"Beguile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... repeated trials, has proved to me that the only way of getting sitters who persist in assuming a set look to resume their habitual expression, is to lead them into talking about some subject in which they are greatly interested. If I can only beguile them into speaking earnestly, no matter on what topic, I am sure of recovering their natural expression; sure of seeing all the little precious everyday peculiarities of the man or woman peep out, one after another, quite unawares. The long, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... mainland of New Guinea, while the younger fashioned the islands and the sea. When the natives first saw a steamer on the horizon they thought it was Nemunemu's ship, and the smoke at the funnel they took to be the tobacco-smoke which he puffed to beguile the tedium of the voyage.[397] They are also great believers in magic and witchcraft, and cases of sickness and death, which are not attributed to the malignity of ghosts and spirits, are almost invariably set down ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... In the light of its consequences it was probably the most momentous inspiration that he ever had. "I know what I'll do," he said. "I'll use a long, long stick that'll reach way, way, way out." And he glanced about him in quest of a "long, long stick" with which to beguile the bashful eels. His inquiring eye lit upon one of the long clothes-line supporters which Townsend had driven into the river bottom to help ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... I been winging Toward vaporous heights which beckon and beguile I sink back, saddened to my inmost mind; Even as I list a-dream that mother singing The poesy of sweet tone, and sadden, while Her voice is cast in troubled wake behind The keel of her keen spirit. Thou art ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... world. The Cafe de l'Enfers opens its demoniac mouth to swallow ten minutes' audiences and vomit them forth again, amused or bored, as the case may be, by the delusions provided in the interior, whilst other questionable resorts shout forth their attractions and seek to beguile a certain number of sous from ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... a tidy craft, and looked very gay with even the half of her festival flags on view. But the gaiety did not beguile Jim's dampened spirits. He went aboard feeling that he'd like to rip the idiotic things down; but the yacht, at least, offered a place where he could think. The sunset light on the water blazed vermilion—just the color that Jim all at once discovered ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... Look, that didst my soul beguile, Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream Revisit my sad heart, auspicious Smile! As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam: What time, in sickly mood, at parting day 5 I lay me down and think ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... speak'st aright; I am that merry wand'rer of the night: I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, Oft lurk in gossip's bowl, and her beguile In very likeness of a roasted crab; And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale; The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And rails or cries, and ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... go through the ultimate stages of the combat once more and force himself to face the dread reality so that he should never again beguile himself with a single hope. This was really the situation as he understood it. He finally wrought himself up to that supreme point, and ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... that men still know how to beguile us women with false words. Ah, stranger," she answered, with a laugh that sounded like distant silver bells, "thou wast afraid because mine eyes were searching out thine heart, therefore wast thou afraid. Yet being but a woman, I forgive thee for the lie, for it was courteously said. And now tell ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... ye yoong sorrow to beguile Or to gie auld fear the flegs? Na, quo' the mavis; it's but to wile My wee things oot o' her ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... so it should be. "But now this is my counsel, that thou, Thorgeir Otkell's son shouldest beguile Ormilda, Gunnar's kinswoman; but Gunnar will let his displeasure grow against thee at that, and then I will spread that story abroad that Gunnar will not suffer thee to do such things. Then ye two shall some time after make an attack on Gunnar, but still ye must not seek him at home, ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... rather than to check, this return on a distant past; and from the north of Norway to the slopes of the Altai, ardent explorers sought out the fragments of unwritten early poetry. These runes, or Runots, were chiefly sung by old men called Runoias, to beguile the weariness of the long dark winters. The custom was for two champions to engage in a contest of memory, clasping each other's hands, and reciting in turn till he whose memory first gave in slackened his hold. The ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that Margaret's excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you. In a word, to tell me a lie—a silent lie. Moreover, a possibly ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... was sweet at such times to feel such utter dependence upon him as the protective male, and the best in him was stirred to response. The next morning she might jar again from the hour of getting up in their ugly hotel room, through the expedition with which they would try and beguile the day, to the dinner, at which her conversation was always most noticeably trifling; but he always, to her surprise, let her go to bed alone, and came up much later to find the old magic upon her ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... again; but ye maun promise never to speak o' whatever ye may see strange aboot the hoose; for, atween oursells, there are anes expeckit there this verra night wha's names wadna cannily bear tellin'; and Jeanie trusts me, and I maunna beguile her. But the waters are out, and we will hae a lang and cauld tramp through the bogs, sae get a drap o' somethin' for the road, and I'll hae Tam Herron's Sunday suit ready for you after bed-time. Saul! ye'll mak a ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... and America, from Rome, and London, and New York, have striven with a zeal and fidelity known only to religious enthusiasm, incited by mutual emulation, and armed with those terrors which awe the soul, those allurements which beguile the affections, and those fascinations which enkindle hope; but they have striven in vain against the colossal power of barbarism; and to-day, those heathen orgies which have darkened the annals of the ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... assured to us. The time that we waste is that which is spent in anxious, trivial, conventional things. We have to bear them in our burdens, many of us, but do not let us be for ever examining them, weighing them in our hands, wishing them away, whining over them; we must not let them beguile us of the better part. If the despairing part of us cries out that it is frightened, wearied, anxious, we must not heed it; we must again and again assure ourselves that the peace is there, and that we miss it by our own fault. Above all let us not make pitiable excuses for ourselves. ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in every night on her way home from school to see Libby Anne, and many were the stories she told and the games she invented to beguile the long hours for the little girl. One night when she came into the tent Dr. Clay was sitting beside Libby Anne's bed, gently stroking her thin little hand. The child's head was turned away from the door, and she did not hear Pearl ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... bower—an intimate cosy room, reflecting on every hand the gentle, industrious personality of the owner. On an oak table near the window were spread some papers and account-books concerned with the estate—with which she had sought to beguile the time of waiting. She led the way towards this, and, sinking into the high-backed chair that stood before it, she looked up at him expectantly. She was pale, there were dark stains under her eyes, and wistful lines had crept into the sweet face ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... the herd, suffic'd, did late repair To ferny heaths and to their forest lair, She made a mannerly excuse to stay, Proff'ring the hind to wait her half the way; That, since the sky was clear, an hour of talk Might help her to beguile the tedious walk. With much good-will the motion was embrac'd, To chat awhile on their adventures past: Nor had the grateful hind so soon forgot Her friend and fellow-suff'rer in the plot. Yet, wond'ring how of late she grew estrang'd, Her forehead cloudy and her count'nance ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... that song on Sunday, To witch an idle while, I sang that song on Monday, As fittest to beguile; I sang it as the year outwore, And the new slid in; I thought not what might shape before Another ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... Naught can beguile his bold Unsleeping vigilance; E'en in the fireflame, old Visions unheeded dance. Fearless of lurking spy, Scornful of wassail-swell, With an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... easy seemed its accomplishment, the more I shrunk from the thought of deceiving Ernest, in this hour of restored tranquillity and abounding love. I loathed the idea of deceiving any one,—but Ernest, my lover, my husband,—how could I beguile his new-born confidence? ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... menial position in a sculptor's atelier at Florence. A more rigid surveillance was exerted over me, and the dancing dervishes crowned me queen of their revels. By day and by night I was surrounded with influence intended to beguile me from the past, to narcotize memory, to make me in reality the heartless, soulless, scoffing creature that I certainly seem. But Erle Palma has found me stiff tough clay, and despite his efforts, I have been true to the one love of my life. What I have suffered, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... tendency to be bewildered and cowed beneath a robust stroke of fate. I felt that the thing one ought to aim at doing was to look experience steadily in the face, whether sweet or bitter, to interrogate it firmly, to grasp its significance. If one cowers away from it, if one tries to distract and beguile the soul, to forget the grief in feverish activity, well, one may succeed in dulling the pain as by some drug or anodyne; but the lesson of life is thereby deferred. Why should one so faint-heartedly persist in making choice of experiences, in welcoming ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ALICIA. To beguile the hour; To crown my rose-wreath with a greener flower' To do my master's bidding, that's to give Life to yourself, who only think you live. But listen! Have you seen the nine waves roll Monotonous upon the shoal, Rising and falling ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... To beguile the time on the journey to Canterbury, all these various pilgrims are required to tell some story peculiar to their separate walks of life; and it is these stories which afford the best description we have of the manners and customs of the fourteenth century, as well ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... beguile Mr. Lovecraft from his chosen path are probably unaware of the attitude which he consistently maintains toward hostile criticism. Mr. Lovecraft contends that it gives him pleasure to write as the Augustans did, and that those who do not relish his excursions into classic fields need not follow him. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... drowsiness, to beguile the time, he looks back to his past experience, and the prison became his Patmos—the gate of heaven—a Bethel, in which his time was occupied in writing for the benefit of his fellow-Christians. He ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... longer beguile me, * Thou'lt fail of thy will! What can't be thou seekest; * Thou hast sown ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... in Imagination the most desperate dying Lover that ever was, represented the transports she shou'd be in when the blest discovery shou'd be made, held long discourses with him, and formed answers such as she supposed he wou'd make on such an occasion. Thus, for some hours did she beguile her Cares, but Love, who takes delight sometimes to torment his Votarys wou'd not long permit her to enjoy this satisfaction.... Reason, with stern remonstrances checked the Romantick turn of her late ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... the Carbonari, whose soul has been refreshed, made young and regenerated at the galleys; and the mad Irish priest, Magnus, are impossible personages, inviting to easy ridicule, and neither wisdom nor folly from their lips is likely to beguile the ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... strength, sedition, and spirits,[:] will disappear from conversation. I pray you do not listen to unsubstantiated words: Then who will dare to deceive the age with soft-sounding phrases. Our religion is for all who choose to seek it; But we build no chapels to beguile the foolish. Our true religion has existed from of old, up to the present day, undergoing no change. Its true principles include in their application those of the middle and outside nations alike. Great is the advantage to us! Great is the good influence on this generation! Of ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... novelist who can write a living book is a traitor to his art and conscience if he prefers the easy money of the film. Readers are to be considered before the frequenters of Picture Palaces. His privilege is to beguile and amuse and refresh through the ages: not to snatch ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... said Melick, "may have been written by one of Ross's men and thrown overboard. If I'd been on that expedition I should probably have written it to beguile the time." ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... room, or even resting her darling head on the same pillow, as she did when a child; and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a hundred times a night to be always disappointed. It was a strange way of killing, not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years." This mania of expectation stretching the nerves to their uttermost strain, relaxed sometimes; and then Heathcliff was dangerous. When filled with the thought of Catharine, the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... not like smiles that I cannot understand, so I changed the subject. "The plan is simple, monsieur," I said briskly. "Singing Arrow will come to the window, and you are to make love to her. After a time—not too long—you are to beguile her inside. I think the guards will be complaisant, if you play your part well. Be as debonair as possible. A soldier is always tempted to be lenient to a ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... fires of the Vesta are not so hot; and, by the Stator of our father Romulus, I would die, if die I must, in Rome. Avernus is here; there, in the square before the Forum, I could stand, and, with my hand raised thus, touch the floor of the gods. Ha, by Venus, my Flavius, thou didst beguile me! I ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... frightened," said the Colonel; "it was only that little witch Una who could have deluded him into such a crowd, and, as soon as she saw a bigger boy to beguile, she instantly deserted Keith, so I relieved Rachel ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... furniture was the straw that served me for my repose. It was narrow, damp, and unwholesome. The slumbers of a mind, wearied, like mine, with the most detestable uniformity, to whom neither amusement nor occupation ever offered themselves to beguile the painful hours, were short, disturbed, and unrefreshing. My sleeping, still more than my waking thoughts, were full of perplexity, deformity, and disorder. To these slumbers succeeded the hours which, by the regulations of our prison, I ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... here, the scarlet streams of Christ's blood run throughout the way to the kingdom of heaven; therefore mind that, see if thou do not find the besprinkling of the blood of Christ in the way, and if thou do, be of good cheer, thou art in the right way; but have a care thou beguile not thyself with a fancy; for then thou mayst light into any lane or way; but that thou mayst not be mistaken, consider, tho it seem never so pleasant, yet if thou do not find that in the very middle of the road there is written ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... said, "we are accustomed to beguile the evening hours with entertaining descriptions of travels, often of personal incidents of the haps and hazards of life; and, if it would not be disagreeable to you, we would be vastly entertained, beyond doubt, by any narration with which you might favor us of your Texan experiences ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... all pompous dreams and the stilted prospects with which he had aforetime hoped to beguile his wife. The man was plain and simple now, a being very much on fire with an honest passion. He may have left her love-cold, but he touched the sympathy which in a true woman is love's nearest neighbour. Before ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... L'Oyseleur, the spy and traitor, who voted for the torture. One man most reasonably asked why she should be put to torture when they had ample material for judgment without it? One cannot but feel that the proceedings on this occasion were either intended to beguile the impatience of the English authorities, eager to be done with the whole business, or to add a quite gratuitous pang to the sufferings of the heroic girl. As the men were not devils, though probably possessed by this time, the more cruel among them, by the horrible curiosity, innate alas! ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... shelf across the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider, which was supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the provisions lay the flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely watcher to beguile a tedious hour. The house was ventilated by two round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... happening to some of us?) and we were shut up in a sick-room, then duly as daylight came the quick step and cheerful face of Aunt Esther,—not solemn and lugubrious like so many sick-room nurses, but with a never-failing flow of wit and story that could beguile even the most doleful into laughing at their own afflictions. I remember how a fit of the quinsy—most tedious of all sicknesses to an active child—was gilded and glorified into quite a fete by my having Aunt Esther all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the best of his ability by the aid of some books he had obtained and by chatting with his jailer, worked his hardest to add to his knowledge of the language, and as the French soldiers were quite glad to beguile the time away by talking with their captives, he succeeded at the end of the journey, which lasted nearly a month, in being able to chat with a certain amount of fluency. Verdun was one of the four places in which British prisoners were ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... for me, an unknown outcast. When I found you pitied me, and listened to my love—I was too weak to forego the one ray of sunshine in my wretched life—and, thinking that I had a prospect before me in an idea I promised to reveal to you later, I swore never to beguile you or myself in that hope by any act that might bring you to repent it—or myself to dishonor. But I taxed myself too much, Maruja. I have asked too much of you. You are right, darling; this secrecy—this deceit—is unworthy of us! Every hour of it—blest as it has been ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... Professor OMAN'S recent memorandum would prove a sufficient counterblast. He had, however, no objection to adding Mr. SHAW'S latest pamphlet to "the large budget of Shavian literature" already at the Foreign Office, where, it is said, the clerks on night-duty like to beguile ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... made voting citizens or not, let no man beguile himself with the thought that the old order of things will be restored. They who step into light and freedom will not retrace their steps. This end is equality, civil, religious and political—there is no ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... honest brute At law his neighbours prosecute, Bring action for assault and battery Or friends beguile with lies and flattery?" ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... needle, and it was, a part of it, white silk; and another part of it with silver thread: the tail and fins were of a quill, which was shaven thin: the eyes were of two little black beads: and the head was so shadowed, and all of it so curiously wrought, and so exactly dissembled, that it would beguile any sharp-sighted Trout in a swift stream. And this minnow I will now shew you; look, here it is, and, if you like it, lend it you, to have two or three made by it; for they be easily carried about an angler, and be ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... could have taken possession of me, to settle myself in surroundings so foreign and unknown, breathing of isolation and sadness? The waiting unnerves me, and I beguile the time by examining all the little details of the building. The woodwork of the ceiling is complicated and ingenious. On the partitions of white paper which form the walls, are scattered ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... his watch being shared by the old lady and her two daughters, who proved extraordinarily kind and solicitous. Then the patient began to mend, slowly; and the young women—who proved to be twins, named respectively Clara and Dolores—did their best to beguile the time for their two guests by teaching them Spanish. And remarkably efficient teachers they proved to be, too; their pupils making enough progress within the next three weeks to enable them to gather a tolerably correct general idea of what was said to them. ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... beautiful, has wealth in plenteous store, And fortune fine in calves and kine, and lovers half a score; Her faintest smile would saints beguile, or sinners captivate, Oh! I think a dale of Moya, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... argument deserve, still more shall we discover of management and disingenuousness in the form under which they are dispersed among the public. Infidelity is served up in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem; in interspersed and broken hints, remote and oblique surmises; in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history; in a word, in any form rather ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... his well-meaning but obtuse relatives. To look upon the lad's occasional bursts of enthusiasm with a wondering and frightened stare, was all that the poor old woman could do to show that she even observed them, and as for the father, it was quite impossible to beguile him from his old and commonplace notions. The idea of listening to reading, or to the explanation of any of the mysteries of science, formed no ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... spoken anything but "yes" and "no" to her mother for an hour, and she had only spoken those two words occasionally, when duty demanded it. For one thing, Sir Redmond was absent, and had been for two weeks, and Beatrice was beginning to miss him dreadfully. To beguile the time, she had ridden, every day, long miles into the hills. Three times she had met Keith Cameron, also riding alone in the hills, and she had endeavored to amuse herself with him, after her own inimitable fashion, and with more or less success. The trouble ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... mouthfuls, serving to beguile the boredom of the watch for a brief while; they are substantial repasts, which require several sittings. Such an appetite astonishes me, after I have seen the Crab Spider, that no less ardent watcher, refuse the Bees whom I give her and allow herself to die of inanition. Can this other ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... country; I love this Union. It was the first vision of my early years; it is the last ambition of my public life. Upon its altar I have surrendered my choicest hopes. I had fondly hoped that in approaching age it was to beguile my solitary hours, and I will stand by it as long as there is a Union to stand by and when the ship of the Union shall crack and groan, when the skies lower and threaten, when the lightnings flash, the thunders roar, the storms beat, and the waves run mountain-high, if the ship of State ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... quite true that Chesterfield recommended in his speech that the Irish Parliament should inquire into the working of the Penal Laws in order to find out if they needed any {252} improvement. But this was a mere piece of stage-play to amuse and to beguile the stupidity and the bigotry of the Irish Parliament of those days. It was not a stroke of policy which a man like Burke would have condescended to or could have approved; but it must have greatly delighted the cynical humor of such a man as Chesterfield. At all events ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Helen's soul within her breast; and when now she marked the fair neck and lovely breast and sparkling eyes of the goddess, she marvelled straightway and spake a word and called upon her name: "Strange queen, why art thou desirous now to beguile me? Verily thou wilt lead me further on to some one of the people cities of Phrygia or lovely Maionia, if there too thou hast perchance some other darling among mortal men, because even now Menelaos hath ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... at first, but I'd beguile her. I'm the youngest, and I always get my own way. I told Sylvia Trevor, who was staying with us, and she was very kind, giving me good advice not to do it, but it is to be a surprise for Bridgie to help her to pay the bills. If ye want money, what else can you do ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... joking; why, a child costs terribly dear!" exclaims a ten-times-too-happy husband, at the baptism of his eleventh, called the little last newcomer,—a phrase with which women beguile their families. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Brook (whose Spring-head was not far distant from his peacefull habitation) fitted with Angle, Lines, and Flyes: Flyes proper for that season (being the fruitfull Month of May;) intending all diligence to beguile the timorous Trout, (with which that watry element abounded) observ'd a more then common concourse of Shepheards, all bending their unwearied steps towards a pleasant Meadow within his present prospect, and had his eyes made more happy to behold the ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... command the expedition in person. The Black Prince, now in his twentieth year, accompanied him, and commanded one of the largest vessels. The day on which the Spanish fleet would make its appearance had been nicely calculated. Edward waited impatiently for its approach, and, to beguile the time, made the musicians play an air which the famous Chandos, who was now with him, had brought from Germany. During the concert, the king, from time to time, turned his eye to the watcher at the masthead. In a short time the music was interrupted by the cry ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... passed the second week of his confinement. The stone walls of this cell had a melancholy interest. They were carved over nearly every available inch with figures of men, birds, and animals, cut, no doubt, by the former prisoners to beguile the weary hours. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... surprise, Whether I tarry still or go, Methinks the time moves very slow. All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so mad as melancholy. When to myself I act and smile, With pleasing thoughts the time beguile, By a brook side or wood so green, Unheard, unsought for, or unseen, A thousand pleasures do me bless, And crown my soul with happiness. All my joys besides are folly, None so sweet as melancholy. When I lie, sit, or walk alone, I sigh, I ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... country, because they fear that votes will be lost if our people are convinced of the anti-religious character of the party, steadfastly deny that they are conspiring against religion. Indeed they are quite cunning and crafty in their effort to beguile the unwary. If the person hesitates joining the party, owing to his conviction that nearly all the Socialist leaders have been the enemies of religion, he is informed that it would be just as foolish for him not to be a Revolutionist for this reason, as it would be for one not to become a ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... anything to relieve the terrible tedium and beguile their thoughts from the peril in which they were placed. The lapse of time was discussed, and the possibility of the slackening of the furious flow of the falling river so that a boat might come down in search of the unfortunates, but to a man all came to the conclusion that nothing could be expected ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... for it," replied Philippa. "Thou wilt do, child, as methinks. I would say it were easier to break thy heart than to beguile thy conscience. A right good thing—for the conscience. Is this Clare?" she asked, breaking off suddenly as Clare came in, with a tone which showed that she felt most interest in her of the three. She took both Clare's hands and studied ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... which he read the wonderful story of life in many tragic and comic tales of actual fact; and in the prison where he spent twelve years, he must often have heard from his fellow-prisoners such fragments as they knew and remembered, with which doubtless they would beguile the tedium of their confinement. That would be for the most part in the first and second imprisonments, extending from the years 1660 to 1672. The third imprisonment was a short affair of only some nine months, spent in the little prison upon the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... to women when they beguile us with insincere professions," replied she, rising up ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and twine me about thy body, doing as I bid thee, and behold! for a while thy shape shall wear the shape of the Golden Helen, and thy face shall be as her face, and thine eyes as her eyes, and thy voice as her voice. Then I leave the rest to thee, for as Helen's self thou shalt beguile the Wanderer, and once, if once only, be a wife to him whom thou desireth. Naught can I tell thee of the future, I who am but a counsellor, but hereafter it may be that woes will come, woes and wars and death. But what matter these when thou hast had thy desire, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... assembled upon the earth, at the council, both the I-am-woi and the gods from under the seas, after much debate, and long consultation, they resolved to make a great feast upon the earth, and to invite We-suk-kah, that they might thus beguile him, and at the feast lay hands ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... would come to me if he were caught that grieved me, but only care for him; for I had come to lean in everything upon this grim and grizzled giant, and love him like a father. So when he was away I took to reading to beguile my thoughts; but found little choice of matter, having only my aunt's red Prayer-book that I thrust into my bosom the afternoon that I left Moonfleet, and Blackbeard's locket. For that locket hung always round my neck; and I often had the parchment ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... were to be seen depicted the slaying of Horwendil; the fratricide and incest of Feng; the infamous uncle, the whimsical nephew; the shapes of the hooked stakes; the stepfather suspecting, the stepson dissembling; the various temptations offered, and the woman brought to beguile him; the gaping wolf; the finding of the rudder; the passing of the sand; the entering of the wood; the putting of the straw through the gadfly; the warning of the youth by the tokens; and the privy dealings with the maiden after the escort was eluded. And likewise could ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... didn't have no fair show," maintaining that when he was "ropin' a steer he didn't want no blanked tenderfoot to be shovin' in his rope like Bill there." But Bill steadily maintained his position that "the story of that there picnic was a little too unusual" for him. Bruce was trying meanwhile to beguile The Duke into a discussion of the physics and metaphysics of the case. But The Duke refused with quiet contempt to be drawn into a region where he felt himself a stranger. He preferred poker himself, if Bruce cared to take a hand; and so the evening went on, with the theological discussion ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... to the last of these Adventures in Friendship. As I go out—I hope not for long—I wish you might follow me to the door, and then as we continue to talk quietly, I may beguile you, all unconsciously, to the top of the steps, or even find you at my side when we reach the gate at the end of the lane. I wish you might hate to let me go, as I myself hate to go!—And when I reach the top of the ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... sende vs in the shippes and according to such paternes as hee shall send. Wee doe not finde the Ambassadour nowe at the last so conformable to reason as wee had thought wee shoulde. Hee is very mistrustfull, and thinketh euery man will beguile him. Therefore you had neede to take heede howe you haue to doe with him or with any such, and to make your bargaines plaine, and to set them downe in writing. For they bee subtill people, and doe not alwaies speake the trueth, and thinke other men to bee ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... either out of respect to the presence of Rita, or concern for the Count's misfortune, rode along, contrary to his custom, in profound silence, and without indulging in any of those snatches of muleteers' songs with which it was his wont to beguile the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... the flat rock on which they were perched lay out of the wind's reach; and to beguile the interval of waiting Annet drew out a book which she had brought with her—a much-worn copy of Hans Andersen which had arrived at Christmas, three years ago, as a gift from that mysterious Aunt Vazzy of whom their mother talked so often. Linnet stoutly maintained that this aunt of ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in thought, His chamber in the palace sought. Then, as the surest hope of all, The monarch bade his servants call Vidyujjihva, whom magic skill Made master of the means of ill. Then spake the lord of Lanka's isle: "Come, Sita with thine arts beguile. With magic skill and deftest care A head like Rama's own prepare. This head, long shafts and mighty bow, To Janak's ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... and spell those hieroglyphs Of phosphorescent dusk, devoutly bent; They drink a cup to whirl on dizzier cliffs For their shamed fall, which asks, why was she sent! Why, and of whom, and whence; and tell they truth, The legends of her mission to beguile? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... passing through Ballinderry, will consider it to have been justly designated the garden of the north. The multitude of pretty little villages, scattered over the landscape, each announcing itself by the tapering tower of a church, would almost beguile the traveller into believing that he was passing through a rural district in one of the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... the hill Where we together watched the sun go down Beyond the gold-washed uplands, while his fires Touched into glittering life the vanes and spires Piercing the purpling mists that veiled the town. The wintry night thy voice and eyes beguile, Till wake the sleeping summers ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... the uncertainty of his dreadful shooting, despite all his former "practice." We might relate the interesting stories, anecdotes, and narratives with which the explorers and the hunter sought to beguile the pleasant periods that used to follow supper and precede repose, and describe the tremendous energy of Paul Burns in springing to the rescue of the self-willed baby when it fell into the fire, and the cool courage of Oliver Trench in succouring the same baby when it tumbled into the ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... some few sounds, or a suppressed moaning over his hard lot, 'and that is what I hear in my cabin.' Then at last he rises with a determined briskness in his mien, and the resentment against fate from an ill-used man, and he casts exactly three handfuls of corn or bread-crumbs into the water, these to beguile the reluctant obstinate gudgeon, who, perhaps, poor thing, is not so much to blame for inattention after all, being at the time just one hundred and fifty ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... [1]the hours of prime? and call thine ear To the gay viol dinning in the dale, With tabor loud, and bag-pipe's rustic drone To merry Shearer's dance;—or jest retail From festal board, from choral roofs the song; And speak of Masque, or Pageant, to beguile The caustic memory of a cruel wrong?— Thy lips acknowledge this a generous wile, And bid me still the effort kind prolong; But ah! they wear a ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Champagne. No doubt he liked to look back to the stirring days of his youth, and I dare say the young folk who gathered round his hospitable hearth knew the Sire de Joinville for a good story-teller, who could beguile a winter evening with tales of that luckless Crusade in which he bore his part, and of his hero and leader, sovereign, saint, and soldier in one, Louis, the cross-bearing King of France; and, happily for us, before the stories died ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... closer hand their pomp Vanishes. Earth's glories thus With their myriad light-effects Still beguile us artfully. ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... swells not into state, But, like some mountain in those happy isles, Where in perpetual spring young nature smiles, Your greatness shows: no horror to affright, But trees for shade, and flowers to court the sight: Sometimes the hill submits itself a while In small descents, which do its height beguile: 140 And sometimes mounts, but so as billows play, Whose rise not hinders, but makes short our way. Your brow, which does no fear of thunder know, Sees rolling tempests vainly beat below; And, like Olympus' ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to beguile the tediousness of a long voyage from Hong Kong to England, during the spring and summer of 1844. When I state, that the whole was written with the paper on my knee, for want of a desk, amid continual interruptions from three young children lacking amusement during ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... neighbours with complaints of her son; a humorous young one, in a voice half bursting with laughter, relates in the ears of her companions whose husbands are absent some jocose story of her husband's, to beguile the pain of separation. Some are reproaching the Grihini (house-mistress), some the Korta (master), some the neighbours; some reciting their own praises. She who may have received a gentle scolding in the morning from Surja ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... to one, Especially of women; but 'tis so, They shall be pleas'd, whether they will or no.— Which will come first? what, both give back! ha, neither! Why, then, yond help that both may come together[442]. So, stand still, stand [still] but a little while, And see, how I your angers will beguile. Well, yet there is no hurt; why, then, let me Join these two hands, and see how they'll agree: Peace, peace! they cry; look how they friendly kiss! Well, all this while there is no harm in this: Are not these ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... bolstered in the bed, after a time she could use her hands, and often would ask for sewing to beguile the tedium. She had become very expert with her needle the first year of her release from Mrs. B., and she had forgotten none of her skill. Mrs. H. praised her, and as she im- proved in health, was anxious to employ her. She told her she could in this way replace ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... that, in mentioning this circumstance, we lay no weight whatever upon the pretended information thus conveyed. But it often happens, such is our natural love for the marvellous, that we willingly contribute our own efforts to beguile our better judgments. Whether the coincidence which I have mentioned was really one of those singular chances, which sometimes happen against all ordinary calculations; or whether Mannering, bewildered amid the arithmetical labyrinth and technical jargon of astrology, had insensibly twice followed ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... after day she went to her seat in the workroom where a dozen other young women sat sewing busily on gay garments, with as much lively gossip to beguile the time as Miss ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... representation," when, from Eden down, Eve can always plead with Adam, can have the first word instead of the last—if she knows what that first word is, in herself and thence in its power with him—can beguile him to his good instead of to his harm, as indeed she only meant to do in that first ignorant experiment? Would it be any less easy to qualify for and accomplish this than to convince and outnumber in public gathering not only bodies of men but the mass of women that will also ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... shower came on, and we took shelter in the cavernous interior of an enormous, half-ruined oak-tree. Natural decay and the pickaxes of the woodman seeking fuel for his camp-fire had hollowed out a comfortable retreat from the storm. Surrounding the tree was a bed of wild strawberries, which helped to beguile the time. When at length the clouds cleared away, we resumed our saddles with dry jackets. But, as it turned out, the half-hour we spent under the tree lost us the chance ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... to remain where they were until the expiration of a certain time. When it should be elapsed, he promised that she should lead him to any part of the world she chose. Cheered by this promise, she planned many an imaginary journey to foreign lands, and many a long hour did Mary and her father beguile in arranging the ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... perhaps three: we eat because we are hungry. We rarely fail to eat excessively to satisfy the sense of relish after the normal hunger sense has been dissipated; we may eat to satisfy relish as we eat ice cream, fruits, and the enticing extras that beguile us to put more food into the stomach after it is already overfilled for its working capacity. But our actual need of food, the best reason for taking it, is to make up for the wastes from the general activities; and this is a process in the order ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... they again emerged. A great multitude had already assembled; the windows were filled with people, smoking and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing, quarrelling, joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the centre of all—the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and all the hideous ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Greece in the fourth century carried down the historical and Homeric traditions of the embroidery frame, and made it part of their daily lives, while the Persian women of rank left such work to their slaves, is evident from the pretty legend told of Alexander the Great, who desiring to beguile the weariness of his prisoners, the wife and family of Darius, sent them some of his garments to embroider. When it was reported to him that these princesses were much mortified, believing it was a suggestion ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... which is in the keeping of Paulina,—a piece many years in doing and now newly performed by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself eternity, and could put breath into his work, would beguile nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape: he so near to Hermione hath done Hermione that they say one would speak to her and stand in hope of answer:—thither with all greediness of affection are they gone; and there ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... inclined to Josephine, whose tastes were in exact accordance with her own. Sophia had little or no inclination for the excitement and tumult of fashionable pleasures; and therefore she was left much to herself, alone and dependent upon her own resources to beguile her time, while her mother and sister were abroad in the giddy whirl of ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... not hope to beguile Prosper into committing any piece of folly," said Raoul to his uncle; "his head is as cool as a usurer's. He never goes beyond a certain degree of dissipation. What object he has in view I know not. Perhaps, when he has spent his last napoleon, he will blow his brains out; he certainly ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... consented. When the June roses blossomed, we were married. The balmy air and opening buds spoke of a new life. They typified my new life, truly. The glitter and gloss which had deceived me in youth would never beguile me more. I had learned that it was not the external man, but the internal ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... fierce sun's weight A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! So be it, but we seek a fabled shore, To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, To wander where Love's labyrinths beguile; There let us land, there dream for evermore: "It may be we shall ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... not to be titled of forbears vile * O whose ape-like face doth the tribe defile! Nay, I'm rending lion amid mankind, * A hero in wilds where the murks beguile. Al-Hayfa befitteth me, only me; * Ho thou whom ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Mercy Giggs, and insisted on our churning in turn till y'e butter came, if we sate up all nighte for't. 'Twas a hard saying; and mighte have hampered her like as Jephtha his rash vow: howbeit, soe soone as she had left us, we turned it into a frolick, and sang Chevy Chase from end to end, to beguile time; ne'erthelesse, the butter w'd not come; soe then we grew sober, and, at y'e instance of sweete Mercy, chaunted y'e 119th Psalme; and, by the time we had attayned to "Lucerna pedibus," I hearde y'e buttermilk separating ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... is an excellent servant and friend, but a dangerous master. It may easily beguile us by its seductive reproductions of surface relief and lighting to think more of these qualities than any other, and to endeavour to put them in the wrong places—in places where we want colour planes rather than shadow planes, flatness and repose rather ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... there, held fixedly by living coral, the dead shell could not choose but whistle. So I left it to its wayward pipings, happy to have been the sole auditor to a purely natural, albeit mechanical, monotone. Upon such an instrument did the heavenly maid beguile the time when she was yet uncouthly young—at the hoydenish age when men also cajoled her with clicking sticks and the beating of hollow logs, and music was but ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... time goes swiftly. Yet even the interest and excitement does not prevent fatigue, and from 12:45 to 6:45 seems interminable! Even when the whistle blows we are not all free—Excelsior is behindhand with her production, and those whom extra pay can beguile stay on. Maggie, my little teacher, walks with me toward our divided destinations, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... ascertain the cause of this inauspicious merry-making had not Kate's injunction kept him aloof. The noise of minstrelsy was now heard—symptoms of the marriage-feast and the banquet. More than once he suspected some witchery, some delusion of the enemy to beguile him by enchantments. However, he resolved to be quiet; and, for the purpose of a more extended vision, he climbed, or rather stepped into, the low huge fork of the tree. From this tower of observation ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... entering the little churchyard, he saw the old man labouring in a half-made grave. "My destiny," thought Ravenswood, "seems to lead me to scenes of fate and of death; but these are childish thoughts, and they shall not master me. I will not again suffer my imagination to beguile my senses." The old man rested on his spade as the Master approached him, as if to receive his commands; and as he did not immediately speak, the sexton opened the discourse ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... prodigious size, the leaves of which were covered with innumerable pinholes. And this is what the Troezenians say about that myrtle. Queen Phaedra, when she was in love with Hippolytos, used to recline idly all day long under this same tree. To beguile the tedium of her weary life she used to draw out the golden pin which held her fair locks, and pierce with it the leaves of the sweet-scented bush. All the leaves were riddled with holes. After she had ruined the poor young man whom she pursued with ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... intense selfishness. Good-nature, perfect courtesy, patience, punctuality, and an easy adaptation to perhaps untoward circumstances mark the perfect lady in travelling. When you see a lady, detained perhaps for hours by a snow-storm, pleasantly trying to beguile the time by conversation, relieving tired mothers, perhaps, of the care of fretful children, jesting pleasantly upon the unpleasant delay, and uttering no complaint or impatient word, even if half frozen or in utter discomfort, you may be certain you see a perfectly well-bred lady in ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... Will felt inclined to sleep. He therefore buttoned up his coat tight to the chin, fixed his hat well down on his brows, and put himself into one of those numerous attitudes of torture with which "outsides" were wont to beguile the weary hours of night in coaching days. When the sun rose next morning, Will was still in that state of semi-somnolence which causes the expression of the countenance to become idiotic and the eyes owlish. At last the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... his own walk, to be sure he shambled pitifully on the edge of hers. Her superiority sparkled so hard and frosty-bright that she began to pity him; and so the maid was thawed to be the mother of her man. Isoult knew she must beguile him now for his soul's ease and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... on ter twenty ya'rs ... but Jim's old an' I'm old ... an' afore long we'll both be gone ... an' nuther one ner t'other of us hain't sich fools es not ter know what we've been holdin' down.... Nuther one ner t'other of us don't beguile hisself with ther notion thet all them old hates air dead ... or thet ef wild-talkin', loose-mouthed men gains a hearin' ... they ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... blessing are free schools! What a difference it makes in the life of that poor girl, to be able to read! How many weary hours of pain will a nice book beguile! And, beside, if one has not a cent in the world, if one has a good education, it is worth as much as money in the bank,—and more, too, because banks often turn out great humbugs, and then people lose all the money they have ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... that he had entrapped their relatives, and was about to fall on their Seneca brethren with all the force of Canada. The Jesuit, whom they trusted and esteemed, but who had been used as an instrument to beguile them, was summoned before a council of the chiefs. They were in a fury at the news; and Lamberville, as much astonished by it as they, expected instant death, when one of them is said to have addressed him to the following effect: "We know you too well to believe that you meant ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... superiority of silence to speech, or rather of the active to the contemplative life. The career of a great conqueror, a great legislator, a man who in any capacity has moulded the doctrines of the race, had a charm for his imagination which he could not find in the pleasant idlers, who beguile our leisure by singing ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Arcangeli begged to see the medals once more. As Winckelmann stooped down to take them from the chest, a cord was thrown round his neck. Some time afterwards, a child whose friendship Winckelmann had made to beguile the delay, knocked at the door, and receiving no answer, gave an alarm. Winckelmann was found dangerously wounded, and died a few hours later, after receiving the sacraments of the Romish Church. It seemed ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... vouch for the fact—that Captain Brown was heard to say, sotto voce, "D-n Dr Johnson!" If he did, he was penitent afterwards, as he showed by going to stand near Miss Jenkyns' arm-chair, and endeavouring to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing subject. But she was inexorable. The next day she made the remark I have mentioned ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... my willing tongue, The songs that Braga fram'd and sung? Who was it op'd to me the store Of dark unearthly Runic lore, And taught me to beguile my time With Denmark's aged and witching rhyme; To rest in thought in Elvir shades, And hear the song of fairy maids; Or climb the top of Dovrefeld, Where magic knights their muster held! Who was it did all this for me? O, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... of paradise. When her father and her brother find it necessary to warn her simplicity, give her lessons of worldly wisdom, and instruct her "to be scanter of her maiden presence," for that Hamlet's vows of love "but breathe like sanctified and pious bonds, the better to beguile," we feel at once that it comes too late; for from the moment she appears on the scene amid the dark conflict of crime and vengeance, and supernatural terrors, we know what must be her destiny. Once, at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest; perhaps it was young, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... had driven at a pace accommodated rather to the convenience of the horses than to our impatience; and finding, at the quaint little inn where we now halted, that we must wait for a nail or two in a loose shoe of one of our relay, we consulted, and being both hungry, agreed to beguile the time with an early dinner, which we enjoyed very sociably in a queer little parlour with a bow window, and commanding, with a litle garden for ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... in one flaming pile; The foe old Priam did of life beguile, And with his blood, thy ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... this information, and thanked my informant with some degree of warmth. My gratitude he did not notice, but continued: "In order to beguile expectation, I have ordered supper; will you do me the favour to partake with me, unless indeed you have supped already?" I was obliged, somewhat awkwardly, to decline his invitation, conscious as I was that the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... been poor Sir Piers's favorite retreat. It was, in fact, the only room in the house that he could call his own; and thither would he often, with pipe and punch, beguile the flagging hours, secure from interruption. A snug, old-fashioned apartment it was; wainscoted with rich black oak; with a fine old cabinet of the same material, and a line or two of crazy, worm-eaten bookshelves, laden with sundry dusty, unconsulted law tomes, and a light sprinkling of the elder ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... against him in the matter. Then the story of little Katy was told as one might tell something that had happened a hundred years ago, without any personal sympathy. It was simply a curious story, an interesting adventure with which to beguile a weary hour of stage riding in the darkness. It would have gratified Albert to have been able to detect the vibration of a painful memory or a pitying emotion, but Helen did not suffer her placidity to be ruffled by disturbing emotion. The conversation drifted to other ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... Hervey's Meditations, Watts on the Improvement of the Mind, or Hannah More's Sacred Dramas. Who knows what he may be reduced to? I remember the great Irish liberator telling how, when once detained in an inn in Switzerland, he could find no book to beguile the time with but the Lettres Provinciales of Pascal. I have no doubt that the coerced perusal of them to which he had to submit did him ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... for future use to file, Including woodruff, marjoram and sage, Thyme, agrimony, hyssop, camomile (A name writ painfully on childhood's page), Tansy, the jaded palate to beguile, Horehound, laryngeal troubles to assuage, And, for a cup ere mounting to the stirrup, The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... most critical hour of her youth, when love was sent to her heart like an angel, to beguile her from selfishness, and make self-denial easy, Lillie's pretty little right hand had sowed to the world and the flesh; and of that sowing she was now to reap all the disquiets, the vexations, the tremors, that go to fill the pages of French novels,—records of women who ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... both gods and men slept long; only Zeus, king of the gods, lay wakeful, pondering in his heart how best he might do honor to Achilles. "I shall send a Dream to beguile Agamemnon," at length ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... than patriotic sentiment. All-red speeches might adorn a banquet or win an election, but facts—or fictions—as to freight and dividends were needed to beguile the capital from investors' pockets. The hope of securing for the Canadian provinces the trade and traffic of the golden West was, in early years as in late, much the strongest factor ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... beard was th' equal grace Both of his wisdom and his face; In cut and dye so like a tile, A sadden view it would beguile: The upper part whereof was whey, The nether orange mixt with grey. This hairy meteor did denounce The fall of sceptres and of crowns; With grisly type did represent Declining age of government, And tell, with hieroglyphic spade, Its own grave ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... painted in bright warm colours, and a correspondingly genial temperature was secured by hot-water pipes running the entire length. Comfortable rooms opened out from the wards at frequent intervals, and there was every form of amusement to beguile the otherwise irksome leisure of those temporary recluses. Most of my hermits were smoking—I mean on the male side—many were reading; one had a fiddle, and I scraped acquaintance immediately with him; whilst another was seated at ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... arrangement, Ben went home to dinner, which he made very lively by recounting Billy Barton's ingenious devices to beguile the tedium of sermon-time. He said nothing of his conversation with Miss Celia, because he had not quite made up his mind whether he liked it or not; it was so new and serious, he felt as if he would better lay it by, to think over a good deal before he could understand all about it. But ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... forget me?" chuckled the fleshless lips by his ear. "But no, my boy; I'm with you now, for ever and a day. 'Misery loves company,' and it wouldn't be pretty of me to desert you in this extremity, would it? Come, let us beguile the hours till dawn with conversation. Here's a sprightly subject: What are you going to do, Mr. Kirkwood? What ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... no such God, for they believe in no more gods but in Him that was at the beginning, and made of naught all things visible and invisible, which Lord took flesh and blood, being in the Virgin, the same God. But ye have many false ways, to beguile the innocent people with sleights of ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... it still wants half an hour to the time fixed for the start—by a triple row of the more patient and prudent spectators. On the left of the path, various more or less Shady Characters have established their "pitches," and are doing their best to beguile ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... long, unrefreshing, heavy slumber, to awake to all the wild frenzy again. Thus, to and fro went the little maiden from the farm to the Owl's Nest and Madame Giche, who chatted to and tried to amuse her when there, and to beguile ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... thou a Fox? It may well be that thou shalt beguile me as such beasts will but look to it, that if thou dost I shall know how ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... merely a local head-wind blowing through the Straits, is a mistral tormenting the whole Gulf of Lions. We shall be tossing about presently in a manner unpleasant to landsmen; and when you are safely housed, I will come and beguile a little time by relating a true story of a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various |
