"Spectacles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the great pro- consul, once more exchanged glances and again burst out laughing, and continued laughing, rocking in their chairs with laughter, until they could laugh no more for exhaustion, and the elderly gentleman removed his spectacles to wipe the tears from ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... longer he might have bought as much more as everything seemed abundant. The only disagreeable thing that happened was to Mr. Sparrman, who, out by himself botanising, was set upon and stripped of everything but his trousers—Besant substitutes spectacles for trousers. He made his way towards the boats, and was befriended by a native, who gave him some cloth to put over his shoulders and escorted him to the others. When Oree heard of the affair he placed himself in Cook's hands, and did his best to find ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... 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
... disguised. Cornie Dean's long black skirt trailed around her. A.O.'s own jacket fitted her snugly, with Margaret Elwood's new black feather boa, which had just been sent her from home, hiding the cut of its familiar collar. Jane Ridgeway's second best spectacles covered her mischievous eyes, and a black veil was draped over the small toque and blond hair in such a way that its broad band of crape hid the lower part of her face. As a finishing touch a piece of gold-leaf, pressed over part ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... closed, and Mrs. Savine, removing her spectacles, wiped both them and her eyes as she remarked: "I hope the Almighty will forgive a meddlesome old woman for ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... squatted on a carpet upon the ground, in an inner court, and reminded me much of a stage king who had undressed after the performance. I produced all my wonderful things to amuse his highness,—my compass, spyglass, kaleidoscope, spectacles, peepshow, &c. In this way I amused him for an hour, he the while asking questions about my personal habits. Our people then told him the sovereign of England was a woman. "Kamo?" To which I replied, "Kamo." I was then requested to read some English, which I did from ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... without doubt one of those performers who appeared in the dramatic scenes and processional representations of the outdoor spectacles already reviewed. His pleasing voice, his picturesque appearance, grace of bearing and elegance of gesture, together with his ability to play his own accompaniments, marked him as the ideal impersonator of the Greek ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... though uv a different stripe, will be apinted. So long ez Dimocrats are kept out, what care I who hez the places? Paul may plant and Apollus water; but uv what account is the plantin and waterin to me ef I don't get the increase? I take no delight in sich spectacles. Ef Androo Johnson proposes to be a Dimockrat,—ef he desires the honest, hearty support of the party,—let him seel his ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... skilful appliance of a jingling jargon of Asiatic, Celtic, and classical phraseology, make nonsense sound like learning too deep to be fathomed. So, while Rusticus will point out to you "the auld-fashioned standin' stane"—on which he tells you that there are plain to be seen a cocked hat, a pair of spectacles, a comb, a looking-glass, a sow with a long snout, and a man driving a gig,—Mr Urban will describe to you "a hieroglyphed ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... a whole people to die rather than yield; there was a thrill of joy through the national heart. When the enforced restraint was at last taken off, there was one bound towards the enemy. Few more magnificent spectacles have been seen in history than the enthusiasm which pervaded the country as the great danger, so long deferred, was felt at last to be closely approaching. The little nation of four millions, the merry England of the sixteenth century, went forward to the death-grapple ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... attending to what he was saying. The words bills and renew had, however, an awakening sound in them; and she snatched the letter which her husband held towards her, and wiping her eyes, and putting on her spectacles, endeavoured, as fast as the dew which collected on her glasses would permit, to get at the meaning of the needful part of the epistle; while her husband, with pompous elevation, read an ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... road over his spectacles and saw the rye flour all sprinkled on every side, just where it had flown. "Now that's too bad!" he said. "Well, Polly, they say it's no use to cry over spilt milk, and I suppose spilt flour is just ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... Instruments — N. optical instruments; lens, meniscus, magnifier, sunglass, magnifying glass, hand lens; microscope, megascope^, tienoscope^. spectacles, specs [Coll.], glasses, barnacles, goggles, eyeglass, pince-nez, monocle, reading glasses, bifocals; contact lenses, soft lenses, hard lenses; sunglasses, shades [Coll.]. periscopic lens^; telescope, glass, lorgnette; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... said the doctor, readjusting his spectacles. "Here is a splendid one. No: a blackbird has been digging his beak into that. And into this one too. Really, my dear, I'm afraid that my garden friends and foes have been tasting them all. No, here is one with nothing the matter, save the contusion ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... relieved at the edges, where the washing had left off, with a border of a darker color. He looked like an overworked Christy minstrel with the briefest of intervals between his performances. There were black rims in the orbits of his eyes, as if he gazed feebly out of unglazed spectacles, which heightened his simian resemblance, already grotesquely exaggerated by what appeared to be repeated and spasmodic experiments in dyeing his gray hair. Without the slightest notice of Lance, he inflicted his protesting ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... amphitheatre, during an exhibition of games given by Zenobia on the occasion of her return, in which the Palmyrenes, especially those of Roman descent, take great delight. I care, as you know, nothing for them, nor only that, abhor them for their power to imbrute the people accustomed to their spectacles more and more. In this instance I was persuaded by Fausta and Gracchus to attend, as I should see both the Queen and her subjects under favorable circumstances to obtain new knowledge of their characters; and I am not sorry ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... off my father's pen as it travelled slowly over the paper. At last he finished his letter, put it with my commission into the same cover, took off his spectacles, ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... given the freedom of their rooms, she listened to their chatter, she was often caught up for embraces heavy with cologne; they loved to dress her up in preposterous costumes, and shouted with laughter at the sight of her in Dolly Varden bonnets, Scotch kilts, or spectacles and wigs. "Baby doll," "Lovey," and "Honey Babe" were Julia's names here, and she was a child hungry for love and eager to earn it. To-night she ate her supper in that silence so grateful to grown ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... spectacles on my nose (they were the kind that fasten back of the ears) during the previous hardships, and I found these sticking in their position when I awoke. My khaki coat was on the ground under my hammock, and the first thing was to ascertain ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... well, pretty well," answered the Duke, rubbing his gold-bowed spectacles with a white silk handkerchief. "But still, I must say that the poor fellow seems very down-hearted. Shall I read ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... are not to be handled on the Sabbath. Neither are pocket-handkerchiefs, spectacles, etc., to be carried on the Sabbath in an unwalled town or village. Radishes are not to be salted in quantities, but each piece is to be dipped separately in salt and eaten. After dinner the Israelite is to take a siesta, for each letter forms the initial of a word, and the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... tremendous shafts of light. Whether it was a thick and oily discharge from the engine of a submerged construction or not, I think that I shall have to accept this substance as a concomitant, because of another note. "As wave succeeded wave, one of the most grand and brilliant, yet solemn, spectacles that one could think of, was ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... coffee houses present yet more singular and astounding spectacles; they are not only crowded within, but other expectant crowds are at the doors and windows, listening a gorge deployee to certain orators who from chairs or tables harangue each his little audience; the eagerness with ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... is re-formed before the bungalow. A huge bag of copper coin is produced. The old Lallah, or writer, with spectacles on nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled coolies, and as each name is called, the mates count out the pice, and make it over to the coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get his little purchases made at the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Perkins, the "cow doctor," came to the door. He was an old man with iron-gray hair, and always wore steel-bowed spectacles; at least for twenty years nobody in the town could remember ever having seen him without them. It was the general opinion that he wore them during the night. Once when questioned on the subject, he laughingly said that he "couldn't see to go ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... for them in the rear, as they refused to allow any at the front to be vacated for them. It was just before the doors opened on the great dialogue where Laura was the mother, in a neat wrapper and gray wig and spectacles, standing in the midst of an interesting family. The back of an easy chair served to support Ivy, who was dressed in white, with ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... was cut off by the appearance round the corner of the van of rays from the curate's spectacles, followed hastily by his face and a few white whiskers, and the swinging tails of his long gaunt coat. Nobody reproached him, seeing how he was reproaching himself; and he entered breathlessly and ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... the shading spectacles of green his eyes seemed devoid of any expression. His attitude remained unchanged, thumbs in the low-cut pockets of his wide-flapping trousers, ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... the danger here, as everywhere, of forming hasty and inaccurate judgments, and of drawing general conclusions from partial premises, and on my present tour there is the added risk of seeing things through official spectacles; but still certain things lie on the surface, and a traveler must be very stupid indeed if he does not come to an approximately just conclusion concerning them. As, for instance, it is easy to see that far in the interior of the Malay Peninsula, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... waistcoat, a brocade brode of resplendent lustre, which combined both qualities. His shoes were bright with the new French blacking, and his jewellery, rings, studs, brooches, and chains (for he wore two, that belonging to his watch, and one from which depended a pair of spectacles, folded so as to resemble an eye-glass,) were of the finest material and the ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... Monkbarns, you prick up your ears and wipe your spectacles. That is the motto, as every one of the learned family of antiquaries is well aware, and, as you have often told me, of your great forbear, the venerable and praiseworthy Aldobrand Oldenbuck the Typographer, ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... in the hope of effecting a reconciliation with Jack Holton, of whom unpleasant reports were now reaching Montgomery from the state capital? An intelligent community possessed of a healthy curiosity must be pardoned for polishing its spectacles when a drama so exciting and presenting so many characters is being disclosed upon ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... spectacles be set in leather, and with a leather case, or let the fould be fitter for the nose.—Yours for ever, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 kind will show a 'K' upon their foreheads ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... exposed them to the pressure or peril of poverty, for it was a much more difficult thing for women than for men to secure an adequate support by their own efforts. The result was one of the most shocking spectacles the world has ever known—nothing less, in fact, than a state of rivalry and competition among women for the opportunity of marriage. To realize how helpless were women in your day, to assume toward men an attitude of physical, mental, or moral dignity and independence, it is enough to remember ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... her little boy had just passed, but looks of admiration were all they gave. In the distance an old gentleman appeared, and he was even a more unlikely customer. He peered through his spectacles, and seemed too much wrapped up in his own thoughts to spare attention ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a great curiosity, as it forms a portion of the harbour, being situated like the nose in a pair of spectacles, the basins being the eyes right and left. The actual defences are intact, although the inner accommodation for barracks, magazines, &c., &c., require great repairs and alteration. The walls are of solid squared masonry, the stones jointed ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... student, who was repeating something at great speed about Charles the Great, and adding to each of his sentences the word nakonetz [ the English colloquialism "you know."] while a third one—an old man in spectacles—proceeded to bend his head down as we approached, and, peering at us through his glasses, pointed silently to the tickets. I felt his glance go over both myself and Ikonin, and also felt sure that something about us had displeased him (perhaps it was Ikonin's red hairs), for, after taking another ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... bairns, children's so-called "comforters." soondin', sounding, examination with a stethoscope. soopled, suppled. sooth, South. sough, rushing sound; to sough awa', to breathe his last. spails, splinters, shavings. spak, spoke. spate, flood. specks, spectacles. sporran, pouch worn with the kilt. spunks, matches. stappin', stepping. starns, stars. staw'd, surfeited. steer, disturbance. stiddy, steady. stoundin', aching. stour, dust. strae, straw; in the strae, in child-bed. straught, ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... they and their families have enjoyed during the year past, and pray for a repetition of the same mercies for the year to come. This festival is called the "Idu I-Fitr," and we were fortunate enough to witness one of the most impressive spectacles I have ever seen. Women never appear, but the entire male population, with their children assembled at the great park which surrounds the mosque, clad in festival attire, each bringing a prayer rug to spread upon the ground. About ten thousand persons of all ages and all classes came on foot ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... down to this day; and no country can so justly complain of being constantly misunderstood and misrepresented by French tourists as ours. The more difficult it is for a Frenchman not to glance through colored spectacles from the Palais Royal at whatever does not belong to "the Great Nation," the more praise those few of them deserve who give to the world correct and impartial impressions of travel and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... her gold-rimmed spectacles from her cap frills to her eyes, placed her lace-mittened hands on the arms of her chair and looked straight and steadily into the face ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... century. And, indeed, they acted as a kind of moral thermometer, in a fashion that would much have astonished their ill-doing and barbarous selves. For my mother has told me how when she would commit some piece of childish naughtiness, her aunt would say, looking gravely over her spectacles at the small culprit: "Emily, your conduct is unworthy of the descendant of the seven kings of France." And Emily, with her sweet grey Irish eyes, and her curling masses of raven-black hair, would cry in penitent shame over her unworthiness, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... beard as we could in those days. I had been