"Magically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the girl, now night had fallen—that wondrous velvet night of Arizona, which blots out garish day with a cloak of violet, purple-edged where the hills rise vaguely in the distance, and softens magically all harsh details beneath the starry vault—she slipped out to the summit of the ridge in the big pasture, climbing lightly, with the springy ease born of the vigor her nineteen outdoor years had stored in the strong ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... of what? Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life? Or does she listen to the Ghost's Walk and think what step does it most resemble? A man's? A woman's? The pattering of a little child's feet, ever coming on—on—on? Some melancholy influence is upon her, or why should so proud a lady ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... is absent, the characters he has cut in the glass will, the poet hopes, magically defend his mistress against the seductive entreaties of ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... at the bidding of the capitalistic classes, had plunged the people of the nation." Then in ten words he introduced the speaker, and as the speaker raised his arms above his head invoking quiet, there fell, magically, a quick, deep, breathless hush ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... high bicycle, sherry, Moody and Sankey, the Crystal Palace, Labouchere, "Pigs in Clover," Lottie Collins, Evolution, Bimetallism: hosts of forgotten images, names and shibboleths came popping out from the brain's dusty pigeon-holes, magically released by the spectacle ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... such an hour, and it comes to every one of us, think upon the vast world outside, and the walls so magically built will as magically fall. God's sunshine is there, and God's fresh air, to think upon which, with the companies of men and women who walk up and down in it and are fair, is the most sovereign ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... animals and human beings who have been magically transformed into different kinds ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... fascinating exercise in contortion. She was entranced by the wash-room with its hot and cold water and its basin of apparent silver, whose contents did not have to be lifted and splashed into a slop-jar, but magically emptied themselves at ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... explosion into Venice as it rose statelily from the rippling lustre. Around it wove the black riders with still, communicating prows, so buoyant, so mysteriously alive and peering, like some superior sea creatures risen magically from below the frayed reflection of the station lights. Much as Peter felt that he owed to the vivid presence of the girl, his new capacity to see and feel it so as it burst upon them, he hadn't found the courage ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... flashed across the doctor's vision magically. The emerald wings, slashed with scarlet and yellow, wheeling and swooping about her head, ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... who had so magically turned the tempest into dead calm, as our old and dear Corneille puts it, had modestly retreated to the half-shadow of his pillar, and would, no doubt, have remained invisible there, motionless, and mute as before, had he not been ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... collector. Now these visionaries—at least the true ones—honour each other according to the degree of "eye" that each possesses. By "eye" the collector means a faculty of discerning a fine object quickly and instinctively. And, in fact, the trained eye becomes a magically fine instrument. It detects the fractions of a millimetre by which a copy belies its original. In colours it distinguishes nuances that a moderately trained vision will declare non-existent. Nor is the trained collector ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Aladdin's palaces the Institute had sprung up—not exactly in a night, but in a marvellously short space of time. There was more of interest about it, too, than about the Aladdin buildings; for whereas the latter were evolved magically out of that mysterious and undefinable region termed Nowhere, the Miss Robinson edifice came direct from smoky, romantic London, without the advantage ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... thoughts were in the mind of the writer. Just so, a dream or a story or any other situation may be used to open the locked doors of a life, but to say that the dream has slipped stealthily out of the keyholes and over the transoms and wonderfully, mysteriously and magically clothed itself is quite ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... fertility supposed to follow the application of fire in the form of bonfires, torches, discs, rolling wheels, and so forth, is not conceived as resulting directly from an increase of solar heat which the fire has magically generated; it is merely an indirect result obtained by freeing the reproductive powers of plants and animals from the fatal obstruction of witchcraft. And what is true of the reproduction of plants and animals may hold good also of the fertility of the human sexes. The bonfires are supposed to promote ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... yellow saffron suffused with sage green. Against this singularly lovely, ample "cloth" branches and leaves of steadfast trees stood out in high relief. All the lower levels became transparently clear, the definition of distant objects magically sharpened, spaces translucent. In a sea which shone like polished silver the islet was a gem—green enamel, amethyst rocks, golden sand. The bold white trunks of giant tea-trees glowed; the creamy blooms of bloodwoods ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... festooned with bunches of garlic, with flowers, with lumps of lard, with little flags and ribbons, with garlands of caruba beans and with vetch. The flags, the ribbons, the flowers and the feathers were, I suppose, for gaiety and festa—pour faire la frime—but garlic has some magically beneficent properties; not only does it avert the evil eye, it is also a symbol of robust health, so that instead of replying to "How do you do?" by saying "As right as rain," they reply, "As right as ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... speaking, purification from the guilt of offences against the ritual law; it was also part of the initiation of proselytes, and had been largely practised by John the Forerunner. But in no case did any Jew think that washing could change, sacramentally or magically, the nature of man. A Greek on the other hand, brought up in the atmosphere of the mysteries, might well have thought so. The same is true of the other constituent element in primitive Christian Baptism—the formula "in the {85} name of the Lord Jesus." There is no reason ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... property that there was no pretence of a marriage in law. He and Theresa were on profoundly uncomfortable terms about this time,[150] and Rousseau is not the only person by many thousands who has deceived himself into thinking that some form of words between man and woman must magically transform the substance of their characters and lives, and conjure up new ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... and a myriad of earthy odors rose up and encircled them. Snipe and reed birds were noisy in the hollows and from the misty tundra lakes came the honking of brant. After their weary weeks on shipboard, the dewy freshness livened them magically, cleansing from their memories the recent tragedy, so that the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... looking all round me in the surprise of the moment, as if I had expected to see the title magically inscribed for us on ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... probably have no less than four homes open to her. The fact is, if you should put Polly on a desert island, the bees and the butterflies and the birds would gather about her; she draws everything and everybody to her magically. Then, too, she is not penniless. Rents are low, and she cannot hope to get quite as much for the house as before, but even counting repairs, taxes, and furnishings, we think she is reasonably certain of ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... raised her above a velvet scented sea of wall-flowers which ran in regular waves beneath the apple-trees, under murmuring of many bees. The blossom above Joan's head was all a lacework of sunny rose and cream; and the sun painted glorious russet harmonies below, glinted magically in the green and white above, turned the gray lichens, which clustered on the weather side of the trunks and boughs, to silver. The glory of life here always heartened Joan. She felt the immortality of Nature, who, from naked earth and barren boughs, thus at the sun's smile splendidly awakened, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... regard their possession as a treasure of great price, a sort of reservoir of spiritual force,[132] which can be turned to account not only in battle by worsting the enemy, but in various other ways, such as by magically increasing the food supply. For instance, when a man of the grass-seed totem wishes to increase the supply of grass-seed in order that it may be eaten by people of other totems, he goes to the sacred store-house, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... may—though by a fluke—have left a quantity of money to your widow, but her sole skill is to spend it. She has heard that there is such a thing as investing money. She tries to invest it. But, bless you, you never said a word to her about that, and the money vanishes now as magically as it once magically ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... grades—misdeeds that blackened the pages of other teachers' deportment books—somehow managed to reach the door of Miss Georgiana's room without being dismissed from the school by the principal. Once having entered the favored portal, their characters seemed to change magically. ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... wallet. "However, we have a certain leeway on expenses on this assignment and appreciate your co-operation." He handed two twenties and a ten to the maitre d'. Fredrick bowed low, the money disappearing into his clothes magically. "Merci bien, monsieur." ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... about the sculptures of Jean Goujon and Carpeaux, or about the marvellous harmony of the East facade! But a flick of the cane towards the half-hidden moulding! And George had felt with a thrill what an exquisite curve and what an original curve and what a modest curve that curve was. Suddenly and magically his eyes had been opened. Or it might have been that a deceitful mist had rolled away and the real Louvre been revealed in its esoteric and ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... enormous pine, they took the decanter, filled their glasses, and then disposed of themselves comfortably against a spreading root. The curling tail of a squirrel disappeared behind them; the far-off tap of a woodpecker accented the loneliness. And then, almost magically as it seemed, the thin veneering of civilization on the two men seemed to be cast off like the bark of the trees around them, and they lounged before each other in aboriginal freedom. Mr. Byers removed his restraining duster and undercoat. Mr. Langworthy resigned his dirty white jacket, his ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... every day and bear away the bravest among the slain. These warriors are entertained at his table with heavenly mead, and encouraged to keep up their strength and skill by cutting and hewing each other, their wounds healing magically as soon as made. ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... being unable to pursue, dealt magically with some rocky ridges, which then rushed over ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... they had great disinclination, and no more to direct Lizer's greasy fingers over the yellow keys of that demented piano in a vain endeavour to teach her "choones", of which her mother expected her to learn on an average two daily, it seemed as though I had a mountain lifted off me, and I revived magically, got out of bed and packed ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... when the germ appears of an intellect that can foresee an end not immediately realised, or rather when a desire arises that we feel and recognise as not satisfied, then comes in the sense of will and the impulse magically to intensify that will. The animal it would seem is preserved by instinct from drawing into his horizon things which do not immediately subserve the conservation of his species. But the moment man's life-power began to make on the outside world demands not immediately ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... this fascinating book has headed the list of best sellers. It has been made twice as a movie, once a silent picture and only recently as a talkie, but it has remained for the distinguished dramatist, Alice Chadwicke, to make the first and only dramatization of this magically beautiful story. Green Gables is the home of lovable Matthew Cuthbert and his stern sister, Marilla Cuthbert. Nobody suspects that beneath her hard exterior there lurks a soft and tender heart. When Matthew, after a great deal of reflection, finally decides to adopt an ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... tips of the spruce, now seen to be rather close at hand, shone a slender, silver crescent moon, darkening, hiding, shining again, climbing until its exquisite sickle-point topped the trees, and then, magically, it cleared them, radiant and cold. While the eastern black wall shaded still blacker, the park blanched and the border-line opposite began ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... daily recurrence the thought developed: it enlarged to the whimsical notion that here, on his bicycle on the road, he was magically escaped out of his two worlds, not belonging to or responsible to either of his two worlds, which amounted to delicious detachment from all the universe. A mysteriously aloof, free, irresponsible attitude of mind was thus obtained: it was a condition in which—as ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... shall see Azoth, viz. the Catholick [or Universal] Mercury of Philosophers; which alone, with the Internal and External Fire, yet with Sympathetick Harmony, with Olympick Fire (by reason of inevitable necessity) Physico-magically united, will suffice thee for obtaining our ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... one end of the room. It came from a fine-looking old lady who stood near the window surrounded, it would seem by admiring satellites, and at the little musical sound Mrs. Graham Woods Bartlett's face cleared magically, for the stately old lady was a very important personage to all present, envied usually too, and if this little incident seemed to amuse her then the matter was beautifully altered. So Mrs. Graham Woods Bartlett found her voice. "Go out ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... of the ring was now the worthy archbishop, and to him the magically inspired affections of Charlemagne were transferred, much to the good man's annoyance. To rid himself of the unwelcome attentions and fulsome flatteries of his sovereign, he cast the ring into the lake which surrounded the castle. Once more the Emperor's affections changed their object, and ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... fearing yet adoring him. Nothing could have been more unlike the Amherst she fancied she knew than this act of irrational anger which had magically lifted the darkness from his spirit; yet, magically also, it gave him back to her, made them one flesh once more. And suddenly the pressure of opposed emotions became too strong, and she ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... the hasty departure was magically diffused. Amy said afterward that she began to understand what they meant when they talked about wireless telegraphy. For as the stage rattled and bumped along the dusty highway the next morning, figures appeared at the windows, handkerchiefs ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... voluptuous character, but not very charming; also two or more by Guido, one of which, representing Fortune, is celebrated. They did not impress me much, nor do I find myself strongly drawn towards Guido, though there is no other painter who seems to achieve things so magically and inscrutably as he sometimes does. Perhaps it requires a finer taste than mine to appreciate him; and yet I do appreciate him so far as to see that his Michael, for instance, is perfectly beautiful. . . . . In the gallery, there are whole rows of portraits ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I was coming down-stairs again there was another ring at the door. And my mother appeared magically out of the kitchen, but I was beforehand with her, and with a laugh I insisted on opening the front door myself this time. A young woman stood ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... an extra quantity of kindling wood. He was housed, and fed, and clothed, after a fashion, but not loved. Mr. Shackford did not ill-treat the lad, in the sense of beating him; he merely neglected him. Every year the man became more absorbed in his law cases and his money, which accumulated magically. He dwelt in a cloud of calculations. Though all his interests attached him to the material world, his dry, attenuated body seemed scarcely a ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... accents she besought him to be patient with her, he softened magically and for the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... his body, furious, though somewhat disheartened at seeing their champion come to grief; but they had to deal with a blade that had kept half a dozen Hungarian swordsmen at bay, and, with point or edge, it met them every where, magically. They were drawing back, when Delaney, recovering from the first effects of his fearful wound, crawled forward, gasping out curses that seemed floating on the torrent of his rushing blood, and tried to grasp Mohun by the knees ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... man running along the shore. He was undressing with most remarkable speed. Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magically ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... stood pressed closely against the book-shelves, against the book-shelves which magically had grown up in front of the door by which he had entered. He was in the place of books and roses—in the haunt ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... panic, the result of her interview with the Guatemalan general at the apartment house, vanished magically. She sat down at this unexpected friend's ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular as ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... it out, nor trouble himself long with the effort. Mrs Pipchin was again beside him, if she had ever been away (he thought she had gone out with the Doctor, but it was all a dream perhaps), and presently a bottle and glass got into her hands magically, and she poured out the contents for him. After that, he had some real good jelly, which Mrs Blimber brought to him herself; and then he was so well, that Mrs Pipchin went home, at his urgent solicitation, and Briggs and Tozer came to bed. Poor ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... were with us today, he could look back and tell us of the day when he, too, was sure that stammering was but a trifle. He, too, could point out the tune when he felt that sometime, somehow, his stammering would magically depart and leave him free to talk as others talked. And yet, having gone down the road through a long life of usefulness, Kingsley's is the voice of a mature experience which says to every stammerer: "Beware—there are pitfalls ahead!" ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... But not a soldier to apply the match to the batteries of cannon, not a sailor to assist in maneuvering the fleet, not a shepherd for the flocks. After the ruin of the village, and the destruction of the forts which dominated it, a ruin and a destruction operated magically without the co-operation of a single human being, the flame was extinguished, the smoke began to descend, then diminished in intensity, paled, and disappeared entirely. Night then came over the scene; a night ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... made immediate preparations for chastising the audacious Beggars of Zeeland and their, pedantic young commander, but no sooner had the Spaniards taken the field than the wily foe had disappeared as magically as he had come. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... doors parted softly. Owen and Balthazar, with their new escort, stepped through. For a moment, Wallace waited. Then he drew back the other lever, and the departing guests found as they reached the end of the secret passage, that their path opened, almost magically before them, in the hushed unfolding of ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... the tall, young cook, lean, tanned, and with an ugly triangle of fresh sunburn under his left shoulder-blade, where his shirt had been torn with a thorn that day. He loosed the aparejos and mantas, containing the kitchen-kit; almost magically a fire was started. Water was heating a moment later and slabs of bacon began to writhe.... Savage as he was from hunger, it was marvellously colorful to the fresh-eyed Cairns—his first view of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... flat or almost flat upon the sea. All showed ivory beach, vivid wood, surrounding water, transparent and heavenly blue, inhabited by magically colored fish. When we dropped anchor, took boat and landed, it was to find the same astonished folk, naked, harmless, holding us for gods, bringing all they had, eager for our toys which were to them king's treasures and ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... and lo! I was succeeding! He turned the page with the incredible rapidity and dexterity of which only great pianists seem to have the secret, and in conjunction with my air in the bass he was suddenly, magically, drawing out from the upper notes the sweetest and most intoxicating melody I had ever heard. The exceeding beauty of the thing laid hold on me, and I abandoned myself to it. I felt sure now that, at any rate, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... blazing at their crests, the valleys dark and cool. In the east the limb of the sun was just rearing itself, the air was heady with the scent of growing things, and so clear that the distances were magically shortened; a certain wild, intoxicating exuberance surcharged the out-of- doors. But to the stiff and wearied Eastern lad it was all cruelly mocking. When he halted listlessly to view its beauties he was goaded forward, ever forward, faster and faster, until finally, amid protests ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... significance to her intelligence. Victor himself, for that matter, was a figure without real consequence other than as a symbol of the old order, the tedious old ways of the world from which she had magically escaped. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... approaching, so they ate the fine supper which the Wizard magically produced from the kettle and then went to bed in ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... veil come?" The clouds vanished magically from Fairy's face, and she leaned forward with that joy of wedding anticipation ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... earl, "aren't the twins loathsome? But tell me, can you shoot that thing as magically as ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... returned that afternoon he was startled to find the cabin empty. But instead of bearing any appearance of disturbance or hurried flight, the rude interior seemed to have magically assumed a decorous order and cleanliness unknown before. Fresh bark hid the inequalities of the floor. The skins and blankets were folded in the corners, the rude shelves were carefully arranged, even a few tall ferns and bright but quickly fading ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... was finally tried, sentenced, and led out to execution, with the scimitar about to descend, when of a sudden—he drew his head out of the water. And lo! all these marvels had passed in a second! What if there were to be magically crowded into those few hours all that could possibly be seen—sea and land, old towns in different countries, strange people, cathedrals, town-halls, streets, etc.? It would be like some wild, fitful dream. And on the Friday I would draw my head, as it were, out of the tub. ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... Happily, an inhabitant of the kitchen made more despatch: a lusty dame, with tucked- up gown, bare arms, and fire-flushed cheeks, rushed into the midst of us flourishing a frying-pan: and used that weapon, and her tongue, to such purpose, that the storm subsided magically, and she only remained, heaving like a sea after a high wind, when her master ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... establishing such a system of communication that news and gossip are the common property of all nations. We have gone farther. We have established in every large region of population a system of voice-nerves that puts every man at every other man's ear, and which so magically eliminates the factor of distance that the United States becomes three thousand miles ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... donkey, and the peasant at his plough, appeal to you so as to make, as it were, an exquisite pattern on your soul, then you may begin to find excuses for yourself. But you may see places long and often before they are thus magically revealed to you, and for myself I caught the real emotion of Granada but once, when from the Generalife I looked over the valley, the Generalife in which are mingled perhaps more admirably than anywhere else in Andalusia all the charm of Arabic ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Stork's Leg, supporting a nautilus shell, containing the fragments of a bird's egg; into which, was said to have been magically decanted the soul of a deceased chief. (Unfortunately crushed in by ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the full moon rose as it rises nowhere but over Texan or Asian plains; golden, glorious, seeming to fill the whole heaven and the whole earth with an unspeakable radiance; softly glowing, exquisitely, magically beautifying. The commonest thing under it was transfigured into something lovely, fantastic, fairylike. And the dullest souls swelled and rose like the tides ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... lofty and solemn view, he indulged in some wild story of native humour, which convulsed the whole audience with laughter. Yet, before the burst had subsided, he touched another string of that harp which so magically responded to the master's hand. He described the long career of calamity through which an individual born with a glowing heart, brilliant faculties, and an aspiring spirit, must struggle, in a country filled with the pride of independence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... it only to the sesame of a sad voice those portals spring magically back? But for his sake she must needs pause on the threshold of attainment, and stifle that ambition which of itself precluded consideration of a calm, uneventful existence. She was young and full of courage, but the pathos of his years ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... quite mad. I happen to be having just one gleam of sanity, that won't last after I have finished this letter. I suppose when an individual man goes mad and gets out of the window because he imagines the door is magically impossible, and dances about in the street without his trousers jabbing at passers-by with a toasting-fork, he has just the same sombre sense of unavoidable necessity that we have, all of us, when we go off with our packs into ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... It was magically, mystically beautiful over all this squalor and toil and bitterness, from five till seven-a moving hour. Again the falling sun streamed in broad banners across the valleys; again the blue mist lay far down the coulee over the river; the cattle called from ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... streamed long, golden rays from out the heart of that glory upon which no human eye may look. The angry wind had fallen to quiet, and higher up, floating in a sea of purest violet, those despised and flouted rags of clouds were seen, magically changed to ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was told to Kohl by 'an old insignificant squaw among the Ojibways.' {80a} Here we have a precise parallel to the tale of Bheki, the frog-bride, and here the reason of the prohibition to touch water is made perfectly unmistakable. The touch magically revived the bride's old animal life with the beavers. Or was the Indian name for beaver (temakse) once a name for the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... two heads pretty close together; one consequence being that the seed-plant of sympathy was "forced" a good deal, and developed somewhat after the fashion of those plants which Hindoo jugglers cause magically to sprout, blossom, and bloom before the very eyes of astonished beholders—with this difference, however, that whereas the development of the jugglers is deceptive as well as quick, that of our botanists was genuine and ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... discovered here and there as the days passed. We named our new home the "Sunshine" apartment and assured each other that we were very well pleased, and when one morning as I set out for the office I noticed that the lower halls and stairway had suddenly taken on an air of spruce tidiness—had been magically transformed over night, as it were—I was so elated that I returned to point these things out to the Little Woman. She came down to the door with me and agreed that it was quite wonderful, and added the final touch to our satisfaction. She added that it ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... like an ordeal was occasionally imposed. The very fragmentary condition of the texts which give it adds to its obscurity. But it appears to have consisted in the litigant being compelled to eat a mina weight of some magically concocted food and to drink the contents of an inscribed bowl. What the result was expected to be is not stated. One fragmentary text appears to name the ingredients of the magic potion. All that can be made out points to an ordeal, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... everywhere one and the same; it is the motive behind that makes it good or evil; and his motive was entirely unselfish. He knew—provided he was not first robbed of self-control—how vicariously to absorb these evil radiations into himself and change them magically into his own good purposes. And, since his motive was pure and his soul fearless, they could not work ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... saw we approached a gate that amazingly was a gate. Hinges, yes; and mechanical complications, and a pendant cord on each side. I tugged at one and the gate magically opened. As we passed through I tugged at the other and it magically closed. This was luxury ineffable to one who had laboured with things that seemed to be kept merely for the sake of a jest that was never of the best and was staling ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... stated that the most magically beautiful effect of all was produced by the Peeresses, in suddenly and simultaneously donning their coronets. It was as though the stars had somehow kept back their radiance till the young moon revealed herself ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... For them I had rebuilt this house—for them and their grandsire—whose trail was almost at its end. How happy he was in their presence! They, too, were happy because they were young, the sun was shining and their home was magically restored. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... needed looking after. Another minute and he would have patted him and told him what to eat and wear. But instead he raised his hat and smiled. The train moved slowly out, making a deep purring sound like flowing water. The platform had magically thinned. Officials stood lonely among the scattered wavers of hats and handkerchiefs. As he stepped backwards to keep the carriage window in sight until the last possible moment, Minks was nearly knocked over by a ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... continued; for a moment the invisible form between Clee's knees writhed violently—and then suddenly, almost magically, a silence fell over the whole room. Clee had forced his will on Xantra! He had made him stop ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... The spirit vanished as magically as he had appeared, and with this solemn warning ringing in his ears, the Baron found himself in inky darkness again. This time he did not hesitate to grope madly for the door, but hardly had he reached it, when, with a fresh sensation of horror, ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... they were real doubles, those of slaves or vassals killed at the tomb, and who had departed along with the double of the master to serve him beyond the grave as they had served him here. A number of statues and images, magically endued with activity and intelligence, was afterwards substituted for this retinue of victims. Originally of so large a size that only the rich or noble could afford them, they were reduced little by little to the height of a few inches. Some were carved ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... mist appeared, enveloping the timid stranger, a halo formed around his brow and two silvery wings sprang magically from his shoulders. Gradually rising, higher and higher, he finally disappeared from sight, his hands outspread in benediction, while the terror-stricken family fell upon their knees, crossing themselves, and murmuring in awestruck ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick
... aglow. His natural look was at first sight a little stern until a man came to know it, then this impression waned and left a critic puzzled. The square cut of his face and abrupt angle of his jaw did not indeed belie Will Blanchard, but the man's smile magically dissipated this austerity of aspect, and no sudden sunshine ever brightened a dark day quicker than pleasure made bright his features. It was a sulky, sleepy, sweet, changeable face—very fascinating in the eyes of women. His musical laugh once fluttered sundry young bosoms, brightened many ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the threat that stalked with this grim man. Life quickened in the somnolent town as to the sound of a fire bell as he passed; people stood watching after him; came to doors and windows to lean and look. A few moments after his passing the street behind him became almost magically alive, although it was a silent, expectant, fearful interest that communicated itself in whispers ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the purpose of making a first acquaintance with this "office," we are coming into it from the hall, through the door which is now locked, but which, for our special convenience, has been magically unlocked for us. As we stand just inside the door, the length of the room runs right and left; or, more accurately, to the right only, for the left-hand wall is almost within our reach. Immediately opposite to us, across the breadth of the room ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... breaking of the black-faced ram's first day in the wilderness. Never before had he stood on an open hilltop and watched the light spread magically over a wide, wild landscape. Up to the morning of the previous day, his three years of life had been passed in protected, green-hedged valley pastures, amid tilled fields and well-stocked barns, beside a lilied water. This rugged, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... an ideal harmony in things; since it was natural and fitting that what had come from a hen should lead on to a hen again. The ideal nature possessed by the parent, hovering over the passive seed, magically induced it to grow into the parent's semblance; and growth was the gradual approach to the perfection which this ancestral essence prescribed. This was why Aristotle's God, though in character an unmistakable ideal, had ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... purpose of beautifying the body in order to attract the other sex is, as in all the other citations I have made, not even hinted at. The same is true in the summary made by Mallery of the seventeen purposes of tattooing he found. No. 13 is, indeed, "to charm the other sex;" but it is "magically," which is a very different thing from esthetically. I append the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... great—such a fierce, hissing roar—that the cry uttered by Ebenezer Parks was half drowned; while, in less time than it takes to tell it, the young deputy felt a sudden shock as a rush of cold water bathed his face and head, acting so magically that he rose quickly, and, with the water rising above his ankles, began to feel his way along the stony wall, as fast as he could, in the direction in which he ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... perfunctory manner, for the sake of doing something, those skilled in trail-reading went back over the ground. Nothing was added to the first experience. At the point of robbery magically had appeared a man and—if the stage driver's solemn assertion that at the time of the hold-up no animal was in sight could be believed—subsequently, when needed, a large horse. Whence had they come? Not along the road in either direction: ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... step-mother's footfall sounded on the stairs outside. He heard it, and turning away left the room abruptly. I drank my cup of tea and prepared to leave as one moving about in a dream. This was one of the strangest experiences I had ever had; some secret spring seemed to have been magically touched within me, and all the pent-up love and devotion of a life-time now flowed freely through my veins. I was attracted most powerfully towards the cold, distant man whom I had dreaded all along, and whom I could have hated ardently had it not ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... forty-five, magically produced, it seemed, so quickly did it show in his hand, was making an icy ring against Dade's throat, and the words, the epithet for which he had hesitated, remained unspoken. Metallic, venomous and filled with a threat ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... changed, not in degree, but in quality, as the piano magically brought before him green distances lying fair beneath the warm sun, clover-scented meadows and blossoming boughs. "Life," he said to himself; "life ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Salt Cellar offered very good scope for those legitimate effects of hers which we one and all admire. Was it nothing to her to have cut those black shadows across the cloisters? Was it nothing to her that she so magically mingled her rays with the candle-light shed forth from Zuleika's bedroom? Nothing, that she had cleansed the lawn of all its colour, and made of it a platform of silver-grey, fit ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... effort to shake off her grip. He looked at the dark cloud of her hair that had ruled him so magically, and the memory of old delights made him grip a great handful almost inadvertently as he spoke. "Dear Leopard," he said, "we humans are the most streaky of conceivable things. I thought I hated you. I do. I hate you like poison. And also I do ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... magically on all the hoardings announcing that a Festival consisting of three evening and two morning concerts would be held in the Alexandra Hall, at Hanbridge, on the 6th, 7th and 8th November, and that the box-plan could be consulted at the principal ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... the royal thumb; which he suddenly wrenched with such violence, that the King called him a cursed rascal, and condescended to kick his shins. He soon found, however, that the doctor, had as it were, magically relieved his thumb from pain: and so grateful did he feel to Ward, whom he now termed his Esculapius, that he prevailed on him to accept a handsome carriage and horses, and shortly afterwards, presented his nephew, who subsequently became a general, with an ensigncy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... object takes a letter's lineaments Though swollen to mainsail measure,—magically, I gather from your words; and on its face Are three vast seals, red—signifying blood Must I suppose? It moves on Dresden town, And dwarfs the city as it passes by.— You ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... however, and I could once more enjoy the scene. When the first bewilderment of wonder and admiration is over; when the fantastic city no longer appears a vision, but a reality, pile upon pile of natural rock so magically cast in the form of architecture, we realize countless beauties unperceived at first. The intense limpidity and crystalline clearness of the atmosphere, the brilliance of the limestone, the no less dazzling ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... a soldier to apply the match to the batteries of cannon, not a sailor to assist in maneuvering the fleet, not a shepherd in charge of the flocks. After the ruin of the village, the destruction of the forts which dominated it, a ruin and destruction magically wrought without the co-operation of a single human being, the flames were extinguished, the smoke began to subside, then diminished in intensity, paled and disappeared entirely. Night then came over the scene; night dark upon the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ignorant of this. Perhaps my wifely pride would have enabled me to bear it better if I had known that the steamer were trembling with honor rendered to my husband. After this we were quiet, enough, for we were moving magically over a sea like a vast pearl, almost white with peace. I never saw anything so fair and lovely as the whole aspect of the mighty ocean. Off on the horizon a celestial blue seemed to meet the sky. Julian sat absorbed. He did not turn his ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... bethought me of the old Egyptians and their Ka statues of which I had read, and that these statues, magically charmed and set in the tombs of the departed, were supposed to be inhabited everlastingly by the Doubles of the dead endued with more power even than ever these possessed in life. But of this I said nothing to Zikali, thinking that it would take too much ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... force of gravitation is one-sixth as great as upon the earth, we had found ourselves astonishingly light. Five-sixths of our own weight, and of the weight of the air-tight suits in which we were incased, had magically dropped from us. It was therefore comparatively easy for us, encumbered as we were, to make our way about ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... thus crept through the tunnel and been doctored at the other end, each took some glowing embers home with him in a pot wherewith to rekindle the fire on the domestic hearth. Lastly they put some of the charcoal in a vessel of water and drank the mixture in order to be thereby magically protected ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... was first thoroughly tried in Mississippi, and has hence been called the "Mississippi plan." So magically effectual was it, that, with variations adapted to locality and circumstances, this "Mississippi plan" soon enveloped the entire South in its mesh-work of fraud, barbarity, and blood. The massacres, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... shore a blue light—vaporous, mysterious—flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain. It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing from blue to a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... a priceless diamond bracelet on to that arm. It was just an arm, the usual feminine arm; every normal woman in this world has two of them; and yet——! But at the same time, such is the contradictoriness of human nature, Henry would have given a considerable sum to have had Miss Foster magically removed from the room, and to be alone. The whole of his being was deeply disturbed, as if by an earthquake. And, moreover, he could scarce ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett |
