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Magic lantern   Listen
noun
magic lantern  n.  An early form of slide projector.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Magic lantern" Quotes from Famous Books



... like to count up there used to come to my town an old man with a magic lantern. He would hire the audience room in the ancient town hall for an evening, hung up a sheet, charge ten cents admission and show to a crowd of wondering and delighted urchins pictures wonderful, humorous and startling. He always wound up ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... of pictures by the electric current, the requisite changes in the current being effected by the action of light upon selenium. The picture is projected by a magic lantern. Its projection is traversed by a selenium resistance through which the current passes. This is moved systematically over its entire area, thus constituting the transmitter, and synchronously with the motion of the selenium a contact point at the other end of the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... issue from the circumambient world of conjecture. But nothing will ever turn up for our poor old Colonel till his poor old toes turn up to the daisies. This change only, which we harshly call "Death," will steal over his prospects; this new slide only will be slipped into the magic lantern of his existence, accompanied by funeral drums ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... "Wasn't—wasn't that magic lantern wonderful, where the figures moved? Wonderful—ah, wonderful! And wasn't that first act funny, where the fellow fell down all the time? And that musical act, and the fellow with the burnt-cork face who played 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' on ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... spoken, and looked up. Her sleek little head and round brown eyes gave her the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby seal that morning, with a five-shilling magic lantern, twelve biblical slides, a dolly that could squeak in the most lifelike manner, and a ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... and incident now to be described are without date. As Mary recalled them, years afterward, they hung out against the memory a bold, clear picture, cast upon it as the magic lantern casts its tableaux upon the darkened canvas. She had lost the day of the month, the day of the week, all sense of location, and the points of the compass. The most that she knew was that she was somewhere near the meeting of the boundaries ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... suddenly arose very loftily and towered threateningly right beside them; masts, spars, rigging, all like a ship that had taken sudden shape in the air instantly, just as a single beam of electric light evokes phantasmagoria on the screen of a magic lantern. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... did not. I dressed the arrowroot, and am I not Fairy? I have just got such a pretty note from Clemmy, Mr. Emlyn, asking me to come up this evening and see her new magic lantern. Will you tell her to expect ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... attainable impostures, cannot maintain itself in the wearying mind of the populace, and I find my charitable friends inviting the children, whom the streets educate only into vicious misery, to entertainments of scientific vision, in microscope or magic lantern; thus giving them something to look at, such as it is;—fleas mostly; and the stomachs of various vermin; and people with their heads cut off and set on ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... too much amongst us of the French way of palming off false accounts of things on children, "to do them good," and showing nature to them in a magic lantern "purified for the use of childhood," and telling stories of sweet little girls and brave little boys,—O, all so good, or so bad! and above all, so little, and everything about them so little! Children accustomed ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... kisses, soft, warm, and light, on lips, cheeks and forehead. The room was pitch dark, and for a second or two I thought I was still at Park Hill, and that Miss Chinfeather had come back from heaven to tell me how much she loved me. But this thought passed away like the slide of a magic lantern, and I knew that I was at Deepley Walls. The moment I knew this I put out my arms with the intention of clasping my unknown visitor round the neck. But I was not quick enough. The kisses ceased, my hands met each other in ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various

... in glorious brightness, casting on the beautiful cloud-curtain the dark, clearly defined shadow of the mountain-top, with its crown of buildings, even the towers and turrets showing with startling distinctness. It was like a mammoth, well-cut cameo, or a gigantic magic lantern effect, with the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... feature of society. The world is like a magic lantern, or the shifting scenes in a pantomime. TEN YEARS convert the population of schools into men and women, the young into fathers and matrons, make and mar fortunes, and bury the last generation but one. TWENTY YEARS convert infants into lovers, and fathers and mothers, render youth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... kind, and let the children do whatever they liked; and her two maids were so good-natured, and petted them; and there were always such nice cakes, oranges, and jellies. Then, in the evenings there was sure to be a magic lantern, or a man to play the fiddle; in short, going to grandmamma's was a very ...
— The Goat and Her Kid • Harriet Myrtle

... precincts of public life," said Waldershare; "and if you ever enter it, which I think you will," he would add thoughtfully, "it will be interesting for you to remember that you have seen these characters, many of whom will then have passed away. Like the shades of a magic lantern," he added, with something between a sigh and a smile. "One of my constituents send me a homily this morning, the burthen of which was, I never thought of death. The idiot! I never think of anything else. It is my weakness. One ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... it like the Duke of Wellington's nose. A man from the top of it could have jumped onto our bulwarks, and I shut my eyes as it overhung, waiting for the crash; but it slid by and was gone like a slide you pass through a magic lantern. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... their Easter and Christmas carols. We made some records of these on our Edison phonograph, and they were overpowered with joy when they heard their own voices coming back to them from the machine. The magic lantern also proved exceedingly popular, and several tried to touch the pictures and see if they could not hold them. We were also able to show some hastily made lantern slides of themselves, and I shall never forget ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... "entering port," beside which he was posted, stood a Parsee merchant, whose long white robe, dark face, and high black cap made him look very much like a cigar wrapped in paper. Along the quivering line of sunlight that streamed through the port came filing, like figures in a magic lantern, an endless procession of tall, sinewy, fierce-looking Malays, and yellow, narrow-eyed, doll-faced Chinamen, carrying blocks of tin, rice sacks, opium chests, or pepper bags, and all moving in time to a dismal tune, suggestive of a dog shut out on a ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... aunt caught the fire of his enthusiasm and went straight with him to the door wherein the magic lantern performed. A crowd of children were pushing up, but Zene, more energetic than courteous pushed his charges ahead so that they gained chairs before the landlord's son could make ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Thought and thing are identical. But this identity is to be recognised only in the mind of God, in the absolute—which develops what in itself is unity in the form of a duality. As if (to use a rude illustration) the same image should be shot from the interior of a magic lantern through two diverging tubes, making that twofold ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... a profissor iv detictives, is a handwritin' expert, which is wan iv th' principal industhries iv Fr-rance at th' prisint time. He was accompanied be a throop iv assistants carryin' a camera, a mutoscope, a magic lantern, a tib iv dye, a telescope, a calceem light, a sextant, a compass, a thermometer, a barometer, a thrunkful iv speeches, a duplicate to th' Agyptian obelisk, an ink-eraser, an' a rayceipt f'r makin' goold out iv ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... pounds of tea and sugar, and about twenty pounds of coffee. One small tin canister, about fifteen inches square, was filled with spare shirts, trousers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilized life, another of the same size was stored with medicines, a third with books, and a fourth with a magic lantern, which we found of much service. The sextant and other instruments were carried apart. A bag contained the clothes we expected to wear out in the journey, which, with a small tent just sufficient to sleep in, a sheepskin mantle as a blanket, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... color boxes for painting magic lantern slides a bottle of varnish for this purpose is supplied, which answers fairly well. It has to be painted on, after the slides are thoroughly dry, with a large ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... for baptism—it was a sign of the new life they professed at the font; but we did not expect them to wear clothes generally, except their own chawats, nor was it to be desired until they knew how to wash them. We had also brought a beautiful magic lantern with a dissolving-view apparatus for our people's amusement and instruction, for some of the slides were painted by Miss Rigaud to illustrate the life of our Lord, and there were many astronomical slides also. All these treasures brought us numerous visitors. The Chinese Christians were all ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... justly celebrated. During the evening there was a dance and supper in the servants' hall, to which many of the small farmers with their wives, sons and daughters, had been invited, and a right jovial time they had of it. Dancing, songs, scenes from the magic lantern, hunt the slipper, blind man's buff, kissing under the mistletoe, and many other Christmas gambols were the order of the evening,—and, if one might judge from the bursts of mirth and laughter that prevailed, this was very much to the satisfaction ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... the electrical machine, was in communication with the altar and the crucifix that was fastened upon it. A hole had been made in the window-shutter opposite the chimney, which opened and shut with a slide. In this hole, as we learnt afterwards, was fixed a magic lantern, from which the figure of the ghost had been reflected on the opposite wall, over the chimney. From the garret and the cellar they brought several drums, to which large leaden bullets were fastened by strings; these had probably been used to imitate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... reproduced in gigantic proportions, with all the marvelous truth of nature itself. The success of some of the most celebrated demonstrations of Faraday, Tyndall, Doremus, Morton, and others, was due to the skillful use of the magic lantern. As an educator, the employment of this instrument is rapidly extending. No school apparatus is complete without it; and now that transparencies are so readily multiplied by photography upon glass, and upon mica, or gelatin, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... as on turning his attention to the moon, he struck up a song in which the name of that body was frequently mentioned. He was treated to an exhibition of the magic lantern in the cabin by Captain Stanley, and a rocket was sent up to his great astonishment and admiration, which he found words to express in "kaiwa" ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... lodgings in the Corso. She could see the road winding like a ribbon round the hill, with a medley of bright colors continually moving over it. But she was absorbed in revery, and they floated round and round before her mental eye, like the revolving shadows of a magic lantern. ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... his chair and hugged Richard; he got out of his chair and hugged them both at once; he kept running up to Meg and squeezing her fresh face between his hands and kissing it, going from her backward not to lose sight of it, and running up again like a figure in a magic lantern; and whatever he did, he was constantly sitting himself down in this chair, and never stopping in it for one single moment, being—that's ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... large room, which might be darkened, and fitted up with a magic lantern, for the purpose of exhibiting circulating Decimals in the act of circulation. This might also contain cupboards, fitted with glass doors, for keeping ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... on turning them; and now we have the beautiful dream of a pilgrim sleeping with his staff and gourd beside him, and to whom appears a host of young fays skimming a huge pot. Does it not seem that your eye is upon a vision of a fete by Boucher, shown by his pupil in Tasso's garden? Adorable magic lantern! where Clorinde follows Fiammette, where the gleams of an epic poem mingle with the smiles of the novellieri! Tales of the fay Urgele, little comic jests, rays of gayety and sunshine which one might say were thrown upon the cloth upon which Beroalde de Verville made his cherry-gatherer walk. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... the home of his childhood. The things he had hitherto experienced were no more, or as if they never had been. His home, his parents, his wife, his children, the girl that had drawn him across the ocean, everything that had happened to him on his trip were nothing more in his soul than magic lantern pictures. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... honest Irishman, a great favourite among them, who used to entertain them with raree-shows, and to exhibit a magic lantern to the children on winter evenings. He had gone quite mad upon this subject. Sometimes he would call out in the middle of the street—"Take care of that corner, neighbours; for the love of Heaven, keep clear of that post, there is a patent ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to the Jocks; whereupon Church of Scotland installed a telescope at Kruystraete to show them the stars. If the one formed a cigar-trust, the other made a corner in cigarettes. If one of them introduced a magic lantern, the other chartered a cinema. But the permanent threat to the peace of the mess was ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... be hidden in some small cave near here, and they may have some sort of a magic lantern or a similar arrangement, for throwing a shadow picture. They could arrange it to move as they liked, and could cause it to disappear at will. That, I think, is the ghost ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton

... without taking any rest. Now and then the care of the machinery had to be confided to a negro, whom he had trained after a certain fashion, and I confess I felt far from easy when I saw him handling the levers and taps with all the self-confidence of a monkey showing off a magic lantern. Besides our negro crew, there was a perfect menagerie of creatures loose on board. Gazelles, which were inoffensive enough, I must grant, a legion of ill-behaved monkeys, and a tame civet. The monkeys never stopped playing spiteful tricks on everybody all day long, and at night they all huddled ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... therefore, given to understand, that slavery was not to be disturbed in the States where it had been already established. But this was not all. He had to have another lesson in the philosophy of dissolving scenes, as exhibited in the great political magic lantern. Nearly all the Western States had denied him an equality with the white man, in the adoption or modification of their constitutions. He looked to Kansas for justice, and lo! it came. The first constitution, adopted by the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... the Ghost, Magic Lantern Pictures, Phantasmagoria, Chinese Shadows, Wonderful Mirror, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger

... of the magic lantern dates back to 1650, and is attributed to Professor Kircher, a German philosopher of rare talents and extensive reputation. The instrument is simple and familiar. It is a form of the microscope. The shadows cast by the object are, by means of lenses, focussed upon something capable of reflection, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... Sunday School last winter because he heard they were for fechtin' battles. Ay, and they telled him he was to join a thing called an International, and Jaikie thought it was a fitba' club. But when he fund out there was no magic lantern or swaree at Christmas he gie'd it the chuck. They learned him a heap o' queer ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... stretched out by pulleys, gagged and blindfolded, with their under parts covered by vaccine vesicles. Also we had photographs of children suffering from the effects of improper or unclean vaccination, which, by means of magic lantern slides, could be thrown life-sized on a screen; indeed, one or two such children themselves were taken round to ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... content to be common they are not and cannot be. Among these exceptional mortals I do not count such as, having secured the corner of a couch within the radius of a good fire, forget the world around them by help of the magic lantern of a novel that interests them: such may not be in the least worth knowing for their disposition or moral attainment—not even although the noise of the waves on the sands, or the storm in the chimney, or the rain on the windows but serves to deepen the calm of their spirits. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... only knew their Christian names. And then the returning in open carriages rolling through the white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer night, when the dusky darkness of the street is chequered by a passing glimpse of light skirt or flying feather, and the moon looms like a magic lantern ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... him. Jay looked puzzled, but with fists clinched, he rushed fiercely. Right and left he swung, but the teacher was never there. Presently there was another stinging smack on his cheek and another, as Ira danced about him like the shadow of a magic lantern. ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox

... it—he sees, he assures us, a female form stealing to the young man's tomb—the form of a widowed lady—who is she? e la sua madre! This was startling, no doubt; though we, or many of us, were like the cat in Florian, to whom the monkey was showing a magic lantern without a light, and describing what she ought to have seen. Believing her, however, to be there on such good authority, we were getting very sorry for Bellini's mother, when we were unexpectedly relieved, by finding it was only a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... had another mother's meeting for the mothers of the Free Kindergarten. This time I gave a magic lantern show, and I was the showman. The poor, ignorant women sat there bewildered. They had never seen a piano, and many of them had never been close to a foreigner before. I showed them about a hundred slides, explained through an interpreter until ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... fog-whistle out of the impenetrable whiteness, and she again towered up suddenly behind, ever wheeling, gliding on, vapour and water so commingled that you could not say she floated, but was somehow faintly present like the dim picture on a canvas screen from a magic lantern half in focus. She was searching in the fog for the 'Nab' light-ship, thence to take new bearings and cleave the mist in a straight course at half-speed for Southampton. When she found the 'Nab' she vanished finally, and I was glad and ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... elaborate preparations for taking these pictures. The cinematograph is a wonderful invention. By a clever arrangement hundreds of photographs are taken, one after the other, with marvellous rapidity; these pictures are printed on a long strip, and made to pass through the magic lantern as rapidly as when the photographs were taken; the result is a composite picture which, when thrown upon a screen, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... third that all his worldly possessions are not equal to the purchase of a dinner. It is an ignis fatuus—a sort of magic lantern replete with delusive appearances—of momentary duration—an escape to the regions of noise, tumult, vanity, and frivolity, where the realities of Life, the circumstances and the situation of the observer, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... either. D'you remember our 'Evening with Shakespeare'?" The Head's eyes twinkled. "Or the humorous gentleman with the magic lantern?" ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... owing to this, his illusion is even increased, but to say what is superfluous is the same as to overthrow a statue composed of separate pieces and thereby scatter them, or to take away the lamp from a magic lantern: the attention of the reader or spectator is distracted, the reader sees the author, the spectator sees the actor, the illusion disappears, and to restore it is sometimes impossible; therefore ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... though you were going to give a magic lantern show. Or is it for some new kinds of moving pictures? Say, do you remember the time we gave a show in the barn, and charged a nickel to come in? You were the ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton

... digression. I have just returned from hearing an itinerant lecturer, and it will take a week to get the smoke of his magic lantern out of my eyes. If there is any error in these observations, blame ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... effected under the influence of the preparation, which by first isolating the sense makes, as it were, a darkness in the consciousness, and then projects only two images into it. As if from the screen before a magic lantern, the child receives his psychical acquisitions, or rather they are like seeds falling on a fertile soil; and it is in the subsequent free choice, and the repetition of the exercise, as in the subsequent activity, spontaneous, associative, and reproductive, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... ours, man!' urged Charley. 'It's not like being in school at all! And we 'as a treat in the summer, and prizes and sometimes a magic lantern 'tainment. It ain't 'arf all right, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... aided the efforts of the school master and mistress for the improvement of the rising generation of Stokebridge. Hitherto all efforts that way had failed, but he now got over a magic lantern from Birmingham, hiring sets of slides of scenery in foreign countries, astronomical subjects, &c., and gave lectures once a fortnight. These were well attended, and the quiet attention with which he was listened ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... to Gelele, King of Dahomey. He was to take presents from Queen Victoria and to endeavour to induce Gelele to discontinue both human sacrifices and the sale of slaves. Mrs. Burton sadly wanted to accompany him. She thought that with a magic lantern and some slides representing New Testament scenes she could convert Gelele and his court from Fetishism to Catholicism. [204] But Burton, who was quite sure that he could get on better alone, objected that her lantern would probably be regarded as a work of magic, and that consequently both he ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... degli Schiavoni, that Mr. Vyvian might the better explain what he meant; Miss Barnett, round-about and cheerful, sketch-book in hand, to hunt for "Venice, Her Spirit," in the Pescaria; Miss Gould to lie down on her bed and recover from lunch; the curate to take the air and photographs for his magic lantern lectures to be delivered in the parish-room at home; and Mrs. Johnson ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... a thumb thrust into each arm-hole of his coat; now a student poring on a book; now a crouching negro; now, a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man; a hunch-back throwing off his cloak and stepping forth into the light. They were often as entertaining to me as so many glasses in a magic lantern, and never took their shapes at my bidding, but seemed to force themselves upon me, whether I would or no; and strange to say, I sometimes recognised in them counterparts of figures once familiar to me in pictures attached to childish books, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... hear—Midsummer stories, or Winter's tales, and stories of their own battle-fields—they wanted a school in which they could teach the common people History (and not English history only), with illustrations, large as life, and a magic lantern to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... had announced a performance of the magic lantern to-night in church; and this brought the king to visit us. In honour of the Black Douglas (I suppose) his usual two guardsmen were now increased to four; and the squad made an outlandish figure as they straggled after him, in straw hats, kilts and jackets. Three carried ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a big, big box that looked like a magic lantern. And on every branch where he had hung his seven wishes for a camel there was a white card instead with the one word "Palestine" written ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... much unpacking. There was a small single bed, two chairs, and an indefinite number of tables. Impossible to say how many, for they were half obscured by numberless things scientific: microscopes, a retort, small furnace, two cameras, galvanic battery, coils of wire and rubber tubing, magic lantern, books, photographs, and papers; on a small desk a confused pile of papers; on the walls a great ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... real life-work that was waiting for me. Without the knowledge which the possession of it gave me, that work could not have been carried out as it was. That is not to say that I recommend every man to have a magic lantern in his cellar, or the promiscuous purchase of all sorts of useless things as though the world were a kind of providential rummage sale. I should rather say that no effort to in any way add to one's stock of knowledge is likely to come amiss in this world ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... lively touches without finding his work placed under the microscope of erudite analysts, some of whom, like Iago, are nothing if not critical, are not only exact but very exacting. In these days a writer who endeavours to illuminate some scene of ages past, to show us, as by a magic lantern, the moving figures brought out in relief against the surrounding darkness, is liable to be set down as an illusionist, possibly even as a charlatan or conjurer. Yet one feels the charm of the splendid vision, though it may fade into the light of common day when it falls under ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... beehives and cannons, steam cut-offs and baby jumpers, lightning churns and flying machines on which he had taken out patents, assured of making a fortune from each one. He had raised fancy chickens, figured himself rich on two swarms of bees, traveled with a magic lantern, written a philosophic novel, and started a newspaper. There was but one purpose in which he was fixed—which was, to guard his daughter jealously. To do this, and to make the experiment of building ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... five-and-thirty years. They talk of pulling it down, and to her the idea of leaving it is exquisite pain. She is alone, a teacher of music. She has seen proprietors come and go. The pension has changed mistresses many times. Students of law and of medicine have come and passed like the shadows of a magic lantern; but this poor soul has remained still in her little room on the fourth, and has kept always ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... Yoeders' today, and to the Dawsons' tomorrow. He didn't like to think there might be hard feeling toward him in a house where he had had so many good times, and where he had often found a refuge when things were dull at home. The Yoeder boys had a music-box long before the days of Victrolas, and a magic lantern, and the old grandmother made wonderful shadow-pictures on a sheet, and told stories about them. She used to turn the map of Europe upside down on the kitchen table and showed the children how, in this position, it looked like a ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... change came o'er my dream," Like the magic lantern's shifting slider; I lookt and saw by the evening beam On the back of that Turtle sat a rider— A goodly man with an eye so merry, I knew 'twas our Foreign Secretary,[2] Who there at his ease did sit and smile, Like Waterton on his crocodile;[3] ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... situations taken from books and applied to human life: of racial peculiarities generalised from insufficient data, and then "discovered" in actuality: of theological diagrams and scientific "laws," flung upon the background of eternity as the magic lantern's image ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... looked, the picture commenced to disappear, not fade, but to go off to one side, just as a picture leaves the screen of a magic lantern. Over the inner ocean there appeared dark clouds; but this part was visible last, and the clouds seemed to break at the last moment, and a white city, set in green fields and forests, was visible for an instant, a great golden dome in the center remaining in view after ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... misty gulf. The gulf was destruction, annihilation, death; but if death was decreed, why should not the agony be brief? Beyond this vision there faintly glimmered another, as in the children's game of the "magic lantern" a picture is superposed on the white wall before the last one has quite faded. It represented Mary Garland standing there with eyes in which the horror seemed slowly, slowly to expire, and hanging, motionless hands which at last made no resistance when his own offered to take them. When, of old, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... when you change Pictures in a magic lantern, Books, beds, bottles, floor, and ceiling Fade ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... love affair of which the writer thought she was cognizant. Her mind accepted that instantaneously, corroborating memories coming quick to her call. They flashed across her mental vision, vivid and detached like slides in a magic lantern—glimpses of Chrystie in her unfamiliar brooding and her flushed elation, and the walks, the long walks, from which she returned withdrawn and curiously ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... of the Greek sailors, whom, from first to last, he tried to make useful, may here be given. On one occasion, following his invariable habit of taking every possible occasion of trying to win the confidence and friendship of those under him, he was exhibiting a magic lantern to the crew of the Hellas. At many of the dissolving views they manifested a childish delight, but at length one unfortunate picture was brought before them. It depicted a Greek running from the pursuit of a Turk, and then melted into a view of the Turk cutting off his captive's head. At ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... by reading "Tam o' Shanter," accompanied by illustrations, made by a magic lantern. When this was over, and lights were again brought into the room, the tubs of water were drawn forward. Twelve apples were set floating in each tub. Three little boys had their arms pinioned, and water-proof capes were put over their clothes. Then each one was led ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... is an instrument for projecting on a screen in a darkened room picture post cards or any other pictures of a similar size. The lantern differs from the ordinary magic lantern in two features; first, it requires no expensive condensing lens, and second, the objects to be projected have no need of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... who sees the phantom, being reflected upon a cloud of mist, like the image of the magic lantern upon a white sheet, is supposed ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... congress man resorted There; strange they were to all invisible when His oily visage, like a magic lantern, Lit the apartment. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... perfumes as set the mind a dreaming, and such fires as burn the very senses; and he saw again all he had seen before his sleep, from Sinbad, his singular host, to Ali, the mute attendant; then all seemed to fade away and become confused before his eyes, like the last shadows of the magic lantern before it is extinguished, and he was again in the chamber of statues, lighted only by one of those pale and antique lamps which watch in the dead of the night over the sleep of pleasure. They were the same statues, rich ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... intervening space and are answered by the joyous shouts of the new arrivals. And thus it goes on and on, until at last the broad haven of pleasure opens up and grove and meadow, music and dancing, drinking and eating, magic lantern shows and tight-rope dancing, illumination and fireworks, combine to produce a pays de cocagne, an El Dorado, a veritable paradise, which fortunately or unfortunately—take it as you will—lasts only this day and the next, to vanish like ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... toys, dolls, sleds, games and picture books. There was a magic lantern for Russ—something he had long wanted. There was a toy airship, that could be wound up and would fly, for Laddie. This he had ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope

... town hall, the Willing Workers' Guild held a social in the Sunday school. To pay the expenses of the social, the rector delivered a public lecture on "Italy and Her Past," illustrated by a magic lantern. To pay for the magic lantern, the curate and the ladies of the church got ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... much in the way of festivities, but there was a free half-hour after supper, when they could have the recreation room to themselves. It was to be a private affair for their own hostel, and only the mistresses who resided there were invited. The entertainment was to consist of a magic lantern show. Photography had raged lately as a hobby among the Intermediates, and several of them had taken to making lantern slides. Patricia—an indulged only daughter—had persuaded her father to buy her a lantern; ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... ambitious of literary eminence. Possessed of great beauty, and after a time high station and wealth, she yet yearned for the recognition by great writers of her position as one of them. She had published, previous to her continental trip, two volumes,—one called "The Magic Lantern," the other, "Sketches and Fragments," both being accounts of and comments upon London society; both were unsuccessful. Her one book which will remain in literature was consequent upon her meeting with ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... aunt Jane, in her black silk made over especially for this occasion? Aunt Miranda had not intended to come, she knew, but where, on this day of days, was her beloved aunt Jane? However, this thought, like all others, came and went in a flash, for the whole morning was like a series of magic lantern pictures, crossing and recrossing her field of vision. She played, she sang, she recited Queen Mary's Latin prayer, like one in a dream, only brought to consciousness by meeting Mr. Aladdin's eyes as she spoke the last line. Then at the end of the programme ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... all followed the gentleman. There was a big table in the board-room, but it had been pushed right up under the long windows at one side, and chairs were arranged in rows across the room—like those you have at schools when there is a magic lantern on 'Our Eastern Empire', or on 'The Way We Do in the Navy'. The doors were of carved wood, very beautiful, with a carved Phoenix above. Anthea noticed that the chairs in the front rows were of the kind that her mother so loved to ask the price of in old furniture shops, and never ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... hour later three men stood in a tiny room, darkened, save for a vivid patch of white on a screen a yard and a half square. Foyle and Green watched the screen intently as the third man inserted the slide in the powerful magic lantern. Magnified enormously, the typewritten characters stood out vividly black ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... believe the quickness of the vegetation of the good seed, but I know several of the men" [the South Sea missionaries], "and am sure they are of unimpeachable veracity. In trying to convey knowledge, and use the magic lantern, which is everywhere extremely popular, though they listen with apparent delight to what is said, questioning them on the following night reveals almost entire ignorance of the previous lesson. O that the Holy Ghost might enlighten them! To his soul-renewing influence ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... personages which are exhibited. The magician reports certain answers as given by the demons; but these answers do not appear to have been heard from any lips but those of him who was the creator or cause of the scene. The whole of the demons therefore were merely figures, produced by the magic lantern (which is said to have been invented by Roger Bacon), or by something of that nature. The burning of the perfumes served to produce a dense atmosphere, that was calculated to exaggerate, and render more formidable ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... too, besides having a lot of useful information. He had acquired a big amount of experience out of books, and could talk for hours on any subject connected with ideas and discourse. He had been in every line of graft from lecturing on Palestine with a lot of magic lantern pictures of the annual Custom-made Clothiers' Association convention at Atlantic City to flooding Connecticut with bogus wood alcohol ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... will give the warning bell, and all will vanish. The time for action has arrived. We alter our position in a second, bring the deadly weapon to bear on the stag; quickly draw a steady bead, hugging the rifle with all our might, and fire! The hinds flash across our vision like the figures in a magic lantern, and the stag lies weltering ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... these streamed through Michael's head, as if projected there by some magic lantern, and while they lasted he was conscious of no grief at all, but only of a devouring hate for the mad, lawless butchers who had caused Francis's death, and willingly at that moment if he could have gone out into the night and killed a German, and met ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... in the house, but Amelia was. The old folks had gone to a Magic Lantern in the schoolroom, and Amelia was ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit

... as might have puzzled the choice and turned the brain of any inferior person. Such a succession of lovers as she has had this summer, ever since you went to Ireland—they appeared and vanished like figures in a magic lantern. She had three noble admirers—rank in three different forms offered themselves First came in, hobbling, rank and gout; next, rank and gaming; then rank, very high rank, over head and ears in debt. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... Hence the house was never finished. The roof, however, was on, and the main room floored, so that it had been utilized for church and Sunday school purposes, for an Orange Lodge, for temperance and magic lantern itinerant lectures, and for local hops. Now, with the dead body of Harding laid out upon an improvised table of rough boards on trestles, it assumed the most solemn aspect it had ever exhibited. Three oldish men were ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... form for birthday use. Anybody's long-lost brother will do ill to turn up on a birthday. If I had a long-lost brother I should know beforehand that he would prove a tremendous fraternal failure if he appointed to rush into my arms on my birthday. The first Magic Lantern I ever saw, was secretly and elaborately planned to be the great effect of a very juvenile birthday; but it wouldn't act, and its images were dim. My experience of adult birthday Magic Lanterns may possibly have been unfortunate, but has certainly been similar. I have an illustrative ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... There are no highly wrought amplifications of imaginative passions to be found in its condensed pages, but every word is in itself a drop of gall, reflecting from its sphered surface a world of grief, of agony. The characters pass before us like shadows thrown from a magic lantern, showing only their profiles, and but rarely their entire forms. Flitting rapidly o'er our field of vision, they leave us but a few lines, but so true to nature, so deeply significant, that we are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... shops ashore, these low and vicious haunts of iniquity," he rolled his tongue round the words, "I propose that the officers shall prepare and deliver a series of lectures on interesting topics. I have," he added, "brought a magic lantern and a good stock of slides out from England, and some evening next week I propose to deliver the first lecture myself. The subject is a most instructive one, 'The effects of alcohol on the human body and mind,' and to illustrate it I have prepared ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... [Lat.]; refraction, distortion, illusion, false light, anamorphosis^, virtual image, spectrum, mirage, looming, phasma^; phantasm, phantasma^, phantom; vision; specter, apparition, ghost; ignis fatuus [Lat.] &c (luminary) 423; specter of the Brocken; magic mirror; magic lantern &c (show) 448; mirror lens &c (instrument) 445. V. be dimsighted &c n.; see double; have a mote in the eye, have a mist before the eyes, have a film over the eyes; see through a prism, see through ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... avoided. For the same reason, by this process positive impressions can be obtained not only upon wet paper, &c., but also upon hard inflexible substances, such as porcelain, ivory, glass, &c.,—and upon this last, the positives being transparent are applicable to the stereoscope, magic lantern, &c. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various

... shown in his manner of regarding the expected arrival of some Roman Catholic priests in the Polynesian seas. He set to work to translate Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," and begged that a present offered him for his people might be expended in slides illustrating it for a beautiful magic lantern which he already possessed, and whose Scripture scenes drew tears from the natives. He had not Church knowledge enough to rise above the ordinary popular view of "Popery," and did not understand its Christianity enough to see the evils of sowing the bitterest seeds of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... gentleman's studio, where they saw several pictures that opened to them the strange gates of mystification. Francie protested that she didn't want to be done in THAT style, and Delia declared that she would as soon have her sister shown up in a magic lantern. They had had the fortune not to find Mr. Waterlow at home, so that they were free to express themselves and the pictures were shown them by his servant. They looked at them as they looked at bonnets and confections when they went to expensive shops; as if it ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... been married, and she had a vision of her late husband and herself standing side by side before the priest—but the event seemed to be so infinitely far away in the past, and it affected her spirit as little as if her thoughts were occupied by strangers. But suddenly, as a picture changed in a magic lantern, she seemed to see Emil, instead of her husband, standing by her side, and the picture appeared to stand out so completely, without any co-operation on the part of her will, that she almost had to regard as a premonition, even as ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... it's capital for a beginning and he's sure to get on fast. There's one or two very good sort of customers been coming lately. There's the Earl of Driffield, I think it is—don't you remember, Lucy, it was he gave that lecture with the magic lantern at the Institute you and I went to last summer. He's a queer sort of gentleman. Well, he's been coming several times and giving orders. And there's some of the college gentlemen; oh, and a lot of others. They all seem to think he's ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... shoes and stockings on when you go to the magic lantern show to-night," said Felicity in a tone ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... nothing but the truth. We don't care a rap about the truth now, so long as they'll give us a thrill. We must have onions. We used to demand of the novelist a love-story; now he must be morbidly sexual and grimly sensational. Our grandfathers went to a magic lantern entertainment and thought it a furious frolic. And on Sundays they prayed. 'From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us!' Their grandchildren ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... support but a few biscuits and a pound of tea and sugar, about twenty of coffee, a small tin canister with some spare shirting, trousers, and shoes, another for medicines, and a third for books, while a fourth contained a magic lantern. His ammunition was distributed in portions among the whole luggage, that, should an accident occur to one, the rest might be preserved. His camp equipage consisted of a gipsy tent, a sheep-skin mantle, and ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... tried entertaining with the aid of the limelight in India and had had some experience of this kind. I could give that clever author plenty of material for another volume on "The Light that Failed"—a collection of anecdotes connected with the magic lantern. But, as I said, it doesn't so much matter to the entertainer as the lecturer, who must be au serieux, and when I was a lecturer I felt any mishap of the kind very keenly; but an entertainer is a privileged being, and can turn the matter off with a joke at the expense ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... arrangement of shielded lights placed at side of reflector, a pretty effect is produced as each slide is gradually brought to view.—The Optical Magic Lantern ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... heavily upon the chest of the moaning and suffocated traveller; and notwithstanding a paralysis which appeared to have seized upon his limbs, every external object in the apartment became visible to him as by the light of a magic lantern. He heard his watch ticking, like a living creature, upon the dressing-table where he had left it. His black morocco pocketbook was distinctly visible, beside the looking-glass, and two spectral boots stood up amidst the varied shadows of the night. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... indeed she contrived to make it. She had brought a magic lantern to school with her, and used it for most of her lessons, arranging thick curtains to darken the windows. She had a selection of good slides showing many different countries, and when her pupils were somewhat accustomed to these she would test their knowledge by ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... had had, all his life, the great art of choosing his enemies; and when he had found them implacable and invincible, it was when he had not been able, under any pretense, to make them otherwise. But points of view change greatly in the course of a life. It is a magic lantern, of which the eye of man every year changes the aspects. It results that from the last day of a year on which we saw white, to the first day of the year on which we shall see black, there is but the interval ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... nature that was extreme in everything. Voltaire read his poetry and his dramas, told stories that made them weep and then laugh at their tears, improvised verses, and amused them with marionettes, or the magic lantern. La belle Emilie criticized the poems, sang, and played prominent parts in the comedies and tragedies of the philosopher poet, which were first given in her little private theater. Among the guests ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... the phantasmagoria (magic lantern), is at present performing some interesting experiments that must doubtless advance our knowledge concerning galvanism. He has just mounted metallic piles to the number of 2,500 zinc plates and as many of rosette copper. We shall forthwith speak of his ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... is supplied with Chemical and Philosophical Apparatus for Scientific Illustration; with Charts, Globes and Magic Lantern, to illustrate Geography, Physiology, Natural History and Astronomy; with new instruments for field work in Land Surveying and Civil Engineering; with two telegraph instruments and batteries for practice in Telegraphy, ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold

... to the other by lengthening or shortening it in the direction of one of the axes. M. Amagat then photographs two isothermal diagrams, leaving one fixed, but arranging the other so that it may be free to turn round each axis of the co-ordinates; and by projecting, by means of a magic lantern, the second on the first, he arrives in certain cases at an ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... came in to Paddin'ton on the big magic lantern sheet. First we saw the platform empty an' the porters standin' by. Then the engine come in, head on, an' the women in the front row jumped: she headed so straight. Then the doors opened and the passengers came out and the porters got the luggage—just ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... rattling pace on our homeward drive, hedgerow and fence gliding by us like slides in a magic lantern. Archer's horse did not belie the character he had given of him. With head erect, and expanded nostril, he threw his legs forward in a long slashing trot, whirling the light tilbury along at the rate of at least eleven miles an hour; and fortunate it was that he did not ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... me to be much ado about nothing; they take up a lot of our time, and the results aren't worth the trouble—I have nothing particular to say. Oh, well, yes, if you like—let's have blind man's buff and a magic lantern;" and then, dropping a mock curtsey to her companions, she dropped out ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... stuff and make the summerhouse into a gymnasium, and we can give magic lantern shows in it, too. What do you say?" Pee-wee inquired in his most enthusiastic manner. "We can charge five cents to get in." He did not explain whence the audiences would come. He had found an old magic ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh



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