"Specter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you have the money, but, my dear little girl, you are going to need every cent of it and more too before you get rid of this specter. But I couldn't charge David anything if he were a millionaire. Don't you understand,—this is the only way we doctors have of showing what we think of the big work these preachers are doing here and there around ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... the balsam's ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,— A syllabled silence that no man may hear,— As dreamily upon its stem it rocks? What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some specter of some perished flower ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... just read "Faust" again. Alas, every year I am fascinated afresh by this somber figure, this restless life. It is the type of suffering toward which I myself gravitate, and I am always finding in the poem words which strike straight to my heart. Immortal, malign, accursed type! Specter of my own conscience, ghost of my own torment, image of the ceaseless struggle of the soul which has not yet found its true aliment, its peace, its faith—art thou not the typical example of a life which feeds upon itself, because ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... months she had been fighting a specter, never daring to lift her eyes to it, but fighting it blindly, passionately, unceasingly. She had denied its existence, refuted every memory, filled her life to the brim with other interests, other affections, and here suddenly she had met it face to face, and it was no longer horrible, but ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... sobbing bitterly when the Noa-Noa left for San Francisco though they stormed the stokers lustily when aroused. Their life is so simple in these beloved islands that the dangers of the mainland are exaggerated in their minds, and to the old the civilization of a big city appears as a specter of horrible mien. The electric cars, the crowds, the murders they read of and are told of, the bandits in the picture-shows, the fearful stranglers of Paris, the lynchers, the police, who in the films ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... swiftly, as a darting hawk, I made another grab for the throat that must at all costs be silenced. He had covered it with his own hands and I could not pry away his fingers. Again and again I tried, and now, with growing strength, he caught my wrists and held them. Maddened by the specter of failure, I heard him drawing in a labored breath that I knew would come ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Beck suggested a starved black spider, especially when you were looking into his cold, amused, malignant black eyes. He made short work of the guileless brewer, who was dazed and frightened by the meshes in which he was enveloped. Staring at the horrid specter of publicity which these men of craft kept before him, he could not vigorously protest against extortion. Beck discovered that twenty thousand ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... into the lovely valley which had been the favorite home of his tribe, upon the fields where he grew his corn, and the sparkling stream whence he drew his fish. John used to fancy at times, as he sat there, that he could see that red specter gliding among the trees on the hill; and if the tombstone suggested to him the trump of judgment, he could not separate it from the war-whoop that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to Karl and Olga, who stood in speechless astonishment at this strange dialogue. She could understand nothing of this uncanny stranger; this specter in black and white, who seemed to emit a lurid radiance as if his red ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... his sword upon the bed, "this man must be the devil in person; he has disappeared like a phantom, like a shade, like a specter." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... man strolled disconsolately enough into the billiard-room, thence (dogged by a specter of loneliness) to the bar, and finally, in sheer desperation, to the dining-room, where he selected a table and ordered an ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Europe—the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... himself instantly, and glanced at the three girls. As his eyes fell on Lilias and Dulcie, his expression changed to one of utter consternation and amazement, and he colored to the roots of his fair hair. They on their part gazed at him as if they had encountered a specter. ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... the touch of her lips, lay inert as she nestled down into soft-breathing, child-like sleep. He watched the tent opening pale into a glimmering triangle wondering what their life would be with the specter of David standing in the path, an angel with a flaming sword ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... with her, on the threshold of the study door, stood the mistress of the house. She held her old music-book clutched fast mechanically in both hands. She stood, the specter of herself. With a dreadful vacancy in her eyes, with a dreadful stillness in her voice, she repeated ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... to the suspension of free trade negotiations with the US. These measures, combined with chronic underinvestment in the state oil company, Petroecuador, led to a drop in petroleum production in 2007. PALACIO's successor, Rafael CORREA, raised the specter of debt default - but Ecuador has paid its debt on time. He also decreed a higher windfall revenue tax on private oil companies, then sought to renegotiate their contracts to overcome the debilitating effect of the tax. This generated economic uncertainty; private investment has dropped and economic ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... The specter of ecclesiastical authority reared itself, and the question of sharing public school moneys with parochial schools and of reading the Bible in the public schools became a burning issue. Here and there occurred clashes that were more ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... intercourse abroad of a community and interfere with the importation of food when the crops fail and provisions are dear, forthwith the belief springs up that there are too many people. Under such circumstances, every increase in the family is felt as a burden; the specter of over-population rises; and the terror that it spreads is in direct proportion to the concentration of the land in few hands, together with its train of evils—the partial cultivation of the soil, and its being ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... bring the echo clear Of songs that in past times they bore; Wide seas I cross'd to foreign shore, With hope of change and other fate; My folly was made clear too late, For in the place of good I sought The seas reveal'd unto me naught, But made death's specter on me wait. ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... or take any depredating Indian. As only two dollars was paid for killing a wolf, it is easy to see how the pioneers regarded the forest folk in point of relative noxiousness. But ten years later a handful only of the Kickapoos remained in Sangamon County, the specter of the vanished people. A chief named Machina came one day to a family who were clearing a piece of timber, and issued an order of eviction in these words: "Too much come white man. T'other side Sangamon." He threw ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... mysterious girls were, their strange story fascinated my imagination. What possible tragedy lay before them in the years? what horrible revelation to wrench them asunder? to change in a single instant the quiet current of their lives? About them, unseen as yet, lurked a grim specter, waiting only the opportunity to grip them both in the fingers of disgrace, and make instant mock of all their plans. In spite of every effort, every lurking hope, some way I could not rid myself of the thought that Beaucaire—either ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... political harmony, however, the Missouri controversy cast the specter-like shadow of slavery. For the moment, and often in after years, it seemed inevitable that parties would spring into new vigor following sectional lines. All patriots were genuinely alarmed. "This ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction. It was cruel iron-hard; and hour after hour they would cringe ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... you can give, is too poor even for me. Love you I will not. If you speak to me so again, you will drive me away. Talk to me as you will of your void idol. Tell me of the darkness of his dwelling, and the sanctuary it affords to poor, tormented, specter-hunted humanity; but do not talk to me of love also, for where your idol is, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... specter in oilskins, came up to them. "Eve wants you, Brooks," he shouted above the clamor ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... he trudged along, with his knees shaking, but with a brave heart, until he came to a great pine, which evidently had been struck by lightning, for it stood up white and tall, lifting its bare arms to the sky, like some specter ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... poor wife, it is far worse than that. No man has ever seen a more ghastly specter than I have seen of ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... better, happier or wiser for their having lived in it, have done so by working diligently and persistently. Yet, I am certain that not even one of these, when "looking backward from his manhood's prime, saw not the specter of his mis-spent time." Now, don't suppose I am so foolish as to think that all the preaching in the world can make anything look to young eyes as it looks to old eyes; not ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... politician brought on the specter of Napoleon for a different purpose. Early in January, 1865, Francis P. Blair made a journey to Richmond and proposed to Davis a plan of reconciliation involving the complete abandonment of slavery, the reunion ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... face my accusers, and know the worst? Why flee from the specter of a crime committed by another? Are my hands stained with human blood? ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... swimming, scotomy^; cataract; ophthalmia. [Limitation of vision] blinker; screen &c (hider) 530. [Fallacies of vision] deceptio visus [Lat.]; refraction, distortion, illusion, false light, anamorphosis^, virtual image, spectrum, mirage, looming, phasma^; phantasm, phantasma^, phantom; vision; specter, apparition, ghost; ignis fatuus [Lat.] &c (luminary) 423; specter of the Brocken; magic mirror; magic lantern &c (show) 448; mirror lens &c (instrument) 445. V. be dimsighted &c n.; see double; have a mote in the eye, have a mist before the eyes, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Surrey must be dull. How could I forget or enjoy? I put the curtains down, and told Temperance, who was wandering about, not to call me to dinner. I determined, if possible, to surpass my dullness by indulgence. But underneath it all I could not deny that there was a specter, whose aimless movements kept me from stagnating. I determined to drag ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... by the tettix, see, I return! See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no specter that speaks! Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you, "Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid! Persia has come, we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed, Ran and raced: like ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... even the steep, tortuous canyons dried out and there was neither shade nor moisture in them. The few farms and ranches round about were scattered widely, and life thereon was a grim struggle against heartbreak, by reason of the gaunt, gray, ever-present specter of the drought. Of late this particular region had proven itself to be one of violent extremes, of extreme dryness during which flowers failed to bloom, the grass shriveled and died, and even the trees refused to put forth leaves; or, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... ideal which requires that all things be measured by it—was still dominant. Who has not experienced the chilling memory of the better thing? How it creeps over the spirit of one's current dreams! Like the specter at the banquet it stands, its substanceless eyes viewing with a sad philosophy the makeshift feast. The what-might-have-been of her life with Cowperwood walked side by side with her wherever she went. Once ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... helping them break their cycle of despair. There is hope for a free, independent, and sovereign Lebanon. We must have the courage to give peace a chance. And we must not be driven from our objectives for peace in Lebanon by state-sponsored terrorism. We have seen this ugly specter in Beirut, Kuwait, and Rangoon. It demands international attention. I will forward shortly legislative proposals to help combat terrorism. And I will be seeking support from our allies ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... brigands would be as one of Watteau's shepherds. Never did a man's vanity enjoy such a treat! This charming person added that I had threatened her, and that I had jumped at her horse's bridle like the specter of the forest ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... the craft into deep water, and with muffled stroke moved through the inky waves, a somber specter sneaking along the banks of the ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... The specter of hunger presently began to go from house to house, but the result was not what was expected; it awakened only hatred and defiance. It was precisely in this direction that they were invincible! In the course ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... poor that a month's illness or a shut-down of the factory may push them from poverty to the abyss. They are thrifty, but can neither earn nor save enough to feel absolutely sure that the hollow-eyed specter of Want may not seize them by the throat. They are willing to work, so eager to work that at the docks and the factory gates they trample and jostle one another for the chance to work. They are the underpinnings, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... I'm sincere I can't pretend I'm not different. And I'm not a bit sure I know what's any better for them to do than what they're doing!" She had spoken impetuously, hotly, addressing not the men beside her but a specter of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... any event, with Cuba a State, Porto Rico could not be kept a Territory. No more could the Sandwich Islands. And then, looming direct in our path, like a volcano rising out of the mist on the affrighted vision of mariners tempest-tossed in tropic seas, is the specter of such States as Luzon ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... mask has been torn from the specter of distraction, and hereafter when irrelevant sights, sounds and other sensations threaten to interrupt your work, just stop a moment and consider. So far as you and your actual knowledge are concerned, nothing exists in substance and reality outside your mental ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... maintaining stability in the strategic nuclear balance and pushing back the specter of nuclear war. A decisive step forward was taken in the Vladivostok Accord which I negotiated with General Secretary Brezhnev—joint recognition that an equal ceiling should be placed on the number of strategic weapons on each side. With resolve and wisdom on the part of both nations, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of grief; but was not strong enough to sustain a shock of joy! I ought not to have given you this surprise! But try now to compose yourself, and give me welcome. I am here; alive, warm, loving, hungry even! a woman, and no specter risen from the grave, although you look at me just as if I were one! Dear Herman, kiss me! I have come a long way to join you!" she said, in a voice softer than the softest ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... since the murders. He looked better, and we had a long talk, I outside the window and he within. He held to his story of the night before, but was still vague as to just how the thing looked. Of what it was he seemed to have no doubt. It was the specter of either the captain or Vail; he excluded the woman, because she was shorter. As I stood outside, he measured on me the approximate height of the apparition—somewhere about five feet eight. He could see Burns's ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... success the first season progressed. But never a salary day that the "white specter" did not perambulate. Every obligation met promptly, a few folks began to take notice of the new show, persons who had held their faces the other way. The manager was forced to practice the greatest economy. There was a few ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... under the sway of his old warlike feelings. Brigham had revived his fainting faith. He went out into the noise and hurry of war preparations in a sort of intoxication. Underneath he never ceased to be conscious of the dreadful specter that would not be gone—that stood impassive and immovable as one of the mountains about him, waiting for him to come to it and face it and live his day of reckoning,—the day of his own judgment upon himself. But ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... peradventure, at some moment he might find them off their guard, either to be drawn into an ambuscade by day or surprised in camp by night. Unswervingly due north-east the night-marchers held their course for several miles, the warrior gliding on before them, like a gigantic specter there to lead them over the shadowy borders of another world. So it seemed to Burl, who felt his spirit strangely troubled within him whenever an opening through the forest, letting in the hazy glimmer of the moon, brought that huge bulk less ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... foot of the staircase—suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the specter of the most horrible of women. At this I was able to straighten myself; I went the rest of the way up; I made, in my bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where there were objects belonging to me that I should have to take. But I opened the door to find again, ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... foot of a wooden cupboard which looks like iron are lamp glasses in paper shirts; and farther away, groups of oil-drums. All is dilapidated and ruinous; all is dark in this angle of the great building where light is elaborated. The specter of a huge window stands yonder. The panes only half appear; so encrusted are they they might be covered with yellow paper. The great stones—the rocks—of the walls are upholstered with a dark deposit of grease, like the ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... hammock, I was extremely alarmed at finding myself weltering in congealed blood, and without feeling any pain whatever. Having started up and run to the surgeon, with a firebrand in one hand, and all over besmeared with gore, the mystery was found to be, that I had been bitten by the vampire or specter of Guiana, which is also called the flying dog of New Spain. This is no other than a bat of monstrous size, that sucks the blood from men and cattle, sometimes even till they die; knowing, by instinct, that the person they intend to attack is in ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... was talk in both countries of intervention. Napoleon, especially, loomed large on the horizon as a possible ally of the Confederacy. And yet, all this while, Lincoln had it in his power at any minute to lay the specter of foreign intervention. A pledge to the "Liberal party throughout the world" that the war would bring about the destruction of slavery, and great political powers both in England and in France would at once cross the paths of their governments should they move toward intervention. Weighty as ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the real causes of the increasing emigration from Finland. If, along with them, political agitation has also played a certain part, alarming the credulous peasantry with the specter of military service on the distant borders of Russia, yet their emigration was and remains an economic phenomenon. Having originated long before the issue of the manifesto of 1899, it kept increasing under the influence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... The specter saluted. "Lieutenant Alfred Pendray, of the Shane," he said, in a voice that had almost no strength. He held up a pouch. "Microfilm," he said. "Must get to ...
— The Measure of a Man • Randall Garrett
... in general, it does. If it does not die, she has for the rest of her life a Damocles' sword hanging over her head, and she is in constant terror lest her sin be found out. She does not permit herself to look for a mate, but if she does get married, the specter of her antematrimonial experience is constantly before her eyes. After years and years of married life, the husband may divorce her if he finds out that she had "sinned" before she knew him. And unless the husband is a broad-minded man and loves her truly ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... back to her guests, and with the effortless ease of long training, she became once more the gracious and tactful hostess. But in her heart, the fear had grown a little stronger, and a specter walked by her side. Once during the evening, her husband looked at her questioningly, and she breathed a few words to him. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... side and at her beck and call, never at a loss to do and say the right thing, Miller had wooed her in his own masterful way, trampling down prejudice, suspicion, unbelief, until he had gained his heritage—love. The specter of the ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... nothing of the kind; the clerks were all hard at work, and the other people paid him no kind of attention. The visitor began to become reassured. "If," thought he, "this mysterious personage of yesterday, this specter which had risen from the bowels of the earth, knew all, and had seen all, would they, I should like to know, let me stand about like this? Would they not rather have arrested me, instead of waiting till I should come of my own accord? Hence this man has ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... only a province of the Infinite Heavens, so our actual existence is only a stage in Eternal Life. Astronomy, by giving us wings, conducts us to the sanctuary of truth. The specter of death has departed from our Heaven. The beams of every star shed a ray of hope into our hearts. On each sphere Nature chants the paean of ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... blood all drained from her face, she stared at him as if she saw a specter—"Derry," ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... our operations up here in the Kentucky mountains. We won't get worked up over him at present, anyway. To change the subject, I haven't told you that Elfreda has adopted Little Lindy, the hermit's daughter that we took from the cave in the Specter Mountains last season. The Overlanders are still her guardians, but that guardianship will be transferred to Elfreda when we get back home ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... Beatrice awaited the reply with a suspense no words can describe. A dull wonder came over her at times why she must suffer so keenly. Other girls had done what she had done—nay, fifty times worse—and no Nemesis haunted them. Why was this specter of fear and shame to stand by her side every moment and ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the waters gleam And sparkle with the sun's warm beam, Reflecting then some mirrored cloud Like specter wrapt in filmy shroud— Till pouring down with fretful whirl They o'er the mill-dam rush and curl, And foaming round in eddies deep, The circles wide ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... entrance to the land of the Americans. The father of this youth held Chuan Kai in the hollow of his hand, and Chuan Kai knew that a few words spoken to the enforcers-of-law would send him away from these shores, where living came so easily, back to China where stalked a specter which he had reason to fear with the fear of one whose heart trembles like the heart of a field mouse that hears the cry of the long-taloned owl. Those reasons trooped through the Oriental's mind as his black eyes shifted from the face of Campbell to the face ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... listened attentively, and the dim light just revealing their countenances showed their different emotions of confidence or distrust in his plans. General Sidney Johnson stood apart from the rest, with his tall straight form standing out like a specter against the dim sky, and the illusion was fully sustained by the light-gray military cloak which he folded around him. His face was pale, but wore a determined expression, and at times he drew nearer the center of the ring and said a few words, which were listened ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... which would attract notice anywhere; full of energy, character and intellect, the strong lines soften on a closer inspection. There is a good deal that is "pure womanly" in the face which has been held up to the country so often as a gaunt and hungry specter's crying for universal war upon mankind. The spectacles sit upon a nose strong enough to be masculine, but hide eyes which can beam with kindliness as well as flash with wit, irony and satire. Angular she may be—"angular as a Lebanon Shakeress" she said ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... between black mountain walls, and even the mirage which springs from its surface under that hot sun throws off the guise of a cool lake almost on the moment of its assumption to become a repellant specter that leaps and twists like a flame. The Paiute Indians called the spot ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... steep rises over a white and dusty road, with a flaring stone dyke on each side, and neither tree nor bush to shelter us from the scorching sunlight till we came to Woodhouseleigh, the haunted walk of a white specter, who, it seems, was fond of the shade, for her favorite promenade was an avenue overarched with the green arms of noble old elm trees; and we blessed the welcome shelter of the Ghost's Haunt.... A cloud fell over all our spirits as we rode away from this enchanting spot, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... my sojourns in Russia, my thoughts naturally dwell upon the two sovereigns Nicholas I and Alexander II. The first of these was a great man scared out of greatness by the ever recurring specter of the French Revolution. There had been much to make him a stern reactionary. He could not but remember that two Czars—his father and grandfather—had both been murdered in obedience to family necessities. At his proclamation as emperor he had ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... excited, readily accepted every sort of rumor about this mysterious automobile. It was said to be a supernatural car. It was driven by a specter, by one of the chauffeurs of hell, a goblin from another world, a monster escaped from some mythological menagerie, in short, the devil in person, who could defy all human intervention, having at his command invisible and ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... he began to flit about the castle like a family specter of active habits. The first person he ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... shuttled in and out, and hunger came and marched with us till all the days and nights were filled with cravings, and we recked little of fair skies or dripping clouds, or aught besides save this ever-present specter ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... wheel-chair, listening to the music. Memories were crowding thick upon him. Again and again he wished that he had never opened the door of the sitting room that other night and caught the old man off his guard. It had left a specter in his mind, horrible in its pathos and intense. Strung fiercely to the thought of emptiness, it came upon him nevertheless, as he opened the door, with a curious chill sense of palpability; as if silence and emptiness could strike one in the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... budget cuts and plans for more privatizations, but it failed to restore investor confidence quickly. While the devaluation is likely to help Mexican exporters, whose products are now cheaper, it also raises the specter of an inflationary spiral if domestic producers increase their prices and workers demand wage hikes. Although strong economic fundamentals bode well for Mexico's longer-term outlook, prospects for solid growth and low ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... in silence. A general depres- sion has fallen upon all; the specter of famine has appeared among us, and each has remained wrapped in his own gloomy meditations, though each has doubtless but one idea dominant in ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... name of God," said the boy gravely, for he saw a hollow-eyed specter staring toward him from the bed in the corner, "let me pass! ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... representatives of the working classes who are killed on one side and on the other. They promised the Socialist regime, and they have only destroyed the production of the factories so as to leave the population without product and throw the workers into an army of unemployed; the horrible specter of famine occupies the void left by the broken organizations of food-supply; millions of the money of the people are squandered in maintaining a Red Guard—or sent to Germany to keep up the agitation there, while the wives and the widows of our soldiers no longer receive an allowance, ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... be—in my nightgown?" snapped the specter. "What color is yours?" and she gave Lucy a little ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... form at last in a dim shadow, and MacVeigh saw that it would pass very near to him. He made out, one after another, a human figure, three dogs, and the toboggan. There was something appalling in the quiet of this specter of life looming up out of the night. He could no longer hear the sledge, though it was within fifty paces of him. The figure in advance walked slowly and with bowed head, and the dogs and the sledge followed in a ghostly line. Human leader and animals were ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... are—the slow lemurs of South India, small tailless nocturnal animals, somewhat resembling sloths in appearance, and almost as deliberate in their movements, except when in the act of seizing their insect prey; the Tarsier, or specter lemur, of the Malay islands, a small, long tailed nocturnal lemur, remarkable for the curious development of the hind feet, which have two of the toes very short, and with sharp claws, while the others have nails, the third toe being exceedingly long and slender, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various |
