"Apparition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not grasp the hand of the peasant-woman, although her dark form remained close before him. A secret shudder began to run through his limbs, whilst suddenly a light seemed to shine forth from the apparition—a golden light—in which she became wholly wrapped; so that he felt as though Aslauga stood before him in the flowing veil of her golden hair, and smiling graciously on him. Transported and dazzled, he sank on his knees. When he rose up once more he only saw a cloudy mist of autumn spreading ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... a slight noise brought us down for a moment to our proper sphere; yet hardly,—for on looking up we beheld, standing in the wake of a coloured sun-beam, from which, on wing of gossamer, she seemed to have just descended, an unexpected apparition of surpassing grace and beauty. Titania's self, just stepped upon the moonlit earth, could scarcely have stood poised on an unbroken flower-stalk, in form more airy, in attitude more graceful, with ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... a few bars, so to speak, behind the Vicar, but one never failed to catch the words "apost'lick church" towards the end. He was very scornful of ghosts, and told me that he had been about the churchyard very often at night for fifty years without seeing anything like an apparition. But the whole village was alarmed, including the clerk, one Sunday when, about midnight, the tenor bell was heard solemnly tolling. The clerk, with some supporters and a lantern, unlocked the door, and found the village idiot—silly C.—in the tower ringing the bell. It ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... now, I'm thinking of them soldiers that is in town. (Sighs) Then I didn't sleep since ever they come; but whenever I'd be sinking to rest, starting, and fancying I heard the drum for Owen to go. (A deep groaning sigh.) Och! and then the apparition of Owen in regimentals ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... written across his features. He stood mute, lips pendent, his eyes bulging forward as if gazing at an apparition. Cooper and Fanwell, following his gaze, beheld the door standing ajar and revealing a man's form with one hand on the knob, the other braced against the jamb. Evidently the newcomer had changed his mind ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... this in a distracted way, with his eyes going about the garden for the possible apparition of Sir Isaac, and all the time his sense of possible observers made him assume an attitude as though he was engaged in the smallest of small talk. Her colour quickened at the import of his words, and emotion, very rich and abundant emotion, its various factors not altogether ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... shambled forward, and Littlejohn gaped, gaped in terror at the titanic figure. He opened his mouth to speak, but words did not form; there were no words to form, for how does one address an apparition? ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... clasped her hands together, and held them up towards Heaven, muttering, in a voice scarcely audible, "Great God!—If this apparition be formed by my heated fancy, let it pass away; if it be real, enable me to bear its presence!—Tell me, I conjure you, are you Francis Tyrrel in blood and body, or is this but one of those wandering visions, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... flames, will-o'-the-wisps which hover about the graves at such hours, chiefly in the hot months or after autumn rains. It is a well-authenticated apparition; the scientist Bessel saw one; so did Casanova, here at Rome. He describes it as a pyramidal flame raised about four feet from the ground which seemed to accompany him as he walked along. He saw the same thing later, at Cesena near Bologna. There was some correspondence on the subject (started ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand: I stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listened, I looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see any thing; I went up to a rising ground to look farther: I went up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one, I could see no other ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... for often pain becomes the hope of the physician. Half a day passed away thus. The doctor formed his resolution like a brave man; he issued suddenly from his place of retreat, and went straight up to Athos, who beheld him without evincing more surprise than if he had understood nothing of the apparition. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The International may have seen some account of an apparition said to have been seen recently in the royal palace at Berlin, and known under the name of the "White Lady." M. Minutoli, lately chief of the Police at Berlin, has been amusing himself by looking up the history of this visitant from the unknown world, and has published a variety of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Prussia; at her side, in a miserable linen-covered wagon, crouching far in the corner, sat Wilhelmine Enke, the rival of the princess; near her, her two children, whose existence condemned her, and stamped her life with dishonor. Like a dream the brilliant apparition rushed past Wilhelmine, and it haunted her through the long streets, to the humble home where she sought a temporary refuge. And when finally alone, in her own room, where no one could spy into her face, nor understand ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... vicious, and mentally disordered characters by hypnotic influence that have been effected at the Salpetriere in Paris, and elsewhere, by physicians expert in psychical therapeutics are closely analogous to the cures wrought by Jesus on some victims of "demoniac possession."[7] The cases of apparition,[8] also, which have been investigated and verified by the Society for Psychical Research have laid a solid basis of fact for the Biblical stories of angels, as at least, a class of phenomena to be regarded as by no means altogether legendary, ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... shout, 'The Lady doth here protest, upon her salvation, that she never dealt in any of these things.' It was the voice of the Earl of Nottingham, who had entered unperceived, and who was standing there with Arabella Stuart on his arm. Their apparition was no surprise to the judges; ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... persons we found there. A half-clothed, red-haired Irish servant was upon her knees, kindling up the fire; and a long, thin woman, with a sharp face, and an eye like a black snake, was just emerging from a bed in the corner. We soon discovered this apparition to be the mistress ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... drew her thoughts and feet thither, but whatever Faith expected she did not expect to see Sam Stoutenburgh. One might almost go further and say he did not expect to see her, for he gazed at her as if she had been an apparition—only that his face was red instead ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... Sainte Croix gives this brief view of the ceremonies: "Dans ces mysteres on employoit, pour remplir l'ame des assistans d'une sainte horreur, les memes moyens qu'a Eleusis. L'apparition de fantomes et de divers objets propres a effrayer, sembloit disposer les esprits a la credulite. Ils en avoient sans doute besoin, pour ajouter foi a toutes les explications des mystagogues: elles rouloient sur le massacre de Bacchus par les Titans," ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... more distressing objects than a drowned corpse. On that bright June morning a dreadful apparition lost little of its grim repulsiveness because the body was that of ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... disclosed—enchanting, subduing, beautiful. He looked at the woman. Through the checkered light between them she appeared to him with the impalpable distinctness of a dream. The very spirit of that land of mysterious forests, standing before him like an apparition behind a transparent veil—a veil woven ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... pass the summer heats on the banks of the Torgau, and to recommence his retreat about the beginning of September. The subsequent change of plan being unknown to Kien Long, 25 left him for some time in doubt as to the true interpretation to be put upon this mighty apparition in the desert: but at length the savage clamors of hostile fury and clangor of weapons unveiled to the Emperor the true nature of those unexpected calamities which had so prematurely ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... the negro, who was crouched in a corner, groaned in agony, while Charles was inclined to treat the matter lightly. Louder related how, while at the lake in the wood, he had been visited by this mysterious apparition, who offered him a book to sign, adding that he knew at once that his tormentor was a wizard or the Devil, that his eyes were in an instant changed to fire, and sulphurous smoke issued ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... there was the rapid crunch of hoofs in the snow, an abrupt command to halt, and they found themselves surrounded by a dozen troopers. Prescott recognized the faded blue uniform and knew at once that he was in the midst of Yankee horsemen. The girl beside him gave one start at the sudden apparition and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... man" and his two friends peered anxiously out at it from around the corner of the station. The one coach stopped directly under the lights, and they could see the passengers as they came down the steps. Two or three got out, but these were men. Then came an apparition that caused Captain Jerry to gasp and clutch at Perez ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... main-deck, to the consternation of two men at the weather fore-rigging. These were foremast hands, and Scotty had no present use for them. He ran past them in his stocking-feet—and they gave room to the wild-eyed apparition—and aft to the poop, where, besides the helmsman, was a man who might be captain or mate, but who ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... was engaged with his Directors when the door opened and the same apparition stepped within—tall, slim, red-haired, with his little tight coat, short trousers, ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... by this time recovered her reason and judgment. 'O, it was a trick of the imagination,' she said, with a faint laugh. 'I live so much alone that I get superstitious—and—I thought for the moment I saw an apparition.' ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... been a believer in spirits, the apparition did not surprise her, and yet she was tremendously excited. "Burn it!" she echoed, "the valuable manuscript? At which he laboured for so many weary hours? Yet, doubtless, it would be wrong to preserve it. Sin is the only rolling stone that gathers moss; what a gentleman, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... and arts. I commenced from my vision in that mimic Golgotha of creatures inferior to man, close by the scene of man's most trivial and meaningless pastime. I went on,—Derval's murder; the missing contents of the casket; the apparition seen by the maniac assassin guiding him to the horrid deed; the luminous haunting shadow; the positive charge in the murdered man's memoir connecting Margrave with Louis Grayle, and accusing him of the murder of Haroun; the night in the moonlit pavilion at Derval Court; the baneful ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Hauntings, I never mention the Apparition by which I am pestered, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or spectre, so familiar, so like myself, and yet so abhorrent, which lurks in the plate-glass of shop-windows, or leaps out of mirrors ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... appeared, rising above the Lyskamm high into the sky. Pale, colorless and noiseless, but perfectly sharp and defined, except where it was lost in the clouds, this unearthly apparition seemed like a vision from another world, and almost appalled we watched with amazement the gradual development of two vast crosses, one on either side. If the Taugwalders had not been the first to perceive it, I ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... be looking for somebody. Her eyes, in fact, scanned both sides of the street, and for one second were raised directly to the bow window in which Ralph stood; but she looked away again instantly without giving any sign that she had seen him. This sudden apparition had an extraordinary effect upon him. It was as if he had thought of her so intensely that his mind had formed the shape of her, rather than that he had seen her in the flesh outside in the street. And yet he had not been thinking of her at all. The impression was so intense that he ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... fell in with a crash. There was the sudden apparition of the demoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks of hair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror filled the room. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled precipitately. The man who ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... was so ludicrous that it made me laugh in spite of my shaken nerves. "They would fancy me out of my wits! Imagine stopping an apparition and telling it what ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... immediate vicinity, the buffalo, attracted by the apparition, looked up. The medicine-man walked then very deliberately toward the opening of the pis-kun. Generally the buffalo began to follow him, and as he saw that they did so he increased his pace, the animals, whose curiosity was aroused, at the same ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... debut at church, with her masculine hat placed resolutely on the top of her head, and cane in hand, people could not say their prayers, or attend to the sermon, for staring and wondering at the uncouth apparition which had so unceremoniously appeared in the midst of them. This was not diminished, by her choosing to stand during those portions of the service, when pious females bend the knee. Miss Wilhelmina said, "that she was too big to kneel—that her prayers ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Spanish poems. Where the marvellous enters into them at all, it is mostly in the shape of saintly miracles. St. James of Compostella appears on horseback among the Christian hosts battling with the Moors, or even in the army of the Conquistadores in Mexico—an incident which Macaulay likens to the apparition of the "great twin Brethren" in the Roman battle of Lake Regillus. The mediaeval Spaniards were possibly to the full as superstitious as their Scottish contemporaries, but their superstitions were the legends of the Catholic Church, not the inherited folklore of Gothic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Basilides had entered the temple that day. He inquired of every one he met whether he had been seen in the city. Eventually he sent some horsemen, who discovered that at the time Basilides was eighty miles away. Vespasian therefore took what he had seen for a divine apparition, and guessed the meaning of the oracle from the ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... for breath, paused to take the key from her basket. In a flush and glow, with the haste she had made, and the pleasure of being safe at home, she stooped to draw it out, when, raising her head, she saw him standing silently beside her: the apparition ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... nis[obs3], kobold[obs3], flibbertigibbet, fairy, brownie, pixy, elf, dwarf, urchin; Puck, Robin Goodfellow; leprechaun, Cluricaune[obs3], troll, dwerger[obs3], sprite, ouphe[obs3], bad fairy, nix, nixie, pigwidgeon[obs3], will-o'-the wisp. [Supernatural appearance] ghost, revenant, specter, apparition, spirit, shade, shadow, vision; hobglobin, goblin, orc; wraith, spook, boggart[obs3], banshee, loup-garou[Fr], lemures[obs3]; evil eye. merman, mermaid, merfolk[obs3]; siren; satyr, faun; manito[obs3], manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... atrocious," said Grosse, who wanted to change the subject. But this was effected by the most unexpected apparition of Mr. Delaport Green, whom they had both supposed to be refreshing himself ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Edward III and the Black Prince; the almost complete undoing of their work by Charles V and Bertrand Duguesclin; the union of the French and English crowns (1420), resulting from the victories of Henry V and the murderous feud of the Burgundian and Armagnac factions; the apparition of Jeanne d'Arc as the prophetess of French nationalism, and the regeneration of the French monarchy by a new race of scientific statesmen. All the West had been shaken by this secular duel. For Scotland it spelled independence, for Navarre the loss of independence; in Castile it set on the ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... a muffled scream when he saw the glowing apparition. Birnier heard the rustle of grass. As the boy stood up to run he leaped and pulled ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... writer adds that Defoe was 'a wonderful mixture of knave and patriot.' The knavery is seen to some extent in his method of workmanship as a man of letters. In A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal[52] the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705 (1706) Defoe's art ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the intense blackness of everything around. Now and then a face would come within range of this meagre streak of yellow light, looking strangely distorted, with great, elongated shadows across the brow and chin, a grotesque, ghostly apparition which quickly vanished again, scurrying off like some frightened gnome, giving place other forms, other figures all ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the net swept after it, and the sash slipped and fell. Mrs. Fontenette rose wildly, and when she saw first the old woman, half starting from her seat with frightened stare, and then the entomologist speechless, motionless, and looming like an apparition, she gave that cry her husband heard, and fell back upon the pillow in ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... up on end was distinctly visible. It was clasping its knees, its long hair flowed down its back, and its face was steadily addressed to the window at the foot of its bed. "Do you care to talk?" asked the queer apparition. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... remember, that there was no apparition or supernatural manifestation, or series of circumstances pointing to such a manifestation, however strongly substantiated they appeared to be, that could not be explained on ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... strong hidden will gave her strength. She drew back the iron bolt from the closed cellar door, and crept in to the captive. He was asleep; and when he awoke and saw the hideous form, he shuddered as though he had beheld a wicked apparition. She drew her knife, cut the bonds that confined his hands and feet, and ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... "mostellum," the diminutive of "monstrum," a "spectre" or "prodigy." It was probably coined by Plautus to serve as the title of this Play, which is called by several of the ancient Commentators by the name of "Phasma," "the Apparition."] ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... but darkened by the blinds being down and the curtains drawn. The rays of a golden sunset diffused through the apertures a strange and mysterious glow, which suddenly seemed to surround and envelope an apparition, standing half visible on the threshold of the noiselessly opened door. A remarkably expressive head emerged from a bundle of shawls, which moved forward with feeble and tottering steps—it was Mr. Palmer. His wife could not trust her eyes, but as soon as she became convinced of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... petrified, staring at his glazing eyes; then, turning to make for the scullery, was confronted by the catastrophic apparition of the tallest Wenus gazing at me with reproachful eyes and extended tentacles. Disgust at my cruel act and horror at my extraordinary habiliments were written all too plainly in her seraphic lineaments. ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... was close at hand. Just as the van passed under the railway arch that spans the Hyde-road at Bellevue, a point midway between the city police office and the Salford gaol, the driver was suddenly startled by the apparition of a man standing in the middle of the road with a pistol aimed at his head, and immediately the astonished policeman heard himself called upon, in a loud, sharp voice, to "pull up." At the spot ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... Breed knew this grisly apparition for Cripp. The scent was there, and the warped foreleg. Cripp did not recognize his friend. His mind was clouded and the light of insanity gleamed in his sunken eyes. Breed whirled and fled, and a weird cry sounded behind him,—the ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... all events, should not suspect the grave revelations that had been made, although they had been sufficient to have paralyzed one of less courage and resolution than himself, he outwits his companions by banter, treating the apparition with intentional and grotesque disrespect and jocularity at a moment when an irresolute mind would have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... without a ripple upon its surface, or visible motion of the ever-moving current. A little vessel, with one loose sail, was riding at anchor, keel to keel with another, that lay right under it, its own apparition,—and all was silent, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... appearance or actions could have roused his terrible ire. It became manifest to me less than two minutes after I had set eyes on him for the first time, and though immensely surprised of course I didn't stop to think it out. I took the nearest short cut—through the wall. This bestial apparition and a certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti only a couple of months afterwards have fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal, to the end of my days. Of the nigger I ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... important landing below that this latest bride of the river was coming and the time of her appearance had been definitely calculated. And now behold her, a vision of delight, a winged victory, the finest apparition yet. Up in front of her bell could be seen Captain Hugh, and who was that beside him, twice his ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... opening door he turned and stared at the apparition which confronted him. Mary had closed the door and stood with her back to it, screwing up her courage for the last stage of ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... from the cupboard with the brown-and-white jug in her hand, when she caught sight of something at the other end of the kitchen; perhaps it was because she was already trembling and nervous that the apparition had so strong an effect on her; perhaps jug-breaking, like other crimes, has a contagious influence. However it was, she stared and started like a ghost-seer, and the precious brown-and-white jug fell to the ground, parting for ever with ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... that hunger forced him into a recruiting-office, no doubt aided by the specious argument that he wanted to teach temperance to Tommy Atkins. The recruiting-officer gazed at the apparition and sent for a surgeon. This surgeon sent for another, and both went over the skeleton, tapping, listening, prodding and counting. "All he needs is food and work," said surgeon Number One, giving the subject a final poke with his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... one word, she puts on the face of an Angel, till she hath found one or other whom she thinks fit to deceive with her base tricks and actions. But having caught him under the Slavery of this false apparition; she then turns the t'other side of the Meddal; and draws back the curtain of her Vizards, to shew the naked truth, which she so long had palliated, and her modesty only forbad her to reveal: By degrees then vomiting up the venom that she so long had harboured under her sweet hypocrisie. ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... very wicked to open one's eyes during prayer, he knew. Roarin' Sandy's Johnny had told him that if he did he might see the Deil standing behind him. And since then Scotty had been divided between dread of the awful apparition and a natural desire to see what his Satanic Majesty looked like. He was ashamed of his restlessness, for Callum was kneeling beside him motionless. Callum would think him a baby if he moved. He peeped cautiously through his fingers at his uncle. Callum was kneeling at ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... just as the rising sun gilded the houses and minarets of Alexandria. Soon the gangway was dropped for a pilot to come abroad, and shortly with much chattering that gentleman appeared on the bridge. The Captain gazed on the apparition with horror, and the signallers, in security behind the flag locket, were convulsed with mirth. A pale, underfed little Hebrew, not, apparently, the cleanest specimen of its race, clad in something like a dressing-gown and a pair of bath slippers, and topped off by a red tarboosh tilted well back ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... a bound that would have unseated a less practised rider. Hanging to her rein was a figure that had leaped from the bank, and at the same time from the road before her arose a shadowy horse and rider. "Throw up your hands," commanded this second apparition, with an oath. ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... slid down my spine—the unknown with its terrors besieged my brain—the apparition was too big for a dog. I gazed, rooted to my perch, unable to move a ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... was much frightened, and thought it was an apparition. He clove the circling ball with his sword, and out of it leaped a small boy whose whole body glowed with a crimson radiance. But his face was delicately shaped and white as snow. About his right ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Martel made up his nose, for I had already seen this poor nose change shape at the second performance of Zaire, under the tropical depression of the atmosphere, but I had never realised how much he lengthened it. This comical apparition restored all my gaiety, and from thenceforth I was in full ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... gutta-serena, arrived at La Salette on the first of July, in company with some sisters of the community. The extreme fatigue which she had undergone in order to reach the summit of the mountain, at the place of the apparition, caused some anxiety to be felt that she could not remain fasting until the conclusion of the mass, which had not yet commenced, and the Abbe Sibilla, one of the missionaries of La Salette, was requested to administer the sacrament to her before the service began. She had scarcely ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... in the turret window down to the time of the death of the late Empress Augusta, which was, of course, of comparatively recent date. For some time after that event, she seems to have taken a rest; and now, if rumour is to be credited, the apparition which displayed in the past so deep an interest in the fortunes—or perhaps one would be more correct in saying misfortunes—of the Hohenzollern family has been manifesting ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... risen in horror at the sudden apparition, and staggered back against the wall, where he stood staring stupidly at his unfortunate father with fixed and ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... instantaneous and wonderful. A man in the advance, looking up, saw the strangely clad figure apparently rise out of the ice itself. The man turned about and wildly broke for the boats. Then another and another took one terrified glance at the supposed apparition, and tarrying not, turned about to compete with the first in a mad race for the boats. Shouts of "Ghost! Ghost!" filled the air, and then the stampede and panic became general, though after the manner of panic-stricken crowds, ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... from a ribbon and tumbled about before a pair of deep blue eyes. Round cheeks were pink and soft, sweet lips were red and shyly smiling, a white apron with ruffles almost covered a blue gingham dress. The boy held his breath at the beauty of the apparition. He had never dreamed of anything so sweet and ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... a Red Cross uniform, stood his dream girl, looking so much more ravishing than she had before that he promptly snatched the blue and gray vision from its place of honor and installed a red, white, and blue one instead. So engrossed was he in the apparition that he quite failed to see Captain Phipps ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... indolent, a reckless, an ignorant being, she would take a pen at such moments, or at least while the recollection of such moments was yet fresh on her spirit. She would seize, she would fix the apparition, tell the vision revealed. Had she a little more of the organ of acquisitiveness in her head, a little more of the love of property in her nature, she would take a good-sized sheet of paper and write ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... The apparition of Francisco after so long an interval, and in such an unexpected quarter of the globe, acted as we have before described upon Cain. When he was taken to the boat he was still confused in his ideas, and it was not until they were nearly on board that he perceived ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... lovers again, and her American friend and confidante, Mrs. Arson, was enchanted by this handsome apparition, which, Helene protested, she had only summoned up half laughingly. Dear old Holthoff had written her that Lassalle was somewhere on the Righi, but she had not really believed she would stumble on him. She was suffering ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... flooded down, and Garry Connell glanced quickly at the doorway. Too many of these blacks and this would be no safe place for him. He was expecting another apparition like the first; he would have thought himself prepared against any further surprise, but his gray eyes opened wide at what the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... at the sight of the apparition, his face became livid, and a shade of terror flashed across his countenance. It was but an instant, though, that he stood thus, and calling to Moriarity to follow, he dashed through the door, drawing his ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... in the midst of those new views of human wretchedness which his own sufferings have occasioned, and while those desires to remedy it, with which his penitence is accompanied, are still on his lip, by this wild apparition and embodiment of his thought, in that new accession of his mental disorder, which the presence of this object seems to occasion, that confounding of proximate conceptions, which leads him to regard this man as a source of new light on human ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... S. Priest of the Sun, you come most opportune, For here has been a dreadful apparition: As I lay sleeping on my couch, methought ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... a phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... as Miss Wimple sat in a low Yankee rocking-chair, sewing among her books, she was favored with the extraordinary apparition of Miss Madeline Splurge,—her first visitor that day, whether ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... as suddenly as if some apparition had appeared before him, and blushing guiltily, clasped and held upon his face the little soft, warm hands which did not tremble, but lay still beneath his own. It was Providence which sent her there, he thought; Providence indicating that he might ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... not surprised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at this apparition. It required no stretch of imagination to conjure up the most strange fancies. This gigantic head, blanched with age, thus rising from the bowels of the earth, might well have belonged to one of those fearful beings which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... and the glory of the resurrection. This is no ordinary child, either, that she holds, for He sees beyond this world into eternity and that His is no common destiny;—at least, one feels these things as we gaze at the lovely apparition on its background of clouds and innumerable angel heads. St. Sixtus on one side would know more of this mystery, while St. Barbara on the other is dazzled by the vision and turns aside her lovely face. Below are ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... mountains; Christmas, 1868; a room in an inn. Matthis, a prosperous burgomaster, recalls with friends the murder of a Polish Jew, fifteen years before. He wonders that the murderer has never been apprehended. The sound of sleigh bells is heard and the apparition of the Jew appears. Matthis is prostrated by the incident and consults a mesmerist, Dr. Frantz, who assures him that he has power to compel a criminal to divulge his secret thought. Matthis isolates himself and sleeps alone to avoid eavesdropping. On the night of his daughter's wedding he ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... is still thoroughly enjoyable. It would seem that a miser with a comic but sound-hearted clerk, after an altercation with some well-fed representatives of "the most distrissful" tenantry that ever yet were seen, makes the acquaintance of "an apparition," and dreams that he is the tenant of his own jewel-casket. In his sleep he is present at a ballet replete with silver and gold and precious stones, to say nothing of shapely limbs and pretty faces, and makes great friends with the "apparition," who shows him much graceful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... hand, but I did not because I was afraid. Besides, I was sitting in a semi-circle with the others and our hands were joined. Dr. Owen, however, was at the end of the line with one hand free, and I saw him reach out towards the apparition (it was about four feet high) and it seemed to me that his hand and arm passed right through the white shape. As he did this I heard a long sigh and a rustling sound and I was conscious of a chilling breath on my face. I asked Dr. Owen about this afterwards and he said that ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... him, do not say I mentioned his visit. It was rather painful. He was shy, and I, too, was nervous. One cannot spend a whole year alone on an island without feeling bewildered by the sudden apparition ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have not conveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself, and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stamped upon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!—I would give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explain whence such things can come, to confound and stupefy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... introduction to the Cuckoo was by means of the apparition which issued hourly from a little German clock, such as are frequently found in country inns. This particular clock had but one dial hand, and the exact time of day could not be determined by it until the appearance of the Cuckoo, who, in a squeaking voice, ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... indeed, I fear the objects of these several desires, this whirling in the stream of life troubles my heart, these five desires, the inconstant thieves—stealing from men their choicest treasures, making them unreal, false, and fickle—are like the man called up as an apparition; for a time the beholders are affected by it, but it has no lasting hold upon the mind; so these five desires are the great obstacles, forever disarranging the way of peace; if the joys of heaven are not worth having, how much less the desires common to men, begetting the thirst of wild love, and ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... addressed him. The friar shut the door without saying a word, and then lifting up his cowl, which had been drawn over it, discovered the black face of Mesty. Agnes screamed, and all sprang from their seats at this unusual and unexpected apparition. Mesty grinned, and there was that in his countenance which said that he had ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... recovering control of the motor, and she dared not let her attention wander, but out of the corner of her eye she appreciated the situation. Temporarily, out of sheer amaze at this apparition from the blue, the guns ceased their sniping. She became aware that a light curly head, crouched low in the sage-brush, was moving rapidly to meet her at right angles, and in doing so was approaching directly the line of fire. She could see him dodging to and fro as he moved ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... reappearance of Eliab Hill, but he was not interfered with. In fact, the cars moved off so quickly after he was first seen that there was no time to recover from the surprise produced by the unexpected apparition. It was not until the smoke of the engine had disappeared in the distance that the wrath of the bystanders clothed itself ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... little stiffly—they were evidently surprised by my sudden apparition, dusty, fatigued, and white faced; but Nettie did not remain to ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... friend or mistress, and suddenly discover that I have been deceived, I can only describe the effect produced on me by comparing it to the clasp of that marble hand. It is the actual impression of marble, it is as though a man of stone had kissed me. Alas! this horrible apparition has knocked more than once at my door; more than once we ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... though she appeared much impressed by the extremeness of my terror and the minuteness of my description. I communicate the story, as it lies fixed in my memory, without attempting to explain it. The supposed apparition may have been merely a momentary affection of the eye, of the nature described by Sir Walter Scott in his "Demonology," and Sir David Brewster in his "Natural Magic." But if so, the affection was one of which I experienced no after-return; and its coincidence, in the case, with the probable time ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... when lie saw me. No doubt 'twas the apparition he least expected. He whips out his sword and springs back to have space to cut at me; but I parried the stroke with my musket, and he skipped back and entrenched himself behind the table. I own that I could have cheerfully slain him there and then but for my anxiety concerning ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... night Indiman stopped at Police Headquarters, but he did not see fit to make the nature of his inquiries known to me. On the subject of the apparition in the mirror, however, ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... reason surged back into his brain, accompanied by a paralyzing fear. Some prescience told him that the man in the doorway was Kane Lawler. And though he was convinced of it, he was a long time lifting his head and in turning it the merest trifle toward the door. And when he saw that the dread apparition was indeed Lawler, and that Lawler's heavy pistol was extending from his side, the hand and arm behind it rigid, he stiffened, flung himself around and faced Lawler, his mouth open, his eyes bulging with the terrible dread of death and the awful certainty ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... "devil-dance," which Powers compares to the haberfeldtreiben of the Bavarian peasants,—an institution got up for the purpose of frightening the women and children, and keeping them in order. While the ordinary dances are going on, there suddenly stalks forth "an ugly apparition in the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... God: for it is written (James 1:21): "With meekness receive the ingrafted word," and (Ecclus. 5:13): "Be meek to hear the word" of God. Again, Dionysius says (Ep. viii ad Demophil.) that "Moses was deemed worthy of the Divine apparition on account of his great meekness." Therefore meekness is the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... half-frightened pleasure to her lips. Boys who had seen her every day for the last three months in chapel suddenly discovered that she was simply charming; they greeted her much as mortals in distress would greet the apparition of the good fairy, and fifty champions there and then were ready to do battle for her, and only ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... where, only a few feet distant, a hooded shape stood dimly outlined against the snow. Chloe's garments, dampened by the exertion of the earlier hours, had chilled her through while she slept, and as she stared wide-eyed at the apparition beyond the fire, the figure drew closer and the chill of the dampened garments seemed to clutch with icy fingers at her heart. She nerved herself for a supreme effort and arose stiffly to her knees, and then suddenly the figure resolved itself into the form of a girl—an ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... finish, for just then an apparition, startling in the extreme, pushed violently past him and into the room. It was a girl's figure, hatless, bedraggled, mudstained, her hair wild and drenched with rain, her eyes staring strangely, while one lividly pale ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... or excuse for prolonging the conversation, and it ended here. Within three hours the oakum-headed apparition once more dived into the Leaving Shop, and that night Rogue Riderhood's recantation lay in the post office, addressed under cover to Lizzie Hexam at ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the ear of young Hamlet, that an apparition, exactly resembling the dead king his father, had been seen by the soldiers upon watch, on the platform before the palace at midnight, for two or three nights successively. The figure came constantly ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... exultation. The lawyer peered in too, when, suddenly, he heard a shot, a bullet whizzed past his ear, and, the next moment, with a sickening thud, Carruthers fell to the ground. Coristine rose to his feet like lightning, and faced an apparition; the Grinstun man, with pistol in one hand and life preserver in the other, was before him. Without a moment's hesitation he regained his grasp of his spade, and stretched the ghost at his feet, mercifully ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... porcupine in one respect: they have shown him made up into a ball and rolling down a hill. One writer makes him do this in a sportive mood; he rolls down a long hill in the woods, and at the bottom he is a ragged mass of leaves which his quills have impaled—: an apparition that nearly frightened a rabbit out of its wits. Let any one who knows the porcupine try to fancy it performing ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... and hid his face in the lace which trimmed the neck; he put his arm round the waist, but the dress collapsed like a phantom. "They say the soul is a spirit," he mused, "but then, it ought to be a tangible spirit, at least." He approached the bed as if he expected to see an apparition. He touched everything, took everything in ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... confess it—from hope; but we saw nothing more of the traveler. He was truly a fugitive from us—or, more probably, in spite of the gentlemanly graces my imagination had lent him, a collier returning to his shanty in the forest. The apparition had spoiled our twilight walk. The brief twilight of October was shortened by the mountains that rise like walls on either side of the road, and Alice hurried forward, so that we had no time to look for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had upon others has been of the most decided nature. They have called here after the departure of every fresh tenant, and it was all that I could do to answer their persistent inquiries. It is to them and not to Mr. Searles I feel bound to report the apparition ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... knowledge, to others living, as Augustine says in the same book. And so it may be said of Samuel that he appeared through Divine revelation; according to Ecclus. 46:23, "he slept, and told the king the end of his life." Or, again, this apparition was procured by the demons; unless, indeed, the authority of Ecclesiasticus be set aside through not being received by the Jews ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... (L'), an apparition said to haunt the Voreux pit. It was said to take the form of an old miner who twisted the necks of ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... a faintly whirring dark-gray spot appeared: an airman made his way above the Grand Canal, passed above the Chateau, and disappeared. They had sat down on a bench, the better to crane their heads to watch him out of sight. Sylvia was penetrated with the strangeness of that apparition in that spot and thrilled out: "Isn't it wonderful! Isn't it ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... turned to go, the picture of offended dignity, when her eyes fell on an apparition in the doorway, and she quailed. It was William, left safely by the fireside for the night, and now glowering, not at her as she swiftly divined, but at the hat with the drooping feathers, twenty ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... you how glad I am to see you, Wings," said Stephen, "and only a little less glad to see those big fellows with their brave faces." Then he mentioned to Nevill the apparition of that mysterious caravan which had appeared, and vanished. Also he described the behaviour of the Zaouia men when they had looked ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... for days she could not have hit on a costume more becoming to her style of beauty. It was scarcely in character, however, to shriek aloud with laughter, as she did a moment later, as Mark Antony was suddenly arrested on his march by an apparition which leapt forward from behind a screen, and advanced upon him to an accompaniment of ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... great rough chunk of Scotland, howked out of her not so much neatly as liberally; and in his Black Watch uniform, all caked with mud, his kit and nearly all his worldly possessions on his back, he is an apparition scarcely less fearsome (but so much less ragged) than those ancestors of his who trotted with Prince Charlie to Derby. He stands silent, scowling at the old lady, daring her to raise her head; and she would like very much to do it, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... with his burden, he looked so fantastic in the growing darkness, that the French did not know what to make of the strange apparition, and began to fire afresh. "Wilhelm, however, reached the sandpit safely, where friendly arms were stretched out to help him, and relieve him of the captain. He stayed to breathe ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... no silence ever known on earth; a darkening of the shadow, blacker than the blackest night in the thickest wood—a pause—then, a sound as of the heavy air being cleft asunder; and then, an apparition of two figures coming on out of the shadow—two monsters stretching forth their gnarled yellow talons to grasp at us; leaving on their track a green decay, oozing and shining with a sickly light. Beyond and around me, as I stood in the midst ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... that he might avoid rencontre. Perhaps the very sound that awoke him was the one he wished to shun; at the next step it became more distinct,—a child's voice singing some tuneless song; and directly a tiny apparition appeared before him, as if it had taken shape, with its wide, light eyes and corn-silk hair, from the most wan and watery of sunbeams. But what had a child to do in this paradise, thought he, and from whence did it come? Impossible to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... foundation. It was originally based on an unwarranted assumption that the star of Tycho was a variable of long period, appearing once every three hundred and fifteen years, or thereabout. If that were true there would have been an apparition somewhere near the traditional date of the birth of Christ, a date which is itself uncertain. But even the data on which the assumption was based are inconsistent with the theory. Certain monkish records speak of something wonderful appearing ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... apparition of Uncle Sam was received with cries, cheers, and loud clapping of hands. The Professor bowed repeatedly in response to this ovation, and it was a long time before he could make himself heard by the audience. At last he said ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... that all these things are thoroughly intelligible, but the lines on which an explanation may be forthcoming seem to be laid down:—the notion being that what we see is a temporary apparition or incarnation of a ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... noon-day. Fear would have inclined me to recoil from,— his loved presence to fly towards him. I remained on the spot where I was, choked with agonising sensations. When he had entered the room, the windows and shutters closed of themselves, and the candle was relighted—then I thought it was his apparition, and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything. I went up to a rising ground, to look farther. I went up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one; I could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... daylight the three went together to the Harmon house, and found torn bits of letters scattered on floor and window-sill near the spot where Alec had last seen the unlooked-for apparition. The letters, to all appearance, had belonged to the dentist, but they were torn very small. The three searched the house all through by the light of more than one candle, and came out again into the darkness of the summer night, for the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... feeling of utter contempt, I struck the inert body with my foot. Then, as my eyes lifted, they encountered those of the girl. She had drawn back to the table, startled out of all reserve by this sudden apparition, unable to comprehend. Doubt, questioning, fright found expression in her face. The pistol yet remained clasped in her hand, while she stared at me as ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... there was a clawing and reaching of shadowy arms: altogether, it was as if some titanic spectral grasshopper, with a heart of fire, were writhing and kicking in convulsions of phantom agony. Such an apparition, in an hour and a place so lonely, might stagger a less superstitious soul than that of Don Miguel ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... spoke, the crouching shape in the corner reared itself upright, and keeping his fiery eyes still glaring upon Sir Norman, advanced into the light. Our young knight was in the act of raising his glass to his lips; but as the apparition approached, he laid it down again, untasted, and stared at it in the wildest surprise and intensest curiosity. Truly, it was a singular-looking creature, not to say a rather startling one. A dwarf of some four feet high, and at least ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... desire to write a play of the dead, and my belief in Warfield's artistry culminated in "The Return of Peter Grimm." The subject was very difficult, and the greatest problem confronting me was to preserve the illusion of a spirit while actually using a living person. The apparition of the ghost in "Hamlet" and in "Macbeth," the spirits who return to haunt Richard III, and other ghosts of the theatre convinced me that green lights and dark stages with spot-lights would not give the illusion necessary to this play. All other spirits have been ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... neuer appeare but as prognosticats of afterclaps. To be resolutelie instructed herein, doo but peruse a treatise intituled; A doctrine generall of comets or blasing starres published by a bishop of Mentz in Latine, and set foorth in English by Abraham Fleming vpon the apparition of a blasing starre seene in the southwest, on the 10 of Nouember 1577, and dedicated to the right worshipfull sir William Cordell knight, then maister of hir ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (8 of 8) - The Eight Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... often much less, it is sometimes much more. Their height of flight has been variously estimated at from forty to two hundred feet. "A dropping from the clouds" is a common expression used by observers when describing the apparition of a swarm. ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... incident, when Shelley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in puris naturalibus, not undetected, though covered in his retreat by the clever Italian handmaiden, through a luncheon party assembled in the dining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet's unexpected apparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny. Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was no easy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny's laconic remark that the sea was his ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... says my author, "only to call in the first itinerant foreigner, who perambulates the streets with a galantee-show (as it is commonly termed in London), and by imparting to him your wish, if he is not deficient in intelligence and skill, he will soon be able to give you a rehearsal of the apparition of phantoms: for, by approaching or withdrawing the stand of his show, and finding the focus of his glasses, you will see the objects diminish or enlarge either on the white wall, or the sheet that ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... began a movement, as though something alive were striving to free itself from bonds and rise. It heaved and struggled in the dusty mass, grew stronger, and instead of a shapeless writhing there came an upshooting pyramid, which gradually took upon itself form. A ghostly apparition of stem, of leaves, of a dusky red rose, grew more and more distinct until it glowed from its prison of ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter |
