"Seance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a seance all to herself," he grinned, "an' she says, there's a wedding ring hanging over the brat's head, an' she said to tell you, Uncle Forrie—" He paused, giggled a little and ended—"Red curls'll twist around your heart so close ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... later I had an opportunity of making the good man's acquaintance and hearing a conversation between him and Mr. Burns. They talked about Spiritualism, with which Borrow had very little patience, though, after some talk he consented to attend a seance to be held that evening in Burns's drawing-room. We sat together, and I had the pleasure of hearing from time to time his grunts of disapproval. When the discourse—'in trance'—was over, he asked me if I believed in 'this sort of thing,' and when I said I was ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... then become the rage, and so Jeanne decided to consult her, although the woman charged a higher fee than, I understand, the other fortune-tellers were then doing. When the two sisters found themselves there, my married niece bargained that the seance should be half-price, as Jeanne only wished to stay a very few minutes, and to ask but one question. After the bargain was concluded, Jeanne, it seems, observed—the story of the interview has been told to me, and before me, many many times—that ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his programme, and Steering got up, too. While Madeira shut up his desk, Steering threw away the stump of his cigar and brought his flexed arms back to his shoulders with an expansive pull on his chest that sent a big influx of air into his lungs. After his seance with Madeira he felt as though he had been pummelled down flat. Madeira had to open his desk again for something he had forgotten and Steering passed on to the door, impatient for some outside air. As he opened ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... "A seance in table-tipping?" asked his sister coldly. "Really, Louis, I think we are rather past ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... time the reporter saw a light in the office window he broke into the seance. When the boy and his girl were not holding down the sofa at her father's home, or when there was no dance at the Imperial Club hall, nor any other social diversion, David and Larmy and the reporter would meet at ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Podmore's account of Mr. Davey's seance, his attention was called away for two or three minutes without his noting it. We may take it for granted that the kickings up of the bedclothes during which Sanders became weak and faint, lasted ten minutes or more. "Being ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... freemasonry of their common love taught it to him—that in the presence of a third person her name, no allusion to her, even, must pass his lips. In short, these conversations grew at length into a kind of seance or solemn rite; a joint offering to the dead of the best that they had to give, their tenderest thoughts and memories, made in solemn secrecy and ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... Yes, she is. I'd like to shake her, mischief-making thing. Father liked Nelson well enough before that, but he came home from that seance as bitter against him as if the poor boy had committed murder. Marietta told him that a small dark man was trying to take away his daughter, or some such silliness. Nelson isn't very small nor VERY dark, but he was the only male in sight that came near answering ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Boult drew out his watch, the audience hushed itself, as for a conjuring seance. Mr Hambly passed a hand over ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... of charms. Magic, too, is an art—like other arts. This is forgotten by the majority of its practitioners. Hence the sordid vulgarity of the average mind-reader and humbugging spiritualist of the dark-chamber seance. Besides, the study of the super-normal mind tells us of the mind in health—nature is shy in revealing ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Consulate was capable of exalted ideals for the general well-being that were foreign to the Napoleon of ten years later—is fruitful of mistakes in interpreting his activities. On April 8 he attended a seance of the Institute, and was there instrumental in reconciling several persons who had become estranged through events which occurred during the Revolution.* (* Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, 1 252.) He ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... a little. You have been told, I daresay often enough, that the business of writing demands two—the author and the reader. Add to this what is equally obvious, that the obligation of courtesy rests first with the author, who invites the seance, and commonly charges for it. What follows, but that in speaking or writing we have an obligation to put ourselves into the hearer's or reader's place? It is his comfort, his convenience, we have to consult. To express ourselves is a very small part of the business: very small and almost ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... appointed for the seance I was unexpectedly obliged to go away. When I wished to resume the treatment, January 9, the patient wrote me that his condition was strikingly improved, the heart palpitations and feelings of anxiety had not reappeared. His pleasure in life and work had returned once more, his ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Anderson-Waite, of 30 Queen's Mansions, Queen's Gate. I have been holding a seance here, with some of my friends, and most extraordinary things have happened, and are still happening. There are violent knockings on the wall and ceiling, and the table has become positively dangerous. It has repeatedly sprung into the air, and savagely assaulted several of the sitters. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... from the big "Lone Star" of Texas which ended the show. No bedtime frolic to-night; the four in the nursery undressed in a dead quiet and fell asleep before their heads fairly touched the pillows. In her own little room Sarah held another seance with the witch hazel bottle, and went to sleep only to dream of a wild ride across the meadows on Blue Bonnet's rocking-horse, with a fierce band of Comanche Indians pursuing her, yelling fiendishly all the while, and keeping up a ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... other reasonably intelligent man. He may, therefore, lend the weight of a great name to conclusions—or conjectures—entirely outside his own province. The element of trickery in the ordinary professional seance is notorious.[75] The ordinary physical phenomena of spiritism have almost without exception been duplicated by conjurers—many of whom have mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Seance a fini a l'heure ou le president du Roxburghe-Club leve celle de Londres; et le vice-president, M. Dibdin, a soigneusement reuni les bouchons, pour les porter en Angleterre comme un signe commemoratif ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... be expected from them; and, in short, if only for the sake of those who wished to continue their experiences, it was necessary that I should withdraw from them. That was the last occasion on which I took part in a seance under Mr. Hume's mediumship. My mother continued her sittings at the house of Mr. Powers, and it is fair to record that she there witnessed material phenomena—some of them closely allied to phenomena only explainable on Spiritualistic theories—of even a more extraordinary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Viscount de Coralth, and consequently freed from all restraint, M. de Valorsay rose with a long-drawn sigh of relief. "What an interminable seance!" he growled. And, approaching his acolyte, who was sitting silent and motionless in an arm-chair, he slapped him on the shoulder, exclaiming: "Are you ill that you sit there like that, as still ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... sheepskin-covered cushion which was the ugly Duckling's saddle. This time it was "Antoun" who settled her into place, with her feet meekly crossed; and the caricature of a camel rose like a sofa at a spiritualistic seance. Strange to say, however, when all were ready to start, Monny appeared more comfortably lodged than any of the camel-riding ladies; and the thought entered my mind that perhaps Anthony had, with extreme subtlety, taken this roundabout way ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... associes, rendoit justice a la porte exterieure de la cour, et j'y vis venir devant lui des chretiens etrangers pour plaider leur cause. Mais quand le seigneur se leva, les juges leverent aussi leur seance, et ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... do you think, for a private seance?" he asked of Madame Picardet, the lady to whom the Seer had successfully predicted ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... Dantes, "I know not that we can better employ ourselves, after so protracted a seance, than to repair to Vefour's. This talking is hungry work, and listening and thinking, which are by far more tedious, are still more so. So ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... The Jacob's Ladder of Communion. What a Development Circle Is. Forming the Development Circle. The Sitters in the Circle. The Spirit Communication Code. The Matter of Time Conditions. Opening the Seance. Developing a Medium. The Personnel of the Circle. Changing the Sitters. Adding a Medium. Reasons for Changes. Psychic Attunement. Pre-Test Manifestations. Premature Tests. Forcing Tests. Spirit Directions. Questioning the Spirits. Substance ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... Bessel returned with redoubled earnestness to the room where the seance was going on, and so soon as he had thrust himself within sight of the place he saw one of the men who stood about the medium looking at his watch as if he meant that the seance should presently end. At that a great number ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... shall yet tear away The mystic garb that hides it from the day, And drag it forth and bind it with its laws, And make it serve the purposes of men, Guided by common sense and reason. Then We'll hear no more of seance, table-rapping, And all that trash, o'er which the world is gaping, Lost in effect, while science seeks ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Mr. Britton, when, at the end of the seance, he returned his treasures to the bag, "you have now got twenty-three of our cheques, to all intents and purposes. I hope you are not going to make any unlawful use of them—must tell our cashiers to keep a bright ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... not Madame Zero had demonstrated her gifts so convincingly as to have converted a sceptic, there was no doubt that she had perceptibly raised the spirits of the whole party (not excluding her own), so the seance was quite deservedly pronounced an ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... Benjamin's father said these words to the veteran in charge of the pier-turnstile; who, as an early bird, was counting his tickets, so to speak, before they were hatched—his actual professional cabinet-seance not having begun. For the pier wasn't open yet, and his permission to Fenwick to pass the open side-gate was ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... is not yet 20, has been in the habit for some time past of attending seances held by the Cardiff Psychological Society. One night at a seance, while in a state of trance, she was seized with a strange convulsion. Through ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... has just been related, Harry Mortimer paid them another visit, which the family council had resolved should be a regular "mesmeric seance." ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... figures, the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor of the Orang. Furthermore, having demonstrated the parts, at one of the sittings of the Academy, they add, "la presence des parties contestees y a ete universellement reconnue par les anatomistes presents a la seance. Le seul doute qui soit reste se rapporte au pes Hippocampi minor...A l'etat frais l'indice du petit pied d'Hippocampe etait ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... with its multitudes of slaughters, proceeds to the wilderness of Sinai; and there again, the Prophet Moses goes into a secret seance and finally announces that God had delivered laws to him, which had been issued ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... better-half had been served likewise, I was certain that all five pseudo-murders were wholly and solely acts of retribution, and that they were perpetrated—I am inclined to think involuntarily—by the spirit of the owl itself. Accordingly, I decided to hold a seance here—here in its old haunt, and if possible to put an end to the earth-bound condition and wanderings of the soul of the unhappy bird. Thanks to Father Mickledoff we have done so, and there will be no more ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... until young Cain, ostracised from the studio during the seance, whistled in through the keyhole sympathetic inquiries concerning the only woe his little soul knew, "Watty matter in yare? Ennybuddy dut e tummuck-ache?" that they chorused with laughter at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... it has always appeared to me perfectly reasonable to suppose that the energy of the light-rays should interfere most seriously with the delicate and subtle forces and forms of energy which are liberated in the seance room. The old objection: "Why must these things always be done in the dark?" has appeared to me very short-sighted and inconsistent with ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... presentation of this serious enterprise for the criticism and official sanction of The Academy, 'en seance', was included a request that, if possible, the task of writing a preface to the series should be undertaken by me. Official sanction having been bestowed upon the plan, I, as the accredited officer of the French Academy, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... don't wonder that she has bewitched you, Morton. She can never be anything to you, of course. But we must help her, just the same, and I confess I am crazy to see one of her 'performances,' as you call them." Her face lightened. "How would it do to invite them to dinner and have a seance afterwards? You could ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... they have seldom seen them. Visitors who can satisfy the authorities that they are desirous of studying the works of art with a serious purpose can obtain free passes; but only after certain preliminaries, which include a seance with a photographer to satisfy the doorkeeper, by comparing the real and counterfeit physiognomies, that no illicit transference of the precious privilege has been made. Italy is, one knows, not a rich country; but the revenue which the gallery entrance-fees ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... corresponding date a generation—that is thirty years—ago. As I read over this column recently I had quite a start as I saw my own name, and read the reprint of a letter which I had written in 1887, detailing some interesting spiritual experience which had occurred in a seance. Thus it is manifest that my interest in the subject is of some standing, and also, since it is only within the last year or two that I have finally declared myself to be satisfied with the evidence, that I have ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but they did not produce silence or darkness. On the contrary, as soon as Eliphalet and the officer went into the house, there began at once a series of spiritualistic manifestations—a regular dark seance. A tambourine was played upon, a bell was rung, and a flaming banjo went singing around ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... hunting-ground for the spiritualist medium, the faith healer, and the mind curer. You will find there the most advanced emancipation from theological superstition combined in the most extraordinary way with a more than half belief in the incoherences of a spiritualistic seance. The Boston Christian Scientists have just erected a handsome stone church, with chime of bells, organ, and choir of the most approved ecclesiastical cut; and, greatest marvel of all, have actually had to return a surplus ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... go upstairs alone. They imagined skeleton fingers clutching their legs through the banisters, or bodiless heads rolling like billiard balls along the landings. Having listened, awestruck, to Veronica's accounts of a seance, they were apprehensive lest the tables should turn sportive and caper about the rooms rapping out spirit messages, or boisterous elementals should bump the beds up and down and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... there's no escaping. Many persons of to-day are in the same mental state as one Mr. Boggs, told of in a magazine story, a rural gentleman who was agitated over spectral visitants. He had once talked at a seance with a speaker who claimed to be the spirit of his brother, Wesley Boggs, but who conversed only on blue suspenders, a subject not of vital interest to Wesley in the flesh. "Still," Mr. Boggs reflected, "I'm not so darn sure!" In answer to a suggestion ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... seance Carry is called away by a customer, one of the swells of Malines much addicted to a poetical expression of his admiration for the fair sex in general and for Carry in particular. Greatly to our edification, she was pleased ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... right, Leila. The Sans have planned some kind of seance at that empty house to scare Marjorie. Probably they have dressed up in some hideous fashion. They could easily get away with it on account of the masquerade. The sooner we get there the better. We may be able to catch them, unless they have got hold ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Indeed, so inconspicuous is the proceeding, and so quietly do the members that choose to attend pass into the lecture-hall, leaving perhaps half the company engaged as before, that the "stranger "—as the non-member is here officially designated—might very readily fail to understand that the seance proper had begun. In any event, he cannot enter until permission has been formally voted by ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... seance. That conversation threw me into a fever. I came out of my uncle's study as if I had been stunned, and as if there was not air enough in all the streets of Hamburg to put me right again. I therefore made for the banks of the Elbe, where the steamer lands ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Frances replied confidently. "I can understand how discouraged poor Peace must feel. I've been there myself, only instead of giving away my own things as she does, I gave away other people's belongings. I can never forget the seance I had with mother the day I handed over father's best, go-to-meeting overcoat to a dirty, evil-looking tramp, and gave away Victor's velocipede to the ash-man's little boy. I came to the conclusion that the whole world was just a sham and ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... this kind of bird on its legs is a very important part of its—diagnosis; (we must have a fine word now and then!) Its action on the wing, is mere flutter or flirt, in and out of the hedge, or over it; but its manner of perch, or literally 'bien-seance,' is admirable matter of interest. So also in the birds which are on the water what these are on land; picking up anything anywhere; lazy and fortunate, mostly, themselves; fat, floating, daintiest darlings;—their balance on the water, also, and under it, in 'ducking,' a most essential ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... silence. So it was with these rival spooks. They interfered, but they did not produce silence or darkness. On the contrary, as soon as Eliphalet and the officer went into the house, there began at once a series of spiritualistic manifestations, a regular dark seance. A tambourine was played upon, a bell was rung, and a flaming banjo went singing ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... to carousing and talking of their lovers. And they ceased not to eat and drink and chat, nibbling dry fruits and laughing and playing tricks for the space of a full hour when lo! a knock was heard at the gate. The knocking in no wise dis turbed the seance, but one of them rose and went to see what it was and presently returned, saying, "Truly our pleasure for this night is to be perfect." "How is that?" asked they; and she answered, "At the gate be three Persian Kalandars[FN167] with their beards and heads ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... diseases of the lid and cornea, and taught a trained nurse, who herself had a nebulous cornea, to make what I may call a specialty of this particular therapeutic procedure. She became exceedingly skillful and was quite faithful. We believed that the best results were obtained in a seance of two or three minutes, the finger tip being used over the lid, and the surface of the cornea lubricated with a drop of pure olive oil, although in glaucoma the addition of the oil is not necessary. Four movements were utilized, the first a ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... someone else were to tell you that they had an East Indian yogi who was going to give a seance this very afternoon you would hotfoot it to the telephone to inform Trudy that you must break your engagement with her, and send word to your original hostess as well. That is about ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Beulah and her sister through bright sunny mornings in their mother's home with their cat beside them and the pet lamb coming into the room from the meadow. There everything suggested fraud, and when at my second seance her foot was caught behind the curtain and the whole humbug exposed, it was exactly what I had expected. But here everything breathed sincerity and naivete and absence of fraud—yet my mere assurance cannot convince a skeptic; we ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... of the phenomena, but skeptical as to the value and personal origin of the communications made in the "circles." Her daughter, a child of seven, was in fact a hypnotic clairvoyant of singular lucidity, and my brother, Dr. Jacob Stillman, obtained from the mother permission to have a private seance, only the mother and child, the doctor, and myself being present. I hypnotized the girl Fanny, and when she opened her eyes in the hypnotic state the doctor made the usual tests for coma, exposing the eyes to the sudden glare of a brilliant light, sticking pins into her flesh, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the patience to wait until a way was made clear, or whether another letter from her father decided her to clear that way for herself, is uncertain; but one day in March Valerie received a letter from Mrs. Collis; and answered it; and the next morning she shortened a seance with Querida, exchanged her costume for her street-clothes, and hastened to her apartments, where Mrs. Collis was already awaiting her ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... gone. Next morning he entered with the rest, and soon saw that his plan had been perfectly successful. The public disputation began, but the attention of the audience was elsewhere. There was whispering and comparing notes, and passing about of little books, and as soon as the seance was over, open discussion of Campion's "Reasons." Hartley did not wait for more, but rode back to Stonor with the news that the book had surely ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... believe my sister came from the dead to tell me what to do," said the lawyer, "of course, I'd do it. I'd be afraid not to. But I don't believe he does. And he believes you can bring his sister herself before him. He insists that tonight you hold a seance in his house, and that you materialize the spirit of his dead sister. So that he can see his sister, and talk with his sister. Vance says you can do that. ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... clean is our seance from slanderous foe; * And from envious rival whose aim is blame: None hither may come save the cup-boy, and eke * Cup-comrades who ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... hath befallen me, never, whilst I live, shall I cease to blame myself for the past. As for this Shahrazad, her like is not found in the lands; so praise be to Him who appointed her a means for delivering His creatures from oppression and slaughter!" Then he arose from his seance and kissed her head, whereat she rejoiced, she and her sister Dunyazad, with exceeding joy. When the morning morrowed, the King went forth and sitting down on the throne of the Kingship, summoned the Lords of his land; whereupon the Chamberlains and Nabobs and Captains of the host ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... when he arrived, the night of the strange witch-doctor's seance. This had all come to an end. The schoolhouse was dark—the girls were asleep. From a prowling native he learned that the girls were there and safe, then he turned in ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... have above remarked is only resorted to when a matter of grave import has to be inquired about; the bhagat makes a high charge for a seance of this description. We will fancy that three or four families in a village consider themselves bewitched by a najo, and they resolve to have recourse to a bhagat to find out who the witch is; with this view ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... account of the manner in which I had failed, and was the recipient of a scathing rebuke from the city editor. It was in vain I tried to get angry. Even to myself I could not simulate proper indignation, so thoroughly had the starch been taken out of me by my seance with an excusably irritated man, knowing the while that I was trespassing on ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... said Huish, 'turn down the lights at once, and the Band of 'Ope will oblige! This ain't a spiritual seance.' ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... les finissons donc si vous le trouuiez agreable, pour nous porter auec plus de zele aux autres deuoirs qui contribueront a vostre satisfaction, & qui seront agreables a touts les veritables estimateurs de la bien-seance & de l'honnestete de la conuersation commune, comme nous ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... This seance at M. Thierry's completed the triumph of Jasmin at Paris. The doors of the most renowned salons were thrown open to him. The most brilliant society in the capital listened to him and feted him. Madame de Remusat sent him a present of a golden ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Indeed, but for the more prominent ones, he never could remember what their jobs were, nor even recollect their names. It put one in a cold perspiration to hear him remark, when recounting what had occurred at a Cabinet seance or at the meeting of some committee bristling with Privy Councillors, "A fellow—I don't know his name but he's got curly hair—said..." Other soldiers besides Lord K. have, however, been known on occasion to get these super-men mixed up in their minds. There were three Ministers, for instance, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... let the Republic receive my oath of gratitude, my oath of devotion!"—and next he proclaimed that there was nobody to surpass him in determined consecration "to the defence of order and to the establishment of the Republic." [Footnote: Seance du 26 Septembre 1848: Moniteur, 27 Septembre.] Good words these. Then again, when candidate for the Presidency, in a manifesto to the electors he gave another pledge, announcing that he "would devote himself altogether, without mental reservation, to the ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... devoir faire pour sa reception au Conseil, il ne les auroit pas acceptees, l'honneur de la Compagnie luy estant d'autant plus considerable, qu'en estant le chef, il n'auroit rien voulu souffrir qui peust estre contraire a sa dignite." Registre du Conseil Souverain, seance du 13 Mars, 1690. The affair had occupied the preceding sessions of 20 and 27 February and 6 March. The submission of the councillors did not prevent them from complaining to the minister. Champigny au Ministre, 10 Mai, 1691; ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... they knock with their legs on the floor, establishing (what was clear enough before to me) the connection between the table-moving and 'rapping spirits.' Sarianna—who is of the unbelieving of temperaments, as you know—wrote a most curious account to me the other day of a seance at which she had been present, composed simply of one or two of our own honest friends and of a young friend of theirs, a young lady....[23] She says that she 'was not as much impressed as she would have been,' 'but I am bound to tell the truth, that I do not think it possible that any tricks ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... my wife and I went; the moment the "medium" opened her mouth my wife recognized her as the person who has been trying for several months to get me on the telephone to tell me how the spirit of Jack London is seeking to communicate with me! The seance was a public one, a gathering composed, half of wealthy and cultured society-women, and half of confederates, people with the dialect and manners of a vaudeville troupe. A megaphone was set in the middle of the floor, the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... the evening, our party assembled for what, in foreign phrase, is called 'une seance magnetique.' Anna M——, our mesmerisee, was already with us. Mr K—— arrived soon after, and was introduced to his young patient, whose name we had purposely avoided mentioning to him in the morning; not that we feared imposition on either hand, but that we were determined, by every precaution, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... and seacaptains and, as each came, enquired of him anent the city of Babel and its peninsula[FN391] and the garden of Iram; but none of them knew these places nor could any give him tidings thereof. However, when the seance broke up, one of them said, "O King of the Age, an thou be minded to ken this thing, up and hie thee to the land of China; for it hath a vast city[FN392] and a safe, wherein are store of rarities and things of price and folk of all kinds; and thou shalt not come to the knowledge of this city and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... room, facing the Olympians, stood or sat the particular claimant or expert witness of the seance. Now it might be Marshal Foch, with wrinkled, weary, war-worn visage, and thin rumpled hair, in shabby uniform, telling of Germany's failure to fulfill the armistice conditions; one would meet him later in the corridor outside—like Grant, he was apt to have the ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... destined to be let down during the performance of the phenomenal manifestations. There was a camp-stool inside the cabinet; a number of cane-bottomed chairs on the platform, and also the various properties of a spirit seance, familiar to me from long experience, guitar, fiddle, handbells, tambourine, &c. One adjunct alone was new; and that was a green stable bucket, destined, I could not doubt, to figure in what my Rimmel-scented programme promised as the climax of Part I.—the "Great Pail ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Master sat on the other, a Persian cat playing chaperon on the rug between, and the book-lined walls of the Master's most particular sanctum looking down upon them; while in the drawing-room beyond, Miss Wenlock, at the tea-table, sat patiently waiting till her domestic god should declare the seance over, allow her to make tea, and bring in the young and honoured guest. And now both charmers had vanished from the scene and had left no equals behind. The Master, who possessed the same sort of tact in training young women that Lord Melbourne showed in educating the girl-Queen, was left ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 17th of June, in the morning, in the church of Notre Dame. They were joined by nine bishops appointed by Napoleon, although they had not yet received canonical institution. At the second seance, when the affairs of the Council began to be seriously considered, the Ministers of Religion of France and Italy took their places in the assembly. In opening, on the 16th, the session of the Corps Legislatif, the emperor had haughtily proclaimed his ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... joy, however, was in withdrawing for what might be called a seance of meditation from the world's business. Some men make celebration in wine, sport and adventure; but Jean Jacques made it in flooding his mind with streams of human thought which often tried to run uphill, which were frequently choked with weeds, but still were like the pool of Siloam to his vain ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hammock, his head bent down and his hand placed at his mouth in an effort to divert the direction of the sound. I was within a few feet of this young fellow and could plainly see by the light of the kitchen fire the attitude of the impersonator and distinctly hear his whistling. The seance continued for some 10 minutes, the impersonator chirping out answers to the questioning priest. The listeners were fully convinced that the sounds were of divine origin and expressed that conviction by uttering some such expressions as, "Oh what a beautiful voice the Magbabya has," ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... question that fifteen puzzled investigators are asking themselves this morning, after witnessing a number of astounding manifestations at a private seance given by Mr. ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... 'Five Years After.' Violet Parkinson, the Alderman's only child, is in love with Jack Alston, who is 'poor, but clever.' Mrs. Parkinson, however, will not hear of any marriage till the deceased Alderman has materialised himself and given his formal consent. A seance is held at which Jack Alston unmasks the medium and shows Dr. Josiah Brown to be an impostor—a foolish act, on his part, as he is at once ordered to leave the house by the infuriated Mrs. Parkinson, whose faith in the Doctor is not in the least ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... and hold free conversation with their wise men, and are no longer satisfied with mere secret intercourse, they drive out all these laconizers, and any other foreigners who may happen to be in their country, and they hold a philosophical seance unknown to strangers; and they themselves forbid their young men to go out into other cities—in this they are like the Cretans—in order that they may not unlearn the lessons which they have taught them. And in Lacedaemon ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... watched expectantly, and, leaning out a little, I said sweetly, in my best Parisian accent: "Mesdames et Messieurs, la seance est terminee." And off we drove! Their expressions defied description; I never saw people look so astounded. McLaughlan was unfeignedly delighted. "Wot was that you 'anded out to them, Miss?" he asked. "Fair ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... the first an object of awe to Malachi, who carefully avoided him; but one night we got the butt into a room where the artisan was entertaining the boys with a seance. After the table-rapping, during which Malachi sat with uncovered head and awe-struck expression, we proposed that he should have his bumps read, and before he could make his escape Malachi was seated in a chair in the middle of the room and the bricklayer ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... brain freely and without pain. From my own experience I am able to confirm Dr. Frazier's observation. In addition, the two-stage operation for the excision of the Gasserian ganglion provides an observation of extraordinary interest. If at the first seance the ganglion is exposed, but is not disturbed except by the iodoform gauze packing, then on the following day the gauze may be removed, the ganglion picked up, and its branches and root excised without anesthesia and without pain. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... one night which had been left on his floor by a careless chambermaid; for the member rooming next him had the night before opened his innocent eyes on a thousand-dollar bill miraculously floating through the transom. If bills of such denomination materialized as cleverly as roses at a medium's seance, what might not develop at any moment? It was disquieting! Beds were feverishly ripped open instead of being slept in; mattresses were overhauled and pillows uncased; chiffoniers were turned upside down ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... "Is this a seance?" inquired Kathleen, watching the group from the doorway. Another of Miss Kiametia's receiving party had taken her place at ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... the architect, returned from town to his holiday cottage greatly impressed by the spiritualistic seance at which he had been present. As he undressed and got into his solitary bed (Madame Vaxin had gone to an all-night service) he could not help remembering all he had seen and heard. It had not, properly speaking, been a seance at all, but the whole evening had been spent in terrifying conversation. ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... chamber, council chamber, state chamber. cabinet council, privy council; cockpit, convocation, synod, congress, convention, diet, states-general. [formal gathering of members of a council: script] assembly, caucus, conclave, clique, conventicle; meeting, sitting, seance, conference, convention, exhibition, session, palaver, pourparler, durbar[obs3], house; quorum; council fire [N.Am.], powwow [U.S.], primary [U.S.]. meeting, assemblage &c. 72. [person who is member of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in the London Medium a very interesting narrative of his seances with the Emperor and Empress of Russia, the royal family and nobility. In the first royal seance, the Grand Duchess Vladimir proved to be a medium, and was lifted in the air, screaming the while. 'As she continued to ascend,' says Mr. Eglinton, 'I was compelled to leave her hand, and on returning to her seat, she declared ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... out of the way while we have our seance with the Draper. Now brace up, my dear; just nod or shake your head when ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... colossal structure of a splinter, and whose cherubic countenance was decorated with a Cheshire cat grin. Quite unaware that his riotous efforts had brought out the wrathful Butch Brewster, the youthful narrator of Chuckwalla Bill's stormy career continued his excessively noisy seance. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... writing: 'Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling Island, who held a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll: this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively, like a table or a hat at a modern spirit seance.'[1] Now M. Lefebure has pointed out (in 'Melusine') that, according to De Brosses, the African conjurers gave an appearance of independent motion to small objects, which were then accepted as fetishes, being visibly ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... this wonder woman, their mistress, in whom they felt such inordinate pride; so that one, then two, then more, from distances long and short, would creep into the council with pretexts ranging from the thin to the absolutely transparent, until one morning the whole seance ended in an unseemly fracas between the legitimate and the illegitimate seekers after help in word or kind, whereupon Hahmed, rising in his wrath, smote them verbally hip and thigh, and Jill departed in high ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... such and such people answering to their description. She persisted that she did not, and went over the others for the second time. This astonished M. le duc d'Orleans deeply, as well as myself, and we were at a loss to explain it, but the event proved that the child was perfectly right. This seance took place in 1706. These four members of the royal family were then full of health and strength; and they all died before the king. It was the same thing with M. le prince, M. le duc, and M. le prince de Conti, whom she likewise did not see, though she beheld the children ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... consistently calm, businesslike, indifferent to all save to the work in hand. The soi-disant Ernest Berty spoke invariably in French, either dictating his orders or seeking information, and I made verbal translation into English of all that he said. The seance lasted close upon an hour, and presently I gathered that the affair was terminated and that I could consider ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Let us have a seance!" whispered the poet. "Tell us, madam, can you really lift the veil of ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... clipped box and laurel which the key-hole also commands. Lovers of the supernatural, of which I am the first, will like to be reminded, or perhaps instructed, that the Church of the Priory stands on the spot where Remus had a seance with the spiritual authorities and was advised against building Rome where he proposed, being shown only six vultures as against twelve that Romulus saw in favor of his chosen site. The fact gave the Aventine Hill the fame of bad luck, but any one may safely visit ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... connu Fleeming Jenkin! C'etait en Mai 1878. Nous etions tous deux membres du jury de l'Exposition Universelle. On n'avait rien fait qui vaille a la premiere seance de notre classe, qui avait eu lieu le matin. Tout le monde avait parle et reparle pour ne rien dire. Cela durait depuis huit heures; il etait midi. Je demandai la parole pour une motion d'ordre, et ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and straining began, and men grunted as they heaved against an axle. After a long seance of such effort there came a sharp exclamation, like an oath, and the confusion fell to a murmur of dismay. Someone jerked open the door, and Dupin's ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... long and very interesting story, but in substance it is this: While in a condition of contemptuous disbelief as to the alleged phenomena of spiritualism, Sir William chanced to witness a seance wherein a young girl named Florence Cook was the medium. Her doings so puzzled and interested him that he went again and again to see her. Dissatisfied with the conditions under which the wonders took place, he asked Miss Cook to come to his house and ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... seance went forward. For twenty minutes or more odd waifs and strays of humanity crawled in through the trap-door, obtained their message of good or ill, and departed into the shadows as silently as they had come. Among them were ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O. |
