DICTIONARY ONE.COM • More 'Magic' Quotes from Famous Books

... or cell, made out of a rock; it was divided into several apartments, one of which Prospero called his study; there he kept his books, which chiefly treated of magic, a study at that time much affected by all learned men: and the knowledge of this art he found very useful to him; for being thrown by a strange chance upon this island, which had been enchanted by a witch called Sycorax, who died there a short time before his ...

— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Vision and the Cry That haunt the new Canadian soul? Dim grandeur spreads we know not why O'er mountain, forest, tree and knoll, And murmurs indistinctly fly.— Some magic moment sure is nigh. ...

— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall

... briskly than ever. A military band struck up an air from Semiramis: and the noise of the innumerable matracas (rattles), some of wood and some of silver, with which every one is armed during the last days of the holy week, broke forth again as if by magic, while again commenced the sale of the Judases, fireworks in the form of that arch-traitor, which are sold on the evening of Good Friday, and let off on Saturday morning. Hundreds of these hideous figures were held above the crowd, ...

— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... stolen, and the loss is typical of all that he had struggled for. His son, Henry VI, was but the shadow of a king, a puppet in the hands of powerful nobles, who seized the power of England and turned it to self- destruction. Meanwhile all his foreign possessions were won back by the French under the magic leadership of Joan of Arc. Cade's Rebellion (1450) and the bloody Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) are names to show how the energy of England was violently destroying itself, like a great engine that has lost its balance wheel. The frightful reign of Richard III followed, which ...

— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... fore-finger, as he was coming closer to the point—had my child arrived safe into the world, unmartyr'd in that precious part of him—fanciful and extravagant as I may appear to the world in my opinion of christian names, and of that magic bias which good or bad names irresistibly impress upon our characters and conducts—Heaven is witness! that in the warmest transports of my wishes for the prosperity of my child, I never once wished to crown his head with more glory and honour than ...

— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... Then she ran into the pantry again for a little round tin box, with a cover full of holes, and shaking this gently over the pan, a fine white shower of flour fell upon the cream. The pan was then replaced on the fire and stirred; and, to Ellen's astonishment, the whole changed, as if by magic, to a thick, stiff, white froth. It was not till Miss Fortune was carefully pouring this over the fried slices in the dish, that Ellen suddenly recollected that breakfast was ...

— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... by his Arab ancestors, was doing its work. For what seemed a long time this continued, and then, in the midst of the blind and frenzied race, there loomed out of the thick air, as if it had appeared by magic, the opposing line. ...

— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... the usual anxious lines as she prepared to hear a story of fresh disaster from her husband's lips; but at the doorway two magic words were whispered into her ear which brought the blood into the white cheeks, and sent her trotting down the hall on eager feet. Then came the delicious moment to which Mollie had looked forward ever since the meeting at the cross-roads. She walked back into the room, while Ruth looked ...

— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... German king, Maximilian I., and in 1508 was engaged in an adventurous enterprise in Catalonia. He probably served Maximilian both as soldier and as secretary, but his wonderful and varied genius was not satisfied with these occupations, and he soon began to take a lively interest in theosophy and magic. In 1509 he went to the university of Dole, where he lectured on John Reuchlin's De Verbo Mirifico, but his teaching soon caused charges of heresy to be brought against him, and he was denounced by a monk named John Catilinet in ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... have heard it said—(and I believe there is more than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one)—that flowers only flourish rightly in the garden of some one who loves them. I know you would like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them: nay, more, if your look had the power, not only to cheer, but to guard;—if you could bid the black blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar spare—if you could ...

— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... imposing. On wandering thro' the enceinte of this famous temple, I thought of Apollonius of Tyana and his sudden appearance to his friend Damis at the porch of this very temple, when he escaped from the fangs of Domitian and when it was believed that, by means of magic art, he had been able at once to transport himself from the Praetorium at Rome to Puteoli. As I said before, the bay included by cape Misenus and Puzzuoli is what is called Baiae. The land is low and marshy from Puzzuoli to a little beyond the lake Avernus; but from Monte ...

— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... occupy a foremost rank in the intellectual history of the age." In addition to the various works of Brewster already noticed, the following may be mentioned:—Notes and Introduction to Carlyle's translation of Legendre's Elements of Geometry (1824); Treatise on Optics (1831); Letters on Natural Magic, addressed to Sir Walter Scott (1831); The Martyrs of Science, or the Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler (1841); More ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... to you, even if I would?—you came by night; you knocked upon my door;—and I opened to you. You spoke to me. What was it you said? You gazed in my eyes. What was the mystic might that turned my brain and lured me, as it were, within a magic net? (Hides her face on his shoulder.) Oh, look not on me, Nils Lykke! You must not look upon me after this—— True, say you ? Do you not own me? I am yours;—I ...

— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen

... generations tread thee down; The voice I heard this passing night was heard In ancient days, by Emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same voice that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn, The same that ofttimes hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in ...

— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... Come, worthy sir, come with me, and partake All the great things that mortals happy make." Alas, what virtue hath sufficient arms To oppose bright honour and soft pleasure's charms? What wisdom can their magic force repel? It draws the reverend hermit from his cell. It was the time, when witty poets tell, That Phoebus into Thetis' bosom fell: She blushed at first, and then put out the light, And drew the modest curtains of the night. ...

— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... time, the perfection of a nurse. She kept herself and the nursery and the children in most refreshing order; she amused Una when she was more than usually unwell with a perfect fund of innocent stories; the work flew from her nimble fingers as if by magic. I boasted everywhere of my good luck, and sang her praises in Ernest's ears till he believed in her with all his heart. But one night we were out late; we had been spending the evening at Aunty's, and came in with Ernest's night-key as quietly as possible, in order ...

— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... door, a hot puff of stuffy, unpleasantly close air came out, and the noise ceased as if by magic, though there were about three hundred boys ...

— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... Beltane, "methinks there is some magic in thy touch, for now is my pain abated—hast ...

— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... dawcuments handed over by the Cadi, sir. He reckoned they were sort of magic spells. The chahplain ordered them to be reported to you and ...

— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw

... having great confidence in his 'firmness and integrity of purpose,' and hoping for support from him in face of a faint-hearted disposition to regard Lord Palmerston as a magician against whom it was vain to struggle. Events were speedily to show that Lord Palmerston had more magic at his disposal than his valiant foe believed. The agent of the British government in the China seas—himself, by the way, a philosophic radical—had forced a war upon the Chinese. The cabinet supported him. On the motion of Cobden, the House censured the proceeding. ...

— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the power of firmly guiding his life and commanding himself; on the other, an amiable desire to overlook the faults and defects of the world, and to contemplate life as it painted itself in the transfiguring magic-mirror of his poet's soul. Frankness and enjoyment spoke in his sparkling eye, but the subtle smile on his lips when he was engaged in a discussion, or when his soul was stirred, betrayed that Pentaur, far from childlike carelessness, had ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... no magic in merely choosing an occupation. If you do nothing to an occupation but choose it, it can do nothing at all to you. If you are an incorrigible lover of holidays, so that the arrival of a working-day ...

— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... contented. We have performances at the factory every winter; the workpeople act themselves. They have lectures with a magic lantern, a splendid tea-room, and everything they want. They are very much attached to us, and when they heard that Lizanka was worse they had a service sung for her. Though they have no education, they have ...

— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... brothers, Sophy held up the pop-gun in the tongs, one end still tinged with a red glow, smoky, blackened, and perfumed. Maurice made one bound, she lowered it into his grasp as the last red spark died out, and he clasped it as Siegfried did the magic sword! ...

— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... declining days of a great scientist, who feels his physical and mental faculties gradually ebbing away. A Tiresome Story, Chekhov calls it; and so it would be without the vitality conjured into it by the magic ...

— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... and deceive those Ethnics and Indians, being adored and worshipped for [1185] gods. For the Gentiles' gods were devils (as [1186]Trismegistus confesseth in his Asclepius), and he himself could make them come to their images by magic spells: and are now as much "respected by our papists" (saith [1187] Pictorius) "under the name of saints." These are they which Cardan thinks desire so much carnal copulation with witches (Incubi and Succubi), transform bodies, and ...

— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... owd story he towd her, Th' story, 'at's owder nor time; Nowt ivver chap whisper'd wor owder, Nowt ivver soa grand an sublime. For man nivver towd ither story, Soa chock full ov magic as this, For, it shraaded th' young chaps i' glory, An' filled her ...

— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley

... command, the music swelled, and his enfranchised spirit rose on its viewless wings to behold the veiled Future already woven from the tangled skein of the troubled Present—the thousand-fold story of music's magic and mystery, stretches back into the forgotten Past, and onward into the ...

— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... same Pietro Martire d'Anghiera who from Burgos wrote to inform Rome of what was taking place in the privacy of the Duke of Valentinois's apartments in the Vatican. Under his facile and magic pen, the jar of ice-cold water into which Cesare was believed to have been plunged was transmuted into a mule which was ripped open that the fever-stricken Cesare might be packed into the pulsating entrails, there to sweat the ...

— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... number, although traces of six or seven different men could be perceived as far as the spot where they had been disturbed. From this point these children of the Bush had disappeared, as it were, by magic: not a twig was broken, not a stone was turned, nor could it be observed that the heavy drops of rain had been shaken from a single blade of grass. All efforts to hit upon the direction in which they had fled were to no purpose, except to put the explorers ...

— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... against his life may not all have been baseless. At last, one of own cousins, the Count of Nevers, was accused of having recourse to diabolic means of doing away with the duke's legitimate heir.[2] Three little waxen images were found in his house, and it was alleged that he practised various magic arts withal in order to win the favour of the duke and of the French king, and still worse to cause Charles to waste away with a mysterious sickness. The accusations were sufficient to make Nevers resign all his offices in his kinsman's court ...

— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... lobster farmer scamper winter number tumbler blunder jester pitcher milker farther monster marble cycle uncle thimble jumble grumble stumble tingle tickle speckle candle nimble tumble ankle twinkle single dangle dimple cackle buckle magic picnic handle bundle frolic mimic simple wrinkle merit arctic solid limit habit infant stupid visit spirit distant rapid profit pulpit merchant timid ashes classes servant kisses dishes dresses brushes losses stitches bunches wishes ...

— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... stars roll on in their majestic spheres, regardless of mortal hopes and fears. At length day broke, when the preacher rose from bed anxious and unrefreshed. A little before the appointed time he proceeded to a certain building, and having mounted two flights of stairs, saw the magic number on the door in front of him. As the clock struck he entered. Agreeably to a preconcerted plan, he wiped the right corner of his mouth with a white handkerchief, and nodded three times. The only person in the room, a well-dressed and apparently affable ...

— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... strange to her that the house, which but a short time ago had no existence whatever, and was yet cold and soulless, was destined to be the living home of a family, with history in its walls and memories clinging about it. The formidable magic of life was always thus discovering itself to her, so that she could not look upon even an untenanted, terra-cotta-faced villa without a secret thrill; and the impenetrable sky above was not more charmed and enchanted than those brick walls. When she reflected ...

— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... in and enjoy their splendid home, it was thrown open for examination and admiration. All S——went to see the show, and wander in dreamy amazement through parlors, halls, and chambers. I went with the rest. The change seemed like the work of magic. I could with difficulty make out the old landmarks. The spacious rooms, newly painted and decked out in rich, modern furniture, looked still more spacious. In place of the whitewashed ceilings and dingy papered walls, graceful frescoes spread their ...

— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... other work is the special quality of Balzac's genius displayed so completely as in "La Peau de Chagrin," which we render as "The Magic Skin." Published in 1831, it is the earliest in date of his veritable masterpieces, and the finest in conception. There is no novel more soberly true to life than this strange fairy tale. His hero, the Marquis de Valentin, is a young aristocrat of the Byronic type. He rejects the simple joys and ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... were very conveniently arranged. The water flowed down one bank, and up the other, so that you could go either way without the least trouble. Those were the days of magic. People were then able to fly six or seven miles, and to light on the trees like birds, when they went out hunting. But now the world is decrepit, and all good things are gone. In those days people used the fire-drill. Also, if they planted ...

— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... makes it a safe play Charlie excused himself and went to lunch. After Saugatuck we are not booked, because Charlie says something may fall down in New York and he may want to yank us right in. And, say, if Signor Petroskinski, the Illusionist and Worker of Mystical Magic, ever gets a crack at a Broadway audience it'll be a case of us matching John D. Rockefeller to see who has the ...

— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh

... talk of Bessie appealed to such manliness as he had in him, and, whatever his own wickedness may have been, he was too madly in love with the woman to let her name be taken in vain by a man whom, though he held his "magic" in superstitious reverence, he yet ranked lower than a dog. With his nerves strung to the highest possible state of tension, and half drunk as he was, Frank Muller was no more to be played with or irritated ...

— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... fairly under way, there arose such a huzza as ten thousand throats never gave before. The passengers returned the cheer, but Fulton stood upon the deck, his eyes flashing with an unusual brilliancy as he surveyed the crowd. He felt that the magic wand of success was waving over him and he was silent. The entire trip was an ovation, and is ...

— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... beautiful for speech; the meaning was too laden with brotherly love and cheer for it to be mistaken. A sad-eyed girl smiled to herself and gazed with new hope in her face; a pickpocket took his hand out of his neighbor's bag that had opened like magic under his practised touch. Babies stretched out their arms to the glitter; grown men stared silently with unaccustomed tears wetting their eyes. The school children sang on and on, "Oh, come all ye faithful, ...

— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith

... boat at 'The Bowl of Cream,' the river inn where Summerhay was staying. To him, who had been a rowing man at Oxford, the river was known from Lechlade to Richmond; but Gyp had never in her life been on it, and its placid magic, unlike that of any other river in the world, almost overwhelmed her. On this glistening, windless day, to drift along past the bright, flat water-lily leaves over the greenish depths, to listen to the pigeons, ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Patriotism! There is magic in the word. It is bliss to repeat it. Through ages the human race burnt the incense of admiration and reverence at the shrines of patriotism. The most beautiful pages of history are those which recount its deeds. Fireside tales, the ...

— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... with magic, methinks, And the future was given to her gaze; For an obelisk marked her abode, and a sphinx On her threshold kept vigil always. She was pensive and ever alone, nor was seen In the haunts of the dissolute crowd; But communed ...

— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... magic of Egypt is still widely practised, and many of the formulae used in modern times are familiar to the Egyptologist. The Egyptian, indeed, lives in a world much influenced by magic and thickly populated by spirits, demons, and djins. Educated men holding Government appointments, and dressing in ...

— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... whiteness, and she again towered up suddenly behind, ever wheeling, gliding on, vapour and water so commingled that you could not say she floated, but was somehow faintly present like the dim picture on a canvas screen from a magic lantern half in focus. She was searching in the fog for the 'Nab' light-ship, thence to take new bearings and cleave the mist in a straight course at half-speed for Southampton. When she found the 'Nab' she vanished finally, and I was glad ...

— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... topics, first published in the 9th century; notes for bibliophiles on the care of books, and on paper, ink, pictures and bric-a-brac; a collection of famous criminal cases; night thoughts suggested by a meteor. Add to the above, numerous short stories relating to magic, dreams, bilocation, and to almost every possible phase of supernatural manifestation, and the reader will have some idea of what he may expect in an ordinary "library" of a popular character. It must always be remembered that with the Chinese, style is ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... in like manner; she made the dress herself, and its fit was perfection, showing her plump little figure all the plumper, while its black color set off the whiteness of her simple collar, and with those magic gaiters, Ralph's gift also, he used to sit in the big chair, peering at her, and in a quandary as to whether he had ever been so happy ...

— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... imperceptible degrees there grew in Scrope's mind the persuasion that he was in the presence of the living God. This time there was no vision of angels nor stars, no snapping of bow-strings, no throbbing of the heart nor change of scene, no magic and melodramatic drawing back of the curtain from the mysteries; the water and the bridge, the ragged black trees, and a distant boat that broke the silvery calm with an arrow of black ripples, all these things were still before him. But God was there too. God was everywhere ...

— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... a man with long hair, in a black doublet, who approached the foot of the bed where Sainte-Croix lay. Brave as he was, this apparition so fully answered to his prayers (and at the period the power of incantation and magic was still believed in) that he felt no doubt that the arch-enemy of the human race, who is continually at hand, had heard him and had now come in answer to his prayers. He sat up on the bed, feeling mechanically at the ...

— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... little Saracen was performed so well by le petit Ducrow, that we longed to see more of him. The desperate battle fought by about sixteen supernumeraries at the pass of Castle Moura, was quite as sanguinary as ever: the combats were perfection—the glory of the red fire was nowise dimmed! It was magic, yes, it was ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... be said without exaggeration of Carpocrates and Basilides who both taught at Alexandria about 120-130 A.D. Unfortunately we know the views of these interesting men only from the accounts of their opponents. Carpocrates[1134] is said to have claimed the power of coercing by magic the spirits who rule the world and to have taught metempsychosis in the form that the soul is imprisoned in the body again and again until it has performed all possible actions, good and evil. Therefore the only way to escape reincarnation (which is the object of religion) and to rise ...

— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... Felicien could do nothing but watch Angelique as she embroidered the curls, following the exact direction of their rolling with her little pointed stitches, and he never wearied of seeing the hair grow and radiate under her magic needle. Its weight, and the great quivering with which it seemed to be unrolled at one turn, ...

— The Dream • Emile Zola

... passionate verbal outbreaks, and outside the charmed precincts of the tragic stage, the world would not tolerate the raving Hamlets and Othellos, the Macbeths and Medeas, that scowl and storm and anathematize so successfully in the magic glow ...

— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... alighted at the wide piazza of the Under-Cliff House, and were shown to airy rooms, which proved that the guests were not kept in pigeon-holes for the sole benefit of the proprietor. Our heroine employed the best magic the world has known—thoughtful helpfulness. Mr. Muir was banished. "You would be as useful as a whale," she said to him, when he offered to aid his wife in unpacking and getting settled. "Go down to the piazza and smoke in peace. I shall be worth a dozen of you ...

— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... wharves and the ships And the sea-tides tossing free, And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea.'" ...

— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... the pleasing note of lute and lyre, The lily's purple, the red rose's glow; It wonders at the witchery of the fire, And marvels at the magic of the snow. ...

— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman

... nobody. While the racket was going on we were standing in line of battle, on the hither side of an extensive cotton field, and there was a big, tall cottonwood tree standing about a quarter of a mile in our front by the side of the road. I was looking in that direction when suddenly, as if by magic, a big forked branch of this tree quietly took leave of the trunk, as if it "didn't know how it happened." Before it struck the ground the shot from one of Shelby's guns that had done this pruning went screaming over our heads. It sounded just real good, like old times, with an effect, somehow, ...

— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... conscious certainty that it was so. Curiously enough, I never remember feeling the slightest nervousness while I was there, but rather an immense excitement in the idea of such invisible companionship; but as soon as I had emerged from the magic circle of the huge black cedar trees, all my fair visions vanished, and, as though under a spell, I felt perfectly possessed with terror, and rushed home again like the wind, fancying I heard following footsteps all the way I went. The ...

— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... came to pass that the Nephites began to repent of their iniquity, and began to cry even as had been prophesied by Samuel the prophet; for behold no man could keep that which was his own, for the thieves, and the robbers, and the murderers, and the magic art, and the witchcraft which was in ...

— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... powerful, yet it could bear no fruits—the door could not open till the pope pronounced the magic words which held it closed. Neither Philip nor Mary was in a position to use violence or ...

— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... groaning of lonely ice-fields and the sigh of Indian palms? When, with Bacon, I can explore the laboratory of nature, or with Locke, consult the mysteries of the soul? When Spenser can lead me into golden visions, or Shakespeare smite me with magic inspiration, or Milton bathe me in immortal song? When History opens for me all the gates of the past,—Thebes and Palmyra, Corinth and Carthage, Athens with its peerless glory, and Rome with its majestic pomp?—when kings and statesmen, authors and priests, with their public ...

— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... of bows and arrows and spears. This strange change in African savages came to be talked over among the people. It was so wonderful that the other tribes could account for it only as an instance of supernatural magic. There was nothing they knew of that would lead men like the Bechuanas to bring war to an end, and ...

— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... evaded her, and yet never ceased to call her with such a voice as he who reads on a magic page of the calling of elves hears stilly in his brain, yet somehow behind the seduction was another and a sterner voice. There was warning as well as fascination. Beyond that edge at which she strained on tiptoe, mingled with the jocund calls to Hasten, Hasten, were ...

— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... movements, no noises, but suddenly the caribou seemed to develop from the green shadow mist, to stand, his ears pricked forward, his lustrous eyes wide, his nostrils quivering toward the unknown something that had uttered the sound. It was like magic. An animal was now where, a moment before, none ...

— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... dream we had, a dream of music, Music that rose from the opening earth like magic And shook its beauty upon us and died away? The long cold streets extend once more before us. The red sun drops, the ...

— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken

... the formation of real proficiency in the art, friends should meet often, sit long, and be thoroughly at ease. A modern audience generally breaks up before it is well warmed through, and includes enough strangers to break the magic circle of social electricity. The clubs in which Johnson delighted were excellently adapted to foster his peculiar talent. There a man could "fold his legs and have his talk out"—a pleasure hardly to be enjoyed now. ...

— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... Prometheus strove to trace Inspired perceptions of celestial grace, Th' ideal spirit, fugitive as wind, Art's forceful spells in adamant confined: Curved with nice chisel floats the obsequious line; From stone unconscious, beauty beams divine; On magic poised, th' exulting structure swims, And spurns attraction with elastic limbs. While ravish'd fancy vivifies the form; While judgment toils to analyze its charm; While admiration spreads her speaking hands; The lofty artist undelighted stands. He longs ...

— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... for your assistance this afternoon," Jasper told Lois as they at last paused at the gate leading to the Sinclair house. "I started forth uncertain what to do, and behold, everything has turned out as if by magic." ...

— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody

... understanding of its wants incited by a commendable spirit of emulation, and encouraged by liberty, early gave birth to those improvements which have converted a wilderness into the abodes of abundance and security, with a rapidity that wears the appearance of magic. Industry has wrought with the confidence of knowledge, and the ...

— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... express an intense desire to hear a story of magic and mystery, and to assure him that his name was ...

— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... Jasper. "Well, we must give her some, and that's a fact." The small girl kept on at a dog-trot along the bank, her eyes fixed on the wonderful people who tossed out such magic wealth, and holding out her arms and singing her shrill song. But when the money was thrown, she was always a bit too late, and the other children, scrambling and scuffling, had pounced upon it, and had ...

— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney

... to his feet, his eyes gleaming fiercely. "How?" he demanded. "They have slain the pack. Will they not soon come for the leaders? Has the young white chieftain magic to work against ...

— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... On all Irish questions the wisdom and experience of English statesmen were in vain. Yet amid the storms which beat over the unhappy island, the voice of the great pilot was louder than the tempests, which he seems to control as if by magic. Mr. Gladstone, in one of his later contributions to literature, has done justice to the motives and the genius of a man whom he regards as the greatest that Ireland has ever produced, if Burke may be excepted, yet a man whom he bitterly opposed ...

— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... at least a mile above you, and you can hear him over a radius of half a mile, measured from the place where he will drop. The little poets chant one against the other, and yet there is no discord, for the magic of distance seems to harmonize song with song, and the tumult soothes instead of exciting you. Who is the poet who talks of "drawing a thread of honey through your heart"? It is a quaint, conceited phrase, and yet somehow it gives with absurd felicity some ...

— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... Malayan-Arabic tradition, Adam was moulded from a lump of clay mixed with water (cf. W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic [1900], pp. 21-22); but the suggestion may as well have come from a ...

— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,

... followers of Basilides, actual magic played a determining part. They hand down the names of the rulers of the several heavens as a weighty secret. This was a result of the belief, that whoever knew the names of these rulers would after death pass through all the heavens to the supreme God. In accordance ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... many thousands of her innocent subjects to misery and expulsion, had not her confessor worked on her conscience in an unusual manner; alluding to some unprecedented favor shown to one of that hated race, occasioned, he declared, by those arts of magic which might occur again and yet again, and do most fatal evil to the land. Isabella had, it appears, when reproached by Torquemada for her act of mercy, which he termed weakness, pledged herself, not to interfere with ...

— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... beside her. They walked toward the Platform. And it was still magic, no matter how often Joe looked at it. It was huge beyond belief, though it was surely not heavy in proportion to its size. Its bright plating shone through the gossamer scaffolding all about it. ...

— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... within the bowl, And, half-suspected, animate the whole. Of mordant mustard add a single spoon, Distrust the condiment that bites too soon; But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault, To add a double quantity of salt. And, lastly, o'er the flavored compound toss A magic soup-spoon of anchovy sauce. O green and glorious!—O herbaceous treat! 'T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat; Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl! Serenely ...

— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... This great permanent and enduring benefit was secured to me through only two months of your skillful treatment and careful management of my case. Your medicines had a wonderful control over my disease, driving away its terrible symptoms as if by magic; they imparted to me a new power, filled my body and mind with unusual vigor, and transformed me from one racked with pain and living death or worse, to a full measure of health and happiness. I feel that if I had not been opportunely and successfully ...

— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... means, and Mireio, at the suggestion of one of her maiden friends, takes Vincen to the abode of the witch who lives in the Fairies' Hole under the rocks of Les Baux. Besides the obvious objection that the magic cure could not have been made, there is the physical impossibility of Vincen's having walked, in his dying condition, through the labyrinth of subterranean passages, amid the wild scenes of a sort of Walpurgis night. The poet was doubtless ...

— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... though he by no means neglected the requirements of musical labor. As he himself confesses, the balmy climate, the glorious landscapes, the languid dolce far niente, which tended to enervate all that came under their magic spell, wrought on his susceptible temperament with peculiar effect. A quotation from an article written by Gottschalk, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly," entitled "Notes of a Pianist," will furnish the reader a graphic idea of the influence ...

— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... proclaimed his discoveries to four or five of his companions. Trinity in unity, he said, was as much a contradiction as a square circle. Ezra was the author of the Pentateuch. The Apocalypse was an allegorical book about the philosopher's stone. Moses had learned magic in Egypt. Christianity was a delusion which would not last till the year 1800. For this wild talk, of which, in all probability, he would himself have been ashamed long before he was five and twenty, he was prosecuted ...

— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... song in magic wonders rife; But yet, O Nature! is there nought to prize, Familiar in thy bosom scenes of life? And dwells in daylight truth's salubrious skies No form with which the soul may sympathize? Young, innocent, on whose sweet forehead mild The parted ringlet shone in simplest ...

— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... they have since outwrit all other men, 'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen. The storm, which vanish'd on the neighbouring shore, Was taught by Shakspeare's Tempest first to roar. That innocence and beauty, which did smile In Fletcher, grew on this enchanted isle. But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he. 20 I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you now That liberty to vulgar wits allow, Which works by magic supernatural things: But Shakspeare's power is sacred as a king's. Those legends from old priesthood were received, ...

— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... that had just come into them as she realised that already, on the tower before she even knew him, she had loved him. It was that love, already born in her heart but as yet unconscious of its own existence, which had so strangely increased for her the magic of the African evening when she watched it with him. But before—suddenly she knew that she had loved Androvsky from the beginning, from the moment when his face looked at her as if out of the heart of the sun. That was why her entry into the ...

— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... course, the elder distrusted; just as she had no approval for Jean's public activities. Linda didn't like public women; her every instinct cried for a fine seclusion, fine in the meaning of an appropriate setting for feminine distinction, the magic of dress and cut roses. Her private inelegant word for Lowrie's wife was "bold;" indeed, describing to herself the younger woman's patronage of her bearing, she descended to her mother's ...

— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... with him when he was at Itchincope; and his look, and what I know of his father, that gallant and handsome Colonel Richard Beauchamp, would give one a kind of confidence in him; supposing always that he is not struck with one of those deadly passions that are like snakes, like magic. I positively believe in them. I have seen them. And if they end, they end as if the man were burnt out, and was ashes inside; as you see Mr. Stukely Culbrett, all cynicism. You would not now suspect him of a passion! It is true. Oh, I know it! That is what the men go ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... over to a painter's eyes, posed, draped, and lighted with the one object of studying her beauty. If there be any magnetism in isolated attention, any in steadfast gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither—if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feathered, in freedom of admiration, "and all in the way of business"—then is a lovable sitter to a love-like painter in "parlous" vicinity (as the new school would phrase it) to sweet heart-land! Pleasure ...

— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... Freudvoll, Leidvoll, Gedankenvoll—an extensive commentary on some melodic ideas not too grossly evident; and he certainly fetched as much variety and depth of passion out of the piano as that moderately responsive instrument lends itself to, having an imperious magic in his fingers that seem to send a nerve-thrill through ivory key and wooden hammer, and compel the strings to make a quivering lingering speech for him. Gwendolen, in spite of her wounded egoism, had fullness of nature enough to feel the power of this ...

— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... locks unshorn, The pledge of my unviolated vow. For proof hereof, if Dagon be thy god, Go to his Temple, invocate his aid With solemnest devotion, spread before him How highly it concerns his glory now To frustrate and dissolve these Magic spells, Which I to be the power of Israel's God 1150 Avow, and challenge Dagon to the test, Offering to combat thee his Champion bold, With th' utmost of his Godhead seconded: Then thou shalt see, or rather ...

— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... ways to see the Exposition at night, both of which must be followed if one is to get the fullest appreciation of the magic beauty of the lighting. One is to wander about the palaces and courts in the midst of the soft flood of mysterious light, watching the play of the fountains, the barbaric flames of the Court of Ages, the green shimmer of the waters in the Court of ...

— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... said Spargo confidently. "There is more magic in a thousand-pound reward than you fancy, Breton. I'll have the history of ...

— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher

... advanced. The brightness of the corridor outside left his eyes confused in this dim light. Aymer suddenly remembered this and turned on a switch. The vague shadowy space was flooded with soft radiance. It was like magic ...

— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... were stirred by his name; he heard the applauding crowds; he breathed the incense of his fame; he adored that life long dreamed of; radiant, he sprang to radiant triumphs; he raised his stature; he evoked his illusions to bid them farewell in a last Olympic feast. The magic had been potent for a moment; but now it vanished forever. In that awful hour he clung to the beautiful tree to which, as to a friend, he had attached himself; then he put the two stones into the pockets ...

— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... word, this is intolerable! Look ye, Dominie, if you speak another word till I give you leave, I will read three sentences out of the Black Acts, whisk my cane round my head three times, undo all the magic of this night's work, and conjure Harry Bertram ...

— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... do; and if very glad to see you on meeting, they are not likely to say so in words; but they cherish warm emotions under a hard crust of reserve and shyness, and lavish all their wealth of affection on the little band collected within the magic circle of Home. Said an American who had spent two years as a public lecturer throughout Great Britain: "Circumstances have introduced me favorably to the intimacy and regard of many English families, and I can scarcely recollect one which was not in its own sphere, a model household." My own opportunities ...

— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... year, and the latter snow had been light, while steady dry weather followed it, and there were times when I felt that I should have given several years of my life for rain. It came, and, though there was not much of it, as if by magic tender grain stood a handbreadth above the black loam, while I watched it lengthen daily with my heart in my eyes, and I grew feverishly anxious about the weather. Many things depended on the success of that crop. Then suddenly it was summer, the hottest summer for ten seasons, our neighbors ...

— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... elevated in society, come every week to pass long hours with the miserable prisoners. Observing in these degraded beings the least aspiration after virtue, the least regret for a past crime, they encourage the better tendencies and repentance; and, by the powerful magic of the words "duty," "honor," "virtue," sometimes they rescue from the depths of degradation one abandoned, despised, ...

— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... progressive. The world has emerged from its blindness and ignorance by the innate force of the mind. Reason, the great magician, has uplifted its wand; and lo, the creatures of night disappear! It has dispelled the foolish old notions of magic, witchcraft, and miracles. It has overcome the spirit of persecution, the childish conception of original sin, and the doctrine of eternal punishment. It has put an end to bull-baiting, cock-fighting, ...

— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... for which John Ruskin had been feeling all these years. No wonder that he took Turner for his leader and master, and fondly tried to copy the wonderful "Alps at Daybreak" to begin with, and then to imitate this new-found magic art with his own subjects and finally to come boldly before the world in passionate defence of a man who had done such great things ...

— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... heavenly to Meredith to hear this intimate revelation from her lips, always so shy of expressing her need of him. It was a great advance in the right direction, and his skies cleared as by magic. If absence truly made the heart grow fonder, he would have no cause of complaint against this short parting. It was the greater one in the spring, the shadow of which was already darkening his horizon, that ...

— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... portion,—a tomb, a place for his dead,—and a more beautiful description of a scene of mutual deference, of regard for rights and respect for character and position, was never penned than that which records the negotiation between the bereaved patriarch and the children of Heth. With the touch of magic, the whole scene is before us. The bereaved patriarch, courteous in grief, bowing in the presence of the sons of Heth,—the deep respect, the kindly sympathy, manifested by those who, strangers to his religion, felt the claims of his character,—mingled with that deep awe which the visitation ...

— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... through the lungs, and the crumbs and solid dirt down and out by means of the food tube. But the waste water—how does she get rid of that? The waste water, you remember, is in the blood vessels, mixed with the blood. How does she get it out of the blood? She sends it through three magic cleaners, or strainers,—the skin, ...

— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson

... collected about them other members of the searching party, who stuck their heads out of ports and doors now and then to see that no evil magic had ...

— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... squares. From the window of our hotel (which looked into the Place Royale) I saw a juggler displaying his art to a crowd, who stood in a regular square about him, none pretending to press nearer than the prescribed limit. While the juggler wrought his miracles his wife supplied him with his magic materials out of a box; and when the exhibition was over she packed up the white cloth with which his table was covered, together with cups, cards, balls, and whatever else, ...

— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... thereupon sent Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, provided with a magic chain and ring, upon both of which the name of God was engraved. He also provided him with a fleece of wool and sundry skins with wine. Then Benaiah went and sank a pit below that of Ashmedai, into which he drained off the water and ...

— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... must not think of reciprocity as obtaining in the succession of cause and effect, as if the effect could turn back upon its cause; for as the effect arises its cause disappears, and is irrecoverable by Nature or Magic. There are many cases of rhythmic change and of moving equilibria, in which one movement or process produces another, and this produces something closely resembling the former, and so on in long series; as with the swing of a pendulum or the orbit of a planet: but these are series of cause ...

— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... activity. Hence the dramatic representations to which I have referred, the performance, for instance, of such a drama as the Rishyacringa, the ceremonial 'marriages,' and other exercises of what we now call sympathetic magic. To quote a well-known passage from Sir J. G. Frazer: "They commonly believed that the tie between the animal and vegetable world was even closer than it really is—to them the principle of life and fertility, ...

— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... gold, friendship and women! Now I stand alone—poor, deserted—with a pair of long ears and without my magic ring! Had I known that life was so utterly ignoble, I should have stayed at home with the witch. Where shall I turn to now—without friends, without money, without house and home? Trouble awaits me ...

— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg

... exception of a single groan, which I gave on first seeing the object, I found that if one word would save my life, or transport me to my own fireside, I could not utter it. I was also rooted to the earth, as if by magic; and although instant tergiversation and flight had my most hearty concurrence, I could not move a limb, nor even raise my eyes off the sepulchral-looking object which lay before me. I now felt the perspiration ...

— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... eye glance which hath magic might; * Wherever turn those orbs it bars our flight: Nor be deceived by low sweet voice, that breeds * A fever festering in the heart and sprite: So soft that silky skin, were rose to touch it * She'd cry and tear-drops rain for pain and fright: ...

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... and laid the foundations of the home in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. The word 'Susquehanna' had a magic sound to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley delivered his farewell discourse. April 6 he passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex Street, and a day later went to Gravesend. For the details of the journey one must go ...

— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... grey beard and a gaze that peered anxiously through a settling blindness. Thirty acres—eight dollars an acre. P. Ville was a swarthy foreigner, called, in Greenstream, the Portugee; every crop he planted grew as if by magic. Old Matthew Zane would endeavor to borrow from Gordon the money with which to repurchase the option ...

— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... aged wizard said, "For what cause hath thy Gerald parted? I cannot lend my mystic aid, Except to lovers, faithful hearted; My magic wand would lose its might— I could not read my spells aright— All skill would from my soul depart, If I should aid the ...

— Successful Recitations • Various

... into the religious beliefs of all countries and all ages, prove to the world that the hopes we now embody were born with the human races. Chaldea, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, the Moors, have transmitted from one to another Magic, the highest of all the occult sciences, which holds within it, as a precious deposit the fruits of the studies of each generation. In it lay the tie that bound the grand and majestic institution of the Templars. Sire, when one of your predecessors burned the Templars, he ...

— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... Senator was the pioneer, charging sixteen dollars a passage, and actually coining money. Other boats were built, out of materials which had either come around Cape Horn or were brought from the Sandwich Islands. Wharves were built, houses were springing up as if by magic, and the Bay of San Francisco presented as busy a scene of life as any part of the world. Major Allen, of the Quartermaster's Department, who had come out as chief-quartermaster of the division, was building a large warehouse ...

— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... and repeats somewhat tediously the story of his visit to Scotland. He gives a synopsis of all the sciences he had ever studied—Theology, Dialectics, Arithmetic, Music, Optics, Astronomy, Astrology, Geometry, Chiromancy, Agriculture, Medicine, passing on to treat of Magic, portents and warnings, and of his own experience of the same at the crucial moments of his life. He ends by a reference to an incident already chronicled in the De Vita Propria,[175] how he escaped death or injury from a falling ...

— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... to watch him. But one evening, while the magician was standing upon the top of the highest tower of his castle, the boy gave him a push from behind, and he met death on the sharp rocks below. Then the boy took his master's book of magic and found a recipe to make one grow. He made the mixture and swallowed it, and straightway began to grow big and tall. This greatly delighted him, until he found he was getting much bigger than the average man and rapidly becoming a giant. ...

— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum

... years ago, but cannot recollect the authority, "That, when Alexander besieged a certain city in India, the Brachmans, by the power of magic, raised a cloud of smoke around the walls, whence broke frequent flashes of lightning, with thunder, and the thunderbolts slew many of his soldiers." This would infer the very ancient use of fire-arms of some kind ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... are often disinterred along the coast." The merit of those artists lay in perfect imitation of natural objects, such as birds, fishes, fruits, plants, skulls, persons in various positions, faces (often with graphic individuality). Some jars exactly resembled the "magic vases" which are still found in Hindustan, and can be emptied only when held at a ...

— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... this! The silent and shattered walls of Wagner all at once burst forth into a blinding sheet of vivid light, as though they had suddenly been transformed by some magic power into the living, seething crater of a volcano! Down came the whirlwind of destruction along the beach with the swiftness of lightning! How fearfully the hissing shot, the shrieking bombs, the whistling bars of iron, and the whispering bullet struck and crushed through the dense masses of ...

— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... and the next moment Cinderella produced the other from her pocket! Once more she stood in the slippers, and once more the sisters saw before them the lovely Princess who was to be the Prince's bride. For at the touch of the magic shoes the little gray frock disappeared forever, and in place of it she wore the beautiful robe the fairy Godmother had given ...

— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous

... flee before the terrors thus conjured up within her mind, they left her as if by magic the moment her straining eyes distinguished the approach of a dim figure without. She could not tell who it was, only that it was the unmistakable form of a man, and that he was whistling softly to himself. It might not prove to be the gambler, but she must accept the chance, for flesh ...

— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... Easter morning, and the good sunrise of a perfect spring made radiant the high hill above the town. Rosy-fingered morn touched with magic colour the masts and scattered sails of the ships upon the great river, and spires and towers quivered with rainbow light. The city was waking cheerfully, though the only active life was in the pealing bells and on the deep flowing rivers. ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... contrasts too sharp and unvaried. But from four o'clock on the light mellows, the shadows become long and sweeping, the outdoor effects grow more and more beautiful. It is as if the first hint of sunset were the signal for ringing down a magic curtain on a scene where nature herself was pageant mistress. This is true of all outdoor plays ...

— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... shadows; the beautiful contrasts of unusual shades of colour which are always differing and shifting with the changing sunshine and the ever moving position of the aerial observer. Ah! for some better pen than mine to describe these things! One with glowing words and a magic rhythm to express the wonders of the air and the beauty of the garden beneath—the immensity of the sea—the sense of space and of one's littleness there—the realization of the Power moving the multitudes below—the exaltation of spirit altitude produces—the ...

— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... surrounded by careful ritual. The manifestations of sex were the least intelligible and the most spontaneous. Therefore the things of sex were those that most lent themselves to feelings of horror and awe, of impurity and of purity. They seemed so highly charged with magic potency that there were no things that men more sought to avoid, yet none to which they were impelled to give more thought. The manifold echoes of that primitive conception of sex, and all the violent reactions that were thus evolved and ...

— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... close shut beneath a roof, Knows not the night, the tranquil spell, The stillness of the wildwood ouphe, The magic dropped on moor and fell. No cool dew soothes its fiery shell, Nor any star, a red sardel, Swings painted there as in a well. Dyed like a stream of muscadel No white-skinned snake coils in its cup To drink its soul of sweetness up, A honeyed ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... seamanlike foes. Like Russell, he completely destroyed the enemy fleet; but he never had Russell's advantage in numbers. We might go on with other reasons yet; but we shall only give two more: first, that magic touch of his warm heart which made his captains "like a band of brothers," which made the bluejackets who carried his coffin treasure up torn bits of the pall as most precious relics, and which made the Empire mourn him as a friend; ...

— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... connection with a stroke of good luck. Sometimes the thing—an odd-shaped stone, say—had a superficial resemblance to a desirable object, and so was thought likely to aid in the acquisition of such objects by 'sympathetic magic.' {117b} ...

— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... was, and besides it would be shabby to give the whole thing away too exactly, don't you know; and he would tell Hayward how he had seen her first in her pretty muslin dress and of the flower she had given him. He made a delicate idyl of it: the sunshine and the sea gave it passion and magic, and the stars added poetry, and the old vicarage garden was a fit and exquisite setting. There was something Meredithian about it: it was not quite Lucy Feverel and not quite Clara Middleton; but it was inexpressibly charming. Philip's heart ...

— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... often think of Shandon bells, Whose sounds so wild would in days of childhood Fling round my cradle their magic spells, On this I ponder where'er I wander, And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee; With the bells of Shandon That sound so grand ...

— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black

... growing indignation at the audacity of the stranger. Only the petrification of absolute astonishment, and wonder as to what would happen next, took her off her guard for the moment and prevented her from ousting the young lady from the premises instantly. There was also the magic name of the handsome young gentleman that had been used as password, and the very slight possibility that this might be some rich relative of the lovely young patient that she would not like to ...

— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... enthusiastic admiration of Halle had inspired her with a desire to cultivate a more classic style of pianoforte-playing. So in her English reading, each new book blotted out its predecessor. Travels, histories, essays, biographies, flitted across the lady's brain like the coloured shadows of a magic-lantern, leaving only a lingering patch of picture here and there. To be versatile was Lady Laura's greatest pride, and courteous friends had gratified her by treating her as an authority upon all possible subjects. Nothing ...

— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... this we are certain, that, when this good old gentleman enters a room, there is a warmth and brightness in his very presence, that causes you to look round, half expecting to see the tables and chairs throwing their shadows along the floor, as if, by the power of magic, a window had suddenly been opened in the wall to let in the ...

— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... did not know me and we mutually terrified each other. I fully expected to get killed by the local nobility and gentry; they thought I was connected with the World's Women's Temperance Association, and collecting shocking details for subsequent magic-lantern lectures on the liquor traffic; so fearful misunderstandings arose, but we gradually educated each other, and I had the best of the affair; for all I had got to teach them was that I was only a beetle and fetish hunter, and so forth, while they had to teach me a new world, and a very fascinating ...

— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... the careless indulgence of mothers is responsible for the ruin of their sons. If mothers were as watchful of their sons as of their daughters, the magic chain of mother love would be far more binding to their boys. There are homes in this city where at night you can hear the mothers say to servants: "Are the clothes in off the line; did you bring the broom and the pitcher from the porch; are the blinds all down; are the girls in bed; ...

— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...

— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... great deal of time so. Well, so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in the circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all magic and border chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto, stopped a minute and drank something, and then began without a thought ...

— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... a man be ever shadowed by the vampire wing of his past? Have I not a right to be happy? Money, estate, name, are mine, all that means an open sesame to the magic door. Others go in, but I beat against its flinty portals with hands that bleed. No! I have no right to be happy. The ways of the world are open; the banquet of life is spread; the wonder-workers plan their pageants ...

— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... a thousand orange-blossoms, and of locusts, honey-sweet, and he begins to think himself enchanted. He feels the dark, old houses are unreal, as if, instead of cobble-stones beneath his feet, there must be the soft and tender grass of Araby the Blest. Such is the magic of a trade, the perfume industry of Grasse that for so many hundreds of years has made her meanest streets full of ...

— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... deceiver. Nicodemus followed for the defence. Then Annas for the prosecution. He said: "The voice of God is the voice of the people." He was followed by Joseph, who maintained that the wonders performed by Christ were not done by magic, they were miracles; that is he was not a magician, he was the Son of ...

— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... accordance with his deposition or his resumption of these spectacles, seems to me to be childish to a degree, and tends towards turning this simple tale into a kind of fairy story, in which the spectacles play the part of a magic potion or charm, such as Mr. W. S. GILBERT would use in his Creatures of Impulse, his Fogarty's Fairy, and his Sorcerer, whenever he wishes to bring about a sudden and otherwise inexplicable transition from one ...

— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... purchased from its holder. This fetish, the palladium of the island, was in one point remarkable—a very ordinary shell in a perfectly new box of native make. Why it was thought "great medicine" and ignorantly worshipped, the pale-face student of magic and religion could not understand. However, it was the Luck of the island, and when it crossed the sea to Europe a pestilence of measles fell on the native population. There was no manifest connection ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not in the house, but Amelia was. The old folks had gone to a Magic Lantern in the schoolroom, and Amelia ...

— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit

... the magic carpet of the Eastern story, carried him back to a rambling old grey mansion, clothed with a great magnolia and many roses, standing in old-time gardens, and shrubberies of laurel and ilex and Spanish chestnut, ...

— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... him sometimes. But, alas, that could not be, for the king had given strict orders that the sentinels posted at the city gates should allow "no fairy bodies" in. Even the very last of the kind was, by a new law, banished to far-distant fairyland. "No more magic wands, no more wonders nowadays," sighed poor Caspar; "nothing can be won but by hard and ...

— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... good a fairy as I want to see," said her grandfather, passing his arm fondly round her. "She carries a ray of sunshine in her right hand; and that's as magic-working a wand as any ...

— Queechy • Susan Warner

... "My studies in Magic were never carried very far, your Majesties," protested the Astrologer, wriggling uncomfortably. "I—I did very little at it. And, even before it was decreed that all enchanters and sorcerers should either leave the Kingdom or take up some other ...

— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... temper that I hadn't learned to keep in hand those days, and I nearly killed him. I had nothing but contempt for him, anyway, because even then, when he wasn't quite twenty, he was a woman hunter, preying on silly girls. I don't know what his magic with women is, but it works, until they find him out. He was playing off two or three fool girls that I knew and at the same time keeping a woman in apartments down-town,—a girl he'd picked up on a trip to Georgia,—like ...

— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... had got through with the high kicking, and all gone off, except one girl, a gipsy, who was going to sing a song, and then a bell would ring and the whole stage effects would change as if by magic. When she had got to the end of her song and had waltzed off to the left, we got up and walked down in front, and took one of a whole row of vacant seats, put on our spectacles, and were ready. Do you know, every cuss in that audience ...

— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... then, with all thy most irresistible blandishments, thou young and happy Bride! What business have we to prophesy bedimming tears to those resplendent eyes? or that the talisman of that witching smile can ever lose its magic? Are not the high-born daughters of England also the high-souled? And have not honour and virtue, and charity and religion, guarded for centuries the lofty line of thy pure and unpolluted blood? Joyful, therefore, ...

— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... and resolve. We see, after ages of your oppression, the unquenchable desire for Irish independence blaze forth anew, and as it sweeps along the cities and prairies of this vast continent it gathers within its magic influence five millions of Irish hearts and twice five millions of friends of freedom and foes of despotism! Arise, then, my countrymen! Nerve yourselves for the struggle so nobly commenced. Cast aside ...

— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... know Gideon Vetch through his look and manner as well as he should have known another man after weeks or months of daily intercourse. Whatever the man's private life, whatever his political faults may have been, there was magic in the clasp of his hand and the cordial glow of his smile. He was always responsive; he stood always on the same level, high or low, with his companion of the moment: he was as incapable of looking up as he was of looking down; he was equally without reverence and without ...

— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... blind Shaykh, a cripple, who is knowing, wise as a wizard and experienced; and all resort to him and ask him what they require, when he counsels them what will be their advantage; for he is versed in craft[FN248] and magic and trickery. Now he is a sharper and the sharpers resort to him by night; therefore, I repeat, go thou to his lodging and hide thyself from thine adversaries, so thou mayst hear what they say, unseen of them; for he telleth them which party got the better and which got the worse; and ...

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... resolved upon the abolition of lotteries. It felt that it was dealing a stab thereby at property. The pickpocket, the blackleg, and the charlatan make especial use of their dexterity of hand, their subtlety of mind, the magic power of their eloquence, and their great fertility of invention. Sometimes they offer bait to cupidity. Therefore the penal code—which much prefers intelligence to muscular vigor—has made, of the four varieties mentioned above, a second category, liable ...

— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... president of the association, his portrait hung in all the meeting-halls, and the magic of his name used to attract the easily deluded masses, who were in a state of agitated ignorance and growing unrest, ripe for any movement that looked anti-governmental, and especially anti-Spanish. Soon after the organization had been perfected, collections began ...

— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... the wildest vicissitudes, the most daring explorations, the mightiest magic, the fiercest conflicts, the brightest triumphs, and the most affecting catastrophes, are those ...

— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... that Stillwell had dreamed of, and so many more changes and improvements and innovations that it was as if a magic touch had transformed the old ranch. Madeline and Alfred and Florence had talked over a fitting name, and had decided on one chosen by Madeline. But this instance was the only one in the course of developments in which Madeline's wishes were not compiled with. The ...

— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... said that this is a scientific age, the world is so full of necessitous life that it is waste of time for young Ireland to brood upon tales of legendary heroes, who fought with enchanters, who harnessed wild fairy horses to magic chariots and who talked with the ancient gods, and that it would be much better for youth to be scientific and practical. Do not believe it, dear Irish boy, dear Irish girl. I know as well as any the economic needs of our ...

— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... not comprehend the metaphysics of a Trinal Unity, nor how it is just that innocence should be punished, that guilt may go free. They do not attribute any magic virtue to the laying on of hands; nor do they believe that the traces of an evil life in the soul can be washed out by the sprinkling of a few drops of water, however pure, or by baptism in any blood, however innocent, in the ...

— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... of a child, If I have always, and Heaven knows I have, Next to a mother's held a nurse's name, Succour this one distress, recall those days, Love me, though 'twere because you loved me then." But whether confident in magic rites Or touched with sexual pride to stand implored, Dalica smiled, then spake: "Away those fears. Though stronger than the strongest of his kind, He falls—on me devolve that charge; he falls. Rather than fly him, ...

— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... with a strange delight To every word you said, And then to hide the burning tears I turned away my head. I dared not trifle with your love, Though till that magic hour I had not cared for aching hearts If they but owned ...

— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... under the Federal authority again, the Southern cause would be deprived of a large amount of its prestige and strength. The authorities of the Gulf States accordingly hurried forward to Richmond all available troops; and from all parts of Virginia the volunteer regiments, which had sprung up like magic, were in like manner forwarded by railway to the capital. Every train brought additions to this great mass of raw war material; large camps rose around Richmond, chief among which was that named "Camp Lee;" and the work of drilling and moulding ...

— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... took the sea, and towed them all like little cockle-boats in his wake. From sea to sea, from port to port, from tribe to tribe, from peril to peril, from feat to feat, David whirled his wonderstruck hearers, and held them panting by the quadruple magic of a tuneful voice, a changing eye, an ardent soul, and truth ...

— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... soul was filled with the fullest effects. He stood watching her figure, with its inspired lineaments, and thought of the fabled prodigies of music spoken of in ancient story. He thought of Orpheus hushing all animated nature to calm by the magic of his song. At last all thoughts of his own left him, and nothing remained but that which the song of Beatrice swept ...

— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... treatment, I have had resource to the wide knowledge of my friend Mr. Alfred Nutt in all branches of Celtic folk-lore. If this volume does anything to represent to English children the vision and colour, the magic and charm, of the Celtic folk-imagination, this is due in large measure to the care with which Mr. Nutt has watched its inception and progress. With him by my side I could venture into regions where the non-Celt wanders at his ...

— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... people seen so much to admire in his appearance, and when, after the opening exercises and the regular order of service, he rose and came out at one side of the desk to speak, as his custom was, the people were for the time under the magic sway of his personality, that never stood out so commanding and loving ...

— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon

... safety spread as by magic. Men and women and children poured into the streets to welcome them. It was as much as Kilmeny could do to keep back the cheering mob long enough to reach the hotel. Verinder, Lady Jim, and India came down the steps to meet them, Captain ...

— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... to the north, they observed in that direction fewer churches, but numerous villas and lines of wood, with the arid steppe beyond them. To the south-west arose the Sparrow Hills, those celebrated heights whence Napoleon and his then victorious army first caught sight of that magic city which they deemed was soon to be the reward of all their toils, but yet which, ere many days had passed, was to prove the cause of their destruction. In the same direction the Moscowa was seen flowing down towards the city, to circle round a portion of it ...

— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... side of the river, where the bow met with the same fate. At that moment Reuben seized the branches of a small overhanging tree in a desperate hope of checking the canoe, but the tree proved so elastic that he was jerked on shore in an instant as if by magic, and the canoe swept over a cascade, where several holes were broken in her bottom and nearly all the bars started. At the same moment the wreck fell flat on the water; all the men jumped out, and Ducette, whose courage forsook ...

— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne

... to secure a seat directly in front of the stand and in full view of the blackboard. If you have never seen Frank Beard make pictures you know nothing about what a good time she had. They were such funny pictures! —just a few strokes of the magic crayon and the character described would seem to start into life before you, and you would feel that you could almost know what thoughts were passing in the heart of the creature made of chalk. Eurie looked, and listened, and laughed. The old deacon who thought the Sunday-school ...

— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... A sea-worm—or a ghost of one—is swimming about. Its large, brilliant eyes, long tentacles, and innumerable waving appendages are now as distinct as before they had been invisible. A trifling change in my position and all vanishes as if by magic. There seems not an organ, not a single part of the creature, which is not as transparent as the water itself. The fine streamers into which the paddles and gills are divided are too delicate to have existence in any but a water creature, and the least attempt ...

— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... your love is much,' she answered smiling. 'Ah! Teule, what magic have you that you can bring me, Montezuma's daughter, to the altar of the gods and of my own free will? Well, I desire no softer bed, and for the why and wherefore it will soon be known by both of us, and with it ...

— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... care of himself by all accounts," answered Samuel, but in quite an amiable tone of voice, because the girl's magic ...

— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... some cards, a magnet, a dried chameleon, and other things necessary for her art. She told me to cross my left hand with a piece of money, and the magic ceremonies began. It was evident to me that she was ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... be patient, and asked my wife to supply me with a ball of thick strong thread. The enchanted bag did not fail us; the very ball I wanted appeared at her summons. This, my little ones declared, must be magic; but I explained to them, that prudence, foresight, and presence of mind in danger, such as their good mother had displayed, produced ...

— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... Peter's nose and watched the delicate edges riffle in the Dutchman's breath. Crossing to the table, he leaned over the white fluff and breathed the short German incantation over it. How it glistened in the firelight! He bent closer and closer as he whispered the magic words that Peter had taught him, his breath ruffling the feather, playing about in the fringed softness. He hung up the feather by a thread and watched it hop back and forth in the center of ...

— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson

... assure herself that no contingency could arise to defraud her of her long-delayed recognition, she felt that the galling load of half her life had suddenly slipped from her weary shoulders; and the world and the future wore that magic radiance which greeted Miriam, as singing she looked back upon the destruction escaped, and on toward the redeemed ...

— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... before said, who create etiquette, and Burke tells us that "manners are of more importance than laws." A fine manner is the "open sesame" that admits us to the audience chamber of the world. It is the magic wand at whose ...

— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... he passionately strove to shape his dreams into abiding sounds. He did not always succeed, but his victories are the precious prizes of mankind. One is loath to believe that the echo of Chopin's magic music can ever fall upon unheeding ears. He may become old-fashioned, but, like Mozart, he ...

— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... fire for a time, at least, and make it possible for him to escape. He must reach the island to find out about his mother and Jess, and how they had fared. The rain by now had developed into a regular downpour, and the raging fire had been quenched as if by magic. The dense volumes of smoke no longer rolled over the land, and as John looked out upon the blackened plains a scene of desolation met his eyes. The forest on every side was in ruins, even to the lake, a glimpse of which he could see through the ...

— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... name Poland was to become another name for tragedy. Kosciusko had fought in the War of the American Revolution. When he returned, with the badge of the Order of the Cincinnati upon his breast and filled with dreams of the regeneration of his own land by the magic of this new political freedom, he was the chosen leader ...

— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... grace, so perfect an exemption from error, that you could not say she outraged custom but commanded it. The wealth of her graces was inexhaustible—she beautified the commonest action; a word, a look from her, seemed magic. Love her, and you entered into a new world, you passed from this trite and commonplace earth. You were in a land in which your eyes saw everything through an enchanted medium. In her presence you felt as if listening to exquisite music; you were steeped in that sentiment ...

— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... that he wore. Swithin picked him up, while Mr. Torkingham wiped the sand from his lips and nose, and administered a few words of consolation, together with a few sweet-meats, which, somewhat to Swithin's surprise, the parson produced as if by magic from his pocket. One half the comfort rendered would have sufficed to soothe such a disposition as the child's. He ceased crying and ran away in delight to his unconscious nurse, who was reaching up for blackberries at a hedge ...

— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... hastily behind her ample skirt a long list of the figures on every freight-car that has passed that morning, from which by some Antillian miscalculation and the murmuring of certain invocations she was to find the magic number that would bring her cooking days ...

— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... was written by me aforetime, and which was set forth in print, I therein told much of the history of King Arthur; of how he manifested his royalty in the achievement of that wonderful magic sword which he drew forth out of the anvil; of how he established his royalty; of how he found a splendid sword yclept Excalibur in a miraculously wonderful manner; of how he won the most beautiful lady in the world for his queen; and of how he established the famous ...

— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... neglected, and is one by which any modern conception of the universe must be profoundly affected. Many of the outgrowths of this method compel a justifiable rejection. But such rejection is not sufficient in an age in which very many resort to this way of thinking, and are attracted to it as if by magic. The case is in no way altered because some people see that true science long ago passed, by its own initiative, beyond the shallow doctrines of force and matter taught by materialists. It would be better, ...

— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... utterance, was continually surprising: it was music not unworthy of the golden ages of the world. Yet MacDowell was a Celt, and his music is deeply Celtic—mercurial, by turns dolorous and sportive, darkly tragical and exquisitely blithe, and overflowing with the unpredictable and inexplicable magic of the Celtic imagination. He is unfailingly noble—it is, in the end, the trait which most surely signalises him. "To every man," wrote Maeterlinck, "there come noble thoughts, thoughts that pass across his heart like great white birds." Such thoughts came often to MacDowell—they ...

— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... beyond these things I have at the castle a fine library—useless no doubt for most purposes of modern study, but full of precious old books. There I can at any moment be in the best of company! There is more of the marvellous in an old library than ever any magic could work!" ...

— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... spring from among the bevy of coat-takers, and hood-retainers, at the extreme end of the great hall, nor from among the heap of promiscuous garments piled in one corner; and yet he is here, looking as if some magic process had brought him from a mysterious labyrinth. "Couldn't get along without me, you see. It's an ambition with me to befriend everybody. If I can do a bit of a good turn for a friend, so much the better!" And he grasps the old ...

— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... a magic twilight from below, I heard its grand sad song as in a dream: Life's wild infinity of mirth and woe It sang me; and, with many a changing gleam, Across the music of its onward flow I saw the cottage lights ...

— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... a worse man to do it. Crime, as ever, led to further crime and was itself the punishment of crime. In the eyes of William's contemporaries the death of Waltheof, the blackest act of William's life, was also its turning-point. From the day of the martyrdom on Saint Giles' hill the magic of William's name and William's arms passed away. Unfailing luck no longer waited on him; after Waltheof's death he never, till his last campaign of all, won a battle or took a town. In this change ...

— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... by! O the days gone by! The music of the laughing lip, the lustre of the eye; The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin's magic ring— The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything,— When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh, In the golden olden glory of ...

— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley

... milk," he said. "Do you mind just getting up and touching the bell? And you've got such a sharp way of speaking to waiters, perhaps you wouldn't mind hauling him over the coals for me when he comes?" Winn complied with this request rapidly and effectively, and the hot milk appeared as if by magic. ...

— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... of course, Tolstoi himself; and all his eternal doubts and questionings, his total dissatisfaction and condemnation of artificial social life in the cities, his spiritual despair, and his final release from suffering at the magic word of the peasant are strictly autobiographical. When the muzhik told Levin that one man lived for his belly, and another for his soul, he became greatly excited, and eagerly demanded further knowledge of his humble teacher. He was ...

— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... her group and its departure for the Salon has left Felicia for a week past in this state of prostration, of disgust, of heart-rending, distressing irritation. It requires all of the old fairy's unwearying patience, the magic of the memories she evokes every moment in the day, to make life endurable to her beside that restlessness, that wicked wrath which she can hear grumbling beneath the girl's silences, and which suddenly bursts forth in a bitter ...

— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... was something about the room, and about the ugly little house as well, that Janice Day realized she did not have at home. She had had it once; but it was not present now in the Day house. In the Carringford dwelling the magic wand of a true homemaker ...

— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... never have thought of it again, probably, but for Harriet herself, for now that the magic string had been touched, her heart overflowed to its echoes, and my waking hours were filled with anecdotes touching, brutal or humourous, of her years of joy and labour. Her cottage rent had cost her forty dollars, ...

— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... notice. Haward, rowing, spoke evenly on, his theme himself and the gay and lonely life he had led these eleven years; and Audrey, though at first sight of the waiting figure she had paled and trembled, was too safe, too happy, to give to trouble any part of this magic morning. She kept her eyes on Haward's face, and almost forgot the man who had risen from the grass and in silence ...

— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... of the moment when he would tell his love to a woman. It was a moment of dim lights, music perhaps in the distance, two souls caught up in the magic of the moonlit night—a pretty graceful speech from him, a sweet gracious surrender from the girl. ...

— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... and feel constrained to address you a word. For although I may not be able to elucidate the principles on which a free government is founded, with the force and clearness of many others who will doubtless respond to your call, nor awake enthusiasm with that magic power that some of the anti-slavery women of the North possess in so high a degree, I shall at least give to Ohio and my country one more voice in favor of a united and free republic; and certainly no voice should be silent when called ...

— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... a sort of sharp, sudden cry or whistle, and immediately all the dwarfs of the village appeared as if by magic, and began hurrying into the house, but as soon as they were in the middle of the passage they fell back at each side, leaving a ...

— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... for the Druids dwelt in the recesses of the forests or near their temples, and those who wished to consult them must journey to them to ask their counsel beneath a sacred oak or in the circle of the magic stones. When great events were impending, or when tribes took up arms against each other, the Druids would leave their forest abodes, and, interposing between the combatants, authoritatively bid them desist. They acted as mediators between great chiefs, ...

— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... we find ourselves transported beyond a doubt to the far-famed city of Winnipeg—that emporium of wealth, enterprise and industry which arose from its prairie surroundings as by the magic of the ...

— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... the dogs acted like magic on the two men. They rushed up the stairs, without a single glance behind. The danger was too pressing to allow any delay for making plans of escape. The door Alan had thrown open seemed to them the way to safety; the cheerful light of day, which ...

— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... the distinguished historian of modern Europe, "during, or shortly after, the French Revolution; and it was mainly intended to counteract the visionary ideas in regard to the blessings of Grecian democracy, which had spread so far in the world, from the magic of Athenian genius." Says Chancellor Kent: "Mitford does not scruple to tell the truth, and the whole truth, and to paint the stormy democracies of Greece in all their grandeur and in all their wretchedness." Lord Byron said of the author: "His ...

— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... for some days. Our garrison I'll post Distributively on the distant hills; While from the Vulture half a thousand men Land in the darkness. Thus without a blow, But with the magic of a countersign, ...

— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman

... exercise and by careful diet, keep yourself in a state of such physical soundness that the chances are altogether favourable for your withstanding the assaults of disease. No doubt the vast majority of people prefer not to follow this advice. A considerable number of them resort to various magic cults, such as letting sudden drafts of cold air in upon the inoffensive bystander with a view to exorcising the germs. But it remains that the medical advice is sound: it amounts to saying, "Keep yourself in the best physical condition possible and ...

— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... first, there was considerable liberality on the part of the officials (all paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and perform their ' magic.' Hariot was the master of both in these occult sciences. The ' furnace ' and the ' still' were at first Raleigh's chief amusement and study. Assaying and transfusing metals, distilling simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes, with exercises in chemistry and ...

— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... neighbouring ruins, it should be added, are the favourite night resort of the Kerman young men in search of romantic adventure, and a most convenient rendezvous for flirtations; but whether the extraordinary qualities of prolificness are really due to the occult power of the magic stone or to the less mystic charms of nights spent away from home, the reader is no doubt better able to discriminate than I. Judging by the long strings of ladies of all ages to be seen going on the pilgrimage, ...

— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... Wellington and had determined to take me on to Winter Quarters, having met, on the way to Windsor, some great specialist in my kind of malady (I wonder how much he knows of it), who declared that the climate of the Antarctic would act on me like magic. ...

— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... of an attitude to science, but he did have such an attitude. Life was to him a story told by God: the people in it the characters in that story. But since the story was told by God it was, quite literally, a magic story, a fairy story, a story full of wonders created by a divine will. As a child a toy telephone rigged up by his father from the house to the end of the garden had breathed that magic quality more than the Transatlantic ...

— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... naked breast—but it was the apple of its owner's eye, and when Inez unfeelingly banished it from the house Juanito began to squall lustily. Nor could he be conciliated until Alaire took him upon her knee and told him about another boy, of precisely his own age and size, who planted a magic bean in his mother's dooryard, which grew up and up until it reached clear to the sky, where a giant lived. Juanito Garcia had never heard the like. He was spellbound with delight; he held his breath in ...

— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... from rage appeared now to increase the shivering propensities of the future judge, who at once perceived it was necessary to moderate his passion; and he returned, as it were by magic, to his former plausible and insinuating manner, as ...

— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... moment becoming English. I know no better example than the French 'prestige' will afford. 'Prestige' has manifestly no equivalent in our own language; it expresses something which no single word in English, which only a long circumlocution, could express; namely, that magic influence on others, which past successes as the pledge and promise of future ones, breed. The word has thus naturally come to be of very frequent use by good English writers; for they do not feel that in employing it they are ...

— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... gives it an advantage over every other boat I have examined. Its deck is nowhere level, and if a person attempts to step upon it while it is afloat, his foot touches the periphery of a circle, and the spoon-shaped, keelless, little craft flies out as if by magic from under the pressure of the foot, and without further warning the luckless intruder falls ...

— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... mean is best perceived when we listen to Him saying, in a plain quotation of this call, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.' Nothing short of Himself can satisfy the thirst of one soul, much less of all the thirsty. Like the flow from the magic fountain of the legend, Jesus becomes to ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... abroad, And his "doe cee doe" was the gem of the fraud. But what can you hope from a gentleman barred From circles of culture by dogs in the yard? 'Twas a glorious dance, though, all the same, The Jardin Mabille in the days of its fame Never saw legs perform such springs— The cold-chisel's magic had given them wings. They footed it featly, those lades and gents: Dull care (said Long Moll) had a ...

— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... stood on the black sideboard. By this act he meant perhaps to put a stop to the conversation of which he was heartily tired. But Mrs. Brand, in the half-bewildered condition of mind to which long anxiety and sorrow had reduced her, did not know the virtue of silence, and did not possess the magic ...

— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... MAGIC carpet,' said the Phoenix; 'why, if it had been allowed to lie about on floors there wouldn't be much of it left now. No, indeed! It has lived in chests of cedarwood, inlaid with pearl and ivory, wrapped in priceless tissues of cloth of gold, embroidered ...

— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... then how sweetly closed those crowded days! The minutes parting one by one like rays, That fade upon a summer's eve. But O, what charm or magic numbers Can give me back the gentle slumbers Those weary, happy days did leave? When by my bed I saw my mother kneel, And with her blessing took her nightly kiss; Whatever Time destroys, he cannot this;— E'en now ...

— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... not care for plants. All he cared for was his mysticism. But one day, as if the magic of poetry had slipped into his soul, he heard all the plants talking, and talking to him; and behold, he loved them and knew what they meant. Imagination had done more for him than all his metaphysics. So we give up our days to collating theory with theory, ...

— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... to most disgusting odors, nor make the least wry face about it. If she found a patient not very sick she would sit down and pour forth a gossipy stream of talk for an hour, when, ten to one, every ailment would be forgotten. There was a charm in her tone, word, and manner that affected like magic. Of course, this woman had a drunken husband—such women always have that affliction. There were those, even in Windsor, who said they did not blame Mr. Moffat for taking to drink—if their wives were always from home, and the house ...

— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... ceremonies was doubtless one symbolizing a marriage or mystical union between the god and his worshippers. (Whether the form of 'sacred marriage' which was originally intended to promote the fertility of the ground by 'sympathetic magic' entered into the ritual of Sabazios is doubtful.) Such a rite, though probably in fact quite innocent, gave rise to suspicions, of which Demosthenes takes full advantage; and the fact that well-known courtesans (such as Phryne and perhaps Ninus) sometimes organized ...

— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes

... wrongly thought that I had a meeting with a great man; no such meeting took place, but my mind was dulled by slumber, and so the false idea arose.' In an analogous manner the things of which we are conscious when under the influence of a magic illusion, and the like, are negated by our ordinary consciousness. Those things, on the other hand, of which we are conscious in our waking state, such as posts and the like, are never negated ...

— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... pleasant to me beyond any fairy tale. I never cared much for things that were not true. No chambers of Arabian fancy could have had the fascination for me of those old Egyptian halls, nor all the marvels of magic entranced me like the wonder-working hand of time. Those books made my comfort and my diversion all the winter. For I was not a galloping reader; I went patiently through every page; and the volumes were many enough and interesting enough to last me long. I dreamed ...

— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... the chalk in the hand of the artist. Behold What beauteous forms as by magic unfold! The store-house of Nature he swiftly displays, Till the dazzled beholder is lost in the maze; Designs without number appear to the view, And show what the chalk ...

— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway

... when he was feasting on a pile of the willow and poplar forage which he loved, and which had appeared as if by magic close beside the mysterious barrier, he saw some men, perhaps a hundred yards away, throw open a section of the barrier. Forgetting to be angry at their intrusion on his range, he watched them curiously. A moment ...

— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... a shape in the middle of the laboratory floor. A huge globular shape which it hurt the eyes to look upon. It became visible out of nowhere as if evoked by magic amid the flames of hell. But it came, and was solid and substantial, and it slid along the floor upon small wheels until it wound up with a crash against the winding drum, and the chain shrieked as it tightened unbearably—and the engine ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... I know. Why 'tis no less than a miracle. It was a child I thought of under that name—a slender, brown-eyed girl, as blithesome as a bird. No, I had not forgotten; only the magic of three years has made of you a woman. Again and again have I questioned in Montreal and Quebec, but no one seemed to know. At the convent they said your father ...

— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... from between his teeth and stared at the speaker silently for a moment. "Voodoo?" he echoed. "You mean negro magic?" ...

— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... the Horses of the Hill wild with fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic—Magic as black as Merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hill picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the ...

— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... her aunt, "thou dost speak like a maiden of nineteen, on the day before her marriage, in the intoxication of wishes fulfilled, of fair hopes and happy omens. Dear child, remember this—even the heart in time grows cold. Days will come when the magic of the senses shall fade. And when this enchantment has fled, then it first becomes evident whether we are truly worthy of love. When custom has made familiar the charms that are most attractive, when youthful freshness has died away, and with the ...

— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... change this house if it could be done by a magic wand or by the exercise of faith, and without raising a speck of dust or upsetting the housekeeping ...

— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... displays its own peculiar characteristics and mode. It is the everlasting struggle between the evil principle and that which is good. He ranges titanic forces in opposition and lets us see the battle. By the magic of his art we are enabled to see these pictures as on ...

— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... was equal to him in any game with pasteboard or ivory; but, be my conscience, he met his match now, for if it was ould Nick was playin' he couldn't do the thrick nater nor the baron. He made every thing come up just like magic: if he wanted a seven of diamonds, or an ace of spades, or the knave of clubs, there ...

— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... request the trader led us over to where she sat, and gave us a formal introduction. She received us in a pleasant but dignified manner, and the moment that she opened her lips to speak the clatter of tongues around us ceased as if by magic, and the most ...

— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... "as long as they and the French kept the peace." They decided to adopt the English Order, barring responses, the Litany, the surplice, "and many other things." {54} The Litany was regarded by Knox as rather of the nature of magic than of prayer, the surplice was a Romish rag, and there was some other objection to the congregation's taking part in the prayers by responses, though they were not forbidden to mingle their voices in psalmody. Dissidium valde absurdum—"a very absurd quarrel," ...

— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... that a traveller has brought from a distant land. But you! you hypocritical robber, who disregard your own body with beastly pride, and sacrifice it to low brutality—what should you know of the magic charm of beauty—that daughter of heaven, that can touch even thoughtless children, and before which the gods themselves do homage! I have a right to Sirona; for hide her where you will—or even if the centurion were to find her, and to ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... which, meeting over the height occupied by the hotel, discharged torrents of rain. At last the wind left the writhing trees in peace, and carried the deeply shadowing cloud away beyond the hills. The sun broke forth, and nature began some magic work. Calling the mist fairies to her aid, she gathered from every ravine and clove delicate airy clouds, which formed a large and rapidly increasing mass of vapor. Soon the plain below—the wide Hudson valley—was entirely shut out, as though a great white ...

— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... loves the pleasing note of lute and lyre, The lily's purple, the red rose's glow; It wonders at the witchery of the fire, And marvels at the magic of ...

— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman

... that he can do so. But on the other hand the weakness of every religion which depends on miracles is that their truth is contested and not unreasonably. If they are true, why are they not certain? Of all the phenomena described as miracles, ghosts, fortune telling, magic, clairvoyance, prophesying, and so on, none command unchallenged acceptance. In every age miracles, portents and apparitions have been recorded, yet none of them with a certainty that carries universal conviction and ...

— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... by magic the echoes took up the call. Andy heard them respond from the farthest haunts of the ...

— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... ninety-six percent. of the race. For a man of the superior minority to subscribe to one of them publicly was already sufficient to set him off as one in imminent need of psychiatrical attention. Belief in them had become a mark of inferiority, like the allied belief in madstones, magic and apparitions. ...

— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... stone cage before. But the magic of his morning walk across the moor, the sight of the pagan tors, the songs of the last cuckoo, had unprepared him for that dreary building. He left the street, and, entering the fosse, began a circuit, scanning the ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... a participation in His glory which shall exalt their limited, stained, and fragmentary humanity into 'the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.' Astronomers tell us that dead, cold matter falls from all corners of the system into the sun, drawn by its magic magnetism from farthest space, and, plunging into that great reservoir of fire, the deadest and coldest matter glows with fervid heat and dazzling light. So you and I, dead, cold, dull, opaque, heavy fragments, drawn into mysterious oneness with Christ, the Sun of our souls, ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ship And the magic of ...

— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... England life, we still recognize some magic in summer. Most persons reluctantly resign themselves to being decently happy in June, at least. They accept June. They compliment its weather. They complained of the earlier months as cold, and so spent them in the city; and they will complain ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... among kings, thy fear of Sakra will soon be dispelled, and I shall soon remove this terrible pain by means of my magic lore (incantation); be calm and have no fear of being overpowered by India. Thou hast nothing to fear from the god of a hundred sacrifices. I shall use my staying charms, O king, and the weapons of all the gods will avail them not. Let the lightening flash in all the directions ...

— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Then I make a separate group of those who expect to sing, or to do any sort of a musical specialty, or any kind of a "stunt" that might be included in the show. I have had the greatest variety of specialties in a show. I have had them do magic, burlesque magic, play ukuleles, and all sorts of stunts which I have placed effectively in a show. We had a man in the Princeton show who did a little trick with a cigarette that was a scream. I saw him standing around, and ...

— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... qualities of our Caucasian civilization, she has changed her policy. She has learned that in the language, and on the lips, and in the hearts of most members of the English race, there is such a word as equity, and at the magic of that word she has nearly emerged from her isolation. And, sir, what we see here to-day reminds me that, some thirty years ago, Boston confined one of her citizens in a lunatic asylum, for the offence of being possessed by a too intensified Boston "notion." He had discovered a new and expeditious ...

— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... stairs flew about his head and struck upon the table,—an omen only fearful from what it prophesied. Then there was such a row for five minutes as I hope I may never see or hear again. People kept their places fortunately, under a vague impression that they should forfeit some magic rights if they left those numbered seats. But when, for a moment, a file of policemen appeared in the orchestra, a whole volley of cyclopaedias fell like rain upon their chief, with a renewed cry ...

— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... instruments. Upon the ancient chant the new harmonies blossomed like roses on an old gnarled stem, and when on the ninth bar of the "Kyrie" the tenors softly separated from the sustained chord of the other parts, the effect was as of magic. Evelyn lifted her eyes and saw her dear father conducting with ...

— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... all these respects they appear to have been made to the author's hand. Neither does the poem exhibit any prevailing force of imagery, or of expression, apart from popular idiomatic phraseology; still less, though it has plenty of infernal magic, does it present us with any magical enchantments of the alluring order, as in Ariosto; or with love-stories as good as Boiardo's, or even with any of the luxuries of landscape and description that are to be found in both of those poets; albeit, ...

— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... "in spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York! Distance is but a relative expression, and must end by being reduced ...

— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... conscience of every reverently educated boy, and become in his growth inseparable from the maturer beliefs. The evolution of the human mind itself had finally reached the point at which this anthropomorphism became a thing impossible to maintain reasonably any longer, and the magic word was spoken by Darwin which broke the spell and set us free—who wished to be free—from a mental servitude grown dangerously dear to our deepest faculties, those of reverence and devotion. That evolution took ...

— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... me. I wanted to force her curiosity, to compel her to suspect nay, to guess my secret, but without giving her any advantage over me: it was necessary for me to proceed by slow degrees. In the mean time, and until I should have a greater happiness, I was glad to see that my money, that magic talisman, and my good conduct, obtained me a consideration much greater than I could have hoped to obtain either through my position, or from my age, or in consequence of any talent I might have shewn in ...

— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... /alu/, evil /edimmu/, evil /gallu/, evil god, evil /rabisu/, /labartu/, /labasu/, /ahhazu/, /lilu/, /lilithu/, handmaid of /lilu/, sorcery, enchantment, magic, disaster, machination which is not good—may they not set their head to his head, their hand to his hand, their foot to his foot—may they not draw near. Spirit of heaven, mayest thou exorcise, spirit of earth, ...

— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches

... astound me as the spectacle of this ice-locked schooner. It was easy to account for the presence of a dead man. My own situation, indeed, sufficiently solved the riddle of that corpse. But the ship, perfect in all respects, was like a stroke of magic. She lay with a slight list or inclination to larboard, but on the whole tolerably upright, owing to the corpulence of her bilge. The hollow or ravine that formed her bed went with a sharp incline under her stern to the ...

— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... upon her escutcheon. Like a royal lily she proudly bloomed with undisputed splendor in the midst of this court, whose petty cabals and intrigues could not soil her fair fame. Her presence spread around her a sort of magic. The most audacious courtier, the most presumptuous cavalier, approached her with only reverence; they ventured not in her presence to use such words and jests as but too well pleased the empress; there was something in Eleonore's glance that commanded ...

— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... is not easy to believe that Mozart, recognized as the greatest pianoforte player and composer of his time by all of musical Germany, could suffer such dire extremes of want as to be obliged more than once to beg for a dinner. In 1791 he composed the score of the "Magic Flute" at the request of Schikaneder, a Viennese manager, who had written the text from a fairy tale, the fantastic elements of which are peculiarly German in their humor. Mozart put great earnestness into the ...

— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... diamonds in brilliant devices. From the middle of the roof, where the arches met, was hung, suspended by a gold chain, an immense lamp of one hollowed pearl, and perfectly transparent, in the centre of which was a large carbuncle, which, by the power of magic, turned round continually, and shed throughout all the hall a clear mild light like that of the setting sun. But the hall was so large, and these dazzling objects so far removed, that their blended radiance cast no more than a pleasing mellow lustre around, and excited no ...

— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... till it came to the island of Aeaea, where Circe, the dreadful daughter of the Sun, dwelt. She was deeply skilled in magic, a haughty beauty, and had hair like the Sun. The Sun was her parent, and begot her and her brother Aeaetes (such another as herself) upon Perse, daughter ...

— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... dreams. None had an inkling of the truth. The insolubility of the Big Bow Mystery teased the acutest minds in Europe and the civilised world. That a man could have been murdered in a thoroughly inaccessible room savoured of the ages of magic. The redoubtable Wimp, who had been blazoned as my successor, fell back on the theory of suicide. The mystery would have slept till my death, but—I fear—for my own ingenuity. I tried to stand outside myself, and to look at the crime with the eyes of another, or of my old self. I found ...

— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... one of the joys which perhaps few of us have yet experienced. But whether we have been there or not, we all know that the very sound of her name is enchanting for those who are fresh from her magic—her sunrises and sunsets unmatched for colour, ...

— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... congress that assembled there was not a large one, but, with no exaggeration whatever, it was one of the most remarkable gatherings ever held. For six entire days and nights the delegates struggled to create by some magic means a world-wide organization of the people, without a program, a committee, a chairman, or a vote. No longer oppressed by the "tyranny" of Marx, or baffled by his "abominable intrigues," they set out to create their "faithful image" of the new world—an organization that was not to ...

— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... freshening, I must admit—and went out on to the hillside, leaving us irreverent youngsters convulsed with laughter. The fun was over now as far as we were concerned, for Father Maguire, overcome by his own magic brew, was calmly sleeping, and no efforts of ours could elicit more than a grumpy, "Arrah, thin—be ...

— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... name is JOHN WELLINGTON WELLS - I'm a dealer in magic and spells, In blessings and curses, And ever-filled purses, In prophecies, witches, and knells! If you want a proud foe to "make tracks" - If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax - You've but to look in On our resident Djinn, Number seventy, ...

— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... perfect being—a being adored and venerated by Mme. d'Albany! One cannot help, in reading these words, smiling sadly at the strange magic by which Death metamorphoses those whom he has taken in the eyes of the survivors; at the strange potions by means of which he makes love spring up in the hearts where it has ceased to exist, saving us from hypocrisy by making us really feel what is false to ...

— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... lawyers understand the art of "cramming" better than any other persons in the world. Why should not this young man be working up the picturesque in this romantic region to serve as a background for some story with magic, perhaps, and mysticism, and hints borrowed from science, and all sorts of out-of-the-way knowledge which his odd and miscellaneous selection of books furnished him? That might be, or possibly he was only reading for ...

— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... raised the glass, and decided, doubtless, by the delicious smell and the beautiful rose color which those few drops had given to the champagne, he swallowed the magic liquor. In an instant a kind of shiver ran through him; he seemed to feel all his old and sluggish blood rushing quickly through his veins, from his heart to his feet, his wrinkled skin seemed to expand, his eyes, half covered by their lids, appeared to open without his will, and the pupils ...

— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... peering and inquiring glance; and, indeed, once or twice I did turn, expecting to see somebody whom I knew, yet always without success; though it appeared to me that I was but a moment too late, and that some one had just slipped away from the direction to which I turned, like the figure in a magic lanthorn. Once I was quite sure that there were a pair of eyes glaring over my right shoulder; my attention, however, was so fully occupied with the objects which I have attempted to describe, that ...

— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... almost direct contrast. Mr. Orage looks down from the height, not of philosophic doubt, but of philosophic certainty (where he alone feels happy) upon the petty house of party politics, and seeks, by the magic music of his words and phrases, so to move and draw after him the sand of human nature on which that house is built, that it may no longer stand but fall and be banished utterly. Mr. Cecil Chesterton, on the other hand, only happy in the role of ...

— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... cart, to spend the day in some picturesque place, where he could sketch or paint. We had our provisions with us, and both lunched and dined on the grass under the fine chestnuts or oaks, so numerous in the Morvan, by the side of a clear stream or rivulet; for running water had a sort of magic influence upon Gilbert, and instinctively, when unwell from nervous exhaustion, he sought its soothing influence. We generally rambled about the country after each meal, and whilst he drew I read to him, leaving the children to their play, under the ...

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... the sacred city, and the first half of the work had been completed. The results had been very satisfactory, and our boxes contained five hundred specimens; but our hearts were sad. The wide sweep of the limitless, grassy sea, the glorious morning rides, and the magic of the starlit nights had filled our blood. Even the lure of the unknown forests could not make us glad to go, for the plains had ...

— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... as well as those that have ascribed all things to their own prudence, and by various arts have raised themselves to honors and have acquired wealth, in the other life devote themselves to the study of magic arts, which are abuses of Divine order, and find in these the chief delight of life. [4] Those that have adapted Divine truths to their own loves, and thereby have falsified them, love urinous things ...

— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... homely, virtuous feeling, a disinterested regard for truth, a blunt yet tender honesty, seasoned with a few amiable fireside prejudices, which always come home to the hearts of your fathers of families and thorough-bred Britons; versed in all the niceties of language, and the magic of names; if he were defending crime, carefully calling it misfortune; if attacking misfortune, constantly calling it crime,—Mr. Dyebright was exactly the man born to pervert justice, to tickle jurors, to cozen truth with ...

— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the phrase which echoes, with some variation, a phrase or line already used. In such poems as "To Helen," "Israfel," "The Haunted Palace," "Annabel Lee," the theme, the tone, the melody all weave their magic spell; it is like listening to a ...

— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... had no shoes; his feet were bare, red, and swollen, and when he walked he limped with both legs. As to clothing—ah, you would hardly have had the skill to name any single garment that he wore, or say by what magic he kept it upon him. That he was cold all over and all through did not admit of a doubt; he knew it himself. Anyone would have been cold there that evening; but, for that reason, no one else was there. How Jo came to be there himself, he could not for the ...

— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... me his breadth of back, and then again was performed for me the feature of which I had heard so much and which has made the swordfish the most famous of all fish—he rose two-thirds out of the water, I suppose by reason of the enormous power of his tail, though it seemed like magic, and then he began to walk across the sea in a great circle of white foam, wagging his massive head, sword flying, jaws wide, dorsal fin savagely erect, like a lion's mane. He was magnificent. I have never seen fury so expressed or such an unquenchable spirit. Then ...

— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... battle in the sky was repeated in the sea-like river with all of the added magic of the current and the eddies and the wimpling ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... constant habit; it has happened a hundred times since, and a thousand before. I lived on her caresses as my daily food, nor can I live without them." So I told him the whole story, "what conjurations, and what mighty magic I won his daughter with," to be anything but MINE FOR LIFE. Nothing could well exceed his astonishment and apparent mortification. "What I had said," he owned, "had left a weight upon his mind that he should not easily get rid of." ...

— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt

... succeeded each other rapidly. That beautiful Milky Way, which has for ages been the object of admiration to all lovers of nature, never disclosed its true nature to the eye of man till the astronomer of Padua turned on it his magic tube. The splendid zone of silvery light was then displayed as star-dust scattered over the black background of the sky. It was observed that though the individual stars were too small to be seen severally ...

— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... a cow milked before, and stood watching the white streams which filled the foaming pail, as if Mr. Alder were a fairy. It seemed like magic. ...

— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb

... composed," says Alison, the distinguished historian of modern Europe, "during, or shortly after, the French Revolution; and it was mainly intended to counteract the visionary ideas in regard to the blessings of Grecian democracy, which had spread so far in the world, from the magic of Athenian genius." Says Chancellor Kent: "Mitford does not scruple to tell the truth, and the whole truth, and to paint the stormy democracies of Greece in all their grandeur and in all their wretchedness." ...

— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... hour, Helen's roving eyes were everywhere, taking note of the things from near to far—the scant sage that soon gave place to as scanty a grass, and the dark blots that proved to be dwarf cedars, and the ravines opening out as if by magic from what had appeared level ground, to wind away widening between gray stone walls, and farther on, patches of lonely pine-trees, two and three together, and then a straggling clump of yellow aspens, and ...

— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... suppose that I believe that the days of magic have returned. This commission, both Constance and myself feel, that is, we are certain, that you are at the bottom of it all. The commission is purchased. I could not expect the Duke, deeply as I feel his generous kindness, to purchase a commission for my son: I could not permit it. ...

— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... pain he suffered. I do not know what magic medicine gave him the strength to smile at us, dying as he was ...

— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... Burris said. "Lately, you've been acting as though magic were loose in the world. As though nothing ...

— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... huge green fierce snake bars the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different." The 'magic words' {xyzzy} and {plugh} also ...

— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... wanted to provoke excitement or astonish the multitude, but because she had succeeded eminently in leading her own life according to her own lights. The terror of appearing inconsistent excited her scorn. Appearances never troubled that unashamed soul. This is the magic, the peculiar fascination of her books. We find ourselves in the presence of a freshness, a primeval vigour which produces actually the effect of seeing new scenes, of facing a fresh climate. Her love of the ...

— Mauprat • George Sand

... stop before the movable stall of an astrologer, who has surmounted it with an owl, as an emblem of his magic wisdom. Many of them take this animal for a curiosity imported from foreign countries; for they are seldom able to distinguish a ...

— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... the craft and duplicity of the Stadtholder; but if ever a French philosopher and a French grisette masqueraded as a Dutch horticulturist and a Frisian waiting-maid they are Cornelius van Baerle and his Rosa; and if ever a tulip grew by magic rather than by the laws of nature it was the tulipe noire. No matter; there is but one Dumas. According to Flotow the composer, William III. of Holland told Dumas the story of the black tulip at his coronation in 1849, remarking that it was time that the novelist turned his attention ...

— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... Siva. In this cult the various forces of nature are deified under separate personalities, which are known as the divine mothers or Matrigan. The ritual to be observed, the sacrifices to be offered, and the mantras or magic texts to be uttered, in order to secure the efficacy of the worship and to procure the fulfilment of the worshipper's desire, are laid down in a series of religious writings known as Tantras. The cult is supposed to have originated in East ...

— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance ...

— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Bretton listened, and waited an opening in the magic circle, his glance restlessly sweeping the room at intervals, lighted by chance on me, where I sat in a quiet nook not far from my godmother and M. de Bassompierre, who, as usual, were engaged in what Mr. Home called "a two-handed crack:" what the Count would have interpreted as a tete-a-tete. ...

— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... out, or heavy ones coming in. At short intervals along the road are repair furnaces, and near them a truck or a gun carriage, or an ambulance that has turned out for slight repairs. In the village are great stores of gasoline and rubber, huge quantities of it assembled by some magic for the hour's ...

— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... no weight in Italy. Pietro of Abano, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, is well known to have fallen a victim to the envy of another physician, who accused him before the Inquisition of heresy and magic; and something of the same kind may have happened in the case of his Paduan contemporary, Giovannino Sanguinacci, who was known as an innovator in medical practice. He escaped, however, with banishment. Nor ...

— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... ordinary men as a traditional everyday rule; for this very reason military discipline, in which more than anywhere else law takes the form of habit, fetters every man not entirely self-reliant as with a magic spell. It has often been observed that the soldier, even where he has determined to refuse obedience to those set over him, involuntarily when that obedience is demanded resumes his place in the ranks. It was this feeling that made Lafayette and Dumouriez ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... sympathies that were at that time indescribably powerful in Rome, and above all in Flamininus himself. If the Romans are liable to any reproach, it is that all of them, and in particular Flamininus who overcame the well-founded scruples of the senate, were hindered by the magic charm of the Hellenic name from perceiving in all its extent the wretched character of the Greek states of that period, and so allowed yet further freedom for the doings of communities which, owing to the impotent antipathies ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... Andreae, were part of a hoax designed perhaps originally as means of establishing a sort of charitable masonic society of social reformers. Missing that aim, the Rosicrucian story lived to be adorned by superstitious fancy, with ideas of mystery and magic, which in the Comte de Gabalis were methodized into a consistent romance. It was from this romance that Pope got what he called the Rosicrucian machinery of his Rape of the Lock. The Abbe de Villars, professing to give very full particulars, had told how ...

— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... its mouth, and a wink of one eye, in order to give the impression that, after all, the crime and the punishment are neither of them the most serious things in the world. I could draw the sketch myself, if I had but the use of ———'s magic fingers. ...

— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to be able to avert the anger of the gods by means of charms, of which she alone possessed the secret; and she drove a brisk trade, and made a fat livelihood out of it. But certain persons accused her of black magic and carried her before the judges, and demanded that she should be put to death for dealings with the Devil. She was found guilty and condemned to death: and one of the judges said to her as she was leaving the dock, "You say you can avert the anger of the gods. ...

— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... a bawd aright, Give ear—there is an old trot Dipsas hight.[170] Her name comes from the thing: she being wise,[171] Sees not the morn on rosy horses rise, She magic arts and Thessal charms doth know, And makes large streams back to their fountains flow; She knows with grass, with threads on wrung[172] wheels spun, And what with mares' rank humour[173] may be done. When she will, cloudes the darkened ...

— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... while working in the Castello dell'Uovo, taking pleasure in watching his pencil and listening to his discourse; 'and Giotto,' says Vasari, 'who had ever his repartee and bon-mot ready, held him there, fascinated at once with the magic of his pencil and pleasantry of his tongue.' We are not told the length of his sojourn at Naples, but it must have been for a considerable period, judging from the quantity of works he executed there. He had certainly returned to Florence in 1332." There he was immediately appointed "chief ...

— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin

... reputation, and brought bad luck instead of good upon its wearer, Honor put it away in her drawer, with the resolve not to test its powers again until she was back in her own Emerald Isle, where, perhaps, it could exercise its magic more freely than in the land of ...

— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... mushroom towns along the line of a new railroad, sprang up as if by magic, and in less than one month we had two hundred frame and log houses, three or four stores, several saloons, and one good hotel. Rome was looming up, and Rose and I already considered ourselves millionaires, and thought we "had the world ...

— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... me to follow my good impulse—some unseen hand held me back—some mysterious influence kept me chained to the spot. We are influenced by magic, although magicians ...

— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... house something to eat; for they were all living beings and might betray her. The broom, however, stood behind the door, so she did not notice it, and gave it nothing to eat. Then she took from the witch's chamber three magic balls of yarn, and fled with the prince. The witch had a little dog that loved the fair Angiola so dearly that ...

— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... the Devon hills in wind and rain, drew into his lungs the fragrant breath of the moorland, and felt a better man. He sang as he walked—a great deep song that went echoing along the valleys. Space—space! There was the magic potion. What were Money, Success, Power, compared to the free delights ...

— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... the gods, acknowledging they were beaten, were hospitably entertained. On the morrow they were escorted to the confines of Utgard, where the giant politely informed them that he hoped they would never call upon him again, as he had been forced to employ magic against them. He then went on to explain that he was the giant Skrymir, and that had he not taken the precaution to interpose a mountain between his head and Thor's blows, while he seemingly lay asleep, he would have been slain, as deep clefts in the mountain side, to which he pointed, ...

— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... very sick she would sit down and pour forth a gossipy stream of talk for an hour, when, ten to one, every ailment would be forgotten. There was a charm in her tone, word, and manner that affected like magic. Of course, this woman had a drunken husband—such women always have that affliction. There were those, even in Windsor, who said they did not blame Mr. Moffat for taking to drink—if their wives were always from home, and the house ...

— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... of power. It is a phantasm and a cheat. Men can do wonders through wine; through Tea they only think themselves great and clear—but that is enough if one has bound oneself to that strange idol and learnt the magic phrase on His Pedestal, [Greek: ARISTON MEN TI], for of all the illusions and dreams men cherish none is so grandiose as the illusion ...

— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... city awakened by enchantment. Natives appeared upon all sides, hailing each other with the magic cry "Ehippy"—ship; the Queen stepped forth on her verandah, shading her eyes under a hand that was a miracle of the fine art of tattooing; the commandant broke from his domestic convicts and ran into the residency for his glass; the harbour-master, who was also the ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... dresses From the finest wool of lambkins, One thread only in thy weaving. "Hear thou what I now advise thee: Brew thy beer from early barley, From the barley's new-grown kernels, Brew it with the magic virtues, Malt it with the sweets of honey, Do not stir it with the birch-rod, Stir it with thy skilful fingers; When thou goest to the garners, Do not let the seed bring evil, Keep the dogs outside the brew-house, Have no fear of wolves in hunger, Nor the wild-beasts of the mountains, ...

— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... back again to the boudoir. She looked very pretty and innocent, seated behind the graceful group of delicate opal china and glittering silver. Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea. The most feminine and most domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her every glance. The floating mists from the boiling liquid in which she infuses the soothing herbs; whose secrets are known to her alone, envelope her in a cloud of scented vapor, through which she seems a social fairy, weaving potent spells with ...

— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... rapt awe upon him. A spell held them fixed. The whole circle swayed in unison with his swaying form as he chanted the departed glories of those happy days when the red man roamed free those plains and woods, lord of his destiny and subject only to his own will. The mystic magic power of that rich resonant voice, its rhythmic cadence emphasized by the soft throbbing of the drum, the uplifted face glowing as with prophetic fire, the tall swaying form instinct with exalted emotion, swept the souls of his hearers with surging tides of passion. Cameron, though ...

— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... startling abruptness in response to the upraised hand of a giant in khaki whose high-crowned sombrero and the brass letters on his shoulder-straps showed that he was a trooper of the Alberta Horse. On his arm was a red brassard bearing the magic letters M. ...

— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... music of Wagner. Wagner had abused Meyerbeer for doing what he did himself—writing operas stuffed with spectacular effects. This man of the foot-lights destroyed all musical imagination with his puppet shows, magic lanterns, Turkish bazaars, where, to the booming of mystic bells, the listener was ...

— Visionaries • James Huneker

... confessed that she no longer wished to go into his presence without adding a little grace to her usually plain attire; and now that she was thinking so deeply of him she involuntarily raised her hand to adjust her coquettish nurse's cap, which by some feminine magic all her own she ever contrived to make a becoming head-dress rather than ...

— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... the loud barking of dogs, while from the tepees appeared as if by magic, women and children, together with innumerable ...

— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin

... casts it out, with its blindness and its terrors, and leaves the mind clear and free. All nature is then before us to study and enjoy. Truth shines on us with celestial light, Goodness smiles on our best endeavors, and Beauty thrills our senses and kindles our imagination with the subtle magic of ...

— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... Wonderland" gave a new stimulus to children's literature, with its effective magic for youthful minds and its brilliant success among all classes of readers. "Davy the Goblin" is one of the many volumes which have been founded, so to say, on its idea and been carried along by its impulse. Thus little can be said for the actual originality ...

— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... out, when too late, that they were unfitted for a life-long companionship. A journalist has said: "No lessons learned by experience, however sharply taught and sadly earned, can enlighten the numbed senses which love has sent to sleep by its magic fascination; and things as plain as the sun in heaven to others are dark as night, unfathomable as the sea, to those who let themselves ...

— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... intent, to guard them during a period of danger (so in Celebes when a family moves into a new house). In Greenland, according to Cranz, a damaged soul might be repaired. Or the soul might be removed with evil intent by magic art—the result would be sickness or swoon; it was then incumbent on the sufferer or his friends to discover the hostile magician and counteract his work by stronger magic, or force him to restore the soul.[49] On the other hand, ...

— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... reader, in fancy, accompany us to some thunder-splintered canyon of the great rock-ribbed Continental Divide, and when the shadows of night come walking along the mountains, seek one of these sequestered camps, take our place in the magic circle, and listen to wondrous tales as they are passed around. There is nothing to disturb the magnificent silence save an occasional soughing of the fitful breeze in the tops of the towering pines, or the gentle babbling of ...

— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... cried he, "cork that magic bottle of yours, before all the oxygen-genii escape, or you'll have us both under the table! And, see here," he added, pulling out his check-book, while Flint stared in amazed disgust. "Here, take a blank check." He took his fountain pen and scrawled his name on one. "The amount? ...

— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... now fixed on the head girl as she stood in the center of the platform, ringing the bell for silence. The clamor subsided as if by magic, and in the midst of a dead hush she began ...

— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... obeyed with celerity, and as some rushed into the hall and dragged forth the squire, struggling, the scene was lighted by the blazing up of a bunch of hay, which had appeared as if by magic, and on which sticks of wood were quickly burning. Over the fire a pot, swung on a stick upheld by two men, was placed, telling a story of ...

— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... prepared that morning to the strains of "Jesus, Lover of My Soul." Wade went out to the kitchen presently to wash hands and face at the sink and dry them on a roller towel, which Zephania whisked before him as if by magic. Watching her for a minute or two dispelled all doubts as to her ability. The way in which she broke the eggs and slipped them into the boiling water was a revelation of dexterity. And all the while she sang on uninterruptedly, joyously, like ...

— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... Louis pressed upon him the advantages to be derived from success, the oftener he sounded in his ears the magic words, "five hundred thousand francs," the more loudly did Raoul's conscience cry ...

— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... in her life, and bearing the loveliest name ever given a woman—Mary." He further added that "God fashioned her heart to be gracious, her body to be the mother of children, and as her especial gift of Grace, he put Flower Magic into her fingers." Mary Stratton was the mother of twelve lusty babies, all of whom she reared past eight years of age, losing two a little over that, through an attack of scarlet fever with whooping cough; too ugly a combination for even such a wonderful mother as she. With ...

— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... diligently; avoiding the muddy pools, but oblivious of the light which they reflect. "Eyes" takes the walk too: and for him it is a perpetual revelation of beauty and wonder. The sunlight inebriates him, the winds delight him, the very effort of the journey is a joy. Magic presences throng the roadside, or cry salutations to him from the hidden fields. The rich world through which he moves lies in the fore-ground of his consciousness; and it gives up new secrets to him at every step. "No-Eyes," ...

— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... that no sooner he thinks of a certain deed than the same is accomplished; that an enemy, for instance, is actually harmed by merely wishing him harm. This mode of thinking forms the basis for many magic ceremonials. It is this latter mechanism,—i.e., the endowment of one's own thoughts with an omnipotent power,—which is also frequently illustrated in malingering. It is sufficient for the type of individual who malingers ...

— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... You see on his canvas, to be sure, red, green, orange, and so on, the peculiar tints of the leaves; but Nature does more (and Cole does not): she blends the variegated hues into one bright mass of bewitching color by the magic of this soft, golden, hazy sunshine. I wish, too, that the great company of story-tellers would let scenery rest in peace. The charm of a landscape is entireness, unity; it strikes the eye at once and as a whole. Examination of the component parts is quite a different thing. Who ean build ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... means an old man was sometimes mistaken for a boy, a woman for a man, and a blackamoor for an European, which very often produced great peals of laughter. These I guessed to be a party of puns. But being very desirous to get out of this world of magic, which had almost turned my brain, I left the temple and crossed over the fields that lay about it with all the speed I could make. I was not gone far before I heard the sound of trumpets and alarms, which seemed to proclaim the march of ...

— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... any gentleman whose head has arrived at maturity of size, the Necromancer, without removing that hat for an instant from before the eyes of the delighted company, will light a fire in it, make a plum pudding in his magic saucepan, boil it over the said fire, produce it in two minutes, thoroughly done, cut it, and dispense it in portions to the whole company, for their consumption then and there; returning the hat at last, wholly uninjured by ...

— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... That magic spark which now circles round the world, annihilating time and space, was evolved; it flashed down the wire; the ocean could not put it out; the dry powder received it; the massive rock burst into fragments; a decided shock was felt on board ...

— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... from Salvator to Claude, we shall find a system of lines totally different. Our first impression from Claude is that of perfect unity, and this we have even before we are conscious of a single image; as if, circumscribing his scenes by a magic circle, he had imposed his own mood on all who entered it. The spell then opens ere it seems to have begun, acting upon us with a vague sense of limitless expanse, yet so continuous, so gentle, so imperceptible in its remotest gradations, as scarcely to be ...

— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... counters and shelves were there, but the barrels of pickled meat, the piles of soap and tinned meats, the bags of flour, the stacks of men's clothing, all this had been whisked away and out of sight as though by magic. A strip of new red oilcloth upon one counter, a strip of blue upon another, transformed both into auxiliary seats. Benches, recently brought in from the rear storeroom by Pere Marquette's man, Jules, and freshly dusted by him, ...

— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... advancing the three men at the fire disappeared as if by magic! The next moment the circle of light showed the figures of half a dozen cowboys darting hither and thither in search of the men who had taken themselves off ...

— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... in each other's arms they admitted the extent of their desolation. Life had been robbed of a magic,—a mystery. The solid friendship of years of mutual trust and understanding was the background of so much lovely folly, so many unrealized possibilities, so many nebulous desires and dreams that the sudden dissolution of their circle was ...

— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... the worship of Osiris, Serapis, and Mithras to the loathsome rites practised in the darkness of African forests, has been handed down as unquestionable truth commanding the loyalty of its disciples. What logic, what magic of holiness, could destroy a false religion if tradition is sacrosanct and ...

— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... robber, the notorious "Fatia Negra." He produced convincing proofs of the existence of a combination extending from the depths of the dungeons to the summits of the mountains which was held together by the magic influence of this one man and he left no stone unturned to ...

— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... The magic bean The divine fruit Fragrant berries Rich, royal berry Voluptuous berry The precious berry The healthful bean The Heavenly berry The marvelous berry This all-healing berry Yemen's fragrant berry The little aromatic berry Little brown Arabian berry Thought-inspiring bean of Arabia ...

— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... himself, sobered, suddenly and painfully aware that the magic of the moment had opened for him an unreal vista where, in the false dawn, the phantom of Hope stood smiling. Her happy smile had altered, too; and her gloved hand stole out and rested on his own for a moment in silence. Neither said anything for a while, and yet ...

— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... peril; The wish is in my mind That I had fired the jungle, And left no leaf behind,— Burnt all bamboos to ashes, And made their music mute,— To save thee from the magic Of Khristna ...

— Last Poems • Laurence Hope

... strange thing was which was coming towards them. It was Bold Walter of Buccleuch and his men, and each of them had stuck a branch of witch's hazel in his basnet, for 'tis said that a twig of hazel protects its wearer from the arts of magic, and they had no mind to be bewitched by ...

— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... that beating, hell had opened for Skag. It was associated with the raw smell of blood and a thin red steam, a little hotter than blood-heat. It always came when he remembered his father. . . . But his mother meant lilacs. The top drawer of her dresser had been faintly magic of her. The smell came when he remembered her. It was like the first rains in the ...

— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... the Vision and the Cry That haunt the new Canadian soul? Dim grandeur spreads we know not why O'er mountain, forest, tree and knoll, And murmurs indistinctly fly.— Some magic moment sure is nigh. O ...

— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall

... "Loveliness, magic, and grace, They are here—they are set in the world! They abide! and the finest of souls Has not been thrilled by them all, Nor the dullest been dead to them quite. The poet who sings them may die, But they are ...

— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... it acquired an element of the exotic; at the same time, descriptive writing became more vivid and picturesque, and the vocabulary for the purposes of description was enlarged. He added to French literature a tale in which human passion and the sentiment of nature are fused together by the magic of genius; he created two figures which live in the popular imagination, encircled with a halo of ...

— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... every Irish heart and made us one in love, purpose and resolve. We see, after ages of your oppression, the unquenchable desire for Irish independence blaze forth anew, and as it sweeps along the cities and prairies of this vast continent it gathers within its magic influence five millions of Irish hearts and twice five millions of friends of freedom and foes of despotism! Arise, then, my countrymen! Nerve yourselves for the struggle so nobly commenced. Cast aside every consideration that would darken the ...

— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... weeks his departure for Stoughton, Michigan, where he meant to return in any case. It was the familiar field of those opportunities in copper which he hoped to profit by again. Once he was on that ground, Olivia Guion and her concerns would be as much a part of a magic past as the woods and mountains of a holiday are to a man nailed down at an office desk. With a very little explanation to Ashley he could turn his back on the whole business and give himself up to ...

— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... been expected," replied Dr. Jones. "It is marvelous what we accomplished with an absolutely empty treasury, no credit, no standing army to speak of, and our little navy scattered to the four ends of the earth. The vast, splendidly drilled armies which we brought into existence as if by magic, were the wonder of the world. We had everything to learn, both North and South, in the matter of logistics. Long lines of communications had to be kept open, and such splendid raiders as John Morgan, Forest, Mosby, etc., were not slow to break them frequently, so that I ...

— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... wood!" he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop deploying into the road as to ...

— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... fatal sign. As I did so, a loud flap overhead and the simultaneous righting of the ship caused me to glance aloft in amazement and wonder as to what was happening. Could it be? By Heaven, yes! The wind had dropped, as if by magic, or a miracle, and for the moment there was a breathless calm, leaving us within fifty fathoms of the reef and, with the momentum of our rapid progress through the water, rushing straight at it. Instinctively I bounded with one mad spring to the wheel, ...

— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... by reading "Tam o' Shanter," accompanied by illustrations, made by a magic lantern. When this was over, and lights were again brought into the room, the tubs of water were drawn forward. Twelve apples were set floating in each tub. Three little boys had their arms pinioned, and water-proof capes were put over their clothes. Then each one was led up to a tub, and ...

— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... introduction, passim, but especially p. xciii. For diseases wrought by witchcraft, see the same, pp. 230, 293. On the preferences of spells in healing over medicine and surgery, see Zend-Avesta, vol. i, pp. 85, 86. For healing by magic in ancient Greece, see, e. g., the cure of Ulysses in the Odyssey, "They stopped the black blood by a spell" (Odyssey, xxix, 457). For medicine in Egypt as partly priestly and partly in the hands of physicians, see ...

— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... a villa too, near Florence, "on the link of Bellosguardo," as dear from association as Villino Trollope. It has for a neighbor the Villa Mont' Auto, where Hawthorne lived, and which he transformed by the magic of his pen into the Monte Bene of the "Marble Faun." Not far off is the "tower" wherein Aurora Leigh sought peace,—and found it. The inmate of this villa was a little lady with blue-black hair and sparkling ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... crush. She looked around in vain for some Mowbray face that she could recognise, but after some fruitless research, a loud shouting in the distance, followed by the firing of musketry, so terrified all around her, that the mob in her immediate neighbourhood dispersed as if by magic, and she remained alone crouching in a corner of the flower-garden, while dreadful shouts and shrieks and yells resounded from the distance, occasionally firing, the smoke floating to her retreat. She could ...

— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... children as well as others, older only by accident of years, but whose hearts are always young—which is the eternal youth—to know the greatest French writer of his day, when, by the magic of his pen, he, like them, becomes young, gentle and charming. I want them to learn to love his "Honey-Bee," newest and sweetest of those darlings of childhood who have come down to us from bygone ages, distant lands and half-forgotten races, but who in their eternal charm appeal to all children ...

— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France

... many years ago, but cannot recollect the authority, "That, when Alexander besieged a certain city in India, the Brachmans, by the power of magic, raised a cloud of smoke around the walls, whence broke frequent flashes of lightning, with thunder, and the thunderbolts slew many of his soldiers." This would infer the very ancient use of fire-arms of some ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... which took place a few days after that of his parents, completed the consternation into which the court was thrown. The most sinister rumors circulated darkly; a base intrigue caused the Duke of Orleans to be accused; people called to mind his taste for chemistry and even magic, his flagrant impiety, his scandalous debauchery; beside himself with grief and anger, he demanded of the king to be sent to the Bastille; the king refused curtly, coldly, not unmoved in his secret heart by the perfidious insinuations which made ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... encroachments of death. And now death stalked everywhere, grinning with malicious triumph, for he had but one more battle to fight. Already his grisly clutch was closing on the standard of victory. Man had mastered life but he had not conquered death. With the magic wand of science he had reached out into space and viewed the life of far-off worlds. He had routed superstition and fear and selfishness. He had banished disease and learned all nature's secrets; had even visited other worlds and had come to know and understand ...

— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... Almost magic as was the change thus suddenly effected in the appearance of the garrison, it was not the most interesting feature in the exciting scene. Choking up the gateway, in which they were completely wedged, and crowding the drawbridge, ...

— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... obstinate button hindering the performer. All this is opposed to the real purpose of playing, and injurious to the actor's art, to say nothing of the interests of the dramatist. Illusion is the special object of the theatre, and this forfeits its magic when once inquiry is directed too curiously to its method of contrivance. Still doubling of this kind has always been in favour both with actors and audiences, and many plays have been provided especially to give dual occupation to the performers. Certain of these have for excuse the fact that ...

— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... had much to think about that night had he been in an analytical mood, for by some magic his sense of utter weariness was marvellously relieved. With a ...

— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... pilgrimages to Stratford-on-Avon, and the Leasowes, and Olney, and other places memorable for their literary associations, are as fine pieces of descriptive writing as the English language possesses. This magic of style characterized all his works, whether those of a more popular kind, or his scientific treatises, such as the "Old Red Sandstone," and "Footprints of the Creator," a volume suggested by the "Vestiges ...

— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... from the Nautilus for about an hour and a half. It was almost noon. I spotted this fact in the perpendicularity of the sun's rays, which were no longer refracted. The magic of these solar colors disappeared little by little, with emerald and sapphire shades vanishing from our surroundings altogether. We walked with steady steps that rang on the seafloor with astonishing intensity. The tiniest ...

— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... would that I could raise The magic of that tongue; The spirit of those deathless lays, The Swan of Teios sung! Each song the bard has given, Its beauty and its worth, Sounds sweet as if a voice from ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... now proved the power Of Fin-folk's craft in magic hour, With magic song; for stroke of steel Thor's reindeer coat would never feel, Bewitched by them it turned the stroke Of the king's sword,—a dust-like smoke Rose from Thor's shoulders from the blow Which the king ...

— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... speak, More than pertains to feats of broil and battle; And therefore, little shall I grace my cause In speaking for myself; yet, by your gracious patience I will a round unvarnished tale deliver Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms, What conjuration, and what mighty magic, (For such proceeding I am charged withal) I ...

— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... certainty that reigns so serenely in my heart. Have you not already noted, comrade, for all that you are young and the way of the world before you, how there sometimes comes to one, although rarely, such a magic mood in which the liberated spirit seems to swim in an exalted ether, and the body seems to move uplifted in a world ...

— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, ...

— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and conquering a repugnance, such as I had never before experienced, I touched the figure with my hand, "The flesh is like stone," I said, "thus held lifelike by some magic of the Indies. I have heard of such skill but never before realized its perfection. Good God! she actually seems to breathe. What can it all mean? Who could the woman be? And why should her body be thus carried about at sea. Is it love, ...

— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... had, however, a fair number of adherents at Constantinople and at Kuku[vs].... There was at the same time another movement, more discreetly undertaken, by American missionaries to convert the Bulgars to the Protestant religion. These Americans, drawn by the magic name of Greece, had come to Europe to assist that people in their fight for freedom. They had built them schools, had printed educational books in Greek, and had contributed in every way towards the people's ...

— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... the world was young With alchemies of fire and witches' oils And magic. But he never ...

— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton

... hook, uncoils and rises straight into the sky until the end disappears; and, soon after, there come tumbling from the blue two arms, two legs, a head and so on, all of which the wizard picks up and crams into the sack. He next utters a few magic words over it and opens it; and the child steps out, bowing ...

— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... may be tall, or the Russian peasant girls who leap high in the air crying, "Flax, grow." The leaping of the youths of the Cretan hymn is just the utterance of their tense desire. They have grown up, and with them all live things must grow. By their magic year by year the fruits of the earth come to their annual new birth. And that there be ...

— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... the lectures in college halls, it rustled the thumbed book leaves of the schoolrooms. This wind blew upon all vanes of all the churches of the country and turned them one way, — toward war. It blew, and shook out as if by magic a flag whose device was unknown to soldier or sailor before, but whose every flap and flutter made the blood bound in our veins. . . . It arrayed the sanctity of a righteous cause in the brilliant trappings of military ...

— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... St. Paul's Cathedral, London, on which Sir John Goss played, and which had felt the magic touch of Mendelssohn, had 13 stops on the Great, 7 on the Swell, 8 on the Choir and only one on the Pedal. It stood in a case on the screen between the choir and the nave of the Cathedral. We have noted elsewhere in this book how Willis had this screen removed, and rebuilt the organ on each ...

— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... civet, good apothecary!" That mass itself is daily changing: is the new body, which the indulgence of gluttonous sensuality supplies, as holy as the old? If it be his mind that is consecrated, what is mind, but a succession of thoughts? By what magic are future thoughts consecrated? Has a bishop no unholy thoughts? Can pride, lust, avarice, and ambition, can all the sins of the decalogue be consecrated? Are some thoughts consecrated and some not? By whom or how is the selection made? ...

— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... insensible, but not seriously injured. One ready and daring hand had prevented the certain loss of one life, and the probable loss of more. Fire-crackers, pistols and other abominations had vanished from the street as if by magic; the noise over, the horses came again under command; they were raised, and horses, harness and carriage all found comparatively uninjured; the disabled driver was taken to a neighboring drug-store; one of the bystanders volunteered to drive the carriage ...

— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... instance. Marble and canvas are more discreet than the mask of the best trained living features. Messalina and Julia look cold and correct enough since they have been turned into stone. Only by the magic of her smile and by the glory of her golden hair do we recognize her who, if all tales are true, might have given a tongue to the walls of the Vatican. We forget the Borgia, with her laboratory of philtres and poisons—we only think that never a duke of all ...

— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... of mankind, and a world-consciousness is arising. Kindness and justice—yesterday but community ideals—are extending their sway throughout the earth. Even while bayonets are bared in conflict and cannon thunder against hostile camps, the magic of our civilization is weaving bonds of union that cannot be broken. Peace, not war, is the true grandeur of nations; love, not hate, is the immutable law of God; and so surely as governments and kings are powerless to divide when home and factory would bind, some ...

— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... gone to him for books, books, nothing but books; and I had been blind to everything in his shop but that fairy-land of shelves, filled, in my simple fancy, with inexhaustible treasures, wonder-working, omnipotent, as the magic seal of Solomon. ...

— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... discover the new elements which might take the place of tradition? Where seek the magic ring which would raise a new social edifice on the remains of that which no ...

— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... find any one in the house, Sylvia dear," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith quietly. Sylvia looked up into the clear, blue eyes, so like her father's, and felt the usual magic spell lay hold on her. The horrid impression made by Arnold's story dimmed and faded. Arnold was always getting things twisted. She came up closer to her aunt's side and took the soft, smooth fingers between her two little hard, muscular hands. In her relief, she ...

— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... last, he tried to make useful, may here be given. On one occasion, following his invariable habit of taking every possible occasion of trying to win the confidence and friendship of those under him, he was exhibiting a magic lantern to the crew of the Hellas. At many of the dissolving views they manifested a childish delight, but at length one unfortunate picture was brought before them. It depicted a Greek running from the pursuit of a Turk, and then melted into a view of the Turk cutting off his captive's head. ...

— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... one would imagine to be the case from the close association of cats with witches and magic, phantasms in a feline form are comparatively rare, and their appearance is seldom, if ever, as repulsive as that of the occult dog. I have seen phantasm cats several times, but, though they have been abnormally large and alarming, only once—and I am anxious ...

— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... get a first-hand impression of the way the gods are treated by the old French epic poets, but the material is too large, and indexes suited to the purpose are wanting. The paganism of the original is taken over naively, e.g., by Veldeke, Eneidt, i. 45, 169.—On magic I have consulted Horst's Daemonomagie (Frankf. 1818); and his Zauber-Bibliothek (Mainz, 1821-26); Schindler, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters (Breslau, 1858); Maury, La magie et l'astrologie dans l'antiquite et au moyen age (Paris, 1860). These authors all agree that mediaeval ...

— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... that we propose to do is this: To find out the secrets of the human frame, to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventives to the effects of time. THIS IS NOT MAGIC; IT IS THE ART OF ...

— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... and who belonged to the great school of Seekers of the Great Work, though the particulars of her life and name are lost to history, stated that the last crowned child would be assassinated. Having placed the queen-mother in front of a magic mirror, in which was reflected a wheel on the several spokes of which were the faces of her children, the sorceress set the wheel revolving, and Catherine counted the number of revolutions which it made. Each revolution was for ...

— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... Ellen in associating this new and delightful variety of sensations with the fact that Jean Isbel had set to-day for his ride up to the Rim to see her. Ellen's joyousness fled; her smiles faded. The spring morning lost its magic radiance. ...

— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... the glamouring influence Of the right honourable gentleman Prevails with magic might, ELEVEN men Have been amassed. And in the Cinque-Port towns, Where he is held in absolute veneration, His method has so quickened martial fire As to bring in—one man. O would that man Might meet my sight! [Laughter.] A Hercules, no doubt, A god-like emanation from this ...

— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... time I've felt easy in weeks! See that? Vandersee said he'd have the entrance cleared. It's like magic. You could float a thousand-tonner in ...

— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... back to her course as if by magic, and once more rushed toward the enemy. Several miles to port, could now be seen the faint outline of the approaching British battle cruiser, sailing swiftly, under full steam, as though she were afraid she would not arrive in time to take part ...

— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... As by magic, the cares of the common day slipped away from her and her spirit began to breathe. Upon the heights she walked firmly now, and as surely as though she felt the hills ...

— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed