high. It is at about seven in the evening that she begins to draw down her garment of mist, but she is long in perfecting that nocturnal toilette. Lonely and neglected, she still is a beauty, exacting and fastidious. The cloud is tortured into many shapes before it meets her taste. She snatches it off, redisposes it, dons and takes it off again, wraps it about her with yet more enchanting folds, until by nine ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and ranged in unimaginable numbers. To the earliest Kentuckians who cut their way into this, the most royal jungle of the New World, to wrest it from the Indians and subdue it for wife and child, it was the noiseless nocturnal cougar that filled their imaginations with the last degree of dread. To them its cry—most peculiar and startling at the love season, at other times described as like the wail of a child or of a traveller lost in the woods—aroused more terror than the nearest bark of the wolf; its stealth and cunning ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... impotence show, We stand still, while no way we can see. If in sickness for succor we thirst, Is there balm in the dreams that have burst? Stars of hope and of longing eternal, That we saw o'er life's sorrows arisen, Shall they sink in death's terrors nocturnal, Only turn into worms in ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... been elected Captain of our barrack and who was also the official interpreter, answered the summons. He was required to accompany the guards to the station. A further batch of British prisoners had arrived. By this time we had grown accustomed to this kind of nocturnal disturbance, so after C—— had passed out the rest of the barrack re-settled down ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... and which we must call the universal logic of women, the logic of English women as it is that of Italian women, of the women of Normandy and Brittany (ah, these last are unsurpassed!), of the women of Paris, in short, that of the women in the moon, if there are women in that nocturnal land, with which the women of the earth have an evident understanding, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... left him in the lurch, for he was not the most ardent; in those nocturnal sports between two sheets, which so please women, he possessed but little merit. Get you gone, you are but an old fool. But you, young man, just consider a little what this temperance means and the delights of which it deprives you—young fellows, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... on the Links, The: Tells how I camped in Graden Sea-wood, and beheld a Light in the Pavilion, iv. 167; Tells of the Nocturnal Landing from the Yacht, iv. 174; Tells how I became Acquainted with my Wife, iv. 180; Tells in what a Startling Manner I learned that I was not alone in Graden Sea-wood, iv. 189; Tells of an Interview between Northmour, Clara, and myself, iv. 197; Tells of my Introduction ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his entrenchments. On the 13th of August, General Drummond, having completed his batteries, commenced a brisk cannonade on the position of the enemy, which, with few interruptions, was continued for two days with great effect; after which he was determined to carry the fort and outworks by nocturnal assault. In pursuance of this purpose, he formed his troops into three divisions: the first, under Lieutenant-Colonel Fischer, of De Watteville's, consisting of the King's Regiment, the regiment of De Watteville, and flank companies ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... on, Oro began to visit me more and more frequently, till at last scarcely a night went by that he did not appear mysteriously in my sleeping-place. The odd thing was that neither Bickley nor Bastin seemed to be aware of these nocturnal calls. Indeed, when I mentioned them on one or two occasions, they stared at me and said it was strange that he should have come and gone as they ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... scalp are things bygone; applause, growing applause, growing interest, growing exultation in his own cleverness (for he takes all the credit), and at last a jubilant leap to wakefulness, with the cry, "I have it, that'll do!" upon his lips: with such and similar emotions he sits at these nocturnal dramas, with such outbreaks, like Claudius in the play, he scatters the performance in the midst. Often enough the waking is a disappointment: he has been too deep asleep, as I explain the thing; drowsiness has gained his little people, they have gone stumbling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he beheld the faithful Mendoza transfixed by Moorish lances. The four principal cavaliers already named, with several of their followers, effected their retreat and reached the camp in safety; but this nocturnal reverse obscured the morning's triumph. Gonsalvo remembered the last words of the devoted Mendoza, and bestowed a pension on his widow and marriage portions on ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... natural process such as we now recognise in the "parthenogenesis" of insects and crustaceans, but to the visitation of the mother by a spirit—a floating, volatile demon or angel (known as an "incubus" in the Middle Ages) beneficent or malicious as the case might be. Stories of the nocturnal visits of these mysterious ghostly "incubi" are on record in great number and variety, both in European and Oriental tradition and legend. There seems to have been a readiness to believe the theory of paternity ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... all become fairly accustomed to seeing numerous air-ships moving in all directions across the sky in the daytime, but it still seems strange to us to see the lights of the air-ships flitting about the nocturnal sky. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... mockery was added to their death; for they were covered in the skins of wild beasts and were torn to death by dogs, or crucified, or set apart for burning, and after the close of the day were reserved for the purpose of nocturnal illumination. Nero lent his own gardens for the spectacle, and gave a chariot-race, mingling with the people in the costume of a charioteer, or driving among them in his chariot; by which conduct he raised a feeling ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... ones were feeding the young. In this neighborhood the naturalists found many birds that were new to them, including a tiny woodpecker no bigger than a ruby-crowned kinglet. They had collected two night monkeys—nocturnal monkeys, not as agile as the ordinary monkey; these two were found at dawn, having stayed ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... so far. It was not three weeks since the time when she first saw the young officer from the window—and yet she was already in correspondence with him, and he had succeeded in inducing her to grant him a nocturnal interview! She knew his name only through his having written it at the bottom of some of his letters; she had never spoken to him, had never heard his voice, and had never heard him spoken of until that evening. But, strange to say, that very evening at the ball, Tomsky, being piqued with ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... sub-varieties of the pigeon, amounting to at least one hundred and fifty, is partly due to their remaining, differently from other domesticated birds, paired for life when once matched. On the other hand, breeds of cats imported into this country soon disappear, for their nocturnal and rambling habits render it hardly possible to prevent free crossing. Rengger[182] gives an interesting case with respect to the cat in Paraguay: in all the distant parts of the kingdom it has assumed, apparently from the effects of the climate, a peculiar character, but near the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... took place at full moon, not long after the visit to Deptford, and Lord Fareham's barge was again employed, this time on a nocturnal expedition up the river to the fields near the haunted Abbey, to carry Hyacinth, her sister, De Malfort, Lord Rochester, Sir Ralph Masaroon, Sir Denzil Warner, and a bevy of wits and beauties—beauties who had, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... though we called to them, they did not answer us, but kept on down the marshy road at such a rate, that their horses' feet struck fire at every stretch, which made us, with reason, begin to suspect they were thieves, having had warning of such; or rather, that they were nocturnal spectres, who, as we were afterwards told, are frequently seen in those places: there were likewise a great many Jack-a-lanterns, so that we were quite seized with horror and amazement! But, fortunately for us, our guide soon after ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... and mutilated, and their rage knew no bounds. It was not long before the wool-carder was apprehended. His religious sentiments were no secret, and he had been seen returning from the scene of his nocturnal exploit. He promptly acknowledged his guilt, and was rescued from the infuriated populace only to undergo a more terrible doom at the hands of the public executioner (July 22, 1525). His right hand was cut off at the wrist, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... mischievous wayfarer: "Naturale sepimentum," says he, "quod obseri solet virgultis aut spinis, praetereuntis lascivi non metuet facem." It is not easy to see the origin or advantage of this practice of nocturnal travelling (which must have considerably increased the hazards of a journey), excepting only in the heats of summer. It is probable, however, that men of high rank and public station may have introduced the practice by way of releasing corporate bodies ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... quite disposed to sacrifice themselves upon the altar of their devotion; but, although they could have forgiven any other form of maltreatment, Lulu's apparent distrust of them wounded them deeply. They had looked forward to delicious nocturnal confidences, when, half disrobed, each should visit the other's boudoir and discuss the fascinating topic from all possible and impossible points of view. That Lulu had proved impervious to all hints of this ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... among the warriors for the night assault. These warriors, some fifty chosen from the followers of Bakahenzie and Marufa, sat on their hams within the circle of fires, uneasily casting glances behind them at the deepening sepia, from whence arose the nocturnal chant of the spirits of the forest. In order to insure no interference from malign animals, Bakahenzie caused to be brought a pure white goat whose throat was cut and bled into the cauldron; for as any one knows, that soul which ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... though greatly fatigued by nocturnal marches, reviews, perpetual harangues, and his labours in the closet, which for the last thirty-six hours had occupied all his moments, would nevertheless review the troops, that previously composed the army ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... From what had been revealed, it seemed probable that it was not death or bodily injury that he feared, for Peter had seen him stand up at the window, a fair target for any good marksman, but an interview with this nocturnal visitor who seemed bent upon bringing it about. Indeed, the childish bravado of his last speech had voiced a wish, but beneath the wish Peter had guessed ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... with the sounds of its joys and its nocturnal revelries, does not know—oh! does not know that I am at ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue |
