"Spectacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... berg, they found the shelf on which lay the dead seal, and climbing the ice-cliff, they saw spread out before them a strange and pleasing spectacle. The fog had lifted, for it was now nearly noon, and although some rain still fell, the eye could see the broken ice-pack seamed with channels, and scarred with pools of varying size, for at least eight miles in any direction. ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... village church only a few miles away. What was the loadstone? A poor country parish priest, informed, illiterate, uncouth,—but a saint. And I know nothing more beautiful or touching in all human history than the spectacle of the great and inspired Dominican, coming to that village chapel, and kneeling for the blessing of M. Vianney, and listening, like a child, to the evening catechetical lecture, delivered in a weak voice, and probably with many a halt for a word, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Baram, and the alarm of the people was largely prevented by the issue to all the chiefs of TEBUKU (tallies) foretelling the date of its incidence. Nevertheless one woman, at least, was so much frightened by the spectacle that she ran into her house and ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... M. de Luxembourg was without bounds. When we met he would not salute me, and in consequence I discontinued to salute him; by which he lost more than I, in his position and at his age, and furnished in the rooms and the galleries of Versailles a sufficiently ridiculous spectacle. In addition to this he quarrelled openly with M. de Richelieu, and made a bitter attack upon him in one of his pleas. But M. de Richelieu, meeting him soon after in the Salle des Gardes at Versailles, told him to his face that he should ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... screamed to his mother in wild joy. To see the wonderful spectacle from near by, she came down to ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... by a most extraordinary combination of circumstances, that Bill, being sober, meets Jim very drunk, and pretty soon Bill is the most disgusted man in this world. He never would have dreamed that his old mate could make such a fool and such a public spectacle of himself. And Bill's disgust intensifies all the time he is helping Jim home, and Jim arguing with him and wanting to fight him, and slobbering over him and wanting to love him by turns, until Bill swears he'll give Jim a hammering as soon as ever ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... the melancholy spectacle hourly before me has made me more serious than usual, perhaps thou wilt not be mistaken. But nothing more is to be inferred from hence (were I even to return to my former courses) but that whenever the time of cool reflection comes, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... This dread spectacle, through its novelty and terror, as I have said, filled the whole city with fear and marvel together; and although at the first sight it did not seem suited to a Carnival, nevertheless, being new and very well arranged, it ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... fright—inside, for I'd never have dared to show fear before my mother. There's nothing else that makes you so brave as living with some one before whom you haven't the courage to let your cowardice show its feather. If we didn't keep each other up to the mark, what a spectacle of fright and flight this world-drama would be! Vanity, the greatest of vices, is also the greatest of virtues, or the source of the greatest virtues—which comes ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... their use. Barnum gave the keeper a time-table of the road and directed him to make a point, whenever trains were passing, always to be busily engaged with the elephant at plowing or other agricultural work as close to the track as possible. Of course the passengers noticed the strange spectacle, items concerning it appeared in the newspapers, extending even to the press of foreign lands, and thousands of people came from all parts of the country to witness the strange sight. Every mail brought numerous letters inquiring about it. Many of these were from the officers of agricultural ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... the seventh century, and casting our eyes to the right, the left, and to all parts, we undertake to render to ourselves an exact account of the state in which we find the national poetry, the following will be the spectacle which will meet our gaze: Upon one hand in Amorican Brittany there are a group of popular poets who speak a Celtic dialect, and sing upon the harp certain legends, certain fables of Celtic origin. They form a league apart, and do not mix at ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... under the shade of a clump of stunted sandalwood, which had, in good seasons, been a favourite mustering camp, and looked about him, and then he passed his hand over his eyes to shut out for a few moments the melancholy spectacle before him. ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke
... of March the Czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham seafight at Spithead, watched every movement of the contending fleets with intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his gratitude to the hospitable government which had provided so delightful a spectacle for his amusement and instruction. After passing more than three months in England, he departed in high ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the world cannot produce a more affecting spectacle than the growth of this mighty Christian philanthropy which, in beginning amid the din of battle, has steadily marched on through every opposing influence, and lifted a race from weakness to strength, from poverty to wealth, from moral and intellectual nonentity to place and ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... when I left her to-day, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said. 'The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.' Whither ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Zola with him and repeated, sometimes word for word, the memorable creed of French naturalism formulated long before by the Goncourt brothers: "The modern—everything for the artist is there: in the sensation, the intuition of the contemporary, of this spectacle of life with which one rubs elbows!" Such, with whatever later developments, was the central doctrine of young Germany in the eighties; such the belief that gradually expressed itself in a number ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... pass this bill and authorize the people of Washington Territory to frame a State constitution and organize a State government, the fundamental law of the State would be made by all the citizens who were to be subject to it, and not by one-half of them. And we shall witness the spectacle of a State government founded in accordance with the principles of equality, and have a State at last with a truly republican form ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... a goodly spectacle indeed! My spirit is like that of the blessed Elihu, it burns within me—my bowels are as wine which lacketh vent—they are ready to burst like new bottles. O, that He may look after His ain people in this day of judgment and deliverance!—And now, what ailest thou, precious Mr Gabriel ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... had been wandering as political orphans since the disastrous defeat of 1852,—Bell of Tennessee, and Crittenden of Kentucky,—honored themselves and the ancient Whig traditions by voting against the bill. In view of the events of the preceding four years, it was a significant spectacle in the Senate when Douglas voted steadily with Seward and Sumner and Fessenden and Wade against the political associations of a lifetime. It meant, to the far-seeing, more than a temporary estrangement, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... by General Madeira's proclamation were no doubt faithfully chronicled in the Bahia newspapers, one of these declaring "in the last few days we have witnessed in this city a most doleful spectacle that must touch the heart even of the most insensible. A panic terror has seized on all men's minds—the city will be left without protectors—and families, whose fathers are obliged to fly, will be left orphans—a prey to the invaders," &c. &c. A prognostication ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... padded and presented another spectacle. There women beat their heads against wadded walls or rolled on the cushion-covered floor, in fits of suffocation. In the midst of this panting, quivering throng, Mesmer, dressed in a lilac coat, moved about, extending a magic wand toward the least suffering, ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... be sure, many times, the late, winter painting of crimson and gold in the East, which unfolded itself before her window, and chased away her dreams. But she had never watched that slow, mysterious change from midnight to morning, which is the only spectacle that can properly ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... taken refuge received many a shock from a crazed bull; and it seemed to Annette from her perch in the branches, as if all the face of the plains was being hurled toward the south in the wildest turmoil. Hell itself let loose could present no such spectacle as this myriad mass of brute life sweeping over the lonely plain under the elfin light of the new-risen moon. Clouds of steam, wreathing themselves into spectral shapes rose from the dusky, writhing ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the vehicles, groaning with the household goods of Mark Heathcote, were seen quitting his door, and taking the road which led to the sea-side, not a human being, of sufficient age, within many miles of his residence, was absent from the interesting spectacle. The leave-taking, as usual on all serious occasions, was preceded by a hymn and prayer, and then the sternly-minded adventurer embraced his neighbors, with a mien, in which a subdued exterior struggled fearfully and ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... it either who listen to them, and love and admire them, and understand them. And we who marvel at this—we who also reflect on justice and virtue, on pity and love—are we so sure that they who come after us shall not some day find, in our present social condition, a spectacle no ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... rambles, seemed to devote himself to bathing, running, and walking. He looked like an athlete; I heard him tell how far he could run without getting "winded;" and as he sprinted up and down the sand in his scanty bathing costume, I always found him a pleasing spectacle. Another runner there gave me a half-hour of amusement that turned at the last to a feeling of almost painful sympathy. He was not in bathing costume, nor did he look particularly athletic. He was teaching his young lady to ride a bicycle, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... second line of trenches and were making a sortie. Under the hill sat Grafton and another correspondent while the storm of bullets swept over them. Grafton was without glasses—a Mauser had furrowed the skin on the bridge of his nose, breaking his spectacle-frame so that one glass dropped on one side of his nose and the other on the other. The other man had several narrow squeaks, as he called them, and, even as they sat, a bullet cut a leaf over his head and it dropped between the pages ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... public thoroughfares, people hastening hither and thither on business had to dismount and kneel in obeisance, and farmers, instead of cultivating the fields, had to act as bearers of the dogs' sedan-chairs. Thus, the city of Kamakura presented the curious spectacle of a town filled with well-fed dogs, clothed in tinsel and brocades, and totalling from four to five thousand. Twelve days in every month used to be devoted to dog-fights, and on these occasions, the regent, the nobles, and the people inside and outside the mansion ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the fat clerk, turning his spectacle-glasses towards his principal, and his eyes towards Nicholas, 'but ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the sight in safety, it would have been a magnificent spectacle—the grandest, the most terrific, perhaps, it is possible to conceive—a ship on fire at night in the mid-ocean. The hull of the vessel lay flaming like an immense furnace on the surface of the deep; her masts, and the lower and topsail-yards, with fragments of the rigging ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the minimum tax on his powers, Cope was in shape, next day, for an hour on the faculty tennis-courts. He played with no special skill or vigor, but he made a pleasing picture in his flannels; and Carolyn, who happened to pass—who passed by at about five in the afternoon, lingered for the spectacle and thought of two or three lines ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Horrified at the spectacle, he turned his head away, and this time his glance rested on a group of men, digging busily beneath the window. It was a strange hour for any one to be at work, and what was the hole for? It was a curious shape, so long and narrow, almost like—— Ah! yes, that was ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... March of the "Grand Army" Peculiar Perils of the Northern Border. Mrs. Dalton's Record. A Dangerous Expedition. Her Husband's Fate. A Trance of Grief. Between Frost and Fire. A Choice of Deaths. Rescued from the Flames. One Sunny Hour. The Storm-Fiend. Terrific Spectacle. In the Whirlwind's Track. The Only Refuge. Locked in a Dungeon. A Fight for Deliverance. Arrival of Friends. Another Peril. Walled in by Flames. Passing Through a Fiery Lane. Closing Days of Mrs. Dalton. A Story of Minnesota. What the Hunters ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... into the hall, and kept there; and as Quakers were not so common then as they now are (and indeed even yet, the more is the pity, they are not common in that part of the country), I was made a spectacle and gazing-stock to the family, and by divers I was diversely set upon. Some spake to me courteously, with appearance of compassion; others ruggedly, with evident tokens of wrath and scorn. But though I gave them the hearing of what they said, which I could not well avoid, yet I said little to ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... seen Jefferson Worth hesitate. The will of the man, whose cold decision had carried him through so many critical situations and upon which the pioneers had relied in the recent time of peril, seemed to fail him at last. The spectacle told the men more clearly than words could have done what he suffered. "I—I don't know what to do," he finished weakly. "Give me time. Let me think." He bowed his face ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... same time flowers, some of which fell into the carriage, were thrown by the crowd that thronged the street, and from the windows. At these friendly cries and at this spectacle, Sand, who until then had shown no moment of weakness, felt tears rising in spite of himself, and while he returned the greetings made to him on all sides, he murmured in a low voice, "O my God, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... not moistening him. Then clouds and rain proceeded from him, thunder with lightning shook the heaven and earth; thus he drew the world to look in adoration, with eyes undazzled as they gazed; with different mouths, but all in language one, they magnified and praised this wondrous spectacle, then afterwards drawn by spiritual force, they came and worshipped at the master's feet, exclaiming:—"Buddha is our great teacher! we are the honored one's disciples." Thus having magnified his ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... sun of summer, and under the bitter cold of winter. He had seen them at their loathsome meals and in their stifling sleeping pens. He had gazed upon them with eyes of haughty, cold, unsympathizing curiosity. To him and his friends they formed but a spectacle of interest or amusement, like ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... an imposing spectacle, as the French expedition made its way down Lake George. General Levis had marched by the side of the lake with twenty-five hundred men, Canadians, regulars, and redskins; while the main body proceeded, the troops in two hundred and fifty ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... little girl," said I, "you would be sorry, indeed, if you had anything of the sort. When you grow up and go to parties, how would you like to show bare arms shaped like mine? You would be a spectacle, indeed." ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... magistrates of Somersetshire capturing a gang of a hundred at a stroke, hanging fifty at once on the gallows, and complaining bitterly to the Council of the necessity for waiting till the Assizes before they could enjoy the spectacle of the fifty others hanging beside them. But the Government were dealing with the difficulty in a wiser and more effectual way. The old powers to enforce labour on the idle and settlement on the vagrant class which had been given by statutes ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... to look upon these black soldiers—marching with all the more pride (as it seemed to him) because they marched under the floating folds of the stars and stripes. His boy's heart was stirred by the spectacle, and full of a big emotion; but the fashion of the times overpowered the generous impulse, and he treated the negro ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is, perhaps, the highest luxury of a clever man. It played at present over the whole field of Angela Vivian's oddities of conduct—for, since his visit in the afternoon, Bernard had felt that the spectacle was considerably enlarged. He had come to feel, also, that poor Gordon's predicament was by no means an unnatural one. Longueville had begun to take his friend's dilemma very seriously indeed. The girl was certainly a ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... more for that gentleness and refinement of emotion, thought, and action which, in the highest sense of the term, it is the province of music to promote. And it is a much rarer accomplishment. I cannot conceive anything more pitiful than the spectacle of men and women perched on a fair observation point exclaiming rapturously at the loveliness of mead and valley, their eyes melting involuntarily in tenderness at the sight of moss-carpeted slopes and rocks and peaceful wood, ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... legislature proposes rewards for assassination, and the leader of a society, that pretends to inform and instruct the people, argues in favour of burning all the books. The French are on the eve of exhibiting the singular spectacle of a nation enlightened by science, accustomed to the benefit of laws and the enjoyment of arts, suddenly becoming barbarous by system, and sinking into ignorance from choice.—When the Goths shared the most curious antiques by weight, were they not more civilized than the Parisian of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... occasional study of the miseries which the opposite system is capable of producing. It is for this reason that the reign of the sovereign whose closing moments have just been recorded is especially worthy of a minute examination, and I still invite a parting glance at the spectacle thus ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cornstalks from fields along the shore, all are being carried seaward. In the middle of the river the prow of a flat boat projects upward from between two huge ice floes which have mashed it, like a miniature wreck in arctic seas. The best view of this annual ice spectacle is to look up the river and see the big field of broken, tumbling, crashing, grinding ice ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... went on. Yet all was still as apart from him as a lighted stage and its drama from a self-contained spectator. In the material world, now as attenuated as a mirage, events were at hand; but to his soul, balanced now on reality and awake to facts, these things were but a spectacle.... ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... the conductor of the festival, told me that Rubinstein had told him that the impulse to use Biblical subjects in lyrical dramas had come to him while witnessing a ballet based on a Bible story many years before in Paris. He said that he had seldom been moved so profoundly by any spectacle as by this ballet, and it suggested to him the propriety of treating sacred subjects in a manner worthy of them, yet different from the conventional oratorio. The explanation has not gotten into the books, but is not inconsistent with the genesis of his Biblical operas, as related by ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... dropped the Celtic languages and literature, and asked him whether he did not think it a funny thing that Temugin, generally called Genghis Khan, should have married the daughter of Prester John? {373} The Lion, after giving a side-glance at the writer through his left spectacle glass, seemed about to reply, but was unfortunately prevented, being seized with an irresistible impulse to contradict a respectable doctor of medicine, who was engaged in conversation with the master of the house at the upper and further end of the table, the writer being a poor ignorant lad, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... gathering enough volume in the quiet intervals to satiate one of its three jaded cravings—lust, hunger, and thirst, and feebly groping after alcoholic and other stimulants to repair its exhaustion; the soul in her dreamy intervals drowsily recounting or contemplating lust past and to come—a ghastly spectacle! ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... forward, the contortions of the slender body, the "split," the putting of the legs around the neck. Hermia had seen these acts at the VariÂŽtÂŽs and at Madison Square Garden when the circus came, but had seen them at a great distance, under a blaze of light, as part of a great spectacle in a performance which went so smoothly that one never gave a thought to the difficulty of achievement. There in the silent shadows of the wood, bared of its tinsel and music, the rehearsal took on a different color. She saw the straining muscles of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... tell-tale porcelain tallies on the table to be settled, and neither had much money; so the manoeuvring was an agreeable sight for the cynical waiter. Finally Lenyard, his national pride rising at the spectacle of the Austrian's penuriousness, paid the entire bill ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... that delicious summer night at Belmont when they saw "how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," and when the blissful lover, radiant with happiness and exalted by the sublime, illimitable, unfathomable spectacle of the star-strewn firmament, murmured, in such heaven-like cadence, of the authentic ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... never have spoiled his appetite! He had lately, too, taken to drinking much more deeply than he had been used to do—the fine intellect of the man was growing thickened and dulled; and this was a spectacle that Morton could not bear to contemplate. Yet so great was Gawtrey's vigour of health, that, after draining wine and spirits enough to have despatched a company of fox- hunters, and after betraying, sometimes in uproarious glee, sometimes in maudlin self-bewailings, that he himself was not quite ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and would be in the worst sort of taste; they would all hate us, and we should feel that we were spies upon the young people; for of course the Bentleys had got Glendenning there to marry him, and in effect did not want any one to witness the disgraceful spectacle. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... At the expiration of a few days, as the disconsolate Selim was seated smoking on the borders of the canal, the body became detached from the stone, and rose to the surface of the water. Overwhelmed by the heart-rending spectacle, which too well explained the mystery of his beautiful queen's disappearance, he was with difficulty prevented by his attendant slaves from throwing himself upon the corpse. When he retired, it was taken out, and sent into Constantinople to be buried. Thus ends this little episode in ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... reply from Vienna. On the same evening, before quitting the field of battle, the First Consul wrote for the second time to the Emperor Francis Joseph. He was moved to the very depths of his impassable and haughty soul by the spectacle of the carnage and fury of the battle. In subsequent calmer moments he perhaps regretted his letter. "It is upon the battlefield of Marengo," said he, "in the midst of agonies, and surrounded by 15,000 ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... see why a mind so attuned recoiled from horror at the French Revolution. There is something almost sinister in the destiny which confronted Burke with the one great spectacle of the eighteenth century which he was certain not merely to misunderstand but also to hate. He could not endure the most fragmentary change in tests of religious belief; and the Revolution swept overboard the whole religious edifice. He would not support the abolition ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... it, he says, Hom. 24, pp. 217, 218, "No one dares touch the king's garments with dirty hands. When you see Him (i.e. Christ) exposed before you, say to yourself: This body was pierced with nails; this body which was scourged, death did not destroy; this body was nailed to a cross, at which spectacle the sun withdrew its rays; this body the Magi venerated," &c. The saint inveighs against several superstitious practices of that age, Hom. 12. His discourses are animated and strong on the characters of fraternal charity, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that remained, to the middle of the month of June, sheer profit. "I came back last Sunday," he wrote on the 30th of May, "with my last country piece of work for this time done. Everywhere the success has been the same. St. James's Hall last night was quite a splendid spectacle. Two more Tuesdays there, and I shall retire into private life. I have only been able to get to Gadshill once since I left it, and that ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the hall a singular spectacle presented itself. The grand staircase was lined on each side with kneeling men and women. There was a sound of suppressed sobbing, and a low murmur was ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... had come to gloat over the spectacle of shame. To behold the agonizing sense of degradation declare itself under the finger-pointing scorn of those who, perhaps, were only innocent from necessity, and virtuous because of the lack of the necessary attractions in the ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... all, who by rights should be the teachers and who the learners? For those peevish, over-toiled, utilitarian insects, was there no lesson to be derived from the spectacle of Me? Gazing out at me with myriad eyes from their joyless factories, might they not learn at last—might I not finally teach them—a wiser and more generous-hearted way ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... accounts he received were of Pompey's miserable end; and soon after, one of the murderers came with his head and his ring, as a most grateful present to the conqueror. 5. But Caesar had too much humanity to be pleased with so horrid a spectacle—with the sad remains of the man he once loved; his partner in power. He turned from it with disgust; and, after a short pause, gave vent to his pity in a flood of tears. He ordered the head to be burned with the most costly perfumes, and placed the ashes ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... nor the parson's, either, please remember, then, that awkward, shuffling, homely-looking Old Jack was thus suddenly transformed by the royalty of blood, of pride and of speed given him by his Creator from what he ordinarily was into a magnificent spectacle of energetic velocity. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... by him, the said Hastings, made an instrument of perfidy, wrong, and outrage to two mothers and wives of sovereign princes, and in which he did exhibit to all Asia (a country remarkable for the utmost devotion to parental authority) the spectacle of a Christian governor, representing a Christian sovereign, compelling a son to become the instrument of such violence and extortion against ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... dresses were of elk skin, and the white leggins of antelope hide or that of mountain sheep. Their buffalo hide moccasins were handsomely beaded and stained. As they passed, followed by the long train of stalwart savage figures, they made a spectacle strange and savage, but ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation and commerce, in agriculture and in manufactures with the same rapidity in the same period. Her progress is now retarded, and it is a heart-breaking spectacle to every man who loves the country to see it arrested only by the perverse and factious folly of the people, stimulated ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... flashing in the sun, and their ample white robes and long sable hair streaming in the breeze. At the war-hoop of their leader, "with the rush of a hurricane the moving forest of lances disappeared under a cloud of dust." From eight to ten thousand cavalry were in the field; and the spectacle, which lasted from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon, was "exceedingly wild and impressive." But the most impressive display of all was to be supplied by the British. With fire-arms the people were acquainted already. The "brass galloper," though viewed with "wonderful respect," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... trustee [cheers]—the response to our common appeal has moved all our feelings to their profoundest depths, and has been such as to shiver and to shatter the vain and ignorant imaginings of our enemies. [Cheers,] That is a remarkable and indeed a unique spectacle. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... criminals like Lady Macbeth or Iago, or the undistinguished and disorderly people of modern realistic literature, yet in either case we find them good to know. And we do so, not merely because we enjoy, as disinterested onlookers, the spectacle of human existence, but because the artist makes us enter into it and realize its values. For even that which from the moral point of view we pronounce evil is, so long as it maintains itself, a good thing from its own point of view. Every will, however blind and careless, seeks a good ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... you have no though of patronising that gruesome spectacle?" said Lord Anthony Dewhurst, as Marguerite almost mechanically had paused within a few ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... guard, and the convict was brought into the lodge covered with dust, sweat and blood, his eyes flashing like balls of fire. They had the lad's body on a stretcher beside him, the lips white, and the cheeks a mask of blue. It was a tremendous spectacle, I can ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... sea after sea, turning up her streaming weather-bow to receive its buffet, and gaily "shaking her feathers" after every plunge, was enough to make a sailor's heart leap with pride and exultation that was not to be lessened even by the awe-inspiring spectacle of the mountains of water that in continuous procession soared up from beneath her keel and went roaring away to leeward with foaming crests that towered to ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... need we further proof? Heaven, heaven, I swear, Will not consent herein we be beguiled, This night I saw his murdered sprite appear, Pale, sad and wan, with wounds and blood defiled, A spectacle full both of grief and fear; Godfrey, for murdering him, the ghost reviled. I saw it was no dream, before mine eyes, Howe'er I look, still, still methinks ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... all been beheaded! Even to this day I feel the terrible horror which overcame me at this sight—a dark pool of blood surrounded the rigid bodies, and if I were to live to see a hundred years, never shall I forget the awful spectacle. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Aurora presented a more cheerful appearance that Captain Wilson went over to the other ship, whose deck, now that the light of heaven enabled them to witness all the horrors even to minuteness, presented a shocking spectacle of blood and carnage. Body after body was thrown over; the wounded were supplied with water and such assistance as could be rendered until the surgeons could attend them; the hatches were then taken off, and the remainder of her crew ordered on deck; about two hundred obeyed the summons, but ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... heels, always keeping his face to the horseman, the pivot, as it were, of this little spectacle. Near the cabin stood the soldiers, watching the play with interest. Stella and Hallie were at one side, their eyes fastened on the scene with a sort of fascinated horror. Stella knew well the danger of the bout. In the doorway of the cabin Lieutenant Barrows ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... The spectacle of two young fellows in evening dress, in a friendly tug-of-war under the lamp-posts of the Boulevard, amused the passing populace; and Sengoun, noticing this, was inclined to mount a boulevard bench and address the wayfarers, but Neeland pulled him down and persuaded ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... read the second book, and entertained all the Doctors and chief scholars: and on the third day he read the third book, and entertained the younger scholars, soldiers, and burgesses."—"A most glorious spectacle (says he), which revived the ancient times of the poets, and of which no example had been seen in England." This is given by Dr. Henry (b. iii., ch. 4, Sec. 2), on the authority of Giraldus's own book, De rebus a se gestis, lib. i. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that if only he could conquer certain difficulties and embarrassments, he might really start to live properly, in the full sense of living. And if he has pluck he says to himself: "I will smooth things out, and then I'll really live." In the same way, nearly everybody, regarding the spectacle of the world, sees therein a principle which he calls Evil; and he thinks: "If only we could get rid of this Evil, if only we could set things right, how splendid the world would be!" Now, in the meaning usually attached ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... and I am dreary, very dreary indeed. The aristocracy, so to call it, are performing "Faust," and I go to the rehearsals and there I enjoy the spectacle of a perfect flower-bed of black, red, flaxen, and brown heads; I listen to the singing and I eat. At the house of the principal of the high school I eat tchibureks, and saddle of lamb with boiled grain; in various estimable families I eat green ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... out accordingly, and the executioners were going to throw them into the tub, when the king fortunately entered the court in his carriage, and asked with the utmost astonishment, what was meant by this horrid spectacle, no ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... from Rome: 'In the great things I see I do not feel the least pleasure, for I know that they are marvelous, but I do not feel it, and I assure you that their multitude and grandeur wearied me after the first day.'... To Leopardi it is rarely given to interest himself in any spectacle of nature, and he never does it without a sudden and agonized return to himself.... Malign and heartless men have pretended that Leopardi was a misanthrope, a fierce hater and enemy of the human race!... Love, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... positively refuse to drink the toast I have just named in spirits, we shall be constrained to anoint you all over from head to foot with our ointment, and then to sprinkle you with the feathers; in so doing, we shall be affording an amusing spectacle to the inhabitants of Crossbourne, and shall be doing yourself a real kindness, by furnishing you with abundant means of 'feathering ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... hat which shaded the forehead. The large dark eyes, described by the landlady, showed an unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out from beneath well-shaped brows as if they were reading the universe in the microcosm of the confronter's face, and were not altogether overjoyed at what the spectacle portended. ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... generally as "Number Six," was duly made at Carlton by Governor Morris and the other Commissioners, with a noted half-breed, Peter Erasmus, as the capable interpreter. Those present who had not been accustomed to the plains witnessed a spectacle of wild splendour, as preceding the treaty, over a thousand Indians, brilliantly and fantastically painted, chanting a weird song, firing rifles, exhibiting marvellous horsemanship, beating drums and giving strange yells, advanced in a semi-circle near to the Commissioner's ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... its course rather impeded its progress. The noise it made, and the anger it showed, seemed to please our sulky bear mightily, so he sat down on the bank with his toes in the water to enjoy the spectacle. The scene was a very striking one, and was fitted to charm the most indifferent eye; and Bruin, bear as he was, could not help being attracted by it. Whatever his meditations, however, it was not destined that he should pursue them long without interruption; for his ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... of no use," she said, returning to him, tears overflowing her eyes. "You cannot help my making a spectacle of myself; and you had better go. Oh, Arthur, I hope so much for you; I do so hope for happiness coming to you out of this marriage; but ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... of the cemetery. Of course hearts that beat beneath silken bodices may be wrung as bitterly as those that serge covers. I am speaking only of those outward manifestations which contributed to complete the strangeness of the general spectacle which I had come out to see. The better tending of the aristocratic portion of the cemetery, and the greater space between the graves and their monuments, made it of course easier and less disagreeable to pass among them and to note the bearing of individual ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... been infested with them. They had destroyed our sails, consumed more stores than the crew, affably shared our beds and our dangers, and now, when the ship was made seaworthy, concluded to clear out. I called Mahon to enjoy the spectacle. Rat after rat appeared on our rail, took a last look over his shoulder, and leaped with a hollow thud into the empty hulk. We tried to count them, but soon lost the tale. Mahon said: 'Well, well! don't talk to me about the intelligence of rats. They ought ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... the mare was seized with fresh fury, and it was with considerable difficulty that she could be brought to face this new cause of fright. In the pauses of the horse's prancing, the vicar discovered to his horror the much-dreaded spectacle of the black coach and the headless steeds, and, terrible to relate, his friend Mr Mills lying prostrate on the ground before the sable driver. Little time was left him to call up his courage for this ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... unseen, and distinguishing its grasp from the blind clutches of credulity; but a single consideration will suffice at least to awaken a feeling of a wide vista of possibility when we put it thus: Do we wonder at the spectacle of a righteous man, passing his life in suffering and poverty, seemingly stricken by the Divine hand?—But is not the case altered when we reflect that the Hand that thus smites is a hand itself pierced with ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... carriage took the lead, he being the senior Sheriff, on account of his having been proposed to the Livery by the Lord Mayor. We proceeded to the Merchant Taylors' Hall, where we found sixteen of their members, and sixteen of the Spectacle makers, besides some few friends of Mr George Carrol. The following gentlemen were also present:—Barons Lionel, Nathaniel, and Anthony de Rothschild, Messrs T. A. Curtis, Benjamin Cohen, Isaac Cohen, Solomon Cohen, S. M. Samuel, ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... come, its desires are accomplished. It is only the obdurate and exulting criminal that is worthy of our indignation. It is common for pity to succeed the bitterest suggestions of resentment. If the vengeful mind be delighted with the spectacle of woes of its own contriving, at least its canine hunger is appeased, and thenceforth ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... dejected air, were an object of contempt to the Gentiles themselves, who regarded them as cowards who had forfeited the glorious and saving name of Christians. And so they who were present at this double spectacle were thereby signally strengthened, and whoever among them chanced to be arrested confessed the faith without doubt ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... to be alive. And after much dubious consideration, he decides within himself that they are all rascals—the scum of the earth—and that he and he only is the true representative of man at his best—the model of civilized respectability. And a mournful spectacle he thus seems to the eyes of us "base" foreigners—in our hearts we are sorry for him and believe that if he could manage to shake off the fetters of his insular customs and prejudices, he might almost succeed in enjoying life as much as ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... The spectacle case shown in the accompanying illustration may be made of either calf or cow skin. The calf skin, being softer, will be easier to work, but will not make as rigid a case as the cow skin. If calf skin is ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Autumn Keats attains to the serenity he has been seeking. In this unparalleled description of a richly beautiful autumn day he conveys to us all the peace and comfort which his spirit receives. He does not philosophize upon the spectacle or draw a moral from it, but he shows us how in nature beauty is ever present. To the momentary regret for spring he replies with praise of the present hour, concluding with an exquisite description of the sounds ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... down to breakfast. Our places were assigned at opposite sides of the table, between Col. B. and Mr. C. To an American eye, we presented a singular spectacle. A wealthy planter, a member of the legislative council, sitting at the breakfast table with a colored man, whose mother was a negress of the most unmitigated hue, and who himself showed a head of hair as curly as his mother's! But this ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... What a spectacle! How many mutilated corpses lie prostrate on the ground with their dilated eyes staring at the sky—and among them, the happy, the enviable! how many living, groaning, bleeding men, writhing with pain, unable to raise their mutilated ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... him walking upon the battlements of his prison,—and that you will give him his liberty when you please, and thus enable him to besiege Paris a second time. On the other hand, the Prince's party will improve this removal very much to their own advantage by the compassion such a spectacle will raise in the people when they see three Princes dragged in chains from one prison to another. I was really mistaken just now when I said the case was all one to me, for I see that I am nearly concerned, because the people—in which word I include the Parliament will cry out against it; I must ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... When within a quarter of a mile of the ford Cook discovered the body of the Doctor lying stranded with head and shoulders under water. Life, of course, was extinct. He was drawn gently from the stream and laid on the shingle just as the foot men arrived with torches. It was a sad spectacle, this fine old man we all loved and respected so much, only a few hours before full of life and health, now a ghastly corpse, his hair and long white beard lying dank over his cold white face and glaring eyes. ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... its vapoury columns and its deafening roar. But unique and magnificent as was the cataract when Dr. Livingston beheld it, the reports of others, and the inference drawn by himself, satisfied him that the spectacle was tame compared with what occurs during the rainy season, when the river flows between banks many miles apart, and still forces its augmented waters through the same fissure into the same trough. At these times ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... ascend at noon. It was truly a magnificent spectacle, that of the impatient crowd who thronged around the reserved enclosure, inundated the entire square and adjoining streets, and covered the neighbouring houses from the basements to the slated roofs. The high winds of past days had lulled, ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... Mr. Yolland, that he only parted with me at Randall Horsman's door, where I was gladly welcomed by the master of the house, and found my poor little niece a grievous spectacle, and so miserable with the horrible illness, that she only showed her pleasure in my coming by fretting ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exclaims the Yorkshireman, who dismounts in a twinkling, lending his friend a hand out of the unsavoury cesspool.—"That's what comes of hunting in a new[12] saddle, you see," added he, holding his nose. Jorrocks scrambles upon "terra firma" and exhibits such a spectacle as provokes the shouts of the field. He has lost his wig, his hat hangs to his back, and one side of his person and face is completely japanned with black odoriferous mixture. "My vig!" exclaims he, spitting ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... almonds, filberts, etc. On the other hand, relatives and friends as the bride and groom go by throw after them not only confectionery, but dried or roasted fruits, wheat and barley; which they call a sign of abundance. In Milazzo the simple ceremony is turned into a spectacle: when the pair come out of the church they are suddenly received by a perfect hail of confectionery thrown by their nearest relatives, from which they strive to escape by quickening their pace or running away.[20] In Syracuse salt and spelt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... perceived projecting. The tents had been cut in pieces; tobacco and other articles lay about; and most of the flour had been carried off, although some bags still remained on the cart. The two bullocks continued feeding near. This spectacle must have appeared most appalling to Mr. Finch, uncertain, as he must have been, whether the eyes of the natives were not then upon him, while neither he nor his man possessed any means of defence! Taking a piece of pork and some flour in a haversack, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... had something to do, as we shall see, with the civilization of the Turks; but the circumstances have been altogether different from those which we trace in the history of England, Rome, or Greece. The Turks present the spectacle of a race poured out, as it were, upon a foreign material, interpenetrating all its parts, yet preserving its individuality, and at length making its way through it, and reappearing, in substance the same as before, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... March, I despatched Capt. Foster with the gun-boat captured from the Spaniards, and the launches of the O'Higgins and Lautaro—to take possession of the island of San Lorenzo, when an unworthy instance of Spanish cruelty presented itself in the spectacle of thirty-seven Chilian soldiers taken prisoners eight years before. The unhappy men had ever since been forced to work in chains under the supervision of a military guard—now prisoners in turn; their sleeping place during ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... Sad indeed was the spectacle of Virginia's ancient aristocracy. It had never been a luxurious society. The very wealthy planters, with vast cultivated estates and pretentious homes, were in the minority. For the most part, the houses were moderate frame structures, set at intervals of a mile or so apart, ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... presented a striking spectacle. Every vessel was busily reporting the signals from the flag ship, the launches were dashing to and fro, and there was every sign ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... mass came the running beast, with his head close to the ground, and trailing a chain behind him. His actions were certainly queer, and well calculated to strike terror into the timid hearts of the helpless ones gathered there to witness the spectacle of a football contest, and not a ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... the room pretty completely enlightened, and looked at Calverley with a new-born distaste. He still sat facing the bewildered lawyer, one moment sobbing convulsively, the next yelping with hysteric laughter. He was not an agreeable spectacle, and when, a few moments later, Thorndyke entered the room, and halted by the door with a stare of disgust, I was moved to join him. But at this juncture a man pushed past Thorndyke, and, striding up to Calverley, shook him roughly ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... wrong house. Naturally his first impulse was towards flight, but as his bewildered gaze slipped about the room it fell upon five stockings hung against the mantelpiece, and stayed there fascinated. Five foolish, limp, expressionless stockings,—it was long since he had seen such an unreasonable spectacle. Then he recollected himself and looked around him. Perhaps even then, if he had made a dash for the door, he might have escaped and matters have been none the worse. But in that instant of hesitation caused by the sudden sight of those five stockings something dreadful ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... contribute its melodious share to this hallelujah; and that is the living and conscious, though irrational tribes. This sings not of power and wisdom alone, but more complex and rich in adoration, sings of goodness also. God has not made the world for a dead spectacle and mere picture for His own eye. How full and crowded with life, and happy life, His creation is! Go forth from inclosing city walls, and, in the summer noontide, stop in solitude and apparent silence and listen; and soon the sounds of this joyous life shall ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... spectacle, and shocked even the Assyrians, accustomed as they were to horrors of this sort. Most of the numerous victims to pestilence or famine lay about the streets or in the public squares, a prey to the dogs and swine; such of the inhabitants and of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... inhabitant of the Five Towns in the Midlands, he had the brusque and energetic mien of the Midlands. It could be seen that he was a stranger to the south; and, in fact, he was now viewing for the first time the vast and glittering spectacle of the southern pleasure city in the unique glory of her autumn season. A spectacle to enliven any man by its mere splendour! And yet Edward Coe was gloomy. One reason for his gloom was that he had just left a bicycle, with a deflated back tyre, to be repaired at a shop in Preston Street. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... there gloomily chewing, he was a spectacle to shudder at. Not so much on account of his natural hideousness, increased a thousand-fold by the tattered and filthy rags which barely covered him. Not so much on account of his unshaven jaws, his hare-lip, his torn and bleeding ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... caught her sight, was a young woman of a slender and elegant form, and eighteen years of age, busily employed in feeding and managing some children, born of the same parents, but considerably inferior to her in age. The impression Mary received from this spectacle was indelible; and, before the interview was concluded, she had taken, in her heart, the vows ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... line of Tibetan horsemen rode towards us at full gallop," he relates. "It was not raining just at that moment, so there was nothing to prevent us from witnessing what was in truth a very magnificent spectacle. It was as though a living avalanche were sweeping down upon us. A moment more and we should be annihilated! We held our weapons ready. On came the Tibetans in one long line stretching across the plain. We counted close upon seventy in ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... knelt beside the inanimate form of her old parent, shedding no tear, and uttering no sigh. Tears would have poorly expressed the wo which at that moment she felt; and the outlaw, growing impatient of the dumb spectacle, now ventured to approach and interrupt her. She rose, meekly and without reluctance, as he spoke; with a manner which said as plainly as words could have, said—'Command, and I obey. Bid me go even now, at midnight, on a perilous journey, over and into foreign lands, and I go without murmur ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... among the Radicals, but that rivalries between the two factions rested on differences of principle far deeper than canal improvement. "If you study the papers at all," wrote William H. Seward, "you will see that the Barnburners of this State have carried the war into Africa, and the extraordinary spectacle is exhibited of Democrats making up an issue of slavery at Washington. The consequences of this movement cannot be fully apprehended. It brings on the great question sooner and more directly than we have even ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... who in averagely prosperous circumstances might have lived pleasantly and reputably. But the deeper we plunge into nature, the deeper we explore life, the more immutable we find the grip of law. What could appear to be a more fortuitous spectacle of collision and confusion than a great ocean breaker thundering landwards, with a wrack of flying spray and tossing crests? Yet every smallest motion of every particle is the working put of laws which go ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Lady Griffin permitted such a spectacle. I am sure it was a vulgar thing to do. Only the san-culottes, make such exhibition of their ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... a gruesome spectacle! A huge beast—maddened to fury by the sharp lashes of a stinging whip, blinded by the blows that had fallen thick and fast about his head and ears, goaded by the memory of years of cruelty and brutality—crushing to death in his hairy ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... paintwork, and after she had bitten a couple of hundred times, to the damage of Maid's neck and Charmian's temper. It was hard enough to have her favourite mare in the harness without also enduring the spectacle of its being ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... opposite side of the street. He was a somewhat peculiar-looking man, tall, gaunt, and bony, and the way in which he carried his head suggested to the medical mind a pronounced degree of near sight and a pair of "deep" spectacle glasses. Suddenly he espied me and crossed the road with his chin thrust forward and a pair of keen blue eyes directed at me through ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... quit our native country when to leave it we must traverse the sea; all is solemn in a journey of which ocean marks the first steps. An abyss seems to open behind you, and to render your return for ever impossible. Besides, the sublime spectacle which the sea presents must always make a deep impression on the imagination; it is the image of that Infinity which continually attracts our thoughts, that run incessantly to lose themselves in it. Oswald, supporting himself on the helm, his eyes fixed on the waves, was apparently ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... that they feel their inseparable union; that notwithstanding all the devices which have been used to sway them from their interest and duty, they are now as ready to maintain the authority of the laws against licentious invasions as they were to defend their rights against usurpation. It has been a spectacle displaying to the highest advantage the value of republican government to behold the most and the least wealthy of our citizens standing in the same ranks as private soldiers, preeminently distinguished by being the army of the Constitution—undeterred ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... blood-stained bar upon the horizon's verge, and this luminous orange-coloured curtain was crossed every moment upwards and downwards by silvery shafts of lightning. Such an effect of sunset combined with storm was like a new revelation of nature, and the sublimity of the spectacle would have held me fast to the patch of wild heath if the rain had not begun to fall in splashes. The long summer day was over, and the night came forth in trouble and with gushing tears. The roar of the thunder ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... had kept them—had rendered them. There was beauty, to him, in a correct, balanced, and closed account. An account unsatisfied was a deformity. The result is plain. That man, looking out night after night upon the grand and holy spectacle of the starry deep above and the watery deep below, was sure to find himself, sooner or later, mastered by the conviction that the great Author of this majestic creation keeps account of it; and one night there came to him, like ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... all our considerations, especially his poor sister's, who had no sooner recovered sufficient strength than she began to lament her brother, crying out that he was killed; and bitterly bewailing her fate, in having revived from her swoon to behold so dreadful a spectacle. While Amelia applied herself to soothe the agonies of her friend, I began to enquire into the condition of the major, in which I was assisted by a surgeon, who now arrived. The major declared, with great chearfulness, that he did not apprehend his wound to be in the least dangerous, and therefore ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... singular specimen of humanity passing before her; thought he was the most awkward and comical creature in the form of a man she had ever seen; and turned away with a laugh to tell her people in the house of the queer spectacle. She little thought that she was taking a bird's eye view of her future husband, as the young man with the rolls under his arms turned out to be. But just then he cared more for bread than he did for her; some ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... of the street there passed by, like a masquerade, the variety of types and costumes that had surprised Aguirre as a spectacle distinct from that furnished by other European cities. There were Moroccans, some with a broad, hooded cape, white or black, the cowl lowered as if they were friars; others wearing balloon trousers, their calves exposed to the ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... yet stop the quiver of his nerves when he recalled the spectacle, and Willet, the hunter, hardened though he was to war, shuddered in spite of himself at the memory of that terrible battle in the leafy wilderness. Nor was Tayoga, the young Onondaga, free from emotion when he thought of Braddock's defeat, and the blazing triumph ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... religious neutrality to control the unruly affections of sinful men. It is now seen that our Western ideas and inventions, moral and material, are being turned against us by some of those to whom we have imparted an elementary aptitude for using them. And thus we have the strange spectacle, in certain parts of India, of a party capable of resorting to methods that are both reactionary and revolutionary, of men who offer prayers and sacrifices to ferocious divinities and denounce the Government by seditious journalism, preaching ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... listened, smiling, to the discussion which had arisen between Grandmother and the Philosopher. It was well worth listening to. The Philosopher, while wholly deferential, held his ground staunchly, but Grandmother worsted him in the end. Her cheeks grew pink, her black eyes shone. It was a captivating spectacle. ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... this had happened a dozen times or more, and still without disaster, he took heart and began to turn it all into a game, choosing this or that breaker and making imaginary wagers upon it; but yet the spectacle fascinated him, and still at the back of his small brain lay wonder that all this terrifying fury and uproar should always be coming to nothing. God must be out yonder (he thought) and engaged in some mysterious form of play. He had heard a ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... contrast to the nervous alertness of the Yankee was the spectacle of the middle-class German and his ways. He sat by his plain, stout, ill-dressed Frau, with his back to the scenery, and ate. Occasionally he spoke in monosyllables: more often he drank; but the end and object of his Rhine trip seemed to be that of consuming as much food as lay within ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... pushed through the crowd with little ceremony, prodding on the right with his umbrella, on the left with his fan, and using his elbows vigorously. Constance, serenely cool, followed in his wake, nodding here and there to a chance acquaintance, smiling on everyone; the spectacle to her held always fresh interest. An image vendor close at her elbow insisted that she should buy a Madonna and Bambina for fifty centesimi, or at least a San Giuseppe for twenty-five. To her father's disgust she bought them both, ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster
... "What a spectacle is this!" cried Hamilton, gaily. He threw himself back on the grass, and clasped his hands behind his head. "Troup, of all men, reproaching me for keeping a vow he once was ready to annihilate me for having broken. That offence was insignificant to the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... was born in Russia in 1814, of a family of good position, belonging to the old nobility. He was well educated and began his career in the army. Shortly after the Polish insurrection had been crushed, militarism and despotism became abhorrent to him, and the spectacle of that terrorized country made an everlasting impression upon him. In 1834 he renounced his military career and returned to Moscow, where he gave himself up entirely to the study of philosophy, and, as was natural at the period, he saturated himself with ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... pendant, take the description of one of the last French novels:—" Paris tout s'oublie, tout se pardonne. Par convenance, par dcence, quelquefois par crainte, on s'absente, ou fait un entr'acte: puis le rideau se rleve pour le spectacle de nouvelles fautes et de nouvelles folies; toute la question est ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... shudder shook her from head to foot, she seemed in truth to sicken and grow faint, like one forced to face some hideous nauseating spectacle. "As for him," she went on in low, feeble tones, "it will be the best too. God knows I forgive him, that I am sorry for him, that I regret his terrible fate. But I feel it would be worse for him to see me—if he must die, it would be wrong to distract ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... to the fact that the Administration, and the foundations upon which it stands, never has needed the support of the people more than now? Can only the party in power afford to be patriotic? What a spectacle is this, that I, an alien born, am wearing out my life and sacrificing my character, to save from themselves a people who pant for my ruin! Has the game been worth the candle? Debt, my family crowded into a house not half ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... lizards," as Peter put it, and besides, he and Oliver had an offensive-defensive alliance of The Country's Tiredest Young Business Men and insisted that their only function in life was to be gently and graciously amused. And certainly the spectacle about them was one to provide amusement in the extreme for even the most ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... of Liege, in Belgium, a troop of Belgian Boy Scouts stood at attention. Staffs in hand, clad in the short knickerbockers, the khaki shirts and the wide campaign hats that mark the Boy Scout all over the world, they were enough of a spectacle to draw the attention of the busy citizens of Liege, who stopped to watch them admiringly. Their scoutmaster, Armand Van Verde, had been addressing them. And now in the fading light of the ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... this reason it is not susceptible of the same increase as that of tobacco, of which the use is more general, and now become an object of the first necessity. The native of the Philippine Islands is, by nature, so sober, that the spectacle of a drunken man is seldom noticed in the streets; in the capital, where the most corrupt classes of them reside, it is admirable to see the general abstinence from a vice that degrades the human species. The consumption of the coco ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... policeman's salute and restoring two shillings and a few fat copper pennies to his pocket, he entered the vast and echoing train-shed. In the act, his attention was attracted and immediately riveted by the spectacle of a burly luggage navvy in a blue jumper in the act of making off with a large, folding sign-board, of which the surface was lettered expansively with the advice, in red against a ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... "They present the curious spectacle," said he thoughtfully, "of the individual man in a new untrammelled liberty trying to escape his moral obligations to society. He escapes them for a while, but they are there; and in the end he ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... and a half beyond this creek (Cottonwood Creek) the rocks approach the river on both sides, forming a most sublime and extraordinary spectacle. For five and three quarter miles these rocks rise perpendicularly from the water's edge to the height of nearly twelve hundred feet. They are composed of a black granite near their base, but from ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... Alexander this would have been no bar to his promotion. But the Church was rapidly undergoing a change; and Carlo, complying with the hypocritical spirit of his age, found it convenient to affect a thorough reformation, and to make open show of penitence. Rome now presented the singular spectacle of an inquisitorial Pope, unimpeachable in moral conduct and zealous for Church reform, surrounded by nephews who were little better than Borgias. The Caraffas began to dream of principalities and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... well stood a rueful spectacle,—a bewildering guide board, flecked with bits of white paper, showing that the notice or message which had recently been pasted and tacked thereon had since been stripped ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... of mythical narration is the history of vegetation, which at the present time has largely supplanted the solar theory. The amazing spectacle of the decay and revival of vegetation, naturally referred to superhuman power, and the importance of plants for human life, have led to the construction of stories (sometimes founded on ritual) in which the adventures of the spirit of vegetation are ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... also known as the wild-ass, being stationed opposite the dense array of the enemy, hurled forth a huge stone, which, although it fell harmless on the ground, yet by the mere sight of it terrified them so greatly, that in alarm at the strange spectacle they all fell ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... speech in reply, failing to excuse the Commission, which is inexcusable, but very good upon the question. Both he and Ellice spoke out. I was at the Abbey on Tuesday and yesterday for a performance and a rehearsal of the 'Messiah.' The spectacle is very fine, and it is all admirably managed—no crowd or inconvenience, and easy egress and ingress—but the 'Messiah' is not so effective as I expected, not so fine as in York Minster; the choruses are admirably performed, but the single voices are miserable—singers ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... drove. At first all went well. The clouds hung low over the woods, the wind sighed in the trees, a drearier day you could hardly imagine. So they joined the rest at the other castle and took their seats to watch the jousting in the lists. So intent were they in watching the gay spectacle of the prancing steeds, the fluttering pennons, and the glittering armour of the knights, that they failed to mark the change, the fatal change, in the weather. For the wind was rising and had begun to disperse the clouds, and suddenly the sun broke through, and ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... of added softness; a mist makes them more wonderful, unreal, romantic; snow brings them to one's doors. At sunrise they are magical, a background for Malory; at sunset they are the lovely home of the serenest thoughts, a spectacle for Marcus Aurelius. Their combes, or hollows, are then filled with purple shadow cast by the sinking sun, while the summits and shoulders ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... was this belief that it needed but a brief Executive suggestion to the Congress to receive immediate answer to the duty of making instant provision for the possible and perhaps speedily probable emergency of war, and the remarkable, almost unique, spectacle was presented of a unanimous vote of both Houses, on the 9th of March, appropriating $50,000,000 "for the national defense and for each and every purpose connected therewith, to be expended at the discretion of the President." That this act ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... still enough to make a little narration. Madame de ]a Roche had told me that she had been only three days in England, and had yet made but a beginning of seeing les spectacles and les gens c'el'ebres;—and what do you think was the first, and, as yet, sole spectacle to which she had been carried?—Bedlam!—And who the first, and, as yet, only homme c'el'ebre she had seen—Lord George Gordon!—whom she called le fameux George Gordon, and with whom she had dined, in company with ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... quatre vingt sept fois, sans y comprendre plus de dix fois qu'il s'était corrompu lui-même. Dans le temps que nous consultions, le pauvre homme spermatisa trois fois à notre présence, embrassa le pied du lit, et agitant contre lui comme si c'eust été sa femme. Ce spectacle nous étonn et nous hâtâ à lui faire des remèdes pour abattre cette furieusse chaleur, mais quel remède qu'on lui eust faire, se passa-t-il ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... glorious orb arose above the desert, the sonorous call, "To prayer, to prayer!" was poured forth by the Soldan himself, and answered by others, whose rank and zeal entitled them to act as muezzins. It was a striking spectacle to see them all sink to earth, for the purpose of repeating their devotions, with their faces turned to Mecca. But when they arose from the ground, the sun's rays, now strengthening fast, seemed to confirm the Lord of Gilsland's conjecture ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... friend from a flatterer, but to his deluded eyes (made proud with the sight) it seemed a precious comfort to have so many, like brothers commanding one another's fortunes (though it was his own fortune which paid all the cost), and with joy they would run over at the spectacle of such, as it appeared to him, truly ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb |
