"Beacon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the guiding hill that emigrants first saw of the far-famed western mountains—especially its snow-covered crest, a veritable beacon, its summit glistening in the morning sun as its rays fell upon it, the majestic hill ever pointing out the direction which the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Grandison Place appear during the absence of its inmates,—that city set upon a hill that could not be hid, whose illuminated windows glittered on the vale below with beacon splendor, and discoursed of genial hospitality and kindly charity to the surrounding shadows. Sadly must the evening gale sigh through the noble oaks, whose branches met over the winding avenue, and lonely the elm-tree wave its hundred ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the spires and towers of the town made a beacon of hope to the peasant as he laboured on the seigneuries leagues and leagues away. Far down the Cote de Beaupre, beyond the Mont Ste. Anne, from the rich farms of Orleans, and across on the Levi shore, the glistening light on the city roofs by day, and at ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the rocking sea, I had a friend, oh that blessed word, we had been parted for years, And I wandered one day to find him, my heart had no cloudy fears. That day stands out in bold relief upon Memory's wreck-strewn shore, Like a beacon light in the lighthouse, undimned by the rush and roar. 'Twas a day in the early June, the clover was red in the field, And the zephyrs garnered the kisses, the gentle violets yield. Birds sang, and the sunshine flickered out and about ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... war, and lodged at the Cromwell's Head Tavern, a building which is still standing on the north side of School Street, upon the site of No. 13, where Mrs. Harrington now deals out coffee and "mince"-pie to her customers, Beacon Hill was a collection of pastures, owned by thirteen proprietors, in lots containing from a half to twenty acres each. The southwesterly slope of the prominence is designated upon the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... social cataclysms and revolutions humanity has one guiding star, a beacon which shows its light above the storms and tempests, a mystical thread running through the labyrinth of history—namely, the religion of philosophy and of thought. The vulgar creeds would not, and have not dared ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... rivals collapsed before it. Its science, its philosophy, its literature were equally admired. Its politics excited the wrath and dread of Tories and the exultant delight of Whigs. It was, says Cockburn, a 'pillar of fire,' a far-seen beacon, suddenly lighted in a dark place. Its able advocacy of political principles was as striking as its judicial air of criticism, unprecedented in periodical literature. To appreciate its influence, we must remember, says ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Emerson fell into her hands, and it would be difficult to over-estimate the impression produced upon her. As she afterwards wrote: "To how many thousand youthful hearts has not his word been the beacon—nay, more, the guiding star—that led them safely through periods of mental storm and struggle!" Of no one is this more true than herself. Left, to a certain extent, without compass or guide, without any positive or effective religious training, this was the first ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Africa, Kuruman, the scene of Robert Moffat's trials and triumphs, stands to-day, surrounded by a number of native towns and villages, where native teachers, trained in the Moffat Institute, are located, and native Churches have been formed,—a beacon shedding its glorious rays around, dispelling the darkness, and bringing the heathen to the knowledge of the ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... history, there had existed on Greek soil a civilization of a very high type, differing from, in some respects even superior to, that which succeeded it, but manifestly refusing to be left out of consideration in any attempt to describe the beginnings of Greek culture. The Homeric poems shone like a beacon light across the dark gulf which separated the Hellas of myth from the Hellas of history, testifying to a splendour that had been before the darkness, and prophesying of a splendour that should be when the darkness had passed. But the very brilliance of their pictures and the magnificence of the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... and regulations of mankind. Let me not, therefore, be condemned for having chosen my principal character from the purlieus of treachery and fraud, when I declare that my purpose is to set him up as a beacon for the benefit of the inexperienced and the unwary, who, from the perusal of these memoirs, may learn to avoid the manifold snares with which they are continually surrounded in the paths of life; while those who hesitate on the brink of iniquity may he terrified from plunging ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Soon he was below the clouds; between their ragged edges a few stars appeared. Beyond a buttress shone a ruddy illumination. Some firs stood against it darkly. It was the fire Marcia and Elizabeth were watching at the place where he had cached the surplus supplies that morning. It served as a beacon when the crispness ceased, and for an interval he was forced to mush laboriously through soft drifts. Then he came to a first bare spot. It was in crossing this rough ground that Frederic showed signs ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... light would come stealing in from the other side, and another frog would set his elbows on the float and stare hard across at the first-comer. And then two more shining points, and two more, till twelve or fifteen frogs were gathered about my beacon, as thick as they could find elbow room on the float, all staring and blinking like so many strange water owls come up from the bottom to debate weighty things, with a little flickering will-o'-the-wisp nodding grave assent ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... speech, your Excellency," cried out Sumner, "a most capital speech!" and he led the way in a peal of applause in which the crowd in the chamber universally joined, and which must have rung across Beacon Street to the Common far away. My feeble finger had touched the button which brought this unexpected downpour, and for the moment I was ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... of sorrow passed. She stood beside him, breathing brokenly in the ebb of that overmastering tide. In the opening of the broad valley the moon stood redly. The wind trailed slowly from the hills to meet it, as if to warm itself at its beacon-fire. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... propose to be my own pilot across the seas of memory; and if I lose myself in the mists of uncertainty, or run aground on the reefs of speculation, I still hope to make port at last, and I shall look for welcoming faces on the shore. For the ship I sail in is history, and facts will kindle my beacon fires. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... of National Biography, 63 vols. (Macmillan). English Men of Letters, a volume to each author (Macmillan); briefer series of the same kind are Great Writers (Scribner), Beacon Biographies (Houghton), Westminster Biographies (Small). Allibone, Dictionary of Authors, 5 vols. (Lippincott). Hinchman and Gummere, Lives of Great English Writers (Houghton), offers thirty-eight biographies in a ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... and the safest; inasmuch as the bar has nearly two fathoms on it at low water, and the rise at spring tides is from twelve to fourteen feet. The bar is narrow, the passage nearly straight, and, were it buoyed and a beacon placed on Pearl Island, would always be safe to a steamer. When the wind is from the east or north, the bar is smooth; if from the south and south-east, it has a heavy break on it, and is not to be attempted in boats. A strong ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... heavy dark hair, coiled high on her shapely head, was just slightly silvered with gray and seemed to be a fitting foil to her large melancholy black eyes—eyes that from their slumbering depths seemed to impress the beholder with suggestions of some mysterious power, gleaming messages, like beacon flashes, from her inner life. With her becoming dress of rich, dark cloth, gloves and parasol to match, she looked ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... our American life is how to bring the strong, wealthy, and learned into helpful touch with the poorest, most ignorant, and humblest, and at the same time make one appreciate the vitalizing, strengthening influence of the other. How shall we make the mansion on yon Beacon Street feel and see the need of the spirits in the lowliest cabin in Alabama cotton-fields or Louisiana sugar-bottoms? This problem Harvard University is solving, not by bringing itself down, but by ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... the two cutters were darting swiftly away over the long glassy undulations of the ground-swell toward the great cloud of smoke on the horizon which served as a beacon for us; the men pulling a long steady stroke, which, whilst it sent the boats through the water at a very fair pace, could be maintained for three or four ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... with the utmost rigour. He denied the murder with his last breath. "It is," says a contemporary judge, "a dark case of divination, to be remitted to the great day, whether he was guilty or innocent. Only it is certain he was a bad youth, and may serve as a beacon to all profligate persons."—FOUNTAINHALL'S Decisions, Vol. I. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... gazing at a feeble light which appeared at a distance of sixty paces, and some thirty feet beneath him. This light came from Stephane's room; he had opened his window and closed the white curtains in such a way that his lamp, placed behind this transparent screen, could serve as a beacon to Gilbert without danger ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... thought His love would weaken As more and more He knew me; But it burneth like a beacon, And its light and heat go through me; And I ever hear Him say, As He goes along His way, Wand'ring souls, O do come near Me; My sheep should never fear Me. I am ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... last chieftain, died. The storms had swept over it, tearing rocky masses from its shores, and flinging them far into the sea, which had undermined the foundations of Helgoland, and hidden the conquest beneath the waves. Although small, it was the beacon of Europe. In the last days of 1812 the eyes of all German patriots were fixed longingly and hopefully upon that lonely rock in the North Sea. It was British territory—the first advance which England had made to the shores of suffering Germany, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... other adventurous leader, issued noiselessly from the gates of a town, opened expressly for their egress, to accomplish the surprise of distant post or detachment, a light in some lofty window, of no suspicious appearance to the observer uninformed of its meaning, served as a beacon to the Carlists, and told them that danger was abroad. The Christinos returned empty-handed and disappointed from their fruitless expedition, cursing the treachery which, although they could not prove it, they were well assured was the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Feathered for flight into sunrise or sunset, for eastward or west, Fledged for the flight everlasting, but held yet warm to thy breast. Gather it close to thee, song-bird or storm-bearer, eagle or dove, Lift it to sunward, a beacon beneath to the beacon above, Green as our hope in it, white as our faith in ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... are those which might be backed to run a victorious race with the tale of evil fortune; and clearly for the reason that man's livelier half is ever alert to speed them. They travel with an astonishing celerity over the land, like flames of the dry beacon-faggots of old time in announcement of the invader or a conquest, gathering as they go: wherein, to say nothing of their vastly wider range, they surpass the electric wires. Man's nuptial half is kindlingly concerned in the launch of a new ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been severe but healthy discipline, and doubtless from it was learned many a lesson of grace and duty. As the snow-covered hills of her own dear home disappeared; as the tall chimney at the entrance of the harbor, from which the nightly flame burned forth a beacon to the mariner to guide him amid the storm, was lost in the distance; as the first night came on and darkness gathered over the wide waste of waters; as deep shadows fell upon the form of the plunging ship,—the missionary cause must have presented itself in a new light, and, to some extent, have ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... plain to see, Sartoris, you're a packet-rat that never sailed nowhere except across the Western Ocean, in an' out o' Liverpool and New York." They had approached the end of the island, and overlooked the harbour entrance. "Now, this is where I intend to place the beacon. What do you think of it?" Sartoris assumed the manner and expression of supreme interest, but said nothing. "Them two leading lights are all very well in their way, but this beacon, with the near one, will ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... composition is discoverable in many pictures where there is no direct evidence that the intention was to compose thus, but wherein analysis on these lines proves that, led by unity, balance and repose (cardinal beacon-lights to the mind artistic), the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... the Muses, that for Melissos too we kindle such beacon-blaze of song, a worthy prize of the pankration for this scion ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... like a banner Before God's host unfurled; It shineth like a beacon Above the darkling world; It is the chart and compass That o'er life's surging sea, Mid mists and rocks and quicksands, Still guide, O Christ, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Hudson City, N. J., over forty years ago, when there were not as many houses in that town as there are now. I was born in old Dutch Row, now called Beacon Avenue, in a two-story frame house. In those days there was an Irish Row and a Dutch Row. The Irish lived by themselves, and ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... suddenly unfolded, descending like lightening by the inspiration of the spirit and illuminating the darkened soul, to these mysteries no man perhaps was ever a more sudden or a more combustible kind of convert than myself. I beamed with gospel light; it shone through me. I was the beacon of this latter age: a comet, sent to warn the wicked. I mean, I was all this in my own imagination, which swelled and mounted to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... looking out west over the east harbor of Alexandria to Pharos island, just off the end of which, and connected with it by a narrow mole, is the famous lighthouse, a gigantic square tower of white marble diminishing in size storey by storey to the top, on which stands a cresset beacon. The island is joined to the main land by the Heptastadium, a great mole or causeway five miles long bounding the harbor on ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... very old one, and the bogey has done duty for a long time in Ireland. When, to-day, it is from Germany that freedom may be feared, Ireland is warned against the German. When, three hundred years ago the beacon of hope shone on the coast of Spain, it was the Spaniards who were the bad ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... the roses; its rooms and passages filled with pictures, books, and old carved oak furniture. In a country where the flat pasture lands of Cheshire rise suddenly to the rocky ridge of Alderley Edge, with the Holy Well under an overhanging cliff; its gnarled pine-trees, its storm-beaten beacon tower ready to give notice of an invasion, and looking far over the green plain to the smoke which indicates in the horizon the presence of the great ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Huntingdonshire, and Cambridgeshire, and a great deal of very valuable property had been destroyed. A mystery enveloped these proceedings that indicated organization, and it became suspected that they had a political object. Threatening letters were sent to individuals signed 'Swing,' and beacon fires communicated from one part of the country to the other. With the object of checking these outrages, night patrols were established, dragoons were kept in readiness to put down tumultuous meetings, and magistrates and clergymen and landed gentry were all at their wits' ends. Even in ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... after the man on the bowsprit once more called out, that notwithstanding the thick fog he saw a light distinctly; Stewart looked in the direction the sailor pointed out, and plainly saw the glimmer of the friendly beacon, and knew it at once as the signal placed to warn ships from approaching too near the cliffs which lined the shore. Notwithstanding his first repulse, he approached the pilot a second time; but he met with a second repulse;—he was answered—"Sir, I have been ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... other feels poverty grasping at her, but is proud in the possession of her virtue; and though trouble would seem tracing its lines upon her features, her heart remains untouched by remorse;—she is strong in the consciousness that when all else is gone, her virtue will remain her beacon light to happiness. Anna, in the loss of that virtue, sees herself shut out from that very world that points her to the yawning chasm of her future; she feels how like a slave in the hands of one whose heart is as cold as his smiles are false, she is. Maria owes the world no hate, nor are her ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Trumet are unique. No other part of the Cape shows anything just like them. High Point Light crowns their highest and steepest point and is the flashing beacon the rays of which spell "America" to the incoming ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... oh devil! What limme of him but a complete Villaine! A tongue prophaner then Idolatrie, His eye a beacon fixed in his place Discovering illes, but hood-winked unto grace; His heart a nest of vice kept by the Devill, His good is none at all, his all ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... the lamp is trimmed, The fire has a ruddy glow That streams like a beacon down the path, To the dusky ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... twisted and branched it as young pliant oak; hammered it as forge-glowing iron; tempered it as steel; cast it as bronze; chiselled it as marble; painted it as a cloud; strung and tuned it as an instrument; lit it up as a life tower—the world's one beacon: steadily sending it onward through one trial form after another until at last had been perfected for it that angelic shape in which as man it was ever afterwards to sob and ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls. As "every ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... old leaven was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about "the effects of the present Toleration, especially as to the increase of Blasphemy and Damnable Errors;" and some Presbyterian booksellers had recently published A Second Beacon Fired, in which they insidiously tried to work upon the Lord Protector's new Conservative and State-Church instincts; by denouncing the books of some leading Anabaptists and other heretics, hostile to his Government, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... black mirk of night, Forth-gleaming like the eyes of Hope, or like the fires of Home, Upon the eager eyes of men far-straining o'er the foam. Good! But how greatly less than good to fear, to think, to know That inland England's less alert against a whelming foe Than when bonfire and beacon flared mere flame of wood and pitch, From Surrey hills to Skiddaw! Science-dowered, serenely rich, Safe in its snugly sheltered homes, our England lies at ease, Whilst round her cliffs gale-scourged to wrath the tiger-throated seas Thunder in ruthless ravening ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... steadfastly at his wife. He had not spoken since the lash struck him, and he spoke not now; but in those large, clear eyes, where his remaining strength seemed to have taken refuge as in a citadel, the old fierceness flared up for a moment, and then, like an expiring beacon, went out. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... that the annals of no country, catholic or pagan, may ever be stained with such a repetition of human sacrifices to papal power, and that the detestation in which the character of Mary is holden, may be a beacon to succeeding monarchs to ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... year, they erected a beacon on Raines Islet to mark the entrance of a good passage through the reef. The rest of the year was spent in surveying Torres Straits. They remained thus occupied till the beginning of 1845, when they sailed for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... dishonor to virtue and my sex. But I forgive you," added she. "Yes, Sanford, I forgive you, and sincerely pray for your repentance and reformation. I hope to be the last wretched female sacrificed by you to the arts of falsehood and seduction. May my unhappy story serve as a beacon to warn the American fair of the dangerous tendency and destructive consequences of associating with men of your character, of destroying their time and risking their reputation by the practice of coquetry and its attendant follies. But for these I might have been honorably connected, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... says, "and was awfully glad of it. Kinder still is The Sunday Sun, the 1st, the 8th and the 15th of October, five columns each, which say that I have completely lifted any cloud away from his memory, and that his future fame will shine like a beacon in all ages. Thank God!" St. George Burton was wicked enough to twit her for her spelling, and to say that he found out as many as seventeen words incorrectly spelt in one letter. But she deftly excused herself by saying that she used archaic forms. "Never ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... interesting. We found ourselves under perpendicular cliffs of Beacon sandstone, weathering rapidly and carrying veritable coal seams. From the last Wilson, with his sharp eyes, has picked several plant impressions, the last a piece of coal with beautifully traced leaves in layers, also some excellently preserved impressions of thick stems, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... take ever so humble a part in it, but without your hearing a word or a sigh from me. Besides, I had you always before me as an example; because I knew that you would have done it for me—indeed that you had already done as much. Your example was like a shining beacon to me, aunt! ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... preferable is the oral lesson! It goes forward, goes back, starts afresh, walks around the obstacle and varies the methods of attack until, at long last, light is shed upon the darkness. This incomparable beacon of the master's word was what I lacked; and I went under, without hope of succor, in that treacherous pool of ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... about the impossible, that if she were brown, and had been brought up in North Carolina, she would be like Cicely; and that if Cicely's ancestors had come over in the Mayflower, and Cicely had been reared on Beacon Street, in the shadow of the State House dome, Cicely would have been very much ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Before a blazing log, I'm thinking of cold London Wrapped in its killing fog; And, like a shining beacon Above the picture grim, I see the London 'Bobby,' And sing my song ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... temptation and iniquity, the world of Paris, like a ship without a chart or a compass. A precious race I ran in consequence, for a time; and if I had not been so fortunate as to meet you, Marie, whose bright eyes brought me out, like a blessed beacon, safe from that perilous ocean, I know not but I should have suffered shipwreck, both in fortune, which is a trifle, and in character, which is every thing. No, no; if that is all in which you doubt, your fears ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... objection to take service with us." "What!" cried the prisoner; "I go with the French to fight against the English! Your honour must excuse me; I could not do it to save my life." [722] This poor fisherman, whether he was a real or an imaginary person, spoke the sense of the nation. The beacon on the ridge overlooking Teignmouth was kindled; the High Tor and Causland made answer; and soon all the hill tops of the West were on re, Messengers were riding hard all night from Deputy Lieutenant to Deputy ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I was almost relieved. After the frightful apprehensions I had entertained, it seemed to be good fortune that she should be merely wasted away, without any outward disfigurement of that face that had been my beacon in dreams and raptures for those vain years. In my own arms I bore her out of that doleful place and up into the open air, through the palace now swarming with the stir and bustle of the newly arrived Nabob's Court, into the garden where the day was breaking and the birds were ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... within the memory of man the savage ranged the desert wastes and trackless forests, a noble city has sprung as though by magic from the ground, which will ever serve both as a monument of English enterprise, and as a beacon from whence the light of Christian civilisation shall spread through the dark and gloomy recesses of ignorance and guilt. The true history of our Australian possessions; the causes which have led to their settlement; the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... by the "grand astoria terrapin," a developed species of diamond-back tortoise, whose exquisitely sculptured convex back, lurching awkwardly as it crawled, rose almost three feet above the ground; and the "new century turkey," which carried its beacon head and staring eyes as high ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... deep growl of disappointment, and a hurried consultation among the men. But whether they would follow Stephen's counsel, it was not permitted them to choose; for suddenly a strong, bright flame burst up in a high column, like a beacon, into the midnight air, and every one gazing upwards saw in a moment that the thatch over the farthest gable had caught fire. The house itself was now burning, and the light, blazing full upon their upturned faces, revealed to Stephen the well-known features of ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... gorgeous than those borrowed from the light of day. Or the gloom of the deep glen is dissipated and devoured by the lambent tongues of fire, while the rocks over against each other burn with the additional radiance reflected from their faces. Beacon answers to beacon from cliffs and hilltops. Perhaps the enemy's fires far off diffuse a glow through another quarter of the heavens. The reeds of the Kuban and the Terek set on fire by the Russians to destroy the ambuscades of the mountaineers, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... past the navy yard and rounding Hog-fish Beacon, the sun came out and swiftly the scene became transfigured. As the steamer drew nearer and began to run between the islands in the channel, the undulating shores showed themselves as hills and valleys in miniature. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the nocturnal radiance of the fire-fly is purposely intended as an attraction to the opposite sex; that the artful insect illuminates its body for a beacon to love. Thus: perched upon the edge of a leaf, and waiting the approach of her Leander, who comes buffeting with his wings the aroma of the flowers, some insect Hero may show a torch to ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... debasing pleasure were stalking their prey. Out there, murderers of souls were lying in wait; robbers of hearts were creeping stealthily; slayers of purity were watching; killers of innocence were lurking. To the woman at the window, that night, the twinkling lights of the city were as beacon fires on the outskirts ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... nearing our destination. Gates had to be opened, and my poor driver breathed hard from the continual getting down and up. In the end a long and heavy cart-track brought us to the loneliest light that I have ever seen. It shone on the side of a hill—in the heart of an open wilderness—as solitary as a beacon-light at sea. It was the light of the cottage which was to ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... colonization was begun on this island - as well as on nearby Howland Island - but was disrupted by World War II and thereafter abandoned. Presently the island is a National Wildlife Refuge run by the US Department of the Interior; a day beacon is situated near the middle of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... field was about the size of a football field, a bright, shiny expanse of rough-polished metal, carved and smoothed flat from the nickel-iron of the planetoid itself. It not only served as a landing field, but as a reflector beacon, a mirror that flashed out the sun's reflection as the planetoid turned slowly on its axis. I'd homed in on that beacon, and now I was ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Kymore, like that of Rotas, here projects to the bed of the river, and was blazing at night with the beacon-like fires of the natives, lighted to scare the tigers and bears from the spots where they cut wood and bamboo; they afforded a splendid spectacle, the flames in some places leaping zig-zag from hill to hill in front ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... restraint, of earnest and measured enthusiasm. What the Psalm of Life is to the people who do not think, Rabbi ben Ezra might and should be to those who do: a light through the darkness, a lantern of guidance and a beacon of hope, to the wanderers lost and weary in the selva selvaggia. It is one of those poems that mould character. I can give only one or two of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... faces and the steel of the scanty army; it was seen, miles away, by the warders of many a castle manned with the troops of Lancaster; it brought the steed from the stall, the courier to the selle; it sped, as of old the beacon fire that announced to Clytemnestra the return of the Argive king. From post to post rode the fiery news, till it reached Lord Warwick in his hall, King Henry in his palace, Elizabeth in her sanctuary. The iron step of the dauntless Edward ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Prof. Buchanan at his age of life has taken upon himself such a broad, deep, beneficent task as publishing the JOURNAL OF MAN. We welcome it as a harbinger of knowledge that will send its light away down the corridors of time as a beacon of the nineteenth century....We believe that its future pages are destined to contain the vortex of questions, socially and morally, which are whirling through the human mind, and their solution, in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... if she should, it was her own fault and that of his mother, for all her life she had known him to be married. So he finished his letter with a message that the bells should be ready to ring, and that when Philip heard three guns fired on the coast, he might light the big beacon pile above ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... direction, my only thought was to get the boat across to the other side. It was not difficult to steer, for the lights in Kertch were still visible, and served as a beacon. The waves splashed over our boat with angry hissings. The farther across we got, the more furious and the wilder became the waves. Already we could hear a sort of roar that held mind and soul as with a spell. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... All that was trifling must be discarded when his eye could travel beyond wild hyacinth and myrtle, past pines and olive groves and cypresses, past the rosy soil of upturned fields, to the long, firm lines of Parnes's purple ridge and to the snowy summit, a midday beacon, high-uplifted, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... whom it has been by the Poets appropriated. Both the towers on the sea-coast, and the beacons, which stood above them, had the name of Tor-ain. This the Grecians changed to Triaina, [Greek: Triaina], and supposed it to have been a three-pronged fork. The beacon, or Torain, consisted of an iron or brazen frame, wherein were three or four tines, which stood up upon a circular basis of the same metal. They were bound with a hoop; and had either the figures of Dolphins, or else foliage in the intervals between them. These filled up the vacant space between ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... great Restoration Movement of the nineteenth century, who forsook the religious associations of a lifetime and cheerfully endured poverty, persecution and every hardship in their endeavor to restore Christian union on the primitive gospel, and who held forth a beacon-light that helped me to find the truth in its simplicity as it is in ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... bravely—my walls are strong and high—my comrades in arms fear not a whole host of Saxons. The war-cry of the Templar and of the Free Companions rises high over the conflict! And by mine honor, when we kindle the blazing beacon for joy of our defence, it shall consume thee ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... him driveth me to my death, that I may not be left outliving my dear child. In each hand I am fain to grasp the sword; now without shield let us ply our warfare bare-breasted, with flashing blades. Let the rumour of our rage beacon forth: boldly let us grind to powder the column of the foe; nor let the battle be long and chafe us; nor let our onset be shattered in rout ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... In this connection, we cannot help referring to the beautiful character of Phyllis Wheatley, whose life was absolutely pure, and who was so remarkably inspired by the poetic muse that, even in the darkest days of Negro bondage, she forced the recognition of mankind. Her genius flashed forth as a beacon light to her benighted brethren as a token of assurance to them of the fulfillment of the promise, "Ethiopia shall again stretch forth her hand unto God." Benjamin Banneker, the great mathematician and astronomer, was another instance, in those remote days of darkness, that the Great Dispenser ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the back of the reef, and fired guns to give warning to the rest. But they, supposing their admiral was engaged with enemies, crowded all sail and ran ashore after him, for his light in the maintop was an unhappy beacon. The men had time enough to get ashore, yet many perished. There were about forty Frenchmen on board one of the ships, where there was good store of liquor. The afterpart of her broke away and floated off to sea, with all the men ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... ever left to human Reason the filling up of its outlines, the careful connexion of its more isolated truths. The two are, as the lightning of Heaven, brilliant, penetrating, far-flashing, abrupt,—compared with the feebler but continuous illumination of some earthly beacon[584]." ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... mountain slopes have started for market. In the ruddy light the marble temples on the lofty Acropolis rising ahead of these hurrying rustics are standing out clearly; the spear and helmet of the great brazen statue of the Athena Promachos are flashing from the noble citadel, as a kind of day beacon, beckoning onward toward the city. From the Peireus, the harbor town, a confused him of mariners lading and unlading vessels is even now rising, but we cannot turn ourselves thither. Our route is to follow the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... ever the memory of one with whose destiny it had often seemed to him that Hallin's had something in common. To him, as to Thyrsis, the same early joy, the same "happy quest," the same "fugitive and gracious light" for guide and beacon, that— ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their way down the north side of Beacon Hill towards Charlestown bridge, their conversation, cheerful and even gay through the prospect of an interesting and pleasant excursion, turned from private matters to topics of local interest, and thence ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me. Let cook do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and pair at half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night. Is ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Theobald, nor would she avoid it for her boy, if his life was required of her in her Redeemer's service. Oh, no! If God told her to offer up her first-born, as He had told Abraham, she would take him up to Pigbury Beacon and plunge the—no, that she could not do, but it would be unnecessary—some one else might do that. It was not for nothing that Ernest had been baptised in water from the Jordan. It had not been her doing, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... lattice and veranda in the upper and lower town, the lanterns of the French and English admirals were shining from the tops of their flag-ships, and the revolving gleams from the beacon on the Pallissadoes Point flickered and dazzled over the gemmed starlit surface of the water. The awning was still spread on the after-deck of the "Monongahela;" and there, while the officer of the watch paced the forward ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... tremendous fire a prey, And to ashes sink away. To the Ark I now go back, Which pursues its dreary track, Lost and 'wilder'd till the Lord In his mercy rest accord. Early of a morning tide They unclosed a window wide, Heaven's beacon to descry, And a gentle dove let fly, Of the world to seek some trace, And in two short hours' space It returns with eyes that glow, In its beak an olive bough. With a loud and mighty sound, They exclaim: 'The world we've found.' To a mountain nigh they drew, And when ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... foreigner, kill him; he who has friendly relations with him is a traitor to his country." It is said that they actually kept the country along the sea shore barren and unattractive while in the interior the people lived on the fat of the land. The mountain peaks were great beacon towers lighted up every night to signal to the capital that no danger threatened and all ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... this reason that Mr. ARTHUR BALFOUR has sometimes been called Mr. Arthur Baffler. Puzzling, however, though he may be in many of his political manifestations, his writings are like a beacon in the gloom, and some day these simple chatty little booklets will surely gain the wide public which they deserve. "The Foundation of Bunkers," "A Defence of Philosophic Divots" and "Wood-wind and Brassies" should be read by all who are interested ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... moves—our preparations for defence against the threatened invasion of England by Buonaparte. An outhouse door riddled with bullet-holes, which had been extemporized by a solitary man as a target for firelock practice when the landing was hourly expected, a heap of bricks and clods on a beacon-hill, which had formed the chimney and walls of the hut occupied by the beacon- keeper, worm-eaten shafts and iron heads of pikes for the use of those who had no better weapons, ridges on the down thrown up during the encampment, fragments ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... dinner down to the meadows for them by and by?' said her father, coming suddenly into the room. 'I have promised them a long, uninterrupted time for their sport to-day, because to-morrow we are all going for a picnic to the Beacon, and there will be no fishing then. You and Francie are the two idlest folk in the house just now, aren't you, Jessie? so suppose you ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... position where it was visible from a considerable extent of the hillside. It had been settled that the parties of hunters who did not return at nightfall should occasionally send one of their number to a point whence he could get a view of the beacon. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... sharply, but in considerable agitation. "It is too late now, after something you have said to me. If I didn't speak out now, I should be like that bad man you told us of, who let out the beacon light when the wind was blowing hard on shore. Listen, David, and take my words to heart. The road you are on now I have been upon, only I went much farther on it than you shall go." She resumed after a short pause: ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... and I trust will remain so until the end of her journeying here. And what is more, she is learning the secret, that there is more happiness in caring for others, than in being all absorbed in selfish consideration. Still, she is a sad wreck upon the stream of life—a warning beacon for ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... decided to take his advice. They unharnessed the horse; took one of the lanterns of the carriage as a beacon, and followed slowly the line of pasture-land, under the woodchopper's guidance. At the end of about ten minutes, the forester pointed out a light, twinkling at the extremity of a rustic path, bordered ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... line into the shadows of the Cosmopolitan; five minutes passed without even a nibble. "Dear me!" quoth the Devil, "that's very singular; one of my most popular flies, too! Why, they'd have risen by shoals in Broadway or Beacon Street for that. Well, here goes another." And fitting a new fly from his well- filled box, he ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... fire" is kindled by the sons of Donn Desa to give warning to Conaire. So that is the first warning-beacon that has been made in Erin, and from it to this day every warning-beacon ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... again, when you find out a professor that is not horribly tainted with some of these things, I exclude not the ministers nor their families, let him be as a beacon upon a hill, or as an ensign in our land. But says one, Would you have us singular? and says another, Would you have us make ourselves ridiculous? and says a third, Such and such, more godly-wise than we, do ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pitched down the slope from the cook tent. We were too tired to sit round a camp-fire and talk. The stars were white and splendid, and they hung over the flat ridges like great beacon lights. The lake appeared to be inclosed on three sides by amphitheatric mountains, black with spruce up to the gray walls of rock. The night grew cold and very still. The bells on the horses tinkled distantly. There was a ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... that endure must have this helpful, uplifting quality. Without violence of direction they must be beacon-lights that gently guide stricken men and women into ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... it in Holland and Zealand alone that the beacon fires of freedom were lighted. City after city in Gelderland, Overyssel, and the See of Utrecht; all the important towns of Friesland, some sooner, some later, some without a struggle, some after a short siege, some with resistance by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mass of porphyritic stone, the top about twenty feet above high tide, shaped much like a pyramid, and a few years since was capped with a conical granite beacon, strongly built and riveted down, but which had been two-thirds washed away by the tremendous surf of the easterly storms. The rock stands at the outer edge of a long sand-shoal, and is east of Salem. To the northward, a dim blue line on the horizon, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... that would not be done as well or better by her equally storm-beaten consort, whose rigging and spars had been in such much better trim than hers when the gale struck both alike. Gwen felt, too, a great faith that the daughter's love would be, as it were, the beacon of the mother's salvation; the pilot to a sheltered haven where the seas would be at rest. She herself could ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... myself alone," The circling star with honest pride doth boast, "Not to myself alone I rise and set; I write upon night's coronal of jet His power and skill who formed our myriad host; A friendly beacon at heaven's open gate, I gem the sky. That man might ne'er forget, in every fate, His home ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield, be a beacon to you through life. He writes with that intention, and in that hope. If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence—though his longevity is, at present (to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... spent the greater part of his life; thence he sent forth his captains to plough the southern seas; and as year after year the weather-beaten ships returned from their venturesome pilgrimage, the first glimpse of home that greeted them was likely to be the beacon-light in the tower where the master sat poring over problems of Archimedes or watching the stars. For Henry, whose motto was "Talent de bien faire," or (in the old French usage) "Desire[381] to do well," was wont to throw himself ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... light that flamed out from the merry pine-torch; he didn't wonder that half the Eastern world worshiped fire. He adored it—blessed, blessed fire—the sign of God, the beacon of the human. Hark! What half-human—or rather wholly inhuman—sounds are these that alternate in unearthly measure? Surely animal nature has no voice so strident, vengeful, odious. Can it be animals of prey? No. The Virginia forests are dangerous only ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... are missing, this deponent has no doubt, were either murdered upon the steamboat or found a watery grave in the cataract of the Falls; and this deponent further says that immediately after the Caroline was got into the current of the stream and abandoned, as before stated, beacon lights were discovered upon the Canada shore near Chippewa, and after sufficient time had elapsed to enable the boats to reach that shore this deponent distinctly heard loud and vociferous cheering at that point; that this deponent has no doubt that the individuals ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... into public affairs. To meet Clark in the corridors was to get a breeze that swept like a chinook across the frozen waste of old-line politics. In the gloom of the lobby this apostle of red hair and rubicund visage was a beacon light. I have met him so, of a Saturday afternoon when the House was out of session, and when the member for Red Deer was ripe for a free talk to any stranger. A great friendliness possessed him always. He could laugh at the besetments of party ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... containing a choice knot of the old, respectable, true-blue, Boston-aristocracy families. Two or three of them had winter houses in Beacon Street, and went there, after Christmas, to enjoy the lectures, concerts, and select gayeties of the modern Athens; others, like the Fergusons and Seymours, were in intimate relationship with ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
