"Seance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seance went forward. For twenty minutes or more odd waifs and strays of humanity crawled in through the trap-door, obtained their message of good or ill, and departed into the shadows as silently as they ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... "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
... 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; and"—here ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... 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 once more, his night's rest left ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... 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
... been given a private seance. Possibly he had not desired it. He had come with a dozen other ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... 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
... 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, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... 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
... 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 Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... Eloge historique de Sir WILLIAM HERSCHEL, prononce dans la seance publique de l'Academie royale des sciences ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... 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
... 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)
... 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
... seance is to be broken up: scamper off to Adele to get ready: I'll ask mamma to let you drive to the station in the coupe to meet Mr. Brown: there will certainly be room for such little folks.—And as to you, Miss Featherstone, as head of the house pro tem. I order you to put on your hat and cloak ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... 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
... 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 ribaldry under cover ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... 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
... when he arrived, the night of the strange witch-doctor's seance. This had all come to an end. The schoolhouse was dark—the girls were asleep. From a prowling native he learned that the girls were there and safe, then he turned in ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... The seance of love and legend had been Patsy's own idea. At the supper- table spread by Norah Doyle, in spite of the protests of her visitors— the Young Doctor, Louise and Patsy—Nolan Doyle, who had a fine gift for playful talk, had tried to keep the situation free from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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
... 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 deux ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... 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
... up, a trifle uncertainly. "I'll stand for most any kind of a dark seance, but this particular spook business is getting on my nerves. Are ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... 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 |
