"Magic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... different. She did things, you know, and made charms, and talked poetry, and people were afraid of her. Beth believed in her thoroughly. She'd be Norna, and make charms. But she had no lead. Norna looked about her. She knew by magic that Cleveland was coming to consult her, and she had no lead. There was a border of lead, however, over the attic window outside. All she had to do was to steal upstairs, climb out of the window on to the roof, and cut a piece of the lead off. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... (hider) 530. [Fallacies of vision] deceptio visus[Lat]; refraction, distortion, illusion, false light, anamorphosis[obs3], virtual image, spectrum, mirage, looming, phasma|; phantasm, phantasma[obs3], phantom; vision; specter, apparition, ghost; ignis fatuus &c. (luminary) 423 specter of the Brocken magic mirror[Lat]; magic lantern &c. (show) 448; mirror lens &c. (instrument) 445. V. be dimsighted &c. n.; see double; have a mote in the eye, have a mist before the eyes, have a film over the eyes; see through a prism, see through a glass ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... good folk,' he said; 'my wife is one, and I've given her a little church of her own to do as she likes in; still, I'm not very sure about them; I think some of them are too fond of meddling with magic.' ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... would take me across. The lights of the island lay like a crown on the water. I paced the ramparts, eyeing them, breathing the keen salt of thundering waves, until they were robbed of their magic by the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... By the way, I can shew you a great curiosity; - the autograph of an Oxford tradesman, very rare! I think of presenting it to the Ashmolean." And Mr. Larkyns opened his writing-desk, and took therefrom an Oxford pastrycook's bill, on which appeared the magic word, "Received." ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... or cell, made out of a rock; it was divided into several apartments, one of which Prospero called his study; there he kept his books, which chiefly treated of magic, a study at that time much affected by all learned men: and the knowledge of this art he found very useful to him; for being thrown by a strange chance upon this island, which had been enchanted by a witch called Sycorax, who died there a short time before his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Vision and the Cry That haunt the new Canadian soul? Dim grandeur spreads we know not why O'er mountain, forest, tree and knoll, And murmurs indistinctly fly.— Some magic moment sure is nigh. ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... briskly than ever. A military band struck up an air from Semiramis: and the noise of the innumerable matracas (rattles), some of wood and some of silver, with which every one is armed during the last days of the holy week, broke forth again as if by magic, while again commenced the sale of the Judases, fireworks in the form of that arch-traitor, which are sold on the evening of Good Friday, and let off on Saturday morning. Hundreds of these hideous figures were held above the crowd, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... stolen, and the loss is typical of all that he had struggled for. His son, Henry VI, was but the shadow of a king, a puppet in the hands of powerful nobles, who seized the power of England and turned it to self- destruction. Meanwhile all his foreign possessions were won back by the French under the magic leadership of Joan of Arc. Cade's Rebellion (1450) and the bloody Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) are names to show how the energy of England was violently destroying itself, like a great engine that has lost its balance wheel. The frightful reign of Richard III followed, which ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... fore-finger, as he was coming closer to the point—had my child arrived safe into the world, unmartyr'd in that precious part of him—fanciful and extravagant as I may appear to the world in my opinion of christian names, and of that magic bias which good or bad names irresistibly impress upon our characters and conducts—Heaven is witness! that in the warmest transports of my wishes for the prosperity of my child, I never once wished to crown his head with more glory and honour than ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Then she ran into the pantry again for a little round tin box, with a cover full of holes, and shaking this gently over the pan, a fine white shower of flour fell upon the cream. The pan was then replaced on the fire and stirred; and, to Ellen's astonishment, the whole changed, as if by magic, to a thick, stiff, white froth. It was not till Miss Fortune was carefully pouring this over the fried slices in the dish, that Ellen suddenly recollected that breakfast was ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... by his Arab ancestors, was doing its work. For what seemed a long time this continued, and then, in the midst of the blind and frenzied race, there loomed out of the thick air, as if it had appeared by magic, the opposing line. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the usual anxious lines as she prepared to hear a story of fresh disaster from her husband's lips; but at the doorway two magic words were whispered into her ear which brought the blood into the white cheeks, and sent her trotting down the hall on eager feet. Then came the delicious moment to which Mollie had looked forward ever since the meeting at the cross-roads. She walked back into the room, while Ruth looked ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... German king, Maximilian I., and in 1508 was engaged in an adventurous enterprise in Catalonia. He probably served Maximilian both as soldier and as secretary, but his wonderful and varied genius was not satisfied with these occupations, and he soon began to take a lively interest in theosophy and magic. In 1509 he went to the university of Dole, where he lectured on John Reuchlin's De Verbo Mirifico, but his teaching soon caused charges of heresy to be brought against him, and he was denounced by a monk named John Catilinet in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have heard it said—(and I believe there is more than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one)—that flowers only flourish rightly in the garden of some one who loves them. I know you would like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them: nay, more, if your look had the power, not only to cheer, but to guard;—if you could bid the black blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar spare—if you could ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... imposing. On wandering thro' the enceinte of this famous temple, I thought of Apollonius of Tyana and his sudden appearance to his friend Damis at the porch of this very temple, when he escaped from the fangs of Domitian and when it was believed that, by means of magic art, he had been able at once to transport himself from the Praetorium at Rome to Puteoli. As I said before, the bay included by cape Misenus and Puzzuoli is what is called Baiae. The land is low and marshy from Puzzuoli to a little beyond the lake Avernus; but from Monte ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... occupy a foremost rank in the intellectual history of the age." In addition to the various works of Brewster already noticed, the following may be mentioned:—Notes and Introduction to Carlyle's translation of Legendre's Elements of Geometry (1824); Treatise on Optics (1831); Letters on Natural Magic, addressed to Sir Walter Scott (1831); The Martyrs of Science, or the Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler (1841); More ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... to you, even if I would?—you came by night; you knocked upon my door;—and I opened to you. You spoke to me. What was it you said? You gazed in my eyes. What was the mystic might that turned my brain and lured me, as it were, within a magic net? (Hides her face on his shoulder.) Oh, look not on me, Nils Lykke! You must not look upon me after this—— True, say you ? Do you not own me? I am yours;—I ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... generations tread thee down; The voice I heard this passing night was heard In ancient days, by Emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same voice that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn, The same that ofttimes hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Come, worthy sir, come with me, and partake All the great things that mortals happy make." Alas, what virtue hath sufficient arms To oppose bright honour and soft pleasure's charms? What wisdom can their magic force repel? It draws the reverend hermit from his cell. It was the time, when witty poets tell, That Phoebus into Thetis' bosom fell: She blushed at first, and then put out the light, And drew the modest curtains of the night. ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... time, the perfection of a nurse. She kept herself and the nursery and the children in most refreshing order; she amused Una when she was more than usually unwell with a perfect fund of innocent stories; the work flew from her nimble fingers as if by magic. I boasted everywhere of my good luck, and sang her praises in Ernest's ears till he believed in her with all his heart. But one night we were out late; we had been spending the evening at Aunty's, and came in with Ernest's night-key as quietly as possible, in order ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... door, a hot puff of stuffy, unpleasantly close air came out, and the noise ceased as if by magic, though there were about three hundred boys ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... Beltane, "methinks there is some magic in thy touch, for now is my pain abated—hast ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... dawcuments handed over by the Cadi, sir. He reckoned they were sort of magic spells. The chahplain ordered them to be reported to you and ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... having great confidence in his 'firmness and integrity of purpose,' and hoping for support from him in face of a faint-hearted disposition to regard Lord Palmerston as a magician against whom it was vain to struggle. Events were speedily to show that Lord Palmerston had more magic at his disposal than his valiant foe believed. The agent of the British government in the China seas—himself, by the way, a philosophic radical—had forced a war upon the Chinese. The cabinet supported him. On the motion of Cobden, the House censured the proceeding. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the power of firmly guiding his life and commanding himself; on the other, an amiable desire to overlook the faults and defects of the world, and to contemplate life as it painted itself in the transfiguring magic-mirror of his poet's soul. Frankness and enjoyment spoke in his sparkling eye, but the subtle smile on his lips when he was engaged in a discussion, or when his soul was stirred, betrayed that Pentaur, far from childlike carelessness, had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no magic in merely choosing an occupation. If you do nothing to an occupation but choose it, it can do nothing at all to you. If you are an incorrigible lover of holidays, so that the arrival of a working-day ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... contented. We have performances at the factory every winter; the workpeople act themselves. They have lectures with a magic lantern, a splendid tea-room, and everything they want. They are very much attached to us, and when they heard that Lizanka was worse they had a service sung for her. Though they have no education, they have ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... brothers, Sophy held up the pop-gun in the tongs, one end still tinged with a red glow, smoky, blackened, and perfumed. Maurice made one bound, she lowered it into his grasp as the last red spark died out, and he clasped it as Siegfried did the magic sword! ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... declining days of a great scientist, who feels his physical and mental faculties gradually ebbing away. A Tiresome Story, Chekhov calls it; and so it would be without the vitality conjured into it by the magic ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... and deceive those Ethnics and Indians, being adored and worshipped for [1185] gods. For the Gentiles' gods were devils (as [1186]Trismegistus confesseth in his Asclepius), and he himself could make them come to their images by magic spells: and are now as much "respected by our papists" (saith [1187] Pictorius) "under the name of saints." These are they which Cardan thinks desire so much carnal copulation with witches (Incubi and Succubi), transform bodies, and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... owd story he towd her, Th' story, 'at's owder nor time; Nowt ivver chap whisper'd wor owder, Nowt ivver soa grand an sublime. For man nivver towd ither story, Soa chock full ov magic as this, For, it shraaded th' young chaps i' glory, An' filled her ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... command, the music swelled, and his enfranchised spirit rose on its viewless wings to behold the veiled Future already woven from the tangled skein of the troubled Present—the thousand-fold story of music's magic and mystery, stretches back into the forgotten Past, and onward into the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... same Pietro Martire d'Anghiera who from Burgos wrote to inform Rome of what was taking place in the privacy of the Duke of Valentinois's apartments in the Vatican. Under his facile and magic pen, the jar of ice-cold water into which Cesare was believed to have been plunged was transmuted into a mule which was ripped open that the fever-stricken Cesare might be packed into the pulsating entrails, there to sweat the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... number, although traces of six or seven different men could be perceived as far as the spot where they had been disturbed. From this point these children of the Bush had disappeared, as it were, by magic: not a twig was broken, not a stone was turned, nor could it be observed that the heavy drops of rain had been shaken from a single blade of grass. All efforts to hit upon the direction in which they had fled were to no purpose, except to put the explorers ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... against his life may not all have been baseless. At last, one of own cousins, the Count of Nevers, was accused of having recourse to diabolic means of doing away with the duke's legitimate heir.[2] Three little waxen images were found in his house, and it was alleged that he practised various magic arts withal in order to win the favour of the duke and of the French king, and still worse to cause Charles to waste away with a mysterious sickness. The accusations were sufficient to make Nevers resign all his offices in his kinsman's court ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... lobster farmer scamper winter number tumbler blunder jester pitcher milker farther monster marble cycle uncle thimble jumble grumble stumble tingle tickle speckle candle nimble tumble ankle twinkle single dangle dimple cackle buckle magic picnic handle bundle frolic mimic simple wrinkle merit arctic solid limit habit infant stupid visit spirit distant rapid profit pulpit merchant timid ashes classes servant kisses dishes dresses brushes losses stitches bunches wishes ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... stars roll on in their majestic spheres, regardless of mortal hopes and fears. At length day broke, when the preacher rose from bed anxious and unrefreshed. A little before the appointed time he proceeded to a certain building, and having mounted two flights of stairs, saw the magic number on the door in front of him. As the clock struck he entered. Agreeably to a preconcerted plan, he wiped the right corner of his mouth with a white handkerchief, and nodded three times. The only person in the room, a well-dressed and apparently affable ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... strange to her that the house, which but a short time ago had no existence whatever, and was yet cold and soulless, was destined to be the living home of a family, with history in its walls and memories clinging about it. The formidable magic of life was always thus discovering itself to her, so that she could not look upon even an untenanted, terra-cotta-faced villa without a secret thrill; and the impenetrable sky above was not more charmed and enchanted than those brick walls. When she reflected ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... in and enjoy their splendid home, it was thrown open for examination and admiration. All S——went to see the show, and wander in dreamy amazement through parlors, halls, and chambers. I went with the rest. The change seemed like the work of magic. I could with difficulty make out the old landmarks. The spacious rooms, newly painted and decked out in rich, modern furniture, looked still more spacious. In place of the whitewashed ceilings and dingy papered walls, graceful frescoes spread their ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... other work is the special quality of Balzac's genius displayed so completely as in "La Peau de Chagrin," which we render as "The Magic Skin." Published in 1831, it is the earliest in date of his veritable masterpieces, and the finest in conception. There is no novel more soberly true to life than this strange fairy tale. His hero, the Marquis de Valentin, is a young aristocrat of the Byronic type. He rejects the simple joys and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... were very conveniently arranged. The water flowed down one bank, and up the other, so that you could go either way without the least trouble. Those were the days of magic. People were then able to fly six or seven miles, and to light on the trees like birds, when they went out hunting. But now the world is decrepit, and all good things are gone. In those days people used the fire-drill. Also, if they planted ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... makes it a safe play Charlie excused himself and went to lunch. After Saugatuck we are not booked, because Charlie says something may fall down in New York and he may want to yank us right in. And, say, if Signor Petroskinski, the Illusionist and Worker of Mystical Magic, ever gets a crack at a Broadway audience it'll be a case of us matching John D. Rockefeller to see who has the ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... talk of Bessie appealed to such manliness as he had in him, and, whatever his own wickedness may have been, he was too madly in love with the woman to let her name be taken in vain by a man whom, though he held his "magic" in superstitious reverence, he yet ranked lower than a dog. With his nerves strung to the highest possible state of tension, and half drunk as he was, Frank Muller was no more to be played with or irritated ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... fairly under way, there arose such a huzza as ten thousand throats never gave before. The passengers returned the cheer, but Fulton stood upon the deck, his eyes flashing with an unusual brilliancy as he surveyed the crowd. He felt that the magic wand of success was waving over him and he was silent. The entire trip was an ovation, and is ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... beautiful for speech; the meaning was too laden with brotherly love and cheer for it to be mistaken. A sad-eyed girl smiled to herself and gazed with new hope in her face; a pickpocket took his hand out of his neighbor's bag that had opened like magic under his practised touch. Babies stretched out their arms to the glitter; grown men stared silently with unaccustomed tears wetting their eyes. The school children sang on and on, "Oh, come all ye faithful, ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... boat at 'The Bowl of Cream,' the river inn where Summerhay was staying. To him, who had been a rowing man at Oxford, the river was known from Lechlade to Richmond; but Gyp had never in her life been on it, and its placid magic, unlike that of any other river in the world, almost overwhelmed her. On this glistening, windless day, to drift along past the bright, flat water-lily leaves over the greenish depths, to listen to the pigeons, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Patriotism! There is magic in the word. It is bliss to repeat it. Through ages the human race burnt the incense of admiration and reverence at the shrines of patriotism. The most beautiful pages of history are those which recount its deeds. Fireside tales, the ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... with magic, methinks, And the future was given to her gaze; For an obelisk marked her abode, and a sphinx On her threshold kept vigil always. She was pensive and ever alone, nor was seen In the haunts of the dissolute crowd; But communed ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... magic of Egypt is still widely practised, and many of the formulae used in modern times are familiar to the Egyptologist. The Egyptian, indeed, lives in a world much influenced by magic and thickly populated by spirits, demons, and djins. Educated men holding Government appointments, and dressing in ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... whiteness, and she again towered up suddenly behind, ever wheeling, gliding on, vapour and water so commingled that you could not say she floated, but was somehow faintly present like the dim picture on a canvas screen from a magic lantern half in focus. She was searching in the fog for the 'Nab' light-ship, thence to take new bearings and cleave the mist in a straight course at half-speed for Southampton. When she found the 'Nab' she vanished finally, and I was glad ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... topics, first published in the 9th century; notes for bibliophiles on the care of books, and on paper, ink, pictures and bric-a-brac; a collection of famous criminal cases; night thoughts suggested by a meteor. Add to the above, numerous short stories relating to magic, dreams, bilocation, and to almost every possible phase of supernatural manifestation, and the reader will have some idea of what he may expect in an ordinary "library" of a popular character. It must always be remembered that with the Chinese, style is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... in like manner; she made the dress herself, and its fit was perfection, showing her plump little figure all the plumper, while its black color set off the whiteness of her simple collar, and with those magic gaiters, Ralph's gift also, he used to sit in the big chair, peering at her, and in a quandary as to whether he had ever been so happy ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... imperceptible degrees there grew in Scrope's mind the persuasion that he was in the presence of the living God. This time there was no vision of angels nor stars, no snapping of bow-strings, no throbbing of the heart nor change of scene, no magic and melodramatic drawing back of the curtain from the mysteries; the water and the bridge, the ragged black trees, and a distant boat that broke the silvery calm with an arrow of black ripples, all these things were still before him. But God was there too. God was everywhere ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... a man with long hair, in a black doublet, who approached the foot of the bed where Sainte-Croix lay. Brave as he was, this apparition so fully answered to his prayers (and at the period the power of incantation and magic was still believed in) that he felt no doubt that the arch-enemy of the human race, who is continually at hand, had heard him and had now come in answer to his prayers. He sat up on the bed, feeling mechanically at the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... little Saracen was performed so well by le petit Ducrow, that we longed to see more of him. The desperate battle fought by about sixteen supernumeraries at the pass of Castle Moura, was quite as sanguinary as ever: the combats were perfection—the glory of the red fire was nowise dimmed! It was magic, yes, it was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... be said without exaggeration of Carpocrates and Basilides who both taught at Alexandria about 120-130 A.D. Unfortunately we know the views of these interesting men only from the accounts of their opponents. Carpocrates[1134] is said to have claimed the power of coercing by magic the spirits who rule the world and to have taught metempsychosis in the form that the soul is imprisoned in the body again and again until it has performed all possible actions, good and evil. Therefore the only way to escape reincarnation (which is the object of religion) and to rise ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Felicien could do nothing but watch Angelique as she embroidered the curls, following the exact direction of their rolling with her little pointed stitches, and he never wearied of seeing the hair grow and radiate under her magic needle. Its weight, and the great quivering with which it seemed to be unrolled at one turn, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... passionate verbal outbreaks, and outside the charmed precincts of the tragic stage, the world would not tolerate the raving Hamlets and Othellos, the Macbeths and Medeas, that scowl and storm and anathematize so successfully in the magic glow ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... alighted at the wide piazza of the Under-Cliff House, and were shown to airy rooms, which proved that the guests were not kept in pigeon-holes for the sole benefit of the proprietor. Our heroine employed the best magic the world has known—thoughtful helpfulness. Mr. Muir was banished. "You would be as useful as a whale," she said to him, when he offered to aid his wife in unpacking and getting settled. "Go down to the piazza and smoke in peace. I shall be worth a dozen of you ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... wharves and the ships And the sea-tides tossing free, And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea.'" ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the pleasing note of lute and lyre, The lily's purple, the red rose's glow; It wonders at the witchery of the fire, And marvels at the magic of the snow. ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... nobody. While the racket was going on we were standing in line of battle, on the hither side of an extensive cotton field, and there was a big, tall cottonwood tree standing about a quarter of a mile in our front by the side of the road. I was looking in that direction when suddenly, as if by magic, a big forked branch of this tree quietly took leave of the trunk, as if it "didn't know how it happened." Before it struck the ground the shot from one of Shelby's guns that had done this pruning went screaming over our heads. It sounded just real good, like old times, with an effect, somehow, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... conscious certainty that it was so. Curiously enough, I never remember feeling the slightest nervousness while I was there, but rather an immense excitement in the idea of such invisible companionship; but as soon as I had emerged from the magic circle of the huge black cedar trees, all my fair visions vanished, and, as though under a spell, I felt perfectly possessed with terror, and rushed home again like the wind, fancying I heard following footsteps all the way I went. The ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... came to pass that the Nephites began to repent of their iniquity, and began to cry even as had been prophesied by Samuel the prophet; for behold no man could keep that which was his own, for the thieves, and the robbers, and the murderers, and the magic art, and the witchcraft which was in ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... powerful, yet it could bear no fruits—the door could not open till the pope pronounced the magic words which held it closed. Neither Philip nor Mary was in a position to use violence or ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... groaning of lonely ice-fields and the sigh of Indian palms? When, with Bacon, I can explore the laboratory of nature, or with Locke, consult the mysteries of the soul? When Spenser can lead me into golden visions, or Shakespeare smite me with magic inspiration, or Milton bathe me in immortal song? When History opens for me all the gates of the past,—Thebes and Palmyra, Corinth and Carthage, Athens with its peerless glory, and Rome with its majestic pomp?—when kings and statesmen, authors and priests, with their public ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... of bows and arrows and spears. This strange change in African savages came to be talked over among the people. It was so wonderful that the other tribes could account for it only as an instance of supernatural magic. There was nothing they knew of that would lead men like the Bechuanas to bring war to an end, and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... evaded her, and yet never ceased to call her with such a voice as he who reads on a magic page of the calling of elves hears stilly in his brain, yet somehow behind the seduction was another and a sterner voice. There was warning as well as fascination. Beyond that edge at which she strained on tiptoe, mingled with the jocund calls to Hasten, Hasten, were ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... movements, no noises, but suddenly the caribou seemed to develop from the green shadow mist, to stand, his ears pricked forward, his lustrous eyes wide, his nostrils quivering toward the unknown something that had uttered the sound. It was like magic. An animal was now where, a moment before, none ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... dream we had, a dream of music, Music that rose from the opening earth like magic And shook its beauty upon us and died away? The long cold streets extend once more before us. The red sun drops, the ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... the formation of real proficiency in the art, friends should meet often, sit long, and be thoroughly at ease. A modern audience generally breaks up before it is well warmed through, and includes enough strangers to break the magic circle of social electricity. The clubs in which Johnson delighted were excellently adapted to foster his peculiar talent. There a man could "fold his legs and have his talk out"—a pleasure hardly to be enjoyed now. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Prometheus strove to trace Inspired perceptions of celestial grace, Th' ideal spirit, fugitive as wind, Art's forceful spells in adamant confined: Curved with nice chisel floats the obsequious line; From stone unconscious, beauty beams divine; On magic poised, th' exulting structure swims, And spurns attraction with elastic limbs. While ravish'd fancy vivifies the form; While judgment toils to analyze its charm; While admiration spreads her speaking hands; The lofty artist undelighted stands. He longs ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... for your assistance this afternoon," Jasper told Lois as they at last paused at the gate leading to the Sinclair house. "I started forth uncertain what to do, and behold, everything has turned out as if by magic." ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... understanding of its wants incited by a commendable spirit of emulation, and encouraged by liberty, early gave birth to those improvements which have converted a wilderness into the abodes of abundance and security, with a rapidity that wears the appearance of magic. Industry has wrought with the confidence of knowledge, and the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... express an intense desire to hear a story of magic and mystery, and to assure him that his name was ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... Jasper. "Well, we must give her some, and that's a fact." The small girl kept on at a dog-trot along the bank, her eyes fixed on the wonderful people who tossed out such magic wealth, and holding out her arms and singing her shrill song. But when the money was thrown, she was always a bit too late, and the other children, scrambling and scuffling, had pounced upon it, and had ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... to his feet, his eyes gleaming fiercely. "How?" he demanded. "They have slain the pack. Will they not soon come for the leaders? Has the young white chieftain magic to work against ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... On all Irish questions the wisdom and experience of English statesmen were in vain. Yet amid the storms which beat over the unhappy island, the voice of the great pilot was louder than the tempests, which he seems to control as if by magic. Mr. Gladstone, in one of his later contributions to literature, has done justice to the motives and the genius of a man whom he regards as the greatest that Ireland has ever produced, if Burke may be excepted, yet a man whom he bitterly opposed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... at least a mile above you, and you can hear him over a radius of half a mile, measured from the place where he will drop. The little poets chant one against the other, and yet there is no discord, for the magic of distance seems to harmonize song with song, and the tumult soothes instead of exciting you. Who is the poet who talks of "drawing a thread of honey through your heart"? It is a quaint, conceited phrase, and yet somehow it gives with absurd felicity some ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Malayan-Arabic tradition, Adam was moulded from a lump of clay mixed with water (cf. W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic [1900], pp. 21-22); but the suggestion may as well have come from a ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... followers of Basilides, actual magic played a determining part. They hand down the names of the rulers of the several heavens as a weighty secret. This was a result of the belief, that whoever knew the names of these rulers would after death pass through all the heavens to the supreme God. In accordance ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... many thousands of her innocent subjects to misery and expulsion, had not her confessor worked on her conscience in an unusual manner; alluding to some unprecedented favor shown to one of that hated race, occasioned, he declared, by those arts of magic which might occur again and yet again, and do most fatal evil to the land. Isabella had, it appears, when reproached by Torquemada for her act of mercy, which he termed weakness, pledged herself, not to interfere with ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... beside her. They walked toward the Platform. And it was still magic, no matter how often Joe looked at it. It was huge beyond belief, though it was surely not heavy in proportion to its size. Its bright plating shone through the gossamer scaffolding all about it. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... within the bowl, And, half-suspected, animate the whole. Of mordant mustard add a single spoon, Distrust the condiment that bites too soon; But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault, To add a double quantity of salt. And, lastly, o'er the flavored compound toss A magic soup-spoon of anchovy sauce. O green and glorious!—O herbaceous treat! 'T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat; Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl! Serenely ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... This great permanent and enduring benefit was secured to me through only two months of your skillful treatment and careful management of my case. Your medicines had a wonderful control over my disease, driving away its terrible symptoms as if by magic; they imparted to me a new power, filled my body and mind with unusual vigor, and transformed me from one racked with pain and living death or worse, to a full measure of health and happiness. I feel that if I had not been opportunely and successfully ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... means, and Mireio, at the suggestion of one of her maiden friends, takes Vincen to the abode of the witch who lives in the Fairies' Hole under the rocks of Les Baux. Besides the obvious objection that the magic cure could not have been made, there is the physical impossibility of Vincen's having walked, in his dying condition, through the labyrinth of subterranean passages, amid the wild scenes of a sort of Walpurgis night. The poet was doubtless ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... though he by no means neglected the requirements of musical labor. As he himself confesses, the balmy climate, the glorious landscapes, the languid dolce far niente, which tended to enervate all that came under their magic spell, wrought on his susceptible temperament with peculiar effect. A quotation from an article written by Gottschalk, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly," entitled "Notes of a Pianist," will furnish the reader a graphic idea of the influence ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... proclaimed his discoveries to four or five of his companions. Trinity in unity, he said, was as much a contradiction as a square circle. Ezra was the author of the Pentateuch. The Apocalypse was an allegorical book about the philosopher's stone. Moses had learned magic in Egypt. Christianity was a delusion which would not last till the year 1800. For this wild talk, of which, in all probability, he would himself have been ashamed long before he was five and twenty, he was prosecuted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... song in magic wonders rife; But yet, O Nature! is there nought to prize, Familiar in thy bosom scenes of life? And dwells in daylight truth's salubrious skies No form with which the soul may sympathize? Young, innocent, on whose sweet forehead mild The parted ringlet shone in simplest ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they have since outwrit all other men, 'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen. The storm, which vanish'd on the neighbouring shore, Was taught by Shakspeare's Tempest first to roar. That innocence and beauty, which did smile In Fletcher, grew on this enchanted isle. But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he. 20 I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you now That liberty to vulgar wits allow, Which works by magic supernatural things: But Shakspeare's power is sacred as a king's. Those legends from old priesthood were received, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... that had just come into them as she realised that already, on the tower before she even knew him, she had loved him. It was that love, already born in her heart but as yet unconscious of its own existence, which had so strangely increased for her the magic of the African evening when she watched it with him. But before—suddenly she knew that she had loved Androvsky from the beginning, from the moment when his face looked at her as if out of the heart of the sun. That was why her entry into the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... course, the elder distrusted; just as she had no approval for Jean's public activities. Linda didn't like public women; her every instinct cried for a fine seclusion, fine in the meaning of an appropriate setting for feminine distinction, the magic of dress and cut roses. Her private inelegant word for Lowrie's wife was "bold;" indeed, describing to herself the younger woman's patronage of her bearing, she descended to her mother's ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... with him when he was at Itchincope; and his look, and what I know of his father, that gallant and handsome Colonel Richard Beauchamp, would give one a kind of confidence in him; supposing always that he is not struck with one of those deadly passions that are like snakes, like magic. I positively believe in them. I have seen them. And if they end, they end as if the man were burnt out, and was ashes inside; as you see Mr. Stukely Culbrett, all cynicism. You would not now suspect him of a passion! It is true. Oh, I know it! That is what the men go ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... over to a painter's eyes, posed, draped, and lighted with the one object of studying her beauty. If there be any magnetism in isolated attention, any in steadfast gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither—if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feathered, in freedom of admiration, "and all in the way of business"—then is a lovable sitter to a love-like painter in "parlous" vicinity (as the new school would phrase it) to sweet heart-land! Pleasure ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Freudvoll, Leidvoll, Gedankenvoll—an extensive commentary on some melodic ideas not too grossly evident; and he certainly fetched as much variety and depth of passion out of the piano as that moderately responsive instrument lends itself to, having an imperious magic in his fingers that seem to send a nerve-thrill through ivory key and wooden hammer, and compel the strings to make a quivering lingering speech for him. Gwendolen, in spite of her wounded egoism, had fullness of nature enough to feel the power of this ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... locks unshorn, The pledge of my unviolated vow. For proof hereof, if Dagon be thy god, Go to his Temple, invocate his aid With solemnest devotion, spread before him How highly it concerns his glory now To frustrate and dissolve these Magic spells, Which I to be the power of Israel's God 1150 Avow, and challenge Dagon to the test, Offering to combat thee his Champion bold, With th' utmost of his Godhead seconded: Then thou shalt see, or rather ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... ways to see the Exposition at night, both of which must be followed if one is to get the fullest appreciation of the magic beauty of the lighting. One is to wander about the palaces and courts in the midst of the soft flood of mysterious light, watching the play of the fountains, the barbaric flames of the Court of Ages, the green shimmer of the waters in the Court of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... said Spargo confidently. "There is more magic in a thousand-pound reward than you fancy, Breton. I'll have the history of ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... advanced. The brightness of the corridor outside left his eyes confused in this dim light. Aymer suddenly remembered this and turned on a switch. The vague shadowy space was flooded with soft radiance. It was like magic ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... were stirred by his name; he heard the applauding crowds; he breathed the incense of his fame; he adored that life long dreamed of; radiant, he sprang to radiant triumphs; he raised his stature; he evoked his illusions to bid them farewell in a last Olympic feast. The magic had been potent for a moment; but now it vanished forever. In that awful hour he clung to the beautiful tree to which, as to a friend, he had attached himself; then he put the two stones into the pockets ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... word, this is intolerable! Look ye, Dominie, if you speak another word till I give you leave, I will read three sentences out of the Black Acts, whisk my cane round my head three times, undo all the magic of this night's work, and conjure Harry Bertram ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... do; and if very glad to see you on meeting, they are not likely to say so in words; but they cherish warm emotions under a hard crust of reserve and shyness, and lavish all their wealth of affection on the little band collected within the magic circle of Home. Said an American who had spent two years as a public lecturer throughout Great Britain: "Circumstances have introduced me favorably to the intimacy and regard of many English families, and I can scarcely recollect one which was not in its own sphere, a model household." My own opportunities ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... year, and the latter snow had been light, while steady dry weather followed it, and there were times when I felt that I should have given several years of my life for rain. It came, and, though there was not much of it, as if by magic tender grain stood a handbreadth above the black loam, while I watched it lengthen daily with my heart in my eyes, and I grew feverishly anxious about the weather. Many things depended on the success of that crop. Then suddenly it was summer, the hottest summer for ten seasons, our neighbors ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... elevated in society, come every week to pass long hours with the miserable prisoners. Observing in these degraded beings the least aspiration after virtue, the least regret for a past crime, they encourage the better tendencies and repentance; and, by the powerful magic of the words "duty," "honor," "virtue," sometimes they rescue from the depths of degradation one abandoned, despised, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... progressive. The world has emerged from its blindness and ignorance by the innate force of the mind. Reason, the great magician, has uplifted its wand; and lo, the creatures of night disappear! It has dispelled the foolish old notions of magic, witchcraft, and miracles. It has overcome the spirit of persecution, the childish conception of original sin, and the doctrine of eternal punishment. It has put an end to bull-baiting, cock-fighting, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... for which John Ruskin had been feeling all these years. No wonder that he took Turner for his leader and master, and fondly tried to copy the wonderful "Alps at Daybreak" to begin with, and then to imitate this new-found magic art with his own subjects and finally to come boldly before the world in passionate defence of a man who had done such great things ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... heavenly to Meredith to hear this intimate revelation from her lips, always so shy of expressing her need of him. It was a great advance in the right direction, and his skies cleared as by magic. If absence truly made the heart grow fonder, he would have no cause of complaint against this short parting. It was the greater one in the spring, the shadow of which was already darkening his horizon, that ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... portion,—a tomb, a place for his dead,—and a more beautiful description of a scene of mutual deference, of regard for rights and respect for character and position, was never penned than that which records the negotiation between the bereaved patriarch and the children of Heth. With the touch of magic, the whole scene is before us. The bereaved patriarch, courteous in grief, bowing in the presence of the sons of Heth,—the deep respect, the kindly sympathy, manifested by those who, strangers to his religion, felt the claims of his character,—mingled with that deep awe which the visitation ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... through the lungs, and the crumbs and solid dirt down and out by means of the food tube. But the waste water—how does she get rid of that? The waste water, you remember, is in the blood vessels, mixed with the blood. How does she get it out of the blood? She sends it through three magic cleaners, or strainers,—the skin, ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... collected about them other members of the searching party, who stuck their heads out of ports and doors now and then to see that no evil magic had ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... squares. From the window of our hotel (which looked into the Place Royale) I saw a juggler displaying his art to a crowd, who stood in a regular square about him, none pretending to press nearer than the prescribed limit. While the juggler wrought his miracles his wife supplied him with his magic materials out of a box; and when the exhibition was over she packed up the white cloth with which his table was covered, together with cups, cards, balls, and whatever else, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thereupon sent Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, provided with a magic chain and ring, upon both of which the name of God was engraved. He also provided him with a fleece of wool and sundry skins with wine. Then Benaiah went and sank a pit below that of Ashmedai, into which he drained off the water and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... must not think of reciprocity as obtaining in the succession of cause and effect, as if the effect could turn back upon its cause; for as the effect arises its cause disappears, and is irrecoverable by Nature or Magic. There are many cases of rhythmic change and of moving equilibria, in which one movement or process produces another, and this produces something closely resembling the former, and so on in long series; as with the swing of a pendulum or the orbit of a planet: but these are series of cause ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... activity. Hence the dramatic representations to which I have referred, the performance, for instance, of such a drama as the Rishyacringa, the ceremonial 'marriages,' and other exercises of what we now call sympathetic magic. To quote a well-known passage from Sir J. G. Frazer: "They commonly believed that the tie between the animal and vegetable world was even closer than it really is—to them the principle of life and fertility, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... gold, friendship and women! Now I stand alone—poor, deserted—with a pair of long ears and without my magic ring! Had I known that life was so utterly ignoble, I should have stayed at home with the witch. Where shall I turn to now—without friends, without money, without house and home? Trouble awaits me ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... exception of a single groan, which I gave on first seeing the object, I found that if one word would save my life, or transport me to my own fireside, I could not utter it. I was also rooted to the earth, as if by magic; and although instant tergiversation and flight had my most hearty concurrence, I could not move a limb, nor even raise my eyes off the sepulchral-looking object which lay before me. I now felt the perspiration ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... eye glance which hath magic might; * Wherever turn those orbs it bars our flight: Nor be deceived by low sweet voice, that breeds * A fever festering in the heart and sprite: So soft that silky skin, were rose to touch it * She'd cry and tear-drops rain for pain and fright: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and laid the foundations of the home in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. The word 'Susquehanna' had a magic sound to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley delivered his farewell discourse. April 6 he passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex Street, and a day later went to Gravesend. For the details of the journey one must go ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... grey beard and a gaze that peered anxiously through a settling blindness. Thirty acres—eight dollars an acre. P. Ville was a swarthy foreigner, called, in Greenstream, the Portugee; every crop he planted grew as if by magic. Old Matthew Zane would endeavor to borrow from Gordon the money with which to repurchase the option ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... aged wizard said, "For what cause hath thy Gerald parted? I cannot lend my mystic aid, Except to lovers, faithful hearted; My magic wand would lose its might— I could not read my spells aright— All skill would from my soul depart, If I should aid the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... into the religious beliefs of all countries and all ages, prove to the world that the hopes we now embody were born with the human races. Chaldea, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, the Moors, have transmitted from one to another Magic, the highest of all the occult sciences, which holds within it, as a precious deposit the fruits of the studies of each generation. In it lay the tie that bound the grand and majestic institution of the Templars. Sire, when one of your predecessors burned the Templars, he ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Senator was the pioneer, charging sixteen dollars a passage, and actually coining money. Other boats were built, out of materials which had either come around Cape Horn or were brought from the Sandwich Islands. Wharves were built, houses were springing up as if by magic, and the Bay of San Francisco presented as busy a scene of life as any part of the world. Major Allen, of the Quartermaster's Department, who had come out as chief-quartermaster of the division, was building a large warehouse ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and repeats somewhat tediously the story of his visit to Scotland. He gives a synopsis of all the sciences he had ever studied—Theology, Dialectics, Arithmetic, Music, Optics, Astronomy, Astrology, Geometry, Chiromancy, Agriculture, Medicine, passing on to treat of Magic, portents and warnings, and of his own experience of the same at the crucial moments of his life. He ends by a reference to an incident already chronicled in the De Vita Propria,[175] how he escaped death or injury from a falling ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... to watch him. But one evening, while the magician was standing upon the top of the highest tower of his castle, the boy gave him a push from behind, and he met death on the sharp rocks below. Then the boy took his master's book of magic and found a recipe to make one grow. He made the mixture and swallowed it, and straightway began to grow big and tall. This greatly delighted him, until he found he was getting much bigger than the average man and rapidly becoming a giant. ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... years ago, but cannot recollect the authority, "That, when Alexander besieged a certain city in India, the Brachmans, by the power of magic, raised a cloud of smoke around the walls, whence broke frequent flashes of lightning, with thunder, and the thunderbolts slew many of his soldiers." This would infer the very ancient use of fire-arms of some kind ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... are often disinterred along the coast." The merit of those artists lay in perfect imitation of natural objects, such as birds, fishes, fruits, plants, skulls, persons in various positions, faces (often with graphic individuality). Some jars exactly resembled the "magic vases" which are still found in Hindustan, and can be emptied only when held at a ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... this! The silent and shattered walls of Wagner all at once burst forth into a blinding sheet of vivid light, as though they had suddenly been transformed by some magic power into the living, seething crater of a volcano! Down came the whirlwind of destruction along the beach with the swiftness of lightning! How fearfully the hissing shot, the shrieking bombs, the whistling bars of iron, and the whispering bullet struck and crushed through the dense masses of ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... and the next moment Cinderella produced the other from her pocket! Once more she stood in the slippers, and once more the sisters saw before them the lovely Princess who was to be the Prince's bride. For at the touch of the magic shoes the little gray frock disappeared forever, and in place of it she wore the beautiful robe the fairy Godmother had given ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... flee before the terrors thus conjured up within her mind, they left her as if by magic the moment her straining eyes distinguished the approach of a dim figure without. She could not tell who it was, only that it was the unmistakable form of a man, and that he was whistling softly to himself. It might not prove to be the gambler, but she must accept the chance, for flesh ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... Easter morning, and the good sunrise of a perfect spring made radiant the high hill above the town. Rosy-fingered morn touched with magic colour the masts and scattered sails of the ships upon the great river, and spires and towers quivered with rainbow light. The city was waking cheerfully, though the only active life was in the pealing bells and on the deep flowing rivers. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... contrasts too sharp and unvaried. But from four o'clock on the light mellows, the shadows become long and sweeping, the outdoor effects grow more and more beautiful. It is as if the first hint of sunset were the signal for ringing down a magic curtain on a scene where nature herself was pageant mistress. This is true of all outdoor plays ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... shadows; the beautiful contrasts of unusual shades of colour which are always differing and shifting with the changing sunshine and the ever moving position of the aerial observer. Ah! for some better pen than mine to describe these things! One with glowing words and a magic rhythm to express the wonders of the air and the beauty of the garden beneath—the immensity of the sea—the sense of space and of one's littleness there—the realization of the Power moving the multitudes below—the exaltation of spirit altitude produces—the ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... surrounded by careful ritual. The manifestations of sex were the least intelligible and the most spontaneous. Therefore the things of sex were those that most lent themselves to feelings of horror and awe, of impurity and of purity. They seemed so highly charged with magic potency that there were no things that men more sought to avoid, yet none to which they were impelled to give more thought. The manifold echoes of that primitive conception of sex, and all the violent reactions that were thus evolved and ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... close shut beneath a roof, Knows not the night, the tranquil spell, The stillness of the wildwood ouphe, The magic dropped on moor and fell. No cool dew soothes its fiery shell, Nor any star, a red sardel, Swings painted there as in a well. Dyed like a stream of muscadel No white-skinned snake coils in its cup To drink its soul of sweetness up, A honeyed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... seamanlike foes. Like Russell, he completely destroyed the enemy fleet; but he never had Russell's advantage in numbers. We might go on with other reasons yet; but we shall only give two more: first, that magic touch of his warm heart which made his captains "like a band of brothers," which made the bluejackets who carried his coffin treasure up torn bits of the pall as most precious relics, and which made the Empire mourn him as a friend; ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... connection with a stroke of good luck. Sometimes the thing—an odd-shaped stone, say—had a superficial resemblance to a desirable object, and so was thought likely to aid in the acquisition of such objects by 'sympathetic magic.' {117b} ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... was, and besides it would be shabby to give the whole thing away too exactly, don't you know; and he would tell Hayward how he had seen her first in her pretty muslin dress and of the flower she had given him. He made a delicate idyl of it: the sunshine and the sea gave it passion and magic, and the stars added poetry, and the old vicarage garden was a fit and exquisite setting. There was something Meredithian about it: it was not quite Lucy Feverel and not quite Clara Middleton; but it was inexpressibly charming. Philip's heart ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... often think of Shandon bells, Whose sounds so wild would in days of childhood Fling round my cradle their magic spells, On this I ponder where'er I wander, And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee; With the bells of Shandon That sound so grand ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... growing indignation at the audacity of the stranger. Only the petrification of absolute astonishment, and wonder as to what would happen next, took her off her guard for the moment and prevented her from ousting the young lady from the premises instantly. There was also the magic name of the handsome young gentleman that had been used as password, and the very slight possibility that this might be some rich relative of the lovely young patient that she would not like to ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... enthusiastic admiration of Halle had inspired her with a desire to cultivate a more classic style of pianoforte-playing. So in her English reading, each new book blotted out its predecessor. Travels, histories, essays, biographies, flitted across the lady's brain like the coloured shadows of a magic-lantern, leaving only a lingering patch of picture here and there. To be versatile was Lady Laura's greatest pride, and courteous friends had gratified her by treating her as an authority upon all possible subjects. Nothing ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... this we are certain, that, when this good old gentleman enters a room, there is a warmth and brightness in his very presence, that causes you to look round, half expecting to see the tables and chairs throwing their shadows along the floor, as if, by the power of magic, a window had suddenly been opened in the wall to let in the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... did not know me and we mutually terrified each other. I fully expected to get killed by the local nobility and gentry; they thought I was connected with the World's Women's Temperance Association, and collecting shocking details for subsequent magic-lantern lectures on the liquor traffic; so fearful misunderstandings arose, but we gradually educated each other, and I had the best of the affair; for all I had got to teach them was that I was only a beetle and fetish hunter, and so forth, while they had to teach me a new world, and a very fascinating ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the careless indulgence of mothers is responsible for the ruin of their sons. If mothers were as watchful of their sons as of their daughters, the magic chain of mother love would be far more binding to their boys. There are homes in this city where at night you can hear the mothers say to servants: "Are the clothes in off the line; did you bring the broom and the pitcher from the porch; are the blinds all down; are the girls in bed; ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... great deal of time so. Well, so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in the circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all magic and border chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto, stopped a minute and drank something, and then began without a thought ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... a man be ever shadowed by the vampire wing of his past? Have I not a right to be happy? Money, estate, name, are mine, all that means an open sesame to the magic door. Others go in, but I beat against its flinty portals with hands that bleed. No! I have no right to be happy. The ways of the world are open; the banquet of life is spread; the wonder-workers plan their pageants ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... a thousand orange-blossoms, and of locusts, honey-sweet, and he begins to think himself enchanted. He feels the dark, old houses are unreal, as if, instead of cobble-stones beneath his feet, there must be the soft and tender grass of Araby the Blest. Such is the magic of a trade, the perfume industry of Grasse that for so many hundreds of years has made her meanest streets full of ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... deceiver. Nicodemus followed for the defence. Then Annas for the prosecution. He said: "The voice of God is the voice of the people." He was followed by Joseph, who maintained that the wonders performed by Christ were not done by magic, they were miracles; that is he was not a magician, he was the Son of ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... accordance with his deposition or his resumption of these spectacles, seems to me to be childish to a degree, and tends towards turning this simple tale into a kind of fairy story, in which the spectacles play the part of a magic potion or charm, such as Mr. W. S. GILBERT would use in his Creatures of Impulse, his Fogarty's Fairy, and his Sorcerer, whenever he wishes to bring about a sudden and otherwise inexplicable transition from one ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... purchased from its holder. This fetish, the palladium of the island, was in one point remarkable—a very ordinary shell in a perfectly new box of native make. Why it was thought "great medicine" and ignorantly worshipped, the pale-face student of magic and religion could not understand. However, it was the Luck of the island, and when it crossed the sea to Europe a pestilence of measles fell on the native population. There was no manifest connection ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not in the house, but Amelia was. The old folks had gone to a Magic Lantern in the schoolroom, and Amelia ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... the magic carpet of the Eastern story, carried him back to a rambling old grey mansion, clothed with a great magnolia and many roses, standing in old-time gardens, and shrubberies of laurel and ilex and Spanish chestnut, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... him sometimes. But, alas, that could not be, for the king had given strict orders that the sentinels posted at the city gates should allow "no fairy bodies" in. Even the very last of the kind was, by a new law, banished to far-distant fairyland. "No more magic wands, no more wonders nowadays," sighed poor Caspar; "nothing can be won but by hard and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... good a fairy as I want to see," said her grandfather, passing his arm fondly round her. "She carries a ray of sunshine in her right hand; and that's as magic-working a wand as any ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... "My studies in Magic were never carried very far, your Majesties," protested the Astrologer, wriggling uncomfortably. "I—I did very little at it. And, even before it was decreed that all enchanters and sorcerers should either leave the Kingdom or take up some other ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... temper that I hadn't learned to keep in hand those days, and I nearly killed him. I had nothing but contempt for him, anyway, because even then, when he wasn't quite twenty, he was a woman hunter, preying on silly girls. I don't know what his magic with women is, but it works, until they find him out. He was playing off two or three fool girls that I knew and at the same time keeping a woman in apartments down-town,—a girl he'd picked up on a trip to Georgia,—like ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... had got through with the high kicking, and all gone off, except one girl, a gipsy, who was going to sing a song, and then a bell would ring and the whole stage effects would change as if by magic. When she had got to the end of her song and had waltzed off to the left, we got up and walked down in front, and took one of a whole row of vacant seats, put on our spectacles, and were ready. Do you know, every cuss in that audience ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... then, with all thy most irresistible blandishments, thou young and happy Bride! What business have we to prophesy bedimming tears to those resplendent eyes? or that the talisman of that witching smile can ever lose its magic? Are not the high-born daughters of England also the high-souled? And have not honour and virtue, and charity and religion, guarded for centuries the lofty line of thy pure and unpolluted blood? Joyful, therefore, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and resolve. We see, after ages of your oppression, the unquenchable desire for Irish independence blaze forth anew, and as it sweeps along the cities and prairies of this vast continent it gathers within its magic influence five millions of Irish hearts and twice five millions of friends of freedom and foes of despotism! Arise, then, my countrymen! Nerve yourselves for the struggle so nobly commenced. Cast aside ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... know Gideon Vetch through his look and manner as well as he should have known another man after weeks or months of daily intercourse. Whatever the man's private life, whatever his political faults may have been, there was magic in the clasp of his hand and the cordial glow of his smile. He was always responsive; he stood always on the same level, high or low, with his companion of the moment: he was as incapable of looking up as he was of looking down; he was equally without reverence and without ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... blind Shaykh, a cripple, who is knowing, wise as a wizard and experienced; and all resort to him and ask him what they require, when he counsels them what will be their advantage; for he is versed in craft[FN248] and magic and trickery. Now he is a sharper and the sharpers resort to him by night; therefore, I repeat, go thou to his lodging and hide thyself from thine adversaries, so thou mayst hear what they say, unseen of them; for he telleth them which party got the better and which got the worse; and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... resolved upon the abolition of lotteries. It felt that it was dealing a stab thereby at property. The pickpocket, the blackleg, and the charlatan make especial use of their dexterity of hand, their subtlety of mind, the magic power of their eloquence, and their great fertility of invention. Sometimes they offer bait to cupidity. Therefore the penal code—which much prefers intelligence to muscular vigor—has made, of the four varieties mentioned above, a second category, liable ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon |
