"Wisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... broken and finally ended abruptly. Roger was fast asleep. Charley, with a soft kiss on his hair, rose from the cramped position on her knees and went into the house. In a short time the adobe was in darkness and Peter, with a wisp of alfalfa on which he chewed meditatively, hanging from his mouth, leaned his gray head on the corral bars and ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... of a night for a ghost story," said Melissa, her eyes going over the group with a strange, sweet compassion in their depths. "The wind ought to be howling with blood-curdling glee and the will-o'-the-wisp ought to be a-hoppin' in the swamp. There ought to be a graveyard close by—and some skeletons standing just outside the winders, trying to look in upon ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard — ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... there was not a person in sight and what frightened them was nothing but a wisp of hay, blown down by the wind. Afterward, when anything moved, they sprang at it, held it down with their sharp little claws, and chewed on it with their pointed white teeth. When they were tired of this game, ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... he experimented. He daubed it onto his hair with a wisp of cotton. His hair began to mat down, but he found that combing it out as he went along removed the worst of the wax and still left some of the color. It worked better than it ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... placarded, came up to them. One of them, a thin little skeleton, pitiably ragged in dress, with hollow eyes and white face, was coughing in the cuff of the wind. She was plainly a consumptive—a little wisp of a girl. She spoke brokenly, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-gray under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the sleeping stomach and force sufficient food on it to last till noon. As a convalescent victim of this proletarian practice I am well aware of its ravages on body and mind. It is the will-of-the-wisp of false whiskey followed by false hope, leading into the fogs and bogs of the bourgeois and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... time" of the Alimentive is one where there are plenty of refreshments. A dinner invitation always makes a hit with him, but beware that you do not lure a fat person into your home and give him a tea-with-lemon wisp where he expected a ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... middle-aged woman emerges (all women are middle-aged when emerging from the dentist's office) looking as if she were playing the big emotional scene in "John Ferguson." A wisp of hair waves dissolutely across her forehead between her eyes. Her face is pale, except for a slight inflammation at the corners of her mouth, and in her eyes is that far-away look of one who has been face to face with Life. But ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... and our reasons for considering them inadequate. We ask the student to consider carefully these remarks, for by so doing he will post himself, and will be saved much tedious and perplexing wandering along the dangerous places in the Swamp of Metaphysics, following the will-o'-the-wisp of Finite Mind masquerading as the Infinite Wisdom! Beware of the False Lights! They lead to the quagmire and ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... and he jumped into his wagon and rattled away in the darkness, his lantern looking like a "will-o'-the-wisp" ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... moon rise blood-red and awful and turn gradually to a whiteness of still more appalling purity. For a long, long time he watched it, trying to recall something which eluded him, chasing a will-o'-the-wisp memory round and round the ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... and scowled on her, and said: Thine ankles forsooth! Bag-o'-bones! thou wisp! forsooth, thou art in love with thy looks, though thou knowest not what like a fair woman is. Forsooth, I begin to think that thou wilt never grow into a woman at all, but will abide a skinny elf thy life long. Belike ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... millions of times greater than that produced by any chemical combination such as the union of oxygen and hydrogen to form water. From the heavy white salt there is continually rising a faint fire-mist like the will-o'-the-wisp over a swamp. This gas is known as the emanation or niton, "the shining one." A pound of niton would give off energy at the rate of 23,000 horsepower; fine stuff to run a steamer, one would think, but we must remember that it does not ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... bits. More important would be Buck Benson and his old pal, Pinto. From the barn Merton dragged the saddle, blanket, and bridle he had borrowed from the Giddings House livery stable. He had never saddled a horse before, but he had not studied in vain. He seized Dexter by a wisp of his surviving mane and simultaneously planted a hearty kick in the beast's side, with a command, "Get around there, you old skate!" Dexter sighed miserably and got around as ordered. He was both pained and astonished. He knew that this was Sunday. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the room, screaming and fighting. A wisp of curses came back into the big room as she was lugged up ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... already, I am the one who should be grateful, and I too was the one at fault. Had you waited for me to make the suggestion, we should have been still in that dirty little box of a house, and I should have been wearing the same black wisp of a necktie such as I have worn for the last fifteen years. Kiss ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... disaffected Kohistanees. The fort of Tootundurrah fell without resistance. Julgah, however, the next fort assailed, stubbornly held out, and officers and men fell in the unsuccessful attempt to storm it. In three weeks Sale marched to and fro through the Kohistan, pursuing will-o'-the-wisp rumours as to the whereabouts of the Dost, destroying forts on the course of his weary pilgrimage, and subjected ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the galleys, or otherwise, would have recourse to the demon to extricate them from their troubles! It would be very easy for me to relate here a great number of curious stories of persons generally believed to be bewitched, of haunted houses, or horses rubbed down by will-o'-the-wisp, which I have myself seen at different times and places, at last reduced to nothing. This I can affirm, that two monks, very sensible men, who had exercised the office of inquisitors, one for twenty-four years, and the other during twenty-eight, have ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... deftness born of experience, converted the free ends of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held true was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag tacked above the knob of ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... something had sobered the Will-o'-the-wisp in Andy's brain, and all that was manly in him looked out, solemn and pitying. The woman was standing by the barn-door when he reached it, watching his lips for a stray word as a dog might, but not speaking. He unhitched the horse, put him in his stall, and pushed the wagon under cover,—then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... skin and tousled mane and forelock in which chaff and dirt were entangled—who would have recognized in this drooping and rickety creature the proud, the dainty, the exquisite Lady Clare? Her beautiful tail, which had once been her pride, was now a mere scanty wisp; and a sharp, gnarled ridge running along the entire length of her back showed every vertebra of her spine through the notched and scarred skin. Poor Lady Clare, she had seen hard usage. But now the days of her tribulations are ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... child of Sergeant M'Taggart must have wandered for a breath of cool air to the very verge of the parapet of the Fort ditch, Her tiny night-shift was gathered into a wisp round her neck and she moaned in her sleep. "See there!" said Mulvaney; "poor lamb! Look at the heat-rash on the innocint skin av her. 'Tis hard—crool hard even for us. Fwhat must it be for these? Wake up, Nonie, your mother will be ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... unexplained phenomenon of nature. An hour a day passed in such scientific or literary pursuits will furnish as many facts as the memory can retain, and will give him 'a pleasure not to be repented of' (Timaeus). Only let him beware of being the slave of crotchets, or of running after a Will o' the Wisp in his ignorance, or in his vanity of attributing to himself the gifts of a poet or assuming the air of a philosopher. He should know the limits of his own powers. Better to build up the mind by slow additions, to creep on quietly from one thing to another, to gain insensibly ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the roots, from a fashion she had of twisting and winding it tightly around a tin spoon, or a match stem, to "pull her palate up." The colored people suffer from a mysterious ailment known as "having your palate down," for which the one specific is to take a wisp of your hair and wrap it as tightly around a tin spoon, or a match stem, as you can twist it; that pulls your palate up. It is, of course, absolutely necessary for you to have your palate up, even though you scalp yourself in the process ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... else!" Why do we not stop and gather it by the roadside we are passing now? We will not find it farther on. That which is enticing us onward is only the illusionary flicker of a will o'-the-wisp! We will stretch out our hands too late—when we have been caught in its fatal snares, and then in the darkness and misery that will surround us, we will feel how foolish we have been, and our cries of despair and distress will be echoed back to our own ears in sounds ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... this person as a translator of English poetry, some idea may be formed from the difficulty he found himself under respecting the meaning of a line in the Incantation in Manfred,—"And the wisp on the morass,"—which he requested of Mr. Hoppner to expound to him, not having been able to find in the dictionaries to which he had access any other signification of the word "wisp" than ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... carefully raised, and, if the fire is permanently kindled, the pinch of smoldering dust is inserted in a wisp of dry grass or other easily inflammable material; in a minute or two flames burst forth, and the fire may be ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... perished in a cornfield. His empty coat served well for a scarecrow. A wisp of straw stuck out through a hole in his ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... in the day they could be seen swooping down from the branch of a certain apple-tree and back again to their starting-place without having touched the ground. "Flycatchers!" said Turner exultantly. "I shall ha' to look about. They got their nest somewhere near, you may be sure o' that! A little wisp o' grass somewhere in the clunch (fork) of a tree ..." (his glance wandered speculatively round in search of a likely place) "that's where they builds. Ah! look now! There he goes again! Right in the clunch you'll find their ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... avoided. The benefit derived from the inhalation of steam is considerable. This is effected by holding the horse's head over a bucketful of boiling water, so that the animal will be compelled to inhale steam with every inhalation of air. Stirring the hot water with a wisp of hay causes the steam to arise in greater abundance. One may cause the horse to put his nose in a bag containing cut hay upon which hot water has been poured, the bottom of the bag being stood in a bucket, but the bag must be of loose texture, as gunny ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... to conclude that there is no such thing as Causality, that in searching for a cause of everything that happens, we are pursuing a mere will o' the wisp, using a mere vox nihili which has {36} as little meaning for the reflecting mind as fate or fortune? Surely, in the very act of making the distinction between succession and causality, in the very act of denying that we can discover any causal connexion between one physical ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... pulled on during the night, passing a large town, from which issued a loud noise, as of a multitude quarrelling. Once they fancied they saw a light following them, but it turned out to be a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mr. Wood, grimly, "that there wasn't a wisp of hay inside that shanty, and that where the poor beasts were tied up the wood was knawed and bitten by them in their torture for food? Wouldn't he have sent me that note, instead of leaving it here on the table, if he'd wanted me to know? The note isn't dated, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... first waking up he had plucked from his face. And he knew by its soft thin feeling and its delicate scent of violets, Bee's favorite perfume, that it was her handkerchief, and she had spread it as a veil over his exposed and feverish, face. That little wisp of cambric was redolent of Bee! of her presence, her ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... repeated notes from the horn, the baying of hounds, and the screams that celebrate with orthodox excitement the death of a fox. The rat-hunt was over. Joker lifted his spare, aristocratic head from the grass, and listened, with a wisp of dewy green stuff in his mouth. Christian looked at her watch. It was early still, not eight o'clock. A grey horse and its rider came forth from the dark grove of laurels. Larry was looking for her. She sighed; she did not know why. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Broadway; up, up, up, until he hurried down Waverley Street, I after him, and suddenly disappeared among the old gray walls of the university. I went in, walked all through the halls, made a dozen inquiries, but in vain. I reckon he is a will-o'the-wisp." ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... means limited vocabulary of epithets, but even his torrents of abuse brought no solace to him. The hot sun beat down on his wounded face and hurt terribly, but he almost forgot that pain in the agony of his humiliation. He had been thrashed by an old man, with a wisp of a girl sitting on a post and acting as referee. He turned in his saddle and through the empty valley shouted an insulting ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... desire. The broad way was filled with lines and groups of peoples clustering to the hilltop—and over the far-reaching slopes I could see the awaiting throngs. My guide pointed to the constellation of Perseus, and I could discern a nebulous mass of considerable diameter from which proceeded a wisp-like exhalation, just a phantasmal fan of ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... the Yahoos' kennel a piece of ass's flesh; but it smelt so offensively that I turned from it with loathing: he then threw it to the Yahoo, by whom it was greedily devoured. He afterwards showed me a wisp of hay, and a fetlock full of oats; but I shook my head, to signify that neither of these were food for me. And indeed I now apprehended that I must absolutely starve, if I did not get to some of my own species; for as to those filthy ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... to him, and was shown how to carry it across his rein arm, and then he enviously watched his father take hold of a wisp of the horse's mane, place a foot in the stirrup, and lightly swing himself into the saddle, while his horse hung toward him a ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... the Angel. And from a hut of wattles and clay a little peasant girl came with a bundle of hay in her arms, and gave first one of the oxen and then the other a wisp. Then she stroked their black muzzles, and laid her rosy face against their white cheeks. Then the Prince Bishop saw the rude teamster rise from his rest on the bank and cry to his cattle, and the oxen strained against the beam and the thick ropes tightened, ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... into the pale sky above a headland far to the southward. As I stared at this it became black and distinct, tossed about in the wind. I watched intently, clinging to my support, scarcely trusting my eyesight, while that first wisp deepened into a cloud, advancing slowly toward me. There was no longer doubt of what it was—unquestionably some steamer was pushing its course up stream. Even before my ears could detect the far-off chug ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... practice; but his proficiency was the result of years of painstaking effort. Unaided he had worked out a method of his own for putting an edge upon the shell—he even tested it with the ball of his thumb—and when it met with his approval he grasped a wisp of hair which fell across his eyes, grasped it between the thumb and first finger of his left hand and sawed upon it with the sharpened shell until it was severed. All around his head he went until his black shock was rudely bobbed with a ragged bang in front. For the appearance of it he cared ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of it; and we came here like criminals to receive your sentence, if you will not show us mercy. Pity those who condemn themselves and come to ask forgiveness. It is you who have given strength to the nation by dwelling with it; and if you leave us, we shall be like a wisp of straw torn from the ground to be the sport of the wind. This country is an island drifting on the waves, for the first storm to overwhelm and sink. Make it fast again to its foundation, and posterity will never forget ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... at her window, had been growing in the fields of the South. She had seen it torn by the bale-breakers, blown into the openers, loosened, cleansed, and dried; taken up by the lappers, pressed into batting, and passed on to the carding machines, to emerge like a wisp of white smoke in a sliver and coil automatically in a can. Once more it was flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres, removing with superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short, thrusting ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... watch. He would try Kensky again, he thought; but again his mission was fruitless. He might have given up his search for this will-o'-the-wisp but for the fact that his new employers seemed to attach considerable importance to his making acquaintance with this notability of Kieff. He could hardly be out after ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... of a forge. The soldiers outside had already been asleep for a long time, and were lying on the ground motionless, as if dead. When the master-thief saw that he had succeeded, he gave the first a rope in his hand instead of the bridle, and the other who had been holding the tail, a wisp of straw, but what was he to do with the one who was sitting on the horse's back? He did not want to throw him down, for he might have awakened and have uttered a cry. He had a good idea, he unbuckled the girths of the saddle, tied a couple of ropes which ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... set down with absolute faithfulness; his bibliographies supplementing his own contributions and also those of the many writers whom he inspired and guided in like labours are exhaustive. Rarely is there a wisp to be gleaned where Winsor has garnered. If he was deficient in the power of vivid and picturesque presentment, it is only that like all men ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... sprung to her feet. Linnet and Matthew Henry, too, had picked themselves up, though more slowly.... A wisp of smoke drifted by the rock to their right. When they turned their eyes upon the Mermaid's Rock ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "Will o' the Wisp." This personage is a strolling demon or esprit follet, who, once upon a time, got admittance into a monastery as a scullion, and played the monks many pranks. He was also a sort of Robin Goodfellow, and Jack o' Lanthern. ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... for being so charmingly and neatly expressed. What they say about joy being the bribe that achievement offers us to get itself realized may be true in a sense. But they are wrong in speaking of the bribe as if it were an apple rotten at the core, or a bag of counterfeit coin, or a wisp of artificial hay. It is none of these things. It is sweet and genuine and well worth the necessary effort, once we are in a position to appreciate it at anything like its true worth. We must learn not to trust the beautiful writers too implicitly. For there ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... he pointed at a thin wisp of smoke rising from the convicts' camp. "It is about our neighbors," ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... flesh coverings. Certainly not the enormously rich ... they didn't buy their provocative draperies from show windows. And even the comfortably off might pause, she thought, before throwing a couple of hundred dollars into a wisp of veiling that didn't reach much below the knees and would look like a weather-beaten cobweb after the second wearing. With all this talk about profiteering and economy and the high cost of living, even Helen Starratt had to admit that one could go without an evening gown at two hundred dollars. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... went to prison, the fisherman was going home one night along the shore toward the village with some nets on his back. He was of a callous nature, and did not hesitate to take the shortest way across the meadow; but when he got in among the dunes, he saw a will-o'-the-wisp following in his steps, grew frightened, and began to run. It began to gain upon him, and when he leaped across the brook to put water between himself and the spirit, it seized hold of the nets. At this he shouted the name of God, and fled like one bereft of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... had. He was a dried-out wisp of a man wrinkled like a winter pippin. "Was your uncle engaged to be married at the time of his ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... We are the wisp of straw, the plaything of the winds. We think that we are making for a goal deliberately chosen; destiny drives us towards another. Mathematics, the exaggerated preoccupation of my youth, did me hardly any service; and animals, which I avoided as much as ever I could, are the consolation of my old ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... quiet as a mouse. Just in the nick of time the ladder was run out, and Mr Sparks tripping over it, fell violently to the ground. He sprang up and gave chase, of course, but he might as well have followed a will-o'-the-wisp. The young scamps, doubling like hares, took refuge in a dark recess under a stair with which they were well acquainted, and from that position they watched their enemy. They heard him go growling past; knew, a moment or two later, from the disappointed ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... at first noticed the small grasshopper, which at their appearance had skipped off the Scarecrow's nose and was now clinging to a wisp of grass beside the path, where he was not likely to be stepped upon. Not until the Scarecrow had been neatly restuffed and set upon his feet again—when he bowed to his restorers and expressed his thanks—did the grasshopper move from his perch. Then he leaped lightly into ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... about it, only if they had been there it would not have seemed so lonely. Suddenly—what was that in the distance? A light, a tiny light, bobbing in and out of sight among the trees? Could it be a star come out of its way to take pity on her? Much more likely a Will-o'-the-wisp; for she did not stop to reflect that a dry pine forest in summer-time is not one of Will-o'-the-wisp's favourite playgrounds. It was a light, as to that there was no doubt, and it was coming nearer. Whether she was more frightened or glad Olive scarcely knew. Still, ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... health is like the pursuit of happiness in that you do not always know when you have either. It may furthermore be likened to chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever keeps a few safe paces ahead of you. The thought that I had to keep busy at something calculated to promote my health was a habit that I could not easily relinquish. So now I began to read up and practice physical culture—which I had always spoken of as physical torture. I had read ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... TEA.—Cut two pounds of round steak into small dice, rejecting all skin and fat. Put it into a glass fruit jar with one cup of cold water. Cover the can sufficiently tight to prevent any water from boiling in, and place it on a wisp of straw or a muffin ring in a kettle of cold water. Heat very gradually, and keep it just below the boiling point for two or more hours; or, place the can in a deep dish of hot water, and cook in a moderate oven for three hours. Allow the meat to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... my best," said Paul coldly, but the reproach cut deep. He was a failure. No nervous or intellectual effort could save him now, though he spent himself to the last heartbeat. He was the sport of a mocking Will o' the Wisp which he had taken ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... prison where Grosley thought he saw him, during the French Revolution? Was he known to Lord Lytton about 1860? Was he then Major Fraser? Is he the mysterious Muscovite adviser of the Dalai Lama? Who knows? He is a will-o'-the-wisp of the memoir-writers of the eighteenth century. Whenever you think you have a chance of finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip; and if his existence were not vouched for ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... guess," said Jackson, "it doesn't need much conjuration to tell that. Food and lodging for ourselves, to be sure; and a wisp of hay and tether for our horses. —Hospitality in short; and that's what no true Tennessee man, bred and born, ever refused yet. No, not even to an enemy, such a ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... warning all that we can only too easily mistake a will-o'-the-wisp for a star, and that we should thus ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... large an apparent portion of the heavens, how stupendous must be the extent of the nebula. It would seem almost as if all the other clusters hitherto gauged were collected and compressed into one, they would not surpass this mighty group, in which every wisp—every wrinkle—is a sand-heap of stars. There are cases in which, though imagination has quailed, reason may still adventure inquiry, and prolong its speculations; but at times we are brought to a limit across which no human faculty ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Her hair was straw-coloured and stringy in spite of the labour she had expended on it with curling-iron and brush. As to her face, the more noticeable features were a very broad, flat nose; a comparatively chinless under jaw, on which grew an accidental wisp of hair or two; a narrow and permanently decorated upper lip. When she smiled—well, the effect was discouraging, to say the least. Her eyes were pale and prominent. In spite of all this, practice in rouging might have ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Episcopalian party into a Royalist party, and placed at its head the Covenanter, Montrose. On the other hand, the National Covenant was transformed into the Solemn League and Covenant, which had for its aim the establishment of Presbytery in England as well as in Scotland. This "will o' the wisp" of covenanted uniformity led the Scottish Church into somewhat strange places. As early as January, 1643, Montrose had offered to strike a blow for the king in Scotland, but Charles would not take ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... privileges by the dam proprietors. The hundred yoke of oxen, meanwhile, standing patient, gazing wishfully meadowward, at that inaccessible waving native grass, uncut but by the great mower Time, who cuts so broad a swathe, without so much as a wisp ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... their rooms to dress, talking and laughing. They could not be silent, their hearts were so light. Jean sang softly to herself as she laid out what she meant to wear that evening. Pamela had made her promise to wear a white frock, the merest wisp of a frock made of lace and georgette, with a touch of vivid green, and a wreath of green leaves for the golden-brown head. Jean had protested. She was afraid she would look overdressed: a black frock would be more suitable; but Pamela had insisted ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... monster, turning up the white of his undersides, made a dart at a black bottle and a wisp of hay which had been thrown overboard in the morning. Down they went into his ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... pictures. There was one of the fifth dormitory at 6 a.m. You saw all the girls asleep, and their heads were killing. Amy had a top-knot that had fallen on one side, Phyllis a pigtail about two inches long, and as thin as a string. You know her miserable little wisp of hair. Mary was lying on her back with her mouth wide open. It was the image of her. She's nearly as good as Hilda Cowham. We might call her 'Hilda Cowman' as a nom de plume. Wouldn't ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Will-o'-the-Wisp, and a plump, spooky sprite she made with dabs of phosphorus upon her fluttering black cambric costume, and funny peaked cap, which glowed uncannily when the room was darkened. She carried a little electric ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... together on a wharf one bright October day awaiting the arrival of an ocean steamer with an impatience which found a vent in lively skirmishes with a small lad, who pervaded the premises like a will-o'-the-wisp and afforded much amusement to the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... coming. It concluded with the representation of a woman in labour, acted by a set of great brawny fellows, one of whom at last brought forth a strapping boy, about six feet high, who ran about the stage, dragging after him a large wisp of straw which hung by a string from his middle. I had an opportunity of seeing this acted another time, when I observed, that the moment they had got hold of the fellow who represented the child, they flattened or pressed his nose. From ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Frank was furiously busy, working the darkened stellene of his bubb from the drum, letting it spread like a long wisp of silvery cobweb against the stars, letting it inflate from the air-flasks to a firm and beautiful circle, attaching the rigging, the fine, radial spokewires—for which the blastoff drum itself now formed the hub. To the latter he now attached his full-size, sun-powered ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... sand-dunes with a wreath of billows at their feet, or afar on some volcanic tropic isle where waterfalls descended and became mist, reaching the sea in vapor veils that swayed and shivered to every vagrant wisp of wind. But always, in the foreground, lords of beauty and eternally reading and sharing, lay he and Ruth, and always in the background that was beyond the background of nature, dim and hazy, were work and success and money ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... huge misfortune, this will-o'-the-wisp attraction exercised by London on young men of brains. They come here to be degraded, or to perish, when their true sphere is a life of peaceful remoteness. The type of man capable of success in London is more or less callous and cynical. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... out of doors. Then she heard a kind but commanding voice repeating: "Open your mouth," and stared up wildly into her great-great-great-grandmother's face, then around the strange little garret, lighted with a wisp of rag in a pewter dish of tallow, and the stars shining through the crack in the logs. Not a bit of furniture was there in the room, besides the bed and an oak chest. Some queer-looking garments hung about on pegs and swung in the draughts of the wind. It ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... these circumstances, her conduct was somewhat erratic. For three days, perhaps, she would fly to the door at her husband's ring, and hang upon his every movement. Then, for the next three, she would be a veritable will-o'-the-wisp for elusiveness, caring, apparently, not one whit whether her husband came or went until poor Bertram, at his wit's end, scourged himself with a merciless catechism as to what he had done to vex her. Then, perhaps, just when he had nerved himself almost to the point of asking her what was the ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... only a crowd of men and boys, who jeered and hooted. This was a sight not new; but in their midst he caught a glimpse of a crested helmet and the black cloak of a slave-driver. And then the crowd parted, and Nicanor saw a girl, a lean wisp of a thing, with burning eyes and a gray face framed in straight black hair, with chained wrists and a ragged frock which slipped aside to show a long red welt across her brown shoulders. The slave-driver held the end ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Watsons of this world, as opposed to the Sherlock Holmeses, success in the province of detective work must always be, to a very large extent, the result of luck. Sherlock Holmes can extract a clue from a wisp of straw or a flake of cigar-ash. But Doctor Watson has got to have it taken out for him, and dusted, and exhibited clearly, with a ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... here on a roving secret commission. I shall call, of course, and pay my personal respects to His Excellency, the General Commanding. I am an official will-o'-the-wisp, just now, but my blushing honors are strictly civil, and, by the way, in expectancy. Where does ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... and reclining side by side: a straw man and a straw woman. The workmanship is childishly clumsy; but still, the woman can be distinguished from the man by .the ingenious attempt to imitate the female coiffure with a straw wisp. And as the man is represented with a queue—now worn only by aged survivors of the feudal era—I suspect that this kitoja-no-mono was made after some ancient ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... notes on Shakspeare, purposely to mislead or entrap Malone, and obtain for himself an easy triumph in the next edition! Steevens loved to assist the credulous in getting up for them some strange new thing, dancing them about with a Will-o'-the-wisp—now alarming them by a shriek of laughter! and now like a grinning Pigwigging sinking them chin-deep into a quagmire! Once he presented them with a fictitious portrait of Shakspeare, and when the brotherhood were sufficiently divided in their opinions, he pounced upon them with a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... slip in, Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth, Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them, Nor the present, nor the least wisp that ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Escalante believed a better road existed to Monterey by way of the north than by the middle route, and a further incentive to journey that way was probably the rumours of large towns in that direction, the same will-o'-the-wisp the Spaniards for nearly three centuries had been vainly pursuing. The authorities had urged two expeditions to Alta California, to establish communication; Garces and Captain Anza had carried out one, and now Escalante was to ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... rushed again to the door to find it locked. In sheer despair she made for the window, threw open the casement, and ere Sir Hugh could seize or stop her flung herself headlong into the court below. When the horrified husband looked down into the darkness, a wisp of white garments, a bruised and lifeless body, was all that remained ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... know I am greatly daring, but there are moments when we are outside ourselves—when we know and speak things of which we can give no logical account. You have put life behind you; yet what is life but a will-o'-the-wisp? Who can say where the light may not ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... to resume their journey when one of the youngest and keenest-eyed uttered an exclamation and pointed up at the rugged crag above them. From its summit there fluttered a little wisp of pink, showing up hard and bright against the grey rocks behind. At the sight there was a general reining up of horses and unslinging of guns, while fresh horsemen came galloping up to reinforce the vanguard. The word 'Redskins' was ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the place, the sky fades towards night through a surprising key of colours. The latest gold leaps from the last mountain. Soon, perhaps, the moon shall rise, and in her gentler light the valley shall be mellowed and misted, and here and there a wisp of silver cloud upon a hilltop, and here and there a warmly glowing window in a house, between fire and starlight, kind and homely in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Port Victoria. Besides, it's no use nodding to a monument. And he was like one. He didn't speak, he didn't budge. He just sat there, holding his handsome old head up, immovable, and almost bigger than life. It was extremely fine. Mr. Stonor's presence reduced poor old Jermyn to a mere shabby wisp of a man, and made the talkative stranger in tweeds on the hearthrug look absurdly boyish. The latter must have been a few years over thirty, and was certainly not the sort of individual that gets abashed ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the skin worn off the sole of the other. But there were the lights ahead, and we kept right straight for them, though no matter how far we walked they seemed just the same distance off. It was certainly discouraging, and I could not help thinking of the will-o'-the-wisp, and wondering if the phenomenon was ever seen in the Arctic. I could not remember any instance in my reading, and determined to reach that light or perish in the effort. At last it did seem nearer. We could make out the shapes of the tents, and finally we could hear ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... very interesting matter, that will-o'-the-wisp, known as "the cost of production." It is hard for any man who has ever studied economics at all to restrain a cynical smile when he is told that an intelligent group of his fellow-citizens are looking for "the cost of production" as a basis for tariff ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... up and down, here and there, like following some will-o'-the-wisp went the boys. At times they thought they had lost the object of their pursuit, but again they would hear him ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... to caressing; strolling along with a roguish twinkle of the eye, and, if the thing were possible, would have had his hands in his pockets and whistled as he went. If there ever chanced to be an apple core, a stray turnip or wisp of hay in the gutter, this Mark Tapley was sure to find it, and none of his mates seemed to begrudge him his bite. I suspected this fellow was the peacemaker, confidant and friend of all the others, for he had a sort of "Cheer-up-old-boy-I'll-pull-you-through" ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... of a half-drunken old guide named Shanks somewhere around Mount Tom district. And now we've come up this way in the hope of crossing his trail. Not that I've got much expectation myself that we'll be sure to find this same; Roland, who turns out to be a sort of will-o'-the-wisp to us; but since his old aunt was so kind as to finance this expedition, why we're bound to do all we can to make it a ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... star-broke out for one moment, as if to smile comfort upon him, and then vanished. But lo! in the distance there suddenly gleamed a red, steady light, like that in some solitary window; it was no will-o'-the-wisp, it was too stationary—human shelter was then nearer than he had thought for. He pointed to the light, and whispered, "Rouse yourself, one struggle ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... cattle, a section of tilled field for the wheat and corn and vegetables and a section of woodland for the fire-wood—each strip, so divided, being a complete miniature seigniory. Everything is neat. One feels that not a wisp of hay is lost (for it was in haying time that I passed), that every tree is as carefully watched as a child, that whatever is taken from the fields they are not impoverished. The living owners, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... mother's favorite. Why, no one knew, except that he was so ugly. He had so many scars on his face, from falls and fights, that somehow he produced the impression of a target. His hair stood out like a halo of straw, and one defiant wisp reared itself above his forehead with the grace of a cat's whisker. Mrs. Lilly could never sleep until he was safe in her arms, and his life knew no cross until after the accident to Katharine Kirk, who became, in her turn, the pivot round which the family revolved. Horrible to relate, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Lord we're on the ridge now! and the rest is easy. Tell you what, though, boys, now we're all right, I don't mind saying that I didn't take no stock in that blamed corpse light down there. If there ever was a will-o'-the-wisp on a square up mountain, that was one. It wasn't no window! Some of ye thought ye saw a ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... only the squalid villages of the Zuni Indians, after stumbling on the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and marching as far north as the southern line of Kansas. Jacques Cartier, following another will-o'-the-wisp to the north, and searching for the storied city of Norembega, supposed to exist somewhere in the wilderness south of Cape Breton, found it not, indeed, but laid the foundations for the great empire which France was to establish ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... for Yolanda and Twonette, and told Max and me to sleep, if we could, on the tap-room floor. After an hour on the hard boards I went to the stable, and, rousing a groom, gave him a silver crown for the privilege of sleeping on a wisp of hay. I fell asleep at once and must have slept like the dead, for the dawn was breaking when one of our squires wakened me. I could not believe that I had been sleeping five minutes, but the dim morning light startled me, and ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... through. I'm going to be awfully good to you, Eve. You sha'n't ever have any more worries, poor old thing." He looked at her affectionately. "I wonder why it is that large men always fall in love with little women. There are you, a fragile, fairy-like, ethereal wisp of a little ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... violets ripened no otherwhere than in the valleys of Bordeaux. Ergo, I am not drunk. I do not think I am mad, neither, for I know in my heart that I am poor Franois Villon, penniless Master of Arts, and no will o' the wisp Grand Constable. Then I am dreaming, fast asleep in the chimney corner of the Fircone Tavern, having finished that flask I filched, and everything since then has been and is a dream. The coming of Katherine, a dream. My fight with Thibaut d'Aussigny, a dream. ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... unprofitable, and by no means a pleasant task to follow the commissioners in their erratic career, as they were led hither and thither by the four lights of magnetism above mentioned; the four "Wills-o'-the-Wisp" which dazzled the benighted and bewildered doctors on that wide and shadowy region of metaphysical inquiry — the influence of mind over matter. It will be better to state at once the conclusion they came to after so long and laborious an investigation, and then examine whether they were ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... chestnut shied from a sudden strange shining point springing up in the darkness close at hand, which the country-bred horse discriminated as fox-fire, and kept steadily on, unmindful of the rotting log where it glowed. Far in advance, in the dank depths of the woods, a Will-o'-the-wisp danced and flickered and lured the traveller's eye. The stranger was not sure of the different quality of another light, appearing down a vista as the road turned, until the sorrel, making a tremendous spurt, headed for it, uttering a joyous ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... is a very bewildering thing—and thoughts do sometimes play the very will-o'-the-wisp with one. And when somebody you know is at a party, there is a funny inclination to go through the motions at least, and be up as late as anybody else. So it was with a somewhat sudden recollection that Mr. Rollo bethought him ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... instances of popular beliefs that have poetic capabilities, the kelpie, the will-o'-the-wisp, and second sight. He alludes to the ballad of "Willie Drowned in Yarrow," and doubtless with a line of "The Seasons" running in his head,[29] conjures Home to "forget not Kilda's race," who live on the eggs of the solan goose, whose only prospect ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... In her restlessness and solitude, she had forgotten this; she had only asked whether any life was worth living for a woman who had neither husband nor children. Was the family all that life had to offer? could she find no interest outside the household? And so, led by this will-of-the-wisp, she had, with her eyes open, walked into the quagmire of politics, in spite of remonstrance, in ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... its large nose out of that garage was a gray motor (but not so nice a gray as ours) conducted by a wisp of a chauffeur. He was driving two passengers, and I bounced on the springy back seat of our car with surprise as I recognized them. Down went my head mechanically in as polite a bow as if I hadn't been turned out of her house by Mrs. West, though, when ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... poised as Lilamani's own. The letter lived in a slim blue bag, lovingly embroidered. Lilamani—foolish and fanciful—wore it like a talisman, next her heart; and at night slipped it under her pillow with her gold watch and wisp ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... and, besides, phosphorus is a dangerous thing to handle incautiously, and I do not want to suggest anything which might be productive of disaster if the experiment was repeated at home. A little wisp of hay, slightly damped and lighted, will safely yield a sufficient supply, and you need not have an elaborate box like this; any kind of old packing-case, or even a bandbox with a duster stretched across its open top and a round hole cut ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... looking on his father so worn and white and wasted, listening to his strangled breathing, there rose a passionate vehemence of anger against Nature, cruel, inexorable Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body, slowly pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the being who was dearest to him in the world. His father, of all men, had lived a careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was his reward—to have life slowly, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... just see her in the 'Cloud Wisp'!" I exclaimed, with the greatest pride, for Bess Rutherford has nothing ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... was to be tempted by such a 'will o' the wisp' as that!" he exclaimed. "We must keep away, my dear sir, to the left, and I hope ere long that we shall escape from this treacherous neighbourhood." He had been through a good many trying scenes, but he had never felt more perplexed than he did at this moment. He ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... gazed at her adoringly. Her hair was dressed in a high and stately fashion to-night. She wore a gown of gold brocade and a necklace and little tiara of emeralds and diamonds; she was looking very handsome and very regal. Thornton was a thin, dark, nervous wisp of a man, who had borne his share of the burdens laid upon his city in the cataclysm of 1906, but if his wife had demanded an enormous historic ruby he would have done his best to gratify her. But how ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... noticed to the southward and on the other side of the peninsula a faint, dark line against the edge of the sunset. Few, even with an eye good enough to see it, would have taken it for anything but a wisp of cloud, but the physical sense of Henry Ware, so acute that it bordered ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is not evident. But a more interesting retort is, that since people have tried to prove obvious propositions, they have found that many of them are false. Self-evidence is often a mere will-o'-the-wisp, which is sure to lead us astray if we take it as our guide. For instance, nothing is plainer than that a whole always has more terms than a part, or that a number is increased by adding one to it. But these propositions are now known to be usually false. Most numbers are infinite, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... thus we get on firm footing. We but advance into sloughs of despond, led by wills of the wisp; and the girl mediums, the so-called clairvoyantes, invariably lose mental health and physical strength. It is but a matter of time, and they become hysteria patients or inhabitants of lunatic asylums. I have known ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... stole down; the dark hills rose to the pale blue sky; there was a fair star and a wisp of purple cloud; and the shadowy waters gleamed. Breaking into the trill of the frogs came the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... first wisp of thought meant nothing to the scout. "The strangers wear many coverings on their bodies as do they, and they had also coverings upon their heads. They were bigger. Also from their minds I learned that they are not of ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... baskets, Willow-grouse sewed them with an over-and-over stitch. In this way she made the soft grasses into a firm basket. She began by taking a wisp of grass in the left hand and a flat splint in the other. She wound the splint around the wisp a few times then turned the wrapped portion upon itself. When she had fastened it with a firm stitch, again she wound the splint around the wisp and took ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp |
