"Wisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were they well gone than my grandfather came from his hiding-place, and twisting a wisp of straw round his horse's feet, that they might not dirl or make a din on the stones, he led it cannily out and down to the river's brink, and, there mounting, took the ford, and was soon free on ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... was still a babe, Franz Anton started once more after the will-o'-the-wisp of theatrical fame, with his "Weber's Company of Comedians." Genofeva, sickly and melancholy, dragged herself about with the troupe until Carl Maria was ten years old, when her health gave way, and the travel was discontinued. Poverty and consumption ended her days two ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... you not feel, that this "will o' the wisp" phantom of your brain, can prove no guide to either of us in the pilgrimage of life? Perceive you not that the unworthy spirit in which you approach the Book of GOD'S Law must effectually prevent you from getting ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... said Thurston, as he strode on through the park of Luckenough, "to fancy that any one with eyes, heart and brain, could possibly fall in love with the 'Will-o'-the-wisp' Jacquelina, or worse, that giglet, Angelica; when he sees Marian! Marian, whose least sunny tress is dearer to me than are all the living creatures in the world besides. Marian, for whose possession I am now about to risk everything, even her own esteem. Yet, she will forgive ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to show yourself to a blind beetle in an unbecoming way. 'Tis well that there's one in the house that knows what is befitting. Miss Dollars, you stand still; I must sort your necktie before you go. 'Tis all of a wisp. Miss Mysie, you tell your mamma that I should be fain to know her pleasure about Miss Dollars' frocks. She've scarce got one—coloured or mourning—that ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rays of the love-star burned low upon the grey horizon, that star towards which the eyes of women yearn and which women's feet are fain to follow, though, like a will-o'-the-wisp, it leads them through strange and difficult ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... hope once that Mr Fawkes should bring grist to our mill," said Gatesby, thoughtfully: "but I see that is but a Will-o'-the-Wisp." ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... coast of County Antrim, the 'wisp' is not used; but on this day the boys go about from house to house, and are regaled with 'bannocks' of oaten bread, buttered; these bannocks are baked specially for the occasion, and are commonly small, thick, and round, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... from the French prison where Grosley thought he saw him, during the French Revolution? Was he known to Lord Lytton about 1860? Was he then Major Fraser? Is he the mysterious Muscovite adviser of the Dalai Lama? Who knows? He is a will-o'-the-wisp of the memoir-writers of the eighteenth century. Whenever you think you have a chance of finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip; and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole, I should incline to deem him as ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... Hawthorne, that, if George Ripley, instead of following after a will-o'-the-wisp notion, which could only lead him into a bog, had used the means at his disposal to cultivate Brook Farm in a rational manner, and had made it a hospitable rendezvous for intellectual and progressive people,—an ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... filled. It is the instinct both of poetic and of servile minds to associate a sentiment of grandeur with such fantastic dreams, but usually on condition that the dreamer wears a crown. When the regenerator of society appears with a wisp of straw upon his head, unappreciative society is apt to send him back to his cell. There, at least, his capacity for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as they entered the home park, and proceeded towards the fatal oak. It was pitchy dark, and they could only distinguish the tree by its white, scathed trunk. All at once, a blue flame, like a will-o'-the-wisp, appeared, flitted thrice round the tree, and then remained stationary, its light falling upon a figure in a wild garb, with a rusty chain hanging from its left arm, and an antlered helm upon its head. They knew it to be Herne, and instantly fell ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in the sunshine!" Slowly, from the ashes, Kwasind Rose, but made no angry answer; From the lodge went forth in silence, Took the nets, that hung together, Dripping, freezing at the doorway; Like a wisp of straw he wrung them, Like a wisp of straw he broke them, Could not wring them without breaking, Such the strength was in his fingers. "Lazy Kwasind!" said his father, "In the hunt you never help me; Every bow you touch is broken, Snapped asunder every ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Coupeau, Boche and Bibi-la-Grillade. These three wore black frock coats and walked with their arms dangling from their rounded shoulders. Boche wore yellow pantaloons. Bibi-la-Grillade's coat was buttoned to the chin, as he had no vest, and a wisp of a cravat was tied around ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... satisfactory in the sight of that great mountain that enclosed us to the north: whether it stood, robed in sunshine, quaking to its topmost pinnacle with the heat and brightness of the day; or whether it set itself to weaving vapours, wisp after wisp growing, trembling, fleeting, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... privileges by the dam proprietors. The hundred yoke of oxen, meanwhile, standing patient, gazing wishfully meadowward, at that inaccessible waving native grass, uncut but by the great mower Time, who cuts so broad a swathe, without so much as a wisp to wind about ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... life—that she preferred it to most beds. But Susan made her up a kind of bed in the corner. They would not let her pay anything. She had rheumatism horribly, some kind of lung trouble, and the almost universal and repulsive catarrh that preys upon working people. Her hair had dwindled to a meager wisp. This she wound into a hard little knot and fastened with an imitation tortoise-shell comb, huge, high, and broken, set with large pieces of glass cut like diamonds. Her teeth were all gone and her cheeks almost met in ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... confines of a world into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor firefly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features. The walker in the familiar fields which stretch around my native town sometimes finds himself in another land ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... his own will-o'-the-wisp philosophy, looking very handsome and care-free there where the noon sun slanted across the white arcade all thick with golden ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... already been asleep for a long time, and were lying on the ground motionless, as if dead. When the master-thief saw that he had succeeded, he gave the first a rope in his hand instead of the bridle, and the other who had been holding the tail, a wisp of straw, but what was he to do with the one who was sitting on the horse's back? He did not want to throw him down, for he might have awakened and have uttered a cry. He had a good idea, he unbuckled the girths of the saddle, tied a couple of ropes which were hanging to a ring on the ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... said, "I am going to take this thing up bit by bit without trying to get a whole philosophy into the work," anchored him to the heaviest tasks as if he were a true- born plodder, while the "wild Irishman" with dreams and desires lighted the way with gleams of Will-o'-the-Wisp. The quicksilver in the veins of the patient Mercutio of railroad rates and demurrage charges lightened his work for himself and others. Just as in the five years when he served San Francisco, as City and County Attorney, he labored ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... blossom from which wholesome fruit can spring. When love and truth dies out of marriage, its vitality is gone. God forgive the men and the women who dare to hold the most beautiful tie that links soul to soul, as a wisp of flax, to be rent or burned at the will of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... him, her face curiously blank, as though to say, 'Why are you so cruel?' He offered her the wisp of paper. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... country, pass a spirit-haunted spot. The leader of the party turns round, and in a low voice tells the others that they are approaching the spot, whereupon they all become silent, though up to that point they have been chattering. The leader then takes a wisp of grass and ties it in a knot, and all the others do the same. They then walk on in silence for a period, which may be anything from five to fifteen minutes, after which, as they pass the spot, the leader ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... the first place, I found a bead-purse, about half done; there was, however, no prospect of finishing it, for the needles were out, and the silk upon the spools all tangled and drawn into a complete wisp. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... readers will regard that varry gooid advice, when they see th' grass cut—"Mak hay woll th 'sun shines." There's nowt aw like better nor to spend a day or two in a hay field. Tawk abaat "Ho de Colong!" It doesn't smell hauf as weel to me as a wisp o' new made hay. An' them 'at niver knew th' luxury a' gooin' to bed wi' tired booans, should work i'th' hay-field for a wick. It'll do onnybody gooid; an' if some o' them idle laewts 'at stand bi a duzzen ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... fame. familia family. famoso famous. fandango fandango (Spanish dance). fanega acre, bushel. fantasma m. phantasm, vision. farmaceutico druggist. fatiga fatigue. fatigar to fatigue. fatuo fatuous, vain, false; fuego —— ignis fatuus, will o' the wisp. faz f. face. fe f. faith, certificate; a —— mia upon my honor; a —— que in truth. febrero February. fecundo fruitful, fertile. fecha date. fechoria action, misdeed. fehacientes (faith-inspiring) conclusive. felicidad f. happiness. felicitar ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... one and all, these partial moments of blinding beauty in that lesser, outer world:—A big, brown, clumsy bee he saw, blundering into the petals of a wild flower on which the dew lay sparkling.... A wisp of colored cloud driving loosely across the hills, dropping a purple shadow.... Deep, waving grass, plunging and shaking in the wind that drew out its underworld of blue and silver over the whole spread surface of a ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... foolish I was to be tempted by such a 'will o' the wisp' as that!" he exclaimed. "We must keep away, my dear sir, to the left, and I hope ere long that we shall escape from this treacherous neighbourhood." He had been through a good many trying scenes, but he had never felt more perplexed than he ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of pheasants, even as it is a gaggle of geese or a badling of ducks, a fall of woodcock or a wisp of snipe. But a covey of pheasants! What sort of talk is that? I made him sit even where you are sitting, Nigel, and I saw the bottom of two pots of Rhenish ere I let him up. Even then I fear that he had no great profit ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hundred yards off—eighty—sixty—now. Up goes the gun, but alas and alas! they catch a glimpse of the light glinting on the barrels, and perhaps of the head behind them, and in another second they have broken and scattered this way and that way, twisting off like a wisp of gigantic snipe, to vanish with melancholy cries into the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... that for people. I can't go back to Cousin Anna. I've been through too much. Why, you mayn't think it, but I'm grown up, Francis! I'm about twenty years older than that foolish little girl you married. I—I wonder I haven't wrinkles and a little wisp of fuzzy gray hair!" she added, ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... his utmost to reach the shore, but it was all in vain. The waves, racing and tumbling over each other, knocked him about as if he had been a stick or a wisp of straw. At last, fortunately for him, a billow rolled up with such fury and impetuosity that he was lifted up and thrown ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... unfortunates be a housewife, then she is continually "picking up", continually pursuing that household Will-o'-the-Wisp, "finishing the work." For it is the nature of housework that it is never finished, no matter how much is done. This overconscientious person, unless she is made of steel springs and resilient rubber, breathlessly chasing this phantom all day and into the night, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... dreamt he was riding out, hunting, not on Malek-Adel, but on some strange beast of the nature of a unicorn; a white fox, white as snow, ran to meet him.... He tried to crack his whip, tried to set the dogs on her—but instead of his riding-whip, he found he had a wisp of bast in his hand, and the fox ran in front of him, putting her tongue out at him. He jumped off, his unicorn stumbled, he fell... and fell straight into the arms of a police-constable, who was taking him before the Governor-General, and ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... little a push, she had gone on easily enough. But he did neither. He was courteous and cold. Partly was his coldness real; he could not look on her as other than the daughter of his enemy's house, ward of the man who had schemed to kill him, will-o'-the-wisp who had lured his son to disaster. Partly was it mere absence; M. Etienne's plight was more to him than mademoiselle's. When she spoke not, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... at her coming though she felt convinced that he was aware of her, aware probably of everything that passed within a considerable radius of his disreputable person. His dark face, lined and dirty, half-covered with ragged black hair that ended in a long thin wisp like a goat's beard on his shrunken chest, was still turned to the east as though challenging the sun that was smiting a swift course through the heavens as if with a flaming sword. The simile rushed through her mind unbidden. Where would she be—what would have happened to her—by ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... common type consists of a great coherent central mass, with two or more arms extending from opposite sides in the form of a spiral. This is as if gaseous revolving nebulae had come into comparatively close proximity to a passing body. The visitor, by its attraction, drew from the nebula a wisp of gas. The revolving motion of the nebula gave to the attracted ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... to old possessions, or of widening the borders of the empire by taking in neighboring lands. No Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon has ever been born on Chinese soil; no army has ever been led abroad in search of the will-of-the-wisp called glory; the wild fancy of becoming lords of the world has always been out of touch with their ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the great opponent of orthodoxy in his day, yet he led his followers to no goal more explicit than might be surmised from a study of Kant and Hegel. He was, however, sincere in his devotion to the will-o'-the-wisp that he conceived to be the truth, and he was courageous enough to admit that he never satisfied himself. There was chilly and austere attraction about the man; he was so elevated and superior that one could hardly help believing that he must know something of value, and this illusion ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... has always been to see a Will-o'-the-wisp, and I am still hoping; but that hot summer, had I known it at the time, they were quite common within an easy walk of my house in the New Forest. There was some correspondence on the subject in The Observer, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... bright and still as a sheet of steel. The fields of lucerne, under the morning light, were softly turning from black to emerald, and beyond the aloe hedge a native kraal that was scattered on the side of a hill slowly woke to life. A dog barked; a wisp of smoke curled between the thatched huts, and one or two blanketed figures crept from the low doors. The simple yet secret lives of these people intrigued Christine deeply. She knew little of Kafirs, for she had been in Africa ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... arm about the soft, yielding body beneath its wisp of garment, and he swung her behind him as he set himself to meet the attack. And he flashed her a look that must have carried a message, for the trembling lips were framing a ghost of a smile as ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... hope that on the spot he might succeed in recovering his father's possession and his mother's dowry. But here, too, the same ill-fortune that had hitherto dogged his steps attended him. The lawsuit which he instituted, though it promised well at first, proved a will-o'-the-wisp, which lured him into the bog of absolute penury. His sister was dead; his mother's relatives, formerly hostile, were now, because of the lawsuit, doubly embittered against him. In his distress he sought refuge in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto, which is now ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... park came repeated notes from the horn, the baying of hounds, and the screams that celebrate with orthodox excitement the death of a fox. The rat-hunt was over. Joker lifted his spare, aristocratic head from the grass, and listened, with a wisp of dewy green stuff in his mouth. Christian looked at her watch. It was early still, not eight o'clock. A grey horse and its rider came forth from the dark grove of laurels. Larry was looking for her. She ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... valuations of life, feeling, instinctively, that only in this category lay her own significance. To abandon the obvious weights and measures was to find herself buffeted and astray in a chaotic and menacing universe. Goodness was her guide, and she could cling to it if the enchanting will-o'-the-wisp did not float into sight to beckon and bewilder her. She indignantly repudiated the conception of a social order founded on charm rather than on solid worth; yet, like other frail mortals, she found herself ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... all his old sins life will be filled with hideous specters. Memory will become a place of torment and a ghastly chamber of horrors. We shall be the children of despondency and wretchedness. Memory will be a graveyard; the past will give no light save the "will-o-the-wisp" light from putrescence and decay. All the springs of joy will be poisoned by morbid griefs that keep open old wounds. The city hath its offal heap where refuse matter is destroyed; each home its garret, the contents cast out at regular intervals; ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... tugged at the bit. It was as a wisp of hay in his mouth. I might as well have been a monkey or a straw woman bobbing up and down on his back. Pound, pound, thump, thump, gaily sped on the Great Goer. There were dim shouts far behind me for a while, ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... times greater than that produced by any chemical combination such as the union of oxygen and hydrogen to form water. From the heavy white salt there is continually rising a faint fire-mist like the will-o'-the-wisp over a swamp. This gas is known as the emanation or niton, "the shining one." A pound of niton would give off energy at the rate of 23,000 horsepower; fine stuff to run a steamer, one would think, but we must remember that ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... centuries; it may vanish to-morrow. A German revolution may destroy it; a small group of lunacy commissioners may fold it up and put it away. But should it go, it would at least take with it nearly every crown between Hamburg and Constantinople. The German kings would vanish like a wisp of smoke. Suppose a German revolution and a correlated step forward towards liberal institutions on the part of Russia, then the whole stage of Eastern Europe would clear as fever goes out of a man. This age of international elbowing ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... brown and hard on the outside, with a most appetizing smell, and a soft ring round it where the top had pulled away, just like the top on a loaf of bread. To the boy's surprise, the cakes were quite clean, and a few flicks with a wisp of leaves left them as free from sand or ashes as if they had been baked in an oven. Mick tapped the cake with his knuckles. "Another couple of minutes ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... deliberate violation of a rule that must never be infringed; but as a countryman will sometimes run after a jack-a-lantern, till running after it he finds himself in a burying-ground, so Bracciolini suffered himself to be misled by his literary will-o'-the wisp,—alliteration: therefore he preferred writing "nec nunc," instead of "nec tunc;" he therefore did that which was fatal to the work that he wanted to palm off upon the world as the composition of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... a great star shone in her eyes. She thought at first she was out of doors. Then she heard a kind but commanding voice repeating: "Open your mouth," and stared up wildly into her great-great-great-grandmother's face, then around the strange little garret, lighted with a wisp of rag in a pewter dish of tallow, and the stars shining through the crack in the logs. Not a bit of furniture was there in the room, besides the bed and an oak chest. Some queer-looking garments hung ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... offences in the affability of his gorgeous clients—whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my Lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches tied ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... weak and timid? Yet a moment later he closed his eyes, and pressed his hands tightly over his hot eyeballs. He was a man of little imaginative force, yet the white face of a dying man seemed suddenly to have floated up out of the darkness, to have come to him like a will-o'-the-wisp from the swamp, and the hollow, lifeless eyes seemed ever to be seeking his, mournful and eloquent with dull reproach. Trent rose to his feet with an oath and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He was trembling, and ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and declared thunder to be "a flaming exhalation set in motion by evil spirits, and hurled downward with a great crash and a horrible smell of sulphur." In support of this view, he dwelt upon the confessions of tortured witches, upon the acknowledged agency of demons in the Will-o'-the-wisp, and specially upon the passage in the one hundred and fourth Psalm, "Who maketh his angels spirits, his ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the players but one join hands in a circle. The odd player in the center runs around on the inside of the circle and hits one of the players with a wisp of grass, if the game be played out of doors, or tags him if played indoors. Both players then run out of the circle, it being the object of the player who was tagged to catch the odd player before he can run three times around the outside ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... fourteenth time in two weeks, she was treating the singular shoulders of Charles-Norton. He was sitting beneath the glow of the evening lamp, his coat off, his shirt pulled down to his elbows; and she, standing behind the chair, was leaning solicitously over him. A wisp of her hair caressed his right ear, but somehow did not relax his temper. "Well, let them alone, Dolly," he growled; "let them alone. Good Lord, ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... o' the wisp, Carlotta, for two years now, against his better judgment and to the undoing of his peace of mind and heart. And play days were over for Phil Lambert. The work-a-day world awaited him, a world where there would be neither ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... waters of the cloister fountain. Suddenly the lights and the perfumes and the stillness of the sky were overwhelmed, a fierce Northwind charged with storm and darkness burst roaring upon me. It lifted me up and carried me like a wisp of straw over fields, cities, rivers, and mountains, and through the midst of thunder-clouds, during a long night composed of a whole series of nights and days. And when, after this prolonged and cruel rage, the hurricane was at last ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... own free will," answered Hans. "It is not the first time I have been set to watch the Spaniards, or that they have tried to catch me, and found that they had a Will-o'-the-Wisp to deal with; but this was an easy task, and nothing to boast of." Hans was saying this while he was assisting Berthold to replace the bit in the horse's mouth, and to tighten the girth of his saddle, the landlord rendering the same service to Captain Van der ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... hidden guidon or command? At each turn, at each danger, he remembered he had acted with swiftness and decision, and had at no time been at a loss. Fortune had favored him at each stage of his journey and had directed his steps with rare assurance in this direction. Fortune or a will-o'-the-wisp? Or was Marishka calling to him? He had had the impression of her nearness often—there in the hospital—and since, at Selim Ali's—upon the road. It seemed strange and a little mystifying too, that he had never ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... a little wisp of song played softly in the twilight, Such a happy little song—and oh, the dusk is gray! Such a joyous little song, and oh, the night is coming— Coming with the bitter chill that marks the ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... such a look from Colonel Symonds Dodd. It was rather astonishing to find softness in him in respect to flowers. He seemed as hard as a block of wood. He had a squat, square body and his legs seemed to be set on the corners of that body. His square face was smooth except for a wisp of whisker, minute as a water-color brush, jutting from under his pendulous ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... his occiput, by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses. His lank, grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip—a beard which any absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to observe, and therefore to have neglected to shave. When Madame le Claire stopped in leading him forward, he halted, and feeling blindly forward into the air ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... faint apology: "It isn't very much of a breakfas', darlin', but we'll make believe it's waffles an' chicken an'—an' hot rolls an' batter-bread an'—an' everything." She rose to her little bare feet, holding her wisp of a skirt aside, and made a sweeping bow. "Allow me, Miss Jemima, to make you a mos' delicious cup ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... and from its summit he saw nothing but the bushy wilderness, with a strip of forest appearing on the sunken horizon. He searched the sky for a wisp of smoke that might tell of a human habitation, below, but saw none. Yet people might live beyond the strip of forest, where the land would be less sandy and more fertile, and, after a brief rest, he pushed on with the same vigor ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... menacing figure of a man, massive of build and sinister of face. His jet-black eyebrows met in the center of his scowling forehead, and under them gleamed eyes cold and dangerous. A thin wisp of a dark mustache contrasted with the quick gleam of his strong, white teeth. On the rare occasions when he laughed, his mirth was like the hungry snarl ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... and grinned reassuringly through the wisp of hair that hung down over her face. She put the lock carefully back into place with a critical hand and continued: "I was just exercising my ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... aloud, only followed his companion as he led him on, and in and out, with the sound playing with their ears as the will-o'-the-wisp is said to ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... pressed, on their way to market in buffalo carts; "Babul the thief," the natives called this acacia. Higher up a torch-wood tree gleamed as if sprayed with gold, its limbs, lean and bare of foliage, holding at their extremities in wisp-like fingers bright, yellow, solitary blooms. From a tendu tree a pair of droll little brown monkeys chattered and ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... building time came, how kind they all were! indeed, though it was a busy season with every bird, each anxious to finish its work, yet I heard an old Rook one day ask little Jenny Wren 'if he should help her,' as he met her trying to drag a large wisp of straw ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... possible work was done for the next twelve months, on shaft, levels, cross-cuts, drifts, winzes, and raises. For two long years he pursued underground promising indications of wealth, which like the will-with-the-wisp evaded him, until every prospect of silver and gold in the "Hidden Treasure," and "Monte Christo" disappeared, and the mines ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... box for ony sake, man. Sall, ye 're no' feared," as Carmichael, thirsting for action, swung it up unaided; and then, catching sight of the merest wisp of white, "A' didna see ye were a minister, an' ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... attract notice from the opposite side of the bay. But though it was seen from the windows of my own house by an attached relative, it was deemed merely a singularly-distinct apparition of Will o' the Wisp, and so brought us no assistance. Meanwhile we had carried out a kedge astern of the Betsey, as the sea was flowing at the time, to keep her from beating in over the rocks; and then, taking our few movables ashore, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the time needed to accumulate a heap of the big, fan-like leaves. These Charley made into three torch-like bundles, taking care to place a dead dry leaf between each two green ones. Binding each bundle together with a wisp of green leaf, he struck a match and lit up the three, passing one to the captain and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... than a wisp of sound—that request. The words were stumbling, and very earnest, and not very hard to understand. Silence came again, broken only by the treble strains of violins beyond. Once, in that quiet, his eyes strayed to the small and round, and yellow object which ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... light except that of the blinking starres, and the wicked and devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead good ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Boise and Silver City, and I was afraid to be left alone so much at night; so I begged Captain Corliss to let me have a soldier to sleep in my quarters. He sent me old Needham. So I installed old Needham in my guest chamber with his loaded rifle. Now old Needham was but a wisp of a man; long years of service had broken down his health; he was all wizened up and feeble; but he was a soldier; I felt safe, and could sleep once more. Just the sight of Needham and his old blue uniform coming at night, after taps, was ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... gray mustache, and a smile of unquenchable youth, greeting April with a narcissus in his buttonhole. He was feeding the sparrows with crumbs and smiled to see one of them fly off, carrying a long wisp of hay, bustling away to build for himself and his sparrow bride a bungalow in the foot-hills of the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... light could it be? A Will o' the Wisp? A Jack o' Lantern, some phosphoric phenomenon rising in the exhalations of ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... what will I do?" said Billy, and he went back to the earth, where he and the piece of the devil's nose melted into a ball of fire, and he roves the earth till this day as a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... strange," said Lady Engleton, in speaking of him afterwards to Hadria, "it is strange that his cleverness does not come to the rescue; but so far from that, I think it leads him a wild dance over boggy ground, like some will-o'-the-wisp, but for whose freakish allurements the good man might have trodden a quiet ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... The bigot's threat'nings or the zealot's creed; Shook by a dream, he next for truth receives What frenzy teaches, and what fear believes; And this will place him in the power of one Whom we must seek, because we cannot shun." Wisp had been ostler at a busy inn, Where he beheld and grew in dread of sin; Then to a Baptists' meeting found his way, Became a convert, and was taught to pray; Then preach'd; and, being earnest and sincere, Brought other sinners to religious ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... my crown fall in the dirt," she said, tossing a wisp of hair from her forehead; "but you great, insensible beings are always in mischief when you are in the country. Why don't you stay at home, in your brick cages that stand on heaps of flat stones? You are watched there all the time by creatures with clubs ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... threw a quick glance into the gilt-framed mirror close by. She smoothed a stray wisp of hair which had escaped from under her lace cap: she gave a tug to her fichu and a pat to her skirts. Then, as the folding doors were once more thrown open, and Hector—stiff, solemn and pompous—appeared under the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... as he pointed at a thin wisp of smoke rising from the convicts' camp. "It is about our neighbors," ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... words, the smile, the unusual courtesy of the removed hat, Ellen rose from her chair, a tall, slim wisp of a woman, whose blue-veined hands ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... a faded white lace parasol with pink bows; a pair of soiled grey peau de suede gloves, and a little black wisp of ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... returned his companion's cordial hand- pressure almost unconsciously. He stood, leaning against the mantelpiece, and looking gravely down into the fire. His first emotion was one of repugnance,—of rejection, . . what did he need of this will-o'-the-wisp called Fame, dancing again across his path,—this transitory torch of world-approval! Fame in London! ... What was it, what COULD it be, compared to the brilliancy of the fame he had once enjoyed as Laureate of Al-Kyris! As this thought passed across his mind, he gave a quick ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Three, have skull-caps of lemon yellow and dull gold thread, and blue dungaree jackets faded and threadbare. They are young lusty fellows, and Stroke, who is a tough-looking, middle-aged man, with a wiry beard, has a skull-cap between rose and brown, and round it a salmon-coloured wisp of a turban—over them there is the arch of the frogged foot of the lateen sail. All but Bow are in full sunlight, sweating at their oars, he is in the shadow the sail casts on our bow. We recline, to quote our upholsterer, in "cairless elegance" on the floor of the stern, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... goat called out "Hum Pakpak," and the leopard ran away in a fright. Presently it met a jackal and called out "Ah! my sister's son, some fearful animal has occupied my house!" "What is it like, uncle?" asked the jackal "It has a wisp of hemp tied to its chin," answered the leopard: "I am not afraid, uncle," boasted the jackal, "I have eaten many animals like that, bones and all." So they tied their tails together and went back to ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... — [breaking out into a passionate cry.] — Your hair, and your big eyes, is it?... I'm telling you there isn't a wisp on any gray mare on the ridge of the world isn't finer than the dirty twist on your head. There isn't two eyes in any starving sow isn't finer than the eyes you were ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... of the canoe was probably the commonest of all. He is a true Indian divinity, shining like the lightning and striking only when there is a storm, but appearing like the Aurora Borealis, or even the Robin Goodfellow-Will-o'-the-Wisp at others.] ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... arrived from the old country and set all the Bohemian girls in a flutter. He was easily the buck of the beer-gardens, and on Sunday he was a sight to see, with his silk hat and tucked shirt and blue frock-coat, wearing gloves and carrying a little wisp of a yellow cane. He was tall and fair, with splendid teeth and close-cropped yellow curls, and he wore a slightly disdainful expression, proper for a young man with high connections, whose mother had a big farm in the Elbe valley. There was often an interesting discontent ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... appearances a mandarin, of middle age, was garbed in a stiff, dark satin gown, heavy with gold and jewels which flashed brightly in the light of a camp-fire. His severe, dark face was long, and stamped with intelligence of a high order. He wore a mustache which drooped down to form a hair wisp on either side ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... curved downwards over his thin lips like a vulture's beak as if trying to peck at his chin. His eyes were shadowy and uncertain under his prominent forehead and bushy eyebrows. His beard was a mere black wisp, and the points of his scant moustaches were waxed and stood up stiffly. He was the taller of the two, but his hat hung lower in his hand than his friend's, for he had unnaturally long arms, with a long body and short legs, whereas the ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... flat stone where he had often thought out his problems of life. The shadow of the church cut off the glow of sunset, and made it seem silent and dark. Ahead of him the Valley lay. Across at the right it stretched toward the Junction, and he could see the evening train just puffing in with a wee wisp of white misty smoke trailing against the mountain green. The people for the hotels would be swarming off, for it was Saturday night. The fat one would be there rolling trunks across and the station agent would presently close up. It would ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... so dearly, might be killed. They, accordingly, pulled on during the night, passing a large town, from which issued a loud noise, as of a multitude quarrelling. Once they fancied they saw a light following them, but it turned out to be a will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... found to have gone abroad in the train of Sir Thomas More, and nothing was heard till their return six weeks later, when Ambrose brought home a small packet which had been conveyed to him through one of the Emperor's suite. It was tied up with a long tough pale wisp of hair, evidently from the mane or tail of some Flemish horse, and was addressed, "To Master Ambrose Birkenholt, menial clerk to the most worshipful Sir Thomas More, Knight, Under Sheriff of the City ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seen that will-o'-the-wisp light far up the side of the rocky steep on the preceding night, as well as Paul and Jack. He may have been pondering over it since, though neglecting to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... variations arose spontaneously. The fruitless search after final causes leads their pursuers a long way; but even those hardy teleologists, who are ready to break through all the laws of physics in chase of their favourite will-o'-the-wisp, may be puzzled to discover what purpose could be attained by the stunted legs of Seth Wright's ram or the hexadactyle members of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... remains to-day a charred cinder lapped about by the blue Pacific. At times gulls circle over its blackened and desolate surface devoid of every vestige of life. From the squat, truncated mass of Lakalatcha, shorn of half its lordly height, a feeble wisp of smoke still issues to the breeze, as if Vulcan, tired of his forge, had banked its fire before ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the darkness of the mountain path. Suddenly, at a distance of two hundred feet from them, a bright and sparkling light was seen approaching Monte-Leone and his companion. The Count uttered a sharp whistle, and the light went to the middle of the wood, and hurried like a will-o'-the-wisp towards the travellers. The light was a torch, borne by a man, dressed as a peasant and wrapped in a large cloak, which suffered nothing but his two sparkling eyes to be seen, which were scarcely less brilliant ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... things that the outside world had to offer; all that had ever stirred his pulses to a worship of the beautiful, the harmonious, the excellent, rose in exact value. Then, he saw again the sunrise as it would be to-morrow morning over these ragged hills. He saw the mists rise and grow wisp-like, and the disc of the sun gain color, and all the miracles of cannoning tempest and caressing calm—and, though he had come back to fight, a wonderful peace settled over him, for he knew that, if he must choose ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... out to the highroad behind his vast, rolling-flanked horses—so much cleaner and better fed than his wisp of a wife. Claire followed him, and in her heart she committed murder and was glad of it. While Mr. Boltwood looked out with mild wonder at Claire's new friend, Zolzac hitched his team to the axle. It did not seem possible that two horses could pull out the car where ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the most melancholy description—a cold, cloudy, windy, rainy December night. Not a soul was upon the streets excepting a solitary straggler, returning hither and thither from an evening sermon, or an occasional watchman gliding past with his lantern, like an incarnation of the Will-o'-wisp. I strolled up and down for half an hour, wrapped in an olive great-coat, and having a green silk umbrella over my head. It was well I chanced to be so well fortified against the weather; for had it been otherwise, I must have been drenched to the skin. Where I went I know not, so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... in the hours when he went indoors to read to the men as they sat on their rugs with their feet to the fire, he thought oftenest of the walks on the North Berwick sands, and of the important fact that May Chisholm had to stop three times to push a rebellious wisp of ringlets under her hat-brim. Strange are the workings of the heart of a man, and there is generally a woman somewhere who pulls ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... enjoyed considerable popularity in his own age. Erasmus calls him 'Britannicarum literarum lumen et decus!' How dark must have been the night in which such a Will-o'-wisp was mistaken for a star! He has wit, indeed, and satirical observation; but his wit is wilder than it is strong, and his satire is dashed with personality and obscenity. His style, Campbell observes, is 'almost a texture of slang ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... child of Sergeant M'Taggart must have wandered for a breath of cool air to the very verge of the parapet of the Fort ditch, Her tiny night-shift was gathered into a wisp round her neck and she moaned in her sleep. "See there!" said Mulvaney; "poor lamb! Look at the heat-rash on the innocint skin av her. 'Tis hard—crool hard even for us. Fwhat must it be for these? Wake up, Nonie, your mother will be woild about you. Begad, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and cast it into the blaze. And then they raised the dead man from the strip of carpet and carried him into the bedroom and laid him reverently by the side of his dead wife, after which they left the dead in darkness and returned to the living. And the three grave men stood over the wisp of flesh that had been born a male into the world. Then, their task being accomplished, reaction came, and even Doyne, who had seen death in many lands, turned faint. But the others, losing control of their nerves, shook like men stricken ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... and the skin worn off the sole of the other. But there were the lights ahead, and we kept right straight for them, though no matter how far we walked they seemed just the same distance off. It was certainly discouraging, and I could not help thinking of the will-o'-the-wisp, and wondering if the phenomenon was ever seen in the Arctic. I could not remember any instance in my reading, and determined to reach that light or perish in the effort. At last it did seem nearer. We could make out the shapes of the ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... their eyries; away down the clattering ravines, where the flashing cataracts tumble; away through the dark pine-forests, where the hungry wolves are howling; away over the dreary wolds, where the wild wind walks alone; away through the splashing quagmires, where the will-o'-the wisp slunk frightened among the reeds; away through light and darkness, storm and sunshine; away by tower and town, highroad and hamlet.... Brave horse! gallant steed! snorting child of Araby! On went the horse, over mountains, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... at poetry. Nor was he romantic to look at, but thin, and sinewy, and one-eyed, and some dried up, clean shaven except for a wisp of greyish whisker on his chin, and always neatly dressed now. When he'd laugh to himself, the wrinkles would spread around his eyes, one blind, and the other calm and calculating, and absent-minded. He'd sit with his cigar tilted up in one corner of his mouth, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... went to prison, the fisherman was going home one night along the shore toward the village with some nets on his back. He was of a callous nature, and did not hesitate to take the shortest way across the meadow; but when he got in among the dunes, he saw a will-o'-the-wisp following in his steps, grew frightened, and began to run. It began to gain upon him, and when he leaped across the brook to put water between himself and the spirit, it seized hold of the nets. At this he shouted the name of God, and fled like one bereft of his senses. The next morning at sunrise ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to find it locked. In sheer despair she made for the window, threw open the casement, and ere Sir Hugh could seize or stop her flung herself headlong into the court below. When the horrified husband looked down into the darkness, a wisp of white garments, a bruised and lifeless body, was all ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... impossible for him to keep to his subject, or any subject. It is as impossible for him to pull himself up briefly in any digression from that subject. In his finest passages, as in his most trivial, he is at the mercy of the will-o'-the-wisp of divagation. In his later re-handlings of his work, he did to some extent limit his followings of this will-o'-the-wisp to notes, but by no means always; and both in his later and in his earlier work, as it was written for the first time, he indulged them ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... time is infinitely divisible, each of them is infinitely divisible also; all that is actual in it being a single moment, gone while we try to apprehend it, of which it may ever be more truly said that it has ceased to be than that it is. [236] To such a tremulous wisp constantly re-forming itself on the stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines itself down. It is with this movement, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... bewildered for argument. Leslie was enveloped in rose-colored tulle, with touches of silver, and looked like a young goddess with straps of silver over her slim shoulders and a thread of pearls about her throat. The white neck and back that the wisp of rose-color made no attempt to conceal were very beautiful and quite childish, but they shocked the sweet soul of Julia Cloud inexpressibly. She stood aghast when Leslie whirled upon her and demanded to know how ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... did this when there was not a person in sight and what frightened them was nothing but a wisp of hay, blown down by the wind. Afterward, when anything moved, they sprang at it, held it down with their sharp little claws, and chewed on it with their pointed white teeth. When they were tired ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... collects around one's head. I call up my philosophy; I resolve not to care, though I shall be devoured. My philosophy stands the strain; I do not care; but my nerves basely fail me, and after a few moments, and a dozen stings here and there, I spring involuntarily to my feet, wildly flourish my wisp of leaves, and of course put to instant flight the actors in the ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... southwestern wilderness: now thirsting in the deserts, now penned up in gloomy canons, now crawling over pathless mountains, suffering the horrors of starvation and of despair, but following this will-o'-the-wisp with a melancholy perseverance seldom seen in man save when searching for some mysterious treasure. Coronado apparently twice crossed the State of Kansas. 'Through mighty plains and sandy heaths,' says the chronicler of the expedition, 'smooth and wearisome and ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... wear the look of a nightmare, a harassing, feverish dream. We seemed to be fascinated hither and thither by an ignis fatuus, enticed into quagmires and quicksands by an altogether illusive, mocking, malicious Will-o'-the- wisp. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... held up the bag and looked at it. It must have been unfastened, for the next instant there was an avalanche on the snowfield of the counterpane—some money, a wisp of a handkerchief, a tiny booklet with thin leaves, covered with a powdery substance—and a necklace. I drew myself up slowly and stared ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... vivacious men, who strut and swing through the streets as if the great globe itself were their private property; but upon this occasion it resolved itself into the swift and impetuous flight of a meteor. He shot from one angle of a street to another something in the manner of a will-o'-the-wisp, and it was almost as difficult to fix his course and follow him up. Thus hanging closely on his footsteps, I was not a little mortified to find, after all, that the trouble I had taken led to nothing. Striking out a different, but a much shorter route, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... "use mine." She reached up and, with her dainty wisp of handkerchief, wiped his wet cheeks exactly as if he had been ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... almost bursting with delight—he bided his time and kept as quiet as a mouse. Just in the nick of time the ladder was run out, and Mr Sparks tripping over it, fell violently to the ground. He sprang up and gave chase, of course, but he might as well have followed a will-o'-the-wisp. The young scamps, doubling like hares, took refuge in a dark recess under a stair with which they were well acquainted, and from that position they watched their enemy. They heard him go growling past; knew, a moment or two later, from the disappointed tone of the ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... active men—made their appearance. They all had at their backs large baskets bound by withes passing across the forehead and chest. They were but lightly clothed. A small poncho covered their shoulders, and the usual cloth and kilt was worn round the loins, a wisp of leaves preventing their backs being chafed by their burdens. Each man also carried a long staff in his hand, and a bag of roasted corn as provision for the journey. The burdens were soon adjusted. ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... Henry, and the lady had halted on the path and were standing deeply absorbed in their conversation, when I was suddenly aware that I was not the only witness of their interview. A wisp of green floating in the air caught my eye, and another glance showed me that it was carried on a stick by a man who was moving among the broken ground. It was Stapleton with his butterfly-net. He was very much closer to the pair than I was, and he appeared to be moving in their direction. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle |
