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More "Seance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... account of Mr. Davey's seance, his attention was called away for two or three minutes without his noting it. We may take it for granted that the kickings up of the bedclothes during which Sanders became weak and faint, lasted ten minutes or more. "Being fanned as though some bird were flying ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... little or no sympathy between him and Tacitus, and, certainly, no identity of genius, that he should strive his utmost to cast off such a heavy burden and endeavour to carry a lighter load by fabricating a continuation of Livy; but no guinea is required to be spent for a visit to the seance of a medium, to call up the spirit of Cosmo de' Medici by the rapping of a table: in the first place, the spirit would be sure not to come, however hard the table might be rapped, from fear of being addressed in Latin or Italian, as spirits ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... reellement touchee, de la raison et de la fermete que le roi a mises dans cette rude seance."—Marie Antoinette to Joseph II., August 22d, 1785, Arneth, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... became necessary to call for a detail of policemen to drive back the curious people. In the Mayor's office were Detectives Crim and McDermott with the Mayor and Chief of Police, who for nearly two hours held a seance with the accused men in their effort to reach the truth. The examination of Walling by the mayor was ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... and seemed interested. I had the gas lighted in the drawing-room, got the steps, and repaired the cornice, which has been a bit of an eyesore to me. In a fit of unthinkingness—if I may use such an expression,—I gave the floor over the parlour, where the seance was taking place, two loud raps with the hammer. I felt sorry afterwards, for it was the sort of ridiculous, foolhardy thing that Gowing or ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... when he arrived, the night of the strange witch-doctor's seance. This had all come to an end. The schoolhouse was dark—the girls were asleep. From a prowling native he learned that the girls were there and safe, then he turned ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... another when the irate parent rushed into the little room. The exiles' camp was broken up, and the exiles driven out into the cold world. "Al-f-u-r-d" was escorted home then to the cellar where the seance was a trifle more animated than usual, at least "Al-f-u-r-d's" cries ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... phenomena, but skeptical as to the value and personal origin of the communications made in the "circles." Her daughter, a child of seven, was in fact a hypnotic clairvoyant of singular lucidity, and my brother, Dr. Jacob Stillman, obtained from the mother permission to have a private seance, only the mother and child, the doctor, and myself being present. I hypnotized the girl Fanny, and when she opened her eyes in the hypnotic state the doctor made the usual tests for coma, exposing the eyes to the sudden glare of a brilliant light, sticking pins into her flesh, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... ask my opinion." It was young Benjamin's father said these words to the veteran in charge of the pier-turnstile; who, as an early bird, was counting his tickets, so to speak, before they were hatched—his actual professional cabinet-seance not having begun. For the pier wasn't open yet, and his permission to Fenwick to pass the open side-gate was an indulgence to ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... but they did not produce silence or darkness. On the contrary, as soon as Eliphalet and the officer went into the house, there began at once a series of spiritualistic manifestations, a regular dark seance. A tambourine was played upon, a bell was rung, and a flaming banjo went singing around ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... their description. She persisted that she did not, and went over the others for the second time. This astonished M. le duc d'Orleans deeply, as well as myself, and we were at a loss to explain it, but the event proved that the child was perfectly right. This seance took place in 1706. These four members of the royal family were then full of health and strength; and they all died before the king. It was the same thing with M. le prince, M. le duc, and M. le prince de Conti, whom she likewise did not ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... which I could see was destined to be let down during the performance of the phenomenal manifestations. There was a camp-stool inside the cabinet; a number of cane-bottomed chairs on the platform, and also the various properties of a spirit seance, familiar to me from long experience, guitar, fiddle, handbells, tambourine, &c. One adjunct alone was new; and that was a green stable bucket, destined, I could not doubt, to figure in what my Rimmel-scented programme promised as the climax of Part I.—the "Great Pail ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Madame Zero had demonstrated her gifts so convincingly as to have converted a sceptic, there was no doubt that she had perceptibly raised the spirits of the whole party (not excluding her own), so the seance was quite deservedly ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... at this gentleman's house that in January a carefully organised seance was held, at which my father was present incognito, so far as the medium was concerned, and on which he wrote the following report to Mr. Darwin, referred to in his "Life," volume 3 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... certain that all five pseudo-murders were wholly and solely acts of retribution, and that they were perpetrated—I am inclined to think involuntarily—by the spirit of the owl itself. Accordingly, I decided to hold a seance here—here in its old haunt, and if possible to put an end to the earth-bound condition and wanderings of the soul of the unhappy bird. Thanks to Father Mickledoff we have done so, and there will be no more so-called ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... "Confreres," he said, "our number as fixed for this seance still needs two to be complete, and doubtless they will arrive in a few minutes. Till they come, we can but talk upon trifles. Permit me to offer you my cigar-case." And so saying, he who professed to be no smoker handed his next neighbour, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and his hand placed at his mouth in an effort to divert the direction of the sound. I was within a few feet of this young fellow and could plainly see by the light of the kitchen fire the attitude of the impersonator and distinctly hear his whistling. The seance continued for some 10 minutes, the impersonator chirping out answers to the questioning priest. The listeners were fully convinced that the sounds were of divine origin and expressed that conviction by uttering ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... expectation that he would keep his promise to escort her to a tavern at Montmartre, where some horrible things were said to occur. Hyacinthe, looking very bored, quietly replied that he had been detained at a seance given by some adepts in the New Magic, in the course of which the soul of St. Theresa had descended from heaven to recite a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... in trance or under the influence of anaesthetics. After death, when it withdraws entirely from the dense body, it would be clearly visible to him, and he would frequently see it hovering over newly made graves as he passed through a churchyard or cemetery. If he were to attend a spiritualistic seance he would see the etheric matter oozing out from the side of the medium, and could observe the various ways in which the communicating entities ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... the London Medium a very interesting narrative of his seances with the Emperor and Empress of Russia, the royal family and nobility. In the first royal seance, the Grand Duchess Vladimir proved to be a medium, and was lifted in the air, screaming the while. 'As she continued to ascend,' says Mr. Eglinton, 'I was compelled to leave her hand, and on returning to her seat, she declared that she had been ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the geologist, when the four "came out" of their seance, "the bees seem to have everything their own way. How can we help the humans best? Hurry up with your idea; I'm getting sick of these ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... The seance ended, the Devil slapping a safe portion of the children's bodies, with a sound resembling applause. After many months of this really annoying conduct, poor Campbell laid his case before the Presbyters, in 1655, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the entire brain freely and without pain. From my own experience I am able to confirm Dr. Frazier's observation. In addition, the two-stage operation for the excision of the Gasserian ganglion provides an observation of extraordinary interest. If at the first seance the ganglion is exposed, but is not disturbed except by the iodoform gauze packing, then on the following day the gauze may be removed, the ganglion picked up, and its branches and root excised without anesthesia ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... savez comment j'ai connu Fleeming Jenkin! C'etait en Mai 1878. Nous etions tous deux membres du jury de l'Exposition Universelle. On n'avait rien fait qui vaille a la premiere seance de notre classe, qui avait eu lieu le matin. Tout le monde avait parle et reparle pour ne rien dire. Cela durait depuis huit heures; il etait midi. Je demandai la parole pour une motion d'ordre, et je proposal que la seance fut levee a la condition que chaque membre francais emportat ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was in earnest about it, though he relished a joke at the expense of his doctrine, like some clerics when they are in the safe company of other clerics. He told me once of having recounted to Agassiz the facts of a very remarkable seance, where the souls of the departed outdid themselves in the athletics and acrobatics they seem so fond of over there, throwing large stones across the room, moving pianos, and lifting dinner-tables and setting them a-twirl under the chandelier. "And now," he demanded, "what do you say ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... become the rage, and so Jeanne decided to consult her, although the woman charged a higher fee than, I understand, the other fortune-tellers were then doing. When the two sisters found themselves there, my married niece bargained that the seance should be half-price, as Jeanne only wished to stay a very few minutes, and to ask but one question. After the bargain was concluded, Jeanne, it seems, observed—the story of the interview has been told to me, and before me, many many times—that she hoped the fortune-teller ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... adjourn was carried. The youngest member proposed to make up a purse for the author producing the best dissertation addressed to the society upon a subject which Sterne considered of such importance; but at the end of the seance eighteen shillings was the total sum found in the hat ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... resumed, after a moment's consideration, "and a considerable portion of the actual material of his physical body. So the physical body that remains behind is depleted, not only of force, but of matter. You would see it small, shrunken, dropped together, just like the body of a materialising medium at a seance. Moreover, any mark or injury inflicted upon this Double will be found exactly reproduced by the phenomenon of repercussion upon the shrunken physical body ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... in Europe and America in Indic superstition and spiritualism, and half-educated people will doubtless be influenced for some time to come by Mah[a]tmaism and Yogism, just as they are moved by native seance-spirits and mesmerism. Blavatskyism (which represents no phase of Buddhism) will always find disciples among the ignorant classes, especially in an agnostic or atheistic environment, so that one should attribute the mental attitude of such minds to their lack of culture rather than to India; ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... are no more authoritative than the conclusions of any other reasonably intelligent man. He may, therefore, lend the weight of a great name to conclusions—or conjectures—entirely outside his own province. The element of trickery in the ordinary professional seance is notorious.[75] The ordinary physical phenomena of spiritism have almost without exception been duplicated by conjurers—many of whom have mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and even the most unusual phenomena, ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Queen of herbs in the seance of wine * And in Heaven Na'im are my name and sign: And the best are promised, in garth of Khuld, * Repose, sweet scents and the peace divine:[FN210] What prizes then with my price shall vie? * What rank even mine, in all ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... "At a seance held within sound of Big Ben on 8th May 1901, there were present Mrs. E. V. M., Mr. Thomas Atwood, and myself. As Mr. Atwood resumed his seat after delivering an address (about 8.30 p.m.) I became aware of a vision which presented itself as being some five feet distant ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... hall, and got him into the wings; and there was a pathetically earnest lady waiting to give him a tract on the horrors of vivisection, and an old gentleman with a white beard and palsied hands, inviting him to a spiritualistic seance. Funniest of all, there was Aunt Caroline's prophet, the author of the "Eternal Bible," with his white robes and his permanent wave, and his little tribute of carrots and onions wrapped in a newspaper. I decided that these were Carpenter's own kind of troubles, and I left him to attend to them, ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... except to demonstrate the truth of spiritualism. He does love to monkey with the supernatural, and he delights in getting hold of some skeptical friend and convincing him of the presence of spirits beyond a doubt. I've known him to ignore two cases of croup and one case of twins to attend a seance and help convince a doubting Thomas on the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... evening that the quartet met regularly for their seance. Old Reinhardt, the violin teacher, was first violin and leader; Mr. Bauermeister (in everyday life a well-to-do wholesale plumber) was second violin; Professor Marshall played the viola, and old Professor Kennedy bent his fine, melancholy face over the 'cello. Any one who chose might go to ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... her, would insert the penis in her vulva and make movements of her thighs and hips calculated to cause friction. At times she varied the program by lying upon me and embracing me passionately. I can remember distinctly her quick, gasping breath and convulsive movements. She generally ended the seance by persuading me to perform cunnilingus upon her. None of these performances were intelligible to me and I invariably protested against being compelled to leave my play to amuse her. Even her fondling of my genitals annoyed ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... nodded Kendrick. "So far as I am concerned, this little chat with you has never taken place and there's been nobody here except the servants—so far as I am concerned. But is there any danger of anybody—— What would be the object of anybody spying on this particular little seance——?" He paused at the quick consternation which the ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... had been fitted up as a medium's seance parlor, with black hangings on the walls, while at one side there was a square cabinet of black cloth, with a guitar lying ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... the field of recollection pretty thoroughly in our after-dinner seance in your rooms, David, but I noticed there was one corner of it you left undisturbed. Was there any ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Eloge historique de Sir WILLIAM HERSCHEL, prononce dans la seance publique de l'Academie royale des sciences le ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... come to bed. It was the sepulchral tone that made them jump perhaps. Zizi got up without a murmur; he was glad to go, really. He slept in the room with his parents. His father, an overcoat thrown over his night things, led him away without another word. And the two women resumed their seance. The saucer moved more easily and swiftly now that Zizi had gone. 'C'est done toi qui as le fluide,' each said ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... training. Flannigan claimed to know the system that had reduced the president to what he is, and he and Jim had a seance every day which left Jim feeling himself for bruises all evening. He claimed to be losing flesh; he said he could actually feel it going, and he and Flannigan had spent an entire afternoon in the cellar three days before with a potato barrel, a ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the ejaculation, "The Republic has given me this happiness: let the Republic receive my oath of gratitude, my oath of devotion!"—and next he proclaimed that there was nobody to surpass him in determined consecration "to the defence of order and to the establishment of the Republic." [Footnote: Seance du 26 Septembre 1848: Moniteur, 27 Septembre.] Good words these. Then again, when candidate for the Presidency, in a manifesto to the electors he gave another pledge, announcing that he "would devote himself altogether, without mental reservation, to ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... but no meeting, nor working (except by carpenters), till then. Your Third Estate, self-styled 'National Assembly,' shall suddenly see itself extruded from its Hall, by carpenters, in this dexterous way; and reduced to do nothing, not even to meet, or articulately lament,—till Majesty, with Seance Royale and new miracles, be ready! In this manner shall De Breze, as Mercury ex machina, intervene; and, if the Oeil-de-Boeuf mistake not, work deliverance ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... They did hold seance that night in a fine spirit of lark, huddled together in the de-luxe sitting room of one of their suites, and little half-hysterical shrieks and much promiscuous ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... the projects of marriage between Queen Elizabeth and the dukes of Anjou and Alencon. In the same year were published the 45th and 46th vols. of the Memoires de l'academie. On the 2nd of August of the same year the last seance of the old academy was held. More fortunate than its sister Academy of Sciences, it lost only three of its members by the guillotine. One of these was the astronomer Sylvain Bailly. Three others sat as members of the Convention; but for the honour ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hopeful way in which the examination proceeded, and when Rachel attempted to say that his mother would be much displeased, he proceeded to tumble head over heels all round the room, as if he knew better; which performance broke up the seance, with a resolve on her part that when she had the books she would not be so beaten. She tried Francis, but he really did know next to nothing, and whenever he came to a word above five letters long stopped short, and when told to spell it, said, "Mamma never made him spell;" also muttering ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on believers. The Chinese use a form of planchette, which is half a divining rod—a branch of the peach tree; and 'spiritualism' is more than three-quarters of the religion of most savage tribes, a Maori seance being more impressive than anything the civilised Sludge can offer his credulous patrons. From these facts different people draw different inferences. Believers say that the wide distribution of their favourite mysteries is a proof that 'there is something in them.' ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the window and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He looked the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end to a long and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic seance his manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an entomologist intent upon classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared to become pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again and shook his head again, and continued to shake it slowly, ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... out of the way while we have our seance with the Draper. Now brace up, my dear; just nod or shake your head when I ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... la meme seance, le Conseil de Guerre a prononce contre dix-sept autres accuses de trahison envers les Armees Imperiales, des comdamnations de travaux forces et de prison variant entre ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... reading the account which I am mailing to you under separate cover, will you kindly forward it to the American Branch of the Society of Psychical Research? As you will observe, it is a verbatim report of a "seance." ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... government, that it is hard for us to have the added risk of wraiths, but there's no escaping. Many persons of to-day are in the same mental state as one Mr. Boggs, told of in a magazine story, a rural gentleman who was agitated over spectral visitants. He had once talked at a seance with a speaker who claimed to be the spirit of his brother, Wesley Boggs, but who conversed only on blue suspenders, a subject not of vital interest to Wesley in the flesh. "Still," Mr. Boggs reflected, "I'm not so darn sure!" In answer to a suggestion ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... "If someone else were to tell you that they had an East Indian yogi who was going to give a seance this very afternoon you would hotfoot it to the telephone to inform Trudy that you must break your engagement with her, and send word to your original hostess as well. That is about ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... intelligences dont les produits ne s'ajoutent pas seulement mais se fecondent et se multiplient dans une progression indefinie." No. 393 Republique francoise. Assemblee nationale. Projet de Constitution... precede par un rapport fait au nom de la Commission par le citoyen Armand Marrast. Seance du 30 ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... disturb me," he said, "I have only to tell the provost the truth. Members of the Imperial Police caught without proper uniform inside German lines are shot, seance tenante." ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Our seance at the mess that night was a late one, for after we had discussed some coopers of claret, there was a very general public feeling in favour of a broiled bone and some devilled kidneys, followed by a very ample bowl of bishop, over ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... his sermon Chichester paused for a moment. And Malling, who seldom felt any thrill at a seance, and who had often remained calmly watchful and alert during manifestations which amazed or terrified others, was aware of a feeling of cold, which seemed to pass like a breath through his spirit. The congregation about him, perhaps struck ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Mr. Britton, when, at the end of the seance, he returned his treasures to the bag, "you have now got twenty-three of our cheques, to all intents and purposes. I hope you are not going to make any unlawful use of them—must tell our cashiers to keep a bright look-out; ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Republican prosperity, doctor bills and other blessings. It seems to me that were I a ghost I would float about on cloud banks and bathe in the splendors of the morning, instead of hiding in bat-caves all day and snooping about all night seeking an unsalaried situation at some dark-lantern seance. When America's greatest lexicographer writes me an ungrammatical message on a double-barreled slate, signs it "noeh webstur," and instructs his terrestial to deliver it to me on payment of one cart-wheel dollar, I suspect that there's something sphacelated in the psychological Denmark. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... man lives in the woods east of Onabasha, accompanied by his dog, horse, cow, and chickens, and a forest full of birds, flowers, and matchless trees. He has lived there in this manner for six long years, and every spring he and his dog have a seance and agree whether he shall go on gathering medicinal herbs and trying his hand at making medicine or go to the city and live as other men. Always the dog chooses ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... their legs on the floor, establishing (what was clear enough before to me) the connection between the table-moving and 'rapping spirits.' Sarianna—who is of the unbelieving of temperaments, as you know—wrote a most curious account to me the other day of a seance at which she had been present, composed simply of one or two of our own honest friends and of a young friend of theirs, a young lady....[23] She says that she 'was not as much impressed as she would have been,' 'but I am bound to tell the truth, that I do not think it possible ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... submitted to Professor Richard Owen, the Superintendent of Natural History; and my learned friend kindly inspected the Egyptian and Palmyrene crania which accompanied them. The whole was carefully described by Dr. C. Carter Blake, Ph.D., before the last-named seance of the Anthropological ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... They interfered, but they did not produce silence or darkness. On the contrary, as soon as Eliphalet and the officer went into the house, there began at once a series of spiritualistic manifestations—a regular dark seance. A tambourine was played upon, a bell was rung, and a flaming banjo went ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Pendant ce temps, le grand cadi, avec ses autres associes, rendoit justice a la porte exterieure de la cour, et j'y vis venir devant lui des chretiens etrangers pour plaider leur cause. Mais quand le seigneur se leva, les juges leverent aussi leur seance, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... laurel which the key-hole also commands. Lovers of the supernatural, of which I am the first, will like to be reminded, or perhaps instructed, that the Church of the Priory stands on the spot where Remus had a seance with the spiritual authorities and was advised against building Rome where he proposed, being shown only six vultures as against twelve that Romulus saw in favor of his chosen site. The fact gave the Aventine Hill the fame of bad luck, but any one ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... chamber, state chamber. cabinet council, privy council; cockpit, convocation, synod, congress, convention, diet, states-general. [formal gathering of members of a council: script] assembly, caucus, conclave, clique, conventicle; meeting, sitting, seance, conference, convention, exhibition, session, palaver, pourparler, durbar[obs3], house; quorum; council fire [N.Am.], powwow [U.S.], primary [U.S.]. meeting, assemblage &c. 72. [person who is member of a council] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... carousing and talking of their lovers. And they ceased not to eat and drink and chat, nibbling dry fruits and laughing and playing tricks for the space of a full hour when lo! a knock was heard at the gate. The knocking in no wise dis turbed the seance, but one of them rose and went to see what it was and presently returned, saying, "Truly our pleasure for this night is to be perfect." "How is that?" asked they; and she answered, "At the gate be three Persian Kalandars[FN167] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... admiring audiences, by license, and never failed to elicit both amusement and applause. To show how striking were its effects, and how surprising, even to scientific men, it may be mentioned that a certain learned SAVANT, on hearing it at a SEANCE of the Academie des Sciences, Paris, protested that it was a fraud, a piece of trickery or ventriloquism, and ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... mind curer. You will find there the most advanced emancipation from theological superstition combined in the most extraordinary way with a more than half belief in the incoherences of a spiritualistic seance. The Boston Christian Scientists have just erected a handsome stone church, with chime of bells, organ, and choir of the most approved ecclesiastical cut; and, greatest marvel of all, have actually had to return ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... running on the same thing? Last time I met up with you there you was collecting a hundred dollars and keep-the-change cents from me, and now here you are spending it. It's ce'tinly curious how both of us are remembering that little seance in the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... in Keeling Island, who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll; this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively like a table or a hat at a modern spirit-seance." Tylor, op. cit. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... hand on his shoulder with a friendly pressure. "You'll have to wait in here a while longer—and you'll have to keep mighty quiet. I've got a circle at three o'clock—a seance. They come once a week, and I can't well put them off. You see, I work alone. It's a small circle, and I never liked the idea of helpers; they're likely to give you away sooner or later. I stretch a curtain across this corner for a cabinet, and they tie me to a chair—and ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... has just been related, Harry Mortimer paid them another visit, which the family council had resolved should be a regular "mesmeric seance." ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... that the Bonaparte of the early Consulate was capable of exalted ideals for the general well-being that were foreign to the Napoleon of ten years later—is fruitful of mistakes in interpreting his activities. On April 8 he attended a seance of the Institute, and was there instrumental in reconciling several persons who had become estranged through events which occurred during the Revolution.* (* Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, 1 252.) He was therefore on good terms with this learned body, and was himself a member of that division ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... is absolutely useless—mere rot. It has already cost me not only its price but also two candles for an all-night seance and an entire degeneration of my most sad and sober resolutions. Money I needed for shoes, solemnity I needed for my reputation—all have gone to the winds in this nightmare of ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... follows an account of a fairly good seance—taps on the marble table, reading pellets, describing persons, etc., until I thought Foster was tired of the interview and was feigning sleep to end it. All of a sudden he sprang to his feet with such an expression of horror ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... indistinctement dans tous les peuples du monde, il y a rarement disette de candidats. A chaque vacance, une commission est nominee au scrutin. Elle presente trois noms a l'Academie, qui consacre une seance a les discuter, et vote dans la seance suivante. Nous devons elire tout a l'heure le successeur de Ranke. Parmi les deux noms qui ne sortiront pas de l'urne, il y en a un qui pourra bien reussir quand on elira le successeur de Minghetti. En general on est porte deux ou trois fois ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... been given a private seance. Possibly he had not desired it. He had come with a dozen other victims of ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... with the first number of his programme, and Steering got up, too. While Madeira shut up his desk, Steering threw away the stump of his cigar and brought his flexed arms back to his shoulders with an expansive pull on his chest that sent a big influx of air into his lungs. After his seance with Madeira he felt as though he had been pummelled down flat. Madeira had to open his desk again for something he had forgotten and Steering passed on to the door, impatient for some outside air. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... anything to you, of course. But we must help her, just the same, and I confess I am crazy to see one of her 'performances,' as you call them." Her face lightened. "How would it do to invite them to dinner and have a seance afterwards? You could judge then of ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the seance lasted," she continued; "some hours, I suppose, for it was dark when I again realised where I was. And after dinner, there was another; and then at midnight he led me to the roof and invoked what he called an astral benediction—a ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... Communication. Developing Concentration. The Call for Illumination. The Jacob's Ladder of Communion. What a Development Circle Is. Forming the Development Circle. The Sitters in the Circle. The Spirit Communication Code. The Matter of Time Conditions. Opening the Seance. Developing a Medium. The Personnel of the Circle. Changing the Sitters. Adding a Medium. Reasons for Changes. Psychic Attunement. Pre-Test Manifestations. Premature Tests. Forcing Tests. Spirit Directions. Questioning the Spirits. Substance ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... seance-room that may be genuine," he heard him saying, "are produced by this fluid, detachable portion of the personality, the very thing we have been speaking about. They are projections of the personality—automatic ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... up, a trifle uncertainly. "I'll stand for most any kind of a dark seance, but this particular spook business is getting on my ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... Hellenes. Now when the Lacedaemonians want to unbend and hold free conversation with their wise men, and are no longer satisfied with mere secret intercourse, they drive out all these laconizers, and any other foreigners who may happen to be in their country, and they hold a philosophical seance unknown to strangers; and they themselves forbid their young men to go out into other cities—in this they are like the Cretans—in order that they may not unlearn the lessons which they have taught them. And in Lacedaemon and Crete ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... Huish, 'turn down the lights at once, and the Band of 'Ope will oblige! This ain't a spiritual seance.' ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... its multitudes of slaughters, proceeds to the wilderness of Sinai; and there again, the Prophet Moses goes into a secret seance and finally announces that God had delivered laws to him, which had ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... I. "My first visits have generally been failures, and I have more than once been told that my own temperament is most unfavourable to the success of a seance. Nevertheless, I have in some cases witnessed marvels perfectly inexplicable by known natural laws; and I have heard and read of others attested by evidence I certainly cannot ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... our seance from slanderous foe; * And from envious rival whose aim is blame: None hither may come save the cup-boy, and eke * Cup-comrades who never our ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Mr Boult drew out his watch, the audience hushed itself, as for a conjuring seance. Mr Hambly passed a hand ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... afraid to open the bottle, on the contrary, would be glad to do so. I am a clairvoyant and trance-medium, with materialization as a specialty. My name is Jefferson P. Smitz. Here is my card. I have a seance to-morrow night. Bring your bottle then, and I will open it. The price of admission is," he said, with a glance of tentative scrutiny, "one dollar," at which information Mr. Middleton, looking unresponsive, uninterested, not to say sulky, he continued: "but as you will bring such ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... girl, who is not yet 20, has been in the habit for some time past of attending seances held by the Cardiff Psychological Society. One night at a seance, while in a state of trance, she was seized with a strange convulsion. Through her ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... "medium" opened her mouth my wife recognized her as the person who has been trying for several months to get me on the telephone to tell me how the spirit of Jack London is seeking to communicate with me! The seance was a public one, a gathering composed, half of wealthy and cultured society-women, and half of confederates, people with the dialect and manners of a vaudeville troupe. A megaphone was set in the middle of the floor, the room was made dark, a couple of hymns were sung, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... day appointed for the seance I was unexpectedly obliged to go away. When I wished to resume the treatment, January 9, the patient wrote me that his condition was strikingly improved, the heart palpitations and feelings of anxiety had not reappeared. His pleasure in life and work had returned ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... said to have turned up at Birmingham. It appears from a report in the Medium and Daybreak that Mr. Charles Gray, of 139 Pershore-road, being "sadly sorrow-stricken by the passing away of a son," was "constrained to remain at home" on the evening of May 31. A seance was arranged "with a few friends," and of course a message was received from the dear departed boy. This was conveyed through Mr. Russell, junior, whose age is not stated. Then Mr. Reedman "was controlled to write ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... I sat between Beulah and her sister through bright sunny mornings in their mother's home with their cat beside them and the pet lamb coming into the room from the meadow. There everything suggested fraud, and when at my second seance her foot was caught behind the curtain and the whole humbug exposed, it was exactly what I had expected. But here everything breathed sincerity and naivete and absence of fraud—yet my mere assurance cannot convince a skeptic; we must ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... a special scout meeting for this work; every scout had come equipped with a gimlet, and there was such a boring seance as had never been known before. Roy had said it was a great bore. As fast as the holes were bored, Pee-wee had tied the strips of leather through them, and the whole job had been finished in ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... connected with the principal circles in Paris where these experiments were tried, and for two years I even filled the exacting position of secretary to one of these circles, an office which morally bound me not to be absent from a single seance. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... experiments. Perhaps all such inquiries may end in no more than diversity of opinion. These practical researches ought not to be attempted by the majority of people, if by any. On many nervous systems, the mere sitting idly round a table, and calling the process a seance, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... of the lower forms of life. This being so, it has always appeared to me perfectly reasonable to suppose that the energy of the light-rays should interfere most seriously with the delicate and subtle forces and forms of energy which are liberated in the seance room. The old objection: "Why must these things always be done in the dark?" has appeared to me very short-sighted and inconsistent with all ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... mouth, lit it slowly, and let out a long cloud of smoke. It is not a little to his credit that he performed these rites with so much composure, for almost before he had begun them the table at which he sat had begun to revolve, first slowly, and then rapidly, as if at an insane seance. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... "La Seance a fini a l'heure ou le president du Roxburghe-Club leve celle de Londres; et le vice-president, M. Dibdin, a soigneusement reuni les bouchons, pour les porter en Angleterre comme un signe commemoratif ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... practices, and in the effects of these practices on believers. The Chinese use a form of planchette, which is half a divining rod—a branch of the peach tree; and 'spiritualism' is more than three-quarters of the religion of most savage tribes, a Maori seance being more impressive than anything the civilised Sludge can offer his credulous patrons. From these facts different people draw different inferences. Believers say that the wide distribution of their favourite ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... member rooming next him had the night before opened his innocent eyes on a thousand-dollar bill miraculously floating through the transom. If bills of such denomination materialized as cleverly as roses at a medium's seance, what might not develop at any moment? It was disquieting! Beds were feverishly ripped open instead of being slept in; mattresses were overhauled and pillows uncased; chiffoniers were turned upside down in hope that bills were tacked on the bottom; ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... did not grant Mrs. Collis the patience to wait until a way was made clear, or whether another letter from her father decided her to clear that way for herself, is uncertain; but one day in March Valerie received a letter from Mrs. Collis; and answered it; and the next morning she shortened a seance with Querida, exchanged her costume for her street-clothes, and hastened to her apartments, where Mrs. Collis was already awaiting her in ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... It is not a little to his credit that he performed these rites with so much composure, for almost before he had begun them the table at which he sat had begun to revolve, first slowly, and then rapidly, as if at an insane seance. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... between him and Tacitus, and, certainly, no identity of genius, that he should strive his utmost to cast off such a heavy burden and endeavour to carry a lighter load by fabricating a continuation of Livy; but no guinea is required to be spent for a visit to the seance of a medium, to call up the spirit of Cosmo de' Medici by the rapping of a table: in the first place, the spirit would be sure not to come, however hard the table might be rapped, from fear of being addressed in Latin or Italian, as spirits are always sulky when they speak ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the manner in which I had failed, and was the recipient of a scathing rebuke from the city editor. It was in vain I tried to get angry. Even to myself I could not simulate proper indignation, so thoroughly had the starch been taken out of me by my seance with an excusably irritated man, knowing the while that I was trespassing ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... geologist, when the four "came out" of their seance, "the bees seem to have everything their own way. How can we help the humans best? Hurry up with your idea; I'm getting ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... soon fatal to many of the lower forms of life. This being so, it has always appeared to me perfectly reasonable to suppose that the energy of the light-rays should interfere most seriously with the delicate and subtle forces and forms of energy which are liberated in the seance room. The old objection: "Why must these things always be done in the dark?" has appeared to me very short-sighted and inconsistent with ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... patience, courage, and resignation never forsook him. He became reduced to the greatest straits, and even wanted food and clothing; yet his ardour of investigation remained the same. Once, when the Institute invited him, as being one of its oldest members, to assist at a SEANCE, his answer was that he regretted he could not attend for want of shoes. "It was a touching sight," says Cuvier, "to see the poor old man, bent over the embers of a decaying fire, trying to trace characters with a feeble hand on the little bit of paper which he held, forgetting ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... walked there often on as cold a day as to-day; I know mine ached as we paced to and fro while the Marquis explained the operetta. It was really too cold to stay out-of-doors, and we turned back to the little salon, called the Salon Japonais, to finish the seance there. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... carpenters), till then. Your Third Estate, self-styled 'National Assembly,' shall suddenly see itself extruded from its Hall, by carpenters, in this dexterous way; and reduced to do nothing, not even to meet, or articulately lament,—till Majesty, with Seance Royale and new miracles, be ready! In this manner shall De Breze, as Mercury ex machina, intervene; and, if the Oeil-de-Boeuf mistake not, work deliverance ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... clean is our seance from slanderous foe; * And from envious rival whose aim is blame: None hither may come save the cup-boy, and eke * Cup-comrades ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... familiar his conclusions are no more authoritative than the conclusions of any other reasonably intelligent man. He may, therefore, lend the weight of a great name to conclusions—or conjectures—entirely outside his own province. The element of trickery in the ordinary professional seance is notorious.[75] The ordinary physical phenomena of spiritism have almost without exception been duplicated by conjurers—many of whom have mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and even the most unusual ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Professor Richard Owen, the Superintendent of Natural History; and my learned friend kindly inspected the Egyptian and Palmyrene crania which accompanied them. The whole was carefully described by Dr. C. Carter Blake, Ph.D., before the last-named seance of the Anthropological Institute (December ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... strayed into our midst would follow on with a brief phrenological seance, and nothing afforded the comrades more satisfaction than to be informed that their bumps ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... in whom they felt such inordinate pride; so that one, then two, then more, from distances long and short, would creep into the council with pretexts ranging from the thin to the absolutely transparent, until one morning the whole seance ended in an unseemly fracas between the legitimate and the illegitimate seekers after help in word or kind, whereupon Hahmed, rising in his wrath, smote them verbally hip and thigh, and Jill departed in high dudgeon, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... daresay often enough, that the business of writing demands two—the author and the reader. Add to this what is equally obvious, that the obligation of courtesy rests first with the author, who invites the seance, and commonly charges for it. What follows, but that in speaking or writing we have an obligation to put ourselves into the hearer's or reader's place? It is his comfort, his convenience, we have ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... know it sounds foolish, but we were having a spiritualistic seance. Madame la Grange ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... vain-glorious warriors, and after a little manoeuvring they put out their lips to be kissed, a sight which might well make even a Scotch Covenanter grin. They suck their lips in with a sharp hissing breath; then push them out suddenly, ready for the osculatory seance, the lips moving as if they were pushed from the inside by a pole. The "boys" enjoy the picnic immensely. As a matter of fact, these "boys" always seem to me to be doing one of four things. They are either eating, smoking, sleeping, or making love; and they do enough love-making ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... true." The implication seems rather to be that if you begin by believing on inadequate grounds, you will presently attain to belief on adequate grounds, or, in other words, knowledge. Thus, when you go to a spiritual seance in a sceptical frame of mind, the chill of your aura frightens the spirits away, and you obtain no manifestations; but if you go in a mood of faith, which practically means confident expectation, the phenomena follow, and you depart ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... in that bottle some one of the Pre-Adamite demons? I am not afraid to open the bottle, on the contrary, would be glad to do so. I am a clairvoyant and trance-medium, with materialization as a specialty. My name is Jefferson P. Smitz. Here is my card. I have a seance to-morrow night. Bring your bottle then, and I will open it. The price of admission is," he said, with a glance of tentative scrutiny, "one dollar," at which information Mr. Middleton, looking unresponsive, uninterested, not to say sulky, he ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... Did they? Say, that seance didn't break up until six-fifteen, and before the board adjourns Rowley had a whackin' big option check in his fist, and a resolution had gone through to install an experiment plan as soon as it could be put up. An hour before that Willis G. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... author has portrayed in the plays of Hamlet and Lear by the side of these extravagant imitations, to save, if possible, even dunces, and dreamers, and criticasters from being taken in by the latter; and at their next seance pitched into the doctor's pet chimera, and what with logic, fact, ridicule, and the author's lines, knocked it ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... like you to come to a seance" said Mr. Dempster, glad to find some one who was disposed to inquire on the subject. He had only recently become a convert, and was very anxious to induce others to think with him. "I am quite sure that you will see something that will impress you with ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... sermon Chichester paused for a moment. And Malling, who seldom felt any thrill at a seance, and who had often remained calmly watchful and alert during manifestations which amazed or terrified others, was aware of a feeling of cold, which seemed to pass like a breath through his spirit. The congregation about him, perhaps struck by the unusual form of the ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... freshest roses and mignonettes, in short, a thousand medleys of the prettiest and gayest colours were assembled, and intersected each other in all sorts of ways on the perfumed heads and snowy shoulders of the most charming women for whom the princely salons contend. The first success of the seance was for Madame George Sand. As soon as she appeared with her two charming daughters [daughter and cousin?], she was the observed of all observers. Others would have been disturbed by all those eyes turned on her like so many stars; but George Sand ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Flannigan claimed to know the system that had reduced the president to what he is, and he and Jim had a seance every day which left Jim feeling himself for bruises all evening. He claimed to be losing flesh; he said he could actually feel it going, and he and Flannigan had spent an entire afternoon in the cellar three days before ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... beyond. Indeed, so inconspicuous is the proceeding, and so quietly do the members that choose to attend pass into the lecture-hall, leaving perhaps half the company engaged as before, that the "stranger "—as the non-member is here officially designated—might very readily fail to understand that the seance proper had begun. In any event, he cannot enter until permission has been formally voted by ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... Concentration. The Call for Illumination. The Jacob's Ladder of Communion. What a Development Circle Is. Forming the Development Circle. The Sitters in the Circle. The Spirit Communication Code. The Matter of Time Conditions. Opening the Seance. Developing a Medium. The Personnel of the Circle. Changing the Sitters. Adding a Medium. Reasons for Changes. Psychic Attunement. Pre-Test Manifestations. Premature Tests. Forcing Tests. Spirit Directions. Questioning the Spirits. Substance and ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... field of recollection pretty thoroughly in our after-dinner seance in your rooms, David, but I noticed there was one corner of it you left undisturbed. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... published in the London Medium a very interesting narrative of his seances with the Emperor and Empress of Russia, the royal family and nobility. In the first royal seance, the Grand Duchess Vladimir proved to be a medium, and was lifted in the air, screaming the while. 'As she continued to ascend,' says Mr. Eglinton, 'I was compelled to leave her hand, and on returning to her seat, she declared that she had been ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the stairs again; and after standing thunderstruck a minute, I ran to the foot of the stairs and saw just like a boot disappearing on the top step.' She said, 'I think I must be going crazy. Why should I always see something at three o'clock each day after the seance?'" (Vol. V. ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... heated coast uv India, near th' bendin' sugar cane. Yes, we did some privateerin', as wuz privateerin', sure, An' we scuttled many a schooner, it wuz risky business pure. But—stranger—we'd be laughin', jest filled with persiflage, If we hadn't had a seance with that ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... and, leaning out a little, I said sweetly, in my best Parisian accent: "Mesdames et Messieurs, la seance est terminee." And off we drove! Their expressions defied description; I never saw people look so astounded. McLaughlan was unfeignedly delighted. "Wot was that you 'anded out to them, Miss?" he asked. "Fair gave it 'em proper anyway, ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... aux Chambres dans la Seance du 14 Fevrier 1825, par S. E. le Ministre de l'Interieur, Sur les Ecoles Secondaries de Medecine, les Chambres de Discipline, et les ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... was sealed; that the cruel finger of a relentless fate had written it so plainly in her tell-tale palm, that all who saw it might read. She hid her face on my shoulder and sobbed so violently that it put an end to the seance. ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling Island, who held a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll: this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively, like a table or a hat at a modern spirit seance.'[1] Now M. Lefebure has pointed out (in 'Melusine') that, according to De Brosses, the African conjurers gave an appearance of independent motion to small objects, which were then accepted as fetishes, being visibly animated. M. Lefebure next compares, like Mr. Tylor, the alleged physical phenomena ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... of wraiths, but there's no escaping. Many persons of to-day are in the same mental state as one Mr. Boggs, told of in a magazine story, a rural gentleman who was agitated over spectral visitants. He had once talked at a seance with a speaker who claimed to be the spirit of his brother, Wesley Boggs, but who conversed only on blue suspenders, a subject not of vital interest to Wesley in the flesh. "Still," Mr. Boggs reflected, "I'm ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... happiness: let the Republic receive my oath of gratitude, my oath of devotion!"—and next he proclaimed that there was nobody to surpass him in determined consecration "to the defence of order and to the establishment of the Republic." [Footnote: Seance du 26 Septembre 1848: Moniteur, 27 Septembre.] Good words these. Then again, when candidate for the Presidency, in a manifesto to the electors he gave another pledge, announcing that he "would devote himself altogether, without mental reservation, to the ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... seen them. Visitors who can satisfy the authorities that they are desirous of studying the works of art with a serious purpose can obtain free passes; but only after certain preliminaries, which include a seance with a photographer to satisfy the doorkeeper, by comparing the real and counterfeit physiognomies, that no illicit transference of the precious privilege has been made. Italy is, one knows, not a rich country; but the revenue which the gallery entrance-fees represent cannot reach any great volume, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... to me all this is a little too Russian in its conception," said Ranuzi, half aloud. "I shall be surprised if the police do not interrupt this seance, which smells a little ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the floor, establishing (what was clear enough before to me) the connection between the table-moving and 'rapping spirits.' Sarianna—who is of the unbelieving of temperaments, as you know—wrote a most curious account to me the other day of a seance at which she had been present, composed simply of one or two of our own honest friends and of a young friend of theirs, a young lady....[23] She says that she 'was not as much impressed as she would have been,' 'but I am bound to tell the truth, that I do not think it possible ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... succeeded in obtaining from China the skulls of three martyred missionaries. These treasures were indispensable to the successful operation of a new magical rite composed by the Supreme Pontiff of Universal Freemasonry and Vicegerent of Lucifer, General Albert Pike. A seance was about to be held; Brother George Shekleton of immortal memory, the hero who had obtained the skulls, was present with those trophies; and the petrified quondam atheist took part, not because he wished ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Sir:—After reading the account which I am mailing to you under separate cover, will you kindly forward it to the American Branch of the Society of Psychical Research? As you will observe, it is a verbatim report of a "seance." ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... its legs is a very important part of its—diagnosis; (we must have a fine word now and then!) Its action on the wing, is mere flutter or flirt, in and out of the hedge, or over it; but its manner of perch, or literally 'bien-seance,' is admirable matter of interest. So also in the birds which are on the water what these are on land; picking up anything anywhere; lazy and fortunate, mostly, themselves; fat, floating, daintiest darlings;—their balance on the water, also, and ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... chaperon on the rug between, and the book-lined walls of the Master's most particular sanctum looking down upon them; while in the drawing-room beyond, Miss Wenlock, at the tea-table, sat patiently waiting till her domestic god should declare the seance over, allow her to make tea, and bring in the young and honoured guest. And now both charmers had vanished from the scene and had left no equals behind. The Master, who possessed the same sort of tact in training young women ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that Mr. Bessel returned with redoubled earnestness to the room where the seance was going on, and so soon as he had thrust himself within sight of the place he saw one of the men who stood about the medium looking at his watch as if he meant that the seance should presently end. At that a great number of the shadows who had ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... sitting beside it with kind, discreet, testifying silences. Such is the figurative form under which the once rugged enemy of Florence, stretched at her length by the rarely troubled Arno, to-day presents herself; and I find my analogy complete even to my sense of the mere mild seance, the inevitably tacit communion or rather blank interchange, between motionless cripple and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... have heard a good deal of spirit matters of late, especially of wonderful incidents that attended Mr. Home's visit to Florence, two or three years ago. Mrs. Powers told a very marvellous thing; how that when Mr. Home was holding a seance in her house, and several persons present, a great scratching was heard in a neighboring closet. She addressed the spirit, and requested it not to disturb the company then, as they were busy with other affairs, promising to converse with it on a future occasion. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the whole experience was the marvellous demonstration of occult power which attended the final seance of the society, the true nature of which is ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... said, "I have only to tell the provost the truth. Members of the Imperial Police caught without proper uniform inside German lines are shot, seance tenante." ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... before Charity's; she was newer to the game. During a dark scene she surrendered the field and decamped. But Cheever and his wife both caught the faint shimmer of her respectable robe as it floated from the rail and vanished in the curtains. It was like a dematerialization at a seance. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... and very interesting story, but in substance it is this: While in a condition of contemptuous disbelief as to the alleged phenomena of spiritualism, Sir William chanced to witness a seance wherein a young girl named Florence Cook was the medium. Her doings so puzzled and interested him that he went again and again to see her. Dissatisfied with the conditions under which the wonders took place, he asked Miss Cook to come to his house and sit for ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... just had to tell you the good news. I seen Slavovitch. Or Slavovitch seen me, I guess, because he started the seance. He says to me: 'Shorty, I want to speak to you about them eggs. I've kept it quiet. Nobody knows I sold 'em to you. But if you're speculatin', I can put you wise to a good thing.' An' he did, too, Smoke. Now what'd you guess that good ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... don't you know? That's like a tradesman shutting up shop when he's made his fortune, or a prima donna going off the stage. It ain't so easy to make out, is it, how the Forno-Populo can retire from the world? She can't be going to take poison, like the great Sarah, and give us a grand dying seance in Lady Randolph's drawing-room. That would be going a bit too far, don't ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... on Sunday evening that the quartet met regularly for their seance. Old Reinhardt, the violin teacher, was first violin and leader; Mr. Bauermeister (in everyday life a well-to-do wholesale plumber) was second violin; Professor Marshall played the viola, and old Professor Kennedy bent his fine, melancholy face over the 'cello. Any one who chose might go ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... be there, or anyone else. As they say of marriage, it's a lottery. They might have roulette, or a spiritual seance, or Kubelik, or fancy ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... that dreadful lump on his head. This time Mary's mother restrained her emotion, and Mary cried. But it was not because she feared her mother was pining away. Oh, no; it was her mother's rugged health and virile strength that grieved Mary, as long as the seance lasted, which was during the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... not remember more idyllic, peaceful surroundings than when I sat between Beulah and her sister through bright sunny mornings in their mother's home with their cat beside them and the pet lamb coming into the room from the meadow. There everything suggested fraud, and when at my second seance her foot was caught behind the curtain and the whole humbug exposed, it was exactly what I had expected. But here everything breathed sincerity and naivete and absence of fraud—yet my mere assurance cannot convince a skeptic; we must examine the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... kinship with anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the window and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He looked the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end to a long and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic seance his manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an entomologist intent upon classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared to become pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again and shook his head again, and continued ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... later I had an opportunity of making the good man's acquaintance and hearing a conversation between him and Mr. Burns. They talked about Spiritualism, with which Borrow had very little patience, though, after some talk he consented to attend a seance to be held that evening in Burns's drawing-room. We sat together, and I had the pleasure of hearing from time to time his grunts of disapproval. When the discourse—'in trance'—was over, he asked me if I believed in 'this sort of thing,' and when I said ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... of Turner, the great artist had volunteered to give Stillman some advice on painting, but had not redeemed the promise at the time of passing away. Stillman had a friend whose daughter was mediumistic and he decided to experiment. Immediately on beginning the seance the young girl was taken possession of by an entity claiming to be Turner. Stillman asked his question silently, speaking no words, but mentally requesting Turner to write his name. The only reply was an emphatic shake of the head. He then asked if he would give some ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... still gurgling over this as he took me upstairs. He showed me my room himself, and then began the fruitless search for evening raiment that kept me home that night from the club. For I couldn't wear Sam's clothes. That was clear, after a perspiring seance of a ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... at the clock. "Confreres," he said, "our number as fixed for this seance still needs two to be complete, and doubtless they will arrive in a few minutes. Till they come, we can but talk upon trifles. Permit me to offer you my cigar-case." And so saying, he who professed to be no smoker handed his next neighbour, who was the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Huish, 'turn down the lights at once, and the Band of 'Ope will oblige! This ain't a spiritual seance.' ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... oath of the States General, taken at the Tennis Court of Versailles, was followed by the royal sitting of the 23d of June. In this seance the King declared that the Orders must vote separately, and threatened, if further obstacles were met with, to himself act for the good of the people. The Queen looked on M. Necker's not accompanying the King as treachery or criminal cowardice: she said that he had converted a remedy ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... West story, with its multitudes of slaughters, proceeds to the wilderness of Sinai; and there again, the Prophet Moses goes into a secret seance and finally announces that God had delivered laws to him, which had ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Magnificent! Let us have a seance!" whispered the poet. "Tell us, madam, can you really lift the ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... a very short and indistinct seance last night. A man speared the other day in a wallaby hunt, near the Laroki, he told us, was dead. He seemed to be raving a great deal, and wound up the first part with, Nao kuku daure (Foreign tobacco is bad). Continuing to rave and disturb sleep, I ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... crowd continued to increase, and it became necessary to call for a detail of policemen to drive back the curious people. In the Mayor's office were Detectives Crim and McDermott with the Mayor and Chief of Police, who for nearly two hours held a seance with the accused men in their effort to reach the truth. The examination of Walling by the mayor was severe to ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... to unbend and hold free conversation with their wise men, and are no longer satisfied with mere secret intercourse, they drive out all these laconizers, and any other foreigners who may happen to be in their country, and they hold a philosophical seance unknown to strangers; and they themselves forbid their young men to go out into other cities—in this they are like the Cretans—in order that they may not unlearn the lessons which they have taught them. And in Lacedaemon and Crete not only ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... corresponding date a generation—that is thirty years—ago. As I read over this column recently I had quite a start as I saw my own name, and read the reprint of a letter which I had written in 1887, detailing some interesting spiritual experience which had occurred in a seance. Thus it is manifest that my interest in the subject is of some standing, and also, since it is only within the last year or two that I have finally declared myself to be satisfied with the evidence, that ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "A seance?" repeated Blanche Farrow in a dubious tone. "I don't think Miss Burnaby would enjoy ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... then become the rage, and so Jeanne decided to consult her, although the woman charged a higher fee than, I understand, the other fortune-tellers were then doing. When the two sisters found themselves there, my married niece bargained that the seance should be half-price, as Jeanne only wished to stay a very few minutes, and to ask but one question. After the bargain was concluded, Jeanne, it seems, observed—the story of the interview has been told to ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... drawing-room, got the steps, and repaired the cornice, which has been a bit of an eyesore to me. In a fit of unthinkingness—if I may use such an expression,—I gave the floor over the parlour, where the seance was taking place, two loud raps with the hammer. I felt sorry afterwards, for it was the sort of ridiculous, foolhardy thing that Gowing or Lupin ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... shut up his desk, Steering threw away the stump of his cigar and brought his flexed arms back to his shoulders with an expansive pull on his chest that sent a big influx of air into his lungs. After his seance with Madeira he felt as though he had been pummelled down flat. Madeira had to open his desk again for something he had forgotten and Steering passed on to the door, impatient for some outside air. As he opened the door, with his eyes rather ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... interrupted. "If someone else were to tell you that they had an East Indian yogi who was going to give a seance this very afternoon you would hotfoot it to the telephone to inform Trudy that you must break your engagement with her, and send word to your original hostess as well. That is about all your plans ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... not Madame Zero had demonstrated her gifts so convincingly as to have converted a sceptic, there was no doubt that she had perceptibly raised the spirits of the whole party (not excluding her own), so the seance was quite deservedly pronounced ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... unusual way, half a dozen years before: a cyclone blew him some three miles and knocked a tree down with him which was four feet through at the butt and sixty- five feet high. He did not survive this triumph. At the seance just referred to, my friend questioned his late uncle, through Mr. Manchester, and the late uncle wrote down his replies, using Mr. Manchester's hand and pencil for that purpose. The following is a fair example of the questions asked, and also ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... decisively affirming it. For instance: towards the close of Act I Madame d'Aubenas has gone off, nominally to take the night train for Poitiers, in reality to pay a visit to her lover, M. de Stoudza. When she has gone, her husband and his guests arrange a seance and evoke a spirit. No sooner have preliminaries been settled than the spirit spells out the word "O-u-v-r-e-z." They open the window, and behold! the sky is red with a glare which proves to proceed from the burning ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... had previously been virtually undisturbed. Here and now developed a phenomenon that places little Miss Mompesson on a par with the celebrated Fox sisters, for her father's bed chamber was turned into a seance room in which messages were rapped out very much as messages have been rapped out ever since the fateful night in 1848 that saw modern spiritism ushered into ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... should certainly say as a rule the Americans are much too well satisfied with themselves for this feeling to be at all common. General Lee, in the course of this to me most interesting evening's seance, gave me many details of the war too long to put on paper, but, with reference to the small result of their numerous victories, accounted for it in this way: the force which the Confederates brought to bear was so often inferior in numbers to that of the Yankees that the more ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... of sore and cracked nipples, thorough cleansing with boiled water and boracic acid solution follows each nursing seance; and, after careful drying, balsam peru—equal parts with glycerine—may be applied with a tiny piece of sterile gauze or cotton; a sterile cotton pad is then applied to each breast which is held in place by a ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... strangers and seacaptains and, as each came, enquired of him anent the city of Babel and its peninsula[FN391] and the garden of Iram; but none of them knew these places nor could any give him tidings thereof. However, when the seance broke up, one of them said, "O King of the Age, an thou be minded to ken this thing, up and hie thee to the land of China; for it hath a vast city[FN392] and a safe, wherein are store of rarities ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... touchee, de la raison et de la fermete que le roi a mises dans cette rude seance."—Marie Antoinette to Joseph II., August 22d, 1785, Arneth, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... saints, as also of flying dragons. Flying in those days of yore may have been real enough to the multitude, but it was at best delusion. In the good old times it did not need the genius of a Maskelyne to do a "levitation" trick. We can picture the scene at a "flying seance." On the one side the decidedly professional showman possessed of sufficient low cunning; on the other the ignorant and highly superstitious audience, eager to hear or see some new thing—the same audience that, deceived by a simple ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... served likewise, I was certain that all five pseudo-murders were wholly and solely acts of retribution, and that they were perpetrated—I am inclined to think involuntarily—by the spirit of the owl itself. Accordingly, I decided to hold a seance here—here in its old haunt, and if possible to put an end to the earth-bound condition and wanderings of the soul of the unhappy bird. Thanks to Father Mickledoff we have done so, and there will be no ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... of this warning. Some of the most subtle deceptions are found in the teaching that Christ has already come, secretly, or that He comes in the chamber of death, or in the spiritualistic seance. Against all these errors we are forewarned, as well as against any agencies that may come showing marvelous signs and wonders. The close of human probation, the coming of the day of God, will be as a thief in the night; and Christ's coming itself will overtake the unwatchful all unprepared. ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... her and kissed her on the mouth and cheeks and eyes. When this was ended and done, for naught is durable save the Living, the Eternal, Provider of the peacock and the owl,[FN438] Nur al-Din rose from the seance and stood upon his feet, because the darkness was now fallen and the stars shone out; whereupon quoth the damsel to him, "Whither away, O my lord?"; and quoth he, "To my father's home." Then the sons of the merchants conjured him to night with them, but ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... attended a seance of the Institution of the Sourds-Muets founded by the famous Abbe de l'Epee, and continued with equal success by his successor the Abbe S[icard],[63] who delivered the lecture and exhibited the talent and proficiency of his pupils. The eldest pupil, Massieu, himself ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... making the gas and could prevent trouble on that tack. It was before the day of charged tanks. The gas we made was contained in wedge-shaped rubber bags, in a frame with weights on top that gave the necessary pressure. Mackellar volunteered to be the weight, and sat on the bags, at our first seance, while Wells superintended the gas and I read the written directions. We were getting along nicely when I came to a place enjoining great caution in the distribution of the weight. "You are working," read the text, "with ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... resolute effort of will he mastered his imagination, reminding himself that spirits gifted in the matter of moving material objects such as candlesticks, frequent only the booths of seance mediums. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... a sudden, Bubbles gave a queer little leap into the air. "I've got it!" she exclaimed. "Let's hold a seance!" ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... latter class of cases as it obviously is in the former. Thus, telepathy being a power of the subjective mind, messages may be conveyed from one to another at any time, neither of the parties being objectively conscious of the fact. It follows that a telepathist at any following seance with the recipient can reach the content of ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... Yes, she is. I'd like to shake her, mischief-making thing. Father liked Nelson well enough before that, but he came home from that seance as bitter against him as if the poor boy had committed murder. Marietta told him that a small dark man was trying to take away his daughter, or some such silliness. Nelson isn't very small nor VERY dark, but he was the only male in sight that came near answering the ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... suitor) was putting poison in her tea; she had a customer who was shadowed by detectives, and another (a very wealthy lady) who had been arrested in a department store for kleptomania; she had been present at a spiritualist seance where an old gentleman had died in a fit on seeing a materialization of his mother-in-law; she had escaped from two fires in her night-gown, and at the funeral of her first cousin the horses attached to the hearse had run away and smashed the ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... however—for the freemasonry of their common love taught it to him—that in the presence of a third person her name, no allusion to her, even, must pass his lips. In short, these conversations grew at length into a kind of seance or solemn rite; a joint offering to the dead of the best that they had to give, their tenderest thoughts and memories, made in solemn secrecy and with uplifted hearts ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
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