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Priestess   Listen
noun
Priestess  n.  A woman who officiated in sacred rites among pagans.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Priestess" Quotes from Famous Books



... retaining still Some scintillations of Promethean fire, Bespeaks him animated from above. The Gods love verse; the infernal Pow'rs themselves Confess the influence of verse, which stirs The lowest Deep, and binds in triple chains Of adamant both Pluto and the shades. In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale Tremulous Sybil make the Future known, And He who sacrifices, on the shrine 30 Hangs verse, both when he smites the threat'ning bull, And when he spreads his reeking entrails wide To scrutinize the Fates envelop'd there. ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... honeysuckle. Then the aroma of pitch, sulphur, and assafoetida cruelly strangled the other melodic emanations. Lilith, disdaining the shelter of her nymphs and their clowneries, stood forth in all the hideous majesty of AEnothea, the undulating priestess of the Abominable Shape. His nerves macerated by this sinful apparition, Baldur struggled to resist her mute command. What was it? He saw her wish streaming from her eyes. Despair! Despair! Despair! There is no hope for thee, wretched earthworm! No abode but the abysmal House of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... a nurse were there. And completing the group was Nea holding a round object in each hand—round things with unkempt, trailing hair. He was not completely conscious—and for a second she looked like a high priestess of the Amazon, holding two mummified heads ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... in his exalted mood may readily be imagined. To him my little comedy was a supernatural vision, and kneeling before Maria Dovizio he exclaimed: "Beautiful priestess, beseech Apollo to grant me the power to make the world ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... when the punishment was ended, he would send a sign, and his sign would be that a great silver shell should fall from the heavens, and within would be Xheev's own emissary, who must wed the ranking priestess of Xheev, establishing again the rapport between the kingdom of paradise and ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable

... to make some appropriate moral remarks, when I heard Leonora (whose command of tongues is simply marvellous) address an attendant priestess ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... spent, when there was a commotion in the village, and it was announced that a person of importance was approaching, no less than the high-priestess of Pele, if not Pele herself, as ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... was in this manner conferred both on persons and places. From hence Camillus, Camilla, Camella Sacra, Comates, Camisium, [12]Camirus, Chemmis, with numberless other words, are derived. Chamma was the title of the hereditary [13]priestess of Diana: and the Puratheia, where the rites of fire were carried on, were called Chamina, and Chaminim, whence came the Caminus of the Latines. They were sacred hearths, on which was preserved a perpetual fire in honour of Cham. The idols of the Sun called ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... Prussian, in order to become a German; and Prussia having no desire to avail herself of my abiliies, I am going to see whether or not Germany has any use for them. My beautiful Marianne, you shall be the priestess who receives the oath which I make on the altar of the fatherland: 'I swear to devote all my powers and talents to Germany; I swear to be a faithful and untiring son to ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... shudder at the dreadful barbarism. How clumsily the wretched creatures attempt to assist the witch president of the tea-tray; how hopelessly they hold the kettle, how continually they imperil the frail cups and saucers, or the taper hands of the priestess. To do away with the tea-table is to rob woman of her legitimate empire. To send a couple of hulking men about among your visitors, distributing a mixture made in the housekeeper's room, is to reduce the most social and friendly of ceremonies to a formal giving out of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... Gorgons, who dwelt in the Far West, beyond the stream of ocean, in that cold region of Atlas where the sun never shines and the light is always dim. Medusa was one of them, the only mortal of the trio. She was a monster with a past, for in her girlhood she had been the beautiful priestess of Athene, golden-haired and very lovely, whose life had been devoted to virgin service of the goddess. Her golden locks, which set her above all other women in the desire of Neptune, had been her undoing: and when Athene knew of the frailty of her priestess, her vengeance was indeed appalling. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... indulgent words as these, who knows but that, like burning Sappho, I might have sang as well as loved? Who knows but that the golden gates of the Eden of immortality might have opened to admit the wandering Peri to her long-lost home? I might have been the priestess of a shrine of Delphic celebrity, and the world have offered burning incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I might,—but it matters not. The divine spark ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... apparent approach, every pretension, even, to a divine inspiration and guidance in the age in which he lived. "'The greatest blessings which men receive come through the operation of phrensy ([Greek: mania]—inspired exaltation), when phrensy is the gift of God. The prophetess of Delphi, and the priestess of Dodona, many are the benefits which in their phrensies (moments of inspiration) they have bestowed upon Greece; but in their hours of self-possession, few or none. And too long were it to speak of the Sibyl, and others, who, inspired and prophetic, have delivered utterances beneficial ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... the foreign music of her low voice, "what brings thee hither? Wouldst thou gain, or hast thou lost, that gift our poor sex prizes so dearly beyond its value? Is it of love that thou wouldst speak to the interpreter of dreams and the priestess ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... mistaken she laid aside with it something of the high dignity of her demeanour. As the country became more populous and significant of comfortable life he saw, with a feeling of joy, that the exalted princess and priestess of the Andean peaks was changing to a woman—an earth woman, but no less enticing. A little colour crept to the surface of her marble cheek. She arranged the conventional dress that the removal of the robe now disclosed with ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... mentioned which leads to sublime heights. What path do I mean? The emulous imitation of the great poets and prose-writers of the past. On this mark, dear friend, let us keep our eyes ever steadfastly fixed. Many gather the divine impulse from another's spirit, just as we are told that the Pythian priestess, when she takes her seat on the tripod, where there is said to be a rent in the ground breathing upwards a heavenly emanation, straightway conceives from that source the godlike gift of prophecy, and utters her inspired oracles; so likewise from the mighty genius of the great writers of antiquity ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... in her excitement, flung the shawl away, and stood a priestess where she had just cowered like ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... direct orders of the black despots in the land, young Ralestone got de Roche and his daughter away on his ship. Her maid chose to remain among her people. Ralestone hints that she was a sort of priestess of Voodoo and that it had been her dark powers which had protected the ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... Cyrus—son of a royal Median mother and a Persian father of different race and lower position—was the mule indicated, though Croesus did not know this. In truth, the oracles of Greece seem usually to have borne a double meaning, so that whatever happened the priestess could claim that her word was true, the fault was in ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... religiously preserved and worshipped. This god, in appearance, resembles a thick roll of homespun flannel, which arises from a custom of dedicating a material of their dress to it whenever its aid is sought: this is sewed on by an old woman, its priestess, whose peculiar care it is. They pray to it in time of sickness. It is invoked when a storm is desired to dash some helpless ship upon the coast; and, again, the exercise of its power is solicited in calming the angry ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various

... from Mr. Carlyon's arms, and walking with the dignity of a priestess of the Temple, she preceded her master along ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... a brazen girdle, and naked feet. These go with drawn swords through the camp, and, striking down those of the prisoners that they meet, drag them to a brazen kettle, holding about twenty amphorae. This has a kind of stage above it, ascending on which, the priestess cuts the throat of the victim, and, from the manner in which the blood flows into the vessel, judges of the future event. Others tear open the bodies of the captives thus butchered, and, from inspection of the entrails, presage victory to ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... were dead, and took immediate steps to restore her. Then a great wonder happened, for she, who had been thrown into the sea as dead, came back to life. But feeling sure that she would never see her husband again, Thaisa retired from the world, and became a priestess of the Goddess Diana. ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... or this or that theological creed, but in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social disorganization upon the track of immorality, as surely as it sends physical disease after physical trespasses. And of that firm and lively faith it is her high mission to be the priestess. ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... As the faithful high-priestess of the coffee-pot she was always the first to taste her own brew. She now set her cup down hastily. Her red, wrinkled little face was a study. The widow Broadnax, whose cup was untouched, sat silent and impassive as usual, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... to the fact that Humboldt discovered in Mexico a small statue which he supposed represented an Aztec priestess. This statue had sculptured upon its forehead a row of pearls, worn in the same manner as is represented in this pipe. This is another pipe of great interest, and is supposed to represent the head of a woman. The ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... "Priestess of Set, great seeress and magician of the old world in whom once my spirit dwelt, send forth your Ka, your everlasting Emanation, to help me. Crush this black hound. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... This place is no longer 'Violet Banks' It is the Holy Hill. This house is the temple; that nursery is the sanctuary; that cradle is the altar; and that babe is the idol of the community. Now go along with Violet. Oh! she is high priestess to the idol. Go along. I'm going to wash my face and hands, and then I'll ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... of Pollio by the fury of her acting. But measured by the standards of to-day, say that set by Calve's Carmen, it must have been a simple age that could be impressed by the tragic power of anyone acting the part of Bellini's Druidical priestess. The surmise is strengthened by the circumstance that Madame Grisi created a sensation in "Il Trovatore" by showing signs of agitation in the tower scene, walking about the stage during Manrico's "Ah! che ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... of myrtle. It befits me to adorn myself with the symbol of youthful innocence, since I now wander in Nature's Paradise. Hitherto all that held us together was love and passion. Now Nature has united us more firmly with an indissoluble bond. Nature is the only true priestess of joy; she alone knows how to tie the nuptial knot, not with empty words that bring no blessing, but with fresh blossoms and living fruits from the fullness of her power. In the endless succession of new forms creating Time plaits the wreath of Eternity, and blessed is he whom Fortune ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... history," exclaimed Hardenberg. "Come, Frederica, sit down by my side here on the couch on which you have so often reposed as a modern Pythia, and proclaimed to me the oracles which your mysterious priest had whispered to you. Now you are no priestess uttering equivocal wisdom, but a young woman telling the truth, and making me listen to the revelations of ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... Cortez The End of the Trail Panel from the Column of Progress The Feast of the Sacrifice The Joy of Living The Man with the Pick The Kneeling Figure The Pegasus Panel Primitive Man Thought Victory The Priestess of Culture The Adventurous Bowman Pan Air The Signs of the Zodiac The Fountain of Ceres The Survival of the Fittest Earth Wildflower Biographies of Sculptors Sculpture Around ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James

... went on and talked, and cud yo' 'av hearn her, it would ha' made yo' think she war the prettiest and sweetest, and most compassionate woman as ever a-come ter bless ther world. She seemed ter me like a fur off priestess ministerin' to ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... rites and nameless infamies had a horrible fascination for an age of decaying faith. And not far from the mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii there is a monument, probably of the age of Trajan, with a bas-relief portrait, dedicated to the memory of one Usia Prima, a priestess of Isis; this worship, with its painful initiations and splendid ritual, being imported from Egypt in the second century. But although this Neo-paganism appealed more to the passions of men than the sunny humanistic worship of older times, and for a time inspired the most ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... bones. When it goes to the bandstand, it gazes from a safe distance on the big drum, full of boys and girls who would not let their hair be combed: it hears their groans at every stroke of the terrible drumstick. Thus the religious side of the tender nature is developed, and Ayah is the priestess. Under the same guidance it will, as it grows older, tread paths of knowledge which its parents never trod. Whither will they lead it? We know not who never joined in the familiar chat of Ayahs and servants, but imagination ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... head of a huge tigress which glared with glassy eyes across the place at the snarling muzzle of a polar bear. Mycenaean vases and gold death masks stood upon the same shelf as Venetian goblets, and the mummy of an Egyptian priestess of the thirteenth dynasty occupied a sarcophagus upon the top of which rested a basrelief found in one of the shrines of the Syrian fish ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... in herself, leaves it to chance or fate to amuse the beings whom she has herself assembled within her halls. Nonchalance is the metier of your modern hostess; and so long as the house be not on fire, or the furniture not kicked, you may be even ignorant who is the priestess of the hospitable fane in ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... and not woman, is the heart of all. But she, as priestess of the visible earth, Holding the key, herself most beautiful, Had come to him, and flung the portals wide. He entered: every beauty was a glass That gleamed the woman back upon his view. Shall I not rather say: each beauty gave Its own soul up to him who ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... wide doors into the broad hall, up the grand staircase, through the luxurious rooms goes the high Priestess of the Temple of Love. It is a lonely house. For it is still in a state of social siege. So far as Harvey is concerned, no one has entered it. So they live rather ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... once been sacred to Freya. At the feast horse-flesh, once the food of the gods at banquets, was eaten. The broth for the feast was brewed in a kettle held over the fire by a tripod, like that which supported the seat of Apollo's priestess at Delphi. The kettle may be a reminder of the one Thor got, which gave to each guest whatever food he asked of it, or it may be merely that used in brewing the herb-remedies which women made before they ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... failed to respond. When George Sand published her first novels, one Gueroult was commissioned to ascertain if the author of Lelia would undertake this important service. He found a badly dressed woman who was using her talents to gain a living, but was by no means anxious to become the high priestess of a new religion. Even after his disappointment Enfantin looked eagerly forward to the publication of George Sand's Histoire de ma Vie, hoping that at last the great revelation was coming, and he was again disillusioned. But before ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... of ushering into the world her first great-grandchild, the son or daughter—as might turn out—of her granddaughter, Maisie Costrell, the only daughter of Widow Thrale. For this young woman had ordained that "Granny" should officiate as high-priestess on this occasion, and we know it is just as well to give way to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... the son of Naram-Sin, but we do not yet know whether he followed his father on the throne. Another son was high-priest of the city of Tutu, and in the name of his daughter, Lipus-Eaum, a priestess of Sin, some scholars have seen that of the Hebrew deity Yahweh. The Babylonian god Ea, however, is more likely to be meant. The fall of Sargon's empire seems to have been as sudden as its rise. The seat of supreme power in Babylonia was shifted southwards to Isin and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... splendid portrait of himself, and transcript of his travels, Childe Harold, he imitated Spenser in form and in archaism. But he was possessed by the muse: the man wrote as the spirit within dictated, as the Pythian priestess is fabled to have uttered her oracles. Childe Harold is a stream of intuitive, irrepressible poetry; not art, but overflowing nature: the sentiments good and bad came welling forth from his heart. His descriptive powers ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... dwellers of thy home Blessed the path thy race had trod, Kneeling in the temple dome To a reptile god; Where the shrine of Isis shone Through the veil before its throne, And the priest with fixed eyes Watched his human sacrifice; And the priestess knelt in prayer, Like some dream of ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... friendship, honour, All present joys, and earnest of all future, Are summ'd in thee. Come, lead me forward, now, like a tame lamb To sacrifice. Thus, in his fatal garlands Deck'd fine and pleas'd, the wanton skips and plays, Trots by th' enticing, flatt'ring, priestess' side, And, much transported with its little pride, Forgets his dear companions of the plain; Till, by her bound, he's on the altar lain, Yet then too hardly bleats, such ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... child, 'the priestess of pity and vengeance,' Mr. Stead calls her. You are too young to know about her but I remember reading of her in 1872, during the Commune troubles in France. She is an anarchist, and she used to wear a uniform, and shoulder a rifle, and help to build barricades. She was arrested and ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... the writing and replied: "Rejoice! Loxias (Apollo) promises thee a happy return home; hearken to the prediction of the priestess." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... mention here that the Flaminica Dialis, who was not priestess of Juno as is commonly supposed, but assisted her husband in the cult of Jupiter, was also subject to certain taboos. On three occasions in the religious year she might not appear in public with her hair "done up," viz. the moving of the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain attempt to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Coecina. Her epitaph was discovered many ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess together, seeking a proper site for their temple of happiness. They were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess for such a shrine, although, making poetry of the pretty name of Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her "Lily" because her form was as fragile and her cheek almost as pale. As they passed hand in hand down the avenue of drooping elms ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... announces that it is Iphigenia's high mind, which she demands and not her blood, she wishes to take her into a foreign land, where she may be her priestess and atone for the sins of ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... his step-brother, comes, it is said, with Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great magician. Circe absolves them with a sucking-pig and salt cakes. That may make a fairly good dish, but can barely either pay for Absyrthe's blood or render Jason and Medea more honourable ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... does not claim to be giving his own thoughts when speaking of love. He says he is only relating what a woman once imparted to him as a revelation. It was through mantic art that he came to his conception of love. Diotima, the priestess, awakened in Socrates the daimonic force which was to lead him to the divine. ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... Incantations and charms are then resorted to by the bunda woman, to ascertain what the concealed crime is, and after a decent period employed in this buffoonery, the charges are brought in conformity with the imagination or malignity of this priestess of ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... which nature hath bedecked all females, or hath at least instructed them how to put it on; lest, through the indelicacy of males, the Samean mysteries should be pryed into by unhallowed eyes: for, at the celebration of these rites, the female priestess cries out with her in Virgil (who was then, probably, hard at work on ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... in particular the grand old Commonwealth which they inhabited, he stated, had not long sat among the ruins of her temples, like a sorrowing priestess with veiled eyes and a depressed soul, mourning for that which had been. Like the fabled Phoenix, she had risen from the ashes of her past. To-day she was once more to be seen in her hereditary position, the brightest gem in all that glorious galaxy of States which ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... be seen only from across the lagoon. (p. 137.) The friezes decorating the huge circular flower receptacles set around the base of the rotunda and at intervals in the colonnade are by Ellerhusen. Eight times repeated on the lofty columns within the rotunda is "The Priestess of Culture," a conventional but pleasing sculpture ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... fell in love with her; but for the present we were simply amiably fraternal. We were united to her by a common enthusiasm; we were fellow-celebrants at her ancestral altar—or, rather, she was the high priestess there, we were her acolytes. For, with her, filial piety did in very truth partake of the nature of religion; she really, literally, idolised her father. One only needed to watch her for three minutes, as she sat beside him, to understand the depth and ardour ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... "The Priestess of Culture," by Herbert Adams, one of the best-known of American sculptors, eight times repeated, we felt, had its rightful place up there and blended into the general architectural scheme. But some of the other pieces ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... to go to Tauris, and to steal and transport to Athens an image of Artemis that had fallen from heaven. His friend Pylades accompanied him on this expedition. They were seized by Thoas the king, and Orestes, as the principal offender, was to be sacrificed to Artemis. His sister, Iphigeneia, priestess of Artemis, contrived their escape, and the three arrived safe at Athens with the sacred image.] The whole assembly rose in applause at this mere fictitious representation. What may we suppose that they would have done, had the same thing occurred in real life? In that case Nature herself ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... Long House itself! What shame upon the Iroquois that the Senecas have defiled their purest law! May Leshi seize them all! So how, then, shall I know whether this white captive mother lives in the Vale Yndaia still—or if she lives at all? Or if they have not made of her a priestess—a sorceress—perhaps The Dreaming Prophetess of the Onon-hou-aroria!—by reason of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... should enter Babylon, when the augurs denounced impending danger? Whether Cicero, to appease the wrath of Marc Antony, should burn all his works? The subjects in the second class are more complex. A priestess was taken prisoner by a band of pirates, and sold to slavery. The purchaser abandoned her to prostitution. Her person being rendered venal, a soldier made his offers of gallantry. She desired the price of her prostituted charms; but the military ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... same principle that Sarah your wife refuses to give the receipt for a ham or a gooseberry dumpling. She values her receipts, not because they secure to her a certain flavour, but because they remind her that her neighbours want it—a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful in a priest; venial when it withholds the blessings of a ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... past a temple a priestess came forth to speak to Jason; Iphias was her name. She had a prophecy to utter about the voyage. But Iphias was very old, and she stammered in her speech to Jason. What she said was not heard by him. The heroes went on, and ancient Iphias was left standing there as the old ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... the loss of her child under tragic and terrible circumstances. The thieves were the priests of a certain bastard Arab tribe who, on account of a birthmark shaped like the young moon which was visible above her breast, believed her to be the priestess or oracle of their worship. This worship evidently had its origin in Ancient Egypt since, although they did not seem to know it, the priestess was nothing less than a personification of the great goddess Isis, and the Ivory ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... The girls came scurrying, flushed after their games of tennis, and flung themselves down, some on the marble steps and some on the tiled seat. Bertha, as the Camellia Buds had suspected, was evidently the high priestess, and opened the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... Demeter perceives that her sacred grove is suffering. Then comes one of those transformations which Plato will not allow. Vainly anxious to save the lad from his ruin, she appears in the form of a priestess, but with the long hood of the goddess, and the poppy in her hand; and there is something of a real shudder, some still surviving sense of a haunting presence in the groves, in the verses which describe her sudden revelation, when the workmen flee away, leaving ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... shall remove his seat, And gird Long Alba for defence; and there 'Neath Hector's kin three hundred years complete The kingdom shall endure, till Ilia fair, Queen-priestess, twins by Mars' embrace shall bear. Then Romulus the nation's charge shall claim, Wolf-nursed and proud her tawny hide to wear, And build a city of Mavortian fame, And make the Roman race ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... and after meals. In this way they would be brought up in the fear of God. I am no idle prattler: I ask you not to cast my words to the winds. I would not think you so rude if I did not daily hear it. Every housefather is a priest in his own house, every housemother is a priestess; therefore see that you help us to perform the office of the ministry in your homes as we do in church. If you do, we shall have a propitious God, who will defend us from all evil. In the Psalm [78, 5] it is written: 'He appointed a law in Israel, which ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... the most perfect feminist ideal that as yet the world has known; an ideal of service within the home of which full life she is the high-priestess; an ideal turning to foolishness the false values of this industrial age. And this ideal of service, shared by all, gives to the most unlearned Jewish woman the priceless knowledge of an eternal truth: a truth that has to be learnt by each one among us before we can find happiness—that ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... the beauty that generations of gardeners of a single vision had created. Our minds rested in the quiet as in the quaint phrase, we "tasted the sound of the kettle and listened to the incense." At length at a signal we rose. Led by the priestess of the ceremony, our host's aunt, a slight figure in grey with snow-white tabi and new straw sandals, we passed by the dripping rocky fountain, with its lilies, and the azure hydrangea of the hills which, some say, suggests ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... trout from the Golo was a redeeming feature in the aspect of affairs to one who had waited long, and walked far, without his breakfast. But the dish reeked as if the Golo ran oil, and the fish were still floating in the unctuous stream, spite of my injunctions to the weird priestess of the mysteries of the cave beneath—“Senza olio, senza olio,” reversing the phrase in the Baron de Grimm's story of the Frenchman, who, having sacrificed his own goût to his guest's penchant for asparagus au naturel, on his friend's falling down ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... were bending forward, some sitting erect. But all of them were motionless, the postures of all were strained, as though they were bound! The house had its tenantry. But there was no central figure here now, no leader, no exhorter, no priest nor priestess. There was no shouting, nor any note of the savage drum. The drum itself, its head broken in, the drum of the savage tribes, lay near the door, its mission ended. This audience, whoever or whatever it might ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... of opinion that he must speak in a manner different from the rest of mankind. He thereupon began to writhe his body, to screw up his face, to hold in his breath, and to exhale it in a forcible manner, insomuch that the priestess of the Pythian god at Delphos could not have acted her part to better advantage. Inspiration soon became so habitual to him that he could scarce deliver himself in any other manner. This was the ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... pow'r Of Time, and to his wither'd arms, Resign the rifling of her charms! Must veil her beauties in a cloud, A grave her bed, her robe a shroud! When all her glowing, vivid bloom, Must fade and wither in the tomb! When she who bears the ensigns now, Of Beauty's Priestess on her brow, Shall to th' abhorr'd embrace of Death Give up the sweetness of her breath! When worms—but stop, Description, there— My heart cannot the picture bear— Sickens to think there is a day, When Chloe will ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd

... color is not confined to externals alone, but infuses the music as well. Very skilfully Verdi makes use of two melodies which are saturated with the languorous spirit of the East. The first is the invocation of Ptah, chanted by an invisible priestess to the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... Witchcraft, lib. viii. chap. 12. The contrivance of this illusion was possibly like that at Delphi, where in the centre of the temple was a chasm, from which arose an intoxicating smoke, when the priestess was to announce divine revelations. Seated over the chasm upon the tripod, the Pythia was inspired, it seems, by the soporific ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... his couchant posture when she spoke, and, excepting the red glare of his eyes, might have seemed a hieroglyphical emblem, lying at the feet of some ancient priestess of Woden or Freya; so strongly did the appearance of Ermengarde, with her rod and her chaplet, correspond with the ideas of the days of Paganism. Yet he who had thus deemed of her would have done therein much injustice to a venerable Christian matron, who ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... slight indifference to a function familiar from many repetitions. Little O'Grady wore his plaster-flecked blue blouse over his shabby brown suit and hardily announced himself as Phidias. Medora walked with a languid grace as a Druid priestess, and Miss Wilbur, the miniaturist, showed forth as Madame Le Brun, without whose presence no fancy-dress ball ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... the goat-footed satyrs all attentive. Evoe! my mind trembles with recent dread, and my soul, replete with Bacchus, has a tumultuous joy, Evoe! spare me, Bacchus; spare me, thou who art formidable for thy dreadful thyrsus. It is granted me to sing the wanton Bacchanalian priestess, and the fountain of wine, and rivulets flowing with milk, and to tell again of the honeys distilling from the hollow trunks. It is granted me likewise to celebrate the honor added to the constellations by your happy spouse, and the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... of the day. Or, rather, there were two terraced temples, one dedicated to Fate like that in the underground city of Nyo, and the other to Love. Of the temple to Fate she told me her father had been the High Priest, and of the temple to Love she was the High Priestess. ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... hither, bade me greet With hail, and fair salute, Diana's priestess. For new and wondrous conquest, this the day, When to her goddess Tauris renders thanks. I hasten on before the king and host, Himself to herald, and its ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the other, having flown into Lybia, had there formed or founded the oracle of Jupiter Ammon. These origins are certainly very frivolous and very fabulous. The Oracle of Delphi is more recent and more celebrated. Phemonoe was the first priestess of Delphi, and began in the time of Acrisius, twenty-seven years before Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus. She is said to have been the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... Avenue, on this radiant afternoon, Mrs. Austen and Paliser were occupied with their devotions. Mrs. Austen was priestess and Paliser was saying his prayers; that is, he was jingling his money, not audibly, but none the less potently in the lady's ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... death, and his unhappy love that was the cause of it, he was extremely distressed, and, in the height of his grief, an oracle which he had formerly received at Delphi came into his mind, for he had been commanded by the priestess of Apollo Pythius, that, wherever in a strange land he was most sorrowful and under the greatest affliction, he should build a city there, and leave some of his followers to be governors of the place. For this cause he there founded a city, which he ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... an oracle in which the whole country had the greatest confidence, and to which recourse was always had in times of special perplexity. It was whispered that a near relation of the philosopher's was lady's-maid to the priestess who delivered the oracle, and the Puritan party declared that the strangely unequivocal answer of the oracle was obtained by backstairs influence; but whether this was so or no, the response as nearly as I can translate it ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... That's best for a parson. 'I come not to bring the righteous but sinners to repentance.' And who are you to brand the woman as common or unclean? If she is a heathen priestess, yet she worships a god of some sort. Do you?" He stopped suddenly; the humility which men hated in him again blanketed his fanaticism. "It is my task to give her a better god—the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... its occupation by the Roman legions. In the first scene the Druids enter with Oroveso, their priest, to the impressive strains of a religious march which is almost as familiar as a household word. The priest announces that Norma, the high priestess, will come and cut the sacred branch and give the signal for the expulsion of the Romans. The next scene introduces Pollione, the Roman proconsul, to whom Norma, in defiance of her faith and traditions, has bound herself in secret marriage, and ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... in a friend's house, the house of the king of Kyrene of goodly horses, that with Arkesilas at his triumph thou mayst swell the favourable gale of song, the due of Leto's children, and of Pytho. For at Pytho of old she who sitteth beside the eagles of Zeus—nor was Apollo absent then—the priestess, spake this oracle, that Battos should found a power in fruitful Libya, that straightway departing from the holy isle he might lay the foundations of a city of goodly chariots upon a white breast of the swelling earth, ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... that of man, not only in Egypt but in most ancient lands. Offerings of food and drink were constantly supplied to them, in Egypt laid upon the altars, in other lands burnt for a sweet savour. At Thebes the divine wife of the god, or high priestess, was the head of the harem of concubines of the god; and similarly in Babylonia the chamber of the god with the golden couch could only be visited by the priestess who slept there for oracular responses. The Egyptian gods could not be cognisant of what passed on earth {3} without being ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... always remember that there are saints of different orders; are there not, Mary? and nobody supposes that the Franciscans and the Dominicans agree very well together. Dr. Thorne does not belong to the school of St. Proudie, of Barchester; he would prefer the priestess whom I see coming round the corner of the staircase, with a very famous young ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... Giotto in her boudoir, an Andrea del Sarto over her drawing-room chimney-piece. Surrounded by these treasures, and by innumerable bronzes, mosaics, majolica dishes, and little worm-eaten diptychs covered with angular saints on gilded backgrounds, our hostess enjoyed the dignity of a sort of high-priestess of the arts. She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature copy of the Madonna della Seggiola. Gaining her ear quietly one evening, I asked her whether she knew that remarkable man, ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... laughed—"You expected what is called a 'singular' woman—one who makes herself 'singular,' adopts a 'singular' pose, and is altogether removed from ordinary humanity. And of course you are disappointed. I am not at all a type of the veiled priestess." ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... undergo. And yet you must follow the impulse of your own inspiration. If THAT commands the slaying of the victim, no bystander has a right to put out his hand to stay the sacrificial knife: but I hold you a stern priestess ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... intelligent face" and "a reflective cast of character." He certainly paid Margaret Fuller herself no such tribute, but thus early in his Brook Farm experience let appear his thinly veiled contempt for the high priestess of transcendentalism. Even earlier his antagonism toward this eminent woman was strong, if it was not frank, for he wrote: "I was invited to dine at Mr. Bancroft's yesterday with Miss Margaret Fuller, ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... paupers, we sit on the lowest bench at the foot of the class, in your Dame's Art School, to learn the alphabet of the wonderful Renaissance; and in our chastened and reverent mood, it almost takes our breath away when your high-priestess unrolls the last pronunciamento, and tells us her startling story of 'Euphorion!' Why? Ah!—don't you know? The Puritan leaven of prudery, and the stern, stolid, phlegmatic decorum of Knickerbockerdom mingle in that consummate flower of the nineteenth ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... escape that so easily. Why, this is the temple of superstition, and you are the high-Priestess. How shall I ever get on at dinner, without you? I know I shall do something to shock Mr. Raby. Perhaps spill the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... wish thee to taste of the joys of paradise. There," said he, tapping the door of the room in which was Madame d'Hocquetonville, "in there is a lady of the court and a friend of the queen, but the greatest priestess of Venus that ever was, and her equal is not to be found in any courtesan, harlot, dancer, doxy, or hussy. She was engendered at a moment when paradise was radiant with joy, when nature was procreating, when the planets were whispering vows of love, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... tragedy, and epigrams. But their writing was the entertainment of their pleasure; yours is only a diversion of your pain. The muses have seldom employed your thoughts, but when some violent fit of the gout has snatched you from affairs of state; and, like the priestess of Apollo, you never come to deliver his oracles, but unwillingly, and in torment. So that we are obliged to your lordship's misery for our delight: You treat us with the cruel pleasure of a Turkish ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... experimenting: holding, meantime, a grim intuition of their foolishness, or so it seems to me. 'The science' made it easier for her to seek her ancestors in a foreign country with only a hundred dollars in her purse; for the Salem priestess proclaims the glad tidings that all the wealth of the world is ours, if we will but assert our heirship. Benella believed this more or less until a week's sea-sickness undermined all her new convictions of every ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and New York museums contain many phases of one same family group, painted by George de Forest Brush. There is a touch of the hearthstone priestess about the woman. The force of sex has turned to the austere comforting passion of motherhood. From the children, under the wings of this spirit, come special delicate powers of life. There is nothing tense or restless about them, yet they embody action, the beating of the inner fire, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... period—which she had put on during the cloudy morning. Her tall strong figure did not bend in the wind, and the schoolbooks she carried in her hand broke the straight line of her figure only to heighten the priestess effect that her approaching ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... on the memories of one short, magnificent year, forever to be contented with the grim rigidity of conventual life in an ancient cloister surrounded by gloomy mountains. She was to be a veiled shadow amongst veiled shades, a priestess of sorrow amongst sad virgins; and though, if she lived long enough, she was to be the chief of them and their ruler, her very superiority could only make her desolation more complete, until her own shadow, like the others, should be gathered ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... was a bloody sacrament: Death came Unto the bridal, like a bidden guest, The Priestess, FREEDOM, had but bless'd the flame, E'er the fierce furies to the revel press'd: The storm grew dark—its lightning flash'd afar— Murder and Rapine leagu'd themselves with War; Yet, proudly and triumphantly, on high, That ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... little boat came floating, Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland, Where amid myrtles a pathway stole in mazes Up to the groves of the high embosom'd temple. 10 There in a thicket of dedicated roses, Oft did a priestess, as lovely as a vision, Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea, Pray him to hover around the slight canoe-boat, And with invisible pilotage to guide it 15 Over the dusk wave, until the nightly sailor Shivering with ecstasy sank ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... present, and eight hundred picked warriors of the Six Nations under Thayendanegea, besides the little band of Wyandots led by the resolute Timmendiquas. "Indian" Butler was in general command of the whole, and Queen Esther was the high priestess of the Indians, continually making fiery speeches and chanting songs that made the warriors see red. Upon the rear of this extraordinary army hung a band of fierce old squaws, from whom every remnant of mercy and ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... tale it is that has so twined itself around the hearts of mankind that it has lived in classic story for ages and gotten into the folk-tales of more than one European people! Hero is a priestess of Aphrodite, who lives at Sestos, on the Thracian coast; Leander, a youth, whose home is at Abydos, on the Asiatic shore, beyond the Hellespont. The pair meet at a festival of Venus and Adonis and fall in love with each other at sight. The maiden's parents are unwilling ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... sent me hither, and commands To hail Diana's priestess. This the day, On which for new and wonderful success, Tauris her goddess thanks. The king and host Draw near,—I come to herald ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... that no man wounded them. But at the last, coming about them with a great multitude, they smote the swords out of their hands with stones, and so bound them and took them to King Thoas. And the king commanded that they should be taken to the temple, that the priestess might deal with them according to the custom ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... awful in the eyes of a nervous child, I may say, such as I was. She used to look at me for a long time sometimes, with the peculiar smile I have mentioned, and a great finger upon her lip, like the Eleusinian priestess on the vase. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... dedicated to her. At Sais, the chief priest was a man, the Tcharp-haitu; but the persistence with which women of the highest rank, and even queens themselves, took the title of prophetess of Nit from the times of the Ancient Empire shows that in this city the priestess of the goddess was of equal, if not superior, rank ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... dim golden glow, among great fluted pillars and bowls of softly burning radiance swung (like censers) by long chains. Occasionally there is an airy flutter, a bell clangs, bronze doors slide apart, and an elevator appears, in charge of a chastely uniformed priestess. Lights flash up over this dark little cave which stands invitingly open: UP, they say, LOCAL 1-13. The door-sill of the cave shines with a row of golden beads (small lights, to guide the foot)—it is irresistible. There is an upward impulse about the whole place: the light blossoms upward ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... One cannot imagine Jane Eyre saying to Mr. Rochester that he had come back to himself through loving her. It just detracts at the supreme moment from the generosity of the scene; it has the accent of the priestess, not of the true lover; and thus at the moment when one longs to be in the very white-heat of emotion, one is subtly aware of an improving hand that casts water ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in this Town a certain High Priestess of the Socially Elect and a Queen Bee of the Cotillion Tribe. Whatever she said, Went. No one could lay claim to any Class in this Town until he had seated himself at one of her Dinners, with the $28,000 Gold Service in front of him, and dissected a French ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... 82.]—whom the Marischal has carefully brought up, and who refuses to marry away from him,—rather stupid, not very pretty by the Portraits; must now be two-and-thirty gone] is perfectly calculated to be the Priestess of it! Yet he dawdles away his day in a manner not unpleasant to him; and I really am persuaded he has a conscience that would gild the inside of a dungeon. The feats of our bare-legged warriors in the late War [BERG-SCHOTTEN, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... steer his airy flight; Such deadly stenches from the depth arise, And steaming sulphur that infects the skies. From hence the Grecian bards their legends make, And give the name Aornus to the lake. Four fable bullocks in the yoke untaught, For sacrifice, the pious hero brought. The priestess pours the wine betwixt their horns: Then cuts the curling hair, that first oblation burns, Invoking Hecate hither to repair; (A powerful name in hell and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... thy mantle! Clothe thee with nakedness, O Soul, that art its priestess! For lo, thy body is thy temple. Pass unto me a magnet's stream, O amber of the flesh, And let me drink of nectar ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... priest discern the danger, the bane, the alarming rivalry, involved in this priestess of nature whom he makes a show of despising. From the gods of yore she has conceived other gods. Close to the Satan of the Past we see dawning within her a Satan ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... seriousness as a genius, ran a dazzling career of a dozen years or so in Cambridge and Boston, and then her light seems to have gone out. She came to the surface, with other newness, in the Transcendental era; she was the priestess of its mysteries; when that movement ebbed away, her day was over. This is the impression one would gather, if he had only current ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... DIOTI'MA, the priestess of Mantineia in Plato's Symposium, the teacher of Soc'rates. Her opinions on life, its nature, origin, end, and aim, form the nucleus of the dialogue. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... of hero-worship, a cloud of high ideal images,—the lighting up, in short, of all that God has laid, ready to be enkindled, in a woman's nature, when the time comes to sanctify her as the pure priestess of a domestic temple. But, alas! it was kindled by one who did it only for an experiment, because he felt an artistic pleasure in the beautiful light and heat, and cared not, though it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... the temple of Athene, and there the priestess made her one of the temple-sweepers; for there they knew she would be safe, and not even Polydectes would dare to drag her away from the altar. And there Perseus, and the good Dictys, and his wife, came ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... alone, goes to the chest of drawers, and adores the portrait there with feelings that are beyond all expression. She does not kiss it or press it to her breast, or shew it any mark of bodily affection; but she takes it in her hands and elevates it like a priestess.) ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... It would have needed a greater than the Pythian Priestess to have given me hopes of either in Florence. And yet, as we pursued our way, by the Borg' Ognissanti towards the river, I could not but be struck by the subdued aspect of the citizens, who, far from being the lively impertinents they had ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... fashions, the ugly eccentric dances, the costly pageant balls, the shouldering, the striving, the worship of money, the gambling, the self-advertisement—all the abject vulgarity of it? And my set, the artistic, soulful literary set, you said was the worst of all: you actually described the high-priestess as looking like a 'decomposing cod-fish,' and added by way of a final insult that you thought the ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... broke over me in a shower of pearls. Confused, I started up; and it was some moments before I understood that the music proceeded from the room adjoining mine in the hotel. Not altogether unfamiliar was the theme; the priestess of whom I have spoken had once brought it from the Holy of Holies, when she was appointed to stand; and now, remembering, I broke ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... had been disinterred from the sand in front of the building. The soil at that place is profusely strewn with fragments of images wrought in clay, representing portions of the human body. I was myself so fortunate as to fall in with the head of a priestess, a beautiful piece of workmanship, moulded according to the most exact proportions of Grecian art. It had formed part of a brazier that had served to burn perfumes on the altar near which I found it. I happened to use part of that vase to hold some live coals, and notwithstanding the many years ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... if you please, a niece of mine shall there attend you.' This proposal was accepted with thanks by Thaisa; and when she was perfectly recovered, Cerimon placed her in the temple of Diana, where she became a vestal or priestess of that goddess, and passed her days in sorrowing for her husband's supposed loss, and in the most ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... holy priestess of the Sun A glittering golden breast-plate wore, Fashioned to semblance of the flower, That also in ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... coming from so white a priestess, and in words that lent so musical and sweet a sanction, removed the last mote of conjecture from the air. Mrs. Wright, as usual, was the first to take action. Every set of women, probably, has its recognized clown, she who is just too cute and killing. And those who do ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... of Strong, the maid, upon the not-too-grateful Cora, an angular, grenadier-looking female presented herself at the servants' entrance, announcing that she was "the new maid;" and she was installed as high priestess of Madeline's apartments without loss ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... call them "howling dervishes." Incidentally it may be said that both Miss Larrabee and her mother were dervishes, but that did not prevent her from making sport of them. From Miss Larrabee we learned that the high priestess of the howling dervishes of our society was Mrs. Mortimer Conklin, known by the sisterhood of the mosque as Priscilla Winthrop. We in our office had never heard her called by that name, but Miss Larrabee explained, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... adjoining. It seems your worship had, with religious abhorrence, passed by the Elephant and Castle, but borrowing in part the imagery of that sign, had converted your half-reasoning self into a clumsy Christian pedler, with a bundle of contraband goods at your back. One Joanna, it seems, was the priestess of this temple, and your worship had commenced so strong a flirtation with the Lambeth sybil, that all the world looked upon wedlock as inevitable. As I stood in the porch, I overheard your amatory sighs and groans which sounded in my ears like Boreas wooing Vulcan through a cranny ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... the girl's later triumphant progress; the sensation she created, the bored world bowing to her feet because she brought it, along with name and wealth, so fresh a spirit, so pure a beauty. There was a certain autocratic old Aunt of her mother's, a sort of awful high priestess in the inmost shrine of the sacred elect; this Begum, delighted with her young kinswoman, ordered the rest of her world to be likewise delighted, and the world agreeing with her verdict, Mary Virginia fared very ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... to silence the critic, but the other young woman also turns upon him, and we may suppose that he is glad to escape from their tongues. And then everybody becomes silent, for the religious services begin. The priestess, a comely girl, chants the psalm of Adonis, the beautiful old pagan hymn, more beautiful and more sensuous than anything uttered by the later religious poets of the West; and all listen in delighted stillness. As the hymn ends, Gorgo bursts out ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... was at its height when she planned a visit abroad, which had been a long-cherished dream, and May 15, 1883, she sailed for England, accompanied by a younger sister. We have difficulty in recognizing the tragic priestess we have been portraying in the enthusiastic child of travel who seems new-born into a new world. From the very outset she is in a maze of wonder and delight. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... them. Back in the far past we can build up the life of our ancestry—the little kingdom, the queen or her daughter as king maker, the simple life of the royal household, and the humble candidate for the kingship, the priestess with her control of the weather and her power over youth and maid. In the dimmest distance we can see traces of the earlier kindred group marriage, and in the near foreground the beginnings of that fight with patriarchal institutions ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... remarkable specimens of ancient art will be found among the Egyptian Antiquities. The painted statue (Hall III.) of the Seated Scribe is one of the most precious examples the world possesses of an art admirable in its naturalism and power of vivid portraiture, and the charming figure of a priestess, known as Dame Toui, exquisitely wrought in wood, is equally noteworthy. A superb example of a royal papyrus of the Book of the Dead will also invite attention. We pass on through a suite of beautifully decorated rooms filled with a choice collection of Etruscan and Greek Ceramic art, each ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... dark cheeks of her glowing and her eyes flashing—"Hamish, I have that in the heart of me." And as she stood thus pointing to the fires, all lit up and wild and beautiful, I thought there must surely have been away back in her story a priestess who tended fires in some far ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... smiling, in the moon- and fire-light, the singing died away, and there began the second stage of this barbarous and bloody celebration. From different parts of the ring, one after another, man or woman, ran forth into the midst; ducked, with that same gesture of the thrown-up hand, before the priestess and her snakes; and, with various adjurations, uttered aloud the blackest wishes of the heart. Death and disease were the favours usually invoked: the death or the disease of enemies or rivals; some calling down these plagues upon the nearest of their own blood, and one, to whom I swear I had been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... return, as indeed it ought: for it is thus that God intended woman to look instinctively at the world. Would to God that she would teach us men to look at it thus likewise! Would to God that she would in these days claim and fulfil to the uttermost her vocation as the priestess of charity!—that woman's heart would help to deliver man from bondage to his own tyrannous and all-too-exclusive brain— from our idolatry of mere dead laws and printed books—from our daily sin of looking at men, not as our struggling and suffering brothers, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley



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