"Wisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... covering himself by a succession of rearguard skirmishes, De Wet danced like a will-o'the-wisp in front of and round the British columns. De Lisle, Fanshawe, Byng, Rimington, Dawkins, and Rawlinson were all snatching at him and finding him just beyond their finger-tips. The master-mind at Pretoria had, however, thought out a scheme which was worthy of De Wet himself in ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said with dignity, putting back a wisp of dirty gray hair behind her ear. "It is my house. ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... never seen an evening of better promise," returned Chayne, with a smile at her eagerness. The brown cliffs of the Aiguille du Chardonnet just across the glacier glowed red in the sunlight; and only a wisp of white cloud trailed like a lady's scarf here and there in the blue of the sky. The woman of the chalet came out ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... language and history, and you have as your allowance for the year L200—a sum which is insufficient to pay the Dutch teacher employed to bring the children up to the required standard in that language. It is small wonder, then, that most teachers prefer to dispense with this Will-o'-the-wisp grant altogether, seeing that the efforts of some to earn it have resulted in pecuniary loss. The actual sum expended on Uitlander schools last year amounted to L650, or 1s. 10d. a head out of a total expenditure for education of L63,000, the expenditure per Dutch child ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... this point numbered six, one of whom was a wisp of a twenty-four year old girl. Arrayed against him and his dream, he knew, was the combined power of the world in the form of the Reunited Nations, and, in addition, such individual powers as the United States of the Americas, the Soviet Complex, Common Europe, the ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... who is enslaved by the pen. Moreover, he suffers always the pangs of an unsatisfied hunger, the exquisite torture of an unappeased and unappeasable thirst, for something which, like a will-o'-the-wisp, hovers ever above and beyond him, past the power of ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... roses, but the thought came what if she could find that vein of heroism in the Senator. When women risk their souls on that "if" and the souls of friends and children; is it vanity, I wonder, or is it the will o' the wisp light that ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... A thin wisp of smoke rising above the nearer wall of rocks made the agent set his teeth. Throughout his course the voice of the engine had, as it were, yapped at his hurrying heels, but now it was silent, and he could hear a murmur of voices and an occasional shouted order. He came into sight ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the ashes, Kwasind Rose, but made no angry answer; From the lodge went forth in silence, Took the nets, that hung together, Dripping, freezing at the doorway; Like a wisp of straw he wrung them, Like a wisp of straw he broke them, Could not wring them without breaking, Such the ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... The roads became appalling. There were only three broken-down horses on the estate and not a wisp of hay. The horses had to be fed on rye straw chopped up with an axe and sprinkled with flour. One of the horses was vicious and there was no getting it out of the yard. Another was stolen in the fields and a dead horse left in its place. And so for a long time there was only one poor spiritless ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... racing as hard as she could go all along the very edge of the cliff, and away to the Downs, the miller's boy racing and yelling after her, but he might as well have tried to catch a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Mrs. Lancaster touched a wisp of lace to her eyes, "Really, Doris, you are making it very painful for me, but some day you will see that I was wise. For the present, I would rather die than give up the money. I have no more ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... of the performance the road was gay with teams. David and Samantha Milliken drove by in Miss Cummin's neat carryall, two children on the back seat, a will-o'-the-wisp baby girl held down by a serious boy. Steve Webster was driving Doxy Morton in his mother's buggy. Jabe Slocum, Pitt Packard, Brad Gibson, Cyse Higgins, and scores of others were riding "shank's mare," ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the most versatile writers of Sweden, was a man of strange contrasts, a genius as uncertain as a will-o'-the-wisp. His contemporary, the famous poet ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... M. Chapelain, and M. de Geslin. It would be but an unprofitable, and by no means a pleasant task to follow the commissioners in their erratic career, as they were led hither and thither by the four lights of magnetism above mentioned; the four "Wills-o'-the-Wisp" which dazzled the benighted and bewildered doctors on that wide and shadowy region of metaphysical inquiry — the influence of mind over matter. It will be better to state at once the conclusion they came to after so long and laborious an investigation, and then examine whether they were ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... order. The first is the taste, Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp: Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist, With a flavour of Will-o-the-wisp. ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... precipitous walls, or in high mountain meadows, and, again, down by the gray sand-dunes with a wreath of billows at their feet, or afar on some volcanic tropic isle where waterfalls descended and became mist, reaching the sea in vapor veils that swayed and shivered to every vagrant wisp of wind. But always, in the foreground, lords of beauty and eternally reading and sharing, lay he and Ruth, and always in the background that was beyond the background of nature, dim and hazy, were work and success and money earned that made them free of the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... bondman could follow the free in all but the flesh, through every corridor of the prison and every street outside, to the hotel where you read the English papers on the veranda, or to the little restaurant where the Chianti was corked with oil which the waiter removed with a wisp of tow. ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Madison Square they saw a gallant and courtly old man with military shoulders and pink cheeks, a debonair gray mustache, and a smile of unquenchable youth, greeting April with a narcissus in his buttonhole. He was feeding the sparrows with crumbs and smiled to see one of them fly off, carrying a long wisp of hay, bustling away to build for himself and his sparrow bride a bungalow in the foot-hills of ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the dead man from the strip of carpet and carried him into the bedroom and laid him reverently by the side of his dead wife, after which they left the dead in darkness and returned to the living. And the three grave men stood over the wisp of flesh that had been born a male into the world. Then, their task being accomplished, reaction came, and even Doyne, who had seen death in many lands, turned faint. But the others, losing control of their nerves, shook ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... of the guard in Jeanne's room, the ceaseless scrutiny to which she was exposed. The vulgar slanderer was allowed to escape after this valuable testimony. She comes into history like a will-o'-the-wisp, one of the marsh lights that mean nothing but putrescence and decay, and then flickers out again with her false witness into the wastes of inanity. That she should have been treated so leniently and Jeanne so cruelly! say the historians. Reason good: she was nothing, came of nothing, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... humour of melancholy sits ill upon you; it suits not with a sleek boot, a hat of trim block, a fresh cloak, and a full purse. A pize on it! send it off to those who have their legs swathed with a hay-wisp, their heads thatched with a felt bonnet, their jerkin as thin as a cobweb, and their pouch without ever a cross to keep the fiend Melancholy from dancing in it. Cheer up, sir! or, by this good liquor, we shall banish thee from the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... possessor. In his hand was a valise—description of it is an impossible task; a Boston man would not have carried his lunch and law books to his office in it. And above one ear, in his hair, was a wisp of hay—the rustic's letter of credit, his badge of innocence, the last clinging touch of the Garden of Eden lingering to ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... arose and closed about him. A fine, imperceptible rain fell in the dark, and great drops gathered on his hair and clothes. His heart beat slowly, and a numbness crept through all his limbs. Then, looking up, two merry wisp lights came dancing. He lifted his head to look at them. Nearer, nearer they came. So warm, so bright, they danced like stars of fire. They stood before him at last. From the centre of the radiating flame in one looked out a woman's face, laughing, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... The will-o'-the-wisp torches had stopped dancing forward now, but still they remained there, quite inexplicable in their fixity. We imagined that our five minutes' bombardment must have carried death and destruction to everyone and everything. And yet ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... not shared by Charley, who was never ripe for anything but frolic. Had not Stephen been influenced by a desire to do good, and possibly by another feeling too embryonic for detection, he would never have dreamed of making an errand boy of a will-o'-the-wisp. As such, however, he was installed, and from that moment an anxiety unknown before took possession of Stephen's bosom. He was never at ease, for he never knew what the boy might be about. He would have parted with him the first ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... quickly. He slipped his few possessions into a bag at his belt, slid the knife into a spring holster above his wrist, and picked up the bowl-shaped helmet. It seated on a plastic seal, and the little air compressor at his back began to hum, ready to turn the thin wisp of Mars' atmosphere into a barely breathable pressure. He tested the Marspeaker—an amplifier and speaker in another pouch, designed to raise the volume of his voice to a level where it would carry through even ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... learned that if I skimp and drudge and save for twenty years I can then begin to do the things I wish to do. But not before,—not before without compromise. And I 've had enough of the will o' the wisp Future, enough of the shadowy to-morrows. I 've saved a few hundreds and had a few hundreds left me recently by the last relative I had on earth. I 'd like to take this and ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... instructions respecting the chair, I craned out of the window, watching his progress, and wondering with what sudden madness he was bitten. Indeed, I could not credit my senses, could not believe that I heard and saw aright. Yet there out in the darkness on the moor moved the will-o'-the-wisp, and ten yards along the gutter crept my friend, like a great gaunt cat. Unknown to me he must have prospected the route by daylight, for now I saw his design. The ledge terminated only where it met the ancient wall of the tower, and it ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... but ye be a pair of rude curs, barking from a warm kennel at your betters, who are shivering in the cold, without so much as a bone to pick, or a wisp of straw to their tails! Well, well, 'tis soon said; every dog, you know,—and 'twill be my turn soon. I come hither from the castle at Halton, where my Lady Fitz-Eustace would lay your curs' noses to the grinding-stone; but, rest her soul, she will not long be ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that preceded the appearance of Graca Aranha's Canaan, the novel that was lifted into prominence by Guglielmo Ferrero's fulsome praise of it as the "great American novel."[2] For South America, no less than North, is hunting that literary will o' the wisp. Both Maria and Innocencia have been mentioned for ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... fair statue was living and dangerous. He was a strong man, she a wisp of a girl; but she flung him off and ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Cheever accused her of if Jim had been complacent and stealthy. Or, she might have kept Jim at her heels till she was rid of Cheever and then have married him. She would have saved him at least from floundering through the marsh where that Kedzie-o'-the-wisp had led him ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... existence is an evil. They would have us therefore exchange our hopes for insight, and warn us that even this is very circumscribed at best. For not only is happiness a mockery, but knowledge is a will-o'-the-wisp. Mankind resembles the bricklayer and the hodman who help to raise an imposing edifice without any knowledge of the general plan. And yet the structure is the outcome of their labour. In like manner this mysterious ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... impression of him was that he was all eyes: I couldn't look at anything else for a time, and was hardly conscious of the rest of that weazened, peaked little face and the under-sized wisp of a body with its pathetic adjuncts of metal and leather. I think they were the brightest eyes I ever saw—as keen and intelligent as a wicked old woman's, withal as trustful and cheery as the ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... from his case and gave it to him. Then, striking a match, held it for him, till the wisp of paper and tobacco was well alight; while he lay back, drawing in the fragrant smoke, with a sigh in which contentment ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... disappointment. On arriving at the coast of America Cabot's ships seem first to have turned towards the north. The fatal idea, that the empires of Asia might be reached through the northern seas already asserted its sway. The search for a north-west passage, that will-o'-the-wisp of three centuries, had already begun. Many years later Sebastian Cabot related to a friend at Seville some details regarding this unfortunate attempt of his father to reach the spice islands of the East. The fleet, he said, with its three hundred ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... regretted it afterward, and knew that he would regret it to his dying day—even then the thought flashed through Kay's mind that Cliff wanted all the glory. Behind him the milling, screaming crowd was huddling, as if for protection. Slowly a wisp-like tentacle protruded from the advancing wall. Kay swung his ax and lopped it from the phantom body. But the wall was almost upon them, and from the other side ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... of Egeria was, however, dispelled when the valley was turned into a place of imprisonment for the Jews. Domitian drove them out of the Ghetto, and shut them up here, with only a basket and a wisp of hay for each person, to undergo unheard-of privations and miseries. The Horticultural Gardens, where the shrubs and plants are grown that ornament the public squares and terraces of the city, now occupy the site of the celebrated ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... cottages. I stood at a projection in one of our trenches, from where I could see the general shape of our line, and could glimpse a good view of the German arrangements. Not a soul could be seen anywhere. Here and there a wisp of smoke indicated a fire bucket. Behind our trenches, behind the shattered houses at the top of a wooded rise in the ground, stood what once must have been a fine chateau. As I looked, a shrieking hollow whistle overhead, ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... is like the pursuit of happiness in that you do not always know when you have either. It may furthermore be likened to chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever keeps a few safe paces ahead of you. The thought that I had to keep busy at something calculated to promote my health was a habit that I could not easily relinquish. So now I began to read up and practice physical culture—which I had always spoken of as physical torture. ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... both on us have gone to kingdom come and no mistake if I had. Not a bit of it; I planted myself firm and waited. Sure enough the second wave arter that came tearing along, tossing the poor cretur up and down like a wisp of seaweed, and pitched her ashore right ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... raised, and, if the fire is permanently kindled, the pinch of smoldering dust is inserted in a wisp of dry grass or other easily inflammable material; in a minute or two flames burst forth, and the fire may be ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... day and night, the mist lay white, And pale stars shone at noon; The sea around was foam and fire, And overhead hung wan a wire, A will-o'-wisp of moon. ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... blew in her face, a great star shone in her eyes. She thought at first she was out of doors. Then she heard a kind but commanding voice repeating: "Open your mouth," and stared up wildly into her great-great-great-grandmother's face, then around the strange little garret, lighted with a wisp of rag in a pewter dish of tallow, and the stars shining through the crack in the logs. Not a bit of furniture was there in the room, besides the bed and an oak chest. Some queer-looking garments hung about on pegs and swung in the draughts of the wind. It must have been snowing outside, for little ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... curious—a kitoja-no-mono, or ex-voto. Two straw figures joined together and reclining side by side: a straw man and a straw woman. The workmanship is childishly clumsy; but still, the woman can be distinguished from the man by .the ingenious attempt to imitate the female coiffure with a straw wisp. And as the man is represented with a queue—now worn only by aged survivors of the feudal era—I suspect that this kitoja-no-mono was made after some ancient and strictly ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... him, her face curiously blank, as though to say, 'Why are you so cruel?' He offered her the wisp of paper. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... waters of the cloister fountain. Suddenly the lights and the perfumes and the stillness of the sky were overwhelmed, a fierce Northwind charged with storm and darkness burst roaring upon me. It lifted me up and carried me like a wisp of straw over fields, cities, rivers, and mountains, and through the midst of thunder-clouds, during a long night composed of a whole series of nights and days. And when, after this prolonged and cruel rage, the hurricane was at last stilled, I found ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which arts, sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful hypocrites, like so many Wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... wisp of grass falling, the big craft came down on a level spot, and then, leaping out, the young inventor and his two companions crept along the path toward the cabin. Mr. Terrill was armed, Tom carried a flashlight, while Mr. Damon picked up a ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... party, and placed at its head the Covenanter, Montrose. On the other hand, the National Covenant was transformed into the Solemn League and Covenant, which had for its aim the establishment of Presbytery in England as well as in Scotland. This "will o' the wisp" of covenanted uniformity led the Scottish Church into somewhat strange places. As early as January, 1643, Montrose had offered to strike a blow for the king in Scotland, but Charles would not take the responsibility of beginning the strife. In August negotiations began for the extension ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... that was certain: He had just seen what had no existence. The twilight spectres were making game of him, poor wretch! The little man in scarlet was the will-o'-the-wisp of a dream. Sometimes, at night, nothings condensed into flame come and laugh at us. Having had his laugh out, the visionary being had disappeared, and left ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... use! You dare stand here and tell me that—you white-faced wisp, you wreath of mist, you little ghost of all the sorrow in the world. You dare! Haven't I been looking at you? You are all eyes. What makes your cheeks always so white as if you had seen something ... Don't speak. I love it—No use! And you really think that I can now go to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... good of me?' cried the queer deep voice with petulance. 'You couldn't get a wisp of hay in there, much less all of me. I should block the whole ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... languishing under unjust persecution, I have already spoken. Count Cortina is a gentleman and a scholar, a man of vast information, and a protector of the fine arts. His conversation is a series of electric sparks; brilliant as an ignis fatuus, and bewildering as a will-o'-the-wisp. I have seldom heard such eloquence even in trifles; and he writes with as much ease as he speaks. We have seen three clever pieces of his lately, showing his versatile genius; one upon earthquakes, one upon the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... "Will o' the Wisp." This personage is a strolling demon or esprit follet, who, once upon a time, got admittance into a monastery as a scullion, and played the monks many pranks. He was also a sort of Robin Goodfellow, and Jack o' Lanthern. It is in allusion to ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... Beeson awoke, and seeing that his guest had retired he did likewise. But before doing so he approached the long, plaited wisp of pagan hair and gave it a powerful tug, to assure himself that it was fast and firm. The two beds—mere shelves covered with blankets not overclean—faced each other from opposite sides of the room, the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... said; "but only for a while—for remember, you belong to me. Here is a token"—and she thrust into his hand a wisp of her long, golden hair. "Sleep on it and dream of me. Do not look so sad. I shall come for you without fail, and by this sign you shall know when I am coming. When this mark begins to heal," she said, as, with the nail on the forefinger of the right ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Mick scooped one of them out from the edge. It was brown and hard on the outside, with a most appetizing smell, and a soft ring round it where the top had pulled away, just like the top on a loaf of bread. To the boy's surprise, the cakes were quite clean, and a few flicks with a wisp of leaves left them as free from sand or ashes as if they had been baked in an oven. Mick tapped the cake with his knuckles. "Another couple of ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... hammock under the pines as she unwrapped it. The hot sunshine, glinting through the dark boughs overhead, flashed upon precious stones and dazzled her as the wisp of tissue-paper fell ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... closed. And in Soames, looking on his father so worn and white and wasted, listening to his strangled breathing, there rose a passionate vehemence of anger against Nature, cruel, inexorable Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body, slowly pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the being who was dearest to him in the world. His father, of all men, had lived a careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was his reward—to have life slowly, painfully squeezed out of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... exchanged for that diffused light which fills vapours from within and lends them their mystery. A belt of thick brushwood and low trees lay before me, clinging to the slope, and as I pushed with great difficulty and many turns to right and left through its tangle a wisp of cloud enveloped me, and from that time on I was now in, now out, of a deceptive drifting fog, in which it was most ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... delicately featured, with that purity of expression one sees in the faces of the good—the result of a life, perhaps, given to his ideal in art. He wears his hair long and curling over his ears, with a long stray wisp over one eye, the whole cropped evenly at the back as it reaches his black velvet collar. He wears, too, a dove-gray vest of fine corduroy, buttoned behind like those of the clergy, and a velvet tam-o'-shanter-like cap, ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... dignity about her. Lady Bridget gave the impression of an old-fashioned, precocious child, dressed up in a picture frock of soft shining white stuff, hanging on a straight slender form and gathered into a girdle at the waist, with a wisp of old lace flung carelessly over the slight shoulders. She stood for a moment or two on the half landing, then, as the aide-de-camp murmured in the Governor's ear at the foot of the stairs, she came close to the bannisters and looked ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... about for signs, and pretty soon I finds a wisp of red hair, roots an' all, I says, 'Ruddy's hair,' I says. 'He's ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... activity. Two of the boys, gesticulating, walked one after the other clean through him! Neither manifested the slightest consciousness of his presence. It is difficult to imagine the sensation he felt. They came against him, he says, with no more force than a wisp ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... possibility of her beginning again; for, the experience, however contemptuously he tried to think of it, had left the bewilderment of a mysterious terror. Her face was streaming with water and tears; there was a wisp of hair on her forehead, another stuck to her cheek; her hat was on one side, undecorously tilted; her soaked veil resembled a sordid rag festooning her forehead. There was an utter unreserve in her aspect, an abandonment ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... stood together on a wharf one bright October day awaiting the arrival of an ocean steamer with an impatience which found a vent in lively skirmishes with a small lad, who pervaded the premises like a will-o'-the-wisp and afforded much amusement to the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... the Night Hawk, also known as "Bull-bat," "Mosquito Hawk," "Will o' the Wisp," "Pisk," "Piramidig," and sometimes erroneously as "Whip-poor-will," being frequently mistaken for that bird, is an extensive one. It is only a summer visitor throughout the United States and Canada, generally arriving from its winter haunts in the Bahamas, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... very bewildering thing—and thoughts do sometimes play the very will-o'-the-wisp with one. And when somebody you know is at a party, there is a funny inclination to go through the motions at least, and be up as late as anybody else. So it was with a somewhat sudden recollection that Mr. ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... Just a little wisp of song played softly in the twilight, Such a happy little song—and oh, the dusk is gray! Such a joyous little song, and oh, the night is coming— Coming with the bitter chill that ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... the risk; we are to have all the blame if it fail," (Campan, ii. 105.)—and vanishes, he and his plot, as will-o'-wisps do. The Queen sat till far in the night, packing jewels: but it came to nothing; in that peaked frame of irritancy the Will-o'-wisp ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... warning, merely as coming from the great portion of the public that represented the solid interests of the country, the quiet, thinking people who never indulged in any foolish chase after a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... and Sandford affected this neighbourhood, to be near the theatres. Lady Davenant here presided over the Dorset Gardens Company; Shadwell, "round as a butt and liquored every chink," nightly reeled home to the same precinct, unsteadily following the guidance of a will-o'-the-wisp link-boy; and in the square lived and died Sir John King, the Duke ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... let no wisp Of day's distraction thine enchantment mar; Thy soft spell lisp And lure the sweetness down of each blue star. Then let that low moan be A while more easeful, trembling remote and strange, far oversea; So shall the easeless heart of love rest then, or only sigh, Hearing ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... crisp autumn morning. The early sunshine fell on the hectic flush of decay in the foliage of the woods, but a thin wisp of vapour still lingered across the moat-house garden and the quiet fields beyond. Merrington kept on until he reached the large windows of the dining-room, which opened on to ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... important thing in mind. His was the keenest eye of them all, and just before landing he had noticed to the southward and on the other side of the peninsula a faint, dark line against the edge of the sunset. Few, even with an eye good enough to see it, would have taken it for anything but a wisp of cloud, but the physical sense of Henry Ware, so acute that it bordered ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... There is usually on each a section of meadow for the cattle, a section of tilled field for the wheat and corn and vegetables and a section of woodland for the fire-wood—each strip, so divided, being a complete miniature seigniory. Everything is neat. One feels that not a wisp of hay is lost (for it was in haying time that I passed), that every tree is as carefully watched as a child, that whatever is taken from the fields they are not impoverished. The living owners, when they go to their graves, leave their little patches of earth as rich as they found them. There is ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... to see again the will-o'-the-wisp darting in and out, that spirit of the marsh at which he had often gazed in the long ago over his mother's shoulder, and while listening to her seductive words. He gave no second look to the sky, no sign was in the heavens to-day to lead him up to higher planes. ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... paper about a stone, and tied it with a wisp of grass. With a sudden flexile turn of a wrist that had thrown many a reata, he flung it straight through the open window. Elena read the meaningless phrases, then fell ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... remain so until the sweating is completely over, or so long as prudence will permit; and when cold weather fairly sets in, add more earth to keep from freezing, leaving only a wisp of straw protruding through to carry off any foul air ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... the one of which I am now almost a part, a light might have been seen dancing strangely round the trunk of a beech, the oak of Denmark. It was no will-o'-the-wisp produced by exhalations of the earth; for, now it would shine brightly, and at the next moment vanish, as if it had mingled with the old tree's leaves. Reappearing, the light would assume an oscillating motion for a short time; then revolve with such rapidity, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Jackson, "it doesn't need much conjuration to tell that. Food and lodging for ourselves, to be sure; and a wisp of hay and tether for our horses. —Hospitality in short; and that's what no true Tennessee man, bred and born, ever refused yet. No, not even to an enemy, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... from his chair, still keeping his eyes steadily fixed upon it, and moved toward it, with his hands outstretched. He did not get any nearer to it; it was retreating before him, like a will-o'-the-wisp. He kept on, crossing the length of the room; it seemed to pass through the substance of the door, and yet he saw it beyond. He opened the door softly; yes, there it was in the hall. A pistol was lying on the little table beside the door, which Richard knew to ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... trailed off. A wisp of ash had dropped and my mental howl must have been loud enough to scorch their minds. It was enough to stop Martha, at any rate. But the wisp of ash was cold and nothing happened except my spine got coldly ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... beheld her daughter as in a dream, and she opened her arms as if to caress her. And the child, laughing and sobbing, was about to throw herself into those open arms; but King Loc tore her away, and like a wisp of straw he bore her through the blue landscape to the Kingdom ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... how kind they all were! indeed, though it was a busy season with every bird, each anxious to finish its work, yet I heard an old Rook one day ask little Jenny Wren 'if he should help her,' as he met her trying to drag a large wisp of straw with all ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... finish, for another officer came on the run from forward, and he, too, sought the bridge. Then the two girls saw curling up from one of the hatchways on the lower forward deck, a little wisp of smoke, and immediately afterward there sounded through the ship ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... wreck. I can't think what's the matter with me, and I've lost all my hair. You've no idea, Mrs. White, of the beautiful hair I used to have; it used to fall in armfuls over my shoulders; now, it's no more than a wisp.' ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... pale-faced, woe-begone, and attenuated man, with short indescribables, no coat, check shirt, and a neck-cloth twisted like a wisp of straw, opening his door, and advancing toward you with hurried movement and half-recognizing glance, saluting you in low and hesitating tones, and without looking at you, beginning to pour into your willing ear a stream of learning and wisdom, as long as you are content to listen. . . . His ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... front. The lower are still clothed in forest, but the green has been merged in the deep purple of the atmosphere. The higher are bare rock till the snow appears. But just across them floats a long level wisp of fleecy cloud, and apparently the limits of earth have been reached and sky has begun. We would rest content with that. But our eyes are drawn higher still. And high above the cloud, and rendered ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... apart. She could see the white ribbon of foaming cascades in each. Between lifted a great mountain, and on the lakeward slope of this stood a terrible scar of a slide, yellow and brown, rising two thousand feet from the shore. A vaporous wisp of cloud hung along the top of the slide, and above this aerial banner a snow-capped pinnacle thrust itself ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... both placarded, came up to them. One of them, a thin little skeleton, pitiably ragged in dress, with hollow eyes and white face, was coughing in the cuff of the wind. She was plainly a consumptive—a little wisp of a girl. She spoke brokenly, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... in a soothing tone; "just tell the ladies when you get home that it was all an accident. Here, rub down your clothes wi' this wisp o' grass, an' I'll see if my missis can't coax them Cochins to lay some more ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... behind the house to pause in line back of Lee, who was staring at the stove-pipe of his cabin, from which came a wisp of smoke. It seemed to Burrell that they held their position for a long time. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... way! He was half lying down, his body supported by a heap of dead. I raised my lantern to look at his face, and found that his ear and part of his jaw had been blown off. Great clots of blood, coagulated by the cold, hung from his lower jaw. There was a wild look in his eyes. I took a wisp of straw, dipped it in my flask, drew up a few drops of brandy, and blew them into the poor fellow's mouth between his teeth. I repeated this three or four times. A little life then came back to him, and we took him away in one of the vehicles. The same thing was done ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Greasy Pans and Kettles—A small wisp brush is better for cleaning greasy pans and kettles than the string mop you use for the dishes. You can buy them two for five cents. A little soap powder sprinkled on them makes a fine suds for the tinware and ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... had been put up for us. The ring was made on rice chaff and earth. The wrestlers squatted in two parties at opposite sides of the ring. They did not wear the straw girdles of the professionals. Each man had a wisp of cotton cloth tied round his waist and between his legs. One of the best things about the wrestling was the formal introduction of the competitors. A weazened little man with a tucked-up cotton kimono and ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... man. He stood, leaning forward with his legs a little apart. His boyish face was deeply flushed; he had sucked and bitten his blond moustache into a wisp; he was breathing heavily, with his mouth ajar; his very large and conspicuous blue eyes glittered with a sort of passion. (He wore those eyes in his odd little ugly ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... down with a wisp of hay, you might, indeed, sir," said the groom one morning a fortnight after the picture had been begun—the day but one, in fact, before that set for Vandyke Brown's wedding. "Yes, sir," he continued, "with a wisp of hay, or even with a single straw! Here I've been face ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... of the reports, they heard a voice shouting: "Scowrers! A lot of them, coming from up the river!" A moment later, there was a light whip-crack of one of the long muzzle-loaders, from the top of the old Carnegie Library, and Altamont could see a wisp of gray-white smoke drifting away from where it had been fired. He jumped to his feet and raced for the radio, picking it up and bringing ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... distribution of rewards, for taking the postboy's hat off; the water descending from the brim of which, the invisible gentleman declared, must have drowned him (the postboy), but for his great presence of mind in tearing it promptly from his head, and drying the gasping man's countenance with a wisp ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the wisp of straw, the plaything of the winds. We think that we are making for a goal deliberately chosen; destiny drives us towards another. Mathematics, the exaggerated preoccupation of my youth, did me hardly any service; and animals, which I avoided as much as ever I could, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... a will o' the wisp. There seems little hope of our ever securing him. Nevertheless we shall continue to do our best to allow you to face him again one day. And then, senor, you will realize what a miraculous escape you ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... of German trenches with the glasses I saw a wisp of flag clinging to its pole in the still air far down to the left. Flags are as unusual above trenches as men standing up in full view of the enemy. Then a breeze caught the folds, and I saw that it was the tricolour ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... a wisp of a golden-haired girl, whom he afterward learned was Zulka's cousin, the daughter of the plump Holder of the Purse. Apparently Trusia had not yet noticed his ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... love-star burned low upon the grey horizon, that star towards which the eyes of women yearn and which women's feet are fain to follow, though, like a will-o'-the-wisp, it leads them through strange and difficult places, and into ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... priests say that they have magical powers over all who read them, or so much as handle them; that a curse sticks wherever they are or have been. I have heard of those who have withered away to a mere wisp; of others who have suddenly caught on fire, and vanished in flame and smoke; and of others, whose blood has stood still, frozen, or run out from all parts of the body, changed to the very color of your shoe, at their bare touch. Who should doubt that it is so, when the very boys in the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... a wisp of quality to shiver with terror at the mere mention of war with France; but ba su, thought Jean, there was now in her face a sharp, fixed look of pain, in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stood, it was," declared the Father. "But all at once, a smart puff o' wind caught that pretty wisp o' veilin' from the young wife, and wafted it away. And as quick as the wind itself after it she darted; but when she was close to it, up and off it whirled again, and she followed it, and he after her, and—shouts ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... jerk of his neck the Senior Surgeon rooted his mud-gagged mouth a half inch further towards free and spontaneous speech. Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one two stones and a wisp of ground pine and a brackish, prickly tickle of ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... you merry lads! Tell your mammies and your dads, And all those that news desire, How you saw a walking fire. Wenches, that do smile and lisp Use to call me Willy Wisp. If that you but weary he, It is sport alone for me. Away: unto your houses go And I'll go laughing ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... of Paradise, to dig pitfalls for the unwary feet of some misshapen country wench who was striving to lead an honest life. As a muley cow will turn from a manger filled with new-mown hay, and wear out her thievish tongue trying to coax a wisp of rotten straw through a crack in a neighbor's barn, so will man turn from consenting Venus' matchless charms to solicit ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... windows, strong iron bars of very choice smith-work, twisted and hammered, to keep the common folk from tumbling into the cellars, and in the peaked roof of fair white plaster were driven great nails from which hung fags of rope, and from one something which was no rope, but a poor wisp of humanity staring horribly aslant ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... smoke, but it would be apt to make people cough, and, besides, phosphorus is a dangerous thing to handle incautiously, and I do not want to suggest anything which might be productive of disaster if the experiment was repeated at home. A little wisp of hay, slightly damped and lighted, will safely yield a sufficient supply, and you need not have an elaborate box like this; any kind of old packing-case, or even a bandbox with a duster stretched across its open top and a round hole cut in the ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... on during the night, passing a large town, from which issued a loud noise, as of a multitude quarrelling. Once they fancied they saw a light following them, but it turned out to be a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Grayson perished in a cornfield. His empty coat served well for a scarecrow. A wisp of straw stuck out through a hole in ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... hear well enough, but at first I couldn't see any of them. But I gathered that Miss Lucy was standing up whilst she was talking, and moving around a bit now and then. I seen one of her sleeves, and then a wisp of her hair. Which was aggervating, fur I wanted to know what she was like. But her voice was so soft and quiet that you kind of knowed before you seen her how she ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... a faded white lace parasol with pink bows; a pair of soiled grey peau de suede gloves, and a little black wisp of a ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... however, the bell-rope wore thin, and some ingenious citizen fastened a wisp of hay to it, that this might serve as a handle. One day in the height of summer, when the deserted square was blazing with sunlight, and most of the citizens were taking their noonday rest, their siesta was disturbed by the violent ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... back in the shadow, but tailed along. She must have been late, that girl, for he cooled his heels on a bench for twenty minutes, growing more impatient all the time. Finally she came—a slender wisp of a girl, but some queen! Plainly dressed, dark hair and eyes, small hands and feet and a face like ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... on its feet, and sidled across the yard, eyeing her husband the while with a curious expression that was half-fearful, half-triumphant. When she reached the closed stable door she opened it, plunged into the dark recess within, and reappeared, dragging forth by a wisp of his ragged mane—poor, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... short, for he suddenly got his answer. Into the hall limped a boy. Never was there seen so ruinous a child. He was dripping wet, his shirt was all but torn off his back, his bleeding nose was poorly staunched by a wisp of handkerchief, his breeches were in ribbons, and his poor bare legs looked as if they had been comprehensively kicked and scratched. Limpingly he entered, yet with a kind of pride, like some small cock-sparrow who has lost most of his plumage ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... and pictured it cluttered with gold-hunters, greedy, undesirable interlopers doomed to disappointment in the long run. Ward had seen the gold fever sweep through a community and spoil life for the weak ones who took to chasing the will-o'-the-wisp of sudden wealth. Tramps of the pick-and-pan brigade—they should not come swarming into these hills on any wild-goose chase, if he could help it. And he could and should. This was not, properly speaking, a ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Marsden, we will set off at once to look for my Will-of-the-wisp old friend, though I suspect we shall have to travel fast to catch him," said Mr Fordyce to me. "His activity would put to shame many young men, I suspect, and your brother must not let the grass grow under his feet if he wishes to ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... stood and peered into the grave. He was the father of Levi Baggs, the hackler, and people said he was never seen except on the occasion of a funeral. The ancient had been reduced to a mere wisp by the attrition ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Brighton. Maude and Frank were seated at the favourite small round table near the window, where they always lunched. Their immediate view was a snowy-white tablecloth with a shining centre dish of foppish little cutlets, each with a wisp of ornamental paper, and a surrounding bank of mashed potatoes. Beyond, from the very base of the window, as it seemed, there stretched the huge expanse of the deep blue sea, its soothing mass of colour broken only by a few white ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... divisible also; all that is actual in it being a single moment, gone while we try to apprehend it, of which it may ever be more truly said that it has ceased to be than that it is. [236] To such a tremulous wisp constantly re-forming itself on the stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines itself down. It is with this movement, with the passage and dissolution of impressions, images, sensations, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... been asleep for a long time, and were lying on the ground motionless, as if dead. When the master-thief saw that he had succeeded, he gave the first a rope in his hand instead of the bridle, and the other who had been holding the tail, a wisp of straw, but what was he to do with the one who was sitting on the horse's back? He did not want to throw him down, for he might have awakened and have uttered a cry. He had a good idea, he unbuckled ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... is first expressed in beauty of form. It is long since the great May flies, large as swifts, had their aerial cloudy dances over the vast everglades and ancient forests of ferns; and when, on some dark night, a brilliant Will-o'-the-wisp rose and floated above the feathery foliage, drawn in myriads to its light, they revolved about it in an immense mystical wheel, misty-white, glistening, and touched with prismatic colour. Floating fire and wheel were visible only to the stars, and the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... This efflorescence, together with sand and other impurities, was scraped from the earth with large mussel shells. It was then placed in earthen-ware vessels containing about five gallons. There were pierced with holes in the bottom, which were covered with a wisp of straw as a strainer. The jars, being full of salt and sand, were watered occasionally, and the brine accordingly filtered through to a receiver. The contents were boiled, and produced the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... the upper windows was there anywhere a spark of light, nor was there any sound but the tossing of the branches and the wail of the wind among the chimneys. Not even a dog barked or rattled a chain, and from no chimney breathed a wisp of smoke. The house in the gloom of that melancholy evening had a singular eerie and tenantless look; and oppressive silence reigned there; and Mitchelbourne was unaccountably conscious of a growing aversion to it, as ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... river. From hard thoughts of other days Kate could see her drawn to that day—its softness and sunshine, its breath of the river and breath of the trees. Folded in the arms of that day was Ann just then. The breeze stirred a little wisp of hair on her temple—gently swayed the knot of ribbon at her throat. The spring was wooing Ann; her face softened as she listened. Was it something of that same force which bounded boisterously up in boy and dogs which was stealing ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... was less sure of the past because I was so sure of the present. A wisp of brown mist settling among the trees spread cloud behind her. What I wanted was this woman, to hide in the woods for my own. I could feed and clothe her, deck her with necklaces of garnets from the rocks, and ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... sentences were broken and finally ended abruptly. Roger was fast asleep. Charley, with a soft kiss on his hair, rose from the cramped position on her knees and went into the house. In a short time the adobe was in darkness and Peter, with a wisp of alfalfa on which he chewed meditatively, hanging from his mouth, leaned his gray head on the corral bars and eyed the ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... neck, at the same time turning his head in the right direction. There came a snap, and the neck was straight. She then began to stroke it with gentle yet firm hand. In a few moments he began to breathe. As soon as she saw his chest move, she called for a wisp of hay, and having shaped it a little, drew herself from under his head, substituting the hay. Then rising without a word she walked from the yard. Stopchase lay for a while, gradually coming to himself, then scrambled all at once to his feet, and staggered ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... average dwelling was very small and incommodious. People accustomed to the comparative luxury of the older camps had suffered a good deal from the lack of all domestic conveniences in this new will-o'-the-wisp of ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Cock!" says the ass: "you disturbed me from as nice a wisp of hay as ever I tasted. ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Feeble as a will-o'-the-wisp in that enshrouding dark, the torch showed only hints of things—here a fallen pillar, there a shattered mass of wreckage where a huge section of the ceiling had fallen, yonder a gaping aperture left by the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... descriptive of the irresponsible, mischievous, anti-social creature whose eccentric action is the outcome of too much mutton. This immoral will-o'-the-wisp, seized with a desire to jostle, or thump, or smash, combines for the occasion with others like himself, and the shouldering, shoving gang is well ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... by her sweetness attract a lover too early, and by her tenderness respond to him too readily, and by her devotedness follow him too blindly, before she had time to know herself or men. And he also knew, or believed, that first love is as often a will-o'-the-wisp as the star for which all young things take it. Five days in the week he tended the gardens of Alfriston, the sixth he gave to the Lord of the Burgh that lay among the hills, and the seventh he ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... was one of those snaky-looking, black-haired peons, with a wisp of jetty mustache, who serve as the type of Mexican villains in lurid melodrama—and he had ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... dug up and the surface earth thrown away to avoid any risk of defilement. Only when it is remembered that these rules are observed by people who do not wash themselves from one week's end to the other, and wear the same wisp of cloth about their loins until it comes to pieces, can the full absurdity of such customs as the above be appreciated. But the tendency appears to be of the same kind as the intense desire for respectability so often noticed among the lower classes in England. The Chindas, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell |
