"Wisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as we are led to expect," he said to the Shepherd, "he'll have no judgment of his own, and be dependent on them as has him in charge. Mr. Craigie will not be loosening his hold, and with only a weak woman and a sickly boy to deal with, he'll wind 'em around his finger like a wisp o' wool. It's my opinion we'll have Mr. Craigie to deal with ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... clothing and ornament, and placed them in the hut. The fire had gone out, but, after raking about deep down in the pile of ashes, he found a few embers still alight. These he placed carefully on a bent wisp of dry grass which he pulled out of the roof, and which blazed up in a few seconds. He then set fire to the hut in several places, and went outside. In a few minutes the hut, being built of wattles and grass, ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... and the cattle bells afield. And there was something satisfactory in the sight of that great mountain that enclosed us to the north: whether it stood, robed in sunshine, quaking to its topmost pinnacle with the heat and brightness of the day; or whether it set itself to weaving vapours, wisp after wisp growing, trembling, fleeting, and fading ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the human race attained its zenith—was there nothing beyond, nothing to look forward to, and he merely the latest dreamer and enthusiast who was pursuing the same will-o'-the-wisp that others had sought through the ages? If so, then what fatality was it that encompassed him and continually urged him on? Doubt counseled him to return, but pride and confidence in self still cried forward. Come what would, he either must go on to the end or accept the humiliation that awaits ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... sounded lightly on the floor above. And Donnegan, already alert in the strange atmosphere of this house, gave back a pace so as to get an honest wall behind him. He noted that the step was quick and small, and preparing himself to meet a wisp of manhood—which, for that matter, was the type he was most inclined to fear—Donnegan kept a corner glance upon the old woman at the foot of the stairs and steadily surveyed the shadows at the ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... subject, or any subject. It is as impossible for him to pull himself up briefly in any digression from that subject. In his finest passages, as in his most trivial, he is at the mercy of the will-o'-the-wisp of divagation. In his later re-handlings of his work, he did to some extent limit his followings of this will-o'-the-wisp to notes, but by no means always; and both in his later and in his ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... throng That packt the ways of Heaven. From the plain, From mere and holt and hollow rose amain The haunters of the silence; from the streams And wells of water, from the country demes, From plough and pasture, bottom, ridge and crest The rustic Gods rose up and joined the rest. Like a long wisp of cloud from out his banks Streamed Xanthos, that swift river, to the ranks Of flying shapes; and driven by that same mind That urged him to it came Simoeis behind, And other Gods and other, of stream and tree And ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-gray under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ah bet Ah knows just the woman for you-all, ef you-all ain't lookin' for a young gal with a figger like a wisp of hay." ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... appearance. They all had at their backs large baskets bound by withes passing across the forehead and chest. They were but lightly clothed. A small poncho covered their shoulders, and the usual cloth and kilt was worn round the loins, a wisp of leaves preventing their backs being chafed by their burdens. Each man also carried a long staff in his hand, and a bag of roasted corn as provision for the journey. The burdens were soon adjusted. One of them had a sort of chair at his back, which Don Jose had ordered to carry the senora, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... TEA.—Cut two pounds of round steak into small dice, rejecting all skin and fat. Put it into a glass fruit jar with one cup of cold water. Cover the can sufficiently tight to prevent any water from boiling in, and place it on a wisp of straw or a muffin ring in a kettle of cold water. Heat very gradually, and keep it just below the boiling point for two or more hours; or, place the can in a deep dish of hot water, and cook in a moderate oven for three hours. Allow the meat to cook thus four or five hours, or until it appears ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... he looked up to find that her eyes were not on him, and that she was twisting her wisp of a handkerchief between her fingers quite as if considering whether such fury, disappointment and humiliation could ever be forgiven. He felt that he was on trial and that his future ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... the rest of the universe as those two, separated temporarily on earth that the discovery of the utilization of one with the other might serve as an incentive to your minds. You saw it in Nature on Jupiter in the case of several creatures, suspecting it in the boa-constrictor and Will-o'-the-wisp and jelly-fish, and have standing illustrations of it in all tailed comets— luminosity in the case of large bodies being one manifestation—in the rings of this planet, and in the molecular motion and porosity of all gases, liquids, and solids on earth; since what else ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the Hyalonemas, or glass-rope ocean floor by a twisted wisp of strong flexible flint needles, somewhat on the principle of a screw-pile. So strange and complicated is their structure, that naturalists for a long while could literally make neither head nor tail of them, as long as they had only Japanese specimens ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... cliff puffed a cloud of dust. A thudding report boomed over the water. Just a wisp of whitish-grey smoke arose, and beneath it the great rock, with a gapping seam across its top, rolled majestically outward, sending a shower of spray on all sides, and opening to their eager view a black chasm into the heart of the headland. The experiment had worked out with the accuracy ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... thirty, feeling, alas, that she was a girl and still as attractive as ever. It is a grim thing to a woman, however fortunately placed, to realize that age is creeping on, and that love, that singing will-o'-the-wisp, is fading into the ultimate dark. Aileen, within the hour of her greatest triumph, had seen love die. It was useless to tell herself, as she did sometimes, that it might come back, revive. Her ultimately realistic temperament told her this could never be. Though ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... her out two dozen upon the moss of the rock-ledge, unwinding the wisp of hay from each as it came safe out of my pocket. Lorna looked with growing wonder, as I added one to one; and when I had placed them side by side, and bidden her now to tell them, to my amazement what did she do but burst into ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... EDWARD. A wisp of straw were worth a thousand crowns To make this shameless callat know herself.— Helen of Greece was fairer far than thou, Although thy husband may be Menelaus; And ne'er was Agamemmon's brother wrong'd By that false woman as this king by thee. His father revell'd in the heart of France, ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... I was content. Oh! there are times when the instinctive trust of one's heart is, so far more powerful than any proofs or reasons, that faith seems a higher knowledge. I would have pledged ten thousand lives, if I had had them, on the honesty of those eyes, that had led me like a will-o'-the-wisp in the ball-room half a year ago! The new-year's dance came back on me as I stood there—my ball-dress was in the drawer up-stairs—and now! oh ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in order. The first is the taste, Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp: Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist, With a flavor of Will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... a roving secret commission. I shall call, of course, and pay my personal respects to His Excellency, the General Commanding. I am an official will-o'-the-wisp, just now, but my blushing honors are strictly civil, and, by the way, in expectancy. Where does your promotion ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... followed her about like a dog ever since he could run; in fact, the only taming he had ever had, had been done by Ramona, with bread and honey. He was intractable to others; but Ramona could guide him by a wisp of his silky mane. Alessandro also had nearly as complete control over him; for it had been one of his greatest pleasures, during the summer, when he could not see Ramona, to caress and fondle her horse, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... publicly," cried the Great White Queen, still standing erect, her black eyes flashing beneath the wisp of scanty grey hair, and her talon-like hand uplifted. "To utter such words hast thou returned from the land beyond the black seas? True, thou art my son, and some day will sit upon this my stool, but for thus opposing my will thou shalt be banished from Mo until such time as I am carried ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door. The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his long- sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... A stranger watching them as they appear round the bend of the pretty old lane fancies each of them to be the last, and has just abandoned all hope of seeing another, when the next pair of horns makes its unexpected appearance. They never hurry home; they just come. A particularly tempting wisp in the long sweet grass under the hedge will induce an instant halt. The least thing passing along the road stops the whole procession; and they stare fixedly at the intruder till he is well on his way. And then, with no attempt to make up for lost time, they jog along at the same old ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Lord we're on the ridge now! and the rest is easy. Tell you what, though, boys, now we're all right, I don't mind saying that I didn't take no stock in that blamed corpse light down there. If there ever was a will-o'-the-wisp on a square up mountain, that was one. It wasn't no window! Some of ye thought ye saw ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... hope died. She had thought it just possible that this affair had been a travelling flirtation; that Nick, though infatuated, would return to his old allegiance when this witch-light, this will-o'-the-wisp, this love pirate, had gone. But the love pirate intended to drop anchor in California waters, it seemed! Luckily for Carmen that the daylight had faded. Changes on a woman's face, if bent a little, could not ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... A wisp of spray struck him in the face, but Weston, who saw the smile in his eyes, was curiously satisfied. It suggested, in the first place, an ample confidence in him, which was naturally gratifying, and in the second, that Stirling in spite of his years could take a keen pleasure in that particular form ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... else. The best places were quickly taken, the hollows in the trees, the holes in the walls, the forks of the apple-trees and the elms, and you could see a brown beak, like the point of a sword, sticking out of a wisp of straw between all the rafters of the roof. One year, when all the places were taken, I suppose, a tomtit, in her embarrassment, spied the slit of the letter-box protected by its little roof, at the right of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... shadowy presence of the woman he loved so passionately walked beside him. On the shores of the lonely fiord or in the pine forests, Elizabeth's bright, speaking face seemed to move before him like a will o' the wisp; even in the rustle of the summer breeze in the leaves he could hear her voice, with its odd breaks and sibilant pauses, so curiously sweet to his ear. "I am possessed," he would say to himself—"I am possessed!" and indeed ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "gashed their thighs, and at the flowing of the blood they all said, 'I have brought blood,' and they stamped the foot forcibly on the ground, sprinkling the blood around them; then wiping the wounds with a wisp of leaves, they threw it, bloody as it was, on the dead man."[245] With these Australian practices we may compare a custom observed by the civilised Greeks of antiquity. Every year the Peloponnesian lads lashed themselves on the grave ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Literature. His juvenile ambition to be a "Leerie licht the lamp" faded. To reach the gleam which had enamoured him, he knew he must build with care and patience, like his family of engineers, a tower to enclose or a ladder to reach to this will-o'-the-wisp which inveigled him upward. His mind teemed with ideas; but he saw he would have to serve an apprenticeship to learn to weave smoothly together the web of his fancy, till, in his verbal fabric, he had the charm of all the muses flowering ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... but drafts must be avoided. The benefit derived from the inhalation of steam is considerable. This is effected by holding the horse's head over a bucketful of boiling water, so that the animal will be compelled to inhale steam with every inhalation of air. Stirring the hot water with a wisp of hay causes the steam to arise in greater abundance. One may cause the horse to put his nose in a bag containing cut hay upon which hot water has been poured, the bottom of the bag being stood in a bucket, but the bag must be of loose texture, as gunny sack, or, if ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... his brother's tail,—to be a dog, a mule, a cat, a toad, an owl, a lizard, a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny.—Hey day! Will with a Wisp, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... but as a countryman will sometimes run after a jack-a-lantern, till running after it he finds himself in a burying-ground, so Bracciolini suffered himself to be misled by his literary will-o'-the wisp,—alliteration: therefore he preferred writing "nec nunc," instead of "nec tunc;" he therefore did that which was fatal to the work that he wanted to palm off upon the world as the composition of a Roman, because a Roman would not have ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... instructions respecting the chair, I craned out of the window, watching his progress, and wondering with what sudden madness he was bitten. Indeed, I could not credit my senses, could not believe that I heard and saw aright. Yet there out in the darkness on the moor moved the will-o'-the-wisp, and ten yards along the gutter crept my friend, like a great gaunt cat. Unknown to me he must have prospected the route by daylight, for now I saw his design. The ledge terminated only where it met the ancient wall of the tower, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... descendant of a long line of French nobles, who had gained their chief honours by killing men, ravishing women and plundering their neighbours' lands—though occasional flashes of bravery and chivalry had glanced over their annals in history like the light from a wandering will o' the wisp flickering over a morass. Gifted in his art, but wholly undisciplined in his nature, he had lived a life of selfish aims to selfish ends, and in the course of it had made love to many women,—one especially, on whose devoted affections he had preyed like an insect that ungratefully poisons ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... of this cluster of swarthy wretches, near the companion-way, stood a burly, square-built ruffian, with a pistol in his right hand, and his dexter paw pushing up a brown straw hat as he ran his fingers across his dripping forehead and a tangled mass of carroty, unshorn locks. There was a wisp of a red silk kerchief tied in a single knot around his bare bull neck; the shirt was thrown back, and exposed a tawny, hairy chest, as a ray of light flashed up from the binnacle. He looked—as indeed he was—the lowest type of a sailor scoundrel. His companions were of lighter build, and their ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... veery, as they call the Wilson's thrush in New England, is merely a voice, a sylvan mystery, reflecting the sweetness and wildness of the forest, a vocal "will-o'-the-wisp" that, after enticing us deeper and deeper into the woods, where we sink into the spongy moss of its damp retreats and become entangled in the wild grape-vines twined about the saplings and underbrush, still sings to us from unapproachable tangles. Plainly, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... he, on the other hand, escape from the French prison where Grosley thought he saw him, during the French Revolution? Was he known to Lord Lytton about 1860? Was he then Major Fraser? Is he the mysterious Muscovite adviser of the Dalai Lama? Who knows? He is a will-o'-the-wisp of the memoir-writers of the eighteenth century. Whenever you think you have a chance of finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip; and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole, I should incline to deem him as ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... rooms to dress, talking and laughing. They could not be silent, their hearts were so light. Jean sang softly to herself as she laid out what she meant to wear that evening. Pamela had made her promise to wear a white frock, the merest wisp of a frock made of lace and georgette, with a touch of vivid green, and a wreath of green leaves for the golden-brown head. Jean had protested. She was afraid she would look overdressed: a black frock would be more suitable; but ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... They began to appear in the deepening twilight. It seemed as if all the sky were alight with fireflies, whirling and swirling and fluttering here and there. But then the fire-drill began to emit a tiny wisp of smoke. Thorn worked furiously. Then a tiny flickering flame appeared, which he nursed with a desperate solicitude. Then a larger flame. Then a roaring blaze! It could not be missed! A fire within the dome could not fail to be noted and ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... doors. Then she heard a kind but commanding voice repeating: "Open your mouth," and stared up wildly into her great-great-great-grandmother's face, then around the strange little garret, lighted with a wisp of rag in a pewter dish of tallow, and the stars shining through the crack in the logs. Not a bit of furniture was there in the room, besides the bed and an oak chest. Some queer-looking garments hung about on pegs and swung in the draughts of the wind. It must have been snowing ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... all the time needed to accumulate a heap of the big, fan-like leaves. These Charley made into three torch-like bundles, taking care to place a dead dry leaf between each two green ones. Binding each bundle together with a wisp of green leaf, he struck a match and lit up the three, passing one to the captain and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... meadows, the will-of-the-wisp has undoubtedly been seen, as well as in a wet field in the central part of the parish; but it is a disappointing phenomenon—nothing but a misty, pale bluish light, rather like the reality of a comet's tail, and if "he" was by "Friar's Lantern led," "he" ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... Tucker, bestowing a final polish with her apron, "'twas like satin before, sir—not a wisp of dust." ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... mother-in-law's. She was almost as much altered as Herbert himself. Her jaunty air had given way to something equally energetic, but she looked wiry and worn, and her gold pheasant's crest had become little more than a sandy wisp, as she came quietly in and took the hand that Herbert held out to her, saying how glad she was to ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thoughts as a drowning man. How had he ever dared bring such a will-o'-the-wisp away from home? How had his mother consented to let him? His father had charged him, over and over, not to let go Fly's hand in the street. That did very well to talk about; but what could you do with a child that ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... had anything about me I could sell to get him bread!" thought Nello; but he had nothing except the wisp of linen and serge that covered him, and ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... cloister fountain. Suddenly the lights and the perfumes and the stillness of the sky were overwhelmed, a fierce Northwind charged with storm and darkness burst roaring upon me. It lifted me up and carried me like a wisp of straw over fields, cities, rivers, and mountains, and through the midst of thunder-clouds, during a long night composed of a whole series of nights and days. And when, after this prolonged and cruel rage, the hurricane was at last stilled, I found myself far from my native land at the bottom ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... about that. Her hair was straw-coloured and stringy in spite of the labour she had expended on it with curling-iron and brush. As to her face, the more noticeable features were a very broad, flat nose; a comparatively chinless under jaw, on which grew an accidental wisp of hair or two; a narrow and permanently decorated upper lip. When she smiled—well, the effect was discouraging, to say the least. Her eyes were pale and prominent. In spite of all this, practice in rouging might have helped her a little, but she had had no practice. Young men never ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... place to try one in; there were four roads meeting, and a cab-stand close by. Plenty of people were passing to and fro, and the middle of the road was very muddy. Tony begged a wisp of straw from a cabman, to make a seat for Dolly in the sunshine under a blank bit of wall, while he set to work with a will, feeling rather pleased than not that the broom would not sweep of itself. A crossing was speedily made, and for two ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... they would find there, and a poor little flower-bed or so, and a humble apology for a pinery, and two or three little attempts of that sort without any pretension, they would distinguish him very much. Carrying out his character, this gentleman was very plainly dressed, in a wisp of cambric for a neckcloth, big shoes, a coat that was too loose for him, and a pair of trousers that were too spare; and mention being made of the Opera by Mrs Skewton, he said he very seldom went there, for he couldn't afford it. It seemed ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... untracked region of romance and dreams where the call of his still sturdy manhood had beckoned him,—how long none might know. And at last he had heeded, laid down the staid, the sane, and followed the will-o'-the-wisp of conquest and adventure that took ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Doctor Watsons of this world, as opposed to the Sherlock Holmeses, success in the province of detective work must always be, to a very large extent, the result of luck. Sherlock Holmes can extract a clue from a wisp of straw or a flake of cigar-ash. But Doctor Watson has got to have it taken out for him, and dusted, and exhibited clearly, with a ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... went downstairs and out into the night. Here he could hear much better than in the room above; which had but one loophole for air and light, and that was almost stopped up, with a wisp of straw. He could now plainly hear volley firing, and a continued crackle of ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... them by disorderly methods." Our spirits may live in the Golden Age, but our bodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path and the staff struck carefully into the darkness before us to see that the path beyond is not a morass, and the light not a will o' the wisp. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... all the time. Miles and miles of somber landscape were made bright with merry song, and when the sun shone and all the golden summer lay spread out before us, it was glorious just to drift on through it like a wisp, of thistle-down, careless of how, or when, or where the wind should anchor us. 'There's a tang of gipsy blood in my veins that pants for the sun ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... bringing the flame upward in a violent curve. The flame settled on his little black pipe, his cheeks sucked until they must have met, and a slow unwilling noise arose, and with the return of his cheeks a small colorless wisp of possibly smoke came upon the air.—"That's not tobacco. Do you know what it is? It's wood! And I sit here smoking wood in my pipe when my wife is sick with worrying.... M'sieu! Jean"—leaning forward with jaw protruding and a oneness of bristly eyebrows, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... wood; place between them, bottom side up, three very hot flat-irons, and over them lay a wet cloth; hold the velvet over the cloth, with the wrong side down; when thoroughly steamed, brush the pile with a light wisp, and the velvet will look ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... once entered Jervis Whitney's mind that so fantastic a thing as a pair of red moccasins was to be found in the Old Dominion, or anywhere else outside of a monkey show, though he might search the world, with a will-o'-the-wisp, from Big Bone Lick to the Land of Nod. So, in saying, "let me but find them, and you shall have them," he thought he was hazarding his word no more than were he to say: "Let the man in the moon but give me the moon, and the moon, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... they carried a passport to indifference in the fact that they all wanted something, and it was clear to the meanest intelligence that they appeared to be more magnificent than they were, visions in dazzling complexions and long kid gloves, rattling up in third-class ticca-gharries, with a wisp of fodder clinging to their skirts. It was less interesting still when they belonged to the other class, the shabby ladies, nearly always in black, with husbands in the Small Cause Court, or sons before the police magistrate, who came to get it, if possible, "kept out of the paper." Successful ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... sentence, if you will not show us mercy. Pity those who condemn themselves and come to ask forgiveness. It is you who have given strength to the nation by dwelling with it; and if you leave us, we shall be like a wisp of straw torn from the ground to be the sport of the wind. This country is an island drifting on the waves, for the first storm to overwhelm and sink. Make it fast again to its foundation, and posterity will never forget to praise you. When we first heard of this ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... not feel, that this "will o' the wisp" phantom of your brain, can prove no guide to either of us in the pilgrimage of life? Perceive you not that the unworthy spirit in which you approach the Book of GOD'S Law must effectually prevent you from getting any wisdom ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... bag and looked at it. It must have been unfastened, for the next instant there was an avalanche on the snowfield of the counterpane—some money, a wisp of a handkerchief, a tiny booklet with thin leaves, covered with a powdery substance—and a necklace. I drew myself up slowly and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... except that of the blinking starres, and the wicked and devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... how kind they all were! indeed, though it was a busy season with every bird, each anxious to finish its work, yet I heard an old Rook one day ask little Jenny Wren 'if he should help her,' as he met her trying to drag a large wisp of straw with ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... They, accordingly, pulled on during the night, passing a large town, from which issued a loud noise, as of a multitude quarrelling. Once they fancied they saw a light following them, but it turned out to be a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... some have heard the elves it call Part Pagan, part Papistical. If unto me all tongues were granted, I could not speak the saints here painted. Saint Tit, Saint Nit, Saint Is, Saint Itis, Who 'gainst Mab's state placed here right is. Saint Will o' th' Wisp, of no great bigness, But, alias, call'd here FATUUS IGNIS. Saint Frip, Saint Trip, Saint Fill, Saint Filly;— Neither those other saint-ships will I Here go about for to recite Their number, almost infinite; Which, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... gives Helma! The look never fades, either, all the while Helma is puttin' away a pot of chocolate, a club sandwich, and an order of toasted muffins and marmalade. She just lets them big eyes of hers travel up and down, from Vee's smooth-fittin' gloves to the little wisp of straw-colored hair that curls up over the side of her fur hat. You couldn't blame Helma. I took a peek now and ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... me so irresistibly, as this fair occasion of feasting my sight with all those treasures of youthful beauty I had enjoyed, and which lay now almost entirely naked, his shirt being trussed up in a perfect wisp, which the warmth of the season and room made me easy about the consequence of. I hung over him enamoured indeed! and devoured all his naked charms with only two eyes, when I could have wished them at least an hundred for the ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... word happy, even in his solitary thoughts. Happiness, that priceless elusive treasure, can come only to a heart at peace in the warm sunshine of love. Material things can make for contentment, but ah! how uncertain is that will-o'-the-wisp happiness. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... momentarily brightened. One by one the stars in the deep-blue sky paled and went out and the blue dome changed and lightened. Night had vanished on invisible wings and silence broke to the music of a mockingbird. The rose in the east deepened; a wisp of cloud turned gold; dim distant mountains showed dark against the red; and low down in a notch a rim of fire appeared. Over the soft ridges and valleys crept a wondrous transfiguration. It was as if ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... exchange between Kells and his lieutenant, Jim Cleve sat on the edge of the table, one dusty boot swinging so that his spur jangled, a wisp of a cigarette in his lips. His face was white except where there seemed to be bruises under his eyes. Joan had never seen him look like this. She guessed that he had been drunk—perhaps was still drunk. That utterly abandoned face Joan was so keen to read made her bite her tongue ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... again to myself the monster had pulled himself together, his crutch under his arm, his hat upon his head. Just before him Tom lay motionless upon the sward; but the murderer minded him not a whit, cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a wisp of grass. Everything else was unchanged, the sun still shining mercilessly on the steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain, and I could scarce persuade myself that murder had been actually done and a human life cruelly cut short a moment ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and was surprised to find what a vivid picture he retained of her lingering in the porch to put it up; her rounded arms held above her head, her pretty shoulders, full throat, and glowing face thrown back, and a wisp of the very hair between her white teeth! He ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... woman emerges (all women are middle-aged when emerging from the dentist's office) looking as if she were playing the big emotional scene in "John Ferguson." A wisp of hair waves dissolutely across her forehead between her eyes. Her face is pale, except for a slight inflammation at the corners of her mouth, and in her eyes is that far-away look of one who has been face to face with Life. But she is through. She should ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... there, a bunch of fern or flowers, and brightening the trunks of the interlacing trees. As she saw the lights and shadows dancing before her she became serious for a moment, and fancied they were like the will-o'-the-wisp, and portended no good; but she soon quickened her pace, and at the first opening went out again into the road, where the sun was uninterrupted in his gaze, and her ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... and by no means a pleasant task to follow the commissioners in their erratic career, as they were led hither and thither by the four lights of magnetism above mentioned; the four "Wills-o'-the-Wisp" which dazzled the benighted and bewildered doctors on that wide and shadowy region of metaphysical inquiry — the influence of mind over matter. It will be better to state at once the conclusion they came to after so long and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... for leaping blindfolded had been over-ridden by circumstance. He felt himself to be a puppet of Fate, and he drifted with the tide because he lacked the strength to swim against it. That will-o'-the-wisp sense of security which had cheered him when first he had realized how much he owed to the protective wings of Mr. King had been rudely extinguished upon the very day of its birth; he had learnt that Mr. King was a sinister ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... touched a wisp of lace to her eyes, "Really, Doris, you are making it very painful for me, but some day you will see that I was wise. For the present, I would rather die than give up the money. I have ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... medium of expression than even marble; but certainly I have seldom been more impressed by a piece of modern sculpture. Miss Hosmer showed us photographs of her Puck—which I have seen in the marble—and likewise of the Will-o'-the-Wisp, both very pretty and fanciful. It indicates much variety of power, that Zenobia should be the sister of these, which would seem the more natural offspring of her quick and vivid character. But Zenobia is a high, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard — ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... into the fen, and for some days he wandered there, eating berries, sleeping on tussocks of grass, with water-snakes crawling over him and poisonous plants shedding their baneful dew on his flesh. He came to the lake at last. A will-o'the-wisp played along the surface. "'Tis she!" he cried. "I see her, standing in the light." Hastily fashioning a raft of cypress boughs he floated it and pushed toward the centre of the pond, but the eagerness of his efforts and the rising of a wind ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... door opened. Then, with Colonel Hugonin, came Martin Jeal—a wisp of a man like a November leaf—and regarded them from under his shaggy white hair ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... conclude that there is no such thing as Causality, that in searching for a cause of everything that happens, we are pursuing a mere will o' the wisp, using a mere vox nihili which has {36} as little meaning for the reflecting mind as fate or fortune? Surely, in the very act of making the distinction between succession and causality, in the very act of denying that we can discover any causal connexion between ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... she had not made her protest loudly and, perhaps, cleverly enough. Life had behaved very meanly to this woman. When she was young and sweet her sweetness had been violated and crushed by something harsh and reckless; and now she was not sweet any longer, but just a wisp of an old woman, and nobody would ever bother about her again; and life gives one no second chances. Yaverland lamented, as Ellen had done, the fate of those exceptional people who are old ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... a busy scene, empty trucks being pushed off, full trucks being pushed on, all the men carrying lighted lanterns, that wavered and glinted like "wills of the wisp." Presently a bell rung, and a portion of the men, to whom this was a signal, left off work and began to put on their jackets and to await the descent of the cage to take them up in parties. At this ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... sorority, association &c. (party) 712. volley, shower, storm, cloud. group, cluster, Pleiades, clump, pencil; set, batch, lot, pack; budget, assortment, bunch; parcel; packet, package; bundle, fascine[obs3], fasces[obs3], bale; seron[obs3], seroon[obs3]; fagot, wisp, truss, tuft; shock, rick, fardel[obs3], stack, sheaf, haycock[obs3]; fascicle, fascicule[obs3], fasciculus[Lat], gavel, hattock[obs3], stook[obs3]. accumulation &c. (store) 636; congeries, heap, lump, pile, rouleau[obs3], tissue, mass, pyramid; bing[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in the heavens a moon swung among her stars most queenly and sedate, careless altogether of this mortal world of strife and terrors; the sea had a golden roadway. A lantern light bobbed on the outer edge of the rock, shining through Olivia's bower like a will-o'-the-wisp, and he could hear in low tones the voices of Doom and his servant. Out at sea, but invisible, for beyond the moon's influence, a boat was being rowed fast: the beat of the oars on the thole-pins came distinctly. And in the wood behind, now cut ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... ankle, you may be sho'," observed Matthew Field, a long wisp of a man who had married too early to repent it too late, "an' I must say, if it kills me, that I always had a sharp eye ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... large, tender, dark eyes; a beautiful, tawny coat, covered with rich, dark spots; a long neck; a rather short body, measuring about seven feet in length; slender, shapely legs, terminating in feet with divided hoofs; and a long tail, ending in a wisp of dark-colored hair, which was a splendid thing with which to whisk off ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... my best," said Paul coldly, but the reproach cut deep. He was a failure. No nervous or intellectual effort could save him now, though he spent himself to the last heartbeat. He was the sport of a mocking Will o' the Wisp which ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... rest here, immovable but alert, in the breathless hush of noon. Showers of benevolent heat stream down upon this desolation; not the faintest wisp of vapour floats upon the horizon; not a sail, not a ripple, disquiets the waters. The silence can be felt. Slumber is brooding over the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... having been ordered to bring the prisoner to the town house for another examination, repaired to the cooler with four husky daredevils. They opened the door, all of them curious to look upon the Will-o'-the-wisp. But imagine their astonishment upon seeing him hanging from the bars of the window by his necktie! Some said that he was still writhing; others that he was already stiff. However that may be, they ran to Petrus Mauerer's house to inform him of the fact, and what is certain is that upon the latter's ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... it was, Lo there! Sometimes this power, and sometimes that power, was to engage in the war, just as if the whole world was mad and foolish like Britain. And thus, from year to year, has every straw been catched at, and every Will-with-a-wisp ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... love with the first hypocrite that had come his way, a follower of strange gods, cold, calculating, too selfish even to be sinful! Eheu! She was getting on my nerves. Analysis—always analysis! I could not let her be. She obsessed me as she had obsessed Jerry—a slender wisp of a thing that I could have broken in my fingers and would still, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... great scheme, if it comes off; and the "only begetter" of it, if report is true, is Mr. Winston Churchill, the strategist of the Antwerp expedition, who now aspires to be the Dardanelson of our age. Anyhow, the Sultan, lured on by the Imperial William o' the Wisp, is already capable ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... whether there is any reason to think that there is now less regard for the higher, the qualitative values of life, than at other periods. My opinion is that ever since the time of Rousseau and his contemporaries, we have been led astray by a will-of-the-wisp akin to the apocalyptic dreams of the Jews in the last two centuries before Christ, dreams which also filled the minds of the first generation of Christians. The Greeks never made the mistake of throwing their ideals into the future, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... says my grandfather, and fell to whistling, like a man facing it out. But the tune he chose was "Yankee Doodle!" This, of course, made the Jew dead sure of his man. But he was a lean little wisp of a man, and my grandfather too strongly built to be tackled. So the pair stood eyeing one another until, glancing up, my grandfather saw three soldiers come round the corner of the road from Plymouth, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... flat on her back, the little emaciated wisp of humanity, hardly raising the piecework quilt enough to make the bed seem occupied, and to account for the thin, worn old face on the pillow. But as I entered the room her eyes seized on mine, and I was aware of nothing but them and ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the wisp of hay-coloured hair which adorned his sunburnt forehead, kicked out his left heel as if there were a dog biting at his calves, and brought down his head to a bow. Old Mrs Blenkinsop dropped a curtsey. Little Polly, her ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Thames. Five provinces have declared for young Stadt, and there will be inundation, conflagration, constupration, consternation, and every sort of nation and nations, fighting away, up to their knees, in the damnable quags of this will-o'-the-wisp abode of Boors. It is said Bernadotte is amongst them, too; and, as Orange will be there soon, they will have (Crown) Prince Stork and King Log in their Loggery at the same time. Two to one on ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... thoughts to the facts of life. Now, when man leads his thoughts away from the world of the physical senses, he misses the corrective influence of this latter. If his thought is not able to be its own mentor, it will be as unsteady as a will-o'-the-wisp. Consequently, the student's thought must be exercised in such a way that its course and object are self-determined. Inner firmness and a capacity to concentrate strictly on one object: this is what such thinking must of itself engender. And for this reason the thought exercises ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... instant it was out of the question to think of putting out the flame that leaped from wisp to ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... perhaps the wonder to you, as to me, is how this momentous crisis in the life of such a wisp of nerve as myself has been transacted so quietly. My dear, it is a wonder to myself. I am tranquil, quiet, and happy. I look only on the present, and leave the future with Him who has hitherto been so kind to me. 'Take no thought for the morrow' is my motto, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... her a hat of touchwood," said the old dwarf, "so that even if she is seen it will look like a will-o'-the-wisp bobbing up and down. If she does not come, I will not. I must dance my dance. You do not know what it is! We two alone move together with a grace which even here is remarkable. But when I think that up yonder we shall ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... meekly, and grinned reassuringly through the wisp of hair that hung down over her face. She put the lock carefully back into place with a critical hand and continued: "I was just exercising my ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... conjure up visions of rooks cawing in the elms; of young curates in flat hats imbibing tea on green lawns; of housekeepers named Meadows or Fleming, in rustling black silk; of old Giles—fifty years, man and boy, on the place—wearing a smock frock and leaning on a pitchfork, with a wisp of hay caught in the tines, lamenting that the 'All 'asn't been the same, zur, since the young marster was killed ridin' to 'ounds; and then pensively wiping his eyes on a stray ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... you?" asked Tom, startled, and with reason; yet conscious, in his dark, dreary despair, of a vague glimmer, bearing the same relation to hope that a will-o'-the-wisp does to the light on our hearth ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Grayson perished in a cornfield. His empty coat served well for a scarecrow. A wisp of straw stuck out through a hole ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... when the front door swung wide and a man appeared in the light. A rush of frost, turned to vapor by the heat of the room, swirled about him to his knees and poured on across the floor, growing thinner and thinner, and perishing a dozen feet from the stove. Taking the wisp broom from its nail inside the door, the newcomer brushed the snow from his moccasins and high German socks. He would have appeared a large man had not a huge French-Canadian stepped up to him from the bar ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... her charge with interest and some concern. She saw with surprise that the girl had hit upon the only possible way of intriguing the interest of a spoiled darling like Captain O'Leary. She flitted like a will-o'-the-wisp before him. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... made excuses for him: he had come with such pleasurable anticipations, and everything had gone wrong. Heinz had behaved disagracefully, as only he could. While as for Louise, one was no more able to rely on her than on a wisp straw; and she, Madeleine, was little better than a fool not ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... upon such a spectacle at such a time, in the very deeps of the wilderness, under a night sky, heavy with drifting clouds. The whole civilized world had vanished, gone utterly like a wisp of vapor before a wind, and it was peopled only by these savage figures that danced ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... blue will-o'-the-wisp, a glitter in the cunning lights, she led him to a far end of the room where many cushions were, There she turned on him with a snake-like suddenness that was one of ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... ghost or vampire that attacks people in the dead of night and lays them prostrate. Lilu and lilitu are the spirits that flit by in the night. Of a specific character likewise are the conceptions connected with a demon known as ardat lili, 'maid of the night,' a strange female 'will-o'-the-wisp,' who approaches men, arouses their passions, but does not permit a satisfaction of them. Great importance being attached by the Babylonians to dreams, the belief in a 'maid of the night' was probably due to the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... Andy's uncertainties. Adeline, the cat, came out of the stable and looked at them contemplatively. Adeline still had the string tied to her tail, and a wisp of paper tied to the string. The Kid pounced and ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... in him, he sang and whistled, as he bustled about. The big porch was cleared, and a tree-stump put in as a block; he lit a wisp of hay to see if there was a draught underneath the boiler. The children stood open-mouthed gazing at him, and Lars Peter shook his ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo |
