"Magically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blinds, my dear!" The fact was that Mrs. Maldon measured the time between the lighting of gas and the drawing down of blinds by tenths of a second—such was her fear lest in that sinister interval the whole prying town might magically gather in the street outside and peer into the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... panic, the result of her interview with the Guatemalan general at the apartment house, vanished magically. She sat down at this unexpected friend's table ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... sat very still, I, of course, expecting a bite every moment. Presently I saw a bonefish not six feet from the boat. Where he came from was a mystery, but he appeared like magic, and suddenly, just as magically, he vanished. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... given herself—informing him, in fact, that he ought to go, for his uncle is dead and his country in danger. Only, she reminds him of his pledges, and warns him of the misfortunes which await his breach of them. He is then magically wafted back on ship-board as ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... adoring him. Nothing could have been more unlike the Amherst she fancied she knew than this act of irrational anger which had magically lifted the darkness from his spirit; yet, magically also, it gave him back to her, made them one flesh once more. And suddenly the pressure of opposed emotions became too strong, and she ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... I think that almost magically beautiful! But is it true? I hope not and I think not. The poet went on to say that Paradox had destroyed the sanctity of Truth, and that Science had done nothing more than strip the skeleton of the flesh and blood that vested it, and crown the anatomy with glory. One cannot speak more severely, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Suddenly, magically, a great longing came over him. He must see his mother, or his brothers, or his little sister—someone who knew him, someone who belonged to him. He could have cried out in his desire. This one thought consumed all his ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... sea, the small waves en papillote, and peruke-like puffs of farinaceous foam, which were the delight of Backhuysen and his compeers. If one could but arrest the connoisseurs in the fact of looking at them with belief, and, magically introducing the image of a true sea-wave, let it roll up to them through the room,—one massive fathom's height and rood's breadth of brine, passing them by but once,—dividing, Red Sea-like, on right hand and left,—but at least setting close before their eyes, for once in inevitable truth, what ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... in the Round Pond is what is called a stick-boat, because she is rather like a stick until she is in the water and you are holding the string. Then as you walk round, pulling her, you see little men running about her deck, and sails rise magically and catch the breeze, and you put in on dirty nights at snug harbours which are unknown to the lordly yachts. Night passes in a twink, and again your rakish craft noses for the wind, whales spout, you glide over buried cities, and have brushes with pirates, and cast anchor ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... meet one who had not been loyal to the helmet of her youth; and they were such beautiful old creatures that I could well believe the legend Jonkheer Brederode told us: how the sirens of the North Sea had wedded Frisian men, and all the girl-children had been as magically lovely as their mothers. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... drooping in shade and cover. For a few seconds the long avenue was lost in flying clouds of dust, and then was left bare of life or motion. Raindrops in huge stars and rosettes appeared noiselessly and magically upon the sidewalks—gouts of moisture apparently dropped from mid-air. And then the ominous ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... and he had—after all—been the one link that tied the Volskys to their dingy quarters! With Pa gone the family could seek cleaner, sweeter rooms—rooms that would have been barred to the family of a drunkard! With Pa gone the air would clear, magically, ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... of the distant mountains; and on the east, the vine-hidden end of the barn. Against the southern wall,—and, so, directly opposite the trellised, vine-covered arch of the entrance,—a small, lattice bower, with a rustic table and seats within, was completely covered, as was the barn, by the magically woven tapestry of the flowers. In the corner of the hedge farthest from the entrance they found a narrow gate. Unlike the rest of the premises, the garden was in perfect order—the roses trimmed and cared for; the walks neatly ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... certain of the classic lyrics indicate how near the two varieties of love poems can be: male and female. Thus, why should not "he" as well as "she" have dwelt among untrodden ways? Why should not "he" have walked in beauty like the night? POE wrote magically about ANNABEL LEE; why should not one of his female relatives, for example, have written in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... letter's lineaments Though swollen to mainsail measure,—magically, I gather from your words; and on its face Are three vast seals, red—signifying blood Must I suppose? It moves on Dresden town, And dwarfs the city as it passes by.— You say ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... face changed magically. He smiled upon Juliet. "Come in, Miss Moore! You've met this ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... as the days passed. We named our new home the "Sunshine" apartment and assured each other that we were very well pleased, and when one morning as I set out for the office I noticed that the lower halls and stairway had suddenly taken on an air of spruce tidiness—had been magically transformed over night, as it were—I was so elated that I returned to point these things out to the Little Woman. She came down to the door with me and agreed that it was quite wonderful, and added ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... beauty of an Adonis; and, as their more interesting companions flash upon his presence, the least classical of poets might be excused for imagining that, like their blessed Goddess, the women had magically sprung from the brilliant foam of that ocean which ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... stones, that made a white blot on the reddish road, were covered with tiny sun-scorched plants, wild thyme or marjoram, and here and there grew stunted dark foliaged shrubs. And the sonority of the word Bianoris with which the sentence ended suddenly and magically evoked for me the musical humming of the insects that buzzed around the two travellers who, upon that bygone day in June, walked onward in the great silence and serene tranquillity of the hot noon enkindled by a younger sun. I was no longer in the schoolroom; I was in ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... high bicycle, sherry, Moody and Sankey, the Crystal Palace, Labouchere, "Pigs in Clover," Lottie Collins, Evolution, Bimetallism: hosts of forgotten images, names and shibboleths came popping out from the brain's dusty pigeon-holes, magically released by the spectacle of ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... hardly required any change from the epic Kanva. It was a happy thought to place beside him the staid, motherly Gautami. The small boy in the last act has magically become an individual in Kalidasa's hands. In this act too are the creatures of a higher world, their majesty not rendered ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... lifted high and thin, so that we saw in clarity the whole herd and the outriders and the mesas far away. As the afternoon waned, long shafts of sun slanted through this dust. It played on men and beasts magically, expanding them to the dimensions of strange genii, appearing and effacing themselves in the billows of vapour from ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... approaching, so they ate the fine supper which the Wizard magically produced from the kettle and then went to bed ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... over his body, furious, though somewhat disheartened at seeing their champion come to grief; but they had to deal with a blade that had kept half a dozen Hungarian swordsmen at bay, and, with point or edge, it met them every where, magically. They were drawing back, when Delaney, recovering from the first effects of his fearful wound, crawled forward, gasping out curses that seemed floating on the torrent of his rushing blood, and tried to grasp Mohun by the knees and ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... superimposes them over the louder sounds. They are like the tear-forms swimming across the field of vision, which disappear so quickly when you concentrate your sight to look at them, and which reappear so magically when again your gaze turns vacant. In the stillness of your hazy half-consciousness they speak; when you bend your attention to listen, they are gone, and only the tumults and ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... to apply the match to the batteries of cannon, not a sailor to assist in maneuvering the fleet, not a shepherd for the flocks. After the ruin of the village, and the destruction of the forts which dominated it, a ruin and a destruction operated magically without the co-operation of a single human being, the flame was extinguished, the smoke began to descend, then diminished in intensity, paled, and disappeared entirely. Night then came over the scene; ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... flowers, with lumps of lard, with little flags and ribbons, with garlands of caruba beans and with vetch. The flags, the ribbons, the flowers and the feathers were, I suppose, for gaiety and festa—pour faire la frime—but garlic has some magically beneficent properties; not only does it avert the evil eye, it is also a symbol of robust health, so that instead of replying to "How do you do?" by saying "As right as rain," they reply, "As right as garlic." They believe that to put three crosses of garlic under the bed of a woman ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... spoke she produced quite magically the slim, shining sword she had lent him once before. "Carry this," she said. "When it is drawn a certain door which would otherwise remain shut will open wide. And be of ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... narrowed. The rays gave their tiny cluster the appearance of a monster even more fantastic than those moiling around them—a monster with long straight tentacles of glaring white. They stumbled forward through the magically parting ranks of black octopi. The beams kept the creatures back; they were ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the hasty departure was magically diffused. Amy said afterward that she began to understand what they meant when they talked about wireless telegraphy. For as the stage rattled and bumped along the dusty highway the next morning, figures appeared at the windows, handkerchiefs ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... other they started on their homeward way with Miss Ashwell and Major Phillips bringing up the rear, for Williams the janitor had magically appeared with the latter's stick, and Uncle Tom thoughtfully made his adieus ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... only the color which affects him so strongly; its kind is something new, startling, and altogether lovely. Its surface, so magically framed and tinted, is broken by fleeting silver wind-streaks here and there; otherwise, it has the vast stillness which we associate with the Grand Canyon and the sky at night. The lava walls are pearly, faintly blue afar off, graying and daubed ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to cut up the carcass as dexterously as any journeymen butchers in Paris. The scraps of meat were distributed and flung upon the coals, and the whole process was magically swift. Philip went over to the woman who had given the cry of terror when she recognized his danger, and sat down by her side. She sat motionless upon a cushion taken from the carriage, warming herself at the blaze; she said no word, and gazed at him without a smile. ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... property that there was no pretence of a marriage in law. He and Theresa were on profoundly uncomfortable terms about this time,[150] and Rousseau is not the only person by many thousands who has deceived himself into thinking that some form of words between man and woman must magically transform the substance of their characters and lives, and conjure up new relations ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... not explained time. It is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... and sunlight; the breath of living creatures who have lived in the vast swamps and forests of some primeval world, and the sunlight which transmuted that breath into the leaves and stems of trees, magically locked up for ages in that black stone, to become, when it is burnt at last, light and carbonic acid as it was at first. For though you must not breathe your breath again, you may at least eat your breath, if you will allow the sun to transmute it for ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... us to the hour when the passengers arose, and the ship was presently alive. The news swept from lip to lip magically; in all parts of the ship I saw men and women talking, with their faces pale with consternation and horror. I had not the courage to break the news to Miss Le Grand, and asked the doctor, a quiet, gentlemanly man, to speak to her. I was on the poop looking after the ship when the doctor came from ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... spindle-backed chairs, Eleanor and Kate had grouped themselves by the piano. Eleanor, turning the leaves on the music-rack, looked over her shoulder at him. She was in pink that day; the tint of her gown, blending into the tint of her fresh skin, contrasted magically with the subdued background. Kate, all in white, sat on a hassock pulling a volume from the low book shelf. All this came upon Bertram with a soothing sense which he did not understand in that stage of his ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... then he drew the most beautiful pictures on the window pane, to amuse them when they should wake. He crept slyly into the larders of thrifty housewives, and, with a touch, made chickens and ducks hanging there, quite stiff and tasteless; he skipped to the cistern, and magically rendered the pump handle immovable; he ran about the streets and played tricks with the bright gas lamps, and they went out, as though a puff of wind had blown over them. And, last of all, he ran against a stout Burgomaster, returning homeward from a merry supper, ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... and sixth days they began to explore farther around the place, and the seventh they had become quite strengthened, so magically had the pure water and an abundance of fish and fowl, together with the numerous roots which they found, acted upon them. They found this lake had no streams entering or running from it, and that no motion stirred its placid ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... fascinating book has headed the list of best sellers. It has been made twice as a movie, once a silent picture and only recently as a talkie, but it has remained for the distinguished dramatist, Alice Chadwicke, to make the first and only dramatization of this magically beautiful story. Green Gables is the home of lovable Matthew Cuthbert and his stern sister, Marilla Cuthbert. Nobody suspects that beneath her hard exterior there lurks a soft and tender heart. When Matthew, after a great deal of reflection, finally decides to ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... moonshine, cast by some morbidly radiating Coleridge into the chaos of a fermenting life, act magically there, and produce divulsions and convulsions and diseased developments. So dark and abstruse, without lamp or authentic finger-post, is the course of pious genius towards the Eternal Kingdoms grown. No fixed highway more; the old spiritual highways and recognized paths ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... approached a gate that amazingly was a gate. Hinges, yes; and mechanical complications, and a pendant cord on each side. I tugged at one and the gate magically opened. As we passed through I tugged at the other and it magically closed. This was luxury ineffable to one who had laboured with things that seemed to be kept merely for the sake of a jest that was never of the best and was staling with use. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... which I had asked. There were over thirty dishes on the emblazoned menu, and of course I had wanted something that was not on it: a peculiar rusk, a rusk recondite and unheard of by my fellow-diners. The man had hopefully said that he "would see." And here lay the rusk, magically obtained. I felicitated him, as an equal. And then, having consumed the ice and the fruits of the hot-house, I arose and followed in the path of the lion-breasted woman, and arrived at an elevator, and was wafted aloft by a boy of sixteen who did nothing else from 6 A.M. till midnight ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... himself a Basque, informs us artlessly and seriously that one counts a thousand and forty-five forms for their combined present indicatives, and a trifle over ten thousand forms for the two fully expanded verbs; and yet the language, he hastens to add, is so magically simple that even a Basque child never ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... rigidity or an ostentatiously languid and careless indifference. At the extreme remove from this is Birnbaum, that gigantic and feverishly active spider, whose bent body seems to crouch over the whole orchestra, his magically elongated arms to stretch out so far that his wand touches the big drum. But even the quietest of these foreign conductors, Nikisch, for example, gives no impression of psychic inhibition, but rather of that refined and deliberate economy of means which marks the accomplished ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... the North of Scotland. There are Elizabethan references to the poem, and a twelfth century romance turns on the main idea of sleep magically induced. The lover therein is more fortunate than the hero of the ballad, and, finally, overcomes the spell. The idea ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... disinclination, and no more to direct Lizer's greasy fingers over the yellow keys of that demented piano in a vain endeavour to teach her "choones", of which her mother expected her to learn on an average two daily, it seemed as though I had a mountain lifted off me, and I revived magically, got out of bed and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... so Damaris watched them, softly laughing. Then, in the content bred of Carteret's promise and the joy of coming travel, something of their frisky spirit caught her too—a spirit which, for all young creatures, magically haunts the dusk. And, as they presently fled away up the lawn, Damaris fled after them, circling over the moist grass, darting hither and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... dome-like brow—and fired! There could be no possibility of missing at such short range, no possibility whatever ... and in the very instant of pulling the trigger the mist cleared, the lineaments of Dr. Fu-Manchu melted magically. This was not the Chinese doctor who stood before me, at whose skull I still was pointing the deadly little weapon, into whose brain I had fired the bullet; ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... ones, being unable to pursue, dealt magically with some rocky ridges, which then rushed over the ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... intensely to read the music correctly and sympathetically, and lo! I was succeeding! He turned the page with the incredible rapidity and dexterity of which only great pianists seem to have the secret, and in conjunction with my air in the bass he was suddenly, magically, drawing out from the upper notes the sweetest and most intoxicating melody I had ever heard. The exceeding beauty of the thing laid hold on me, and I abandoned myself to it. I felt sure now that, at any rate, I should ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... The doctor sighed deeply and sank back onto the sofa he had been occupying. The three could see an indentation magically appear in the upholstery of an easy-chair across ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... he took her offered hand and said "How do you do," in his turn, and merely to repeat the ordinary words seemed magically to restore the situation to the normal. Indeed, he was so much relieved, and it was so natural to be shaking hands, to be conventionally greeting, that he forgot he had only a towel on and his professional manner came back to him. ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... by celestial guardians, and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his shoulders, stroked his mustaches and waited for the dawn. It came slowly in a whirling mist of snowflakes, that dazzled and confused the eye. What could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed. He looked over the valley, and summed up the present and future ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... beauty. To this day, in many places, the hills, vales, and woods on either bank, retain almost the original wildness of primeval Nature. The river winds among high limestone hills, which are carved in frequent deep ravines, by tumbling brooks, or trickling rills. Low, green islands rise magically upon the forward view of the voyager, then vanish in the receding distance, like fairy ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Chalk, shortly. He was gazing in much distaste at a brig to starboard, which was magically drawn up to the skies one moment and ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... had taken, rather late in life perhaps, to playing the part of a French country gentleman; he returned with a store of acute observations and pleasant anecdotes, a little older, a little mellower, otherwise unchanged. Of those magically expanded views, those sudden yawnings of sympathetic depths, that nowadays every one may count on winning, if not by a week in Brittany, at any rate by a month in Manitoba, we find scarcely a trace. In the sixteenth ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... grin that wreathed Masten's lips—a shallow, forced one. But it sufficed for the rider. He sat erect, his six-shooter disappearing magically, and the smile on his face when he looked at the girl, had ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the ladies, with, Behold, your King! to be caressed, courted, admired, and flattered, the king of beauty and fancy would too commonly bolt; slip away, steal out, creep off; unobserved and almost magically he vanished; thus mysteriously depriving his fair subjects of his much-coveted, long looked-for company." If he had been fairly caged and found himself in congenial company, he let time pass unheeded, sitting up all night to talk, and chaining his audience by the spell of his unrivalled eloquence; ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... haunting, and he has a lot of fun out of mortals for being scared of specters. He loves to shake the lugubrious terrors of the past before you, exposing their hollow futility, and he contrives to create new fears for you magically while you are ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... his wallet. "However, we have a certain leeway on expenses on this assignment and appreciate your co-operation." He handed two twenties and a ten to the maitre d'. Fredrick bowed low, the money disappearing into his clothes magically. "Merci bien, monsieur." ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... person to be acted upon in wax or clay, roasting this image before a fire; by mixing magical ointments, or other compositions or ingredients; or sometimes merely by uttering an imprecation.... Witches can ride in sieves on the sea, on brooms, or spits, magically prepared. The meeting of the witches is held every Friday night—between Friday and Saturday.... They steal children from the grave, boil them with lime till all the flesh is loosed from the bones, and is reduced to one mass. ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... aloud when she bumped her head, and getting out of and into her clothes was a fascinating exercise in contortion. She was entranced by the wash-room with its hot and cold water and its basin of apparent silver, whose contents did not have to be lifted and splashed into a slop-jar, but magically emptied themselves at the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Polperro shakes the soul and the aesthetic nerves like a glass of old wine; no one can survey it unmoved, or leave it as he entered it, any more than you can come out of a fairy ring as you went in. In the afternoon they had bathed in the rock pools along the coast. In the evening the moon had magically gleamed on the little town, and Barry and Gerda had sat together on the beach watching it, and then in the dawn they had risen (Barry and Gerda again) and rowed out in a boat to watch the pilchard haul, returning at breakfast time ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... is at its best by night, for, in the red, fiery glow, the blackened walls, the shining anvil, and the smith himself, bare-armed and bare of chest, are all magically transfigured, while, in the hush of night, the drone of the bellows sounds more impressive, the stroke of the hammers more sonorous and musical, and the flying sparks mark plainly their individual ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... sugar poised above his cup with the sugar-tongs. Her astonishment was so great that she kept it there. The walls of the city which just now had seemed to be rising magically faded away again, leaving the same unbounded vacancy into which she had been looking ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... by direct experience that there is a state of matter in which inertia is, to say the least, greatly diminished, we find ourselves in need of giving this state (which is present throughout nature wherever material changes are brought into existence magically) a name of its own, as we did with the two types of causation. A word suggests itself which, apart from expressing adequately the peculiar self-mobility which we have just brought to our experience, goes well alongside the word 'inert' by forming a kind of rhyme with it. This is the term 'alert'. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... Another minute and he would have patted him and told him what to eat and wear. But instead he raised his hat and smiled. The train moved slowly out, making a deep purring sound like flowing water. The platform had magically thinned. Officials stood lonely among the scattered wavers of hats and handkerchiefs. As he stepped backwards to keep the carriage window in sight until the last possible moment, Minks was nearly knocked over by a man who hurried along the platform ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... and furiously in all parts of London, and in no part more rapidly than in the slice of a house whose front always presented an air of having been freshly decorated, in spite of summer rain and winter soot and fog. The plants in the window boxes seemed always in bloom, being magically replaced in the early morning hours when they dared to hint at flagging. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, it was said, must be renewed in some such mysterious morning way, as she merely grew prettier as she neared thirty and passed it. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life? Or does she listen to the Ghost's Walk and think what step does it most resemble? A man's? A woman's? The pattering of a little child's feet, ever coming on—on—on? Some melancholy influence is upon her, or why should so proud a lady close the doors and sit ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... speculative of past ages have frequently attempted to arrive, by external means, at the immediate possession of results otherwise requiring a long course of intense study and anxious inquiry. From these defunct illuminati originated the suppositionary virtues of the magically-endowed divining wand. The simple bending of a forked hazel twig, being the received sign of the deep-buried well, suited admirably with their notions of immediate information, and precluded the unpleasant and toilsome necessity for delving on speculation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... see the things she saw that morning. Never again did she have so unquestioningly the happy child's conception of the whole world as magically centered in indulgent kindness about herself. As she looked up the clean, empty street stretching away under the shade of its thrifty young trees, it seemed made only to lead her forward into the life for which she had been so long preparing herself. Endbury, with its shops, its bustle ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... in a dream that he finds his stirrups, and is vaguely conscious of voices about him—a thudding of hoofs and the creak of leather. As one in a dream he lifts "The Terror" to a fence that vanishes and gives place to a hedge which in turn is gone, or is magically transfigured into an ugly wall. And, still as one in a dream, he is thereafter aware of cries and shouting, and knows that horses are galloping beside him—riderless. But on and ever on races the great, black horse—head ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... Christmas trees in the city that night, but none which gave such hearty pleasure as the one which so magically took the place of the broken branch and its few poor toys. They were all there, however, and Dolly and Polly were immensely pleased to see that of all her gifts Petkin chose the forlorn bird to carry ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... her because Salt Cellar offered very good scope for those legitimate effects of hers which we one and all admire. Was it nothing to her to have cut those black shadows across the cloisters? Was it nothing to her that she so magically mingled her rays with the candle-light shed forth from Zuleika's bedroom? Nothing, that she had cleansed the lawn of all its colour, and made of it a platform of silver-grey, fit for ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... native conjurors that I have seen who are consistently good at sleight-of-hand, (and they are Arabs or Egyptians) are the invaders of the ships at Port Said, and their one and only good point, magically, is their manipulation of those unfortunate chickens. Their "Gillie, gillie, Mrs. Langtry" is more up-to-date and an improvement upon the "Beggie, beggie, ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... The tea came, magically—delicious cambric tea and cinnamon toast. Kirk and the old gentleman talked of the farm, and of Asquam, and other every-day subjects, till the spring dusk gathered at the window, and the musician started up. "Your folk will be anxious," he said. "We must be off. ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... that makes it good or evil; and his motive was entirely unselfish. He knew—provided he was not first robbed of self-control—how vicariously to absorb these evil radiations into himself and change them magically into his own good purposes. And, since his motive was pure and his soul fearless, they could not ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... closely against the book-shelves, against the book-shelves which magically had grown up in front of the door by which he had entered. He was in the place of books and roses—in the haunt ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... faithless a valet as any servant who ever watered wine, lost a gimcrack, or hooked a weed. Studs, neckcloths, bootjacks, silk socks, pins, underwear—all magically and eventually faded from my wardrobe, wafted to those silent bournes of swag that valets wot of. What in hell do you want to stay here for ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... bathed in this highly ozoned lake atmosphere, which magically soothes every nerve and refreshes every sense like an elixir, and we are off again on the broad bosom of the Mackinaw strait, threading a verdant labyrinth of emerald islets and following the course of Father Jacques Marquette, who two hundred years ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... animality. It moves like a young fawn; spins the gayest, most silken, most golden of spider webs; fills one with the delights of taste and smell and sight and touch. In the most glimmering, floating of poems, "L'Apres-midi d'un faune," there is caught magically by the climbing, chromatic flute, the drowsy pizzicati of the strings, and the languorous sighing of the horns, the atmosphere of the daydream, the sleepy warmth of the sunshot herbage, the divine apparition, the white wonder of arms ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... I think, to be an enchanted place, where every newly-arrived person became magically changed into a sort of Midas on a small scale; transforming everything he touched, if not into gold—the days of California were now over—at all events into Washington "eagles," or Mexican silver dollars, or even greenbacks, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... his head. There were tears in her eyes. The old sense of unreality was strong upon him again. He was listening to the Tocsin's story. It was strange that he should be doing that—that it could be really so! It seemed as though magically he had been transported out of the world where for years past he had lived with danger lurking at every turn, where men set watch about his house to trap him, where the denizens of the underworld yowled like starving beasts to sink their ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the natural character of Juan and Maria, their attitude towards the cousins changed magically. The half-breed woman could not do enough for the twain, and Juan of the yellow eyes became suddenly ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... of Bordeaux, for some time tutor to a prince, praetorian prefect of Gaul, consul, and in his last years just an old man contentedly living on his estates. His most famous poem is a description of the Moselle, which for all its literary affectations evokes most magically the smiling countryside which was the background of his life. High above the river on either bank stand the villas and country houses, with their courts and lawns and pillared porticos, and the hot baths from which, ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... her more favored sister, (who is very frequently both stupid and uninteresting), her chances of an invitation are small indeed, until her father is in a position to head a subscription list or an election fund, and then, presto! all the insuperable difficulties that previously existed, magically disappear. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... penetrates the top, and its branches sway and dash together above the actors' heads; in the Dusk of the Gods there is Gunther's hall, completely open on one side. Undefiled Nature, healthy and wild and sweet, is always present, and always in sympathy with the character of every scene. Besides being magically picturesque, the music is also continuously in a high degree dramatic, and it has yet another quality: it is charged with a sense of a strange, remote past—a past that never existed. No archaic chords or progressions occur, but by a series of miraculous touches the atmosphere of a far-away past ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... days and three weeks," said Billy, remembering something, "the difference is sometimes no greater than between Tweedledum and Tweedledee." He smiled humorously at the other young man, a frank, likeable smile that softened magically the bluntness of his young mouth. "That's why I came to you. You are the only soul I know to be interested in Miss Beecher's welfare. The Evershams are off up the Nile—and they'd probably be helpless, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... do without Bozzy by his bedside—dear, garrulous old Bozzy, most splendid of toadies, most miraculous of reporters? When Bozzy begins to talk to me, and the old Doctor growls "Sir," all the worries and anxieties of life fall magically away, and Dismal Jemmy vanishes like the ghost at cock-crow. I am no longer imprisoned in time and the flesh: I am of the company of the immortals. I share their triumphant aloofness from the play that fills our stage and see ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... was coming down-stairs again there was another ring at the door. And my mother appeared magically out of the kitchen, but I was beforehand with her, and with a laugh I insisted on opening the front door myself this time. A young woman stood on ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... testimonials had received their crowning complement. The beginning at the Beach had touched its shining end. As she and mamma had planned it, so it had magically fallen out. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... misdeeds behind them in other grades—misdeeds that blackened the pages of other teachers' deportment books—somehow managed to reach the door of Miss Georgiana's room without being dismissed from the school by the principal. Once having entered the favored portal, their characters seemed to change magically. ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... only object, with the odd sense, through his embarrassment, that it would be magically dispelled by his ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... sentenced, and led out to execution, with the scimitar about to descend, when of a sudden—he drew his head out of the water. And lo! all these marvels had passed in a second! What if there were to be magically crowded into those few hours all that could possibly be seen—sea and land, old towns in different countries, strange people, cathedrals, town-halls, streets, etc.? It would be like some wild, fitful dream. ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... returned that afternoon he was startled to find the cabin empty. But instead of bearing any appearance of disturbance or hurried flight, the rude interior seemed to have magically assumed a decorous order and cleanliness unknown before. Fresh bark hid the inequalities of the floor. The skins and blankets were folded in the corners, the rude shelves were carefully arranged, even a few tall ferns and bright ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... through Joe's guard, darting his blade as though it were a foil. A cut opening magically on Joe's chest from the left nipple to ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... streets by the river a few panting people hurried, clinging to the house wall for a thin strip of shade, too narrow even to cover their feet. All the windows of the stores were open, and within the offices, with a little thinking, a little turn of the pen, and a little tracing in ink, men were magically warding off impending disaster, or adding thousands to the thousands accumulated already—men, too, were writing without thinking, mechanically copying or posting, scribbling letters of form, with heads clear or heads aching, with hearts burning or ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... sharpnesses that earlier had appeared upon her face. A soft colour flooded her cheeks; her eyes shone. Come to him! She would go to the end of the world.... Keith! She said it aloud, in a voice that was rich with her deep feeling, magically transformed. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... hills of the interior of old Norway, and, although the weather is excessively hot, many of these are covered with snow. Everything is light, and transparent, and thin, and blue, and glassy, and fairy-like, and magically beautiful, and altogether delightful! There: have you made much of all that, good reader? If you have, be thankful, for, as I set out by saying, description of scenery, (at least to any good purpose), is ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... is at one time the very model of maidenly modesty and wisdom (336 ff.), at others an accomplished intriguante and demi-mondaine (549 ff., esp. 607 ff.). When the plot of the Ep. is getting hopelessly tangled, of a sudden it is magically resolved as by a deus ex machina and everybody decides to "shake ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, night ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... quantity of kindling wood. He was housed, and fed, and clothed, after a fashion, but not loved. Mr. Shackford did not ill-treat the lad, in the sense of beating him; he merely neglected him. Every year the man became more absorbed in his law cases and his money, which accumulated magically. He dwelt in a cloud of calculations. Though all his interests attached him to the material world, his dry, attenuated body seemed scarcely ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... so great—such a fierce, hissing roar—that the cry uttered by Ebenezer Parks was half drowned; while, in less time than it takes to tell it, the young deputy felt a sudden shock as a rush of cold water bathed his face and head, acting so magically that he rose quickly, and, with the water rising above his ankles, began to feel his way along the stony wall, as fast as he could, in the direction ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... successful, for on November 28, the king departed with his army. And now all was changed in Florence. The partisans of the Medici had vanished magically and Savonarola ruled the city at the head of the popular party. He speedily proposed a new form of government suggesting as the best model, a Grand Council like that of Venice. The new Government was formed of a Grand Council and a Council of Eighty answering to an Assembly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Again, as he expected, the covering was raised by an unbidden hand and John lamented, that, on account of the interference, instead of the princess, whom he wanted to take to the King, a disgusting corpse had been magically substituted. He succeeded in being recompensed with a good deal of money. [Jos. Haltrich, Deut. Volksmed. d. Siebenbuerg, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... "is the important official called the Guardian of the Entrance of Paradise. Sir Guardian, permit me to introduce to you two children of men who have been magically transformed into skylarks against their will. They are not quite birds, because their heads retain the human shape; but whatever form they may bear, their natures are sweet and innocent and I deem them worthy to associate ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... a pocket, and magically a dozen double eagles rolled and vibrated upon the counter, sending into Ling Foo's ears that music so peculiar to gold. Many days had gone by since he had set his gaze upon the yellow metal. His hand reached down—only to feel—but not so quickly as the white ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... clean and magically glittering it all looked; and the keen cold cleared the fear and fever from her ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... wide lane with puffing motors and impatient horses on either hand, she walked unscathed to the further curb. It gave her a delightful sensation, so delightful that, after a minute, she walked back. Twice again, after short intervals, she trod the fascinating way so magically opened at the lifting of the big man's hand. But the last time her conductor left her at the curb, he ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... heavy tithes on his poor parishioners, that, in spite of the prosperity of their fishing, they were unable to pay them. So the herrings left the district, and the parson could whistle for them, until he mended his ways and reduced his tithes, when they magically returned. ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... an open port offers a striking contrast to its far-Eastern environment. In the well-ordered ugliness of its streets one finds suggestions of places not on this side of the world,—just as though fragments of the Occident had been magically brought oversea: bits of Liverpool, of Marseilles, of New York, of New Orleans, and bits also of tropical towns in colonies twelve or fifteen thousand miles away. The mercantile buildings—immense by comparison ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... as enchanted swords which had magically flowered, lilied the desert stretches, and there were strange red blossoms like drops of blood clinging to the points of long daggers. Bird of Paradise plants were there, too, well named for their plumy splendour of crimson, white, ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... make-up, the Patchwork Girl was magically alive and had proved herself not the least jolly and agreeable of the many quaint characters who inhabit the astonishing Fairyland of Oz. Indeed, Scraps was a general favorite, although she was rather flighty and erratic and did and said many things that surprised ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... woodsman and with muscles trained not only by wild life there in the mountains to speed, endurance and exactitude, but by many an hour of stealthy stalking of the "revenuers" sent to search out his moonshine still, raid it, take him prisoner, were almost magically ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... where the force of gravitation is one-sixth as great as upon the earth, we had found ourselves astonishingly light. Five-sixths of our own weight, and of the weight of the air-tight suits in which we were incased, had magically dropped from us. It was therefore comparatively easy for us, encumbered as we were, to make our way ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... boyhood days he found to be magically changed. New faces met him on all sides. The old log cabin where his father and mother had resided, was deserted and its dilapidated walls were crumbling with decay. The once happy inmates were scattered over the face of the earth, while many of their voices were ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... stained glass of the window, just noticed, were perfectly enchanting. The window itself, as you look upward, or rather as you fix your eye upon the center of it, from the remote end of the abbey, or the Lady's Chapel, was a perfect blaze of dazzling light; and nave, choir, and side aisles seemed magically illumined. We declared instinctively that the Abbey of St. Ouen could hardly have ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... and—quoting the chairman—"to hear the truth about the war into which the Government, at the bidding of the capitalistic classes, had plunged the people of the nation." Then in ten words he introduced the speaker, and as the speaker raised his arms above his head invoking quiet, there fell, magically, a quick, deep, breathless hush ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... persuasion when we see her en grande toilette. In day dress she has always been inclined ever so little to a primness and severity that suggest old-maidishness. In her low gown of pale grey, with all her silver hair waved softly, she is unexpectedly lovely,—her face softened, transformed, and magically 'brought out' by the whiteness of her shoulders and slender throat. Not an ornament, not a jewel, will she wear; and she is right to keep the nunlike simplicity of style which suits her so well, and which holds its own even in the ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... contention of our school. Surely, if man awakes to the discovery that the laws, neither of nature, health, nor of private or public life, can be violated with impunity, more than ever is he convinced that the universe is, in Emerson's singularly expressive phrase, "so magically woven" that man must come to ruin if he sets himself to systematically disregard them. The word "woven" is an illumination in itself, showing how the warp of constant nature and life and the woof of man's conduct ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... slowly into the house and stood at the window, staring at the mountains. In the clear, newly washed air, they looked like the soft, tumbling waves of some magically blue sea. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... final form of history. Perhaps, in looking at recent ages, we are balked of seeing their true underlying form by the dust of events and the clamor of details; for eyes anointed they might resolve themselves into Moyturas and Camlans endlessly fought; into magical weapons magically forged; into Cuculains battling eternally at the Watcher's Ford, he alone withstanding the great host of this world's invaders, while all his companions are under a druid sleep. . . . It is the most splendid scene or incident in the Tann Bo Cuailgne; and I cannot think of it, but ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... everything then—before the door opened, and she saw first of all the shocked, scared face of the elderly parlour-maid who supported the crumpled, palsied figure of the old, old woman who, three hours before, had been so miraculously young, magically upheld and supported then by the omnipotent strength of ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Guesno's house, events have been dragging him nearer and nearer the gulf that yawns at his feet; while his destiny, hovering above him like an enormous vulture, hides the light from those who approach him. And the circles from above press magically forward to meet those from below: they advance, they contract, and then, uniting at last, their eddies blend and fasten upon ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... way beneath him. At the door of the house he glanced fearfully behind him, like a hunted man. All Nature seemed dead. The forests which covered the sides of the mountain were sleeping, lying heavy beneath a weight of sadness. The still air was magically clear and transparent. There was never a sound. Only the melancholy music of a stream—water eating away the rock—sounded the knell of the earth, Christophe went to bed in a fever. It the stable hard by the beasts stirred as restlessly and uneasily ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... to slip a priceless diamond bracelet on to that arm. It was just an arm, the usual feminine arm; every normal woman in this world has two of them; and yet——! But at the same time, such is the contradictoriness of human nature, Henry would have given a considerable sum to have had Miss Foster magically removed from the room, and to be alone. The whole of his being was deeply disturbed, as if by an earthquake. And, moreover, he could ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... cat, white the dogs: like some orange and snow-white ribbon magically inspired, thrice at enormous speed they set a belt about the house. With tremendous bounds the Rose kept before her pursuers—heavily labouring, horrid with thirsty glee. Impotent in the doorway moaned Mr. Marrapit, his dirge rushing up to a wail of grief each ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... again. There was an irresistible charm and roguishness about the fellow, with his intelligent oval face, black Vandyke beard and magically ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke |
