"Divining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there, eh?" said Von Gerhard, as though divining my wish. "It is too brightly lighted, and too noisy. We will find a table out here under the trees, where the music is softened by the distance, and our eyes are not offended by the ugliness of the singers. But inexcusably ugly they ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... train of scattered causes and consequences, which then she had no power to set in order; but the rush almost overwhelmed her, and what was wanting, shame added. She was vexed with herself for her jealousy in divining and her impatience in asking foolish questions; and in her vexation was ready to be vexed with Winthrop, — if she only knew how. She longed to lay her head down in her hands, but pride kept it up. She rested her ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... victory on land. On the northern frontier such a man as Andrew Jackson might have changed the whole aspect of the war. He was a great general with the rare attribute of reading correctly the mind of an opponent and divining his course of action, endowed with an unyielding temper and an iron hand, a relentless purpose, and the faculty of inspiring troops to follow, obey, and trust him in the last extremity. He was one of them, typifying ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... as well. Muzio really did vanish, as though he had sunk through the earth. One day Fabio thought himself bound to relate to Valeria precisely what had occurred on that fateful night ... but she, probably divining his intention, held her breath, and her eyes narrowed as though she were anticipating a blow.... And Fabio understood her: he did not deal ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... had not earned. Their affection for her naturally heightened their perception of what she was trying to do and their approval of what she did. Her inexperience conserved her own exuberant fancy, which ran riot with every straw of opportunity, making of it a golden divining rod whereby the treasure of ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... home Michael Angelo carried out the embassy of the Magnificent; his father divining why he was called, with great persuasion from Granacci and others made ready to go: lamenting to himself that his son would be taken away. Stating, moreover, that he would never suffer his son to be a stonemason, it was useless for Granacci to explain how great was the difference between ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... that she would try; and walked with the divining-rod between her pretty fingers for many a mile in wood and wold, wherever the ground looked red and rusty. But she never ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... with a mighty splash, carrying the spray far and wide, while its own fragments roll onwards with the stream. The trees of the orchard are uprooted in an instant, and an old elm falls prostrate. The outbuildings of a cottage are invaded, and the porkers and cattle, divining their danger, squeal and bellow in affright. But they are quickly silenced. The resistless foe has broken down wall and door, and buried the poor creatures in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and I had discussed with each other every plan of action, but now unfortunately we had no opportunity of taking counsel with one another. Still she had been accustomed too long to self-reliance to hesitate for that reason, and divining by a flash of woman's intuition how this spectacle might be converted into an opportunity of escape, she consented gracefully to Cesare's plans, requesting only that the French troops ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... nodding resignedly, "I feared as much. Divining that I would institute inquiries, she has stolen a march upon me, and ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... receive for his disease. He was much beyond the ordinary convict in point of ability. He defended himself, cross-examined the authorities, and made some of the chiefs cut very sorry figures under the divining rod. He at last gained his point, for he exposed the authorities and obtained his removal to another prison, where he would have what he considered proper medical treatment—good food being an essential item ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... Age to the earlier, more ancient life of the senses; and for us the most attractive form of [225] classical story is the monk's conception of it, when he escapes from the sombre atmosphere of his cloister to natural light. The fruits of this mood, which, divining more than it understands, infuses into the scenery and figures of Christian history some subtle reminiscence of older gods, or into the story of Cupid and Psyche that passionate stress of spirit which the world owes to Christianity, constitute a peculiar vein ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... went to the proseuche, a certain female servant having a spirit, a diviner, met us, who brought her masters much gain by divining. [16:17]She following Paul and us, cried, saying, These men are servants of the Most High God, who declare to us the way of salvation; [16:18]and this she did for many days. And Paul being grieved turned around and said to the spirit, I command you, in the name ...
— The New Testament • Various
... till her rage was somewhat exhausted, and then, having thrown her divining apparatus into the fire, I looked at her in pity and anger, and said that we must part the next day, as she had narrowly escaped killing me. I confessed that I had been with Bomback, and that there had been a girl in the house; but I denied ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of hoofs upon the stony trail. Other horses and riders were descending into the canyon. They had been the cause of his deliverance, and in the relaxation of feeling he almost fainted. Then he sat there, slowly recovering, slowly ceasing to tremble, divining that this situation was somehow to change his attitude ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... things interested him, the Asika volunteered the information through Jeekie, that this was a divining-bowl, and that if those who went before her had wished to learn the future, they caused Little Bonsa to float in it and found out all they wanted to know by her movements. She, however, she added, had other and better methods of learning ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... had they closed the door on the wretched woman, when the Marquis of Orsini returned; and, too well divining what had passed, he exclaimed, "In the name of Heaven, captain!—by all that is holy, Piero! I implore you not to consummate this ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the English-speaking world has recently been celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Keats, who is the only pure Greek in all English literature, for whose imagination "a thing of beauty was a joy forever," and whose genius in divining the secrets of the beautiful amounted to inspiration. We know now that no poet in all time, who died so young, has left so much that is precious. Scholars are not wanting who believe that had he lived to see his maturity Keats would have ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the metropolis of art, where he applied himself with the greatest assiduity. He copied all the great frescos of Raffaelle in the Vatican several times; he next turned his rapid pencil against the works of Annibale Caracci in the Farnese palace. Meantime, his father divining the direction which the truant had taken, followed him to Rome, where, after a long search, he discovered him sketching ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... means of the divining stalks (the divining plant, milfoil or yarrow) and the tortoiseshell has been carried on from time immemorial, but was not originally practised with the object of ascertaining future events, but in order to decide doubts, much as lots are ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... employed, has denied emphatically that the boy, whose name is Rodwell, is an impostor. He says that the lad, when tested, never failed to find either water or mineral veins, the lodes having always been found exactly at the places indicated. The divining-rod which he holds only moves in obedience to the muscular contraction of his hands, and a rod of any kind of wood, or even of any material substance whatever, can be used, provided it be a conductor of electricity. Dr. McClure's statements ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... Madame was nowhere in sight. Divining their wish to be alone on this last evening together, she had long since gone to her own room. The candles on the mantel had been lighted and the reading lamp burned low. Near it was the little red book that Edith had found at the top of the Hill of ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the art, as she owned, of divining many of her thoughts. "You can afford to look in the glass still; and only be pleased by the truth it tells you. As for me, do you know what my scheme is? I think of asking Frank to give me the Virginian estate King Charles gave ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Marcus recalled too how, divining how they seemed to wish to be alone, he had left them pacing up and down beneath the shading vines, talking earnestly, while he consoled himself by joining Serge, who was in as great a state of excitement as himself and literally pelted him with ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... and, as if divining her thought, Lady Tynemouth embraced her, and a moment later there was no sound in the room save the ticking of the clock and the crackle of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Lea, divining that the Sheriff had been at the King's ear with his story, made a clean breast of all he knew; how that the outlaws had befriended him in sore need—as they had befriended others—and how that he had given them only knightly protection ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... blow cut short these words; and though the reply to the hail could hardly have been heard on board the ship, yet, as if divining the true state of the case, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... of divining future events by this method is to suspend a bolo or a dagger that has been consecrated to a deity and from its movement, or from the absence of movement, obtain the desired information. In case of emergency ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... to them that he would bestow it on them in three days, and on the third day at daybreak they were found dead. And so they say that this was a formal decision pronounced by that God to whom the rest of the deities have assigned the province of divining with an accuracy superior to that of all ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Typho's accomplices had done with the body, and accordingly acquainted her by what mouth of the Nile it had been conveyed into the sea—For this reason therefore the Egyptians look upon children as endued with a kind of faculty of divining, and in consequence of this notion are very curious in observing the accidental prattle which they have with one another whilst they are at play (especially if it be in a sacred place), forming omens ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... acquit her; for not only did she show no provocative favor to another, but she seemed to have gained in dignity and pride since his arrival, actually to have kissed her hand in farewell to the childhood he had been so slow in divining; grown—he felt rather than analyzed—above the pettiness of coquetry. Once more she had stirred the dormant ideals of his early manhood; there were moments when she floated before his inner vision as the embodiment of the world's beauty. Nor ever had there been a woman born ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... to Thring, where he captained in a football match, Loveday watching his rage, his twisting waist, and then accompanying him home: but in the dining-room they found the lord-of-the-manor's bailiff; and Loveday, divining something embarrassing, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... In divining Dorothy's griefs, Mrs. Hanway-Harley showed even greater ingenuity. Dorothy and Richard had quarreled; Mrs. Hanway-Harley was sharp to note that now she neither saw nor heard of Richard. Also, Dorothy came to the dinner table when Storri ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 12th of April, the Emperor also received the last adieux of Marshal Macdonald. When he was introduced, the Emperor was still feeling the effects of the events of the preceding night; and I am sure the Duke of Tarentum perceived, without divining the cause, that his Majesty was not in his usual condition. He was accompanied by the Duke of Vicenza; and at this moment the Emperor was still so much depressed, and seemed so entirely absorbed in thought, that he did ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... The bird, divining the presence of intruders, ceased his song. Doubtless he had heard the rustle of their clothing as they sat down at the foot of the tree, or the tender words they were murmuring into ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... into one another's hand, watching one another, feeling, divining that something of a grave nature was going to arise ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Cavetown The story slowly rolled— That old man knew the mountains Were filled with ore of gold. The boxes held his crucibles; 'Twas haunted where he trod; And every shafted pole he brought Was a divining rod! ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... tingling work, for as surely as I sensed his intention of briefness, just as surely had he sensed mine. I doubt that I could have done the trick had it been broad day instead of moonlight. The dim light aided me. Also was I aided by divining, the moment in advance, what he had in mind. It was the time attack, a common but perilous trick that every novice knows, that has laid on his back many a good man who attempted it, and that is so fraught with danger to the perpetrator that swordsmen ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... harass or tempt her spiritual looking friend. She prattled artlessly of theatre parties followed by a supper at one of the fashionable restaurants, and of new acquaintances whom she entertained, and through whom her social circle was enlarged, without divining that the sprightly narration was a thorn in the flesh of her hearer. Selma was capricious in her reception of these reports of progress. At times she listened to them with grave, cold eyes, which Flossy took for signals of noble disdain and sought to deprecate by wooing promises to be less ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... instincts, indeed, and at bird's-nesting they almost amounted to prophecy. Where we others only suspected eggs, surmised possible eggs, hinted doubtfully at eggs in the neighbourhood, Harold went straight for the right bush, bough, or hole as if he carried a divining-rod. But this faculty belonged to the class of mere gifts, and was not to be ranked with Edward's lore regarding facings, and mine as to the habits of prairie-dogs, both gained by painful study and extensive travel in those "realms of gold," ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... expense of which intelligence was constituted like a brilliantly condensed nucleus; and it is still today the atmosphere which gives it life, the fringe of touch, and delicate probing, inspiring contact and divining sympathy, which we see in play in the phenomena of discovery, as also in the acts of that "attention to life," and that "sense of reality" which is the soul of good sense, so widely distinct from common-sense. And the peculiar task of the philosopher ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... had taken the wind out of my sails, for I had come purposing to give her a large piece of my mind. Divining my intention, womanlike she had created a diversion by carrying the war into the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... secret, Folly finally ran away to avoid any more particular leave-taking between herself and the children. But the stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for the smallest boy but one divining her intent, immediately began swarming upstairs after her—if that word of doubtful etymology be admissible—on his arms and legs; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... geomantic. Pertaining to geomancy, the art of divining future events by means of signs connected with the earth. The figure here represents two constellations, Rubeus, which signifies Mars direct, Puella, ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... said Sylvia Jackson, divining her thought. "He is so fresh and unconventional that we all like him at home. He is the very nicest boy I know; but I am like a mother or an elder sister to him. Why, I am centuries older than Desmond, not in actual years, but in knowledge ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... put five thousand francs on the red, when the black came up for the seventeenth time. The colonel then put a thousand francs on the black and won. In spite of this remarkable piece of luck, his head grew weary; he felt it, though he continued to play. But that divining sense which leads a gambler, and which comes in flashes, was already failing him. Intermittent perceptions, so fatal to all gamblers, set in. Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... visit him, and have news of his dear patient. His accounts of her were, far from encouraging. "She does not rally," he said. "We must get her back to Kent again, or to the sea." I did not know then that the poor child had begged and prayed so piteously not to be moved, that her parents, divining, perhaps, the reason of her desire to linger in London, and feeling that it might be dangerous not to humour her, had yielded to her entreaty, and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is indeed a sweet child," observed Madame Durand, divining my thoughts; "she cried very much indeed when the ship had to sail away without you, and nothing would comfort ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... themselves—for all the other children were still out at play—Nellie soon had Robert quietened and sitting at his dinner of cold potatoes and buttermilk. Bit by bit she drew from him the story of the fight at school; divining for herself the reason for Robert's attack upon Peter Rundell, she soon was in possession of the whole story with its termination of revolt against the headmaster and even the confession of what he had written on ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... sight of Olmeta. When she returned she went into the garden again, where she spent so great a part of these hot days that her face was burnt to a healthy brown, which was in keeping with her fearless eyes and carriage. Mademoiselle Brun, on the other hand, spent most of her days indoors, divining perhaps that Denise had of late fallen into ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... The traveler, divining his curiosity, explained. "I stayed last night at the mill below. I'm a millwright. I have some property to inspect in Silver Plume, hence I'm walking across. I didn't know it was so far; I was misinformed. I'm not accustomed to ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... His comrades, divining the cause of Clancy's impatience, make no attempt to restrain him. They have rested and sufficiently refreshed themselves. There is no reason for their remaining any longer ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to draw the lower forms of nature up to them, divining their histories, and imitating their ways, in their wild dances and paintings; even so did they love to look upward and people the atmosphere that enfolds the earth, with fairies and manitoes. The sister, obliged to leave ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... sun is overcast,— Nay, rather borne to heaven, and there is shining, Waiting our coming, and perchance repining At our delay; there shall we meet at last: And there, mine ears, her angel words float past, Those who best understand their sweet divining; Howe'er, my feet, unto the search inclining, Ye cannot reach her in those regions vast. Why, then, do ye torment me thus, for, oh! It is no fault of mine, that ye no more Behold, and hear, and welcome her below; Blame Death,—or rather praise ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... he thought me a mind-reader, but I fancy the knack of divining when people need a confidant is preternaturally ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... I fear, of what I sent you about heirlooms," said Mr. Dove, divining the purport ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... him as the divining-rod of Aaron, blooming ever afresh with magic flowers. Now that the flame of pain and passion burned it up, and left a bare sear brittle bough, he ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... King Shaddad, and now sunk somewhere in the Sands of Arabia. Jamshyd's Seven-ring'd Cup was typical of the 7 Heavens, 7 Planets, 7 Seas, &c., and was a Divining Cup. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... Chihuahua are the rich silver mines of Eulalia. The road thither is a rough one, but many persons enjoy the excursion, over what at first sight seems to be a plain of lava, though as there is no volcano visible, one is a little at fault in divining from whence it came. We were told finally that it was slag from the workings of the mines at Eulalia, and that more modern processes of disintegration and amalgamation might extract good pay in silver from these "tailings," now spread broadcast for many miles on the surface ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... fall became visible over the sunken trees to our right, almost on a level with us. I have heard people talk of having felt disappointed on a first view of this stupendous scene: by what process they arrived at this conclusion I profess myself utterly incapable of divining, since, even now that two years have almost gone by, I find on this point my feelings are not yet to be analyzed; I dare not trust myself to their guidance, and only know that my wildest imaginings were forgotten in contemplating ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... on their guard, and their commander, Colonel Baerenklau, divining the tactics of the Tyrolese, had ordered his two guns to be pointed ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... the threshold of the quaint Little Church Around the Corner. Though few in number it was a gathering strongly fortified by warm affection. The several passers-by who chanced to see this small procession enter the unpretentious sanctuary had no difficulty in divining their purpose or singling out the chief participants in the affair. The face of the beautiful, dark-eyed girl, gowned in a smart tailored coat suit of brown, wore the shy radiance of a bride. The tall, distinguished-looking man who accompanied her was easily identified as the happy party of the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... divining his master's thoughts, stood with look intent and anxious yelp, impatient for ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... what was the uproar: some were killed outright, others escaped upstairs, closing the door at the foot and placing some furniture against it. This feeble barrier was soon broken down, and the Swiss who had attempted to resist were shot. The tumult woke Coligny from his slumbers, and divining what it meant—that Guise had made an attack on the house—he was lifted from his bed, and, folding his robe-de-chambre round him, sat down prepared to meet his fate. Cornaton entering the room at this moment, Ambrose Pare asked him what was the meaning of the noise. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Miss Gordon divining his thoughts. "The soul is more than raiment, 'the world has room for another man and I want you to fill ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... on my grandmother, probably divining my inward sufferings, "Koko," she repeated in a voice tender rather than harsh, "is ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... divining to an extent that which inspired her question, smiled at her somewhat proudly as ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... jumeaux! a vous!" Jeanne thought the twins were really in a plight and that she would have to help them out with a gift, but, quick as thought, Castor seized Pollux, saying, "J'y mets mon compagnon!" and Pollux, divining his intention, grasped Castor, declaring excitedly, "Et moi aussi, j'y mets mon compagnon" And into the basket they leapt together. "Ils s'entetent a rester inseparables," sighed Jeanne; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... just arrived from Dallas, looked on at the game with some curiosity, not divining its purpose, until McWade pocketed the dice, then mounted a box at the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... bestow all the art upon the mystics when they endowed thee with divining powers. They gifted every man with a little of it, and it speaketh no less truthfully because it is small. Come, thy board has been generous and I am satisfied. I have another and a fiercer hunger I would appease. Give me the message and let me ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... with a hoarse cry of rage and pain. But he was quickly upon his feet again, muttering curses, and again he attacked his grim-faced antagonist. Quick blows rained upon his defenseless face, for the strong, silent man was now fairly aroused. He fought like a demon, perhaps divining that here strong men battled for a good woman's love. The outlaw was proving to be no match for his opponent. Arising from the ground where a mighty blow had sent him, he made a lightning-like effort to recover the knife which Benson had taken ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... that they may exercise themselves therein, and that even foreigners, who are curious about it, may learn to know its riches and the graces it hath in unfolding the secrets of the highest discipline." Herein is revealed the founder of the French Academy, skilful as he was in divining the wants of his day, and always ready to profit by new means of action, and to make them his own ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... speaking-tube. But still the Fledgling held her tow, and Dan and Mulhatton stood silent at the wheel, the rush of the wind, which had long torn out the double windows, swirling their hair into their eyes and numbing their torn and bleeding hands. The elements, as though divining the weakening of the tug,—a tug which often had laughed them to scorn,—were making mad work of it; there were strange sounds, unforeseen blows—but still the tug ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... furious now if she knew I'd spoken right out. But you don't want to be treated like a little girl all your life, do you?" He laughed at her speechless embarrassment with a kind obtuseness to the horror of youth at seeing its shy fastnesses of reserve laid open to indifferent feet. Divining, however, through his affection for her, that she was really more than pleasantly startled by his bluntness, he began to make everything smooth by saying: "There aren't many girls in Endbury who don't envy my little Lydia, I guess. Paul ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of 1893, one of the driest years ever known, I went to the weir pool above the wood, and found the shepherd fishing. The river was lower than had ever been known or seen, and on the hills round the "dowsers" had been called in with their divining rods to find ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... Walton-le-Dale, on the Ribble, had a legend that if you stood on a certain headland and looked up the valley to Ribchester "you would gaze over the greatest treasure that England had ever seen." The farmers tried excavations, and the divining rod is said ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... under other circumstances it would have been. Nannie Hilliard was both perspicacious and fascinating, and Constance foresaw that her presence would tangle further the already tangled plot of the little comedy which was unfolding itself at Villa Rosa. But Miss Hazel, divining nothing of comedies or plots, was thrown into a pleasant flutter by the news. Guests were a luxury which occurred but seldom in ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... influence over the German peasantry in that vicinity. The members of the brotherhood made themselves useful as teachers and in various handicrafts. They were especially in demand among the superstitious for their skill in casting horoscopes, using divining rods, and carving potent amulets. Their mysterious astronomical tower on the heights of the Wissahickon was the Mecca of the curious and the distressed. To the gentle Kelpius was ascribed the power of healing, but he was himself the victim of consumption. ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... poetry is addressed by the young to the young; only the great masters of the art are capable of divining, or think it worth while to enter into, the feelings of retrospective age. The two great poets whom we have so lately lost, Tennyson and Browning, have done this, each in his own inimitable way; the one in the Ulysses, from which I have borrowed; the other in that wonderful fragment "Childe Roland ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... tired body. It was not that she detected any note of personal admiration in his praise—he had commended her as the surgeon might commend a fine instrument fashioned for his use. But that she should be the instrument to serve such a purpose—that her skill, her promptness, her gift of divining and interpreting the will she worked with, should be at the service of this implacable scientific passion! Ah, no—she could be ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... good-night she remained in the open doorway with her hand upon his shoulder and her eyes thoughtfully lowered, so that her wish to say something more than good-night was evident. Not less obvious was her perplexity about the manner of saying it; and George, divining her thought, amiably made an ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... good, then," said the Baron. "If it stands thus, you may well hear Everything I have to tell you; But before we go on farther, With old wine it must be seasoned." Cleverly his thoughts divining, Margaretta, from the cellar, Now brought up two dusty bottles Which, with spider-webs all covered, In the sand had lain half-buried; Brought with them two fine-cut goblets, Which she filled and then presented. "This wine ripened long before the War raged in our ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... her mother, divining her purpose, caught her and whispered, "Do not go—not for life. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... brown man, yes,"—Karamaneh divining my question, nodded, and the shimmering cloud of her wonderful hair, hastily confined, burst free and rippled about her shoulders. "A gaunt, fleshless brown man, who ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... it is obvious that an examination in joy could not be conducted in any set fashion, every great joy in the world has its natural diviners and experts, and teachers of literature who know its joy have plenty of ways of divining this joy in others. ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... He nodded, divining her thought. The girl shivered. She felt terror mounting to her heart, and the matter-of-fact attitudes of the others in the great laboratory did not allay ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... far more effect on the Samoan conscience than more civilised methods of warning and reproof. So when Mrs Stevenson, by a clever imitation of native conjuring, made Lafaele believe that 'her devil,' or divining spirit, would tell her where the missing pig was, it is probable that Lafaele, even if innocent himself, shared the feast with his ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... as little reason for it as we had for remaining there. There was no warrant for any belief in the special divining power of the unknown Lacy Bassett, except Captain Jim's extravagant faith in his general superiority, and even that had always been a source of amused skepticism to the camp. We were already impatiently familiar with the opinions of this unseen oracle; he was always impending in Captain ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... to Henry, and I was not slow to mark the discomposure which appeared on more than one face as the crowd in the chamber fell back for me to approach my master. Still, I was careful to remember that this might arise from other causes than guilt. The King received me with his wonted affection; and divining that I must have something important to communicate, he withdrew with me to the farther end of the chamber, where we were out of earshot of the Court. I related the story to ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... those darker secrets of humanity necessary to her tragic incantation. They served her, those dreaded, passionate outbreaks of her brother's, even as the moors she loved, the fancy she courted, served her. Strange divining wand of genius, that conjures gold out of the miriest earth of common life; strange and terrible faculty laying up its stores and half-mechanically drawing its own profit out of our slightest or most miserable experiences, noting the gesture with ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... of lots and auguries, they are addicted beyond all other nations. Their method of divining by lots is exceeding simple. From a tree which bears fruit they cut a twig, and divide it into two small pieces. These they distinguish by so many several marks, and throw them at random and without order upon a white ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... may rest assured my social position is beyond question," the stranger said, as if divining his thought. ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... flattered," he declared, as they walked down the garden path together. Then, as he opened the gate for her, he asked, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, for he was an astute business man, and accustomed to divining people's motives, "Now, what do you want to wheedle out of me this morning? You've been for a trip already, and it can't ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... me that water may be found by a divining rod made of willowe; whiche he hath read somewhere; he thinks in Vitruvius. Quaere Sir John ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... have a curious faculty of divining what is going on before they are actually told about anything. Sebastian and Tinette must have possessed this faculty in a high degree, for even as the doctor was going downstairs, Tinette, who had been rung ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... more than man had not this first grasp of the divining-rod of the pleasures of earth filled him with the lust of them. Even his love for Lucina, and his parents and sister, seemed for a while subverted by that love for himself, to which the chance of its ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... remembered in time that Hermas had early lost the happiness of caressing a mother, and he had hastily amended the phrase. He was one of those to whom it is so painful to hurt another, that they never touch a wounded soul unless to heal it, divining the seat of even the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... slight at his side. But instead of taking her position, she drew back, looking up and frowning as she seemed to speak objectingly to Gale. De Spain saw her hesitation without catching its import. The talkative woman near at hand was more divining. "Lord, that Nan Morgan makes me tired," she exclaimed to her gum-chewing companion, "ever see anything like her? First she wouldn't dance unless the floor was cleared—Sleepy Cat folks ain't good enough for them Music ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... deceit and effrontery before. I was so indignant that I could feel my astral fingers tremble. I could not bear to look at him, and as by that time I had eaten all I could, I rose and walked directly from the court without another word. I am sure he would have pursued me had not the elemental, divining my wish to escape, detained ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... temptation to throw it at him, and divining that the stimulant might be of assistance to her in the trying crisis in which she found herself, the girl lifted the cup to her lips, bowed to him, and swallowed a ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the doctor, divining what the next question was to be. "He may linger on for months; for a year, it may even be; or a very short period may see the termination. Don't worry him with any more lessons and stuff of learning; he'll never ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... a divining rod!" groaned Rhoda. "That would tell us in what direction the water lay. We've been going south-east all the ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... with an air of impenetrable mystery invited Wilfred Compton to a ride that might keep him from his bride several days, the young man guessed that Willock had been found. Lahoma, divining as much, urged Wilfred to hasten, assured him that she enjoyed the publicity and stirring life of the Mangum hotel and expressed confidence that should she need a friend, Mizzoo would help her through any difficulty. So Wilfred rode away with Bill, ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... several, as the crowd in the chamber fell back for me to approach my master. I was careful, however, to remember that this might arise from other causes than guilt. The king received me with his wonted affection; and divining at once that I must have something important to communicate, withdrew with me to the farther end of the chamber, where we were out of earshot of the court. I there related the story to ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... souls can prepossessions reign? Allow me to remind you, grass is green— All flesh is grass;—no bacon but is flesh— Ye are but bacon. This divining BAG 80 (Which is not green, but only bacon colour) Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er A woman guilty of—we all know what— Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind She never can commit the like again. 85 If innocent, she will turn into an angel, And rain ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... ceasing his familiar way of speaking, doubtless divining that his companion belonged to the rich and happy; "let us walk along the road to warm our feet, and I will tell you things, which probably you have never heard of—I am called Jean-Victor, that is all, for I am a foundling, and my only happy ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Divining with the peculiar instinct of the guild the character of the fish now nibbling at the naked hook, the cheat resolved to risk a little bait, and accordingly sent by return mail a genuine one- dollar note, with a written invitation ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... head, marriage or single blessedness being foretold by its remaining whole or breaking, and of the peel so cast forming the initial of the future loved one, finds many adherents. Equally popular, too, was the practice of divining by a thistle blossom. When anxious to ascertain who loved her most, a young woman would take three or four heads of thistles, cut off their points, and assign to each thistle the name of an admirer, laying them under her ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... stations, a decent-looking woman came into the compartment where I sat. Divining at once that I had crossed the water, she spoke pretty freely. Their farm was on a mountain side. It had to be dug with a spade; horses could not plough it. The seasons had been against the crops for some years. Yes, their rent had been raised, raised at different ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... almost as metallic as the rap that followed it, had ceased; the tramping of footsteps on the gravel had died out. Mrs. Tulliver's blond face seemed aged ten years by the last thirty hours; the poor woman's mind had been busy divining when her favorite things were being knocked down by the terrible hammer; her heart had been fluttering at the thought that first one thing and then another had gone to be identified as hers in the hateful publicity of the Golden ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... apparelled we may not look on its shadowy nakedness: it will fly from us and only return again in the darkness crying in a thin, childish voice which we may not comprehend until, with aching minds, listening and divining, we at last fashion for it those symbols which are its protection and its banner. So she could not understand the touch that came to her from afar and yet how intimately, the whisper so aloof and yet so thrillingly personal. The standard of either language or experience was not ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... the least defence, hurled him over the precipice. The helplessness of the strong man was uttered in one single despairing cry as he shot into the abyss. Then all was still. The sound of his fall could not reach the edge of the gulf. Divining in a moment that the lady, whose name was Elsie, must have fled in the opposite direction, he reined his steed on his haunches. He could touch the precipice with his bridle-hand half outstretched; his sword-hand half outstretched ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... with a feminine instinct that belied her masculine attire, understood the two men, and divining that they were both in love and jealous, one of Philippe and the other of Pierce, exercised the greatest tact and succeeded in sending them off to their hotel in a much better frame of mind. She did a great deal of quiet talking about how boyish Pierce Kinsella ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... himself knew nothing of engineering, but he had the services of a practical engineer—one M. Marie; and some artists, and a number of Egyptian officers and Soudanese soldiers accompanied the expedition. The party included neither metallurgist nor practical prospector [306] but Burton carried a divining rod, and seems really to have believed that it would be a help. The expenses, it was ascertained, would amount to one thousand nine hundred and seventy-one pounds twelve shillings and sixpence—no very extravagant sum for purchasing all the wealth ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... descending, and with a rapidity that seemed somewhat to disturb the aeronaut; and when, after a re-ascent, effected by a discharge of ballast, another decided downward tendency ensued, Mr. Harris clearly realised that something was wrong, without, however, divining the cause. The story subsequently told by the girl was to the effect that when the balloon was descending the second time she was spoken to by her unfortunate companion in an anxious manner. "I then ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... his fortune was made when he was twenty. A poor coal-digger (ever hear of a rich one?) had saved a dollar or two and bought a small tract of land on a hillside on which he tried to raise corn. Not a nubbin. Jacob, whose nose was a divining-rod, told him there was a vein of coal beneath. He bought the land from the miner for $125 and sold it a month afterward for $10,000. Luckily the miner had enough left of his sale money to drink himself into a black coat opening in the back, as soon ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... side-narrative, that of Dousterswivel, is the weak point of the whole; but this Scott justifies by "very late instances of the force of superstitious credulity, to a much greater extent." Some occurrence of the hour may have suggested the knavish adept with his divining-rod. But facts are never a real excuse for the morally incredible, or all but incredible, in fiction. On the wealth and vraisemblance and variety of character it were superfluous to dilate. As in Shakspeare, there is ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... by Della Wharton's feminine blandishments. He was grimly amused—when he was not disgusted; though he continued to treat her with the utmost courtesy and gentleness, trying to keep her from divining his emotions. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... own age took hold of him roughly and laid him in the dust, jeeringly threw his hat to some high roof, spat on his new shoes. Even little girls, divining his abjectness, were prone to act rowdyish with him. And this especially made him suffer. He comprehended, somehow, that it was ignoble for a man child to ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... this is a negative reply. This seems to be a very simple trick, for the diviner can impart movement to the lime-case by means of the hand. A similar way of consulting the oracle is by the bow, which is held in the hand by the middle of the string. A simple method of divining is by means of cowries or grains of rice. The diviner plunges his hand into a bag or basket after asking the god a question. If the number of cowries or grains of rice comes out odd, the omen is good; if it comes out even, the reverse is the case. The Khasi word for consulting ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... being called on to run with his little box. The procession closed, as it had opened, with a cloud of noisy and dirty urchins hanging on the rear of the priest and his flambeaux-bearing company. The whole swept past us at such a rapid pace, that I could only, by way of divining its object, open large wondering eyes upon it, which the large-boned lad in the brown cloak noticed, and repaid with a scowl, which broke no bones, however. "He is carrying the santissimo," said my fellow-travellers, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... belief that he contemplated an attack on Columbus, thus concealing his real purpose to surprise the small garrison at Belmont. General Polk on the morning of the 7th discovered the landing of the Federal forces on the Missouri shore, some seven miles above Columbus, and, divining the real purpose of the enemy, detached General Pillow with four regiments of his division, say two thousand men, to reenforce the garrison at Belmont. Very soon after his arrival, the enemy commenced an assault which was sternly resisted, and with varying fortune, for several ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... he clanged the bell for Tee-ka-mee, and that faithful servitor, divining the order, brought the aged factor ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... added, divining Lynde's unspoken thought even before it had fairly shaped itself in his brain, "it is not ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the little maid, divining that the discussion of her was unfavorable, fell to tears, and then ran up and dried ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... fifteen minutes for a young and forty for an old man) or waking from sleep.' (Q.) 'What of drinking wine?' (A.) 'Doth not the prohibition suffice thee in the Book of God the Most High, where He saith, "Verily, wine and casting lots and idols and divining arrows are an abomination of the fashion of the Devil: shun them, so surely shall ye thrive."[FN315] And again, "If they ask thee of wine and casting lots, say, 'In them are great sin and advantages to mankind, but the sin of them is greater than ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... earth has ever known. Thucydides is in fact the supreme historian, at the same time swift and detailed, scrupulously sifting his evidence but giving free play to intuition, setting forth none but incontestable facts, yet divining the most secret intentions and embracing at a glance all the present and future political consequences of the events which he relates. He is withal one of the most perfect writers, one of the most admirable artists in the literature of mankind; ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... yes." Karamaneh, divining my question, nodded, and the shimmering cloud of her wonderful hair, hastily confined, burst free and rippled about her shoulders. "A gaunt, fleshless brown man, who bent, and writhed ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Divining their misery, their hunger, and the savage thought that had come to them, Sally had whispered to the factor's wife to bring food, and the woman now came running out with two baskets full, and returned for more. Sally ran forward among the Indians and put the food into their hands. With grunts ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... ask that I shall seriously discuss whether an old woman with a divining-rod can detect hidden treasures; whether Mr. Home floated in the air or Mrs. Guppy sailed from house to house; whether cripples are cured at Lourdes or all manner of diseases at Winifred's Well? Must I patiently reason with a man who ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... you is interested in buried treasure? Well near Strong where the CCC Camp is was a place of buried treasure. Madam Hartline and three other white folks and myself went down there in a car. With a finding rod (divining rod) we located the treasure. Then I took this here proving rod you sees here and drove it down in the groun till hit struck somethin hard. A voice from somewhere said: 'What you all doing here? What you after?' Ever body lit a shuck ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... is to misjudge your so-called 'common man'! That fat, undistinguished-looking Briton in the corner of the omnibus is as likely as not Mr. So-and-So, the distinguished poet; and who but those with the divining-rod of a kind heart know what refined sensibility and nobility of character may lurk ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... intelligent animals are able to understand our ideas and the object of our actions; we are merciless to the creatures of the inferior spheres, and exile them from our own; we deny them the faculty of divining human thoughts, and yet we ourselves would fain master the highest of all ideas—the Idea of ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... man groaned—placed one hand before his eyes, and with the other grasped his guardian's arm convulsively, as if to check him from proceeding farther; but the good man, not divining his meaning, and absorbed in his subject, went on, irritating the wound ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... it in the time of the Prophet, who died 632 A.D. Commentators considered that a passage in the Koran concerning lots and images embraced chess within the meaning of the latter term. The words are "O true believers, surely wine, and lots, and images, and divining arrows are an abomination of the works of Satan, therefore avoid ye them that ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... that he could promise this, and consented to bear my message to her. Within the hour she was at my bedside and divining that, haply, I had news to give her of the letter I had born her brother, she dismissed Magistri ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... Milton was become a man of consideration, and might be useful as a protector. They concluded that the best thing they could do was to seek a reconciliation. There were not wanting friends of Milton's also, some perhaps divining his secret discontent, who thought that such reconciliation would be better for him too, than perilling his happiness upon the experiment of an illegal connexion. A conspiracy of the friends of both parties contrived to introduce Mary Powell into a house where Milton often visited ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... as if divining my thoughts, 'I know of nothing, I remember nothing. But there was something else he told me which makes me have faith in him. ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the vehicle for carrying away evils is called a faditra. "The faditra is anything selected by the sikidy [divining board] for the purpose of taking away any hurtful evils or diseases that might prove injurious to an individual's happiness, peace, or prosperity. The faditra may be either ashes, cut money, a sheep, a pumpkin, or anything else the sikidy ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... arresting all just anticipation regarding the immediately succeeding creation, and which, thus reversing the main end and object of philosophy, would render the philosopher who clung to it less sagacious in divining the future than even the ordinary man? But, in truth, the existing premises, wholly altered by geologic science, are no longer those of Hume. The footprint on the sand—to refer to his happy illustration—does not now stand alone. Instead of one, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... land of wise old books And men with meditative looks, Who move in quaint red-gabled towns And sit in gravely-folded gowns, Divining in deep-laden speech The world's supreme arcana—each A homely god to listening Youth Eager to tear the veil of Truth; * * * * * Mild votaries of book and pen— Alas, the dreams, the dreams ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... be all right, dearest," said Lorry, divining his wife's thoughts as she sat staring rather soberly straight ahead of her, "Just as soon as we get to Edelweiss, the whole affair will look so simple that we can laugh at the fears of to-day. You see, we are a long way off ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... help, watch, and guide Luigi. Besides, was he himself so old, so used-up, as to be unable to assist in organisation, even as he had assisted in conquest? Struck by his son's quick intelligence in business matters, perhaps also instinctively divining that the battle would now continue on financial and economic grounds, he obtained him employment at the Ministry of Finances. And again he himself lived on, dreaming, still enthusiastically believing in a splendid future, overflowing ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... little gesture. "How should I know? I'm no student of germs. He had a row of glass pans in front of him, with hideous messes in them, and he appeared to be sounding the depths of iniquity in them with a small glass divining rod." ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... by wine and littered with dirty plates and dishes. When Fagerolles, on his aide, succeeded in obtaining two glasses of chartreuse for himself and Jory, he began to talk to Sandoz, whom he treated with a certain amount of deference, divining that the novelist might become a power. And Jory thereupon appropriated Claude, who had ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... with some friendly soul. Once Donal heard the murmured words, "Lord, I'm a' yer ain;" and noted that his sleep grew deeper thereafter. He did not wake till the day began to dawn. Then he asked for some water. Seeing Donal, and divining that he had been by his bedside all the night, he thanked him with a smile and a little nod—which somehow brought to his memory certain words Andrew had spoken on another occasion: "There's ane, an' there's a'; an' the a' 's ane, an' ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... dining-room his ill-divining soul had told him that his sin had found him out. What head of a family ever sends for any of its members into the dining-room if his ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... too, means "him of the silver eye"? If it does, revoke, O student, your shrill eheu for the Greekless and untrousered savage of the canoe, suppress your feelings, and go steadily into rhabdomancy with several divining-rods, in search of the Pierian spring which must surely exist somewhere among the guttural districts of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... cards dropping in rapid sequence as he played alternately from his own hand and the dummy, permitted her thoughtful eyes to wander toward Agatha from moment to moment. How alluring her subtle beauty, in its own strange way! How perfect her accord with her partner! How faultless her intelligence, divining the very source of every hidden motive controlling him, forestalling his intent—acquiescent, delicate, marvellous intelligence—the esoteric complement of two parts of a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... speculative of past ages have frequently attempted to arrive, by external means, at the immediate possession of results otherwise requiring a long course of intense study and anxious inquiry. From these defunct illuminati originated the suppositionary virtues of the magically-endowed divining wand. The simple bending of a forked hazel twig, being the received sign of the deep-buried well, suited admirably with their notions of immediate information, and precluded the unpleasant and toilsome necessity for delving on speculation for the discovery of their desired object. But, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... The divining party again laid their heads together: apparently they could not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated. Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded "the tableau of the whole;" whereupon ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... prince was he about to find in that strange Henri, whom some thought a fool, others a coward, and all a renegade without firmness. But Chicot's opinion was rather different to that of the rest of the world; and he was clever at divining what lay below the surface. Henri of Navarre was to him an enigma, although an unsolved one. But to know that he was an enigma was to have found out much. Chicot knew more than others, by knowing, like the old Grecian sage, that he knew nothing. Therefore, where most people would have gone to speak ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... hands, and tables walk about in lonely castles of Savoy, and no one marks them, till a day comes when the furniture of some American cottage is similarly afflicted, and then a shoddy new religion is based on the phenomenon. The latest revival among old beliefs is faith in the divining rod. 'Our liberal shepherds give it a shorter name,' and so do our conservative peasants, calling the 'rod of Jacob' the 'twig.' To 'work the twig' is rural English for the craft of Dousterswivel in the 'Antiquary,' and perhaps from this comes our slang expression to 'twig,' or divine, the hidden ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... these things as he painted human brings, because he was endowed with the gift of divining the inner life in everything. His colour and form are alike suitable to the spiritual harmony. A man, a tree, an apple, all were used by Cezanne in the creation of something that is called a "picture," ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... entered into partnership with a man of considerable property. It seemed as if I had a talent of always guessing and foreboding where gain and profit were lying hid in distant countries, in uninviting, or hazardous undertakings; something like what is said of the divining rod, that it will hit upon metals and upon water. As many gardeners have a lucky hand, so in trade I prospered in every, even the most unpromising speculation. It was neither strength of understanding nor extent ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... imagination supplied the deficiency. He had that singular gift, which is often to be remarked in the children of old families and an old stock, on which the imprint of the ages is too strongly marked, of divining thoughts, which have never passed through their minds before, and are hardly comprehensible to them.—Then there was the kitchen, where bloody and succulent mysteries were concocted: and the old servant who used to ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... taking things quite as seriously. But Olivia, in spite of the tragedy that the hour held for her, was giving the moment its exact value, guiltless of the feminine immorality of panic. To give a moment its due without that panic, is, St. George knew, a kind of genius, like creating beauty, and divining another's meaning, and redeeming the spirit of a thing from its actuality. But by that time the arithmetic of his love was by way of being in too many figures to talk about. Which is ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... as the river wimpled and laughed in mockery of his clumsy tender of protection and her rejection of it, and Beauvayse's tall figure stood, erect and triumphant, on the flower-starred bank, waiting to recommence his wooing until the intruder should be gone, divining, as Saxham had instinctively known, the hidden passion that rent and tortured him, glowing with the consciousness ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... arch enemy as quickly, and divining what the great beast would do he leaped nimbly away toward the females and the young, hoping to hide himself among them. Tublat, however, was close upon his heels, so that he had no opportunity to seek a place of concealment, but saw that he would be ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... divining that this was urged in justification and precedent for devious modern ways that were not meek, did not pursue this branch ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... those few seconds succeeding his first glance, as lightning-swift had been the impulses of others, their motion as quick and sure. Sweyn's vigilant eye had darted upon him, and instantly his every fibre was alert with hostile instinct; and, half divining, half incredulous, of Christian's object in stooping to Tyr, he came hastily, wary, wrathful, resolute to oppose the malice ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... power of the guns—and such the game of guns checkmating guns—in their effort to stop the enemy's curtains of fire while maintaining their own that the genius who finds a divining rod which, from a sausage balloon, will point out the position of every enemy battery has fame awaiting him second only to that of the inventor of a system of distilling a death-dealing ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... * *'s illness; she is not of those who die:—the amiable only do; and those whose death would do good live. Whenever she is pleased to return, it may be presumed she will take her 'divining rod' along with her: it may be of use to her at home, as well as to the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore |
