"Spectacles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she dressed very neat and tidy. She did not go to church, but she purchased a large Bible and a pair of spectacles, and was often to be seen reading it at the door; and when I talked to her she was glad to enter upon serious things. I spoke to her about her fondness for money, and pointed out that it was a sin. She replied that ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... winter, with French politics and French society and occasional spectacles and processions extending from the Carrousel to the Arc de l'Etoile, that Browning wrote that essay on Shelley, which his publisher of that time, Mr. Moxon, had requested to accompany a series of Shelley letters which had been discovered, but which were afterward found ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... brass and shone like gold, so brightly was it polished. In the evening, when the snowflakes fell, the mother said: 'Go, Snow-white, and bolt the door,' and then they sat round the hearth, and the mother took her spectacles and read aloud out of a large book, and the two girls listened as they sat and spun. And close by them lay a lamb upon the floor, and behind them upon a perch sat a white dove with its head ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... carried. Of one of these baskets the recording Secretary, Miss Adams, gives us an interesting inventory in one of her reports: "Within was a bottle of cream, a home-made loaf, fresh eggs, fruit and oysters; stowed away in a corner was a flannel shirt, a sling, a pair of spectacles, a flask of cologne; a convalescent had asked for a lively book, and the lively book was in the basket; there was a dressing-gown for one, and a white muslin handkerchief for another; and paper, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Taddee Mooch he made a face. In appearance Mooch was extraordinarily Jewish: he was the Jew as he is drawn by those who dislike the race: short, bald, badly built, with a greasy nose and heavy eyes goggling behind large spectacles: his face was hidden by a rough, black, scrubby beard: he had hairy hands, long arms, and short bandy legs: a little Syrian Baal. But he had such a kindly expression that Christophe was touched by it. Above ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... drawing-room he found it filled with the sound of talk and laughter. But it was a talk and laughter in which the Grosville family seemed to have itself but little part. Lady Grosville sat stiffly on an early Victorian sofa, her spectacles on her nose, reading the Times of the preceding day, or appearing to read it. Amy Grosville, the eldest girl, was busy in a corner, putting the finishing touches to a piece of illumination; while Caroline, seated on the floor, was showing the small child of a ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... setting his spectacles and leaning forward in his seat, "you've heard what the officer has said. You may consider yourself fortunate—very fortunate—there is not enough evidence to convict you. Don't flatter yourself that a breakdown in the prosecution clears your character. In the eyes ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... apartments, with Hans Steinmann, Cardinal-Protector of Germany, blowing at his side. They entered the lift, still in silence, and passed out, two splendid vivid figures, one erect and virile, the other bent, fat, and very German from spectacles to ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... possessed herself of a section, and was scrutinizing it through her spectacles. "I'll need my reading-glass, Mary, my dear," she said; "my old eyes cannot see this ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... did not immediately answer. Her head dropped a little on one side, a broad smile bewrinkled the lower part of her well-worn visage, and with her eyes half-closed, behind her heavy spectacles, she held out both her hands, the purple umbrella in one of them, and exclaimed in a voice of happy fervor: "Robert! ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... right has an old woman, with silver spectacles on her long, thin nose, to enlist any man among the awkward squad which compose her muster roll? Who can derive inspiration from the boney hand, which is coaxingly laid on your shoulder, and trembles, not from agitation or love, but merely from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... contractions which are made by our fussing about food interfere with our circulation; the interference with our circulation makes us liable to take cold, and it is safe to say that more than half the colds that women have are caused principally by wrong eating. Somewhat akin to grandmother's looking for her spectacles when all the time they are pushed to the top of her head is the way women fuss about their eating and then wonder why it is that they cannot seem to ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... don't like that name," said Arthur emphatically; "but I suppose he can't help that. Does he wear spectacles?" ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... that spectacles of sadder plights Should make our blisses relish the more high? Then all fair dames, and maidens, and true knights, Whose flourish'd fortunes prosper in Love's eye, Weep here, unto a tale of ancient grief, Traced from the course of an ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... your brother—I saw your brother," he said, nodding his head, as Archer lagged past him, trailing his spade, and scowling at the old gentleman in spectacles. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Page put on his spectacles, took the paper, and read it through. Then, looking over the rim of his glasses in his characteristic way, he leaned toward Admiral Sims ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there, My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair; And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, Go dancing round the china-plates that stand ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... ourselves—would bring us a cup of coffee, and sitting up in bed we began to smoke the cigarettes and cigars of another idle, aimless day. Breakfast was at nine: a nasty uncomfortable meal. The room was stuffy, and there are more enlivening spectacles than seventy British officers caught by Dutch farmers and penned together in confinement. Then came the long morning, to be killed somehow by reading, chess, or cards—and perpetual cigarettes. Luncheon at one: the same as breakfast, only more so; and then a longer afternoon to ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... rich nor yet poor Would do for me ought, although I should die: Which seeing, I gat me out of the door, Where Flemings began on me for to cry, 'Master, what will you copen[1] or buy? Fine felt hats? or spectacles to read? Lay down your silver, and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... eggs" and "three pounds of butter," "two dozen pearls at so much a dozen" (or would they be entered by ounces?) and "fifty pounds of sandalwood," or should I reckon that by cords? I could find out later. I would wear my large tortoise-shell spectacles (possibly blinders in addition), and I should attend strictly to business for a while, but when a full moon rose over a South Sea lagoon, and the palm trees rustled and the phosphorescence broke in silver on ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... "fur" as she was "consarned," she preferred the "per-turnip"—another preferred the "pertater"—another the "cow-cumber," and still another voted "ingern" king. But suddenly a wise looking old dame raised her spectacles and settled the whole question by observing: "Ah, ladies, you may talk about yer per-turnips, and your pertaters, and your passnips and other gyardin sass, but the sweetest wedgetable that ever melted on these ol' gums o' ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... had been superintendent during the latter half of the time, this was a cruel stroke. He wanted to make her reverse her opinions. And they never met without 'Now, Ursula, don't you remember Jem Burton putting on Miss Pope's spectacles, and grinning ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be other shapes in his cell. His old grandmother sat in one corner, reading, through her familiar spectacles, the well-worn family Bible. His sister sat there, playing with her baby, and his mother was singing as she sewed. And he laughed and talked to them, but could get no answer. Occasionally he felt a half-consciousness that it was all a delusion,—a mere vision of the brain; and ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... a moment there was no movement amongst his listeners. Then one of the loungers, an old man with a stubble of gray beard, drew near and regarded him through thick spectacles. ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... gave her a chair, and went into a room close by, from which she soon reappeared, followed by a quiet-looking lady, not very old, but with a cap and spectacles, and something about her which made Jessie feel quite ashamed of her ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... Father Christmas, a large boy dressed in long belted robe; he carries a staff, and wears a white wig and beard. Mother Goose, a tall girl wearing a peaked soft hat tied over an old lady's frilled cap; also neck-kerchief and apron, spectacles on nose, and a broom of twigs, such as street-cleaners use, complete her costume. Mother Goose's son Jack and her Children may be costumed according to the pictures in any good illustrated copy of "Mother ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... home with the neighbors. This practice came naturally to Wordsworth; and a kind and valued neighbor he was to all the peasants round. Many a time I have seen him in the road, in Scotch bonnet and green spectacles, with a dozen children at his heels and holding his cloak, while he cut ash-sticks for them from the hedge, hearing all they had to say or talking to them. Southey, on the other hand, took his constitutional walk at a fixed hour, often reading as he went. Two families ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... fast), the little picture of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold as they appeared in the Royal Box at Drury Lane Theatre, and others of the same class, have been in the old lady's possession for many years. Here the old lady sits with her spectacles on, busily engaged in needlework—near the window in summer time; and if she sees you coming up the steps, and you happen to be a favourite, she trots out to open the street-door for you before you knock, and as you must be fatigued after that hot walk, insists on your swallowing two ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... padded," Aunt Anne said wisely. "People of that kind can do anything. There is something in his walk that assures me it is he, and I must see him without his spectacles." ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... spectacles on his nose, and began to cross-question her, during near four hours, from a paper which he held in his hand. These were the main articles, as far ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... wouldn't. Not if his turbin was all the colours of the rainbow—for I don't 'old with such. Why, there was Rapkin's own sister-in-law let her parlour floor to a Horiental—a Parsee he was, or one o' them Hafrican tribes—and reason she 'ad to repent of it, for all his gold spectacles! Whatever made you fancy I should let to ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... themselves—as they were wont to do in days gone by—with formidable clubs, stone hatchets, and spears. "What means the boy!" exclaimed Ole, laying down a book which he had been reading, and thrusting his spectacles up on ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... disappointed at the mode in which I received his advances he wished to conclude our interview as soon as need be, I know not; but he speedily withdrew from a capacious pocket a document in parchment, which, having spread at large upon the table, and having leisurely put on his spectacles, he began to hum over its contents to himself ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... beaten, they still pursue their inquiries, and rejoice in having acquired some knowledge? how they delight in telling others what they have learnt? how they are attracted by processions, and games, and spectacles of that kind, and will endure even hunger and thirst for such an object? Can I say no more? Do we not see those who are fond of liberal studies and arts regard neither their health nor their estate? ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... States—they could not have had a warmer welcome. Gardener Jim opened the door in such haste that he scattered the ashes from his pipe over the rag-carpet on the floor. Phoebe, too, contrived to drop her spectacles while she was saying "How do you do," and it took at least three minutes to ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... the later ones, but it was a success, and immediately the "Quat'z' Arts" Ball was put into the hands of clever organizers, and became a studied event in all its artistic sense. Months are spent in the creation of spectacles and in the costuming of students and models. Prizes are given for the most successful organizations, and a jury composed of painters and sculptors passes upon your costume as you enter the ball, and if you do not come up to their artistic standard you are unceremoniously turned away. Students ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... himself softly up and sat on the fence. He saw old Stephen Strong close his book, place his spectacles on it, and kneel down by his chair. The old man remained on his knees for some time and then, taking up his candle, left the kitchen. The man on the fence still sat there. Truth to tell, he was chuckling ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... stood a little bald-headed man with a pointed sallow face half hidden by an enormous pair of green spectacles and a pepper and salt beard. No shirt was visible, but an impressive broad red cravat. He wore white trousers. Red leather slippers furnished the only Oriental ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... a place for spectators), a building in which the seats for spectators surround the scene of the performance. The word was doubtless coined by the Greeks of Campania, since it was here that the gladiatorial shows for which the amphitheatre was primarily used were first organized as public spectacles. The earliest building of the kind still extant is that at Pompeii, built after 80 B.C. It is called spectacula in a contemporary inscription. The word amphitheatrum is first found in writers of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... down, surprised, over his great spectacles, and said, "Why, it is the faculty which enables us to distinguish ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... good fist. Even when angry, a frame of mind in which he found himself very frequently, he did not clench his fists without leaving his thumbs in relaxation—a sure sign, it is said, of the lack of tenacity of purpose and tact in practical dealings. He would adjust his spectacles on his forehead, and then, forgetting what he had done, would overturn everything in his wild search for them. When he started out on a trip he would take the greatest pains to remember the key of his portmanteau, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... home, they had thought of this other Mildred, the little English girl, whose low, musical voice had been so carefully trained by her father in reading aloud. By one of these strange providences which we never recognize as such at the time, Mr. Rowland had broken his spectacles the last evening of Mildred's stay in New York. She had offered to read the magazine article which he was particularly anxious to hear, and they had been charmed by her beautifully modulated voice. Now the ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that won his wreath of prosperity from thy disasters, and of Caesar, compassionate to the dead, didst shudder at every blast of the trumpet filled by the breath of civil commotion,—thou, that, besides the wreck of thy soldiery perishing on either side, didst bewail, amongst thy spectacles of domestic woe, the luminaries of thy senate extinguished, the heads of thy consuls fixed upon a halberd, weeping for ages over thy self- slaughtered Catos, thy headless Ciceros (truncosque Cicerones), and unburied ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... a ruddy-faced, benevolent old gentleman, with spectacles and a kindly manner. He made a few commonplace remarks to his colleagues with the good-natured intention of giving the confused-looking student before him time to compose himself. Then, turning blandly towards him, he said ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... close-shorn head, and his long beard, slightly turned back, looked like a creation of Sebastian del Piombo wandering out of his picture of the "Raising of Lazarus;" and I had before my eyes a short young man, thin and pallid, with spectacles. But what he had not been able to change, and what I recognized immediately, was the great heart, the lofty mind, the energetic character, the dauntless courage; and if I did not recognize him by his features, I recognized him by the grasp ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... one too. It seems probable that the Alexandrians has irritated the tyrant by their railleries, and perhaps by their tumults. * Note: After these massacres, Caracalla also deprived the Alexandrians of their spectacles and public feasts; he divided the city into two parts by a wall with towers at intervals, to prevent the peaceful communications of the citizens. Thus was treated the unhappy Alexandria, says Dion, by the savage beast of Ausonia. This, in fact, was the epithet which the oracle had applied to him; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... enemies were on the watch for us there. We had almost forgotten them, so absorbed were we by the great spectacles that had been ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... a reduction. "He did not want to support government officers at high salaries, to ride about in their coaches and sport gold spectacles. He did not want them paid for giving wine parties, and electioneering the Legislature. They should walk from their residences to ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... did not ask what they were; as a rule, they were simple. But, being in the shop of the optician that day, standing with his back to the door, he heard Dick come in and order a pair of rose-coloured spectacles, with which he was at once provided. The people of Pantouflia were accustomed to wear them, saying that they improved the complexions of ladies whom they met, and added ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... saw us at Mr. Kendall's counting-room. It was before business-hours: we had cared for that. We found Mr. Kendall sitting leisurely over his papers, his feet up and his spectacles pushed back. I had been nervous enough during the walk, but a glance at his face reassured me. It was a good, a fatherly face, full of bonhommie, but showing, withal, a spice of business-shrewdness. I left Tom standing at the counting-room ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles—kind of grinding him into the earth, you know. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... paid no attention to anything but the woman, and looking at her sharply and suspiciously through his gold-rimmed spectacles, he said to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... wore great faded aprons of blue drilling, with sufficient pockets convenient to the right hand. Miss Peggy Bond was a very small, belligerent-looking person, who wore a huge pair of steel-bowed spectacles, holding her sharp chin well up in air, as if to supplement an inadequate nose. She was more than half blind, but the spectacles seemed to face upward instead of square ahead, as if their wearer were always on the sharp lookout for birds. Miss Bond had suffered ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... obliged to do so. I danced moreover somewhat badly for a Wallachian prince. The quadrille once ended, I became stationary; foolishly held back by my short sight—too shy to sport an eyeglass, too much of a poet to wear spectacles, and dreading lest, at the slightest movement, I should bruise my knee against the corner of some piece of furniture, or plunge my nose into the trimming of a bodice. Soon hunger and thirst interfered in the matter; but for a kingdom I should never have dared to approach the buffet with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... do with me. But I reckon some of 'em would take the side of a woman what's been treated so. Well, I'll go on an' wait for him. How do you find this here place?" He took out a piece of paper and, carefully adjusting his spectacles, read a number. It was the number ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... circi for the exhibition of public spectacles were very numerous. The first theatre was erected by Pompey the Great; but the Circus Maximus, where gladiatorial combats were displayed, was erected by Tarquinus Priscus; this enormous building was frequently enlarged, and in the age of ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... country: it was impossible for me to live happily elsewhere. At Venice, in the train of public affairs, in the dignity of a kind of representation, in the pride of projects of advancement; at Paris, in the vortex of the great world, in the luxury of suppers, in the brilliancy of spectacles, in the rays of splendor; my groves, rivulets, and solitary walks, constantly presented themselves to my recollection, interrupted my thought, rendered me melancholy, and made me sigh with desire. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... esteemed and valued; by what theory or system can we account for this sentiment from self-love, or deduce it from that favourite origin? There seems here a necessity for confessing that the happiness and misery of others are not spectacles entirely indifferent to us; but that the view of the former, whether in its causes or effects, like sunshine or the prospect of well-cultivated plains (to carry our pretensions no higher), communicates a secret joy and satisfaction; the appearance ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... literature; if he will give us never so little discussion of the first principles of beauty, and point the moral with some "selling books," he will at least have turned the flood. There are stories nowadays, but few novels, and plenty of spectacles, but no plays; and how should we know the difference, never having heard what a novel ought to be? But let the aesthetic critic give us a firm foundation for criticism, a real understanding of the conditions of literary art; let him teach us to know a novel or a play when we see it, and we shall ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... house-maid; and she made me a low courtesy, and I found did not know me. So I smiled, and went to the housekeeper's parlour; and there sat good Mrs. Jervis at work, making a shift: and, would you believe it? she did not know me at first; but rose up, and pulled off her spectacles; and said, Do you want me, forsooth? I could not help laughing, and said, Hey-day! Mrs. Jervis, what! don't you know me?—She stood all in amaze, and looked at me from top to toe: Why, you surprise me, said she: What! Pamela thus metamorphosed! ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... caution you, my dear sir, not to be too sanguine," said the man-of-law, looking over his spectacles at his client; "you have no idea how deceptive descriptions are. People are so prone to receive them according to their desires rather ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... get in the eyes,' she looked up at him, quivered, and suddenly got up and left the room. He did not say a word, but went on with some other part of the drawing; his silence was unnatural, and his dark cheek blanched a little. Cousin Holman looked up from her work, and put her spectacles down. ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... room when Johnny again arrived at the store, and a clerk took his name up very dubiously. The clerk returned, smiling with extreme graciousness, and informed the caller that he was to walk straight back. Johnny found Ersten in spectacles and apron, with a tape-line round his neck and a piece of chalk in his hand, and wearing a very worried look, while all the workmen in the room appeared subdued ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... silver coinage of Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of spectacles, which were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of nature, to this gentleman's perception. The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the greater pity, as he appeared to be a poet. He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away, which was no more ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was breathing quickly. The older woman looked through some papers in her hand, put some notes of orders for groceries on a table by her side, and flattened out a long letter on foreign paper on her knee. She looked at Molly a little nervously, with cold blue eyes over gold-rimmed spectacles reposing on her ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... I'm talkin' about. My 'usband used ter take me to the play before we was married, but I never see any play equal ter wot 'appens in this street, if yer only keeps yer eyes open. I see people as wears spectacles readin' books. I don't wonder. If their eyesight was good, they'd be able ter see fer themselves instead of readin' about it in a book. I can't read myself, bein' no scholar, but I can see that books an' plays is fer them as ain't got no ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... took his seat in the middle of that half circle, He was an old man, his hair was gray; he never held an office before in his life. He thought that an office was all he needed to be a truly great man, and when he came up he adjusted his powerful spectacles and glanced calmly around the audience with amazing dignity. Suddenly his eyes fell upon me, and then the good old man came right forward and invited me to come up on the stand with the town officers. Invited me up on the stand! No town officer ever took ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... quite capable of taking long country walks. He always wore, even in the country, black or dark-grey clothes, which indeed constituted for him a kind of uniform. His eyes were grey and glittered brightly and keenly behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. These he never removed, except for a moment of polishing on a large silk bandana handkerchief. He smoked comparatively little, but was a perpetual snuff- taker. Nothing was more amusing than to hear him discourse on snuff- taking and describe his ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... little table lay two or three books, her handkerchief, a pair of steel spectacles newly taken off, and an old-fashioned gold watch in a heavy double case. Upon this last object her son's eyes and her ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... below, this fall would present one of the grandest spectacles in the world. In height, volume of water, and sublime surroundings it has no equal. The spectator, however, looks down upon it from a great height above its brink, whence it is so foreshortened that he can only guess its majesty and beauty. By lying upon your belly ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... rolled up round a hoop-stick. He showed it to me. My position and my full-length portrait (but my real ears don't stick out horizontal) was behind a corner lamp-post, with written orders to remain there till I should see Miss Drowvey fall. The Drowvey who was to fall was the one in spectacles, not the one with the large lavender bonnet. At that signal I was to rush forth, seize my bride, and fight my way to the lane. There a junction would be effected between myself and the colonel; and putting our brides behind us, between ourselves and the palings, ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... work. He has reached a pitch of infatuation unbelievable; and is becoming, as I have said before, more and more of a Nero every day. At the present moment he is instigating the construction of an arena at Schildorn where spectacles after the ancient manner will be given. These, according to William, are intended to afford instruction to the masses as well as to the classes. A very fitting conclusion this, to the fears which he ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... costly jewel from my neck— A heart it was, bound in with diamonds— And threw it towards thy land; the sea receiv'd it, And so I wish'd thy body might my heart. And even with this I lost fair England's view, And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart, And call'd them blind and dusky spectacles, For losing ken of Albion's wished coast. How often have I tempted Suffolk's tongue, The agent of thy foul inconstancy, To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did When he to madding Dido would unfold His father's acts commenc'd in burning Troy! Am I not witch'd like her? or thou not false like ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... Where corn might grow, Such fertile soil is seen in 't, A long hook nose, Though scorned by foes, For spectacles convenient.][83] ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... was a star, and dwelt apart. Aunt Eunice looked at her through a determined pair of spectacles, and worshipped while she gazed. The youngest sister lived in a dreamy state of honors to come, and had constant zoological visions of lions, griffins, and unicorns, drawn and quartered in every possible style known to the Heralds' College. The Reverend Hebrew Bullet, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Prussian king befuddling ambassadors in his "Tobacco Parliament"; its pauses of intense and cumulative suspense, Queen Louise pleading to Napoleon for her country's life; but it has also its magnificent pageants, its gorgeous culminating spectacles of wonder. Kings and emperors are but the supernumeraries upon its boards; its hero is the common man, its plot his triumph over ignorance, his struggle upward out of the slime ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... crape was given to each man, to be worn as a kind of short veil, attached to the hat. This was found to be sufficiently efficacious. But a more convenient mode was adopted by some of the officers: they took out the glasses from spectacles, and substituted black or green crape in ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... or smile there, Annie was not to be beat; nor did she stop in her progress until at last she was shown into a room where she saw, perched on a high stool, with three (of course) long legs, a strange-looking personage with a curled wig and a pair of green spectacles, who no doubt must be the pelican himself. As she appeared in the room with the umbrella, not much shorter or less in circumference than herself, the gentleman looked curiously at her, wondering no doubt ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... and promptly fall in love with each other, Corinne seeking partly to fix her hold on Nelvil, partly to remove his Britannic contempt for Italy and the Italians, by guiding him to all the great spectacles of Rome and indeed of the country generally, and by explaining to him at great length what she understands of the general theory of aesthetics, of Italian history, and of the contrasted character of the chief European nations. Nelvil on his side is ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... steel-rimmed spectacles at the two children who were bubbling over with laughter. "I think," she said sternly, "people don't learn ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... of the room, sending with me the impression that inside the frock-coat, behind the bland gold-rimmed spectacles, there was yet something left of manhood and that vague quality called fight, which is surely hard put to live ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... all go through life wearing spectacles coloured by our own tastes, our own calling, and our own prejudices, measuring our neighbours by our own tape-measure, summing them up according to our own private arithmetic. We see subjectively, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... pearl.[FN320] So he rejoiced in her and felt his heart at rest and after tarrying with her a full-told year, one chance day of the days he determined to go forth in disguise and to wander about town and solace himself with its spectacles alone and unattended. So he went into the vestiary where the garments were kept and doffing his dress donned a garb which converted him into a Darwaysh. After this he fared forth in early morning to stroll around the streets and enjoy the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... mention where she was going, did she, Janet?" Hannah would query, when she had finished her work and put on her spectacles to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... countenances are kindly by nature, and many who appear to be evil are in reality honorable and trustworthy. Therefore, that you may judge all your fellow-creatures truly, and know upon whom to depend, I give you the Character Marker. It consists of this pair of spectacles. While you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. The good will bear the letter 'G,' the evil the letter 'E.' The wise will be marked with a 'W' and the foolish with an 'F.' The ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... that one finds it hard to break from, and many a minister who thought himself reformed of lecturing has, over-tempted, gone up to the American Library or Boston Lyceum Bureau, and drank down raw, a hundred lecturing engagements. Still, a man once in a while finds a new pair of spectacles to look through. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... their public spectacles used to set seats in the shade for strangers, but themselves sat ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... instead of a cobbler's bench, and a bed, where Lindau sat propped up; with a coat over his shoulders and a skull-cap on his head, reading a book, from which he lifted his eyes to stare blankly over his spectacles at March. His hairy old breast showed through the night- shirt, which gaped apart; the stump of his left arm lay upon the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Prince ran away, and the day before the one on which the Christmas presents were to be gathered, the nearsighted father went out into the wax doll field again; but this time he had his spectacles on, and could see just as well as any one, and even a little better. Peter's little sister was swinging herself on her crutches, in the place where the wax doll did not come up, tipping her little face up, and smiling just ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... a personage scarcely, indeed, to be seen at all for his very bushy hair, whiskers, and moustache, from which emerged merely the tip of a nose and a pair of round eyes in spectacles. As, however, the hair was of an orange colour and the eyes of a piercing and pinlike sharpness, the eclipse of feature was not a loss of effect. And as the flamboyant head was a tolerably familiar object in the ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been the murderer, I should have suspected myself, in conjunction of course with Mrs. Drabdump. The first persons to enter the room would have seemed to me guilty. I wrote at once (in a disguised hand and over the signature of 'One Who Looks Through His Own Spectacles') to the 'Pell Mell Press' to suggest this. By associating myself thus with Mrs. Drabdump I made it difficult for people to dissociate the two who entered the room together. To dash a half-truth in the world's eyes is the surest ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... speak, and Mrs Caffyn, who was sitting at the head of the couch, put her work and her spectacles on the table. It was growing dusk; she took Madge's hand, which hung down by her side, and gently lifted it up. Such a delicate hand, Mrs Caffyn thought. She was proud that she had for a friend the owner of such a hand, who behaved to her as ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... in its peaceful tranquillity, at others so majestic in its mighty power; the forests agitated by the storm, or alive with the song of birds; nor the glaciers and mountains—there are doubtless some whom none of these magnificent spectacles can move, whom "all the glories of heaven and earth may pass in daily succession without touching their hearts ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... himself, having assumed the aristocratic particle as the prerogative of a man of his distinction in the councils of his country. With his tip-tilted nose in the air, his carefully curled head on one side, the deputy for Arras was observing Andre-Louis attentively. The horn-rimmed spectacles he used for reading were thrust up on to his pale forehead, and it was through a levelled spy-glass that he considered the speaker, his thin-lipped mouth stretched a little in that tiger-cat smile that was afterwards to become so famous ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... tragedies and comedies were turned into verse, whether it were the Cheshire legend of the Iron Gates or the fall of Sir John Stanley and his spectacles into the Alderley mere, the discovery of a butterfly or the loss of "a ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... right! The tall, powerful-looking man whom I saw bowing over my cousin's hand was indeed the person whom I had seen with Delora a few hours ago. I ran Freddy to ground, and presently I found myself also bowing before His Excellency. He regarded me through his horn-rimmed spectacles with a benign and pleasant expression. I had been in the East, and I talked for a few moments upon the subjects which I thought ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Bete Humaine, even the Egoist. But in a fairy tale the boy sees all the wonders of fairyland because he is an ordinary boy. In the same way Mr. Samuel Pickwick sees an extraordinary England because he is an ordinary old gentleman. He does not see things through the rosy spectacles of the modern optimist or the green-smoked spectacles of the pessimist; he sees it through the crystal glasses of his own innocence. One must see the world clearly even in order to see its wildest poetry. One ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... she said in a voice that was soft yet full, "and I did not think I should care to see any more spectacles in Rome, where the people are going in procession all the year through—but what do ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... was of little or no use to him at any distance, and he would wear, one over the other, two or three pairs of large round concave spectacles, so powerful as greatly to diminish objects. He would mount his steps, look at you through one pair of glasses, then push them all back on his head, and paint by the naked eye close to the canvas. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... was known as "the Hill Cumorah," where the angel Moroni announced to him the presence of the "golden plates" giving an account of the fate which attended the early inhabitants of America. With these plates would be found the only means by which they could be read, the wonderful spectacles known as the "Urim and Thummim." Joe was not averse to such a revelation, for his hazel rod and his "peek-stone" had already failed him. There had been various religious awakenings in the neighborhood, and when the various sects began to quarrel over the converts Joe arose and announced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... take him wings; and leaving the earth fly up to heaven, wander with sun and moon, stars, and that heavenly troop, God himself being his guide." If we desire to see him, we must lay aside all vain objects, which detain us and dazzle our eyes, and as [6331]Ficinus adviseth us, "get us solar eyes, spectacles as they that look on the sun: to see this divine beauty, lay aside all material objects, all sense, and then thou shalt see him as he is." Thou covetous wretch, as [6332]Austin expostulates, "why dost ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... she was connected were kept aloof from her contaminating influence, and soon afterwards were altogether removed from the place. There was one, however, a particularly hard-headed looking individual, who used to stare at me through her round spectacles whenever I met her, as if I were an ogre. I heard that she was a great mathematician. She looked like it; and evidently there was no fear entertained of her being converted. She and one other were left behind; but otherwise the house, which had been built at ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... to all the more ordinary objects of interest for strangers in London, the shops, the theatres, the parks, the gay parties given by the nobility at the West End, and other such spectacles, Peter saw them all, but he paid very little attention to them. His thoughts were almost entirely engrossed by subjects connected with his navy. He found, as he had expected from what he heard in Holland, that the English ship-carpenters had reduced ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... a good little girl, but is meddlesome. She has a good Grandmother, called Mrs. Mason, and she sometimes goes to her house. One day Mary got into mischief. Seeing her Grandmother's spectacles on the table, she put them on her nose, and said, "I'm Grandmother." Mary began to march about the room in a very grand way. Presently the spectacles fell off, and the glasses were broken. Poor Mary cried bitterly, and at first did not know what to do; ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... veteran sinner of the lot, old Trimble Rogers, fumbled in his breeches and withdrew a small book carefully wrapped in canvas. Solemnly he hooked behind his ears a pair of huge, horn-rimmed spectacles and knelt beside the dying pirate. In the manner of a priest the buccaneer intoned a chapter of Holy Writ which he appeared to know by rote. Then he said a prayer in a powerful broken voice. Silence followed. The others waited with ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... himself at his table, put on his spectacles and taken up some sewing. But, hearing my order, he burst ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... the spectacles he had needlessly put on. They were dim with a moisture which he furtively polished off, blinking his eyes meanwhile as if the light hurt him. He was profoundly moved—thrilled to the very core of his soul by the simplicity, frankness and courage ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... narrative was interrupted by the appearance of Martha, making demand for her peas. Bubble was duly presented to her; and she beamed on him through her spectacles, and was delighted to see him, and quite sure ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... the Old Bridge removed their commodities, -and in two hours after the bridge was cracked. The torrent broke down the quays and drowned several coach-horses, which are kept here in stables under ground. We were moated into our house all day, which is near the Arno, and had the miserable spectacles of the ruins that were washed along with the hurricane. There was a cart with two oxen not quite dead, and four men in it drowned: but what was ridiculous, there came tiding along a fat haycock, with a hen and her eggs, and a cat. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... lily fair, Beneath her chin was pinn'd with decent care; And pendent ruffles, of the whitest lawn, Of ancient make, her elbows did adorn. Faint with old age, and dim were grown her eyes, A pair of spectacles their want supplies; These does she guard secure, in leathern case, From thoughtless wights, in some ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... "he's not fond of reading, but I know an old mushrat that's fond of anything like print. I'll give it to him, so any time you see him reading it by moonlight, with his spectacles on, you'll know ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... pout," replied Monsieur Quillan. "Sanity is entirely too much to require of any man when you pout. Besides, your eyes are so big and so bright they bewilder one. In common charity you ought to wear spectacles, Nelchen,—in sheer ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... don't believe Chagmouth people will recognise any of us," said Mavis, hunting for a pair of spectacles she had mislaid. "I'm going to bargain that our names aren't ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... Leonard clung tenaciously to his little strip, every inch that he could possibly pay rent for. He had been there since that story was finished. The broad view rested him. When he ceased to peer into a patient's mouth, he pushed up his spectacles and took a long look over the lake. Sometimes, if the patient was human and had enough temperament to appreciate his treasure, he would idle away a quarter of an hour chatting, enjoying the sun and the clear air of the lake. When the last patient had gone, he would take the chair ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... spectacles. 'Six per cent. guaranteed,' she read; 'and the Directors have every reason to believe that ten per cent., or more, will be ultimately realised to the shareholders by the hotel.' 'Put me into that, Master Henry! ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... is a bad man," answered Baggs stoutly, "and a blackguard's a blackguard. And if you are equal to doing one dirty trick, your fellow man has a right to distrust you all through. You've got to look at a question through your own spectacles, and I won't hear no nonsense about the welfare of the Mill, because the welfare of the Mill means to me—Levi Baggs—my welfare—and, no doubt, it means to that godless rip, his welfare. You mark me—a man that can ruin one girl won't be very tender ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... spectacles (of which almost every ornamented church they passed supplied an instance), Isabel contemplated with pleasure the character of Barton[2], who displayed that moderation and liberality which justified ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Spectacles! Nose! No,—the latter feature of hers had never become acquainted with the former; and there was as little stiffness as nasal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... across the Hellespont, the assembling of the fleet, the collecting of provisions, fell to his province. Daily a courier pricked into Sardis with despatches from the Great King to his trusted general. Mardonius left the great levees and public spectacles to Artaphernes, but his hand was everywhere. His decisions were prompt. He was in constant communication with the Medizing party in Hellas. He had no time for the long dicing and drinking bouts the Persians loved, but he never failed ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... winter Snow-white lit the fire and put on the kettle, which was made of brass, but so beautifully polished that it shone like gold. In the evening when the snowflakes fell their mother said: "Snow-white, go and close the shutters," and they drew round the fire, while the mother put on her spectacles and read aloud from a big book and the two girls listened and sat and span. Beside them on the ground lay a little lamb, and behind them perched a little white dove with its head tucked ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... therefore, admit that either my complaints or suspicions are "tout a fait imaginaires," or that they are "des petitesses," as your excellency is pleased contemptuously to term them; but whatever they are, they originate in my own observation, without any assistance from the spectacles of an "intrigant," with which I am so gratuitously accommodated ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... Manse, a quaint fancy of a letter from "my unfortunate friend P.", whose wits were a little disordered, there are grotesque hints of the fate of famous persons. P. talks with Burns at eighty-seven; Byron, grown old and fat, wears a wig and spectacles; Shelley is reconciled to the Church of England; Coleridge finishes "Christabel"; Keats writes a religious epic on the millennium; and George Canning is a peer. On our side of the sea, Dr. Channing had just published a volume of verses; Whittier had been lynched ten years before in South Carolina; ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... and her eyes were further obscured by large spectacles, but I could discern a wisp of rather artificial-looking hair drawn across her forehead. And she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... her, and the pen was put into her hand. When she laid it down, the parson returned his spectacles to their sheath, and a nervous voice, which thrilled and frightened her, said from behind, "Let me be the first to wish you ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... number of pictures found in the homes of the Negroes. In default of anything better, they will paper their walls with advertisements of the theater and the circus, and even with pictures from vicious newspapers. They delight in street pageantry, fancy costumes, theatrical performances, and similar spectacles. Factories employing Negroes generally find it necessary to suspend operations on "circus day." They love stories of adventure and any fiction that gives play to their imaginations. All their tastes lie in the realm of the objective and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Professor Otto von Gierke of the University of Berlin. I gathered from his conversation that he and his family had been very kindly entertained in London. His manner was somewhat harsh and over-bearing, but his white hair and spectacles gave him a venerable aspect, and it was clear that he and his wife and daughter belonged to a cultivated and intelligent milieu. But who among his English hosts could possibly have imagined the thoughts and ideas in that grey head? ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... purposes. This, though, was or view of the case, merely, and not shared in to any appreciably extent by the gentlemen who were managing our boarding house. We seemed to view the matter through allopathic spectacles, they through homoeopathic lenses. We thought that the atomic weight of peas (or beans) and the James River fluid were about equal, which would indicate that the proper combining proportions would be, say a bucket of beans (or peas) to a bucket of water. They held that the nutritive potency ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... patronage, known by the appellation of La Maison Lucy Hocquet, not only for hats, bonnets, capotes and turbans, but also for pelerines, fichus a la paysanne, canzous, chemisettes, collars, habit shirts, parures de spectacles, etc.; in these articles they have been so celebrated for the taste and elegance with which they are arranged, that the fame of their talents has attracted around them many of the most influential ladies in Paris, as also several of the most ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... glorious, rarest, and most valuable of Cattleyas is C. Hardyana, doubtless a natural hybrid of C. aurea with C. gigas Sanderiana. Few of us have seen it—two-hundred-guinea plants are not common spectacles. It has an immense flower, rose-purple; the lip purple-magenta, veined with gold. Cattleya Sanderiana offers an interesting story. Mr. Mau, one of Mr. Sander's collectors, was despatched to Bogota in search of Odontoglossum crispum. While tramping through ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... time I know a little fir-plantation about a mile square not far from Markton,' said De Stancy, 'which is precisely like this in miniature,—stems, colours, slopes, winds, and all. If we were to go there any time with a highly magnifying pair of spectacles it would look as fine as this—and save a ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... smooth, ruddy face, and white hair, and large round spectacles behind which his eyes danced and sparkled, and a comical kindly mouth, and his clothes were of bright colours that merged into each other as easily as those of the rainbow and were as certain a sign that the sun was shining somewhere. Moreover there was in his appearance a vague but unmistakable ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas |
