"Weird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there is a touch of chaos that suggests the infinite. The melodies seem strange and changing forms, like summer clouds, and weird harmonies come like sounds from the sea brought by fitful winds, and others moan like waves on desolate shores, and mingled with these, are shouts of joy, with sighs and sobs and ripples of laughter, and the wondrous voices ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... far off my science witnessed, All these fatal auguries Seen though dimly in the distance, I resolved to chain the monster That unhappily life was given to, To find out if yet the stars Owned the wise man's weird dominion. It was publicly proclaimed That the sad ill-omened infant Was stillborn. I then a tower Caused by forethought to be builded 'Mid the rocks of these wild mountains Where the sunlight scarce can gild it, Its glad entrance being barred By these rude ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... draw, Willie, A comely weird to dree, For the Royal Rose that's like the snaw, And the King that's on ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... to puffins and pirates. Over the single landing-place frowns from the cliff the keep of an old ruin, 'Moresco Castle,' as they call it still, where some bold rover, Sir John de Moresco, in the times of the old Edwards, worked his works of darkness: a gray, weird, uncanny pile of moorstone, through which all the winds of heaven howl ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... clear, with a touch of frost in the air, yet with the feeling in it of approaching spring. A dim light fell over the forest from the half-moon and the stars, and seemed to fill up the little clearing in which the manse stood, with a weird and mysterious radiance. Far away in the forest the long-drawn howl of a wolf rose and fell, and in a moment sharp and clear came an answer from the bush just at hand. Mrs. Murray dreaded the wolves, but she was no coward and scorned to ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... consciousness, suggested the following distinct species of lies. It is often a well-marked epoch when the young child first learns that it can imagine and state things that have no objective counterpart in its life, and there is often a weird intoxication when some absurd and monstrous statement is made, while the first sensation of a deliberate break with truth causes a real excitement which is often the birth pang of the imagination. More ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the stained glass made a faint twilight in the church, but there was something weird and strange about being there alone at that hour that set the boy's heart to beating faster ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... at Henrietta, who felt very much ashamed, and crept behind her two friends. Madame Torvestad now struck up a hymn, in which all the company joined. To Jacob Worse's ear, all these voices in the low room, the subdued tones of the women, and the rough bass of the men, sounded weird and unpleasing. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... and faced Patty, with rolling eyes and a weird grimace. But Patty looked so astounded and frightened that the face broke into a reassuring ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... literature which had slumbered for several years after the death of Defoe, but which the genius of Fielding and Smollett had again brought into fashion. But their tales purported to be pictures of the manners of the day. This was rather the forerunner of Mrs. Radcliffe's[1] weird tales of supernatural mystery, which for a time so engrossed the public attention as to lead that "wicked wag," Mr. George Coleman, to regard them as representatives of the class, and to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... continued at dead of night through the lattice. Here they discourse on the real nature of love. At length the gloomy lover persuades Isidora to marry him. Their midnight nuptials take place against a weird background. By a narrow, precipitous path they approach the ruined chapel, and are united by a hand "as cold as that of death." Meanwhile, Don Francisco, Isidora's father, on his way home, spends the night at an inn, where a stranger insists ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... ridiculous as this place at present. They expected the Emperor ten or twelve days ago, and put up all manner of triumphal arches made of evergreens, which look like tea-leaves now, and will take a withered and weird appearance hardly to be foreseen, long before the twenty-fifth, when the visit is vaguely expected to come off. In addition to these faded garlands all over the leading streets, there are painted eagles hoisted over gateways and sprawling across a hundred ways, which ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... sometimes a dozen revolved on one post, and Maurice would stop long enough to laugh. How easy it was to walk! All he had to do was to lift a foot, and the pavement would rise to meet it. The moon, standing high behind him, cast a long, weird shadow, and he staggered after it and cut at it with the saber. It was only when he saw the lights of the royal palace and the great globes on the gate posts that sanity returned. This sanity was of ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... fro, have to ask their way from battery to battery, or go yards beyond their real objective point. Little fires are burning here and there, and battery-lanterns are flickering in the gloom. Out on the face of the stream, too, one can see from the northern shore weird, dancing lights, like will-o'-the-wisps, go twinkling through the fog; and far across the waters, from time to time, there is heard the sudden crack of rifle. The Southern pickets are beginning to catch faint ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... waiting for a guest in that weird institution which she called her club. The weird institution, however, had lost some of its weirdness and gained in comfort and cachet. It now boasted many members of distinction, new decorations and enlarged subscriptions. Miss Julia Winter sat in the mauve drawing-room ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... the one pastime which could be practiced without making a noise of any sort to attract undesirable attentions, the boy took to it in self-defence. But before long it had become his passion. He read, by stealth, everything that fell into his hands, a weird melange of newspapers, illustrated Parisian weeklies, magazines, novels: cullings from the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... "Do you think she would show you such consideration? I assure you, to-night is the time of all times!" There was something so malicious, so weird in his tone and manner that she shuddered as she listened to his words. In spite of her humiliation, her bitterness and suffering, and her desire for retribution, she never realized that one could find such sweet satisfaction in revenge as did Don Felipe. The prospect of it ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... change and 'cease to be,' And empires rise and grow and fall; But the weird music of the sea Lives, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... forth in search of adventures in the thick of a 'London particular,' Mr. Guppy's phrase for a fog. When you are once ensconced in your garden seat by the driver, you go lumbering through a world of bobbing shadows, where all is weird, vague, grey, dense; and where great objects loom up suddenly in the mist and then disappear; where the sky, heavy and leaden, seems to descend bodily upon your head, and the air is full of a kind of ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one of the 'properties'—the caldron for the witches' cave; and the three uncouth-looking figures, with broken clothes-props in their hands, who are drinking gin-and-water out of a pint pot, are the weird sisters. This miserable room, lighted by candles in sconces placed at lengthened intervals round the wall, is the dressing-room, common to the gentlemen performers, and the square hole in the ceiling is the trap-door of the stage above. You will observe that the ceiling is ornamented with the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... few months under the black flag, until he went down on the Isle of Haut. The events of that brief and thrilling period are unfortunately obscure, with only a ray of light here and there. But the story of his passing is the most weird of all the strange yarns that are spun about the ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... spellbound. It seemed to him that the most exciting chapter of this weird tale was ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... hills across the water came the dull resonance of distant guns and a remote weird crying. Then everything was still. A cockchafer came droning over the hedge and past us. High in the west the crescent moon hung faint and pale above the smoke of Weybridge and Shepperton and the hot, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... about sixteen, and to be a sort of animated flowers and make home bright and be given things. He was irritated that they would not remain at this, and still more irritated that they failed to suppress altogether their natural interest in young men. The tandems would be steered by weird and devious routes to evade the bare chance of his bloodshot eye. My aunt seemed to have no ideas whatever about what was likely to happen to her children. She had indeed no ideas about anything; she took her husband and the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... we shall see any more of them," Harry said, "and I own that I shall be glad. There is something very weird in their noiseless flitting about, and in the shadows the fire casts on ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... night sounds through Johnnie's open window. From near-by came Chirpy Cricket's cheerful piping. And in the distant swamp the musical Frog family held a singing party every evening. Johnnie Green liked to hear them. But he objected strongly to the weird hooting and horrid laughter of Solomon Owl, who left the hemlock woods after dark to hunt for ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... paler, day by day thinner, day by day a stranger light burns in his bonny eyes. Weird thoughts sweep through Baby's brain, weird questions startle Mamma out of the golden languors in which she is steeped, weird words frighten the gentle Ayah as she fondles her darling. The current of babble and laughter has almost ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... heavy upon the ground, the grass is saturated with dew, and the numerous trees not only freely bespatter everything beneath their widespreading branches with copious showers of dewdrops, as the wind sweeps through them, but many of them have a trick of assuming a singularly weird and uncanny appearance in the first faint light of the early dawn; yet Jack felt quite happy, not to say exhilarated, as he and his friend the Colonel of Cuirassiers stepped briskly along the dew- sodden gravel paths on their way ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... of the Steenbeek are left behind and flickering Verey lights cast into weird relief the rugged surface of the earth. At Pommern Castle our front trenches, in which figures of men loom indistinctly, are reached. At one corner, where the trench is littered with fragments, we are cautioned by a sentry, whose ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... man up trembling in every joint. Once in the saddle, he seemed to gather in a moment unnatural vigour; and the figure that went flying to Tergou was truly weird-like and terrible: so old and wizened the face; so white and reverend the streaming hair; so baleful the eye; so fierce the fury which shook the bent frame that went spurring like mad; while the quavering voice yelled, "I'll make their hearts ache. I'll make their hearts ache. I'll make their ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... language which often misses fire even with us, but that enormous alphabet of sun and moon and green grass and blue sky in which alone we meet, and by which alone we can signal to each other. That unique man of genius, George Macdonald, described in one of his weird stories two systems of space co-incident; so that where I knew there was a piano standing in a drawing-room you knew there was a rose-bush growing in a garden. Something of this sort is in small or great affairs the ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... own medium of expression as the most difficult. Mrs. Browning's "Hatty" had bestowed in her bag a volume of Mr. Browning's, and on the homeward journey from Albano to Rome he read aloud to them his "Saul." At the half-way house on the Campagna, the Torre di Mezza, they paused, to gaze at the "weird watcher of the Roman Campagna," the monument to Apuleia, whose ruins are said to have assumed ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... awkwardness suggestive of a greater skill with another instrument only less powerful. He was seated on two reversed buckets, pyramidally balanced, at a small table which had the air of wide capabilities in some other sphere of usefulness. There was a weird cunning in the legs of this table indicative of subtle change into a camp-bed ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... we dine we are not tempted by the Voice. We are wary of weird sauces. We shun the cunning aspics. We look about at our neighbor's table. He is eating of things French, and Russian and Hungarian. Of food garnished, and garish and greasy. And with a little sigh of Content and resignation we settle down to our ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... was most carefully-masked; but this precaution soon proved to be unnecessary, the boats having traversed less than half the distance between the schooner and the other two vessels when vivid sheet lightning began to play along the south-western horizon, lighting up the scene with its weird radiance frequently enough to enable us to steer a perfectly straight course. The fight was still going on when we left the schooner; but it appeared to cease soon afterwards, and we came to the conclusion that the crew of the Indiaman ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... the nose so impossible that it elevated his countenance from commonplace ugliness to weird distinction had taken a friendly fancy to her. He was Julius Bam, nephew of the proprietor. In her third week he offered her the forewoman's place. "You've got a few brains in your head," said he. "Miss Tuohy's a boob. Take the job and you'll push up. We'll start you ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... it! Oh, the spectral splendor of that vision! The whole great ship in full sail instantly makes an acute silhouette against the monstrous disk,—rests there in the very middle of the vermilion sun. His face crimsons high above her top-masts,—broadens far beyond helm and bowsprit. Against this weird magnificence, her whole shape changes color: hull, masts, and sails turn black—a ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... spectacle wild, weird, altogether indescribable; and by Captain Redwood not to be looked upon a moment longer than was necessary to ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... bureau. And if in all this "land of the free and home of the brave" there be a single throne, it must be this same curiously changeable chair. In spite of, or perhaps because of, its strange powers, that weird piece of furniture managed to make itself so felt that it was religiously avoided by every native who called at the Forks. Not the wildest "Hill-Billy" of them all dared to occupy for a moment this seat of Uncle Sam's representative. Here Uncle ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... to the right a huge intensely bright disc of weird colour span incessantly, and letters of fire that came and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... was a ghost to some purpose—a ghost free from all the weird associations of death and the grave—a healthy, utilisable ghost, and a ghost, above all, which wanted to be photographed. It seemed too good to be true. Yet how strange it was! Here we have just been discussing ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... awesomely think of it, and how solemn it looked when I had reluctantly left it at dusk, an hour or two before; then I would picture it to myself, later, lying deep and cold and still under the stars, in the dark thicket, with all that weird, uncanny lite seething beneath ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... his father-in-law, the latter with rifle in hand, prepared for action. The first joy at beholding them safe and sound was damped by the news they brought. As soon as Carruthers could recover himself he spoke to the weird woman and invited her to come and rest at Bridesdale. Then he hastened on ahead to warn his wife and sister, and make arrangements for the reception of the strange visitor. When the party arrived at the house they found a large ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... valleys. The moonlight was now enveloping like a luminous mist the valley of Couesnon. Certainly a woman whose heart was burdened with a despised love would be sensitive to the melancholy which that soft brilliancy inspires in the soul, by the weird appearance it gives to objects and the colors with which ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... lease of human life Warns me to hedge in my diplomacy. The sooner, then, the safer! Ay, this eve, This very night, will I take steps to rid My morrows of the weird contingencies That vision round and make one hollow-eyed.... The unexpected, lurid death of Lannes— Rigid as iron, reaped down like a straw— Tiptoed Assassination haunting round In unthought thoroughfares, the near success Of Staps the madman, argue to forbid The riskful ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... groups of persons, gravely clad, were making their bargains before starting for some perhaps distant spot on the highway, to keep a dies rosationis, this being the time of roses, at the grave of a deceased relation. Here and there, a funeral procession was slowly on its way, in weird contrast to the gaiety ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... human. As the moth to the flame, we are led, even against our will, into all of life, even the most unpleasant. The charm possessed by the novel and unplumbed, by such stories as Jude the Obscure, or by the weird imaginings of a Baudelaire, comes from this source. It is no mere scientific curiosity, because it includes that "consciousness of kind," which makes us feel akin ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... which all present, but one, had heard a dozen times. It mattered the less, as it was a good one. Sir Charles capped it with a better. The Governor told a weird tale of Lunsford's men, the "babe-eating" regiment. Sir Charles recounted a little adventure of His Grace of Buckingham with a quack astrologer, a Court lady, and an orange girl, which made the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... surprise the gruff voice of a man bade me enter. I found myself in a small room, blue with smoke and poorly furnished. An old man was cooking supper, as he hummed some weird old gypsy tune. He seemed scarcely to notice me and displayed neither surprise nor dissatisfaction at my sudden appearance. I murmured some excuse about being in the wrong house, that I was looking ...
— Futurist Stories • Margery Verner Reed
... brethren of the congregation might have felt inclined to hold up their hands in dismay could they have looked in there just at that moment, and seen all the weird goings-on that were taking place. Still, an investigation would have proven that the scouts were not responsible for the scrimmage; since they had a perfect right to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... depression pervaded the group of riders as they wound in and out of the cottonwood clumps and threaded the deep coulee that led to the bench. For the most part they preserved an owlish silence, but now and then someone would break into a low, weird refrain and the others would join in with the mournful strain ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... but the tireless fireflies danced in the blackness of the wood. The river gurgled faintly in the wind-stirred reeds. From out the gloom of the thicket came the weird coco-coco of the horned owl. From the starlit sky above fell the shrill cry of the mosquito hawk, "peepeegeeceese, peepeegeeceese!" From an isolated bark tepee came the subdued incantation of the Indian medicine-man, while above the singing of the ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... ever stand listening to the seals just at nightfall, and did their weird, low call stir you to a feeling of kinship with all the creatures of the great deep, and did you lose yourself there out under the cold, dark water in that mysterious untamed world of the sea that is ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... jungle of pain and grief which seemed to spread round and about so many she loved; whilst Dekko, puffed out with sleepiness, sat on the back of a chair, muttering incoherently to some fanciful image of his weird brain. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... and he thought unobserved, out of the front door of the section house, and slink stealthily to the very spot where his darling's tiny garments had been found, and there amid heart-rending shrieks, which we in our bunk house could plainly hear above the weird moanings of the winter storms, he would dig with his bare hands deep into the cruel snow, searching for his lost baby—his ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... Riches, Knowledge, and Love; and in depicting their peculiar and wonderful virtues Mrs. Prentiss has wrought into the story with much skill her own theory of a happy life. She wrote the book with intense delight, and its strange, weird-like scenes and characters—the home in the forest; Dolman, the poor woodcutter; Cinda, his tall and strong-minded wife; Nidworth, their first-born; wandering Hidda, boding ill-luck; the hermit; these and all the rest—seemed to her, for a while, almost as real ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Mrs. Hunt tragically, as twelve strokes chimed from the grandfather clock in the hall. Wally and Norah, crowned with blue and scarlet paper caps, the treasure of crackers, were performing a weird dance which they called, with no very good reason, a tango. It might have been anything, but it satisfied the performers. The music stopped suddenly, and Mr. Linton wound up the gramophone for the last ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... colours in a kaleidoscope with the wavering and increasing light. At one time it seemed to me that one of the trees was a gipsy woman enveloped in a cloak, extending her arm towards me threateningly; at another, two weird dogs seemed to be fighting together; but however fantastic and fearsome had been these strange effects of light and fancy mingled together, I should not have minded—I knew what they were; it was a relief to have anything to look at ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... it into his head to entertain weird beings from other houses whose brothers or cousins he had met in the holidays. On such occasions he liked to have some trusty friend by him to help the conversation along. It struck Kennedy that this ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... skippers were ashore in the red-curtained public-houses. The roar of personal experiences sounded through the cloud of tobacco-smoke and steam, and the drinking was steady and determined. Out on the river the shadows fell on the racing tide; the weird lights flickered in the brown depths of the water; and the swirling eddies gurgled darkly and flung the boats hither and thither. In the stern of each boat was a crouching figure; for the little cabin-boy had to wait ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... suggestion of contrast still farther one should read Hugo's "Notre Dame" on the spot. It will give a wonderful and whimsical conception of those weird gargoyles and devils, which have only to be seen to awaken a new interest in what this great writer has put forth. For another sensation, pleasant or otherwise, one might look up a copy of Meyron's wonderful ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... that I—that we, for my wife and little girl would be at one with me in my wish, did they know of it, must not keep you from your purpose of fighting out your trouble alone. Every man, as the Scotch proverb says, must "dree his own weird." I shall not, I must not, ask you for any promise; but I trust that if ever you do come back you will make us all glad by seeing you. And remember that what I said of myself and of all I have—all—holds good so ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... effective than physical, if designed and applied with sufficient wisdom. The bull-roarer, of which something has been already said, furnishes the ceremonies with a background of awe. It fills the woods, that surround the secret spot where the rites are held, with the rise and fall of its weird music, suggestive of a mighty rushing wind, of spirits in the air. Not until the boys graduate as men do they learn how the sound is produced. Even when they do learn this, the mystery of the voice speaking through the chip of wood merely wings the imagination for loftier flights. Whatever else ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... Then her nervous fingers once more gripped my arm, as, looking into my face, her eyes shining with a weird, unusual light, she replied in quick, ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... air. A swarm of mosquitoes buzzed in the glare thrown by the lamp with a shrill, attenuated sound like the skirl of far-away bagpipes. A creature with bat-like wings flapped with a monstrous ungainliness between the outer posts of the verandah. From across the compound an owl called on a weird note of defiance. And in the dim waste of distance beyond she heard the piercing cry of a jackal. But close at hand, so far as the rays of the lamp penetrated, she could ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... was chartered for a sail of a couple of hours, and then followed the drive home to 'Sconset by a different course from that of the morning, and varied by the gradually fading light of the setting sun and succeeding twilight casting weird shadows here and there among the ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... then, to say that Kelley's music flags in no wise behind the divine progress of the words. The lute idea dictates an arpeggiated accompaniment, whose harmonic beauty and courage is beyond description and beyond the grasp of the mind at the first hearing. The bravery of the climax follows the weird and opiate harmonies of the middle part with tremendous effect. The song is, in my fervent belief, a masterwork of absolute genius, one of the very greatest ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... valley of the dead; Lit by a weird half light; No sound they made, no word they said; And they were pale with fright. Then suddenly from unseen places came Loud laughter, that was like ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... our guns, too, now, very well. They were giving voice all around me, but never a gun could I see, for all my peering and searching around. Even the battery we had passed below was out of sight now. And it was a weird thing, and an uncanny thing to think of all that riot of sound around, and not a sight to be had of the batteries ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... floor back and forth, stopping now and then to listen expectantly. Then again he seated himself to wait. Several times, passionately insistent, he shook his head, and it was as if the refusal were being made to an invisible presence. Suddenly he lifted his face as the sound of a weird, wild wail was borne to him, mingling with the elf-like moaning of the wind. He leaned forward slightly, listening intently. From somewhere above him pleading notes from a violin were making the night even more mournful. A change came ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... spirit-lamps, little pipes, little lacquer trays, little teapots, little cups-all the accessories and all the remains of a Japanese feast, resembling nothing so much as a doll's tea-party. In the midst of this circle of dandies are three overdressed women, one might say three weird visions, robed in garments of pale and indefinable colors, embroidered with golden monsters; their great coiffures are arranged with fantastic art, stuck full of pins and flowers. Two are seated ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... even this semblance of interest died out or was confined to strange tales whispered under breath on weird nights at neighboring firesides, and the old neglect prevailed once more. The whole place—new brick and old stone—seemed doomed to a common fate under the hand of time, when the present Philo Ocumpaugh, succeeding to the property, brought new wealth and business enterprise ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... she climbed upon the bed, took her dying husband's head upon her lap, and, bending close above his face, began to sing. It was a melody I had never heard before—low, and sweet, and quaint. The effect was weird and thrilling as the notes fell tremulous from the singer's lips in the hush of that dead hour of the night. Presently the dying man became more quiet, and before the song was finished he opened his eyes as a smile swept over his face, and ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... commence at eight o'clock. The wind blew fiercely through the stiff, naked boughs of the giant maples, and drifted the light powdery snow madly on before it. I had been in-doors all day listening to the weird wailing of the ceaseless wind as it whistled down the chimneys and swept past the house corners. I had written and read and stitched until my eyes were wearied and my fingers numb, and it was only four o'clock, that ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... something very weird and awful in the brief note of time with which the Evangelist sends Judas on his dark errand. 'He ... went immediately out, and it was night.' Into the darkness that dark soul went. That hour was 'the power of darkness,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... animal it was, Confucius was sent for. At once he declared it to be a K'e-lin, and legend says that its identity with the one which appeared before his birth was proved by its having the piece of ribbon on its horn which Ching-tsae tied to the weird animal which presented itself to her in a dream on Mount Ne. This second apparition could only have one meaning, and Confucius was profoundly affected at the portent. "For whom have you come?" he cried, "for whom have you come?" and then, bursting into tears, he added, "The course of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Some six or seven killer whales, old and young, were skirting the fast floe edge ahead of the ship; they seemed excited and dived rapidly, almost touching the floe. As we watched, they suddenly appeared astern, raising their snouts out of water. I had heard weird stories of these beasts, but had never associated serious danger with them. Close to the water's edge lay the wire stern rope of the ship, and our two Esquimaux dogs were tethered to this. I did not think ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... stories of his gifted son. One alone, called "Solomon-Nameh," fills eighty books. Arabia also claims Solomon as the Father of her kings, and to this day, under the eastern sky dusky Arabs sit around the lonely tent-fire and tell weird and wonderful tales of the wit, wisdom, and wealth of Solomon. Legends of which he is the hero are also preserved not only in Asia and Africa, but also in the remotest corners of Europe. According to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... and gained a petty mound Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard the voices murmuring. While I listened, came On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt: I seemed to move among a world of ghosts; The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, The jest and earnest working side by side, The cataract and the tumult and the kings Were shadows; ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... let it be, John. But why am I evil if I have the second sight like my mother before me? Oh! she warned me what must come if I married you, and I would not listen; now I warn you, and you will not listen. Well, so be it, we must dree our own weird, everyone of us, a short one; all save Rachel, who was born to live her life. Man, I tell you, that the Spirit drives you on to convert the heathen just for one thing, that the heathen may make a martyr ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... their animals nearer and nearer to the pits, they urged them faster until the unhappy creatures, besides themselves at the weird occurrences of a night of terror, were at a ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... the knight did fondle, / and straightway saw him not, Unto her maids attendant / spake the queen distraught: "Meseemeth a mickle wonder / where now the king hath gone. His hands in such weird fashion / who now from out mine own ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... then are long, as the nights are short, for in the north of Finland there is a midnight sun, and even in Helsingfors, during June, he does not set till about eleven, consequently it remains light all night—that strange weird sort of light that we English folk only know as appertaining to very early morning. As we sat finishing supper about ten o'clock at the Kapellet, we were strongly reminded of the light at three A.M. one morning, only a week or two before, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... them get real happy shouting, we did so. And now commenced a religious dance, perfectly indescribable, and as long as I have been in the South it was perfectly new to me. The leader started down one of the aisles chanting a weird plantation song, and every joint in his body moving in time with the measure; the sisters took it up and followed two by two until there was a complete circle all around the church, all dancing ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... of there being snow falling outside and an eerie wind wailing through the skeleton trees, the night was still and muggy. Lastly, I did not know, until the journal reached my hands, that he was put into the room known as the Haunted Chamber, nor that in that room the fire is noted for casting weird shadows upon the walls. This, however, may be so. The legend of the manor-house ghost he tells precisely as it is known to me. The tragedy dates back to the time of Charles I., and is led up to by a pathetic love-story, which I need not give. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... the ruins a faint sound reaches his ear. He stops instantly and listens, his head bent, every sense on the alert. He is not thinking of Honor now—not in his wildest dreams would he connect her in any way with these weird unholy old ruins; but he is anxious—as anxious as ever Launce was—to solve the mystery that attaches to the place. Again it comes, a long-drawn, gasping cry, with this time a ring of fear ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... blanched and terror-stricken, for the last reverberations of the thunder, the whistle of the Fast Express, bound from Millville to the great city, rose wildly on the air, like the scream of an exultant demon, and died away in a series of weird and mocking ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... half shyly, and looked in startled wonder. The baby was strikingly like Gila, with all her grace, delicate features, wide innocent eyes. The sweep of the long lashes on the little white cheeks, that were all too white for baby flesh, seemed old and weird in the tiny face. Yet when the baby looked up and recognized its father it crowed and smiled, and the smile was wide and frank and lovable, like Tennelly's. There was nothing artificial about it. Courtland drew a long sigh of relief. For the moment he had been looking at the baby as if ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... to one of them, then the fellow began putting on the weird uniform. It made him look like a visitor from another world. The tremendous weight of his garb prevented him from moving at more than a slow shuffle across the deck, strong though ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... The superstition of the Highlanders. This is shown in Brian's faith and in the weird ceremonies in connection with the Fiery Cross. 2. The method of mustering the clans by means of the message of the Fiery Cross. 3. Their ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... dice with Ceres in Ilades, by investing one of their body with a cloak made in a single day, [Greek: pharos autemeron exyphenantes], Euterpe, cxxii. Gray, in his ode of The Fatal Sisters, has embodied the Scandinavian myth in which the twelve weird sisters, the Valkiriur, weave "the crimson web of war" between the rising and ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Erlking, his long, spectral arms outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, the alarmed father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace, the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul with their weird harps. There can be no better illustration than is furnished by this terrible scene of the magic power of mythology to invest the simplest physical phenomena with the most intense human interest; for the true significance of the whole picture ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... indulge such superstitious vagaries, my dear, wise Janet. The age of hobgoblins, haunted houses, and supernatural influences has passed away with the marvels of alchemy and the weird myths of Rosicrucianism. Because many deaths have occurred at that place, and the residents were consequently plunged in gloom, you must not rashly impute eldritch influences to the atmosphere surrounding it. Knowing ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... brought it up, and after some delay a place for it was found. The two lights now plainly showed a sudden enlargement in the area of the cave, and above them hung what appeared to be huge icicles, giving the interior a weird appearance. Still ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... clumps of feathery bamboo; there were big trees covered with scarlet flowers instead of leaves; there was the flaming bougainvillea in profusion; and, in addition, there were great trailing cables of orchids, of weird shapes and vivid colouring reaching from bough to bough. Yes, there was plenty to see and marvel at, and there would be more when those few yards of rippling water had been spanned and their feet pressed the lush grass of yonder flowery mead close by the river's ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... magic round me here; But fading, blotted, dim, a picture faint, With spell more silent, only pleads a tear. Plead not! Thou hast my heart, O picture dim! I see the fields, I see the autumn hand Of God upon the maples! Answer Him With weird, translucent glories, ye that stand Like spirits in scarlet and in amethyst! I see the sun break over you: the mist On hills that lift from iron bases grand Their heads superb!—the dream, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the young musician. In little more than a week's time he composed an opera, "Rodrigo," for which he obtained one hundred sequins. His next visit was to Venice, where he arrived at the height of the carnival. Whatever effect Venice, with its weird and mysterious beauty, with its marble palaces, facades, pillars, and domes, its magnificent shrines and frescoes, produced on Handel, he took Venice by storm. Handel's power as an organist and a harpsichord player was only second ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... according to the elder Pomeroy, little Albert who had not been at the O'Connor home the night before, heard the dolorous tale of the wonderful tree in Philadelphia, the gift of nuts and their weird disappearance. To confirm the sad story he picked up the carpet-bag, turned it inside out. Within a torn lining, he triumphantly extracted ten nuts. Child-like, he proceeded to sample them and had eaten three when his ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... I answered, takin' her baby from her arms, an' leadin' the way to the kitchen, where we would be alone, with a great, cracklin' fire in the stove to sit by. I gave her food and comforted her, an' tended the baby, while she told me about hersilf, with an occasional spell o' cryin' an' a wild, weird expression on her face that gave me bad ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... sprang up on the rail with a blue light in his hand, and as the weird radiance flared in a long streak to leeward a cry rose from the water. In another few moments a blurred object, half hidden in flying spray, drove down upon the schooner furiously on the top of a sea, and then ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... League over the Negro was due in large degree to the mysterious secrecy of the meetings, the weird initiation ceremony that made him feel fearfully good from his head to his heels, the imposing ritual, and the songs. The ritual, it is said, was not used in the North; it was probably adopted for the particular benefit of the African. The would-be ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... strange, weird dance amongst the imagery of the rings, over which my earth planet was beginning to throw a haze of light. At first it was hardly more than a walk, a slow procession round the twin circumferences of the centred ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... watery mirror of the China Sea. And he will have observed striking features peculiar to this latitude of the Atlantic coast. I recall an atmospheric effect in springtime resembling a light pearl-colored mist, which had none of the qualities of a fog, but rather lent a weird transparency to the air. It gave the impression of sunlight faded or washed of its golden particles, or of a picture drawn on pearl. There was a statuesque stillness about the water, a near and yet a far look about the entire scene, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... bed greatly disturbed in mind as to whether she was doing well to marry the obstreperous Westerner. "He fascinates me in a wild, weird sort of a way when I'm with him," she had said to herself before going to sleep, "and the idea of him is fascinating in certain moods. And it is a temptation to take hold of him and master and train him—like broncho-busting. But is it interesting enough for—for ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... of the most curious and weird circumstances connected with this meeting. Hardly had he laid himself back in his chair before I heard a faint scratching against the table leg, and next moment an enormous cat, black as the Pit of Tophet, ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... domestic affection and fidelity to trusts. Two characters in particular are original creations,—"Dominie Sampson" and "Meg Merrilies," whom no reader can forget,—the one, ludicrous for his simplicity; and the other a gypsy woman, weird and strange, more like a witch than a sibyl, but intensely human, and capable of the strongest attachment for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... forest. True, she had spent a part of the day in the same place, running no other danger than that of being struck, but the woods in the daytime are not like the woods at night, with the solemn silence and the mysterious shadows, which make one conjure up the vision of so many weird things. ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... smoke-laden wind, scurrying townward across the barren quarry-lands. The vast canopy was red with the glow of flying embers and fire-lit clouds. Below, in the dusty road, swarmed the long procession of citizens. Grim, stark hemlocks gleamed in the weird, uncanny light that turned the green of their foliage and the black of their trunks into the colour of the rose on the side facing the fire, but left them dark and forbidding on the other. The telegraph-poles beyond the burning warehouse lining the railroad spur that ventured down ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... the fantastic coals. Without, the world was cold and bright, for a pale, tremulous moon filled the world with its beauty. The wind came in across the sea, and mingling with the murmur of the waters, produced a weird and ghost-like sound, as it swept through half-deserted streets, penetrating rudely the abodes of poverty, and whistling around the mansions of the rich. This sound Leah heard faintly, as it sought ingress at her windows, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... shell screamed over and burst with a weird startling flash of flame a hundred yards away. We followed the right-hand path, and found that it bent to the left again. "This is getting puzzling," I said to Wilde in a low voice. "I think we've come right so far," he replied, "but I shall ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... pain and rage. If anything could have added more agony to the next few minutes it was the sight of Tricky. That ever gay animal was careering down the hill straight towards the feeding sheep. The pump-handle was still tied to its neck, and it clattered over the stones with a noise weird enough to drive the whole flock into the sea. The shepherd knew there must be a catastrophe, but he was powerless to avert it. He was too sore to follow, so he slowly limped towards the hut, to nurse his wrath ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... to Bradley to be an ordinary small hut. Outside the hut was what he took for a curiously shaped log of wood. The inside of the hut was in shadow, but as his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, he saw something in one corner. It was a weird-looking head, ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... lineage of the Argive kings. After Io's departure, Prometheus renews his defiance to Jupiter, and his stern prophecies, that the son of Saturn shall be "hurled from his realm, a forgotten king." In the midst of these weird denunciations, Mercury arrives, charged by Jupiter to learn the nature of that danger which Prometheus predicts to him. The Titan bitterly and haughtily defies the threats and warnings of the herald, and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one of the picturesque incidents that Sturt has introduced in his narrative, and that help to fix on our memory the strangely weird picture of the lonely band of men confronted with the unaccustomed forces ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... who knew what was going on, had his reasons for welcoming this development. He concocted various legends of his own weird experiences at the valley-head, and these, as coming from him, had considerable weight. They were communicated in the first instance to the groom. By him they were conveyed to the coachman; by him, to the coachman's wife; whence they were not long in finding ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... who never forgot her in their Easter offerings, for which, as for all other gifts, she was requested to "call at the back gate." This seemed, indeed, the only way of reaching the weird old creature, who had for so many years appeared daily upon the streets, nobody seemed to know from where, disappearing with the going down of the sun as mysteriously as the golden disk itself. Of course, if any one had cared to insist upon knowing how she lived or where she stayed at nights, he ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... what might be called the chorus, were in twelve sets, each group clad in a different colour or design of feather-silk. Their head-dress, while composed of the entire body of a bird of plumage, lacked the flamboyant tail of the peacock. The music was weird and whimsical, as there were neither stringed nor brass instruments. It was made wholly by women playing upon a vast variety of drums and reeds. There were all sizes of whistling reeds or flutes; several of these of different lengths were grouped into one instrument ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... the sun was still a half hour high and filled the west with a red glow. The forest there was tinted by it, and seen thus in the coming twilight with those weird crimsons and scarlets showing through it, the wilderness looked very lonely and desolate. An ordinary boy, at the coming of night would have been awed, if alone, by the stillness of the great unknown spaces, but it found ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the gentle reader, Miss Alcott's stories perennially bloom. And, for some strange reason, the weird "Elsie Dinsmore" series is found under the popular Christmas tree, while nobody gives the Rollo books to anybody. Why? One may begin to believe that that degeneracy which the prevalence of jazz, lip-sticks, and ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... the dim mists had a certain weird quality and Robert's imaginative mind heightened its effect. It was almost like the blind shooting at the blind. A pink dot would appear in the fog, expand a little, and then go out. There would be a sharp report, the whistling of a bullet, perhaps, and that was all. The white men fought in silence, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... short, and fixed his keen eyes upon the agitated girl, who stood in front of him. For at least two minutes the man and the girl stood face to face, motionless, and without exchanging a word. Through the dead, weird silence, the pulsations of their hearts were plainly audible. It seemed as if before speaking again each wished to fathom the depths of guilt that lay in the other's heart. It was a compact entered into by look and not by speech; and Daumon so well understood this, that at length, when ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... with an old governess, migrate from Kensington to the West of Ireland. Belonging as they do to "the ould family", the girls are made heartily welcome in the cabins of the peasantry, where they learn many weird and curious tales from the folk-lore of the district. An interesting plot runs through the narrative, but the charm of the story lies in its happy mingling ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... 248 The Sixty Stories of the Perfectly Constructed Colossus Building Had Mysteriously Crashed! What Was the Connection Between This Catastrophe and the Weird Strains of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the stamp of native heroism. He has, therefore, given a threefold division to the guilt of that crime. The first idea comes from that being whose whole activity is guided by a lust of wickedness. The weird sisters surprise Macbeth in the moment of intoxication of victory, when his love of glory has been gratified; they cheat his eyes by exhibiting to him as the work of fate what in reality can only be accomplished by his own deed, and gain credence for all their words by the immediate fulfilment ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Spargo and Breton came late at night to Hawes' Junction, on the border of Yorkshire and Westmoreland, and saw rising all around them in the half-darkness the mighty bulks of the great fells which rise amongst that wild and lonely stretch of land. At that hour of the night and amidst that weird silence, broken only by the murmur of some adjacent waterfall the scene was impressive and suggestive; it seemed to Spargo as if London were a million miles away, and the rush and bustle of human life ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... Buttercup and his mother of the approach of the old hag. In 'Bushy Bride', No. xlv, he appears only as the lassie's lap-dog, is thrown away as one of her sacrifices, and at last goes to the wedding in her coach; yet in that tale he has something weird about him, and he is sent out by his mistress three times to see if the ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... never forget the sudden weird hush which followed that unexpected sound. The woman released her grasp of her victim as if she had been shot, and the crowd, with a shout on their lips, ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the winds, gathered into their host the souls of the dead—thus giving birth to the Scandinavian and Teutonic legend of the Wild Horseman, who rides at midnight through the stormy sky, with his long train of dead behind him, and his weird hounds before. The Ribhus, or Arbhus, again, were the sunbeams or the lightning, who forged the armour of the Gods, and made their thunderbolts, and turned old people young, and restored out of the hide alone ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... it seemed that I was as old at fifteen as many a girl of eighteen; I had lived so much with grown-up people; I had received all my impressions from them. I was very quick and appreciative. I read character well, and seemed to have a weird, uncanny insight into the thoughts and ideas of people—into their motives and plans. I had too much of this faculty, for I was often made uncomfortable because shadows came between me and others, and because I seemed to feel and understand things ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... reasoned with him, Why, how many things had bad names undeservedly, and how easy it was to give bad names, and did he not think that if he and I were persistently to whisper in the village that any weird-looking old drunken tinker of the neighborhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would come in time to be suspected of that commercial venture! All this wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound to confess, and was as dead a failure ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the chief indunas ventured to communicate the fact that a very old and strange-looking man, who did not appear to be quite right in his wits, together with a. slightly younger, though equally weird-looking companion, craved an ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... 1905) Guinevere is married to King Arthur, whom she has never seen, when already in love with Lancelot, so that the "marriage" was merely a ceremony, and not a real marriage (cf., May Child, "The Weird of Sir Lancelot," North American ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the wind meanwhile blowing steadily, and playing its song upon the leaves. There was no other sound, but, when it was nearly midnight, a long howl, inexpressibly dreary and weird, came out of ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was a recruiting of the best voices from several of the choirs of London, and many musical instruments beside. The result was to win general praise for the beauty, harmony and perfection of the music. The weird, dismal strains of a quartette of trombones, in a recess far above the heads of the congregation, playing the three splendid "Equali," Beethoven's funeral hymn, swept through the vaulted roof of the Abbey, in pure tones never to be forgotten. When these ceased and finally died away, the great ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... cannot understand or endure the tyranny of her mother-in-law) by vague predictions and threats of hell; and when a thunderstorm suddenly breaks over the assembled family, after her husband's return, and the weird old lady again makes her appearance, Katerina is fairly crazed. She thinks the terrible punishment for her wayward affections has arrived; she confesses to her husband and mother-in-law that she loves Boris. ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... and the whole army of "Codfederate Brigadiers" on the other. This accounts, in a large measure, for many of Longstreet's strictures upon the conduct of officers of the army, and, no doubt, a mere after thought or the weird imaginations of an ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... not unlike. I recall him, two months later, a little less uncouth, a little better dressed, but in singularity and in angularity much the same. All the world now takes an interest in every detail that concerned him, or that relates to the weird tragedy of his ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... yet published gives a better illustration of his genius, and of the weird charm which has given his stories such ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... coffin. The walls and pillars of each chamber are wonderfully carved and painted. The pillars show pictures of the King making offerings to the gods, or being welcomed by them, but the pictures on the walls are very strange and weird. They represent the voyage of the sun through the realms of the under-world, and all the dangers and difficulties which the soul of the dead man has to encounter as he accompanies the sun-bark on its journey. ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... voluminous, white, canvas hoods, loaded with provisions; after these, countless, giant cannon decorated with branches, flowers and flags, mounted on open trucks without sides. All this procession was a weird phenomenon gliding by in the sky like a mirage, for the road-bed at the rear of the chateau is very high and is hidden by intervening shrubs and bushes so that the wheels of the cars are quite concealed. ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... divine led them to disregard their reason and give their passions undivided sway. One of the chronicles puts it: "Wherever the Almighty builds a church, the Devil comes and builds a chapel by its side." The thing that most distinguished these weird Dutchmen was their communistic views. They taught that, since we all were equal in the eyes of God, we should all be equal likewise in the eyes of men, that temporal government along with class distinctions of every kind ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... time risen above the horizon, and the whole countryside looked so fresh and sweet, from the blue, sparkling sea to the purple mountains, that it was difficult to realise how weird and uncanny was the enterprise ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... or thwart me. It seemed to change its position on the water, as well as in the atmosphere, and I was too busily employed in trying to reach it to discover in the darkness that the current, which I could not distinguish from smooth water, was whirling me down stream as fast as I would approach the weird vessel. ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... provinces, is such a popular element in every Adelphi melodrama; and it ultimately falls into the hands of an unscrupulous young man who succeeds in blackmailing Mr. Bourchier and in marrying his daughter. Mr. Bourchier suffers tortures from excess of chloral and of remorse; and there is psychology of a weird and wonderful kind, that kind which Mr. Conway may justly be said to have invented and the result of which is not to be underrated. For, if to raise a goose skin on the reader be the aim of art, Mr. Conway must be regarded as a real artist. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... her hands frantically as the scene presented itself, in all its danger, to her excited fancy. She saw the night still and dark, herself stealing like a criminal from the house; she saw the old cypress rising up weird and solemn, she heard the low shiver of its branches as they swayed to and fro; she saw the earth laid ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... who were put to death for witchcraft, without recognizing the well-marked features of the victims of cerebral disorder. In this way I have no doubt a considerable number of mad people were destroyed. Their very appearance suggested to their neighbours the notion of something weird and impish; the physiognomy of madness was mistaken for that of witchcraft, while the poor wretches themselves, conscious of unaccustomed sensations and singular promptings, referred them to the agency of demons. Strangely ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... were our vigilant pickets, and then the vedettes of the enemy. All seemed strangely still and peaceful, but a single shot would have brought thousands of men to their feet. The moon poured a soft radiance over all, and gave to the scene a weird and terrible beauty. The army was like a sleeping giant. Would its awakening be as terrible as on the last three mornings? Then I thought of that other army sleeping beyond our lines,—an army which neither bugle nor the thunder of all our ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... who was willing to run the newspaper, and I turned the post office over to Ma Wagor. Amid the weird beating of tom-toms and the hoo-hoo ah-ah-ahhh of the Indians across the trail, I set up my farewell message in The Wand. In gorgeous regalia of beads and quills, paint and eagle feathers, the Indians had come to send the Great Spirit with Paleface-Prints-Paper ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl |
