Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Visitant   Listen
noun
Visitant  n.  One who visits; a guest; a visitor. "When the visitant comes again, he is no more a stranger."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Visitant" Quotes from Famous Books



... a sacred visitant into the inner recesses of the human heart, those recesses must be neat indeed. Remember, ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain

... scattered throughout the vast metropolis. In theaters and restaurants and other gathering places, as well as in millions of homes, a voice from the Worldwide Broadcasting Tower announced the weird visitant. And its image, as it glowed in the night, was everywhere transmitted ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... frighten my good angel visitant away, and without the smallest breath of pause went on to add a few directions as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fall, when the Ghost rehearses his story on those solemn battlements of Elsinore. But think what he is seeing: not the stage-vision for which we care so little, but the spectre of his father,—a midnight visitant from the grave! It has been asserted that no man ever believed he saw a spirit and survived the shock. And it is strongly urged, as a defence of Booth's conception of this scene, that, in the closet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... slowly back with baffled anger and vindictiveness. However, he had prevented something, although he knew not what. The principal had got away, but he had identified his confederate, and for the first time held a clue to his mysterious visitant. There was no use to alarm the household, which did not seem to have been disturbed. The trespassers were far away by this time, and the attempt would hardly be repeated that night. He made his way quietly back to the corral, let loose his horse, and regained the casa unobserved. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... and clasped his two hands upon, his forehead, trying to think who the late visitant could be. Why should any one come to him at such an hour, unless—unless it was discovered? There could be no other justification ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... hover around the form, words, and motions of those whose special recipients it is; a sort of ethereal loveliness, concentrating the tints of the rainbow, the sun's golden rays, and so acting upon the mind's eye of the observer as almost to convince him that a visitant from a sphere of ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... not forgotten; nor that visitant of singular shape and habits which had appeared in the sky from no one knew whence, trailing its luminous streamer, and proceeding on its way in the face of a wondering world, till it should choose to vanish as suddenly as it ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... hesitation Mingled with his adoration; Should he go, or should he stay? Should he leave the poor to wait Hungry at the convent gate, Till the vision passed away? Should he slight his radiant guest, Slight this visitant celestial For a crowd of ragged, bestial Beggars at the convent gate? Would the vision there remain? Would the vision come again? Then a voice within his breast Whispered audible and clear, As if to the outward ear: "Do thy duty; that is best; Leave ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... crisis. Again I must repeat how much I am afraid of being hurried forward too fast. An error at this moment might be fatal. Clifton is so much alarmed by the particular respect which the Count de Beaunoir [A pleasant kind of madman, who is a visitant here.] pays me, that he has this instant been with me, confessed a passion for me, in all the strong and perhaps extravagant language which custom has seemed to authorise, and has entreated, with a degree of warmth and earnestness that could scarcely be resisted, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... opposed to the idea, that a third visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a red gleam, like that of a torch, had shone through the great front window, as if the negro were lighting a guest up ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... returning her look, "here, most convenient to your hand, is a fine sharp knife, in case you are afraid of the ghost or any other midnight visitant and so—good night, madam!" Saying which, I took up one of the candles and crossed to the door of that room—which had once been Donald's, but here I paused to glance back at her. "Furthermore," said I, snuffing ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... Lincluden, which stand on the junction of the Cluden and the Nith, a short mile above Dumfries. He gave us the Vision; perhaps, he dared not in those yeasty times venture on the song, which his secret visitant poured from her lips. The scene is chiefly copied from nature: the swellings of the Nith, the howling of the fox on the hill, and the cry of the owl, unite at times with the natural beauty of the spot, and give it life ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... minute traits of his person. His features, however, were so marked by prominent characteristics, which appear in all likenesses of him, that a stranger could not be mistaken in the man; he was remarkably dignified in his manners, and had an air of benignity over his features which his visitant did not expect, being rather prepared for sternness of countenance.... his smile was extraordinarily attractive. It was observed to me that there was an expression in Washington's face that no painter had succeeded in taking. It struck me no man could ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... kingfisher had been seen at my lake, and hoped that the bird might build and become established there; it was, therefore, a keen regret to me that this bright visitant had met ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... his cell, but it was too late even for that angel visitant to bring a gleam of joy. His friends were all dead. His name was forgotten on earth. He knew nothing of the world or of its ways. His mind was enfeebled, and even the slender stock of knowledge which he had possessed as a child, had vanished away. They broke off his chains and removed him from ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... last comer, Damaris started up, tense with wonder and excitement, since she knew—somehow—this final visitant belonged not to the past so much as to the present, that her power was unexhausted and would go forward to the shaping of the coming years. Which knowledge drew confirmation from what immediately followed. For, as by almost imperceptible degrees the brightness faded in the west, the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... and action were those of the phantom; but her voice was so indescribably sweet, her glance so winning, her smile so tender, so unlike that of Rhoda's midnight visitant, that the latter could hardly believe the evidence of her senses. She was truly glad that she had not hidden away in sheer aversion, as she had been inclined to do. In her basket Mrs. Lodge brought the pair of boots that she had ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... intense and breathless silence. This was an assembly amongst whom excitement was a very rare visitant. But there were many there now who sat still and spellbound with eyes riveted upon the speaker. To those who were personally acquainted with him a certain change in his appearance was manifest. A spot of colour flared in his pale cheeks. There ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... sea of gillyflowers About it; this, a milky-way on earth, Like visions in the Northern dreamer's heavens, A lily-avenue climbing to the doors; One, almost to the martin-haunted eaves A summer burial deep in hollyhocks; Each, its own charm; and Edith's everywhere; And Edith ever visitant with him, He but less loved than Edith, of her poor: For she—so lowly-lovely and so loving, Queenly responsive when the loyal hand Rose from the clay it work'd in as she past, Not sowing hedgerow texts and passing by, Nor dealing goodly counsel from a height That makes the lowest ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... he would have to go and open the front door. Both humanity and self-interest urged him to go instantly. For the visitant was assuredly the doctor, come at last to see the sick man lying upstairs. The sick man was Henry Leek, and Henry Leek was Priam Farll's bad habit. While somewhat of a rascal (as his master guessed), Leek was a very perfect valet. Like you and me, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... mine be the weary task to wait and watch at home. Fata feminus. The mystery of the dressed Crab must be unveiled. Should this mysterious visitant again vouchsafe a prophetic message, a practical prophet must be at hand to receive it. Jupiter, this gentleman is not practical. This report"—she struck the paper on which the Prophet had dotted down his notes—"is ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... visited it late at night, when the young moon was beginning to struggle through the cloudy sky, and looked down into the ravine which Cobbett declared was the most horrid place God ever made; but no sign of ghostly visitant could be caught among the bracken, no sound of the dead voices was audible in the air. It is the way with ghosts—they seldom appear where they might be looked for. It is the unexpected in the world of shadows, as in the workaday world, which ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... for the last three or four years have been full of incident, outcry, and bloodshed. The state of things, indeed, prevailing in the world for some time past is extraordinary. A visitant from another planet would imagine that normal peace and abnormal war had changed places, and that civilized mankind now regard peace as an interlude of war, not war as an interlude of peace. He would be wrong, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... moment when a slight rustling among the leaves at his feet filled him with a sudden conviction that a second rattlesnake was after him. He left the spot expeditiously, not halting until he was sure that he was beyond reach of the unwelcome visitant, which, it is well known, is not much given to ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... whole of her figure and the clear profile of her face and head were distinctly visible, and when at last she stopped and stood there full in my view just, but only just beyond the door, I saw—it came upon me like a flash—that she was no stranger to me, this mysterious visitant! I recognised, unchanged it seemed to me since the day, ten years ago, when I had last seen her, the beautiful features ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth

... candle and darted out into the hall, I followed him. He made directly for the staircase, and part way up he turned off to the right through a small door. We were on the gallery itself; below us the fire gleamed cheerfully, the cat was not in sight. There was no sign of my ghostly visitant, but as we stood there the Bokhara rug, without warning, slid over the railing and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... decide what shall be the style of your greeting to his morning. There is no arbitrary rule of courtesy between you and him, and you need no arrow to point to his distinctions, and to indicate to you the right manner of treating such a visitant. ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... commonplaces useful at least in breaking such constraints, he followed the colonel into the library and sat down with him. The colonel, from his chair by the window, regarded his son in a fond approval. Even to his eyes where Jeff was always a grateful visitant, the more so now after he had been so poignantly desired, he was this morning the more manly and altogether fit. But Jeff was not going ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... (Painful vicissitude!) his bosom tear. Now, imaged in his mind, he sees restored In peace and joy the people's rightful lord; The proud oppressors fly the vengeful sword. While his fond soul these fancied triumphs swell'd, The stranger guest the royal youth beheld; Grieved that a visitant so long should wait Unmark'd, unhonour'd, at a monarch's gate; Instant he flew with hospitable haste, And the new friend with courteous air embraced. "Stranger, whoe'er thou art, securely rest, Affianced in my faith, a ready ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... this spectral visitant was a strong objection to disorder or untidyness of any kind, or even to an alteration in the general routine of the house. For instance, she showed her disapproval of any stranger coming to sleep by turning the chairs ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... the verdure, the figure of a young girl, who appeared to be listening to the music with the most entranced attention. Flattered by such a testimony to my skill, and anxious to gain a nearer view of my mysterious visitant, I advanced towards her hiding-place, forgetting in my haste to continue playing on the lute. The instant the music ceased, she discerned me and disappeared. Determined to behold her, I again struck the chords, and in a few minutes I saw her white robe ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... sound, like footsteps shuffling in the dark passage behind the arras, struck her ear; she knew her strange visitant was come. She started up, clasping her hands hard together as she listened, wondering who and what like she might be. She suspected no harm,—for who could desire to harm her who had never injured a living being? Yet there she stood on the one side of that black door of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... to public companies, and I believe never held a share in one. He had a very few old friends with whom he loved to associate. He was very hospitable, but he had a strong aversion to formal parties, and to every kind of ostentation. His chief delight was to act as cicerone to an appreciative visitant to his magnificent gallery. He was a frequent visitor to the snug smoking-room at the "Hen and Chickens," where poor "Walter" always brought him, without waiting for an order, what Tony Weller called the "inwariable" ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... transformation wrought by the angel. When Joseph came, he did not recognize her. He asked her who she was, whereto she replied, "I am thy maid-servant Asenath! I have cast away my idols, and this day a visitant came to me from heaven. He gave me to eat of the bread of life and to drink of the blessed cup, and he spake these words unto me, 'I give thee unto Joseph as his affianced wife, that he may be thy affianced husband forever.' And furthermore ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... and hesitation Mingled with his adoration; Should he go or should he stay? Should he leave the poor to wait Hungry at the convent gate Till the Vision passed away? Should he slight his heavenly guest, Slight this visitant celestial, For a crowd of ragged, bestial Beggars at the convent gate? Would the Vision there remain? Would the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... Saint James now succeeded to that of Saint Peter, and after greeting his predecessor as doves greet one another, murmuring and moving round, proceeded to examine the mortal visitant on the subject of Hope. The examination was closed amidst resounding anthems of," Let their hope be in thee;"[46] and a third apostolic flame ensued, enclosing Saint John, who completed the catechism ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... him a change of raiment, that she might enjoy a conversation to which he could not be introduced in the habiliments of mourning. Alas! though the signs of affliction may be interdicted, the unwelcome visitant herself will intrude even into the most splendid residences and most elevated conditions! Mordecai refused the dress, not out of disrespect to the queen, but to express his poignant anguish, and to incite her to deeper ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... was broken by a roar, and Mark felt that a cloud was interposed between himself and the camp visitant which hurled him violently ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... Napoleon—lasted nearly ten years. For a like decade civil war raged between England and Scotland, originating in a question of authority between the King and Commons, and ending in Cromwell's protectorate. Why, I ask, if we admit this fiendish visitant to our borders, should we anticipate that our fate would be more favorable? No! war is to be averted, and a nation still covered with glory is to be preserved by holding the Border States ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... and playmates, to have had wider interests and activities. When, a lad, he saw his first warbler in the "Deacon Woods," the black-throated blue-back, he was excited and curious as to what the strange bird could be (so like a visitant from another clime it seemed); the other boys met his queries with indifference, but for him it was the event of the day; it was far more, it was the keynote to all his days; it opened his eyes to the life about ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... walking in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of these little strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine to make a picture! But we must have a little more about Spiridion's wonderful visitant. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that groove of trees, and mysteriously beckoned to her as she stood at the window, turning her heart to sickness as she gazed? Was it a human being, one to bring more evil to the house, where so much evil had already fallen? Was it a supernatural visitant, or was it but a delusion of her own eyesight? Not the latter, certainly, for the figure was now emerging again, motioning to her as before; and with a white face and shaking limbs, Barbara clutched her shawl around her and went down that path in the moonlight. The beckoning form retreated within ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... have seen how the sober awkward Thing looked when she was forced out of her Intrenchments. In short, Sir, 'tis impossible to give you a true Notion of our Sports, unless you would come one Night amongst us; and tho it be directly against the Rules of our Society to admit a Male Visitant, we repose so much Confidence in your Silence and Taciturnity, that was agreed by the whole Club, at our last Meeting, to give you Entrance for one Night ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... imagine how he came there. The weather is too fine for shipwrecks, and it was not a part of the coast where any passing trader would be likely to land. Besides, if anyone has landed, where is he? We have been able to find no trace of him whatever. To this hour, we have never discovered who our strange visitant was. ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... ages: the cycle of one departure and return may clasp unnumbered generations; and dust, kindling to brief suffering life, and through pain, passing back to dust, may meanwhile perish out of memory again, and yet again. To how many maimed and mourning millions is the first and sole angel visitant, him easterns call Azrael! ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... gloomy boughs Had charms for him; and here he loved to sit, His only visitant a straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper; And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath And juniper and thistle sprinkled o'er, Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here An emblem ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... I often thought of my unhappy visitant, often wondered how she was getting on. A year later I was staying with a friend in Ipswich who was a visitor at the prison there, and I remembered how it was to Ipswich she had been brought back, and I asked to see her. My friend knew her, and ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... he knew what his visitant must be—"if I stir it will seize me with its claws and bury its teeth in my throat. Oh, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... due. He is not evil; he is good. He is a joy forever. He is vitally necessary in the scheme of things. Happy are they who in the real great work of life can carry with them this angel visitant, fluttering free along their path, now close and sweet, now smiling mischievously at a ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... animal, being more afraid than either, leaped into the bed, and meauled with the most piteous exclamation. — Loyd, thus informed of the nature of the annoyance, rose and set the door wide open, so that this troublesome visitant retreated with great expedition; then securing himself, by means of a double bolt, from a second intrusion, he was left to enjoy his good fortune without ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... title which this "Word of Jesus" gives Him—THE COMFORTER! What a word for a sorrowing world! The Church militant has its tent pitched in a "valley of tears." The name of the divine visitant who comes to her and ministers to her wants, is Comforter. Wide is the family of the afflicted, but He has a healing balm for all—the weak, the tempted, the sick, the sorrowing, the bereaved, the dying! How different from other ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... the speech he had committed to memory, and then waited for the ghostly visitant. Ben, who had not anticipated that there was so much speaking in Hamlet's part, was rather confused, and did not know whether it was time for him to come out and strike terror to the heart of his supposed ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis

... waste places All the grey globe over Ooze, as the honeycomb Drips, with the sweetness Distilled of my strength, And, teeming in peace Through the wrath of my coming, They give back in beauty The dread and the anguish They had of me visitant! Follow, O follow, then, Heroes, my harvesters! Where the tall grain is ripe Thrust in your sickles! Stripped and adust In a stubble of empire, Scything and binding The full sheaves of sovranty: Thus, O, thus gloriously, Shall you fulfil yourselves! Thus, O, thus mightily, Show yourselves sons ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... exquisite emotion; that infinite which lies within the divine sphere that unites spiritual genius with human love? His own positive and earthly nature attained, for the first time, and as if for its own punishment, the comprehension of that loftier and more ethereal visitant from the heavens, who had once looked with a seraph's smile through the prison-bars of his iron life; that celestial refinement of affection, that exuberance of feeling which warms into such varieties of beautiful idea, under the breath of the earth-beautifier, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and, hastening to his side, I saw the faint outlines of that shadowy visitant growing indistinct and disappearing. As it vanished, Monsieur turned deliberately toward me; his eyes were clear, the faintness was over; his voice was grave and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... Evelyn, she was transferred from the little chamber, with its French bed and bamboo-coloured washhand-stand, to an apartment with a buhl wardrobe and a four-post bed with green silk curtains, usually appropriated to the regular Christmas visitant, the Dowager Countess of Chipperton. A pretty morning room communicated with the sleeping apartment, and thence a private staircase conducted into the gardens. The whole family were duly impressed and re-impressed with her importance. No queen could be made ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... unassuming manner of Percy rendered him a most acceptable visitant at Isis Lodge, so the cottage was called; he was ever ready with some joyous tale, either of Oxford or of the metropolis, to bring a smile even to the lips of Mrs. Amesfort. It was not likely that he should so frequently visit the cottage without exciting the curiosity and risibility of his college ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... a wavering wet hand fumbling toward her in the darkness. It clasped hers; the arm went around her; she raised her face, and the cold lips of the visitant met ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... say much about hooping-cough, for there is scarcely a nursery in which, to everyone's great discomfort, it is not known as a familiar and most unwelcome visitant. It varies remarkably in its importance, being sometimes so slight as scarcely to amount to an illness, but in other instances one of the most deadly of diseases. It causes the death of a fourth of all children who die under the age of five, and three out of four of these ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... she exclaimed, as the vision brightened into a form distinct, beaming with the beauty of holiness, and radiant with love. She then said, audibly addressing the mysterious visitant-'I ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth

... from a ramble with the children, they encountered a young man who was greeted, without much fervour, as 'cousin Lionel.' Mr. Tarrant professed himself merely a passing visitant; he had come to inquire after the health of his grandmother, and in a day or two must keep an appointment with friends elsewhere. Notwithstanding this announcement, he remained at Teignmouth for a fortnight, exhibiting a pious assiduity in his attendance upon the ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... we arrived at a large, desert, dark cavern, which the Lazzeroni assured us was the Sibyl's Cave. We were sufficiently disappointed—Yet we examined it with care, as if its blank, rocky walls could still bear trace of celestial visitant. On one side was a small opening. Whither does this lead? we asked: can we enter here?—"Questo poi, no,"—said the wild looking savage, who held the torch; "you can advance but a short distance, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... things are thus recorded of him in history, but because the prophets stated that such things should happen to the Messiah. Thus, Jesus is descended from David, because the Messiah was to come of David's lineage. His birth is announced by an angelic visitant, because the birth of the Messiah must not be less honoured than that of Isaac or of Samson; he is born of a virgin, because God says of the Messiah, "this day have I begotten thee," implying the direct paternity of God, and because the prophecy in Is. vii. ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... Usually, in cases of a similar nature, there is left in the mind of the spectator some glimmering of doubt as to the reality of the vision before his eyes; a degree of hope, however feeble, that he is the victim of chicanery, and that the apparition is not actually a visitant from the old world of shadows. It is not too much to say that such remnants of doubt have been at the bottom of almost every such visitation, and that the appalling horror which has sometimes been brought about, is to be ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... other subjects, among the rest a family relationship existing between us,—not a very near one, but one which I think I had seen mentioned in genealogical accounts. Mary S. (the last name being the same as that of my visitant), it appeared, was the great-great-grandmother of Mrs. H. and myself. After cordially recognizing our forgotten relationship, now for the first time called to mind, we parted, my guest leaving me for his own home. We had been sitting in my library ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... she sat back in her carriage, remembrance came rapping like an unwelcome, unadmitted visitant. She tried to put it away by chattering smartly; the theatre-wagon rolled along to the clicking of hoofs on the asphalt; but through it all the troublous knocking persistently recurred. For this was one of the few times when she had lingered upon a thought of that first romance of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... bend no more in revery When he at eventide is calling. Nor muse: Who may this singer be Whose song about my heart is falling? Know you by this, the lover's chant, 'Tis I that am your visitant. ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce

... were now thoroughly mystified. In the morning they explored the grounds, but could find no trace of footmarks, nothing to indicate the nature of their visitant. It was now close on Christmas, and as the noises had not been heard for some time, it was hoped that the disturbances would not occur again. The Andersons, like all modern parents, made idols of their children. They never ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... the Eastern Rumelian plain. Among the migratory birds are the crane, which hibernates in the Maritza valley, woodcock, snipe and quail; the great spotted cuckoo (Coccystes glandarius) is an occasional visitant. The red starling (Pastor roseus) sometimes appears in large flights. The stork, which is never molested, adds a picturesque feature to the Bulgarian village. Of fresh-water fish, the sturgeon (Acipenser sturio and A. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Mr. Polly. "I haven't come back and I'm not coming back. I'm—I'm a Visitant from Another World. You shut up about me and I'll shut up about myself. I came back because I thought you might be hard up or in trouble or some silly thing like that. Now I see you again—I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied completely. See? I'm ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... would, the figure was instantly before my eyes, at precisely the same distance! I was then convinced it was the Bodach Glas. My hair bristled, and my knees shook. I manned myself, however, and determined to return to my quarters. My ghastly visitant glided before me (for I cannot say he walked), until he reached the footbridge: there he stopped, and turned full round. I must either wade the river, or pass him as close as I am to you. A desperate courage, founded on the belief that my death was near, made me resolve ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... and no ghost at all, as I was now convinced—cleared in two bounds the intervening space that lay between him and the entrance to the cavern, seeking to get away as far as possible from his terrible visitant. Apparently, he must have thought the other to be the 'genuine Simon Pure,' come to punish him for his false pretences in making believe to be a denizen of the spirit world whilst he was yet in the flesh, and so ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... love shall come like visitant of air, Safe in secret power from lurking human snare; What loves me, no word of mine shall e'er betray, Though for faith unstained ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

... cry, and fell senseless. Afterwards, they found a consolation in the length of time, now months, that had elapsed, since Arnod had left Cossova, during which no fearful visitant had again approached him; and they fondly began to hope that gave them security. For the poor girl well knew from many a village tale the danger to which Arnod ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... it must have been a kerchief of her own, and that all the rest has been my imagination; that, if not, then my strange visitant was no spirit, but a woman; and that, if human thing knows human thing, it was no creature of flesh and blood that sat beside me last night. Besides, what woman would she be? The nearest saeter is a three-hours' climb to a strong ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome

... conqueror. In ancient Greece the fruitful plains of Thessaly, Boeotia, Elis and Laconia had a fatal attraction for every migrating horde; Attica's rugged surface, poor soil, and side-tracked location off the main line of travel between Hellas and the Peloponnesus saved it from many a rough visitant,[210] and hence left the Athenians, according to Thucydides, an indigenous race. The fertility of the Rhine Valley has always attracted invasion, the barren Black Forest range has repelled and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... closely as was mannerly towards the group about the litter. All gaped at Drake's words of amity, at Sir John Nevil's grave smile, and Carlisle's friendly face, but most of all at that one who had been the peer of great captains, but who now stood amongst them undetached, ghost-like, a visitant from the drear world of the dishonored dead. The palm-trees edging the square began to wave and rustle in the wind; the youth upon the litter moved restlessly, uttering moaning and incomprehensible words. Drake was speaking to Arden and others of ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... day, and so my visitant honored me by thrusting his contemptible presence upon me, and he would not go until late at night, when a man with a diseased hip and one eye—and a ghastly thing at that—called to see whether I could ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... 6th, early in the morning, on visiting Jatta, he found his majesty sitting upon a bullock's hide, warming himself before a large fire, for the Africans frequently feel cold when a European is oppressed with heat. Jatta received his visitant very kindly, and earnestly entreated him to advance no farther into the interior, telling him that Major Houghton had been killed in his route. He said that travellers must not judge of the people of the eastern country by those of Woolli. The latter were acquainted ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... him: mainly chapters on the inconsistencies of human deportment, human superstition and human creeds. The "Letters from the Earth" referred to in the following, were supposed to have been written by an immortal visitant from some far realm to a friend, describing the absurdities of mankind. It is true, as he said, that they would not do for publication, though certainly the manuscript contains some of his mgt delicious writing. Miss Wallace, to whom the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the heavenly visitant would but end here, I think the impression would be deeper and more abiding. The filmy, vague outline of the white figure thoroughly harmonizes with all established, orthodox notions of ghosts, and if this were all of the apparition vouchsafed to us, we might, perhaps, have a harder problem to ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... the solitary depression of these years,—for him the twelve years ended when he first saw this small, graceful, intensely alive invalid, dressed in a simple white wrapper, who had come down from her room to meet him in the family parlor. She might seem, indeed, like himself, rather a "visitant" than an inhabitant of this planet, and their courtship not unlike one of his own stories of half immaterial lovers who go hand in hand, with sentiments for sentences and great heedlessness of mortal matters, to an idyllic union of hearts. He ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... and pressingly turned to her. It almost seemed to her that no one had ever been so close to her as that. All this, however, took but an instant, at the end of which she had disengaged her wrist, turning her eyes upon her visitant. "You've ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... rule well in mind, among them, that if the violin is old and has undergone much affliction while under the hands of many doctors, some of these possibly belonging to the "heroic school," it may be found that the last visitant of the interior had straightened, bent, or contracted and held some of the parts together while the glue was in process of drying and that sufficient time had not elapsed since the occurrence for the strained parts to settle down under their new condition. ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... the stories are reduced to nonsense; for they present no evidence (through running parallel to actuality) which proves that the author does know the truth. Unless the reader has faith that Stevenson deeply understands the nature of remorse, the conversation between Markheim and his ghostly visitant becomes incredible and vain. The author gives himself no opportunity to prove (through analogy with actual experience) that such a colloquy consistently presents the ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... number of its lengths, which he also counted distinctly. He then told her that at the point where these two lines met, at a depth of a certain number of feet which he also told her, treasure lay buried. And so the dream broke up, and her remarkable visitant vanished. ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring eyes. With its hands it clutched at its hair—at its chin; plucked at its mouth. No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly visitant, but scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming teeth—and the ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... the great observatories of the world had, in a manner, sought to entertain the strange visitant of the heavens. The learned had gone so far as to claim its acquaintance, to recognize it as the returning comet of a date long gone by. It even carried amidst its shining glories, along the far unimagined ways of its orbit, the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... metamorphosis! But here stands she that has vindicated your fames. Take heed of such insectae hereafter. And let it not trouble you, that you have discovered any mysteries to this young gentleman: he is almost of years, and will make a good visitant within this twelvemonth. In the mean time, we'll all undertake for his secrecy, that can speak so well of his silence. [COMING FORWARD.] —Spectators, if you like this comedy, rise cheerfully, and now Morose is gone ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... the determination to consecrate life's remaining days, weeks, or years, to that service which is alone worthy of being engaged in by immortal beings, Arthur Bernard returned once more to the battle of life, with a heart crushed and bleeding, it is true, but not destitute of Peace, that celestial visitant, or of heavenly hope, pointing to a brighter and ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert

... sleighing, and was looking forward to writing her English letters in the cozy drawing-room, and sociably imbibing afternoon tea with any visitors hardy enough to face the bitter northwester, happily so rare a visitant in that ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... under the influence of which the dame connived at an attachment, which lulled also to pleasing dreams, though of a character so different, her charge and her visitant. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... visitant, attach To my reed roof your nest of clay, And let my ear your music catch, Low twittering underneath the thatch At the gray dawn ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... seemingly animated, walks with them in the field in broad daylight; and if they are employed in delving, harrowing, seed-sowing, or any other occupation, they are at the same time mimicked by this ghostly visitant. My informer added further that having visited a sick person of the inhabitants, she had the curiosity to enquire of him, if at any time he had seen any resemblance of himself as above described; he answered in the affirmative, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... ever nearly as impenetrable by a comb as a quickset hedge.'] Hawkins's Johnson, pp. 45-50. Johnson, after mentioning Cave's slowness, says: 'The same chillness of mind was observable in his conversation; he was watching the minutest accent of those whom he disgusted by seeming inattention; and his visitant was surprised, when he came a second time, by preparations to execute the scheme which he supposed never to have been heard.' Johnson's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... boundary of the field, the spot marked by the broken half-buried pillar of red granite Heliobas had mentioned, he paused—thinking dreamily of the words of Esdras, who in answer to his Angel-visitant's inquiry: "Why art thou disquieted?" had replied: "Because thou hast forsaken me, and yet I did according to thy words, and I went into the field, and lo! I have seen and yet see, that I am not able to express." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... so generally detested being taken into favor, excited the curiosity of every visitant; and even ladies so far conquered their natural horror and disgust as to request to see it fed. It seemed particularly fond of flesh maggots, which were kept for ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... had not her want of sympathy with his pursuits occasioned a barrier of reserve and coolness to arise between them fatal to her influence. During this time no token of Lucy's existence had reached him: and it was with such a thrill as might have welcomed a visitant from the dead, that, one morning as he left his own house to proceed to the office in which he pursued his studies, he saw before him at some distance, yet without any intervening object to interrupt his view of her, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... incurred, in the intenseness of the sorrow that assailed his soul. His heart and imagination were already far from the spot on which he stood, when he felt an iron hand upon his shoulder. He turned, shuddering with an instinctive knowledge of his yet unseen visitant, and beheld standing over him the terrible warrior ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... party, sir," remarked Carrick in comment, while Carter still tried to pierce the gloom to establish the identity of the invisible visitant. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... war—1777-1778—was famous for its length and its intolerable severity. The American soldiers suffered from all the miseries of hunger and cold and insufficient pay, Kosciuszko, to whom the piercing rigour of the climate must have seemed as a familiar visitant from his northern Lithuanian home, was on the borders of Canada when he heard of the arrival in Trenton of a Pole, famous, as Kosciuszko himself as yet was not, in the national records of Poland—Kazimierz Pulaski. With his father, brothers, and cousin, ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... the sisters. Suddenly, as he caught sight of the crape upon the chalice and the crucifix,—for in default of other means of proclaiming the object of this funeral rite the priest had put God himself into mourning,—the mysterious visitant was seized by some all-powerful recollection, and drops of sweat gathered on his brow. The four silent actors in this scene looked at each other with mysterious sympathy; their souls, acting one upon another, communicated ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... than to plead the difference of custom in different countries, in defence of these usages which cannot fail giving disgust to the organs and senses of all mankind. Will custom exempt from the imputation of gross indecency a French lady, who shifts her frowsy smock in presence of a male visitant, and talks to him of her lavement, her medecine, and her bidet! An Italian signora makes no scruple of telling you, she is such a day to begin a course of physic for the pox. The celebrated reformer of the Italian comedy introduces a ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... her sooner or later, to be handed into the ruthless paw of a clerk at the mont de piete, she had little doubt. Everything that she or her husband had ever possessed worth possessing had so vanished—had been not an absolute property, but a brief fleeting joy, a kind of supernal visitant, vanishing anon into nothingness, or only a pawnbroker's duplicate. The time would come. She showed the trinket to her husband with a melancholy foreboding, and read his thoughts as he weighed it in his palm, by mere force of habit, speculating what it would fetch, if ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... of tongues I take another survey of my visitant. Ha! a light dawns upon me. That shrewd old face, with its sharp, winking eyes, is no stranger to me. Pietro Frugoni, I have seen thee before. Si, signor, that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty white neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... spectre it was, swaying in the unknown depths, crossing clouds, and piercing realms of darkness, and speaking to those who could understand. A sick child, somewhere or other, saw it, and the watchful mother carried the little one to a window the better to see this strange visitant. ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... gasped the Prophet, overwhelmed at this mysterious visitant's familiar description of his ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... beautiful stranger who would visit the earth and perform mighty wonders, was always one which Mark Twain loved to play with, and a nephew of Satan's seemed to him properly qualified to carry out his intention. His idea was that this celestial visitant was not wicked, but only indifferent to good and evil and suffering, having no personal knowledge of any of these things. Clemens tried the experiment in various ways, and portions of the manuscript are absorbingly interesting, lofty in conception, and rarely worked ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... movement caught my eye and I looked astern to the rail. A sinewy hand, dripping with water, was clutching the rail. A second hand took form in the darkness beside it. I watched, fascinated. What visitant from the gloom of the deep was I to behold? Whatever it was, I knew that it was climbing aboard by the log-line. I saw a head, the hair wet and straight, shape itself, and then the unmistakable eyes and face of Wolf Larsen. His right cheek was red with blood, which flowed from ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg. Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his domineering visitant on the hand. In another moment Spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of bed and smacked, pinched, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... another life." With the last words she raised her arms till they were bare to the elbow, her brow was contracted in one deep fold, her eyes were closed, her voice was smothered: in her dusky flame-colored garment, she looked like a dreamed visitant from some ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... visitant," I said, "I think that Cyrus the Gaunt would better be watchful. I've never known anyone else except Cyrus to produce such ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... neck, and he had lain a whole night among the slain. But there was a deeper mystery still. He had been a very bad man once, it would appear, and now he was very good; and he had seen a vision; and altogether, with his strong Scotch voice, and his sword, and his wonderful story, the most solemn visitant was this grave and lofty soldier. But they saw how their father loved him, and they saw how he loved their father. As he sat so erect in the square corner-seat of the chapel, they could notice how his stern look would soften, and how his firm lip would quiver, and how a happy ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... the skin-lined sleeping-bag, and this fettered him so that he fell back, and the next moment his nocturnal visitant sprang forward, coming down heavily upon him, at the same moment making ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... went out early and came back late, could sometimes spare half-an-hour just before or just after dinner to draw wonderful pictures for the little ones, or on a Sunday he would now and then walk with the elder ones to Hampstead Heath or to the Zoo, where, as a constant visitant to the prosector's laboratory, he was a well-known figure, and admitted by the keepers to their arcana. But, while he often told us stories of the sea and of animals, he did not talk "shop" to us, as many people seemed to expect by their inquiries whether we did not receive quite ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... I see," volunteered the ticket taker, to whom William Grimsby was a familiar visitant. Shirley reeled with steadied and studied equilibrium, into the foyer of the theatre, as he nodded. Their seats were purposely in the rear of a side box, well protected from the audience by the holders of the front positions. The criminologist appeared to relapse into dreams of bygone days, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... an undisguised angel visitant to the House on the Hill. If in his kindly hospitality Doctor Holiday had stretched a point or two in the first place to make the little stranger feel at home the case was different now. She was needed, badly ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... ride at least three miles along the Westmoreland side of the water, towards Martindale. The views, especially if you ascend from the road into the fields, are magnificent; yet this is only mentioned that the transient Visitant may know what exists; for it would be inconvenient to go in search of them. They who take this course of three or four miles on foot, should have a boat in readiness at the end of the walk, to ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... June 12, 1852, as he looks at boys bathing in the river: "The color of their bodies in the sun at a distance is pleasing. I hear the sound of their sport borne over the water. As yet we have not man in Nature. What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... to say what Johnson said, That in the course of some six thousand years, All nations have believed that from the dead A visitant at intervals appears:[773] And what is strangest upon this strange head, Is, that whatever bar the reason rears 'Gainst such belief, there's something stronger still In its ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... hair in masses like clouds, No false locks does she descend to. There are her earplugs of jade, Her comb-pin of ivory, And her high forehead, so white. She appears like a visitant from heaven! She ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... became a family political paper, and on April 10, 1841, its name was supplanted by that of The New York Tribune. Its home was at 30 Ann Street, and Horace Greeley, its editor, promised that it should be "worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant to family firesides." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... world" (bk. iii.). On entering Paradise, he overhears Adam and Eve talking of the one prohibition (bk. iv.). Raphael is now sent down to warn Adam of his danger, and he tells him who Satan is (bk. v.); describes the war in heaven, and expulsion of the rebel angels (bk. vi.). The angel visitant goes on to tell Adam why and how this world was made (bk. vii.); and Adam tells Raphael his own experience (bk. viii.) After the departure of Raphael, Satan enters into a serpent, and, seeing Eve alone, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... edge and point, and then handed it to the chiefs behind him, to be examined by them. Roger saw by his manner that he had been favorably impressed, for the weapon was as strange and mysterious, to him, as the visitant. ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... spontaneous benevolence in her native town. By the bed-sides of the sick and dying, in the home of poverty, and the haunts of disease, where sin, and sorrow and suffering, that trinity of human woe are ever to be found, she became a welcome and revered visitant. All sought her in trouble, and she withheld not counsel nor aid in any hour of need, nor ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... was labouring up the second hill; and from the slow and unsteady footing of the horses it was evident they must have come out of the plain. The carriage too, Edward now saw clearly, was a strange one, and must probably be bringing some unexpected visitant. With much panting and straining at length the horses dragged the coach up the last slope; and an elderly lady got out at the door of the great house, and sent her maid and servant with the carriage to the inn ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... brown lashes. Her chestnut hair was thrown back with a silver comb, and fell in thick curls below the waist; her complexion was of alabaster clearness, and cheeks and lips wore the coral bloom of health. As they confronted each other one looked a Hebe, the other a ghostly visitant from spirit realms. Beulah shrank from the eager scrutiny, and put up her hands to shield her face. The other advanced a few steps, and stood beside her. The expression of curiosity faded, and something like compassion swept over the stranger's features, as she noted the thin, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... people to eat; where he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack. They gathered every man according to his eating. They came to it as to a treasure-house of Scriptures; each visitant taking what was precious and leaving as precious for others;—Yea, more, says our worthy old Church-historian, Fuller, where "the same man at several times may in his apprehension prefer several ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... something that might well be discovered upon inquiry to be an answer to her prayer. This capuchin who had stared at me from the courtyard became at once to her mind—so ill-balanced upon such matters—a supernatural visitant, harbinger, as it were, of my ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... know that this modest-colored bird is an assassin. At least, I have never seen them scold or molest him, or utter any outcries at his presence, as they usually do at birds of prey. Probably it is because the shrike is a rare visitant, and is not found in this part of the country during the nesting season of ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... appropriate, entertaining, and amusing poetry. Whoever resorts to these saline springs in search of amusement, if he has money and time at command, cannot fail, during the season, between May and November, of being highly gratified, except the mind is entirely depraved. To every visitant, the guide of Mr. Moncrief will not only be useful but entertaining. The poetical epistles of Miss Fidget are not only descriptive but very humorous, and the poetry of Mr. ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye

... which can scarcely fail to recall John's witness, 'I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon Him.' The humanity on which the Divine Spirit uninterruptedly abides, ungrieved and unrestrained, must be free from the stains which so often drive that heavenly visitant from our breasts. The white-breasted Dove of God cannot brood over foulness. There has never been but one manhood capable of receiving and retaining the whole fulness of the Spirit ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... the indigenes were not perfectly adapted, see Origin, Ed. i. p. 390.> Moreover as the island continued changing,—continued slow changes, river, marshes, lakes, mountains &c. &c., new races as successively formed and a fresh occasional visitant. ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... company set out, in the autumn of 1018, and reached Carham on the Tweed, where they were met by Malcolm king of the Scots. A comet had been seen in the sky for some weeks and the fears inspired by this dread visitant seem to have had more effect upon the Northumbrians than upon the Scots. From whatever cause it arose, when the two forces joined in battle a panic spread among the followers of St. Cuthbert. They were utterly routed, and most of the leading Northumbrians as well as eighteen priests were slain—thus ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... that I was somewhat inquisitive as to the person and demeanor of our visitant. After a moment's pause, I stepped to the door and looked after him. Judge my surprise when I beheld the selfsame figure that had appeared a half-hour before upon the bank. My fancy had conjured up a very different image. A form and attitude and garb ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... Randall and demanded payment for his silence. His face still bore the placid expression of peace and contentment, while his eyes beamed their goodwill to all. Anyone observing his manner might have mistaken him for a visitant from another world, clothed in human fashion, and mingling for a time in the ways of men. Such was the outward appearance ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... industrial warfare between the unions and the employers has been replete with sordid details of selfishness, corruption, hatred, suspicion, and malice. In every community the strike or the boycott has been an ominous visitant, leaving in its trail a social bitterness which even time finds it difficult to efface. In the great cities and the factory towns, the constant repetition of labor struggles has created centers of perennial discontent which are sources of never-ending reprisals. In spite of individual ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... two rows back, was a strange young man who shone among the cud-chewing citizens like a visitant from the sun-amber curls, low forehead, fine nose, chin smooth but not raw from Sabbath shaving. His lips startled her. The lips of men in Gopher Prairie are flat in the face, straight and grudging. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... to the straggling W formed by the five chief stars of Cassiopeia. There is a star not very far from the place here indicated, but rather nearer to the middle angle of the W. This, however, is not a bright star; and cannot possibly be mistaken for the expected visitant. (The place of Tycho's star is indicated in my School Star-Atlas and also in my larger Library Atlas. The same remark applies to both the new stars in the Serpent-Bearer, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... had been witnesses of the magician's supernatural skill. On the next day of consultation, the necromancer being in the chair, and his friend behind the curtain, the outward door was scarce opened, when a female visitant flounced in, and discovered to the magician the features of one of those inquisitive ladies, whose curiosity, he knew, his confederate had aroused in the matter above described. She addressed herself to him with a familiar air, observing, that she had heard much of his great knowledge, and was ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... night the two young men had seen the thing, and their hour for turning in had long since passed as they lay half reclining on the ground by their campfire waiting, hoping that it would return once more. Their interest in the strange visitant had completely banished all sensations of fatigue from a full day of vacation fishing in the cold Adirondack streams among which they ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... the people to make the necessary sacrifices for the support of the Government and the defence of the country. In peaceful times and in an ordinary state of affairs, it may be admitted that the tax-gatherer is an unwelcome visitant. Mr. Jefferson relied upon him in 1799 to bring about a change of parties and administrations. But the country was then poor, the parties equally divided, and the political issues matters of temper and theory, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... pensant la vie de bruit et d'insouciance que j'avais mene jusqu'alors. Ce que je trouvai de plus pnible, ce fut de m'habituer passer les soires de printemps et d'hiver dans une solitude complte. Jusqu'au dner, je parvenais tant bien que mal tuer le temps, causant avec le staroste, visitant mes ouvriers, examinant mes constructions nouvelles. Mais, aussitt qu'il commenait faire sombre, je ne savais plus que devenir. Je connaissais par coeur le petit nombre de livres que j'avais trouvs dans les armoires et dans le ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen

... moral law than he has ever put in practice; if it be true that the imbruted child of vice and pollution knows more of God and the moral law than he has ever put in practice; how much more fearfully true is it that the dweller in a Christian home, the visitant of the house of God, the possessor of the written Word, the listener to prayer and oftentimes the subject of it, possesses an amount of knowledge respecting his origin, his duty, and his destiny, that infinitely outruns his character and his conduct. ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... the desire to accost the dread presence, or a command of the ancient Greek, after a bit Mr. Smitz turned off the gas and the noises that had heralded the visitant's appearance began in reverse order, and at their cease, the gas being turned on again, there was the circle quite bare of any evidence that a Greek warrior in full panoply had but ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... Apprentice," in a purely moral sentiment; but this is just what our artist cannot bring himself to do. He must have that touch of nature, and of humour, which makes the whole world kin. He must introduce the quarrelling cat and dog into the office scene between West and Goodchild, or the feline visitant whose apparition through the chimney disturbs Thomas Idle's unhallowed slumbers; he must accentuate the gormandising guests in the Sheriff's banquet, and the humours of the crowd even in a Tyburn execution. And in other subjects—where the moral lesson is ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton

... apparent willingness to wait through the period of an unpromising engagement, till he should be established in his new pursuit, he could not but perceive at moments that she loved him rather as a visitant from a gay world to which she rightly belonged than as a man with a purpose opposed to that recent past of his which so interested her. Often at their meetings a word or a sigh escaped her. It meant that, though she made no conditions ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... well-being in bed. And here, of course, you will understand pleasurable sensations; for overmastering pain—the most deadly and tragical element in life, and the true commander of man's soul and body—alas! pain has its own way with all of us; it breaks in, a rude visitant, upon the fairy garden where the child wanders in a dream, no less surely than it rules upon the field of battle, or sends the immortal war-god whimpering to his father; and innocence, no more than philosophy, can protect us from this sting. As ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... characteristic of Rossetti that he addressed me in the following terms probably before I had left his house: for the letter was, no doubt, written in that interval of sleeplessness which he had spoken of as his nightly visitant: ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... you have a ghost in this beautiful old place, or a secret staircase, or at least a bogy of some sort? Do not spoil the romantic look of it by telling me you have no tale of terror to impart, no history of a ghostly visitant who walks these halls at ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"

... in a dress of some soft snowy shining fabric, neither silk nor crape, with white starry jasmines in her raven hair and upon her bosom, Regina seemed some angelic visitant sent to still the strife of human passions, so lovely and pure was her colourless face; and as General Laurance looked up at her, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... himself, and thridded his soft, light hair with his slender fingers. He was satisfied with his success in conveying an impression of the sort of care he took of his reputation. "Now, then, I was left alone again, in no pleasant frame of mind. I couldn't doubt what my beautiful visitant had told me, and the thought of my murder all planned out was depressing, to say the least of it. But, as sure as I am telling you, the departure of my unknown friend depressed me more than the thought of my ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... girl, fancied during the night that she saw something stirring in her bed-room. In the idea that the ghost would attack her head rather than her feet, she tied up her feet in her bonnet- de-nuit, put them upon the pillow, and her head under the quilt—a novel way of cheating a spiritual visitant. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... with the sight of Mrs Mair's pale thin cheeks and tear reddened eyes. As suddenly, however, an indwelling demon of her own house, whose name was Envy, arose from the ashes of her hearth to meet the white robed visitant: Phemy, poor little harmless thing, was safe enough! who would harm a hair of her? but Lizzy! And this woman had taken in the fugitive from honest chastisement! She would yet have sought another seat but the congregation rose to sing; and her neighbour's offer of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... his hearers understand at times the folly or perversity of their behaviour. He told his congregation that he had had a vision, and had gone up to the gateway of heaven, where S. Peter stood as Warder. No pleased smile had he for the visitant, but a frown of stern displeasure. "Athanasius," said he, "why are you continually sending me these empty bags, carefully sealed up, with nothing inside?" It was one of the piercing sayings we meet with in Christian antiquity, when these things were real to Christian men, and ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... old spice; a stickler for decorum would have said that she was decidedly improved, that she had grown more womanly; and something of this change appeared also in her work, which tended now to the graceful rather than the grotesque. She received her fashionable visitant with off-hand friendliness, not altogether ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... guessed happily in saying to him that to offer to paint Gabriel Nash would be the way to get rid of that visitant. It was with no such invidious purpose indeed that our young man proposed to his intermittent friend to sit; rather, as August was dusty in the London streets, he had too little hope that Nash would remain in town at such a time to oblige him. Nick had no wish ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... such thing as separation. We shall draw from our little box a small white packet, and, though Nostradamus may offer us every secret of magician or alchemist in exchange for it, we shall refuse offhand. How shall he lure us with a shadow, a ghostly visitant, savoring of the pit and summoned only by the most marrow-freezing incantations? Here in our hand is a mysterious, more potent charm, bringing us the warm, human personality of the man. We are not spiritualists, yet here sealed in the white packet is an incorporal presence. Given but ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... the fen came to St. Guthlac, and he fed them after their kind; how the ravens tormented him, stealing letters, gloves, and what not, from his visitors; and then, seized with compunction at his reproofs, brought them back, or hanged them on the reeds; and how, as Wilfrid, a holy visitant, was sitting with him, discoursing of the contemplative life, two swallows came flying in, and lifted up their song, sitting now on the saint's hand, now on his shoulder, now on his knee; and how, when Wilfrid wondered thereat, Guthlac made ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... patience and persistence are his! Always waiting, always prepared, cherishing no resentments, willing to lead, anxious to welcome, who is he, and whence came he? If Mrs. Dillingham did not pray, she had a vision of this heavenly visitant, and kissed the hem of ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... them from heaven brought a precious gift to the warriors in the white plumes which she shed at the visit. Every warrior, as he approached the spot where they fell, picked up a feather of snowy white to adorn his crown; and the celestial visitant thus became the means of furnishing the aspirants of military fame with an emblem which was held in the highest estimation. Succeeding generations imbibed the custom from this incident to supply themselves with a plumage approaching ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... take me unaware, When most with lesser things my brain is wrought, As in some nimble interchange of thought The silence enters, and the talkers stare. Suddenly I am still and thou art there, A viewless visitant and unbesought, And all my thinking trembles into nought And all my being opens like a prayer. Thou art the lifted Chalice in my soul, And I a dim church at the thought of thee; Brief be the moment, but the mass is said, The benediction like an aureole Is on my spirit, and shuddering through ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... a son, nine or ten years old, to whom Caroline Campbell had occasionally made such gaudy present as were likely to attract his savage fancy. This won the child's affections, so that he became a familiar visitant, almost an inmate of their dwelling, and, being unrestrained by the courtesies of civilized life, he would inspect everything which came in his way. Some poison, prepared for a mischievous fox which had ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... Finches, and Flycatchers; while, soaring above all, a little withdrawn and alone, rises the divine soprano of the Hermit. That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch, and which unpractised ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius. As I come up under the tree he casts his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various



Words linked to "Visitant" :   traveler, boulevardier, guest, traveller, invitee, visiting fireman, visit, company



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com