"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wonder of the vision that he had to be awakened as from a trance when Miss Jarrott, very young and graceful, crossed the lawn and held out ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Talana Hill victory soon became apparent. The threat of Erasmus sitting on Impati still impended, and Yule moved his camp next day to a site which he believed to be out of range. But in the meantime Erasmus awoke from his trance and, on the afternoon of October 21, opened fire with a six-inch gun,[18] and again Yule was compelled to shift his camp. He had already asked for reinforcements, but White was unable to spare them, and recommended him to ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... satchels with my note-books, specimens of dried plants, insects, fragments of minerals, etc., and, hanging these satchels on my arms, called on Copernicus to fulfil his promise. Instantly all things disappeared again from my view; I was floating with my satchels in mid-ether, and fell into a trance. When I awaked, I was in my father's house in New York. How long the passage required, I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the water tank. He purposely left the farmer dazzled with his proposition to think over it. The latter sat in a sort of trance of avarice, staring at ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... trance, I staggered to it, and after a moment's aimless fumbling, was out in the hall again. I reached the stairhead in time to see Godfrey try the front door, and then turn along the lower hall leading to the back of the house. An instant later, a chorus of ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... wet day, go through their Amulet Arch into the golden desert, and there find the great Temple of Baalbec and meet with the Phoenix whom they never thought to see again. And how the Phoenix did not remember them at all until it went into a sort of prophetic trance—if that can be called remembering. But, alas! I HAVEN'T time, so I must leave all that out though it was a wonderfully thrilling adventure. I must leave out, too, all about the visit of the children to the Hippodrome with the Psammead in its travelling bag, and about how the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... oracles are dumb:[122] No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving; Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving; No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-eyed ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... breathed his last. Some pretty verses, attributed to Alaric A. Watts, commemorate a similar incident, said to have happened to two sisters who were nuns at Beverley Minister. They disappeared one evening after vespers. After some months they were found in a trance in the north tower. On being aroused they declared they had been admitted into Paradise, whither they would return before morning. They died in the night; and the beautiful monument called the Sisters' Shrine still witnesses to the truth ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Hopkins was in a state of amazement; and Millicent, if she did not swoon, seemed to herself in a trance. Neither of them could see in the cause anything to account for the effect. How could a merchant prince quail before so flimsy a piece of paper? Mr. Sterling explained. Mr. Hopkins begged the matter might not be made public,—above all things, that legal proceedings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... she crept in at the other side of the bed, and in a few moments was asleep. Once more Brenton struggled to awake, but with no effect. He heard the clock strike three, and then four, and then five, but there was no apparent change in his dream. He feared that he might be in a trance, from which, perhaps, he would not awake until it was too late. Grey daylight began to brighten the window, and he noticed that snow was quietly falling outside, the flakes noiselessly beating against the window pane. Every one slept late that morning, but at last he heard the preparations ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... could have wished!" she murmured under her breath. "She has fallen into a trance. She is again under the dominion of her idea. If we watch and do not disturb her she may repeat her action of last night, and herself show where she has put this ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... was my good chance, To meet with a Black-coat that was in a Trance; I speedily grip'd him and whip'd off his Cods, 'Twixt his Head and his Breech, I left little odds: O, quoth the Devil, and so away ran, Thou oft will be ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... patience, though, after some talk he consented to attend a seance to be held that evening in Burns's drawing-room. We sat together, and I had the pleasure of hearing from time to time his grunts of disapproval. When the discourse—'in trance'—was over, he asked me if I believed in 'this sort of thing,' and when I said I was simply an investigator he remarked, 'That's all right, I, too, am an investigator—of things in general—and it would not take me long to sum up that little man (the medium) as a humbug, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... misshapen hands supporting chin and jaws, sat puffing stinking Siwash tobacco and staring straight before him. It would have seemed ruminative, the stare, had his eyes been softer or had he blinked; as it was, his face was set and trance-like. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... elemental overture to tempest I took no note of time, but felt, through self-abandonment to the symphonic influence, how sea and air, and clouds akin to both, were dealing with each other complainingly, and in compliance to some maker of unrest within them. A touch upon my shoulder broke this trance; I turned and saw a boy beside me in a coastguard's uniform. Francesco was on patrol that night; but my English accent soon assured him that I was no contrabbandiere, and he too leaned against the stanchion ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... everything which makes us feel that a man is, as we say, terribly unlucky; and of this there is, even in Shakespeare, not a little. Here come in some of the accidents already considered, Juliet's waking from her trance a minute too late, Desdemona's loss of her handkerchief at the only moment when the loss would have mattered, that insignificant delay which cost Cordelia's life. Again, men act, no doubt, in accordance with their characters; but what is it that brings them just the one problem which ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... company. Yet he could find none who could meet his want as a helpmeet. Milton has fancifully described Adam expressing his want to the Infinite. It grew upon him. Then he has pictured him asleep, and seeing, as in a trance, the rib, with cordial spirits warm, formed and fashioned with his ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... your reveries of waking consciousness," Stahl took him up, "but in sleep—in the trance consciousness—completely! And therein lies your danger," he added gravely; "for to pass out completely in waking consciousness, is the next step—an easy one; and it constitutes, not so much a disorder of your being, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... she showed an intense and ever-increasing devotion to things holy; her delight in prayer became almost a passion. She never wearied of visiting the churches in and about her native village, and she passed many an hour in a kind of rapt trance before the crucifixes and saintly images in these churches. Every morning saw her at her accustomed place at the early celebration of her Lord's Sacrifice; and if in the afternoon the evening bells sounded across the fields, she ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... children and a few scattered husbands. This instantaneous outbreak of life into loneliness is one of the pleasantest scenes of the day. Some of the good people are rubbing their eyes, thereby intimating that they have been wrapped, as it were, in a sort of holy trance by the fervor of their devotion. There is a young man, a third-rate coxcomb, whose first care is always to flourish a white handkerchief and brush the seat of a tight pair of black silk pantaloons which shine as if varnished. They must ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... arms, that valiant, long-suffering man, and his faithful wife, two brave and patient souls, parted so long, and tried so hard, but now united once more in wedded love and bliss. The hours went by unheeded, and day would have overtaken them in that trance of delight, had not Athene marked them with pity from her heavenly seat, and stayed the steeds of the morning in the east, and prolonged the reign of night, that the joy of that first meeting might not be broken until they had tasted all ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... him, Mildred had told him that, in spite of her apparent good health, she was occasionally subject to long trance-like fits, resembling sleep; should this happen, it would be useless to call an ordinary doctor, but that a Miss Timson, a well-known scientific woman and a friend of hers, must be summoned at once. He had taken Miss Timson's address and promised to do so; but Mildred had ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... but a ferrywoman called Rohe. Any soul whom she carried over and who ate the food offered to it on the further bank was doomed to abide in Hades. Any spirit who refused returned to its body on earth and awoke. This is the meaning of what White men call a trance. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to awake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... see a more complete abandonment to the wild postures of fatigue and despair than in the pathetic sprawl of these human forms upon the simmering plush settees. A hot eddy of some varnish-tinctured vapour—certainly not air—rises from under the seats and wraps the traveller in a nightmarish trance. Occasionally he starts wildly from his dream and glares frightfully through the misted pane. It is the custom of the trainmen, who tiptoe softly through the cars, never to disturb their clients by calling ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... Leroy was no coward or he'd never have been one of the four chosen by the Academy for the first Martian expedition. But the fear in his eyes was more understandable than that other expression, that queer fixity of gaze like one in a trance, or like a person in an ecstasy. "Like a chap who's seen Heaven and Hell together," Harrison expressed it to himself. He was yet to discover ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... ringing voice was no longer sounding in his ear. The uplifted, warning, threatening hand menaced him only in memory. And before the might of her purpose, and the force of her maledictions, he stood as in a trance. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... dream, O to awake and wander There, and with delight to take and render, Through the trance of silence, Quiet breath; Lo! for there among the flowers and grasses, Only the mightier movement sounds and passes; Only winds and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... alone, in words, of which she would not have believed herself capable. With hot brow and dry eyes she paced her little chamber, sat down on the bed, staring into vacancy, sprang up and paced again: but she went into no trance—she dare not. The grief was too great; she felt that, if she once gave way enough to lose her self-possession, she should go mad. And the first, and perhaps not the least good effect of that fiery ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of the spell, the joyousness of the birds is described, and also the awakening of Christabel as from a trance.—During this rest (her mother) the guardian angel is supposed to have been watching over her. But these passages could not escape coarse minded critics, who put a construction on them which never entered ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... along the trance towards an open room, and on entering it they met a fair damsel in the garb of a handmaid, to whom the knight spoke in familiarity, and kittling her under the chin, made her giggle in a wanton manner. By her he was informed that the Archbishop was ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... lips in the form of an inconsequent question. But before he could even frame the sentence, the thought that prompted it had slipped back into the deeper consciousness he had just left behind with the trance of deep sleep. ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... known to history as the first three ministers of the Brethren's Church. And then Gregory the Patriarch stepped forward, and announced with trembling voice that these three men were the very three that he had seen in his trance in the torture-chamber at Prague. Not a man in the room was surprised; not a man doubted that here again their prayers had been plainly answered. Together the members of the Synod arose and saluted the chosen three. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... might: Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, Save the enigma of herself, she knows. The master could not tell, with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped; Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said;— Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, That held in trance the ancient Attic shore, And charms the ages with the notes that o'er All woodland chants immortally prevail! And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled, He with diviner silence dwells instead, And on no earthly sea with transient roar, Unto no earthly airs, he ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... as Kelly said or not, that Harley went into a trance and poked his nose into the private life of the people he wrote about, it was a fact that while meditating upon the possible output of his pen our author was as deaf to his surroundings as though he had departed into another world, and it rarely happened that his mind emerged from that condition ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... feeling toward the other: seeing, as if with spiritual vision, a nature unstrung, hardly responsible, and one that invited only the most infinite tenderness and care. This wave of new and perfectly clear perception was like a magnetic trance. It was an hour of absolute spiritual clairvoyance, and the evidence was furnished by a letter received, the next morning, from a mutual friend, which entirely substantiated and corroborated the telepathic impression ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... gods. On another occasion he had been missed for several hours, and after a lengthened search had been discovered in a little chamber in one of the northern turrets of the palace gazing, as one in a trance, at a Greek gem carved with the figure of Adonis. He had been seen, so the tale ran, pressing his warm lips to the marble brow of an antique statue that had been discovered in the bed of the river on the occasion of the building of the stone ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... exquisite minutes I sat there beside her in a sort of heavenly trance. How beautiful she was! How engaging—how sweet—how modestly appreciative of the man beside her, who had little beside his scientific learning, his fame, and a kind heart to appeal to such youth and ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... as from a trance, bounded to his side. Willock helped him to mount, then placed the child the saddle ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... they yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is one, stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp; another is convulsed with nervous twitchings; another scratches the earth in a kind of mechanical trance. One would say she was preparing a grave for herself. The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl and a face that bears the scars of a hundred fights. One eye has been lost in some long-forgotten encounter. Now they walk over him, kittens ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... one in a trance when he spoke of the brave, bearded Frenchmen, From the green sun-lit valleys of France to the wild Hochelaga [a] transplanted, Oft trailing the deserts of snow in the heart of the dense Huron forests, Or steering the dauntless canoe through the waves of the fresh water ocean. "Yea, stronger ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... creature. They say that, if you take his hand in yours and ask him questions, he has no other choice than to answer—or to awake. The Doctor—as we know by virtue of the prophetic advantages just remarked upon—will stay asleep for some hours yet. Or, if you are clairvoyant, you have but to fall in a trance, and lay a hand on his forehead, and you may read off his thoughts,—provided he does his thinking in his head. But the world is growing too wise, nowadays, to put faith in old woman's nonsense like this. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... looked languishing on mine, And wreathing arms did soft embraces join, A doubtful trembling seized me first all o'er; Then, wishes; and a warmth, unknown before: What followed was all ecstasy and trance; Immortal pleasures round my swimming eyes did dance, And speechless joys, in whose sweet tumult tost, I thought my breath and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... spending of the two shillings Uncle Eb had given me. Such sublimity of proportion I have never seen since; and yet it was all very small indeed. The stores had a smell about them that was like chloroform in its effect upon me; for, once in them, I fell into a kind of trance and had scarce sense enough to know my own mind. The smart clerks, who generally came and asked, 'Well, young man, what can I do for you?' I regarded with fear and suspicion. I clung the tighter to my coin always, and said nothing, although I saw many a trinket whose glitter went to my soul ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... pier, he walked straight before him like a man in a trance, who knows neither where he is going nor what is to become of him. He saw himself irretrievably lost, possessing no longer a shelter, no means of rescue and, of course, no longer any friends. Alone, wandering on the sea-shore, he felt tempted to drown himself, then and there. Just ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... discovery was that he was alive; and the next that he was likely to live as long as if he had never heard the report of a pistol in his life. He had made a narrow escape, however; the bullet had grazed his head and stunned him for a moment or two, which trance terror and confusion of spirit had prolonged somewhat longer. He now arose to demand vengeance on the person of Waverley, and with difficulty acquiesced in the proposal of Mr. Morton that he should be carried before the Laird, as a justice ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... woman—the only woman. Before you came I was content. Since we met, I have been in torment. You woke me up. When a man is roused from a trance it gives him pain. You brought pain to me— sleeplessness, discontent, a craving that grew and grew. I wished we had never met—you had upset my life; I believed that I hated you for it. Delphine questioned me. It was then I told her that I disliked ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the ceridim trance hours before Lyad awoke from the stunner blast she'd absorbed. The Commissioner was sitting in a chair beside ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... ter sleep en' how he felt w'en 'e woke up. Dey stayed ter dinner, en' w'en dey got thoo' talkin' en' eatin' en' drinkin', dey tole Marse Dugal' Skundus had had a catacornered fit, en' had be'n in a trance fer fo' weeks. En' w'en dey l'arned about Cindy, en' how dis yer fit had come on gradg'ly atter Cindy went away, dey 'lowed Marse Dugal' 'd better let Skundus en' Cindy git married, er he'd be liable ter hab some mo' er dem fits. Fer Marse Dugal' didn' want no fittified niggers ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... him, exclaimed as in a trance, "Oh, venerable Simon, now will be fulfilled that which thou once prophesied to me, 'A sword shall pierce through thine own soul!'" And as she spoke Mary Magdalene gently supported her ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... truly that, as I strive more with this strange lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems daily more amazing to me that men such as these should dare to play with the most precious truths, (or the most deadly untruths,) by which the whole human ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... the orchestra a chance!" says I. "And keep them elbows down! Don't try to stretch here; wait until you get back to the open fields for that. Yes, it's all over, and you're about to butt into society; so for Heaven's sake come out of the trance!" ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... said, taking a deep breath as if rousing from a trance, "that is best. Child—see to it, and have your way. Senor, will you arrange that the senora has what comfort there is here? Our ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Well trained to meet occasion, trained In all by duty's law ordained, Strove with his prudent speech to find Soft access to the monarch's mind. He, skilled in every gentle art Of eloquence that wins the heart, Sugriva from his trance to wake, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... sweat poured from his face, and his limbs were flaccid as an infant's, that the sound of a rattle had caused him to stop short—that a pleasant halo danced before his eyes, and sweet sounds met his ears—and that from that instant until the conclusion of the trance, "he was as happy as he ever expected ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... hours, there was a large exodus of members, and then Edgecumbe rose like a man waking out of a trance. ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... was the time of day when the promenade deck was always full. Passengers in cocoons of rugs lay on chairs, waiting in a dull trance till the steward should arrive with the eleven o'clock soup. Others, more energetic, strode up and down. From the point of view of a man who wished to reveal his most sacred feelings to a beautiful girl, the place was practically Fifth Avenue ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... cast her into the sea. With one hand she clung to the boat; her grandfather lifted his knife and struck. Nerrvik descended into the ocean and became the queen of the fishes. Possessing only one hand she cannot plait her hair. A magician who can go to Nerrvik in a trance and arrange her tresses wins her gratitude and can secure from her for the hunters quantities of fish. It is interesting to note the similarity of the legend of Nerrvik to that of Jonah. But just as the Eskimos have changed the masculine sun of southern mythologies to the feminine, ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... essayed to raise his own wavering voice. A smile of heavenly beauty played over his pallid features as the music ceased,—a radiance like that crimson glow which covers the mountain-top at dawn. He spoke almost inaudibly, as if in a trance; then repeating with a musical flow the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... sorrow of silent despair: fanaticism alone could suggest a ray of hope and consolation. "How can he be dead, our witness, our intercessor, our mediator, with God? By God he is not dead: like Moses and Jesus, he is wrapped in a holy trance, and speedily will he return to his faithful people." The evidence of sense was disregarded; and Omar, unsheathing his cimeter, threatened to strike off the heads of the infidels, who should dare to affirm that the prophet was no more. The tumult was appeased ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... trance of peace had given them the light sadness which fulfilled beauty brings, they found it good to hasten down the deserted street to the cafes and thronging friendly people. They knew how to live and take their pleasure, those ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... he was waiting for a new lot to come along, he began to shine up to the widow Sharpless, a powerful, well-preserved woman of forty or thereabouts, who had been born with her eye-teeth cut. He found her uncommon sympathetic. And when Chauncey finally came out of his trance he was the stepfather of the widow's ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... only, and that after a certain time its effects on the nerves would cease as the effects of intoxicating liquors cease, and that the patient might recover, if the lungs could be kept in play, if respiration were not suspended during the trance or partial death in which the patient lies. To prove the truth of this by experiment he fell to work upon a cat; he pricked the cat with the point of a lancet dipped in Woorara. It was some minutes before the animal became convulsed, and then it lay, to all appearance, dead. Mr. Brodie ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... dream—its expression is frequently one of peculiar mildness and benignity; the breathing may be slow, but it is calm and uniform: the pulse not so rapid as in the waking state, but soft and regular; the composure of the whole body may continue trance-like and perfect. There is, indeed, no sign of innocence more touching than the smile of a sleeping infant. But, suddenly, this state of tranquillity may be disturbed; the dreamer changes his position and become restless; he moans grievously—perhaps ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... tarpaulin. The sailors heaped pilot-coats upon us. It was a bad ship, they said, to be sick on board of, for no such thing as brandy was allowed in the old Priscilla. Still I am sure I tasted some before I fell into a state of semi-insensibility. As in a trance I heard Temple's moans, and the captain's voice across the gusty wind, and the forlorn crunching of the ship down great waves. The captain's figure was sometimes stooping over us, more great-coats were piled on us; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fell to imagining that he looked once more and found it there, and what it would be like if she loved him,—she who, as Alexandra said, could give her whole heart. In that dream he could lie for hours, as if in a trance. His spirit went out of his body and crossed the ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... not need rights, they need freedom from all cares and sufferings. Sweet, lovely beings, let them have husbands to lift them above all earthly cares and trials! Oh! angels of our homes," says he, liftin' his eyes to the heavens, and kinder shettin' 'em, some as if he was goin' into a trance, "fly around, ye angels, in your native haunts! mingle not with rings, and vile laws; flee away, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... upon that fateful night, it seemed to Stella that she must indeed have slept the sleep of the lotus-eater, for no misgivings pierced the numb unconsciousness that held her through the still hours. She lay as one in a trance, wholly insensible of the fact that she was alone, aware only of the perpetual rush and fall of the torrent below, which seemed to act like a narcotic upon ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... and went out at the door, walking no longer like a Hofcavalier, but like one in a trance. Dimly she saw the sisters standing without the door of Sharon; there was Thecla, with half-amused face, and there was Persida, curious as ever; there were Sister Petronella and Sister Blandina and others, and behind all the straight, tall form of austere Jael. Without turning to the ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... Manhattan were simultaneously made to migrate from Fifth Avenue to Michigan Avenue, the club servants, beyond missing some familiar faces, would not find much difference. Could any man, waking from a trance, tell by the men surrounding him whether he was in the Duquesne Club at Pittsburgh or the Minnesota Club in St. Paul? And, if it be urged that the select club-membership represents a small circle of the population only, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... truth was, that with some vivid boy-touch he had carried his hearer far. The Rat was deadly quiet. Even his eyes had not moved. He spoke almost as if he were in a sort of trance. "It's real," he said. "I'm there now. As high as you—go on—go on. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... subtle and also more consistent than either of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have, and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human life. It will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say in a religious and respectable society?) are more likely to make mistakes in ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... had already poisoned my grandparents Barrois in the same manner. He had himself given me an antidote. But the means he had were not sufficient to shield me from all danger, and he begged me to drink a potion, which would put me in a trance for the space of three days. I took the potion which the count gave me; I lost my senses. How long I lay thus I do not know, but when I woke I found myself in a coffin in a church, and the count standing beside me. A new and powerful potion restored me to my former vitality. The count brought ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... secret, and beset with terror. The ancients called it ecstasy or absence,—a getting out of their bodies to think. All religious history contains traces of the trance of saints,—a beatitude, but without any sign of joy, earnest, solitary, even sad; "the flight," Plotinus called it, "of the alone to the alone." The trances of Socrates, Plotinus, Porphyry, Behmen, Bunyan, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... dressing-gowns of every shape, hue, and material, with buff slippers—the "regulation Margate shoeing," both for men and women. As the hour of eleven approached, and the church bells began to ring, the town seemed to awaken suddenly from a trance, and bonnets the most superb, and dresses the most extravagant, poured forth from lodgings the most miserable. Having shaved and dressed himself with more than ordinary care and attention, Mr. Jorrocks walked his friends off to ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... at once began to prepare for his novitiate. In this retreat he submitted himself to the severest penances and discipline and displayed such excessive zeal and devotion as to win the admiration of the monks, who at times believed him to be rapt in a holy trance. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... The ruddy gold light of approaching sunset bathed all the wood in glory, and the rays fell upon the kneeling figure, forming a halo of glory round it. But she did not heed, she did not see. She was as one in a trance, insensible to outward vision. Once and again her lips moved, but we heard no word proceed from them, only the rapt look upon her face increased in intensity, and once I thought (for I could not turn my gaze away) that I saw the gleam ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... trigger, the thing spoke softly—that was one of its chief attractions for Nigel—and spat forth a little jet of flame. And as it did so, his brain cleared like magic. He laughed and shook himself as though out of a trance into which he had fallen. The light was still there. What a fool he was, potting at glow-worms like a madman! He shut the window with a bang and started to undress, and then went over to the door as he heard ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... Teresa, Amina's foster-mother, {315} shows Lisa's handkerchief, which was found in the Count's room. Lisa reddens, and Elvino knows not whom he shall believe, when all of a sudden Amina is seen, emerging from a window of the mill, walking in a trance, and calling for her ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... significance that might lie therein. Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar discipline; and though the effort to interpret this discipline was discouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision during his outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and others that its effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour. A less truthful man than he might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a vision in the form of resurgent memory; a less sane man might have believed ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... man tried for his voice, and found enough of it to say: "There's a trance medium over at the Huddle. Her control says 't I can develop into a writin' medium." He seemed to refer the fact as a sort of question to Westover, who could think of nothing to say but that it must be very interesting to feel that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... here at the gate and went down the street, a-lookin' neither to the right nor the left. He looked to me like a man in a trance, almost. He keeps right on through Legal Row till he comes to Franklin Street, and then he goes up Franklin to B. Weil & Son's confectionary store; and there he turns in. I happened to be followin' 'long behind him, with a few others—with several others, in fact—and ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... attitudes of those around them, which contrasted strongly the fixed and stern postures of those two, who remained gazing silently at each other. "Who knows him?" exclaimed Olavida, starting apparently from a trance; "who knows him? ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... are ordinarily classed together as 'mediumistic phenomena.' The most important of these are psychometry, 'vision' of 'spirit' forms, claimed communications by means of rappings, table movements, automatic writing, independent writing, trance speaking, etc. With them also ought to be noted what are generally called physical phenomena, though in most cases, since they are intelligibly directed, the use of the word 'physical,' without this qualification, might be misleading. These physical phenomena include such facts as the movement ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... sensitiveness, was sufficiently developed and predominant, the conditions of neurological experiments for scientific purposes were satisfactory, and to make such experiments, the subjects, instead of being ignorant, passive, emotional, hysteric, or inclined to trance, should be as intelligent as possible, well-balanced and clear-headed,—competent to observe subjective phenomena in a critical manner. Hence, my experiments, which have been made upon all sorts of persons, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... which the graver part of the dialogue is written can be no more than worthy of the subject: whereas in other plays of Dekker's the style is too often beneath the merit of the subject, and the subject as often below the value of the style. The subsequent revival of Infelice from her trance is represented with such vivid and delicate power that the scene, short and simple as it is, is one of the most fascinating in any play of the period. In none of these higher and finer parts of the poem can I trace the touch of any other hand than the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the lower world he was seated upon the throne to which the Emperor had borne him. His rest had been made easy by the luxurious cloaks of the courtiers and emissaries which had been lavishly heaped about him, while during his trance the truly high-minded Kwo Kam had not disdained to wash his feet in a golden basin of perfumed water, to shave his limbs, and to anoint his head. The greater part of the assembly had been dismissed, but some ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... this question, I will give you a brief account of the two most vigorous attempts which have been made to turn the elements we have been considering to a profitable end. I have in my thoughts the invention of ether-inhalation and the induction of trance in mesmerism. The witch narcotised her pupils in order to produce in them delusive visions; the surgeon stupifies his patient to prevent the pain of an operation being felt. The fanatic preacher excites convulsions and trance in his auditory to persuade them that they are visited by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... earth to bear witness to the truth will at once sweep away all the vain words and vainer thoughts of this unhappy century. It will be what they call a great fact, dear Lothair; and when the Holy Spirit descends upon their decrees, my firm belief is the whole world will rise as it were from a trance, and kneel before the divine ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... all your doing!" Then, as if wakening from a trance, she uttered a long, piercing shriek, darted into the pavilion between the gory corpses, and flung herself headlong out of the open window into the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... which was not waking—for I knew nothing of what was going on about me, and not sleeping—for I was conscious of my own repose. In this state my fevered mind broke loose from me, while my weary body was at rest, and in a trance, or day-dream of my fancy—I know not what to call it—I saw Walter Hartright. I had not thought of him since I rose that morning—Laura had not said one word to me either directly or indirectly referring to him—and ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... real Martian behind the scenes, who dictated the contents of this book through the medium to Mr. Kennon. It was further stated that "The medium was held in trance for short periods only, as the medium must necessarily experience the atmosphere of Mars which is more rarified than that of your Earth." Writes also that the medium seemed to have some difficulty, and at first pain in breathing while in the ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... stain, It were possible just for one hour To forebode, or remember, or fear, Nothing; of one thing aware And one only, that we two are here, And together, unhindered: then, Dear, This one hour were our life,—all the past But the ignorant sleep before birth, All the future a trance, that should last Till we turn us again to ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Still the trance seemed to hold her enthralled. The music was diabolically merry. She could fancy evil spirits tripping to it in swarms around her. They seemed to point at her, and wave their arms around her, and from them came an influence, magnetic in its ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the shore, their young spirits elate. In a trance of enjoyment and pride; For were they not reaping the cherished reward Which to labour is ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... film of trance between two stirrings! Lo, It bursts; yet dream's snapped links cling round the limbs Of waking: like a running evening stream Which no man hears, or sees, or knows to run, (Glazed with dim quiet), save that there the moon Is shattered to a creamy flicker of flame, Our eyes' sweet trouble were hid, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... accordance with the answer. He goes on ignoring all the interesting towns and oases on the way to his Timbuctoo. Excessively uncertain about future joy, and too breathlessly preoccupied to think about joy in the present, he just drives obstinately ahead, rather like a person in a trance. Singular conduct for a plain man priding himself ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... cross-hilt of the naked sword The angel's hands, as prompt to smite, were held; His vigilant intense regard was poured 15 Upon the creature placidly unquelled, Whose front was set at level gaze which took No heed of aught, a solemn trance-like look. ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... of the half trance with an effort. His body felt like it had been through a meat grinder, and it was almost impossible to think with the fog in his head. After minutes of deliberation he figured out that the medikit was what he needed. The ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... I was standing in a sort of trance at that particular point of Manhattan marked by the junction of Charlton and Varick streets and the end of Macdougal, about two hundred feet north of Spring. And there was nothing at all about ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... man the circumstances and that I had got to get dad out of his trance, and he said he would help me. When I was out riding the day before I noticed that the road was full of great dane dogs, wolf hounds and stag hounds, which followed their master's sledges out in the country, and the dogs ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... that Boyce came in. So soon as he spoke Davidson exclaimed: "Old Boyce! Dead too! What a lark!" I hastened to explain that Davidson was in a kind of somnambulistic trance. Boyce was interested at once. We both did all we could to rouse the fellow out of his extraordinary state. He answered our questions, and asked us some of his own, but his attention seemed distracted by his hallucination about a beach and ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... gloaming gathers round, The silence mellows every sound, The gentle wind, through foliage nigh, Begins to breathe its plaintive sigh; While o'er the hill creeps silver light, Where calm and chaste the queen of night, Awaking from her daily trance, Doth charm all nature with her glance. Her virgin train sweeps down the glade, Kissing the cavern's mouth of shade; She smiles upon the singing brook, With sparkles filling every nook That lurks ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... upstairs and consulted with the doctor, who wondered at his protracted absence. There was no change in Clara yet. She lay in a condition which could not be called a trance or a sleep. She did not seem to be in any great pain; but she was unconscious ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... conferred on them, and forgetting the hand that bestowed them. As if to recall them to a better sense of things, events now occurred which it is our business to relate, and which aroused the whole colony from the sort of pleasing trance into which they had fallen, by the united influence of security, abundance, and ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... phantasy, the phantasy the appetite, which moving the animal spirits causeth the body to walk up and down as if they were awake. Fracast. l. 3. de intellect, refers all ecstasies to this force of imagination, such as lie whole days together in a trance: as that priest whom [1603]Celsus speaks of, that could separate himself from his senses when he list, and lie like a dead man, void of life and sense. Cardan brags of himself, that he could do ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... medicine dance is to work up the dancer to a state of trance, in which he receives a revelation in regard ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... course through Life portray! New scenes of Wisdom may each step display, 10 And Knowledge open as my days advance! Till what time Death shall pour the undarken'd ray, My eye shall dart thro' infinite expanse, And thought suspended lie in Rapture's blissful trance. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the breakfast table—but he never laughed at Miss Oliver's dreams again; for that day brought news of the opening of the Verdun offensive, and thereafter through all the beautiful weeks of spring the Ingleside family, one and all, lived in a trance of dread. There were days when they waited in despair for the end as foot by foot the Germans crept nearer and nearer to the grim ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and, inevitably, Claude. The late Miss Manwaring would not have been surprised to learn that more space is devoted to Claude than to the others. Then almost precisely at the half-way point a pleasing trance is interrupted by the portrait of a "hoary sage," perhaps, Mr. Kirkwood suggests, the portrait Reynolds had recently completed of the Rev. Zachariah Mudge, then seventy-two years of age, who had been since 1737 a fellow prebendary of Morrison's at Exeter, and whom ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... as from a trance, with an impression that he had been desperately rude. He was about to say that the gray gosling in the legend could not speak Scandinavian, when he was interrupted by Mr. Mackenzie turning and asking him if he knew from what ports the English smacks hailed that came up hither to the cod and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... beds and screamed with fright. Barbara ran madly over the ground, back and forth, not certain where to hide. Eleanor stood shivering and Anne rushed over to ask Polly what had happened. Polly explained in a whisper, and Eleanor, as in a trance, watched her sister running about with something that seemed to cleave to her foot closer than a porous- plaster. Finally, Eleanor came to her senses and ran over to keep Barbara from rolling ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... gone out, his hands covering his face, and his head hanging down, his eyes swollen with tears but staring on the sand. The camel looks restless about, and moans. I cry out—"Said!" He starts up as if from a death-trance. He bellows out—"Aye wah," and begins to sob aloud. The slaves, close by, hear the noise and rush upon us. Where are the people? I see only slaves. They are all gone towards The Rock in pursuit of me. I now lie down and they ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... with his gripsack, gazing in a trance of true admiration at the hollowed crags, topped by the gray, grotesque wood, and crested finally ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... Clairaudience, Inspiration, Trance, and Physical Mediumship; Prayer, Mind, and Magnetic Healing; and all classes ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... about his knees; then the ball-room, and a multitude of voices, and all talking of his wife. Suddenly she appeared darting by him; and Frank was there. Then came his agony and tortures again; all returned upon him as in the confusion of some horrible trance. Then the hut seemed to enlarge and the walls to rock; and shadows of those he knew, and of terrible beings he had never seen before, were flitting round him and mocking at him. His own substantial form seemed to him undergoing a change, and taking the shape ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various |
