"Marvellous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gentleman (letting the Assistant out of the pillory, with the air of a man who does not often unbend to these frivolities). Now, Gentlemen, I am sure all those whom I see around me have heard of those marvellous beings—the Mahatmas—and how they can travel through space in astral bodies, and produce matter out of nothing at all. (Here the group endeavour to look as if these facts were familiar to them from infancy, while the Comic Coachman assumes the intelligent interest of a Pantomime Clown ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... stated, than marriages between the trappers and a beautiful redskin. Isolated absolutely from women of his own colour, the poor mountaineer forgets he is white, which, considering the embrowning influence of constant exposure and sunlight, is not so marvellous after all. For a portion of the year there is no hunting, and then idleness is the order of the day. At such times the mountaineer visits the lodges of his dark neighbours for amusement, and in the spirited dance many a heart is lost to the squaws. The young trapper, like other enamoured ones ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... have felt only disgust; but his love made it impossible for him to believe her guilty of such unworthy lightness as her words bespoke, even on the plain evidence before him, so he simply choked back his anger as best he might, and followed towards the house, speechless with astonishment at the marvellous change that had come over the daughter ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... wonderful ideality. The eternity of God, the grandeur of Nature, the profundity of the soul, move in silent panorama before you. The great and agitating problems of human existence are depicted with astonishing energy and precision, and marvellous is the conduct of the piece to us who behold it as a painting away back on the dark canvas ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... obtained from St. Peter; but that is superstition. Faith, however, produces miracles, and whether it be true or false faith, it will always produce the same wonders." We have also this penetrating observation from Pierre Ponponazzi, of Milan, an author of the same century: "We can easily conceive the marvellous effects which confidence and imagination can produce, particularly when both qualities are reciprocal between the subject and the person who influences them. The cures attributed to the influence of certain relics are the effect of this imagination ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... hundreds of thousands of dollars pass through his hands, and he is responsible for the genuineness of every one. He has persons in his own employment who pay and receive all monies, and who examine and test every separate coin with the most marvellous rapidity. They take a whole handful of dollars at a time, and toss them up separately with the finger and thumb: this enables them to determine whether each "rings" properly, and on the coin falling into their hand again, reversed, they examine the second side ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... is marvellous. Learn to your confusion that it is now at least sixteen years ago since the man of whom you speak died in a shipwreck at sea with his wife and children, when he was trying to save their lives from the cruel persecutions which accompanied the ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... have been forgiven, the old man's continued disrespect to his daughter's memory, his refusal to join even in the simplest ceremony of devotion, kept both him and old Mata chilled and distant. The one possible explanation,—aside from that of wanton cruelty,—was a thing so marvellous, so terrible in implied suggestion, that the boy's faint soul could make for it no present home; let it drift, a great luminous nebula of hope, a little longer ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... having learned much as to the treatment of wounds and bruises and sicknesses of all kinds. He is well pleased with its appearance now, and with your state of health. He says that you Rangers are marvellous tough customers, whether as soldiers or as patients. You take ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... fellow was found to be so excessively alarmed, that he could scarcely articulate; but having recovered from his fright, and again with the full power of utterance, he declared that no money could tempt him to try again for the lamp; and in excuse for such a determination, he related the most marvellous story of what he had seen—far exceeding the wonderful things which the unexampled Don Quixote de la Mancha declared he had seen in the deep cave of Montesinos. Dave was, in fact, suspended at the height of two hundred and forty feet above the level below. Such is the history of the lamp, ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... and strangled, but clung with the death-grip of drowning men; and when at last she found bottom and dragged herself up the beach with the waves beating at her, she carried them all, salvaged from the sea in a fashion so marvellous that Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first on his legs, had no voice left with which to express ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... nearly spoilt his exhibition of his marvellous power of endurance, for pricking his finger accidentally with a pin, he sang out lustily, much to the ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... how marvellous was the shooting of the Ostjaks, he was nevertheless surprised at seeing that each of the birds was struck in the head, and was thus killed instantly without the ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... reverent tones, began the sad story of the betrayal, captivity, and Death. Wikkey listened in absorbed attention, every now and then commenting on the narrative in a way which showed its intense reality to himself, and gave a marvellous vividness to the details of which Lawrence had before scarcely realized the terrible force. As he read on, his voice became husky, and the child's eyes were fixed on him with devouring eagerness, till the awful end came, and Wikkey broke into an agony of weeping. Lawrence ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... who is the light of the world, and so a light to you, that tells you the truth of your condition, leads all, that take heed unto it, out of darkness into God's marvellous light. For light grows upon the obedient; it is sown for the righteous, and their way is a shining light, that shines forth more and ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... conclusion, the various and marvellous gifts displayed for the first time on our stage by the great poet, the great dramatist, the strong and subtle searcher of hearts, the just and merciful judge and painter of human passions, who gave this ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... regarded one another curiously, each endeavoring to recall some unwonted sound which might sustain a narrative that was fast obtaining the seducing interest of the marvellous. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... Brunetta, rival beauties. Phyllis procured for a certain festival some marvellous fabric of gold brocade in order to eclipse her rival, but Brunetta dressed the slave who bore her train, in a robe of the same material and cut in precisely the same fashion, while she herself wore simple black. Phyllis died of mortification.—The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... seem to me to savour a little of opera bouffe," he remarked drily. "For my own part I believe that these marvellous documents would be perfectly safe in the unlocked drawer of my desk. I do not believe any of these stories which come from Paris about copies of our work being in existence. I do not wish you to be careless, of course, but don't overdo your precautions. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... old houses one is, of course, liable to adventures. Where is the marvellous to find refuge, if not among the chambers, the intricacies, which have seen the vicissitudes, the crimes, and the deaths of generations of such men as had ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... from every nation of the West, men who certainly had never intended to go on pilgrimage themselves, were roused to what seems a somewhat perverse anger of religious devotion. Under the lead of Godfrey of Bouillon they marched eastward, saw the wonders of Constantinople, marvellous indeed to their ruder eyes, defeated the sultans of Asia Minor and of Antioch, and ended by storming Jerusalem, and erecting there a Christian kingdom where Mahometanism had ruled for nearly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... in the marvellous heart of man, That strange and mystic scroll, That an army of phantoms vast and wan Beleaguer the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... columns of the Lyceum returned the sound, seeming to sympathize in their joy. To such a pitch was I affected myself, that I made a speech, in which I acknowledged that I had never seen the like of their wisdom; I was their devoted servant, and fell to praising and admiring of them. What marvellous dexterity of wit, I said, enabled you to acquire this great perfection in such a short time? There is much, indeed, to admire in your words, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, but there is nothing that I admire more ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... the difficulty of focussing, but makes the minimum visible angle smaller. Helmholtz has defined the minimum angle measurable with the naked eye as being one minute of arc. In view of this it is simply marvellous that, when the positions of Tycho's standard stars are compared with the best modern catalogues, his probable error in right ascension is only /- 24", 1, and in declination ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... moment in the surprise of seeing the woman in black, had passed by on the cliff above her, perceiving and feeling as he went the things set down. At all times his keen vision and active brain took in and tasted details with an easy swiftness that was marvellous to men of slower chemistry; the need to stare, he held, was evidence of blindness. Now the feeling of beauty was awakened and exultant, and doubled the power of his sense. In these instants a picture was printed on his memory that ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... presented to me, I stood for some time to contemplate it; I cannot better illustrate the reaction which, took place in my mind, than by saying that it resembles that awkward inversion which a man's proper body experiences when, on going to pull something from which he expects a marvellous assistance, it comes with him at a touch, and the natural consequence is, that he finds his head down and his heels up. That which dashed the whole scene from the dark elevation in which the romance of devotion ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... days we landed a job at Divinerries', and I learned to shimmy from a kid at the Palais Royal. We stayed at Divinerries' six months until one night Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist, ate his milk-toast there. Next morning a poem about Marvellous Marcia came out in his newspaper, and within two days I had three vaudeville offers and a chance at the Midnight Frolic. I wrote Wendell a thank-you letter, and he printed it in his column—said that the style was ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... lover of Moore and Byron, and some of their songs which were translated needed no explanation to render them intelligible to him. Wolfe's marvellous poem on the death of Sir John Moore made a deep impression on him, and was a special favorite. Goethe and Heine he liked greatly, especially Goethe's song of Mignon, "Knowst thou the Land," and Heine's Fisher's Song (which Schubert has set to such delicious ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... longing seas the bark glideth, the golden marvel, around the gold of which all good, bad, and marvellous things frisk:— ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... yelling. As his room is on this side of the house, I could hear it better than in the morning. It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realize all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all. I reached him just as the sun was going down, and from ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... they would all be shot Unless they left the service, The hero hesitated not, So marvellous his nerve is. He sent his resignation in, The first of all his corps, O! That very knowing, Overflowing, Easy-going Paladin, The Duke of Plaza-Toro! To men of grosser clay, ha, ha! He always showed the way, ha, ha! That ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... you will think long and carefully even of anatomical facts, you will see in and behind them something more and grander than they. You will catch glimpses of the divinity of Nature. Most of us travel threescore years and ten stone-blind in a world of marvellous beauty. Why does the artist see so much more in every fence-corner and on every hill-side than we, set face to face with the grandest landscapes? Primarily, I believe, because he is sympathetic, and ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... to the roll of the Atlantic and drinking whisky punch, therefore he would be found to be romantic, semi-barbarous, and perhaps more than semi-lawless in his views of life. Irish priests have been made by chroniclers of Irish story to do marvellous things; and Fred Neville thought that this priest, if only the matter could be properly introduced, might be persuaded to do for him something romantic, something marvellous, perhaps something almost lawless. In truth it might have been ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... Mrs. Fremont being requested to examine the letters that came after him, and forward those which he ought to receive. She read the countermanding orders and detained them! and Fremont knew nothing of their existence, until after he had returned from one of the most marvellous and eventful expeditions of modern times—one to which the United States are indebted (among other things) for the present ownership of California, instead of seeing it a British possession. The writer of this View, who was then in St. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... to be expiated, and that strength had to be obtained from above for the new stage of their history on which at the annual Passover they might be supposed to be entering. In the same way, in the New Dispensation, are our minds ever to revert to the marvellous revelation of the grace and saving power of God in which Christianity originated; and in the very midst is the Lamb slain, who is both the expiation of the sins that are past and the strength requisite for the conflict and the pilgrimage. "If we walk in ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... to its very foundations, unfastening the prison doors, thus setting the prisoner at liberty in a marvellous way. He succeeded in reaching the coast without being caught by the guards of the Sultan, and a vessel sailing to Venice took him on board. But as he approached his native land the struggle in his soul between love and duty was very great; at one moment it seemed to overcome ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... afternoon we have received I think five invitations on yellow cards to various royal functions! Now indeed we are in the marvellous East, in the land to which Scot and Irish should travel to see their prince or king. So you, my dear friends, artists and professional men, who have chosen to live as I have done, in or near the capital of your native land, and whose most thrilling pageant in the whole year is ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... he had listened with wonder to the astounding achievements of Fitz in the postal and financial departments of the house. Of course Mr. Wittleworth would be a partner in the concern as soon as he was twenty-one, if not before; for, besides his own marvellous abilities, he had the additional advantage of being a relative of the ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... here that many of us met Scarron for the first time, and if we have got to know him better since, we still remember with a thrill of pleasure that first encounter when in the society of the matchless Count de la Fere and the marvellous Aramis we made our bow in company with the young Raoul to the crippled wit and his illustrious companions. The Whartons write brightly about Scarron, but their best merit to my mind is that they at once prompt ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... don't know me? Recollect the Old Jersey?' And he opened his vest and bared his breast. I immediately said to him—'You are James McClain.' 'I am,' said he. We both stepped into Mariner's public house, at the corner, and he related his marvellous ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... two long letters, one to Rose, and one to Watson, telling them both that he hoped to see them in less than six months. To Watson he told the whole of the strange tragedy of the Mahina, and of the marvellous escape of Mrs. Tracey. ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... but who, in his forlorn old age, had wandered to Syria, and there, by dint of applying scriptural texts to contemporary events, had earned the title of a prophet. Like Samuel Brothers, he prophesied marvellous things of Lady Hester's future, which she, rendered credulous by her solitary life in a mystic land, where her own power and importance were the chief facts in her mental horizon, came at length ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... merit. D'Anville was the first to construct a map by scientific methods, and that of itself is sufficient glory. In the department of historical geography, D'Anville exhibited unusual good sense in discussion, and a marvellous topographical instinct for identifications, but it is well to remember that he was neither a man of science, nor even well versed in classic authorities. His most beautiful work is his map of Italy, the dimensions of which, hitherto exaggerated, extended from the east to the west in accordance ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... land, with spiteful tricks and apish pranks, unworthy of his Homeric philosophy, of this prince of wisdom of this fatherly centre, from which have issued since the rising of his subterranean light a good number of marvellous works. Out upon those who would defile this divine head! All their life long may they find grit between their teeth, those who have ignored his good ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... "So marvellous, Prince, that you do not believe me," Elissa answered. "I know well what you think. You think that a woman to whom this very morning you spoke such words as women cannot well forgive, being revengeful laid a plot to murder you, and then, being a woman, changed her mind. Well, it is ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... have occurred to her. She had the heart of a woman, but mentally she was like a composite picture of Shakespeare's dramatis personae, and that Emerson should have spoken of her as "a great exaggerated creature" is not to be wondered at. In her own department she was marvellous. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... owe the marvellous spectacle of the rainbow—"God's bow in the clouds." It is indeed truly a heavenly messenger, and so unlike anything else that it scarcely seems to belong to ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... the capital of Europe, by well-bred people of all countries. Her politesse was kind and without sarcasm, and, by her own naturalness, she communicated ease. She was not beautiful, but had a frank and open expression and a marvellous gift of conversation, which was her delight and in which she gloried. Her salon was conspicuous for its untarnished honor and for the example it set ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... cry, but Kitty stopped him just in time by lifting him on to her lap and giving him her watch to look at. A marvellous watch that was gold and blue and bordered with a ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... ran higher than ever. The face of the capitaine was masked, as are always the faces of great diplomatists; he walked placid and upright, raising his wooden leg with an ease and skill that was absolutely marvellous. But poor Adolphe's brow was clouded. Yes, poor Adolphe! for he was poor in spirit, he had pledged himself to give up Marie, and to accept the liberal allowance which his mother tendered him; but it remained ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... is now the Province of Manitoba—and what is wider—in the great Western Canada of to-day. There may have been not many wise men, not many mighty, not many noble among them, but the long and stormy voyage which they made, the dangers they endured on the sea, the marvellous land journey they accomplished, and their taking "seisin of the land," to use William the Conqueror's phrase, entitles them to recognition ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... the Tower, the Lieutenant writes to Salisbury (December 23, 1605) of the "marvellous" confidence shown by Tresham and his friends that had he survived, they feared not the course of justice. Later, having left no male issue, his inheritance passes to his brother, who is described as of Rushton, when ...
— The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605 • William Parker
... years old: the Canon Delfini recognised his precocious talents and undertook to find him a classical education. The student obtained some small preferment, and succeeded to his patron's appointment. His marvellous acquaintance with ancient books secured him a place as librarian to the Cardinal Farnese, and he received many offers of more lucrative employment: but he found that if he accepted he would have to live away from Rome; and he refused everything that could cause ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... cares,' so Eastern night has its mosquitoes; and a sore contest one has with them on issuing from the bath at such an hour. How they flit about, imps of evil as they are, and sound their horn of defiance in our ear!—a very marvellous sound to proceed from such tiny creatures, and, to persons of irritable nerves, worse even than their sting, or at least an additional horror. They proved strong incentives to a hasty toilette; and the whole gipsying-party ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... abundant flowers; the two grand views from the upper windows, one towards Paris, the other towards the garden; the waterfalls, set in a tasteful frame, and rushing down step by step, breaking into a white foam, sparkling in the sunlight or with the reflection of a thousand torches, formed a marvellous setting for a festival both by night and by day. More than three hundred thousand persons went to Saint Cloud; they began to arrive in the morning, and filled every avenue, covered every bit of rising ground. Food was publicly distributed; the fountains ran wine. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... carried about in civic processions prior to the year 1835; even now it is seen on Guy Fawkes' day, the 5th of November.—Whiffler: An official character of the old Norwich Corporation, strangely uniformed and accoutred, who headed the annual procession on Guildhall day, flourishing a sword in a marvellous manner. All this was abolished on the passage of the Municipal Reform Act in 1835. As a consequence, says a contemporaneous writer, "the Aldermen left off wearing their scarlet gowns, Snap was laid up on a shelf in the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... awakening the churches by marvellous signs," said one, extending a lank, cold hand to salute ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... fill rapidly. Long shimmering trains swept over the deep red carpet, white shoulders emerged from bodices starred with diamonds, embroidered with pearls, covered with flowers, and in nearly every coiffure glittered those marvellous hereditary gems for which the Roman ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Pritha's son endued with immeasurable energy, were certainly marvellous. O Brahmana, what did Dhritarashtra of great wisdom say, when ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... right over them, causing great rains, suddenly casteth all its leaves, viz., within three days, and yet within six days after becomes all green again. The leaves of the other trees do also in part fall away, but so as the trees continue still green notwithstanding: being of a marvellous height, and supported as it were with five or six natural buttresses growing out of their bodies so far, that three men may so be hidden in each of them, that they which shall stand in the very next buttress shall not be able to see them. One ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... movement. The strong, steady hands shook, those marvellous fingers, usually so deft and sure, faltered now as they loosened the cloak and threw the hood back over the wig of tangled, matted hair. It was not the darkness alone that would not let him see—there was a mist and a blur ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... top she halted, still longing to hear at his side that marvellous wood-note, and was just starting on once more, when from the same quarter as before it came again, with new and fervent clearness. With noiseless foot she sprang back down the bendings of the path, having no other thought but ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... Tallboys in the large arm-chair, where she looked most beautiful and gorgeous, in a robe of some astonishing sheeny sky-blue, edged with paly gold, while on her head was a coronal of sapphire and gold, with a marvellous little plume. The cost must have been enormous, and her delicate and spirituelle beauty was shown to the greatest advantage; but as the audience was far too scanty to be worth beginning upon, Cecil, with a sigh at the folly of maternal idolatry, went to hunt up her ladies ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... statesman. The smoothness of his manipulation was marvellous. No other man in politics, indeed no other man who had ever been in politics in this country, could—his admirers said—have brought together so many hostile interests and made so fantastic a combination. Some ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... himself from her with bitter words, and the next moment they saw Macdougal riding furiously along the side of the gorge, swinging his apparently maddened horse through the thick timber with marvellous dexterity. Done uttered a cry, and ran for the horses, and Lucy followed him, calling piteously. She saw Jim spring upon Wallaroo and turn his head down the gully, and, knowing his intention, snatched ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... It must therefore be altogether without reference to its present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and meaning of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the present neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the Venetian character, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... boy, carrying the splits for a servant of the family, called Sam Wham. Now Sam was an able young fellow, well-boned and willing; a hard headed cudgel player, and a marvellous tough wrestler, for he had a backbone like a sea-serpent; this gained him the name of the Twister and Twiner. He had got into the river, with his back to me, was stooping over a broad stone, when something bolted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... glory in his eyes. Often as he was working, the crushing sense of the unmanliness of his conduct quite overpowered him, and, alleging that he was unwell, he ran off to St. Sebald's Church. There he spent hours in studying Peter Fischer's marvellous monument, and he would exclaim, as if ravished with delight, "Oh, good God! Is there anything on earth more glorious than to conceive and execute such a work?" And when he had to go back again to his staves and hoops, and remembered ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... oval form, which is covered with scales. The hind feet are webbed, and, with the aid of the tail, which acts as a rudder, enable it to swim through the water with ease and rapidity. Except in one respect, I do not know that it can be considered a sagacious animal; but it is a marvellous engineer, its faculties being employed in building houses, and in forming dams for the protection of ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... having arrived in Saint Louis and other frontier towns—bringing with them, not only the full account of the gold discovery, but its confirmation, in the shape of large "chunks" of gold-bearing quartz, and bags of the yellow dust itself. The marvellous tale was no longer questioned, or doubted. The mail had brought newspapers from New Orleans and Saint Louis, giving detailed accounts of the digging of Sutter's mill-race by the disbanded soldiers of the "Mormon Battalion;" of the crevasse caused by the water, which had laid open the wonderful ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... way Bertha had drawn courage, resolution, pride, and ambition from what she saw on this short ride. That she was in a car and mistress of it was in itself a marvellous distinction, and the thought of what she would have been—as a "round-tripper" from Sibley Junction—added to her pleasure and pride. She was always doing sums in her head now. Thus: "Suppose our excursion does cost twenty dollars ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... either side of the wicker car, like a ship; and, like a ship, it could be steered with perfect ease. He even took Jack to a little stone structure that stood in a meadow, surrounded by trees. In there, according to Pierre, stood this marvellous balloon, not yet inflated, of course. That was only a matter of five seconds; a handful of the silver dust placed at the aperture of the silken bag, a drop of pure water touched to it, and, puff! the silver dust turns to vapour and the balloon ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... should put it in the first class of biographies without hesitation. Of course, it is only a fragment; and much of it is frankly devoted to the sayings and doings of Hogg; it is none the worse for that. It is an intensely humorous book, in the first place. There are marvellous episodes in it, splendid extravaganzas like the story of Hogg's stay in Dublin, where he locked the door of his bedroom for security, and the boy Pat crept through the panel of the door to get his boots and keep them from him, and a man in the room below pushed ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wonder-smith, skilled smith, worker of marvellous things: gen. pl. wundor-smiða geweorc ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... born to the faith and not half plunged into it by an unexpected christening in cold water, will be like the superb Democritus, a laughing philosopher. His delight in a mechanism that can fall into so many marvellous and beautiful shapes, and can generate so many exciting passions, should be of the same intellectual quality as that which the visitor feels in a museum of natural history, where he views the myriad butterflies in their cases, the flamingoes and shell-fish, the mammoths and gorillas. Doubtless ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... think about as high as any mountain in the world. Never shall I forget the utter loneliness of the prospect—only the little far-away homestead giving sign of human handiwork;—the vastness of mountain and plain, of river and sky; the marvellous atmospheric effects—sometimes black mountains against a white sky, and then again, after cold weather, white mountains against a black sky—sometimes seen through breaks and swirls of cloud—and sometimes, which was best of all, I went up ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... "Shepherd's Calendar." His connexion with this popular periodical is more generally known from the position assigned him in the "Noctes Ambrosianae" of Professor Wilson. In those interesting dialogues, the Shepherd is represented as a character of marvellous shrewdness and sagacity, whose observations on men and manners, life and literature, uttered, as they are, in the homeliest phrases, contain a depth of philosophy and vigour of criticism rarely exhibited in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of the land, with swelling hearts and uplifted eyes asked 'Lord, what wilt thou have us to do?' The marvellous organization of the United States Sanitary Commission, with its various modes of heavenly activity, pointed out the way, saying 'The men must fight, the women must work, this is the way, follow me.' In accepting this call, there has been no reservation. Duty has been taken up, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... lay unruffled before us, not a ripple disturbed those glassy depths which reflected every tree and cottage on the opposite bank. Each star found its double twinkling in that placid mirror, and mountain frowned back on mountain. It was almost unreal, so marvellous was the reflection. Behind us, at the top of the great ridge, a silvery effulgence proclaimed the coming of the moon. Her brilliant light silhouetted the grim and rocky ridge in startling clearness, though it was four thousand feet above us. Through a gap rises a peak, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... it—say ten and six, The lowest price a miser could fix: I don't pretend with horns of mine, Like some in the advertising line, To 'MAGNIFY SOUNDS' on such marvellous scales, That the sounds of a cod seem as big as a whale's; But popular rumours, right or wrong, - Charity sermons, short or long, - Lecture, speech, concerto, or song, All noises and voices, feeble or strong, From the hum of a gnat to the clash of a gong, This ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... "Wonderful! marvellous!" Pulfennius exclaimed. "Madam, you amaze me. But if this is true so much the better. I had thought my boy must wait two years or more for a wife, as I am determined that no more of my sons shall marry wives ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... lightly insinuated, but never insisted upon, with the tact which stood Madame de Villegry in stead of talent, and which had enabled her to perform some marvellous feats upon the tight-rope without losing her balance completely. She, too, made fun of the tragic determination of Fred, which all those who composed the society of the De Nailles had been made aware of by the indiscreet lamentations ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... before of John Laighton." Mrs. Thaxter evidently was satisfied that she had received messages from her father, who had been dead about two years; and though the rest of us did not credit this, the fact in itself seemed marvellous enough. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... grand foundation of the monarchy" would be destroyed, resolved to preserve the truth. He therefore had the records carefully examined, compared, and their errors eliminated. There happened to be in his household a man of marvellous memory, named Hiyeda Are, who could repeat, without mistake, the contents of any document he had ever seen, and never forgot anything which he had heard. This person was duly instructed in the genuine traditions and old language of former ages, and made to repeat ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... whether to me the discussion on the New Zealand Flora is not even more instructive. I cannot too much admire both. But it will require a long time to suck in all the facts. Your case of the largest Australian orders having none, or very few, species in New Zealand, is truly marvellous. Anyhow, you have now DEMONSTRATED (together with no mammals in New Zealand) (bitter sneer No. 3), that New Zealand has never been continuously, or even nearly continuously, united by land to Australia!! At page lxxxix, is the only sentence (on this subject) in the whole essay at which I ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Everybody was delighted. The Princess took Esperance by both hands, gazing at her, stroking the tapering fingers that were still vibrating with the fever of the music. Esperance was so pale that the Princess led her into another room and made her sit down, praising her marvellous execution and striving to quiet the little heart she could feel beating with so ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... image, so to speak, of an engine, made in wood or iron. Never was a child more occupied with a toy than was King Richard with these things. I am myself no judge of such matters, but I have heard it said by men well acquainted with them, that the King had a marvellous understanding of such contrivances. But these cares were a great hindrance to recovery. So at least I judged, and doubtless it had been thus in the case of most men. But the King was not as others, and, as it seemed to me, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... raise an invisible barrier between the child and parent. It was felt by a little maiden of rare fancy, who said in a whisper at the conclusion of one of these marvellous tales, "But don't tell Mamma." The impassable wall between many a mother and daughter in later years, once consisted of but a scattered stone here ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... garden, Mr. Keith hobbling painfully with two sticks and indulging in very bad language. They paused awhile under some trellis work covered with a profusion of Japanese convolvuluses, pale blue, slate colour, rose-tinted, purple, deep red, with white and coloured bands, a marvellous display of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... A marvellous kind of whining interrupted the discourse. The innumerable band of dwarfs pulled the drollest faces, folded their handikins, and made the most lamentable gesticulations; but the speaker slid like a spider, upon one of the threads which canopied over the cart, down into Klaus's lap; thence he clambered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who travelled twice as fast as his master's horse, without the aid of seven-leagued boots, are 'chefs d'oeuvre' in the improvement of taste. For incident we have the invisible, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... himself. He went so far as to acquire the habit of riding daily over to Penycumwick, and there he made the acquaintance of that hardy and scarred adventurer of whom Sir Oliver had spoken, and listened to the marvels the fellow had to tell—many of them too marvellous to be true—of hazards upon ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... of the world could speak, what marvellous tales of heroism they could relate that are hidden in the oblivion of their depths. Sailors generally are singularly reticent about their adventures. They are sensitive about being thought boastful; the nature of their training and employment is so pregnant with danger that they become ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... journal reveals a precocious intellect, it preserves—and this is its charm—a spontaneity of childhood—for the little Slav was a bewitching little girl, with rosy cheeks and clear eyes. Has she not evoked all the marvellous imagination of the little ones in these words: "Because I put on an ermine cloak, I imagine ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... on one side and gave so marvellous an imitation of the terrible cries I had heard during the night that I felt sure ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... scenery, the elegance of which it is almost impossible to render with due force in another language, and the true and delicate touches of human nature which everywhere abound in the work, especially in the long dialogue in Chapter II, are almost marvellous when we consider the sex of the writer, and the early ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... though they no longer take them to the concert or the play as they did in a less sophisticated age. Children still learn to knit either at school or at home, and if their mother teaches them she probably makes them a marvellous ball. She does this by winding the wool round little toys and small coins, until it hides as many surprises as a Christmas stocking, and is as much out of shape; but the child who wants the treasures in the stocking has to knit for them, and the faster she secures them the faster she is learning ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... palpable fabrications of conspiracy and murder, blood and fire—the imaginary armies—the intended massacres—form a collection of falsehoods, that one would have thought indigestible, even by the coarse appetite of the vulgar for the marvellous and horrible; but which are, nevertheless, received as truth by both Houses of Parliament, and questioned by no one who is desirous to escape the odious appellation of friend to the bloody Papists, and favourer of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... covered in half a day, is well worth a week or month; but, wildly beautiful as it is, it becomes pale and small in comparison with the wonderland that lies beyond the rubber plantations between Hana and the Honomanu Gulch. Two days were required to cover this marvellous stretch, which lies on the windward side of Haleakala. The people who dwell there call it the "ditch country," an unprepossessing name, but it has no other. Nobody else ever comes there. Nobody else knows anything about it. With the exception of a handful of men, whom business has brought there, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... one achieve that Rollant's life was lost, Charle's right arm were from his body torn; Though there remained his marvellous great host, He'ld not again assemble in such force; Terra Major would languish in repose." Marsile has heard, he's kissed him on the throat; Next he begins to undo ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... the man, his suffering life, and the melancholy eclipse of his brilliant intellect, ethics as science is little concerned. In Nietzsche the marvellous literary artist it can have no interest. These things are the ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... him introduce the motion in the House of Commons, and his speech was a truly marvellous feat of oratory. He was interrupted on all sides of the House, and in a speech of nearly five hours in length never once lost the thread of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... a marvellous fashion That men should be slack, When their bosoms lack An object of passion, To look such a lass on, Her patience distressing, The bestial a-chasing, In the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... always kept up to date with the latest devices—in his lobby the spectacle of a vile, outworn hand-brush at tea-time amounted to a scandal. Less than a fortnight previously he had purchased and presented to his wife a marvellous electric vacuum-cleaner, surpassing all former vacuum-cleaners. You simply attached this machine by a cord to the wall, like a dog, and waved it in mysterious passes over the floor, like a fan, and the house was clean! He was as proud of this machine as though he had invented it, instead of ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... great importance is known about Fa-hien in addition to what may be gathered from his own record of his travels. I have read the accounts of him in the "Memoirs of Eminent Monks," compiled in A.D. 519, and a later work, the "Memoirs of Marvellous Monks," by the third emperor of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1403-1424), which, however, is nearly all borrowed from the other; and all in them that has an appearance of verisimilitude can ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... seven men out of one hundred and three Irish members. When the General Election of 1880 was declared he was utterly unprepared to meet all its emergencies. For lack of candidates he had to allow himself to be nominated for three constituencies, yet with marvellous and almost incredible energy he fought on to the last polling-booth. The result was astounding. He increased his following to thirty-five, not, perhaps, overwhelming in point of numbers, but remarkable for the high intellectual standard of the young men who composed ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... alive. An Italian, but at home in all countries, all languages, and all disguises. Really a marvellous genius. Nothing balks him." ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... audible crackle through the stuff of the sky... and only five minutes away the shop-lights were glittering, the Isvostchicks crying to clear the road, the tram-bells clanging, the boys shouting the news. Around and about me marvellous silence.... ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... asserted their dominion again. Depression, jealousy, repentance, qualms, and all other shackles of the spirit whatsoever, had fled discomfited. Now at last he saw his late exploits in their true heroic proportions, and realized his marvellous good fortune in satisfying his aspirations so gloriously. Raising his glass ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... O ye kiddies, was happily spent, [1] When Nancy trigg'd with me wherever I went; [2] Ten thousand sweet joys ev'ry night did we prove; Sure never poor fellow like me was in love! But since she is nabb'd, and has left me behind, [3] What a marvellous change on a sudden I find! When the constable held her as fast as could be, I thought 'twas Bet Spriggins; but ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... way, a well-known author, Mrs. B——, tells a marvellous story about these snakes. She says that they always go in pairs, have great affection for each other, and are prepared on all occasions to resent affronts offered to either of them. She narrates that a peasant once killed ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... disease in their frames, who put resolutely from them the thought of what existence might be—that these do it all without prospect or hope of reward save the permission to eat and sleep and bring into the world other creatures to strive with them for bread, surely that thought is yet more marvellous. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... thought or expression; he altogether fails to disguise what a good fellow he is. But in a very short time the neighbourhood of a club, the possibility of a bath, the presence of barbers and tailors, by a mysterious and marvellous working, reverse his development, and the little graces which endear him to society at home begin to reappear. So long as the sole of his boot was tied to the uppers by a piece of string, he could not look you in the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... solemnly to where, across the great judgment-hall, another throne, called "the Tribunal of the Gods," faced "the King's Tribunal." It was the seat from which sentence of death was pronounced, and was a marvellous creation. Above a throne of pure gold was suspended a great feather canopy of many and brilliant hues, from the centre of which gleamed a blazing sun, made all of gold and jewels. Rich hangings of rare and ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... heartiest meals were of flies. Daily, at noon, swarms of ephemerals played over the water, and the trout rose from the river-bed to feed. At first they "sported" ravenously, rising quick and sure to any insect their marvellous vision might discern. Afterwards they fed daintily, disabling and drowning with a flip of the tail many an insect that fluttered at the surface, and choosing from their various victims some unusually tasty morsel, such as a female "February red" about to lay her eggs. At this time, also, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... not thinking of herself.... Nearer—he heard no foot-fall. Now and then she glided through slanting rays of soft, white light cast from upper windows, and they seemed to derive ethereality from her.... Nearer—and he could see the marvellous pose of the head, and the action of the figure, never incarnation more graceful.... Yet nearer—he beheld her face, in complexion a child's, in expression a woman's. The eyes were downcast, the lips moved. She might ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... part assigned to the 'Barbarians' in this marvellous drama of the ages, it was necessary that many things should combine; an exemption from the temptations which had materialised the races of the south; the severe life that perfects strength; a race endowed with the physical ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... here?" he said. "And whose portrait is it?" For he had rejected the first suggestion of its being Edmonson himself. The dress belonged to an earlier period, and the face was that of a man somewhat older; it could not be thought of as the portrait of the young man standing beside it; it was simply a marvellous likeness. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... while matters did not go so very badly. Other children, who came to look at that marvellous doll and to make timid advances, kept her interested. But presently the east-bound train was signalled and they were ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... cormorants and darters on the sand-bars, and stilts, skimmers, and clouds of beautiful swaying terns in the foreground. About noon we passed the highest point which the old Spanish conquistadores and explorers, Irala and Ayolas, had reached in the course of their marvellous journeys in the first half of the sixteenth century—at a time when there was not a settlement in what is now the United States, and when hardly a single English sea captain had ventured so much as to cross ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... is rich in personal incident, and recalls to the reader the tales related of the Persian Izdubar, the Chaldeo-Babylonian Nimrod, and the Greek Heracles. He is as much the hero of the tale as is Joseph Andrews in Fielding's classic of that name. His marvellous strength is used as handily for a jest as for some prodigious victory over man or monster. He is drawn for us as a bold, reckless fellow, with a rollicking sense of humor, which, in truth, sits but awkwardly upon the intense devotion ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... unravel so painful a mystery; and refusing all credence to the assertion of the regicide that he had been self-prompted—an assertion to which he had perseveringly adhered amid torture, and even unto death, with a firmness truly marvellous under the circumstances—the zealous magistrate carefully examined every document that was laid before him, and interrogated their authors with a pertinacity which created great alarm among the accused parties, of whom none were ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... talked so long that old Mac (the butler) got quite shirty, and finally—after putting his head round the door two or three times—came in like the Lord Mayor and bore off the whisky decanter to the smoking-room. Now, the pater said that the love of the marvellous was native to mankind, and Tertullian had acquired a false credit for his motto, Credo quia impossible, since that was the natural failing of the untrained intellect, and, scientifically speaking, he ought to have been ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... dislodge the enemy. In such cases one engineer saved, and time won, justify the loss of almost twenty soldiers to one workman. Some one finally suggested an expedition and they did at the end what ought to have been done at the start. O West Point! thy science is marvellous! The staff treated the construction of a bridge over the Rappahannock as if it were building some railroad bridge, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... this monster gave a tremendous snort, but nothing awoke Hedley, who slumbered peacefully through it all. We got up early, rushed off to the scene of the disaster, as did all the other passengers. It was marvellous that the engine went over that bridge, for really the rails were almost suspended in mid air, but fortunately for us it did, or we should have followed and telescoped, and probably been hurt or killed, the baggage wagon being suspended between the engine and cars, all on one side and down ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... appeal to Heaven. Certainly in her fragile appearance she expressed nothing save indefinable charm—no one, studying her physiognomy, would have accredited her with genius, power, and the large conceptions of a Murillo or a Raphael;—yet within the small head lay a marvellous brain—and the delicate body was possessed by a spirit of amazing potency to conjure with. While she watched for the first glimpse of the carriage which was to bring her uncle the Cardinal, whom she loved with a rare and tender devotion, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... which was designated as the Sanctum Sanctorum or Holy Hole. The feretory is used as a receptacle for the carved work found at various dates about the cathedral, including portions of statuary once belonging to the great screen. Here lies a really marvellous lid of a reliquary chest, presented in 1309 by Sir William de Lilburn, with events in the life of our Lord and various saints vividly portrayed in colours, and decorated with the donor's armorial bearings. The "Holy Hole" has been used as a receptacle for fragments of various ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... Eugenie took delight in lulling her cousin's pain with the pretty childish joys of a new-born love. Are there no sweet similitudes between the birth of love and the birth of life? Do we not rock the babe with gentle songs and softest glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden future? Hope herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above its head? Does it not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of sorrow and its tears of joy? Does it not fret ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... a marvellous uniformity in all the arrangements of this array of volumes which have thus appeared at intervals throughout two centuries. They dealt with matter too sublimely separated from the temporal doings of men to be affected by political events, yet could they not entirely ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Ben Jonson, who nevertheless did not like his metric, thought he would perish for not being understood, and perhaps did not understand him—called Donne with justice, might not be thought likely to be among the first letter-writers. The marvellous lightning-flashes of genius in a dark night of context which illuminate his poetry and his sermons, can hardly be expected—would indeed be almost out of place—in ordinary letter-writing. Moreover, Donne is, perhaps, with Browne, the most characteristic exponent of ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... of terror; the element of fear in myths, heroic legends, ballads and folk-tales; terror in the romances of the middle ages, in Elizabethan times and in the seventeenth century; the credulity of the age of reason; the renascence of terror and wonder in poetry; the "attempt to blend the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... criticise in the collection, which had been made with a marvellous carelessness. But we must not be hard upon M. Marie. He is an engineer, utterly ignorant of mineralogy and of assaying: he was told off to do the duty, and he did it as well as he could—in other words, very badly. He neglected to search for alluvial gold in ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... at the marvellous and sudden entrance of our young friend upon the quiet beauties of the twilight scene, and bewildered Johnny scarcely knew whether to laugh ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... spores, a process mysterious and marvellous as a fairy tale. Instead of seeds the fern produces spores, which are little one-celled bodies without an embryo and may be likened to buds. A spore falls upon damp soil and germinates, producing a small, green, shield-shaped patch much smaller than a dime, which is called a prothallium (or prothallus). ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... fellow, miscalculating in his haste our draught of water, must have scraped all the fins off his back against the keel, as he performed this manoeuvre; for the shock of the contact, caused the yawl to tremble from stem to stern. But such was the marvellous celerity of their movements, that though they came within easy striking distance, all the hostile demonstrations of Max ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... could tell you things that you'd hardly believe. Marvellous things that have really ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... produce the effect at will, he abandons it for something newer and a little higher. The boy who discovers, without being told, that the dominant chord, followed by the tonic, produces a certain musical effect, is doing something that for him is on a par with Wagner's searching the piano for those marvellous effects of his that ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... that spread their surfaces to the sunshine, and long grass-like ones to glide through currents of water that would tear those of any other shape. What diversity of leaf-form and structure we meet daily, and yet how very little does the wisest man of science understand of the reasons underlying such marvellous adaptability! ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a glimpse into her nature which rendered after events not so marvellous to me as they might seem to others. She thought a moment quite indolently, and then continued: "You make one moralise like George Eliot. Marriage is a condition, but love must be an action. The one is a contract, the other is complete possession, a principle—that is, if it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of this lookout, the view was one of the most beautiful and widest far or near, and we were treated like most new-comers. During the ascent our eyes were bandaged, and when the handkerchief was removed a marvellous picture appeared before our astonished gaze. In the foreground, toward the left, rose the wooded height crowned by the stately ruins of the Blankenburg. Beyond opened the beautiful leafy bed of the Saale, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... present, but always the state of something by which an action is, or was, or will be, undergone or undergoing—a state continuing, or so regarded, though perhaps the action causative may be ended—or sometimes perhaps imagined only, and not yet really begun. With a marvellous instability of doctrine, for the professed systematizer of different languages and grammars, Dr. Bullions has recently changed his names of the second and third participles, in both voices, from "Perfect" and "Compound Perfect," to "Past" and "Perfect." ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... new home—far across the city from the ugly flags and lanterns—the tiny room with its engraving of the "Rock of Ages" and its canary, she forgot both her troubles entirely; for now, at last, the marvellous fact was assured: the five hundred dollars was pinned into the waistcoat pocket, lying upon Pietro's heart day and night, the precious lump that meant to him Bertha and a home. The good Republican set election-day for the happiest holiday ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... Saint Kyranus dwell in hard service, under the most holy Abbot Henna, and great miracles were manifested by him, and works of holiness are still there related. Now when Saint Kiaranus was there, he saw this marvellous vision—a like vision Saint Enna also saw—to wit, a great and fruitful tree on the bank of the river Synna in the middle of Ireland, whose shadow was protecting Ireland on every side; and its branches were flowing beyond Ireland into the sea. ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... done so and there would then be no Irish question today. But in 1540 it was recognized that "to enterprise the whole extirpation and total destruction of all the Irishmen in the land would be a marvellous gumptious charge ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of beyond the sea, more books made of his noble acts, than there be in England, as well in Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Greekish, as in French. And yet of record remain in witness of him in Wales, in the town of Camelot, the great stones and the marvellous works of iron lying under the ground, and royal vaults, which divers now living have seen. Wherefore it is a marvel why he is no more renowned in his own country, save only it accordeth to the Word of God, which ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... on the possibility of his god's having retired from business; for religion is born of fear, not of love, and the savage is reminded of his god by calamity rather than good fortune. This idea has been caught by Robert Browning in his marvellous Caliban upon Setebos, a poem developed out of a ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... vast expanse behind the Sultan is India—that India, which has been for centuries the coveted treasure-house of the world. With his back turned upon this marvellous India, the Sultan's face is turned toward Europe, where six great Empires are looking with eager and longing eyes at the golden prize behind him in the East; and each glaring suspiciously and defiantly at the other at the slightest move toward the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... imitation." This was illustrated in the Epidemic of Loudun, amongst others referred to by him. This epidemic spread to neighbouring towns menaced all the high Languedoc, but was arrested by the wisdom of a Bishop, who did this by depriving the movement of its marvellous elements. In this epidemic form it was in its bodily and mental manifestations really hysteria with characteristic stigmata and convulsions. An excellent example of this religious hysteria was presented as recently as 1857 in an epidemic at Morzines in upper Savoy. It began with two little ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... say about an earth anterior to this of ours, but one without light or human inhabitants. A lake burst its bounds and submerged it wholly. This is obviously nothing but a mere and meagre fiction, invented to explain the origin of the primeval ocean. But mark it well, for this is the germ of those marvellous myths of the Epochs of Nature, the catastrophes of the universe, the deluges of water and of fire, which have laid such strong hold on the human fancy in every ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton |
