"Will-o'-the-wisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he feared that his two white friends, whom he loved so dearly, might be killed. They, accordingly, pulled on during the night, passing a large town, from which issued a loud noise, as of a multitude quarrelling. Once they fancied they saw a light following them, but it turned out to be a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... side; Galloping over the field and hill, Over the marshland, stalwart still, Into the forest's shadowy hush, Where specters walk in sunless day, And in dark pool and branch and bush The treacherous will-o'-the-wisp lights play. Out of the wood 'neath the risen sun, Weary we gallop, one and one, To a richer hope and a stronger foe And a hotter fight in the fields below— Each man his own slave, each his lord, For the golden spurs and ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... that said, "I am going to take this thing up bit by bit without trying to get a whole philosophy into the work," anchored him to the heaviest tasks as if he were a true- born plodder, while the "wild Irishman" with dreams and desires lighted the way with gleams of Will-o'-the-Wisp. The quicksilver in the veins of the patient Mercutio of railroad rates and demurrage charges lightened his work for himself and others. Just as in the five years when he served San Francisco, as City and County Attorney, he labored to such effect that ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... certainly indirect. His plays on the other hand, in the production of which he spent the better part of his life, greatly outweigh his novel both in aesthetic and historical importance. To attempt to estimate Lyly's position as a novelist and as a prose writer is to chase the will-o'-the-wisp of theory over the morass of uncertainty; the task of investigating his comedies is altogether simpler and more straightforward. After groping our way through the undergrowth of minor literature, we come out ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... "No will-o'-the-wisp mislight thee, No snake or slowworm bite thee, But on, on thy way, Not making a stay, Since ghost there's none ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... a corner of the room he takes a pile of manuscript, and weary as he is, adds several pages to it. The dream of his boyhood has grown with him—that delightful dream of authorship! How this will-o'-the-wisp of the brain entices one into mental fogs! How it coaxes and pets one, cheats and ruins one! And so that appalling pile of closely-written manuscript is Mortimer's romance? Wasted hours and wasted thought—who would buy or ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... were little luminous spots in her mouth. I had heard somewhere that there is a phosphorescence appearing during decay of organic substances which once gave rise to the ancient superstition of "corpse lights" and the will-o'-the-wisp. It was really due, I knew, to living bacteria. But there surely had been no time for such micro-organisms to develop, even in the almost tropic heat of the Novella. Could she have been poisoned by these phosphorescent bacilli? What was ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... bewildered, in the squalls; then thick fogs which fell suddenly like a shroud and which, penetrating into the cloisters through the broken arcades, rendered us invisible, and made the little lamp we carried to guide us appear like a will-o'-the-wisp wandering under the galleries; and a thousand other details of this monastic life which crowd all at once into my memory: all combined made indeed this monastery the most romantic abode in ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... to the dregs in the dead o' the night, And he shuffles the shadows about As he gathers the stars in a nest of delight And sets there and hatches them out: The Zhederrill peers from his watery mine In scorn with the Will-o'-the-wisp, As he twinkles his eyes in a whisper of shine That ends in a ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... down from their hills, and carry fire and sword through a district, and are off again before a force can be gathered to strike a blow. Then there are marches to and fro among their hills, but it is like chasing a will-o'-the-wisp; and like enough, just when you think you have got them cooped up, and prepare to strike a heavy blow, they are a hundred miles away, plundering and ravaging on our side of the frontier. They are half-wild men, short in stature, ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... should do," said he, glancing into the glass above the fireplace. "I only wish that you could come with me, Watson, but I fear that it won't do. I may be on the trail in this matter, or I may be following a will-o'-the-wisp, but I shall soon know which it is. I hope that I may be back in a few hours." He cut a slice of beef from the joint upon the sideboard, sandwiched it between two rounds of bread, and thrusting this rude meal into his pocket he started off ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... drawing a long breath, distends his belly and drums delicately upon it with his clenched fist, producing such entrancing tones, that the traveller cannot resist turning aside to follow the sound, which, Will-o'-the-wisp-like, recedes as he advances, until it lures him on to his destruction. Love is, however, the most powerful engine which the cat, the fox, and the badger alike put forth for the ruin of man. No German poet ever imagined a more captivating ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... very hot weather I have seen the water swell up over the mid walls of the vats, till the whole range would be one uniform surface of frothing liquid, and on applying a light, the report has been as loud as that of a small cannon, and the flame has leapt from vat to vat like the flitting will-o'-the-wisp on the surface of some ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... good churchmen we were afterwards told we ought to have remembered. October 31st was All-Hallows Eve, "when ghosts do walk," and here we were in a place they revelled in—so much so that they gave their name to it, Duninius' Dale. Here the curious sights known as "Will-o'-the-Wisp" could be seen magnificently by those who would venture a midnight visit. But we ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... was certain: He had just seen what had no existence. The twilight spectres were making game of him, poor wretch! The little man in scarlet was the will-o'-the-wisp of a dream. Sometimes, at night, nothings condensed into flame come and laugh at us. Having had his laugh out, the visionary being had disappeared, and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... said it was all a mere will-o'-the-wisp, and my lord agreed with her. Then your uncle forbade Sebek to betray the matter to you, and sent word to me that he would possibly send Hiram to Sinai when the horse-fair was over. So take patience, sweetheart. What are two weeks, or at most three—and then. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... start with; and at a later date these actually spoil the schooling of experience, and put a wrong construction on the lessons it teaches. If, before this, the youth had no light at all to guide him, he is now misled by a will-o'-the-wisp; still more often is this the case with a girl. They have both had a false view of things foisted on them by reading novels; and expectations have been aroused which can never be fulfilled. This ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... pounds a year. Now he learned that the English intended to ship all the French out of Hudson Bay and to keep them out. The enthusiast had played his game with more zeal than discretion. The English had what they wanted—furs and fort. In return, Radisson had what had misled him like a will-o'-the-wisp all his life—vague promises. In vain Radisson protested that he had given his promise to the French before they surrendered the fort. The English distrusted foreigners. The Frenchmen had been mustered on ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... that the gift of a "sort of cat" to young Edward Hines might prove on investigation to be not a clew but a will-o'-the-wisp, I preferred to think that fate or the acute reasoning of Inspector Gatton had sent me down to this quiet country for a good purpose; and I built great hopes around the figure of the "lady down from London." Indeed it appeared to me that ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... moral order in the universe, and they unhesitatingly declare that existence is an evil. They would have us therefore exchange our hopes for insight, and warn us that even this is very circumscribed at best. For not only is happiness a mockery, but knowledge is a will-o'-the-wisp. Mankind resembles the bricklayer and the hodman who help to raise an imposing edifice without any knowledge of the general plan. And yet the structure is the outcome of their labour. In like manner this mysterious world is the work of man—the mirror of his ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... her brain, until she is become delirious; she can no longer pursue her own interest, or, indeed, rightly distinguish it. Like the people of Nineveh, she can hardly tell her right hand from her left; but, as a changeling, is dazzled and delighted by an ignis fatuus, a Will-o'-the-wisp, an exhalation from the vilest materials in nature, that leads her astray through Westphalian bogs and deserts, and will one day break her neck over some barren rocks, or leave her sticking in ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... beasts, and the like, whose peculiar notes and voices betray them as having once been little children, or were compelled to join, the train of the wild huntsman, or mingle in the retinue of some other outcast, wandering sprite or devil; or, again, as some deceitful star, or will-o'-the-wisp, mislead and torment the traveller on moor and in bog and swamp, and guide him to an untimely death amid desert solitudes. Ploss, Henderson, and Swainson have a good deal to say on the subject of Frau Berctha and her train, the Wild Huntsman, the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... of the family. At first I didn't understand how it was, and I felt very much like saying I didn't like it; for Luly seemed to be a nice little girl, and playful as a little kitty. She was always laughing, singing, and dancing—now in at one door, and now out at the other, like a will-o'-the-wisp, or a jack-o'-lantern. Why on earth they didn't like Luly, I couldn't see. Being an old maid, of course I couldn't rest easy till I found out the reason of this; and I soon did it, as you'll see, if you read on to the end of ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... headway in this quarter. Instinct indicated a delicate harmony between those events and the formless shadow to which Sally had all along been sensitive, of something equivocal in the pretensions of Mrs. Standish. But that clue played will-o'-the-wisp with her fancy, leading it ever farther astray in a bottomless ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... longer used the word happy, even in his solitary thoughts. Happiness, that priceless elusive treasure, can come only to a heart at peace in the warm sunshine of love. Material things can make for contentment, but ah! how uncertain is that will-o'-the-wisp happiness. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... again opened, and Gagniere glided in softly, like a will-o'-the-wisp. He had come straight from Melun, and was quite alone, for he never showed his wife to anybody. When he thus came to dinner he brought the country dust with him on his boots, and carried it back with him the same night ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... of the love-star burned low upon the grey horizon, that star towards which the eyes of women yearn and which women's feet are fain to follow, though, like a will-o'-the-wisp, it leads them through strange and difficult ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... rough places and the smooth, the stir of its air and the possibility of wild beasts. To her it was night-time there, and where the ground seemed fair and the light to play, she thought of the marsh and the will-o'-the-wisp. She could not but be loyal to the old, trodden ways. She had married Lewis Rand, not his party or its principles. But to-night, as she listened, the light seemed to grow until it was dawn in the forest, and the air to blow ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... considerations! Unstable as water, Reuben shall not excel. Double-minded men, we, like Jacob's first-born, are unstable in all our ways. We have no anchor, or, what anchor we sometimes have soon slips. We have no fixed pole-star by which to steer our life. Any will-o'-the-wisp of pleasure, or advantage, or praise will run us on the rocks. The searchers of Mansoul, after long search, at last lighted on Anything, and soon made an end of him. Seek him out in your own soul also. Be you sure he is somewhere there. He is skulking somewhere there. And, having found him, if you ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... see all the figures in their various places. Atkinson was leaning against a tree with a listless face; Quinton's wife was still at her window; the doctor had gone strolling round the end of the conservatory; they could see his cigar like a will-o'-the-wisp; and the fakir still sat rigid and yet rocking, while the trees above him began to rock and almost to roar. Storm ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... the darkness through which the lantern moved like a will-o'-the-wisp. "Your uncle is here, too," he said. Then he drew rein with a sudden, "Halloo, what is wrong?" Aaron came forward, leaving the lantern on the ground. It lit weirdly Dr. Gordon, who was kneeling on the ground beside ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... the person rejecting it. How much more so must it be to papa, though he likes you, and when you are near him would perhaps, in a fit of unworldliness, be almost as reckless as the creature he calls madcap and would rather call countess. No! sooner with a Will-o'-the-wisp, my friend. Who could ever know where the man was when he himself never knows where he is. He is the wind that bloweth as it listeth—because it is without an aim or always with a new one. And am I the one to direct him? I need direction. My lord and sovereign must ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nearer. If before he were charmed, now he was enchanted. What an universal acquisition of useful knowledge! Three or four dukes were earnestly imbibing a new theory of gas from a brilliant little gentleman in black, who looked like a Will-o'-the-wisp. The Prime Minister was anxious about pin-making; a Bishop equally interested in a dissertation on the escapements of watches; a Field-Marshal not less intent on a new specific from the concentrated essence of hellebore. But what most ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... two carriages stand shining by the wayside. Scarce a word or two was uttered at our parting, and these regarded business: a silent grasping of hands, a turning of faces aside, and the thing was over; the horses broke into a trot, the lamplight sped like Will-o'-the-Wisp upon the broken moorland, it dipped beyond Stony Brae; and there were Macconochie and I alone with our lantern on the road. There was one thing more to wait for, and that was the reappearance of the coach upon Cartmore. It ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... already given. Still, he did not know whose words were to be heeded; and added to his doubt was the lack of understanding of why the Black Phantom did not attack him. It seemed always to be following him in accordance with some mysterious design, or to be luring him onward like a will-o'-the-wisp, further and further into a strange and more ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... made my way softly to the spot. There in the seat where I was wont to pursue my even tenor as an orchid slumbered Martin Dyke, amateur desecrator of other men's houses, challenger of the wayward fates, fanatic of a will-o'-the-wisp pursuit, desperate adventurer in the uncharted realms of love; and in his face, turned toward the polychromatic abominations of the house, so soon to be deserted, was all the pathos and all the beauty ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Ireland, will, it is to be hoped, give the full details of this exciting record hunt, and thus exemplify the great utility, not to speak of the manliness, of real names and addresses, versus false names and equally Will-o'-the-Wisp initials. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... without consulting her children or saying a word to anybody, she went to see Mademoiselle Josepha Mirah, prima donna of the Royal Academy of Music, to find or to lose the hope that had gleamed before her like a will-o'-the-wisp. At midday, the great singer's waiting-maid brought her in the card of the Baronne Hulot, saying that this person was waiting at the door, having asked ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to the work is unique among operatic overtures, as it has a chorus behind the curtain interwoven with it. It is a picture of the opera itself, and contains a will-o'-the-wisp passage, a rustic song with accompaniment of goat-bells, a storm, and in the midst of the storm a chant to the Virgin, sung by the unseen chorus, and then a Pilgrimage march, the whole being in the nature of a retrospect. ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... Did he, on the other hand, escape from the French prison where Grosley thought he saw him, during the French Revolution? Was he known to Lord Lytton about 1860? Was he then Major Fraser? Is he the mysterious Muscovite adviser of the Dalai Lama? Who knows? He is a will-o'-the-wisp of the memoir-writers of the eighteenth century. Whenever you think you have a chance of finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip; and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole, I should incline to deem ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... will, if we applied, we would get the property, which was worth about five thousand pounds. Weel, three or four years passed awa, and we heard something about the lawsuit, but naething about the money. I was vexed for having onything to say to it. I thought it was only wasting a candle to chase a will-o'-the-wisp. About the time I speak o', my mither had turned very frail. I saw there was a wastin' awa o' nature, and she wadna be lang beside me. The day before her death, she took my hand, and 'Davy,' says ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... devil will carry her away." Perhaps this was the cause of the guard in Jeanne's room, the ceaseless scrutiny to which she was exposed. The vulgar slanderer was allowed to escape after this valuable testimony. She comes into history like a will-o'-the-wisp, one of the marsh lights that mean nothing but putrescence and decay, and then flickers out again with her false witness into the wastes of inanity. That she should have been treated so leniently and Jeanne so cruelly! say the historians. Reason good: she was nothing, came of nothing, and meant nothing. ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... an evening as the one of which I am now almost a part, a light might have been seen dancing strangely round the trunk of a beech, the oak of Denmark. It was no will-o'-the-wisp produced by exhalations of the earth; for, now it would shine brightly, and at the next moment vanish, as if it had mingled with the old tree's leaves. Reappearing, the light would assume an oscillating motion for a short ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... opponent of orthodoxy in his day, yet he led his followers to no goal more explicit than might be surmised from a study of Kant and Hegel. He was, however, sincere in his devotion to the will-o'-the-wisp that he conceived to be the truth, and he was courageous enough to admit that he never satisfied himself. There was chilly and austere attraction about the man; he was so elevated and superior that one could hardly help believing that he ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Narrows. As they neared what is now known as Prospect Point they heard from the heights above them a laugh, and looking up they beheld the witch-woman jeering defiantly at them. They landed and, scaling the rocks, pursued her as she danced away, eluding them like a will-o'-the-wisp as she called out ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... another the giant skunk set upon end to salute his visitors, and this of the canoe was probably the commonest of all. He is a true Indian divinity, shining like the lightning and striking only when there is a storm, but appearing like the Aurora Borealis, or even the Robin Goodfellow-Will-o'-the-Wisp at others.] ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... less easy apprehension, is not to my purpose. But to a man whose predominant faculty was strong common sense, who was absolutely resolved that whatever paths he took should lead to realities, and traverse solid ground instead of following some will-o'-the-wisp through metaphysical quagmires amidst the delusive mists of a lawless imagination, there was an obvious fascination in the Bentham mode of thought. It must be added, too, that at this time J. S. Mill, the inheritor ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... could get up surprise parties, which really bored him, carry out elaborate practical jokes, give extraordinary entertainments at will. For his parents acquiesced in his absurdities, were even rather proud of them, thinking that he followed his Will-o'-the-wisp of a fancy because he was not less, but more, than other young men. In fact, they supposed he must be a genius because he was erratic. Many people are of the same opinion, and declare that a goose standing on its head must be a swan. By degrees Eustace ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... can I say in answer except the cruel "It is too late" of that fool Lafayette to his royal master? Oh! my life, my sweet life, what physician will give it back to me. My own hand has dealt the deathblow. Alas! have I not been a mere will-o'-the-wisp, whose twinkling spark was fated to perish before it reached a flame? My eyes rain torrents of tears—and yet they must not fall when I am with him. I fly to him, and he seeks me. My despair is all within. This torture Dante forgot to place in his ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. In their explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly different. Shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true star, or a will-o'-the-wisp? If it is right to wish to be happy, what are the conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? These are the two questions with which I would come to ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... and Plunkett, McDonough and Hunt and Pearse See now why their hatred of tyrants Was so insistently fierce. Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp To cheat a poet's eye? Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause In which to sing ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... of God and of the human struggle, I mean that he could not in sincerest thought hold the contrary to be true. I do not mean to say that daily and hourly, when about his common avocations, his new inspiration did not seem a mere will-o'-the-wisp of the mind. It took months and years to bring it into any accustomed relation to every-day matters of thought and act; and it is this habitual adjustment of our inward belief to our outward environment that makes any ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... on the ridge now! and the rest is easy. Tell you what, though, boys, now we're all right, I don't mind saying that I didn't take no stock in that blamed corpse light down there. If there ever was a will-o'-the-wisp on a square up mountain, that was one. It wasn't no window! Some of ye thought ye saw a ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... quite dark. The house was lit by the firelight only, which flashed like Will-o'-the-wisp on the hall window. Philip was surprised by unusual sounds. There was laughter within, then singing, and then laughter again. He bad reached the porch and his approach had not been heard. The door stood open and he looked in ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... the fisherman was going home one night along the shore toward the village with some nets on his back. He was of a callous nature, and did not hesitate to take the shortest way across the meadow; but when he got in among the dunes, he saw a will-o'-the-wisp following in his steps, grew frightened, and began to run. It began to gain upon him, and when he leaped across the brook to put water between himself and the spirit, it seized hold of the nets. At this he shouted the name of God, and fled like one bereft of his senses. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Who was the silken-skirted woman he met in the darkness but an hour or so before,—the woman whom he had attempted to accost, but who slipped past him like a will-o'-the-wisp—in silence? How was it that the door to Hatton's hall was closed and locked, when Hatton told him it was always open? Why was it that the light in that lower hall was extinguished, and by whom was it done? Had he not gone thither almost immediately after recovering from ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... completely forget it. For Love, and Death, and Pain are only symbols to him who is enslaved by the pen. Moreover, he suffers always the pangs of an unsatisfied hunger, the exquisite torture of an unappeased and unappeasable thirst, for something which, like a will-o'-the-wisp, hovers ever above and beyond him, past the power of words to interpret ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... had fallen as they quitted Bagshot; and it was midnight as they entered the home park, and proceeded towards the fatal oak. It was pitchy dark, and they could only distinguish the tree by its white, scathed trunk. All at once, a blue flame, like a will-o'-the-wisp, appeared, flitted thrice round the tree, and then remained stationary, its light falling upon a figure in a wild garb, with a rusty chain hanging from its left arm, and an antlered helm upon its head. They knew it to be Herne, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... we have it now. The fundamental principles of nearly every branch of modern science were the gradual metamorphoses of the investigations of the old searchers after the "philosopher's stone" and "elixir of life." The long hours of study and experiment in the chase for this will-o'-the-wisp were of vast benefit to the coming generations; and to these deluded philosophers of the Middle Ages, and even of ancient times, we are doubtless indebted for much in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... might have a twofold contact with such movements. His most natural interest is that of studying the mental makeup of those who chase this will-o'-the-wisp. Their mental vagaries and superstitious fancies are quite fascinating material for his dissection. But for the interests of society an entirely different effort is, after all, more consequential. The psychologist has no right to avoid the trouble of examining conspicuous cases ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... bewildering thing—and thoughts do sometimes play the very will-o'-the-wisp with one. And when somebody you know is at a party, there is a funny inclination to go through the motions at least, and be up as late as anybody else. So it was with a somewhat sudden recollection that Mr. Rollo bethought him of what his watch might ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... results are to be looked for. Just as truly, without some knowledge of past and existing conditions of practise, none may hope to escape the danger of becoming, on the one hand, dull imitators of the superficial qualities of old work; or on the other, followers of the first will-o'-the-wisp novelty which ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... the moon is high o'er the ruined tower, When the night-bird sings in her lonely bower, When beetle and cricket and bat are awake, And the will-o'-the-wisp is at play in the brake, Oh then do we gather, all frolic and glee, We gay little elfins, beneath the old tree! And brightly we hover on silvery wing, And dip our small cups in the whispering spring, While the night-wind lifts ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Hodînagarî—A veritable will-o'-the-wisp in the ancient Panjâb geography: Hodînagarî, Udenagar, Udaynagar, is the name of innumerable ruins all over the northern Panjâb, from Siâlkot to Jalâlâbâd in Afghânistân beyond the Khaibar Pass. Here it is more than probably ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... finally lost patience, and, without my knowledge, had gone on to New Zealand, and thence, as it turned out, to Samoa. When I heard of the New Zealand episode there was nothing for it but to follow her there, on a will-o'-the-wisp expedition, as it turned out, but, fortunately, I was unaware of this at the time. I say fortunately, because had I known that she had already left Australia for Samoa, I should certainly have returned to England, in despair ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... dances, picnics and boating parties, all expressively lumped together by Phil under the head of "jamborees"; Alec and Alonzo were so constantly on hand that Anne wondered if they ever did anything but dance attendance on that will-o'-the-wisp of a Phil. They were both nice, manly fellows, but Anne would not be drawn into any opinion as to which ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and the distant outline of Naples all spread in a panorama before them, besides having an excellent bird's-eye prospect of the garden below. Peachy, who was ready to do anything wild, went dancing about like a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... her charge with interest and some concern. She saw with surprise that the girl had hit upon the only possible way of intriguing the interest of a spoiled darling like Captain O'Leary. She flitted like a will-o'-the-wisp ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... charge of the mule and two ponies, but he illtreated these poor animals, and the donkeys also, in a disgraceful manner. However, I had no other guide, and although I knew him to be in partnership with some Will-o'-the-wisp, I was obliged to follow him. It was an easy course for saddle-animals, as the cathedral of Famagousta formed the prominent point; therefore a steeple-chase might have been the direct cross-country way. There was no change in the usual features of the barren landscape. We kept upon the high ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... up the rough hillside. But the lantern retreated as he went forward. As we know, Judson and his gang, led by Bill, were carrying off Jack. Without realizing how far he had gone, Raynor kept on and on. Some instinct told him that the dodging will-o'-the-wisp of light ahead of him had something to do with Jack, and he wanted to find ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... victim of a soul-destroying, home-wrecking, and accursed habit, which that gifted American, Colonel Robert Ingersoll, has, in words of fiery eloquence, called 'the treacherous, insidious murderer of home and happiness; the Will-o'-the-Wisp that draws honour, genius, and all that is good into its fatal, deadly quagmire.' To the assertion that our valued contemporary is 'the possessor of one of the brightest intellects of the present century' (as he so modestly ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... agricultural experience, ready to lavish upon his own hasty inventions a fortune acquired in his London warehouse; and all this to make himself famous as a great light in the agricultural world, which light, after all, was a mere will-o'-the-wisp sort of affair, leading its dupes into the veriest bog of bankruptcy. In common with all those bold, self-reliant spirits that have ventured to break away from the antecedents of public opinion and custom, he has ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... entered Jervis Whitney's mind that so fantastic a thing as a pair of red moccasins was to be found in the Old Dominion, or anywhere else outside of a monkey show, though he might search the world, with a will-o'-the-wisp, from Big Bone Lick to the Land of Nod. So, in saying, "let me but find them, and you shall have them," he thought he was hazarding his word no more than were he to say: "Let the man in the moon but give me the moon, and the moon, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... manner struck him afresh. Here was a woman having that air of decision which exacts respect alike from men and women. Seen thus, with the more vivacious Julia at her side, Estella gained suddenly in moral strength and depth—suggesting a steady fire in contrast with a flickering will-o'-the-wisp blown hither and thither on every zephyr. Yet Julia Barenna would pass anywhere as a woman of will ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... attacks people in the dead of night and lays them prostrate. Lilu and lilitu are the spirits that flit by in the night. Of a specific character likewise are the conceptions connected with a demon known as ardat lili, 'maid of the night,' a strange female 'will-o'-the-wisp,' who approaches men, arouses their passions, but does not permit a satisfaction of them. Great importance being attached by the Babylonians to dreams, the belief in a 'maid of the night' was probably due to the unchecked play of the imagination ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... sweet-smelling soil; the buds upon a clump of fine beeches had begun to open. In this solitude, alone with teeming nature, John tried to interpret his friend's mood; but the spirit of melancholy eluded him, as if it were a will-o'-the-wisp dancing over an impassable marsh. Suddenly, there came to him, as there had come to the quicker imagination of his friend, the overpowering mystery of Spring, the sense of inevitable change, the impossibility of arresting it. At the moment all things seemed unsubstantial. Even ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... warfare; "they say," the thief of reputation, who steals, with stealthy step and coward's mask, to filch good names away in the dead dark of irresponsible calumny; "they say," a giant murderer, iron-gloved to slay you, a fleet, elusive, vaporous will-o'-the-wisp, when you would seize and choke it; "they say," mighty Thug though it be which strangles from behind the purest victim, had not been ever known ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... she has resided in Rome, where she was a pupil of Gibson. Two heads, "Daphne" and "Medusa," executed soon after she went to Rome, were praised by critics of authority. "Will-o'-the-Wisp," "Puck," "Sleeping Faun," "Waking Faun," and "Zenobia in Chains" followed ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... use—and gold-rimmed glasses for eyes that see farther and clearer than my spectacled grandsons at the university can see to-day. We made a golden summer of the thing and followed where, like a will-o'-the-wisp of memory, the Santa Fe Trail of threescore years ago reached from the raw frontier at Independence on to the Missouri bluffs, clear to the sunny ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... the right kind of a night for a ghost story," said Melissa, her eyes going over the group with a strange, sweet compassion in their depths. "The wind ought to be howling with blood-curdling glee and the will-o'-the-wisp ought to be a-hoppin' in the swamp. There ought to be a graveyard close by—and some skeletons standing just outside the winders, trying to look in upon ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... has always been to see a Will-o'-the-wisp, and I am still hoping; but that hot summer, had I known it at the time, they were quite common within an easy walk of my house in the New Forest. There was some correspondence on the subject in The Observer, and the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... set his teeth. He had called upon all the dogged pertinacity which a man must have if he is to be really a man among men. Always, far before him in the distance which must some day be gained, gleamed the will-o'-the-wisp lamp of success. He had an object now, which must never be forgotten, success. What had been his object when he toiled in Mullion House? He had scarcely known that he had any object in working—in giving ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the day sailed on, like a dainty boat with silent oar on a calm-flowing stream, to evening, when, as though it had been a new-born meteor or great will-o'-the-wisp, there appeared on the edge of the twilight, along the distant horizon, a silvery glitter, which, drawing nearer and nearer, presently disclosed a servant in a shining band mounted on a great coach, with horses in burnished harness; with champing speed, which it seemed ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... up and down, here and there, like following some will-o'-the-wisp went the boys. At times they thought they had lost the object of their pursuit, but again they would hear him hurrying on ahead ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... musical, and Christian-like in the very squall of the baby. There it goes, bless it! As for my other companions from Cumberland, Miles Square, the most aspiring of all, has long left me, and is superintendent to a great sheep-owner some two hundred miles off. The Will-o'-the-Wisp is consigned to the cattle station, where he is Vivian's head man, finding time now and then to indulge his old poaching propensities at the expense of parrots, black cockatoos, pigeons, and kangaroos. The shepherd remains with ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... constellation on the oily water. They become a company of dancing stars. Every now and then a boat moves off on a quest of its own. It is as though the firmament were shaken. One hears the kick-kick-kick of the motor, and a star has become a will-o'-the-wisp. These lights can no more keep still than a playground of children. They always make a pattern on the water, but they never make the same pattern. Sometimes they lengthen themselves against the sandy shore on the far side of the bay into a golden river. Sometimes ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... conveniently erroneous phrase, the variations arose spontaneously. The fruitless search after final causes leads their pursuers a long way; but even those hardy teleologists, who are ready to break through all the laws of physics in chase of their favourite will-o'-the-wisp, may be puzzled to discover what purpose could be attained by the stunted legs of Seth Wright's ram or the hexadactyle members of ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... idiots!" said Thurston, as he strode on through the park of Luckenough, "to fancy that any one with eyes, heart and brain, could possibly fall in love with the 'Will-o'-the-wisp' Jacquelina, or worse, that giglet, Angelica; when he sees Marian! Marian, whose least sunny tress is dearer to me than are all the living creatures in the world besides. Marian, for whose possession ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... that will-o'-the-wisp, known as "the cost of production." It is hard for any man who has ever studied economics at all to restrain a cynical smile when he is told that an intelligent group of his fellow-citizens are looking for "the cost of production" as a basis for ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... guide strode on from stone to stone, returning short answers to his companion, whose doubts began to take the form of questions as to 'the man's' knowledge of the road, and the certainty of finding the Laurel House at the end of this will-o'-the-wisp journey. Weariness from a long day's walk and work, and the dawning perception of the stranger's suspicions, were not calculated to induce a very bland frame of mind or tone of manner, and the replies ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... (my views to briefly sum), First, the collegium logicum. There will your mind be drilled and braced, As if in Spanish boots 'twere laced, And thus, to graver paces brought, 'Twill plod along the path of thought, Instead of shooting here and there, A will-o'-the-wisp in murky air. Days will be spent to bid you know, What once you did at a single blow, Like eating and drinking, free and strong,— That one, two, three! thereto belong. Truly the fabric of mental fleece ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... bog, the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, has been lately lit up as by the flickering light of a will-o'-the-wisp, by the almost simultaneous publication of an imaginary charge delivered to an equally imaginary jury by a judge of no less eminence than the late Lord Penzance (that tough Erastian) and of the still bolder ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... following the false light of a will-o'-the-wisp? No, no; the strange coincidence of the threat made on the bridge with the disappearance of the child on the day named, was at least real. The thread had not altogether escaped from my hands. It was less tangible, ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... disreputable; as long as I was loved and cherished I never felt as if I had done wrong. I never felt humiliation when I was with him. When he grew tired of me he could not help it; he never did try to resist any whim or passion. But better, stronger men cannot hold the wavering will-o'-the-wisp they call 'love'; and once it flickers out, it cannot be relighted. No, I have no one to blame; I can only resign myself to the bitterest, cruelest fate that can befall a woman—to be loved and eagerly sought, won, and adored for a brief hour, then thrown carelessly aside—a mere ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... run the affairs of Brians and McRae yourself these days. I hear Ed's off after another will-o'-the-wisp as usual. Let me see, I believe it's a temperance bee he's got ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... end of your gun pointin' right. Can't you see there's not a cent's worth of evidence against the man yet? Have you ever heard where he runs his cattle? Has anybody? Has any one ever seen under that mask? Has any one been found who could identify even his figure? No. Red Mask is a will-o'-the-wisp. He's a ghost; and it's our business to find the body o' that ghost. I'm not the fool to go around to Anton and say, 'You are Red Mask.' He'd laugh in my face. An' later on I guess I'd be targettin' a shot for him. What if I rounded to the gove'nor an' got him fired? It would be the worst possible. ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... her back. Her face was colorless, she looked like a corpse, and her thin, blue lips were pressed together as if in death. There was life in her eyes—a gloomy, wild, fanatical fire flashed from them. Her glance was glaring and uncertain, like a will-o'-the-wisp, and filled those upon whom it fell with a shivering, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... can read the thoughts of the young better than you may think. Now, lad, I tell you that you are following a will-o'-the-wisp if you ever think to make the girl your father saved from the wreck your wife. She would laugh you to scorn if you breathed such a notion in her ear, and tell you to go and drown yourself, or be off to foreign lands so that she might never set ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... their way from voyage to voyage down the coast of Africa—there are no bold flights into the incredible here, but patient and business-like progress from one stepping-stone to another. Dangers and hardships there were, and brave followings of the faint will-o'-the-wisp of faith in what lay beyond; but there were no great launchings into space. They but followed a line that was the continuance or projection of the line they had hitherto followed; what they did was brave and glorious, but it was reasonable. What Columbus did, on the contrary, was, as we ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... have occurred to Hawthorne, that, if George Ripley, instead of following after a will-o'-the-wisp notion, which could only lead him into a bog, had used the means at his disposal to cultivate Brook Farm in a rational manner, and had made it a hospitable rendezvous for intellectual and progressive people,—an ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... rather seek dry figs on the bottom of the sea and fresh ones on this heath,—I would rather seek liberty, or truth itself, or the philosopher's stone, than to run after thee, most deceitful of lights, will-o'-the-wisp of our ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... ignorance, a whole framework of wrong ideas, which are positively wrong, crops up, subsequently confusing the schooling of experience and representing the lesson it teaches in a false light. If the youth was previously in the dark, he will now be led astray by a will-o'-the-wisp: and with a girl this is still more frequently the case. They have been deluded into an absolutely false view of life by reading novels, and expectations have been raised that can never be fulfilled. This generally ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... I transformed myself into a will-o'-the-wisp. Where did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the March-spirit. I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... larrikin is excellently descriptive of the irresponsible, mischievous, anti-social creature whose eccentric action is the outcome of too much mutton. This immoral will-o'-the-wisp, seized with a desire to jostle, or thump, or smash, combines for the occasion with others like himself, and the shouldering, shoving gang is well ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the moors. The solitary lights of a cab crawling almost at a foot pace along the lonely road shone like a will-o'-the-wisp through the snow. It had been snowing for hours, steadily, thickly, and the cold was intense. The dead heather by the roadside had long been completely hidden under that ever-increasing load. It lay in great billows of white wherever the carriage lamps ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... not camp lights, but electric lights, and cheered by these, we quickened our pace. Alas! they seemed to play us a sorry game, and mocking, Will-o'-the-Wisp-like, retreated as we advanced. Then, too, we cursed those once blessed electric lights. Finally we reached the outskirts of the town, and seeing a closed store, with rifle butts and threatening tones persuaded the German dealer to open unto us. Here, speaking personally, I disposed of over half ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... fitfully trying some strain of which they were not certain. Then they stopped playing and talked, and their voices sounded goblin-like in their dark recess, where candles were carried about in an uncertain wavering manner, reminding Ruth of the flickering zigzag motion of the will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... prominent leaders had explained that the seventeen Democratic States which had voted at Charleston for the seceders' platform could, if united with Pennsylvania alone, elect the Democratic nominees against all opposition. This hope doubtless floated before their eyes like a will-o'-the-wisp until the October elections dispelled all possibility of securing Pennsylvania for Breckinridge. From that time forward there began a renewal of disunion threats, which, by their constant increase throughout the South, prepared ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... it, by that sympathy which he exhibits with those principles, is my brother in art to a greater degree than the painter who, with youthful arrogance, throws these to the winds "mistaking," as has been cleverly said, "the will-o'-the-wisp of eccentricity for the miracle working impulse of genius." In whatsoever degree more of the man and less of the mechanics appear, in that degree is the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... eventful afternoon of the performance the road was gay with teams. David and Samantha Milliken drove by in Miss Cummin's neat carryall, two children on the back seat, a will-o'-the-wisp baby girl held down by a serious boy. Steve Webster was driving Doxy Morton in his mother's buggy. Jabe Slocum, Pitt Packard, Brad Gibson, Cyse Higgins, and scores of others were riding "shank's mare," as they would ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wholly to luck trusts to a will-o'-the-wisp, and is about as sure of success as one who owns a castle ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... all? Had the human race attained its zenith—was there nothing beyond, nothing to look forward to, and he merely the latest dreamer and enthusiast who was pursuing the same will-o'-the-wisp that others had sought through the ages? If so, then what fatality was it that encompassed him and continually urged him on? Doubt counseled him to return, but pride and confidence in self still cried forward. Come what would, he either ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... attainment of happiness, yet if we attain the true object of life we find happiness. Those who are ignorant of life's true purpose and who seek happiness high and low, year after year, fail to find it. Like a will-o'-the-wisp, it for ever eludes them. On the other hand, those who recognize the true object of life, and follow it, attain happiness without ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... her attachment to the cart-horse alone that Amabel disturbed the composure of the head-nurse and of Louise the bonne. She was a very Will-o'-the-wisp for wandering. She grew rapidly, and the stronger she grew the more of a Tom-boy she became. Beyond the paddock lay another field, whose farthest wall was the boundary of a little wood,—the wood where Jan had herded pigs. Into this ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... troubled waters for interminable ages. He watched a full moon rise blood-red and awful and turn gradually to a whiteness of still more appalling purity. For a long, long time he watched it, trying to recall something which eluded him, chasing a will-o'-the-wisp memory round and round the fevered ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... leaped back and forth. Perhaps mere weight of rushing would beat the dancing will-o'-the-wisp to the floor. Silent bored in with lowered head and clutched at his enemy. Then he roared with triumph. His outstretched hand caught Dan's shirt as the latter flicked to one side. Instantly they were locked in each other's arms! The most meaning ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... long sought the elixir of life, but it had proved as delusive as a will-o'-the-wisp to him, and ever, just as he felt assured of success, the prize had slipped away from his grasp, leaving him further away from success than he had been before. But now it was not the elixir that he was ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... he should assume the airs of a teacher, and gravely lead out his trusting disciples into the desert places of the earth, when his only object was to get them into a bog and then suddenly reveal himself as a will-o'-the-wisp, laughing at them with a ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... and took his hand from his face: "You are talking in riddles, Kapellmeister! The beer has gone to your head, and you are drunk! Look at the clock over yonder!— What is love? A will-o'-the-wisp! You chase it and it eludes you; you clasp it and it melts into air! There is nothing in life, I tell ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... eyes, or Cytherea's breath." How the brother and sister would croon over him "with murmurs made to bless," calling him their "tender novice" "in the first bloom of his nigritude," their belated straggler from the "rear of darkness thin," their little night-shade, not deadly, their infantile Will-o'-the-wisp caught before his sins, their "poor Blot," "their innocent Blackness," their ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... them in order. The first is the taste, Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp: Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist, With a flavor of Will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... hope died. She had thought it just possible that this affair had been a travelling flirtation; that Nick, though infatuated, would return to his old allegiance when this witch-light, this will-o'-the-wisp, this love pirate, had gone. But the love pirate intended to drop anchor in California waters, it seemed! Luckily for Carmen that the daylight had faded. Changes on a woman's face, if bent a little, could not be ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... were just leaving the fur posts for the St. Lawrence. Frosts had already stripped the trees of foliage, and winter would presently lock all avenues of retreat in six months' ice. La Verendrye's men began to doubt the wisdom of chasing a will-o'-the-wisp to an unknown Western Sea. The explorer sent half the party forward with his nephew Jemmeraie and his son Jean, while he himself remained at Kaministiquia with the mutineers to forage for provisions. {208} Winter found Jemmeraie's men on the Minnesota side of Rainy Lake, where they built ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... author's deeper meaning. Our reading is undisturbed by the ghost-creep of childhood and the adventuresome daring of boarding-school. Formerly we had the mere tale or story; now we feel in a small degree the soul-expression of the writer—an indefinable, will-o'-the-wisp sort of thing; a something not always caught, but that strange intangible something which lends the spark of immortality to the ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... flattened, his teeth bared, his eyes terrible to behold. As the man raced close the stallion struck with lightning hoofs, but the blow failed of its mark—by the breadth of a hair. And the assailant, swerving like a will-o'-the-wisp, darted to the side of the animal and leaped upon its back. At the same instant the wolf left the ground with terribly gaping mouth in a spring for the rider; but Dan flattened himself along the shining back of his mount and the wolf ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... fir-tree: "Everybody Must accept the sphere he's born in, And fulfil his duties fully. So we think here in the forest; And 'tis well so, at least better Than to hop will-o'-the-wisp like, Playing pranks and doing mischief, Men and cattle oft misleading, And the stupid wanderer's curses As reward home with thee taking. Anyhow, no one cares for thee. For, at best, a peasant sayeth, Devil take this Meysenhartus! But they're others who write volumes ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... had run away from a squalid home to the gorgeous freedom of stage-life, only to find that the stage also is squalid and slavish, and that the will-o'-the-wisp of gorgeous freedom had jumped back to home life. She left the cheap theaters for the expensive luxury of Sir Joseph's mansion. But that had its squalors and slaveries, too. She had fled from troubled England to ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... of times greater than that produced by any chemical combination such as the union of oxygen and hydrogen to form water. From the heavy white salt there is continually rising a faint fire-mist like the will-o'-the-wisp over a swamp. This gas is known as the emanation or niton, "the shining one." A pound of niton would give off energy at the rate of 23,000 horsepower; fine stuff to run a steamer, one would think, but we must remember that ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... young; Wizards, Will-o'-the-Wisp, Witch Peddler, Protophantasmist, Servibilis, Monkeys, Spirits, Journeymen, Country-folk, Citizens, Beggar, Old Fortune-teller, Shepherd, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of view, Velasquez had made a bad choice. Cortez had disdained his fetters and his prisons, and would soon disdain his control. His hope to win gain and glory by the aid of this young adventurer was likely to prove a mere Will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... he could write before they were uttered. "James Gilmour, M.A." Never knew him, or heard of him; yet here was he, talking exactly as some one else had years ago talked a hundred times. So oppressive at last became the will-o'-the-wisp reminiscence, that the reviewer stopped, after an account of the Desert of Gobi, and deliberately read it through again, in search of a clue which might reawaken his memory. It was all in vain, and it was not till another hundred pages had been passed, always under the impression of that bewildering ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... waste my abilities pursuing this will-o'-the-wisp "Enough," which is ever a little more than one has, and which none of the panting millions ever yet overtook in his mad chase? Is there no desirable thing left in this world but ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... him! Didn't we take that dive in the river together? But he's an elusive chap, regular will-o'-the-wisp, messenger and spy of ours, and ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... take off in a racing start toward the blue light. Rick had to stretch his legs to catch up, and saw the ghost begin its retreat again, always maintaining the distance between itself and the boys. It danced in the air like a will-o'-the-wisp, as though ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... life worth purchasing by pulsations and respirations. The world is a dank, malarious marsh, with fitful Will-o'-the-Wisp flashes of false radiance—a vast cemetery waiting for our corpses. There is no such thing ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... of life caught her sisters and swept them out, she did not know to what. She never even wondered. She had not been taught to care. She had never been taught anything. The knowledge that she must be famous danced through her dreams like a will-o'-the-wisp; had grown within her in the shape of a great pain that never ceased; only eased a little as she strove mightily ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... for the year L200—a sum which is insufficient to pay the Dutch teacher employed to bring the children up to the required standard in that language. It is small wonder, then, that most teachers prefer to dispense with this Will-o'-the-wisp grant altogether, seeing that the efforts of some to earn it have resulted in pecuniary loss. The actual sum expended on Uitlander schools last year amounted to L650, or 1s. 10d. a head out of a total expenditure for education of L63,000, the expenditure per Dutch child amounting ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... hand cordially. "Why, Mr. De Arthenay, [Footnote: Pronounced Dee arthenay] is this you?" she cried. "This is a pleasure! Melody was sure it was you, and she ran off like a will-o'-the-wisp, when I could not hear a sound. But I'm very glad to see you. We were saying only yesterday how long a time it was since you'd been here. Now you must sit down, and tell us all the news. Stop, though," she added, with a glance at the vine-clad window; ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... individuals, its qualities must ever be taken into account. But there is no subject which more requires discriminating knowledge, or where your illustrating principle, if you are not deeply founded, may not chance to turn out a will-o'-the-wisp. Now this great question of the Latin race, by which M. de Vallombrosa may succeed in disturbing the world—it might be well to inquire where the Latin race is to be found. In the North of Italy, peopled by Germans and named after Germans, or in the South of Italy, swarming ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... and no Body. This unsympathetic attitude, often only half conscious on the part of the regular practitioners, has led many thousands of people to follow will-o'-the-wisp cults, which pay no attention to the findings of science, but which emphasize a realization of man's spiritual nature. Many of these cults, founded largely on untruth or half-falsehood, have succeeded in cases where careful science has failed. Despite fearful blunders and ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... like the pursuit of happiness in that you do not always know when you have either. It may furthermore be likened to chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever keeps a few safe paces ahead of you. The thought that I had to keep busy at something calculated to promote my health was a habit that I could not easily relinquish. So now I began to read up and practice physical culture—which I had always spoken ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... as a word of farewell, he crept out of the house in the gathering dusk, and started in pursuit of the bright object that floated like a will-o'-the-wisp ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... her conduct was somewhat erratic. For three days, perhaps, she would fly to the door at her husband's ring, and hang upon his every movement. Then, for the next three, she would be a veritable will-o'-the-wisp for elusiveness, caring, apparently, not one whit whether her husband came or went until poor Bertram, at his wit's end, scourged himself with a merciless catechism as to what he had done to vex her. Then, perhaps, just when he had nerved himself almost to ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... darkness swallowed them. The last faint gleam of the alcohol lamp died out. Jolly Roger did not look back. Blindly he stumbled ahead, counting his footsteps as he went, and shouting Nada's name. Twice he thought he heard a reply, and each time the will-o'-the-wisp voice seemed to be still farther ahead of him. Then, with a fiercer blast of the wind beating upon his back, he stumbled and fell forward upon his face. His hand reached out and touched the thing that had tripped him. It was not ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the soul. The reek of damp clothes pervaded the gallery where he sat surrounded by clerks and shop girls, and he pictured to himself the dreary rooms from which they had emerged, drawn by the mysterious fire on that altar. Was it a will-o'-the-wisp? Below him, in the pews, were the rich. Did ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
