"Spellbound" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as though spellbound. Suddenly he thought that he heard some one climbing the stairs. He gave a cry, and that was answered by a movement so close to him that it was ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... was quickly evident that his reading would be most remarkable, and in the end it amounted to an astounding revelation. That which seemed dry and involved became under his fingers instinct with beauty and feeling; the musicians and amateurs present listened as if spellbound, and opinion was unanimous that the performance was nothing short of an artistic creation. For the sake of the composer, if not for his own reputation, the pianist should repeat it, not once, but many times." Notwithstanding this decided judgment of a weighty authority—for such everyone will, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... track with the constancy of Doom. Or I was standing a witness to their first meeting in the grim Dark on that lonely road, their eyes of hate and fear staring wildly into each other. Sometimes I found myself spellbound between the two, the centre upon which their fearful sympathies revolved, the object upon which their long pent-up passions were about to burst. Starting from those visions, my waking fancies were hardly less tormenting. I was just at that season of youth, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... first startled cry, stood spellbound by the two glowing eyes that shone from the far end of ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... the herd was grazing on the rich herbage of the mountain pasture, their backs to the brilliant light as was their wont. But of these details Donald was not conscious. What held him spellbound was the miracle that had happened in his absence. Now he knew the surprise that Sandy had for him! Beside every ewe in the flock ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... And moving forward a couple of steps we were able to see into the next room. I looked round in vain for mademoiselle, and then my glance was arrested by a tall, fair-haired girl who was before a harp; and even I, who should have had no eyes but for one face, stood as if spellbound. As her fingers ran over the harp strings a low, wailing melody filled the room, and then with a voice of strange sweetness she sang a sad little song—a bergerelle of my own country. Harp and voice together died away ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... you!" exclaimed Martha indignantly, addressing the spellbound line, staring at her blankly. "Shame on you! To stand there gawkin', an' never raisin' a finger to this poor little fella, an' him just perishin' for the touch of a real mother's hand. Get out of this—the whole crowd o' you," and before the force ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... saw you," continued the count, standing as if spellbound before her, "you were only a child. Now," and his kindling eyes riveted themselves upon her, "you are a woman. Like the magic rose that was the guerdon of the Troubadours, you have passed in an hour from leaf to bud, from bud to fairest flower. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... through the jungle, here and there narrowing to little more than a track over which great forest-trees stretched their boughs. It was all new country to Olga, and the quiet, sunless depths as they advanced, held her awe-struck, spellbound. She gazed into the thick undergrowth with half-fearful curiosity. Once, at a sudden loud flapping of wings, she ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... murmurous tones and the rumble of Dyckman's answer. Then Gilfoyle strode forward. He saw Kedzie coiled on the floor with her elbows on Dyckman's knees. He caught her eye, and her start of bewilderment held him spellbound ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... spellbound, not breathing. Hill stood near her, also closely watching, with brows slightly drawn. Suddenly something impelled her to look beyond the man at the table, and in the shadow on the farther side of the room she again saw Harley's face, grey, withered-looking, ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... together before the fire and be sociable. I was a novice, and used to listen with open eyes and ears to the strange and wild stories told by the old hunters, and believed everything I heard. Some of their stories bordered upon the supernatural. They believed that their rifles might be spellbound, so as not to be able to kill a buffalo, even at arms-length. This superstition they had derived from the Indians, who often think the white hunters have laid a spell upon their rifles. Miller partook of this superstition, and used to tell of his rifle's ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... spirits. The last time I came home the Mediterranean way I had a struggle with myself against excusing our sandy landscape, when we came in sight of it, with its summer cottages for the sole altitudes, to some Italian fellow-passengers who were not spellbound by its grandeur. I had to remember the Rocky Mountains, which I had never seen, and all the moral magnificence of our life before I could withhold the words of apology pressing to my lips. I was glad that I succeeded; but now, going back ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... was more amorous of corruption; not Poe was more spellbound by the scent of graveyard earth. So Beddoes has written a new Dance of Death, in poetry; has become the chronicler of the praise and ridicule of Death. 'Tired of being merely human,' he has peopled a ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... exhibition, when you could smell the sawdust and hear the seconds shouting advice under the ropes, that Claire, who, never having seen anything in her life like this extraordinary performance, had been staring spellbound, awoke to the realization that Dudley Pickering was proposing to her. It required a woman's intuition to divine this fact, for Mr Pickering was not coherent. He did not go straight to the point. He rambled. But ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... with the pole, far away in the woods across the river a cavalry band began to play. Faint and clear the strains of the Star-Spangled Banner rose from among the trees and floated over the water; the boy stood spellbound, mouth open; then, as the far music died away, he sank back into ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... to cross the threshold, but could not. I was spellbound, or there was an invisible barrier erected against me, which I could not overleap. The buzzing in my ears, the pain and throbbing in my head, and racking aches, once more bent me to the earth, ill and reduced as I was, a relapse, thought I; and I felt my judgment once more giving way ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and for the instant he stood spellbound. It was as if the light of day had suddenly given way to the darkness of night. Both of his young friends were gone, carried to the bottom by that huge rock which had seemed such a safe point for ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... another boy, of precisely his own age and size, who planted a magic bean in his mother's dooryard, which grew up and up until it reached clear to the sky, where a giant lived. Juanito Garcia had never heard the like. He was spellbound with delight; he held his breath in ecstasy; only his toes moved, and they wriggled ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... and Mamma with the two girls settled down to needlework. Mamma's kindly interest invited confidence under these pleasant circumstances, and it was not long before the young man was pouring his story into her sympathetic ears. Prudence listened spellbound. It was not often that one had romance brought to one's very door—by a hero with a sprained ankle too! Such a romantic affliction! But Mollie was too much preoccupied by that haunting likeness to listen properly to what the hero was saying, ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... began a struggle for the mastery of the stairs that held Wilson spellbound. Each advance marked a victory worthy of a battlefield. But at each step he was forced to pause and rally all his forces before he went on to the next. First he would twine his long fingers about the rail reaching up as far as he was able; then he would lift one limp leg and swing it ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... into familiar terms. He had almost despaired of making her comprehend until he recalled how his Master had taught in parables. So he retold the incidents of His life in stories which held the Indian maiden spellbound. He showed her pictures in heavy leathern-bound volumes, and tried with less success to explain the meaning of the daily religious services ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... the swarms of fluttering pigeons. The air and the woods were literally blue with them, and the ground seemed a yard deep with them. I pointed my gun across the wall at the surging masses, and then sat there spellbound. The sound of their wings and voices filled my ears, and their numbers more than filled my eyes. Why I did not shoot was never very clear to me. Maybe I thought the world was all turning to pigeons, as they still ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... more true than in preaching. It is such a glorious thing to be able to gather great congregations; but even this may be done and the messenger fail. It is such a delightful thing to a preacher to watch a multitude waiting spellbound beneath his eloquence in rapt attention, or swept by waves of emotion; but that multitude may disperse, the great end of preaching still unwrought and the whole attempt a splendid failure. It is possible to attract ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... your beam, Randolph?" Samm's voice cut sharply through the daze of stupefaction which held spellbound most of the denizens of the Hill. But all were not so held—no conceivable emergency could take the attention of the chief ultra-wave ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... for him; for her blue eyes never faltered till they fixed his gaze, and then, kiss after kiss she threw to him with the daintily gloved little hand, and, leaning far down over the rail, lowering it toward him as much as possible, she finally tossed to him, standing there stern and spellbound, a bunch of beautiful roses she had torn from her corsage. It fell almost at his feet, for in his astonishment and rising wrath he made no effort to catch it. A man, stooping quickly, rescued and handed it to him. Mechanically he said "Thank you," and took it, a thorn pricking deep into the flesh ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... carry conviction to the hearer, and yet should convey to him no suspicion of the pride which Hewson felt in the incident as a sort of tribute to himself. He dramatized the scene at breakfast when he should describe it in plain, matter-of-fact terms, and hold every one spellbound, as he or she leaned forward over the table to listen, while he related the fact with studied unconcern for his own part in it, but with a serious regard for the integrity of the fact itself, which he had no wish to exaggerate as to its ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... light that seemed to fly out from it, we could not see it. The spectacle thrilled us. A million sparks of light seemed to rise from the bed of feldspar over which the water leaped, and the peculiar quality of the rock gave to it the weird brilliancy which held us spellbound as we advanced with extreme caution. It wasn't white by any means, but in those inky depths it would not require a great effort of the imagination to call it white. The faint luminous flashes were the only particles of light that we had seen since Leith had thrown ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... stood quite alone on the platform. Their first appearance had held Miss Hetty spellbound at her position near the door. She felt rather than heard a suppressed chuckle run through the small crowd. Then suddenly her gaze met a pair of compelling brown eyes, not cold and scrutinizing as they had been when their owner had passed her ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... was little that I had not guessed already; but each detail held its magic, because it was she who spoke. If she had said "I like oranges and lemons," the statement would have held me spellbound. I sat raptly gazing while she told me of herself and her sister Enid; of their life, after the death of their parents, with an aunt whose home was in Pittsburgh, of their travels; and of a winter at Nice, four years ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... a moment, spellbound by her emotion; then, making a sudden effort, she looked up. "I—I was afraid." Her voice was so low and shaken that the words ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Subaltern hauntingly of the grey walls of the kitchen. Fortunately, the eyes were closed, but the horror of the thing—the shattered skull, the protruding, blood-smeared brains, bit into the Subaltern's soul. He gazed at it for a moment, spellbound, and then turned in towards the kitchen, feeling broken ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... Then spellbound stood the lad and gazed around, Amazed at all the glory of the hall, And all the solemn splendor of the scene, Till Gurnemanz stooped down and whispered low: "Now give good heed, and if thy heart be pure, And thou art called, then ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... of the corner-stone of the capitol, the Denver papers spoke of the masterly oration of former Governor Balderson of Kansas, whose marvellous word-painting of the Battle of Look Out Mountain held the vast audience spellbound for an hour. A few months later a cloudburst carried away the Big Burro dam, and times went bad, and the stockholders in Balderson's company, who would have rebuilt the dam, could not find Balderson when they needed him, and certain creditors of ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... services useful—shouted out a cry that had almost been forgotten, and which made every heart on board leap with mingled feelings of overpowering joy, consternation, surprise, dismay! Every pulse stopped for a second spellbound! The cry ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... that moment was greater fur than all the agonies which Hilda had ever known. Her heart stopped beating; all life seemed to ebb away from the terror of that presence. Wildly there arose a thought of flight; but she was spellbound, her limbs were paralyzed, and the dark, luminous eyes of the horror enchained her own gaze. Suddenly she made a convulsive effort, mechanically, and sprung to her feet, her hands clutching one another in a kind of spasm, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Bright sat at the head of the school room through the day, laughing merrily now over the mistakes of some awkward boy, now singing kindergarten songs with a class of wee tots, and then, after the smaller ones were dismissed, holding Jane and Job spellbound as they stood by her desk and heard her talk of her college days and 'Frisco, lovely 'Frisco, and the glories of entomology, and the delights of philosophy—names which Job knew must mean something grand. He began to wish that Jane looked like her and talked like her and had lived in 'Frisco. ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... water seems spellbound with expectation, as it beats softly against the raft. A great sadness, and a timid questioning is heard in that faint sound—the only voice of the night—accentuating still more the silence. "We want a little ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... night, a gentle April shower fell; and as the thoughts were carried by it, spellbound, from the chamber where she was born, to her newly-made grave,—that night being the first of her sleeping there,—it seemed very plain that, though Death had been conquered, the Grave still kept possession of the field.—Christ "will be thy destruction," O Grave, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... short staccato phrases, each phrase repeated several times, perhaps twice, possibly five or six times. If he has a list of twenty or thirty,—and I think he has more,—he can make almost unlimited changes and variety, and can sing for two hours or longer, holding his listener spellbound and almost without consciousness ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... with drunken triumph, to Madame Fontaine. "Look at Jacky, ma'am. There's a dancer for you! There's good company for a dull winter night!" She neither looked nor moved—she sat crouched on the chair, spellbound with terror. Jack threw up his arms, turned giddily once or twice, and sank exhausted on the floor. "The cold of him creeps up my hands," he said, still possessed by the vision of the watchman. "He cools my eyes, he calms my heart, he stuns my head. I'm dying, dying, dying—going back ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... Elliot was not thinking about Meteetse. His mind's eye saw another picture—the girl at Kusiak, listening spellbound to the tales of a man whose actions translated romance into life for her, a girl swept from the quiet backwaters of an Irish village to this land of the midnight sun with its ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... should be the last occasion on which such a penalty should be mine. But, alas! the very next day the confectioner had a wonderful negro figure in his window made all of sweets, his face of liquorice and his shirt of sugar, his lips of candy and his eyes of brandy-balls. I was spellbound, and could not tear myself away. And when I did, to add to my misfortunes, there was a crowd outside the omnibus stables to watch the harnessing of a new and very frisky horse. Of course I had to witness this spectacle, and the consequence was I got to school ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... she glanced up at him and saw the expression on his face she crimsoned with confusion and hastily lowered her eyes without replying to his last remark. He did not speak again either, and they remained for several minutes in silence, as if spellbound, Ruth oppressed with instinctive dread, and Slyme scarcely less agitated, his face flushed and his heart beating wildly. He trembled as he stood ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Acadia, her face brightened, her eyes beamed with a strange brilliancy, and she kept us spellbound, so eloquent and yet so sad were her words, and then tears trickled down her aged cheeks and her voice trembled with emotion. Under our father's roof she lacked none of the comforts of life. We knew that her children vied with each other to ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... it offered the only possible explanation of the scene. No officer would have dared to order troops to such certain destruction as apparently awaited them on the fire-crowned slopes of Missionary Ridge. Spellbound Grant followed the men as they crept further and further up the height, expecting every instant to see them hurled back as Pickett's heroes were at Gettysburg, when suddenly wave upon wave of blue broke over the crest, the Union flags fluttered ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... parts of the Town Hall, and the curious sight of the sea of faces when Mr. Bright appeared lingers in my memory still. One curious thing I observed at this gathering was that so long as our member was speaking the vast assembly was held spellbound. But when he paused for a moment to turn over his notes or take a sip of water, the tightly squeezed audience swayed for a little bodily relief and expansion, and this resulted in big surging waves of humanity, which rolled from one end ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... looks and gestures the old man had told his story, his listeners sitting as if spellbound, motionless except for a whispered word of explanation here and there from Marjory. Both gave sighs of regret as his last words died away, ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... how the blossoms fade In the sun's caress; then crosses where The shadow shelters a carven chair. Within its curve, supine she lies, And wearily closes her tired eyes. The minstrel beseeches his silver strings, And holding the lady spellbound, sings: — Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... have dared to obtrude into the negotiations which seemed at hand. She gazed wistfully at a half dozen girls in fresh, colorful, summer array as only a little red-headed orphan girl in a gingham dress can do. She gazed at the big, palatial touring car with eyes spellbound. It was thus that the Indians first gazed upon ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... lying—apparently almost dying—a young woman. Beside the bed, kneeling with upraised head and clasped hands, was a strangely familiar form. Then came forth a sweet voice, pleading to the throne of Mercy for the sufferer. He gazed spellbound for a moment. Then slowly and softly he retraced his steps to the door. Then he almost flew along the streets until he reached Mr. Fairleigh's, just as his father and Miss Bland were ascending the steps. Seizing the former very unceremoniously, ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... both emotional and imaginative, and they were spellbound till the notes of the National Anthem roused them. Then, with the commonplaces of departure, they left the place. "It's so near," said Julie in the crowd outside; ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... melancholy night rejoice, and brought a glow into its dark face as it hovered about the door and windows, peeping curiously in above the shoulders of a dozen loungers. As to this idle company, there they stood, spellbound by the place, and, casting now and then a glance upon the darkness in their rear, settled their lazy elbows more at ease upon the sill, and leaned a little further in: no more disposed to tear themselves away than if ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... voice had held us spellbound, and the poem was well received; but after the usual compliments there was a pause, and then Ideala burst out impetuously: "I am sick of those old Italian lovers," she said; "they float into everything. Their story is the ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... The boys gazed spellbound at the awe-inspiring spectacle, and for a time none of them uttered a word. Lester was the first ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... blue cotton gown, and her blond hair was flying in the breeze created by her rapid descent. I wish I could affirm that by her gentle dignity and serene self-control she awed the company into silence, or that there was a holy dignity about her that held them spellbound; but such, unhappily, is not the case. It was her pet blue pitcher that had been broken—the pitcher that was to serve as just the right bit of colour at the evening's feast. She took command of the situation ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... would have gone unnoticed by both, as it had happened many times before, but in that heavily-charged atmosphere it took on a new significance. Both blushed hotly, and as their eyes met each saw that which held them spellbound. Slowly, almost as if without volition, Crane put his other arm around her. A wave of deeper crimson swept over her face and she bent her handsome head as her slender body yielded to his arms with no effort to free itself. Finally ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... the electric light flooded the chamber, and I saw Black sitting at his writing-table, observing me, a jeer upon his lips, and all the terrible malice of his nature written in his keen and mocking eyes. I stood transfixed by that searching gaze, held spellbound by the fascination of the obvious danger, my hand still upon one of the rifles, yet trembling with the agitation of discovery. Words rose to my lips—excuses, pleadings; but they died away in my throat, ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... in breathless silence, spellbound, by the low clear voice. In burning words Webster called to their love of country. He touched their hearts, he awoke their pride, he appealed to ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... its breath in an unbroken round of forgiveness! But the truth is, we must fight until we die; and when we die there can be no quiet for mankind but complete resumption into - what? - God, let us say - when all these desperate tricks will lie spellbound at last. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... held me spellbound. There is a wistful strained, plangent pathos in the tune; but beneath those masterly old hands it cried softly and bitterly the solitude and desperate estrangement of the world. Arthur and his lady-love ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... that month of winter Circles round, And the evening of the date-day Grows embrowned, I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound. ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... young Frenchman, who was criticising its architecture with fluent dogmatism, drew Bourgonef into the discussion, and thereby elicited such a display of accurate and extensive knowledge, no less than delicacy of appreciation, that we were all listening spellbound. In the midst of this triumphant exposition the irritated vanity of the Frenchman could do nothing to regain his position but oppose a flat denial to a historical statement made by Bourgonef, backing his denial by the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... But it may not be, for these children hold more dear the company of strangers, who think and care for them, than that of their kinsfolk, who have no care of them. Then the parents lament and weep and say that these same women have bewitched their children and that they are spellbound and cannot leave, but are never easy save when they are with their enchantresses. But whatever may be said of it, it is no witchcraft, but it by reason of the love, the care, the intimacies, joys and pleasures, which these women do in all ways unto ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... hurt, as an author would who had looked up from reading the finest passage in his epic only to perceive that his auditor was asleep and not spellbound. Jawkins believed in the "idee" Jawkins as Napoleon did ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... thirty or more of his friends beside, his house-pillars and all the stock he had left beside. He was burning to be off, the old adventurer that he was, but Gudrid was not of his way of feeling about it. The Icelanders were a race of stoics. What was to be held them spellbound. Far from hindering adventure, it promoted it; for you never knew but what Fate intended you to succeed. But Gudrid had seen how she might have been happy, and could not understand how otherwise she could be. The last ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... fairly late, for there was a peculiar fascination about the crackling campfire that held them spellbound. They clasped their hands about their knees, and stared into the glowing heart of the fire, as though capable of seeing all manner of fantastic figures dancing there like madcap sprites. It was the old, old ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... dignity and a charm of lucid phrasing that adapts itself admirably to the essay form he has chosen. The subjects he takes up are beloved figures of the past. Robert Burns, as Lord Rosebery talks of him, walks about in Dumfries and holds spellbound by sheer personal charm the guests of the tavern. There are papers on Burke, on Dr. Johnson, on Robert Louis Stevenson, and others as great. One group deals with Scottish History and one with the service of the state. The last is a study of the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... responses followed, with so little talking between them they were held spellbound, seldom thinking to rise or kneel. Lin's eyes roved over the church, dwelling upon the pillars in their evergreen, the flowers and leafy wreaths, the texts of white and gold. "'Peace, good-will towards men,'" he read. "That's so. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... poet with the brow of Jove and Minerva's lips; the rugged warrior at his side, with the dignity of Mars himself; perhaps some Croesus with his gold, drawn by the spell of Wisdom's enchantment into the magic circle; and this your humble disciple of Thucydides, sitting spellbound under the drippings of the sacred font, getting the material for these pages. That was the Golden Age; there were ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... tell you!" he thundered, and that stentorian voice which always used to dominate every assembly in which he mingled, held them spellbound! ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... could not speak or yell. All was intense excitement on that boat. I jumped up on the stern, holding the bait Captain Dan had put on my hook. Then I paused to look. We all looked, spellbound. That was a sight of a lifetime. There he swam, the monster, a few feet under the surface, only a rod back of the boat. I had no calm judgment with which to measure his dimensions. I only saw that he was tremendous and beautiful. His great, yard-wide fins gleamed royal purple. And ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... come running at their call, but their forms, too, were lost in the shadows of the towering pines. The light from an open door struck across an open space beyond which McGuire and Professor Sykes stood alone, stood silent and spellbound, their heads craned back at a neck-wrenching angle. They were oblivious to all discomforts; their eyes and their whole minds were on the unbelievable thing in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... ecclesiastical monuments of the city. St. Maclou, which dates from the early fifteenth century, though not of the grand proportions of either of the other great churches, being rather of the type of the large parish church as it is known in England, holds one spellbound by the very daring of its ornaments and tracery, but contains no trace of non-Gothic. The French passion for the curved line is nowhere more manifest than here (and in the west front of Notre Dame), where flowing tracery of window, doorway, portal, and, in general, all exterior ornament, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... his borrowed raincoat, buttoned it to his chin, and turned down the brim of his felt hat; but when he looked up at the girl again, he found she hadn't moved; rather, she remained as one spellbound, staring less at than ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... on a snake, which bit her, so that she died, and went down into the world of ghosts. Orpheus loved her so much that he followed her into that gloomy place, taking his lyre with him. He played such entrancing music that all the ghosts were spellbound. Even Persephone, the stern Queen of the Dead, was so touched that she gave him leave to take Eurydice back with him to the land of the living. But she warned him that he must not look back till they were both safely out in ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick
... trial in the wilderness of third-rate contemporary fiction, Voltaire stirs her intellect. And he leads her, too, spellbound by that incomparable verve and intellectual agility of his; she surrenders herself to the illusion of his brilliant assurances, dancing like some triumphant will-o'-the-wisp over the obscure deeps and perplexities of things. In a hundred ways, evil and good, she will remain the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... philanthropist; Mrs. Maud Nathan, president of the New York Consumers' League; Mrs. Rodgers and Mrs. Gabrielle Mulliner, lawyers—all urged the legislators to submit the question to the voters. Dr. Shaw held the audience spellbound until 6 o'clock. John Spargo, the well known socialist, spoke independently with much power, demanding the vote especially for working women. The use of the Assembly Chamber was granted for an evening suffrage meeting which attracted a large audience. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the gray eyes took her literally, since his nation are not slow at seizing opportunity. He launched without a word more of preliminary into a lecture on Germany that lasted hours and held his audience spellbound. It was colorful, complete, and it did not seem to have been ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... hand or thy foot offend thee," &c., and spoke as you know he did sometimes speak, and evidently was entirely carried out of himself, using the Nengonese with a freedom which showed him to be thinking in it as he went on, and with a face only to be described as "the face of an angel." We all sat spellbound. John Cho, Simeona, and the other walked quietly away, without saying a word, and in a day or two afterwards I learnt from John that he had lain awake that night thinking over the matter, that fear had come upon him, lest he might be tempted ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eastern point—juts out into the sea, are hills and rolling downs which rise and fall like the sea when the waves are running "mountains high." Here and there we pass a pond, and often startle the cattle that graze over the greater part of Montauk; and at length pause, spellbound by the view from the hills looking down upon Fort Pond, or Kongonock. The road runs past its southern extremity, where, until the embankment was built, the ocean-surf frequently broke across; and after passing this plain, called ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... threads enchanted, Which to rend no power avails, That dear wanton maiden holds me Thus relentless in her spells. Thus within her charmed round Must I live as one spellbound; Heart! what mighty change in thee; Love, O love, ah, ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... Reginald Carey had been for many voyages on many seas, but the fascination of a storm in the bay attracted him irresistibly still. He had no sympathy with the uneasy crowd in the saloons. He even exulted in the wild tumult of wind and sea and blinding rain. He was as one spellbound in the ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... He was spellbound with utter awe at the spectacle he beheld. This brilliant world a-gleam to its farthest horizon with golden, glorious sunlight, softly spread and diffused! This, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... deposition had held his hearers spellbound for over an hour and a half. He had believed, he added finally, that, in spite of her criminal conduct, Helene at least was a faithful servant. He had been wrong. She had put his cellar to pillage, and in her chest they had found many things belonging to him, besides a diamond belonging ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... That did not astonish the young man. All avenues, in the ordinary sense, are works of art; and the mere excess of art he saw manifested did not surprise him; it was the character of the art that had brought him to a standstill and held him spellbound. And the longer he looked the more he became convinced, that whoever had superintended the arrangement of this scenery was an artist—an artist with ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... to write when very young, at school taking always the prize in composition. As a mere child she could always keep other children spellbound whilst telling them fairy stories of her own invention. 'I remember', she says, turning round with a laugh, 'when I was about ten years old, writing a ghost story which so frightened myself, that when I went to bed that night, I couldn't ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... Drummond, tingling all over with wrath and excitement, stands spellbound for the moment, a light step comes to his side, a little hand is laid on the bandaged arm, and Ruth Harvey's pretty face, two big tears trickling down her cheeks, is looking ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... head dismally and pointed ashore, and Mr. Chalk, following the direction of his finger, gazed spellbound at a figure which was signalling wildly from the highest point. Tredgold and Stobell, approaching the side, waved ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... opportunities to embody them, it seemed to be no longer the same high and mysterious faculty that so ruled the tides of the feelings of others. He then appeared a more ordinary poet—— a skilful verse-maker. The necromancy which held the reader spellbound became ineffectual; and the charm and the glory which interested so intensely, and shone so radiantly on his configurations from realities, all failed and faded; for his genius dealt not with airy fancies, but had its power and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... confused, she had not fully comprehended his purpose until he uttered the closing sentence, and painful astonishment kept her silent, while as if spellbound her ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... of the shops and restaurants, the picturesque kiosks where they sold newspapers and flowers—all this made up a picture so utterly unlike anything he was familiar with at home that Jefferson sat spellbound, delighted. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... spellbound by the animation of his face, the seeming reality of his plea. He was not a singer; ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... listened spellbound to this extraordinary story. My friend rose now and paced up and down the room, his hands in his pockets, and an expression of the most ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... girls stood spellbound by the natural beauty of the scene. As they walked they had become more and more conscious of the roaring noise made by rushing water, and now, ascending a small rise of ground, they came full upon the majestic beauty ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... bizarre fate led him? Where was "Wartrace Hall," and who was "Mahsteh Majah"? Who was the winsome little lady who looked as if she might be twenty, and had all the wit and wisdom of the ages at her tongue's end—who had held him so nearly spellbound over the teacups that he had entirely lost sight of everything but his ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... shadow fell upon him, and turning around he found himself face to face with Mary Barner who stood spellbound, listening to her lately installed ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... the life of the people, street tragedies, drinking bouts, and country junketings; broad humor and Nature's philosophy; lively fancies and exquisite landscape painting—such are the themes of his song, which from one generation to another has held the heart of the people spellbound. Every man, woman, and child knows his favorite ditties by heart, has sung or hummed them in moments of joy or sorrow. For his song is both joyful and sad. His joy is the joy of the simple hearted, his gladness ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... the telepathic, almost hypnotic power of the Norlaminian mentality, raised her to heights of power she had never before attained. Playing as one inspired, she went through one tremendous solo after another—holding her listeners spellbound, urged on by their intense feeling to carry them further and ever further into the realm of pure emotional harmony. The bell which ordinarily signaled the end of the period of relaxation did not sound; for the first time in thousands of years the planet of Norlamin deserted its rigid ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... faint resistance was overcome, and again the room hushed itself, every hearer spellbound. It was a voice well worthy of cultivation, excellent in compass, with rare sweet power. Again the rapturous applause, and again the demand for more. Another! she should not refuse them. Only one more and they ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... my sleeve. It was Hibbard's. Startled by my immobility and silence, he had stepped in with quaking members, expecting he hardly knew what. But no sooner did his eyes fall on the prostrate form which held me spellbound, than an unforeseen change took place in him. What had unnerved me, restored him to full self-possession. Death in this shape was familiar to him. He had no fear of blood. He did not show surprise at encountering it, but only at the effect it ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the house was full of melody. Clear, sweet, and powerful, her notes penetrated to the kitchen, where the maids were busy, and they stopped in spellbound wonder, with dish or utensil in hand. Mrs. Muir listened with her hair-brush suspended, while methodical Mr. Muir laid down his razor, and, going to the door, set it ajar. The song poured into the room like an harmonic flood. Before the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... and she seemed to grow to mature years in the instant. Allen started to leave, but was held spellbound by the force exercised by the quiet, firm dignity which became ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... run. In legal phrase he stopped, looked and listened, experiencing a curious feeling of expansion. This enchanting creature transmuted the dingy office lined with its rows of calfskin bindings into a golden grot in which he stood spellbound by the low murmur of her voice. A sense of infinite leisure emanated from her—a subtle denial of the ordinary responsibilities—very relaxing and delightful to Tutt. But what twitched his very heartstrings was the dimple that came and went ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... him with black-dilated, spellbound eyes. But he sat glistening and obstinate, forcing the wheeling mare, which spun and swerved like a wind, and yet could not get out of the grasp of his will, nor escape from the mad clamour of terror that resounded through her, as the trucks thumped slowly, heavily, horrifying, one after the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the ragged girl still spellbound without; the little, humpbacked mistress of the house peering through the blinds, an unusual feeling of pity restraining her from going to the door and putting to flight the strange, shy girl who seemed ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... on the threshold spellbound. It was just the smell that bound me, the good old smell of oil paints and turpentine and mediums and varnish and new canvas that you never by any chance put your nose into in any part of Asia. It carried me back twenty years ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the notes given out by an ancient violin, began to read a chapter from his old Book which began with the exhortation, "Let brotherly love continue," and laid down a course of moral conduct that seemed so impossible that I sat spellbound to the last words, "Grace be ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the rebellion in Ireland. Commissioners met and argued and sat on ineffectually till the Armada came and the discussion ended, and the talk of restitution was over. Meanwhile, opinion varied about Drake's own doings as it has varied since. Elizabeth listened spellbound to his adventures, sent for him to London again, and walked with him publicly about the parks and gardens. She gave him a second ten thousand pounds. The Pelican was sent round to Deptford; a royal banquet was held on board, Elizabeth attended ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... were times when he longed to throw down the table and flee into the night. And even that was debarred him; to do anything, to say anything, to move at all, were only to precipitate the barbarous tragedy; and he sat spellbound, eating with white lips. Two of his companions observed him narrowly, Attwater with raking, sidelong glances that did not interrupt his talk, the captain with ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Tonto is a land of milk an' honey," said his father, as Jean gazed spellbound at ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the trio remained sitting as if spellbound, quite unobservant of the crowd, slowly dispersing ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... exact truth. At that moment, Haensel got clear of the rope which had been about his neck and ran to Gretel, but the old witch pointed at them a stick which had been hanging at her girdle, and instantly they found themselves spellbound. She repeated this blood-curdling rhyme, and ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... to do. I'll go an' try. [She goes to the door of the bedroom, stands still as if spellbound and listens.] Wilhelm! You might answer.—[Louder and more frightened.] Wilhelm! You're not to frighten me this way! Maybe you think I don't know that you're still awake!!—[In growing terror.]—Wilhelm, I tell you!... [BERTHEL ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... girl could not know this. Her pride in sharing in so intimate a way a matter which she believed to—and for that matter, really did—affect the policy of a great empire, held her spellbound. There was the feminine delight, too, in being on the inner ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... transparent amber of a mountain stream. In literature his range was extremely wide. Nothing worth reading seemed to have escaped him, and he loved poetry as much as Butler loved oratory. When he preached in Chapel his gorgeous rhetoric, as yet not overwrought or over-coloured, held us spellbound; and though, or perhaps because, he was inclined to spoil the boys who responded to his appeals, and to rate them higher than they deserved, we loved and admired him as, I should think, few schoolmasters have been loved ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the event which I had planned, I was not prepared for such phenomenal success, and I stole nearer the temple spellbound by ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... war," the war "to make the world safe for democracy" came to a formal ending, and for a few hours the world gazed spellbound on golden hopes. Greater than the disillusionment of war was that of the making of the peace. There had never been a war, not even the "Thirty Years' War" in Germany, the "Hundred Years' War" in ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... attracted me mysteriously. I could not separate her from it, nor keep my love of her from the contentions into which it threw me. In vain I raved, 'What is rank?' There was a magnet in it that could at least set me quivering and twisting, behaving like a man spellbound, as madly as any hero of the ballads under ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... loved and lost. We conducted the sculptor to the chamber of death, that he might superintend the casts from the body. No sooner did his eyes fall upon it, than they glowed with admiration and filled with tears. He waved the assistants aside, clasped his hands, and gazed spellbound upon the dead child. Its brow was ideal in contour, the hair of wavy gold, the cheeks of angelic outline. "How beautiful!" exclaimed Bartolini; and drawing us to the bedside, with a mingled awe and intelligence, he pointed out how the rigidity of death coincided, in this fair young ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... around their native musicians. When we were there, one old duffer—the Wagner, doubtless, of the place—was having an immense success. No matter at what hour of the day we passed through that square, there was always the same spellbound circle of half-clad Turks and Arabs squatting silent while “Wagner” tinkled to them on a three-stringed lute and chanted in a high-pitched, dismal whine—like the squeaking of an unfastened door in the wind. At times, for no apparent reason, the never-varying, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... in his mind in the mystic stillness of midnight would an imaginative man be likely to deny the reality of the spirit world? The chances are that he would be spellbound; or, if he had breath enough, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... separated me for the moment from my wife and the man to whom she was related by the ties of race and of class. Again I was aware of that sense of strangeness, of remoteness, which I had felt on the night of our home-coming when I had stood, spellbound, before Bonny Page's exquisite grooming and the shining gloss on her hair and boots. Something—a trifle, perhaps, had passed between Sally and George—and the reason I did not understand it was because ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... followed rapidly. "Murder! thieves! help!" Shriek after shriek, and at last a female form, wildly flinging her arms into the air, could be seen emerging from the half buried chair. Glenville and Barton had run away before the chair fell, but, hearing the fall, looked back, and were at first spellbound with terror at what had happened. When, however, they saw the Drag emerge, they fairly fled for their lives by a circuitous way little frequented by night, and reached home just before the rest of us arrived. There was some alarm when Miss Candlish did not arrive for about twenty minutes or half ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... rooms where whole families took their rest,—he could make his morning toilet without offense to his hosts, while a soapy plunge in some mountain stream became a luxury he would not readily forego. And always, whatever the hardship, there was the compensation of barefooted boys and girls held spellbound, and often fathers and mothers as well, while he unfolded the wonders of a world which lay beyond the mountain's rim, and always he had the advantage of being able to assure them that he, too, was ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... driven by them to believe. That this is so can be seen rationally in this way: undeniably miracles induce belief and powerfully persuade a person that what the miracle-doer says and teaches is true, and at first this engages man's external of thought, virtually holding it spellbound. But one is deprived by this of the two faculties called rationality and liberty, thus cannot act in freedom according to reason, nor can the Lord then inflow into the external of man's thought through the internal save only to leave man to confirm from his rationality what ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... before. And Crummell's dignity and bearing in the pulpit, his polish and refinement, his lucid exposition of the text, his sublimity of thought, beauty of diction, and fire and force of utterance for nearly an hour held that cultured audience spellbound. Crummell made history for the race on that Sunday morning in 1848. And I suppose that Crummell's eulogy on Clarkson, delivered in New York City in 1846, in its grandeur of thought, sublimity of sentiment and splendor of style, surpasses ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... Margaret stood spellbound at the beauty, the devotion, "the great calm," She got behind a pillar in the north aisle; and there, though she could hardly catch a word, a sweet devotional langour crept over her at the loveliness of the place and the preacher's musical ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade |
