"Spectre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men, however, were less distinguished for cleverness than for malignity, and shrieked for blood and the display of brute force in terms that would have done dishonor even to a St. Bartholomew assassin or anti-Albigensian crusader. Monsieur Romieu held up Le Spectre Rouge to the eyes of a generation incapable, from fright, of distinguishing between a scarecrow and the Apollo. The Red Spectre haunted him, and the people for whom he wrote, as relentlessly as the Gray Spectre came upon the chiefs of Ivor. He saw in the working classes—those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... had passed her by when she missed her little brother from the cradle; but still it had never stood by her side and said, "Lo, I am here!" Her circle of love was so small that it seemed as though the dread spectre could not enter. She saw it afar off; she thought upon it sometimes in her poetical dreams, which clad the imaginary shape of grief with a strange beauty. It was sweet to be sad, sweet to weep. She even tried to make a few ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... recently declared war against Philip. At Paris, Perez was received with great distinction and the most flattering attentions, being lodged in a spacious mansion, and provided with a military body-guard. The precaution was not superfluous. Wearing seemingly a charmed life, the dusky spectre of premature and unnatural death haunted him wherever he went or sojourned. Baron Pinilla, a Spaniard, was captured in Paris on the eve of his attempt to murder Perez, put to the torture, and executed on the Place de Greve—thus adding another name to the long catalogue of people, to whom any connexion ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... been easily arranged. On that foggy night when she had fled from Leonard Dowson, terrified by the spectre of a future life which his words had evoked, she had run, without in the least realizing her direction, straight to the railway station; and the idea of London had at once presented itself to her mind. A train was just starting, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... power?" and Angelique pressed her foot hard upon the floor as the answer returned ever the same: "The heart of the Intendant is away at Beaumanoir! That pale, pensive lady" (Angelique used a more coarse and emphatic word) "stands between him and me like a spectre as she is, and obstructs the path I have ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... stone for the macadam roads, thenceforward. The poor gentleman, after having played a certain part in the reaction after the Revolution of 1848, by the publication of a sensational pamphlet entitled Le Spectre Rouge, died of grief at the death of a son who was killed ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Shines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston, Whence, o'er the dawning Land, Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate 'Gainst the black flag of Hate. {62} Envy not, little band, Your brothers under the Hohenzollern hoof Put to the splendid proof. Your hour is near! The spectre-haunted time of idle Night, Your only fear, Thank God, is done, And Day and War, Man's work-time and delight, Begun. Ho, ye of the van there, veterans great of cheer, Look to your footing, when, from yonder verge, The wish'd Sun shall emerge; Lest once again the Flower ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... The spectre army fades Far up the glimmering hill, But, vaguely lingering still, A group of shuddering shades Infects the pallid air, Growing dimmer as day invades The hush of the dusky square. There is one that seems a King, As if the ghost of a Crown Still shadowed his jail-bleached hair; I ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... "The poor man is a king in his own house." But he is not to be let alone. He gets summoned, must answer for himself in the Imperial Court. So he goes, like an old-world spectre, whom no one knows any more. "What is he?" ask the young. "Ah, he is neither a lord, nor a serf! Yet even then is ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... work, and no man can improve upon it. There have been, he admits, revolutions in the moral as well as the physical world; and inspired reformers, who were born to carry them on; but these men are rare and portentous as the physical agencies to which they correspond, and whether "dervish (desert-spectre), swordsman, saint, lawgiver," or "lyrist," appear only when the time is ripe for them. Meanwhile, the great machine advances by means of the minute springs, the revolving wheel-work, of individual lives. Let each of ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... against their meanness. The multitude worshipped on trust—though always distinctly knowing why—but the officiators at the altar had the man habitually in their view. They sat at his feasts, and he sat at theirs. There was a spectre always attendant on him, saying to these high priests, 'Are such the signs you trust, and love to honour; this head, these eyes, this mode of speech, the tone and manner of this man? You are the levers of the Circumlocution Office, and the rulers of men. When half-a-dozen of you fall out by ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... ca'ing in the darkness like a bit lambie that hae lost its mither. Ye would na' be sae ready to put it a' doon to auld wives' clavers then, I'm thinkin'." I saw it was hopeless to reason with him, so contented myself with begging him as a personal favour to call me up the next time the spectre appeared—a request to which he acceded with many ejaculations expressive of his hopes that such an ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hand, though I was not without secret reproaches of my own conscience for the life I led, and that even in the greatest height of the satisfaction I ever took, yet I had the terrible prospect of poverty and starving, which lay on me as a frightful spectre, so that there was no looking behind me. But as poverty brought me into it, so fear of poverty kept me in it, and I frequently resolved to leave it quite off, if I could but come to lay up money enough to maintain me. But these were thoughts of no weight, ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... not dead, then, since he rose of a sudden, like a spectre, took up his wife in his arms, and descended from the pyre in the midst of the clouds of smoke, which only ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... and all kindred humanity are those three concentric walls of earth which no being would think of scaling on such a night as this, even were he to hear the most pathetic cries issuing hence that could be uttered by a spectre-chased soul. I reach a central mound or platform—the crown and axis of the whole structure. The view from here by day must be of almost limitless extent. On this raised floor, dais, or rostrum, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... eyes off the Moon, they could not help noticing that they were still attended outside by the spectre of Satellite's corpse and by the other refuse of the Projectile. An occasional melancholy howl also attested Diana's recognition of her companion's unhappy fate. The travellers saw with surprise that these waifs still seemed ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... night before, offered up to God in the solitude of his own chamber. And not only are the fables, which the chronicles of the times have handed down to us, enacted as veritable facts, but the poet has added miracles and prodigies of his own invention; and in particular, a certain spectre of a black knight—who appears to us to have been introduced as much for the sake of supporting the supernatural character of the piece as for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... thought, out of sight of any of the rest. Upon this I resolved to discover myself to them, and learn something of their condition; immediately I marched as above, my man Friday at a good distance behind me, as formidable for his arms as I, but not making quite so staring a spectre-like figure as I did. I came as near them undiscovered as I could, and then, before any of them saw me, I called aloud to them in Spanish, "What are ye, gentlemen?" They started up at the noise, but ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... was a mass of lambent flame. When Bill saw this fearful apparition he screamed with hearty good-will; but the noise he made was nothing to the yell of terror that came from beneath the shroud of the Yew-lane Ghost, who, on catching sight of the rival spectre, flew wildly up the lane, kicking the white sheet off as it went, and finally displaying, to Bill's amazement, the form and features of Bully Tom. But this was not all. No sooner had the first ghost started, than the second (not to be behind-hand) jumped ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... no nationality and no one type of character. He is the image of humanity. Hamlet is to me not a man, but Man. The sufferings, the doubts, the vague mysteries of life are incarnate in his person. He is ever checked by the Unknown. He is tortured by the phantasm of Doubt. Is the spectre indeed his father's shade? has it spoken truth? is it well to live? is it best to die?—such are the problems ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... among the French architects, decorators, upholsterers, not a single man who understands that pictures represent something, that pictures work upon the mind and feelings, that they make impressions, that they excite forebodings? It is just the same as if they had sent the most ghastly spectre to meet this beauteous and pleasure-loving lady at the very frontiers!" I know not what I said besides: enough, my comrades tried to quiet me and to remove me out of the house, that there might be no offence. They then assured me that it was not everybody's concern to look for significance ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the fire, the vast apartment was so ill-lighted by a single candle that he could be no longer seen, he could still be heard marching about in the dark, however, and presently returned slowly towards the light, and emerged by degrees from obscurity, looking like a spectre, with his white robe and cap, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... destroy the enchantment. The third girl is on her feet, dancing before this areopagus of idiots, with their lanky locks and pot-hats. What a shock when she turns round! She wears over her face the horribly grinning, death-like mask of a spectre or a vampire. The mask unfastened, falls. And behold! a darling little fairy of about twelve or fifteen years of age, slim, and already a coquette, already a woman—dressed in a long robe of shaded dark-blue china crape, covered ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... opinion." Dr. R. S. Candlish said: "You live again in the body—in the very body, as to all essential properties, and to all practical intents and purposes in which you live now. I am to live not a ghost, a spectre, a spirit, I am to live then, as I live now, in the body." Dr. Arnold says: "I think that the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection meets the materialists so far as this—that it does imply that a body or an organization of some sort is necessary to the full development ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... fled, the spectre paused. Then it started onward toward the two men. Again it hesitated. For a moment it remained motionless, then turned and vanished, just as Jim Lane came flying out of the timber, into the bright ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... drenched habit, standing before her dressing-room fire, she heard her maid soliciting entrance, and paid no heed, the door being locked—as though a spectre could be bolted out of rooms and houses! Pacing the floor, restless, annoyed, and dismayed by turns, she flung her wet skirt and coat from her, piece by piece, and stood for awhile, like some slender youth in riding breeches and shirt, facing the fire, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... with hollow eyes, "was just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again." He stopped, with a fixed look ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... property by writers of fiction in all generations; it occurs at least thrice in the Ingoldsby Legends; Sir Walter Scott gives a terrible instance in his story of the Scotch judge haunted by the spectre of the bandit he had sentenced to death {2}, which appears to be founded on fact; and indeed the present narrative was suggested by one of Washington Irving's short stories, read by the writer ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... any such project; but as it was she felt that the event, with all its direful consequences, perpetually hung over her, and might at any moment bring her new prosperity to a miserable end. Her impending great-niece-in-law was a vaguely appalling spectre, who threatened to take the roof from over her head, and the bit out of her mouth, and turn her adrift to founder hopelessly on the workhouse doorsteps. But it was not until more than a year after their settlement at ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... rumbling sound which shook the ground and the car we were in and caused them to tremble. The flash of the light of the passing train, as it sped on its way, was so quick by us that it was impossible to see whether it was a light or not. It appeared like the ghost of a light or a spectre in its flight through the darkness, for a moment and it was gone. It left no trace behind that I could see. There had two or three of those trains of cars passed us before I was able to make out what made the extra ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... staggering and flapping about as usual, and there's been a whale showing every now and then, but it's got too dark now to make him out. But put something there, and I see it—I do see it. It's very dim and broken in places, but I see it all the same, like a faint spectre of itself. I found it out this morning while they were dressing me. It's like a hole in this infernal phantom world. Just put your hand by mine. No—not there. Ah! Yes! I see it. The base of your thumb and a bit of cuff! It looks like the ghost of a bit ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... his enemies at Vogel islet. The combatants flew asunder as if parted by a flash of lightning. Both looked up to the point whence the sound had come, and there they saw what they supposed to be Rolf's spectre pointing at them, and the eyes staring as when looking up from the waters of the fiord. How could these guilty and superstitious men doubt that it was Rolf's spectre which, rising through the centre ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... off the grim spectre valiantly. He patted Ulana's hand as his weak voice resumed. "You will take care of her I know, Carson. Take her with you to your own world; make her happy." He fell silent ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... my lord's present humour it were the ready way to confirm him in his resolution of retirement, should he know that his lady was haunted with such a spectre in his absence. He would be for playing the dragon himself over his golden fruit, and then, Tony, thy occupation is ended. A word to the wise. ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... no spectre have we here; He growls, doubts, lays him on his belly, too, And wags his tail—as dogs ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... when his queen and his courtiers were sleeping, Sabbatai wrestled sore with himself in his lonely audience-chamber. The spectre of self-doubt—long laid to rest by music and pageantry—was raised afresh by this new and unexpected development. It was a rude reminder that this pompous and voluptuous existence was, after all, premature, that the Kingdom ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... what ghost? Thy fancy hath converted some white cow into a spectre, in the uncertain ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... crystals; it was a true easterly fog. I galloped on, hoping to get through it, unable to see a yard before me; but it thickened, and I was obliged to subside into a jog-trot. As I rode on, about four miles from the cabin, a human figure, looking gigantic like the spectre of the Brocken, with long hair white as snow, appeared close to me, and at the same moment there was the flash of a pistol close to my ear, and I recognized 'Mountain Jim,' frozen from head to foot, looking ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... me, had taken possession. Mr. Warder was reduced to a condition of abject obedience, and for a month and more my aunt hardly left her girl-boy's pillow. Indeed, it was long before I was let to see him, and then he was but a spectre of himself, with not enough blood to blush with. Our officers very promptly left for New York the day after our fight, and we heard no ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... a big cat walking in water, stepped toward the door. He could move his tall, bony frame, seemingly covered only with muscles and sinews, so silently that in the dark he made no more sound than a spectre. But once before the door, with Lefever close at hand, he pounded the cracked panels till the windows shook. Some time elapsed before there was any response. The pounding continued till a flickering light appeared at a window. There was an ill-natured colloquy, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... the people of Rixton had something else to talk about. It was the grim spectre of war which had suddenly appeared, and sent a chill to every heart. The newspapers were full of it, and told of the clash between France and Germany, and of the base violation of Belgium by the advancing Huns. Then came England's declaration of war, and all knew that Canada, as a part of ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... white, fluttering shape by the square opening in the outer wall. He stopped on the spot, and his heart almost stopped, too—but only for a moment. Driven by some necessity he could not explain to himself, he picked himself together and pushed on, only to find that the intimidating spectre consisted of some white clothing hung for drying on the iron rod of the shutter and kept moving by a high wind. It was a lesson that went right ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... as if billets of wood were gradually and cautiously displaced, and then a human head was reared slowly, and with marked suspicion, above the shaft of the well. The wild and unearthly air of this seeming spectre, was in keeping with the rest of the scene. A face begrimed with smoke and stained with blood, a head bound in some fragment of a soiled dress, and eyes that were glaring in a species of dull horror, were objects in unison with all the other frightful ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... removed all difficulties, lest he should be seen by her husband. She was unable, however, to prevent him from being seen on one occasion, as he sallied forth at daybreak, by Lothario, who, not knowing who he was, at first took him for a spectre; but, as soon as he saw him hasten away, muffling his face with his cloak and concealing himself carefully and cautiously, he rejected this foolish idea, and adopted another, which would have been the ruin of all had not Camilla found a remedy. It did not occur to Lothario that this ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... very body and soul. And yet for years she had slept in that room, if not happily at least tranquilly. It was matter of wonder to her now, as she looked back at her past life, that her guilt had sat so lightly on her shoulders. The black unwelcome guest, the spectre of coming evil, had ever been present to her; but she had seen it indistinctly, and now and then the power had been hers to close her eyes. Never again could she close them. Nearer to her, and still nearer, the spectre ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... however, was rather dangerous, as the subject of this experiment generally slept with loaded pistols near him. Previously to the time fixed for the apparition, the bullets were abstracted from these weapons, leaving them charged only with gunpowder. When the spectre stalked into the chamber, the youth instantly suspected a trick, and, presenting one of the pistols, said: 'Take care of yourself: if you do not walk off, I shall fire!' Still stood the goblin, staring fixedly on the angry ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... no longer the same; I am no longer tossed by the flurries of spring, but by the storms of summer, the tempests of autumn. To-day when I name Avignon, I evoke a spectre; and, like Antony ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... realities of the soul,—though the grave should forever shut them from our communion. But this relation of memory has peculiar propriety and efficacy when associated with a Christian faith. If the dead live no more, what would memory be to us but a spectre and a sting? Should we not then seek to repress those tender recollections,—to close our eyes to those pale, sad visions of departed love? Should we not invoke the glare and tumult of the world to distract or absorb our thoughts? Would we not say, "Let ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... at once that he had had a long slide downhill since his last visit to her. He was frightened—frightened immediately now of Grace and the room and the physical world—but frightened also behind these things at some spectre all his own. Grace sat down and tried to recover herself. She began to talk in her society voice. Maggie knew that she was praying, over and over again, with a monotony possible only to the very stupid, that there would be no callers ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... that he shall gain Sweet vengeance for the slain— For her, the sole, the one More dear to him than daylight or the sun, That perished to be pure! No more! no more! Hath that stern mourner language! But the vow, Late breathed before those spectre witnesses, His secret spirit mutters o'er and o'er, As 't were the very life of him and his— Dear to his memory, needful to him now! A moment and his right hand grasped his brow— Then, bending to the waters, his canoe, Like some etherial thing ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night Andy had the scarlet-fever—an anxiety which so infected me that I actually returned to the tavern the following afternoon earlier than usual, dreading to hear that the little spectre was dead, and greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey at the door-step with his face wreathed in smiles. When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet-fever that had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... yellow as a Blue-coat boy's legs. We call grapes "white grapes" which are manifestly pale green. We give to the European, whose complexion is a sort of pink drab, the horrible title of a "white man"—a picture more blood-curdling than any spectre in Poe. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... owns not"—he hears, and starts, And grasps the handle of his weapon tried; Then, while the rustling tent-cloth slowly parts, A figure enters and stands by his side: There was an air of majesty and pride In the bold bearing of that spectre pale— The crimson on its robe was still undried, And dagger wounds, that tell a bloody tale Beyond the power of words, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... shook, and spiral columns of vapour rose around the altar, and from each column came a spectre of fire and stood ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... echoed the Spaniard. Then, with horrified gestures, as directed against some spectre, he unconsciously fell into the ready arms of his attendant, who, with a silent appeal toward Captain Delano, seemed beseeching him not again to broach a theme so unspeakably distressing ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... a cold, glassy, ghastly appearance! I closed my own eyes and turned my head away, while a tremor shook very nerve. Was this an illusion? Was I laboring under the effects of a dream? Or had my imagination conjured up a spectre? ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... than she received at the hands of the hard-hearted author, who suffered her to be cheated and bullied by a scheming and brutal guardian, to be slandered by his envious daughter, persecuted by a dissolute nobleman, haunted by a spectre, shut up in a tower, exposed to manifold dangers, beset by robbers, abducted, assaulted, barely rescued, and, finally, even teased and tormented by the chosen lover of her heart, a jealous-pated fellow, who was always making ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... became a means for preserving the records of history, and it has also been a treasure house of stories, furnishing material for much of the poetry of Europe. One of these legends gave Scott the story of the combat between Marmion and the Spectre Knight. ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... a Ceylon elephant-hunter would be the first view of a herd of African elephants—all tuskers! In Ceylon, a "tusker" is a kind of spectre, to be talked of by a few who have had the good luck to see one. And when he is seen by a good sportsman, it is an evil hour for him—he is followed till ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... hole-and-corner life in China, but boldly come out and take their part in the pleasures and business of life. It has always been a question with me whether ghosts, in a haunted house, appear when there is no audience. What does the spectre in the tapestried chamber do when the house is NOT full, and no guest is put in the room to bury strangers in, the haunted room? Does the ghost sulk and complain that there is "no house," and refuse to rehearse his little performance, in a conscientious and disinterestedly artistic spirit, when deprived ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... which might never again articulate words of love and wisdom; to witness the ineffectual motions of his limbs, soon to be wrapt in their mortal shroud. Such for three days and nights appeared the consummation which fate had decreed for my labours, and I became haggard and spectre-like, through anxiety and watching. At length his eyes unclosed faintly, yet with a look of returning life; he became pale and weak; but the rigidity of his features was softened by approaching convalescence. He knew me. What ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... forbidding the arbitrary injection of a ritual element into criminal cases, be strictly enforced in the Kingdom of Poland. This action saved the lives of scores of prisoners, and put a stop to the obscure agitation which endeavored to revive the medieval spectre. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... receive the oath of another man, society will be founded on perjury; peace and love will be banished from among mortals. God, take yourself away! for, from this day forth, cured of your fear and become wise, I swear, with hand extended to heaven, that you are only the tormentor of my reason, the spectre of my conscience. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... is that gliding o'er the meadow yonder? Is it the misty vapors of the moor That form a picture in the morning chill? Now it draws near.—The shade of Catiline! His spectre—! I can see his misty eye, His broken shield, his sword bereft of blade. Ah, he is surely dead; one thing alone,— Remarkable,—his wound I do ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... perspective, seems to be a hideous skull, but when seen near at hand is composed of flowers, with the eyes, in the seemingly empty sockets of the skull, formed by two fair faces of children. Death at a distance looks horrible, the ghastly spectre of the race; but with the near vision it is beautiful with youth and flowers, and when we look into its eyes we look into the ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... doubt believed that my conscience was playing the fiend inside of me. Now, since I've seen her, I'm pacified—a little. It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... my breath; Headlong I rush'd away, I knew not where; In frenzied hast rushing I ran; my feet With terror wing'd, a hell-hound at my heels, Yea! scarce three strides between us. Through a door Right opposite I flew, slamming its weight, To shut me from the spectre who pursued: And lo! another room, the counterpart Of that just left, but gloomier. On I rush'd, Beholding o'er its hearth the grinning face, Another and the same; the haunting face Reflected, as it seem'd, from wall to wall! There, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... back, as if he had seen a spectre, at the appearance of the blooming, sparkling Tamar, who came forward without hat or other head dress, her raven tresses floating ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... back. No more alarming figures, no more mocking laughs! The history of the soup was fallen into the great forgotten, like one of M. Heller's speeches. In the baggage room, Meiser had already seized the handle of a black leather trunk, when, at the other end, he saw the spectre of Fougas, which was pulling in the opposite direction, and seemed inclined to dispute possession. He bristled up, pulled stronger, and even plunged his left hand into the pocket where the revolver was lying. But the luminous glance ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... where wouldst thou go? I've been alone with thee for two whole days, And all the day thou wrapped in sleep didst lie. Where wouldst thou go, my dove?" The gentle girl Was much afraid and trembled, and she thought: "Is it a spirit come to find me here? Avaunt thee and begone, O spectre dread," She said, amid her tears. "No phantom I," Replied the King; "be not afraid. I wish To marry thee." Then Bidasari strove Again to flee. Then sang the King a song That told of love and happiness. Its words Astonished Bidasari, and she cried: ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... Whilst jammed between them, in the filthy den, Were twenty-three more miserable men, Who hardly could be said to be alive, So fearfully did death among them strive To make them all his own, leaving no trace Of aught but spectre life in that vile place. This dreadful history cannot fail to show, How fatal consequences surely flow, From disregard of the Creator's laws, For these foul poisonous vapours were the cause Of five score ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night! Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. 'I found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.' On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, It was on a dreary night of November, making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the body,—in the very body, as to all essential properties, and to all practical intents and purposes, in which you live now. I am not to live as a ghost, a spectre, a spirit, I am to live then as I live ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs; Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... Slimak went into the alcove. He sat on the bed, determined to be on the watch. He did not know that this strange state of mind is called 'nerves'. Yet a kind of relief had come in with Zoska; she had driven away the spectre of Maciek and the child. But an iron ring was beginning to press on his head. This was sleep, heavy sleep, the companion of great anguish. He dreamt that he was split in two; one part of him was sitting by his sick wife, the other was Maciek, standing outside the window, where sunflowers ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... obeyed her, and beheld, entire, distinct, the spectre that drives men to madness or despair—illimitable omnipotent Malice. In its shadow the colour of the flowers was quenched, and the music of the birds rang false. Yet it wore the consecration of time and authority! What if ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... identified—not by me, curse you, Lucile Laroche. And then you were properly buried, and not by me either, nor at my cost, curse you again. You are dead, I tell you!' She looked at him as she looked at you the other day, dazed and spectre-like, and said: 'Henri, I gave up my life once to a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... reminiscences occur to the mind. In Pump Court we encounter the brisk little spectre of Mr. Frederick Minchin, and who can forget that his club was The Oxford and Cambridge, than which what better could he desire? Mr. Thackeray himself was a member of The Garrick, The Athenaeum, and The Reform, but the clubs of many of his characters, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... disease, seem to touch it only with the tips of their fingers: such was his constitution. He had the measles, admittedly. His temperature rose one night to a hundred and three, and for a few brief moments his mother and Aunt Annie enjoyed visions of fighting the grim spectre of Death. The tiny round pink spots covered his face and then ran together into a general vermilion. He coughed exquisitely. His beard grew. He supported life on black-currant tea and an atmosphere impregnated with eucalyptus. He underwent the examination of the doctor every day at eleven. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... parleurs et du vent, La quinteuse deesse incessamment repose, Le coeur gros de chagrin, sans en savoir la cause. N'aiant pense jamais, l'esprit toujours trouble, L'oeil charge, le teint pale, et l'hypocondre enfle. La medisante Envie, est assise aupres d'elle, Vieil spectre feminin, decrepite pucelle, Avec un air devot dechirant son prochain, Et chansonnant les Gens l'Evangile a la main. Sur un lit plein de fleurs negligemment panchee Une jeune beaute non loin d'elle est couchee, C'est l'Affectation qui grassaie en parlant, Ecoute sans entendre, et lorgne ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... half afraid of the mysterious and penetrating shadows that reached forth out of his rayless eyes. Before he left, however, he peered about, touched the sceptre and the throne, fingered this and that, and having, as it were, trimmed the nails and combed the beard of the great spectre, retired with a valet's bow. Observing that Charlemagne had lost most of his nose, he caused it to be replaced in gold very delicately chiseled and enchased. The sacrilege was repeated by Frederick Barbarossa ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... atmosphere which surrounds our globe, and our faculties cannot breathe outside the atmosphere of the phenomenal."[7] And I summed up this essay with the words: "I do not believe in God. My mind finds no grounds on which to build up a reasonable faith. My heart revolts against the spectre of an Almighty Indifference to the pain of sentient beings. My conscience rebels against the injustice, the cruelty, the inequality, which surround me on every side. But I believe in Man. In man's redeeming power; in man's remoulding energy; in man's approaching triumph, through knowledge, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... is not Independence. Far from it! If one of the next couriers should bring you word of unlimited freedom of commerce with all nations, take good care not to call that Independence. Nothing of the sort! Independence is a spectre of such awful mien that the mere sight of it might make a delicate ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Eck, even in the thoughts of his own soul. He knew how powerful they had been in Rome. Even in his youth apparitions had tormented him; now they reappeared. From the dark shadows of his study the spectre of the tempter lifted its claw-like hand against his reason. Even while he was praying the Devil approached him in the form of the Redeemer, radiant as King of Heaven with the five wounds, as the ancient Church represented Him. But Luther knew that Christ appears to poor humanity only ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the grave, over which he had mourned. What years that might otherwise have been to himself so serene, to the world so useful, had been consumed in objectless, barren, melancholy dreams! And all this while to whom had his complaints been uttered?—to the man who knew that his remorse was an idle spectre and his faithful sorrow a mocking self-deceit. Every thought that could gall man's natural pride, every remembrance that could sting into revenge a heart that had loved too deeply not to be accessible to hate, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... d'etat of 1851. But, as Liberals now see, the second Empire, hateful though it was to every man who loved freedom or cared for integrity, did not owe the permanence of its power to cunning or to violence. It was the dread of the Red Spectre which drove the landowners of France into Imperialism; they may have liked parliamentary liberty, it was a pleasant luxury, but they loved their land and property, it was their life-blood, and by Socialism their land and property was ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... Spanish priest who called Rousseau and Voltaire vagabones, and the gentleman who played the "Highland Laddie" on the guitar, and of Mr. Grainger, who was present at one of the exhibitions of that German spectre-monger celebrated ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... stood for one moment mute and unmoving, then a slight shiver ran through his frame; he turned and glided back, silent and spectre-like, as he had entered. He came into the room where he had been accustomed to compose,—where his wife, in her sweet patience, had so often sat by his side, and praised and flattered when the world had but jeered and scorned. In one corner he found the laurel-wreath she had placed ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... she quietly ignored all their suggestions. She went to Paris, and lived like a princess; Rome, Vienna and London wondered over her beauty and her splendor; and wherever she went Franz followed her quietly, haunting her magnificent salons like a wretched spectre. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of thine agony! Yet with thine own best blood shall drip; Thy gnashing tooth, and haggard lip; Then stalking to thy sullen grave, Go—and with Gouls and Afrits rave, Till these in horror shrink away From spectre more accursed than they. ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... that Mr. Surtees of Mainsforth not only palmed off on Sir Waiter Scott several ballads of his own manufacture, but also invented and pretended to have found in a document (since burned) the story of the duel with the spectre knight which occurs in Marmion. In the following letter this ingenious antiquary plays the same game with Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, of Monkbarns, the celebrated antiquary. A note on the subject ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... tonight, O Sweet, and wail, A spectre at my door, Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail— I shall but love you more, Who from Death's house returning, give me still One moment's comfort in my matchless ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the name of the German castles, where we sit up alone to wait for the Spectre—where we are shown into a room, made comparatively cheerful for our reception—where we glance round at the shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the crackling fire—where we feel very lonely when the village innkeeper and his pretty daughter ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... shall return To dare the weeds of death, And plunge through the coned pink bloom, And cry on that spectre set In its silent ring of gloom, And stay my youth to learn The thing that my ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... goest," said Lord Huntinglen; "and I will have thee try, moreover, whether a cup of sack cannot bring some colour into these cheeks of thine. It were a shame to my household, thou shouldst glide out into the Strand after such a spectre-fashion as thou now wearest—Look to it, Dalgarno, for the honour of our roof ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... wild honey, but in a merry company of primitive beings, among the tinkling of guitars, the sighs of love, the moonlight, and such-like—in short, in a quite ordinary opera-comique, without any rescuing spectre of Schopenhauerian philosophy ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... made those present tremble when they saw the old gray woman, a sublime spectre, standing beside her grandchild's pillow. Terror and vengeance wrote their fierce expressions in the wrinkles that lined her skin of yellow ivory; her forehead, half hidden by the straggling meshes of her gray hair, expressed a solemn anger. She read, with a power ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... searchingly at the little old ghost, but to save his life he could not utter a word. He nearly suffocated with longing to possess the secret and know where the treasure lay, but he dared not ask; and all the time the spectre stood staring at him with unwinking scornful eyes, as if the sight of the cowardly, trembling man gave him ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... was otherwise. The report of a super-excellent invention having gone abroad, one by one they came creeping into my room, after I and my companion were in bed, until we lay three in each bed, all being present but Fox. At the very heart of the climax, when a spectre was appearing and disappearing momently with the drawing in and sending out of his breath, so that you could not tell the one moment where he might show himself the next, Mr Elder walked into the room with his chamber-candle in his hand, straightway illuminating six countenances pale ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... across the sill now, and she opened her heavy lids and gazed downwards, half eagerly, half fearfully. The water was dark and the moon-light on the surface glittered. The wheel was below, huge and gaunt like a spectre; silent, with its spokes ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... all her foes had not the problem been unexpectedly solved by her sudden death. The story goes that, while walking one day in the palace halls, meditating upon the best means of meeting and defeating her numerous foes, she found herself suddenly face to face with a hideous spectre, around which rose the shades of the victims whom she had removed by poison or violence from her path. With a spasm of terror the horrified woman fell and died. Conscience had smitten her in the form of this terrific vision, and retribution ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... snow rose up in thick whirlpools, wrapping up the Forward in an impenetrable cloak. Sometimes, under the action of the storm, the fog was torn asunder, and displayed towards land, raised up like a spectre, the ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... universe. The thing we know best and most directly is human nature in all its breadth. It is indeed the one thing immediately known and knowable. Like R.L. Stevenson, he perceives how tragically and comically astonishing a phenomenon is man. "What a monstrous spectre is this man," says Stevenson, "the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing to set children ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... probably understood that it was a spectre-play of some sort; but this was nothing to be afraid of, thought he. It wasn't any dangerous trolls, or any other evil—such as he always dreaded to encounter at night. Both the wall and the gate were so beautifully constructed that he ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... was still living in the asylum at Les Tulettes. She was little better than a skeleton, and in her long, thin face it was only in the eyes that there was any sign of life. Immovable in her chair, she remained from year to year like a spectre, calling up the horrors of her family history. A sudden accident, the death of little Charles Saccard from nasal hemorrhage, wakened in her sleeping brain recollections of years before; she saw again the murder of Silvere, killed by a pistol-shot, and she saw ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... It described what Mr. Tyrrel chiefly feared; and what in its commencements he thought he already felt. It was responsive to the whispering of his own meditations; it simply gave body and voice to the spectre that haunted him, and to the terrors of which ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the conquered height Died out the battle's hum; Vainly 'mid living and the dead We sought our leader dumb; It seemed as if a spectre steed To win that day ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... moralized upon his struggles. "How many a poor Hazlitt must wander on God's verdant earth, like the Unblest on burning deserts; passionately dig wells, and draw up only the dry quicksand; believe that he is seeking Truth, yet only wrestle among endless Sophisms, doing desperate battle as with spectre-hosts; and die and make no sign!"[33] We must appeal to the issue to determine whether Hazlitt's battle was altogether against spectre-hosts, and whether in his quest for truth and beauty he has drawn up nothing ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... faded, like vague faces through forgotten dreams. But this time he laid down the spyglass, and leaned against a column of the piazza, and watched the vessel with an intentness that he could not explain. She came nearer and nearer, a graceful spectre in the ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... festering, burst from his incumbent mound, Roams!—and the Slave of Terror thinks he hears A mutter'd groan!—sees the sunk eye, that glares As shoots the Meteor.—But no more forlorn He strays;—the Spectre sinks into his tomb! For now the jocund Herald of the Morn Claps his bold wings, and sounds along ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... moonlight fell on a garden absolutely bare, as square as a handkerchief, and with the soil all turned over like a field. In one corner, standing motionless and with folded arms, on a hillock, was a black figure which looked like a spectre in one of Biard's pictures. It was M. Dardouillet, and he was so deeply absorbed that he did not see his visitor until Denoisel was quite close ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... into the bedroom, and I followed perforce. I shall never forget the scene, though I had but the one glimpse of it,—the raving, yellowed woman in the bed, not a spectre nor yet even a semblance of the beauty of Temple Bow. But she was his mother, upon whom God had brought such a retribution as He alone can bestow. Lindy, faithful servant to the end, held the wasted hands of her mistress ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the village were called together to hold an inquest. After summoning witnesses, and cross-examining them and studying the strange creature, their verdict was that it could be nothing less than a Hersen Schim, that is, a spectre of the brain. They meant by this that there ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... was now well up; the smoke clouds had been scattered by the breeze; the sky was studded with diamonds. Zen had a feeling of being very happy. True, a certain haunting spectre at times would break into her consciousness, but in the companionship of such a man as Grant she could easily beat it off. She studied the face in the moon, and invited her soul. She was living through a new experience—an experience she could not understand. In spite ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... have completely vanished. The huge solid shell is full of expression; it looks as if it had been hollowed out by the sincerity of early faith, and it opens into a cloister as impressive as itself. Wherever one goes, in France, one meets, looking backward a little, the spectre of the great Revolution; and one meets it always in the shape of the destruction of something beautiful and precious. To make us forgive it at all, how much it must also have destroyed that was more hateful than itself! Beneath the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... magic. His silence and secretiveness encouraged this feeling. He was known to be at work in the long hours of the night in his cell in Notre Dame, and he wandered about the streets like a spectre. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to self gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only desirous to convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of his inward trials, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... whose faith was stronger in ghosts than ours, yet which perhaps had less skill in describing them. There are some circumstances which seem to indicate that the author of the Castle Spectre lighted his torch at the altar of the French muse. Athalia thus narrates her dream, in which the spectre of Jezabel, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Suddenly that question leaped up in her mind and stood in the eye of her imagination, terrible, menacing—a hideous, grim spectre, before which Lloyd quailed with failing heart and breath. The light, the almost divine radiance that had burst upon her, nevertheless threw a dreadful shadow before it. Beneath the music she heard the growl of the thunder. Her new-found happiness ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... somewhat more agreeable life, as of late I have been associating more with other people. You could scarcely believe what a sad and dreary life mine has been for the last two years; my defective hearing everywhere pursuing me like a spectre, making me fly from every one, and appear a misanthrope; and yet no one is in reality less so! This change has been wrought by a lovely fascinating girl [undoubtedly Giulietta], who loves me and whom ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... doors and ravaged rack and box as if it had been the wreck of weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays of the setting sun flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire had been added to the ruin. But even this presently faded, leaving the abandoned coach a rigid, lifeless spectre ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... spectre of the mighty North, slowly rising from lethargy like those Medicean figures of Michael Angelo, which leap from stone to avengers. There was no mutter of coming storm, no clank of coming sabres and bayonets, no creak of great wheels rolling southward, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Another spectre that rose to haunt my last days in prison, and long stood between my parole and final pardon, was the story of one John McMath, a corporal in an Indiana cavalry company, in Pleasanton's command, that I had maltreated him ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither. Gaslights flared in the shops with a haggard and unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night-creatures that had no business abroad under the sun; while the sun itself when it was for a few moments dimly ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... hands before her as if to push aside a spectre that had suddenly risen from the grave, and was now opening its arms to seize her, and carry ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... cuts it. "A hot proud colour flared in her cheeks as she drew quietly aside and stood with averted head to let her pass." In all my researches in modern fiction I cannot recall a more dramatic and satisfying situation. It is, I believe, the first instance on record of a spectre being snubbed. SHAKSPEARE never thought of anything like that. As regards the other aspects of Athalie, the book, I cannot see what else a reviewer can say but that it is written by Mr. CHAMBERS. The world is divided into those who read every line Mr. CHAMBERS writes, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... old Greek question again;—yet unanswered. The unconquerable spectre still flitting among the forest trees at twilight; rising ribbed out of the sea-sand;—white, a strange Aphrodite,—out of the sea-foam; stretching its grey, cloven wings among the clouds; turning the light of their sunsets ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... seems to be meant a mode of seeing, superadded to that which Nature generally bestows. In the Earse it is called Taisch; which signifies likewise a spectre, or a vision. I know not, nor is it likely that the Highlanders ever examined, whether by Taisch, used for Second Sight, they mean the power of seeing, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... ejaculated Count Munster. "It could not have been a spectre. Why, it is not a spectre's hour, and, besides, I certainly saw the lady plainly; it was a decidedly earthly figure. Her face was pale and grave, but there was nothing spectral about it. She wore a black veil thrown back from her face; the upper ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... are certainly remarkable, and the human aspects interesting, but underneath these things, and striking through them, lies a vast world of time and change that to me is still more remarkable, and still more interesting. I could not look out of the car windows without seeing the spectre of geologic time stalking ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... eyes, his mad dream still clung to him, and there was the dead Madge before him, pale in death, and holding a child in her arms! He distinctly heard himself scream as he started up in affright; he could not tell where he was; the spectre faded and the furniture and hangings transformed themselves into their familiar reality. He could not lie down again, and rose and dressed himself. He was not the man to believe that the ghost could be a revelation or a prophecy, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... returned, I was lying on the floor, holding the half- perused paper in my hand. Grief and horror had locked up the avenues of complaint, and I sat as one petrified to stone. My father entered. At the sight of me, he started as if he had been a spectre. His well- known features opened at once my agonized heart. With fearful cries I cast myself at his feet, and putting the letter into his hand, clung, almost ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... throat to hinder his breathing, for he saw a headless horseman coming over the ridge behind him, blackly defined against the starry sky. Setting spurs to his nag with a hope of being first to reach Sleepy Hollow bridge, which the spectre never passed, the unhappy man made the best possible time in that direction, for his follower was surely overtaking him. Another minute and the bridge would be reached; but, to Ichabod's horror, the Hessian dashed alongside ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the five of clubs, which on one occasion he should have played and did not, he walked till he came to the Haymarket. Then he stopped. What could he do? All the life of idleness and luxury which he had so long enjoyed faded like a dream, and the spectre of cheap lodgings and daily journalism rose painfully distinct. He pitied the street-sweepers, and wondered if it were possible for him to slip down into the gutter. "When I have paid my hotel bill, I shan't have a tenner." He thought of Mrs. Byril, but the idea did not please him, and he ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... might flow. And a flood of emotion came over him, and in his heart he blessed her. It was then that on that gaunt headland he seemed to see her at his side. But between them, and dividing them, stalked the spectre of himself. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... on her brow, and her cheek was more than usually pale and collapsed. She would then wander forth again:—the mountain-breeze reanimated her spirits, and imagination again became pleasant unto her. She heard the wild swans winging their way above her, and she thought of the wild hunters and the spectre-horseman:[41] the short wail of the curlew, the call of the moor-cock and plover, was the voice of her beloved. To her all nature wore a charmed life: earth and sky were but creatures formed for her use, and the ministers ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... news, and the threatening spectre of war drew nearer and nearer. The order for mobilisation had been given. The field-troops were separated from the depot, destined to remain in Chanidigot. The infantry were provided with ammunition, and were daily exercised ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... were to be an earthquake an hour hence I should hardly hear it. Go to your berth directly, Lesbia; you look positively awful. I have seen girls look bad after balls before now, but I never saw such a spectre ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was this language spectre laid than another confronted him; that of class distinction. Certain people were "low" and must be shunned by the high, unless the high perversely wished to be thought equally low. His mother was again the arbiter. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... Debreczin, and which a young Prussian Baron, a great traveller, whom he met at Constantinople in '44, told him he always carried in his valise. And, in conclusion, he will say, in order to show the opinion which he entertains of the power of Scott as a writer, that he did for the spectre of the wretched Pretender what all the kings of Europe could not do for his body—placed it on the throne of these realms; and for Popery, what Popes and Cardinals strove in vain to do for three centuries—brought back its ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... coming to, as if we had any right to expect better treatment of them. I doubt if Jacob, in the whole course of his wizened little life, had ever a hand in an honest game that was not haunted by the spectre of the avenging policeman. That he was not "doing anything" was no defence. The mere claim was proof that he was up to mischief of some sort. Besides, the policeman was usually right. Play in such a setting becomes ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... Guzman Bento. It was the same Guzman Bento who, becoming later Perpetual President, famed for his ruthless and cruel tyranny, readied his apotheosis in the popular legend of a sanguinary land-haunting spectre whose body had been carried off by the devil in person from the brick mausoleum in the nave of the Church of Assumption in Sta. Marta. Thus, at least, the priests explained its disappearance to the barefooted multitude that streamed in, awestruck, to gaze ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... into the valley, below us now, as if this rolling along of a heavy victoria, a lot of luggage, and three travellers, was an agreeable episode in her career of toil. But on the mind of her owner, the spectre of the free-thinkers was still hovering like an evil spirit. During the next hour he gave us a long and exhaustive exposition of the changes wrought by ces messieurs qui nient le bon Dieu. Among their crimes was to be numbered that of having disintegrated the morale ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... past year the old seaman had been severely tried. Misfortune had followed upon misfortune; until the hardy veteran looked like the spectre of his former self. His only daughter, a pretty girl of eighteen, was engaged to marry the ostler at the Crown Inn, a fine-looking young man, who had lately come from London. He saw Nancy Jarvis, became enamoured of the fisherman's daughter, told his tale of love, and ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... uniform, haggard but eager, was standing like a gaunt spectre in the sunlight that flooded the terrace. The vagabond, with the eyes of all upon him, raised and lowered his arms thrice, and the ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and enable them to journey down to the native villages in their canoe. These rains would not fall till October. For all that she had hoarded their supplies to the last morsel, eating barely enough herself to sustain life in her body, the dread spectre of starvation waited just without the cave. She had realized perfectly that Ben could not hope to throw off the malady without nutritious food and she had not stinted with him; and now, just when she had begun to hope for his recovery, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... were turned to the leeward. A stately ship, under full sail, had suddenly appeared, bearing down upon us. She came silently, the water splitting in foam at her bows. We could see the crew working about her decks, but no sound came from the spectre. All at once we noticed her hull and sails were transparent. We could see through them to the ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... but a patient ear. 'Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor; And the first wisdom, to be fool no more. But to the world no bugbear is so great, As want of figure, and a small estate. To either India see the merchant fly, Scared at the spectre of pale poverty! See him, with pains of body, pangs of soul, Burn through the Tropic, freeze beneath the pole! Wilt thou do nothing for a nobler end, Nothing, to make philosophy thy friend? To stop thy foolish views, thy long desires, And ease thy heart of all that it admires? Here, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart, a spectre dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of time, Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions, that have passed away, And left no shadow of their loveliness ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... prosperous city, the centre of all the trade of the immense tract of country included from Massowah and Suakin to the Nile, and from Nubia to Abyssinia, was, at the date of our arrival, almost deserted, covered with ruins and rank vegetation, destitute of the most common necessaries of life, the spectre of its former self, haunted by its few remaining ghost-like and plague-stricken citizens. Kassala had just gone through the ordeal of a mutiny of Nubian troops. Pernicious fevers, malignant dysenteries and cholera ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... Worcester and the English dictionaries spell re, while Webster, the Century, and the Standard prefer er:Calibre, centre, litre, lustre, maneuvre (I. maneuver), meagre, metre, mitre, nitre, ochre, ombre, piastre, sabre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, theatre, zaffre,{.} ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... or has been able to procure a collection of such illustrated trials, a century or so old, is deemed fortunate among collectors, for he can at any time raise up for himself the spectre as it were of the great mystery and exposure that for weeks was the absorbing topic of attraction for millions. The curtains are down—the fire burns bright—the cat purrs on the rug; Atticus, soused in his easy-chair, cannot be at the trouble of going to see Macbeth ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton |
