"Spectacles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you and calls you by your name. His voice echoes in the chambers of your memory. You hold his hand in yours and try to peer through the false-face he has on, the mask of a beard or spectacles, or a changed expression of the countenance. He says he is So-and-so. Why, he used to sit with you in Miss Crutcher's room, don't you remember? There was a time when you and he walked together, your ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... worth while to vex himself about a trifle. Midas now took his spectacles from his pocket, and put them on his nose in order that he might see more distinctly what he was about. In those days spectacles for common people had not been invented, but were already worn by kings, else how could Midas have had any? To his great perplexity, however, excellent ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... excite the emotions by cheap means. He simply points out that things are as they are, that there is nothing to be done about it, that they depend upon immutable laws. Accordingly all those sad, even horrible spectacles are accepted as life itself. To Gorky, the spectacle presented by these characters is only natural: he has seen them shaken by passion as the waves by the wind, and a smile pass over their souls like the ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... of these delays, it was rather late, past nine o'clock, before we set forward. I had provided myself with a pair of crape spectacles and a double veil, but I speedily discarded both; the crape fretted my eye-lashes, and would have produced a greater degree of irritation than the sand. A much better kind are those of wire, which tie round ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... tea, and see a freshman swallow greasy ham and eggs, enough to turn the stomach of any one else; and then those Dons always make a point of asking me to meet a set of regular muffs that I don't know. The last time I went, there were only two reading-men in spectacles, perfect dummies, and that ass, young Medlicott, who talks about hunting, and I believe never crossed the back of anything higher ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... for us all!" Pushing back his spectacles into the very roots of his white hair, the professor stared feebly round on the company, and twiddled in his fingers a sheet of thin ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... "Seven doors from the Cheshire Cat public house under the railway bridge. I used to take my lunch there when my business called me to the city. Cloete would come in to have his chop and make the girl laugh. No need to talk much, either, for that. Nothing but the way he would twinkle his spectacles on you and give a twitch of his thick mouth was enough to start you off before he began one of his little ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... to cool and refresh himself; and the frogs, in a neighboring tank, while conjugal duties keep them also on the top, feebly croak as they float with their wives among the green feculence, and make love behind the bulrushes. On leaving the garden, we mount our green spectacles, hoist our umbrella, and resolutely set our face homeward and Romeward. Half an hour's broiling walk brings us up under the friendly covert of the city walls; following the giro of which, we arrive in about as much time as it has taken us to reach them, at the Popolo ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... inscription on his coffin, "Arthurus Dominus de Balmerino, decollatus, 18^o die August. 1746, aetatis suae 58^o;" observed "that it was right," and with apparent pleasure looked at the block saying, it was his "pillow of rest." Lord Balmerino then pulling out his spectacles, read a paper to those who stood around him, and delivered it to the Sheriff to do with it as he thought proper. It was subsequently printed in a garbled form, much of it being deemed too treasonable for publication, and in that form is preserved ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... the children found he was called—was dressed in a coarse coat made of bear's skin, under which was a spotless shirt-front and collar; an old-fashioned pair of horn-rimmed spectacles completed his costume, while some dangerous-looking surgical instruments projected from a rough pocket tacked on to ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... And then the Justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined,— With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... feed a great army, but they did not fire a shot. The sight, whether by daylight or moonlight, did not lose its romance and majesty for the lad. It was a black sea, flowing and living, one of the greatest spectacles of the mighty western wilderness, and it was given to him to look ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... fellow, a self-taught archaeologist who had a passion for collecting Russian antiquities and sometimes tried to outshine Stepan Trofimovitch in erudition and in the progressiveness of his opinions. This worthy shopkeeper, with a grey beard and silver-rimmed spectacles, still owed Stepan Trofimovitch four hundred roubles for some acres of timber he had bought on the latter's little estate (near Skvoreshniki). Though Varvara Petrovna had liberally provided her friend with funds when she sent ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... police, he succeeded in introducing the point of a pickaxe beneath the base of the stone; and eventually he had the satisfaction of removing it from its position, when he made the following geological observations:—He found a primary deposit of dark soil, and, on putting his spectacles to his eyes, he distinctly detected a common worm in a state of high salubrity. This clearly proved to him that there must formerly have been a direct communication between Hookham-cum-Snivey and the town ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... to the other of her companions with uncertain gaze. Where everyone was so kind it was hard to choose. Ethel had not tossed her head once since she entered the room; Kate kept taking off her spectacles, and polishing them on her handkerchief; Flora looked so kind and comfortable; the "Bridgie's expression" was stronger than ever in Margaret's eyes; but there was a something in Lottie's face—a humble, wistful longing which was to ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... force of the explosion raised a solitary mountain of water, from the breaking of which in all directions our little boat narrowly escaped being swamped. The explosion-vessel did her work well, the effect constituting one of the grandest artificial spectacles imaginable. For a moment, the sky was red with the lurid glare arising from the simultaneous ignition of fifteen hundred barrels of powder. On this gigantic flash subsiding, the air seemed alive with shells, grenades, rockets, and masses of timber, the wreck of the shattered vessel. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... Zealand, and Utrecht, and the count of Egmont, governor of Flanders and Artois, permitted no persecutions in those five provinces. But in various places the very people, even when influenced by their superiors, openly opposed it. Catholics as well as Protestants were indignant at the atrocious spectacles of cruelty presented on all sides. The public peace was endangered by isolated acts of resistance, and fears of a general ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... evidence—huge pictures of the two major senatorial candidates. He estimated that Chester Pelton's bald head and bulldog features appeared twice for every one of Grant Hamilton's white locks, old-fashioned spectacles and ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... other means failed to procure this luxury, he would write to his friends for a toothbrush and sell it for the weed, which caused the toothbrushes to be withdrawn from all the prisoners. Then he would write for a pair of spectacles, pretending that his eyes were getting weak. These he sold, and the last were discovered passing into one of the cooks' hands in fair exchange for mutton chops. They were taken into the governor's room, and ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... glanced up over her spectacles at the circle of faces around the sitting-room table. The girls had volunteered to help her pick over berries for canning the following day. It was a sacrifice to make, too, with the midsummer evening calling ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... taking my part. Sarah is going to be a strong-minded woman. I should not wonder if she came out as a lecturer on 'Woman's Rights' some time. I think I see her, with a pair of iron-bowed spectacles on her nose, and her back hair tied up in a big knot, flinging ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... so-called "comforters." soondin', sounding, examination with a stethoscope. soopled, suppled. sooth, South. sough, rushing sound; to sough awa', to breathe his last. spails, splinters, shavings. spak, spoke. spate, flood. specks, spectacles. sporran, pouch worn with the kilt. spunks, matches. stappin', stepping. starns, stars. staw'd, surfeited. steer, disturbance. stiddy, steady. stoundin', aching. stour, dust. strae, straw; in the strae, in child-bed. straught, straight. stude, stood. sutten-doon, habitual, chronic, ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... been a run on the red! there has been a run on the red! and your Excellency's stake has doubled each time. It has been 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and now it is 512!" quickly rattled a little thin man in spectacles, pointing at the same time to his unparalleled line of punctures. This was one of those officious, noisy little men who are always ready to give you unasked information, and who are never so happy as when they are watching ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... gather sticks in the forest or to work on the highway. But now they were commandants, colonels, generals, and had won their grades by fighting in every land on earth. Old Melchior, with his black silk cap pulled over his ears, his weak eyelids, his nose pinched between great horn spectacles, and his lips tightly pressed together, could not sometimes avoid putting aside his magnifying-glass and punch upon the workbench, and throwing a glance toward the inn, especially when the cracking of the whips of the postilions, with their heavy ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... Beaver Lake, and the other detached parties were ordered to return to the post. The expedients to which the poor people were reduced, to cross a country so beset with waters, presented many uncouth spectacles. The inexperienced were glad to compromise, with the loss of property, for the safety of their persons, and astride upon ill-balanced rafts with which they struggled to be uppermost, exhibited a ludicrous picture of distress. Happy were they who could patch up an old canoe, though ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... girl told him he ought to be ashamed of himself ruining a poor hard-working girl who was looking for her sister and he only laughed again and said he knew all about that. I don't know what would have happened only just then an oldish man came along, wearing spectacles and with a kind sharp face, who stopped and asked what was the matter. The policeman was very civil to him and seemed to know him and told him that I wouldn't give him my address and that I was no good and ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... medical assistance was lean and emaciated. Several of these miserable people died in the boats as they were rowing on shore or on the wharf as they were being lifted out of the boats, both the living and the dead exhibiting more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this country. All this was to be attributed to confinement, and that of the worst species—confinement in a small space and in irons, not put on singly, but many of them chained together. On board the Scarborough a plan had been formed to take ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... the last valentine. It belonged to the class that she and Allister had exchanged. It was very ugly and very funny; a picture of a tall, lank woman in spectacles and a college gown, her claw-like hands holding a ponderous volume. Christina laughed gaily and mentally blamed John, either he or Jimmie was surely the ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... us,' he says again, plaintive-like, feelin' for his spectacles an' not finding 'em, 'that Penzance ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was the reply: "life is a guess. I don't think we could deceive Roxalana and Lucy this way, because their eyes are without colored spectacles; but, when people have once begun to see by prejudices and judge by jargon what can't be done with them? Who knows? do you? I ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... the spectacles and they shattered on the floor as he leaped up and the automatic shone in his hand. Lund had folded his arms above his great chest. He laughed again, and ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... I went to bed too, at midnight; passed the next day on the Dover coach; burst safe and sound into my aunt's old parlour while she was at tea (she wore spectacles now); and was received by her, and Mr. Dick, and dear old Peggotty, who acted as housekeeper, with open arms and tears of joy. My aunt was mightily amused, when we began to talk composedly, by my account of my meeting with Mr. Chillip, and of his holding her in such dread remembrance; and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... work at the Admiralty, returning in the evening to receive Cynthia's report of the day. Miss Denison, the boy's teacher, who had been trained in one of the London Special Schools, was a little round-faced lady with spectacles, apparently without any emotions, but really filled with that educator's passion which in so many women of our day fills the place of motherhood. From the beginning she formed the conclusion that the pitiable little fellow entrusted to her was to a great extent educable; ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sermons and poetry; also Sir William Jekyll, who was employing Mr. Hobbs to make a map of an estate he had just purchased; also two country squires and their two wives; moreover, the physician of the neighbouring town,—a remarkably tall man, who wore spectacles and told anecdotes; and, lastly, Mr. Onslow, the gentleman to whom Mr. Hobbs had referred,—an elderly man of prepossessing exterior, of high repute as the most efficient magistrate, the best farmer, and the most sensible person in the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... least some part or other of it in the fiery crucible. But the days of its severest trials were those of its most glorious triumphs. Then it shone above all other periods of time with the brightest examples of sanctity, and exhibited both to heaven and to men on earth the most glorious spectacles and triumphs. Then were formed in its bosom innumerable most illustrious heroes of all perfect virtue, who eminently inherited, and propagated in the hearts of many others, the true spirit of our crucified Redeemer. The same conduct God in his tender mercy holds with regard to those ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the usual variety of people on the ship. The rich family travelin' with children and servants and unlimited baggage; the party of school girls with the slim talkative teacher in spectacles, tellin' 'em all the pints of interest, and stuffin' 'em with knowledge gradual but constant; the stiddy goin' business men and the fashionable ones; the married flirt and the newly married bride and husband, sheepish lookin' ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... tremendously at such appearances. One after the other was silently pronounced "the real Lord Downy." Then came two or three sinister visages—faces half muffled up, with educated features, small cunning eyes, and perhaps green spectacles—conspirators every one—villains who had evidently conspired to reduce Mr Moses's balance at his banker's, and to get fat at his expense. Down went the spirits faster than they had mounted. The head, as well as eyes of Mr Moses, now ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... said the housekeeper; and she conducted Selma into the next room, where, on a little throne, with a high back and rockers, sat the Queen Dowager. She seemed rather smaller than the other gnomes, and was very much wrinkled and wore spectacles. She had white hair, with little curls on each side, and was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... fencing: when I saw you at the end of an alley of associations, I pushed the conversation up the next—because I was afraid of questions such as every moment I expected, with a pair of woman's eyes behind them; and those are worse than Mr. Kenyon's, when he puts on his spectacles. So your name was not once spoken—not thought of, I do not say—perhaps when I once lost her at Chevy Chase and found her suddenly with Isidore the queen's hairdresser, my thoughts might have wandered off to you and your unanswered ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... got there Mr. Dodd's knock was so timid that he had to repeat it before the judge came to the door and peered at them over his spectacles. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Earl Grey, Mr. Stanley, Mr. O'Connell? If I were you, I would not be too anxious to spend my time in reading whilst in town. Make use of your own eyes for the purposes of observation now, and, for a time at least, lay aside the spectacles with ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... affords a haven for the mixed population which labours on the Mole—coolies, seamen, Chinese mess "boys," Tagalog cargadores, Lascar serangs, stalwart Sikh watchmen from the hemp and sugar godowns, squat Germans in white suits with pencils stuck in their sun helmets and wearing amber-coloured spectacles. British clerks with cargo lists, customs brokers, barking mates with blasphemous vocabularies, Scotch mechanics with parched throats, and all the underlings who have to do with ships and ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... shall name the judges from the same places, unless there should be important reasons for bringing the cause directly to Rome. Frivolous appeals are punished. The celebration of divine service is regulated and spectacles in churches are forbidden. The abuse of ecclesiastical censures is repressed, and it is declared that no one is obliged to shun excommunicated persons, unless they have been proclaimed by name, or else that the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... trying to put into words that subtle something which makes us feel at peace with all mankind, and little realizing that its cause lay right within herself; for a sense of having done one's very best and a clear conscience are wonderful rosy spectacles through which ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there, My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair; And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... best of his recollection it had been a good long time since Judge Priest had had a communication by post from overseas. He adjusted his steel-bowed spectacles, ripped the wrapper with care and shook out the contents. There appeared to be several inclosures; in fact, there were several—a sheaf of printed forms, a document with seals attached, and a letter that ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... a tall, fat man with a puffy, colourless, clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and a big gold ring on his fat finger. He was twenty-seven. He had on a light grey fashionable loose coat, light summer trousers, and everything about him loose, fashionable and spick and span; his linen was irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he was slow and, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... night. I remember the look,' he said, laughing, 'when we used to beg for a quarter of an hour more. O Venetia! do not you remember that Christmas when dear old Masham read Julius Caesar, and we were to sit up until it was finished. When he got to the last act I hid his spectacles. I never confessed it until this moment. Will you pardon me, Lady Annabel?' and he pressed his hands together in a mockery ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... to her full height, put her spectacles on, and looked at the papers before her; then put them off again, and fixed her eyes on her son. "Do you think there will be room in the house?" she said. "I fear you would be preparing great discomfort for Adela. Where on earth ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... saw our breakfast," said the Laird, as he finished the newspapers, and deposited his spectacles in his pocket. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... to shake the snow from his leggings, made like his cap of yellow cloth, and from his knitted comforter, which allowed scarcely more of his face to be seen than a few tufts of grizzling beard and a pair of enormous green spectacles made as convex as the glass of a stereoscope. An alpenstock, knapsack, coil of rope worn in saltire, crampons and iron hooks hanging to the belt of an English blouse with broad pleats, completed the accoutrement of ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... is therefore necessary to give these latter certain advantages ... it has been suggested that Italian schools be favoured ... that offices be opened for the gratuitous or semi-gratuitous distribution of food, that presents be given to the indigent population, that fetes and spectacles ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... 'old with such. Why, there was Rapkin's own sister-in-law let her parlour floor to a Horiental—a Parsee he was, or one o' them Hafrican tribes—and reason she 'ad to repent of it, for all his gold spectacles! Whatever made you fancy I ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... from a complete suit of coffee-colour cut very square, and ornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour minus the inexpressibles, which were then of a pale nankeen. He wore a very precise shirt-frill, and carried a pair of first-rate spectacles on his forehead, and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than doubt which precious possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy against it on part of all the clocks and watches in the City, and even of the very Sun itself. Such as he ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... do so here,' said Sir Jasper, who could not well make trial of his new spectacles in Great ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici, the Elder, whereon there were painted—by the hand, not of common painters, but of excellent masters, and with judgment, invention, and marvellous art—all the jousts, tournaments, chases, festivals, and other spectacles that took place in his times. Of such things relics are still seen, not only in the palace and the old houses of the Medici, but in all the most noble houses in Florence; and there are men who, out of attachment ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... determined and probably very unsuitable woman and led reluctant to the altar. Galahad won't marry until he has found 'the one woman,' and I fear he will prove a husband wasted, for poor Galahad already wears spectacles and a bald spot; his devotion to an unrealisable ideal bids ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... Christianity over heathenism and Judaism, and the mightiest empire of the ancient world, a victory gained without physical force, by the moral power of faith and perseverance, of faith and love, is one of the sublimest spectacles of history, and one of the strongest evidences of the divinity and indestructible life of our holy ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... cabbage, for men who do not till the soil, but pass their lives in other people's houses, are thought to be, and are really, wittier and more talkative than simple farmhands. One digs, with a spade, a ditch deep enough to uproot an oak. Another places on his nose a pair of wooden or cardboard spectacles. He fulfils the duties of "engineer," walks up and down, constructs a plan, stares at the workmen through his glasses, plays the pedant, cries out that everything will be spoiled, has the work stopped and begun afresh as his fancy directs, and ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... practice of compelling human beings to fight for the amusement of spectators was introduced; and twelve years later the capture of several elephants in the first Punic war proved the means of introducing the chase, or rather the slaughter, of wild beasts into the Roman circus. The taste for these spectacles increased of course with its indulgence, and their magnificence with the wealth of the city and the increasing facility and inducement to practice bribery which was offered by the increased extent of provinces subject to Rome. It ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... hobbling to the door. Taking her walking stick, she lifts the latch gently and the door opens slightly. A gray head appears through the crack of the door and Lizzie, peeping out from above her tiny rim spectacles, immediately recognizes her visitor. She offers her usual cheerful greeting and begins hastily to push the large wooden tubs from the door to make room for her visitor to enter, though it is with unusual hesitancy that ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... exclaimed, "No, Monsieur!—it is not the wig which is too small; it is your head which is too large." At any rate the wig could not be worn, and Franklin appeared in his own gray hair, dressed in black velvet, with white silk stockings, spectacles on nose, and no sword at his side. The king received the envoys courteously, saying: "Gentlemen, I wish the Congress to be assured of my friendship. I beg leave also to observe that I am exceedingly satisfied in particular with your own conduct during your residence in my kingdom;" and with these ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... bald young man—in fact, one of the baldest young men that ever was seen. He seemed to be bald all over. He had no ascertainable eyebrows, or eyelashes, or hair, and this, with his bright, fresh complexion and his big spectacles, gave him a very ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... for smoothness, absolutely waveless, and shone with the colors of changeable silk, blue, green, pink, and amethyst. Heavy clouds gathered about the sun, and from behind them he exhibited burning spectacles, magnificent fireworks, vast shadow-pictures, scarlet cities, and gigantic figures stalking across the sky. From one crater of embers he shot up a fan-like flame that spread to the zenith and was reflected on the water. His rays lay along the sea in pink, and the water had the sheen of iridescent ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... why has that wild boy gone from me?" And the Curate answers, looking down, Harmless and docile as a lamb, "Young blood! young blood! It must so be!" And draws from the pocket of his gown A handkerchief like an oriflamb, And wipes his spectacles, and they play Their little game of lansquenet In silence for an hour or so, Till the clock at nine strikes loud and clear From the village lying asleep below, And across the courtyard, into the dark Of the winding pathway in the park, Curate ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... quivered, and suddenly got up and left the room. He did not say a word, but went on with some other part of the drawing; his silence was unnatural, and his dark cheek blanched a little. Cousin Holman looked up from her work, and put her spectacles down. ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... for the last time, awaiting our railway warrants, there were some moving spectacles. The Mate and the Second-Engineer were bidding each other affectionate and tearful farewells behind the winch. "You won't quite forget me, Bill, will yer?" I heard the Second exclaim brokenly, but the only reply was a strangled sob. The Steward, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... oriel, where an officer or two, looking up and discovering Mrs. Maumbry, saluted her, whose eyes filled with tears as the notes of the band waned away. Before the little group had recovered from that sense of the romantic which such spectacles impart, Mr. Maumbry came along the pavement. He probably had bidden his former brethren-in-arms a farewell at the top of the street, for he walked from that direction in his rather shabby clerical clothes, and ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Nor was our contentment marred by the fact that the well-known scientific authority with whom the stranger had been intimate,—to the point of "sleeping together" during a survey,—and whom he described as a bent old man with spectacles, must have aged considerably since one of our party saw him three years before as a keen young fellow of twenty-five. Inaccuracies like those were only the carelessness of genius. "That's my opinion, gentlemen," he concluded, negligently rising, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... read. He saw this book, his father's great house Bible, lying above a certain grey head, in the white square hole in the wall. Beneath it was a copy of the Drumfern Standard, and on the top a psalm-book in which were his mother's spectacles, put there when she took them off after reading ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... has not in this instance failed you. Perhaps you will permit me to read the will? But before I do so," continued Mr. Quillet, as he drew his gold-rimmed spectacles from their morocco sheath—"you will allow me, if you please, to state that the legatee, delicately appreciating the position of the widow, will allow her any reasonable annuity—say five hundred ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Green, sympathizingly, "it must have been terrible hard for him, an' he couldn't had a great deal of comfort with his arms." And then, as she looked over her spectacles pityingly at the miniature Macbeth, and noticed that it was the covers of her wash-boilers that he wore, she said, "You must be awful careful not to tumble down, Dickey, for you never could get up; an' besides, if anybody ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... dilettantism, mere conceit and boyish pedantry. I travelled, and the fact that wherever I went I took a small classical library with me was symbolical of my state of mind. I saw everything through old-world spectacles. Even in America I could not get rid of my pedantry, as you will recognise clearly enough if you look back to the letters I wrote you at that time. I came then with theories in my head of what American civilisation must be, and everything that I saw I made fit in with my preconceptions. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... is dropped, and he then fixes a pole into the bottom of the river, and lashes the boat to that, and to that it will be fixed until nine o'clock; at present it is five. He puts on a grey coat, and brown hat, and blue spectacles, all the colours of man and boat being philosophically arranged, and as part of a complicated and secret plot upon the liberties of that unseen, mysterious, and much-considered goujon which is poetically ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... taking out his spectacles and putting them on, to have a better view of the triumphs so dear to his heart. 'I couldn't write like that, now-a-days. No. They're all done by one hand; a little hand it is, not so old as yours, but ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of the sublimest and most awful spectacles in history —that city in ruins—the earth still trembling, the grim and dauntless soldiery collected amid piles of death and ruin; and in such a time, and such a scene, the multitude sensible not of danger, but ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... The first glimpse of the returning Pioneer. The interesting party aboard. The Chief and the entire village at the seashore. The Professor. Muro's wife. Blakely. The Chief meets the Professor. The Chief knows why the Professor is a wise man. The double eyes, spectacles. The Chief with the spectacles. Muro's wife meets the Chief's wife. They confer about Cinda and Sutoto. The savage customs in marriage. The ceremonies. Stut tells the boys about Sutoto's mission to procure his wedding outfit. The surprising ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... them wages for their necessary attendance in the public assemblies and other civil functions; but more especially for the vast and superfluous expense you entailed on the State in the theatrical spectacles with which you entertained them at the ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... thickset, bull-necked man, very nearly bald, with a fringe of gray whiskers round his chin and wearing a pair of black eye-glasses under his spectacles, for his eyes were weak and strained. Lupin noticed the powerful features, the square chin, the prominent cheek-bones. The hands were brawny and covered with hair, the legs bowed; and he walked ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... applied for the increase of the magnificence of town and country residences—for the most part so ignorantly applied, that the Genius of Architecture might almost be frightened from our shores by the spectacles reared here to vex and astonish the next ages. To bring about a reform, to lead the way for rationalism, in the noblest of the practical arts, Mr. Ruskin has approved himself worthy by his previous works. The Stones of Venice ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... of the affections of Miss Maud Barnes, Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, as he sat there, a suitor on probation for her hand, was a young man of modest and genteel appearance. He wore a blue serge suit—a little underdressed for the occasion, perhaps; but his tie and collar were neat; his gold-rimmed spectacles—if a little disapproved of by Maud on account of the air of steadiness which they imparted—suggested excellent son-in-lawlike qualities to Mr. and Mrs. Barnes. He had the promise of a fair moustache, but his complexion generally was colourless. His features, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you would know us," retorted Kennedy calmly. "Therefore we came provided with spectacles of Euphos glass, precisely like those you wear. No, Prescott, we are safe, though perhaps we may have some burns like those red blotches on ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... hair. Spectacles. Dark traveling cloak and hat. Grip. She discards cloak and hat when Hogan releases her, showing a very gay dress beneath. Faint gray wrinkles of grease ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... older woman looked through some papers in her hand, put some notes of orders for groceries on a table by her side, and flattened out a long letter on foreign paper on her knee. She looked at Molly a little nervously, with cold blue eyes over gold-rimmed spectacles reposing on ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... part of it with father's spectacles, and part out of a book father lent me when I asked him why I couldn't make the bright, hot spot with a pair of near-sighted glasses that I found in one of mother's old work boxes. You see, when people begin to get old, their eyes flatten ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... sight was of little or no use to him at any distance, and he would wear, one over the other, two or three pairs of large round concave spectacles, so powerful as greatly to diminish objects. He would mount his steps, look at you through one pair of glasses, then push them all back on his head, and paint by the naked eye close to the canvas. After some minutes he would pull down one ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... over his shoulder, and the boy followed to the housekeeper's sitting-room. The door of the room stood open, and Mrs. Martin sat by the window with a newspaper in her hand. She glanced up over her spectacles as Brown's tall figure appeared ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... is my father, who has come to escort me home," said Mademoiselle Noemie. "He speaks English. He will arrange with you." And she turned to welcome a little old gentleman who came shuffling up, peering over his spectacles at Newman. ...
— The American • Henry James
... Mack Nolan had made of the bottling. Uncle Sam himself must needs polish his spectacles and take another look to detect the fraud. It was a marvelous job of bottling,—and the proof lay only in the drinking. "Tommy" Pepper rode in pint flasks designed to slip safely into a man's coat pocket. Beside him two cases of Canadian Club ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... care-worn. From her recollections of him, she thinks that he would have wanted bread before he would have begged or borrowed a half-penny. "If any of the girls," she says, "who were my school-fellows, should be reading, through their aged spectacles, tidings from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, at ever having teased his gentle spirit." They were big girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions with the silence necessary; and however old age and a long state ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... neck of his gown, and his wig, hastily re-donned after a breathing-space, sat askew. Nor was he anything of an orator: he stumbled over his sentences, and once or twice lost his place altogether. To his dry presentment of the case nobody seemed to pay heed. The judge, tired of wiping his spectacles dry, leant back and closed his eyes. Mahony believed he slept, as did also some of the jurors, deaf to the Citation of Dawes V. Peck and Dunlop V. Lambert; to the assertion that the carrier was the agent, the goods were accepted, the property had "passed." This "passing" of the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... physical disaster, took account alike of the deepest tendencies in character and of the mystery of external fate or accident, exhibited these in action and reaction, in their simplicity and their complexity, and wrought out a series of spectacles of the pity and terror of human suffering and human sin without parallel in the modern world. In these stupendous tragedies he availed himself of all the powers with which he was endowed and all the skill ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... gratitude in her eyes, and taking off her spectacles, "I cannot bear," she said, "so ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of light. Whether it was a thick and oily discharge from the engine of a submerged construction or not, I think that I shall have to accept this substance as a concomitant, because of another note. "As wave succeeded wave, one of the most grand and brilliant, yet solemn, spectacles that one could think of, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... he will want me to go and read to him every day, for when I was directing one of the letters he said, as though to himself, 'If she can read and write for me I need not buy a new pair of spectacles.' It would be too dreadful to be with that cynical ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... most pious woman. Every morning and night we had family prayer. It was difficult for her to stoop, but she always took the great quarto book of Devotions off the table and laid it on a chair, put on her spectacles, and went through the portion for the day. I had an uncle who was also pious, but sleepy. One night he stopped dead in the middle of his prayer. I was present and awake. I was much frightened, but my aunt, who was praying by his side, poked him, and he ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... mustachios, a pair of green spectacles, and his whole figure was surmounted with a fur-cap. Taking a seat directly opposite our party at the same table—"Bring me a pint," said he; and then deliberately searching his pockets, he produced a short ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... head croupier at Scalastro years ago; but he wore a beard and blue spectacles in the old time, when he raked in a good deal of my patrimony,' said Logan. 'But how was he planted ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... medicine.[12] No native ventures to offer an opinion upon this abstruse subject in any circle where he is not known to be profoundly read in either Arabic or Sanskrit lore; nor would he venture to give a prescription without first consulting, 'spectacles on nose', a book as large as a church Bible. The educated class, as indeed all classes, say that they do not want our physicians, but stand much in need of our surgeons. Here they feel that they are helpless, and we are strong; and they seek our aid whenever they ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... we find the way to heaven without the Bible, and how after we grow old can we read the Bible without a little helpful science? Just think, father, you cannot read your Bible without spectacles, and millions of others are in the same fix; and spectacles cannot be made without some knowledge of the ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... grew impressive. He advanced, and shook hands with his grandson as if he were greeting a distinguished member of the board of directors. Then he turned to his son, and shook hands with him also, solemnly. His eyes shone through his gold-rimmed spectacles, but his voice was ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... to see hard drink done away with. And the man said it would come; and then they talked about the corn crop and things, and finally grandpa got away from him and we started for the harness shop. But when we got up to the big store, grandpa says, "Bless me, I've forgot my spectacles at the jeweler's." And he turned around and trotted back. I didn't know whether to foller him or to wait, or to go on to the harness shop. I decided to foller him to keep him from gettin' into more talks, if I could. I suppose he stopped or was stopped a dozen ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... tow-haired and so near-sighted, that he peered at his pupils through spectacles, no one ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... left him, gladly enough I am sure. The last that I saw, he had once more taken up his great Bible, and with tremulous hands was adjusting his spectacles to read. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seen the Rev. Canon Walker. If the painting is correct, the worthy canon has deteriorated none by age, for he seems to look just as like himself now as he did eighteen hundred years since, and to be not a morsel fonder of spectacles and good snuff now than he was then. His insertion, however, into this picture, was a whim of the artist, whose cosmopolitan theory led him to believe that one man is, as a rule, quite as good as another, and that paintings are always appreciated best when they refer to people ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... good deal of his hair, at any rate than of his whiskers; besides this he carries a knife, and generally a pencil case. His memory goes in a pocket book. He grows more complex as he becomes older and he will then be seen with a pair of spectacles, perhaps also with false teeth and a wig; but, if he be a really well-developed specimen of the race, he will be furnished with a large box upon wheels, two ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Eyguieres, and elsewhere. In winter the meadows are green as those of Devon in spring, and the fields yield heavy crops. Indeed, the Durance acts to this region in the same way as does the Nile to Egypt. "The meadows I viewed," says Young, "are among the most extraordinary spectacles the world can afford in respect to the amazing contrast between the soil in its natural and in its watered state, covered richly and luxuriantly with clover, chicory, rib-grass, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... his separate Bible—for they were all men of alien speech even to each other, and Sally Day communicated with his mates in English only, each read or made believe to read his chapter, Uncle Ned with spectacles on his nose; and they would all join together in the singing of missionary hymns. It was thus a cutting reproof to compare the islanders and the whites aboard the Farallone. Shame ran in Herrick's ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... passed through the little streets in very imposing array: Pascalon on the leading mule, banner unfurled; and last in file, grave as a mandarin amid the guides and porters on either side his mule, came the worthy Tartarin, more stupendously Alpinist than ever, wearing a pair of new spectacles with smoked and convex glasses, and his famous rope made at Avignon, recovered—we know at ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... be a lantern upon the little porch of a ramshackle shanty. An old man with immense horn-rimmed spectacles was reading by it out of a tattered magazine. When the couple came close, the old man looked up from his reading, and ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... from the village. It was a middle-aged man, who walked rather limpingly, and who made most extraordinary gestures as he approached the group. First he stood and stared, then he rubbed his eyes and stared again. Then he took out his spectacles and put them on, took them off, rubbed them, and ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... son; and Aunt Kate was too old and wise to be frightened by tales told of Cassy or any one else. So, having had her own way so far regarding Cassy's coming, she looked Abel calmly in the eyes, over the gold-rimmed spectacles which were her dearest possession—almost the only thing of value she had. She was not afraid of Abel's anger, and he knew it; but his eldest son, Black Andy, was present, and he must make a show of ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... have the honor to receive into our little haven a vessel of Inghilterra, Signor Capitano," observed the vice-governatore, earnestly regarding the other through his spectacles as he spoke, and that, too, in a manner not altogether free ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... endue her with the romantic attributes becoming a heroine of her country's Secret Service! What if he must now esteem her in the merciless light of to-night's exposure, as the most pitiable of all human spectacles, a poor lovesick thing sans dignity, sans pride, sans heed for the world's respect, a woman pursuing a man ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... moment fascinated. In that brief space of time the revelation and recognition were completed. Dr. Ravenshaw's glance was the first to break away. The hard brown eyes watching him followed the direction of his view to a pair of spectacles resting on the table. Thalassa understood the intention, and harshly ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... a round-shouldered old man with a long white beard that came to a thin point. He wore old-fashioned gold-rimmed spectacles, the rims forming irregular octagons, and on his head he wore one of the grandest old silk hats that ever saw the light of day in 1865. His principal garment was a frock coat, once black, but now grayish green. He was the wealthiest man in town, and it was said that when ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... Elettra's movements in the next room. In a flash she had guessed half the truth, and reflexion now brought her most of the rest. She remembered Don Teodoro's earnest face and the quiet eyes that had looked at her through the silver spectacles while he had been speaking. There had been conviction in them, and even then she had felt that he believed the truth of what he said, however mistaken he might be. And now she felt that it was not he who had spoken, but Bosio, through him, that the warning came ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... and try to recover Henry. With a small but illustrious retinue, embellished with great elegance of manners and purity of life, she arrived in Paris. The Queen of France received her with every possible mark of respect and affection, and lavished upon her entertainments, and fetes, and gorgeous spectacles until the Queen ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Black over the tops of his spectacles. "Looks like we're going to git a chance to know her," he went on. "It seems the young woman has made up her mind to settle amongst us. Yes, ma'am; we've been hearing she's on the point of buying property and settling ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... shot-guns to Sharpe's rifles. Their uniforms had quite as little uniformity as their arms. Some were dressed in gray pants and jackets, others in light blue; and still others in the various fashions which constituted the wearing apparel at home. Grave gentleman in spectacles, studious young men in green glasses, pale young men who were evidently more at home behind the counter than in line of battle, roughs who had not been tamed by the discipline of military life, and boys who, for the first time, had left the paternal ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... tureen of soup over him, and none of these things stirred him. Once at Naples, I recollect, he set our chimney on fire. Such a time we had of it; every one in the house tumbling into our room, from the piccolo, with no coat and half a pair of pants, to the proprietor in his dressing-gown and spectacles—women calling on the Virgin, men running after water—and there sat Frank, absolutely radiating off so much coolness, that he imparted a portion of it to me, and we sat through the scene as quietly as if they had ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... desired!" said Randolph Rover, adjusting his spectacles. "I am very much obliged, ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... the window, for, although it was quite dusk, a little use might yet be made of the lingering ghost of the daylight. Almost all Mary could see of her was the reflection from the round eyes of a pair of horn spectacles. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... him over her spectacles. "Got any stickin'-plaster?" he asked plaintively, as though he had committed some misdemeanor. She rose and placed a plate and chair for him as he shook hands with Pete, led him to the kitchen and inspected and bandaged his hand, which he had jagged on ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... her chair again and bowed. Then Doris saw that she had a charming tired face, beautiful eyes on which she had just placed spectacles, and soft brown hair framing ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... by touching the top of his own head when speaking about the loss of hair on the part of the noted scientist; and then made rings with his fingers and thumbs which he clapped to his eyes as though looking through a pair of spectacles. ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... cast by M. Longnon on the obscure existence of Francois Villon. (1) His book is not remarkable merely as a chapter of biography exhumed after four centuries. To readers of the poet it will recall, with a flavour of satire, that characteristic passage in which he bequeaths his spectacles - with a humorous reservation of the case - to the hospital for blind paupers known as the Fifteen-Score. Thus equipped, let the blind paupers go and separate the good from the bad in the cemetery of the Innocents! ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... looked upon as a leader, called up a shocked face and walked away; Mrs. Mealer after a faint "Excuse me," also abandoned the parrot-cage; and Mrs. Bean, a small stout woman with a brown false front, followed the large lady with blue spectacles and the tan linen duster. On some mysterious pretext of washing their hands, these two left the upper deck and sought the calm of the white and gold passenger saloon. Here they trod as in the very ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... height, with long and lanky figure, a pronounced stoop, and black, curly hair of coarse quality. His head, which was thrust a little forward, perhaps owing to his short-sightedness, was long, his forehead narrow, his complexion a sort of olive-green. He wore huge, disfiguring spectacles, and he had the protuberant lips of a negro. He greeted Catherine and the Bishop absently and seemed to have ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thanked Heaven for his present prosperity, and for sending him such dear and kind friends to support him in his ill-fortune,—when Doctor Portman read this portion of the letter, his voice faltered, and his eyes twinkled behind his spectacles. And when he had quite finished reading the same, and had taken his glasses off his nose, and had folded up the paper and given it back to the widow, I am constrained to say, that after holding Mrs. Pendennis's hand for ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pushing her spectacles up on her nose and peering earnestly through them. "No," she said finally, "I nuver seed ye afore; leastways I ain't no recollection of hit ef ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... woman was enveloped in a large, warm shawl—a gift from the "Hoose." She also wore a close-fitting white cap, or "mutch," which was secured to her head by a broad, black ribbon. The rims of her spectacles were of tortoiseshell, and she had a huge family Bible on her knee, while her feet rested upon a three-legged stool. She looked up inquiringly as ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... quay. It was morning, and Dion was about to embark in the Albanian's boat for a row on the Bosporus when he saw Mrs. Clarke's thin figure approaching him under a white umbrella lined with delicate green. She was wearing smoked spectacles, which made her white face look strange and almost ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... girl, but is meddlesome. She has a good Grandmother, called Mrs. Mason, and she sometimes goes to her house. One day Mary got into mischief. Seeing her Grandmother's spectacles on the table, she put them on her nose, and said, "I'm Grandmother." Mary began to march about the room in a very grand way. Presently the spectacles fell off, and the glasses were broken. Poor Mary cried bitterly, and at first did not know what ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... the conditions of his engagement that if ever he was not certain of Ogden's whereabouts he should let me know at once. He tells me that early this afternoon he left Ogden in the company of a strange young lady'—Mr Mennick's spectacles flashed for a moment at Cynthia—'and that, when he returned, both of them had disappeared. He made inquiries and discovered that this young lady caught the 1.15 express to London, Ogden with her. On receipt of this information I at once wired to Mr Ford for instructions. I have his reply'—he ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... case in which the Tractors had never been recommended as serviceable." "Purchasers of the Tractors," said one of their ardent advocates, "would be among the last to approve of them if they had reason to suppose themselves defrauded of five guineas." He forgot poor Moses, with his "gross of green spectacles, with silver rims and shagreen cases." "Dear mother," cried the boy, "why won't you listen to reason? I had them a dead bargain, or I should not have bought them. The silver rims alone will sell for ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem." It does, indeed, suggest a far-off, half-sacred antiquity, some greater Jerusalem, Egypt, Babylon, or India. We speak of it as a scene: it is more like a vision, so foreign is it to all other terrestrial spectacles, and so surpassingly beautiful. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... deemed, and justly deemed, of an inhuman temper, who in these days were to seek his amusement in the combats of gladiators and prize fighters: yet Christians appear conscious of no inconsistency, in finding their pleasure in spectacles maintained at the risk at least, if not the ruin, of the eternal happiness of those who ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... minute, but soon after hung still and inanimate. The executioner, after remaining upon duty for more than half an hour, as if to permit the last spark of life to be extinguished, announced to the admirers of such spectacles that the irons for the permanent suspension of the carcass not having been got ready, the concluding ceremony of disembowelling the dead body and attaching it finally to the gibbet would be deferred till ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... cheerfully. Till to-day the weather has been quite heavenly; last night I sat with my window open, it was so warm. If only I had you all here! How Rainie would play in the temple, Maurice fish in the Nile, and you go about with your spectacles on your nose. I think you would discard Frangi dress and take to a brown shirt and a libdeh, and soon be as brown as any fellah. It was so curious to see Sheykh Yussuf blush from shyness when he came in first; it shows quite as much in the coffee-brown Arab ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... They were in the memorable Plaza fight, and stood it out to the last against overwhelming odds, as did also all of the Walker men. The son was killed at the father's side. The father received a bullet through the eye. The old man—for he was an old man at the time—wore spectacles, and the bullet and one of the glasses went into his skull and remained there. There were some other sons: Steve, George, and Jim, very young chaps—the merest lads—who wanted to be in the Walker expedition, for they had their father's dauntless ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... dear prince!" replied Rodin, "the most vulgar and puerile accident may sometimes cause the greatest inconvenience. I have forgotten or lost my spectacles. Now, in this twilight, with the very poor eyesight that years of labor have left me, it will be absolutely impossible for me to read this most important letter—and an immediate answer is expected—most simple and categorical—a yes or a no. Times ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... beings that exist in the potential darkness. What do you think you are?" her soul asked of the professor as she sat opposite him in class. "What do you think you are, as you sit there in your gown and your spectacles? You are a lurking, blood-sniffing creature with eyes peering out of the jungle darkness, snuffing for your desires. That is what you are, though nobody would believe it, and you would be the very last ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... by special instigation of the evil spirit who haunts successful artists, proceeded further to introduce, heedless of perspective, a rock, on which stood the lively portraiture of Sir Vindex—nose, spectacles, gown, and all; and in his hand a brandished rod, while out of his mouth a label shrieked after the runaways, "You come back!" while a similar label replied from the gallant bark, "Good-bye, master!" ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... I just ate, Mr. Raidler?" said the doctor bluffly, looking over his spectacles. Raidler returned the money to his pocket. The doctor immediately entered McGuire's room, and the cattleman seated himself upon a heap of saddles on the gallery, ready to reproach himself in the event ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Apart from this motive, and considered in and for itself, and simply with a reference to the splendid forms which it often assumed, this munificence would furnish the materials for a volume. The public entertainments of Caesar, his spectacles and shows, his naumachiae, and the pomps of his unrivalled triumphs (the closing triumphs of the Republic), were severally the finest of their kind which had then been brought forward. Sea-fights were exhibited upon the grandest scale, according to every known variety ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... sitting-room in Werter Road, he walked uneasily to and fro, squeezing between the table and the sideboard, and then skirting the fireplace where Alice sat with a darning apparatus upon her knees, and her spectacles on—she wore spectacles when she had to look fixedly at very dark objects. The room was ugly in a pleasant Putneyish way, with a couple of engravings after B.W. Leader, R.A., a too realistic wall-paper, hot ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... colours from different points of view, and there is no reason for regarding some of these as more really its colour than others. And we know that even from a given point of view the colour will seem different by artificial light, or to a colour-blind man, or to a man wearing blue spectacles, while in the dark there will be no colour at all, though to touch and hearing the table will be unchanged. This colour is not something which is inherent in the table, but something depending upon ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... tangle I'm thinkin' of ain't more'n a month after Cherokee takes to residin' in Wolfville. He comes trailin' in one evenin' from Tucson, an' onfolds a layout an' goes to turnin' faro- bank in the Red Light. No one remarks this partic'lar, which said spectacles is frequent. The general idee is that Cherokee's on the squar' an' his game is straight, an' of course public interest don't delve no further ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... shall not venture out again—no, not by daylight—without a sufficient pair of spectacles—in your musing moods especially. Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it. You shall not go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle, if we can help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at your years' after your many ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... boy, sat in the middle, with his arm round Lloyd. It was Lloyd who had made the matron too bright: he nearly lost his colours in consequence. These two were grown up. Beside them sat Tewson, a saintly child in the spectacles, who had risen to this height by reason of his immense learning. He, like the others, was a school prefect. The house prefects, an inferior brand, were beyond, and behind came the indistinguishable many. The faces all looked alike as ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... prove the existence of design in the universe, says that noses were made to carry spectacles, and so we have spectacles. A modern satirist would not try to paint with Voltaire's quick brush the doctrine that he wanted to expose. And he would choose a more complicated doctrine than Dr. Pangloss's optimism, would study it more closely, feel his destructive ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... the heroism of American women displayed in their conflicts with the aborigines, we must take into account her natural repugnance to repulsive and horrid spectacles. The North American savage streaked with war-paint, a bunch of reeking scalps at his girdle, his snaky eyes gleaming with malignity, was a direful sight for even a hardened frontiers-man; how much more, then, to his impressionable ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... bearded man, dressed in white duck, stood on deck at the bows, where the steamer's name, Peace, was painted. He was George Grenfell. His keen eyes gleamed through the spectacles that rested on his strong, arched nose. By his side stood his wife, looking out up the river. They were searching for the landing-place and the hut-roofs ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... aged forty—sounds good, but she can only give three hours a day—and I must have one at my beck and call—There is a second one, a Miss Sharp—but she is only twenty-three—plain though, Maurice says, and wears horn spectacles—that should not attract me! She makes bandages all the evening, but is obliged to work for her living so could come for the day. She is not out of a job, because she is very expert, but she does not like her present one. I would have to pay her very highly Maurice says—I don't mind that, I want ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Edgar went to Stoke-Newington, he had attended an "infant school," in Richmond, taught by a somewhat gaunt, but mild-mannered spinster, with big spectacles over her amiable blue eyes, a starchy cap and a little bunch of frosty cork-screw curls on each side of her face. As a child, she had played with Mr. Allan's father on their native heath, in Ayrshire, and to her, little Edgar was always her "ain wee laddie." She had spoiled him ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... and when no other object harasses and distracts its attention, will it be able to keep in view the end to which it is devoted. But if an inordinate attention to an estate, a too anxious pursuit of wealth, indulgence in the pleasures of the chase, and the devotion of our days to public spectacles, rob our studies of much of our time (for whatever time is given to one thing is lost to another), what effect must we suppose that ambition, avarice, and envy will produce, whose excitements are so violent as even to disturb our sleep and our dreams? Nothing ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... kept my spectacles on my nose (they were the kind that fasten back of the ears) during the previous hardships, and I found these sticking in their position when I awoke. My khaki coat was on the ground under my hammock, and the first ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... was a venerable man, who held his thumb under his chin, and, through his spectacles, appeared to ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
