"Divining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were given of working the great ores that lie in the fields about us; and when Elizabeth Sheppard in turn took up the divining-rod, it sought no clods of baser metal, but gold-veined masses of crystal and the clear currents of pure water-streams;—beneath her compelling power, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... acquit her; for not only did she show no provocative favor to another, but she seemed to have gained in dignity and pride since his arrival, actually to have kissed her hand in farewell to the childhood he had been so slow in divining; grown—he felt rather than analyzed—above the pettiness of coquetry. Once more she had stirred the dormant ideals of his early manhood; there were moments when she floated before his inner vision ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... of the guns—and such the game of guns checkmating guns—in their effort to stop the enemy's curtains of fire while maintaining their own that the genius who finds a divining rod which, from a sausage balloon, will point out the position of every enemy battery has fame awaiting him second only to that of the inventor of a system of distilling a death-dealing ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and that even foreigners, who are curious about it, may learn to know its riches and the graces it hath in unfolding the secrets of the highest discipline." Herein is revealed the founder of the French Academy, skilful as he was in divining the wants of his day, and always ready to profit by new means of action, and to make them his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... gone deep, when the silver disks would tinkle hollow, and the inscription read a little too simple, and the old stamp look too pure, and the impress always the same—a Greek boy's head. But he would respect still. A woman, divining ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... had been a silent listener, divining that she had perhaps better make known certain information that was exclusively her own ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... of old the shining, Such a face the sons of men See, and all its life divining Wake ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... hear himself addressed; then looking shyly up in the speaker's face, and divining that no mischief lurked ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... custom of divining the color of the hair of one's future wife or husband, which is probably very old, yet survives in many places, but with interesting modifications as to the bird which gives the signal to try the ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... effrontery before. I was so indignant that I could feel my astral fingers tremble. I could not bear to look at him, and as by that time I had eaten all I could, I rose and walked directly from the court without another word. I am sure he would have pursued me had not the elemental, divining my wish to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... groaned—placed one hand before his eyes, and with the other grasped his guardian's arm convulsively, as if to check him from proceeding farther; but the good man, not divining his meaning, and absorbed in his subject, went on, irritating the wound ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that she stood to him for perfection in human companionship. A woman's love is, perhaps, the only true divining rod. Domini knew instinctively where lay the troubled waters, what troubled them in their subterranean dwelling. She was certain that Androvsky was at peace with her but not with himself. She had said to him in the tent that ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the initiative of the Roman Consul commanding the new fleet. Having got word of the coming of the Carthaginians and divining their plan, he braved an unfavorable wind and a rough sea for the sake of forcing an action before they could establish contact with their army. Accordingly he sought out his enemy and met him (in the year 241 B.C.) off the island of AEgusa, near Lilybaeum. Almost at the first onset the Romans ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... in the northern sky, followed by thunder like the indistinct noise of a battle. Havill and Dare retired to the trees. When the dance ended Somerset and his partner emerged from the tent, and slowly moved towards the tea-house. Divining their goal Dare seized Havill's arm; and the two worthies entered the building unseen, by first passing round behind it. They seated themselves in the back part of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... cruiser," said the American lieutenant as he gripped the brass wheel of the periscope and gave himself intently to the task of divining the ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... could promise this, and consented to bear my message to her. Within the hour she was at my bedside and divining that, haply, I had news to give her of the letter I had born her brother, she dismissed Magistri ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... less understood, and people could only pretend to remember it. And all the while Merman was perfectly sure that his very opponents who had knowledge enough to be capable judges were aware that his book, whatever errors of statement they might detect in it, had served as a sort of divining rod, pointing out hidden sources of historical interpretation; nay, his jealous examination discerned in a new work by Grampus himself a certain shifting of ground which—so poor Merman declared—was the sign of an intention gradually to appropriate the views of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... with the Hazel is the divining rod, for the discovery of water and metals. This has always by preference been a forked Hazel-rod, though sometimes other rods are substituted. The belief in its power dates from a very early period, and is by no means extinct. The divining-rod is said to be still used in Cornwall, and ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... had come to Wade in any sense comparable to that now secretly his, as he lived near Columbine Belllounds, divining more and more each day how truly she was his own flesh and the image of the girl he had loved and married and wronged. Columbine was his daughter. He saw himself in her. And Columbine, from being strongly attracted to him and trusting ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... mackintosh on a rainy day. She bowed now to Dosia with a patronizing dignity, pointed by the plaintive warmth of the greeting to Lois, who had come hurrying down-stairs out of those passion-depths of darkness, so that Mrs. Snow wouldn't suspect anything. She had an uncanny faculty of divining just what you didn't want ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... sound of voices Mary Harmer came softly downstairs from the sick man's side, and divining in a moment who the stranger was, took her into a warm, motherly embrace, and thanked her again and again for coming ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... that vicinity. The members of the brotherhood made themselves useful as teachers and in various handicrafts. They were especially in demand among the superstitious for their skill in casting horoscopes, using divining rods, and carving potent amulets. Their mysterious astronomical tower on the heights of the Wissahickon was the Mecca of the curious and the distressed. To the gentle Kelpius was ascribed the power of healing, but he was himself the victim of consumption. The brotherhood ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... is far, beyond divining. Till then we drain the 'magic cup' apart; Yet not apart, for hope and memory twining Smile upon ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... by the man—All John Steele's excuses for coming in this unceremonious fashion that he had planned to put to the servant of Captain Forsythe were at the moment forgotten. Who could have guessed that he would make his way straight hither—or had any one? An enemy, divining a lurking place for which he was heading, would not have obligingly forwarded his belongings. What then? Had Jocelyn Wray ordered them sent on with Captain Forsythe's boxes and bags, in order that they might be less likely to fall into ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... paused in his singing he wiped away his tears, and poured a drink-offering from his cup; but every time the minstrel resumed his lay a new fit of weeping succeeded. At last, Alcinous, who had hitherto been totally absorbed in that rare minstrelsy, observed his guest's emotion, and partly divining the cause came to his relief. "How say ye, fair sirs?" he said, rising and addressing the company. "Shall we go forth for awhile, and show the stranger that we have other and manlier pastimes, now that we have ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... with the tears of blood. They thought there was some great mystery that so young a child should utter such weighty words, and that the fear of death should make such an impression on him that he should shed tears of blood. They were in suspense divining what it portended, whether that the child would become a great man. They revoked the sentence of death, calling the child Yahuar-huaccac, which means "weeper of blood," in allusion to what ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... this is not what I especially dislike her for; people must love according to their own nature and temperament, and not after another's pattern. The thing that frets me most just now is the way that Eleanor has of divining my thoughts before they are spoken, and even before they are quite clear to myself. Sometimes, when we are talking together, some subject comes up on which I do not care to express my opinion. Eleanor fixes her clear, penetrating eyes upon me, and drags my thought out into the light, just as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... "It's a divining-crystal. In the East certain people, mostly boys, look in these crystals and see all sorts of things, present, past, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... character might become if certain improvements were effected. In discerning genius or abilities of any kind, his penetration was so quick and just that it seemed as if he possessed some mental divining rod revealing to him hidden veins of talent, and giving him the power of discovering mines of intellectual wealth, which lay unsuspected ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... duties just as the Fourth Coalition was being hammered to pieces, on the same anvil which had destroyed the others. By the Treaty of Tilsit (July, 1807), Napoleon prepared to unite the northern nations in his war on British commerce. Hearing or divining his purpose to further this project by seizing the fleet of Denmark, Canning dispatched an armed force to Copenhagen with a demand for the surrender of the Danish ships. The order was executed, and the Danish ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... minute's check and pause. He was reading; he did not see her, and he did not hear her light footstep coming up the bank; until her figure threw a shadow which reached him. Then he looked up and sprang up; and perhaps divining it, met Dolly's hesitation, for, taking her hands he placed her on the bank beside his open book; which book, Dolly saw, was his Bible. But her shyness had all come back. The impression made by the thought of a person, when ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... Conroy tomorrow, you know,' Edith said, divining an anxiety or annoyance in Aylmer ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... mystery of Lovel. The other side-narrative, that of Dousterswivel, is the weak point of the whole; but this Scott justifies by "very late instances of the force of superstitious credulity, to a much greater extent." Some occurrence of the hour may have suggested the knavish adept with his divining-rod. But facts are never a real excuse for the morally incredible, or all but incredible, in fiction. On the wealth and vraisemblance and variety of character it were superfluous to dilate. As in Shakspeare, there ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of Miss Hamm upon horseback persists in the retina of my brain as a far from unseemly vision. One is moved to wonder that a circumstance so trivial should linger in one's mind. How truly has it been said that the vagaries of the human imagination are past divining. ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... results; and as his heart never interfered with the deductions of his rough intelligence, he had by a sort of logical sequence formulated an inflexible plan of action. This man, wholly ignorant, not only of the ideas of history but also of the great names of Europe, had succeeded in divining, and as a natural consequence of his active and practical character, in also realising Macchiavelli, as is amply shown in the expansion of his greatness and the exercise of his power. Without faith in God, despising ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... inquired mechanically, divining some subtler explanation of this visit, and wondering what on earth ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... tingling work, for as surely as I sensed his intention of briefness, just as surely had he sensed mine. I doubt that I could have done the trick had it been broad day instead of moonlight. The dim light aided me. Also was I aided by divining, the moment in advance, what he had in mind. It was the time attack, a common but perilous trick that every novice knows, that has laid on his back many a good man who attempted it, and that is so fraught with danger to the perpetrator that swordsmen are not enamoured ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the young man, divining her thoughts. "Not finding you here, she's gone on a bit, but you can ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... affection for her naturally heightened their perception of what she was trying to do and their approval of what she did. Her inexperience conserved her own exuberant fancy, which ran riot with every straw of opportunity, making of it a golden divining rod whereby the treasure of life ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... know that the penguins were rival fishermen, she fancied that the sea elephants were somehow friendly to her, divining her friendship for them, and maybe she was right, though not perhaps in the way she fancied, for when God made friendship He made it out of ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... had any influence over him. If he opposed her, she had an infallible resource in her tears. She knew thoroughly her husband's character. She knew how to speak to that mind and heart. She busied herself with seeking what could please, with divining his wishes, with anticipating his slightest desires. If he was the least ailing or annoyed she was literally at his feet, and then he could not live without her. He felt that when misfortune came Josephine alone would be able to console him. She had brought him happiness ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... In Piggish souls can prepossessions reign? Allow me to remind you, grass is green— All flesh is grass;—no bacon but is flesh— Ye are but bacon. This divining BAG 80 (Which is not green, but only bacon colour) Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er A woman guilty of—we all know what— Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind She never can commit ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... doctor," smiled Pollyanna, divining his thought. "Dr. Warren is Aunt Polly's doctor. My doctor is ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... of the monster being presented to Jane, who was casting furtive glances from it to the chief, and was just beginning to think that she might next be called on to accept a wolf or panther, and was casting in her mind the chances she had in escaping such an infliction, when the chief said, as if divining her thoughts. ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... this system in the realm of religious practice was, as already intimated, the growth of an elaborate and complicated method of divining the future by the observation of the phenomena in the heavens. It is significant that in the royal collection of cuneiform literature made by King Assur-bani-pal of Assyria (668-626 B.C.) and deposited in his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er, She ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... took the shrubbery path to the village and Miss Hague's cottage-lodgings; and Mr. Cecil Burleigh, repenting too late the vain presumption that had reckoned on her youth and ignorance, apart from the divining power of an honest soul, walked off to Norminster to rid himself of his heavy sense of ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... a time, when Brahmadatta was King of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as son of his chief queen. On his name-day they asked 800 Brahmans, having satisfied them with all their desires, about his lucky marks. The Brahmans who had skill in divining from such marks beheld the excellence of his, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... nothing! And, decidedly, he must be doing something. Thoughts of diving wildly through that forest of legs, and of striking out at whomsoever opposed him, flashed through his mind; but, as though divining his purpose, one of the waiters, a short and chunky chap with an evil-looking cast in one eye, seized him ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... said Arthur, in a low voice, divining the cause of her emotion, and fixing on the retiring form of Mittie his own glistening eye; "she now sows in tears, but she may yet reap in joy. Hers is a mighty struggle, for her character is composed of strong and warring elements. Her mind has grasped the sublime truths of religion, and when ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the tables, Mrs. Chump and Mr. Pole sat apparently unconcerned in their places, and, as if to show their absolute indifference to observation and opinion, went through the ceremony of drinking to one another, upon which they nodded and chuckled: a suspicious eye had the option of divining that they used the shelter of the table cloth for an interchange of squeezes. This would have been further strengthened by Mrs. Chump's arresting exclamation, "Pole! Company!" Mr. Pole looked up. He recognized Lady Gosstre, and made an attempt, in his usual ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the first to reach the point of rocks, saw Jerry hurrying towards us, bearing in his arms a female form, clothed in white. Quicker than a flash, the soldiers, as though divining the situation by instinct, formed a line that completely shielded him from the weapons ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... (Aline much terrified.) ALEXIS Good day—I believe you are a Sorcerer. WELLS Yes, sir, we practice Necromancy in all its branches. We've a choice assortment of wishing-caps, divining-rods, amulets, charms, and counter-charms. We can cast you a nativity at a low figure, and we have a horoscope at three-and-six that we can guarantee. Our Abudah chests, each containing a patent Hag who comes out and prophesies disasters, with spring complete, are strongly recommended. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... day to consider the proposition," she went on, divining his hesitation. "And won't you talk with Mr. Armstrong about it? He knows as well as anybody what the work of the street department is going to involve. Can you think this over and ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... primal kings, and they who had borne wounds of war in fighting for their country. Armour besides hangs thickly on the sacred doors, captured chariots and curved axes, helmet-crests and massy gateway-bars, lances and shields, and beaks torn from warships. He too sat there, with the divining-rod of Quirinus, girt in the short augural gown, and carrying on his left arm the sacred shield, Picus the tamer of horses; he whom Circe, desperate with amorous desire, smote with her golden rod and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Patriotism before family! that is indeed so great an effort that, to make it, we are forced to believe that Brutus from his realm of justice still contemplates us after the lapse of two thousand, five hundred and some years. It seemed natural to Maitre Giguet, who had the merit of divining our wishes in the choice of a chairman, to guide us still further in electing inspectors; but, if I am not mistaken, you think with me that once is enough—and you are right. Our mutual friend, Simon Giguet, who intends ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... mind was running over all the passing acquaintances she had ever made, and endeavoring among them to put the personage before her, he continued to scan her countenance with a steady gaze, as if to read her thoughts, which divining, ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... not flattered by Della Wharton's feminine blandishments. He was grimly amused—when he was not disgusted; though he continued to treat her with the utmost courtesy and gentleness, trying to keep her from divining his emotions. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the throne. Courtiers have a marvelous instinct in scenting the turn of events; courtiers possess a supreme kind of science; they are diplomatists in throwing light upon the unraveling of complicated intrigues, captains in divining the issue of battles, and physicians in curing the sick. Louis XIV., to whom his mother had taught this axiom, together with many others, understood at once that the cardinal must be ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... me in money matters so closely, and grumbles so eternally at what he calls my extravagance, that I'm out of all patience. Last evening, just as I was about telling him that he must give me new parlour carpets, he, divining, I verily believe, my thoughts, cut off every thing, by saying, in a voice as solemn as the grave—'Cara, I would like to have a little plain talk with you about my affairs.' I flared right up. I couldn't have helped it, if I'd died ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... discovering that she was out of humor, but not divining the cause. "Your housemaid admitted me, and thinking you in your own room, was about to usher me in here, and go to announce me, when I saved her the trouble, telling her that my time was limited, and admitting ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... with a little smile, and divining that his advice would be accepted he turned to a fresh subject. "Where are you going to sleep? You ought not to have given ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as the actions; but a poet thrusteth into the middest, even where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and divining of thinges to come, maketh a ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... he clanged the bell for Tee-ka-mee, and that faithful servitor, divining the order, brought the aged ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... balloon had made its appearance just in time for his comments. Another critic, Horace Walpole, was in two minds about balloons. Sometimes they seemed to him 'philosophic playthings'. He was growing old, and did not care to spend his time in 'divining with what airy vehicles the atmosphere will be peopled hereafter, or how much more expeditiously the east, west, or south will be ravaged and butchered, than they have been by the old clumsy method of navigation'. Yet ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... escaping Sheikh was Ghoma, now an exile at Trebisonde. This dream was actually related and retailed in Tripoli two years before the events happened. One day Mr. Gagliuffi called on the tyrant, and found him very thoughtful divining in the rumel ("sand"). "What's the matter?" asked the Consul. His Highness exclaimed, "Oh, I'm much troubled. An Arab chief has come here professing allegiance to my government. But he's a great villain, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... The traveler, divining his curiosity, explained. "I stayed last night at the mill below. I'm a millwright. I have some property to inspect in Silver Plume, hence I'm walking across. I didn't know it was so far; I was misinformed. I'm not accustomed to this ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... brewed a draught for Natalie with some of the herbs she had brought; and instructed Garth to administer it when she woke. For an instant all Garth's suspicions returned; and he looked at her hard. Rina, divining his thought, coolly lifted the pail to her lips, and drank of it. Once more he felt ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... speculative of past ages have frequently attempted to arrive, by external means, at the immediate possession of results otherwise requiring a long course of intense study and anxious inquiry. From these defunct illuminati originated the suppositionary virtues of the magically-endowed divining wand. The simple bending of a forked hazel twig, being the received sign of the deep-buried well, suited admirably with their notions of immediate information, and precluded the unpleasant and toilsome necessity for delving on speculation for the discovery of their desired object. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... are, in small authority, set over the people of a locality, you are apt to develop a small official mind which obscures the power of seeing, understanding, divining. Such an attitude, as I had painfully seen in various parts of the Highlands, fretted the great sore of defeat that lay upon the Jacobites, whereas the effort should have been to heal it. My own mind I had tried to keep fresh and free in all my relationships at ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... in fairy-stories of the fountain of youth, and even amid the briers of this work-a-day world it is found sometimes, I think, by the divining-rod of Love. But many students gnashed their teeth, and, as we have said, Miss Christina Eldridge alone, of all the dear five hundred, said, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... I said in the air, but no one answered me. Mastering my irritation, I went forward to undo the hitching-strap, but Martin, divining my intention, rose and loosened the buckle. As I reached him, he spoke in a low whisper, keeping his back turned ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... patrons. The past fashion in history was to record only the lives and expressions of those great in power. The artist is ever the servant of such, but may he not have had his own private thoughts, unpurchaseable, unsold, and therefore only for our divining. There must have been a sense of humour then as now, and twinkling eyes with which ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... and ideas, a train of scattered causes and consequences, which then she had no power to set in order; but the rush almost overwhelmed her, and what was wanting, shame added. She was vexed with herself for her jealousy in divining and her impatience in asking foolish questions; and in her vexation was ready to be vexed with Winthrop, — if she only knew how. She longed to lay her head down in her hands, but pride kept it up. She rested her chin on one hand and wondered when Winthrop ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... had a divining rod!" groaned Rhoda. "That would tell us in what direction the water lay. We've been going south-east all the ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... race existed, it is this one we see fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little—not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell. The Syrians are very poor, and yet they are ground down by a system of taxation that would drive any other nation frantic. Last year their taxes were heavy enough, in all conscience—but this year they have been increased by the addition of taxes that were forgiven them in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to this passage from Rubruck, Mr. Rockhill says (195, note): "The mode of divining here referred to is apparently the same as that described by Polo. It must not however be confounded with rabdomancy, in which bundles of wands or arrows were used." Ammianus Marcellinus (XXXI. 2. 350) says this mode of divination was practised by the Alans. "They have a singular ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... voices greeted him. Quickly selecting a man whose face was familiar, he pressed a douceur into his hand, and, in a voice that broke in spite of his efforts to control it, asked to be driven home immediately and as fast as possible. The hackman looked upon Edward's haggard face with silent sympathy, divining, perhaps, something of the truth, and hastily led the way ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... ready, outflowing sympathy for the cares and sorrows and interests of all who approached her; with a naive and gentle playfulness, that adorned, without hiding, the breadth and strength of her mind; and, above all, with a clear, divining, moral discrimination; never mistaking wrong for right in the slightest shade, yet with a mercifulness that made allowance for every weakness, and pitied ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is as shy as a virgin; unless it is fittingly apparelled we may not look on its shadowy nakedness: it will fly from us and only return again in the darkness crying in a thin, childish voice which we may not comprehend until, with aching minds, listening and divining, we at last fashion for it those symbols which are its protection and its banner. So she could not understand the touch that came to her from afar and yet how intimately, the whisper so aloof and yet so thrillingly ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... that water may be found by a divining rod made of willowe; whiche he hath read somewhere; he thinks in Vitruvius. Quaere Sir ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... brow, I see their antique pen would have expressed Even such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all, you prefiguring; And, for they looked but with divining eyes, They had not skill enough your worth to sing: For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... mentioned by Herodotus, and the Alans by Ammianus Marcellinus, as making use of these divining rods. The German method of divination with them is illustrated by what is said by Saxo-Grammaticus (Hist. Dan. xiv, 288) of the inhabitants of the Isle of Rugen in the Baltic Sea: "Throwing, by way of lots, three pieces of wood, white in one part, and black in another, into ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the English-speaking world has recently been celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Keats, who is the only pure Greek in all English literature, for whose imagination "a thing of beauty was a joy forever," and whose genius in divining the secrets of the beautiful amounted to inspiration. We know now that no poet in all time, who died so young, has left so much that is precious. Scholars are not wanting who believe that had he lived to see his maturity Keats would have ranked with the five great poets of the ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... one think less of a style or attain it more consummately. He was far too much occupied with the divining of the qualities of light and atmosphere that enveloped his subjects, and with stating those truths in the most direct and poignant way to have time to spare on mere adornments and artifices that amuse us in the work of lesser men. Every stroke in Velasquez means something, ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... me? Could she, who is truth itself, go there and perjure herself before God and man? No! a thousand times no! It has become a simple question of whom she loves, and I'll find out if Shakespeare's words are true. If she has love for me, let her bury it never so deeply, my love will be the divining-rod that will inevitably ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... for another purpose—to wit, that through thy instrumentality we may discover the divining cup the emperor hath lost. Knowest thou aught of this precious crystal?" inquired the Chaldean, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... render the disorder of the young men irretrievable; and, accordingly, in less than a moment they were seen,—all, at least, who were not already disabled,—flying in a panic from the field of battle. It was in vain that the captain of horse-thieves, divining at last the cause of their extraordinary flight, roared out that he was a living man, with nothing of a ghost about him whatever; the panic was universal and irremediable, and nothing remained for him to do but to save his own life as quickly ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... quickening heart throb, yet he had never been cooler in his life. More than anything else in the world he wanted to look at Nell Burton; however, divining that the situation might be embarrassing to her, he refrained from looking up. She began to bathe his injured knuckles. He noted the softness, the deftness of her touch, and then it seemed her fingers were not quite as steady as they might have been. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... romance sadder, and therefore better, than any she had ever read; better, even, than that in the one-act dramas which followed their turns on the stage. "Have you ever studied his writing?" she asked her husband; and, promptly divining her plan, he replied, "I made a few copies of his signature on the Manila hotel register. You never know what will turn up." After a pause, he added eagerly, "Better yet!—there was some of his writing in the overcoat I borrowed from ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... of divining by the lines egraven in the hand of man, by dame nature in 19. Genitures; with a Learned Discourse of the Soul of the World; ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... difficult to find, the road to Klingsor's castle was easy and overeasy; it would seem that for the feet of a votary of the Grail all roads led to it. Parsifal had seen it shining afar, and with childish shouts of delight is drawing near. Klingsor, divining in him an enemy more than usual dangerous, resorts, to make his ruin altogether sure, to what are his supreme methods. He calls to his assistance once more the ally by whose help the great Amfortas had been vanquished. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... cafe. But there they would not be nearly so interesting; for such people to be in Reno means either a domestic comedy, tragedy or romance. Each one is a puzzle, and one finds oneself intent upon divining the mystery embodied in these personalities, as they come and go like shadows ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... little," said Boyd, divining the whole story from the lad's few sentences, "and he also has a way of shooting at the right time. Now, you sit down here, Will, and eat these steaks I'm broiling, and I'll give you a cup of coffee, too, just one ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... divining the presence of intruders, ceased his song. Doubtless he had heard the rustle of their clothing as they sat down at the foot of the tree, or the tender words they were ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... this appointment, I go too far, for one of my profession; But I have a divining soul within me, Which tells me, trust reposed in noble natures Obliges ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... my divining thoughts, This pretty lad will prove our country's bliss. His looks are full of peaceful majesty, His head by nature fram'd to wear a crown, His hand to wield a sceptre, and himself Likely in time to bless a regal throne. Make much of him, my lords; for this is he Must help you more ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... lollipops now, I expect!' Varia hurriedly got up and went away. Ivan Semyonitch looked after her and gave a sly whistle. I glanced at him in perplexity. 'Can it be,' I wondered, 'that he knows all about it?' And the lieutenant, as though divining my thoughts, nodded his head affirmatively. Directly after tea I got up and took leave. 'You, my good sir, we shall see again,' observed the lieutenant. I did not say a word in reply.... I began to feel simply ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... burly policeman entered with the two confidence men who had attempted so perseveringly to get Uncle's money. Behind them came the man they had just been trying to rob. Johnny and Louis had seen them talking to a countryman, and, divining what was intended, followed them as they tolled him away to a place where they could accomplish the robbery. They found a policeman on the way, who took in the situation and assisted the boys to catch the fellows in ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... had come. That, strange to say, was a pity; for, stranger still to say, she could have shown him more confidence if he himself had had less intention. His intention so chilled her, from the moment she found herself divining it, that, just for the pleasure of going on with him fairly, just for the pleasure of their remembrance together of Matcham and the Bronzino, the climax of her fortune, she could have fallen to pleading with him and to ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... Nay, rather borne to heaven, and there is shining, Waiting our coming, and perchance repining At our delay; there shall we meet at last: And there, mine ears, her angel words float past, Those who best understand their sweet divining; Howe'er, my feet, unto the search inclining, Ye cannot reach her in those regions vast. Why, then, do ye torment me thus, for, oh! It is no fault of mine, that ye no more Behold, and hear, and welcome her below; Blame ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... came and did not wait for King to get dressed but burst into the bathroom and shook hands with him while he was still naked and asked ten questions (like a gatling gun) while King was getting on his trousers, divining each answer after the third word ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... 'Such as begin by making free with the devil's name, aye end by doing it with all the names in heaven.' 'Father,' said I, 'I am a soldier, and this is but my "consigne" or watchword." 'Oh, then, it is just a custom?' said he. I not divining the old fox, and thinking to clear myself, said, 'Ay, it was.' 'Then that is ten times worse,' said he. ''Twill bring him about your ears one of these days. He still comes where he hears his name often called.' ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... admiration in his praise—he had commended her as the surgeon might commend a fine instrument fashioned for his use. But that she should be the instrument to serve such a purpose—that her skill, her promptness, her gift of divining and interpreting the will she worked with, should be at the service of this implacable scientific passion! Ah, no—she could be ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... great, simple, inevitable, tragic as life itself. Yet what could have been more beautiful, more splendid than the life of Jones, and his wife, and daughter, and sons, especially Abe? Abe Jones! The name haunted me. In one clear divining flash I saw the life of the lad. I yearned with tremendous passion for the power to tell the simplicity, the ruggedness, the pathos and the glory of his story. The moan of wind in the pines seemed a requiem for the boy who had prattled ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... the Don, partially closing one eye, and looking profoundly into the glass as though he were divining the future, "law, sir, is a mystery and judges is a mystery; masters is a mystery and 'sociates is a mystery; ushers is a mystery and counsel is a mystery;—the whole of life (here he tipped the contents of the glass down his throat) is ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... think, to penetrate by reasoning or intuition the wall of mystery which, it seemed, Rutton chose to set between himself and the world. The intense earnestness of the man's hopeless confession had carried conviction. Amber believed him, believed in the reality of his trouble; and, divining it dimly, a monstrous, menacing shape in the vagueness of the unknown, was himself dismayed and a little fearful. He owed much to this man, was bound to him by ties not only of gratitude but of affection, yet, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... reference chiefly to wisdom. The two words are frequently used promiscuously, and may both be rendered by the Latin vates in its earliest meaning of seer: Valmiki was both poet and seer, as he is said to have sung the exploits of Rama by the aid of divining insight rather than of knowledge ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... vivid in Ruth's recollection. She felt that she would never forget it. But her horror gradually abated, and at the end of a week she was able to look at Randerson without shuddering. During the week she had evaded him. And he, divining the state of her feelings, kept away from the house as ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... you didn't upbraid Mrs. Grubb,' said Mary, divining from Rhoda's clouded brow that her interview had not been a pleasant one. 'You know our only peaceful way of rescuing Lisa from her hold is to make a friend of her, and convert her to our way of thinking. Was she ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... godmother, guardian angel, delicate benefactress, knowing all that threatens, divining all that saves, she was to each of us an amiable protectress, equally beloved and respected, who enlightened, warmed, and elevated his [Chopin's] inspiration, and left a blank in his life when she was ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... least defence, hurled him over the precipice. The helplessness of the strong man was uttered in one single despairing cry as he shot into the abyss. Then all was still. The sound of his fall could not reach the edge of the gulf. Divining in a moment that the lady, whose name was Elsie, must have fled in the opposite direction, he reined his steed on his haunches. He could touch the precipice with his bridle-hand half outstretched; his sword-hand half outstretched would have dropped a stone ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Melkbridge. Mavis was silent. She wished that she were journeying over the hundred miles which lay between where she stood and her lover. Miss Toombs was strangely cheerful: to such an extent, that Mavis wondered if her friend guessed the secret of her lover's identity, and, divining her heart's longings, was endeavouring to distract her thoughts from their probable preoccupation. Mavis thanked her friend again and again for all she had done for her. Miss Toombs had that morning received a letter from her London boot acquaintance in reply to one she had written ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... in divining the mental processes of two children hysterical with excitement, his magnetic taming of those fluttering little hearts, his inspired avoidance of a fatal false step at a critical point in the moral ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... King Shaddad, and now sunk somewhere in the Sands of Arabia. Jamshyd's Seven-ring'd Cup was typical of the 7 Heavens, 7 Planets, 7 Seas, &c., and was a Divining Cup. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... may be urged that the success of the plan depended on too many ifs. Assuming that the Toulon and Brest squadrons escaped the blockaders, their subsequent movements would most probably be reported by some swift frigate off Gibraltar or Ferrol. The chance of our divining the French plans was surely as great as that Gantheaume and Villeneuve would unite in the West Indies, ravage the British possessions, and return in undiminished force. The English fleets, after weary months of blockade, were adepts at scouting; ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... process was a matter of course, the baby gazed meanwhile into Mary's colorless, bony and unlovely face. Perhaps the childish eyes found something behind its hardness not visible to older and less divining insight, for one soft hand forthwith stole up to the hollow cheek, while the other pulled at the worn sleeve for attention. "What a name?" the clear ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... the lugger lowered her mainsail, the schooner, divining, as it appeared, her intention, did the same, and luffed immediately, and was on the new tack first of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... I fear, of what I sent you about heirlooms," said Mr. Dove, divining the purport ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Jack, you'll soon find yourself at home here," said Peter, divining my thoughts. While he was speaking, a seaman lighted a lantern which hung from a beam, and its glare showed me that the place was more roomy than I had supposed, and that every part of it was perfectly clean. I found, indeed, afterwards, that it was very superior ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... considered by his enemies as their lawful plunder. As a matter of fact it was a trap he was preparing. He hoped that his brother and other relatives in Cibao would, either by force or by trickery, capture as many Spaniards as would be required to pay his ransom. Divining this plot, Columbus sent Hojeda, but with an escort of soldiers sufficient to overcome all resistance of the inhabitants of Cibao. Hardly had the Spaniards entered that region when the brother of Caunaboa ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... again, through sudden tears, as though divining his reference to Mr. Bentley's grief, when a step make them turn. Eldon Parr had entered the room. Never, not even in that last interview, had his hardness seemed so concretely apparent as now. Again, pity seemed never ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... baggage room, where they stood talking and laughing, telling me of the morning's shopping expedition—hat-hunting, they called it—in the rain. I fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman, perhaps divining that I had become a little bit distrait and that I had business to transact, rapped smartly on the iron counter ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... and wide, while its own fragments roll onwards with the stream. The trees of the orchard are uprooted in an instant, and an old elm falls prostrate. The outbuildings of a cottage are invaded, and the porkers and cattle, divining their danger, squeal and bellow in affright. But they are quickly silenced. The resistless foe has broken down wall and door, and buried the poor creatures ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and the priest, subjects were constantly supplied. Among the indians who presented themselves for measurement was old Manuel, sacristan from Xaya; he is a h'men, and we had hoped that he would show us the method of using the sastun, or divining crystal. He is a full-blood, and neither in face nor manner shows the least emotion. Automatic in movement, he is quiet and phlegmatic in manner; having assumed the usual indian pose for rest, a squat position in which no part of the body except the feet rests upon ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr |
