"Spectre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... projector and visionary madman. The company thereupon gave up the ghost, the boat went to pieces, and Fitch became bankrupt and brokenhearted. Often have I seen him stalking about like a troubled spectre, with downcast eye and lowering countenance, his coarse, soiled linen peeping through the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... ejaculated Count Munster. "It could not have been a spectre. Why, it is not a spectre's hour, and, besides, I certainly saw the lady plainly; it was a decidedly earthly figure. Her face was pale and grave, but there was nothing spectral about it. She wore a black veil thrown back from ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... met to do battle for the life of Mr. Manvers, while he lay grumbling and burning in his bed, behind the curtains of it. Don Luis Ramonez was there, the first to come—tall and gaunt, with undying pride in his hollow eyes, like a spectre of rancour kept out of the grave. Behind him Tormillo came creeping, a little restless man, dogging his master's footsteps, watching for word or sign from him. These two stood by the lake in the huge empty park, still under its shroud ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... am afraid of fortune, and besides it seems almost worthless to me at this moment. I am afraid of it as of a spectre: it brings disaster to speak of ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... mighty heart, A million lie, in mutest slumber bound. Or, panting like the ocean, when a dream Of storm awakes her:—Heaven and Earth are still; In radiant loveliness the stars pursue Their pilgrimage, while moonlight's wizard hand Throws beauty, like a spectre light, on all. At Judah's tent the lion-banner stands Unfolded, and the pacing sentinels,— What awe pervades them, when the dusky groves, The rocks Titanian, by the moonshine made Unearthly, or yon mountains vast, they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... thought of it. And why had he told it? A sudden impulse, a sudden fear, had led him into sin. A strange fancy had whispered to him, "What if that boy buried by the wall yonder should be the wonder-child, the ragamuffin who looked at the rainbow, the sea urchin, the spectre haunting your guest?" How unlikely that was! And yet ships go far, and the human fate is often mysteriously sad. It might be that the wonder-child was born to be wrecked, to be cast up, streaming with sea-water ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... all speeches, none ever was so full of wit as Mr. Pultney's last. He said, "I have heard this committee represented as a most dreadful spectre; it has been likened to all terrible things; it has been likened to the King; to the inquisition; it will be a committee of safety; it is a committee of danger; I don't know what it is to be! One gentleman, I think, called it a cloud! (this ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... an old mother in imitation of Pope. The good old woman was mighty civil to me, and, among other chat, said she supposed I had a good neighbour in Mr. Pope. "Lord! Madam, he has been dead these seven years!"—"Ah! ay, Sir, I had forgot." When the poor old soul dies, how Pope will set his mother's spectre upon her for daring to be ignorant "if Dennis be ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... memory of man of this expected "rising in the West"? It is the spectre rouge, or, to be more accurate as to local colour, the spectre vert of the Irish alarmist, and a poor, ragged, out-at-elbows spectre it is, altogether very much the worse for wear. Flesh and blood could not bear the mention of this shabby, worn-out old ghost with calmness, and I conveyed to the gentlemen who volunteered the information ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... been easily arranged. On that foggy night when she had fled from Leonard Dowson, terrified by the spectre of a future life which his words had evoked, she had run, without in the least realizing her direction, straight to the railway station; and the idea of London had at once presented itself to her mind. A train was just starting, and Toni hastily took a ticket and ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... out in Rome, and the spectre of a mysterious and mortal sickness distracted those who had survived the terrors of sword and flame. The Spanish and German soldiery either fell victims to the plague or deserted in haste and fear; and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... spectre had made its appearance in their midst, the girls could not have been more disconcerted. A horrible hush spread over the room, and for a moment everybody stared in frozen horror. The musicians slipped down from the dressing-table and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the problem of whether she loved him confronted the young man like a spectre, looming as high as a hill and telling him not to delude himself. Upon the following day, this battle of the night displayed itself in the renewed fervor of his glances and in their increased number. Whenever he thought ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... been able to procure a collection of such illustrated trials, a century or so old, is deemed fortunate among collectors, for he can at any time raise up for himself the spectre as it were of the great mystery and exposure that for weeks was the absorbing topic of attraction for millions. The curtains are down—the fire burns bright—the cat purrs on the rug; Atticus, soused in his easy-chair, cannot be at the trouble of going ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... stopped occasionally, his eye glancing round the apartment, his ear bent, as if some unhallowed noise had struck upon it suddenly. As he moved to his lonely couch, he passed before an immense glass, in a heavy oaken frame: his own reflection met his eye; he started as if a spectre had crossed his path—his cheek blanched—his knees smote one against the other—his respiration was impeded. At last, waving his hand, as if to dispel the phantom his imagination had conjured up, he sprang into the bed, and buried his head ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... old pages seems not so much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to self gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only desirous to convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of his inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and dangers; and to give glory to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... describe; but they were hard-featured old saints of a deep mahogany hue, relieved by a very dark background, and therefore the exact antipodes of my shadowy visitant. On these I had been painting an hour or two before; and that is the solitary connection conceivable between the spectre and anything tangible. The reader will perhaps be inclined to set it down as having been complementary to them. I do not think it was; but were it so, the point mainly craving explanation remains untouched—that what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Indian, put on a dark frown, and stood for a few seconds without uttering a word. The savage shrank back and shuddered from head to foot. Then, with a noiseless step, Martin retreated slowly backward towards the door and passed out like a spectre—never for a moment taking his eyes off those of the savage until he was lost in darkness. On gaining the forest he fled with a beating heart to his former retreat; but his fears were groundless, for the Indian firmly believed that Martin's spirit had visited his hut and carried ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... point from their experiences in the war. All they wanted to do was to sit down together, and, man to man, talk their difficulties over. He would be glad to assist them, and he had no doubt as to the result. He warned the working man that hard times were coming. The spectre of unemployment was already parading their streets. Unemployment meant disorder, rioting. This, he assured them, would not be permitted. At all costs order would be maintained. He had no wish to threaten, but ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... the sick man's energies. He got up, found his family collected in the drawing-room, all in black, and suddenly silent as he came in. In a fortnight, Hulot, as lean as a spectre, looked to his family the mere ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... flow of the Ticin brings a line of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous steam of Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. But he has not a word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce; he crosses the wood of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman, and wanders up and down Rimini without one thought of Francesca. At Paris, he had eagerly sought an introduction to Boileau; but he seems not to have been at all aware that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... soil. A single figure is joyous and alert in that scene of sweat and toil. It is a fantastic personage, a skeleton armed with a whip, who runs in the furrow beside the terrified horses and belabors them, thus serving the old husbandman as ploughboy. This spectre, which Holbein has introduced allegorically in the succession of philosophical and religious subjects, at once lugubrious and burlesque, entitled the Dance ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... him!" cried the duchess, sympathizing, in spite of herself, with his sudden sorrow. He was ghastly as a spectre, and his whole frame shook like ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... nationality and no one type of character. He is the image of humanity. Hamlet is to me not a man, but Man. The sufferings, the doubts, the vague mysteries of life are incarnate in his person. He is ever checked by the Unknown. He is tortured by the phantasm of Doubt. Is the spectre indeed his father's shade? has it spoken truth? is it well to live? is it best to die?—such are the problems ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... insolent annoyance the despairing countenance of the German whose eyes had never left him. When the elevator arrived at the ground floor, Coleman departed with the outraged air of a man who for a time had been compelled to occupy a cell in company with a harmless spectre. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the morbid poet turned suspicious, and began to indulge fresh hopes of fortune in another place. He would again offer himself to the Medici. In April he set off for Tuscany, and alighted at the convent of Monte Oliveto, near Florence. Nobody wanted him; he wandered about the Pitti like a spectre, and the Florentines wrote: actum est de eo.[59] Some parting compliments and presents from the Grand Duke sweetened his dismissal. He returned to Rome; but each new journey told upon his broken health, and another illness made him desire a change of scene. This time Antonio Costantini offered ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the crimson cushions of her chair, the little fringes of pearls that nestled at her bosom on her low bodice, shivered and trembled as she breathed. The gas burned very low within, and with its subdued light only helped to make Honor still more like a spectre than she was. Guy, standing quite close to the panes, could see the gray pallor that had come over her agitated face, her eyes wore that far-off look that is not of earth, as if she were peering through the impenetrable, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... keepers who were left in charge died unaccountably. This was because the ghost of the tortured one pervaded its damp rooms and breathed blights and curses on the occupants. Its appearance was always heralded by a clatter of hoofs on the stone bridge leading into the court. The on-rush of spectre horses is variously explained, some believing that the dead man is leading an assault on the fort, others wondering if it may not be a conscience-smitten governor hurrying to rescue or reprieve his victim, and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... spoken to you of Pompeii," said the Moon; "that corpse of a city, exposed in the view of living towns: I know another sight still more strange, and this is not the corpse, but the spectre of a city. Whenever the jetty fountains splash into the marble basins, they seem to me to be telling the story of the floating city. Yes, the spouting water may tell of her, the waves of the sea may sing of her fame! On the surface of the ocean a mist often rests, and that is ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... her. Long Ghost would have done the same, but the Yankee captain disliked the cut of his jib, swore he was a "Sidney bird," and would have nought to say to him. So Typee divided his advance of wages with the medical spectre—drank with him a parting bottle of wine, surreptitiously purchased from a pilfering member of Pomaree's household—and sailed on a whaling cruise to the coast of Japan. We look forward with confidence and interest to an account of what there ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... regular breathing grew irritating to him; it drew so marked a contrast 'twixt Crispin's frame of mind and his own. Whilst Crispin had related his story, the interest it awakened had served to banish the spectre of fear which the thought of the morrow conjured up. Now that Crispin was silent and asleep, that spectre returned, and the lad grew numb and sick with ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... since the spectre was for me alone? Or if he had not seen It, how did he know this room was an unsafe area? My stupefied brain puzzled over these questions while I managed a sign of refusal. Any effort was impossible to me. The cold ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the Count grew livid, and dropping the cane from his nerveless hand staggered back a pace or two. Had a spectre suddenly stood up before him with threatening hand, he could not ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... tell you about a Chinese wedding we had the other day at our house. The bridegroom was Akiat, a carpenter, about six feet two inches high. He was dressed in whity-brown silk, which made him look like a tall spectre; and the bride was Quey Ginn, a fat, dumpy little girl of sixteen, the Chinese deacon's daughter, and one of my scholars. She did not choose her old husband of fifty years, but her parents arranged it, and Akiat paid one hundred dollars for his ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... beckoning sign with her finger. Gueldmar advanced a little,—when a sudden eldritch shriek startled him back, almost curdling the blood in his veins. Out of the deep obscurity, like some gaunt spectre rising from the tomb, started a face, wrinkled, cadaverous, and distorted by suffering,—a face in which the fierce, fevered eyes glittered with a strange and dreadful brilliancy—the face of Lovisa Elsland, stern, forbidding, and already dark with the shadows of approaching ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Majorca. People were only taken as an extra. It was, therefore, in the company of these squealing, ill-smelling creatures that the invalid crossed the water. When he arrived at Barcelona, he looked like a spectre and was spitting blood. George Sand was quite right in saying that this journey was an ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... their nuptials were blessed with offspring, their children should be educated in the Roman faith—a promise difficult of performance in a land where a stormy tide ran high against Rome, and where Popery was a scarlet spectre that alarmed the ignorant and maddened the bigoted. And now, duly provided with a safe conduct from the regicide, Bradshaw, he was journeying to the city where he was to part with his daughter for an ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... good because we are afraid of what they can do to us. That accounts for our politeness. Death, universal and inevitable, is none the less a villainous institution. Every other antagonist can be ignored or bribed or circumvented or crushed outright. But here is a damnable spectre who knocks at the door and does not wait to hear you say, 'Come in.' Hateful! If other people think differently it is because they live differently. How do they live? Like a cow that has stumbled into a dark hole, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... will you do with materializations such as Dr. Richet studied at the Villa Carmen in Algiers? What will you do with the photographs of the spectre of the helmeted soldier which he obtained under what he declares were ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... all. Her brain was in a whirl. The events of the afternoon rose up like a spectre and haunted her. She felt she needed a confidante. At the earliest possible moment she sought Chrissie alone, and told her how she had run up into the Observatory and ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... in the case of Glam, the terrible spectre which Grettir had so much difficulty in overcoming. To all who appreciate a shudder may be recommended chap. xxxv. of "The Story of Grettir the Strong," translated from the Icelandic by E. ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... fought back the grim spectre that stood by the bedside. The child was born at dawn. Both mother and child, the ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... meditations, with which we left him tormenting himself, Partridge came stumbling into the room with his face paler than ashes, his eyes fixed in his head, his hair standing an end, and every limb trembling. In short, he looked as he would have done had he seen a spectre, or had he, indeed, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... invited Brutus and his friends to an entertainment, where freedom and cheerfulness, for a while, took place of political anxiety, and softened the severity of wisdom. Upon retiring home it was that Brutus thought he saw a spectre in his tent. 21. He naturally slept but little, and was capable of bearing want of rest by long habit and great sobriety. He never allowed himself to sleep in the daytime, as was common in Rome; ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... sickly smile, and vanished as a dying spark. The trance passed from his spirit, and nature recommenced her operations like the clanking of a vast machinery. Yet his eye, as if it could not recover from its vision of terror, remained glaring upon the spot where the spectre had been; and it was not until several minutes had elapsed that the sharp agony which had contracted his features died away. He sprung forward with a wild cry, but the echo alone replied. No voice but his own awoke the awful stillness, pulseless it reigned around him. The stars glittered as brightly, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... afterwards my poor mother was removed to Saint Denis. Four or five days before the horrible death of our adorable Henrietta, the arrows of Saint Denis appeared to me in a dream covered in dusky flames, and amid them I saw the spectre of Death, holding in his hand the necklaces and bracelets of a young lady. The appalling death of my cousin followed close upon this presage. Henceforth, the view of Saint Denis spoils all these pleasant landscapes for me. At Versailles ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... of the lord, the landlord began a weird tale, suggested by the speech of the Palmer. As Marmion listened, he gathered from the legend that not far from where they sat, a knight might learn of future weal or woe. He might, perchance, meet "in the charmed ring" his deadliest foe, in the form of a spectre, and with it engage in mortal combat. If victorious over this supernatural antagonist, the omen was victory ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... Protestant Europe was thus assailed and terrified by the reviving spectre of religious persecution, Charles II of England died and his brother James II succeeded him. Charles may have been Catholic at heart, but in name at least he had retained the English religion. James was openly Catholic. A hasty rebellion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Dutch bear; All that we ask is but a patient ear. 'Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor; And the first wisdom, to be fool no more. But to the world no bugbear is so great, As want of figure, and a small estate. To either India see the merchant fly, Scared at the spectre of pale poverty! See him, with pains of body, pangs of soul, Burn through the Tropic, freeze beneath the pole! Wilt thou do nothing for a nobler end, Nothing, to make philosophy thy friend? To stop thy ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... leased Evermay to Mr. William B. Orme and, certainly, during those years the spectre of the inhospitality of its first owner was laid, for the Ormes were noted for their delightful parties and there, too, were June weddings ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... the glasses that suit him best, (ay, using a spy-glass, if he likes,)—and make a full report. What, probably, will he spy?—what will he select to look at? Of course, he will see a Brocken spectre of himself. He will see several meeting-houses, at least, and, perhaps, that somebody ought to be assessed higher than he is, since he has so handsome a wood-lot. Now take Julius Caesar, or Immanuel Swedenborg, or a Fegee-Islander, and set him ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... his lips seemed to be twisted on one side.... What had happened to my Joseph Most Fair,[23] to my quiet lad? I cannot comprehend it. "Can he have gone crazy?" I say to myself. He roams about like a spectre by night, he does not sleep,—and then, all of a sudden, he will take to staring into a corner as though he were completely benumbed.... It ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... like a bit lambie that hae lost its mither. Ye would na' be sae ready to put it a' doon to auld wives' clavers then, I'm thinkin'." I saw it was hopeless to reason with him, so contented myself with begging him as a personal favour to call me up the next time the spectre appeared—a request to which he acceded with many ejaculations expressive of his hopes that such an ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... goods. But Maria Theresa had refused to submit to the immorality of nine points of the law. By appeals and concessions to France, Russia, and other powers, she contrived to create something which, against the atheist innovator even in that atheist age, stood up for an instant like a spectre of the Crusades. Had that Crusade been universal and whole-hearted, the great new precedent of mere force and fraud would have been broken; and the whole appalling judgment which is fallen upon ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... talked to him about the damage done by cockchafers, and the difficulty of getting hard enough stone for the macadam roads, thenceforward. The poor gentleman, after having played a certain part in the reaction after the Revolution of 1848, by the publication of a sensational pamphlet entitled Le Spectre Rouge, died of grief at the death of a son ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... was hatching against them, were immediately taken up, and cast into prison. And what was more monstrous and incredible, there stood at the bar the prisoner on trial for his life, while the witnesses were permitted to swear that his spectre had haunted them, and afflicted them with all manner of injuries. That the poor prosecuted wretch stood astonished at what was alleged against him, was utterly overwhelmed with the charges, and knew not what to answer, was all of it interpreted as so many ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... was a long way from being the haughty spectre Alice had conjured up, and like many excellent mothers was simply interested to see that her only and impetuous son did not make a mesalliance. While she had wisely made no comment regarding her son's apparent disappointment, what Blanch had said, together ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... the Spaniard. Then, with horrified gestures, as directed against some spectre, he unconsciously fell into the ready arms of his attendant, who, with a silent appeal toward Captain Delano, seemed beseeching him not again to broach a theme so unspeakably distressing to ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... in the body,—in the very body, as to all essential properties, and to all practical intents and purposes, in which you live now. I am not to live as a ghost, a spectre, a spirit, I am to live then as I ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... my seat, unterrified, of course, and proceeded to turn the spectre to good account. I addressed it, in a moderate tone; though I think that I used some gesticulation. Said I: Personation of the Slave-power! predatory, grasping, black! thinkest thou a panting fugitive lies hid under ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice is choked and tears fill his eyes as he sees the goal of "Race-Suicide" nearly in sight and the spectre of the Last Man rising before him. For there is no doubt about it, Australia and New Zealand contain a population which is gradually reaching the highest point yet known of democratic organisation and general social well-being, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... myself to them, and learn something of their condition; immediately I marched in the figure as above, my man Friday at a good distance behind me, as formidable for his arms as I, but not making quite so staring a spectre-like figure as I did. I came as near them undiscovered as I could, and then, before any of them saw me, I called aloud to them in Spanish, "What are ye, gentlemen?" They started up at the noise; but were ten times more confounded when they saw me, and the uncouth figure ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... man, 'mid that beauteous scene Of trees and hills and water, bolt upright Rose, with his ghastly face, a spectre shape ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... shrill cry of exultation, a half-naked form, all gleaming eyes and teeth and polished bronze-hued limbs, rushed out of the blackness beyond the fire, leaped through the tongues of flame and vanished like a spectre into the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of the Tappan Zee to New York in a day, no matter how the wind blew. Hanz Toodleburg called the Fire Fly an invention of the devil, and nobody else. The bright blaze of her furnaces, and the long trail of fire and sparks issuing from her funnel of a dark night, gave a spectre-like appearance to her movements, that rather increased a belief amongst the superstitious that she was really an invention of the evil one, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... the issue tell? We ran our course—my charger fell; What could he 'gainst the shock of hell? I rolled upon the plain. High o'er my head, with threatening hand, The spectre took his naked brand - Yet did the worst remain: My dazzled eyes I upward cast - Not opening hell itself could blast Their sight, like what I saw! Full on his face the moonbeam strook - A face could never be mistook! I knew the ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... true easterly fog. I galloped on, hoping to get through it, unable to see a yard before me; but it thickened, and I was obliged to subside into a jog-trot. As I rode on, about four miles from the cabin, a human figure, looking gigantic like the spectre of the Brocken, with long hair white as snow, appeared close to me, and at the same moment there was the flash of a pistol close to my ear, and I recognized 'Mountain Jim,' frozen from head to foot, looking a century old with his snowy hair. It was 'ugly' altogether, certainly ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... to stand at thy friendship's gate— I, who loved thee, now must like a cold spectre from a far forgotten land of snow Watch thee fall asleep on the couch of freezing friendship? In these arms thou sought and joyed on many delights Excavated the ruins of passion to build them anew, Or sailed on thy wings—these arms—over love's enchanted sea. Friendship! Barrier not this, but ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... with art and progress creeps the haggard spectre, Want— Creeps the frightful phantom, Hunger, with its bloodless body gaunt. Wider, wider spreads the chasm 'twixt the wealthy and the poor, Social discontent declaring ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... achievements of the Washington Conference and you will find that the nations are not voluntarily seeking the rational ideal of peace, but are being driven by urgent necessity into the course of reason. Statesmanship would have disarmed the world before 1914. It was only after 1918 that the spectre of Universal Bankruptcy drove the poor trembling immortals who pass for statesmen to embrace each other as heroes in search of an ideal. Humanity has achieved nothing noble or glorious in the last thirty years; it has been ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... minutes at the bottom of the stairs, I darted up towards my own room. My hand was already on the lock of the door before I recollected myself. I then paused, and a cold shivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as children are accustomed to do when they expect a spectre to stand in waiting for them on the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped fearfully in: the apartment was empty, and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous guest. I could hardly believe that so great a good fortune could have befallen me, but when I became assured ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... holding converse with the broom, or the peruke, or a spectre whom he, and no one else could see Frau Schimmel could not tell, but she had then recovered herself sufficiently to be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... What have I suffered since I parted with you! A raging fire is in my heart and in my brain, that never quits me. The steam-boat (which I foolishly ventured on board) seems a prison-house, a sort of spectre-ship, moving on through an infernal lake, without wind or tide, by some necromantic power—the splashing of the waves, the noise of the engine gives me no rest, night or day—no tree, no natural object varies the scene—but the abyss ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... castled height— Ho, Burghers of the town; Apulia's strength, Romagna's pride, And Tusca's old renown! Why quail ye thus? why pale ye thus? What spectre do ye see? "The blood-red flag, and trampling march, Of Montreal's Companie." Oh, the sunshine of your life— Oh, the thunders of your strife! Wild ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... wonders amongst the children in every land, so that we have now thousands of Officers who have been won in their early years by that Junior work, the spectre of the Sunday School ever and anon rises to threaten with a peaceful death, this Divine undertaking. Only the most persistent watchfulness can prevent the narrow idea of instruction, and unbelief ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... Spectre-like Famine drew near; Her doom-word hummed in his ear: Ah, weak were woman's hands to reach And save him from the hellish charms And wizard motion of those arms! Yet only noble womanhood The wife her dauntless part could teach: She shared ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... it, had reached his eyes; it could not be dispersed; and the consequence was, that he was then blind. The second was lame; he had badly ulcerated legs, and appeared to be very weak. The third was a mere spectre; I think he was the most pitiable object I ever saw. I considered him as irrecoverably gone. They all complained to me of their bad usage on board the Thomas. They said they had heard, of my being in Bristol, and they ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... else the men do. (Roars of laughter.) But above all, sir, let me implore you to reflect for a single moment on the deplorable condition of our country in case of a foreign war, with all our ports blockaded, all our cities in a state of siege; the gaunt spectre of famine brooding like a hungry vulture over our starving land; our commissary stores all exhausted, and our famishing armies withering away in the field, a helpless prey to the insatiate demon of hunger; our navy rotting in the docks for want of provisions ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... a very incorrect dark Book, useful only in defect of better), ii. 173. Coxe, Memoirs of Walpole, i. 260, 261; ii. 498-515.] preceded by protocols, debates in Parliament; and the usual phenomena. It is the Fifth grand Crisis in the Kaiser's spectre-huntings; fifth change in the color of the world-lobster getting boiled in that singular manner;—Second ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was the savior of his outcast state; she was his life's spring, whence the waters of content might flow. And a flood of emotion came over him, and in his heart he blessed her. It was then that on that gaunt headland he seemed to see her at his side. But between them, and dividing them, stalked the spectre of himself. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the land, igloos had been built. Over the village and against the frozen promontories loomed a majestic yet fearful shadowy shape—that of a giant thing, swathed in purple, its arm uplifted threateningly—the spectre of suffering and famine. ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... with sallies of wheeling and careering showers—flying and pursuing, opening, and closing, hiding and restoring. On such a morning, and reaching the summits of the forest-mountain about sunrise, we shall have one chance the more for seeing the famous Spectre of the Brocken.[16] Who and what is he? He is a solitary apparition, in the sense of loving solitude; else he is not always solitary in his personal manifestations, but on proper occasions has been known to unmask a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... moment. When it thrust its ugly presence into his thoughts, he put it away desperately. The man was dead—or his fickle fancy had veered elsewhere. Nothing else could explain his absence. But they could never know, and the uncertainty would forever stand between him and Lynde like a spectre. But he thought more of Lynde's pain than his own. He would have elected to bear any suffering if by so doing he could have freed her from the nightmare dread of Harmon's returning to claim her. That dread had always hung over her ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... grim storm-clouds overcast, Even like a spectre of the past,— Of rapine, feudal strife, and blood, Thou tellest an old, wild, warlike story, When squadrons on thy ramparts stood, With spear and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... letters, who makes his home in the reading-room of the British Museum. It was also a peculiarity of the position that he seemed an almost unwelcome visitant, even to those who had to defend him. There was an awful pause when he rose, silently and so spectre-like, from his seat in the dim land of the back benches, and passed to the seat immediately behind the Marquis of Salisbury. Lord Salisbury made a very vivid and amusing speech in the course of the evening, in defence of Lord Clanricarde and in an attack on Mr. Justice Mathew; ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... straightway the only child of the mansion sickened and died. Mr. Keene's first wife died after the second apparition. Either it was the fancy of an ailing man, or perhaps the general report, but he notes that the spectre was bewailing its woes along the banks of Bogue Holauba when Jasper Keene himself was stricken by an illness which from the first ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... her; for the gay little creature was always a great pet of mine, and I always quoted her with delight, as a proof that bloom and strength were not monopolized by English girls. In the parlor I found the mother closeted with the family physician. Soon, Fanny, aged sixteen, glided in,—a pale spectre, exquisite in costume, unexceptionable in manners, looking in all respects like an exceedingly used-up belle of five-and-twenty. "What were you just saying that some of my Fanny's symptoms were, Doctor?" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... round on the lisping dandy, who staggered back, when the dowager O'Grady appeared before him, drawn up to her full height, and anything but an agreeable expression in her eye. She stalked up towards him, something in the style of a spectre in a romance, which she was not very unlike; and as she advanced, he retreated, until he got the table between him ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Revolution of 1848—the return of foreign refugees to Austria, and other significant indications of joining with the old powers in oppressing freedom. Let Louis Napoleon beware of an anti-American policy—for to every such policy there will be an opposition, with a spectre of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... there was a beautiful description of the spectre of a man drowned in the night, or, in the language of the old Scotch superstitions, seized by the angry spirit of the waters, appearing to his wife with pale blue cheek, &c. Mr. Home has no copy of it. He also showed ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... his "Suspiria de Profundis," Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1845, p. 748., speaking of the spectre of the Brocken, and of the conditions under which that striking phenomenon ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... composition. His 'Tales of Terror' (1799) were dedicated to Lady Charlotte Campbell, afterwards Bury, with whom he was in love. To his 'Tales of Wonder' (1801) Scott, Southey, and others contributed. His most successful plays were 'The Castle Spectre' (Drury Lane, December 14, 1797), and 'Timour the Tartar' (Covent ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the column and read with amazement and stabbing pain the matter that was of interest. The worst had happened—the thing which during all his later life Silas Finn had feared. The spectre of the prison ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... great, it was now much greater; and indeed the appearance, joined to the rattling of the chain, was so hideous, that the boldest soldier might have been terrified by it, without any imputation of cowardice. The bellman fled away with all the wings of fear, the spectre following him at a distance, rattling the chain with a most hideous noise; hence the bellman concluded himself to be haunted by the devil, and declined ever after ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... with fear, he turn'd.—His guide was gone; A broad chaotic cloud appear'd alone. His limbs no more their chilly weight sustained, A deathlike torpor o'er his bosom reign'd, His stony eyeballs fix'd in silent trance Met the terrific Spectre's withering glance. And lo! the Phantom waves, with sudden glare, His burning sceptre thro' the starless air! High o'er the bark the booming billows spread, The deafening waves were closing o'er his head; When rushing clouds the towering ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... windows in the dormitories were festooned with cobwebs that had housed long lines of ancestral spiders, and where a pane or two of glass remained among the many empty frames, one fancied a gibbering spectre might look out from the gloomy ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... dark paint there is but a vague, uniform mass of pale colour; the body of the hand is missing, and there remains only its ghost, visible indeed, but unsubstantial, without weight or warmth, eluding the grasp. The difference between this spectre hand of the Giottesques, and the sinewy, muscular hand which can shake and crush of Masaccio and Signorelli, or the soft hand with throbbing pulse and warm pressure of Perugino and Bellini,—this ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... that hunt is a spectre; sighted, it steals away; and if one remains very, very still and listens, one may hear, far and faint, the undertone of phantom horns mocking the field that rides ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... yet above the Alps; and the images with their aureoles shrank and dilated with the undulations of the mist. I could not but think of that old formula for an anthropomorphic Deity—'the Brocken-spectre of the human spirit projected on the mists of the Non-ego.' Even like those cloud-phantoms are the gods made in the image of man, who have been worshipped through successive ages of the world, gods dowered with like ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of these vain struggles, his love for Anne grew stronger, more overpowering. He was hollow-eyed and gaunt, ravenous with the hunger of love. A spectre of his former self, he watched himself starve with sustenance at hand. Bountiful love lay within his grasp and yet he starved. Full, rich pastures spread out before him wherein he could roam to the end of his days, blissfully gorging himself,—and ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... bitter cold water. A brisk rubbing with a towel put me all aglow, and I felt what a good thing it was to be alive. The past, with its perils and hardships, was behind me like a dim dream, and the future was rose-colored in spite of the grim spectre of war that it held over ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... thou hast any sound] The speech of Horatio to the spectre is very elegant and noble, and congruous to the common traditions of ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Maria, you are sending him to his death. (Enter JARVIS on stairs.) Success to you, Mr. Ghost Breaker, when you beard the spectre in his den. (Takes hat and ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... attributed to glimpses of the earl in his restless night-walks; but by the domestics, both such as had seen something and such as had not, the apparition was naturally associated with the lost chamber, as the place whence the spectre ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Faith, awake, arise, illume The dread unknown, the chaos of the tomb Melt, and dispel, ye spectre doubts that roll Cimmerian darkness o'er the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... way, because he was older than most of us. Anyway, he started back and we sat there watching him, and pretty soon it seemed as if a kind of a screen was behind him, the rain was so thick and there was so much mist. It made him look sort of like a ghost or a—you know—a spectre. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... for no dreadful panics Will meet you with grim spectre-faces. Bring also your spouses, nor leave in your houses Those charmers who ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... a last desperate effort, swung out her right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm, and whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... communication it so often repeats, while his attachment to his mother, in whom he reveres the parent he has lost, makes him question the truth of crimes which are thus laid to her charge, and causes him to look upon this terrific spectre as the punishment of unknown crime, and the visitation of an offended Deity. Ducis has most judiciously and most poetically represented Hamlet, in the despair which his sufferings produce, as driven to the belief of an over-ruling destiny, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... shall return To dare the weeds of death, And plunge through the coned pink bloom, And cry on that spectre set In its silent ring of gloom, And stay my youth to learn The thing that ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... ghost; with one or two sceptics who seemed willing to take the risks (probably in a guilty consciousness of records that would have kept them out of other employ) his confession that he had himself seen the spectre which haunted St. Johnswort, was equally effective. He prevailed at last against the fact and his own testimony with a Japanese, who could not be made to understand the objection to the place, and who willingly went with Hewson as his valet and general house-workman. With the wife of the gardener ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... Mrs. Dodd. "Anyhow, I'm goin' to stay. No sheeted spectre can't scare me away from a place I've always stayed in Summers, 'specially," she added, sarcastically, "when I'm remembered in ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... this spectre-haunted spot in the quiet evening! There was the groaning murmur of the stream flowing down its subterranean passage, and there was the low and fitful warble of a nightingale; but this was all. Who, passing by here ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... near were roused, and thronged along the banks of the stream. Torches flashed in the boats that put off in the terrible search. Hawthorne, then living in the Old Manse, was summoned, and the man whom the villagers had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in his garden, now appeared among them at night, to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their service. The boats drifted slowly down the stream, the torches flashed strangely upon the black repose of the waters, and upon the long slim grasses that weeping ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... beacons burn! And thro' the hyoids, huge and red, Past portals black and guidons bright To onyx lees and opal sands, The Cyclopean vaults of dwale, And cavern'd shapes that Typhon bled, Greet each wand'ring spectre's sight; Where pixies dance on wind-blown strands, Lurke gyte incubi in a hall. Here, then, reigns gyving, batter'd Doom! Where shadows vague and coffined light, Spit broths from splinter'd wracks ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... superstition of a certain species of blood-sucking spectres, known to the novel reading world under the name of vampyres, a superstition retained chiefly in Dalmatia, belongs also here. In modern Greek, such a spectre is called Brukolacas in Servian Wukodlak. We do not however recollect the appearance of a vampyre, in any genuine production of modern Greek or Servian poetry. It seems as if the sound sense of the common people had taught them, that ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... The spectre mounted his car, attended by an innumerable host of tributary spirits, and was borne on the whirlwind to visit other climes. He was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... passengers ashore. The moon sailed tranquilly over the deep blue dome of the sky, the stars traced their glittering paths of light from the zenith downward, and it was sharp, bitter cold. Northward over the river lay a great bank of cloud, dense, gray and massive, the spectre of the coming snow-storm. There it lay so huge and fantastically human, ruffling itself up, as fowls do, in defense against the cold. Halfdan walked on at a brisk rate—strange to say, all the street-cars he met went the wrong way—startling every now and then some precious memory, some word or ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... himself in evident comfort. The fire had by this time so far dwindled away as to be only a handful of smouldering embers, which cast but an exceedingly feeble and uncertain light, sufficient only to reveal the general outline of the pigmy spectre. The old gentleman, with strained eyes, attentively observed his motions, till from very weariness, caused by looking through a light so dim, he began to doubt whether he saw truly: he reasoned with himself, but with no satisfactory result; till ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Les Bottes, turned her anxious eyes from Thionville to Saint-Julien and back to where MacMahon's three rockets should have starred the sky; and what she saw was the Red Prince riding like a fiery spectre from east to west; what she saw was the spiked helmets of the Feldwache and the sodded parapets of Longeau. Chained and naked, the beautiful city crouched in the tempest that was to free her forever and give ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... caused them to tremble. The flash of the light of the passing train, as it sped on its way, was so quick by us that it was impossible to see whether it was a light or not. It appeared like the ghost of a light or a spectre in its flight through the darkness, for a moment and it was gone. It left no trace behind that I could see. There had two or three of those trains of cars passed us before I was able to make out what made the extra noise. Not having any ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... curse him!" and an emotion which he had believed was long since dead rose hotly in his consciousness. Before the dread spectre, suddenly imbued with vitality, Farwell reeled and covered his face. Murder was in his heart—the old madness of desire to wipe out, by any means, that which barred his way ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... motoring homewards across the old line. A ghost-peopled dusk was crawling over the devastation and desolation that is Vimy, and in the distance the bare bones of St. Eloy loomed like a spectre skeleton against the frosty after-glow. We hummed past Thelus cross-roads, dipped downhill and, hey presto! all of a sudden I was in China. (No, not Neuville-St.-Vaast; China, China, place where they eat birds'-nests and puppy-dogs' tails.) There were coolies from some salvage company all over ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... contributing to her mother's comforts, all was joy and congratulation. Her incurable disease was for the time forgotten; and although pain would occasionally draw down the muscles of her face, as soon as the pang was over, so was the remembrance of her precarious situation. Wan and wasted as a spectre, she indulged in anticipation of again mixing with the fashionable world, and talked of chaperoning Isabel to private parties and public amusements, when she was standing on the brink of eternity. Isabel sighed as she listened to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Spain. The extreme Royalists of France, on the other hand, were so bent on accomplishing this task themselves that they were resolved not to permit any Russian troops to pass through France. With the spectre of a general European war thus looming on the horizon, England endeavored to hold the balance for peace. Acting under the instructions of Canning, Wellington declared that England would rather set herself against the great alliance than ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... A few moments before, moved perhaps by a dawning comprehension of the unspeakable pathos of her fate, young Cain had given her a dagger. When, two minutes after the monk's arrival, Leah and Rachel entered the room, a black sighing mass cowered in a corner of the sofa, while Silentia rose spectre-like in the dimness, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... itself oftener than ever. She realized more completely the pain that Mark Waring must have endured, as she guessed what would be the bitterness of her own feelings, if it should prove that she had mistaken Royston Keene. That sorrowful memory seemed to rise before her like a warning spectre, waving her back from the path she had begun to tread. Truly, Cecil Tresilyan was different from the generality of her sex; or, when her own heart was sorely imperiled, she would never have found time to think so often, and so regretfully, of one ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... sound, woful as words can be. Another carnage by the drear Red Sea— Another efflux of a sea more red! Another bruising of the hapless head Of a wrong'd people yearning to be free. Another blot on her great name, who stands Confounded, left intolerably alone With the dilating spectre of her own Dark sin, uprisen from yonder spectral sands: Penitent more than to herself is known; England, appall'd by ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... circumstances Joe would have been jubilant, for he was at the very height of his reputation, the girl he loved was with him, as well as his only sister and his closest friend, but ever in his thoughts like the spectre at the feast was that matter of the signed contract—the abominable thing that smirched his reputation and branded him to the world as false to his ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... said, a panic-terror pervaded the halls, and like an evil-announcing night-spectre passed over the heads of the stiffened, lifeless crowd the dismal rumor—"The regent and the princess are at variance; the regent is speaking to her with vehemence, and the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... his captain, and said, "Oh dear! in that house there is a gruesome witch, and I felt her breath and her long nails in my face; and by the door there stands a man who stabbed me in the leg with a knife, and in the yard there lies a black spectre, who beat me with his wooden club; and above, upon the roof, there sits the justice, who cried, 'bring that rogue here!' And so I ran away from the place as ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... And so, when he is asked why he considers a new movement a passing fad and quickly perishable, he finds himself unprepared with a reason and is more or less embarrassed. For a moment. Only for a moment. Then he waylays the first spectre of a reason that goes flitting through the desert places of his mind, and is at once serene again and ready for conflict. Serene and confident. Yet he should not be so, since he has had no chance to examine his catch, and cannot know whether it is going to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... replied. "He knows it is necessary that I should see him," and Helene then told her husband of her recognition of Von Barwig in church. "I have mourned for him as one dead and gone, and when I saw him to-day rising up like a spectre, as if reproaching me for my neglect, I was terribly overcome. Oh, Beverly, I can't explain, I don't understand why, but I think of him constantly, and my heart goes out to him! Even at this moment I am haunted by the thought of his dear, sweet, gentle smile. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... off the grim spectre valiantly. He patted Ulana's hand as his weak voice resumed. "You will take care of her I know, Carson. Take her with you to your own world; make her happy." He fell ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... languorously through the foliage towards the river. At first I thought myself the victim of another hallucination, but would not stir lest the vision should vanish. She sighed audibly, and I knew this was no spectre. Then I trembled all the more, for my ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... belonging to a widely different group, is the "sylph" (Hestia Jasonia), called by the Europeans by the various names of Floater, Spectre, and Silver-paper-fly, as indicative of its graceful flight. It is found only in the deep shade of the damp forest, frequenting the vicinity of pools of water and cascades, about which it sails heedless of the spray, the moisture ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... sudden gesture Madame d'Argeles freed her hand from the baron's grasp, and recoiled as terrified as if she had seen a spectre rise up before her. Then with her hands extended as if to ward off the horrible apparition, she ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... better, without actual or disguised monarchy; whether shifting corruption is better than a permanent bureaucracy; and as population thickens in your great cities, and the pressure of want is felt, the gaunt spectre of pauperism will stalk among you, and communism and socialism will claim to be heard. Truly America has a great future before her; great in toil, in care, and in responsibility; great in true glory if she be guided in wisdom and righteousness; ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... was sport. No frolic ever came amiss, whatever its guise. He informed play with the earnestness of childhood and the spirituality of poesy. He could turn everything into a hook on which to hang a frolic. No dark care bestrode the horse behind this perennial youth. No haggard spectre, reflected from a turbid soul, sat moping in the prow of his boat, or kept step with him in the race. Like the Sun-god, he was buoyant and beautiful, careless, free, elastic, unfading. Years never cramped his bounding spirits, or dimmed the lustre of his soul. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... and Angelique pressed her foot hard upon the floor as the answer returned ever the same: "The heart of the Intendant is away at Beaumanoir! That pale, pensive lady" (Angelique used a more coarse and emphatic word) "stands between him and me like a spectre as she is, and obstructs the path I have ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Motion stood dreaming he was changed to Rest, And Life asleep did fancy he was Death. A quick small shadow spotted the white world; Then instantly 'twas huge, and huger grew By instants till it did o'ergloom all space. I lifted up mine eyes — O thou just God! I saw a spectre with a million heads Come frantic downward through the universe, And all the mouths of it were uttering cries, Wherein was a sharp agony, and yet The cries were much like laughs: as if Pain laughed. ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... was it possible to dry so well those stores gathered from the peat beds. Huge fires, indeed, glowed upon many a hearth, but the glory of them served only to illumine anxious faces. A hard winter was threatened, and the succeeding spring already appeared as no vision to welcome, but a hungry spectre to dread. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... longer fast. He had taken enough wine to obscure remoter terrors, but not the image of Mr. Dunborough—impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer—Dunborough doubly and trebly offended! That image recurred when the glass was not at his lips; and behind it, sometimes the angry spectre of Sir George, sometimes the face of the girl, blazing with rage, slaying him with ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... of the tale, or novelette, of "The Spectre Barber," by Musaeus (1735-1788), is probably an elaboration of some German popular legend closely resembling the last-cited version, only in this instance the hero does not dream, but is told by a ghost, in reward for a service he had done ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... thus became a means for preserving the records of history, and it has also been a treasure house of stories, furnishing material for much of the poetry of Europe. One of these legends gave Scott the story of the combat between Marmion and the Spectre Knight. ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... Duke of Maddaloni haunted him like a spectre. He ordered his beautiful villa at Posilipo to be destroyed, and made his people ransack once more his pillaged palace at Santa Maria della Stella. The barber of the Duke and a Moorish slave bought ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... to go in. He declared that the door was closed. She pushed it, and slipped into the immense nave, where the inanimate trees of the columns ascended in darkness. In the rear, candles were moving in front of spectre-like priests, under the last reverberations of the organs. She trembled in ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... at Ballarook was over, and Gavan Blake turned his horses' heads in a direction he had never taken before—along the road to Kuryong. As he drove along, his thoughts were anything but pleasant. Behind him always stalked the grim spectre of detection and arrest; and, even should a lucky windfall help to pay his debts, he could not save the money either to buy a practice in Sydney or to maintain himself while he was building one up. He thought of the pitiful smallness ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... DUCATS. Extending his long lean hands from his wide sleeves, the old man began unrolling the packets. There was a gleam of gold. Great as Tchartkoff's terror was, he could not help staring covetously at the coin, and looked on with profound attention as it streamed rapidly through the spectre's bony hands, glittering and clinking with a dull thin metallic sound, and was then rolled up anew. Suddenly he remarked one packet which had rolled a little farther than the rest, and stopped at the leg of the bedstead, near ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the creation of human hands conquers the spectre, and, puffing and whistling, the locomotive breaks through the dark haze. Once again the iron serpent disappears into the bowels of the rock, and as it emerges it crosses another valley and is greeted by a clear heaven and ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... he did. He slept quietly as an infant all that night. Next morning I found him up and dressed. Looking like a spectre, indeed; but with health, courage, and hope in his eyes. Even my father noticed it, when at dinner-time, with Jael's help—poor old Jael! how proud she was—John ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... same tone as if he were speaking to his oxen, took a quid from his iron tobacco-box, pulled off his wet cowhide boots, and sat down before the fire in his stocking-feet. The steam arose from his soaked garments, so that the stout yeoman looked vaporous and spectre-like. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is another looking over the shoulder of Sidonia, like a terrible spectre (a highly poetical idea), for this spectre is Sidonia herself painted as a Sorceress. It must have been added, after a lapse of many years, to the youthful portrait, which belongs, as I have said, to the school of Kranach, whereas the second figure portrays ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... their queer wooden hauntable old house. And when they rose, laughing and yawning to take up their candles, it was, after all, after a rather animated discussion, with many a hair-raising ghost story brought in for proof between brother and sister, as to exactly how many times that snuff-coloured spectre had made his appearance; and, with less unanimity still, as to the precise manner in which he was in the habit of ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... abandoned: but the objectives were not. Most of them were eventually to be translated into action and actuality. It was in their modification, perhaps, that the author was to display most of all his foresight and acumen. From 1848 onwards he recognised the true nature of "the spectre which haunted Europe"—and which still haunts the world. From then onwards he was not to write in the ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... say, embodied; for she is a ghost raised by the spells of Faustus, a simulacrum of a thing long dead; yet with such continuing semblance of life, nay, with all life's real powers, that she seems the real, vital, living one, and Faustus yonder, thing as he is of the present, little better than a spectre. Yet Helena has been ages before Faust ever was; nay, by an awful mystery like those which involve the birth of Pagan gods, she whom he has evoked to be the mother of his only son has given, centuries before, somewhat of her life to make this self-same Faust. A ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither. Gaslights flared in the shops with a haggard and unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night-creatures that had no business abroad under the sun; while the sun itself when it was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... forget the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night Andy had the scarlet-fever—an anxiety which so infected me that I actually returned to the tavern the following afternoon earlier than usual, dreading to hear that the little spectre was dead, and greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey at the door-step with his face wreathed in smiles. When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet-fever that had occurred ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... aware that the full moon had risen at the very place on the distant mountain-brow where the spectre rested, and as I continued to gaze, as if entranced, the face and figure of the doctor seemed slowly to frame themselves within the lunar disk, until at last he appeared to have quitted the air and the earth and to be frowning at me from ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... sister, but a spectre, it will be recalled, who had come to meet him. Since her son's arrival, Madame de Montrevel had not lost sight of Amelie, and she perceived, with dolorous amazement, that Roland's presence awakened a feeling akin to terror ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Ceylon elephant-hunter would be the first view of a herd of African elephants—all tuskers! In Ceylon, a "tusker" is a kind of spectre, to be talked of by a few who have had the good luck to see one. And when he is seen by a good sportsman, it is an evil hour for him—he is followed till he gives ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Pale as a spectre, the pilgrim, whose pilgrimage seemed now on the point of completion, stood cold and trembling before the object of all his desires and all his labours. But he thought of his country, his people, and his God; and, while his noiseless ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... absence of your children gives you so much pain, judge what I must suffer. The affection you show them makes me feel most acutely my unhappiness in having none." These words sounded in Josephine's ears like a funeral knell. She saw the spectre of divorce rising before her, and turned pale. From Genoa they went to Turin. Napoleon heard there of the coalition preparing against him, and left suddenly for France with Josephine. Non-commissioned officers of the Grenadiers and the Chasseurs ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... are always more or less superstitious. Stories of spectre ships and mysterious beacons, that lure vessels out of their course and wreck them on unknown reefs, were among the stock legends of Rivermouth; and not a few people in the town were ready to attribute the firing of those ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the German castles, where we sit up alone to wait for the Spectre—where we are shown into a room, made comparatively cheerful for our reception—where we glance round at the shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the crackling fire—where we feel very lonely when the village innkeeper and his pretty ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... the foot of his bed, with her long hair falling, like a split cone of shadow, in the glimmer of a night-light that burned beside him. You have to imagine her, a silent, a no doubt agonized figure, like a spectre, suddenly offering herself to him—to save his reason! And you have to imagine his frantic refusal—and talk. And talk! ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford |
