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More "Witching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... charges and but little older, and eager one and all for any glory or distinction that could pique the pride or stir the envy of "that Craney set." It was too much for a girl of Sallie Waring's type. Her eyes have a dangerous gleam, her cheeks a witching glow; she clings tighter to his arm as she looks up in ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... they brown; but they presented in the most fascinating ensemble a grey which at night was a fathomless dusk, and by day that green which you perceive where the sea is a hundred fathoms deep. With the light upon her eye there was a glint of emerald, that witching glare which made Becky Sharpe irresistible. Now imagine an eyebrow, dark as the raven's quill, overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... voice of the announcer as the jingle muted, "Which witch do you really wish? Witch is the modern method of cleanliness, using the best of modern technology, and the Witch witch is witching through the world...." ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond
... straight a snowycloth disclose Of samite, which she placed upon a chair: Then, smiling like a freshly-budding rose, She gazed upon me with a witching air, As mote a Cynic anchorite ensnare. Eftsoons, as though her thoughts she could not smother, She hasted thus her mission to declare:— 'Please, these is your clean things I've brought instead of brother, 'And if you'll pay the bill you'll much ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... postponed to three; and some gentlemen, with English education and English habits, dine in New-York at five; while others, whose business keeps them at the bank, or court, or counting-house till three, have the witching time adjourned to four. These are, however, only exceptions to the rule, and as lawyers say, exceptio probat regulam; the legitimate, healthy, fashionable hour for dining—that in which the Knickerbockers, who know no banks or counting-houses, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... worst," she said, "men, as I have known them, are men. He has been shut up for a long while with that minx, who is very fair and witching, and it was scarcely right to watch him through a slit in a tower. If he were my lover, I should say ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... wi' toil an' pain, May plunge an' plunge the kirn in vain; For oh! the yellow treasure's ta'en By witching skill; An' dawtet, twal-pint Hawkie's gaen As ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Essec Powell, the preacher. In vain he sought for any sign of the girl whose acquaintance he had made so unexpectedly, and he was almost tempted to believe that she was no other than a creature of his own imagination, born of the witching moonlight hour, and absorbed again into the passing shadows of night. But could he have seen through the walls of that old grey house, even now at that early hour, he would have understood what kept the preacher's niece so busily engaged that neither ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... riding-dress; The other warded off the drooping boughs. 175 But still she chatted on, with her blue eyes Fix'd full on Merlin's face, her stately prize. Her 'haviour had the morning's fresh clear grace, The spirit of the woods was in her face. She look'd so witching fair, that learned wight 180 Forgot his craft, and his best wits took flight; And he grew fond, and eager to obey His mistress, use her empire deg. as she may. deg.184 They came to where the brushwood ceased, and day 185 Peer'd ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... * * * * * finally by night The village matron, round the blazing hearth, Suspends the infant audience with her tales, Breathing astonishment! of witching rhymes, And evil spirits; of the death-bed call Of him who robbed the widow, and devour'd The orphan's portion; of the unquiet souls Ris'n from the grave to ease the heavy guilt Of deeds in life concealed; of shapes that walk At dead of night, and clank their chains, and wave The ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... fantasy, to hang their infinitely-tinted tresses to the zenith's golden diadem of stars— even they sport upon the same lofty concave of dewless blue, which looks through and through the lacework and everchanging drapery of their mingled hues in the most witching mazes of their nightly waltz, giving to each a definiteness that our homely Saxon tongue might fit ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... These new inhabitants have walled up the fair arched windows and slender portals of the ancient dwellers, spoiling the beauty of the streets without materially changing the architectural masses. In that witching hour when the Italian sunset has faded, and a solemn grey replaces the glowing tones of daffodil and rose, it is not difficult, here dreaming by oneself alone, to picture the old noble life—the ladies moving along those open loggias, the young men in plumed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... and with the aids by which he would surround her rapidly developing into as splendid a woman as little Katy Cameron, who did not need to be developed, but took all hearts at once by that natural, witching grace so much a part of herself. It was a very pleasant picture which Mark painted upon the mental canvas; but there came a great blur blotting out its brightness as he remembered Dr. Grant, and felt that Linwood was one day ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... directly: he had been talking before to the air: "Is it for this I went blackberrying with you in my tender infancy! Is it for this that in the heyday of youth I walked with you to the school-house down the road! Was it for this that in the prime of manhood I breathed soft music in your ear at the witching time of night!" ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... the cheery blaze was crackling in the witching hour of yarn telling, the seasoned habitues of the camp would direct the eye of the newcomer to a little glint of light high up upon the mountain, and edify him with dark tales of a lonesome draft dodger who had challenged ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.— O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever The soul of Nero enter ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... hardly out of the gate before Congdon broke forth in open praise of her. "When Mart dies, what a witching morsel ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... inclined, Yet warm, not wanton; dazzled, but not blind— Though gentle Genlis, in her strife with Stael, Would even proscribe thee from a Paris ball; The fashion hails—from countesses to queens, And maids and valets waltz behind the scenes; Wide and more wide thy witching circle spreads, And turns—if nothing else—at least our heads; With thee even clumsy cits attempt to bounce, And cockneys practise what they can't pronounce. Gods! how the glorious theme my strain exalts, And rhyme finds partner rhyme in ...
— English Satires • Various
... aspect, and the feeling of awe with which the family and servants regard its mystical contents, I have its undisturbed enjoyment; nobody feels a wish to enter it even in the day time, and I verily believe they would not do so at the witching hour of night, lest the mystical signs should take summary vengeance on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... Testament, as that very stile importes. Secondlie, where ye would oppone the dailie practicque, & confession of so manie, that is thought likewise to be but verie melancholicque imaginations of simple rauing creatures. Thirdly, if Witches had such power of Witching of folkes to death, (as they say they haue) there had bene none left aliue long sence in the world, but they: at the least, no good or godlie person of whatsoeuer estate, coulde haue ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... distracted from this witching scene— the exquisite beauty of which is not to be described in mere words—by a noise of singing and shouting on Merlani's island. Presently a feeble flickering fame became visible on the sandy beach, which, quickly increasing in ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... present and future usefulness slowly makes headway against the current of mere adventure. Natural obstacles yield to patient, honest industry. California begins in grains, fruits, and all the rich returns of nature, to show that Ceres, Flora, and Pomona are a trinity of witching good fairies. They beckon to the world to wander hither, and rest under these blue-vaulted balmy skies. Near the splendid streams, picturesque ridges, and lovely valleys of the new State, health and happiness may be ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... of women is like the airy froth of champagne, or the witching iridescence of the soap-bubble, blown for a moment's sport. The sparkle, the life, the fascinating foam, the gay tints vanish with the occasion, because there is no listening Boswell with unfailing memory and capacious note-book to ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Helen's face so mild, And in her bashful mien, The winning softness of the child, The blushes of fifteen. The witching smile, when prone to go, Arrests me, bids me stay; Nor joy, nor comfort can I know, When 'reft of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... blest with beauty and with grace, And blest be He who shaped and fashioned forth his face! All rarest charms that be unite to make him fair, His witching loveliness distracts the human race. Beauty itself hath set these words upon his brow, "Except this youth there's none that's ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... leant out into the night, and watched the light clouds swimming over the moon, and the silver mist folding the water-meadows and willows in its soft cool mantle. His thoughts were such as will occur to any reader who has passed the witching age of twenty; and the scent of the heliotrope-bed in the flower-garden below, seemed to rise very strongly ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... sexton; and who now, drawing into a separate corner some of the straggling parties whom he had collected and brought to the church, kept on the alert, and appeared ready for an attack as well at mid-day as at the witching hour of midnight. This was the more necessary, as the eye of Sir John de Walton seemed busied in searching from one place to another, as if unable to find the object he was in quest of, which the reader will easily understand to be the Lady Augusta de ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... TROUVEZ-VOUS CA? I am also in a conspiracy with the American editor, a French restaurant-man, and an Italian fisherman against the Padre. The enclosed poster is my last literary appearance. It was put up to the number of 200 exemplaires at the witching hour; and they were almost all destroyed by eight in the morning. But I think the nickname will stick. Dos Reales; deux reaux; two bits; twenty-five cents; about a shilling; but in practice it is worth from ninepence to threepence: thus two glasses ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old standing in Bearn, and still existing,)—and the young domenger, (the Bernais title of Damoiseau,) Odon, escorted by their pages and valets. Conversation ensues between them, in which the young lady expresses some doubts as to their prudence in choosing so witching an hour, however beautiful the time, for their journey; when it is known that evil spirits and sorcerers are abroad on their ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... can be delighted? Like a seraph she can sing, Wi' charming grace and witching manner, Thrilling o'er the music string. Her tell the tale that moves to pity, But wi' heart and feeling speak; Then watch the turn o' ilka feature, Kiss the tear ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... passions swell For Estelle! How I love my actions tell Thee, Estelle: That I love thy smiling face, And thy captivating grace— Love thy dreamy 'witching eyes More than planets ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... with the silver of flying fish. That is all the scenery there is; not a sail nor a bird nor an insect. Either the unchanging view or something in the air has stimulated everybody into being their nicest. It is surprising how quickly graciousness possesses some people when there is a witching girl around. Vivacious young men and benevolent officers have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, spick and span in white duck and their winningest smiles. Entertainments dovetail till there is barely time for change of costume ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... proof of a romantic scene upon the Danube displayed in the place of honor, a view of one of the grandly witching defiles where the mighty stream immortalized by Strauss breaks out of the smiling Austrian plains, dashing along into the Iron ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... "witching hour of night when churchyards yawn," we also had a touch of the gaping fit, and thought of rest. The room in which we had supped, was likewise our bed-room; and the bed and sofa, huddled cozily in one corner of the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... promptitude, and received with politeness. My family, in all its branches, came into her Grace's quick recollection; and I was thus indebted to my adventure, not only for an introduction to one of the most elegant women of her time—to the goddess of fashion in her temple, the Circe of high life, at the "witching hour," but of being most "graciously" received; and even hearing a panegyric on my chivalry, from the Marechal, smilingly echoed by lips which seemed made ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... occasion she did not visit him at Potsdam, but at Berlin, and instead of the witching hour of midnight, she chose the broad, clear light of day. Indeed, during the whole of her career, the White Lady does not seem to have kept to the time-honoured traditions of most ghosts, and appeared to startled ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... win promotion," he said to himself, rather bitterly. The picture of that winter night, the witching face of Lisbeth and her mocking laugh as she rode away, kept recurring to his mind. What a girl she had been, the best playmate even a boy might wish; always ready for a lark, daring, mischievous, with ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... promised myself a whole night with you, and I'm not going to be chased away, just at the witching hour," Tavia insisted. ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... exhilaration comes while contemplating one of his open-air scenes with jockeys, race-horses, and the incidental bustle of a neighbouring concourse. Unexcelled as a painter of horses, as a delineator of witching horsemanship, of vivid landscapes—true integral decorations—and of the casual movements and gestures of common folk, Degas is also a psychologist, an ironical commentator on the pettiness and ugliness ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... wall, Ceteian men and Trojans: babel of talk Rose from the feasters: all around the glow Of blazing campfires lighted up the tents: Pealed out the pipe's sweet voice, and hautboys rang With their clear-shrilling reeds; the witching strain Of lyres was rippling round. From far away The Argives gazed and marvelled, seeing the plain Aglare with many fires, and hearing notes Of flutes and lyres, neighing of chariot-steeds And pipes, the shepherd's ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... The drifting, witching wonder grew. From out the burgeoning bounds of space It seemed some morn unearthly drew To that grave glamourous place, Where, fearful of some far adieu, I talked with one who never knew The peril ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... held, sometimes in the daytime and sometimes at the dead of night. Notices were sent to obnoxious persons warning them to stop certain practices. If warning failed, something more convincing was tried. Fright was the emotion most commonly stirred. A horseman, at the witching hour of midnight, would ride up to the house of some offender, lift his head gear, take off a skull, and hand it to the trembling victim with the request that he hold it for a few minutes. Frequently violence was employed either officially or unofficially ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... that as it may, the spot in question was, at all events, so situated as to be only visible, and then but vaguely, under certain witching conditions of light ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... bright silvery clouds—nothing but the face of that young officer and the old ruins down by the flooded river; for it seemed to Dick Smithson that—in spite of what had been written about midnight and the witching hour—he had seen a ghost, and in ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Beyond was the sea in a radiance that glowed and shimmered, to the left the moonlit crests and hollows of the sand-dunes, to the right the rocky shore with its inky shadows and its crystalline coves. Rilla and her partner swung in among the dancers; she drew a long breath of delight; what witching music Ned Burr of the Upper Glen was coaxing from his fiddle—it was really like the magical pipes of the old tale which compelled all who heard them to dance. How cool and fresh the gulf breeze blew; how white and wonderful the moonlight was over everything! This ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "The witching hour," thought the girl. "The hour when the Banshee walks abroad. I wonder if I shall see her. I should like to see her. Did she hear me when I called to her in the cave? Would she help me if she came to my rescue now? She belongs ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... his most admired and intimate friends; now he was nothing more or less than a rival and an enemy, notwithstanding his seeming courtesy and civil self-restraint. As a matter of fact, he, Denzil, was left alone to face his fate: to dare the brilliant seduction of the witching eyes of Ziska,—to win her or to lose her forever! And consider every point as he would, the weary conviction was borne in upon him that, whether he met with victory or defeat, the result would ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the shining gold, and his laugh is the clink of the jingling pieces. He turns himself into a regal sceptre that sways the gaping crowd, and it becomes a magnet that draws with resistless power the outstretched, itching palms of men. He takes the witching form of woman, paints her pulpy cheek with peachy bloom, knots into grace her mass of wavy hair, lights in her sparkling eye the kindling flame, hangs on her pouting lip the expectant kiss, and bids her supple waist invite caress; and more seductive far than gold or power are these cunning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Beaufort, her stepmother's brother.] She has hitherto been most fortunate in pleasing all her friends, both as to the fact and as to the time and manner of telling. Do you remember a conversation we had standing upon the hearth in my room one night, between eleven and twelve, the witching hour, and what you asked me about Captain Beaufort? The secret had then been confided to me; and I hope you will do me the justice to acknowledge that, open-hearted and open-mouthed as I am, I can ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... wanted to go home and swelter and be swindled by taxicab drivers and snubbed by imported head-waiters; he wanted to patronise the subway at peril of asphyxiation and to walk down Fifth Avenue at that witching hour when electric globes begin to dot the dusk of evening—pale moons of a world of steel and stone; he wanted to ride in elevators instead of lifts, in trolley-cars instead of trams; he wanted to go to ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... More in wonder than in wrath, Each beneath her own dear tree Parting her hair that she may see How queens put on their sovereignty? All are come of Pan's own race, Nymphs and satyrs fill the place, Necks outstretched and ears a-twitching, That Pan may know of all this witching. Heedless stumble the goatfeet Till four-footed things retreat. Cries of Ah! and Ay! and Eh! Scare the forest birds away, And their notes that rang so clear At dawn, you now shall rarely hear: Only a robin here and there Pitches high his trembling voice ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... thy fine discourse Foretold not half life's good to me: Thy painter, Fancy, hath not force To show how sweet it is to be! Thy witching dream And pictured scheme To match the fact still want the power: Thy promise brave— From birth to grave— Life's boon ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... please, Gentlemen, Like Etty, Mulready, Maclise; Throbbing romance has waned and wanned; No wizard wields the witching pen Of Bulwer, Scott, Dumas, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... halls we turned away To gaze upon a poet's home; 'Twas near the close of that bright day, And golden sunlight on it shone; Perfume of flowers, and birds' songs low A witching spell ...
— Within the Golden Gate - A Souvenir of San Fransisco Bay • Laura Young Pinney
... left for this season to stamp Miss Kennedy as 'the most unapproachable woman in town.' Which, however, unfortunately, made her more popular than ever. She was so lovely in her shy reserve; the hardwon favours were so delightful; the smiles so witching when they came; and nobody ever suspected that what she did with all her triumphs was to mentally bestow them on somebody else. They belonged to him, now, not to her, and for her had no ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... countra wives, wi' toil an' pain, May plunge an' plunge the kirn in vain: For, oh! the yellow treasure's taen By witching skill; An' dawtit, twal-pint hawkie's ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... little used to answer such interrogations. But I would not willingly quarrel with Ewan Macpherson. My heart must have been colder than it is, could I have enjoyed the company of Elizabeth Macpherson without yielding me to that influence of witching beauty which softens and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... the witching time for Story-telling. "Our whole life, Travellers," said I, "is a story more or less intelligible,—generally less; but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for one, am so divided this night between fact and fiction, ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... sat in the library, which was in the rear of the house, far removed from its public entrance. Spenser's Faery Queen was in her hand, but she had turned from its witching pages to gaze upon the title-page, on which was written, in Edward Houstoun's hand, "June 24th, 18—." It was the day, as Lucy well remembered, on which he had first revealed his love, and chosen ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... the time we had got to New York, and from New York to Long Island, it was a witching hour of the night! Nobody cared, however. All our thoughts were centred at Kidd's Pines. I kept Pat close to me in the train, and once in a while Peter hovered near, as if he longed for a chance to say something. But Pat could not or would not talk, either to him or me. She had a headache, and ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... the weak points till they are successful. When Mahmood was returning with his victorious army from the war in the eleventh century with the spoils and plunder of war upon their backs, and while the soldiers were either lain down to rest or allured away with the Gipsy girls' "witching eyes," the old Gipsies, numbering some hundreds, who where camping in the neighbourhood, bolted off with their war prizes; this so enraged Mahmood, after finding out that he had been sold by a lot of low-caste Indians or Gipsies, that he sent his army after them and slew ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... ghost just once more for her. You know you made him take a reef in the flapping of ghostly garments. Can't we resurrect the specter and restore the wails just for tonight, and bring her over here at the witching hour?" ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... sang to him with witching wile, "My brood why wilt thou snare, With human craft and human guile, To die in scorching air? Ah! didst thou know how happy we Who dwell in waters clear, Thou wouldst come down at once to me, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... up toward him, a happy bird of gay, fluttering plumage, pressing her fingers almost caressingly along the swelling muscle of his arm, and gazing with earnest admiration up into his face. Beneath the witching spell of her eyes the man's cheeks reddened. He took the way of savagery out ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... had understood the terms of that one-sided contract with Satan, the Time of Witching would have lasted longer—you may be sure of that. But how was I to tell? It just happened, and has never happened again, though I've tried the same preliminaries as far ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... poets were not without pleasant interludes, either; as when Tennyson came from the Isle of Wight to London for three or four days, two of which he passed with the Brownings. He "dined, smoked, and opened his heart" to them; and concluded this memorable visit at the witching hour of half-past two in the morning, after reading "Maud" aloud the evening before from the proof-sheets. The date of this event is established by an inscription affixed to the back of a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, made on that night ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... Never was contrast more perfect. A scarf, like scarlet flame, flung about her shoulders, set off the richness of her clear brunette skin, through which the crimson blood flamed in cheek and lip. Eyes, now black, now gray, changing, flashing, witching eyes: gray in quiet moments, darkening with mirth or sadness, anger or pain; hair black and silky, rippling to the rounded, supple waist in glossy waves. Not so tall as Madeline, and rounded and ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... 1795, had a wonderful vogue, running rapidly through edition after edition. Among others to whom it appealed and who were influenced by it was Keats. Mrs. Tighe's talent drew from Moore a delicate compliment in "Tell me the witching tale again"; and in "The Grave of a Poetess" and "I stood where the life of song lay low", Mrs. Hemans bewailed her ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... that have made the American girl unique among the women of the world. Consequently, a book with a Bell heroine is sure of a hearty welcome. What, therefore, can be said of this book, which contains no less than four types of witching and buoyant femininity? There are four stories of power and dash in this volume: "The Last Straw," "The Surrender of Lapwing," "The Penance of Hedwig," and "Garret Owen's Little Countess." Each one of these tells a tale full of verve and thrill, each ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... is one of the most beautiful, serene, witching places that ever was seen. High overhead are ranges of green rustling arches; through which the sun's rays come down to you in sparkles. You seem to be wandering through illimitable halls of pillars; everywhere you catch ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... an instant with her slender fingers in facetious demonstration, and he trembled in painful rapture. And she played on her lute, too, on the lute he had given her of old, those slender fingers making ravishing music on the many-stringed instrument, though her pose as she played was more witching still. What a beautiful glimpse of white shoulders and dainty lace ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... witching goes muffled rumour mine dark silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mooted parlous ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the crimson ruby of thy lips, I feel the witching weirdness of thy breath! I droop! I sink into my soul's eclipse,— I fall in love ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... what celestial realms of space Is hid that beauteous, witching face? Where shines that star, which, boding ills, My trembling heart with ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Lone Pine and barked and barked until his throat was sore. Every night old Mother Fox had warned him that noisy children would come to no good end, and every night Reddy had promised that he would bark no more. But every night when the first silver flood of witching light crept over the hill and cast strange shadows from the naked branches of the trees, Reddy forgot all about his promise. Deep down under his little red coat was a strange feeling which he could not explain. He simply must ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... its witching gayeties, and, though the young Christian was never tempted to join the giddy multitude in their unlawful pastimes, yet his views were more lax than they ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... evil had often come to Maurice Frere, and his selfish nature had succumbed to it when in far less witching shape than this fair and innocent child luring him with wistful eyes to win her. What hopes had he not built upon her love; what good resolutions had he not made by reason of the purity and goodness she was to bring to him? As she said, the past was beyond recall; the future—in which she was ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Sometimes the thinning edge of a cloud brightened in spume, and round the brightness came a circle of umber, making a window of fantastic glory for Dian the queen; there her white vision peeped for a moment on the world, and the next she was hid behind a fleecy veil, witching the heavens. Gourlay was alone with the wonder of the night. The light from above him was softened in a myriad boughs, no longer mere light and cold, but a spirit indwelling as their soul, and they were boughs no longer but a woven ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... all-colored tapestries, flutter red, white, and golden draperies; laugh out in festal garments gay revellers; fly through the golden sunlight showers of perfumed flowers; beam down on you glances from wild, loving eyes, sparkling with fun, gleaming with excitement, thrilling with witching life. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wandering way by the chance sight of lost and fallen ones, whose sad remains our errant footsteps cross. Not always clad in soft, warm, beating life do our bones perform their noblest purpose. Beauty may lure to ruin, but, the witching charm removed, decay may waken sober thought and high resolve. Poor Yorick might have set King Hamlet's table in a roar and been forgot, if, from his unknown grave, the sexton had not brought him forth, to teach an unborn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... seems to himself to be actually rising up from his "wallowing in the mire," and supposes that he shall soon regain his primitive condition of temperance. But the sin is strong; for the appetite that feeds it is in his blood. Temptation with its witching solicitation comes before the will,—the weak, self-enslaved will. He aspires to resist, but will not; the spirit would soar, but the flesh will creep; the spirit has the wish, but the flesh has the will; the man longs to be ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... learnt to watch and decipher every versatile look and expression it wore. Sometimes, when in repose, it reminded me of one of Raphael's angels. At other times, when moved by mirth and with arch glances dancing in the deep, grey eyes,—and they could make merry when they willed,—it was a witching, teasing, provoking little face. Or, again, if changed by grief,—under which aspect, thank God! I seldom saw it,— a noble, resolute face, bearing that indescribable look of calm, set, high resolve, which the face of the heart-broken daughter of Lear, or the deep-suffering mother of the Gracchi ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ceased. The nymph obeyed: In all her loveliest charms arrayed, With winning ways and witching smile She sought the hermit to beguile. The sweet note of that tuneful bird The saint with ravished bosom heard, And on his heart a rapture passed As on the nymph a look he cast. But when he heard the bird prolong His sweet incomparable song, And saw the nymph with winning ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... has ceased to tinkle the herd to rest; they have all paced across the heath. Is not this the witching time of night? The waters murmur, and fall with more than mortal music, and spirits of peace walk abroad to calm the agitated breast. Eternity is in these moments; worldly cares melt into the airy stuff ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... hour; sunset, sundown; going down of the sun, cock-shut, dewy eve, gloaming, bedtime. afternoon, postmeridian, p.m. autumn, fall, fall of the leaf; autumnal equinox; Indian summer, St. Luke's summer, St. Martin's summer. midnight; dead of night, witching hour, witching hour of night, witching time of night; winter; killing time. Adj. vespertine, autumnal, nocturnal. Phr. midnight, the outpost of advancing day [Longfellow]; sable-vested Night [Milton]; this gorgeous arch with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... distance a great clock chimed a single stroke, freighted sore with melancholy. It knelled the passing of the half-hour after midnight; a witching hour, when every public shuts up tight, and gentlemen in top-hats and evening dress are doomed to pace the pave till day (barring they have homes or visible means of support)—till day, when pawnshops ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... to describe charm, and I shall make no attempt, except to say that my mother's spell did not consist in good looks in the ordinary sense of the word. She had a witching expression, an exceedingly graceful carriage of her head and body, and a good figure; but her face was so mobile and so entirely governed by her smile that photographs and pictures were always pronounced as "impossible" ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... a shy, sweet glance up into his earnest face, a witching little smile began to quiver about her lovely lips, then she said, half-saucily, but with ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... tripped downstairs and, bestowing a witching smile upon her sire, waved away his request for an explanation and hastened into the kitchen, whence Annie shortly ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... who haunt the earth, and have their meeting-places for unholy revel, what a playground this must be for them at the witching hour! It is enough to make one's hair stand on end to think of what may go on there when the sinking moon looks haggard, and the owls hoot from the abandoned halls open to the sky of the great ruin above. The burying went on within the rock until thirty ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... in his painting Plans the background to enhance All the beauty of his subject Both in pose and countenance, So the poor and dark interior Lent its gloom to magnify All the power and witching beauty Of her face and lustrous eye. Standing there, a pictured goddess Sketched against a lowering storm, Bearing on her pallid features That supernal ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... man with winsome witching art, Who touches at his will the kindly human heart, 'Till it throbs with joy like pain and tears begin to start; He so tenderly touched ours With his melting magic powers, Made feelings which he felt within our bosoms spring, ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... little steamers skim about from island to island, freighted with a population just waked up to a realizing sense of the pleasures of existence; then is the atmosphere balmy, and the light wonderfully soft and richly tinted; then come the sweet witching hours, when ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... abundant treasure. The harvest task had given place to song And merry dance; and these in turn were chased By legends strange, and wild, unearthly tales Of elves, and gnomes, and fairy sprites, that haunt The woods and caves; where they do sleep all day, And then come forth i' the witching hour of night, To dance by moonlight on the green thick sward. The speaker was an aged villager, In whom his oft-told tale awoke no fears, Such as he filled his gaping listeners with. Nor ever was ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... away from him; she stood just in front of him, looking into his face with the witching eyes ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... describe her. Beauty is the same In Anno Domini as erst B.C.; The type is still that witching One who came, Between the furrows, from the bitter sea; 'Tis but to shift accessories and frame, And this our heroine in a trice would be, Save that she wore a peplum and a chiton, Like any modern ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... was still new to her dignities, Eliza O'Neill was beginning to prattle in the most charming brogue ever heard across the Irish Channel, and to grow through beautiful childhood to witching girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love of things theatrical was in her veins; and while she was still playing with her dolls she was impersonating the Duke of York to her father's Richard III. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... embarrassing. Somehow he felt almost irresistibly invited to laugh, though he had never been much given to risibility. The blending, or rather the juxtaposition, of extremes—a face, a form immediately witching, and a costume odd to grotesquery—had made an assault upon his comprehension at once so sudden and so direct that his dignity came near being disastrously broken up. A splendidly beautiful child comically clad would have made much the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... The forms of those we love are idealised and spiritualised into angelic shapes. The faces of those we have forgotten long, or else perchance have lost, once more return, seraphic from the realms of light. The lovely forms and winning graces of children gone, the witching eyes and alluring smiles of women we have loved, the beautiful countenances of beloved and admired youth, once more we seem to see; the youthful hands we have clasped so often in love and friendship in our own, once more we seem to press, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... sound. The day before Christmas brought trouble for Joe, A thousand times worse. 'Twas a terrible blow To hear that old Santa Claus, god of his dreams. Would not come that year with his fleet-footed teams. He'd seen them. Why, once, of a night's witching hour He saw them jump over the cross on the tower And scamper away o'er the snow-covered roofs, His heart beating time to the sound of their hoofs. Not coming this year? Santa Claus must be dead, He thought, as with sad tears he crept into ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... power lend me Aid to stay the witching tone, Art to pain the beauteous picture Ere its impress swift has flown. * * ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... with an adventurous freedom that almost concealed the commercial nature of her mission. It seemed —this voyaging through the sparkling water, under the scintillating heavens, this resolute pushing into the opening splendors of night —like a pleasure trip. "It is the witching hour of half past ten," said my comrade, "let us turn in." (The reader will notice the consideration for her feelings which has omitted the usual description ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... conscious pride, so that the low sizzling of flesh and flame was as the mystic voice in some witch's brew. There were many other tents on the plain, a blurred city of whitish shadows against the night, and there were many other glowing coals to mark where the earth lay under the stars, and the witching murmur, the tantalizing charm of each was—supper. In this wise, and thinking themselves very patient, men were waiting for other men to starve to death. The besieged had tried, but they had not again cut through ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... said, "a little gentle breeze is coming in at the window, and the roses and pinks and mignonette will smell more sweetly still as the night advances. I will not light the lamp yet, for there is splendid moonlight, and it is such a witching hour. I can make the cocoa beautifully by moonlight. It will be quite romantic to do so, and then afterwards I will show you my charming reading-lamp. I have a lamp with a green shade lined with white, the best possible thing for the eyes. I will make you a shade ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... little Lewy Loses all his pretty smiles; He says they're very far away; At least a hundred miles. He looks as sober as a judge, As stately as a king, As solemn as a parson and As still as anything. And then our little Bertie, The witching willow bringing, Sends all the smiles safe home again, By ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... like a veteran grim and grey, With sling and crutch, I am but fit to watch the fray Where, in the world-old, witching way, In other hands your fingers stay With lingering touch, That may mean nothing, or it may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... and yet it holds fast. So, though Roland's return was far enough away, Denas possessed it in anticipation. The belief that he would come, that he would give her sympathy and assistance, helped her through the long sameness of uneventful days by the witching promise, "Anon—anon!" ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... look to see. There was a witching mingling of the frank, the childlike, and the womanly, in her troubled face; frankness that would not deny the truth that her monitor seemed to have read, a childlike simplicity of shame that he should have divined it, and a womanly ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Buckingham really believed Lady Purbeck to have possessed herself of some powers of witchcraft and that he felt considerable uneasiness on his own account, as well as on his brother's, in connection with it; for he seems to have consulted some other sorcerer, with the object of out-witching the witchery of Lady Purbeck. In some notes[75] by Archbishop Laud for a letter to Buckingham, the following cautious ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... to a milliner's trade; and stowing his clothes and a shot-bag of hard money which he was known to possess into a sailor's chest, with which, together with his gun and a Methodist preacher, he again hurried off for the asylum of his beloved. Arrived once more in the witching presence, he waited till evening (yet how he was constrained so to do is more than I can tell), and then, as we made it a duty to be gathered about him once more, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the forest, artificial townsfolk applaud. Yet a nesting-tree, a thousand leagues from city discords, gives forth better music with deeper meaning and higher message—albeit the songster sings only from love of song. The fretted folk of the great cities cannot understand the witching fascinations of a wild life in a wild, free, tameless land, where God's own hand ministers to eye and ear. To fare sumptuously, to dress with the faultless distinction that marks wealth, to see and above all to be seen—these are the empty ends ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... child by her hand—so marvelous was the fascination of that little creature's countenance. It was a face to attract, to charm, to delight, to draw you in, and rivet your whole attention, until you became absorbed and lost in the study of its mysterious spell—a witching face, whose nameless charm it were impossible to tell, I might describe the fine dark Jewish features, the glorious eyes, the brilliant complexion, and the fall of long, glossy, black ringlets that ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... because of any special danger of the siege or any threatened imminent assault, but simply and merely because of the late slaughter of a pig of tender age whose screams had come up from the Turkish camp about the witching hour of midnight. ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... life and being to these memories, and its glamour brought back the dead from her grave! He remembered how he had asked her if she loved him, and how, avoiding the words so difficult to speak, she had answered with the witching tones of her violin. Oh, that heavenly evening hour upon the balcony! She had said, "Love has its own language: come and listen." And Christina said SHE HAD NOT LOVED! He could ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... bestridden by one Friar John, my very self, and I am forsooth weighty argument. Fourthly, beloved, 'tis an ass that—ha! O sweet vision for eyes human or divine! Do I see thee in very truth, thou damsel of disobedience, dear dame of discord, sweet, witching, wilful lady—is it thou in very truth, most loved daughter, or wraith conjured of thy magic ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... with me. But as I enjoy a hand of cards with a friend, I don't go unprovided.' Saying which, Dare drew a pack from the tail of his coat. 'Shall we while away this leisure with the witching things?' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Oh, witching as its scenes, and bright As is its cloudless summer light, Be still its maids, the soul's delight Of every truthful callan'! Be health around it ever spread, To light the eye, to lift the head, And joy on every heart be shed That beats ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... no more! Witching dancer be gone! For my heart's a still shore in the hugeness of dawn, And some answer is thrilling, is trembling for me In the eerie still brightness of heaven and sea, And the little ripples whisper, "What ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... the dreadful chase, Till time itself shall have an end; By day, they scour earth's cavern'd space, At midnight's witching hour, ascend. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... himself upon a small stool. "So be it, young master, and if you'm minded to talk wi' a lonely man an' share his fire, sit ye down an' welcome. Though being of a nat'rally enquiring turn o' mind, I'd like to know what you've been a-doing or who, to be hiding in this wood at this witching hour when ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... next by chance descried, The Sultan's daughter, witching fair; Love's high control was not denied— He sought to gain the beauty rare. Before the Sultan lowly bent His mother, and the jewels spread; The Prince, astonished, gave consent, And all Aladdin's ...
— Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... The witching hour of lunch was near at hand. Isaac glanced at the clock, the hands of which pointed to five minutes to twelve. As soon as the clock above the Post Office sounded the hour, he left the counter, which was immediately ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... civilization, and the miserable wigwam of a heathen barbarism! Who, then, can wonder—if the theme of Love be universal—that it should have evoked the rude and iron eloquence of the Scandinavian Scald as well as the soft and witching poesy of the bards of more genial climes, or that its praises or its sorrows should be sung on the banks of the Arno, the Seine, or the Thames, as well as amidst the pathless forests of America, or the burning sands ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... carle was at his wonted trade, Still tempting heedless men into his snare, In witching wise, as I before have said; But when he saw, in goodly gear array'd, The grave majestic knight approaching nigh, His countenance fell."—THOMSON, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... clock in the stable tower crept from hour to hour, the bell telling off the half-hours. She neither saw nor heard. Then came the twelve long deliberate strokes announcing the witching hour. At the first stroke Beverly started into life. By the time the last had sounded the pretty pink dinner gown she had been wearing lay in a tumbled heap upon the bed ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... an entrance into a Strasburg pie and dealt out its toothsome contents, and the Teutons, whose favorite tipple had been beer, kept up a fusillade of champagne corks as they filled the glasses of their fair partners. After the supper, the guests returned to the spacious parlors, where, to the witching strains of the Marine Band, the merry dancers chased the hours with flying feet until long after the midnight stars had ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... adaptations will emerge that will render far more perfect the reflection of the will of the people; that will perhaps represent minorities as well as majorities; that will disarm corruptions by dispensing with party organizations. It is the very witching hour of change. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... but Penn, acknowledged her witching sway. She could ride finely now on horseback or with a pillion, and the cunning little beauty persuaded one or the other to take her ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... tongues and the hermit peoples. Learn before you die to follow the Piper's Son, and though your old bones bleach among grey rocks, what matter if you have had your bellyful of life and come to your heart's desire?" And the tune fell low and witching, bringing tears to the eyes and joy to the heart; and the man knew (though no one told him) that this was the first part of the Rime, the Song of the Open Road, the Lilt of the Adventurer, which shall be now and ever and to ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... a mysterious disturbance. The night before last we were awaked by a violent noise, like drawing heavy boards along the new part of the house. I fancied something had fallen, and thought no more about it. This was about two in the morning. Last night, at the same witching hour, the very same noise occurred. Mrs. S., as you know, is rather timbersome, so up got I, with Beardie's broadsword ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... themselves, with such awestruck eyes, and treat them in every way with such demonstrations of perfect credence in their being really ghouls and ghosts, that it is not to be denied that strange feelings creep over one in reading their stories at the witching hour, when the fire is nearly out, and the candle-wicks are an inch and a half long. The Frenchman seldom introduces a ghost—never a ghoul; but he makes up for it by describing human beings with sentiments which would probably ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... had the kindness to extend me courtesies to 'The Witching Hour' the other evening, and listen to muh: There is some class to that show. Ain't you seen it? It's a song and dance about this mental telepathy gag. There is a gambling gentleman who can tell a poker hand every time. The only reason he ain't a heiress is because his conscience ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... with stars, and he caught the flash of fireflies among the undergrowth that were like the lanterns of the fairies a line came into his mind that he liked and repeated several times, rather whimsically pleased with himself for having found it at exactly the right moment. It was "the witching ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... the Opium-eater (5) quell Thy wondering sprite with witching spell? Read'st thou the dreams of murkiest hell In that mild mien? Or dost thou doubt yet fear to tell Such ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... is easily said. Leaue me Friends: 'Tis now the verie witching time of night, When Churchyards yawne, and Hell it selfe breaths out Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter businesse as the day Would quake to looke on. Soft now, to my Mother: Oh Heart, loose not thy Nature; let not euer ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the more watchful felt that the flame was rather in herself, that she bore about her an impure and scorching heat. The fiery dart with which Satan had pierced her was still there, and, as through a baleful lamp, shot forth a wild, but fearfully witching sheen. Shrinking from her, you would yet stand still, with a strange ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... with vases and statuettes. Divans and lounges with deep cushions, the perfection of upholstery, invite to rest and repose. Aquaria alive with fins and strewn with tinged shells and zoophytes. Tufts of geranium, from bead baskets, suspended mid-room, drop their witching perfume. Fountains gushing up, sprinkling the air with sparkles, or gushing through the mouth of the marble lion. Long mirrors, mounted with scrolls and wings and exquisite carvings, catching and reflecting back the magnificence. At their ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... was gravely idling around, stopped smitten with wonder at the sight. The dogs, dressed in showy colours, braided with imitation gold lace on every seam, a plumed hat or a turban on their heads, and moving in cadence to a witching rhythm, with a distant resemblance to human beings, appeared to him to be supernatural creatures. The skilfully linked steps, the slides, the pirouettes delighted but did not discourage him. Like Correggio at the sight of Raphael's painting, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... were named Maud and Florence Stanton, Maud being about eighteen years of age and Florence perhaps fifteen. Maud's beauty was striking, as proved by Patsy's admiration at first sight; Florence was smaller and darker, yet very dainty and witching, like a Dresden shepherdess. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... wholly delightful. With those who are fond of bed-reading Trollope should ever be a favourite, and it is no small compliment to say this, for small is the noble army of authors who have given us books which can enchant in the witching hour between waking and slumber. It is probable that all lovers of letters have their favourite bed-books. Thackeray has charmingly told us of his. Of the few novels that can really be enjoyed when the reader is settling down for slumber almost all have been set forth by writers who—consciously ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... a veteran grim and grey, With sling and crutch, I am but fit to watch the fray Where, in the world-old, witching way, In other hands your fingers stay With lingering touch, That may mean nothing, or it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... hosts above Unbar their golden gates, While Nature holds her court of love, And for her client waits. Then, lady, wake—in beauty rise! 'Tis now the promised hour, When torches kindle in the skies To light thee to thy bower. The day we dedicate to care— To love the witching night; For all that's beautiful and fair In hours like these unite. E'en thus the sweets to flowerets given— The moonlight on the tree— And all the bliss of earth and heaven— Are mingled, love, in thee. Then, lady, wake—in beauty rise! 'Tis now the promised hour, When torches kindle ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... taught my willing tongue, The songs that Braga fram'd and sung? Who was it op'd to me the store Of dark unearthly Runic lore, And taught me to beguile my time With Denmark's aged and witching rhyme; To rest in thought in Elvir shades, And hear the song of fairy maids; Or climb the top of Dovrefeld, Where magic knights their muster held! Who was it did all this for me? O, who, but honest ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... week he had sat at the foot of the Lone Pine and barked and barked until his throat was sore. Every night old Mother Fox had warned him that noisy children would come to no good end, and every night Reddy had promised that he would bark no more. But every night when the first silver flood of witching light crept over the hill and cast strange shadows from the naked branches of the trees, Reddy forgot all about his promise. Deep down under his little red coat was a strange feeling which he could not explain. He simply must bark, so up to the Lone Pine he would ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... management. Mr. Eugene Walter's "The Easiest Way," at the last moment, was released from publication in the Drama League Series of Plays; it still stands as America's most cruelly realistic treatment of certain city conditions. In the choice of Mr. Augustus Thomas's "In Mizzoura"—"The Witching Hour" having so often been used in dramatic collections—the Editor believes he has represented this playwright at a time when his dramas were most racy ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: - Introduction and Bibliography • Montrose J. Moses
... crests and hollows of the sand-dunes, to the right the rocky shore with its inky shadows and its crystalline coves. Rilla and her partner swung in among the dancers; she drew a long breath of delight; what witching music Ned Burr of the Upper Glen was coaxing from his fiddle—it was really like the magical pipes of the old tale which compelled all who heard them to dance. How cool and fresh the gulf breeze blew; how white and wonderful the ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of a haunted spot on a road, where a "ghost" was seen, not at the witching hour of night, not when evening shadows lengthen, but in broad daylight. It is sent to us by the percipient, a lady, who does not desire to have her name mentioned. She was walking along a country road in the vicinity of ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... streams, the pearly streams, The streams in sunbeams flashing, The murm'ring streams, the gentle streams, The streams down mountains dashing, Have been the theme Of poets' dream, And, in wild witching story, Have been renowned for love's fond scenes, Or some great ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... paused for a moment, and then continued, "Well, my attentive friend, 'the witching hour' approaches. We lost too much time in discussion this evening—What! only ten o'clock?" he said, looking at his watch. "Well, I am at a good resting-place in the story, anyway, as you will to-morrow evening admit. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... rein to in any play he has thus far written. The consequence is, when he aimed at mental effect, the result was nearly always pompous, as when Dr. Seelig, in "As a Man Thinks," tries to explain the psychological matrix of the piece, and as when Jack Brookfield, in "The Witching Hour," explains the basis of telepathy. But when he aimed nowhere, yet gave us living, breathing flashes of character, as dominate "The Other Girl" and are typified in the small role of Lew Ellinger, in "The Witching Hour," Thomas was happiest in his humour, most unaffected ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... spring! Of which sweet swans must drink before they sing Their true-pac'd numbers and their holy lays, Which makes them worthy cedar and the bays. But why, why longer do I gaze upon Thee with the eye of admiration? Since I must leave thee, and enforc'd must say To all thy witching beauties, Go, away. But if thy whimpering looks do ask me why, Then know that nature bids thee go, not I. 'Tis her erroneous self has made a brain Uncapable of such a sovereign As is thy powerful self. Prithee not ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... January 8, with three craftsmen of the town, I painted a pack of cards. They were for a senator, in a hurry. I the diamonds. My queen came forth with eyes like spring violets, hair a golden brown, and witching smile. My fellow-craftsmen saw her, and put their arms round my neck and hailed me master. Oh, noble Germans! No jealousy of a brother-workman: no sour looks at a stranger; and would have me spend Sunday with them after matins; and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Spain's maids no race of Amazons, But formed for all the witching arts of love: Though thus in arms they emulate her sons, And in the horrid phalanx dare to move, 'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove, Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate: In softness as in firmness far above Remoter females, famed for sickening ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... the clock in the stable tower crept from hour to hour, the bell telling off the half-hours. She neither saw nor heard. Then came the twelve long deliberate strokes announcing the witching hour. At the first stroke Beverly started into life. By the time the last had sounded the pretty pink dinner gown she had been wearing lay in a tumbled heap upon the bed ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... anxious endeavours. Occasionally, too, I have beheld a man bestriding a horse in that peculiar fashion which may be described as his being on the outside of the animal, slipping away over the hot stones, possibly at a trot, and fancying ivthough with many suspicions to the contrary; that he is witching the world with noble horsemanship. What a pity that such poor fellows will persist in aiming at what they cannot achieve! What mortification and disappointment they must often know! The horse backs on to the pavement, into a plate-glass window, just as Maria, for whose ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... neither were they brown; but they presented in the most fascinating ensemble a grey which at night was a fathomless dusk, and by day that green which you perceive where the sea is a hundred fathoms deep. With the light upon her eye there was a glint of emerald, that witching glare which made Becky Sharpe irresistible. Now imagine an eyebrow, dark as the raven's quill, overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. Then contemplate a softness beside which the velvet upon the petal of a pansy would ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... island to island, freighted with a population just waked up to a realizing sense of the pleasures of existence; then is the atmosphere balmy, and the light wonderfully soft and richly tinted; then come the sweet witching hours, when ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... fortnight now, my dear, I have been living the life of society; one evening at the Italiens, another at the Grand Opera, and always a ball afterwards. Ah! society is a witching world. The music of the Opera enchants me; and whilst my soul is plunged in divine pleasure, I am the centre of admiration and the focus of all the opera-glasses. But a single glance will make the boldest ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... yielded to the bondage of the gay coquette. Now she smiled winningly upon him, and again laughed at his tender speeches. He besought her to dance with him, and she refused, but with such an artless grace, such witching good humor, and playful cruelty, that he could not feel offended. I addressed her and she turned away from him. I had not presumption enough to suppose I could win a maiden's heart where he was my rival, but I thought that, aided ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... decked in long robes were held, sometimes in the daytime and sometimes at the dead of night. Notices were sent to obnoxious persons warning them to stop certain practices. If warning failed, something more convincing was tried. Fright was the emotion most commonly stirred. A horseman, at the witching hour of midnight, would ride up to the house of some offender, lift his head gear, take off a skull, and hand it to the trembling victim with the request that he hold it for a few minutes. Frequently violence was employed either officially ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... think this was, from his shivering notes. Listen again! how old is the dead Time, whose age the distant town-clock is tolling? I don't care to count—to tell the truth, that owl makes me nervous—and if it is 'the witching time of night,' I don't ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... things of this world under the semblance of a sanctified exterior. The friar and Matilda had often sung duets together, and had been accustomed to the baron's chiming in with a stormy capriccio, which was usually charmed into silence by some sudden turn in the witching melodies of Matilda. They had therefore naturally calculated, as far as their wild spirits calculated at all, on the same effects from the same causes. But the circumstances of the preceding day had made an essential alteration in the case. The baron knew well, from the intelligence he had received, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... Sir Aymer de Valence held an interview with the old sexton; and who now, drawing into a separate corner some of the straggling parties whom he had collected and brought to the church, kept on the alert, and appeared ready for an attack as well at mid-day as at the witching hour of midnight. This was the more necessary, as the eye of Sir John de Walton seemed busied in searching from one place to another, as if unable to find the object he was in quest of, which the reader will easily understand to be the Lady Augusta de Berkely, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Loses all his pretty smiles; He says they're very far away; At least a hundred miles. He looks as sober as a judge, As stately as a king, As solemn as a parson and As still as anything. And then our little Bertie, The witching willow bringing, Sends all the smiles safe home again, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... pavement; many of the pillars were festooned with ivy; and, in some places, the shattered walls were covered with creepers, and trees had taken root in the crevices of the masonry. Beautiful at all times were these magnificent ruins; but never so beautiful as when seen by the witching light of the moon—the hour, according to the best authority, when all ruins should be viewed—when the long lines of broken pillars, the mouldering arches, and the still glowing panes over the altar, had a ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... which, by some means, had been left slightly open. Black Eagle went up to it and pushed the door farther open. An odour came forth—a damp, rancid, familiar, musty, intoxicating, beloved odour stirring strongly at old memories of happy days and travels. Black Eagle sniffed at the witching smell as the returned wanderer smells of the rose that twines his boyhood's cottage home. Nostalgia seized him. He put his hand inside. Excelsior—dry, springy, curly, soft, enticing, covered the floor. Outside the drizzle had turned to a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Rambler, of which she was particularly fond, and began to read. For a while she listened, and in her interest forgot her forebodings, but after a time her long silky lashes swept her cheeks, and she slept. The minister laid down the volume and watched the pure girlish face; noted all its witching loveliness, and thought of the homage which it would win her in coming years. He knew as he sat watching her slumber that he loved her above everything on earth; that she wielded a power none had ever possessed before—that his heart was indissolubly linked with hers. ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... chapel's altar-stone, And sings her matins there. Her feet are swift All day in labours 'mid the vales below, Cheering sad hearts: each evening she returns To that high fane, and there her vespers sings; Then sleeps, and dreams of heaven.' With witching smile The youngest of that beauteous triad cried: 'That life is sweetest! I would be that maid!' Cuthbert resumed: 'The Christian Wife comes next: She drinks a deeper draught of life: round her In ampler sweep its sympathies extend: An infant's cry has knocked against her heart, Evoking ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... pretty well inclined for a lark, you may guess. There are no lamps in the streets of Kingston, and as all the decent part of the community are in their cavies by half— past nine in the evening, and as it was now "the witching time o' night," there was not a soul in the streets that we saw, except a solitary town guard now and then, lurking about some dark corner under the piazzas. These same streets, which were wide and comfortable enough in the daytime, had become ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... sizzling of flesh and flame was as the mystic voice in some witch's brew. There were many other tents on the plain, a blurred city of whitish shadows against the night, and there were many other glowing coals to mark where the earth lay under the stars, and the witching murmur, the tantalizing charm of each was—supper. In this wise, and thinking themselves very patient, men were waiting for other men to starve to death. The besieged had tried, but they had not again cut ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... all on me, And let me be a story left to time Of blood and Infamy, how base and ugly Ingratitude appears, with all her profits, How monstrous my hop'd grace, at Court! good souldiers Let neither flattery, nor the witching sound Of high and soft preferment, touch your goodness: To be valiant, old, and honest, O ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... incidents which have a plot. In "Travels with a Donkey," by Stevenson, no one cares for the plot of the whole book,—in fact there is none; yet the reader is interested in the purchase of the "neat and high bred" Modestine up to the "last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy." This incident has a plot. The following is a paragraph from "An Autumn Effect" by Mr. Stevenson. The simple events are perfectly ordered, and there is a delightful surprise at the end. This paragraph has a plot. Yet the thirty pages of "An Autumn ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Another witching time is the period of twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany. Hence in some parts of Silesia the people burn pine-resin all night long between Christmas and the New Year in order that the pungent smoke may drive witches ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... what Staff wanted with all his heart. He wanted to go home and swelter and be swindled by taxicab drivers and snubbed by imported head-waiters; he wanted to patronise the subway at peril of asphyxiation and to walk down Fifth Avenue at that witching hour when electric globes begin to dot the dusk of evening—pale moons of a world of steel and stone; he wanted to ride in elevators instead of lifts, in trolley-cars instead of trams; he wanted to go to a ball-game at the Polo Grounds, to dine dressed as he pleased, ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... the discourse, for it very naturally directed the attention of all present from a subject that was rather tolerated from idleness than interesting in itself, to the different natural phenomena by which they were surrounded. The sunset had now fairly passed, and the travellers were at the witching moment that precedes the final disappearance of the day. A calm so deep rested on the limpid lake, that it was not easy to distinguish the line which separated the two elements, in those places where the blue of the land was ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... soon, with wondering eye, Take to itself a female form, And hover toward me from on high, As fall the leaves in Autumn storm. Her dress was like the mantle fair Which Autumn to Columbia brings, And bids the moaning forest wear, With rainbow hues of angel's wings; Her voice was like the witching strain Which laughing streamlets gayly sing When Summer o'er the ripening grain Spreads wide ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... a child, on some long winter's night, Affrighted, clinging to its grandam's knees, With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees, Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell; Or of those hags who at the witching time Of murky midnight, ride the air sublime, And mingle foul embrace with fiends of hell; Cold horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear More gentle starts, to hear the beldame tell Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear, Murder'd by cruel uncle's ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... In vain he sought for any sign of the girl whose acquaintance he had made so unexpectedly, and he was almost tempted to believe that she was no other than a creature of his own imagination, born of the witching moonlight hour, and absorbed again into the passing shadows of night. But could he have seen through the walls of that old grey house, even now at that early hour, he would have understood what kept the preacher's niece so busily engaged that neither on the shore nor on the banks of the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... like a wreath of diamonds in the moon's silvery rays: in the brawling mountain torrent, or the gentle brook—meandering peacefully through verdant meadows, in the mighty cataract or the feathery cascade, in the downy snowflake, or the iridescent icicle—in each and all of its many witching forms it is beautiful beyond compare. But its claims to our admiration rest not alone upon its ever varying beauty. When consumed with thirst, what beverage can equal a draught of pure, cold water? In sickness its value is simply incalculable especially in fevers; in fact, the famous lines ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... to the care of the sentinel on guard at the house opposite, he joined them, and was soon striding along, at a tremendous pace, toward the great cathedral. Ere he reached it, its long-tongued clock tolled twelve, and all the other churches, one after another, took up the sound, and the witching hour of midnight rang and rerang from end to end of London town. As if by magic, a thousand forked tongues of fire shot up at once into the blind, black night, turning almost in an instant the darkened face of the heavens to an inflamed, glowing ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... in me. My wrongs might slumber till that last assize, when the pitying eyes of Christ sum up the record, but hers—have made a hungry panther of my soul. Come, memory, unlock your treasure house, uncoil your spells, chant all your witching strains, and let us see whether the towers of Notre Dame will not tremble and dissolve as ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... however, regard the power as unholy or disreputable. Another informant mentions a belief that children born between midnight and one o'clock will be second-sighted. People attempt to hasten or delay the birth, so as to avoid the witching hour; clearly then they regard the second sight as an unenviable accomplishment. 'It is certane' says Kirk, 'he sie more fatall and fearfull things, than he do gladsome.' For the physical condition of the seer, Kirk describes it as 'a rapture, transport, and sort of ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... so sweet as thine; Wider our view, but not so sanely sure; For we are troubled by the witching lure Of Science, with her lightning on the mist; Science that clears, Yet never quite discloses what she wist, And leaves us half with doubts and ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... bark of trees, With bodkin wrote, apparently at ease. But Cupid drew her thoughts to higher things, Than merely graving what from fancy springs. Her lover and the place, at once assured, That such a secret would be well secured; A tempting bait, which made her, with regret, Resist the witching ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... the river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; 115 Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Ptolemy plant a ghost just once more for her. You know you made him take a reef in the flapping of ghostly garments. Can't we resurrect the specter and restore the wails just for tonight, and bring her over here at the witching hour?" ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... seek The velvet down that spreads his cheek; And there, if art so far can go, The ingenuous blush of boyhood show. While, for his mouth—but no,—in vain Would words its witching charm explain. Make it the very seat, the throne, That Eloquence would claim her own; And let the lips, though silent, wear A life-look, as ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... turned away To gaze upon a poet's home; 'Twas near the close of that bright day, And golden sunlight on it shone; Perfume of flowers, and birds' songs low A witching spell about us throw. ...
— Within the Golden Gate - A Souvenir of San Fransisco Bay • Laura Young Pinney
... fire, grew more fierce by feeding, till he was well-nigh beside himself. Presently, out comes Moll from her state room, all glowing with exercise, flushed with pleasure, a rich colour in her cheek, and wild fire in her eyes, looking more witching than any siren. Swiftly she crosses the hall, and runs up the stairs to gain her chamber and reclothe herself, but half way up Dawson stops her, and clasping her about, cries hoarsely in ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... In woody wold She met a huntsman fair and bold; His baldrick was of silk and gold, And many a witching tale he told To ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... poop the Reverend Mr Smythe and "Joe" Jellaby, who had contrived to secure sufficient snoozing, during the odd moments when he was off duty since the morning, to make up for the sleep he had lost by going to the admiral's ball and there meeting the witching houri of his dreams, "that chawming gurl," who had subsequently prevented him from taking his proper rest when he came aboard in the small hours of ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... fashioned forth his face!" He's monarch of the fair, wherever they may be; For, lo, they're all become the liegemen of his grace. The water of his mouth is liquid honey-dew And 'twixt his lips for teeth fine pearls do interlace. Perfect in every trait of beauty and unique, His witching loveliness distracts the human race. Beauty itself hath writ these words upon his cheek, "Except this youth there's none that's fair in ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... set in, and the witching hour—the keystone of night's black arch, twelve o'clock—was approaching. To go to bed on such an occasion, would have been held no better than for a jolly toper to shirk his bicker, a lover to eschew the trysting thorn, or a warrior to fly the scene of his country's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... the grand sweeping staircases—up and up, to the very top of the house—to the lofty, lonely battlements. Cloudless spread the wide night sky; countless and brilliant shone the stars; peaceful and majestic slept, the purple sea; spotless white gleamed the snowy earth. A weird, witching scene. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would life be given. Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth. Night waned upon this talk; and even the witching hour had gone by, before we retired to rest. When I placed my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... endeavours. Occasionally, too, I have beheld a man bestriding a horse in that peculiar fashion which may be described as his being on the outside of the animal, slipping away over the hot stones, possibly at a trot, and fancying ivthough with many suspicions to the contrary; that he is witching the world with noble horsemanship. What a pity that such poor fellows will persist in aiming at what they cannot achieve! What mortification and disappointment they must often know! The horse backs on to the pavement, into a plate-glass window, just as Maria, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... in her witching dark eye, There's a love in her tresses at play, Yet her love would be worth not a sigh, If from thee she could lure me ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Lunda boys were to run across to Boden on the evening of the following day, to carry out the mysterious plans of Tom and Yaspard. They were to wait at the geo for Yaspard and his chums, and the mighty deed was to be done at the witching hour of night. So they planned, and put aside with unwonted impatience the Doctor's declaration that there was going to be unsettled weather, and that they must not count upon being able to carry out their scheme in such an ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... got in the front row of spectators, while behind us the crowd packed as closely as matches in a box. The champagne I had taken had again aroused in me that vivid sense of joy and strength and colour. Again the lights were effulgent, the music witching, the women divine. As I swayed a little I clutched unsteadily at the Youth. He ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... her hand—so marvelous was the fascination of that little creature's countenance. It was a face to attract, to charm, to delight, to draw you in, and rivet your whole attention, until you became absorbed and lost in the study of its mysterious spell—a witching face, whose nameless charm it were impossible to tell, I might describe the fine dark Jewish features, the glorious eyes, the brilliant complexion, and the fall of long, glossy, black ringlets that veiled ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Aymer de Valence held an interview with the old sexton; and who now, drawing into a separate corner some of the straggling parties whom he had collected and brought to the church, kept on the alert, and appeared ready for an attack as well at mid-day as at the witching hour of midnight. This was the more necessary, as the eye of Sir John de Walton seemed busied in searching from one place to another, as if unable to find the object he was in quest of, which the reader ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... received with politeness. My family, in all its branches, came into her Grace's quick recollection; and I was thus indebted to my adventure, not only for an introduction to one of the most elegant women of her time—to the goddess of fashion in her temple, the Circe of high life, at the "witching hour," but of being most "graciously" received; and even hearing a panegyric on my chivalry, from the Marechal, smilingly echoed by lips which seemed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... the dreadful chase Till time itself shall have an end; By day they scour earth's cavern'd space, At midnight's witching hour, ascend. ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... they had gone through; but, feeling a calm on their spirits, succeeding the rude interruption produced by Dutton's brutality, they walked out on the cliff, to enjoy the cool air, and the bland scenery of the head-land, at that witching hour. ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... joy, my lord the Duke rose and made as though he were departing; whereupon the false image vanished, and I beheld Ann giving her hand with a witching smile to Junker Henning, that he might help her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... can from a pillow part And by a touch, of cunning art Adorn the casket of the heart, Where every grace, Half hidden by its witching fold, Seeks to betray a charm untold— How envies each admirer ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... but that was not the price of her hand. Nothing less than had been promised would answer now; and when she stole out to meet Jeff she told him so. Under the witching moonlight he began to manifest tendencies to sentiment and tenderness. Her response was prompt: "Go 'long! what dese common niggah ways got ter do wid a 'liance? Yer show me de gole in dat box—dat's de bargain. Den ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... threw up his window and leant out into the night, and watched the light clouds swimming over the moon, and the silver mist folding the water-meadows and willows in its soft cool mantle. His thoughts were such as will occur to any reader who has passed the witching age of twenty; and the scent of the heliotrope-bed in the flower-garden below, seemed to rise very strongly on the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... From morn to eve; unmindful of her form, Unmindful of the happy dress that stole The wishes of the youth, when every maid With envy pined. Hence, finally, by night The village matron, round the blazing hearth, Suspends the infant audience with her tales, Breathing astonishment! of witching rhymes, And evil spirits; of the death-bed call Of him who robb'd the widow, and devour'd 260 The orphan's portion; of unquiet souls Risen from the grave to ease the heavy guilt Of deeds in life conceal'd; of shapes that walk At dead of night, and clank ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... eloquent disdain, the ardor of battle with the thunder of artillery, the hut of the peasant with its pastoral pleasures, and the assemblage of the noble, the distinguished, the beautiful, with the nameless fascinations of feminine loveliness, the witching caprices of conscious power,—while through all and above all glows the memory of the glorious past and mournful present of his beloved country. The book, in fact, opens a vista into modes of life, manners of being, and trains of thought little known ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Graydon went in search of Stella, but she was nowhere to be found, nor had the warm evening lured Mrs. Wildmere from her room. He had learned that Arnault was still at the house, and he inferred, from the surpassing beauty of the moonlit evening, that his rival would not let such witching hours pass without an effort to turn them to account. With a frown he retreated from the music, dancing, and gayety of a full house, and went up to Mrs. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... still new to her dignities, Eliza O'Neill was beginning to prattle in the most charming brogue ever heard across the Irish Channel, and to grow through beautiful childhood to witching girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love of things theatrical was in her veins; and while she was still playing with her dolls she was impersonating the Duke ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... And grace her delicate feet; then for her robe The tissue, pure as Etna's snow that lies Nearest the sun-light as the wreathy mist At summer dawn—so playful let it float About her airy limbs. A girdle next, Purple with gold embroidered o'er, to bind With witching grace the tunic that confines Her bosom's swelling charms: of silk the mantle, Gorgeous with like empurpled hues, and fixed With clasp of gold—remember, too, the bracelets To gird her beauteous arms; nor ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... her, whose smiles shed light on My weary lot last year at Brighton, I talk of happiness and marriage, St. George's and a travelling carriage. I trifle with my rosy fetters, I rave about her 'witching letters, And swear my heart shall do no treason Before the closing of the season. Thus I whisper in the ear Of Louisa Windermere— If she cares for what I say, She's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... voluptuousnesss; but the heart of Inez turned with distaste from this idle mockery. The tears would rush into her eyes, as her thoughts reverted from this scene of profligate splendour, to the humble but virtuous home from whence she had been betrayed; or if the witching power of music ever soothed her into a tender reverie, it was to dwell with fondness on the image of Antonio. But if Don Ambrosio, deceived by this transient calm, should attempt at such time to whisper his passion, she would start as from a dream, and recoil from him with ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... By the witching amorous sweetness and the blackness of thine eyes, By the tender flexile softness in thy slender waist that lies, By the graces and the languor of thy body and thy shape, By the fount of wine and honey from thy coral lips that rise, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... Everything abstract is ultimately of practical use, and even the most immediately utilitarian has an abstract principle at its core. We are too prone to regard the present age of the world as preeminently practical, much as a middle-aged man laments the witching fancies of his boyhood. But, and there is more in the parallel than analogy, if the man be truly imaginative he is none the less so at forty-five than he was at twenty, if his imagination have taken on a more critical form; for this latter half of the nineteenth century ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... been most fortunate in pleasing all her friends, both as to the fact and as to the time and manner of telling. Do you remember a conversation we had standing upon the hearth in my room one night, between eleven and twelve, the witching hour, and what you asked me about Captain Beaufort? The secret had then been confided to me; and I hope you will do me the justice to acknowledge that, open-hearted and open-mouthed as I am, I can keep a ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... to song And merry dance; and these in turn were chased By legends strange, and wild, unearthly tales Of elves, and gnomes, and fairy sprites, that haunt The woods and caves; where they do sleep all day, And then come forth i' the witching hour of night, To dance by moonlight on the green thick sward. The speaker was an aged villager, In whom his oft-told tale awoke no fears, Such as he filled his gaping listeners with. Nor ever was ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... band, Belladonna, lily white, These made up the fairy-land Where I wandered all last night; Ruled in all its rosy glow By a merry Queen, you know Jolly, dancing, laughing, witching, Veuve Cliquot. ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... first voyage up the river brings us more delicately and gracefully down from these mountains to the Hudson—the level highway to the sea. "Of all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination. Never shall I forget the effect upon me of my first view of them, predominating over a wide extent of country—part wild, woody and rugged; part softened away into all the graces of cultivation. As we slowly floated along, I lay on the deck and watched them through ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... and brave baroness! I often thought of you during those months in the Annexe. You will come again, you say, to Tahiti, bathe again in its witching waters, and let the spell of its sweetness bind you again to its soil. Maybe, but baroness, you will never again be as you were, flinging all body and soul into the fire of passion, and yearning for motherhood! Such times can ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Claire! Never was contrast more perfect. A scarf, like scarlet flame, flung about her shoulders, set off the richness of her clear brunette skin, through which the crimson blood flamed in cheek and lip. Eyes, now black, now gray, changing, flashing, witching eyes: gray in quiet moments, darkening with mirth or sadness, anger or pain; hair black and silky, rippling to the rounded, supple waist in glossy waves. Not so tall as Madeline, and rounded and dimpled ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the old grey house on the cliff—the home of Essec Powell, the preacher. In vain he sought for any sign of the girl whose acquaintance he had made so unexpectedly, and he was almost tempted to believe that she was no other than a creature of his own imagination, born of the witching moonlight hour, and absorbed again into the passing shadows of night. But could he have seen through the walls of that old grey house, even now at that early hour, he would have understood what kept the preacher's niece so busily engaged that neither on the shore nor on the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... to tinkle the herd to rest; they have all paced across the heath. Is not this the witching time of night? The waters murmur, and fall with more than mortal music, and spirits of peace walk abroad to calm the agitated breast. Eternity is in these moments. Worldly cares melt into the airy stuff that dreams are made of, ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... some stirrings of pity, drew their breath and gave ground a little. Where was the shrinking, frightened, unbidden guest of a moment before, with downcast eyes and burning cheeks? Here was a proud and easy and radiant lady, with witching eyes and a wonderful smile. "I am only Audrey, your Excellency," she said, and curtsied as she spoke. "My other name lies buried in a valley amongst far-off mountains." She slightly turned, and addressed herself to a portly, velvet-clad gentleman, of a very authoritative air, who, arriving late, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... with terrors of the tempest, blasts Of demon-armies clouding all the wind, With thunder, and with blinding lightning flung In jagged javelins of purple wrath From splitting skies; sometimes with wiles and words Fair-sounding, 'mid hushed leaves and softened airs From shapes of witching beauty; wanton songs, Whispers of love; sometimes with royal allures Of proffered rule; sometimes with mocking doubts, Making truth vain. But whether these befell Without and visible, or whether Buddh Strove with fell spirits ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... looking into a mirror to discover the particular masculine face which would fill their live's mirrors, though, unhappily some of the potency of the charm was lost because it could not be done upon the witching stroke of midnight. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... streams, The streams in sunbeams flashing, The murm'ring streams, the gentle streams, The streams down mountains dashing, Have been the theme Of poets' dream, And, in wild witching story, Have been renowned for love's fond scenes, Or some great ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... wine I never see The frowning face of my enemy; Drink freely of the grape, and nought Can give the soul one mournful thought; Wine is a bride of witching power, And wisdom is her marriage dower; Wine can the purest joy impart, Wine inspires the saddest heart; Wine gives cowards valour's rage, Wine gives youth to tottering age; Wine gives vigour to the weak, And crimson ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... it not. Doubt nothing that gives promise of a care. Right handsome dames there are in Lancashire, Whence called their women, witches!—witching things! I know a dozen families in which You'd meet a courtesy worthy of a bow. I'll give you letters ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... herself down by its bubbling jets and fountains as she had done before, but not thoughtlessly. The spirit of Aphiz seemed to her to be ever by her side, and she would talk to him as though he was actually present, in soft and tender whispers, and sing the songs of their native valley with low and witching cadence; and thus she was partially happy, for the soul is where it loves, rather than where it lives. From childhood she had been taught to believe the Swedenborgian doctrine, of the presence of the spirits ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... lost sight of herself. As they walked towards the tea-tent, through the throng of clergymen and parasols and tanned men with field-glasses, and young bloods and pretty girls, she noted uneasily that his eyes wandered from her to these types of English beauty, these flower-faces under witching hats. Indeed, he had led her out of the way to plough past a row of open carriages. "The shortest cut," he said, "is ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Cortona lies the large weedy water of Lake Thrasymene, turned into a witching word for ever by Hannibal's recorded victory over Rome. Dim as such records have become to us and remote such realities, he is yet a passionless pilgrim who does n't, as he passes, of a heavy summer's day, feel the air and the light and the very faintness of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... fair! I am sad to say That young men now and then betray: Thy lover, I wis, has thy trust betray'd, For he presently woos a witching maid: Her eyes are blue, and, I tell thee this, She has tempting lips that he fain would kiss; But courage, my child, thou mayst yet discover A clue to the heart of ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... Nature holds her court of love, And for her client waits. Then, lady, wake—in beauty rise! 'Tis now the promised hour, When torches kindle in the skies To light thee to thy bower. The day we dedicate to care— To love the witching night; For all that's beautiful and fair In hours like these unite. E'en thus the sweets to flowerets given— The moonlight on the tree— And all the bliss of earth and heaven— Are mingled, love, in thee. Then, lady, wake—in beauty rise! 'Tis now the promised hour, ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... "I had just received the note when you arrived, and I would not answer it until I had consulted my guardian. He is very stern with me, messieurs," turning to us with a witching smile that I could see pleased ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Beverley saw it in actual life the first impression was rather embarrassing. Somehow he felt almost irresistibly invited to laugh, though he had never been much given to risibility. The blending, or rather the juxtaposition, of extremes—a face, a form immediately witching, and a costume odd to grotesquery—had made an assault upon his comprehension at once so sudden and so direct that his dignity came near being disastrously broken up. A splendidly beautiful child comically clad would have made much the same ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... rock so pitifully dwindled of late years. No matter what he facts are. Sing 'of "The Little Old Red Schoolhouse On the Hill" and in everybody's heart a chord trembles in unison. As we hear its witching strains, we are all lodge brethren, from Maine to California and far across the Western Sea; we are all lodge brethren, and the air is "Auld Lang Syne," and we are clasping hands across, knitted together into one living solidarity; and this, if we but sensed it, is the real ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... could not choose but hear. Mr. Kipling, in agreement with an earlier prophet, once identified rebellion with the sin of witchcraft, and about Tolstoy there was certainly a witching power, a magic or demonic attraction, that gave the hearer no peace. Perhaps more even than from his imaginative strength, it arose from his whole-hearted sincerity, always looking reality straight in the face, always refusing compromise, never hesitating to follow ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... noticed as Betty Cunningham had passed; it was that amid the wreck of her beauty one feature still remained as strangely witching as ever. The soft eyes had not lost their delicacy of hue, nor had the evil passions of her soul deprived them of their gentle look. Those who mentioned her, and she was not an uncommon topic among the men of the town, still spoke of Betty's ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... heart to a rival suitor. The wedding day was fixed, but the prospect of her marriage was a terrible trouble to Eustace, and threatened to mar the happiness of his life. Having, however, in his youth perfected himself in the black art, he drew a magic circle, at the witching hour of night, and summoned the Evil One to a consultation. The meeting came off, at which the usual bargain was quickly struck, the soul of Eustace being bartered for the coveted body of the beautiful young lady. The compact, it was arranged, should close at her death, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... duke was particularly mentioned, which alone appalled the heart of Brooks'. The matter was put before Neuchatel, as he entered the club, to which he had been recently elected with acclamation. "So you are a little frightened," he said, with a peculiarly witching smile which he had, half mockery and half good nature; as much as to say, "I will do what you wish, but I see through you and everybody else." "So you are a little frightened. Well; we City men must see ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... countra wives, wi' toil an' pain, May plunge an' plunge the kirn in vain; For oh! the yellow treasure's ta'en By witching skill; An' dawtet, twal-pint Hawkie's gaen As yell's ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... occupied by fame This day; and watching, witching, condescending To the consumers of fish, fowl, and game, And dignity with courtesy so blending, As all must blend whose part it is to aim (Especially as the sixth year is ending) At their lord's, son's, or similar ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... rash witching goes muffled rumour mine dark silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mooted parlous ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... composed]. 'Tis that enamoured nightingale Who thus gives me the reply:— To his partner in the vale Listening on a bough hard by Warbling thus his tuneful wail. Cease, sweet nightingale, nor show By thy softly witching strain Trilling forth thy bliss and woe, How a man might feel love's pain, When a bird can feel his so. No: it was that wanton vine That in fond pursuit has sought The tall tree it doth entwine, Till the green weight it hath brought Makes the noble trunk decline. Green entwining boughs that hold ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... sackcloth, since he, no less than Cynthia, recognized that a dangerous acquaintance was drawing to an end. So Dale's coat imposed a shield, as it were, between the two, but the man drove with little heed to the witching scenery that Dorset unfolded at each turn of the road, and the woman sat distrait, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... it taught my willing tongue, The songs that Braga fram'd and sung? Who was it op'd to me the store Of dark unearthly Runic lore, And taught me to beguile my time With Denmark's aged and witching rhyme; To rest in thought in Elvir shades, And hear the song of fairy maids; Or climb the top of Dovrefeld, Where magic knights their muster held: Who was it did all this for me? O, who, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... interest. Numbers of unmarried French took up farms in the new colony, and soon fell captive to the charms of the Cree girls. Now and again the history of the simple-hearted Scots was repeated; and a coureur was presently seen to bring a shy, witching Saulteux maiden from the tents of the Jumping Indians. But the French, it must be said, were not so dilettante in their taste for beauty as were their Scottish brethren; yet, as a rule, their wives were the prettiest ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... a look to see. There was a witching mingling of the frank, the childlike, and the womanly, in her troubled face; frankness that would not deny the truth that her monitor seemed to have read, a childlike simplicity of shame that he should have divined it, and a womanly self-respect that owned it had nothing to be ashamed of. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... to remain in the witching moonlight was too strong to be resisted. His mellow tones were a music that she had never heard before, and her eyes grew lustrous with suppressed feeling, and a happiness to which she was not sure she was entitled. The spell of her beauty was on him also, and the moments ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Camp, when the cheery blaze was crackling in the witching hour of yarn telling, the seasoned habitues of the camp would direct the eye of the newcomer to a little glint of light high up upon the mountain, and edify him with dark tales of a lonesome draft dodger who had challenged ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a night to think of going to bed at once, and so, although the witching hour of nine P.M. had struck, Edward and I were still leaning out of the open window in our nightshirts, watching the play of the cedar-branch shadows on the moonlit lawn, and planning schemes of fresh devilry for the sunshiny morrow. From below, strains ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... town to become an apprentice to a milliner's trade; and stowing his clothes and a shot-bag of hard money which he was known to possess into a sailor's chest, with which, together with his gun and a Methodist preacher, he again hurried off for the asylum of his beloved. Arrived once more in the witching presence, he waited till evening (yet how he was constrained so to do is more than I can tell), and then, as we made it a duty to be gathered about him once more, the wedding ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... woman sometimes takes the initiative in an affair of this kind—smiled upon the willing and ready-looking fellow; not exactly at him, but as it were in his direction, you know; and he caught the faint glint of sunshine on her lips, and then—but in the witching hour when the twilight and sunlight kiss and part, after the smile and look of ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... merchants. These new inhabitants have walled up the fair arched windows and slender portals of the ancient dwellers, spoiling the beauty of the streets without materially changing the architectural masses. In that witching hour when the Italian sunset has faded, and a solemn grey replaces the glowing tones of daffodil and rose, it is not difficult, here dreaming by oneself alone, to picture the old noble life—the ladies moving along those open loggias, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the flame was rather in herself, that she bore about her an impure and scorching heat. The fiery dart with which Satan had pierced her was still there, and, as through a baleful lamp, shot forth a wild, but fearfully witching sheen. Shrinking from her, you would yet stand still, with a strange trouble ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... there's no one I'd rather have," said Big Bill, honestly, and so Father Neptune strode majestically to his seat at the head of the table, and at his right sat primly, fluttering Aunt Adelaide, instead of the witching sprite he had ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... gracious mother's wiles And dear delusive smiles! No callow fledgling of her singing brood But tastes that witching food, And hearing overhead the eagle's wing, And how the thrushes sing, Vents his exiguous chirp, and from his nest Flaps forth—we know the rest. I own the weakness of the tuneful kind,— Are not all harpers blind? I sang too early, must I sing too late? The lengthening shadows ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... porter at the station, a most awfully nice chap, put me into a sort of fly and sent me to one of the hotels—a jolly good little inn it is—and they can put me up. Then I asked for Hillview, mentioning the witching name of Miss Bella Bathgate, and they sent a boy with me to find the place. Miss Bathgate sent me on here. ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... fingers in facetious demonstration, and he trembled in painful rapture. And she played on her lute, too, on the lute he had given her of old, those slender fingers making ravishing music on the many-stringed instrument, though her pose as she played was more witching still. What a beautiful glimpse of white shoulders and dainty lace her ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... song, that the summer long Hath flowed so sweet and clear Through the cool, dim shades of our forest glades, No longer charms the ear, A witching spell, that will please as well As his glad notes, may be found In the solemn hush, or the leaves' soft rush, As ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... wonder at such regrets no longer, if I cannot share them. There is surely an hilarious informality about these media-nochi that attaches to no antecedent feast; the freedom of a picnic, without its manifold inconveniences: as the witching hour draws nearer, the "brightest eyes that ever have shone" glitter yet more gloriously, till in their nearer and dearer splendor a Chaldean would forget the stars; and the "sweetest lips that ever were ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the zenith's golden diadem of stars— even they sport upon the same lofty concave of dewless blue, which looks through and through the lacework and everchanging drapery of their mingled hues in the most witching mazes of their nightly waltz, giving to each a definiteness that our homely Saxon tongue might fit ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... window—Keats' 'owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold,' I should think this was, from his shivering notes. Listen again! how old is the dead Time, whose age the distant town-clock is tolling? I don't care to count—to tell the truth, that owl makes me nervous—and if it is 'the witching time of night,' I don't ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... great dread was that he might be pricked in his sleep, on which account he would sit up watching far into the morn. For, as he reasoned, not without plausibility, when could he more rationally hope for a place in Aurelia's thoughts than at that witching and suggestive period? She might surely think of him when she had nothing else to do! Had she really nothing else to do? And Otto grew sick and livid with jealousy. It of course frequently occurred to ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... At that "witching hour," if any of the Corner House girls had been awake and had looked out of the window, they would have seen that the snowman was then buried to ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... which first appeared in 1795, had a wonderful vogue, running rapidly through edition after edition. Among others to whom it appealed and who were influenced by it was Keats. Mrs. Tighe's talent drew from Moore a delicate compliment in "Tell me the witching tale again"; and in "The Grave of a Poetess" and "I stood where the life of song lay low", Mrs. Hemans ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... sheer witching desert for five hundred miles, and for aught I know five hundred miles after that. At the rare stations you see perhaps one corrugated-iron store, perhaps a score of little stone houses with a couple of churches. ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... Quinlan escaped five shots, all fired into his house. Mr. Bell, of Pegsboro, beat this record with six. He was believed to sympathise with Mr. Smith-Barry! Men with white masks pervaded the vicinity from the gentle gloaming till the witching morn, and woe to the weak among their opponents, or even among the neutrals, whom they might meet on ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... were strange and weird—that is, wild, unnatural, and witching. They would appear in both calm ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... those glorious dark eyes which he had so madly loved. The music gave life and being to these memories, and its glamour brought back the dead from her grave! He remembered how he had asked her if she loved him, and how, avoiding the words so difficult to speak, she had answered with the witching tones of her violin. Oh, that heavenly evening hour upon the balcony! She had said, "Love has its own language: come and listen." And Christina said SHE HAD NOT LOVED! He could not, would ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... burns low, and it is past the witching hour of night. Whether sleeping or waking, God bless you and our dear mother, and all of you. Good-night—good-night. My love loads ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... chance descried, The Sultan's daughter, witching fair; Love's high control was not denied— He sought to gain the beauty rare. Before the Sultan lowly bent His mother, and the jewels spread; The Prince, astonished, gave consent, ...
— Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... innumerable punctures made by the comb-like instrument with which it was done on the inflamed muscles of his body. By dint of earnest entreaty and much song, he had prevailed on Big Chief to leave his face and hands untouched. It is doubtful if he would have succeeded in this, despite the witching power of his melodious voice, had he not at the same time offered to paint his own face in imitation of tatooing, and accomplished the feat to such perfection that his delighted master insisted on having his own painted ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... butterfly, now half, now wholly shading her radiant face, which quickly peeps out again from behind its shelter, like the moon from out a passing cloud. This little article, always costly, sometimes very expensive, in her hand seems in its eloquence of motion almost to speak. She has a witching flirt with it that expresses scorn; a graceful wave of complacence; an abrupt closing of it that indicates vexation or anger; a gradual and cautious opening of its folds that signifies reluctant forgiveness; in short, the language of the fan in the ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Thy witching tone and air, Thine eye's beseeching earnestness May be to thee a snare. The silver stars may purely shine, The waters taintless flow: But they who kneel at woman's shrine Breathe on it as they bow. Peace may ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... sounds from below, and the wild character of the region, have produced a legend that the place is haunted by a beautiful but wicked water nymph, who lured the voyager, by her witching voice, to the rocks and the whirlpool, where his boat ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... evening bells! With every note that sinks and swells, Sadly and slow The warm tears flow In pensive pleasure more than woe, As Mem'ry wakes her witching spells, 'Neath your soft ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... to win promotion," he said to himself, rather bitterly. The picture of that winter night, the witching face of Lisbeth and her mocking laugh as she rode away, kept recurring to his mind. What a girl she had been, the best playmate even a boy might wish; always ready for a lark, daring, mischievous, with wit as keen as a blade and quick as a flash. He could not think of ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... thou hast done to me; dost thou remember all those witching letters thou sent'st unto me to Armenia, fill'd with the praise of my beloved Sister, where thou extol'st her beauty, what had I to do with that? what could her beauty be to me? and thou didst write how well ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... vainly, to waken that sound. The day before Christmas brought trouble for Joe, A thousand times worse. 'Twas a terrible blow To hear that old Santa Claus, god of his dreams. Would not come that year with his fleet-footed teams. He'd seen them. Why, once, of a night's witching hour He saw them jump over the cross on the tower And scamper away o'er the snow-covered roofs, His heart beating time to the sound of their hoofs. Not coming this year? Santa Claus must be dead, He thought, as with sad tears he crept into ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... suburbs, like Rusafah on the Eastern side and villages like Baturanjah, dear to the votaries of pleasure; and with the roar of a gigantic capital mingled the hum of prayer, the trilling of birds, the thrilling of harp and lute, the shrilling of pipes, the witching strains of the professional Almah, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... uncommon talents—are now all under the turf." And in 1821, John Struthers, a Scottish poet little known, but of great worth and some genius, thus recurs to Currie's words:— (p. 111) Nae mair in learning Willie toils, nor Allan wakes the melting lay, Nor Rab, wi' fancy-witching wiles, beguiles the hour o' dawning day; For tho' they were na very fou, that wicked wee drap in the e'e Has done its turn; untimely now the green grass waves ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... great metropolis ("which is American penny-a-liner for" New-York), you find the dinner postponed to three; and some gentlemen, with English education and English habits, dine in New-York at five; while others, whose business keeps them at the bank, or court, or counting-house till three, have the witching time adjourned to four. These are, however, only exceptions to the rule, and as lawyers say, exceptio probat regulam; the legitimate, healthy, fashionable hour for dining—that in which the Knickerbockers, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... of its wealthy lord. It was a fair sight to see the stately mirrors which spread their shining surfaces between pillars of polished marble reflecting the gay assemblage, that, radiant with jewels, promenaded the saloon, or wreathed the dance to the witching music of the most skilful minstrels in all Tuscany. Every lattice was open, and the eye, far as it could reach, wandered through illuminated gardens, tenanted by gay groups, where the flush of the roses, the silver ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... he listened, Aja's soul was filled as it were with a mingled essence of wonder and irresolution and sheeny beauty and singing sound. For the tone of her voice was like a lute, and before his eyes hovered a picture of waving arms and witching curves, out of which her dreamy eyes, from which he could not take his own, seemed as it were to speak to him of love reproachful and old regret. And all at once, with a violent effort, he roused himself as if from sleep with open eyes. And he shifted ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... A cat-bird first, with witching low song, eying me closely with that calm, dark eye of his, the while he poured it out from ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... difficult to describe charm, and I shall make no attempt, except to say that my mother's spell did not consist in good looks in the ordinary sense of the word. She had a witching expression, an exceedingly graceful carriage of her head and body, and a good figure; but her face was so mobile and so entirely governed by her smile that photographs and pictures were always pronounced as "impossible" ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... uplift thee: not yet, Walk through some passionless years by my side, Chasing the silly sheep, snapping the lily stalk, Drawing my secrets forth, witching my soul with talk. When the sap stays, and the blossom is set, Others will take the ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
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