"Fascination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attracted a fuller audience than had yet assembled in the hall. It lasted three whole days; but only a few fragments of his speech are extant, and scarcely any one of those in existence convey any notion of the fascination which, it is said, that his oratory exercised over those who heard him. One of the most beautiful portions of his speech related to the correspondence of the governor and his agent. It reads thus:—"When I see in many of these letters the infirmities of age made a subject of mockery and ridicule; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... an air of mingled hearty kindness and feudal ownership. I could excuse the latter, for Utah belongs to him of right. He may justly say of it, "Is not this great Babylon which I have built?" His sole executive tact and personal fascination are the key-stone of the entire arch of Mormon society. While he remains, eighty thousand (and increasing) of the most heterogeneous souls that could be swept together from the by-ways of Christendom will continue builded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... a wave over a slope of sand. And there is a house with red gables where the girls are still on the tennis lawn. John walked through the town; he told the doctor he must go at once to the rectory. He walked to Leywood and left his letter with the lodge-keeper; and then, as if led by a strange fascination, he passed through the farm gate and set out to ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... from their essential grace and dignity, but from a sense of power they impress upon the beholder. This sense of unused power, this certainty that he is not making an effort and doing his utmost, but that behind all this strength of fascination there are other treasures of strength, other stores of ability not brought into use, possibly never brought into use, is perhaps what constitutes the supreme charm of his oratory. He speaks as if with little preparation, and with that ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... watching with a certain sense of fascination the wild, disease-stricken face, listening to the man's breathless periods. It seemed that the fear of death, which had gotten hold of him, gave Victor Durnovo no time to pause ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... throat, while he gazed with flashing eyes upon the pair before him; yes, with such a glance as Satan regarded our first parents ere sin had exiled them from Paradise, and destroyed the holy beauty of innocence. He attempted to quit his place of concealment, but a strange fascination, a horrible curiosity, rooted him ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... hard for me to describe what a fascination there is in campaigning against death in those special extraordinary cases where the doctor becomes something more than a man of science and is also a man of affections. It is impossible to describe the irritation of being unable to act in cases like Virginia's—cases where the fight is made between ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... sublime or beautiful, satisfies the aesthetic sense; but that is akin to the sexual instinct, and shares its barbarity: he lays before you also the greater gift of himself. To pursue his secret has something of the fascination of a detective story. It is a riddle which shares with the universe the merit of having no answer. The most insignificant of Strickland's works suggests a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it is this surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... himself when he was at home, and did it well. He knew the qualities of each field, and the rotation of its crops. No improvement in agriculture and no ingenious invention escaped his attention, although he was not to be carried away by mere novelty, which had such a fascination for his ex-secretary at Monticello. Every resource of his estate was turned to good use, and his flour and tobacco commanded absolute confidence with his brand upon them. He followed in the same ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... rough portages. It ate out of my hand and rubbed its woolly head against my leggings. To my dismay, I found that I was beginning to love it for its own sake and without any ulterior motives. The thought of killing and eating it became more and more painful to me, until at length the fatal fascination was complete, and my trip became practically an exercise of devotion to that sheep. I carried it everywhere and ministered fondly to its wants. Not for the world would I have alluded to mutton in its presence. And when we returned to civilisation ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... innocent of such reprehensible tendencies, must nevertheless make an effort to understand the delights of robbery considered as a fine art. Some cynics there are who will tell us that the only reason we are not all thieves is because we have not pluck enough; and there must certainly be some fascination, apart from natural depravity or original sin, to make a man prefer to run countless risks in an unlawful pursuit sooner than do an honest day's work. And in this sentence we have the answer: It is precisely the risk, the uncertainty, the danger, the sense of superior skill and ingenuity, that ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... that," the military secretary said, with a smile. "I can quite realize the fascination of the life of a partisan leader; especially when he has, which Trant and the others have not, a body of men whom he has trained himself, and upon whom he can absolutely rely. You can still, of course, wear the uniform of a field officer on the general's staff, ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... not difficult to perceive the fascination which Voltaire, with this character and this unrivalled splendour of public position, would have for a man like Condorcet. He conceived the warmest attachment to Voltaire, and Voltaire in turn the highest respect for him. Their correspondence ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... Elza stared with the fascination of horror, for now tiny tongues of flame were licking about. Blue tongues, licking the air, vanishing into ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... explosive sound, causing the crowd to jump back several steps. Quarters fell from the mouth of the machine, slowly at first, then at an alarming rate. The coins fell, bounced and rolled all over the floor. The crowd gulped with fascination. ...
— Jubilation, U.S.A. • G. L. Vandenburg
... of Northern Democrats. Lincoln's Plan for Emancipation in the District of Columbia. His Bill Fails to Receive Consideration. A Similar Bill Signed by Him Fifteen Years Later. Logan Nominated for Congress and Defeated. Lincoln an Applicant for Office. The Fascination of Washington ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... had known Coleridge well, declared that as a conversationalist on varied topics Professor Albert Dodd was his superior. When in the pulpit, or in the lengthened "addresses" of lecturing, there was a marvellous fascination in his voice—an Italian witch, or red Indian, or a gypsy would have at once recognised in him a sorcerer. Yet his manner was subdued, his voice monotonous, never loud, a running stream without babbling stones or rapids; but when it came to a climax cataract he cleared ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... make fatuous suggestions, to wonder, or merely to look on with feelings approaching awe and fascination. There was something uncanny here—a soldier and athlete weeping and screaming and going into fits at the sight of a harmless grass-snake, probably a mere blind worm! Was he a hysterical, neurotic ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... poor child, could she have looked beyond, she might have seen cause for thankfulness that the thing most hotly desired was withheld for this early love had not root enough for the wear and tear of life. It was a hob day romance, born of the senses, the bewildering fascination of a graceful presence and winning voice, and well for her if her guardian angel stood with even a flaming sword in ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... the whole business, but insensibly the fascination of it crept over him. He grew used to hearing the various forms of protest, of argument and abuse, which one and all left Wingrave so unmoved. Sphinx-like he lounged in his chair, and listened to all. He never condescended to justify his position, he never met argument by argument. He had the ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... face, unable to bear it. When she turned her miserable eyes toward them again, allured by some strange fascination she was powerless to analyse, Edith was in his arms, her mouth ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... have a fascination though for Jack Penny, who sat down on the edge and dangled his long legs over the rock, amusing himself by throwing down pieces of stone on to larger pieces below, so as to see them ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... sort of fascination to that tirade of venomous mockery. But now I stirred, and pulled the casement open. I peered down into the darkness and hesitated. The wall was creeper-clad to the window's height; but I feared the frail tendrils ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... for my name while my talents went to waste, I was free to go anywhere I pleased, but I had little desire to leave the vicinity of the grass. It exerted upon me, more understandably, the same fascination as on ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... powerful figure of Sergeant Whitley showed through the hot haze of smoke. The back of Warner's hand had been grazed by a bullet. He had not noticed it himself, but the slow drip, drip of the blood held Dick for a moment with a sort of hideous fascination. Then he broke his gaze violently away and turned it upon the enemy, who were pouring upon them in ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was helped in his self-given task— To struggle with ill humours and with pride— Far more by her new gentleness and grace Than he had been by waywardness and scorn And fitful fascination, as of old. To help Torm was her life's new quest, and well Did ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... wished to know, she told me the story, the whole miserable story, that I'd heard enough of to suspect. Why she'd married the other man she couldn't explain herself, except that it was a woman's whim—I had stayed away and he had come the oftener—part pique and part the man's dare-devil fascination, I reckon; but a month had shown her how she really stood, and had shown him, too. Likewise, she saw the sort of man he was and the kind of life he lived. At last he got rough and cruel to her, trying every way to break her spirit; and even the baby didn't stop him—it made him ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... the farmers too, and money which ought to have gone to buy stock, or for the rent, was lost at that table. Of course some of them won occasionally, and considerable sums, for them, too; that formed the fascination of it. ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... to be yourself again. Forget this moment of fascination, and rise afresh to your old strength and wisdom. I am willing to forget ... whatever has happened—I don't ask what. I am ready to wipe it all away, just as ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... intellectual and world-weary man, a cynic whose heart was somewhat imbittered by its large experience of human nature, take up one of Oliver Optic's books and read it at a sitting, neglecting his work in yielding to the fascination of the pages. When a mature and exceedingly well-informed mind, long despoiled of all its freshness, can thus find pleasure in a book for boys, no additional words of recommendation ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... I could play like that! What is more common than this exclamation from people who are listening to a great virtuoso or even only to a fairly clever amateur? They realize that, no matter how much they may enjoy a performance, there is much greater fascination in being the performer. Not a musical person but would play if he could. Why, however, that "if"? It no longer exists. It has been eliminated. The charm, the fascination of playing a musical instrument yourself can be yours, and the only "if" to it is—if you have intelligence enough ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... be able to govern yourself when you let Christ govern you. The glories that are to be done away, that gleam round you like foul, flaring tallow-candles, will lose all their fascination and brightness, by reason of the glory that excelleth, the pure starlike splendour of the white ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... upon rather against the advice of Cale, who had offered to curl and powder his own hair in an imitation of the prevailing mode. But Tom would not be denied the fashionable peruke. He had spent the best part of each day seated behind a screen in Cale's inner shop, listening in a species of fascination and amaze to the talk of the young dandies who daily resorted thither. Cale told him that he would thus best learn something of the language and gossip of the day, and be better able to hold his own when he went abroad; and Tom already felt that he ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... her own war-mongers. In any case he might have led the Unionist Party towards construction and so have prevented the slap-dash methods at reform set going by Mr. Lloyd George after a long and irritating period of Tory pottering. For few men in modern times have exercised so great a fascination over that curious and easily satisfied body, the House of Commons, and no man in the public life of our times has enjoyed a more powerful prestige in the constituencies. Indeed, he stood for many years as the most dignified and honourable figure ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... of the Father of Swords. The eyes of that old man of the mountain remained opaque as ever, save when he rebuked the almoner who sat at meat with him for indecorously quoting the lines of Sadi, when he says: "Such was this delicate crescent of the moon, and fascination of the holy, this form of an angel, and decoration of a peacock, that let them once behold her, and continence must cease to exist in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... her old antagonist equal annoyance. It further struck her that, engrossed in her plans for her daughter, Lady Mary would probably totally overlook any flirtation of her son's. There is a species of fascination in countermining difficult to resist; and, though of course she would have in some measure to be guided by events, Mrs. Wriothesley had pretty well determined upon ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... aesthetically. In his types there is much sweetness of soul, charm of disposition, dignity of mien, even grandeur and majesty of presence. His people we would like to know better. They are full of life, intelligence, sympathy; they have fascination of manner, winsomeness of mood, grace of bearing. We see this in his best-known work—the Mona Lisa of the Louvre. It has much allurement of personal presence, with a depth and abundance of soul ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... to say that dark men always had a peculiar fascination for me. I don't know what it is, but the ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... of the French had found their outlet in painting alone, we should have pictures of wonderful beauty, of a beauty moreover of a markedly different kind from that of the Italian or Spanish or Netherlandish pictures. But on the other hand we should have perhaps lost the amazing fascination of Chartres, and the delights of Limoges enamel ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... ready money and there were broad acres, ready to fall wholly to the husband, to lend dignity to his descendants, and to himself a title, when he should be called upon the Bench. On the side of Jean, there was perhaps some fascination of curiosity as to this unknown male animal that approached her with the roughness of a ploughman and the APLOMB of an advocate. Being so trenchantly opposed to all she knew, loved, or understood, he may well have seemed to her the extreme, if scarcely ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upstairs made her shrink back into her room, She had felt the horrible fascination of that sheer depth, and thought of it for days, thought of it until she dreaded to quit the tenement, lest a power distinct from will should seize and hurl her to destruction. She knew that that must not happen here; for ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... studies by Dussek, Cramer, the Inventions of Bach, etc., but before long the fascination of playing beautiful pieces was so great that he found it hard to ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... was Gabrielle he worshipped in them, Gabrielle to whom he offered up his prayers, his supplications. All that element in religion which gives to love the fascination of forbidden fruit appealed powerfully to his imagination. Unbeliever though he was, he loved the Magdalen's God and savoured the creed that has bestowed on lovers one amorous bliss the more—the bliss of losing ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... was obtainable—the Master's share came to L260—and then, laden with samples of ore, returned townward, with a view to selling their claims to mining capitalists, before starting out upon a second and more protracted journey. The fascination of the prospector's calling had gripped the Master strongly, and he gladly agreed to remain a member of the party. But, in the meantime, having reached the city, he had determined to pay a visit to Mr. Sandbrook's house, first, that he ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... who are describing any one of our more important cathedrals is to declare that altogether it may be fairly called the most beautiful. So great is the fascination exercised by continual study of a single mediaeval building which has escaped destruction, or over-restoration, that such a statement may be advanced in all good faith. In claiming, however, that the cloisters of Salisbury are on the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... his soul to the devil in return for complete gratification of his desires during his life on earth. Something of its fame is due to its association, through its main plot, with Goethe's masterpiece; something may be attributed to the fascination of its theme; something must be granted to the terrible force of one or two scenes. It is hard to believe that its own artistic and dramatic qualities could have secured unaided the reputation which it appears to possess among some critics. More ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... herself up to the fascination of the scene. She had never been in rooms so perfectly lighted, with such a floor, such exquisite music, and so many pretty and well-bred looking people, and she gave herself up to enjoy it with all her ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... when young, was gifted with a peculiar fascination which, as we have seen, had not altogether vanished with age. Consequently she had many lovers, among them two brothers, Frank and Andrew Postlethwaite. The latter was the older, the handsomer, and the most prosperous ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... by his writings increased the prevailing fascination for occult knowledge and pushed this particular line of speculation into an acute stage. He was a man of large learning and of heroic temper, and, possessed as he was of undoubted gifts, in a different period and in a different environment he would, no doubt, have played a notable part in the development ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... glories of a grand military ball at Knightsbridge, at which she had been present, and some private theatricals and tableaux that had followed. She had a vivid, picturesque way of describing things, and Bessie listened with a sort of dreamy fascination that lulled her into forgetfulness ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... history of a trim life of which she knew absolutely nothing. The orderly, well-dressed servants, the punctual meals, the good and abundant food, the nice dresses, the parties, the solid education, the discipline so foreign to her own existence, all—all held their proper fascination. But although she listened with delight to these stories of a bygone time, she never envied her mother those periods of prosperity. Such a life would have been a prison to her; so she thought, although she never ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... Muldoon stared in fascination for another minute, then carefully made his way back to the car. He had parked it within the growth of scrub trees and bushes. He started it, turned the headlights on, and drove slowly out into the open and up to the shack. He honked his horn loudly a couple of ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer
... hardly tell what was the fascination for me. It was certainly not the view of the mountains, though mountains are beyond words in my affections. The truth is, the Rocky Mountains, many of them, need a certain distance to make them either ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... led to the accumulation of a small pile of letters on his desk. He sat down and began to work them off. The addresses continued to exercise a fascination for him. He was miles away from the office, speculating on what sort of a man J. B. Garside, Esq, was, and whether he had a good time at his house in Worcestershire, when somebody tapped him on ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... the magic word "credit" loomed in letters of gold before me. I was aware of the fascination of check-books, so, being armed with one, I expected to be able to buy things, in some cases, at least, without having to pay for them at once. Besides, my bank might be induced to grant me a loan. Then, too, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... me among those wonderful kings' graves in Cracow was personally not uninteresting, indeed a fine study, and his rigmaroles brought up infallibly upon three words which I could not fail to notice: these were "silberner Sarg vergoldet" (silver coffin, gilded). It had an odd fascination for me this phrase, as I stood always waiting for it; why, I wondered, should anybody want to gild ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... things to have, to wear, and to eat, advertised in the same kind, fatherly way, that I felt as if I had unconsciously yearned for each one of them more than for anything else in my life, and now it had been put into my head in all its fatal fascination, I couldn't possible exist another day without sending for it, to one in that procession of noble, self-sacrificing, American advertisers. I felt, too, that if anything disagreeable should happen to me, like a railway or motor car ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... that governments should keep on surpassing in the anguish they inflict the atrocity of the cruelest murderers. If the Salem-born Hawthorne ever visited that church in remembrance of the fact that his people came from the same parish; if he saw the mortal relic which held me in such fascination that I could scarcely leave the place even when the glass box had been locked back to its cupboard, and if the spirits of the dead sometimes haunt their dust, there must have been a reciprocal intelligence between the dead and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... knew that Marjorie adored Eric, and that whatever pets of his happened to be in vogue had the strongest fascination for her. Nevertheless she did lie down on the sofa, and her little pupil's gentle hand felt all that was delightful and soothing as it touched her brow. When Marjorie stole out of the room, Miss Nelson had ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... he agreed eagerly, his eyes burning like two coals of fire, so intense was his interest. "I have been from boyhood," he added, noticing my glance, "a lover of tales of mystery. They have for me a fascination I cannot explain; there is in my blood something that responds to them. I feel sometimes that I would have made a great detective—or a great criminal. Instead of which, I am merely a dealer in curios. You can understand how I am fascinated by a ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... matter, it would enable me to choose with my eyes open—and I should make a good husband in spite of it; but could any one be in love with me?