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More "Magical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and strange marvels. We have told one of these tales in the record of King Rolf and Princess Torborg. We have now to tell that of Ragnar Lodbrok, a hero king of the early days, whose story is full of magical incidents. That this king reigned and was a famous man in his days there is no reason to doubt, but around his career gathered many fables, as was apt to be the case with the legends of great men in those days. To show ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... innovation in the habits of the young Indian was brought about by the magical power of two side-combs ornamented with colored glass. At the first sight of them, A-lee-lah manifested admiration almost equal to that which the scarlet peas had excited in her childish mind. Aunt Mary, perceiving this, parted the curtain of raven hair, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... hunger upon the few wild plums he had found, and more than once he had descended to the flume to slake his thirst; then reclimbed the height again, for there he knew lay the road of his goal. Again and again he tapped the solid rock or the scant earth about it for a response to that magical tip upon his rod; and now, as the second day lightened ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... the lofty spacious Rittersaal or Knight's Hall. The snow-flakes had ceased to beat against the lattice, and the storm had ceased to whistle; the sky was clear, and the bright full moon shone in through the wide oriel-windows, illuminating with magical effect all the dark corners of the curious room into which the dim light of my candles and the fire could not penetrate. As one often finds in old castles, the walls and ceiling of the hall were ornamented in ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... The moon behind the pine-tree branches was filling every cranny of her brain with wakefulness. The soft shiver of the wellnigh surfless sea on a rising tide, rose, fell, rose, fell. The sand cliff shone like a bank of snow. And all was inhabited, as a moonlit night is wont to be, by a magical Presence. A big moth went past her face, so close that she felt the flutter of its wings. A little night beast somewhere was scruttling in bushes or the sand. Suddenly, across the wan grass the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fructification of plants. The consequence was a feeling that these things were due to unseen agencies; and the attempt was made to bring those powers into some sort of relation with mankind, either by the compulsion of magical operations and magical formulae, or by sacrifices and offerings of propitiation, or by promises. A superhuman power might be placed under a spell, or placated with food and drink, or persuaded by ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... partaking somewhat of the Divinity. Medicine was always joined with magic: no remedy was administered without mysterious ceremony and incantation. The use of plants and herbs, both in medicinal and magical practices, was early and general. The mistletoe, pointed out by its very peculiar appearance and manner of growth, must have struck powerfully on the imaginations of a superstitious people. Its virtues may have been soon discovered. It has been fully proved, against the opinion of Celsus, that internal ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... oppressed her. Then, close upon the haunting reality of his voice, his touch, came inability to believe what had happened. Had a transient dreamful slumber crept upon her as she sat here alone? So quickly had the world suffered re-creation, so magical the whelming of old days in a new order, so complete the change in herself. One word she knew which had power from eternity to do these things, and that word neither he nor she had uttered. But there was no need, when the night spoke it in ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... of magic—that is what Pau stares at. For the Pyrenees, viewed from this royal box, are purely magical. They do not rise so high—eleven thousand feet, as mountains go, is nothing wonderful. There is no might nor majesty about them—distant some thirty odd miles. They are just an exquisite wall, well and truly laid, and carved with that careless cunning of the great Artificer into the likeness ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... fifteen years after Colbert's death, estimated the productive powers of France to have diminished by one-half in the previous thirty years. It seems, indeed, probable that the almost magical rapidity and effect of Colbert's early reforms turned Louis XIV's head, and that he was convinced that it only depended on his good pleasure to renew them to obtain the same result. He never found, as he never deserved to find, another Colbert; and he stumbled onward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... music. There must be something in this; the sculptor disregarded technicalities, and the imitation of actual nature, the better to produce the effect which he really does produce, in somewhat the same way as a painter works his magical illusions by touches that have no relation to the truth if looked at from the wrong point of view. But Powers considers it certain that the antique sculptor had bestowed all his care on the study of the human figure, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... clever workmanship of the Italians he merely opposed workmanship of a superior kind as well as quality—thoroughly artistic workmanship, that is to say—his sculpture would be far less interesting than it is. He does, indeed, noticeably do this; there is a felicity entirely delightful, almost magical, in every detail of his work. But when one compares it with the sculpture of M. Dubois, it is not of this that one thinks so much as of a certain individual character with which M. Saint-Marceaux always contrives ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... twilight—that wonderful hour after sunset—when the people are strolling on the pavement, polished to a mirror by the pacing of successive centuries, and when the cavalry soldiers group themselves at the angles under the lamp-posts or beneath the dimly lighted Gothic arches of the palace. This is the magical mellow hour to be sought by lovers of the picturesque in all the towns of Italy, the hour which, by its tender blendings of sallow western lights with glimmering lamps, casts the veil of half-shadow over any crudeness and restores the injuries of time; the hour when all the tints of these old buildings ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... with a stab of self-reproach, "it teaches one not to judge others until one really knows." Twice before to-night, on the day when she resolved for the sake of Jane's children to go to work, and again on the June evening when George returned to her, she had felt this sudden quickening of life, this magical sense of the unexplored mystery and beauty of the world that surrounded her. But she had been very young then, and on that June evening she had been deeply in love. To-night, she assured herself, there was no touch of personal romance. In some inexplicable way the talk with O'Hara had renewed ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... said to have composed twenty-nine poems for his class, and then declared that he had reached the proper limit,—that it would not be prudent to go beyond the magical number. It was not a dissipated class, but one with a good deal of life in it, much given to late hours and jokes, practical and unpractical. The Doctor himself is mysteriously silent concerning his college course, ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... are returned to the "Bibliographer," who is also the Secretary of the Sette of Odd Volumes, for his charming little brochure about Robert Houdin, his Life and Magical ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... and we suspect a knavish one, for without having any thing to do with the invention of the "art preservative of arts," he managed to rob another of the credit and profit of it. He was, however, never in Paris; he was never in his lifetime accused of the exercise of magical arts; he simply endeavored to make as much money as he could in Germany by underselling the copyists in the book market. All stories in which necromancy is attributed to him or to any other printer; all accounts of the opposition ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... month of September last year I received, through the grand-duke's special commission of inquiry, whose humanity you have already appreciated, your dear letters of the end of August and the beginning of September, which had such magical influence that they inundated me with joy by transporting me into the inmost circle ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... well if the Gipsies were now the only persons addicted to such wickedness; but this is not the case; for it is well known that almost every town is cursed with an astrological, magical, or slight-of-hand fortune-teller. There are two now in Southampton; and their wretched abodes are visited not only by vain and ignorant servants, but often by those who belong to the higher circles, and not unfrequently by those ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... longer wondered at people traveling all the way from England to Norway to behold this magical ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... The effect was magical. Just before all was cold and grey, and the clinging mist sent a shiver through those on deck; now, their eyes brightened with pleasure, as the very sight of the glowing orb seemed to have a warming—as ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... interested in the tricks the man showed him. At first it seemed to him almost magical, after he himself had shuffled the cards and cut them the dealer invariably turned up a king. Even admitting he might have various places of concealment, pockets in the lining of the sleeve, in the inside of the coat, and in various other parts of the dress, in which ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... Still that magical light illumined the Place, under the sky's rosy fire. The long glass facade of the restaurant sent out diamond flashes. The pigeons strutting in the open space in front of the Casino were jewels moving on sticks of coral. As ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... with both Guerin and Hurteloup: but it is obvious that they could not be company for him: between him and them there was no great possibility of conversation. The boy Emmanuel took up more of his time: he came now almost every evening. Since their magical talk together a revolution had taken place in the boy. He had plunged into reading with a fierce desire for knowledge. He would come back from his books bewildered and stupefied. Sometimes he seemed even less intelligent than before: he would hardly speak: Olivier ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... of the case. For the nature of miracles does not consist in the inconceivable—at least not in the planless and arbitrary,—but in the fact that they call the attention of man to God and his government; and this leads to the reverse of all that is magical and necromantic, because the magical is unworthy of the idea of God and contradicts all the other self-testimony of God. Now if the nature of miracles consists in the fact that they call my attention to God and his government, an event ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... of terror on seeing the Dwarf, but this only irritated the little monster; muttering a few magical words he summoned two giants, who bound the King with great ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... in it, all the beauties in Paris would be at his feet. But how to regain it? "Oh, for one minute of that beauty!" cried the little man; "what would he not give to appear under that enchanting form!" The magician hereupon waved his stick over his head, pronounced some awful magical words, and twisted him round three times; at the third twist, the men in company seemed struck with astonishment and envy, the ladies clasped their hands, and some of them kissed his. Everybody declared his beauty to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... holiness or taboo and therefore kept from contact with the ground, 7; festival of the wild mango, which is not allowed to touch the earth, 7-11; other sacred objects kept from contact with the ground, 11 sq.; sacred food not allowed to touch the earth, 13 sq.; magical implements and remedies thought to lose their virtue by contact with the ground, 14 sq.; serpents' eggs or snake stones, 15 sq.; medicinal plants, water, etc., not allowed to ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... from the President the pledge that the "cabalistic words" shall be uttered by him on the first of January, 1863, unless the rebellion is abandoned before that time. Thanks and honor to the President for the promise! But we shall not look for the magical operation of the words till they are uttered without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... a restful summer at the seaside, with a stronger arm than Jessie's to lean upon, and more magical medicine to help her back to health than any mortal doctor could prescribe. Jessie danced again with a light heart,—for pleasure, not for pay,—and found the new life all the sweeter for the trials of the old one. In the ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... equally magnificent. The eyes of the spectators were dazzled by dresses trimmed with precious stones. Never had there been seen such profusion of light, flowers, perfumes, and diamonds. In this magical setting, fashionable beauties, with their dresses worked with silver and gold foil, their turbans of Eastern stuffs, their jewels and ancient cameos, appeared like sultanas. It was a most ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... error in Mr. Clay, as the leader of a party, to run at all against General Jackson. He should have hoarded his prestige for 1836, when the magical name of Jackson would no longer captivate the ignorant voter. Mr. Clay's defeat in 1832, so unexpected, so overwhelming, lamed him for life as a candidate for the Presidency. He lost faith in his star. In 1836, when there was a chance of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... I awoke the change was magical. The weather was magnificent. Air and sea, as if by mutual consent, had regained their serenity. Every trace of the storm, even the faintest, had disappeared. I was saluted on my awakening by the first joyous tones I had heard from the Professor for many ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the Scotch, who indeed are not represented at all. But are the Irish better governed than the Scotch? Surely not. This circumstance has of late been used as an argument against reform. It proves nothing against reform. It proves only this, that laws have no magical, no supernatural, virtue; that laws do not act like Aladdin's lamp or Prince Ahmed's apple; that priestcraft, that ignorance, that the rage of contending factions, may make good institutions useless; that intelligence, sobriety, industry, moral freedom, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... possible humbleness, but yet with a countenance taking knowledge, that we knew that he spake it but merrily, "That we were apt enough to think there was somewhat supernatural in this island; but yet rather as angelical than magical. But to let his lordship know truly what it was that made us tender and doubtful to ask this question, it was not any such conceit, but because we remembered, he had given a touch in his former speech, that this land had laws of secrecy touching strangers." ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... was whispered in the ear of his listener, but the effect was magical. The Honorable Mr. Tickels started, and rapidly surveyed the person and countenance of the Corporal; then he reddened with confusion, and began to murmur a broken apology for his conduct, in which he ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... is one of the few who can help in this situation. He's going to have to work out counter stories—amusing stories—about all those magical creatures his people tell about. He's going to have to hint at the possibilities of close co-ordination and co-operation between members of his own species. And he's going to have to suggest the possibility of friendly ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... then, to know the political and moral condition of a state, we must ask what rank women hold in it. Their influence embraces the whole life. A wife,—a mother,—two magical words, comprising the sweetest sources of man's felicity. Theirs is the reign of beauty, of love, of reason. Always a reign! A man takes counsel with his wife; he obeys his mother; he obeys her long after she has ceased to live, and the ideas which ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... hides in the beautiful eyes Of children who treat her well; In the little round hole where the eyeball lies She weaves her magical spell. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Trask, and turned to see Shanghai Tom staring into the bowl, his eyes fairly popping out of his head at this magical cookery which transformed a ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... shadows of the vines that stirred against the sky wavered all over her as she stood before him. So strangely did the light and shade move upon her, that it seemed as if she glided through the ripples of some liquid, mysterious element, not air nor light nor water, but a magical mingling of the three. He had just time to feel, vaguely, for everything was blurred, this sense of strangeness and of sweetness, too, when ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... statement of Josephus on Pilate's governorship, we find, "At that time there appeared a certain man of magical power, if it is permissible to call him a man, whom certain Greeks call a Son of God, but his disciples, the True Prophet, said to raise the dead, and heal all diseases. His nature and his form were human; a man of simple appearance, mature age, small in stature, three cubits ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Ga., and Howard University, Washington, D.C. Hampton, as usual, welcomed a crowd of visitors, and among these a number of distinguished men—Governor Lee of Virginia, and Senator Dawes, being those most widely known. The visitor sees here the magical touch of genius in these large and commodious buildings, the schools, the shops, the houses, the cottages, and, crowning all, the stately chapel. The plat of the village in which these are congregated ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... the king of the Black Islands, I got up, dressed me in haste, took my scimitar, and followed her so quick that I soon heard the sound of her feet before me, and then walked softly after her, for fear of being heard. She passed through several gates, which opened upon her pronouncing some magical words; and the last she opened was that of the garden, which she entered: I stopped at the gate, that she might not perceive me, As she crossed a plot, and looking after her as far as I could in the night, I perceived that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... shut out, than have found a medley of things sacred and profane, where the emblems of our highest hopes and aspirations were placed in insulting indifference side by side with the embodied forms of sensuality. Here, in this scene of magical beauty, it seemed to me for a moment that the years had rolled back, that Christianity had still to fight with a living Paganism, and that the battle was not yet won. It was the same all through the house; and there were many other matters which filled me with regret, mingled with vague and ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... the folding-doors in the lobby, and in a stentorian voice shouted some word, which Ellerey did not catch. Its effect was magical. Immediately there arose a loud hum of voices, the clinking and clatter of innumerable glasses and plates, and the rattle of dice and dominoes. Then Theodor let the door swing to again, muffling the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... deck, with the powder-barrel. At every new acquisition, the savages uttered cries of joy, repeating mona, mona signifying beautiful. The mirrors were at first received with the most delight, but this soon changed into terror; they evidently conceived there was something magical about them, and flung them all into the sea. The coloured glass beads had then the preference, but the distribution caused many disputes. Those who had not obtained any, wished to deprive the rest of them by force. The clamour ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... a vast space, the limits of which extended far beyond my vision. An atmosphere of magical luminousness permeated the entire field of view. I was amazed to see no trace of animalculous life. Not a living thing, apparently, inhabited that dazzling expanse. I comprehended instantly, that, by the wondrous power of my lens, I had penetrated beyond the grosser particles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... a gap of centuries, filled in by impossible stories of magical flight by witches, wizards, and the like—imagination was fertile in the dark ages, but the ban of the church was on all attempt at scientific development, especially in such a matter as the conquest of the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... Did a little boy's boots ever stand still when a drum was playing, "March, march away"? No doubt his father was keeping step to just such sounds, on his path to martial glory! The fife and bugle whistled with magical voices, and ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... to be the great educator, not only as regards races, and under the influence of time, which is in a measure true, but as regards individuals and classes of men, and that in the twinkling of an eye, with magical rapidity. Were this theory practically sound, the vote would really prove a talisman. In that case we should give ourselves no rest until the vote were instantly placed in the hands of every Chinaman landing in California, and ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... power! Napoleon, the son of liberty, to whom he owed everything, had disowned his mother, and was now about to fall. Those glorious triumphs were now over when the people of Italy consoled themselves for defeat and submitted to the magical power of that liberty which preceded the Republican armies. Now, on the contrary, it was to free themselves from a despotic yoke that the nations of Europe had in their turn taken up arms and were ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... magical formulas—the Russian "w" and the sad story about Rachmaninoff's daughter—may, of course, be held in reserve—but the chances are that you will be unable to use them, for during an evening at the opera there will probably be ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... his fate was ruled by some resolute, unseen force, against which all resistance would be unavailing. Moreover, his mind was now entirely possessed by the haunting vision of Lysia—a vision half-human, half-divine —a beautiful, magical, irresistible Sweetness that allured his soul, and roused within him a wordless passion ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... often, indeed, one may say generally, associated with a conception of salvation widely different from that of Schleiermacher. It has been oftenest associated with the notion of something purely external, forensic, even magical. It is connected, even down to our own time, with reliance upon the blood of Christ, almost as if this were externally applied. It has postulated a propitiatory sacrifice, a vicarious atonement, a completed transaction, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... absent owners, about whom the shoes are indeed gossiping. So let the remainder of the furniture keep still while the shoes do their best. Let us call to mind a classic fairy-tale involving shoes that are magical: The Seven Leagued Boots, for example, or The Enchanted Moccasins, or the footwear of Puss in Boots. How gorgeous and embroidered any of these should be, and at a crisis what sly antics they should be ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... seemed to be some power in the stranger that was more than human, something magical and compulsory, when he seized her and gently trotted her round. But lingering emotions may have led her memory to play pranks with the scene, and her vivid imagination at that youthful age must be taken into account in believing her. However, there is no doubt that the ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... woman, turning to the awed people who seemed more than ever disposed to look on her as a supernatural being, said sternly—"Why linger you here? Are you unmindful of your duties? See you not how the shadows lengthen?" These words produced a magical effect: the deep emotions by which the mass had been recently swayed were swiftly replaced by equally profound feelings of a different nature, as cloud succeeds cloud in ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... penetrated with a quieter and more reflective spirit, the richness of fancy in them, as well as the amatory character of many, perhaps the majority, favour a similar attribution. All alike display Donne's peculiar poetical quality—the fiery imagination shining in dark places, the magical illumination of obscure and shadowy thoughts with the lightning of fancy. In one remarkable respect Donne has a peculiar cast of thought as well as of manner, displaying that mixture of voluptuous and melancholy meditation, that swift transition of thought from the marriage sheet to the shroud, which ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... she turned to him, pulled his head down, and whispered a magical something that brought a smile to his face such as Maya thought no earthly being could wear. In his eyes gleamed a happiness and a vigor as if the whole big world were his to own, and suffering and misfortune were banished forever from the face of ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... provided elsewhere, and they must not do so again. The ministers, being entirely in the power of the congregations, had to obey. In short, the elder and his family were excommunicated, spiritually boycotted, interdicted, and cut off from social intercourse; without any of the magical ceremonies of the Vatican, they were as effectually excommunicated as if the whole seventy cardinals and the Pope in person had pronounced the dread sentence. In a great town perhaps such a thing would not be so marked or so much felt; in ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... "Say, what magical charm, or 'Open Sesame,' did you use on this?" asked Allen, after vainly trying. "We can't make it ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... his clothes. Every article seemed to be made to defy the utmost rigour of the elements. His hat (Lincoln and Bennett) was hard and heavy. It sounded upon an entrance-hall table like a drum. A little magical loop in the lining explained the cause of its weight. Somehow, his hats were never either old or new—not that he bought them second-hand, but when he got a new one he took its 'long-coat' off, as he called ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... win her grace. If he think his self-known attractions will not suffice, he will trust to some possible hidden merits, unperceived by himself and the world, but which will manifest themselves to her sight in a magical manner vouchsafed to lovers. Or at worst, if he admit himself to be mean and unlikely, he will put reliance upon woman's caprice, which, as we all know, often makes strange selections. As for me, I took myself to be ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... representing natural objects, and possessing magical virtue to bring down various species of monkeys and apes and other small mammals (i. 417), and as charms for the men ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... all of the original thirteen in the Articles of Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual is most conclusive. Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "State rights," asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the "sovereignty" of the States, but the word even is not in the National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions. What is a "sovereignty" in the political ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... on the point of coming to blows. But suddenly, with an almost magical abruptness, Julius's ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... beneath the warm skin of her head. Then I held her breasts, that had once seemed to me like two little blind faces raised in prayer. But imagery no longer decorates my thought. My hallucination is no longer a weaver of magical phrases. But stark, real—its heart beating under ribs, its skin glowing with perspiration, its nipples standing out. As I caressed her ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... authors that he was laying under contribution began to have marked effect upon the circulation of the magazine, and it was not long before the original figures were doubled, an edition—enormous for that day—of seven hundred and fifty thousand copies was printed and sold each month, the magical figure of a million was in sight, and the periodical was rapidly taking its place as one of the largest successes ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... beautiful simplicity and correct taste struck me at first with an impression of poverty and coldness. At the Church of St. John and St. Paul is the famous martyrdom, or rather assassination, of St. Peter Martyr, by Titian, one of the most magical pictures in the world. Its tragic horror is redeemed by its sublimity. Here too is a most admirable series of bas-reliefs in white marble, representing the history of our Saviour, the work of a modern sculptor. Here too the Doges are buried; and close to the Church ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... in the middle of Trescott's property was hardly allowed to cool before the builders were at work on another house. It had sprung upward at a fabulous rate. It was like a magical composition born of the ashes. The doctor's office was the first part to be completed, and he had already moved in his new books ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... Barbauld, Clara Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe; and traces of the influence of each may be found in his work. Henry Fitzowen loves Adeline de Montfort, but has a powerful and diabolical rival—Walleran—whose character combines the most dangerous qualities of Mrs. Radcliffe's villains with the magical gifts of a wizard. Fitzowen, not long before the day fixed for his wedding, is led astray, while hunting, by an elusive stag, a spectral monk and a "wandering fire," and arrives home in a thunderstorm to find his ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... the cross-roads, there to be stopped by a flanking fire from the wood and from the 92nd (Gordon) Highlanders lining the roadway in front.—"Ninety-second, don't fire till I tell you," exclaimed the Duke. The volley rang out when the horsemen were but thirty paces off. The effect was magical. Their front was torn asunder, and the survivors made off in a panic that spread to Foy's battalions of foot and disordered the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of our country we read that the classics are doomed and about to pass out of our lives, but the classics can never die. I sometimes dream of a magical time when the sun and moon will be larger than now and the sky more blue and nearer to the world. The days will be longer than these days and when labor is over and there falls the great flood of light ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... water, as it yields its comparative heat to the air. The formation and suspension of clouds, in all their varied characteristics, have the same origin. That highly attenuated haze which invests the distant landscape, particularly mountains, with its magical purple hue, is due to the same, but still more ethereal interposition of infinitesimal globules of suspended moisture. In corroboration of this being the true explanation of the phenomena of haze, fogs, etc., is the fact, that as soon as clouds prevail, denoting an electric ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... scene. Clouds formed on the Italian side and invaded the valleys of the Pennine Alps without veiling their summits. We soon had under our eyes a second sky, a lower sky, a sea of clouds, whence emerged a perfect archipelago of peaks and snow-wrapped mountains. There was something magical in it, which the greatest poets could ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... became insupportable. As for the robbers, these gentlemen, who always keep a sharp look-out, and rarely endanger their precious persons without some sufficient motive, and who, moreover, seem to have some magical power of seeing through stone walls and into portmanteaus, were no doubt aware that our luggage would neither have replenished their own nor their ladies' wardrobes, and calculated that people who travel for pleasure are not likely ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... padme, hum," many times over. We repeated the sacred formula after her, as if we had always been brought up to it. I noticed that Hilda walked the way of the sun. It is an important point in all these mysterious, half-magical ceremonies. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... is called about here. The birch-trees there are more beautiful than any in the world; and when the clouds are streaming over in rain-grey, and the sky soaring above in higher blue, just-seen, those gold and silver creatures have such magical loveliness as makes the hearts of mortals ache. The fairies, who have been driven off the moor, alone watch them with equanimity, if they be not indeed the birch-trees themselves—especially those little very golden ones which have strayed out into the heather, on the far side of the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... tangible as a third live being in her quaint little room. It seemed a sort of left-over, still vaguely attached, from the wonderful dream she had just been having. Trying to recall the dream, she shut her eyes again; Missy's one regret, in connection with her magical dreams, was that the sparkling essence of them was apt to become dim when she awoke. But now, when she opened her eyes, the suffusion ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Vicomtesse de Beauseant through the Marcillacs! These words, on which the countess threw ever so slight an emphasis, by reason of the pride that the mistress of a house takes in showing that she only receives people of distinction as visitors in her house, produced a magical effect. The Count's stiff manner relaxed at once as he returned ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... took my outstretched hand in his left hand and raised it to his lips as he held out his right to the Reverend Mr. Goodloe. So real had been that fraction of an instant when I had stood between the two men that I almost felt the sensation of alarm a second time as I saw Nickols' slender, magical, artist's fingers laid in the slim, powerful hand of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, but the gentle voice reassured me as the Harpeth Jaguar answered the intruder, or what he must have felt to be the intruder, for I had something of that feeling myself ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... when kindled. His voice was one of extraordinary compass, melody and power. From the 'deep and dreadful sub-bass of the organ' to the most aerial warblings of its highest key, hardly a pipe or stop was wanting. Like all the magical voices, it had the faculty of imparting to the most familiar and commonplace expressions an inexpressible fascination. Probably no orator ever lived who, when speaking on a great occasion, was more completely absorbed with his theme. "I do not know how it is ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... impressed first by its amazing variety, and almost as quickly by a certain distinctive quality which gives all the varied specimens a kind of homogeneity. As we analyse our impressions, we find that both of these qualities have a common source—the complete objectivity and almost magical imagination of supreme genius. Objectivity and imagination, the gifts of the epic bards of classical antiquity, are today the rarest of blessings. We live in an age of morbid emotion and introspectiveness; wherein the poets, such as they are, have sunk to the level of mere pathologists engaged ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... words had a magical effect. Sponsilier asked for suggestions, when Bob urged that every man available go into the post and accompany the inspection party that afternoon. Since Forrest and himself were unknown, they would take about three of the ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... those dark heavens paused Destiny, With her last star descending in the gleam Of the cold morrow, from the emptied sky. The hour, the distance from her old self, all The novelty and loneness of the place Had left a lovely awe on that fair face, And all the land grew strange and magical. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... rapidity with which a gun can be dislodged from its carriage, and every portion of its complicated machinery scattered upon the ground, is hardly to be believed unless witnessed; but the wonder is increased tenfold, on seeing with what magical celerity the death-dealing weapon can be put together again. These operations will be readily understood by an examination of the Illustrations. In that at the foot of page 175 the cannon is lying useless upon the earth; one wheel already forms the rude resting-place of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... quantities of it; And for knowledge if any one burns, We keep an extremely small prophet, a prophet Who brings us unbounded returns: For he can prophesy With a wink OF his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... speak and act with equal truthfulness ... his human characters have not only such depth and individuality that they do not admit of being classed under common names, and are inexhaustible even in conception; no, this Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits, calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits before us the witches with their unhallowed rites, peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs; and these beings, though existing only in the imagination, nevertheless ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... degrees as the sun went down, the palaces of the superb city began to shed light from their lattices, set in rich sculptured masonry; and here and there, where festivity prevailed, grand illuminations sprung up with magical quickness, the reflection from each separate galaxy rendering it bright as day far, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... something magical, like going to the moon; and I say the thing should be kept exceptional and felt as something breathless and bizarre. My ideal hero would own his horse, but would have the moral courage to hire his motor. Fairy tales are the only sound guidebooks to life; I like the Fairy Prince ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... trouble over the loss of my Magic Belt. Every little while I want to do something magical, and find I can't because the Belt is gone. That makes me angry, and when I'm angry I can't have a good time. ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... has its fair or its festival there, And life seems immune to all trouble and care— Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams, Sea-girdled and basking in magical air. ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a look and of changing expression, so magical with a child, was hardly less so with men. There have been very few instances in history where there is such constant reference to merely physical attributes as in the case of Mr. Webster. His general appearance and his eyes are the first and ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Oaklands, dismounting slowly and with effort, for he was still lamentably weak, "I have not seen you in a habit so long, I declare I should scarcely have known you; the effect is quite magical." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of experience. When John Smith wrote a note to his companions at Jamestown, and thus communicated his desires to them, it was unintelligible to the Indians. They had no knowledge of writing and looked on the marks as magical. When Columbus' ships first appeared on the cost of the new world, the natives looked upon them as great birds. They had never seen large sailing vessels. To vary the illustration, the art of reading, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... laden with their own delights In that enchanted place, wherein Time Knew no divisions harsh of night and day, But light was always, and desire of sleep Was satisfied at once with slumber soft, Desire of food with magical repast, By unseen hands on golden tables spread. But these the knight accepted like a god, All less was lost in that excess of joy, The crowning marvel of her love for him, Assuring him of his divinity. Meanwhile remembrance of the earth appeared Like the vague trouble ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... material world comprehending distinct individual existences. Being associated with this principle of illusion, Brahman is enabled to project the appearance of the world, in the same way as a magician is enabled by his incomprehensible magical power to produce illusory appearances of animate and inanimate beings. Maya thus constitutes the upadana, the material cause of the world; or—if we wish to call attention to the circumstance that Maya belongs to Brahman as a /s/akti—we may say ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... of the time, haunted by painful memories of his past life, Francis saw in money the special instrument of the devil; in moments of excitement he went so far as to execrate it, as if there had been in the metal itself a sort of magical power and secret curse. Money was truly for him the sacrament ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... a little more or less could not affect it; whereas it was a matter of vital importance that the angry and suspicious colonists should find one British statesman with whom they could agree. The real justification of the proclamation lay in the magical effect which it had upon the public temper. The news that the ordinance had been disallowed, and that the whole question of the political prisoners had been once more thrown into the melting-pot, had greatly excited the public ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... indulged Insolency of a domineering—and as you will precipitately augur—an indomitable Will! And there is exuberant SELF-POWER, that, from the innermost mind, oozing up, out, distilling, circulating along nerve and vein, effects a magical metamorphosis! turns the nymph into a squire of arms; usurping even the clamorous and blood-sprinkled joy of man—the tempestuous and terrible CHASE, which, in the bosom of peace, imaging war, shows in the rougher lord of creation himself, as harsh, wild, and turbulent! Oh, how much other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the chaste kiss, Of this magical Miss, Such wonderful transports produce, Since the "world you forget," "When your lips once have met," My Counsel will ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... deep in the earth his magical books and wand, for he was resolved never more to make use of the magic art. And having thus overcome his enemies, and being reconciled to his brother and the King of Naples, nothing now remained to complete his happiness but to revisit his native land, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... frequented by the artist, from which, they said, fearful sounds were heard proceeding on stormy nights, and where the great master was known to have lain as one dead for hours together, on different occasions. These persons believed that at such times Paganini had only come back to life by magical agency. Another swore to having seen a tall, dark shadow bending over him at one of his concerts, and directing his hand; while a third testified that he had seen nine or ten shadowy hands hovering about the strings ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... back to the Sun. Magical and splendid spectacle! Totality has commenced, the Sun has disappeared, the black disk of the Moon covers it entirely, leaving all round it a magnificent corona of dazzling light. One would suppose it to be an annular eclipse, with the difference that this can ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... and sadness. And to their own superstitions, they added those of the Rome which they conquered. They dreaded the Roman she-poisoners and witches, who, like Horace's Canidia, still performed horrid rites in grave-yards and dark places of the earth. They dreaded as magical the delicate images engraved on old Greek gems. They dreaded the very Roman cities they had destroyed. They were the work of enchanters. Like the ruins of St. Albans here in England, they were all full ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... very neat and trim it was. Here a man produced a curious red suit of clothes, rather too small for me; but still a lot better than Bill's rags. He begged me to put it on, which I did. I know now that it was the red magical suit in which the gipsies dress their magical puppets on St. John's Eve; but as I did not then know this, I put it on quite willingly, wishing that it ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... was magical. The heart of the brewer was touched. A long waggon on which we could read the eloquent words "pale ale and porter" stopped next day before our door. For twenty minutes a man with burthened step climbed the Jacob's ladder which led to the poet's attic, and one hundred ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... complexion, which was the same color as your olives. Well, this Arab, whenever he had done eating or working, used to sit down to rest himself, as I am resting myself now, and smoked I cannot tell you what sort of magical leaves, in a large amber-mouthed tube; and if any officers, happening to pass, reproached him for being always asleep, he used quietly to reply: 'Better to sit down than to stand up, to lie down than to sit down, to be dead than to lie down.' He was an acutely melancholy ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the past, without magical skill. Many thanks, my venerable friend, but I will not put your ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... come," he said to himself, understanding the language of those flowers, each of which had doubtless been studied as to form and as to color, and given its true place in the bouquet, where it produced its own magical effect. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... Circle, would ever wish to see another. In spite of the warm, gorgeous, and ever-changing play of colour hovering over the path of the unseen sun, in spite of the dazzling auroral dances and the magical transfiguration of the forests, the absence of true daylight and of all signs of warmth and life exercises at last a depressing influence on the spirits. The snow, so beautiful while the sunrise setting illumination lasts, wears a ghastly monotony at all other times, and the air, so exhilarating, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... ninth year was one of the best that he ever had; it was perhaps the last of the MAGICAL Christmases. After this he was to know too much, was to see Father Christmas vanish before a sum in arithmetic, and a stocking change into something that "boys who go to school never have"—the last of the Christmases of divine magic, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... of the foreign seamen rose in the magical evening air, Faint and far away, as it seemed, but they knew it was, ah, so near; Far away as her heart from Dan's as he sheepishly drew to her side, And near as her heart when he kissed the lips of his newly ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... with the realization of the hope to know this magical Nature you learn that the actuality varies from the preconceived ideal otherwise than in surpassing it. Unless you enter the torrid world equipped with scientific knowledge extraordinary, your anticipations are likely to be at fault. Perhaps you had pictured to yourself the effect of perpetual summer ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... conquer you in one way, I will in another. Go, both of you, and join the bird that warned you, and live in the air and the trees until you repent your stubbornness and promise to become my slaves. The tuxix has spoken, and her magical ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... general engagement ensued, some of the inhabitants of the dormitory siding with Stephen, and some with Bramble, until it seemed as if the coveted blanket would have parted in twain. In the midst of the confusion a sentry at the door suddenly put his head in and shouted "Nix!" The signal had a magical effect on all but the uninitiated Stephen, who, profiting by his adversaries' surprise, made one desperate tug at his ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Set out on a sudden for Spain, Because, runs the story, He'd met with a hoary Mysterious sorcerer chap, Who, trouble to save him, Most thoughtfully gave him A magical traveling cap. I barely believe that the story is true, But here's what that ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... its braziers, retains the winter chill. Here in the garden the air is balmy, and the Judas trees are all a crimson mist. See how the green is creeping, like an inundation through the russets of last year's grasses. In another fortnight all this magical change will have been wrought, and those who come later will have missed the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... occasions on which the sermon was preached, is reported to have been remarkable. The manner of the orator—downcast, as with the inward oppression of the same solemnity that he, in speaking, cast like a spell on the audience—indefinitely heightened the magical power of the awful conception excited. Not Bourdaloue himself, with that preternatural skill of his to probe the conscience of man to its innermost secret, could have exceeded the heart-searching rigor with which, in the earlier part of the discourse, Massillon had put to the rack the quivering ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... day in those regions, when the ocean is clear as glass, and ice-humps and ice-mountains of every shape and size are glittering in the sun's rays with intense brilliancy, while the delicate whiteness of these floating islands, and the magical atmospheric illusions by which they are frequently surrounded, ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... some of it to Hans, also to Umslopogaas, who was with the wounded Zulus, who, we found, were progressing well towards complete recovery, and lastly to Goroko who also was worn out. On all of these the effect of that magical brew ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... The haze of years may magnify all the nobler outlines, while it conceals all that would enfeeble their dignity. To me, his eloquence now resembles those midsummer night dreams, in which all is contrast, and all is magical. Shapes, diminutive and grotesque for a moment, and then suddenly expanding into majesty and beauty; solitudes startling the eye with hopeless dreariness, and at a glance converted into the luxury of landscape, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... with the ruddy glow of health upon their cheeks, and she would have died for any one of them any moment of her life, and finally she, bowed with age and bent with care and labor, dies, and at the moment the magical touch of death is upon her face, she looks as though she never had had a care, and her children burying her cover her face with tears. Do you tell me God can afford to damn that kind of a woman? One such act of injustice ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... him was another, and further south three more. So Hobb went out to look at them, and found not five but fifty peacocks sweeping the Downs with their heavy trains, or opening and shutting them like gigantic magical flowers. Following the throng of birds, he came shortly to a barn already known to him, but he had never seen it as he saw it now. For the roof was crowded with peacocks, and peacocks strayed in flocks within and without; and sitting in the doorway was Heriot, the sight ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... evening, before his departure, did the widow present her swain with the fatal herring; and the swain received it with as many marks of gratitude and respect, as some knight in ancient times would have shown when presented with some magical gift by ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... originated in the fact that he was an old friend of the Froudes, and, as soon as Chelston Cross was completed, he would pay them protracted visits there. This was the then Lord Wentworth, who for me was a magical being because he was Byron's grandson. Another acquaintance who brought with him a subtle aroma of poetry was Wentworth's remarkable brother-in-law, Wilfrid Blunt, then the handsomest of our younger ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... were never right in their views as to how the vastly greater image than their own should be treated. They measured Napoleon and his loftier qualities by their own tumultuous limitations, which prevented them from seeing how wide the gulf was between him and the ordinary man. He was a magical personality, and ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... sentiment of the ideal life transforming the life which now is, to believe in it and even to serve it—hard, but not impossible. And in the young the qualities take a brighter colour, and the rich and magical time of youth adds graces of its own to them; and then, in happy ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... purpose; the profits being promised beforehand to the Committee of the Portuguese Relief Fund, formed to assist the sufferers from Massena's devastations. It consists of rather less than a hundred Spenserian stanzas, the story of Roderick merely ushering in a magical revelation, to that too-amorous monarch, of the fortunes of the Peninsular War and its heroes up to the date of writing. The Edinburgh Review, which hated the war, was very angry because Scott did not celebrate Sir John Moore ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... several times while it gradually assumes the shape of an egg. After some few seconds it has become a large duck's egg which he places in an egg cup on the table in full view of the audience. This little trick is very effective, easy to do, and can be purchased for half-a-crown at any magical depot in London. ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... that the Great Mother should still her restless tongue for the moment. He was doing his duty and the will of his dead father, but his heart ached when he thought of the woman who should be by his side. Oh that they two could undertake this magical journey together, silent and alone in a silent and lonely world. He made no inquiries for Anne, and Daisy said nothing. Only when the car was humming along the homeward road to land them at the church did she open her mouth. The awe had worn off, and she babbled ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... feeling of awe crept over me. My memory worked with startling power. The ominous, the insignificant, the great, the small, the wonderful, the commonplace—all appeared before my mental vision in magical succession. Pages of my history were recalled which had been so long forgotten that they seemed to belong to a previous existence. I heard all the voices of the past laughing, crying, telling what I had heard them tell in ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... however, were of opinion that no attack would take place that day, which would be devoted to preparation and to the removal of every available means of the moral effect produced upon the minds of the soldiery by the supposed magical darkening of the moon. The onslaught would be on the morrow, they said, and they proved ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... fell into the sea and was swept away, and so the inventive god set to work to make another, this time of birchwood with pegs of oak, strung with the silky hair of a very young girl. This completed, he sat down to play, with magical results. Wild beasts became tame, birds flocked from the air, fishes from the sea, to hear the wonderful sounds; brooks paused on their way and winds held their breath to listen. Women began to cry, then men followed their example, and at last the god himself wept, and his tears ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... absolute power! Napoleon, the son of liberty, to whom he owed everything, had disowned his mother, and was now about to fall. Those glorious triumphs were now over when the people of Italy consoled themselves for defeat and submitted to the magical power of that liberty which preceded the Republican armies. Now, on the contrary, it was to free themselves from a despotic yoke that the nations of Europe had in their turn taken up arms and were preparing to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Singhalese name of this disciple, is more pronounceable. He also was one of the principal disciples, called Buddha's "left-hand attendant." He was distinguished for his power of vision, and his magical powers. The name in the text is derived from the former attribute, and it was by the latter that he took up an artist to Tushita to get a view of Sakyamuni, and so make a statue of him. (Compare the similar story in chap. vi.) He went to hell, and released his mother. He also died before ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... persuasion might succeed where violence had failed; and accordingly a proclamation was widely circulated, promising pardon and redress of wrongs to all who would at once return to their allegiance, and pointing out at the same time the futility of further resistance. The effect of this move was magical; within a few days ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... or ingots, attested by Caesar and by surviving examples, which weigh roughly, some two-thirds of a pound, some 2-2/3 lb, but mostly 1-1/3 lb. In religion, the chief feature was the priesthood of Druids, who here, as in Gaul, practised magical arts and barbarous rites of human sacrifice, taught a secret lore, wielded great influence, but, at least as Druids, took ordinarily no part in politics. In art, these tribes possessed a native Late Celtic fashion, descended from far-off Mediterranean antecedents and more directly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... began, but the words had a most magical effect, for the window instantly slammed down, and within a minute the door was unbarred and open. Mr. Sherman was a lanky, lean old man, with stooping shoulders, a ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as if the game were making Ermentrude more hike a lady. Christina was encouraged to proceed with a set of chessmen, and the shaping of their characteristic heads under her dexterous fingers was watched by Ermentrude like something magical. Indeed, the young lady entertained the belief that there was no limit to her attendant's ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Italian side and invaded the valleys of the Pennine Alps without veiling their summits. We soon had under our eyes a second sky, a lower sky, a sea of clouds, whence emerged a perfect archipelago of peaks and snow-wrapped mountains. There was something magical in it, which the ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... How their magical influence possessed him, as well as that child of forest and plain, Nicollet, a peasant boy of Savoy, a professor in Paris, interrupts his topographical report to tell: "It is difficult to express by words the varied impressions which the spectacle of these prairies produces. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... former: The first will not like a Piece unless 'tis all Fable, or at least the Foundation of it: These latter run into the contrary extreme, and seam unwilling or afraid to admit anything of Fable in a Christian Poem; and as Balzac in his Critics on Heinsius his Baptista, are frighted, as at some Magical Charm, if they find but one Word there which was made use of by the old Heathens; which, says he, (unluckily as things have since happened) is as preposterous as to see Turks wear Hats, and Frenchmen Turbants; the Flower-de-lis in the Musselmens Colours, or the Half-Moon on the ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... Here he was found by Louhi, the toothless dame of Pohyola, who took him home and fed him. Then she promised to provide him with a sledge that he might journey safely home if he would forge for her the Sampo, a magical jewel that gave success to its possessor. If he could make her this, she would also give him her daughter in marriage. "I cannot forge the Sampo, but if thou wilt help me to my distant country I will send thee my brother Ilmarinen, the blacksmith, who can forge ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... was eating supper at an inn, four men came in and sat down at the table with him. By his magical power, Hugh knew that they were robbers and meant to kill him that night, in order to ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... recognition to the delicacy and sincerity of imagist verse, to its magical skill in seeming to open new doors of sense experience by merely shutting the old doors of memory, to its naive courage in rediscovering the formula of "Back to Nature." [Footnote: See the discussion of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... on quivers representing natural objects, and possessing magical virtue to bring down various species of monkeys and apes and other small mammals (i. 417), and as charms ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... wind would blow from the East, and the wild geese would appear, having left the sea, flying high and crying strangely, and pass till they were no more than a thin black line in the sky like a magical stick flung up by a doer of magic, twisting and twirling away; and the leaves would turn on the trees and the mists be white on the marshes and the sun set large and red and autumn would step down quietly that night from the wold; and the next day the strange green ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... that they had better not speak about the matter; yet she was generally the first to begin, and Mary would bring out the map, and they both would pore over it, the elder lady through her spectacles, as if they could there discover by some magical power where Ned was, and the point the "Hope" had reached. They were cheerful and happy, though nothing occurred to vary the monotony of their everyday life, until the post one morning brought a letter addressed to ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... doings—Item, what our Lord God said; and lastly, of the magical experiment performed upon George Putkammer and Diliana, in ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... preventing Rita from putting out her head, only the upper half of his figure was visible to her. At that moment, to her infinite surprise and alarm, she saw an extraordinary change come over his features. Their expression of greedy cunning was replaced, with a suddenness that appeared almost magical, by one of pain and terror; and scarcely had Rita had time to observe the transformation, when he lay upon the ground, struggling violently, but in vain, against some unseen power, that drew him towards the wall. He caught at the grass and weeds, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... is which, considered as applying to the human will, conflicts with our consciousness, and revolts our feelings. We are certain that, in the case of our volitions, there is not this mysterious constraint. We know that we are not compelled, as by a magical spell, to obey any particular motive. We feel, that if we wished to prove that we have the power of resisting the motive, we could do so (that wish being, it needs scarcely be observed, a new antecedent); and it would be humiliating to our pride, and (what is of more importance) ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... It was this desert, she thought, with much interest, that alone separated her from the wonderful Land of Oz, and she remembered sorrowfully that she had been told no one had ever been able to cross this dangerous waste but herself. Once a cyclone had carried her across it, and a magical pair of silver shoes had carried her back again. But now she had neither a cyclone nor silver shoes to assist her, and her condition was sad indeed. For she had become the prisoner of a disagreeable princess who insisted that she must ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Steevens—both of whom have passed into the shadowland, and I would to God that either of them were here to-day, for England knew them well, and they would have roused your indignation as I, an unknown man, dare not hope to do. But though what I have written does not bear the magical name of Steevens or of Forbes, it bears the hallmark of the eternal truth. Our men on the fields of war are famishing whilst millions worth of food lies rotting on our wharves and in our cities, food that ought with ordinary management to be within easy reach of our ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... a river which probably derived its magical character from Celtic traditions: it was long the boundary of Briton and Saxon.—These places are introduced, as being near the scene ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... sacrifices supposed that a suitable combination of rites, rituals, and articles of sacrifice had the magical power of producing the desired effect—a shower of rain, the birth of a son, the routing of a huge army, etc. The sacrifices were enjoined generally not so much for any moral elevation, as for the achievement of objects of practical ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... golden light into the painter's room Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole From the dark pictures radiantly forth, And in the soft and dewy atmosphere, Like forms and landscapes magical they lay. Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus— The vulture at his vitals, and the links Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh; And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim Rapt ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... worship, feared that he might neglect to be present in their temple, and that they might lose the royal largess, and the rest of their revenues. So they arose, and withdrew to a cavern situate in the depth of the desert, where dwelt a man who busied himself with magical arts, and was a fervent champion of the error of idolatry. Theudas was his name. Him the king honoured exceedingly, and counted him his friend and teacher, because, he said, it was by the guidance of his prophecies that his kingdom ever prospered. So these idol-priests, that were no priests, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... (M.), and when he left this anywhere Glooskap was sure to find it, and could tell from its appearance all that had befallen his family. And Martin was called by Glooskap Uch-keen (M.), "my younger brother." The Lord of men and beasts had a belt which gave him magical power and endless strength. And when he lent this to Martin, the younger brother could also do great deeds, such as were only done in ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... embraces what we call the past, present, and future. They that went before do not prevent us on whom the ends of the ages are come. The table that was spread for them is as fully furnished for the latest guests. The light, which was so magical and lustrous in the morning beauty, for us has not faded away into the light of common day. The river which flowed in these past ages has not been drunk up by the thirsty sands. The fire that once blazed so clear has not died down into grey ashes. 'The God of Jacob is our refuge.' 'As ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... nature; and that this course can neither be suspended nor altered, but by its author, nor can by him be permitted to be interrupted by any inferior being, unless for the most important reasons. It does not appear what good end could be gained, on the part of Providence, by the permission of these magical enchantments, supposing them supernatural; and if we imagine the Devil to have acted spontaneously, with a view to support his power and influence, he most manifestly erred in his design. Nothing could be more impolitic than his appearance in a field of combat, where he well knew ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... found good quarters for the night under the shelter of some large fragments of rock. We met here some passengers, who made anxious inquiries about the state of the road. Shortly after it was dark the clouds suddenly cleared away, and the effect was quite magical. The great mountains, bright with the full moon, seemed impending over us on all sides, as over a deep crevice: one morning, very early, I witnessed the same striking effect. As soon as the clouds were dispersed it froze ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... corridors. In the entrance—halls was heaped much gold and silver, and here the folk were content to stay, taking their fill of pleasure. At last the vizier had compassion upon them and called out to them: 'All these treasures and all these walls and corridors do not in truth exist at all. They are magical illusions. Push forward bravely and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... said the smith, "played his part so bravely that the clowns and clown-like squires in the company held his art to be little less than magical; but there was one maiden of fifteen, or thereby, with the fairest face I ever looked upon, whose rosy cheek grew pale, and her bright eyes dim, at the sight of the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... for three days, being unable to find game. On another occasion they fell in with a tribe of bushmen who harassed them with poisoned arrows, killing two of their best men, and were only prevented from annihilating them through the terror inspired by their firearms, which they took for magical instruments. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... sign of an inn, with Westminister towers blue and magical before them, to ask for Mistress Atherton's house, and were directed a little further along and nearer to ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... no unbecoming surprise, and since then I have taken occasion to drop in upon him once or twice, unannounced, when the soldiers were about, but so far I have never discovered them performing in anything like a magical manner... ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... reservation lines came no nearer; but the fame of the invader's big maple tom-tom (we wore still the deep, resonant drum of Bunker Hill and Waterloo, of Jemappes, Saratoga, and Chapultepec, not the modern rattle pan borrowed from Prussia), and the trill of his magical pipe had spread abroad throughout Apache land to the end that no higher reward for good behavior could be given by the agent to his swarthy charges than the begged-for papel permitting them, in lumps ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... it yields its comparative heat to the air. The formation and suspension of clouds, in all their varied characteristics, have the same origin. That highly attenuated haze which invests the distant landscape, particularly mountains, with its magical purple hue, is due to the same, but still more ethereal interposition of infinitesimal globules of suspended moisture. In corroboration of this being the true explanation of the phenomena of haze, fogs, etc., ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the luminous western sky. Dismounting again I stood for some time admiring the scene, wishing that I could make that village my home for the rest of my life, conscious at the same time that is was the mood, the season, the magical hour which made it seem so enchanting. Presently a young man, the first human figure that presented itself to my sight, appeared, mounted on a big carthorse and leading a second horse by a halter, and rode down into the pool to bathe the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Poe's magical creations were rootless flowers. He took no hold upon the life about him, and cared nothing for the public concerns of his country. His poems and tales might have been written in vacuo for any thing American in them. Perhaps for this reason, in part, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Magi's suite; a staircase with figures ascending and descending; the rocks and trees of Tuscany; and looking at it one cannot but ponder upon the fatality which seems to have pursued this divine and magical genius, ordaining that almost everything that he put forth should be either destroyed or unfinished: his work in the Castello at Milan, which might otherwise be an eighth wonder of the world, perished; his "Last Supper" at Milan perishing; his colossal equestrian ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... service, do not forget me, but keep your promise to me." "That will I without fail," quoth the lady; and so she bade him farewell, and went home. The scholar, gleefully anticipating the success of his enterprise, fashioned an image, and inscribed it with certain magical signs, and wrote some gibberish by way of orison, which in due time he sent to the lady, bidding her the very next night do as he had prescribed: and thereupon he hied him privily with one of his servants to the house of a friend hard by the tower, there to carry his purpose ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... which I judged to be Paphian rather. Young beauties of both sexes used their opera-glasses, you could notice, not entirely for looking at the stage. And it must be owned the light, in this explosion of all the upholsteries, and the human fine arts and coarse, was magical; and made your fair one an Armida,—if you liked her better so. Nay, certain old Improper-Females (of quality), in their rouge and jewels, even these looked some reminiscence of enchantment; and I saw this and the other lean domestic Dandy, with icy smile on his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... turned into these many potatoes," laughed Mr. Blake. "That is the magical trick Mother Nature does for us. We plant a piece of potato, with 'eyes' in it, or we plant a seed, and up springs a plant on the roots of which are more potatoes, or, if it is a bean, it turns into a vine with many more beans on it. And the seed—that is the eye potato or the ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... This always had a magical, soothing effect upon Shad. Though he never learned to interpret her language, the touch of the hand, the human note of encouragement in her voice, the light in the eyes that looked into his, never failed ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... his reverie, he raised himself from the mantelpiece against which he was leaning. Never had he thought so brilliantly, and he regretted that no magical stenographer should be there to register his thoughts as they passed. But they were gone.... Resuming his position against the mantelpiece, he continued his interrupted ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... king died in his hour. Then we crowned you, the prophetess wise: Peace-of-the-Heart we deeply adored For the witchcraft hid in your eyes. Gift from the sky, overmastering all, You sent forth your magical parrots to call The plot-hatching prince of the tigers, To your throne by ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... could scarcely believe he was in Knightsbridge. Not even a clock was ticking on the mantelpiece above the fire, in which ship logs were burning. The flames which came from them were of various shades of blue, like magical flames conjured up by a magician. He looked round. He had never seen a room like this before. It was a room to live in, to hear strange music in; it was not a reception-room. Not crowded with furniture it was not at all bare. Its "note" ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... fled Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,— Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon; Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon; Attachments by fate or falsehood reft; Companions of early days lost or left; And my native land, whose magical name Thrills to the heart like electric flame; The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time When the feelings were young, and the world was new, Like the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... were heard there when the boys stood below, laughing and talking. What I now heard recalled most vividly all those experiences. To soothe my mind a little, I then took a jews-harp from my pocket and played the "Star-spangled Banner." The effect was beautiful and almost magical, and I sank at once into ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... showing them that he could respond to the remotest mystic indications, with a muffled adroitness equal to their own, and so encouraged them to commence a language leading to intimacy with a rapidity that may well appear magical to the uninitiated. In short, the man really had the language of the very elect of polite society. If you are not versed in this alphabet of mute intelligence, you are in the ranks with waiters and linen-drapers, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... beginning," said his father. "But wishing alone will never do anything, not even if you had the magical wishing-cap I read you about. You must not only wish; you must help yourself. Now, Johnny would make a ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... already broken, here and there flickering up, here and there dying down; the six lamps in that half of the circle still twinkled, but faintly, as stars shrinking fast from the dawn of day. But it was not the fading shine in that half of the magical ring which daunted my eye and quickened with terror the pulse of my heart; the Bush-land beyond was on fire. From the background of the forest rose the flame and the smoke—the smoke, there, still half smothering the flame. But along the width of the grasses and herbage, between the verge ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... jurisdiction of Jack Ketch—no one doubted this, until the story of the apparition of the murderess began to be spread abroad. Then, awful misgivings arose in the popular mind. A woman who had been born close by the magical well, and who had therefore in all probability been baptized in its water like her neighbours of the parish, had nevertheless been publicly and unquestionably hanged. However, probability was not always ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... accounted for many of them.[26] He thought, too, that the Devil very often acted as his own agent without any intermediary.[27] Like Cotta, he was skeptical as to the water ordeal;[28] but, strange to say, he accepted the use of a magical glass to discover "the suspected."[29] He was inclined to believe that the "apparition of the party suspected, whom the afflicted in their fits seem to see," was a ground for suspicion. The main aim of his discourse was, indeed, to warn judges and jurors ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... and when he fell asleep, he dreamed about the subject uppermost in his mind. He thought that, after several days' patient watching, he finally discovered his man; but all attempts to capture him were unavailing. When he pursued, the rebel would disappear in a magical way, that was perfectly bewildering. Finally, he dreamed that the rebel assumed the offensive, and one day he met him in the street, carrying in his hand something that looked like a lump of coal, which he threw at Frank. ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... you are ready to laugh at your own weakness. Have you not often felt what I have thus imperfectly described? If so, you can understand what our young friend has just experienced, even amidst the delights of this magical scene, and amidst the balmy ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... words, she took the paper and tobacco from his unresisting hands; and with a facility that, in Desborough's eyes, seemed magical, rolled and presented him a cigarette. He took it, still seated, still without a word; staring with all his eyes upon that apparition. Her face was warm and rich in colour; in shape, it was that piquant triangle, so innocently sly, so ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... of those friends beneath our feet, upon whom they might fall to-morrow, "wind and weather permitting," and a sweet face would glisten upon us from the undulating wave, and "Boat a-hoy!" from the watchful quartermaster would bring us back to reality and the ship; overboard would go our magical cheroot, over the side our imaginative self, and having duly reported the important fact of our return on board, down we would dive through the steerage hatch, to conjure up again in dreams the dear face we saw in ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... latter became a legal debtor for one hundred and thirty thousand dollars and the owner of the abandoned works, and so simply and smoothly was the business carried out that to the council there seemed something magical and portentous ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... entered the waggon as he bade me, and very neat and trim it was. Here a man produced a curious red suit of clothes, rather too small for me; but still a lot better than Bill's rags. He begged me to put it on, which I did. I know now that it was the red magical suit in which the gipsies dress their magical puppets on St. John's Eve; but as I did not then know this, I put it on quite willingly, wishing that ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... the blue sky or blunt and broken with a thundery look of extinct craters. To the north Sheila saw a further serenity of mountains, lying low and soft on the horizon, of another and more wistful blue. Over it all was a sort of magical haze, soft and brilliant as though the air were a melted sapphire. There was still blessedness such as Sheila had never felt. She was filled with a longing to ride on and on until her spirit should pass into the wide, tranquil, glowing spirit of the lonely land. It seemed to ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... the lake] Now Launcelot dwelt for nigh seventeen years with the Lady Nymue of the Lake in that wonderful, beautiful valley covered over with the appearance of such a magical lake as hath been aforetime described in ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... wonderful as finding the key of the rainbow. Yet here we were; and Granada—after we had entered at last by crossing still another river—came out from under its spell of enchantment when we saw it at close quarters. Only that wonderful hill above was magical still, as magical to the eye as when Ibraham the astrologer ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... control of something which otherwise might not and often would not have come into existence at all. If it would not,—if the patented article is something which society without a patent system would not have secured at all,—the inventor's monopoly hurts nobody. It is as though in some magical way he had caused springs of water to flow in the desert or loam to cover barren mountains or fertile islands to rise from the bottom of the sea. His gains consist in something which no one loses, even while he enjoys them, ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... reality of his voice, his touch, came inability to believe what had happened. Had a transient dreamful slumber crept upon her as she sat here alone? So quickly had the world suffered re-creation, so magical the whelming of old days in a new order, so complete the change in herself. One word she knew which had power from eternity to do these things, and that word neither he nor she had uttered. But there was no need, when the night spoke it in every ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... was too much for every one. Lady Betty, in the realm of bright images, had a host of devoted admirers. Her influence spread beyond the Hut to the plateau itself. Three men went sledging, and to shelter themselves from the rude wind fashioned an ice-cavern, which, on account of its magical hues and rare lustre, could be none other than "Aladdin's Cave." Lady Betty found her hero in a fairy ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... suffering little hurt, he was carried back to the city in triumph, by the one in question, who, to cover her neglect, declared amid many chants of exultation that as he slept a majestic winged form had snatched him from her arms and traced magical figures with his body on the ground in token of the distinguished sacred existence for which he was undoubtedly set apart. In such a manner he became famed at a very early age for an unassuming mildness of character and an almost inspired piety of life, so that on every side frequent opportunity ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... reductions, it is plain, cost the consumer two dollars for every one it professed to save him. As a single illustration of the utterly deceptive character of reductions in price under the profit system, it may be recalled that toward the close of the nineteenth century in America, after almost magical inventions for reducing the cost of shoemaking, it was a common saying that although the price of shoes was considerably lower than fifty years before, when they were made by hand, yet that later-made shoes were so much poorer in quality ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... able and now triumphant Prince, as preserved to us by history and tradition, is full of romantic incidents. He is said to have been born out of wedlock, and that his mother, while pregnant of him, was subject to all the cruel persecutions and magical torments the jealous wife of his father could invent. No sooner was he born than he became an object of hatred to the Queen, so that mother and child, after being concealed for three years in the sanctuaries of Connaught, had to fly for their lives ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I have here to speak of the magical, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... her calmly spoken words, bewildered by the proposal so abruptly made, longing to ask the natural question hovering on his lips, yet too generous to utter it. Pauline read his thought, and answered it with no touch of pain or pride in the magical voice that ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... thinking of the kings in the treatises of Monsieur Charles Perrault, Madame d'Aulnoy, and other historians of Fairyland; of monarchs who give their daughters to the bold adventurers that bring the smallest dog, or the singing rose, or the horse magical. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... impious gibes and curses on their lips. Boone Helm, a hoary reprobate, actually said, as the block was being removed from him, "Good by, boys! I will meet you in hell in five minutes." Harsh measures were these, but their effect was magical. One of the leaders had been hanged at Bannack, and the others as fast as found were promptly executed,—perhaps thirty in all. A few fled, and are heard of now and then among the robbers of Portneuf Canon; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Half-way up the narrow staircase was a large recess dimly lit by the sunlight falling through stained glass, and there was a small fountain playing in the middle of this grotto and all around was a wilderness of ferns dripping with the spray, while at the entrance two stone figures held up magical globes on which the springing and falling water was reflected. Then from this partial gloom he emerged into the drawing-room—a dream of rose-pink and gold, with the air sweetened around him by the masses of roses and tall lilies about. His eyes were rather bewildered ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... parliamentary gossip, activity and intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical strip of matting which indicates the bar of the House. From this point of vantage he watched the first stages of a Parliament in which Mr, Gladstone set out with so triumphant a majority—and watched too the inroads made upon the power and prestige of that majority by the new parliamentary force ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... of the vines that stirred against the sky wavered all over her as she stood before him. So strangely did the light and shade move upon her, that it seemed as if she glided through the ripples of some liquid, mysterious element, not air nor light nor water, but a magical mingling of the three. He had just time to feel, vaguely, for everything was blurred, this sense of strangeness and of sweetness, too, when she gave him ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... grandest stream in Siberia, the train crosses a bridge 1,000 yards in length. But some time before this a stoppage is made at the town of Obb, which is a striking sample of the magical results of the railway. The whole country was till recently a scene of wild desolation. The thriving community, busy with a prosperous trade, is typical of the coming ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... guests begin to weep the ready tears of the heroic age over the sorrows of the past, and dread of the dim future, Helen comforts them with a magical potion. ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... no doubt that a man named Johann Faust, renowned for his learning and credited with magical powers, actually did exist—probably about 1490 to 1540. (He was therefore a contemporary of Paracelsus, and also of Luther, Charles V., Henry VIII. and Raphael.) Several notices of this Dr. Johann Faust occur in writers of the period. One of the most circumstantial is by the friend and biographer ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... track of the moving ship is marked by a lustrous line. 'In the torrid zones between the tropics,' says Humboldt, 'the ocean simultaneously develops light over a space of many thousand square miles. Here the magical effect of light is owing to the forces of organic nature. Foaming with light, the eddying waves flash in phosphorent sparks over the wide expanse of waters, where every scintillation is the vital manifestation of an invisible animal world.' Beneath the surface larger forms are seen, brilliantly ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... I shall be able to pitch my tent in your neighbourhood," I was most potently commanded [1] to a breach of the second commandment, and on my knees, to entreat the said goddess to touch your bank notes and guineas with her magical multiplying wand. I could offer such a prayer for you, with a better conscience than for most men, because I know that you have never lost that healthy common sense, which regards money only as the means of independence, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... methods of analysis than the medicos, was warmly personal and seemed very safe to talk to. She looked me over, did some strange magical thing she called muscle testing and concluded that I still had a very strong constitution. If I would eliminate certain "bad" foods from my diet, eliminate some generally healthful foods that, unfortunately, I was allergic to, ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... deified. He was seized upon by fable, myth, miraculous legend, and poetry—his name was handed down for centuries until the heroic lineaments were softened down, disfigured, and at last faded away in the magical haze of later Romance. But in very rare instances he had the good luck to be taken in hand, before it was too late, by some man of genius, who knew the temper of heroic times because he lived within range of them, and who has preserved for us a story, an incident, or a typical character—not, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... readjustments; he might drive himself on the rocks, on the first reef where he disregarded the clamor of warning bells and carefully charted directions, but he was no Columbus for the discovery of a magical island, a Cuba, of spices and delectable palms. Peyton had looked with a stolid indifference at the dangerously fascinating, the incomprehensible, smile of Cytherea. Yes, if the young donkey could be forced past this tempting patch of grazing, if he could only be driven ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... moisture out of the wax of which my moustache was made, and, as it dried it pulled at my skin in a most disagreeable manner. However, I did not blink. I was a Hussar! A word that had for me an almost magical significance; besides which, having engaged in a military career, I understood very well that my first duty was ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... inconceivably tidy, shimmering with brilliant light under its lofty and beautiful ceiling, shaking and roaring with the terrific thunder of its own vitality, this hall in which no common voice could make itself heard produced nevertheless an effect of magical stillness, silence, and solitude. We were alone in it, save that now and then in the far-distant spaces a figure might flit and disappear between the huge glinting columns of metal. It was a hall enchanted and ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... did not answer, but went into an inner cave, from which he came out bearing something in his hand. 'Do you see this basket?' said he. 'It is a magical basket, and if you are hungry you have only got to say: "Little basket, little basket, do your duty," and you will eat the best dinner you ever had in your life. But when you have had enough, be sure you don't forget ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... the magical suddenness which characterizes Northern lands, the gardens, quays, and the Nevsky Prospekt still preserve their charms for a space, and are thronged far into the night with promenaders, who gaze at the imperial crowns, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... almost equally magnificent. The eyes of the spectators were dazzled by dresses trimmed with precious stones. Never had there been seen such profusion of light, flowers, perfumes, and diamonds. In this magical setting, fashionable beauties, with their dresses worked with silver and gold foil, their turbans of Eastern stuffs, their jewels and ancient cameos, appeared like sultanas. It was a most sumptuous and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... seemed to be as sleepy as he was hungry. More than once his head dropped and he ceased to masticate the food in his mouth. Marriott had positively to shake him before he would go on with his meal. A stronger emotion will overcome a weaker, but this struggle between the sting of real hunger and the magical opiate of overpowering sleep was a curious sight to the student, who watched it with mingled astonishment and alarm. He had heard of the pleasure it was to feed hungry men, and watch them eat, but he had never actually ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... said to myself, these two have partaken together of the great mystery, of the great sacrament of nature, of the source of all that is magical in the wide world. But have they discerned the mysteries? Do they know that they have been in that place which is called Syon and Jerusalem?—I am quoting from an old ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... says of herself! My God! Compare the tame pink- and-white prettiness of youth with the face of Lotys,—and that prettiness becomes like a cheap advertisement on a hoarding or a match- box! Contrast the perfect features, eyes and hair of the newest social 'beauty,'—with the magical expression, the glamour in the eyes of Lotys,—and perfection of feature becomes the rankest ugliness! Once in a hundred centuries a woman is born like Lotys, to drive men mad with desire for the unattainable—to ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Joseph, long before he had a fiddle of his own, imitated the fiddling of his elders with two bits of wood, so the family orchestra was complete. The last accident was the arrival of one Frankh, a distant relative. This was long before the magical feats of the baby Mozart had set every grasping parent staring for signs of musical precocity in his children. But Mathias undoubtedly wanted to do his best for his boy, and Joseph himself must have had ambition of a sort—witness his endeavours to play the fiddle without a fiddle to play—and ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... this battle the South was called to mourn the death of Stonewall Jackson, whose magical name was worth to their cause more than an army. In the evening after his successful onslaught upon the flank of the Union line, while riding back to camp from a reconnoissance at the front, he was fired upon by his own men, who mistook ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... in her graceful performance, which the judicious Dare had so carefully planned, led up to and heightened by subtle accessories, operated on De Stancy's surprised soul with a promptness almost magical. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... already chosen. The Road had its magical fascination, to which he would have surrendered all his boyish soul, had not the call of his destiny been more insistent. The Road led nowhither. Princes and princesses were as rare as hips and haws in summer-time. Their glittering equipages did not stop the van, nor did they ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... companion of Mendelssohn (whom I have already mentioned apropos of the tempo di menuetto of the eighth symphony), [Footnote: Ferdinand Hiller] to play the eighth Prelude and Fugue from the first part of "Das Wohltemperirte Clavier" (E flat minor), a piece which has always had a magical attraction for me. [Footnote: i.e. Prelude VIII., from Part I. of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues.] He very kindly complied, and I must confess that I have rarely been so much taken by surprise. Certainly, there was no trace here of sombre German gothicism ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... and remote these trying times have already become! They are now dim as if a thousand years had passed over them. Steamships and locomotives with magical influence have well-nigh abolished the old distances and dangers, and brought forward the New West into near and familiar companionship with the rest of ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... of a little bell, which you will presently hear, has a magical effect upon the backs. For a short while you may have observed them in an odd attitude—not erect as backs ought to be, but slouching and one-sided. During this interval, too, you may catch a glance of a ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... insignificant fishing village, in fact a nest of pirates. In 1841 the island was ceded by China to Great Britain, and the cession was confirmed by the treaty of Nanking in August, 1842. The transformation effected in less than a decade had been magical; yet that was only the bloom [Page 8] of babyhood, compared with the rich maturity of the, ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... of his life, he was distinguished by the same fascination of manner that has since proved so magical in winning him an unbounded personal popularity. It is wronging him, however, to call this peculiarity a mere effect of manner; its source lies deep in the kindliness of his nature, and in the liberal, generous, catholic sympathy, that embraces all who are worthy of it. Few ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foolish to contend that our rulers are actuated by any personal malevolence or even, at first, by unlawful personal ambition; they are, as I have said, for the most part lawyers, and law is their fetish—their magical cure-all and philosopher's stone. They almost persuade themselves, perhaps, that we the people make the laws; whereas not more than one man in ten thousand—even of lawyers—knows what the law in any given case is, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... never separated in Babylonia; not only the priests but also the gods performed magical ceremonies. Ea, Merodach's father, overcame Apsu, the husband of the dragon Tiamat, by means of spells: he was "the great magician of the gods". Merodach's division of the "Ku-pu" was evidently an act of contagious ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland; Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone. Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, ??de? ya???, Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife; No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether, But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold. Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o'er me— What were the spring to a soul laden with ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... upon leaden boughs, poured water from their bills. Marmaduke, much astonished and bewildered, muttered a paternoster in great haste; and even the clerical rank of the prelate did not preserve him from the suspicion of magical practices in the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... islands, covered with flowers and vegetables and moving like rafts over the waters. All round the margin, and occasionally far out in the lake, they saw little towns and villages half buried in foliage; and the whole scene seemed to them so new and wonderful that they could only compare it to the magical pictures of the old romances. Midway across the lake the army halted at the town of Cuitlahuae, which was not large, but was remarkable for the beauty of its buildings. The curiosity of the Indians increased ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the 2nd century the power of the Eastern Hans declined. In 173 a virulent pestilence, which continued for eleven years, broke out. A magical cure for this plague was said to have been discovered by a Taoist priest named Chang Chio, who in a single month won a sufficiently large following to enable him to gain possession of the northern provinces of the empire. He was, however, defeated by Ts'aou Ts'aou, another aspirant ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Last Legacy; or, the Magical Companion'. Including the various exhibitions of those wonderful Artists, Breslaw, Sieur ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... there be an occasion, but I think that I may be able to manage without need for bloodshed. You are a vastly more formidable enemy than I am, but I imagine that they have a greater respect for my supposed magical powers than they have for the weight of your arm, ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... beautifully spired on the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue, rushes aloft thirty or forty feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle, especially on a dark night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at irregular intervals for weeks at a time—tree after tree flashing and darkening, leaving the trunks and branches hardly scarred. The heat, however, is sufficient ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... and enervating pleasures, as is generally admitted. There was a low religious life, almost no religion at all, and what there was was degrading by its superstition. Everywhere were seen the rites of magical incantations, the pretended virtue of amulets and charms, soothsayers laughing at their own predictions,—nowhere the worship of the one God who created the heaven and the earth, nor even a genuine worship of the Pagan deities, but a general spirit of cynicism and atheism. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... never has it failed in a single instance to effect a cure when timely used. Never did we know an instance of dissatisfaction by any one who used it. On the contrary, all are delighted with its operations, and speak in terms of highest commendation of its magical effects and medical virtues. We speak in this matter "what we do know" after years of experience, and pledge our reputation for the fulfillment of what we here declare. In almost every instance, where the ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... our guard this magical faculty will be our undoing. The tendency is, as we have seen, to return to our earlier state, to recover from the change. And the forces that work in that direction do not pause to ask if the change that has come about is a change for the better or a change for ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Richard's well-modulated, full-toned voice rolled on, the circle drawing closer and closer with their ears and hearts, as the characters, one after another, became real and alive under the reader's magical rendering. Dot Perrybingle's cheery, laughing accents; Tackleton's sharp, rasping tones; John the Carrier's simple, straightforward utterances and the soft, timid cadence of old Caleb, the toy maker—(drowned Edward's father)—and his blind daughter Bertha were recognized as soon as the reader ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Faith,"—three heads, that of the Soul hooded and draped, looking before her with eyes that seem to discern things not seen by mortals; the sinister face of Doubt at the left, the serene, inspiring countenance of Faith at the right. It is a magical picture to have before one with its profoundly significant message. The works of Mr. Vedder will grow more priceless as the years pass by. They are pictures for ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... certificates of varying degrees of speed, at the end of six months or longer, the way in which old-fashioned lawyers accepted the innovation of attractive young women on their clerical staff, seemed almost magical. Decorum relegated the young women to separate rooms from the rest of the employees, and the formality in the bearing of heads of departments towards these pioneer females must have been gratifying to Mrs Grundy. So superior to human exigencies ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... o'clock in the evening, M. de Trailles had thoroughly bewitched me. I had given him my promise that I would introduce him the next day to our Papa Gobseck. The words 'honor,' 'virtue,' 'countess,' 'honest woman,' and 'ill-luck' were mingled in his discourse with magical potency, thanks to that golden ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... ni, san," she rhythmically droned, three being the magical number that would bring good luck if the petals were properly arranged and the number ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... Holy Graal? In the stories it is the holy vessel used by our Lord, and brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea. But in the older heathen Irish stories there is a mysterious vessel of a magical sort, full of miraculous food, and probably the French writers of the romances confused this with the sacred vessel brought from the Holy Land. On account of the sins of men this relic was made invisible, but now and then it appeared, borne by angels or floating in a heavenly ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... woman and young girl emerged from the dark-vaulted passage that led them down through the rocks on which the convent stood to the sea at its base, the light of a most glorious sunset burst upon them, in all those strange and magical mysteries of light which any one who has walked that beach of Sorrento ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... earlier work, The Legend of Perseus—Mr. Hartland finds in this a survival of a culture stage in which all birth is believed to be supernatural. Survivals of this belief that birth is a phenomenon independent of the union of the sexes are found in the existence of numerous semi-magical devices to obtain children, still practised in many parts of Europe, and which were practised on a much more extensive scale during the medieval period; in the ignorance of man concerning physiological functions in general, the existence ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... fail thee. But if thou shouldst ever see me again, beware of speaking to me; for if thou speak thy luck will depart." When the man got home he found the purse filled with dollars; and by virtue of its magical property he became the richest man in the parish. As soon as he found the purse always full, whatever he took out of it, he began to live in a spendthrift manner and frequented the alehouse. One evening as he sat ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... one another,' answered the voice; 'see my zeal. I received your letter last night at ten o'clock; this morning I am here. Farewell, accomplice; do not forget the Island of Asnieres, the fisher Martial, and Dr. Vincent. Thanks to these three magical words, your country girl has only eight days left.' 'Stop,' said M. Ferrand, 'while I go and unbolt the door of my cabinet, and see if there is any one in the ante-chamber, that you may go out by the garden, as you came in.' M. Ferrand went out a moment, and ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... the faint thread of the beginning of the Borhaze Road. To the left of this there was some sharp point of light, some cottage perhaps. It flashed at him as though it were trying to attract his attention. The night was so magical, the world so wonderful, so without bound or limit, that he was prepared now to wait, passively, for his experience. That point of light was where the Scarecrow used to be, just where the brown fields rise up against the horizon. In all his walks to-day he had deliberately avoided that direction. ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... wager, taking care, however, to follow this horrid meal by an immediate and copious draught of oil. But the very glance of the toad has been supposed fatal; of its entrails fancied poisonous potions have been concocted; and for magical purposes it was believed extremely efficacious; a precious stone was asserted to be found in its head, invaluable in medicine and magic. In Carthagena and Portobello (America) these creatures swarm to such a degree in wet weather that many of the inhabitants believe every drop of rain to be converted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... She took up the magical pen, laid ready as Helmas had directed, and she wrote with this gryphon's feather. "So here is the recipe for the Tuyla incantation with which to give life to your images. It may comfort you a little to ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... can string together his incidents with some skill, and he makes use of his learning in the accepted fashion of his day.[624] The poem is deluged with proper names and learned aetiology, though he has no conception of that magical use of proper names and legendary allusions which is the secret of the masters ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... traversed before the point at which the Steamboat lay could be reached, and for that distance the track ran on the left or Dakota side of the Red River. As we journeyed along the Dakota prairies the last hour of daylight overtook us, bringing with it a Scene of magical beauty. The sun resting on the rim of the prairie cast over the vast expanse of grass a flood of light. On the east lay the darker green of the trees of the Red River. The whole western sky was full of wild-looking thunder-clouds, through which the rays of sunlight shot upward ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... the boy made music. The winds that whispered their secrets to the trees owned him for their lord, and the proudest trees of the forest bowed their heads that they might not miss one exquisite sigh that his fingers drew from the magical strings. Nor man nor beast lived in his day that he could not sway by the power of his melody. He played a lullaby, and all things slept. He played a love-lilt, and the flowers sprang up in full bloom from the cold earth, and the ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... interest of the middle class in some way quite unexplained—by a kind of magic, one may say—which welfare of the workers, as it was never directly aimed at, but only hoped for by the way, so also did not come about by any such magical means, and the triumphant middle classes began gradually to find themselves looked upon no longer as rebellious servants, but as ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... which the first hag says: "I have been all day, looking after A raven feeding on a quarter, And soon as she turned her beak to the south I snatched this morsel out of her mouth." —Ben Jonson, "Masque of Queens". But more probably the meaning is that the wolf's bite gave the flesh magical efficacy. (37) Confusing Pharsalia with Philippi. (See line 684.) (38) One of the miraculous stories to be found in Pliny's "Natural History". See Lecky's "Augustus to Charlemagne", vol. i., p. 370. ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... no other characters at all. Lehzen, the Baron, Uncle Leopold, are unsubstantial shadows—the incidental supers of the piece. Her paradise was peopled by two persons, and surely that was enough. One sees them together still, a curious couple, strangely united in those artless pages, under the magical illumination of that dawn of eighty years ago: the polished high fine gentleman with the whitening hair and whiskers and the thick dark eyebrows and the mobile lips and the big expressive eyes; and beside him the tiny Queen—fair, slim, elegant, active, in her plain ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... thirty-two-foot pipes, which go two octaves below the violoncello's low C. Between the pianissimo which almost reaches the limit where sound ceases and silence begins, down to a range of formidable and terrifying power, every degree of intensity can be obtained from this magical instrument. The variety of its timbre is broad. There are flute stops of various kinds; tonal stops that approximate the timbre of stringed instruments; stops for effecting changes in which each note, formed from several pipes, bring out simultaneously its ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... emotion. Through it to-day, as never before in the history of civilization, the heart of a man can reach the heart of mankind. It is inconceivable that the lyric will not grow still more significant with time, freighted more and more deeply with thought and passion and touched with a richer and more magical beauty. Some appreciation of it, no matter how inadequate, should be a part of the spiritual possessions ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... private sphere of moral responsibility. As Hobhouse has well said, in tracing the evolutionary history of the modern conception of marriage, the sacramental idea of marriage has again emerged but on a higher plane; "from being a sacrament in the magical, it has become one in the ethical, sense." We are thus tending towards, though we have not yet legally achieved, marriage made and maintained by consent, "a union between two free and responsible persons in which the equal rights of both ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... margin of the Atbara was similar to the entire route from Berber, a vast desert, with the narrow band of trees that marked the course of the river; the only change was the magical growth of the leaves, which burst hourly from the swollen buds of the mimosas: this could be accounted for by the sudden arrival of the river, as the water percolated rapidly through the sand and nourished the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the spirits of their ancestors, 115-118; dramatic ceremonies performed by them to commemorate the deeds of their ancestors, 118 sq.; examples of these ceremonies, 119-122; these ceremonies were probably in origin not merely commemorative or historical but magical, being intended to procure a supply of food and other necessaries, 122 sq.; magical virtue actually attributed to these dramatic ceremonies by the Warramunga, who think that by performing them they increase the food supply of the tribe, 123 sq.; hence the great ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... she's shy!" Then, feeling Susy quivering in her clasp, she whispered something magical in her ears. It was only: "Robin will keep tight hold of your hand, Susy-girl, and you needn't be a bit frightened and by and by, if you're quiet, we'll fill a bag of goodies for your brother and Granny." But it soothed Susy ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... With magical swiftness of movement, prompted by an intense desire, the dead woman was carried into the convent parlour, passed through the window, and lowered from the walls before the Abbess, followed by the nuns, returned to take up Sister Theresa's body. The sister left ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... push aside the ringlet or curl she plays with. If she has some dignity of profile, you will be persuaded that she is giving irony or grace to what she says to her neighbor, sitting in such a position as to produce the magical effect of the 'lost profile,' so dear to great painters, by which the cheek catches the high light, the nose is shown in clear outline, the nostrils are transparently rosy, the forehead squarely modeled, the eye has its ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... all these good things for his sake!—and his wife, mounting as he mounted beside the one man in the world she had elected to admire and love. "Doctor and Mrs. John Tenison "—so it would be written. "Doctor Tenison's wife"—"This is Mrs. Tenison"—she seemed already to hear the magical ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... just after her lover's wedding. He returns to her. Now, as a rule, in popular tales, the lover's fickleness is explained by a spell or by a breach of a taboo. The old true love has great difficulty in getting access to him, and in waking him from a sleep, drugged or magical. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... we three Stuarts," he said, "as inseparable as the holy trefoil; and, as they say the wearer of that sacred herb mocks at magical delusion, so we, while we are true to each other, may set malice and enmity ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... a result of this activity of thought. It took at first the form of hymns, speculative essays, magical formulas, dogmas, ordinances of worship, etc. By degrees it grew more secular in form, until in the end secular literature arose. This was greatly stimulated by the conditions of inequality arising from war. In the same manner as the reward for merit in invention ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... glory invests our past, beckoning us back to the haunts of the olden time! The paths our childish feet trod seem all angel- guarded and thornless; the songs we sang then sweep the harp of memory, making magical melody; the words carelessly spoken now breathe a solemn, mysterious import; and faces that early went down to the tomb smile on us still with unchanged tenderness. Aye, the past, the long past, is all fairyland. Where our little feet ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... more Oriental than Corinth, more wealthy than Thessalonica, more populous than Athens,"—were incessant and discouraging, since it was the headquarters of pagan superstitions, and of all forms of magical imposture. As usual, he was reviled and slandered by the Jews; but he was also at this time an object of intense hatred to the priests and image-makers of the Temple of Diana, troubled in mind by evil reports concerning the converts he had made in other cities, physically weak and depressed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... lanterns and brought bread and cheese against a hungry time, and after all, it was not so cold in the forest, for the North Wind with his blue ballooned cheeks could not blow hard down those long avenues. Peter was full of excitement, for he was sure that the tree would become magical as soon as the ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... was dead, the tribe knew what they had lost in Why-Why. They bore his body, with that of Verva, to the cave; there they laid the lovers—Why-Why crowned with a crown of sea-shells, and with a piece of a rare magical substance (iron) at his side. {208} Then the tribesmen withdrew from that now holy ground, and built them houses, and forswore the follies of the medicine-men, as Why-Why had prophesied. Many thousands of years later the cave was opened when the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... of the shifting veil A magical bark, by the sunbeams lit, Flits like a dream,—or seems to flit,— With a golden prow and a gossamer sail, And the waves make room ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
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