"Wisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... thaw came. The roads became appalling. There were only three broken-down horses on the estate and not a wisp of hay. The horses had to be fed on rye straw chopped up with an axe and sprinkled with flour. One of the horses was vicious and there was no getting it out of the yard. Another was stolen in the fields and a dead horse left in its ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... could just see her in the 'Cloud Wisp'!" I exclaimed, with the greatest pride, for Bess Rutherford has nothing to envy ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... wisdom and foresight of Charley and myself, I should like to mention that we had entrusted that valuable evidence of our status to the keeping of a worthy stranger dressed in an old red jacket and a pair of corduroy trousers fastened with a wisp of ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... turned their horses' heads and fled. They were not a moment too soon; for the Indians, who had been lying in ambush, rose and fired at the boys. Matthews had a narrow escape; for a bullet cut off the wisp of hair (known as a queue) that hung dangling from the back of his head. The danger that he had passed through, and the sight of his murdered neighbors, roused young Matthews to action. He collected a party of men, put himself at the head of them, followed ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... mother beheld her daughter as in a dream, and she opened her arms as if to caress her. And the child, laughing and sobbing, was about to throw herself into those open arms; but King Loc tore her away, and like a wisp of straw he bore her through the blue landscape to ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... began taking in the valuable papers. First some title-deeds disappeared; then some railway bonds; presently a roll of rent-receipts. All these seemed to be as honey to his tongue; he smiled a smile of tranquil happiness. Finally the newspaper vanished into his face like a wisp of straw drawn into ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... and fair green meadows, for in the early spring of 1586 Ralph Lane, who had been sent with Sir Richard Grenville by Sir Walter Raleigh to colonize Roanoke Island, set out with fourteen comrades from that place on an exploring expedition, hoping to find the golden "Will-o'-the-Wisp," which led so many English adventurers of the day to seek their fortunes in the ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... A nide of pheasants, A wisp of snipe, A flight of doves or swallows, A muster of peacocks, A siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... interprets itself as sight. "The light that is in thee is darkness." We think we see, and all the time we are the children of the night. We think it is "the dawn of God's sweet morning," and behold! it is the perverse flare of the evil one. He has given us a will-o'-the-wisp, and we boastfully proclaim it to ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... mythical are too evanescent to become full-grown myths; and those which are religious are too volatile to remain in the solution or salt of any bottled creed. Like the wandering lights of the Russians, answering to our will-o'-the-wisp, they are the souls of still-born children. There is, for example, the insubstantial and formless but pleasing conception of the Indian Veda. In the Ramayanam the moon is a good fairy, who in giving light in the night assumes a benignant aspect and succours the dawn. In the Vedic ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... that he has been the victim of a soul-destroying, home-wrecking, and accursed habit, which that gifted American, Colonel Robert Ingersoll, has, in words of fiery eloquence, called 'the treacherous, insidious murderer of home and happiness; the Will-o'-the-Wisp that draws honour, genius, and all that is good into its fatal, deadly quagmire.' To the assertion that our valued contemporary is 'the possessor of one of the brightest intellects of the present century' (as he so modestly informs us) we do not cavil ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... 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
... suddenly raised her head and sniffed at the air from the small window above her through which a slender wisp of smoke came curling. Smoke! The smell of burning brush, familiar to her, and yet back here in the woods, unless from a well tended camp-fire, fraught with perilous meaning. She glanced out of the small opening again. The purple had ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... flower-bed or so, and a humble apology for a pinery, and two or three little attempts of that sort without any pretension, they would distinguish him very much. Carrying out his character, this gentleman was very plainly dressed, in a wisp of cambric for a neckcloth, big shoes, a coat that was too loose for him, and a pair of trousers that were too spare; and mention being made of the Opera by Mrs Skewton, he said he very seldom went there, for he couldn't afford ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... it be? A Will o' the Wisp? A Jack o' Lantern, some phosphoric phenomenon rising in the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Causses. Our project at last began to wear the look of a nightmare, a harassing, feverish dream. We seemed to be fascinated hither and thither by an ignis fatuus, enticed into quagmires and quicksands by an altogether illusive, mocking, malicious Will-o'-the- wisp. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... shoulders and hung out their flowers like lamps. Warm wind was in their faces, sweet, reverberant voices of the wood-things came chorusing, and ahead there in the dimness, that misty will-o'-the-wisp was her veil, Olivia's veil. St. George would have followed if ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... down with a wisp of hay, you might, indeed, sir," said the groom one morning a fortnight after the picture had been begun—the day but one, in fact, before that set for Vandyke Brown's wedding. "Yes, sir," he continued, "with a wisp of hay, or even with ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... wide expanse of water, and Vesuvius, and the distant outline of Naples all spread in a panorama before them, besides having an excellent bird's-eye prospect of the garden below. Peachy, who was ready to do anything wild, went dancing about like a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... into the dim recesses of this awful past, we want the aid of some steadfast light which shall illumine the dark places without the treachery of the will-o'-the-wisp. In the absence of that steadfast light, vague conjectures as to the beginning of things could never be entitled to any more respect than was due to mere ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... in Soames, 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
... lights of the two carriages stand shining by the wayside. Scarce a word or two was uttered at our parting, and these regarded business: a silent grasping of hands, a turning of faces aside, and the thing was over; the horses broke into a trot, the lamplight sped like Will-o'-the-Wisp upon the broken moorland, it dipped beyond Stony Brae; and there were Macconochie and I alone with our lantern on the road. There was one thing more to wait for, and that was the reappearance of the coach upon Cartmore. It seems they must have pulled up upon the summit, looked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over England under the Napoleonic regime. But, if many of the English people, weary of the increasing burdens which fell upon them, had their dreams of a good time coming, they, instead of following the mere glimmer of the will-o'-the-wisp, across the darkness of their lot, responded rather to signs of coming activities. Through the darkness they saw perhaps nothing very striking, but they felt occasionally the thrill of coming activities which were struggling for ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... ride to the city. Not so far ahead, however, that he could not observe every movement of her light, graceful figure as she swept down the King's Highway. She was a perfect horsewoman, firm, jaunty, free. Somehow he knew, without seeing, that a stray brown wisp of hair caressed her face with insistent adoration: he could see her hand go up from time to time to brush it back—just as if it were not a happy place for a wisp of hair. Perhaps—he shivered with the thought of it—perhaps it even caressed her lips. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove, But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love. ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... 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 is no more treacherous ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... never once entered Jervis Whitney's mind that so fantastic a thing as a pair of red moccasins was to be found in the Old Dominion, or anywhere else outside of a monkey show, though he might search the world, with a will-o'-the-wisp, from Big Bone Lick to the Land of Nod. So, in saying, "let me but find them, and you shall have them," he thought he was hazarding his word no more than were he to say: "Let the man in the moon but give me the moon, and the ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... close on my heels, saw nothing, and I do not tell him. He will discover quite soon enough the bright presence of that lovely flame where he would fain cast himself bodily, though it evades him like a Will-o'-th'-wisp. For the moment, besides, we are on business bent. The coveted corner must be won. We resume the hunt with the energy of despair. Barque leads us on; he has taken the matter to heart. He is trembling—you can see it in his dusty scalp. He guides us, nose to the wind. He suggests ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... not ten feet distant. At his master's abrupt appearance he merely raised his head, a wisp of grass in the corner of his mouth, without attempting to move away. Buck Johnson walked confidently to him, fumbling in his side pocket for the piece of sugar with which he habitually soothed Button's sophisticated palate. His hand encountered Estrella's letter. He drew it ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... what you did, sir," said she, through her diminishing tears. She was a slight wisp of a girl, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... minutes was all the time needed to accumulate a heap of the big, fan-like leaves. These Charley made into three torch-like bundles, taking care to place a dead dry leaf between each two green ones. Binding each bundle together with a wisp of green leaf, he struck a match and lit up the three, passing one to the captain and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... literature was his destiny; the tripos faded into the background, replaced by the more splendid vision of seeing an accepted article from his pen in a real London magazine; he gave frantic chase to the will o' the wisp of literary fame, which so many pursue all their lives in vain, fortunate if it comes at last to flicker for ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Sam! Ah bet Ah knows just the woman for you-all, ef you-all ain't lookin' for a young gal with a figger like a wisp of hay." ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... me!' he added, with a complacence that would have received a rude shock by a little plain speaking as to those duties close at hand in his home that he was daily neglecting, in order to follow a will-o'-the-wisp in the shape of ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... mysterious and changing and beautiful, but it is not the lights of the North and of Heaven. She is the feu follet, the will-o'-the-wisp that hovers over what is rotten, and dead. Send her away, my son; send her away. Oh, she has left her trail of blood and hatred and malice in my parish, I know. She has bred feuds; she has sent strong ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... feeling hopelessly for his heart; and then, gathering the forlorn little wisp of fur in his arms, he hurried into the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Harramy, which signifies the Child is 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 this I judged, that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the air, that something unusual was brewing overhead. I looked up: there it was, a cloud, low-hung and lurid, and stretching across the whole northern side of the horizon. I had scarce time to gather my clews and bobbins into a hurried wisp, and take shelter under an overhanging bank hard by, when down it came, heavy, hissing, and pelting the whole surface of the river into spray. I drew myself close to the back of the hollow, where I lay in a congratulatory sort of reverie, watching the veins of muddy red, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... churchmen we were afterwards told we ought to have remembered. October 31st was All-Hallows Eve, "when ghosts do walk," and here we were in a place they revelled in—so much so that they gave their name to it, Duninius' Dale. Here the curious sights known as "Will-o'-the-Wisp" could be seen magnificently by those who would venture a midnight visit. But we ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... variations arose spontaneously. The fruitless search after final causes leads their pursuers a long way; but even those hardy teleologists, who are ready to break through all the laws of physics in chase of their favourite will-o'-the-wisp, may be puzzled to discover what purpose could be attained by the stunted legs of Seth Wright's ram or the hexadactyle ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... enough, but at first I couldn't see any of them. But I gathered that Miss Lucy was standing up whilst she was talking, and moving around a bit now and then. I seen one of her sleeves, and then a wisp of her hair. Which was aggervating, fur I wanted to know what she was like. But her voice was so soft and quiet that you kind of knowed before you seen her how she ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... from Monsieur Vigo a sympathy which few men possess, and this I felt strongly as he listened, breaking his silence only at long intervals to ask a question. It was a still night, I remember, of great beauty, with a wisp of a moon hanging over the forest line, the air heavy with odors and vibrant ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... miss," he said to Verena, pulling a wisp of hair as he spoke. "No, miss, there ain't any room. You couldn't possibly sit on the back seat, for it's as much as ever I'll do to bring the lady home in this tumble-down conveyance. Our own is too bad for use, and I had to borrow ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... than three yards off. In rivalry with these appeared the pale disk of the moon, just setting over the western highlands, and "drawing straws" through summer haze; while away in the northeast over the sea, a slender irregular wisp of gray, so weak that it seemed as if it were being blown away, betokened the intention of the sun to restore clear ideas of number and of figure by-and-by. But little did anybody heed such things; every one ran against everybody else, and all was eagerness, haste, and bustle ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... thread, and blue dungaree jackets faded and threadbare. They are young lusty fellows, and Stroke, who is a tough-looking, middle-aged man, with a wiry beard, has a skull-cap between rose and brown, and round it a salmon-coloured wisp of a turban—over them there is the arch of the frogged foot of the lateen sail. All but Bow are in full sunlight, sweating at their oars, he is in the shadow the sail casts on our bow. We recline, to quote our ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... am ashamed to say that hardly a wisp of fodder does the place contain. But how can I get fodder? My lands are small, and the peasantry lazy fellows who hate work and think of nothing but the tavern. In the end, therefore, I shall be forced to go and spend my old age in roaming ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the wisp which flitted before the ardent Bonapartists who pushed on the Emperor to war, was that the South German States would forsake the North and range their troops under the French eagles, as they had done ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... not!" answered he, laughing loudly, as he sprang over the sofa, and set his back against the door. "Come, come, you Will-o'-the-Wisp, as full of flights, and fancies, and vagaries, as a sick old maid! can't you see which side your bread is buttered? Sit down, I say! Don't you know that I'm as good-natured a fellow as ever lived, although I do parade a ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... a picture book there, but she had looked at the picture book hundreds of times; and though her doll was a faithful friend, somehow they had nothing to say to each other now. Rosemary flitted about like a will o' the wisp, and finally went to the window, where ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... star shone in her eyes. She thought at first she was 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 ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that? The snark? No. The snark had a flavor like that of will-o'-the-wisp. And I must remember to distinguish those that have feathers, and bite, from those ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he looked into the hollow eyes of Cuckoo, seeming, strangely, to seek in them the will-o'-the-wisp of which he spoke. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a more unwieldy elephant on his hands, without a wisp of hay in sight for food.. He had seen wrecking operations: money, men, and gigantic equipment often failed to win. Technical skill and expert knowledge were required. He did not know what an examination of her hull would reveal. He had bought ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of his reach. Mr. Raleigh attempted to seize her, but he might as easily have put his hand on a butterfly; she eluded him always when within his grasp, and led him such a dance up and down the forest-path as none other than a will-o'-the-wisp, it seemed, could have woven. All at once a dark figure glided out from another alley and snatched the sprite into its arms. It was a colored nurse, who poured out a torrent of broken French and English over the runaway, and made her acknowledgments to Mr. Raleigh in the same jargon. As she turned ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Baba had always been her own; had followed her about like a dog ever since he could run; in fact, the only taming he had ever had, had been done by Ramona, with bread and honey. He was intractable to others; but Ramona could guide him by a wisp of his silky mane. Alessandro also had nearly as complete control over him; for it had been one of his greatest pleasures, during the summer, when he could not see Ramona, to caress and fondle her horse, till Baba knew and loved him next to ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... "I have told you the truth about it. It's gas. It's carbureted hydrogen. I found it in the pond. 'Carbureted hydrogen' is its science name. Its poetry name is 'Will-o'-the-wisp,' and there's another ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the dead of night and lays them prostrate. Lilu and lilitu are the spirits that flit by in the night. Of a specific character likewise are the conceptions connected with a demon known as ardat lili, 'maid of the night,' a strange female 'will-o'-the-wisp,' who approaches men, arouses their passions, but does not permit a satisfaction of them. Great importance being attached by the Babylonians to dreams, the belief in a 'maid of the night' was probably due to the unchecked play of the imagination during the hours ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... the North-East; again we steer for it, as if following a will-o'-the-wisp. The continued semi-starvation, hard work, and heat was beginning to leave its mark. None of our friends or relatives would have recognised us now! Clothed in filthy rags, with unkempt hair and beards, begrimed with mud, and burnt ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... chill night air stole out of the east, stealthily trailing the sun. Will-o'-the-wisp lights bespecked the sea, surrounding the black hulk that lay motionless in the center of the circle. Lanterns in a score or more of small boats bobbed fitfully in the gentle swell. Presently lights appeared on board the Doraine, one here, one there, then others in twos and threes,—some ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... has just seized all I have, which, God knows, is little enough! and has driven my cow to pound, the only cow I have, and only dependence I have for a drop of milk to drink; and the cow itself too standing there starving in the pound, for not a wisp of hay would he give to cow or Christian to save their lives, if it was ever so! And the rent for which he is driving me, please your honour, has not been due but one week: a hard master he is; but these middle men ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Don Carlos are oftener seen than any others. A Madrid smoker of average industry will use a box a day. They smoke more cigarettes than cigars, and in the ardor of conversation allow their fire to go out every minute. A young Austrian, who was watching a senorito light his wisp of paper for the fifth time, and mentally comparing it with the volcano volume and kern-deutsch integrity of purpose of the meerschaums of his native land, said to me: "What can you expect of a people who trifle in that way with the only work ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... an evening of better promise," returned Chayne, with a smile at her eagerness. The brown cliffs of the Aiguille du Chardonnet just across the glacier glowed red in the sunlight; and only a wisp of white cloud trailed like a lady's scarf here and there in the blue of the sky. The woman of the chalet came out and ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... the hall and into a prim, fleckless parlor. Anne and Diana sat down gingerly on the nearest chairs and explained their errand. Mrs. White heard them politely, interrupting only twice, once to chase out an adventurous fly, and once to pick up a tiny wisp of grass that had fallen on the carpet from Anne's dress. Anne felt wretchedly guilty; but Mrs. White subscribed two dollars and paid the money down . . . "to prevent us from having to go back for it," Diana said when they got away. Mrs. White had the newspapers gathered up before they had their ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... such conditions, the straw is not very inviting. It soon becomes verminous, and this deplorable state of affairs becomes worse the longer the straw is in use. In fact it becomes alive with lice. In one instance I saw a dropped wisp so thickly encrusted with the parasites that it actually moved along the ground under the united action of ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... that, in the night, the Moors kept regular watch, and frequently looked into the hut, to see if I was asleep, and if it was quite dark, they would light a wisp of grass. About two o'clock in the morning, a Moor entered the hut, probably with a view to steal something, or perhaps to murder me: and groping about, he laid his hand upon my shoulder. As night visitors were ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... on the Records of Ireland, will, it is to be hoped, give the full details of this exciting record hunt, and thus exemplify the great utility, not to speak of the manliness, of real names and addresses, versus false names and equally Will-o'-the-Wisp initials. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... are like old friends remembering old days together. A piano-top buggy on a muddy, board-sidewalked street, all cut up by the narrow tires; the shingling at the corner of a veranda on a new-built house; a broken snake-fence girdling an old pasture of mulleins and skull-headed boulders; a wisp of Virginia creeper dying splendidly on the edge of a patch of corn; half a dozen panels of snow-fence above a cutting, or even a shameless patent-medicine advertisement, yellow on the black of a tobacco-barn, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... be a housewife, then she is continually "picking up", continually pursuing that household Will-o'-the-Wisp, "finishing the work." For it is the nature of housework that it is never finished, no matter how much is done. This overconscientious person, unless she is made of steel springs and resilient rubber, breathlessly chasing this phantom all day ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... freakish wisp of hair?— Nay, but its wildest, its most frolic whorl Stands for a slim, enamoured, sweet-fleshed girl! And so, a tangle of dream and charm and fun, Its every crook a promise and a snare, Its every dowle, or genially gadding Or crisply curled, ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... follow him to his farm, which ought to be hard by. And in the silence of the midnight, that they might see their way, suddenly candles appeared, burning, and clinging to the lances of all the knights,—not very bright, however; but like those which the folk call candelae nympharum,—wills of the wisp. But none could pull them off, or altogether extinguish them, or throw them from their hands. And thus they saw their way, and went on, although astonished out of mind, with the wolf leading them, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... How is it that I cannot entertain the capricious creature? I must try her elsewhere. I have already been told that the people of this place are exceedingly ambitious. Evidently there is no room for me here. So, adieu! gentleman of the court, and follow to the bitter end this will-o'-the-wisp! They tell me that Dame Fortune has temples in Surat. Very well! ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... the signs of life afloat in our immediate vicinity on the whilom teeming, busy tideway; and the shore on either side was equally still, only an occasional light, twinkling here and there like a Will o' the Wisp, bearing evidence that some people were stirring, or beginning to wake up as the darkness grew, with that topsy-turvy habit which those who live on land have sometimes of ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... be 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 bulb lantern which unexpectedly flashed ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... her first New York appearance as member of a traveling company in "The Paymaster." Already the energetic mother was importuning Charles to engage the daughter. His answer was, "I'll give her a chance as soon as I can." He little dreamed that this wisp of a girl was to become in later years his most profitable ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... . he will learn something which he wanted, I doubt not, on his present path, even as I shall on mine. "Se tu segui la tua stella" is my motto. . . . Let it be his too, wherever the star may guide him. If it be a will-o'-the- wisp, and lead to the morass, he will only learn how to avoid morasses better ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... 