"Magical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He bolts wildly up the steps into his box, and slams the door. All, Christians and gladiators' alike, fly for their lives, the gladiators bolting into the arena, the others in all directions. The place is emptied with magical suddenness). ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... herewith thanks-a-many are returned to the "Bibliographer," who is also the Secretary of the Sette of Odd Volumes, for his charming little brochure about Robert Houdin, his Life and Magical Deeds, by his truly, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... marvellous on old gold when tea interrupted his observations. Tea with Emma was always engrossing. The mere practice and etiquette of it brought the gentlewoman in her into a lovely salience. Her hands and eyes became magical, her talk light and constant without insistency. A symbolist might imagine eternal correspondence between the amber brew and her sunny hair. It was easy to adore Emma at tea, and generally she did not resent a discreetly pronounced homage. But ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... while Brace examined the gathering groups with his glass, and gave us a few final instructions. Then the guns came into action with a steady, regular fire from right to left, shot following shot, so that at the second round the effect had been almost magical. One minute body after body of men were crowding up toward the road, the next they were scattering and seeking the shelter of the houses, while our attention was now directed toward ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... of her strange, magical voice there went from him some shred of innocence and illusion. It was, of course, his innocence, his ignorance that had made him tolerant of a Grand Display, that had filled him with admiration for the Young Ladies of the Polytechnic Gymnasium, and that had attracted him to Winny Dymond. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... precisely its limitations, but hardly its faults, since the poet attained with marvelous art the very effects he desired. The themes of nearly all the poems are death, ruin, regret, or failure; the verse is original in form, and among the most musical in the language, full of a haunting, almost magical melody. Mystery, symbolism, shadowy suggestion, fugitive thought, elusive beauty, beings that are mere insubstantial abstractions—these are the characteristics, but designedly so, of Poe's poetry. A poem to him was simply a crystallized mood, and it is futile for his readers to apply ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... new city was reached, the magical Kherson. Catharine entered it in grand state, under a noble triumphal arch inscribed in Greek with the words "The Way to Byzantium." It was a busy city in which she found herself. The houses were all inhabited; shops, filled with goods, lined the principal streets; people thronged ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... up them in dazzling spouts of foam—his eye lighted on a gleam of unusual colour on the racing green plain. It came again and again, and presently, as the merry dance waxed wilder still, every white-cap as it tossed into the air became a tiny rainbow, and the whole green plain was alive with magical flutterings, of colours so dazzling that it seemed bestrewn with dancing diamonds. A sight so wonderful that he found himself holding in his! breath lest a puff should ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... said to myself, these two have partaken together of the great mystery, of the great sacrament of nature, of the source of all that is magical in the wide world. But have they discerned the mysteries? Do they know that they have been in that place which is called Syon and Jerusalem?—I am quoting from an old book and a ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... personal it would speak to you of that order which pervades the universe; would make you realize something of the music of the spheres. For on that familiar checkerboard of the days are numerical arrangements which are mysterious, "magical"; each separate number is as a spider at the center of an amazing mathematical web. That is to say, every number is discovered to be half of the sum of the pairs of numbers which surround it, vertically, horizontally, and diagonally: all of the pairs add to the same sum, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language, than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here "excites or assuages emotion:" here is "no magical power of raising phantastick terrour or wild anxiety." The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care: we consider not what they are doing, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... you're thrice welcome," said Andrew, who never dropped his book language. "What will you have? Will you resume your apprenticeship under Goethe, or shall we canter to Canterbury with Chaucer? Grand old Dan Chaucer! Or, shall we study magical philosophy with Roger Bacon—the Friar, the Admirable Doctor? or read good Sir Thomas More? What would Sir Thomas have said if he could have thought that he would be admired by two such people as you and I, in the woods of America, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... rough surface. Once before—once before she had stumbled on those steps, but it was not the balustrade that had saved her. She could feel his arms about her now, holding her up, holding her close and safe. The magical voice was in her ears. "Let you go? I'll never let you go! Poor little feet, stumblin' in the dark, what would you do without Jerry? Time's comin', you cheeky little devils, when you'll come runnin' to him when he whistles! No use tryin' to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... a spigot, his shield is a bung; He taps where the housemaid no more is, When lo! at his magical bidding, upsprung A second Miss Drury, tall, tidy, and young, And sported in ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... is lost in wonder at the magical effect of your medicine, and desires me to express his heartfelt gratitude ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... satisfactory about them. He didn't say much. He just gazed, which was better; and they were looking their grandest that day, like the walls of castles turned into mountains. And there were strange lights and shadows in the water which gave a magical, enchanted effect. There were thunderous violet clouds in the sky, with shafts of sunshine pouring through; and Jack and I discovered, deep down in the river, marvellous treasures of the enchanted castles: white marble seats and ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... primitive customs, and will be an inexhaustible quarry for all future students—is apparently very little concerned with theories about the Sun and the stars, but concentrates his attention on the collection of innumerable details (2) of rites, chiefly magical, connected with food and vegetation. Still later writers, like S. Reinach, Jane Harrison and E. A. Crowley, being mainly occupied with customs of very primitive peoples, like the Pelasgian Greeks or the Australian aborigines, have confined themselves ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... which he declared insoluble; that is, to reconcile the infinite perfections of God with the free-agency of man. He struggles to break loose from this dark mystery; but, like the charmed bird, he struggles and flutters in vain, and finally yields to its magical influence. In his solution, this great luminary of science, like others before him, seems to suffer a sad eclipse. "Before God sent us into the world," says he, "he knew exactly what all the inclinations of our wills would be; it is he that has implanted them in us; it is he also that has ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... with the divine idea—Olive was always trying to flash it at her, like a jewel in an uncovered case—she kindled, flamed up, took the words from her friend's less persuasive lips, resolved herself into a magical voice, became again the pure young sibyl. Then Olive perceived how fatally, without Verena's tender notes, her crusade would lack sweetness, what the Catholics call unction; and, on the other hand, how weak Verena would be on the statistical and logical side if she herself should not bring ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... waiting," she said, "and Rem is waiting, and my aunt is tired, and you two have forgotten that the clock moves." Then they laughed, and laughter is always fatal to feeling; the magical land of love was suddenly far away, and there was the sound of china, and the heavy tones of Rem's voice—dissatisfied, if not angry—and Arenta's lighter fret; and they stood once more among fetishes and forms so foreign, fabulous and fantastical, that it was ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... tell about a fairy fireman who used to put out fires by squirting magical water on them from a morning glory flower," ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... could see, in the moonlight, the faint thread of the beginning of the Borhaze Road. To the left of this there was some sharp point of light, some cottage perhaps. It flashed at him as though it were trying to attract his attention. The night was so magical, the world so wonderful, so without bound or limit, that he was prepared now to wait, passively, for his experience. That point of light was where the Scarecrow used to be, just where the brown fields rise up against the horizon. In all his walks to-day he had ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... home to the homeless all the year round. Its original nucleus, the plausible excuse for the town's coming into prosperous existence, lies in the fiction of a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, groves, gardens, mansions, shops, and churches, and spread themselves along the banks of the little river Leam. This miracle accomplished, the beneficent fountain has retired beneath a pump-room, and appears ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... wall of human sense at sight of death; and on the other he will look out upon the ever-changing, though distant line of perpetual snow. The snow view in India, on mountain regions, is beyond description. No word-painting could give an idea of it; and few artists have been able to reproduce the magical effects of sunrise and sunset on the snows during the varying seasons of the year. The roseate tints of dawn blush on their peaks till they become a flame, and pale into iciest marble; and the evening splendours of purple and violet ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... lips as he held out his right to the Reverend Mr. Goodloe. So real had been that fraction of an instant when I had stood between the two men that I almost felt the sensation of alarm a second time as I saw Nickols' slender, magical, artist's fingers laid in the slim, powerful hand of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, but the gentle voice reassured me as the Harpeth Jaguar answered the intruder, or what he must have felt to be the intruder, for I had something of that ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in love being a philosopher. You say that Olivia will wear out my passion, and that her defects will undo the work of her charms. I acknowledge that she sometimes ravels the web she has woven; but she is miraculously expeditious and skilful in repairing the mischief: the magical tissue again appears firm as ever, glowing with brighter ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... so carried away by the glamor of the white hind's magical beauty that he went home at once, had the eyes of his seven Queens taken out, and, after throwing the poor blind creatures into a noisome dungeon whence they could not escape, set off once more for the hovel in the ravine, bearing with him his horrible offering. But the white hind only laughed ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... How beautiful these woods are at sunset! If I were a Nibelung, I'd come here for certain! [Settles himself, reclining; shadows begin to fall; music from orchestra.] I'm good for nothing but dreaming... I wish Estelle were here to sing to me! How magical the ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... said Merytra, "we have a message for you. No, do not look at my cheek, please, the marks are not magical, only those of the divine fingers of the glorious hand of the most exalted Prince Abi, son of the Pharaoh happily ruling in Osiris, etc., etc., etc., of the right, royal blood of Egypt—that is on one side, ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... Ossian, besides the primitive Saxon ballads, and the triads of Wales, all indicate the extravagant imagery and rude license of poetry in the early ages of society. The history of those several nations also attests the magical influence of their early poetry upon the peoples. We find that Tallifer the Norman trouvere, who accompanied William to the invasion of England, went before his hosts at Hastings, reciting the Norman prowess and might, and flung himself upon the Saxon phalanx where he met his doom. ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... to twice; but for the very reason which should have checked him—namely, on Theobald's suggestion that 'odd numbers are used in enchantments and magical operations;' and here he fancies himself to obtain an odd number by the arithmetical summation—twice added to once makes thrice. Meantime the odd number is already secured by viewing the whines separately, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... towards Priscilla, took her hand, and passed her own rosy finger-tips, with a pretty, caressing movement, over the girl's hair. The touch had a magical effect. So vivid a look of joy flushed up beneath those fingers, that it seemed as if the sad and wan Priscilla had been snatched away, and another kind of creature substituted in her place. This one caress, bestowed voluntarily by Zenobia, was evidently received as a pledge of all ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a river which probably derived its magical character from Celtic traditions: it was long the boundary of Briton and Saxon.—These places are introduced, as being near the scene of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Then there was the good god Balder (the white god), who made everything bright and beautiful, and ripened the fruits of the earth. This god Balder was the sun. Then there were the three magical women, the Fates, who made men's lives happy or miserable. Did you ever hear how these giants and Fates were worshipped before Jehovah and Christ ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... evening, M. de Trailles had thoroughly bewitched me. I had given him my promise that I would introduce him the next day to our Papa Gobseck. The words 'honor,' 'virtue,' 'countess,' 'honest woman,' and 'ill-luck' were mingled in his discourse with magical potency, thanks to that golden tongue ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... the bay-windows were bent to the ground with their burden of snowy blossoms, whose fragrance, mingled with that of the June roses, greeted him as he approached. He forgot his three weeks' absence and the rapid growth in that high altitude; the change seemed simply magical. Then, as he caught a glimpse through the pines of a slender, girlish figure, dressed in white, darting hither and thither, he wondered no longer; it was but the fit accompaniment of the young, joyous life which had come to ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... the whole of this or not,—and it seems that the inspired passages are none of his—it is to me a poem of genius, magical in spite of the ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... containing about an ounce each, under the name of "thistle oil," at the price of a quarter of a dollar each. The usual dose for dry bellyache is thirty drops upon a lump of sugar, and its effect is perfectly magical, relieving the pain instantaneously, throwing the patient into a profound and refreshing sleep, and in a few hours relieving the bowels gently of the contents. This oil seems fitted to compete in utility with the far more costly and less agreeable ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... answer; my eyes were moist. The night before, Pauline had understood my sorrows, as she now understood my joy, with the magical sensitiveness of a harp that obeys the variations of the atmosphere. Human life has glorious moments. Together we walked in silence along the beach. The sky was cloudless, the sea without a ripple; others might have thought ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... their presence in the wards; and in these cases we made it a practice to put the patient in the open air, of course suitably protected, and to leave the wound exposed to the winds of heaven, with only a thin piece of gauze to protect it. The results were almost magical, for in two or three days the wounds lost their odour and began to look clean, whilst the patients lost all signs of the poisoning which had been so marked before. It may be partly to this that we owe the fact that we never ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... Repent The Trap Where is David, the Next King of Israel? On Reading Omar Khayyam The Beggar's Valentine Honor Among Scamps The Gamblers On the Road to Nowhere Upon Returning to the Country Road The Angel and the Clown Springfield Magical Incense The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos King Arthur's Men Have Come Again Foreign Missions in Battle Array Star of My Heart Look You, I'll Go Pray At Mass Heart of God The Empty Boats With a Bouquet of Twelve Roses St. Francis of Assisi Buddha ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... was whispered in the ear of his listener, but the effect was magical. The Honorable Mr. Tickels started, and rapidly surveyed the person and countenance of the Corporal; then he reddened with confusion, and began to murmur a broken apology for his conduct, in which he was interrupted ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... my heart the only consolation you have left me. But Venetia shall still be mine; and I, I am no longer yours. Our love, our still lingering love, has vanished. You have been my enemy, now I am yours. I gaze upon your portrait for the last time; and thus I prevent the magical fascination of that face again appealing to the sympathies of my child. Thus and thus!' She seized the ancient dagger that we have mentioned as lying on the volume, and, springing on the chair, she plunged it into the canvas; then, tearing with unflinching resolution the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... nothing which makes us realize the magical rapidity of growth so much as to look from this steel city and to see the woods close by. For instead of being surrounded by the sordid congestion of an industrial center, the Fore River Shipyard is in the midst ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... perfect symmetry, but it had an expression of great mental power and determination. His features were high, yet delicate, and his mouth, which, when closed, assumed a firm and rather severe expression, softened, when speaking, into a smile of almost magical enchantment. Richly but not extravagantly dressed, he appeared to cultivate rather than disdain the ornaments of outward appearance; and whatever can fascinate or attract was so inherent in this singular man that all which in others would have ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... may be the Irish sheikh's son, or may be merely a magical illusion, and vanish or turn into a cat some fine morning, is your friend, I ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... where violence had failed; and accordingly a proclamation was widely circulated, promising pardon and redress of wrongs to all who would at once return to their allegiance, and pointing out at the same time the futility of further resistance. The effect of this move was magical; within a few days the ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... or as a cheat, he pretended to have learned all the supernatural knowledge which they pretended to teach. By the Egyptians he was looked upon as the favourite of Heaven; he claimed the power of working miracles by his magical arts, and of foretelling events by his knowledge of astrology. In the Thebaid he was so far honoured that at the bidding of the priests one of the sacred trees spoke to him, as had been their custom from of old with favourites, and in a clear and rather womanly ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... magical and quite ideal site, is the finest pleasure-house that ever yet the sun shone on. The park and the gardens are in the form of an amphitheatre, and are, in my opinion, sublime, in a far different way from those of ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... was a person of almost magical perceptiveness; he felt the let-down immediately and feared a failure. This would not do; the attitude of tension between them must be renewed at once. "You'll forgive me?" he began, in a quickly impassioned ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... of almost all ages and countries is the belief that "spirits" will show themselves, usually after magical ceremonies, to certain persons, commonly children, who stare into a crystal ball, a cup, a mirror, a blob of ink (in Egypt and India), a drop of blood (among the Maoris of New Zealand), a bowl of water (Red Indian), a pond (Roman and African), ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... easier for her to put her feeling into words than it is for the youth who has enchantingly rendered the gentle poetry of Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd," or for him who has walked the boards as Southey's Wat Tyler. His association, however, is quite as clinging and magical as is the child's although he can only say, "Gee, I wish I could always feel the way I did that night. Something would be doing then." Nothing of the artist's pleasure, nor of the revelation of that larger world which surrounds and completes our own, is ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... inserted, among other reasons, for the satisfaction of the foreign creditors of the United States, who cannot be strangers to the pretended doctrine, that a change in the political form of civil society has the magical effect ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes when the rest of the landscape ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... gray king died in his hour. Then we crowned you, the prophetess wise: Peace-of-the-Heart we deeply adored For the witchcraft hid in your eyes. Gift from the sky, overmastering all, You sent forth your magical parrots to call The plot-hatching prince of the tigers, To your throne by ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... his jaw to Bishop Bron, for he was dear to Patrick. Immediately on coming from the west, across the Muaidh, into Gregraighe, he met three virulent druids at Rath-Righbhaird, who were able to do nothing to him; and he said that there never would be wanting of this people a man of such magical knowledge. ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... was given them, and this was Cuthbert Grant, now settled down from the period of his Bois-brules impulsiveness to be the Warden of the Plains, with an influence over the Metis, that can only be described as magical. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... form his opinion as to the religion of the White Kendah and their pretensions to a certain degree of magical skill. Of this magic I will make only one remark: If it existed at all, it was by no means infallible. To take a single instance, Harut and Marut were convinced by divination that I, and I only, could kill Jana, which was why they invited ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... is poisonous, that they can play with serpents and remain uninjured, whilst their fur communicates the infection of the venom of those reptiles, that they lend themselves readily to infernal agents and purposes, that certain portions of their bodies possess magical properties and were efficacious in the preparation of charmed potions, and that they are partly supernatural creatures, endowed with a power of bringing good or evil fortune upon their possessors, with other facts just as credible, was once ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... had passed that wonderful week with her—the tug of her enchantment, the ache in his heart increased with every minute that she was not there to make the room, the garden, the very air magical. Would he ever be able to live down here, not seeing her? And he closed up utterly, going early to bed. It would not make him healthy, wealthy, and wise, but it closeted him with memory of Fleur in her fancy frock. He heard Val's arrival—the Ford discharging cargo, then the stillness ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... shall be able to pitch my tent in your neighbourhood,' I was most potently commanded to a breach of the second commandment, and on my knees, to entreat the said goddess, to touch your bank notes and guineas with her magical multiplying wand. I could offer such a prayer for you, with a better conscience than for most men, because I know that you have never lost that healthy common sense, which regards money only as the means of independence, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... of awe crept over me. My memory worked with startling power. The ominous, the insignificant, the great, the small, the wonderful, the commonplace—all appeared before my mental vision in magical succession. Pages of my history were recalled which had been so long forgotten that they seemed to belong to a previous existence. I heard all the voices of the past laughing, crying, telling what I had heard them tell in ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... begin to weep the ready tears of the heroic age over the sorrows of the past, and dread of the dim future, Helen comforts them with a magical potion. ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... incarnation of Gaelic chivalry, the fire and gentleness, the beauty and heroic ardour or the imaginative splendour of the episodes in his retelling of the ancient story. There are writers who bewitch us by a magical use of words, whose lines glitter like jewels, whose effects are gained by an elaborate art and who deal with the subtlest emotions. Others again are simple as an Egyptian image and yet are more impressive and you remember them less for the sentence ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... running out of their palaces to see us pass. Then I would wheel suddenly, and the dust flew up from my four hooves as I turned and we galloped home again, and my master was put to bed. And again he would ride abroad on another day till we came to magical fortresses guarded by wizardry and overthrew the dragons at the gate, and ever came back with a princess fairer than ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... owned all the land, and whatever food was raised was put into the public granary to be divided among the settlers, share and share alike. Dale changed this system, and the old planters were given land to cultivate for themselves. The effect was magical. Men who were lazy when toiling as servants of the company, become industrious when laboring for themselves, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... but a feeling half pleasure, half pain, and a sense of some new power subtle, strong, and sweet that had come into her life. It seemed as if another Mac had taken the place of the one she had known so long an ardent, ambitious man, ready for any work now that the magical moment had come when everything seems possible to love. If hope could work such a marvelous change for a moment, could not happiness do it for a lifetime? It would be an exciting experiment to try, she thought, remembering ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... interest in the picture was divided between a lunch-basket in the foreground, from which protruded a bottle of "St. Jacob's" oil, and a brace of vividly pink cupids hopping about in the tree-tops, rejoicing over the magical effect of the saintly patent medicine. His treatment of this picture proved, if it proved anything, that Corot had gone dangerously near the line where ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the superior erudition of such doctors of divinity as Luther, Malanchthon, Peder Dass, and even so late a scholar in divinity as Grundtvig, in terms of the Black Art. These, together with a very comprehensive list of minor celebrities, both living and dead, have been reputed masters in all magical arts; and a high position in the ecclesiastical personnel has carried with it, in the apprehension of these good people, an implication of profound familiarity with magical practice and the occult sciences. There is a parallel fact nearer home, similarly going to show the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... table, feted as a conqueror, adopted as grandson and perhaps as heir, a proficient in all the learning and arts of the most civilized nation of the earth, enrolled in the college of priests, discoursing with the most accomplished of his peers on the wonders of magical enchantment, the hidden meaning of religious rites, and even the being and attributes of a Supreme God,—the esoteric wisdom from which even a Pythagoras drew his inspiration; possibly tasting, with generals and nobles, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... Burns, she afterwards said, won the attention of the Edinburgh ladies by a deferential way of address—by an ease and natural grace of manners, as new as it was unexpected—that he told them the stories of some of his tenderest songs or liveliest poems in a style quite magical—enriching his little narratives, which had one and all the merit of being short, with personal incidents of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Conventioun halden by yow and utheris notorious Wichis, youre associattis, att the Brwme-hoillis, quhair yow and thay tuik the sea, Robert Griersoun being your admerell and Maister-manne. [Then comes the recital of the magical means used to raise a tempest], quhairby the Quene wes putt back be storme. Item, Indytit, for consulting with the said Annie Sampsoun, Robert Griersoun, and diuers vtheris Wichis, for the tressonabill staying ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... arabesque ornaments quite standing out of the background ... which latter has the effect of velvet. The arms, below, are within a double border of pearls, each pair of pearls being within a gold circle upon an ultramarine ground. The heads and figures have not escaped injury, but other portions of this magical illumination have ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the settlement. A 'Steam-launch' sounds grandiose, and so does a 'Great Central Depot'—seen on paper. And touching this place I was told a tale. Some time ago two young French employes, a doctor and an engineer, were sent up to the mines, and fell victims to the magical influence of the name. Quoth Jules to Alphonse, 'My friend, we will land; we will call a fiacre; we will drive to the local Three Provincial Brothers; we will eat a succulent repast, and then for a few happy hours we will ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... simple and appropriate ceremony we call confirmation. We claim for it no magical powers. It is not a sacrament. It adds nothing to the sacrament of baptism, for that is complete in itself. There is no conferring of Grace by the pastor's hands, but simply a directing of the Church's prayers to ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... desert, she thought, with much interest, that alone separated her from the wonderful Land of Oz, and she remembered sorrowfully that she had been told no one had ever been able to cross this dangerous waste but herself. Once a cyclone had carried her across it, and a magical pair of silver shoes had carried her back again. But now she had neither a cyclone nor silver shoes to assist her, and her condition was sad indeed. For she had become the prisoner of a disagreeable princess who insisted that she must exchange her head for another one that she ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... error in Mr. Clay, as the leader of a party, to run at all against General Jackson. He should have hoarded his prestige for 1836, when the magical name of Jackson would no longer captivate the ignorant voter. Mr. Clay's defeat in 1832, so unexpected, so overwhelming, lamed him for life as a candidate for the Presidency. He lost faith in his star. In 1836, when there was a chance ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... had looked so grey and haggard, was suddenly illumined as if by his magical halo. "I had forgotten it! There are so many hungry in there; I have been watching them, wondering when they ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... Gradually a ray of blue, then of red, then of white light, flashed upon the vast concave roof, showing myriads of star-like points resembling the Milky Way, a crescent moon, and finally a comet appearing in full sail. The effect was magical. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... humbleness, but yet with a countenance taking knowledge, that we knew that he spake it but merrily. That we were apt enough to think, there was somewhat supernatural in this island, but yet rather as angelical than magical. But to let his lordship know truly what it was that made us tender and doubtful to ask this question, it was not any such conceit, but because we remembered he had given a touch in his former speech, that this land had laws of secrecy touching ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... gave a cry of terror on seeing the Dwarf, but this only irritated the little monster; muttering a few magical words he summoned two giants, who bound the King with great chains ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... that music! Did a little boy's boots ever stand still when a drum was playing, "March, march away"? No doubt his father was keeping step to just such sounds, on his path to martial glory! The fife and bugle whistled with magical voices, and seemed ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... unprejudiced reader supposes when he reads this passage that there is some stone or stone-like body in the head of the toad which has a special beauty, or else was believed to possess magical or medicinal properties. And it is probable that Shakespeare himself did suppose that such a stone existed. As a matter of fact there is no stone or "jewel" of any kind in the head of the common toad nor of any species of toad—common or rare. This is a simple ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the swaying boughs of palm and mimosa there are glimpses of rugged mountains, their summits veiled in clouds, of purple sea with the white surf beating eternally against the reefs, whiter still in the yellow sunlight or the magical moonlight ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... magical devices by means of which they endeavour to secure their own success and to defeat their opponents. A daring manager may go to a burial cave, taking two balls with him. He digs out a bone, preferably the tibia from the ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... I like that story much better than the others. The Primum Ens Melissae at least offers a less puerile benefit than most magical secrets.' ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... day men had ready to hand a very serious weapon that might be used against innovators. By craftily circulated rumors the populace was brought to accuse him of magical practices, that is, of producing his cures by association with the devil. We are rather prone to think little of a generation that could take such nonsense seriously, but it would not be hard to ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... and economic failure, but the good results to all concerned proved to be so far-reaching as to startle even its most sanguine advocates. The extension of privileges and rights operated upon the natives as a magical incentive to labour and emulation for the improvement of their economic condition; people who had before preferred an indolent, semi-nomadic existence betook themselves more to agricultural and sedentary habits, living in much greater comfort and steadily ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... swift-fingered, Pauline in attendance during the wonderful processes of dressing or undressing her mistress. These occasions seemed to please Aunt Victoria best also. She showed herself then so winning and gracious and altogether magical to the little girl that Sylvia forgot the uncomfortableness which always happened when her aunt and her father were together. As they came to be on more intimate terms, Sylvia was told a great many details about Aunt Victoria's present ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... words he uttered, with a triumphant pride, that I shall never forget. As for me, the mere name was magical. "Fontenoy" was like one of those great words which light up a whole page of history; and it almost seemed impossible that I should see before me a soldier ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... by his daughter's magical recovery, turned to the strange physician, saying, "Noble Sir, were it not for the form you have taken, for some unknown reason, I would willingly give four times the sum in silver that I promised for the cure of the girl, into your possession. As it is, I suppose you have no use for silver, but ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... unsubstantial shadows—the incidental supers of the piece. Her paradise was peopled by two persons, and surely that was enough. One sees them together still, a curious couple, strangely united in those artless pages, under the magical illumination of that dawn of eighty years ago: the polished high fine gentleman with the whitening hair and whiskers and the thick dark eyebrows and the mobile lips and the big expressive eyes; and ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... like music in old instruments suddenly touched into sound by a wandering finger, among the lumber of people's houses. Nature, "the art of God," as he says, varying a little a phrase used also by Hobbes, in a work printed later—Nature, he seems to protest, is only a little less magical, its processes only a little less in the way of alchemy, than you had supposed. We feel that, as with that disturbed age in England generally (and it is here that he, with it, is so interesting, curious, old-world, and unlike ourselves) his supposed experience might at any ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... met a surly Mexican who would not listen to him, but nearly always he won the man over in the end. He was amazed at his own resourcefulness and eloquence. It seemed as though some inhibition in him had been broken down, some magical elixir poured into his imagination. He found that he could literally take a sheep camp by storm, entering into the life of the men, telling them stories, singing them songs, passing out presents of tobacco and whisky, often delivering a wildly applauded ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... a magical quern, or hand mill, called Grotti; the largest quern ever known in Denmark. Now Grotti, which ground either gold or peace for King Frodi as he willed, was stolen by a sea king named Mysing, who set the mill to grind white salt for his ships. But it happened that Mysing had only learned ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... knightly and devout style, but should anybody in Malborg or any other princely court dare to question it, he, de Lorche, would challenge him instantly to fight either on foot or horseback, even if he should not merely be a common knight, but a giant or wizard, exceeding even Merlin's magical power. ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... lapped around the boat, the green light on the waves grew somehow less intense; in the silence the first of the stars came out, and somehow the time in which he had seen Sheila in these rare and magical colors seemed to become more and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... restful, meditative, a place where the feeling of magical allure takes a deeper, more subjective character. It might well be called the Court of Pools, for two, quiet pools, one circular, one oblong except for its concave side to hold the other, fill the floor of its sunken garden and reflect ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... bestowing names upon the "seas" and mountains of our patient satellite, may have pleased their imagination by picturing this arm of the "Serene Sea" as a peculiarly romantic sheet of water, amid whose magical influences the lunar gentlefolk, drifting softly in their silver galleons and barges, and enjoying the splendors of "full earth" poured upon their delightful little world, were accustomed to fall into charming reveries, ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... and in every other respect different from those in Africa: but I was still more astonished on seeing people on horseback. I did not know what this could mean; and indeed I thought these people were full of nothing but magical arts. While I was in this astonishment one of my fellow prisoners spoke to a countryman of his about the horses, who said they were the same kind they had in their country. I understood them, though they were from a distant part of Africa, and I thought it odd I had not seen any ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... crimson-lipped girl, With the magical smile, I would count that the gamble Were well worth the while, Not a chance would I miss, If only the prize Were a honey-bee kiss Gathered in sips From those full-ripened lips, And a love-flashing glance From ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... he said to himself, understanding the language of those flowers, each of which had doubtless been studied as to form and as to color, and given its true place in the bouquet, where it produced its own magical effect. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... I gave some of it to Hans, also to Umslopogaas, who was with the wounded Zulus, who, we found, were progressing well towards complete recovery, and lastly to Goroko who also was worn out. On all of these the effect of that magical brew proved most satisfactory. ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... feeling came over him, and he began to dole out grudgingly the means with which to make his family comfortable, his wife would pleasantly say: "You are taking it out of the wrong pocket, John!"—words which seemed to have a magical effect upon both ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... ideas and a few scattered phrases. The growing of this body into its full stature and perfect shape was the same thing as the gradual self-definition of the meaning. And this is the reason why such poems strike us as creations, not manufactures, and have the magical effect which mere decoration cannot produce. This is also the reason why, if we insist on asking for the meaning of such a poem, we can only ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... almost magical silence the whole wall at the end of the corridor was sliding back to reveal an enormous amphitheatre in the center of which stood a vast circular table. Ranged in a semicircle about that table, stood fifteen incredibly ancient men clad in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... word, and gesture that responds to every event, the greatest and the smallest. Enchantment reigns; there are no collisions, no differences of opinion, no cold looks. Their two souls are always on the same side. And Dinah would speak the magical words, emphasized by the yet more magical expression and looks which every woman ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... of her simple words on Barnes was almost magical. The dull colour streamed into his sallow cheeks, he shook all over with excitement. His voice, when he spoke, was almost hysterical. He had been so near to despair. This indeed had been almost ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tallow and put it into a spoon, and heat it over a lamp until it becomes very hot; then pour it on the sore or granulation. The effect will be almost magical. The pain and tenderness will at once be relieved. The operation causes very little pain if the tallow is perfectly heated. Perhaps a repetition may be necessary in ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... night; and on an early morning ride in a motorcar to Agra we passed a wolf, and a little later were most impudently raced and outdistanced by a blackbuck, who, instead of bolting into security at the sight or sound of man, ran, or rather, advanced—for his progress is mysterious and magical—beside us for some forty yards and then,—with a laugh, put on extra speed (we were doing perhaps thirty miles an hour) and disappeared ahead. All about Muttra we dispersed monkeys up the trees and into the bushes as we approached. Next to the parrots it is the monkeys that most convince the traveller ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... things only be observed: (1) That the nation under the Second Temple was given to magical arts beyond measure; and (2) that it was given to an easiness of believing all manner of delusions beyond measure... It is a disputable case whether the Jewish nation were more mad with superstition in matters of religion, or with superstition in curious arts: (1) There ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... the eyes of his understanding and the doors of his heart. She taught him more than ever the schoolmaster could, and more than most boys of his day knew. So that in time he came to see in the storms and calms, more than simply bad times and good; and in the clear blue sky and starry dome, in the magical unfoldings of the dawn and the matchless pageants of the sunset, more than mere indications of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... history since the Middle Ages. Patriotic pride received a stimulus such as that which followed the defeat of the Armada and preceded the outburst of the Elizabethan literature. Those successes, too, had been won in the name of 'liberty'—a vague if magical word which I shall not seek to define at present. England, so sound Whigs at least sincerely believed, had become great because it had adopted and carried out the true Whig principles. The most intelligent Frenchmen of the coming generation admitted the claim; they looked ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... questions of the day. From this point of view it may be linked with Locksley Hall and Maud; but in The Princess the treatment is half humorous and the setting is more artificial. Tennyson's lyrical power is seen at its best in the magical songs which occur in the course of the story or interposed between the different scenes. They have deservedly won a place in all anthologies. His facility in the handling of blank verse is also remarkable. Lovers of Milton may ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... from the common ancestor, Nemedh, arrived to contest their supremacy. These last—the fourth immigration—are depicted to us as accomplished soothsayers and necromancers who came out of Greece. They could quell storms; cure diseases; work in metals; foretell future events; forge magical weapons; and raise the dead to life; they are called the Tuatha de Danans, and by their supernatural power, as well as by virtue of "the Lia Fail," or fabled "stone of destiny," they subdued their Belgic kinsmen, and exercised sovereignty over them, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... however, the sacrament has been saved from becoming merely magical by the rite of confirmation or of reception of the Spirit being separated from the baptism of regeneration and reserved for an adult age. The English church confirms at fifteen or sixteen; the Roman rather earlier. The catechetic course, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... ridiculous little images made from Bryony roots, cut into the figure of a man, and with grains of millet inserted into the face as eyes, the same being known as pappettes or mammettes, were accredited with magical powers, and fetched high prices with simple folk. Italian ladies have been known to pay as much as thirty golden ducats for one of these artificial mandrakes. Readers of Thalaba (Southey) will remember the fine scene in ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Last Legacy; or, the Magical Companion'. Including the various exhibitions of those wonderful Artists, Breslaw, Sieur ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... youth is the age of illusions, ardent desires, and fanciful hopes. Youth is like a fairy whose magical wand evokes the most graceful images and the most alluring phantoms. This ignorance of the doleful realities concealed in the future is a gift of divine goodness which, in order that life might not be too bitter, casts a beneficent veil over the sorrows that await us; God screens the ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... quarter, And soon as she turned her beak to the south I snatched this morsel out of her mouth." —Ben Jonson, "Masque of Queens". But more probably the meaning is that the wolf's bite gave the flesh magical efficacy. (37) Confusing Pharsalia with Philippi. (See line 684.) (38) One of the miraculous stories to be found in Pliny's "Natural History". See Lecky's "Augustus to Charlemagne", vol. i., p. 370. (39) The mysterious goddess Hecate was identified with Luna ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... appeared that she had more to gain. The Netherlands might be increased with a strip of French Flanders; Bavaria, Poland, and Italy were all weak neighbours, who might be made to enrich Austria in their turn. A sort of magical virtue was attached to the acquisition of territory. If so many square miles and so many head of population were gained, whether of alien or kindred race, mutinous or friendly, the end of all statesmanship was realised, and the heaviest sacrifice of life and industry ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... not march any great distance, and we helped them along in motor buses; but once set them down by their tracks, though the road might be chaos and the shell-holes innumerable, obstacles were cleared away, holes filled up, and the new surface well and truly laid with a magical rapidity.... The idea of taking shelter never seemed to occur to them; they openly rejoiced at being under fire.... Perhaps though they mended our roads and gave us easy walking, they helped us most by the quiet steadfastness of their example. One never saw them ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... examination, every one drew his own conclusion on the accident which was supposed to have befallen us. The greater number were of opinion that it could have arisen only from the malevolence of some enemy who had availed himself of magical incantations to injure us. For this reason, a famous magician was called, to counteract the effects of the witchcraft, and to remove it. As soon as he came, after steadfastly contemplating us for some time, he began to try our pulses, by putting his finger ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... the number of proper names and technical terms which we have no means of understanding, it is often quite impossible to know the drift of large paragraphs, and even of whole chapters. Since many of the chapters were treated merely as having a magical efficacy either when recited or when inscribed on something buried with the body, it was of small consequence whether or not the words were understood. The bare recital or writing of names of gods, etc., had a magical ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... A magical half hour followed for Northwood and Athalia. The girl told him of her past life, how Dr. Mundson had discovered her one year ago working in a New York sweat shop, half dead from consumption. Without friends, she was eager to follow the scientist to New Eden, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... inevitable conditions of life, and mischievous so far as productive of useless discontent. We need not ask what mixture of truth and falsehood there may be in these principles. Of course, a Radical, or even a respectable Whig, like Macaulay, who believed in the magical efficacy of the British Constitution, might shriek or laugh at such doctrine. Johnson's political pamphlets, besides the defects natural to a writer who was only a politician by accident, advocate the most retrograde doctrines. Nobody at the present day thinks that ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... as the little hexagonal gothic window, which has sculptured subjects beneath the mullions, and which was attached to the Pfarrhof, or clergyman's residence, of St. Sebald. If ever Mr. Blore's pencil should be exercised in this magical city for gothic art, I am quite persuaded that this window will be one of the subjects upon which its powers ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... "Would it might tarry like his", etc.; the construction of the comparison is, "as when Solomon willed that armies of angels, legions of devils, etc., should rush into sight and pile him a palace straight"; the reference is to the legends of the Koran in regard to Solomon's magical powers. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... thee. But if thou shouldst ever see me again, beware of speaking to me; for if thou speak thy luck will depart." When the man got home he found the purse filled with dollars; and by virtue of its magical property he became the richest man in the parish. As soon as he found the purse always full, whatever he took out of it, he began to live in a spendthrift manner and frequented the alehouse. One evening as he sat there he beheld the stranger with a bottle in his hand going round and gathering ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the strawberries and melons, and several other unknown but delicious fruits, of which they ate heartily. But the kitten bothered them constantly by demanding milk or meat, and called the Wizard names because he could not bring her a dish of milk by means of his magical arts. ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... her, as though she was married to Rudy, and had been so for many years. He had gone chamois hunting and as she sat at home, the young Englishman with the golden whiskers was beside her; his eyes were fiery, his words seemed endowed with magical power; he reached her his hand and she was ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... alluring. Brand's throat was like a limekiln. He sat up and took the proffered tumbler into his hands. The liquid was cold and sparkling—almost magical in its effects. He drained it to the last drop, and then looked ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... sister, he was equally astonished at the guise in which she came. All her ordinary forest attire, neat and becoming as this usually was, had been laid aside for the brocade that has been already mentioned, and which had once before wrought so great and magical an effect in her appearance. Nor was this all. Accustomed to see the ladies of the garrison in the formal, gala attire of the day, and familiar with the more critical niceties of these matters, the girl ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... talking. What I now heard recalled most vividly all those experiences. To soothe my mind a little, I then took a jews-harp from my pocket and played the "Star-spangled Banner." The effect was beautiful and almost magical, and I sank at once into ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... bay; and when not so, the haggard, eager, appealing face filled his inmost heart with grief and pity. Nobody better than Basil could manage the unreasonable and bring the disorderly to obedience; he had a magical way with him; but now he only meditated how Diana's wish was to be met. It was not just easy, for he had few family connections in the world, and she ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... These booths were all illuminated, because the citizens would soon pass on their way to the midnight mass, with candles burning in paper funnels, which, as the schoolmaster, then seated at the table at the Thenardiers' observed, produced "a magical effect." In compensation, not a star was visible ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... jingled the pieces of silver. No one shirked his admission fee and some even gave in excess; the helmet teemed with riches; once it had saved broken heads, now it repaired broken fortunes, its properties magical, like the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... as to whether the normal healthy child is at heart a mystic or a realist; whether he likes fairy tales because they show him a magical world where flowers can talk and umbrellas are turned into black geese, or because they tell of strange romantic things happening to a real human boy like himself; but there can be no shadow of doubt that much of the verse intended for children is either too clever in its humour ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... of parliamentary gossip, activity and intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical strip of matting which indicates the bar of the House. From this point of vantage he watched the first stages of a Parliament in which Mr, Gladstone set out with so triumphant a majority—and watched too the inroads made upon the power and prestige of that majority ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn |
