"Divining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... raised his rifle. The king wolf, as if divining his purpose, sheered to one side, but he was confronting the deadliest marksman in the woods. The muzzle of Henry's rifle followed him, and when he pulled the trigger the bullet crashed through the great ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wildly, desperately, that Sylvia made no attempt to stop him, divining with an aching pity what lay under his dreadful words. But when he said again, "It's simply that Judith doesn't care enough about me to stick by me, now I'm down and out. She can't bear me in her narrow little good world!" ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... herself free a second later, and Isabel, divining that any further demonstration from her would cause a breakdown, bade her a loving good ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... loveliness returned again and again,—her face as she conversed at table, her dignity as she rose with the other ladies, her smile when he said good-night. A smile that meant more than civility; he was convinced of it. But memory would not support him through half-a-year of solitude and ill-divining passion. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all, you prefiguring; And for they look'd but with divining eyes, They had not skill enough ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... don't want to be treated like a little girl all your life, do you?" He laughed at her speechless embarrassment with a kind obtuseness to the horror of youth at seeing its shy fastnesses of reserve laid open to indifferent feet. Divining, however, through his affection for her, that she was really more than pleasantly startled by his bluntness, he began to make everything smooth by saying: "There aren't many girls in Endbury who don't envy my little Lydia, I guess. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... His comrades, divining the cause of Clancy's impatience, make no attempt to restrain him. They have rested and sufficiently refreshed themselves. There is no reason for their remaining ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Colonel was not a little surprised to see his son marching up the street, and every now and then glancing behind him with a look of discomfort at the principal, who was following quietly in his train, carrying a parcel of school-books. Colonel Grim and his wife, divining the teacher's intention, agreed that it was a great outrage, but they did not mention the matter to Ralph. Henceforth, however, the boy refused to be accompanied by his servant. A week later he was impudent to the teacher ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... now glided into the room and upon the piano stool, and, as if by magic divining her wish, silently opened the piece of music for which she had been hunting. For the first time their eyes met without any medium, for he had discarded the tinted spectacles he usually wore. These were not the worn orbs of a man who had ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... embarrassed consciousness that he should have had any past at all in view of the present; another, that Miss Sally Madeira had just possibly set Piney on to worry him about Miss Gossamer; and the last, that Piney, divining that a man could hardly reach Bruce's age without some pages of romance behind him, was forever, out of his own perspicacity, trying to make Bruce re-read those pages, so that this new page, that had been turned ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... can exert no influence which will turn me from the path I have chosen," replied Madeleine, divining her young protegee's thoughts. "While Count Tristan remains in my house, you will act as my representative. When he is restored, or, rather, when he is no longer my guest, I shall resume ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the divining stalks (the divining plant, milfoil or yarrow) and the tortoiseshell has been carried on from time immemorial, but was not originally practised with the object of ascertaining future events, but in order to decide doubts, much as lots are drawn ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... his arrangements and divining his object, pressed on, regardless of the scattered state of his fleet, and made the signal for each ship to attack as she came up. Another signal intimated that he should attempt to break the enemy's line, so as to get between it and the land. ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... he, discovering that she was out of humor, but not divining the cause. "Your housemaid admitted me, and thinking you in your own room, was about to usher me in here, and go to announce me, when I saved her the trouble, telling her that my time was limited, and admitting myself; had ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... came about that he spent less and less of his time with her, and more and more with Leila—Leila who needed comforting, and who welcomed him with such sweet and clinging dependence—Leila who hung upon his advice, Leila who, divining his hurt, strove by her sweet sympathy to ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... upbraid Mrs. Grubb,' said Mary, divining from Rhoda's clouded brow that her interview had not been a pleasant one. 'You know our only peaceful way of rescuing Lisa from her hold is to make a friend of her, and convert her to our way of thinking. Was she much disturbed about ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his temples were hanging, His teeth were like teeth of a jack; His lips were inaudibly "slanging"; His eyes were all muddy and black; And water-snakes, round his neck twining, Were hissing; and water-rats swam At his feet; so without much divining I ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... the evening he repaired to the trysting-place and submitted complacently to having his eyes bandaged. Then, with that firm will which only really strong men have the faculty of concentrating, he devoted his attention and applied his intelligence to the task of divining through what streets the carriage passed. He had a sort of certitude of being taken to the Rue Saint-Lazare, and being brought to a halt at the little gate in the garden of the Hotel San-Real. When he passed, as on the first occasion, through this gate, and was put in a litter, carried, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Anodyne necklaces, and tied round the necks of children, to facilitate the growth of their teeth! add to this, that in Price's History of Cornwall, a book published about ten years ago, the Virga Divinatoria, or Divining Rod, has a degree of credit given to it. This rod is of hazle, or other light wood, and held horizontally in the hand, and is said to bow towards the ore whenever the Conjurer walks over a mine. A very few years ago, in France, and even in England, another kind of divining ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... not writ this letter of divining To make a glory of thy silent pining, A triumph of ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... Howe, after evacuating Boston, went to Halifax, but soon set sail for New York. Thither also came Admiral Howe, his brother, with reinforcements from England, and General Clinton from the defeat at Fort Moultrie. The British army was thirty thousand strong. Washington, divining Howe's plans, now gathered all his forces at New York to protect that city. He had, however, only about seven thousand men fit ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... concentrating all his troops except Lomax's brigade, which was to confront the head of my column on the river road, in the vicinity of Nance's Shop. This was discovered by Gregg at an early hour, and divining this purpose he had prepared to meet it by constructing hasty cover for his men before receiving my instructions. About 4 o'clock in the afternoon Hampton got his force in hand, and with Fitzhugh Lee's division assailed the whole front of Gregg's line, and his left flank with Chambliss's and Geary's ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... said simply, and was about to swing himself on to the ledge of the balustrade. Zuleika, divining his intention, made way for him. Her bosom heaved quickly, quickly. All colour had left her face; but her eyes shone as ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... buoyant spirit they seemed little more than so many city blocks. To look into the face and talk once more with the "little mother" would renew his enthusiasm for his work. She must have known that he was growing dull and spiritless with the lingering winter days,—she had such a wonderful way of divining things. His eyes grew misty with tender recollection ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... reconciliation with his father, he was prevailed upon with much difficulty to accompany Sir Robert Drury to Paris[3] Mrs. Donne, being then big with child and in a languishing state of health, strongly opposed his departure, telling him, that her divining soul boaded some ill in his absence; bur Sir Robert's importunity was not to be resisted, and he at last consented to go with him. Mr. Walton gives an account of a vision Mr. Donne had seen after their arrival there, which he says was told him by a person of honour, who had a great intimacy ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... Chaucer, none of our poets has had a constitution more healthful, and it was his old age that yielded the best of him. In him the understanding was, perhaps, in overplus for his entire good fortune as a poet, and that is a faculty among the earliest to mature. We have seen him, at only ten years, divining the power of reason in Polybius.[13] The same turn of mind led him later to imitate the French school of tragedy, and to admire in Ben Jonson the most correct of English poets. It was his imagination that needed quickening, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... table, and was about to put five thousand francs on the red, when the black came up for the seventeenth time. The colonel then put a thousand francs on the black and won. In spite of this remarkable piece of luck, his head grew weary; he felt it, though he continued to play. But that divining sense which leads a gambler, and which comes in flashes, was already failing him. Intermittent perceptions, so fatal to all gamblers, set in. Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition of not breaking ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... at her closely, deliberately, divining the beauty that was half hidden from him. Her parted lips were lovely, and the texture of her white skin was satin smooth as the petals of a rose; there was no fault in the pure oval of her face, in the line of her black brows. He could see no flaw in her now, and he believed ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... when a burly policeman entered with the two confidence men who had attempted so perseveringly to get Uncle's money. Behind them came the man they had just been trying to rob. Johnny and Louis had seen them talking to a countryman, and, divining what was intended, followed them as they tolled him away to a place where they could accomplish the robbery. They found a policeman on the way, who took in the situation and assisted the boys to catch ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... marriage or single blessedness being foretold by its remaining whole or breaking, and of the peel so cast forming the initial of the future loved one, finds many adherents. Equally popular, too, was the practice of divining by a thistle blossom. When anxious to ascertain who loved her most, a young woman would take three or four heads of thistles, cut off their points, and assign to each thistle the name of an admirer, laying them under her pillow. On the following morning the thistle which has put forth a fresh ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... creatures with extravagant devotion, not merely the finely bred and beautiful ones, but the poor, the sick, the halt, the maimed, the half-breeds or the no breeds at all; and almost all animals quickly make friends with me, divining my love for them. But on this one night—well! it was this way. In the last act, as Camille, I had staggered from the window to the bureau and was nearing that dread moment when in the looking-glass I was ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er She shall press, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... beef, but he remained hyperaesthetic, and could see better in a bad light than Daumer or Feuerbach. Some 'dowsers,' we know, can detect subterranean water, by the sensations of their hands, without using a twig, or divining rod, and others can 'spot' gold hidden under the carpet, with the twig. Kaspar, merely with the bare hand, detected (without touching it?) a needle under a table cloth. He gradually lost these gifts, and the theory seems to have ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... was mounting towards the throne. Courtiers have a marvelous instinct in scenting the turn of events; courtiers possess a supreme kind of science; they are diplomatists in throwing light upon the unraveling of complicated intrigues, captains in divining the issue of battles, and physicians in curing the sick. Louis XIV., to whom his mother had taught this axiom, together with many others, understood at once that the cardinal ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Scuppaug. Can any master of Indian dialects tell us whether that word, too, means "him of the silver eye"? If it does, revoke, O student, your shrill eheu for the Greekless and untrousered savage of the canoe, suppress your feelings, and go steadily into rhabdomancy with several divining-rods, in search of the Pierian spring which must surely exist somewhere among the guttural ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... well-known name to the professional practisers of the art. Cicero (de Divinatione) celebrates, and the Jewish prophets frequently deride, their skill in divination and their modes of incantation. The story of Daniel evidences how highly honoured and lucrative was the magical or divining faculty. The Chazdim, or Chaldeans, a priestly caste inhabiting a wide and level country, must have soon applied themselves to the study, so useful to their interests, of their brilliant expanse of heavens. By a prolonged ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... periapt^, telesm^, phylactery, philter; fetich, fetish; agnus Dei [Lat.], lamb of God; furcula^, madstone^; mascot, mascotte^; merrythought^; Om, Aum^; scarab, scarabaeus^; sudarium^, triskelion, veronica, wishbone; swastika, fylfot^, gammadion^. wand, caduceus, rod, divining rod, lamp of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... from the skylight gave precision to the pure lines of her hip and thighs, accentuated her harsh visage, her dark neck, her marble chest, the lines of her knees and feet, the toes of which were set one over the other. Therese looked at her curiously, divining her exquisite form under the miseries of her flesh, poorly fed ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... as if he were holding talk with some friendly soul. Once Donal heard the murmured words, "Lord, I'm a' yer ain;" and noted that his sleep grew deeper thereafter. He did not wake till the day began to dawn. Then he asked for some water. Seeing Donal, and divining that he had been by his bedside all the night, he thanked him with a smile and a little nod—which somehow brought to his memory certain words Andrew had spoken on another occasion: "There's ane, an' there's a'; an' the a' 's ane, an' ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... say?" I inquired mechanically, divining some subtler explanation of this visit, and wondering what on earth ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... my doctor," smiled Pollyanna, divining his thought. "Dr. Warren is Aunt Polly's doctor. My doctor is ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... fragments roll onwards with the stream. The trees of the orchard are uprooted in an instant, and an old elm falls prostrate. The outbuildings of a cottage are invaded, and the porkers and cattle, divining their danger, squeal and bellow in affright. But they are quickly silenced. The resistless foe has broken down wall and door, and buried the poor ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... means for its discovery. They believed in omens, signs, and other superstitions. As a boy Joseph had been shrewd enough and superstitious enough to play this trait up for all it was worth. He had a magic peep-stone and a witch-hazel divining-rod that he manipulated so skillfully as to cause other boys and even older men to dig for him as he wished. He seemed to delight in tricking his companions in various ways, by telling fortunes, reeling off tall yarns, and posing as one possessed of ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... They seemed so cozy, billing and cooing in the shadow of the gay vase, that Rose would have slipped silently away if they had not seen and called to her. "He's not gone I guess you'll find him in the parlor," said Steve, divining with a lover's instinct the meaning of the quick look she had cast at the hat rack as she shut the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... first discouragement, at the first touch of pain, they would languidly and despairingly cease to be. Hugh seemed to discern that men were put into the world that they might apprehend something that it was worth their while to apprehend; that for some reason which he had no means of divining, life could not be a wholly easy or pleasurable thing; but that in order to inspire men to bear pain and unhappiness, they were permeated with an intense desire to continue to live, and to regain some measure of contentment, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... disorder of the young men irretrievable; and, accordingly, in less than a moment they were seen,—all, at least, who were not already disabled,—flying in a panic from the field of battle. It was in vain that the captain of horse-thieves, divining at last the cause of their extraordinary flight, roared out that he was a living man, with nothing of a ghost about him whatever; the panic was universal and irremediable, and nothing remained for him to do but to save his own life ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Shame! He's justly treated, as he might have known. And if the wand were a divining one It would have turn'd, within his very hands, Point-blank to where your handsome ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... paused in his singing he wiped away his tears, and poured a drink-offering from his cup; but every time the minstrel resumed his lay a new fit of weeping succeeded. At last, Alcinous, who had hitherto been totally absorbed in that rare minstrelsy, observed his guest's emotion, and partly divining the cause came to his relief. "How say ye, fair sirs?" he said, rising and addressing the company. "Shall we go forth for awhile, and show the stranger that we have other and manlier pastimes, now that we have eaten and ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... remained in the open doorway with her hand upon his shoulder and her eyes thoughtfully lowered, so that her wish to say something more than good-night was evident. Not less obvious was her perplexity about the manner of saying it; and George, divining her thought, amiably made ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... for men. Accordingly, Apollo signified to them that he would bestow it on them in three days, and on the third day at daybreak they were found dead. And so they say that this was a formal decision pronounced by that God to whom the rest of the deities have assigned the province of divining with an accuracy superior to that ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the question the log did move, borne away by the full current. Mamie, followed by the dog, ran after it, with her eyes aflame with excitement. Dennis barked, divining something uncanny, eager to distract the mind of his mistress from what seemed to be engrossing it. Still she ran on, with her eyes upon the log. The dog knew that she must stop in a moment, that no one could pass the falls unless they went over them. Did he divine also that she ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... romance sadder, and therefore better, than any she had ever read; better, even, than that in the one-act dramas which followed their turns on the stage. "Have you ever studied his writing?" she asked her husband; and, promptly divining her plan, he replied, "I made a few copies of his signature on the Manila hotel register. You never know what will turn up." After a pause, he added eagerly, "Better yet!—there was some of his writing in the overcoat I ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... from casting a rapid glance at the young girl, whose sparkling eyes met his. Then, with that science of vision which gives to a libertine, as it does to a sculptor, the fatal power of disrobing, if we may so express it, a woman, and divining her shape by inductions both rapid and sagacious, he beheld one of those masterpieces of Nature whose creation appears to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here was a fair young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre which ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... cannot say," interrupted the doctor, divining what the next question was to be. "He may linger on for months; for a year, it may even be; or a very short period may see the termination. Don't worry him with any more lessons and stuff of learning; he'll never ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Hastings remembered the beautiful rosewood instrument, whose tones had been so long unheard in his silent home, and he said, "Do you not like Ella's piano?" while a feeling, shadowy and undefined, stole over him, that possibly it might, some day, be hers; and Eugenia, divining his thoughts, answered artfully, "Oh, very much. I used to enjoy hearing dear Ella play, but that don't do me any good. It isn't ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... undone by us, if the soothsayer Tiresias have any oracle to deliver, to enquire this of him; but I will send thy son, Creon, Menoeceus, of the same name with thy father, to bring Tiresias hither. With pleasure will he enter into conversation with you; but I lately reviled him with his divining art, so that he is offended with me. But this charge I give the city with thee, Creon; if my arms should conquer, that the body of Polynices be never buried in this Theban land; but that the man who buries him shall die, although ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... dubious; and the little maid, divining that the discussion of her was unfavorable, fell to tears, and then ran up and dried them on ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... Dantes. The young man obeyed, mounted on the table, and, divining the wishes of his companion, placed his back securely against the wall and held out both hands. The stranger, whom as yet Dantes knew only by the number of his cell, sprang up with an agility by no means to be expected in ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tongue, in order that they may exercise themselves therein, and that even foreigners, who are curious about it, may learn to know its riches and the graces it hath in unfolding the secrets of the highest discipline." Herein is revealed the founder of the French Academy, skilful as he was in divining the wants of his day, and always ready to profit by new means of action, and to make them his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... scratching his head doubtfully. Then, divining the abysmal ignorance from which the judge was speaking, he answered, with an honest twinkle in his eye: "Oh, that's all right, Judge. We always try to do what's right—and we're strong for the law, when they ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... with the hazel. Hazel-rods were used to "divine" for water and minerals by professors of an art which received the crack-jaw title of Rhabdomancy. Having tried our own hand at Rhabdomancy, we are able to say that the freaks of the divining-rod in sensitive fingers are sometimes as curious as those of a table among table-turners; and are probably susceptible ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... she was refused. The next time they churned, the milk would not turn to butter, they continued their labours for many hours, but at last they were compelled to desist in consequence of the unpleasant odour which proceeded from the churn. The milk was thrown away, and the farmer, John Griffiths, divining that the milk had been witched by the woman who had been begging at their house, went to consult a conjuror, who lived near Pwllheli. This man told him that he was to put a red hot crowbar into the milk the next time they churned. This was done, and the milk was successfully churned. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... order, of that marvellous unity, which mark the works of the masters. Everything is sought to flatter that pretentious vanity of the limited understanding which piques itself on its stereotyped knowledge, always striving to usurp the higher empire of the divining soul. Such writing certainly requires subtlety of intellect, for talent is required to discover that which no one can see; to invent relations where none exist. We may, indeed, often observe great perfection in the details, high finish in the execution, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... shoot a little," said Boyd, divining the whole story from the lad's few sentences, "and he also has a way of shooting at the right time. Now, you sit down here, Will, and eat these steaks I'm broiling, and I'll give you a cup of coffee, ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... there," said the young man, divining her thoughts. "Not finding you here, she's gone on a bit, but you ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... we were ready. I turned and looked back into the trench. All my brave fellows were standing, their eyes turned to me, and seemed bent on divining by my attitude or gestures any new effort I might be about to ask of them. The pale light of the moonbeams struck full on their faces, leaving their bodies shrouded in the darkness of the trench. What a strange and comforting ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... boy, whose name is Rodwell, is an impostor. He says that the lad, when tested, never failed to find either water or mineral veins, the lodes having always been found exactly at the places indicated. The divining-rod which he holds only moves in obedience to the muscular contraction of his hands, and a rod of any kind of wood, or even of any material substance whatever, can be used, provided it be a conductor of electricity. Dr. McClure's ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... previously he had a disagreement with Kenneth at some games, and, on his arrival, Maclean told the heir of Kintail that, taking advantage of his connection with the family, they had taken the liberty of providing him with lodgings in the kiln. Kenneth considered this an insult, and, divining that it proceeded from Maclean's illwill to him, he instantly struck him a blow on the ear, which threw him to the ground. The servants in the house viewed this as a direct insult to their chief, Macdonald, and at once took to arms. Kenneth, though sufficiently bold, soon perceived that he had ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... Patricia seized and clung to Landless's arm, trembling violently, and with her breath coming in long, gasping sobs. Exhausted by the previous terrors of the night, this last experience completely unnerved her—she seemed upon the point of swooning. Divining what would soonest calm her, Landless hurried her out of the wood and down the shore to the bank, beneath which lay the sleeping slaves. Here she sank upon the sand, her frame quivering like an aspen. "That dreadful face!" she said in a low, shaken voice. "It is burned upon my eyeballs. How ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... he clanged the bell for Tee-ka-mee, and that faithful servitor, divining the order, brought the aged factor wherewithal ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... strained, premonitory silence that had in it a hint of imminent tragedy. The sitting man stiffened, divining the promise of violence; the standing man shrank back a little and looked downward at the ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... am sure she is all that is delightful," responded Miss Savell, quickly divining that Anne was not pleased at her remark. "I hope to know ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... souls of the saints do not encourage those who ask unlawfully. Yet Samuel appeared to Saul when the latter inquired of the woman that had a divining spirit, concerning the issue of the coming war (1 Kings 28:8, sqq.). Therefore the divination that consists in questioning demons is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... speak of Lady * *'s illness; she is not of those who die:—the amiable only do; and those whose death would do good live. Whenever she is pleased to return, it may be presumed she will take her 'divining rod' along with her: it may be of use to her at home, as well as to the 'rich man' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... smooth waters, white vestments, and fruitful green trees, which are the visions of healthful sleeps, and at good distance from the grave. And they were also too deeply dejected that he should dream of his dead friends, inconsequently divining, that he would not be long from them; for strange it was not that he should sometimes dream of the dead, whose thoughts run always upon death; beside, to dream of the dead, so they appear not in dark habits, and take nothing away from us, in Hippocrates' sense was of ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... enterprises of the kind; that money is only to be digged for at night; with certain forms and ceremonies; the burning of drugs; the repeating of mystic words, and above all, that the seekers must be provided with a divining rod, which had the wonderful property of pointing to the very spot on the surface of the earth under which treasure lay hidden. As the doctor had given much of his mind to these matters, he charged himself with all the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... in the concrete, while he throws, from his poet's station between both, swifter, subtler, and more numerous films for the connection of each with each than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge." This divining and glorifying power it is that Browning ascribes to Love; the lack of it is in his conception the tragic flaw which brings to the ground the superbly gifted genius of Paracelsus. This genuine and original tragic motive is not worked out with uniform power; ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... kind o' tired listenin' to that noise? Suppose I was to carry—just for a bit—. This is the roughest place on the trail. Hi! Stop!" he called to Andrew. The priest had said nothing; but divining what Mac would be at, he helped him to undo the raw-hide lashing, and when Kaviak was withdrawn he wrapped one of the lighter fur things ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... pure eyes ready in their tears At chiding words, or glances chilly; And sudden smiles, as inly bright As lamps through alabaster shining, With ready mirth, and fancies light, Dashed with strange dreams of child-divining: A child in all infantile grace, Yet with the ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... gently, divining some "last message" to deliver. For they were desperate chances that she was taking, and those in the beleaguered city would show her no mercy if they ever caught her ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... road to the Castle of the Grail was difficult to find, the road to Klingsor's castle was easy and overeasy; it would seem that for the feet of a votary of the Grail all roads led to it. Parsifal had seen it shining afar, and with childish shouts of delight is drawing near. Klingsor, divining in him an enemy more than usual dangerous, resorts, to make his ruin altogether sure, to what are his supreme methods. He calls to his assistance once more the ally by whose help the great Amfortas had been vanquished. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... brothers to the number of eight; and two sisters, Henrietta and Arabel, all younger than herself. Edward, the eldest son, especially cared for Elizabeth, holding her in tender and almost reverential love, and divining, almost from his infancy, her exquisite gifts. Apparently, the eldest sister was also greatly beloved by the whole troop of the younger brothers,—Charles, Samuel, George, Henry, Alfred, and the two younger, who ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... the drawing-room Cassandra found fresh sources of pleasure, first in the distinguished and expectant look of the room, and then in the chance of exercising her divining-rod upon a new assortment of human beings. But the low tones of the women, their meditative silences, the beauty which, to her at least, shone even from black satin and the knobs of amber which encircled elderly necks, changed her wish to chatter to a more subdued ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Romana arte, cf. Cic. de Div. 2, 41, K. The Scythians had a similar method of divining, Herod. 4, 67. Indeed, the practice of divining by rods has hardly ceased to this day, among the ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... earth has ever known. Thucydides is in fact the supreme historian, at the same time swift and detailed, scrupulously sifting his evidence but giving free play to intuition, setting forth none but incontestable facts, yet divining the most secret intentions and embracing at a glance all the present and future political consequences of the events which he relates. He is withal one of the most perfect writers, one of the most admirable artists in the literature of mankind; and from this point ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... annoyed to observe that although they had never moved since they sat down, they were now quite close together; both presenting faces of a very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr. Edward Hugh Bloomfield. That gentleman, coming up the river in his boat, had captured the truant canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought to steal a march upon Miss Hazeltine at her sketch. He had unexpectedly brought down two birds with one stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and breathless culprits, the pleasant human instinct of the matchmaker ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as the Red Sea when the Hebrews crossed it under the leadership of Baron Moses, for it seemed to her that she had sharp sand rolling under her eyelids. Pray for her, ye charitable souls, for never was woman so agonised, in divining that her lover has saved her life at the expense of his own. Aided by her son, she herself placed the monk in the middle of the bed, and stood by the side of it, praying with the boy, whom she then told that the prior was ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... for another purpose—to wit, that through thy instrumentality we may discover the divining cup the emperor hath lost. Knowest thou aught of this precious crystal?" inquired the Chaldean, with a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... self-interests which the lawyer's wife had come at last to see and comprehend. Her husband's imperious will had alone taken her to the Rogron's house, where she had suffered much at the harsh treatment of the pretty little creature, who would often press up against her as if divining her secret thoughts, sometimes asking the poor lady to show her a stitch in knitting or to teach her a bit of embroidery. The child proved in return that if she were treated gently she would understand what was taught her, and succeed in what ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... divining the mental processes of two children hysterical with excitement, his magnetic taming of those fluttering little hearts, his inspired avoidance of a fatal false step at a critical point in the moral life of two human beings in the making—all this seemed as nothing to him—an ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... divining future events by this method is to suspend a bolo or a dagger that has been consecrated to a deity and from its movement, or from the absence of movement, obtain the desired information. In case of emergency ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... New York fell into line. A Boston committee presented an address to Bernard asking him to mediate between the people and England; he promised to do so, but at the same time sent out secret requests to have regiments sent to Boston. Divining his duplicity, John Adams, at the next town meeting, formulated the people's resolve to vindicate their rights "at the utmost hazard of their lives and fortunes," declaring that whosoever should solicit the importation of troops was "an enemy to this town ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... and perjure herself before God and man? No! a thousand times no! It has become a simple question of whom she loves, and I'll find out if Shakespeare's words are true. If she has love for me, let her bury it never so deeply, my love will be the divining-rod that will inevitably ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... told on Linnaeus in Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages": "When the great botanist was on one of his voyages, hearing his secretary highly extol the virtues of his divining-wand, he was willing to convince him of its insufficiency, and for that purpose concealed a purse of one hundred ducats under a ranunculus, which grew by itself in a meadow, and bid the secretary find it if he could. The wand discovered nothing, and Linnaeus's mark was soon trampled down ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... object they withdrew from the crowd, which was already regarding them with menacing looks, and went down the road in the direction from which the van was expected to come. They had not gone very far, however, before the people, divining what they were going to do, began to follow them and while they were hesitating what course to pursue, the Socialist van, escorted by five or six men on bicycles, appeared round the corner at the bottom of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... picture of Miss Hamm upon horseback persists in the retina of my brain as a far from unseemly vision. One is moved to wonder that a circumstance so trivial should linger in one's mind. How truly has it been said that the vagaries of the human imagination are past divining. ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... picture from his consciousness to her own. And, as she watched, each detail growing in poignancy and significance she—not all at once, but gropingly, rebelliously and only by degrees—comprehended that purpose, and the abounding love, both of herself and of justice, which dictated it. Divining the root of her trouble and the nature of her suspicion he took this strange means to dissipate them. Setting aside his natural pride, he caused her to look upon his hour of defeat and debasement, careless of himself if thereby he might mend her hurt ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sand, and examine the rocks. Vermuyden had acquired, in his native country, some slight knowledge of alchymy, and he carried out with him not only mercury, aqua regia, and large melting pots, but also a divining rod, which, however, as was most likely the case, was not found to exhibit any virtue. Vermuyden, however, was not to be laughed out of his superstitious notions, although his companions took every opportunity ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... man groaned—placed one hand before his eyes, and with the other grasped his guardian's arm convulsively, as if to check him from proceeding farther; but the good man, not divining his meaning, and absorbed in his subject, went on, irritating the wound ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man whose face was familiar, he pressed a douceur into his hand, and, in a voice that broke in spite of his efforts to control it, asked to be driven home immediately and as fast as possible. The hackman looked upon Edward's haggard face with silent sympathy, divining, perhaps, something of the truth, and hastily led the way ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... connected with the Hazel is the divining rod, for the discovery of water and metals. This has always by preference been a forked Hazel-rod, though sometimes other rods are substituted. The belief in its power dates from a very early period, and is by no means extinct. The divining-rod is said to be still used in Cornwall, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... did not care anything at all about the matter, for, as I before said, the Sakais from habit and an innate spirit of independence will never hear of submitting themselves to any regular, ordinate labour. Knowing, however, with whom I had to deal, and divining what a great amount of patience would be necessary to bring them round to my way of thinking, I began to distribute gifts, especially tobacco, freely and frequently amongst them, only mentioning my wish occasionally, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... helpless before their own consciousness, and Mikky, divining the trouble with that exquisite keenness of a spirit sent from heaven to make earth brighter, conceived the bright idea of giving each of his comrades some article of his apparel as a remembrance. Mr. Endicott came upon the scene ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... one of the officers who was talking, with eyes bulging with covetousness, of the riches of Paris, the Chief Thief with the band on his arm. He it was who so methodically had sacked the castle. As though divining the old Frenchman's thought, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of April, the Emperor also received the last adieux of Marshal Macdonald. When he was introduced, the Emperor was still feeling the effects of the events of the preceding night; and I am sure the Duke of Tarentum perceived, without divining the cause, that his Majesty was not in his usual condition. He was accompanied by the Duke of Vicenza; and at this moment the Emperor was still so much depressed, and seemed so entirely absorbed in thought, that he did not at first perceive these gentlemen, although he was perfectly ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... no more than one of them, and that in full payment of what she owed her, and Mrs. Dempster left the shop in tears, to linger about the neighbourhood until the hour should arrive at which the lady had told her to call again. Apparently she must have cherished the hope that her mother, divining her extremity, would give her the character she could honestly claim. But as she drew near the door which she hoped would prove a refuge, her mother was approaching it also, and at the turning of a corner they ran into each other's arms. The elderly lady had a hackney coach ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... voices and sights of another world came out before him like players on to a stage. Spaces of shining water, crossed by ships with decks manned by heroes for whom the blue distance was for ever revealing new lands to conquer, new adventures to affront; the plumed Indian in his forest divining the track of his enemy from a displaced leaf or twig; the Zealots of Jehovah urging a last frenzied defence of Jehovah's Sanctuary against the Roman host; and now, last of all, the gloom and flames, the infernal palaces, the towering fiends, the grandiose and lumbering ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... interpretation of an old one. Democratic America has a different humanity from feudal Europe, and so must have a new divinity. See, for one moment, how intelligence reacts on our faiths. The Bible was a divining-book to our ancestors, and is so still in the hands of some of the vulgar. The Puritans went to the Old Testament for their laws; the Mormons go to it for their patriarchal institution. Every generation dissolves something new and precipitates something ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... it was the cure who was ever at the beck and call of the two strangers, divining their desires, making quite easy a situation which otherwise might have been difficult enough. Not only the cure, but the whole village soon became quite reconciled to the hitherto unheard-of position assumed by this young girl, ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... Della Wharton's feminine blandishments. He was grimly amused—when he was not disgusted; though he continued to treat her with the utmost courtesy and gentleness, trying to keep her from divining his emotions. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... who remembered him as a grim, white-haired octogenarian who was one day carried home from the iron-furnace which he had built, and put to bed, dead in every part save his eyes. The eyes lived on for a year or more, following the movements of the sympathetic or curious visitor with a quiet, divining gaze; never sleeping, they said—though that could hardly be—until that last day of all when they fixed themselves on the wall and followed nothing ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the transactions of life, and the event is predicted by the application of certain characters marked on a slip of bamboo, to the lines of the sacred book, with which a comparison is made. But this is not their only mode of divining. Before going to war they kill a buffalo or a fowl that is perfectly white, and by observing the motion of the intestines judge of the good or ill fortune likely to attend them; and the priest who performs this ceremony had need to be infallible, for if he predicts contrary ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... into English the Art of divining by Lines and Signatures, engraven in the Hand of Man, written by John Rockman, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... river wimpled and laughed in mockery of his clumsy tender of protection and her rejection of it, and Beauvayse's tall figure stood, erect and triumphant, on the flower-starred bank, waiting to recommence his wooing until the intruder should be gone, divining, as Saxham had instinctively known, the hidden passion that rent and tortured him, glowing with the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to eighteen years had grown, With woman's wisdom duly fraught, When she might take that picture down And learn the lesson which it taught. Yet as she sat within the bower That bore a mother's sacred name, She felt the heart's divining power And guessed the face within the frame— Her mother's! who they said was dead: And hence the crape—appropriate sign. But why debarred the simple meed To look upon her face divine, And as she looked revive again Those lines that had been once ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... papers. But there lay a long folded folio sheet on the table, a legal document, and it gave me a chill to see the word Will on the top of it. Father Payne came in a moment later with a smile. Then somehow divining, as he so often did, exactly what had happened, he said, as if answering an unspoken question, "Yes, that's my will! I have been, in fact, making it. It's a wholesome occupation for an elderly man. But I only wanted to know if you would come for a stroll? Yes? That's all right! You are sure I'm ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... things, shall fast three days. This is the expiation of your oaths, when ye swear inadvertently. Therefore keep your oaths. Thus God declareth unto you his signs, that ye may give thanks. O true believers, surely wine, and lots, and images, and divining arrows, are an abomination of the work of Satan; therefore avoid them, that ye may prosper. Satan seeketh to sow dissension and hatred among you, by means of wine and lots, and to divert you from remembering God, and from prayer; will ye not therefore abstain from ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... and, as if divining her thought, Lady Tynemouth embraced her, and a moment later there was no sound in the room save the ticking of the clock and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was no younger, than before; to support a fresh character, he had to put on an appropriate aspect, and having, at former interviews, been a poet, a novelist, a philosopher, a reformer, a moralist, he was now merely looking the part of a veteran observer, of a psychologist grown gray in divining the character of others ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... but just arrived from Dallas, looked on at the game with some curiosity, not divining its purpose, until McWade pocketed the dice, then mounted a box at the curb ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... you, my lords, I To visit the sick prince; tender your loves, And sorrows to the people. This Sejanus, Trust my divining soul, hath plots on all: No tree, that stops his prospect, but ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... good, then," said the Baron. "If it stands thus, you may well hear Everything I have to tell you; But before we go on farther, With old wine it must be seasoned." Cleverly his thoughts divining, Margaretta, from the cellar, Now brought up two dusty bottles Which, with spider-webs all covered, In the sand had lain half-buried; Brought with them two fine-cut goblets, Which she filled and then presented. "This wine ripened long before the War raged in our German country," Said the Baron. ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... confidences, and I remember that my troubled heart cried out for a strong, tried friendship on which to draw for counsel and sympathy. What wonder, then, that the Angora kitten, deprived of her Laura, emptied her silky little head of some of its worries, divining that I was older and graver and perhaps would find her lost ball and give it to ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... omit that Argument for the Excellency of the Soul, which I have seen quoted out of Tertullian, [3] namely, its Power of divining in Dreams. That several such Divinations have been made, none can question, who believes the Holy Writings, or who has but the least degree of a common Historical Faith; there being innumerable Instances of this nature in several Authors, both Antient and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... this very time, Mesmer has got a hundred thousand pounds by animal magnetism in Paris, and Mainaduc is getting as much in London. There is a fortune-teller in Westminster who is making little less. Lavater's physiognomy books sell at fifteen guineas a set. The diving [divining?] rod is still considered as oracular in many places. Devils are cast out by seven ministers; and, to complete the disgraceful catalogue, slavery is vindicated in print and defended in the House of Peers! Poor human nature, when wilt thou ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... case for the use of the divining-rod. Its virtues are doubtful. They studied the question, however, and learned that a certain Pierre Garnier gives scientific reasons to vindicate its claims: springs and metals throw out corpuscles which have ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... perchance is far, beyond divining. Till then we drain the 'magic cup' apart; Yet not apart, for hope and memory twining Smile upon each, uniting ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... lonely hut. At least I felt something there—something strange, great, simple, inevitable, tragic as life itself. Yet what could have been more beautiful, more splendid than the life of Jones, and his wife, and daughter, and sons, especially Abe? Abe Jones! The name haunted me. In one clear divining flash I saw the life of the lad. I yearned with tremendous passion for the power to tell the simplicity, the ruggedness, the pathos and the glory of his story. The moan of wind in the pines seemed a requiem for the boy who had prattled and romped and played under them, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... the spot when to my dismay I saw a dozen of the worshippers, divining our intention, approaching from the opposite direction in order to cut off ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... back down the years to the time when all this happened, it is clear to me that he had a pretty sharp idea of the meaning of it from the very beginning. How much he knew beforehand by his strange divining powers, it is impossible to say, but from the moment he came upon the scene and caught within himself the note of what was going on amongst us, he undoubtedly held the true solution of the puzzle and had no need to ask questions. And this certitude it was that set him ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... I fear, of what I sent you about heirlooms," said Mr. Dove, divining the purport of ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a model village Elder, so Alpatych had not managed the prince's estates for twenty years in vain. He was a model steward, possessing in the highest degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts of those he dealt with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood that his answers did not express his personal views but the general mood of the Bogucharovo commune, by which ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of Cornwallis, as if Boston were his destination. He intended, however, to capture Philadelphia, the seat of the "rebel Congress," with his main force, while other troops were to co-operate with Burgoyne. Washington, divining the intentions of Howe, with his ragged army crossed the Delaware once more, at the end of July, this time to protect Philadelphia, leaving Arnold and Schuyler to watch Burgoyne, and Putnam to defend ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... structure hidden from the careless eye: a delicate instrument which may catch and perpetuate in imperishable notation unheard harmonies: a staff to lean upon through the journey of life: a candid friend who never deceives us: perchance a divining rod, which may ultimately reveal to us that Beauty and Truth are one—as they certainly are, or ought to be, in the ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... No. 186.—This custom of divining the color of the hair of one's future wife or husband, which is probably very old, yet survives in many places, but with interesting modifications as to the bird which gives the signal to try the divination. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various |