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, with a strong ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... tender, dark eyes; a beautiful, tawny coat, covered with rich, dark spots; a long neck; a rather short body, measuring about seven feet in length; slender, shapely legs, terminating in feet with divided hoofs; and a long tail, ending in a wisp of dark-colored hair, which was a splendid thing with which to whisk ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... pushed her bonnet back farther so that a wisp of her beautiful hair was exposed to the sunlight against the shell-like pinkness of her neck. "He hasn't caught a thing," she said; "but he's had some bites that ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... the human race attained its zenith—was there nothing beyond, nothing to look forward to, and he merely the latest dreamer and enthusiast who was pursuing the same will-o'-the-wisp that others had sought through the ages? If so, then what fatality was it that encompassed him and continually urged him on? Doubt counseled him to return, but pride and confidence in self still cried forward. Come what would, he ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... draws the killingest 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 it ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... become a place of torment and a ghastly chamber of horrors. We shall be the children of despondency and wretchedness. Memory will be a graveyard; the past will give no light save the "will-o-the-wisp" light from putrescence and decay. All the springs of joy will be poisoned by morbid griefs that keep open old wounds. The city hath its offal heap where refuse matter is destroyed; each home its garret, the contents cast out at regular intervals; the individual throws away his old clothes, old ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... mounted and swam free: the upper portion of the veil floated off like a wisp and drifted down the wind. Where the glory had shone, it lingered through tint after tint—rose, pale lemon, palest sea-green— and so passed into azure and became one with the rest of ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... cohabit and the happy result is loving children, and yet while this happy family, free from Nature's pitfalls and snares, are living in a peaceful and blissful state, there exists the ever-menacing "devil" who tempts the loving wife and mother to follow the will-o'-the-wisp—and thereby undoes and destroys the greatest ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... vessel would you call her, Ned?" asked Jimmy; while Francois stood and stared and listened, still believing that the boat must be a phantom, such as was likely to vanish before their very eyes, as might a wisp of ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a worship of the beautiful, the harmonious, the excellent, rose in exact value. Then, he saw again the sunrise as it would be to-morrow morning over these ragged hills. He saw the mists rise and grow wisp-like, and the disc of the sun gain color, and all the miracles of cannoning tempest and caressing calm—and, though he had come back to fight, a wonderful peace settled over him, for he knew that, if he must choose these, his native hills, or all the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... reflects not so much our intuitive analysis of reality as our ability to compose that reality into a variety of formal patterns. A part of speech outside of the limitations of syntactic form is but a will o' the wisp. For this reason no logical scheme of the parts of speech—their number, nature, and necessary confines—is of the slightest interest to the linguist. Each language has its own scheme. Everything depends on the ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... ignore, her tantalizing overtures. But Ralph could look at nothing else while she was about. She loved to lead him in a long, wild-goose chase across the island, dipping almost within reach one moment, losing herself at the zenith in another, alighting here and there with a will-o'-the-wisp capriciousness. Sometimes Ralph would return in such an exhausted condition that he dropped to sleep while he ate. At such times his mood was far from agreeable. His companions soon learned not to address him ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... if that can be a wisp of fog?" mused the young inventor. He rubbed his eyes, thinking it might be a swirling of the night mist or a defect of vision. Then, as he saw more plainly, he noticed the thing in white ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... slightest warning, she pitched forward suddenly on her face and lay clutching into the turf—a little dust-colored wisp of a boyish figure sobbing its starved heart out ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... is related which the chronicler thought to be curious, though he did not comprehend it. The Princess Clementina brought from her confessional box a wisp of straw which clung to her dress at the knee. Until Wogan had placed the King's ring upon her finger, she did not apparently remark it; but no sooner had that office been performed than she stooped, and with a friendly smile at her makeshift bridegroom, she plucked it from her skirt ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... within an hour, as we ran down upon it at something like eight knots, the Island began to take shape. A wisp of morning fog floated horizontally across it, dividing its shore-line from the hills in the interior, which, looming above this cloudy base, appeared considerably higher than, in fact, they were. The shore itself along the ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... and he unwound the great brown pliant vine from the sycamore and leaped aboard. Just then there was a mad howl behind the house and a gray streak of light flashed over the bank and Jack, with a wisp of rope around his neck, sprang through the air from a rock ten feet high and landed lightly on the last log as the raft shot forward. Chad gulped once and his heart leaped with joy, for he had agreed to leave Jack with old Joel, and old Joel had tied ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... smile, the unusual courtesy of the removed hat, Ellen rose from her chair, a tall, slim wisp of a woman, whose blue-veined ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... slightly, with a wavering smile. She was a strange wisp of a girl, and Polly was not in the least disappointed when she made no answer, only watched the fingers that ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... paper about a stone, and tied it with a wisp of grass. With a sudden flexile turn of a wrist that had thrown many a reata, he flung it straight through the open window. Elena read the meaningless phrases, then fell insensible to ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... 