through the war since college, and he had been in California, most of the time, and, as he told me, he had been up north, in Alaska, just after we bought it, and hurt his eyes—had snow-blindness—and he wore spectacles. In fact, I had to do most of the recognizing, but after we found out who we were we were rather comfortable; and I liked him better than I remembered to have liked him in our college days. I don't suppose there was ever much harm in him; ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... commiserate the fate of Ignazio Mugio, the Lombard refugee. A very different character was old Pietro, the steam-boat agent. Groping our way with some difficulty up a gloomy staircase, in the dusk of the evening, we found him, spectacles on nose, poring over a gazette by a feeble oil lamp. The old man was so eager for news that it was difficult to fix him to the object of our inquiries; and then he expatiated on the attractions ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... French neighbours, we are told, included in their expenditure on convivial amusements a curious item called la casse, to wit, the smashing of plates and glasses. The Spaniards, on the other hand, have bull-fights, most shocking spectacles, as we know, for we make it a point to witness them when we are over there. Undoubtedly we have immensely improved in such matters, but we need a great deal of further improvement. Most people are safe only when at ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Jesuit Martin Martini, the author of the admirable Atlas Sinensis, one whose honourable zeal to maintain Polo's veracity, of which he was one of the first intelligent advocates, is apt, it must be confessed, a little to colour his own spectacles:—"That the cosmographers of Europe may no longer make such ridiculous errors as to the QUINSAI of Marco Polo, I will here give you the very place. [He then explains the name.] ... And to come to the point; this is the very city that hath those bridges ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... crimped hair and a large baby; but the arrival of Lucius Harney had long since banished Mr. Miles from Charity's dreams, and as he walked up the path at Harney's side she saw him as he really was: a fat middle-aged man with a baldness showing under his clerical hat, and spectacles on his Grecian nose. She wondered what had called him to North Dormer on a weekday, and felt a little hurt that Harney should have brought him to ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the practical "business" of changing the material glasses and thus hampering the actor by the necessity of altering his expression and his manner in accordance with his deposition or his resumption of these spectacles, seems to me to be childish to a degree, and tends towards turning this simple tale into a kind of fairy story, in which the spectacles play the part of a magic potion or charm, such as Mr. W. S. GILBERT would use in his Creatures of Impulse, his Fogarty's Fairy, and his Sorcerer, whenever ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... deeds of the Inquisition when the priesthood publicly burned and otherwise tortured unbelievers, the alameda has frequently been the scene of fierce struggles, gorgeous church spectacles, and many revolutionary parades. Here scores of treasonable acts have been concocted, and daring robberies committed in the troublous times not long past. To-day it is peaceable enough; so quiet in the summer afternoons, here in the very heart of the busy city, that the drone of the busy humming-birds ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... her sobs. The few pennies she had saved she used to buy a pair of spectacles to read the forthcoming chronicles; for she was one of that class of innocent people who believe that the faculty ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... moment, and when a search was instituted she was sometimes found taking a stroll in the garret where she could have no possible business, and sometimes poking about in the darkest corner of the dark cellar, without the slightest conceivable object. If her thimble or spectacles were lost, she has often been known to go to the pantry and lift up every tumbler and wine-glass on the shelf, one after the other, and look under it as if she really expected to find the missing article there; ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... police headquarters, and they had found the car conductor, he remembering because he had threatened to put the boy scout off the car if he didn't quit pointing his gun straight at an old man with gold spectacles setting across the aisle. And finally they had got off themselves about three miles down the road; he'd watched 'em climb over a stone wall and start up a hill into some woods that was there. And he was Conductor Number Twenty-seven, if we wanted ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... little impression on men, unless their attention is especially called to them." The father of the school of economists (Say), from whom I borrow these two quotations, might have profited by them; but he who laughs at the blind should wear spectacles, and he who ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... his pocket a wallet which bore the signs of long wear, and, opening it, deliberately drew out a folded sheet of note paper, grown yellow with age and brittle with much handling. Then, adjusting his spectacles, he added: "Here's something I'd like to read to you, Albert. ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... my father, who has come to escort me home," said Mademoiselle Noemie. "He speaks English. He will arrange with you." And she turned to welcome a little old gentleman who came shuffling up, peering over his spectacles ...
— The American • Henry James
... impossible not to regard the attitude of the two objects of this vast unpopularity as one of the most truly honourable spectacles in our political history. The moral fortitude, like the political wisdom of these two strong men, begins to stand out with a splendour that already recalls the great historic heights of statesmanship and patriotism. Even now our heart-felt admiration and gratitude goes out to them as ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... when she learned that this was not a wedding, but a rain-dance, and that the maidens whom she had admired were boys dressed up in female raiment, the customs of the Moquis not allowing women to take part in public spectacles. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... very respectable-looking personage, with a powdered head and gold spectacles. He was dressed in a bottle-green coat with a black velvet collar; wore white trousers; and carried a smart bamboo cane under his arm. He had taken up a book from the stall, and there he stood, reading away, as hard as if he were ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... altered tone and manner struck him now for the first time, and he threw his spectacles on the table and stared at the speaker ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... an intermediate tribunal subject to the pope, makes an appeal to the holy see, the pope shall name the judges from the same places, unless there should be important reasons for bringing the cause directly to Rome. Frivolous appeals are punished. The celebration of divine service is regulated and spectacles in churches are forbidden. The abuse of ecclesiastical censures is repressed, and it is declared that no one is obliged to shun excommunicated persons, unless they have been proclaimed by name, or else that the censure shall be so notorious that it cannot be denied ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Great Elector himself; half-sister to the late King, half-aunt to Friedrich Wilhelm; widow now of her third husband: a singular phenomenon to look upon, for a moment, through Wilhelmina's satirical spectacles. One of her three husbands, "Christian Ernst of Baireuth" (Margraf there, while the present Line was but expectant), had been a kind of Welsh-Uncle to the Prince now Bridegroom; so that she has a double right to be here. "She had found the secret of totally ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... would compel surrender, Phips first sent an envoy to Frontenac under protection of the white flag. This messenger after being blindfolded was led to the Chateau and brought before the governor, who had staged for his reception one of the impressive spectacles he loved to prepare. Surrounding Frontenac, as Louis XIV might have been surrounded by the grandees of France, were grouped the aristocracy of New France—the officers of the French regulars and the ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... Abbey.[2452] Here it was that Jeanne was to hear the sermon, as so many other unhappy creatures had done before her. Places like this, to which the folk could flock in crowds, were generally chosen for these edifying spectacles. On the border of this vast charnel-house for a hundred years there had towered a parish church, and on the south there rose the nave of the abbey. Against the magnificent edifice of the church two scaffolds had been erected,[2453] one large, the other smaller. They were west ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... his recollection it had been a good long time since Judge Priest had had a communication by post from overseas. He adjusted his steel-bowed spectacles, ripped the wrapper with care and shook out the contents. There appeared to be several inclosures; in fact, there were several—a sheaf of printed forms, a document with seals attached, and a letter that covered two sheets of paper with typewritten ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... house, Miss Fontover, was an elderly lady in spectacles, dressed almost like an abbess; a dab at Ritual, as become one of her business, and a worshipper at the ceremonial church of St. Silas, in the suburb of Beersheba before-mentioned, which Jude also had begun to attend. She was the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... in question is dated Feb. 8, 1732-3, and the following is the passage to which Walpole refers;—"Those out of power and place always see the faults of those in, with dreadful large spectacles. The strongest in my memory is Sir Robert Walpole, being first pulled to pieces in the year 1720, because the South Sea did not rise high enough; and since that, he has been to the full as well banged about, because it did rise too high. I am determined ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... retinue of the monarchs of the time, while the kings themselves are romantic figures in richest attire, velvet, brocade, wrought gold, and jewels. It may be that much of this splendour was suggested to the painters by dramatic spectacles which actually passed ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... read my name without spectacles. Now let him double the price on my head, for this ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... as one speaker had said, some people read the Act through the spectacles coloured by their desires. Others seemed to be glad at the uncertainty and endeavoured to keep on turning the wheel of discontent. It was true that some people were imposing on the Natives, but, on the whole, there ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... incessantly pursued him, saw a likeness between the official and the Chinese figure he had awkwardly thrown down and broken one night long ago. Presently his face darkened, and his eyes began to burn. Behind the magistrate's blue spectacles he caught the gleam and roll of the tawny eyes belonging to Mr. Harrison's clerk, to Li, son of Mung, son ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... figure-pieces, among which was a lady at a spinning-wheel. Until then no person in the land of the living had had any knowledge of those hidden pictures. An old dame of eighty, who had visited at the house intimately ever since her childhood, all but refused to believe her spectacles (though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to face with the frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply Ham was the leading ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... night, at the sloping desk, referred vaguely to a wish that, as she hastened to add, could never in any circumstances be gratified. Urged by Gertie, on the other side, to put the desire into words, Madame took off spectacles which she wore only when the rest of the staff had gone, and said wistfully that if she could but get a paragraph into the newspapers containing the name of the firm, she thought it would be possible to die happy. Having ascertained this did not ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by awaking, feel that I had reascended. This I do not dwell upon; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting, at least, to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached by words.' De Quincey's most elaborate dreams are: 'The Daughter of Lebanon,' 'Levana and Our Ladies ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... false and practically dishonest policy, however innocently it may have been conceived, cost the United States many hundreds of millions of dollars, and came very near bringing disaster upon the Union cause. One of the most astounding spectacles ever presented in the history of the world was that presented by this country. It went into the war practically free from debt, and come out of it with a debt which seemed very large, to be sure, and was in fact nearly twice as large as ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... room—the pride of Hartledon. She had come in search of Val's desk; which she found, and proceeded to devise means of opening it. That accomplished, she sat herself down, like a leisurely housebreaker, to examine it, putting on a pair of spectacles, which she kept surreptitiously in a pocket, and would not have worn before any one for the world. She found the letter she was in search of; and she found something else for her pains, which she had not ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... bird-nesting on battlefields, a lover of beauty and games and old poems and Greek and Latin tags, and all joy in life—what had he to do with war?—looked bored with an infinite boredom, irritable with a scornful impatience of unnecessary detail, gazed through his gold-rimmed spectacles with an air of extreme detachment (when Percy Robinson rebuilt the map with dabs and dashes on a blank sheet of paper), and said, "I've got more than I can write, and The Daily Mail goes ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... have the honor to receive into our little haven a vessel of Inghilterra, Signor Capitano," observed the vice-governatore, earnestly regarding the other through his spectacles as he spoke, and that, too, in a manner not altogether ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the writer of 'The Vicar of Wakefield' and 'The Deserted Village.' Indeed, we could almost imagine that Dr Primrose himself had described the panic at the supposed ghost in the church in the same tone as the ride to church, the family portrait, or the gross of green spectacles.'[D] We find in "Goody Two Shoes" every one of those distinctive qualities of Goldsmith's writings which Mr William Black so well summarizes in the book already referred to—"his genuine and tender pathos, that never at any time verges on the affected ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... severest trials were those of its most glorious triumphs. Then it shone above all other periods of time with the brightest examples of sanctity, and exhibited both to heaven and to men on earth the most glorious spectacles and triumphs. Then were formed in its bosom innumerable most illustrious heroes of all perfect virtue, who eminently inherited, and propagated in the hearts of many others, the true spirit of our crucified Redeemer. The same conduct God in his tender ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... want the time and the companion to walk back to the natal spot, the family nest, across two States and into the mountains of a third. What adventures we would have by the way, what hard pulls, what prospects from hills, what spectacles we would behold of night and day, what passages with dogs, what glances, what peeps into windows, what characters we should fall in with, and how seasoned and hardy we should arrive ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... to the white snowfields of the Col and the dark jagged wall of the Aiguille du Geant—distant, yet as clear as if stencilled against the blue heaven. It was a delectable vision; but the clergyman, being short-sighted as a mole, had never seen it. He wore spectacles with a line running horizontally across them, and through these he peered at Mr. Frank and Miss Bracy as if uncertain ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the train, but to be prepared to put me up the following night. Then I got the tickets, and took Myra to the train. Hilderman was seeing his friend off; a short, somewhat stout man, with flaxen hair, and small blue eyes peering through a pair of large spectacles. He bowed to us as we passed, and I was struck by the kindly sympathy with which both he and his companion glanced at Myra. Evidently they both realised what a terrible blow to her the loss of her sight must be. I will admit that, when it came to the time for the train to start, ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... some defunct manner, with a brewer's business. A more fashionable neighbourhood, it is said, eighty years ago than now—never certainly a cheerful one—wherein a boy being born on St. George's day, 1775, began soon after to take interest in the world of Covent Garden, and put to service such spectacles of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... gown, and his wig, hastily re-donned after a breathing-space, sat askew. Nor was he anything of an orator: he stumbled over his sentences, and once or twice lost his place altogether. To his dry presentment of the case nobody seemed to pay heed. The judge, tired of wiping his spectacles dry, leant back and closed his eyes. Mahony believed he slept, as did also some of the jurors, deaf to the Citation of Dawes V. Peck and Dunlop V. Lambert; to the assertion that the carrier was the agent, the goods were accepted, the property had "passed." This "passing" of ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the mean time, calmly arranged themselves on the line which they had undertaken to defend, and awaited the charge. Upon the ground, on every side, were lying the mangled bodies of the Persians slain the day before, some exposed fully to view, ghastly and horrid spectacles, others trampled down and half ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... o'clock, I stood in the old man's room. He took the document, put on his spectacles, coughed, spat, wrapped himself up in his black greatcoat, and read the whole certificate through from beginning to end. Then he turned it over and over, looked at me, coughed again, fidgeted about in his chair, and said, 'We will try to ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... she will wear spectacles, and black alpaca dresses, and woollen mittens on her hands! Can't I see her!" cried Max, throwing back his head with one of the cheery bursts of laughter which brought his mother's eyes upon him with a flash of adoring pride. "Now there's ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... compassionate eyes upon her friend. She had seen her growing a little thinner and more tense everyday; had seen her putting on spectacles, and fighting anaemia with tonics, and yielding unresistingly to shabbiness. Would she always be speeding breathlessly from one classroom to another, palpitantly yet sadly seeking for the knowledge with which she knew ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... were sprawling around in the car before starting to get ready for the show, when all of a sudden we heard somebody speaking outside, and then in came a little man with an awful funny face and a funny little cap on. He wore spectacles way down near the end of his nose and he was smiling and seemed awful happy, but there was something funny about his eyes. I guess he wasn't more than about thirty years old, but he looked awful funny and his eyes ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... surrendered to her military control vast grasslands stretching to the Khingan mountains. This Westernly march so greatly enlarged the Japanese political horizon, and so entirely changed the Japanese viewpoint, that the statesmen of Tokio in their excitement threw off their ancient spectacles and found to their astonishment that their eyes were every whit as good as European eyes. Now seeing the world as others had long seen it, they understood that just as with the individuals so with nations the struggle ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... in numbers and who proved a rascally lot. They thronged the camp and became a perfect nuisance with their begging and stealing. They begged from Junipero his robe and from the governor his cuera, waistcoat, breeches, and all he had on. One of them succeeding in inducing Junipero to take off his spectacles to show them to him and as soon as he got them in his hands made off with them, causing the priest a thousand difficulties to recover them. On the 27th of June Sergeant Ortega, with his scouts, pushed on to San Diego and announced to the anxious camp the proximity of ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... primary meeting, and when the evening arrived he hastened to the hall with the pleasing consciousness that he was discharging a great public duty. He reached the hall, and was heartily welcomed by the observant managers, whom, had Titbottom's spectacles been at hand, he would have seen to be foxes—at least. They were very glad indeed to see Honestus and men like him engaging in politics. They saw in that fact the augury of a better day. It was a peculiar pleasure to co-operate with him, and they trusted that this was but the beginning ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... better read it, perhaps, as I have heard your name mentioned, I know not how properly, with that of the young lord." Then the Quaker, bringing his spectacles down from his forehead over his eyes, slowly read the paragraph. As he did so Mr. Pogson looked at him carefully. But the Quaker showed very little emotion by his face. "Does ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... successfully in business, and was doing so well that he felt the imperative need of a partner, and ended by urging Mr. Brandon to accept the position. The bankrupt merchant laid the epistle in his lap, removed his spectacles and looked smilingly toward his wife. They held a long discussion, and both decided to accept the offer at once, as there was no other recourse ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... Sylvia, and Henry took the little yellow sheaf of newspaper clippings, adjusted his spectacles, moved the lamp nearer, and ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... real as the needs adults feel, and it would be just as unwise to get her a new doll, when she needs most of all a wash-boiler for her kitchen, as it would be to buy for yourself a picture, when you really need a pair of new spectacles. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... moments, his cloak, grasped with both hands, folded over his abdomen, his eyes fixed on the ground, his gold-rimmed spectacles slipping gently toward the point of his nose, his under-lip moist and projecting, and his iron-gray eyebrows gathered in a slight frown. He was a pious and holy man, of uncommon learning and of irreproachable clerical habits, a ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... power of will to overcome obstacles, to which much of her success is due. She determined to have a live hawk for the part instead of the conventional stuffed one of the stage, and with some difficulty procured a half-wild bird from a menagerie. Arming herself with strong spectacles and heavy gauntlets, she spent many a weary day in the painful process of "taming the shrew." After a long struggle, in which she came off sometimes torn and bleeding, the bird was taught to fly from the falconer's shoulder on to her outstretched finger and stay there while she ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... the Kirkgate deemed it necessary, by way of preface to the letter, to say, "Ye a' ken that Mrs. Pringle's a managing woman, and ye maunna expect any metaphysical philosophy from her." In the meantime, having taken the letter from her pocket, and placed her spectacles on that functionary of the face which was destined to wear spectacles, she began ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... beyond stuffing her poor wee head with the sort of view of life set down in fool history books. They say she's clever and bright. Well, that's all they care about. When they've done with her they'll have knocked all the girl out of her, and turned her adrift on the world behind a pair of disfiguring spectacles, with her beautiful hair all scratched back off her pretty face, and maybe 'bobbed,' and they'll fill her grips with pamphlets and literature enough to stock a patent med'cine factory, instead of the lawn, and lace, and silk a girl should ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... see you to-morrow?" politely resumed Hawke. "You will not spend your whole morning with the stern damsel in spectacles and steel-like ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... she repeated in a low, but very mournful voice, words, which even Tupia did not at all understand: At the end of every sentence she cut her arms, her face, or her breast, with a shell that she held in her hand, so that she was almost covered with blood, and was indeed one of the most affecting spectacles that can be conceived. The cuts, however, did not appear to be so deep as are sometimes made upon similar occasions, if we may judge by the scars which we saw upon the arms, thighs, breasts, and cheeks of many of them, which we were told were the remains of wounds which they had inflicted ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... led the way to Granny Horton's again. They looked in at the window, and, by the light of the few embers still burning, saw the good woman asleep in her great, old-fashioned chair, with her spectacles on, and by her side a little stand on which lay her Bible open at the place where she had ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... tricks and malicious inventions, and the queer furnishings of their dwelling sphere. You shall learn to track them, as it were, - as the dog tracks the game - by their peculiar scent of gruesomeness. You shall see them unfolding their loathsome and dark spectacles before you -their battlefields reeking with blood, their swamps filled with corpses - besmirching your path with mud, and playing fantastic tricks on you without its causing you the slightest degree of alarm or fear, or depressing you as it did before you knew the cause of all these things - ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... black French knot. His hirsute face was tanned to the uniform hue of a coffee berry; his unkempt grey hair escaped in tufts from beneath a huge slouched hat; and his keen old eyes peered into the room through thickly pebbled spectacles. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... his arm tragically, and led the march up the steep stairway. On the way the young man furnished the assassin with three pennies. At the top a man with benevolent spectacles looked at them through a hole in a board. He collected their money, wrote some names on a register, and speedily was leading the two men along a ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... entrance of herself and her aunt had interrupted the conversation of three people. Near the fireplace sat a little woman wearing black mittens and a white lace cap; standing above her with his arm on the mantelpiece was a thin, battered-looking gentleman with large spectacles, high, gaunt features and a very thin head of hair; near the door was the man against whom Maggie had collided. She saw that he was young, thick-set and restless. She noticed even then his eyes, bright and laughing as though ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... lady exploded in a short laugh. She gathered up her paper and her spectacles case and her bag of fancy work. Then she rose. "Not if you marry Richard Brooks. You may as well know that now as later, Eve. All your life you have shaken the plum tree and have gathered the fruit. You may come to your senses when you find there ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... now the hugest crowd was here and now it was there, and now there were moments of even diffusion. At night the lights were in multitude, and in multitude the flaring and strange decorations. Day and night swung processions, stood spectacles, huge symbolic movements and attitudes, grown obscure and molded to the letter, now mere stage effects. Day by day through carnival week the ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He was short and stout, with a bushy brown beard, and eyes which blinked at me in amazement from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore a grey tweed travelling suit, and brown boots. He had exactly the air of a prosperous middle-class tradesman ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Iewell from my necke, A Hart it was bound in with Diamonds, And threw it towards thy Land: The Sea receiu'd it, And so I wish'd thy body might my Heart: And euen with this, I lost faire Englands view, And bid mine eyes be packing with my Heart, And call'd them blinde and duskie Spectacles, For loosing ken of Albions wished Coast. How often haue I tempted Suffolkes tongue (The agent of thy foule inconstancie) To sit and watch me as Ascanius did, When he to madding Dido would vnfold His Fathers Acts, commenc'd in burning Troy. Am I not witcht ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... questions were on the tip of her tongue, but didn't get any further. For instance, she longed to ask if those cunning little spectacles on the doll's head in the case near her, were for sale, and if the Spectacle Man had any children who read the St. Nicholas and what the gray cat's name was, for that he had a name she didn't doubt, he was so evidently an important part of ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... impatiently, and wiping his spectacles laboriously put them on and drew near to the window to read, his heavy brows lowering in a frown. But his wife did not need to read the letter, for she, like Marcia, had divined its purport, and already her able faculties were marshalled to face ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... you stand there doing nothing?" "This is my day for doing nothing," Charley answered pleasantly, for the tailor-man amused him, and the whimsical mental attitude of his past life was being brought to the surface by this odd figure, with big spectacles pushed up on a yellow forehead, and shrunken hands viciously ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... London hospital. The patient was a poor, old female, in the last stage of decrepitude, and fast sinking beneath the sorrows of life. She had seen happier days, and the only relic which she possessed of better fortune, was a pair of silver framed spectacles; which, on her death-bed, she bequeathed to her benefactress. The poor old woman's relations were dead, and this guardian-spirit who soothed her path to the grave, was her only friend. Such an act of gratitude was, therefore, extremely affecting, and her benefactress ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... hobbled across the room. Her bright little, birdlike eyes, that had never yet known spectacles, had seen something up the ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... was not entirely successful. The man looked the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor from the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian arrow-heads. And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... with the pious official, brought in, among other accounts, an order for twenty-five dollars' worth of goods. 'How ish dat?' said the Sunday-officer; 'I never give no order; let me see him.' The order was produced; he put on his spectacles and examined it. 'Yaaes, dat ish mine name, sartain—yaaes; but—it ish dat d——d Yankee pass!' . . . OUR town-readers, many of them, will remember the bird MINO, who was so fond of chatting in a rich mellow voice with the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... patiently waited for the philosopher to speak. Mr. Dooley rubbed the bar to the end, tossed the cloth into a mysterious recess with a practised movement, moved a glass or two on the shelf, cleaned his spectacles, and drew a ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... masculine reasoners of the little society, left off the attempt, feeling that the Che sara sara would prove more silencing to the murmurs than many arguments. Mr. Hall had told his faithful patients that, even with the strongest spectacles, his sight was not to be depended upon; and they might have found out for themselves that his hearing was very defective, although, on this point, he obstinately adhered to his own opinion, and was frequently heard to regret the carelessness of people's communication nowadays, 'like ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... leaves of the dwarf sumac; and at intervals, rising out of the fence corner or crowning a ledge of rocks, the dark green of the cedar with the still fire of the woodbine at its heart. I wonder if the waysides of other lands present any analogous spectacles ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Aunt Maria raised her spectacles to her forehead and looked at the girl, at her flushed cheeks, her eyes darkened ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... well as many other spectacles arranged during the few succeeding days, is highly theatrical and well calculated to excite the religious emotions of the people— although, perhaps, only temporarily. On Good Friday the bells do not ring, all musical sounds are interdicted, and the hours, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... indispensable to a journey across the glaciers. Iron-spiked alpenstocks, coarse cloth leggings, green spectacles fitting tightly to the eyes, furred gloves, green veils,—nothing was forgotten. We each had excellent triple-soled shoes, which our guides roughed for the ice. This last is an important detail, for there are moments in such an expedition ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... always sang it in with "My part lies therein-a." He drank a glass or two of wine at meals; put syrup of gilly-flowers into his sack, and had always a tun glass of small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about with rosemary. He lived to be an hundred, and never lost his eyesight, nor used spectacles. He got on horseback without help, and rode to the death of the stag till he was past fourscore." Gilpin's Forest Scenery, vol. ii., pp. 23, 26. I should add, from the same authority, that Hastings was a neighbour of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, with whom (as was likely enough) ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Why didn't you send word? Has anything happened?" And then as she sat by the fire sipping a cup of tea, she told the story, in her own simple slow way, and ended up with, "And now I'm coming to live with you, Laddie." And the old eyes behind the spectacles beamed, and the dear old ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... I shall not like Mr. Learning," cried Matty; "for I have seen him two or three times, and I did not fancy his looks at all. He is as solemn and as grave as an owl; he wears spectacles, and has a very long nose, and his back is as stiff as a poker." Matty was a pretty little girl, with blue eyes, and golden curls hanging down her neck, but she had a conceited air, which spoiled ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... replenishing it, and I thought of none. He had heard that it was possible to live in Paris upon next to nothing with very great luxury, so we tried it; we strolled through the lilac aisles among bonnes and babies, attended military spectacles, rode on omnibuses, dined on the country heights, went to theatres, and had a most pleasurable time, gaining everywhere front places, friendly smiles, kind little services, in a way that would have been incomprehensible ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the defendants. How the cause was decided matters little. What was really curious in the affair was the naively droll manner in which the advocate for the defence opened his pleading before the Lord Ordinary. "My Lord," commenced John, in his purest Doric, at the same time pushing up his spectacles to his brow and hitching his gown over his shoulders, "I wad hae thocht naething o't (the action), had hooses been a new invention, and my clients been caught ouvertly impingin' on the patent richts ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... slow, tranquil flight across the years, with all the happiness that they must bring. As I set my own thoughts to journey after hers, suddenly the scene in the room changed, and I beheld Georgiana as an old, old lady, with locks of silver on her temples, spectacles, a tiny sock stuck through with needles on her knee, and her face finely wrinkled, but still blooming with unconquerable ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... had all his Hogarths bound in a book, they were sent home yesterday, and now that I have them all together and perceive the advantage of peeping close at them through my spectacles I am reconciled to the loss of them hanging round the room, which has been a great mortification to me—in vain I tried to console myself with looking at our new chairs and carpets, for we have got new chairs, and carpets covering all over our two sitting rooms, I missed my old friends and could ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... hanging full of fruits, of a size and weight so disproportioned to the stem, and from under long and rich-looking leaves, of the same yellow with the ripened fruit, and of an African luxuriance of growth, is to us one of the richest spectacles that we have ever contemplated in the array of the woods. The fruit contains from two to six seeds like those of the tamarind, except that they are double the size. The pulp of the fruit resembles ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... me in the place I generally occupied. He instantly came up to my friend, and moved his two forefingers in a way that suggested two people going about together, this meant "your friend"; he then moved his forefingers horizontally across his eyes, this meant, "who wears divided spectacles"; he made two fierce marks over the sockets of his eyes, this meant, "with the heavy eyebrows"; he pulled his chin, and then touched his white shirt, to say that my beard was white. Having thus identified me as a friend ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... till death ended their shame and suffering; women held in captivity to undergo the horrors of a living death; whole families burned alive; and as if their devilish fury could not glut itself with outrages on the living, its last efforts exhausted in mutilating the bodies of the dead; such are the spectacles, and a thousand nameless horrors besides, which their first experience of Indian war has burned into the brains and hearts of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... wheel, with a stroke like a rock from a ballista, smashed in the bulwarks, stove the boat, which fell and hung in the water by one end, and sent the ladies, who were sitting there with boxes, baskets, shawls, hats, spectacles, umbrellas, cloaks, down to leeward, in a pond of water. One girl I saw with a bruise on her forehead as large as an egg, and the blood streaming from her nostrils. Shrieks resounded, and for a few moments, we had quite a ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... use, and that she had no place for the things—apples and onions chiefly—that were in the spare room if she gave it up for the young lass's use, she seemed to quiet down, and going over to Leam, standing mutely by the black-boarded fireplace, put on her spectacles, peered up into her face, and said in shrill tones, rasping as a saw, though she meant to be kind, "Ah, well! I suppose it must be; so go your ways up stairs with Jenny, bairn, and make yourself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... scarcely say I don't agree with him. But that's not the point. As a matter of fact, so far from being hanged or incurring any kind of odium, his system is quite the most popular there is at present. London is full of young men in large, round spectacles, and scraggy women who haven't succeeded in getting married—the leaders of modern thought, you'll observe, Major—every one of whom is deeply attached to Nietzsche. You can't, without labelling yourself a hopeless reactionary, ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... in the front room, reading a book through a huge pair of silver-rimmed spectacles. There was a thick fold of flannel about her neck, and she smelt strongly of embrocation. As Bog rushed into the room, she groaned audibly, and laid down the book, as if it were ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... warm tints, Mr. Snelling allowed it to grow in uncropped abundance, and his favourite gesture was to thrust his fingers through its tangled mass. Beneath a white and narrow forehead were two small sharp eyes, that peered out keenly through a pair of gold-bowed spectacles, and were ever on the watch to detect the slightest misbehaviour among the ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... sometimes seen—over the wall. I prefer the fruit which I can buy in the market to that which a man tells me he saw in Sicily, but of which there is no flavor in his story. Others, like Moses Primrose, bring us a gross of such spectacles as we prefer not to see; so that I begin to suspect a man must have Italy and Greece in his heart and mind, if he would ever see them ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... for as soon as he entered Westminster his hood was snatched from his head in the midst of the crowd in broad daylight. In the streets of Westminster he was encountered by Flemish merchants, strolling to and fro, like modern pedlars, vending hats and spectacles, and shouting, "What will you buy?" At Westminster Gate, at the hungry hour of mid-day, there were bread, ale, wine, ribs of beef, and tables set out for such as had wherewith to pay. He proceeded on his way by the Strand, ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... introduced; and twelve years later the capture of several elephants in the first Punic war proved the means of introducing the chase, or rather the slaughter, of wild beasts into the Roman circus. The taste for these spectacles increased of course with its indulgence, and their magnificence with the wealth of the city and the increasing facility and inducement to practice bribery which was offered by the increased extent of provinces subject to Rome. It was not, however, until the last period of the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Chugwater Column in Aldwych, the equestrian statue in Chugwater Road (formerly Piccadilly), and the picture-postcards in the stationers' windows. That bulging forehead, distended with useful information; that massive chin; those eyes, gleaming behind their spectacles; that tout ensemble; that je ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... By a manner, by wearing spectacles, and brushing his hair back in two semi-circles from his forehead, Mr. John Brodrick contrived to appear considerably more important ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... 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 an equal. It was delightful to ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... who inherited an authoritative attitude upon bacteriology from his father; a Japanese student of unassuming manners who drew beautifully and had an imperfect knowledge of English; and a dark, unwashed Scotchman with complicated spectacles, who would come every morning as a sort of volunteer supplementary demonstrator, look very closely at her work and her, tell her that her dissections were "fairish," or "very fairish indeed," or "high above the normal female standard," ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the exercise in such a combination. I incline to think that beauty is almost the greatest of all the spectacles that Nature sets before us. The effect she has upon us is greater than that produced by any other influence. You are perhaps too young to have your mind awakened on such ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... great master of eloquence, Edmund Burke, stood where I now stand, he faltered and remained mute. Doubtless the multitude of thoughts which rushed into his mind was such as even he could not easily arrange or express. In truth there are few spectacles more striking or affecting than that which a great historical place of education presents on a solemn public day. There is something strangely interesting in the contrast between the venerable antiquity of the body and the fresh and ardent youth of the great majority of the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... spectacled man emerged from the crowd, and, beaming with a pleasing elderly bashfulness through his spectacles, gave it as his opinion that though gorsoon was a term usually applied to the male child, it was equally applicable to the female. "But, indeed," he concluded, "the Bench has as good Irish as I have ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... I won't spare myself. All my so-called study of modern life in former days was the merest dilettantism, mere conceit and boyish pedantry. I travelled, and the fact that wherever I went I took a small classical library with me was symbolical of my state of mind. I saw everything through old-world spectacles. Even in America I could not get rid of my pedantry, as you will recognise clearly enough if you look back to the letters I wrote you at that time. I came then with theories in my head of what American civilisation must be, and everything that I saw I made fit in with my preconceptions. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... man who taught the older people that day gathered his forces together and, seated with his back to the platform, his spectacles extended upon his long nose, he proceeded with the questions on the lesson-leaf, as usual, being more than ordinarily unfamiliar with them; but before he was half through he perceived by the long pauses between the ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... is admirably written, and, as the work of a foreigner, perfectly surprising. I was introduced to Don Telesforo de Trueba, the author, an ugly little young man, all hair and glare, whiskers and spectacles; he must be very clever and well worth knowing, Mr. Harness took tea with us ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... in my eyes, it is time to conclude my letter. My eyes I have certainly weakened with using them too much at night. I went the other day to Scarlet's to buy green spectacles; he was mighty assiduous to give me a pair that would not tumble my hair. "Lord! Sir," said I, "when one is come to wear spectacles, what ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... distinguished of the new sectaries, required with irresistible vehemence that they should be instantly apprehended and cast to the lions. [61] The provincial governors and magistrates who presided in the public spectacles were usually inclined to gratify the inclinations, and to appease the rage, of the people, by the sacrifice of a few obnoxious victims. But the wisdom of the emperors protected the church from the danger of these tumultuous clamors and irregular accusations, which they ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... yielded itself up to the contemplation of painful probabilities. Horrid spectacles passed before my imagination. I saw the white horse galloping over the plain, pursued by wolves, and shadowed by black vultures. To escape these hungry pursuers, I saw him dash into the thick chapparal, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... munificence of Caesar. Apart from this motive, and considered in and for itself, and simply with a reference to the splendid forms which it often assumed, this munificence would furnish the materials for a volume. The public entertainments of Caesar, his spectacles and shows, his naumachiae, and the pomps of his unrivalled triumphs (the closing triumphs of the Republic), were severally the finest of their kind which had then been brought forward. Sea-fights were exhibited upon the grandest scale, according to every ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... bewitching of Naiads; and Druidical oaks, expanding, surrendered the imprisoned Hamadryad to the air of heaven. Fairies and Elves, Satyrs and Forsters, Centaurs and Lapithae, played their parts in these gaudy spectacles with every conventional requirement of shape, costume, and behavior point-de-vice, and were supplied by the poet, to whom the letter-press of the show had been confided, with language and a plot, both pregnant with more than Platonic morality. Some idea of the magnificence of these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... big-rimmed spectacles, high forehead, and bushy hair gave him an intensely owlish appearance, sighed tremendously, stared solemnly at his class-mates, and became the author of a most astounding statement: "I—I can't study," quavered the "boner," he whose tender devotion to his books was a campus tradition, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... they didn't know the catheads from the main brace. But if you took them for fools you'd get bit, sure. They'd learn more in a month than another man would in a year. We had one, once, in the Mary Ann, that came aboard with gold spectacles on. And besides, he was rigged out from main truck to keelson in the nobbiest clothes that ever saw a fo'castle. He had a chestful, too: cloaks, and broadcloth coats, and velvet vests; everything swell, you know; and didn't the saltwater fix them out for him? ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chosen, but the moment she spoke you came under the spell of her keen, grey eyes and clear voice.... Mother Philippa, the mistress of the novices, was quite different—stout and middle-aged, and she wore spectacles. She was beautiful notwithstanding; her goodness was like a soft light upon her face. ...Evelyn paused. She could not find words to describe ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... and slender woman, in black, bending toward her, with a willowy appealing grace, and eyes that beseeched. Diana Mallory stood before her. There was a pause. Then Lady Lucy rose slowly, laid down her spectacles, and held ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