—that's the question. With your good looks and powers of fascination" (he was pleased to say), "I might hope; but as it is, Huntingdon, do you think anybody would take me—ruined and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... startling. She had his dark, smiling eyes; his wavy brown hair; her very manner of speech was like his. To David Windom, she was the re-incarnation of the youth he had slain. Out of her eyes seemed to look the soul of Edward Crown. He could not stand it. She became an obsession, a curious source of fascination. He could not bear her out of his sight, and yet when she was with him, smiling up into his eyes,—he was deathly afraid of her. There were times when he was almost overcome by the impulse to drop to his knees and plead for forgiveness as he looked into ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sweeny at the foot of the ladders, with instructions to let none of the women descend, Thurstane hastened back to the exterior wall, drawn by a horrible fascination. With his field-glass he could distinguish every action of the tragedy which was being enacted on the plain. Pepita, entirely stripped of her clothing, was already bound to the sapling which stood by the side of the rivulet, and twenty or thirty ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... book you read last year fell in love with when he was a boy, (as you remember, no doubt,)—handsome as she is, fit for a sea-king's bride, it is not her beauty alone that holds my eyes upon her. Let me tell you one of my fancies, and then you will understand the strange sort of fascination she has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... thought) false. The whole man looked sick with some unknown anxiety: and as he stood there, unconscious of my observation, he tore at his nails, scowled on the floor, or glanced suddenly, sharply, and fearfully at passers-by. I was still gazing at the man in a kind of fascination, when the sale began. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... concluded to postpone this until a future visit. Max, however, having once laid hold of the gridiron, seemed extremely loath to part with it again, and, finally yielding to the irresistible fascination which it evidently had for him, he threw it over his shoulder as we started on our return, and brought it away with him. Having been fastidiously purified by repeated scourings and ablutions, it proved very useful in preparing our meals, of which fresh fish frequently ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... outpost-duty on an island, however large, the main-land has all the fascination of forbidden fruit, and on a scale bounded only by the horizon. Emerson says that every house looks ideal until we enter it,—and it is certainly so, if it be just the other side of the hostile lines. Every grove ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... reply; but, still gazing wildly upon Emily, exclaimed, 'It is her very self! Oh! there is all that fascination in her look, which proved my destruction! What would you have—what is it you came to demand—Retribution?—It will soon be yours—it is yours already. How many years have passed, since last I saw you! My crime is but as yesterday.—Yet I am grown ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... that fascination very keenly, and the mountains and the forests seemed to be always calling him and commanding him to return to them. The follies and the faults of men and the baseness of human nature, of which, of course, the practice of his ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... incurring a charge of presumption, to address you principally on that profound and most subtle question, the nature and mode of formation of the photographic image. I am impelled to do so, not only because the subject is full of fascination and hopefulness, but because the wide topics of photographic methods or photographic applications would be quite unfittingly handled by the president ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... blank eyes upon,—a Creole woman, sir, in New Orleans. And this woman had a scar,—a line extending, blank me, from her eye to her blank chin. And this woman, sir, thrilled you, sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent your blank soul to perdition with her blank fascination! And one day I said to her, 'Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar, blank you?' And she said to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man that I'd confide in but you; but I made that scar myself, purposely, I did, blank me.' These were her very words, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... somewhat busy man, but both he and his partner seem to have suspended their energies this morning," he said. "No doubt wild-beast taming has its fascination, but one might fancy it was apt to prove a somewhat disconcerting ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... you now follow this work because of its fascination—for you must have found and laid aside much treasure in the years that you ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... about all this," he said. "I am just beginning to see that you have a most dangerous power of fascination. I could understand it with old Giles, but I must admit that I thought ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... mean temperature. Prayer-books and French novels (imported, as wanted, for there is not a book-store in the city) are the alpha and the omega of their literature; Paris is considered the centre of civilization. They are comely, but not beautiful; Venus has given her girdle of fascination to few. Sensible of ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... not bear the 'Tannhauser;' it seems to paint with a fatal fascination the beauty of wickedness, the rightness, so to speak, of sensuality. I feel after it as if I had been yielding to a luscious ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... news of interest to-day. A letter says the non-combatants, even the women and children, heedless of danger, were voluntary spectators of the bombardment of Vicksburg the other day. The shells often exploded near them, and behind them, but the fascination was so great that they remained on the ground; even one had an arm carried away by a ball! Can such ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... only time I ever saw her lose her self-possession. She was always remarkably calm and resolute, but now I could see that she trembled. Still we sat there—there was a sort of fascination as our imaginations became more and more excited. Presently some rain-drops began to fall. The Indians continued their dance for a few minutes longer, then, with whoopings and shoutings, they rushed simultaneously towards the house. We fled into my apartment and closed the door, which ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... show his gift and his growing skill, and he found a welcome fast enough. Before he had advanced beyond his stripling youth, his untutored facility had gained a rude mastery over the instrument; he played with a sort of fascination and spontaneity that endeared his art to his uncritical audiences, and his endowment was held as something wonderful. And now it was that Laure-lia, hearing him, far away in the open air, play once a plaintive, melodic strain, ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... it has occurred to many Americans to ask why all the belligerents in this present war are showing such remarkable deference to American public opinion. Some Americans may, of course, believe that it is the sheer personal fascination of individual Americans or simple tenderness of moral feeling that makes Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Austria take definitely so much trouble at a time when they have sufficient already, to demonstrate that they have taken the right course, that they are obeying ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... her voice was low and singularly sweet, her eyes were beautiful, she could not do an ungraceful thing, she was altogether like a bright, flashing meteor, and soon she began to exercise an extraordinary fascination both over Bessie Challoner and Gwin Harley. Having got over her first astonishment, Gwin began to take a sincere interest in the pretty stranger. The lovely expression of her coral lips made her long to ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... substantial features and elements of beauty still remain, the crags and woody steeps, the lake, "its one green island and its winding shores; the multitude of little rocky hills." Wordsworth was not the first poet to feel its fascination. Gray visited the Lakes in the autumn of 1769, and coming into the vale of Grasmere from the north-west, declared it to be one of the sweetest landscapes that art ever attempted to imitate, an unsuspected paradise of peace and rusticity. We cannot indeed compare ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... us the staple of our vocabulary in every domain of thought and knowledge. Politics, tyranny, democracy, anarchism, philosophy, physiology, geology, history—these are all Greek words. It has seized and up to the present day kept hold of our higher education. It has exercised an unfailing fascination, even on minds alien or hostile. Rome took her culture thence. Young Romans completed their education in the Greek schools.... And so it was with natures less akin to Greece than the Roman. St. Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, who called the wisdom of the Greeks foolishness, was ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... in the mirror remained at her window for a long time, and Laurie watched her in growing fascination. It was not until she rose and disappeared that he felt moved to consider so sordid a question as that ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... charity was joined to a philosophical indulgence for the failings of human nature. But the memory of those miserably anxious early years, his young man's years robbed of all generous illusions by the cynicism of the sordid lawsuit, stood in the way of forgiveness. He never succumbed to the fascination of the great shoot; and X, his heart set to the last on reconciliation, with the draft of the will ready for signature kept by ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Delia unconcern'd surveys Her plumy captive, as he leans to sing, Lo! while she smiles, the fascination stays The little heaven ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... descent from Belbani, son of Adasi. The cause and incidents of the revolution which raised Sargon to the throne are unknown, but we may surmise that the policy adopted with regard to Karduniash was a factor in the case. Tiglath-pileser had hardly entered Babylon before the fascination of the city, the charm of its associations, and the sacred character of the legends which hallowed it, seized upon his imagination; he returned to it twice in the space of two years to "take the hands ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Henry II. his mistress entered into possession of full power. The absolute sway of Diana of Poitiers over this weakest of French kings was due to her strong mind, great ability, wide experience, fascination of manner, and to that exceptional beauty which she preserved to her old age. Immediately upon coming into power, she dispatched the Duchesse d'Etampes to one of her estates and at the same time forced her to restore the jewels which she had received from Francis I., a usual procedure ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... take you long," she repeated, "either of you. It was the swiftest case of fascination that I ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... of molten metal, mantling and bubbling, how it is impressed upon my memory! It is a vestige of the ancient cosmic fire that once wrapped the whole globe in its embrace. It had a kind of brutal fascination. One could not take one's eyes from it. That network of broad, jagged, fiery lines defining those black, smooth masses, or islands, of floating matter told of a side of nature we had never before seen. We lingered there on the brink ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... a strange fascination about stealing, Tom," he continued, "for, you see, quite half of that ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... girls, you will not do any of these things unless you have much leisure, and an eager thirst for knowledge. Some new fascination— society and pleasures—or special duties and pressing occupations will drive the fervid desires of your school-days quite from your hearts, or make it impossible for you to gratify them. At any rate, in attempting to pursue all these studies, you will find that ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... stood before him, humble with the proud humility of one who has everything to give and nothing to receive; chaste with that pure ignorance which refuses to know what it cannot condone, and withal a perfect woman, imbued with a fascination which no man had ever been able to resist, for it was the fascination of youthful loveliness combined with the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... priests have rather a fascination for me— when they are not Englishmen. I should say that the best North Italian priests are more openly tolerant than our English clergy generally are. I remember picking up one who was walking along a road, and giving him a lift ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... aspect; each night, ere we retire to sleep, we find ourselves inevitably drawn to watch the glare thrown by the molten lava within the crater upon the thick vapour overhead. The nightly expectation of this aerial bonfire possesses an extraordinary fascination for the stranger. Some times the lurid glare is continuous; at other times there are long intervals of waiting, and even then the reflected light is very faint, a mere speck of reddish glow in the surrounding blackness, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... before seen the familiar realities of school life thus brought low and lying in inglorious disorder at his feet. It gave him a feeling of triumph and had a fascination for him. Damp smelling books were here and there among the ruins, histories, arithmetics, algebras and grammars. He could tread upon these with his valiant heel. A huge roll call book (ah, how well he knew it even in the darkness) lay ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... subsequent discontent, when the absence of the fitful sun had entirely changed the scene, leaving only the damp dirty town, and a grey space, where the concealed giants shrouded themselves, sometimes for weeks together. People generally are so impressed at first, by the fascination of the coup d'oeil, that they hasten to take a house which they cannot engage for less than six months, or, if for three, the price is advanced; fearing to miss the opportunity of settling themselves, they seldom hesitate about the terms, which are generally ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... was the word Thrift which was out in the streets walking arm in arm with righteousness, the inseparable companion and backer up of all such national catch-words, looking everybody in the eye as it were. The very drabs of the pavement, poor things, didn't escape the fascination... However! ... Well the greatest portion of the press were screeching in all possible tones, like a confounded company of parrots instructed by some devil with a taste for practical jokes, that the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... interview, and his sudden disappointment, which he now blushed to recollect. It seemed to him as if some magician must have laid a spell upon his eyes, that he did not see even in that darkness how lovely a face Mercy had, did not feel even through all the embarrassment and strangeness the fascination of her personal presence. Then he dwelt lingeringly on the picture, which had never faded from his brain, of his next sight of her, as she sat on the old stone wall, with the gay maple-leaves and blackberry-vines in her lap. From that day to the present, he had ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... ye o' that for a beauty?" said Forsyth. Ruby's eyes, being set free from the fascination of the owl's stare, now made him aware of the fact that hundreds of birds of all kinds—crows, magpies, sparrows, tomtits, owls, larks, mavises, blackbirds, &c. &c.—were fluttering round the lantern outside, apparently bent on ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Fatal fascination of the opium habit.—What has been said of alcoholic drink is equally true of opium. The habit of using opium is easy to form and almost impossible to break. The secret workings of this poison upon the mind and will of its victim are most ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... and the rest of the party laughed as I added: "Only to pay back what I owe; and we are making slow progress in that direction. Still, the work has its fascination, and it will last and be useful after ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... conscience with the purest brightness, and, as was said by one of the ancients, if it could reveal itself to our eyes in a sensible form, it would excite in our souls feelings of inexpressible love. Vice is ugly when once stripped of the delusive fascination of the passions; the vicious excesses of the lower nature are ugly and repulsive as soon as the intoxication is over. Error is ugly too; there are no beautiful errors but those which contain a larger portion of truth ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... marriage of genius and well-cut cloth, he was painting very well indeed. His shoulders were beautiful and broad; a long neck, a tiny head, a narrow, thin face, and large eyes, full of intelligence and fascination. And although he could not have been working more than an hour, he had already sketched in his figure, and with all the surroundings—screens, lamps, stoves, etc. I was deeply interested. I asked the young lady ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... giving him an understanding body of readers. He had much of the power in which Stevenson was so supreme—that power of remembering accurately and giving full expression to the points of view of childhood. The perennial fascination of the circus as in "The Circus Day Parade" illustrates this particularly well. "The Treasures of the Wise Man" represents another class of Mr. Riley's poems in which he moralizes in a fashion that ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... this terrible and beautiful work of art. This, I think, is a meaning inherent in it—not perhaps the meaning, and still less all the meanings. Indeed, its peculiar fascination for me, among all Ibsen's works, lies in the fact that it seems to touch life at so many different points. But I must not be understood as implying that Ibsen constructed the play with any such definitely allegoric design as is here set forth. I do not believe that ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... my chair. Dorothy rose, too, trembling. A strange shyness seemed to hold us apart. She stood there, the forced smile stamped on her lips, watching me with the fascination of fear; and I steadied myself on the arm of my chair, looking deep into her eyes, seeking to recognize in her ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... and which is knit closer to man's heart than love of wife or kin or his own fair fortune. It had not come to him in the time of the hills' glory, but now on the brink of winter the far-off melancholy of the place and its infinite fascination seemed to clutch at his heart-strings. It was his own land, the place of his fathers; and now he must sever himself from it and carry ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... mastiff bitch and the tongue of flame that shot up as the lady passed—were they omens, or accidents which popular superstition interprets into omens? Was the malignant influence which Geraldine exerted over the maiden supernatural possession, or the fascination of terror and repugnance? Did she really utter the words of a charm, or did her sweet bedfellow dream them? And once more, what was that upon her breast—"that bosom old—that bosom cold"? Was it a wound, or the mark of a serpent, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... she is led away to change her bridal-dress for the journey. 'Tis approaching midnight and the "owl train" leaves within the hour; and they hang about the stairways waiting for her reappearance, and hover in mysterious fascination about Captain Ray as he comes in his travelling suit of mufti, and wonder why he should discard his uniform and sword, and the carriage is now at the door, and great store of rice and old slippers are ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... spider and the fly" enacted over again. We would but shudder to watch that wicked, sly, patient tarantula, coaxing, flattering, urging the poor little fly, whose bright wings are singed with his hot breath, and whose wonderful eyes are held fast by the fascination ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... voice had dropped into the rhythmic intonation of the Indian orator, and his eyes were fixed upon the names that curled, lean and red, among the dry sticks of the camp-fire. Chloe gazed in fascination into the rapt face of this man of many moods. The soul of the girl caught the enthusiasm of his words, and she, too, saw the vision—saw it as she had seen it upon the wave-lapped rock ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... nature, as, in the hatred of oppression, the revolt against abuse of power, and the war with injustice under every form displayed in his earliest books, to have reproduced itself only; and to what extent mere compassion for his own childhood may account for the strange fascination always exerted over him by child-suffering and sorrow. But, many as are the resemblances in Copperfield's adventures to portions of those of Dickens, and often as reflections occur to David which no one intimate with ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... secret—perhaps a horror. Most men, had they known all, would have wondered with good Doctor Walsingham, why, of all places in the world, he should have chosen the little town where he now stood for even a temporary residence. It was not a perversity, but rather a fascination. His whole life had been a flight and a pursuit—a vain endeavour to escape from the evil spirit that pursued him—and a chase ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... The fascination of the ballroom was utterly lost on Craig. "Think of all the houses only half guarded about here to-night," he mused, as we joined Armand and McNeill on the end of the dock. I could not help noting that that was the only ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... I likes it of all things. I can't abide a pipe no-how, but I've quite a prevalence (predilection?) for siggers." So Wiggins puffed and chatted away; and at last, delighted with the sprightly conversation of the lady, seated himself on the small-beer barrel, and so far forgot his economy in the fascination of his entertainer, that he purchased a second. At this favourable juncture, Mrs. Warner, (for she was a widow acknowledging five-and-twenty) ordered the grinning shop-boy, who was chopping the 'lump,' ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... wonderful fascination for the lads, for they came from the far-away and mysterious land of civilization of which Skipper Ed had told them so often and so much, and of which they had read so eagerly on long ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Sometimes the relatives alleged that a spell had been cast on the spirits consulted, which prevented their giving answers to interrogatories. In that case, magicians were employed to remove the fascination. A suspected murderer was submitted to a severe ordeal:—A particular liquid was poured upon the arm or thigh of the unfortunate person; but before the fluid was used it was boiled, while the supposed criminal's name was repeatedly mentioned. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... one who had not been born in Venice ever guess the strange fascination of that magic city for her sons, or dream with what a passion the blood of generations of Venetian ancestry surged in one's veins, compelling patriotism, so that it was not possible to do aught with one's gifts and life that did not enhance the greatness of so fair ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... isn't exactly that," she said quietly. "I am quite willing to admit what all the tourists and chance visitors call the fascination of these places. I happen to dislike them, that is all. Perhaps it is because I live here, because I see them day by day; perhaps because the sight of them and the thought of them have ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strong hold he has on the hearts of the American people, or the absorbing interest he possesses in the eyes of foreigners. The fact that in his own person he condenses a period of national history is a large factor in the fascination he exercises over others. He may fitly be named the "Last of the Great Scouts." He has had great predecessors. The mantle of Kit Carson has fallen upon his shoulders, and he wears it worthily. He has ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... Paris. He was divided from them by the vast mass of roofs about him, by a gulf of empty space, and beyond, by a dark blur—the two arms of the Seine flowing on either side of the Palais de Justice.... The mysterious darkness! The fascination of the sparkling points of light!... Fandor gave himself a mental shake.... This was no moment for ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... they were almost entirely naked, and had to bound, stoop, leap, and run in their terrible hand-to-hand encounters, they looked more like demons than human beings. I felt my heart grow sick at the sight of this bloody battle, and would fain have turned away, but a species of fascination seemed to hold me down and glue my eyes upon the combatants. I observed that the attacking party was led by a most extraordinary being, who, from his size and peculiarity, I concluded was a chief. His hair was frizzed out to an enormous extent, so that it resembled a large turban. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... been speaking impetuously, but he stopped as suddenly, for the senator was not listening to him. He had lowered his eyes and was looking with a glance of mingled fascination and disgust at Arkwright's hands. In his earnestness the young man had stretched them out, and as they showed behind the line of his ragged sleeves the others could see, even in the blurred light and falling snow, that the wrists of each hand were gashed ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... gaze from the landscape to the heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting canopy for the wonders of the earthly scene. My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination—it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... reminded one of a light woman, no longer young, who sought, with faded finery, with powder and paint, to make a brave show of despair. It had those false, difficult smiles of uneasy gaiety, and the pitiful graces which attempt a fascination that the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... members of his own communion, from which he still suffers. Arguing from the dislike and contempt of polemical demonstrations which that accomplished writer has ever shown, I must conclude that he was simply betrayed into a false step by the treacherous fascination of what is called the Philosophy of History, which is good in its place, but can scarcely be applied in cases where the Almighty has superseded the natural laws of society and history. From this he would have been saved, had he been a Catholic; but in the Establishment he knew of no teaching, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... it, John,' said Theodora, 'I must speak the truth. I see how it is. Men are not clear-sighted in judging of a pretty woman of engaging manners. They are under a fascination. I don't blame you—it is exactly the same ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lay in the eager offerings of other and less gifted men. Suffice it for him that at his beck the best of them would quit the shelter of other arms and come fluttering to his own. But now, of course, all this power of fascination must be sternly tempered, even suppressed. Henceforth he must be guarded. The winning of this pure young heart, the possession of this sweet and winsome nature, the lavish homage of this fresh and fervent love should steel his hitherto vagrant fancy against all would-be-willing victims. The time ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... touched her; mingled strangely with the spell, the resisted spell, of youth and sex. Newbury's dark, expressive face, its proud refinement, its sensitive feeling; the growing realization in her of his strong, exacting personality; the struggle of her weaker will against an advancing master; fascination—revolt; of all these things she was conscious as they both sat drowned in the passion of applause which was swelling through the Opera House, and her eyes were still vaguely following that white figure on the stage, with ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by hearsay. Norma had found herself sitting on Leslie's big velvet couch laughing and chatting quite naturally, and where Norma chatted naturally the day was won. She could be all friendliness, and all sparkle and fun, and presently Leslie was listening to her in actual fascination. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... pines, the sere colors of the parched valley, the dark dull-green of the oaks, garlanded with hoary moss, and the gay foliage of the wild grape; all came out distinctly in this furnace-glow, but with quite new effects. In the strong and strange fascination of the scene, both these young people, so singularly situated, forgot for three minutes their mutual anxiety. Longer it would ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... flat-collecting in its acute form, or that in examining her crude pencilings I was courting the infection. I could not foresee that the slight yet definite and curious variation in the myriad city apartments might become a fascination at last, and the desire for possession a mania more enslaving than even the acquirement of rare rugs ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of man against his unseen and silent enemies, the lower or bacterial forms of life, once one becomes alive to it, has an irresistible fascination. More dramatic than any novel, more sombre and terrifying than a battle fought in the dark, would be the intimate picture of the battle of our bodies against the hosts of disease. If we could see with the eye of the microscope and feel and hear with the delicacy of chemical ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... there midway between the gateway and the wall on my left, at right angles to my window, I did not stir, for I knew that though the balls came by within ten feet from where I stood, none was likely to injure me. There was a kind of fascination in listening to the heavy report, and then instantly for the whistling of the ball as, after demolishing a portion of the barricade, it struck the wall with a heavy crash, and sent the splinters ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... in, with startling abruptness, the end of all this fascination,—a serpent's bite and a basilisk's sting. The kind of poisonous snake meant in the last clause of verse 32 is doubtful, but certainly is one much more formidable than an adder. The serpent's lithe gracefulness and painted skin hide a fatal poison; and so the attractive wine-cup is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... had picked up the ring. It just fitted the natural finger. I tried it on and looked into the jewel. The professor was growing dimmer. The marvellous blue was returning, a hue of fascination; not the hot flash of the diamond, but the frozen light of the iceberg. It was frigid, cold, terrible, blue, alluring. To me at the moment it seemed alive and pulselike. I could not account for it. I felt the lust for possession. Perhaps there was something in ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... found a huge snake had coiled himself on one of the upper branches, and was calmly lying with its mouth open, waiting for his prey. Smaller and smaller were the circles the bird made, and weaker and weaker were its efforts to escape the fascination, until it finally fluttered to a limb just above the snake. It seemed to turn its piteous glance for help on me, but not I! I was enjoying it. At length it could no longer resist its fate and it fluttered into its enemy's jaws. Now other men would have let sentiment get the better of them and ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... had far more fascination for me than the Falls themselves. I could sit and watch for hours the water rushing past; and it was long before I could leave them, though my feet were in deep snow. It must be very fine to sit out at that extreme point in summer time, shaded by the rich foliage ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... souls his appeals and warnings burned their way, and each night they rose for prayer in response to his invitation. Older Christians, too, took on a new lease of intensity, and even the unregenerate and the scoffers found a certain fascination in the meetings. Threading through it all, for old and young, converted and unconverted, was an unacknowledged feeling for religious dissipation. Avonlea was a quiet place,—and ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... such a system must be a high, ethical ideal. We must really envisage the wants of humanity. We must want the wants of all men. We must get rid of the fascination for exclusiveness. Here, in a world full of folk, men are lonely. The rich are lonely. We are all frantic for fellow-souls, yet we shut souls out and bar the ways and bolster up the fiction of the Elect and the Superior when the great mass of men is capable of producing larger and larger ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... quietly. "In the world, not in the home. I've not even seen homes—like this one. The sight of brother and sisters playing violin and harp and 'cello together, with the father and mother and brother and uncle looking on, is absolutely so new to me that it has a fascination I can't explain. I find myself continually watching you all—if you'll forgive me—in your relations to each other. It's a new interest," he admitted, smiling, "and I can't tell you what it ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... While we are riding the high horse of criticism and feeling virtuous, we will concede the superiority of the former genre; but when we give our literary conscience the slip, we yield ourselves again to the fascination of the haunted twilight. ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... qualified for the contemplation of either." It would not be difficult to show that to this readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or the lights of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed not only the great range of his influence as a poet, but those powers of fascination which he possessed as a man. This susceptibility, indeed, of immediate impressions, which in him was so active, lent a charm, of all others the most attractive, to his social intercourse, by giving to those who were, at the moment, present, such ascendant ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... its fascination, but we dared not linger long, for as the tide turned one man would have much ado to manage the boat. So we slid through the archway into the bright sunshine of the cove, and headed for ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... had or might yet happen there—the life breath of the genius loci, an at once seductive and, as Tom Verity had rightly divined, a doubtfully wholesome spirit! Over Damaris it exercised an unwilling fascination, as of some haunting refrain ending each verse of her personal experience. Even when, as a little girl of eight, fresh from the gentle restraints and rare religious and social amenities of an aristocratic convent school in Paris, she had first encountered it, it struck her as strangely familiar—a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... stopped helplessly, and eyed with frightened fascination the little old lady as she crossed to the table and picked up a ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... and admiration; and when the Emperor of the French himself came to town, as Heine saw him do in 1810, we can easily understand how the enthusiasm of the boy surrounded the person of Napoleon, and the idea that he was supposed to represent, with a glamor that never lost its fascination for the man. To Heine, Napoleon was the incarnation of the French Revolution, the glorious new-comer who took by storm the intrenched strongholds of hereditary privilege, the dauntless leader in whose army every common ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... butterflies; in its depths lie a plethora of trout. He deals with the most obstruse and abstract subjects with such ease and grace, without for one moment laying aside the badge of authority, that they assume a mysterious fascination to catch the eye of the passerby. In his fictions he has sometimes cultivated a more hectic style, but that in itself constitutes one of the bases of its richness. Scarcely a word but evokes an image, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... sort of grave fascination in the exceeding sternness of the scene-the grey heaps of stone, the mountains raising their shining white summits against the blue, the dark, fathomless, lifeless lake, and the utter absence of all forms of life. Armine's spirit fell under the spell, and he moved dreamily on, hardly attending to ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in SS. Cosma e Damiano, dated 1153; fragments of an inlaid screen in the studio of the illustrious artist, Senor Villegas, etc. We are in the habit of asserting that only the Renaissance masters studied and were inspired by the antique; but the fascination of ancient art was equally felt by their early precursors of the twelfth century. The archway in the middle of the south side of these cloisters (opposite the one represented in our illustration) rests on sphinxes, one of which is bearded. The human-headed monsters, ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... would be the ruin of both. Here were these two on the brink of ruin, so young, so attractive. I never shall forget the pathos of that woman's story. The yearning of that heart for love. Of course in her unhappiness she would turn to the benumbing fascination of the poisonous drug. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... a Manchu official, high in command, espied a beautiful flower-girl on the street and forthwith attached her as his private property. So great was her fascination, the tables were turned and he became the slave—till he grew tired. He not only scorned her, but he deserted her. Though a Manchu maid, the Revolution played into her tapering fingers the opportunity for the sweetest revenge that ever tempted an almond-eyed beauty. It had been the proud ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... felt himself to be. Pierston did not care to regard the figure confronting him so mockingly. Its voice seemed to say 'There's tragedy hanging on to this!' But the question of age being pertinent he could not give the spectre up, and ultimately got out of bed under the weird fascination of the reflection. Whether he had overwalked himself lately, or what he had done, he knew not; but never had he seemed so aged by a score of years as he was represented in the glass in that cold grey morning light. While his soul was what it was, why should he have been encumbered with that withering ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... this river, second only to the Neva in its perennial fascination, and facing on the Prospekt, stands the Anitchkoff Palace, on the site of a former lumber-yard, which was purchased by the Empress Elizabeth, when she commissioned her favorite architect, Rastrelli, to erect for Count Razumovsky a palace in that rococo style which he used in ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... was fast asleep, stretched on a sofa in the salon. Angelot looked in upon him as he lay snoring. With his eyes shut, he was more like the Emperor than ever; and as with Napoleon, there was a sort of fascination in the brow, the chin, the shape of the head, though here there was coarseness instead of refinement, the power ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... of the same theme, and the "Septimius" a later sketch, with a new element introduced. But the present experimental fragment, to which it has been decided to give the title of "The Ancestral Footstep," possesses a freshness and spontaneity recalling the peculiar fascination of those chalk or pencil outlines with which great masters in the graphic art have been wont to arrest their fleeting glimpses of a composition ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she asserted the grace which governed every movement and gesture in her, and got as lightly to her feet as if she were a wind-bowed flower tilting back to its perpendicular. Her father looked at her with as fond a delight as a lover could have felt in her fascination. She was, in fact, a youthful, feminine version of himself in her plainness; though the grace was all her own. Her complexion was not the leathery red of her father's, but a smooth and even white from cheek to throat. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... There is intense fascination to a woman in scanning the face that to her is beyond all others worth perusing, when the soft breath of sleep renders the beloved object unconscious of the eyes bent tenderly upon his features. No check is given ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... are a little weary, perhaps, and through it all there is a suggestion of something not quite understood—a mystery: the hands are graceful and of perfect form, and the rocky background gives an unusual fascination to the whole picture. Leonardo must have loved the picture himself, and it is not strange that he lavished more time upon it than he gave to the great picture of the Last ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement |
