"Spectacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... various events and sports that were taking place. We met for a moment, and the old days would be talked over, and then we parted, some, alas, never to meet again in this world. That vast crowd which fringed the huge expanse of ground was quite the most thrilling spectacle that Canadians had ever seen. Tincques must be a quiet place now, and perhaps only a few marks in the great field still remain to show where the sports were held. But there were gathered there that day the vast host of noble gentlemen who saved the honour ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... well harmonised by the men's voices. Then there was a brief address by a young man with a serious and kindly face, and this was succeeded by a series of ejaculatory prayers taken up here and there by the men. It was a strange and impressive spectacle to see a soldier rise to his feet, his beard rough and unkempt, his khaki uniform all soiled and bedraggled, and forthwith proceed to utter a long prayer. Such prayers were largely composed of supplications on behalf of wives and families ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... Tait startled her. The collie had jumped up, and was bristling with wrath at an unusual spectacle coming through the trees towards her—a tall man, with a face of dusky bronze, surmounted by a pink turban. His face was working angrily, and he muttered as he walked, slowly, as if the pack on his shoulder were heavy. When Tait barked he started ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... repeated many times and each time provoked the serious-minded scientific visitors who witnessed it to laughter. Why? Because the spectacle of a savage little terrier rushing upon an innocent rabbit as if to mangle it integrated the body of the onlooker with a strong desire to exert muscular action to prevent the cruelty. This integration caused a conversion of the potential energy in the brain-cells into kinetic energy, ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... asked him whether he did not think it a funny thing that Temugin, generally called Genghis Khan, should have married the daughter of Prester John? {373} The Lion, after giving a side-glance at the writer through his left spectacle glass, seemed about to reply, but was unfortunately prevented, being seized with an irresistible impulse to contradict a respectable doctor of medicine, who was engaged in conversation with the master of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... civilization of an opposite character. This is not development under the law of slow evolution; it seems more like a case of spontaneous generation. Presto, change! and here before our very eyes is presented the strange spectacle of the most curious, backward, feudalistic Eastern nation turning into a Western one of the most ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... house. Passing through a number of apartments, we reach a door where we find the corpse of the owner. Further on in the interior our men have wrecked everything like vandals. Everything has been searched. Outside, throughout the country, the spectacle of the inhabitants who have been shot defies any description. They have been shot at such short range that they are almost decapitated. Every house has been ransacked to the furthest corners, and the inhabitants dragged from their ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... way being made for him in the crowd by his men, he had strolled up to the rostrum, and mounting its first gradient he leaned with studied grace against the block of white marble, giving to the common herd below the pleasing spectacle of a young exquisite, rich and well-favoured—his handsome person carefully perfumed and bedecked after the morning bath, his crisp fair hair daintily curled, his body clad in a tunic of soft ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... burning still,—and they could not see Fuji. "Ah!" laughed an officer they questioned, "you are looking too low! higher up—much higher!" Then they looked up, up, up into the heart of the sky, and saw the mighty summit pinkening like a wondrous phantom lotos-bud in the flush of the coming day: a spectacle that smote them dumb. Swiftly the eternal snow yellowed into gold, then whitened as the sun reached out beams to it over the curve of the world, over the shadowy ranges, over the very stars, it seemed; for the giant base remained viewless. And ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... a great military spectacle. As I did not have to fly in the afternoon, I went to the artillery observer's post with our Captain. About four o'clock we reached V.; from here we had another half hour's walk ahead of us. From a distance we could see there was heavy firing going on. ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... women and girls looked into the judge's brougham curiously or impudently, attracted by the spectacle of leisure and quiet richness that Adelle presented, a sight not commonly afforded them in the streets of Clark's Field and always fascinating to women of any class wherever it may be. Adelle's dress was plain black, ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... accept for one moment the hypothesis of evolution, the spectacle widens, and its uncertain, grandiose light soon attains our own destinies. Whoever brings careful attention to bear will scarcely deny, even though it be not evident, the presence in nature of a will that tends to raise ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and Hamlet are so marked that even the commentators have noticed them. Professor Dowden exaggerates the similarities. "Both (dramas)," he writes, "are tragedies of thought rather than of passion; both present in their chief characters the spectacle of noble natures which fail through some weakness or deficiency rather than through crime; upon Brutus as upon Hamlet a burden is laid which he is not able to bear; neither Brutus nor Hamlet is fitted for action, yet both are called to act in dangerous and difficult affairs." ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Heavens. Thou com'st, indeed, 410 As a poor miserable captive thrall Comes to the place where he before had sat Among the prime in splendour, now deposed, Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned, A spectacle of ruin, or of scorn, To all the host of Heaven. The happy place Imparts to thee no happiness, no joy— Rather inflames thy torment, representing Lost bliss, to thee no more communicable; So never more in Hell than when in Heaven. 420 But thou art serviceable ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... government, were laid bare—all with an eloquence unparalleled save only in the wondrous efforts of Sheridan, Fox, and Burke in the historic impeachment of Warren Hastings before the British House of Lords. The spectacle presented was one that challenged the attention and wonder of the nations; that of the chief magistrate of a great republic at the bar of justice, calmly awaiting judgment without popular disturbance or attempted revolt, under the safeguards of law and its appointments. The highest test of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... of the crown of thorns; from the pierced side; from the mutilated hands and feet; from the scourged body—from every hand-breadth of his person streams of blood were flowing! Such a gory, ghastly spectacle would frighten the children out of their senses, I should think. There were some unique auxiliaries to the painting which added to its spirited effect. These were genuine wooden and iron implements, and were prominently disposed round about the figure: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unfrequent to find these caves tenanted by Gypsy smiths and their families, who ply the hammer and forge in the bowels of the earth. To one standing at the mouth of the cave, especially at night, they afford a picturesque spectacle. Gathered round the forge, their bronzed and naked bodies, illuminated by the flame, appear like figures of demons; while the cave, with its flinty sides and uneven roof, blackened by the charcoal vapours which hover about it in festoons, seems to offer no inadequate ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... is of quite a different character to that heard below. It is a continuous low muttering growl without any claps or peals. I have stood in the storm cloud at Sinchal, 9,000 feet high, with the lightning originating around me and affording the sublimest spectacle of dazzling brilliancy, and varying in colour from the purest white light to delicious rose and blue tints. I have seen it intensified and focussed as it were within a few feet of me, and from this ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... was going forward; and thus they arrived, finding a nice little mob ready-made to their expectations, and no cause of regret but that they arrived too late to see Mr Hope get home. There were no ladies in terror within sight: but then there was the affecting spectacle of Sir William's popularity. In full view of all the mob, Lady Hunter put a corner of her embroidered handkerchief to each eye, on witnessing the affection of his neighbours to her husband, shown by the final shaking ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... his long and varied experience had he witnessed such a pitiable spectacle as the woman presented. The wild, hollow eyes and wasted, emaciated form and features gave her more the appearance of some wild beast than a human being. She did not appear to be conscious of his presence; and before he had ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... very curious temples, and to contrast them with the church edifices erected in the heart of the city by the Protestant missionaries. There is one without the walls, in the French Concession, where all the instruments of torture, the devilish devices of heathen cruelty, are to be seen, a horrid spectacle. The largest of the temples, however, is within the walls, approached through a wide court, with a fountain (not in use) in the centre. This court is crowded with fortune tellers, conjurors, and gamblers of every kind. Some of these gentry play a game very much like thimble-rigging, in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... swell of the past storm through which the MOZAMBIQUE had ridden without a tremor. The benches, too, were frightfully uncomfortable, and sticky with sirocco moisture under the breathless awning. Above all, there was the unavoidable spectacle of the suffering passengers, natives of the country; it infected him with misery. In attitudes worthy of Michelangelo they sprawled about the deck, groaning with anguish; huddled up in corners with a lemon-prophylactic against sea-sickness, apparently-pressed to faces which, by ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the victim, now seemingly enfolded in the very embrace of the terrible element, calling aloud for mercy and offering submission, the whole company, crowding the gorge below, or peering over from the surrounding cliffs, climbed for the purpose, stood for some time mute and appalled at the spectacle, and the thought of the fearful issue it involved. No sound or sight, however, except the crackling of the consuming fagots and the flaring sheet of the ascending flames, greeted their ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... noble art takes of the language of the human form. Greenough would unfold by the hour the exquisite relation between function and beauty, organization and use,—tracing therein a profound law and an illimitable truth. No more genial spectacle greeted us in Rome than Thorwaldsen at his Sunday-noon receptions;—his white hair, kindly smile, urbane manners, and unpretending simplicity gave an added charm to the wise and liberal sentiments he expressed on Art,— reminding us, in his frank eclecticism, of the spirit in which Humboldt cultivates ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... was ghostly; but while the fellow at my side breathed hard he did not take advantage of my words to make his escape, as I half expected him to. Perhaps, like myself, he was fascinated by the dreary spectacle of long shadowy walls and an equally shadowy staircase emerging from a darkness which a minute before had seemed impenetrable. Perhaps he was simply ashamed. At all events he stood his ground, scrutinizing with rolling eyes that portion of the hall where two columns, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the scene of so much glory. Such reflections arise unbidden in the mind; the most unlettered traveller is struck with the melancholy impression. An eloquent Italian has described this striking spectacle:—"A vast solitude, stretching for miles, as far as the eye can reach. No shelter, no resting-place, no defence for the wearied traveller; a dead silence, interrupted only by the sound of the wind which sweeps over the plain, or the trickling of a natural fountain by the wayside; ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... seemed almost dazzlingly white, as were the few locks that appeared, neatly brushed over his temples, beneath his opera hat. His sanguine complexion, however, had all the freshness ef youth, and his eyes sparkled merrily, as though amused at the spectacle of his nose, which was immense, curved, and polished, like an eagle's beak. He wore perfectly-fitting kid gloves, and the collar of his fur wrapper, falling a little open, showed that ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... the weather be warm or cold: it is as if he thought he could thus artificially warm her heart toward him. But Miss Dwyer did not appear vexed, pretending indeed to be oblivious of everything else in admiration of the spectacle before her. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... have been uneasy; Yussuf knew the people with whom he had to deal, and he went on belabouring the man till he threw himself down and howled for mercy, while the crowd looked on as if interested by the spectacle more than annoyed; and when at last, with a final stroke across the shoulders, Yussuf threw the man off, the people only came a little closer ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... his hand to lift the handle, when the door was gently opened from outside, and the steward's slave stood on the threshold. The old negro presented a lamentable spectacle. The Emperor's dignified and awe-compelling figure, and his favorite's rich garments made him feel embarrassed, and the hound's threatening growl filled him with such terror that he huddled his lean negro-legs together, and, as far as its length would allow, tried to cover ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... accommodating several hundred men, lay alongside. The ship had swung on the tide at an angle to the course that obscured full view of the start. Those of the ship's company who desired a full complete spectacle from start to finish were to go away and anchor at some convenient point in the line, from which an uninterrupted panorama could be obtained. The device had other advantages: by anchoring midway down the course a flagging crew could be spurred on to mightier efforts by shouts and execrations, ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... and shapeless mass; nobody pitied me, nobody helped me, so loathsome a spectacle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... piqued himself more on the plenty than the elegance of his master's table. The sides of this poor animal were fiercely attacked by the clansmen, some with dirks, others with the knives which were usually in the same sheath with the dagger, so that it was soon rendered a mangled and rueful spectacle. Lower down still, the victuals seemed of yet coarser quality, though sufficiently abundant. Broth, onions, cheese, and the fragments of the feast regaled the sons of Ivor who feasted in ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... night at a small hotel in the Louvre quarter, but the whole evening he spent on the Place du Carrousel with the crowd outside the Tuileries, watching the departure from the palace of the infirm King of France and of his Court. The crowd was silent and obviously deeply moved. The spectacle before it of an old, ailing monarch, driven forth out of the home of his ancestors, and forced after an exile of three and twenty years and a brief reign of less than one, to go back once more to misery and exile, was ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... they possessed, if they could not conquer a satisfactory peace in course of time, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. So no composition could be arranged; the Seven Years' War began, and to open it with becoming eclat Braddock debarked, a gorgeous spectacle in red and gold. Yet still there had as yet been in Europe no declaration of hostilities between England and France; on the contrary, the government of the former country was giving very fair words to that of the latter; ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... with seeing the casting of the cannon; for this day the Sultan and the Wazir and the Lords of the land will all be present thereat." Said he, "O my son, go thou with us and we will also enjoy the spectacle and return before the rest of the folk, ere thy master can be back, and we will enjoy ourselves and make merry and look at the sport before I set out upon my journey, for 'tis my intention this ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and stockings and puddled about that creek until she found a safe fording place. I am afraid I must admit that I laughed most heartlessly at the spectacle she presented while ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... conspicuously and prominently in the most public street in the town. It was placed in State Street directly under the windows of a great writing school which I frequented, and from them the scholars were indulged in the spectacle of all kinds of punishment suited to harden their hearts and brutalize their feelings. Here women were taken in a huge cage, in which they were dragged on wheels from prison, and tied to the post with bare ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... misty spray—rising, when the river is full, from the channels between the tall trees—the rushing noise, and a glimpse of the torrent here and there, show imperfectly its divided course. Could a clear view be obtained of it, it would be found to contain a spectacle full of beauty ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... be out of her confinement; and the ice islands lay scattered here and there, of various sizes and shapes, reflecting the bright rays of the sun, and drifting slowly northward before the gale. It was a contrast to much that we had lately seen, and a spectacle not only of beauty, but of life; for it required but little fancy to imagine these islands to be animate masses which had broken loose from the "thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,'' and were working their way, by wind and current, some alone, and some in fleets, to milder climes. No pencil ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... have no though of patronising that gruesome spectacle?" said Lord Anthony Dewhurst, as Marguerite almost mechanically had paused within a few ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... began again, but this time it had the quality of cheers. A real spectacle! To face the savage African lions unarmed! A ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... jealous of the popularity of Nunez, whom he supplanted. His enmity soon became so implacable that, without any cause, he accused him of treason and ordered him to be decapitated. The sentence was executed in the public square of Acla. Don Pedro himself gazed on the cruel spectacle concealed in a neighboring house. He seemed ashamed to meet the reproachful eye of his victim, as with an axe his head was cut off upon ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that I discerned something analogous to the spectacle which the New World presented to me. I observed that the equality of conditions is daily progressing towards those extreme limits which it seems to have reached in the United States, and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the abbe, rightly believing that a pause with Blondet was equivalent to a question: "twelve centuries have done nothing for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has never yet diverted from its one predominating thought,—a caste which still wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since an abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads. That all-pervading thought, the roots of which are in the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... would become of him should he find himself unable thereafter to contain his passion in darkness and silence as he had done till that time? Would he exhibit to the court of Lydia the ridiculous spectacle of an insane love, or would he strive by some extravagant action to bring down upon himself the disdainful pity of the queen? Such a result was strongly probable, since the reason of Candaules himself, the legitimate possessor of Nyssia, had been unable ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... while it reflected her horrified alarm, did not conceal her anger and aversion at the sight of him. Unaware of the forbidding spectacle he presented, de Spain, swept by a brainstorm at the appearance of this Morgan—the only one of all the Morgans he had not fancied covering him and waiting to deliver his death-warrant—felt a fury sweep over him at the thought of being shot by a woman. The wild idea that she ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... despair, the man obeyed. As he finished, he began to sag at the joints. Slowly he slackened down until he was on his knees, an abject spectacle ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the English division gets across by degrees, and their invisible tramp is heard ascending the opposite heights as the lightnings dwindle and the spectacle disappears.] ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... ordinary spectator—a reporter cool and unmoved by what was passing—I might have noted the details, and set them before you. But the case was far otherwise. One thought alone was in my mind—my eyes sought for one sole object—and that prevented me from observing the varied features of the spectacle. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... violently darted its envenomed fangs into the body of the heedless maiden. And stung by that serpent, she instantly dropped senseless on the ground, her colour faded and all the graces of her person went off. And with dishevelled hair she became a spectacle of woe to her companions and friends. And she who was so agreeable to behold became on her death what was too painful to look at. And the girl of slender waist lying on the ground like one asleep— being overcome with the poison of the snake—once ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... The streets were full of citizens and of groups and squads of soldiers, but the spectacle was melancholy. There was not a smile anywhere, but only universal gloom. It was as if some vast calamity had smitten all hope and cheer dead. We were not used to this, and were astonished. But when they saw the Maid, there was an immediate ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... whole, I think the miners of Anzin knew what they were about when they stood aloof from the 'strike' in the Pas-de-Calais. To do this was to aid the 'strikers' themselves much more effectually than by joining in the strike. For surely the spectacle of such an orderly prosperity as exists at Anzin, the result of equitable relations maintained for years between Capital and Labour, is the strongest possible argument in support of the reasonable demands of Labour. But what are ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... phenomena of a meteoric shower which attracted attention in modern times was witnessed by the Moravian Missionaries at their settlements in Greenland. For several hours the hemisphere presented a magnificent and astonishing spectacle, that of fiery particles, thick as hail, crowding the concave of the sky, as though some magazine of combustion in celestial space was discharging its contents toward the earth. This was observed over a wide ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... joined hands with Sir George White the enemy will feel himself overmastered, will lose the initiative, and begin to shrink from the British attacks. That state of things in Natal would lighten Lord Methuen's work. But it would be rash to assume such favourable conditions. We must be prepared for the spectacle of hard and prolonged fighting in Natal, and for the heavy losses that accompany it. The better our troops come out of their trials the more are we bound to ask ourselves how it came about that they were set to fight under difficulties, ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... in very high respect, and allowed this differential feeling to appear throughout the trial. "It was," says John Adams, who was present on this occasion, and from whom nearly all the details of the course of this affair are derived, "it was a moral spectacle more affecting to me than any I have ever seen upon the stage, to observe a pupil treating his master with all the deference, respect, esteem, and affection of a son to a father, and that without the least affectation; while he baffled and confounded ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... is a chorus?—a band composed of human beings, who dance and sing; but suppose the company proceed to act as each may chance—confusion follows; the spectacle has lost its charm. How different when each and all together act and recite [4] with orderly precision, the limbs and voices keeping time and tune. Then, indeed, these same performers are worth ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... property of one Harry Barwick, a tanner by trade. Not far from here—in old Bridge-street, now known as Mill-street—was to be seen a large picture, containing the portraits, rudely executed by myself as artist to the club, of some forty members of the Henpecked Club. The spectacle was of the most laughable description. There was also displayed a gigantic cradle, large enough to hold the biggest person in the world in case of emergency. The cradle was supposed to be used on the occasion of a member of the club being found guilty of ill-treating ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... accordingly, and, side by side with Dr. Melmoth, began to ascend the hill. On reaching the summit, the little country town lay before them, presenting a cheerful and busy spectacle. It consisted of one long, regular street, extending parallel to, and at a short distance from, the river; which here, enlarged by a junction with another stream, became navigable, not indeed for vessels of burden, but for rafts of lumber and ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an instant it hung suspended, threatening destruction to the smiling landscape below it. At the same moment sounds like the loudest peals of rolling thunder rent the air, almost deafening us with their roar. Even our captors, not unaccustomed to such a spectacle, stood aghast, clutching each other's arms, and gazing with horror-stricken countenances at the mountain. "See, see!" cried Oliver; "how ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... villain Castles taking care to leave a few bullets, wrapped up in an old stocking, so exposed in the waggon, that those who remained could not avoid seeing them. The whole of what occurred was reported by Mr. Spectacle Dowling, a confidential reporter of the Sunday Observer, who swore to the particulars afterwards with an astonishing degree of minuteness, although other reporters who were present declared, that not one-tenth of what was said could ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... birds enthralled. Reynard seems to have learned from the weasel's manoeuvres, for he, too, is wont to entice the rabbits towards him by extraordinary methods, twirling round, like a cat, in pursuit of his tail, and affording such a spectacle to any onlookers that they must needs, from sheer curiosity, find out the meaning of a woodland farce, which, alas! is often followed by a tragedy. It is not known that the fox ever succeeds in fascinating the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... see them. And the news of the bloody deed being spread about the city, a great press of curious onlookers came crowding before the Palace. Some said, "Lo! a good deed well done!" Others, and these the more part, at sight of so lamentable a spectacle, were filled with ruth. Yet durst they not openly commiserate the Prince's victims, for fear of evil handling by his armed dependents, which were set to guard the bodies. Young men gazed at the Princess's corse, for to discover ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... its essence bearing the same eternal characteristics as Brahman. But never, he had really found this self, because he had wanted to capture it in the net of thought. With the body definitely not being the self, and not the spectacle of the senses, so it also was not the thought, not the rational mind, not the learned wisdom, not the learned ability to draw conclusions and to develop previous thoughts in to new ones. No, this world of thought was also still on this side, and ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... With such solemnity does he look on the celebration of these commemorative services, as we may call them, that none but initiated men are allowed to witness them; women and children are strictly excluded from the spectacle. These sacred dramas are often, though by no means always, associated with the rites of initiation which young men have to pass through before they are admitted to full membership of the tribe and to participation in its deepest ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... industrious and worthy, whose mind had been deranged by disappointments and trials. "There she stood," says Miss Dix, "clinging to or beating upon the bars of her caged apartment, the contracted size of which afforded space only for increasing accumulations of filth,—a foul spectacle; there she stood, with naked arms, dishevelled hair, the unwashed frame invested with fragments of unclean garments, the air so extremely offensive, though ventilation was afforded on all sides but one, that it was not possible to remain beyond a few moments ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... physical atmosphere. And his consciousness of unfailing unity and order did not desert him in that broader survey, which made the utmost one could ever know of the earth seem but a very little chapter in the endless history of God the Spirit, rejoicing so greatly in the admirable spectacle that it never ceases to evolve from matter new conditions. The immoveable earth, as we term it, beneath one's feet!—Why, one almost felt the movement, the respiration, of God in it. And yet how greatly even the physical eye, the sensible ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... something better, and they hoped he would be able to leave the house that day. Miss Lucy expected the chaise every moment, and, as the day was fine for the time o' year, they had carried him in his easy-chair up to the green before the auld castle, to be out of the way of this unco spectacle." Hither Colonel Mannering went in quest of him, and soon came in sight of the little group, which consisted of four persons. The ascent was steep, so that he had time to reconnoitre them as he advanced, and to consider in what mode ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... philosophers," replied Dorsenne, laughing still more gayly, "this spectacle will cause them to meditate on the words uttered by one of my friends: 'One can not doubt the hand of God, for it created the world.' Do you remember ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ear. All sorts of devices have been invented to aid this specialization of particular organs, as well as to correct their imperfections: the magnifying glass, the telescope, the microscope, extend the powers of the eye; the spectacle or an operation on the eye muscles enables the defective eye to do normal work. A man with astigmatism might be a policeman all his life, win promotion, and die ignorant of his defect; whereas if the same man had become a chauffeur, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... fishing steamers, and the boats are drawing her nets," explained the Captain. "Didn't you ever see a seine drawn before? Wa'al, I declare! I'm mighty glad we happened just in time, for it's a cur'us spectacle. I guess we'll kind of hang about till they get the nets in, and then I'll take the 'Cornelia' up near enough ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... was in full view, and the scene beggars description, —hurrying teamsters with their teams and dangling traces (no wagons), retreating infantry without guns, many without hats, a harmless mob, with the massive columns of the enemy moving orderly on. At this spectacle General Lee straightened himself in his saddle, and, looking more the soldier than ever, exclaimed, as if talking to himself, 'My God! has the army dissolved?' As quickly as I could control my own voice I replied, 'No, General, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... some point. The bringing of supplies was complicated by the fact that the Boer women and children were coming more and more into refugee camps, where they had to be fed by the British, and the strange spectacle was frequently seen of Boer snipers killing or wounding the drivers and stokers of the very trains which were bringing up food upon which Boer families were dependent for their lives. Considering that these tactics were continued for over a year, and ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... patience, snatched the machine from her, ran it down the stairs, pushed the door of the "meat-tray," and found herself behind the scenes, the drops rising and falling, the nightly spectacle since she had been "that high," the land of the unreal lights. And the sudden glare from the reflectors set clusters of shoulders blazing with a silvery glow, brought up out of the shade the pale flesh of the dancing-girls, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight—an upper middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family—no branch of which had a liking for the other, between ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a fairy princess, a goddess of summer, the next a figure of fun with black spots scattered thickly over cheeks and nose, a big splash on the white shoulder, and inky daubs dotted here and there between the rose-leaves. What a transformation! What a spectacle of horror! Peggy stood transfixed; Mellicent screamed in terror; and Esther ran forward, handkerchief in hand, only to be waved aside with angry vehemence. Rosalind's face was convulsed with anger; she stamped her ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... governess; the ending of a liaison between a coxcomb and a lady much older than himself ("Le Feu et l'Eau"); "L'Ideal de M. Gindre," with a doubtful marriage-close; a discovery of falseness ("Le Pardon"); "La Derniere Idylle" (which may be judged from some of its last words: "I have made a spectacle of myself long enough, and now the play is over"), and "Noces d'Or," the shortest and bitterest of all, in which the wife, who has felt herself tyrannised over for the fifty years, mildly retaliates ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of the castle aided the spectacle and made royalty appear almost as imposing in death as at the moment when the Crown was ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... I sat down on the top of a hummock to rest and catch my breath. I stayed away the whole forenoon. At dinner I was called upon to give an account of myself. "For heaven's sake, boy, where have you been so long?" I made a clean breast of the matter, saying that I had been put to flight by the spectacle down in the court and that half way to the "Vineyard" I had rested on a hummock and leaned my back against a crumbling pillar. "Why, there you sat in perfect composure on Gallows Hill," said my father, laughing. Feeling as though the noose were being ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of skulls. An interesting feature of the landscape near Rio Moris is a row of large reddish pinnacles, which rise perpendicularly from the river-bed up along the hillside, and form a truly imposing spectacle. An excited imagination may see in them so many giants suddenly petrified while walking up the mountain. Around Pinos Altos and Jesus Maria the rock is of blue porphyry, quite hard in places, and speckled with little white patches. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... persuadability. I'm bound to say he didn't criticise his benefactors, though practically he got tired of them; she, however, had the highest standards about eleemosynary forms. She offered the odd spectacle of a spirit puffed up by dependence, and indeed it had introduced her to some excellent society. She pitied me for not knowing certain people who aided her and whom she doubtless patronised in turn for their luck in not knowing ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... asking for it, for he had no perception of difficulties, and consequently no curiosity about remedies. The complex Parisian world about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an immense, amazing spectacle, but it neither inflamed his imagination nor irritated his curiosity. He kept his hands in his pockets, looked on good-humoredly, desired to miss nothing important, observed a great many things narrowly, and never reverted to himself. Mrs. Tristram's "advice" was ...
— The American • Henry James
... a blow of the shoulder that was as violent as a blow from a battering-ram, he dashed open the door. Then the horror-stricken accent of the man who had been peering through the shutters was explained. The room presented such a spectacle that all the agents, and even Gevrol himself, remained for a moment rooted to the threshold, shuddering ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... shore, and watching in their swaying agony the Athenian ships sink one by one, without being able to lift a hand, or cast a long or short spear to help them! Yet the watchers knew that the awful spectacle on which they gazed meant death, or a slavery worse than death, for every one ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... and pretty ones,—for Tasajara as a "Cow County" had attracted settlers with large families,—and there were already the contrasting types of East and West. Many turned to look after the tall figure of the daughter of the Founder of Tasajara,—a spectacle lately rare to the town; a few glanced at her companion, equally noticeable as a stranger. Thanks, however, to some judicious preliminary advertising from the hotel clerk, Peters, and Daniel Harcourt himself, by ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... certainly remarkable; but the falsehood of giving prominence to such details in a picture representing the dead Wallenstein—as if they were the objects which could possibly arrest our attention and excite our sympathies in such a spectacle—is a falsehood of the realistic school. If a man means to paint upholstery, by all means let him paint it so as to delight and deceive an upholsterer; but if he means to paint a human tragedy, the upholsterer must be subordinate, and velvet must not draw our ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... time wrote that Lutherdom had driven quiet culture back, and at another spoke of the {712} Reformation as "a sorry spectacle of boundless confusion, error fighting with error, selfishness with selfishness, the truth only here and there heaving in sight." Again he wrote to a friend: "The character of Luther is the only interesting thing ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... 'that this here gen'l'm'n, with the twist in his countenance, feels rather thirsty, with the melancholy spectacle afore him. Is it ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... sought refuge in abstractions. They talked of dykes and windmills and cigars, the history of Holland and its constitution, the constitution of the United States and the edifying spectacle of the politics of that blessed country. They talked of political economy and pessimism and cattle rearing, the state of agriculture in England, the foreign policy of the day, Anarchism, the President of the French Republic. They would have talked of bi-metallism if they could. People ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... unpromising matter to itself, will realise itself by selection, and the preference of the better in what is bad or indifferent, asserting its prerogative under the most unlikely conditions. People had in Carl, could they have understood it, the spectacle, under those superficial braveries, of a really heroic effort of mind at a disadvantage. That rococo seventeenth-century French imitation of the true Renaissance, called out in Carl a boundless enthusiasm, as the Italian original had done two centuries before. He put into his reception ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... seeing that no harm was like to come to them, pressed forward once more, and gazed with open-mouthed wonder—and also, as it seemed to me, with awe—at the prodigious spectacle which Pablo, gravely riding upon the ass's back, presented to them. And so, with the guards before and behind us, we marched onward into the ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... philosophy of the prophet Job, concerned rather with the causes than the results of things. Your barrister at Lincoln's Inn, after ten years of cosmopolitan experience in London or Washington, will revert in six months to the ancestral type of morals and manners; the spectacle is so common, even in the case of exceptionally assimilative men like Wu Ting-fang, or the late Marquis Tseng, that it evokes little or no comment ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... came the sight was not inspiriting. Dawn amid a waste of Flanders mud, seen through a rain-storm, is not a joyous spectacle in any case. Consider, sahib, what a sunny land we came from, and pass no hasty judgment on us if our spirits sank. It was the weather, not the danger that depressed us. I, who was near the center of the trench, ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... increasing speed, in perfect time to the inspiring melody of trumpet, flute, and horn, that seemed to sound for them alone. Many paused to watch them, for they gave to the graceful pastime the enchantment which few have skill enough to lend it, and made it a spectacle of life-enjoying youth, to be remembered long after the music ceased and the ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... American people, who had helped to celebrate the victories of Oyama, Nogi and Togo, to recognize that a day of vengeance for Portsmouth was bound to come. In those days we regarded the Manchurian campaign merely as a spectacle and applauded the victors. We had no idea that it was only the prelude of the great drama of the struggle for the sovereignty of the Pacific. We wanted imperialism, but took no steps to establish it on ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... mingles with slaughter, as at Bazeilles. Women and children are roasted alive, filling the air with suffocating odor, while the maddened combatants rage against each other. All this is but part of the prolonged and various spectacle, where the scene shifts only for some other horror. Meanwhile the sovereigns of the world sit in their boxes, and the ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... The spectacle of the moving army—the grand army of the Nile—as it advanced towards its goal was especially wonderful in the clear air of the early morning; a long row of great brown masses of infantry and artillery, with a fringe of cavalry dotting the plain for miles in front, with the Camel ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... The most extraordinary spectacle, as it seems to me, is the vast expenditure of labour and time wasted in obtaining mere subsistence. As a man, in his lifetime, works hard and saves money, that his children may be free from the cares of penury and ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... scoffes and scornes, and contumelious taunts, In open Market-place produc't they me, To be a publique spectacle to all: Here, sayd they, is the Terror of the French, The Scar-Crow that affrights our Children so. Then broke I from the Officers that led me, And with my nayles digg'd stones out of the ground, To hurle at the beholders of my shame. My grisly countenance made others flye, None durst ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... devices which have been used to sway them from their interest and duty, they are now as ready to maintain the authority of the laws against licentious invasions, as they were to defend their rights against usurpation. It has been a spectacle displaying to the highest advantage the value of republican government, to behold the most and the least wealthy of our citizens standing in the same ranks as private soldiers, pre-eminently distinguished by being the army of the constitution—undeterred ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... my first day, when I visited the front trenches, saw the work of 'Mother,' and finally that marvellous spectacle, the Ypres Salient at night. I have passed the night at the headquarters of a divisional-general, Capper, who might truly be called one of the two fathers of the British flying force, for it was he, with Templer, who laid ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... So, for years, they co-existed in a hateful silence; their meals, their ablutions, their friendly visitors, exposed to an unfriendly scrutiny; and at night, in the dark watches, each could hear the breathing of her enemy. Never did four walls look down upon an uglier spectacle than these sisters rivaling in unsisterliness. Here is a canvas for Hawthorne to have turned into a cabinet picture—he had a Puritanic vein, which would have fitted him to treat this Puritanic horror; he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cloaks with black crosses on them would not, of themselves, profit any Ritterdom; that solemn vows and high supramundane professions, followed by such practice as was notorious, are an afflicting, not to say a damnable, spectacle on God's Earth;—that a young Herr had better marry; better have done with the wretched Babylonian Nightmare of Papistry altogether; better shake oneself awake, in God's name, and see if there are not still monitions in the eternal sky as to what it is wise to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... meeting showed that around even these harmless and commonplace propositions the battle of debate could rage hot; and it really seemed as if even to teach women the alphabet ought still to be mentioned as "a promising experiment." Now, with the successes before us of so many colleges; with the spectacle at Cambridge of young women actually reading Plato "at sight" with Professor Goodwin,—it surely seems as if the higher education of women might be considered quite beyond the stage of experiment, and might henceforth be provided for in the ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... privileged theatres could furnish. But the regular drama, it was held, must still be protected: performed only on the patent boards. So now "burletta licenses" were issued, under cover of which melodramas were presented, with entertainments of music and dancing, spectacle and pantomime. In 1809, the Lyceum or English Opera House, which for some years before had been licensed for music and dancing, was licensed for "musical dramatic entertainments and ballets of action." The Adelphi, then called the Sans Pareil Theatre, received a "burletta ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... they that were appointed to examine them did not believe them to be any other than bedlams and mad, or else such as came to put all things into a confusion in the fair. Therefore they took them and beat them, and besmeared them with dirt, and then put them into the cage, that they might be made a spectacle to all the men of the fair. There, therefore, they lay for some time, and were made the objects of any man's sport, or malice, or revenge; the great one of the fair laughing still at all that befell them. But the men being patient, and "not rendering railing ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... the scene. Some seats had been arranged from which ladies could witness the spectacle, and the front seat was occupied by Lucetta, the Mayor's wife, just at present. In the road under her eyes stood Henchard. She appeared so bright and pretty that, as it seemed, he was experiencing the momentary weakness of wishing for her notice. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Commentary. No matter; anything that such a good man wrote must be good reading, and he would save it up for Sunday. The consequence of this was, that, when the Rev. Mr. Stoker stopped in on his way to meeting on the "Sabbath," he turned white with horror at the spectacle of the senior Deacon of his church sitting, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, absorbed in the pages of "Ivanhoe," which he found enormously interesting; but, so far as he had yet read, not occupied with religious matters so much as he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... every act of the drama he beheld only himself, Giles, and Dennet. Watching at first with a sweet fascination, his feelings changed, now to strong yearning, now to hot wrath, and then to horror and dismay. In his troubled sleep after the spectacle, he identified himself with the lover, sang, wooed, and struggled in his person, woke with a start of relief, to find Giles snoring safely beside him, and the watch-dog on his chest instead of an expiring lady. He had not made unholy love to sweet Dennet, nor imperilled her good ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... believe attempt the seemingly impossible and, by attempting, prove that one with God can chase a thousand and two can put ten thousand to flight. I can imagine that the early Christians who were carried into the arena to make a spectacle for those more savage than the beasts, were entreated by their doubting companions not to endanger their lives. But, kneeling in the centre of the arena, they prayed and sang until they were devoured. How helpless they seemed and, measured by every human rule, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... a higher spectacle. And I shall never forget the mixture of wonder and awe which I felt at the first distant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... some ambition to have a front seat in the gallery. 'The people of fashion exalt themselves in church over the heads of the people of no fashion.'[895] A crowded London church in the old times, gallery above gallery thronged with people, was no doubt an impressive spectacle, not soon to be forgotten. To many the thought of galleried churches will revive a different set of remembrances. Dusky corners, a close and heavy atmosphere, back seats for children and the scantily favoured, to which sound reached as a drowsy hum, and where sight was limited ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... dancing, taking a rubber at whist or euchre, or diverting themselves with other recreations of winter house life. In one upper chamber, a physician was presenting a child just born to the proud father. In another, there was a mysterious spectacle, which a closer examination might have proved to be the preparing of a dead body for the morrow's burial. But Bog ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... element in the worship of the South could not be conjectured without offence to both. Drama I have said, but, if I had said opera, it would have been equally with the will merely to recognize the fact and not to censure it. Many have imagined a concert of praise in heaven, and portrayed it as a spectacle of which the elder Christian worship seems emulous. Go, therefore, to Rome, dear fellow-Protestant, with any measure of ignorance short of mine, but leave as much of your prejudice behind you as you can. You are not more likely to become a convert because ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... powder to be buried in the depths of the pocket, with the needle-case and the thimble. There was the phosphorus on the matches, too, the verdigris on old sous, the open window with the paved street below; but the thought of forcing upon her parents the ghastly spectacle of a self-inflicted death-agony, the thought that what would remain of her, picked up amid a crowd of people, would be so frightful to look upon, made her reject ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... walled-plains; though, as in the case of Petavius, Langrenus, Gassendi, and several other noteworthy examples, it is very prominently displayed. The progress of sunrise on all these objects affords a magnificent spectacle. Very often when the rays impinge on their apparently level floor at an angle of from 1 deg. to 2 deg., it is seen to be coarse, rough grained, and covered with minute elevations, although an hour or so afterwards it appears as smooth ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... hallucinations with him to the grave, but a belief in the unreality of pain is hardly likely to be one of them. The laughing philosopher is quite invincible on his midsummer's day, but ere long fatality makes him sad. There is no screen to shut off permanently the spectacle of suffering. When Marie Antoinette passed to her bridal in Paris, the halt, the lame, and the blind were sedulously kept out of her way, lest their appearance should mar the joyousness of her reception; but, ere long, the poor queen had a very close view of misery's children, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... had a low chair with two little fairy ponies in it to drive her about the gardens, while I walked with the two gentlemen and saw things much better than in the former hurly-burly, though that was a beautiful spectacle in its way. Avice, who has seen scores of FETES in college grounds, much preferred the scenery, etc., in their natural state to a crowd of strangers. The young people took possession of the two girls, and when we all met for the five o'clock tea, before going home, Lady Georgina ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of this exhilarating and bright spectacle was heard the din of a hundred thousand voices. Above the constant hum, there arose, from time to time, the blasts of trumpets and the symphonies of rich music. Here the improvisatore, secretly employed by a politic ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is now seen that our Western ideas and inventions, moral and material, are being turned against us by some of those to whom we have imparted an elementary aptitude for using them. And thus we have the strange spectacle, in certain parts of India, of a party capable of resorting to methods that are both reactionary and revolutionary, of men who offer prayers and sacrifices to ferocious divinities and denounce the Government by seditious journalism, preaching primitive superstition in ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... A.M. VII. 216—226. All that Cic. says is that he could accept the Peripatetic formula, putting upon it his own meaning of course. Doubtless a Peripatetic would have wondered how a sceptic could accept his formulae; but the spectacle of men of the most irreconcilable opinions clinging on to the same formulae is common enough to prevent us from being surprised at Cicero's acceptance. I have already suggested (n. on 18) that we have here a trace of Philo's teaching, as distinct from that of Carneades. I ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... exhibition, exposition, demonstration, representation; display, spectacle, ostentation, parade, pomp, flourish, splurge, pageantry, splendor: appearance, semblance; pretense, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... must be remarked by everybody that the glory of the future state is always put before us not as an inner consciousness or mental communion simply, not as an absorption into ourselves within, but as a great spectacle without us, the spectacle of a great visible manifestation of GOD. It is a sight, a picture, a representation, that constitutes the heavenly state, not mere thought and contemplation. The glorified saint of Scripture is especially ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... louder. He made gestures as if to say that they would see. Then having fastened the "Baleine" to the yawl, he towed her back. And an unlooked-for spectacle stunned Coqueville. In the bottom of the bark, the three men—Rouget, Delphin, Fouasse—were beatifically stretched out on their backs, snoring, with fists clenched, dead drunk. In their midst was found a little cask stove in, some full cask they ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... does not come alone. His Saints come with Him. When He appears, then shall we also appear with Him in glory (Col. iii:4). In that day of triumph and glory, He will be glorified in His Saints and admired in all them that believed (2 Thess. i:10). Wonderful spectacle it will be, when He brings His many sons with Him unto glory! All will be conformed into the ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... centre of a whirl of books, logarithms, and calculations in the University Library, and constituted himself an unmitigated, if respected, pest at the Cambridge Observatory. Moreover—and this was the most iconoclastic spectacle of all to his conservative pedagogical neighbours in the Appian Way—telegraph boys on bicycles kept rushing to and fro in a stream between the Hooker boarding-house and Harvard Square at all hours of the day ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... observations that he made concerning her, and all that she told him about her life, whether interior or exterior. Her words were characterised alternately by the most childlike simplicity and the most astonishing depth of thought, and they foreshadowed, as it were, the vast and sublime spectacle which later was unfolded, when it became evident that the past, the present, and the future, together with all that pertained to the sanctification, profanation, and judgment of souls, formed before ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... heels, always keeping his face to the horseman, the pivot, as it were, of this little spectacle. Near the cabin stood the soldiers, watching the play with interest. Stella and Hallie were at one side, their eyes fastened on the scene with a sort of fascinated horror. Stella knew well the danger of the bout. In the doorway of the cabin Lieutenant Barrows leaned ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... is the discovery of what they can not do, and ought not to attempt, that transforms reformers into statesmen; and great should be the joy of the world over every reformer who comes to himself. The spectacle is not rare; the method is not hidden. The practicability of every reform is determined absolutely and always by "the circumstances of the case," and only those who put themselves into the midst of affairs, either by action or by observation, can know what those circumstances are or perceive ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... net was close in shore. The whole of the enclosed space became a sweltering mass. Treading on the fish at last, many of both men and boys slipped in the water, and fell down over head and ears, so that the spectacle was presented of human beings bounding out of the water in apparent emulation of their prey. The excitement was almost too much for them. Several of the boys were seen to rush up into the woods and dash back again, with no apparent reason except the desire to get rid of superabundant energy. ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... sad spectacle for those portraits. Possibly they barely recognised in the reckless, jaunty, fair boy, and his baffled, almost wrathful companion, the Heathcote and Richardson who four months ago had sat there, fresh, and simple, and rosy, with the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... was worse in store for them. A Dutch optician, Hans Lippershey by name, of Middleburg, had in his shop a curious toy, rigged up, it is said, by an apprentice, and made out of a couple of spectacle lenses, whereby, if one looked through it, the weather-cock of a neighboring church spire was seen nearer and upside down. The tale goes that the Marquis Spinola, happening to call at the shop, was struck with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Anastasio provided, and the tables were covered under the pine-trees, where he saw the cruel lady so pursued and slain; directing the guests so in their seating that the young gentlewoman, his unkind mistress, sate with her face opposite unto the place where the dismal spectacle was to be seen. About the closing up of dinner, they began to hear the noise of the poor persecuted woman, which drove them all to much admiration, desiring to know what it was, and no one resolving them they rose from the tables, and looking directly as the noise came to ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... his face buried in the cushions, and his shoulders were shaking. Eleanor seeing him thus, forgot her righteous purpose, forgot her pledge to disseminate the principles and blessings of abstinence, forgot everything but the pitiful spectacle of her gallant Uncle Jimmie in grief. She stood looking down at him without quite the courage to kneel at his ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... out accordingly, and the executioners were going to throw them into the tub, when the king fortunately entered the court in his carriage, and asked with the utmost astonishment, what was meant by this horrid spectacle, no ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... on which they are bent? It was an ill thing when King Harry the Eighth brought in this fashion of forcing the law to give a colour to his will! In the good old times, the blow came without being first baited by one and another, and made a spectacle to all men, in the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sources of happiness more acute than that of the average. She took an intense and keen enjoyment in life itself. Everything interested her, amused her. She was never bored. She so much enjoyed the mere spectacle of life that she never required to be the central figure. When she had to play the part of a mere spectator it didn't depress her; she could delight in society and in character as if at a theatre. On the other hand, as she had a good deal ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... been sacrificed, body and soul, to enable these people to walk the streets in comfortable security. They seemed so completely unaware of the significance of his disfigured face. It was simply a disagreeable spectacle from which they ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... years after his death, and the man who cannot pay that premium is worth precious little to anybody considered purely from an economic standpoint. If the state wants to bring damage suits for the slaughter of its citizens, well and good; but for God's sake let us get rid of the degrading spectacle of people hawking the corpses of their relatives ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... theory, prior to the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter. But when a picture was there exhibited in which a number of relatively small globes were shown to be revolving around a single large globe in the centre, it seemed impossible not to feel that the beautiful spectacle so displayed was an emblem of the relations of the planets to the sun. It was thus made manifest to Galileo that the Copernican theory of the planetary system must be the true one. The momentous import of this opinion upon the future welfare of the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... her. Tolerance to him was not an isolated virtue, but an integral part of democracy. He took little interest in the Parliamentary side of Catholic relief, realizing its hollow unreality, and, in the case of the Bill of 1793, actually ridiculing the absurd spectacle of the Catholic cottiers being herded to the poll by their Protestant landlords. Nor was he even an extreme Democrat, for he advocated a ten-pound, instead of a forty shilling franchise. His original pamphlet of 1791 contains nothing but the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... service; it had educated the American people to the point where they were willing to accept a permanent federal union. As the "Federalist" put it, "A nation without a national government is an awful spectacle." ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... choses aimables et utiles qu'on enseigne aux petits garcons et petites filles de cinq a six ans, on leur apprend aussi le francais. Qu'il est beau de voir ces jeunes intelligences se developper an son de la belle langue de Bossuet, de Fenelon, de Lamartine et de Victor Hugo. Vous verrez a Concord un spectacle peut-etre unique dans les Etats-Unis: une douzaine de petits Americains et Americaines chantant la Marsellaise et dansant des rondes de Bretagne et de Vendee avec une voix aussi douce et un accent aussi pur que s'ils etaient nes sur les bords de ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... which, passing through the hammock-nettings, struck a seaman in the forehead, and scattered his blood and brains in all directions. He reeled backwards two or three yards, and fell dead at Isabella's feet. Captain Williams immediately drew her away from the ghastly spectacle, and gave orders to carry the body forward on the other side of the deck. He then attempted to prevail upon her to go below; but she was too much terrified to listen to him, nor did she seem to understand him. After a minute or two, she became more composed, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... principal instrument of amusement for the populace of Paris. It was so elevated that all could have a good view of the spectacle it presented. To witness the conduct of nobles and of ladies, of boys and of girls, while passing through the horrors of a sanguinary death, was far more exciting than the unreal and bombastic tragedies of the theater, or the conflicts of the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the heavens, and had ascertained that on the thirty-third minute after the thirteenth hour, the marriage procession must set out, or the consummation would not be prosperous. Who can describe the pomp and glory of the spectacle, or give an adequate idea of its splendour? Alas! it would not be possible, even if it were attempted by ten thousand poets, each with ten thousand tongues of silver, singing for ten thousand years. Such, however, was the order of ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... we have made from Irving is not poetical. Accurate, vivid, life-like, it is. We cannot read it without a feeling of pleasure. We admire the genius of the writer; we wonder at the magnificence of the spectacle which, by a few masterly touches, he has raised up before us. But there is no more poetry in it than in his description of Herr Van Tassel's supper table, covered with all the luxuries of Dutch housewifery. It is true, there may be more of beauty and sublimity in the scenery ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... diamant du charbon! Sainte enigme! lumiere auguste des tenebres! Les celestes n'ont rien de plus que les funebres, Si les funebres, groupe aveugle et chatie, Songent, et, n'ayant pas la joie, ont la pitie. O spectacle sacre! l'ombre secourant l'ombre, L'ame obscure venant en aide a l'ame sombre, Le stupide, attendri, sur l'affreux se penchant, Le damne bon faisant rever l'elu mechant! L'animal avancant lorsque l'homme recule! ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... great concourse, composed largely of soldiers of the various foreign armies (for most of them had now been withdrawn from the Capital and Gin-Sin), looked on with wonder at this spectacle. Sam, who was standing with the inventor Cope, scanned the faces of the executioners with care, and was unable to detect the slightest sign of emotion in them. They had not been prepared in the least for the ordeal; they did not even know that their relations had been brought from home, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... other organs as well as the sight; for it is observed that a taste for any one of the fine arts is connected with a general predilection for them all. But neither the Apollo, the Vatican, nor the pomp of the Catholic ritual, excited his feelings to so great a degree as the spectacle which presented itself to his view around the portico of the church. Bred in the universal prosperity of Pennsylvania, where the benevolence of the human bosom was only employed in acts of hospitality and mutual kindness, he had never witnessed any spectacle of beggary, nor had he ever ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... Priam and Hecuba. Their lamentations, tears, and despair. Their cries reach the ears of Andromache, who, ignorant of this, was retired into the inner part of the palace; she mounts up to the walls, and beholds her dead husband. She swoons at the spectacle. Her excess of grief ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the actual benefit contained in the few ounces of meat; and only the Irishman fresh from his native cabin can calmly consider a meal of that magnitude, while, as to carrots, neither Irishman nor German, nor the most determined and enterprising American, could for a moment face the spectacle of fifteen pounds served up for ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... this mummery? Why was he a spectacle for that mob? All the blood rushed to Paul's head and the little pulses in his temples began to beat like hammers. He looked at Alvarez, but the Spaniard had turned his face into a stony mask, and he could read no meaning there. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... gives notice, by its buz and its struggles, of its being entangled, but out steps the self-circumscribed tyrant, winds round and round the poor insect, till he covers it with his bowel-spun toils; and when so fully secured, that it can neither move leg nor wing, suspends it, as if for a spectacle to be exulted over: then stalking to the door of his cell, turns about, glotes over it at a distance; and, sometimes advancing, sometimes retiring, preys ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... deal to Middleton, see above, p. 150) was particularly disconcerting. In the early age of Christianity "the laws of nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... nakedness and failed to recognize its psychological correctness. The reason was simple, and indeed simple-minded. The Church was passionately eager to fight against what it called "the flesh," and thus fell into the error of confusing the subjective question of sexual desire with the objective spectacle of the naked form. "The flesh" is evil; therefore, "the flesh" must be hidden. And they hid it, without understanding that in so doing they had not suppressed the craving for the human form, but, on the contrary, had heightened it by imparting ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... daughters of the house, Isham the coachman, Shirley the master's body-servant, Edward's boy Jeames, and the nondescript half dozen who helped the others. The ruder sort upon the porch, "outdoor" negroes drawn by the music and the spectacle from the quarter, approached the windows. Together they made a background, dark and exotic, splashed with bright colour, for the Aryan stock ranged to the front. The drawing-room was filled. Mr. Corbin Wood had come noiselessly in from ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Don Cornelio believed that his eyes were deceiving him. In truth the spectacle, to which he was thus introduced, had very little in it to justify the merriment of the black. In place of the heads of wolves and other noxious animals, which may often be seen nailed up against the walls of country houses, here there were three human heads! They were not yet ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... necessary for the growing boy and play that engages many participants has the most value. America today is suffering from highly specialized, semi-professional athletics and games. "When athletics degenerate into a mere spectacle, then is the stability of the nation weakened. Greece led the world, while the youth of that great country deemed it an honor to struggle for the laurel leaf, and gymnasiums were everywhere and universally ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... what he termed your Holiness's absurd position, and affirmed that the world had seldom beheld, or would soon behold again, so ridiculous a spectacle as a Pope besieged by rats. 'I can help your master,' he continued, 'and am willing; but my honour, like his, is aspersed in the eyes of the multitude, and he must come to my aid, if I am to come ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett |