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. ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... recurrent floods of hopelessness sweeping her. Far down the tundra toward the north she could see the flag-pole on the Lookout. The tattered home-made flag hung dispiritedly in the still sunny air, and the smoke of the signal fire was a mere straight-rising wisp. The calls of happy mating gulls came to mock her—gulls replete with the bountiful food of the sea. Today she was hungry, so hungry that every atom of her body cried for food, hot, nourishing food which she had not known for months. And Ellen, back there at the cabin, ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... did this when 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 ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... by a gentle pricking and tickling. It felt as though a wisp of hay were passing lightly over his mouth, backwards and forwards. He snatched at it, and a long stalk remained in his hand. His eyes were slightly dazzled; he was gazing straight at the sun, already considerably lower in ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... mad; that was certain: He had just seen what had no existence. The twilight spectres were making game of him, poor wretch! The little man in scarlet was the will-o'-the-wisp of a dream. Sometimes, at night, nothings condensed into flame come and laugh at us. Having had his laugh out, the visionary being had disappeared, and left Gwynplaine ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... he was growing "hotter" and "hotter" till death balked him at the finish. Westray recollected Mr Sharnall saying more than once that Martin had been on the brink of solving the riddle when the end overtook him. And Sharnall, too, had he not almost grasped the Will-of-the-wisp when fate tripped him on that windy night? Many thoughts came to Westray's mind as he turned these papers, many memories of others who had turned them before him. He thought of clever, worthless Martin, who had wasted his days on their writing, who had neglected home and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... as one who is about to trail suspicion. She went to the side-window, and peered out. From a little grape-arbor on the lawn, there floated to her the unmistakable odour of tobacco—yes, and she could see a curling wisp of smoke. ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... clothe it with flesh and blood." Some years afterwards, I reminded him of this advice. "Did you follow it?" he inquired. "I tried," I said; "but I had not gone far on the road till some confounded Will-o-wisp came in and dazzled my sight, so that I deviated from the path, and never found it again."—"It is the same way with myself," said he, smiling; "I form my plan, and then I deviate."—"Ay, ay," I replied, "I understand—we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... his two white friends, whom he loved so dearly, might be killed. They, accordingly, 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
... goat by the village community. Before threshing his corn each cultivator offers a separate sacrifice to Thakur Deo of a goat, a fowl or a broken cocoanut. Each evening, on the conclusion of a day's threshing, a wisp of straw is rubbed on the forehead of each bullock, and a hair is then pulled from its tail, and the hairs and straw made into a bundle are tied to the pole of the threshing-floor. The cultivator prays, 'O God of plenty! enter here full and go out empty.' ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... were ringing their first warning for the morning service when Mandy peeped into the spare bedroom for the second time, and glanced cautiously at the wisp of hair that bespoke a feminine head somewhere between the covers and the little white pillow on the four-poster bed. There was no sound from the sleeper, so Mandy ventured across the room on tiptoe and raised the shades. The drooping ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... as freakish, and wears as many shapes as Puck; a gnat, a will-o'-the-wisp, a Sister of Charity, a meek-faced child; and one does not know in which guise she pleases most. Hard the task of him who has and ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... brain was filled. It is the instinct both of poetic and of servile minds to associate a sentiment of grandeur with such fantastic dreams, but usually on condition that the dreamer wears a crown. When the regenerator of society appears with a wisp of straw upon his head, unappreciative society is apt to send him back to his cell. There, at least, his capacity ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... escape from the French 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 by Horace Walpole, I should ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... von Weber was still a babe, Franz Anton started once more after the will-o'-the-wisp of theatrical fame, with his "Weber's Company of Comedians." Genofeva, sickly and melancholy, dragged herself about with the troupe until Carl Maria was ten years old, when her health gave way, and the travel was discontinued. Poverty and consumption ended her ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes |
