"Spectre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... considerably. Nervously active by habit, he found delay doubly hard. The days we had spent on Lake Disappointment in a vain search for a river had been particularly trying on his nerves, and had left him a prey to many fears. The spectre of an early winter in this sub-Arctic land began to haunt him constantly. The days were slipping away and were becoming visibly shorter with each sunset. If we could get to the Indians on the George, ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... was undoubtedly saved by a French Canadian. But for Jacques Baby, the grim spectre Starvation would have stalked through the little fortress. Baby was a prosperous trader and merchant who, with his wife Susanne Reaume, lived on the east shore of the river, almost opposite the fort. He had a farm of one thousand acres, ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches creak, springing out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the flue, and shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As in the old story, the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen. She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit as she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself—a vacuous duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... slept quietly as an infant all that night. Next morning I found him up and dressed. Looking like a spectre, indeed; but with health, courage, and hope in his eyes. Even my father noticed it, when at dinner-time, with Jael's help—poor old Jael! how proud she ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... ghost, as he believed, for the flour that still remained in the sack had completely whitened his fellow-traveller and given him a most unearthly appearance. The frightened miller was "putrified," as Mrs. Malaprop would say, at the sight, and a push from the white spectre brought the unfortunate man to the ground, when away rode the gallant quartermaster with his sacks of flour, which, at length bursting, made a ludicrous spectacle of man ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... circles in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities of America are aroused over the visit of a spectre called Nationalism, alias Territorialism. Like all spectres, it is doing a lot of mischief and causing much confusion in the heads of ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... as they. Not a word, whether of sympathy or of animosity, greeted the silent procession. On went the noiseless, spectre-like train until it reached the market-place. There the superior stopped, and the brothers gathered around him in one ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... With the rod of sickness smote her; And the ruddy color left her, And those lofty airs and manners; Sickness and a ghastly pallor Came upon her limbs and forehead, And she hourly sank and wasted Till a spectre she resembled. Then the spirit fled the body, And was carried unto Sero; Sero through the wicket passed it To the pit of Long Damnation. What is now this pompous woman, And her great imagination? These have vanished like a ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... a half-playful lunge with his bayonet at a gaunt, yellow-faced spectre of a man who staggered on to the boat with a child in his arms wrapped in a tattered blue quilt. A gust of the chilly wind picked his shapeless, loose-fitting hat off as he leaped to avoid the bayonet-point, and his head ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... and have seen the whole assembly in very great alarm all the while it has been ringing. But there is nothing which delights and terrifies our English theatre so much as a ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody shirt. A spectre has very often saved a play, though he has done nothing but stalked solemnly across the stage, or rose through a cleft in it and sunk again without speaking one word. There may be a proper season for these several terrors, and when they only come in as aids and assistances ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... it was that night when there was an alarm of fire. I went close up to you to take Master Archibald from your arms; and, as sure as I am now standing here, I believe that for the moment my senses left me. I thought I saw a spectre—the spectre of my dead lady. I forgot the present; I forgot that all were standing round me; that you, Madame Vine, were alive before me. Your face was not disguised then; the moonlight shone full upon it, and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I am altogether at my ease when I see anywhere in my path that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, Poverty; attended as he always is, by iron-fisted oppression, and leering contempt; but I have sturdily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day already, and still my motto is—I DARE! My worst enemy is moi-meme. I lie ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... weary wretch and worn, A roundel shrill and obsolete. The spectre of a dog forlorn ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... reddish-brown white. We call wine "white wine" which is as yellow as a Blue-coat boy's legs. We call grapes "white grapes" which are manifestly pale green. We give to the European, whose complexion is a sort of pink drab, the horrible title of a "white man"—a picture more blood-curdling than any spectre in Poe. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... found himself trying to take an inventory of his own stock. And since the material question of money did not come in to cloud the horizon, he felt he could do it impartially. There are many now who, having sacrificed every prospect, find their outlook haunted by the spectre of want; there are many more, formerly engaged in skilled trades such as engineering or mining, who find that they have four years of leeway to make up in their profession—four years of increased knowledge and mechanical improvements—unknown to them, but not to their competitors, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... render possible, the application of scientific tests. We may compare him once more to Miss Bronte, who introduces, in 'Villette,' a haunted garden. She shows us a ghost who is for a moment a very terrible spectre indeed, and then, very much to our annoyance, rationalises him into a flesh-and-blood lover. Hawthorne would neither have allowed the ghost to intrude so forcibly, nor have expelled him so decisively. The garden in his hands would have been haunted by a shadowy terror of which ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... "The poor man is a king in his own house." But he is not to be let alone. He gets summoned, must answer for himself in the Imperial Court. So he goes, like an old-world spectre, whom no one knows any more. "What is he?" ask the young. "Ah, he is neither a lord, nor a serf! Yet ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... all was joy and congratulation. Her incurable disease was for the time forgotten, and although pain would occasionally draw down the muscles of her face, as soon as the pang was over, so was the remembrance of her precarious situation. Wan and wasted as a spectre, she indulged in anticipation of again mixing with the fashionable world, and talked of chaperoning Isabel to private parties and public amusements, when she was standing at the brink of eternity. Isabel sighed as she listened to her mother, and observed ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... thy suffering; let those kisses that have wasted thee close thy lids! Descend into the cold earth, poor trembling body that can no longer support its own weight. When thou art there, perchance thou wilt be believed, if doubt believes in death. O sorrowful spectre! On the banks of what stream wilt thou wander and groan? What fires devour thee? Thou dreamest of a long journey and thou hast one ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... too late. The helpless loveliness lying in his arms was not for him. It was Ahmed whom she loved, Ahmed who had waked to such a tardy recognition of the priceless gift that she had given him, Ahmed whom he must wrest from the grim spectre that was hovering near him lest the light that shone in her violet eyes should go out in the blackness of despair. And yet as he looked at her with eyes filled with hopeless misery a demon of suggestion whispered within him, tempting him. He knew ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... rim dips: the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; 200 With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... bodies of those who in the eastern countries of Europe are called vampires. They buried the corpse under the gallows; but neither the digging up nor the re-burying were of avail to banish the spectre. Again the spade and pick-axe were set to work, and the dead man being found considerably improved in condition since his last interment, was, with various horrible indignities, burnt to ashes, 'after which the spectrum was ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... the name of Huguenot applied to the Protestants, hitherto called "Lutherans," "heretics of Meaux" and, more rarely, "Calvinists." The origin of the word, first used at Tours in 1560, is uncertain. It may possibly come from "le roi Huguet" or "Hugon," a night spectre; the allusion then would be to the ghostly manner in which the heretics crept by night to their conventicles. Huguenot is also found as a family name at Belfort as early as 1425. It may possibly come from the term "Hausgenossen" ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... was gone she abandoned herself to an impassioned dramatization of her own death from blood-poisoning, and her husband's early marriage with the actress, who then appeared in all his plays, though they were not happy together. Her own spectre was always rising between them, and she got some fearful joy out of that. She counted his absence by her heart-beats, but he came back so soon that she was ashamed, and was afraid that he had behaved so as to give the woman a notion ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... a vacant chair Fills with quick tears some tender eye, And at our maddest sports appear Those well-loved forms that will not die. We lift the glass, our hand is stayed— We jest, a spectre rises up— And weeping, though no word is said, We kiss and pass the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... which a great deal of nonsense has been written by English writers on the early history of Canada, most of whom have been able to see nothing but the spectre of paternalism in every domain of colonial life. It is quite true, as Tocqueville tells us, that the physiognomy of a government can be best judged in its colonies, for there its merits and faults appear as through a microscope. But in Canada it ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... need of haste. On Friday, while the flames were still making their way onward, General Funston telegraphed: "Famine seems inevitable." The people of the country took a more hopeful view of it, and by Saturday night the spectre of famine was definitely driven from the field and food for all the fugitives was ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... with my own money,' replied the spectre. It is all my own, and I shall keep it. The church shall never have one stiva of it if ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sure no one had as yet been found who had really seen the spectre old man, nevertheless the place kept its ghost reputation ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... sentence gravely in any company, and you are certain to provoke laughter. And yet some subtile recognition of the fact of death runs constantly through the warp and woof of the most ordinary human existence. And this recognition does not always terrify. The spectre has the most cunning disguises, and often when near us we are unaware of the fact of proximity. Unsuspected, this idea of death lurks in the sweetness of music; it has something to do with the pleasures with which we behold the vapours of morning; it comes between the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... remain untrue in the future. The vain desire of creating beyond the present for the future I abandon, but if I am to create for the present, that present must appear to me in a less disgusting form than it actually does. I renounce fame, and more especially the ridiculous spectre of posthumous fame, because I love my fellow-men too much to condemn them, for the sake of my vanity, to the poverty in which alone the posthumous fame of dead people finds ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... and, quite illegally but profitably, landed her in Standard Oil is not a part of this drama. But meanwhile she had shuddered. Like many another widow, to whom New Haven was as good as Governments, she might have been in the street. Pointing at her had been that spectre—Want! ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the Spaniard. Then, with horrified gestures, as directed against some spectre, he unconsciously fell into the ready arms of his attendant, who, with a silent appeal toward Captain Delano, seemed beseeching him not again to broach a theme so unspeakably ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... arouse the bitter resentment he expected. There even came whispers to his ears that he had sold out to the landlords, and there was enough truth in the report to scare him. Thus to both parties came the uncomfortable spectre of the black men, and both sides went to work to ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... protest against the tame and unimpressive manner in which that supernatural personage is permitted to make his appearance. It should seem that our managers reserve all their decorations for the inexplicable dumb show of the Wood Daemon (that diphthong is my delight), the Castle Spectre, &c. &c. The Bleeding Nun in Raymond and Agnes is ushered in with a pre-scent-iment of blue flame and brimstone. Angela's mother advances in a minuet step, to soft music, like Goldsmith's bear, and is absolutely ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... reason why you want him to go. You think if he really asserted himself, really knocked down the spectre of his old distrust and stamped on it, he would be a different man. If he had once proved himself, as we say of younger chaps, ...
— Different Girls • Various
... section a white-lipped girl strained forward, silently intreating. Her face was tear-streaked. There was something desperately compelling about her attitude. The spectre of defeat to her was as grim as the spectre of death. Almost unconsciously her lips parted and she started to sing ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... magic, because they know not how they are produced. Eyes that are diseased do not see things as others see them, or else behold them differently. A drunken man will see objects double; to one who has the jaundice they will appear yellow: in the obscurity people fancy they see a spectre, where there is but the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... pestilence had broken out in Rome, and the spectre of a mysterious and mortal sickness distracted those who had survived the terrors of sword and flame. The Spanish and German soldiery either fell victims to the plague or deserted in haste and fear; and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... endured in this nature would justify the expression. I never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life—so far as memory serves in things so long ago—without an assurance, which realized its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say, that to his picture of the Witch raising up Samuel—(O that old man covered with a mantle!) I owe—not my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy—but the shape and manner of their visitation. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Ghost, as far as possible, the Mother's attributes —Love, Charity, Grace; but in spite of conscientious effort and unswerving faith, the Holy Ghost remained to the mass of Frenchmen somewhat apart, feared rather than loved. The sin against the Holy Ghost was a haunting spectre, for no one knew what else ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... though audible, caused him to crouch behind a cedar bush again. He held his breath, listened, and peered through the branches. Soon a man appeared,—a Navajo; but whether it was Nacaytzusle or not, he could not discover. The Indian glided across the open space as noiselessly as a spectre, and disappeared in a northerly direction. Tyope remained in his concealment for a while, and as nothing more was heard or seen, he crawled to the nearest shrub to the west. There he again listened and watched, then rose to his feet and moved ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... called MONK Lewis, from his once popular romance of that name, was a good-hearted man, and, like too many of that fraternity, a disagreeable one—verbose, disputatious and paradoxical. His Monk and Castle Spectre elevated him into fame; and he continued to write ghost-stories till, following as he did in the wake of Mrs. Radcliffe, he quite overstocked the market. Lewis visited his estates in Jamaica, and came back perfectly negro-bitten. He promulgated ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... of Faith, awake, arise, illume The dread unknown, the chaos of the tomb Melt, and dispel, ye spectre doubts that roll Cimmerian darkness o'er the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... feet. But she, for whom the greeting was intended, did not observe this mute courtship, for her eyes followed the travellers, and especially the young man, as if spellbound. As soon as the three were far enough off not to hear her, the girl asked with a shiver, as if some desert-spectre had passed by-and in a low ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... do to us. That accounts for our politeness. Death, universal and inevitable, is none the less a villainous institution. Every other antagonist can be ignored or bribed or circumvented or crushed outright. But here is a damnable spectre who knocks at the door and does not wait to hear you say, 'Come in.' Hateful! If other people think differently it is because they live differently. How do they live? Like a cow that has stumbled into a dark hole, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... clear as anything in reason[857]. She had no patience with English anti-slavery people who believed Northern protestations, and she did not express concern over the horrors of a possible servile insurrection. Nevertheless this spectre was constantly appearing. Again the Spectator sought to allay such fears; but yet again also proclaimed that even such a contingency was less fearful than the consolidation of the slave-power ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... the slain— For her, the sole, the one More dear to him than daylight or the sun, That perished to be pure! No more! no more! Hath that stern mourner language! But the vow, Late breathed before those spectre witnesses, His secret spirit mutters o'er and o'er, As 't were the very life of him and his— Dear to his memory, needful to him now! A moment and his right hand grasped his brow— Then, bending to the waters, his canoe, Like some etherial ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... no little exercise of the imagination to form a mental picture of Lord HALDANE as a member of the Russian ballet, or, to put it in a more concrete form, making the famous flying exit in Le Spectre da la Rose. Could fancy be translated into fact, the drawing power of such a spectacle would be prodigious. On the other hand, and in view of the notorious adaptability of the Slavonic temperament, we can well imagine NIJINSKY proving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... strange visions. And in the midst of those ruins, which began to assume fantastic forms, and which seemed to move, in the gathering shades of twilight, Berta, her father, and the nurse might well believe themselves in the presence of a spectre evoked there ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... hunt is a spectre; sighted, it steals away; and if one remains very, very still and listens, one may hear, far and faint, the undertone of phantom horns mocking the field that rides ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... I was lying on the floor, holding the half- perused paper in my hand. Grief and horror had locked up the avenues of complaint, and I sat as one petrified to stone. My father entered. At the sight of me, he started as if he had been a spectre. His well- known features opened at once my agonized heart. With fearful cries I cast myself at his feet, and putting the letter into his hand, clung, almost expiring, to ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... shook, and spiral columns of vapour rose around the altar, and from each column came a spectre of fire and stood ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... hands it to the Duke. Macias is arrested after a tumultuous scene, and is led away, shaking off Elvira's efforts to save him with bitter contempt, and breaking loose from her with the prophecy that in every joy of the future and every incident of her wedded life, the spectre of his murdered love will rise before her, and 'every echo and every breeze repeat the ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... out, the camp-fire fades, The wild auroral ghost-lights die, And stealing up the distant wood The moon's white spectre floats on high, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... the fire, the vast apartment was so ill-lighted by a single candle that he could be no longer seen, he could still be heard marching about in the dark, however, and presently returned slowly towards the light, and emerged by degrees from obscurity, looking like a spectre, with his white robe and cap, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail, A spectre at my door, Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail— I shall but love you more, Who, from Death's house returning, give me still One moment's ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... grew irritating to him; it drew so marked a contrast 'twixt Crispin's frame of mind and his own. Whilst Crispin had related his story, the interest it awakened had served to banish the spectre of fear which the thought of the morrow conjured up. Now that Crispin was silent and asleep, that spectre returned, and the lad grew numb and sick with the horror ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... hear of Finance-Minister Creutz, once a poor Regiment's Auditor, when his Majesty, as yet Crown-Prince, found talent in him? Can readers fish up from their memory, twenty years back, anything of a terrific Spectre walking in the Berlin Palace, for certain nights, during that "Stralsund Expedition" or famed Swedish-War time, to the terror of mankind? Terrific Spectre, thought to be in Swedish pay,—properly a spy Scullion, in a small concern of Grumkow VERSUS Creutz? [Antea, vol. v. pp. 356-358; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... from south to north. In public he still played the part of chorus to the wild speeches of his friends: but he would have taken in petto the first dictator who came along and swept away the red spectre. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... soon one gets accustomed to a sudden change of fortune. The novelty of the situation had worn off by the time the home journey was finished. She was again in the grip of overwhelming fear. The horrible dread of a prosecution stood like a spectre in her path. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart a spectre dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time, Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions that have passed away And left no shadow of their loveliness On the dead waste of life. That ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... alone with thee for two whole days, And all the day thou wrapped in sleep didst lie. Where wouldst thou go, my dove?" The gentle girl Was much afraid and trembled, and she thought: "Is it a spirit come to find me here? Avaunt thee and begone, O spectre dread," She said, amid her tears. "No phantom I," Replied the King; "be not afraid. I wish To marry thee." Then Bidasari strove Again to flee. Then sang the King a song That told of love and happiness. Its words ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... there are when spectre-like, Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled, I enter alone upon the stubble field, From which the laborers' voices late have died, And in the antiphony of afterglow And rising full moon, sit me down Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock And lose myself amid so many alike. I ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... crowding out of the houses and towards the great marketplace, where the assembly to hear the conditions was likeliest to meet. The soldiers, who had been better cared for than the more useless townsfolk, were spectre-like in all conscience; but the starving children, and the desperate mothers who could only weep and wring their hands in answer to the piteous demand for bread, were the beings who most stirred Raymond's heart as he ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... funnier figure in my life. The coat was once my grandfather's—a colonel of West India Militia, I believe. Now my grandfather had been a rather short man, but very broad and stout, particularly round the stomach. Old Clump was tall and thin as a spectre, so the epaulettes fell over his shoulders, the waist flapped loosely eight inches above his trousers, and the short swallow-tails did not sufficiently cover the spot which the venerable darky usually placed on the chair to hide a patch, the bigness of a frying-pan ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... As he spoke the spectre-like clerk put down a neatly-ruled bit of paper and an unsigned cheque on the desk before his employer, and then smiled a ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... habitations, and the cave-like refuges in which the citizens sought safety from the death-dealing missiles. It was a scene never to be forgotten, a spectacle of ruin, suffering, and death. And the suffering was not alone from the terrible enginery of war, but from lack of food as well, for that dread spectre of famine, that in a few weeks more was to force the surrender of the valiantly defended city, was already showing its gaunt form in the desolated ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... scythe and darts supply, How great a king of fears am I! They view me like the last of things, They make and then they draw my stings. Fools! if you less provoked your fears, No more my spectre form appears. Death's but a path that must be trod, If man would ever pass to God; A port of calms, a state to ease From the rough rage of swelling seas. Why then thy flowing sable stoles, Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles, Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds, Long palls, drawn hearses, covered ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Mar. 20. Dvo[vr]ak's cantata "The Spectre Bride" given in Brooklyn, N.Y., under Theodore Thomas; also Raff's "Die Jahreszeiten" for chorus, pianoforte ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... was taken with a panic; she fancied herself deserted in a giant tomb, with dead men gathering about her. She herself was in truth the grisliest spectre there, in her white satin gown and feathers, and the horror of her hideous face. But she took to flight, and the key remained unnoticed ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... shall return To dare the weeds of death, And plunge through the coned pink bloom, And cry on that spectre set In its silent ring of gloom, And stay my youth to learn The thing that my ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Piercie Shafton, by presenting him with a bodkin, indicative of his descent from a tailor, is borrowed from a German romance, by the celebrated Tieck, called Das Peter Manchem, i. e. The Dwarf Peter. The being who gives name to the tale, is the Burg-geist, or castle spectre, of a German family, whom he aids with his counsel, as he defends their castle by his supernatural power. But the Dwarf Peter is so unfortunate an adviser, that all his counsels, though producing success in the immediate results, are in the issue attended with ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... secured my complete forgiveness. Consequently, the khan repeatedly appeals to me as "bur-raa-ther," lays his forefingers together, and enlarges upon the fact that we have passed through the dangers and difficulties of the Dasht-i-na-oomid together. The dread spectre of possible mutilation and disgrace as the consequence of their misdeeds pursues these guileful, grown-up children even in their dreams. All through the night they are moaning and muttering uneasily in their ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Mazarine (who had the devil always present in his black imagination) wakes his best beloved, to make her partaker—you will never be able to guess of what—to make her partaker of his nocturnal visions. Flambeaux are lighted, and search is made everywhere; but no spectre does Madame Mazarine find, except that which lay by ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... and provident father, this scheme threatened to fructify sooner than he wished, if indeed it could ever have fructified to his satisfaction; for the grisly spectre of typhus laid his relentless hand upon Mary when she—and of a consequence Annie—was somewhere about eight years old. And surely, being as we are very hopeful optimists in the cause of human nature, we need not say that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... suppress the social democrats, does its best to employ them for its own ends. It uses them in fact as it uses irreconcilable France, namely, for the purpose of terrorisation, since it has discovered that the spectre of socialism is as effective to keep the middle classes loyal as the spectre of French revenge is to keep the Southern States loyal. But it also hopes in time to eradicate socialism from the State. "A vigorous national policy" ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... completely vanished. The huge solid shell is full of expression; it looks as if it had been hollowed out by the sincerity of early faith, and it opens into a cloister as impressive as itself. Wherever one goes, in France, one meets, looking backward a little, the spectre of the great Revolution; and one meets it always in the shape of the destruction of something beautiful and precious. To make us forgive it at all, how much it must also have destroyed that was more hateful than itself! Beneath the church ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... is to leave what does not belong to one severely alone. In other sins there may be something gained in the long run, but here no such illusion can be entertained, for the spectre of restitution, as we shall see, follows every injustice as a shadow follows its object, and its business is to see that no man ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... If a spectre had made its appearance in their midst, the girls could not have been more disconcerted. A horrible hush spread over the room, and for a moment everybody stared in frozen horror. The musicians slipped down from the dressing-table and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... brother-surgeon and the servant brought him home, but neither candles nor the light of day could allay his fears; his disordered brain showed him Grandier ever standing at the foot of his bed. A whole week he continued, as was known all over the town, in this condition of abject terror; then the spectre seemed to move from its place and gradually to draw nearer, for he kept on repeating, "He is coming! he is coming!" and at length, towards evening, at about the same hour at which Grandier expired, Surgeon Mannouri drew his ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... But there was a ship—safe, convenient, roomy: a ship with beds, bedding, knives, forks, comfortable cabins, glass and china, and a complete cook's galley, pervaded, ruled and possessed by the pitiless spectre of starvation. The lamp oil had been drunk, the wicks cut up for food, the candles eaten. At night she floated dark in all her recesses, and full of fears. One day Falk came upon a man gnawing a splinter of pine wood. Suddenly he threw the piece of wood ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... had been the wreck of weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays of the setting sun flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire had been added to the ruin. But even this presently faded, leaving the abandoned coach a rigid, lifeless spectre on the twilight plain. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... not sprung into life full grown. It had gradually taken form after Michael's imprisonment. At first it had been only an uneasy ghost that could be laid, a spectre across her path that could be avoided; but since she had come home it had slowly attained gigantic and terrifying proportions. It loomed before her now as a vague but insistent menace, from which she ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... the welter of the east One gaunt barque like a spectre bore; The mad wind trumpeted, then ceased, Then trumpeted ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... Adown his cheeks Seem'd real tears to flow; and even his hand With Ceyx' motion mov'd. Deeply she groan'd, Ev'n in her sleep, and rais'd her longing arms To clasp his body; empty air she clasp'd: Exclaiming;—"stay; O whither dost thou fly? "Together let us hence!"—Rous'd with the noise, And spectre of her spouse; sleep fled her eyes, And round she cast her gaze for that to seek Which she but now beheld. Wak'd by her voice, Her slaves approach'd with lights; but when in vain She search'd for what she lack'd, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... what ghost? Thy fancy hath converted some white cow into a spectre, in the uncertain ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Worcester and the English dictionaries spell re, while Webster, the Century, and the Standard prefer er:Calibre, centre, litre, lustre, maneuvre (I. maneuver), meagre, metre, mitre, nitre, ochre, ombre, piastre, sabre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, theatre, zaffre,{.} ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... a wonderful winter to the Bean family. Never before had Mrs. Bean known what it was to be free from the oppressing spectre of want. No longer was she forced to worry about household supplies; neither was it necessary for Steve to go to the store each week with his basket of eggs and a few rolls of butter. He carried, instead, ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... A third spectre appeared, rising like Banquo's spirit at Macbeth's feast. This was too much for the plump girl's self-control. She opened her mouth, and her half-strangled shriek, the partially masticated cap-strings all but choking her, aroused Ruth and Helen ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... ears of those who preach dissent, And at the stake teach wretches to repent. Clad cap-a-pie in mail we'll face our foes, And arm our British soldiery with bows. Dirt and disease shall rule us as of yore, The Plague's grim spectre stalk from shore to shore. Proceed, brave BALFOUR, whom no flouts appal, Collect stupidities and do them all. Uneducate our men, unplough our land, Bid heathen temples rise on every hand; Unmake our progress and revoke our laws, Or stuff them full of all their banished flaws. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... there came a vague light—the spectre of a smile. And as Recklow looked at her he remembered the living glory she had once been; and wrath blazed wildly within him. "What have they done to you?" he asked in an unsteady voice. But McKay laid his hand on ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... helpless without his aid. Medland's sanguine mind caught eagerly at the chance, and in a moment turned it into a hope—almost a conviction. Then the whole thing would go down to the grave with the unlucky man, and not even its spectre survive to trouble him. For if no one had certain knowledge, if there were never more than gossip, growing, as time passed, fainter and fainter from having no food to feed on, would not utter silence follow at last, so ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... state of the atmosphere, known as the Fata Morgana of Sicily, the Mirage of the Desert, the Spectre of the Brocken, and the more common exhibitions of halos, coronae, and mock suns. The Mountain House at Catskill has repeatedly been seen brightly pictured on the clouds below. Rainbows are also due to this condition of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... water left in the bottom of a bucket overnight was frozen into a thick cake in the morning, the thermometer indicating 18 degrees. The nights I pass in these fearful regions are more dreadful than the days, for "night is the time for care, brooding o'er days misspent, when the pale spectre of despair comes to our lonely tent;" and often when I lay me down I fall into a dim and death-like trance, wakeful, yet "dreaming dreams no mortals had ever dared ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... the first word uttered loud enough to reach the strange four-armed, one-headed, but legless spectre. It produced a wonderful effect, for the odd figure wheeled about and started off at something like a run. Sukey brought his gun to his shoulder ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... of the other, Attusah of Kanootare, this was necessary in the event that submission to the British government became inevitable. For since he claimed to be a ghost, surely never was spectre so reckless. He had indeed appeared to so many favored individuals that the English might fairly have cause to doubt his execution in satisfaction of his crimes against the government; and the breach of faith on the part of the Cherokee ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the old seaman had been severely tried. Misfortune had followed upon misfortune; until the hardy veteran looked like the spectre of his former self. His only daughter, a pretty girl of eighteen, was engaged to marry the ostler at the Crown Inn, a fine-looking young man, who had lately come from London. He saw Nancy Jarvis, became enamoured of the fisherman's ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... eyes were lit with something very much like horror. Some words certainly left his lips, but they did not carry to the hearing of any one of those three people. He looked at Maraton with the fierce, terrified intentness of one who looks upon a spectre! ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bundle, held it out. There were the eyes. She chilled. No imagination here. No spectre ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... and on his way home. He was buried at sea on the 2nd of May, 1872. Poor fellow! He was the smallest in size of all the children, in his manhood reaching only to a little over five feet; and throughout his childhood was never called by any other name than the "Ocean Spectre," from a strange little weird yet most attractive look in his large wondering eyes, very happily caught in a sketch in oils by the good Frank Stone, done at Bonchurch in September 1849 and remaining in his aunt's possession. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... vices to abhor: And the first wisdom, to be fool no more. But to the world no bugbear is so great, As want of figure, and a small estate. To either India see the merchant fly, Scared at the spectre of pale poverty! 70 See him, with pains of body, pangs of soul, Burn through the tropic, freeze beneath the pole! Wilt thou do nothing for a nobler end, Nothing, to make philosophy thy friend? To stop thy ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... peace and love will be banished from among mortals. God, take yourself away! for, from this day forth, cured of your fear and become wise, I swear, with hand extended to heaven, that you are only the tormentor of my reason, the spectre of my conscience. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... had proceeded from it, had reached his eyes; it could not be dispersed; and the consequence was, that he was then blind. The second was lame; he had badly ulcerated legs, and appeared to be very weak. The third was a mere spectre; I think he was the most pitiable object I ever saw. I considered him as irrecoverably gone. They all complained to me of their bad usage on board the Thomas. They said they had heard, of my being in Bristol, and they hoped I would not leave it without inquiring into ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... comfort still, In a whole land's good-will, In hope that pallid spectre shall not slay. The unwelcome hand of Death Closes on that white wreath; But there is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... O listen to the Sea-maid's shell; Ye who have fled your natal shores in hate Or anger, urged by pale disease, or want, Or grief, that clinging like the spectre bat, Sucks drop by drop the life-blood from the heart, And hither come to learn forgetfulness, Or to prolong existence! ye shall find Both—though the spring Lethean flow no more, There is a power in these entrancing skies And murmuring waters and delicious ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... heart and voice! For Athens, leave pasture and flock! Present to help, potent to save, Pan deg.—patron I call! deg.8 Archons deg. of Athens, topped by the tettix, deg. see, I return! deg.9 See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no spectre that speaks! 10 Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you, "Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid! Persia has come, deg. we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed, deg.13 Ran and raced: like ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... anguish. But by and by their feelings got the better of them, and when he was asleep in his chair after dinner Mrs. Millborne's irritation broke out. The embittered Frances joined her in reproaching the man who had come as the spectre to their intended feast of Hymen, and turned its promise ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... Spectre-like Famine drew near; Her doom-word hummed in his ear: Ah, weak were woman's hands to reach And save him from the hellish charms And wizard motion of those arms! Yet only noble womanhood The wife her dauntless part could teach: She shared with him the last dry food And thronged with hopefulness ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... that was precisely what Mr Bickersdyke was doing. He was feeling thoroughly pleased with life. For nearly nine months Psmith had been to him a sort of spectre at the feast inspiring him with an ever-present feeling of discomfort which he had found impossible to shake off. And tonight he saw his way of getting ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... ghosts. Taking advantage of these superstitions, my brother and myself made him the sufferer in many a practical joke. Upon one occasion, we put into circulation, in the neighborhood, a story full of wonder. A remarkable spectre had been seen near the mill on dark nights, and especially on those misty nights of murky gloom, common in early spring to this latitude. Its form was unique and exaggerated, with flaming eyes, and mouth of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... through the heavy door, and a spectre passed into the room before his eyes. And upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... element into criminal cases, be strictly enforced in the Kingdom of Poland. This action saved the lives of scores of prisoners, and put a stop to the obscure agitation which endeavored to revive the medieval spectre. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... and stood for a few seconds without uttering a word. The savage shrank back and shuddered from head to foot. Then, with a noiseless step, Martin retreated slowly backward towards the door and passed out like a spectre—never for a moment taking his eyes off those of the savage until he was lost in darkness. On gaining the forest he fled with a beating heart to his former retreat; but his fears were groundless, for the Indian firmly believed that Martin's spirit had visited his hut and carried away ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... a spectre had been evoked by that thrilling, though deep-toned roar, a huge unforeseen gray form suddenly arose very loftily and towered threateningly right beside them; masts, spars, rigging, all like a ship that had taken sudden shape in the air instantly, just as ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... this megacephalous gentleman, nor did we ever encounter any one who professed to have seen him, otherwise we would certainly have reported the case to the Phrenological Society. But we no more doubt his existence than that of the spectre of the Brocken. Sometimes the shadowy spectre of Ben Muich Dhui is a gigantic exaggeration of the ordinary human form seen stalking in a line with the traveller's route, striding from mountain-top to mountain-top as he steps from stone to stone, and imitating ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... by Rodin in an abrupt voice, made the Princess and Father d'Aigrigny grow pale and tremble. Rodin's look was gloomy and chilling, like a spectre's. For some moments, the silence of the tomb reigned in the saloon. Rodin was the first to break it. Still impassible, he pointed with imperious gesture to the table, where a few minutes before he ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of human hands conquers the spectre, and, puffing and whistling, the locomotive breaks through the dark haze. Once again the iron serpent disappears into the bowels of the rock, and as it emerges it crosses another valley and is greeted by a clear heaven and a multitude of ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... keep an entire community of brave men in dread of some indefinable tragedy. Mobs and riots of much greater magnitude than the John Brown uprising had frequently occurred in the free States, and they were put down by the firm authority of law, without the dread hand of a spectre behind which might in a moment light the horizon with the conflagration of homes, and subject wives and daughters to a fate of nameless horror. Instead, therefore, of arresting the spread of Republican ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... ridicule and derision for their temerity and presumption in giving countenance to this wild projector and visionary madman. The company thereupon gave up the ghost, the boat went to pieces, and Fitch became bankrupt and brokenhearted. Often have I seen him stalking about like a troubled spectre, with downcast eye and lowering countenance, his coarse, soiled linen peeping through the elbows ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... on the bench in her rags and Slimak went into the alcove. He sat on the bed, determined to be on the watch. He did not know that this strange state of mind is called 'nerves'. Yet a kind of relief had come in with Zoska; she had driven away the spectre of Maciek and the child. But an iron ring was beginning to press on his head. This was sleep, heavy sleep, the companion of great anguish. He dreamt that he was split in two; one part of him was sitting ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... from the shrine Not aid but agony is mine. As a spider he creeps and he clutches his prey, And he hales me away. A spectre of darkness, of darkness. Alas and alas! well-a-day! O Earth, O my mother! O Zeus, thou king of the earth, and her child! Turn back, we pray thee, from us ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... passive mass obeyed the vague motions of space. It was an object to inspire indescribable dread. Horror, which disproportions everything, blurred its dimensions while retaining its shape. It was a condensation of darkness, which had a defined form. Night was above and within the spectre; it was a prey of ghastly exaggeration. Twilight and moonrise, stars setting behind the cliff, floating things in space, the clouds, winds from all quarters, had ended by penetrating into the composition of this visible ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... monotone and soliloquy of the stream; the unheeding rocks basking like monsters along the shore, half out of the water, half in; a solitary heron starting up here and there, as you rounded some point, and flapping disconsolately ahead till lost to view, or standing like a gaunt spectre on the umbrageous side of the mountain, his motionless form revealed against the dark green as you passed; the trees and willows and alders that hemmed you in on either side, and hid the fields and ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... of the dawn which is neither night nor day; they found him seated on a lime-sack filled with bones, clad in the mantle of egoism, and shivering in terrible cold. The anguish of death entered into the soul at the sight of that spectre, half mummy and half foetus; they approached it as does the traveller who is shown at Strasburg the daughter of an old count of Sarvenden, embalmed in her bride's dress: that childish skeleton makes one shudder, for her slender and livid hand wears ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Division. We were all sincerely sorry to lose him from the 3rd Brigade. He was ever a good and true friend, and took a deep interest in his men. But the immediate effect of his departure, as far as I was concerned, was to remove out of my life the hideous spectre of No. 2 General Hospital, and to give me absolute liberty in wandering through the trenches. In fact, as I told him sometime afterwards, I was beginning a little poem, the first line of which was "I never knew what freedom ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... This is a word probably derived from "mostellum," the diminutive of "monstrum," a "spectre" or "prodigy." It was probably coined by Plautus to serve as the title of this Play, which is called by several of the ancient Commentators by the ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... sit up?" queried this visitor Lane took for the spectre of a dream. He advanced into the room. He grasped Lane with firm hand. And then Lane realized this was no nightmare. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... burn! And thro' the hyoids, huge and red, Past portals black and guidons bright To onyx lees and opal sands, The Cyclopean vaults of dwale, And cavern'd shapes that Typhon bled, Greet each wand'ring spectre's sight; Where pixies dance on wind-blown strands, Lurke gyte incubi in a hall. Here, then, reigns gyving, batter'd Doom! Where shadows vague and coffined light, Spit broths from splinter'd wracks and domes. Where ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... admits, revolutions in the moral as well as the physical world; and inspired reformers, who were born to carry them on; but these men are rare and portentous as the physical agencies to which they correspond, and whether "dervish (desert-spectre), swordsman, saint, lawgiver," or "lyrist," appear only when the time is ripe for them. Meanwhile, the great machine advances by means of the minute springs, the revolving wheel-work, of individual lives. Let each of these be content with ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... prodigious clatter on the pavement and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight, while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone when the people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the ancient lady, the spectre of old Caesar and the Old Maid herself were not all a strangely-combined delusion with some dark purport in its mystery. The whole town was astir, so that, instead of dispersing, the crowd continually increased, and stood gazing up at the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... madness of despair, He roar'd, he beat his breast, he tore his hair. Dry sorrow in his stupid eyes appears, For, wanting nourishment, he wanted tears: His eye-balls in their hollow sockets sink, Bereft of sleep, he loathes his meat and drink. He withers at his heart, and looks as wan As the pale spectre of a murder'd man: That pale turns yellow, and his face receives 530 The faded hue of sapless boxen leaves: In solitary groves he makes his moan, Walks early out, and ever is alone: Nor, mix'd in mirth, in youthful pleasures shares, But sighs when songs and instruments ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Varillo had not gone to Naples. He had been turned back by a spectre evoked from his own conscience—coward fear. He was on his way to the station when he suddenly discovered that he had lost the sheath of his dagger. A cold perspiration broke out on his forehead as ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... eyes seemed quenched in tears, passed often down the street, hardly able to drag himself along; it was Monsieur de Lamotte, who lodged, as we have said, in the rue de la Mortellerie, and who seemed like a spectre wandering round a tomb. The crowd made way and uncovered before him, everybody respected such terrible misfortune, and when he had passed, the groups formed up again, and continued discussing the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE |
