"Visitant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they may happen to be, to talk about "dying in the last ditch," and of imitating the action of Pelayo and his friends; but common folk like to die in their beds, and to receive the inevitable visitant with decorum, to an exhibition of which ditches are decidedly unfavorable. As to Pelayo, he lived in an age in which there were neither railways nor rifled cannon, neither steamships nor Parrott guns, neither Monitors nor greenbacks,—else he and his would either have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... years past, was remarkably healthy. Since '93 it has been afflicted, at different times, during the summer, with an epidemic, which has certainly proved extremely fatal; but ought it to be called an "annual visitant" here any more than at Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, &c., all of which places have been equally, and some of them more, afflicted ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Christianity but with an excessively inadequate apprehension of its attributes;—as in the patriarchal ages a man might have received with only the honors appropriate to a saint or prophet, the visitant in whom he was entertaining an angel unawares. Happy for both that ancient entertainer of such a visitant, and the ignorant but honest adopter of the reformed religion, when that which they entertained rewarded them according to its own celestial ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... pressing as closely as was mannerly towards the group about the litter. All gaped at Drake's words of amity, at Sir John Nevil's grave smile, and Carlisle's friendly face, but most of all at that one who had been the peer of great captains, but who now stood amongst them undetached, ghost-like, a visitant from the drear world of the dishonored dead. The palm-trees edging the square began to wave and rustle in the wind; the youth upon the litter moved restlessly, uttering moaning and incomprehensible words. Drake was speaking to Arden and others ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... events of the preceding night, and bitterly did he regret having yielded to a curiosity which had cost the unfortunate Sambo so much. He judged correctly that they had been followed in their nocturnal excursion, and that it was the face of some prying visitant which Sambo's superstitious dread had transformed into a hideous vision of the past. He recalled the insuperable aversion the old man had ever entertained to approach of even make mention of the spot, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... twigs and other indications of the near approach of some one from the forest; and, the next moment, emerging through the thick underbrush, which he parted by the muzzle of his rifle as he made his way, the expected visitant came into view. Seemingly unmindful of the presence of others near by, or of the curious and scrutinizing gaze of Claud, he advanced with a firm, elastic tread, and stately bearing, exhibiting a strong, erect frame, a large, intellectual head, and handsomely moulded features, with ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... there is left in the mind of the spectator some glimmering of doubt as to the reality of the vision before his eyes; a degree of hope, however feeble, that he is the victim of chicanery, and that the apparition is not actually a visitant from the old world of shadows. It is not too much to say that such remnants of doubt have been at the bottom of almost every such visitation, and that the appalling horror which has sometimes been brought ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hours after our arrival, Mr. C. displayed a good deal of his brilliant conversation, when he was listened to with surprise and delight by the whole circle; but at this time, unluckily, Lady—was announced, when Mrs. Hannah, from politeness, devoted herself to her titled visitant, while the little folks retired to a snug window with one or two of the Misses More, and there had ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... new educational movement met with a sudden but temporary check in the shape of the measles. One fine day, that unwelcome visitant came into the house, and laid its hand on poor little Helen. In a few days, Isabella and Jamie were down beside her—not very ill, but all three just ill enough to require a darkened room, careful nursing, and a bountiful supply ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... encouragement' which the divine Spirit gives us? Are we bolder to-day than we were yesterday? Are we ready to meet with more undaunted confidence whatever we may have to face? Do we feel ever increasing within us the full blessedness and inspiration of that divine visitant? And do these sweet communications take all the 'torment' away from 'fear,' and leave only the bliss of reverential love? They who walk in the fear of the Lord, and who with the fear have the courage that the divine Spirit gives, will 'have rest,' like the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... out from the window of the sacristy, and the hot mid-day wind walking in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of these little strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine to make a picture! But we must have a little more about Spiridion's wonderful visitant. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... only felt him close to her—beside her on the bench and pressingly turned to her. It almost seemed to her that no one had ever been so close to her as that. All this, however, took but an instant, at the end of which she had disengaged her wrist, turning her eyes upon her visitant. "You've ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... anchored, there was no small confusion and bustle on board of the Yungfrau. When Vanslyperken's cabin door was found to be locked, it was determined that Smallbones should not appear as a supernatural visitant that night, but wait till the one following; consequently the parties retired to bed, and Smallbones, who found the heat between decks very oppressive, had crept up the ladder and taken a berth in the small boat that he might sleep cool and comfortable, intending to be down ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... meeting him was at the house of a colored gentleman in Bridgetown where we were breakfasting. He called in incidentally, while we were sitting at table, and exhibited all the familiarity of a frequent visitant. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... shuffling in the dark passage behind the arras, struck her ear; she knew her strange visitant was come. She started up, clasping her hands hard together as she listened, wondering who and what like she might be. She suspected no harm,—for who could desire to harm her who had never injured ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of more favorable circumstances existing with many of them, and happily availed, which our situation does not offer. But the paper respecting Monticello, to which you allude, was not written by a Virginian, but a visitant from another State; and written by memory at least a dozen years after the visit. This has occasioned some lapses of recollection, and a confusion of some things in the mind of our friend, and particularly as to the volume of slanders supposed to have been cut out of newspapers and preserved. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... me, Till the waste places All the grey globe over Ooze, as the honeycomb Drips, with the sweetness Distilled of my strength, And, teeming in peace Through the wrath of my coming, They give back in beauty The dread and the anguish They had of me visitant! Follow, O follow, then, Heroes, my harvesters! Where the tall grain is ripe Thrust in your sickles! Stripped and adust In a stubble of empire, Scything and binding The full sheaves of sovranty: Thus, O, thus gloriously, Shall you fulfil yourselves! Thus, O, thus mightily, Show yourselves ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... College of Lincluden, which stand on the junction of the Cluden and the Nith, a short mile above Dumfries. He gave us the Vision; perhaps, he dared not in those yeasty times venture on the song, which his secret visitant poured from her lips. The scene is chiefly copied from nature: the swellings of the Nith, the howling of the fox on the hill, and the cry of the owl, unite at times with the natural beauty of the spot, and give it life and voice. These ruins ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... visitant was a strong objection to disorder or untidyness of any kind, or even to an alteration in the general routine of the house. For instance, she showed her disapproval of any stranger coming to sleep by turning the chairs face downwards on ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... Fair visitant, the time of flowers, We welcome now with thee, When all the birds' unnumbered choir Warbles from ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... impenetrable by a comb as a quickset hedge.'] Hawkins's Johnson, pp. 45-50. Johnson, after mentioning Cave's slowness, says: 'The same chillness of mind was observable in his conversation; he was watching the minutest accent of those whom he disgusted by seeming inattention; and his visitant was surprised, when he came a second time, by preparations to execute the scheme which he supposed never to have been heard.' Johnson's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... slowly back with baffled anger and vindictiveness. However, he had prevented something, although he knew not what. The principal had got away, but he had identified his confederate, and for the first time held a clue to his mysterious visitant. There was no use to alarm the household, which did not seem to have been disturbed. The trespassers were far away by this time, and the attempt would hardly be repeated that night. He made his way quietly back to the corral, let ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... bolt, or the shriller warning of the unoiled hinges, as the door moved cautiously back, and a cloaked form became dimly visible in the opening. A survey of the inside of the chamber, the unmoving nurse and her senseless charge, with the fumes of brandy and tobacco, reassured the visitant. Her stockingless feet were thrust into wadded slippers; over her white night-dress was a dark-blue wrapper, and, in addition to this protection against the cold, she was enveloped in a great shawl, disposed ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... resembling themselves in all respects as to their person, features, or clothing. This image, seemingly animated, walks with them in the field in broad daylight; and if they are employed in delving, harrowing, seed-sowing, or any other occupation, they are at the same time mimicked by this ghostly visitant. My informer added further that having visited a sick person of the inhabitants, she had the curiosity to enquire of him, if at any time he had seen any resemblance of himself as above described; he answered in the affirmative, and told her, that to make farther trial, as he was going out ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... portray,—a beauty which seems to hover around the form, words, and motions of those whose special recipients it is; a sort of ethereal loveliness, concentrating the tints of the rainbow, the sun's golden rays, and so acting upon the mind's eye of the observer as almost to convince him that a visitant from a sphere of perfection is in ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... all may be dimly traced, as in a palimpsest, the remote pagan original. At their best they embody a lofty and touching poetry very subtle and significant, as when we read of Bran's summoning by a visitant of supernatural beauty to the isles of undying delight, where a thousand years are but as a day; his return with a companion who had been overcome by longing for Ireland and home; the man's falling to ashes at the first touch of the native soil, as though he ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... day it was his habit to withdraw for a while for private meditation. "Whither art thou going?" asked his colleagues and disciples. "I have a guest to whom I must show attention." "Who is this guest?" "My soul," was the solemn reply; "to-day it is with me, to-morrow the heavenly visitant may be departed and ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... and unassuming manner of Percy rendered him a most acceptable visitant at Isis Lodge, so the cottage was called; he was ever ready with some joyous tale, either of Oxford or of the metropolis, to bring a smile even to the lips of Mrs. Amesfort. It was not likely that he should so frequently visit the cottage without exciting the curiosity and risibility of his college ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... intolerable severity. The American soldiers suffered from all the miseries of hunger and cold and insufficient pay, Kosciuszko, to whom the piercing rigour of the climate must have seemed as a familiar visitant from his northern Lithuanian home, was on the borders of Canada when he heard of the arrival in Trenton of a Pole, famous, as Kosciuszko himself as yet was not, in the national records of Poland—Kazimierz Pulaski. With his father, brothers, and cousin, ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... where I would, the figure was instantly before my eyes, at precisely the same distance! I was then convinced it was the Bodach Glas. My hair bristled, and my knees shook. I manned myself, however, and determined to return to my quarters. My ghastly visitant glided before me (for I cannot say he walked), until he reached the footbridge: there he stopped, and turned full round. I must either wade the river, or pass him as close as I am to you. A desperate courage, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... The Halfway House of old was but a memory. It had served its purpose, had fulfilled its mission, and those who once ruled it now were gone. The wild herds and the wild men came there no longer, and there were neither hosts nor those needing hospitality. And Mary Ellen, the stately visitant of his sleeping or his waking dreams, no longer might be seen in person at the Halfway House. Recreant, defeated, but still refusing aid, she had gone back to her land of flowers. It was Franklin's one comfort that she had never ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... visitant! that o'er the brine Stalk'st proudly—heeding not what wind may blow, What chart, what compass, shapes that course of thine, Whence didst thou come, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... his gasping utterance and utter fall, when the Ghost rehearses his story on those solemn battlements of Elsinore. But think what he is seeing: not the stage-vision for which we care so little, but the spectre of his father,—a midnight visitant from the grave! It has been asserted that no man ever believed he saw a spirit and survived the shock. And it is strongly urged, as a defence of Booth's conception of this scene, that, in the closet interview with the Queen, after the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... were able to strike camp. The ridge, still favouring the direction of west and north-west, on the third day they arrived at a tract of land, hilly, but with tolerable grass on it. Here they found traces of a former white visitant in the shape of a marked-tree line. Two miles from this point, they met with a belt of brushwood so dense that for the first time they were forced to alter their course; but the subordinate spurs on either side ending in rocky precipices, they had to return and again confront ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... shipwrecks, and it was not a part of the coast where any passing trader would be likely to land. Besides, if anyone has landed, where is he? We have been able to find no trace of him whatever. To this hour, we have never discovered who our strange visitant was. ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... to see the effect produced on the parents by this, till recently, unexpected event. "Well, Molly," said Mr. Jones,—a neighbor of Mr. Duran, whose wife had just been to see the strange visitant, and who had reared a large family of children,—"how do Mr. and Mrs. Duran act with the boy?" "Act? why just like two grown-up children. And they think it is the most wonderful child that ever was born. But they don't know what it may ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos
... [EXEUNT DAW AND LA-FOOLE.] Madams, you are mute, upon this new metamorphosis! But here stands she that has vindicated your fames. Take heed of such insectae hereafter. And let it not trouble you, that you have discovered any mysteries to this young gentleman: he is almost of years, and will make a good visitant within this twelvemonth. In the mean time, we'll all undertake for his secrecy, that can speak so well of his silence. [COMING FORWARD.] —Spectators, if you like this comedy, rise cheerfully, and now Morose is gone in, clap your hands. It may be, that ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a red gleam like that of a torch had shone through the great front window, as if the negro ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... kettle. During a royal banquet the argument to crush the Manicheans grew on the great mind of St. Thomas, and the king made his secretary write it down on the spot. Had not these men trained themselves to admit and welcome the angel visitant, no matter when or where he came, the stagnant pool of the world's ignorance might have remained ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... say much about hooping-cough, for there is scarcely a nursery in which, to everyone's great discomfort, it is not known as a familiar and most unwelcome visitant. It varies remarkably in its importance, being sometimes so slight as scarcely to amount to an illness, but in other instances one of the most deadly of diseases. It causes the death of a fourth of all children who die under the age of five, and three out ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... a world-ruler, as Goethe was, as Voltaire was, a characteristic differentiating him from such men at once betrays itself. The nimble spirit of Voltaire in its airy imaginings seems a native, or at least a charming visitant, of every clime, of every epoch; Goethe, impelled more by his innate disposition than by any plan of culture, draws strength and inspiration from a circuit even wider than Voltaire's—Greece, Rome, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... villagers have known since she was born, and who, to the knowledge of every one here, lived in poverty with her mother, until her marriage to the decrepid and avaricious Don Gumersindo, has caused all this to be forgotten, and is now looked upon as a wondrous being, a visitant, pure and radiant, from some distant land, from some higher sphere, and is regarded by her fellow-townspeople with affectionate esteem, and something like ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... her as she stood at the window, turning her heart to sickness as she gazed? Was it a human being, one to bring more evil to the house, where so much evil had already fallen? Was it a supernatural visitant, or was it but a delusion of her own eyesight? Not the latter, certainly, for the figure was now emerging again, motioning to her as before; and with a white face and shaking limbs, Barbara clutched her shawl around her and went down that path in the moonlight. The ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... countries, in defence of these usages which cannot fail giving disgust to the organs and senses of all mankind. Will custom exempt from the imputation of gross indecency a French lady, who shifts her frowsy smock in presence of a male visitant, and talks to him of her lavement, her medecine, and her bidet! An Italian signora makes no scruple of telling you, she is such a day to begin a course of physic for the pox. The celebrated reformer of the Italian comedy introduces a child befouling itself, on the stage, OE, NO TI SENTI? BISOGNA ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Mrs. Rolleston would not be available even for a drive, for she hated sleighing, and was looking forward to writing her English letters in the cozy drawing-room, and sociably imbibing afternoon tea with any visitors hardy enough to face the bitter northwester, happily so rare a visitant in that ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... eighteenth century, which was much more incredulous of the supernatural than the nineteenth, with all its mysterious spiritual manifestations, can be. He was a scientific and practical man. Yet he shuddered with awe as he listened to the description given by his unconscious wife of this strange visitant. And he could not forbear ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... legends connected with the famous General ——, of Hampton, New Hampshire, who was regarded by his neighbors as a Yankee Faust, in league with the adversary. I give the story, as I heard it when a child, from a venerable family visitant. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... exception of Deeside, Macquoich, the young Englishman, and a Scotch laird, who were playing poker—an amusement which he understood they frequently protracted until three in the morning. It was nearly time for him to expect his mysterious visitant. Before he went upstairs he thought he would take a breath of the outer evening air, and throwing a mackintosh over his shoulders, passed out of the garden door of the billiard-room. To his surprise it gave immediately upon the fringe of laurel ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that which I had myself seen and heard. Demanded by his lordship, what was the succour that I had come to entreat at his hands? Replied, licence for my exorcism, that so I might, ministerially, allay this spiritual visitant, and thus render to the living and the dead release from this surprise. 'But,' said our bishop, 'on what authority do you allege that I am intrusted with faculty so to do? Our Church, as is well known, hath abjured certain branches of her ancient power, on grounds of perversion and abuse.' ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... material existence, no human companionship, no love, no comfort. When reason returned, I set myself to the task of visiting other planes where beings of my own kind might be found and I soon learned that it was impossible to do this in the body. To these people I was a ghostly visitant, if they sensed my presence at all, for my roamings between planes had altered the characteristics of atomic structure of my being. I could no longer adapt myself to material existence in these planes of the fifth dimension. ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... his eyes very tightly, so as not to see the ghostly visitant that he knew had come to punish him for his sin. But something made him open them, and then he felt he could never close them ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... typic lyre The diapason of man's mingled frame, And the grand Doric heptachord of heaven. With all of pure, of wondrous and arcane, Which the grave sons of Mochus, many a night, Told to the young and bright-haired visitant Of Carmel's sacred mount.—Then, in a flow Of calmer converse, he beguiled us on Through many a Maze of Garden and of Porch, Through many a system, where the scattered light Of heavenly truth lay, like a broken beam From the pure sun, which, though refracted all Into a thousand ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... observed another carriage advancing by the opposite road. The liveries were flaunting and the attendants numerous. They drew nearer, and he perceived that it was the equipage of lord Osborne. Since therefore the lovers were to be so soon interrupted by the entrance of a new visitant, he thought proper ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... thus unexpectedly upon them like a visitant from another world, bereaving them for a few minutes of speech and motion, was evidently not a native of the land. His pale and somewhat melancholy face, as well as parts of his costume, betokened him one who had come from civilised lands; and Rooney's first thought ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... no such thing as separation. We shall draw from our little box a small white packet, and, though Nostradamus may offer us every secret of magician or alchemist in exchange for it, we shall refuse offhand. How shall he lure us with a shadow, a ghostly visitant, savoring of the pit and summoned only by the most marrow-freezing incantations? Here in our hand is a mysterious, more potent charm, bringing us the warm, human personality of the man. We are not ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... knocking at her door, which roused her, was like a call from the peace of dreams to the desolation of reality. When she had turned on the light she received from the hands of the waiting servant that which had become a most rare visitant in the blankness of her ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... up the hateful visitant the noise of its attack had aroused the military guards across Epping Forest, in Chingford village, and, aided by a search-light, the anti-aircraft-gun opened its unavailing fire on the Zeppelin—ineffective, except that its returning shrapnel smashed ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... visitant! with thee I hail the time of flowers, And hear the sound of music sweet From ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... have we had a more puzzling or mysterious visitant than Major-General Bratish—Baron Fratelin—Count Eliovich. I knew him well,—better, I believe, than others who had known him longer, but under less trying circumstances. I stood by him through thick and thin. I fought his battles for a long while, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... when, obvious to the sense, Springs the fresh spark of bright intelligence. So felt the towering soul of MONTAGU, Her sex's glory, and her country's too; Who gave the spotted plague one deadly blow, And bade its mitigated poison flow With half its terrors; yet, with loathing still, We hous'd a visitant with pow'r to kill. Then when the healthful blood, though often tried, Foil'd the keen lancet by the Severn side, Resisting, uncontaminated still, The purple pest and unremitting skill; When the plain truth tradition seem'd to ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... afterwards became notorious for the unaccountable noises which disturbed the peace of mind of the new tenants. Not only were there violent knocks, hammerings, groanings, and sounds of footsteps in the ceilings and walls, out strange sights frightened the servants out of their wits. A ghostly visitant dressed in drab would appear and disappear mysteriously, a female figure was often seen to rush through the apartments, and other supernatural occurrences at length became so intolerable that the inmates of the house sought refuge in flight. Later successive tenants fared ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... Elsinore, shouted in all the stays, bellowed in the shrouds, thrummed the taut ropes against the steel masts, and from the myriad tiny ropes far aloft evoked a devil's chorus of shrill pipings and screechings. And yet, through this bedlam of noise, came Captain West's voice, as of a spirit visitant, distinct, unrelated, mellow as all music and mighty as an archangel's call to judgment. And it carried understanding and command to the man at the wheel, and to Mr. Pike, waist-deep in the wash of sea below us. And the man at ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... to last. With a wild cry, "Lucia! Ha! Lucia! Fury! Avenger! Fiend!" he started to his feet, and glared around him with a bewildered eye, as if expecting to behold some ghastly supernatural visitant. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Shadow had: the more the restless child thought of his visitant, the deeper it grew,—shrinking in size, but becoming more intensely dark, till it seemed like part of a heavy thunder-cloud, only that no lightning ever played across ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... backwards—till the whole of her figure and the clear profile of her face and head were distinctly visible, and when at last she stopped and stood there full in my view just, but only just beyond the door, I saw—it came upon me like a flash—that she was no stranger to me, this mysterious visitant! I recognised, unchanged it seemed to me since the day, ten years ago, when I had last seen her, the ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... caused his mind to revert to ghosts; but he was comforted by hearing the slow, distant foot-fall of the policeman. On it came, not unlike the supposed step of an unearthly visitant, until the guardian of the night stood revealed before him on the other side of ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... chestnut hair was thrown back with a silver comb, and fell in thick curls below the waist; her complexion was of alabaster clearness, and cheeks and lips wore the coral bloom of health. As they confronted each other one looked a Hebe, the other a ghostly visitant from spirit realms. Beulah shrank from the eager scrutiny, and put up her hands to shield her face. The other advanced a few steps, and stood beside her. The expression of curiosity faded, and something ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... that she saw something stirring in her bed-room. In the idea that the ghost would attack her head rather than her feet, she tied up her feet in her bonnet- de-nuit, put them upon the pillow, and her head under the quilt—a novel way of cheating a spiritual visitant. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Ernest had heard the organ booming away as he was passing outside the church and had sneaked inside and up into the organ loft. In the course of time the organist became accustomed to him as a familiar visitant, and the pair ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... had been the transformation wrought by the angel. When Joseph came, he did not recognize her. He asked her who she was, whereto she replied, "I am thy maid-servant Asenath! I have cast away my idols, and this day a visitant came to me from heaven. He gave me to eat of the bread of life and to drink of the blessed cup, and he spake these words unto me, 'I give thee unto Joseph as his affianced wife, that he may be thy affianced husband forever.' And furthermore he said, 'Thy name shall not any more be called Asenath, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... her want of sympathy with his pursuits occasioned a barrier of reserve and coolness to arise between them fatal to her influence. During this time no token of Lucy's existence had reached him: and it was with such a thrill as might have welcomed a visitant from the dead, that, one morning as he left his own house to proceed to the office in which he pursued his studies, he saw before him at some distance, yet without any intervening object to interrupt his view of her, a form and face ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... A little, unceremonious visitant to his father's study would often climb into the chair near the shelf, and express his wonder, and repeat his questions, at the seeming mystery,—first, of not eating the apple, and suffering it to be wasted; ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... ever longed for the day when he should be able to fulfil his promise to his poor stricken father, who, albeit somewhat relieved of his incubus, since the night when father and son watched together, was not yet quite free from his ghostly visitant; moderns would say ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... masses like clouds, No false locks does she descend to. There are her earplugs of jade, Her comb-pin of ivory, And her high forehead, so white. She appears like a visitant from heaven! She appears ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... returned from a ramble with the children, they encountered a young man who was greeted, without much fervour, as 'cousin Lionel.' Mr. Tarrant professed himself merely a passing visitant; he had come to inquire after the health of his grandmother, and in a day or two must keep an appointment with friends elsewhere. Notwithstanding this announcement, he remained at Teignmouth for a fortnight, exhibiting a pious ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... would be gained by any one if the slipper remained for ever at the museum, whereas by conniving at its recovery by those who, after all, were its rightful owners I should be ridding England of a weird and undesirable visitant. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... Aklis! and it is ablaze, knowing a visitant near. Tighten now the hairs of Garraveen about thy wrist; touch thy lips with the waters of Paravid; hold before thee the Lily, and make ready to enter the mountain. Lo, my betrothed, thou art in possession of the three means that melt opposition, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... breakfast with us. You are strange to me. I never heard of you. You seem like a visitant from another world. Tell me, my brother, how came you to ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... leaves at his feet filled him with a sudden conviction that a second rattlesnake was after him. He left the spot expeditiously, not halting until he was sure that he was beyond reach of the unwelcome visitant, which, it is well known, is not much given to ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... and shapeless with glaring eyes" stood before me. It proved, however, neither ghost nor goblin, but my friend Boatswain, the great Newfoundland dog, who had conceived a companionable liking for me, and occasionally sought me in my apartment. To the hauntings of even such a visitant as honest Boatswain may we attribute some of the marvellous stories about ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... permit suppuration and other horrible processes which were formerly supposed to be the necessary concomitants of healing. The hospital, whether military or civil, was formerly a scene that might well horrify and make sick a visitant. It was putrefaction everywhere. It was stench and poisonous effluvia. The conditions were such as to make sick if not destroy even those who were well. How then could the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... took me aback for a moment; yet there was no touch of forwardness, or boldness, about the child for child, almost, she seemed to be: I guessed her at scarcely over twenty—all was the innocent frankness of some angelic visitant, new to the ways of earth and the conventionalisms or, if you will, the barbarisms—of Society. "Even so," I mused, "will Sylvie look and speak, in another ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... south early in January, whose course, dealt with by Professor Kruger, one of the most zealous of our comet calculators, is found to be partially identical with that of the four remarkable comets we have been considering. Astronomers have not been moved by this new visitant on the well-worn track as we were by the arrival of the comet of 1882, or as we should have been if either the comet of 1882 had never been seen or its path had not been shown to be so wide ranging. Whatever the comet of the present year may be, it was not the comet of 1882 returned. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... between the sisters. Suddenly, as he caught sight of the crape upon the chalice and the crucifix,—for in default of other means of proclaiming the object of this funeral rite the priest had put God himself into mourning,—the mysterious visitant was seized by some all-powerful recollection, and drops of sweat gathered on his brow. The four silent actors in this scene looked at each other with mysterious sympathy; their souls, acting one upon another, communicated to each ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... all the rose light. From her fairy ear of waxen white hangs a golden pendant, the treasured gift of one far distant. Before her, on the table, lies Chambers' Journal, which always found its way a welcome visitant to our settlement, soon after the spring fleet had borne it over the Atlantic. She has been reading one of Mrs. Hall's stories, which, good as they are, are yet little admired by the Irish in America. The darker hues which she pourtrays in the picture of their native land have become ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... stretched out before him. He was a new man. He had entered into a new world whose center of gravity was in heaven, "where Christ is," and an indescribable, exultant gladness filled his soul. He had received Him, the divine Visitant from that other world, and his own soul was quickened with the life He brought. Henceforth he claimed kinship with Him and with the Father. A new motive power of living had entered into his being. ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... by Dwyer and a servant of young O'Mara's, both these having acted as witnesses; and further supported by the signature of Peter Nicholls, a brother of the order of St. Francis, by whom the ceremony had been performed, and whom Heathcote had no difficulty in recognising in the person of his visitant. ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Subtle as the birth of an emotion—solemn as the presage of a disaster—terrible as the throes of dissolution, was the pang that agonised the Rosicrucian. His flesh crept upon his bones at the consciousness of a preternatural but invisible presence—the presence of an unseen visitant in the dead of the midnight! His heart quaked as it drank in, like Eliphaz, "the veins of ITS whisper."[8] There was no sound or reverberation, and yet the language streamed upon the knowledge of the listener with a distinctness beyond ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... bend no more in revery When he at eventide is calling. Nor muse: Who may this singer be Whose song about my heart is falling? Know you by this, the lover's chant, 'Tis I that am your visitant. ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce
... of life is under our feet, yet how strange and mysterious it seems! It draws our attention away from matter. It arises among the inorganic elements like a visitant from another sphere. It is a new thing in the world. Consciousness is a new thing, yet Huxley makes it one of his trinity of realities—matter, energy, and consciousness. We are so immersed in these realities that we do not see the divinity they ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... of grace for herself or for me, and she believed that here at last was something that might well be discovered upon inquiry to be an answer to her prayer. This capuchin who had stared at me from the courtyard became at once to her mind—so ill-balanced upon such matters—a supernatural visitant, harbinger, as it were, of my ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... visitant, of sturdy form, Draped in such clothing As the world's great, whom luxury makes warm, Look ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... suspense so patiently endured. But long ere this disclosure, we have learnt by bitter experience to distrust Mrs. Radcliffe's secrets and to look for ultimate disillusionment. The uncanny voice that ominously echoes Montoni's words is not the cry of a bodiless visitant striving to awaken "that blushing, shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom," but belongs to an ordinary human being, the prisoner Du Pont, who has discovered one of Mrs. Radcliffe's innumerable ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... visited it late at night, when the young moon was beginning to struggle through the cloudy sky, and looked down into the ravine which Cobbett declared was the most horrid place God ever made; but no sign of ghostly visitant could be caught among the bracken, no sound of the dead voices was audible in the air. It is the way with ghosts—they seldom appear where they might be looked for. It is the unexpected in the world of shadows, as in the workaday world, ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... to-night, I see," volunteered the ticket taker, to whom William Grimsby was a familiar visitant. Shirley reeled with steadied and studied equilibrium, into the foyer of the theatre, as he nodded. Their seats were purposely in the rear of a side box, well protected from the audience by the holders of the front positions. The criminologist ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... was tight in the skin-lined sleeping-bag, and this fettered him so that he fell back, and the next moment his nocturnal visitant sprang forward, coming down heavily upon him, at the same moment making a deadly ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... converged in front of her, moss-carpeted, and close-roofed by oak-wood in its first rich leaf. After the hot sun on the straight and shadeless road outside, these cool avenues stretching away into a forest infinity, seemed to beckon a visitant towards some distant Elysian ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... many have felt after being with his brother, Ralph Waldo, that I had entertained an angel visitant. The fawn of Marvell's imagination survives in my memory as the fitting image to recall this beautiful youth; a soul glowing like the rose of morning with enthusiasm, a character white as the lilies ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Whoever resorts to these saline springs in search of amusement, if he has money and time at command, cannot fail, during the season, between May and November, of being highly gratified, except the mind is entirely depraved. To every visitant, the guide of Mr. Moncrief will not only be useful but entertaining. The poetical epistles of Miss Fidget are not only descriptive but very humorous, and the poetry of Mr. Pensile ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... on Venus, and Over Old Earth Hovers a Mysterious Visitant—Dread Harbinger of Interplanetary ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... No such bright visitant had ever before come into the strange country where she dwelt, and when he departed, her dim palace, her misty woods and gardens, even her own magic, no longer gave her pleasure as they once ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... for decorum would have said that she was decidedly improved, that she had grown more womanly; and something of this change appeared also in her work, which tended now to the graceful rather than the grotesque. She received her fashionable visitant with off-hand friendliness, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... the gate re-closing. Between one and two the caller came again; there was a repetition of the same signal,—that it was a signal I did not doubt; followed by the same retreat. About three the mysterious visitant returned. The signal was repeated, and, when there was no response, fingers tapped softly against the panels of the front door. When there was still no answer, footsteps stole softly round the side of the house, and there came the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... all of the speech he had committed to memory, and then waited for the ghostly visitant. Ben, who had not anticipated that there was so much speaking in Hamlet's part, was rather confused, and did not know whether it was time for him to come out and strike terror to the heart of his ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... aisle, two rows back, was a strange young man who shone among the cud-chewing citizens like a visitant from the sun-amber curls, low forehead, fine nose, chin smooth but not raw from Sabbath shaving. His lips startled her. The lips of men in Gopher Prairie are flat in the face, straight and grudging. The stranger's mouth was arched, the upper lip short. He wore a brown jersey ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... princess, who had risen from her seat when directed by her father to take charge of me. I could have fallen down and worshipped her: as it was, I involuntarily dropped on one knee, and looked up in her face as if I had been contemplating a celestial visitant. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... awful visitant, which convulses the earth apparently without warning, is, however, like all the manifestations of nature, preceded by signs which the observing and understanding eye can perceive and calculate upon as unerringly as the astronomer can determine the approach ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... would be still worse, exposed to receive all visits? for the French, you know, are never mor in public than in the act of death. I am like animals, and love to hide myself when I am dying. Thank God, I am now two days beyond the crisis when I expected my dreadful periodic visitant, and begin to grow very sanguine about the virtue of the bootikins. I shall even have courage to go to-morrow to Chalfont for two days, as it is but a journey of two hours. I would not be a day's journey from hence for all Lord Clive's diamonds. This will satisfy you. I doubt Madame ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Till the jingling teams come up from the road that runs by the valley's edge, With plunging of horses, and hurling of snow, and many a shouted word, And carry away the keen-scented fruit of his cutting, cord upon cord. Not the sound of a living foot comes else, not a moving visitant there, Save the delicate step of some halting doe, or the sniff of a prowling bear. And only the stars are above him at night, and the trees that creak and groan, And the frozen, hard-swept mountain-crests with their silent fronts of stone, As he watches the sinking glow of his fire ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... the two young men had seen the thing, and their hour for turning in had long since passed as they lay half reclining on the ground by their campfire waiting, hoping that it would return once more. Their interest in the strange visitant had completely banished all sensations of fatigue from a full day of vacation fishing in the cold Adirondack streams among which they ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the last comer, Damaris started up, tense with wonder and excitement, since she knew—somehow—this final visitant belonged not to the past so much as to the present, that her power was unexhausted and would go forward to the shaping of the coming years. Which knowledge drew confirmation from what immediately followed. For, as by almost imperceptible degrees the brightness faded in the west, the figures, so ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... musicians and "inventor of the organ." The legend says that an angel fell in love with Cecilia for her musical skill, and nightly brought her roses from paradise. Her husband saw the angel visitant, who gave to both a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... and hope into the wearied 'Man,' the Angel ordains that a pure and good woman shall join her fate with his; that innocent young souls shall descend and dwell with them. Domestic love and quiet bliss are the counsel of the heavenly visitant. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... beast came from the creature with the hairy arms, together with renewed coughing. But the steel grip relaxed not one iota. I realized two things: the first, that in my terror at the suddenness of the attack I had omitted to act as prearranged: the second, that I had discredited the strength of the visitant, whilst ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... visitant, with thee I hail the time of flowers, And hear the sound of music sweet From birds ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... chords with arm of might, And strikes with impulse strong; I know not whence the visitant, ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... one stumbles along the half-hidden street a shape, huge, intangible, comes stealing past; one wonders what strange visitant this is that comes near in the gathering darkness. And then in a moment the vagueness is dispelled; the form, the lineaments, take shape from the gloom, and one finds that one is face to face with a familiar friend, whose greeting warms the heart as one passes ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... years,—for him the twelve years ended when he first saw this small, graceful, intensely alive invalid, dressed in a simple white wrapper, who had come down from her room to meet him in the family parlor. She might seem, indeed, like himself, rather a "visitant" than an inhabitant of this planet, and their courtship not unlike one of his own stories of half immaterial lovers who go hand in hand, with sentiments for sentences and great heedlessness of mortal matters, to an idyllic union of hearts. He rose, on her entrance, to greet her, and looked at ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... I love shall come like visitant of air, Safe in secret power from lurking human snare; What loves me, no word of mine shall e'er betray, Though for faith unstained my ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... rival it. With no attempt to hide his gorgeous self he perched in full view on a branch of the tree and began to sing in rapid notes. What the song lacked in sweetness was quite forgotten as they looked at the lovely visitant. ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... so busy, and so well had he been always that all the deaths he had seen in his journey down a hundred years of mortality had failed to bring home to him the grave and puissant image of death as a personal visitant. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the same, and to see the moonlight rippling over the sombre water at midnight in unaffected tranquillity. Myself was scarcely better informed of the tidal flood: stray echoes of speech, odd fragments of newspaper floated down to me, and at intervals some visitant from the greater deep held, like a sea-shell, the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... of it before. I will look into it, and see what can be done." Here further conversation was suspended by a visitant. I waited with impatience till the guest had retired; but he had scarcely left the room when my brother entered. I supposed my father would have immediately introduced this subject, and, as my brother usually represented him in every affair of business, and could of ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... scarcely fail to recall John's witness, 'I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon Him.' The humanity on which the Divine Spirit uninterruptedly abides, ungrieved and unrestrained, must be free from the stains which so often drive that heavenly visitant from our breasts. The white-breasted Dove of God cannot brood over foulness. There has never been but one manhood capable of receiving and retaining the whole fulness of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... his cell, but it was too late even for that angel visitant to bring a gleam of joy. His friends were all dead. His name was forgotten on earth. He knew nothing of the world or of its ways. His mind was enfeebled, and even the slender stock of knowledge which he had possessed as a child, had vanished away. They broke off his chains and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... either the desire to accost the dread presence, or a command of the ancient Greek, after a bit Mr. Smitz turned off the gas and the noises that had heralded the visitant's appearance began in reverse order, and at their cease, the gas being turned on again, there was the circle quite bare of any evidence that a Greek warrior in full panoply had but now ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... high The rock's bleak summit[69] frowns above our head, Looking immediate down, we almost fear Lest some enormous fragment should descend With hideous sweep into the vale, and crush The intruding visitant. No sound is here, 260 Save of the stream that shrills, and now and then A cry as of faint wailing, when the kite Comes sailing o'er the crags, or straggling lamb Bleats for its mother. Here, remote from man, And life's discordant roar, might Piety Lift up her early orisons to Him ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... piercing realms of darkness, and speaking to those who could understand. A sick child, somewhere or other, saw it, and the watchful mother carried the little one to a window the better to see this strange visitant. ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... 'em. You're one yourself, Jim, when you look at the stock-boards. Well! The fellow came and went like an angel visitant, and after awhile I got tired of watching for him, and found myself admiring the vocabulary of the boys as they got excited. Gad! It's a liberal education to listen to that sort of a crowd. The worst you can do yourself sounds like a Sunday-school address ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... morning the sun streamed into the coach, of which we were the only inside passengers. Dancing and playing came the light, now here, now there, skipping along the seat, and settling nowhere—cheerful visitant, and to the idiot something more, for he gazed upon it, and followed its fairy motion, lost in wonder and delight. He looked from the coach-window, and beheld the far-spreading fields of beauty with an eye awakened from long lethargy and inaction. He could not gaze enough. And the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the title which this "Word of Jesus" gives Him—THE COMFORTER! What a word for a sorrowing world! The Church militant has its tent pitched in a "valley of tears." The name of the divine visitant who comes to her and ministers to her wants, is Comforter. Wide is the family of the afflicted, but He has a healing balm for all—the weak, the tempted, the sick, the sorrowing, the bereaved, the dying! How different ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... a meagre sum, and there was nothing for it now but to reduce expenses. The rent being one thing that was never cut, the result was a scantier allowance of food. Moreover, the mortals seeing to it that their heavenly visitant had her full craving satisfied, it was small wonder that the bones in Mary's face pressed more like knobs than ever against the tight-drawn skin, or that the spirits of the airy, hopeful, buoyant Norma ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... threshhold of her heart with the sight of Mrs Mair's pale thin cheeks and tear reddened eyes. As suddenly, however, an indwelling demon of her own house, whose name was Envy, arose from the ashes of her hearth to meet the white robed visitant: Phemy, poor little harmless thing, was safe enough! who would harm a hair of her? but Lizzy! And this woman had taken in the fugitive from honest chastisement! She would yet have sought another seat but ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... returning her look, "here, most convenient to your hand, is a fine sharp knife, in case you are afraid of the ghost or any other midnight visitant and so—good night, madam!" Saying which, I took up one of the candles and crossed to the door of that room—which had once been Donald's, but here I paused to glance back at her. "Furthermore," said I, snuffing my candle with great nicety, "madam need have no further ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol |
