Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Spell   Listen
verb
Spell  v. t.  (past & past part. spelled; pres. part. spelling)  To supply the place of for a time; to take the turn of, at work; to relieve; as, to spell the helmsman.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Spell" Quotes from Famous Books



... across the Channel, calculating the domestic effect of each treaty provision. Few could resist his personal magnetism in conversation and no one would deny him the title of master-politician of his age. During the first weeks of the Conference, Wilson seems to have fallen under the spell of Lloyd George to some extent, who showed himself quite as liberal as the President in many instances. But Wilson was clearly troubled by the Welshman's mercurial policy, and before he finally left for America, found relief in the solid consistency of Clemenceau. ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... heap of dem reels. Hoped sing dem behind de old folks back many a day cause us chillun wasn' never allowed to sing reels in dem days. See, old back people was more religious den dey is now. Yes, mam, dey been know what spell somethin in dat day en time. When dey would speak den, dey meant somethin, I tell you. People does just go through de motion dese days en don' have no mind to mean what dey talk. No, child, us didn' dar'sen to let us parents hear us sing no reels den. What dem old people didn' quarrel ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... Heroine—a creature of resplendent form and feature, With a spell in every motion and a charm in every look: I'd a Villain—worse than Nero,—I'd a most superior Hero: And the host of minor persons which is needed in ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... courage, and yet they all trembled before the man they contemned, and shrank from an object invested with no other terrors than those which they had voluntarily conferred upon it. Where lies the spell of a tyrant that enables him alone, hated and contemned, to tyrannize over his fellow creatures! However, the Moors had now a respite from their fears, for the approach of the Christians compelled Caneri to forsake ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... seen the most diminutive bonnets, not bigger than saucers, ornamented with beads and flowers and lace, and backed up by ready-made "chignons," on the heads of girls who are only one degree removed from the poor-house. Servant-girls who can scarcely read, much less write,—who do not know how to spell their names,—who have low wages,—and, as little children, had scarcely shoes to their feet,—who perhaps never saw fresh meat in their homes, except at Christmas, when it was given them by some rich neighbour,—spend all their earnings on their dress, appear on Sundays in hats and feathers, ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... to have it given me. I ought to have ... oh, nothing very much, perhaps ... a little gladness ... a glad memory ... the thought that my life will not have been entirely wasted.... The thought that I too shall have had my spell of love.... But that short spell I ask for ... I beg for ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... crime, and it may be that this cruel and wicked crime may be the means of discovering other crimes, and of leading in the end to the detection, if not to the conviction, of persons who have been connected in them, and those who rest in the supposed confidence of impunity may find the spell broken, may find the light of information to reach them, and may find in the end that the law will be able to prevail; because it must be in the experience of many of you that it is unhappily in the power of a few persons who engage ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... you shall not ruin him,' said I. 'I believe a spell of prison is the very best way of keeping you apart, and you shall have it, or it will be no ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... hard, but if we worked still harder we were occasionally allowed a little spell in the long summer evenings about sundown to fish, and on Sundays an hour or two to sail quietly without fishing-rod or gun when the lake was calm. Therefore we gradually learned something about its inhabitants,—pickerel, sunfish, black bass, perch, shiners, pumpkin-seeds, ducks, loons, ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... Something holds us here. You will never persuade Denzil to go, and I—I cannot persuade myself to go. There is a clinging sweetness in the air for me; and there are vague suggestions, memories, dreams, histories—wonderful things which hold me spell-bound! I wish I could analyze them, recognize them, or understand them. But I cannot, and there, perhaps, is their secret charm. Only one thing grieves me, and that is, that I have, perhaps, unwittingly, in some thoughtless ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... helped the maid To mount behind and at an easy trot They and the troop rode on to Camelot. He asked no questions for some fairy spell Made light his heart, and told him all was well; And as these two rode through the land together, By dappled greenwood shade and sunlit heather, Her soft voice in his ears, the innocent charm Of her light, steady touch upon his arm, Wrought magic in his soul. That day, I ween, Sir Launcelot ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... the more lifelike its gestures and movements; and the more intelligibly audible its voice. Its garments, too, glistened so much the brighter with an illusory magnificence. The very pipe, in which burned the spell of all this wonderwork, ceased to appear as a smoke-blackened earthen stump, and became a meerschaum, with painted bowl and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... any object once looked at, is further well illustrated in the very varied facilities for the spelling of words found in different persons. Thus, there are people who, when they once see any word (we will say a proper name) written or printed, can always afterwards spell that word unerringly, no matter how uncommon it may be. The mental retina, so to speak, receives so clear and exact an impression of the form of that word from the eye, that it retains ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... a community, wherein administrators and public alike accept the certainty that during dry times lawns and parks and golf courses and sometimes human skins will have to do without the application of water for a spell, is a reality of life in some arid regions and is probably always going to be. Elsewhere it is, or should be, an element in the design planning of industries that use heavy quantities of water for cooling and ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... Her terror increased, and every time the great kitchen clock struck the hour she broke into a perspiration from grief. She lost her head, and had the nightmare; her candle went out, and then she began to imagine that someone had thrown a spell over her, like country people so often fancy, and she felt a mad inclination to run away, to escape and to flee before her misfortune, like a ship ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... looked into the eyes of the street gamins about him, and he began to wonder. Some of them were fierce, unruly-looking youngsters, inclined to meanness and rowdyism, but one and all, they seemed under the spell of their leader's voice. At last Robert said, "Boys, this is my father. He's a preacher, too. I want you to come up and shake hands with him." Then they crowded round the old man readily and heartily, ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... that didn't alter the case. Certain obligations were involved in the very fact of marriage, and were quite independent of the quantity of enjoyment extracted from it. Isabel thought of her husband as little as might be; but now that she was at a distance, beyond its spell, she thought with a kind of spiritual shudder of Rome. There was a penetrating chill in the image, and she drew back into the deepest shade of Gardencourt. She lived from day to day, postponing, closing her eyes, trying not to think. She knew she ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... made his living by ministering to various abject vices, gave credit for their food to many a piece of white wreckage. He was naively overjoyed at the idea of his old bills being paid, and he reckoned confidently on a spell of festivities in the cavernous grog-shop downstairs. Massy remembered the curious, respectful looks of the "trashy" white men in the place. His heart had swelled within him. Massy had left Charley's infamous den directly he had realized ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... seemed to listen to my chatter. He was as if under a spell, and his dark, strong face glowed with the magic of it. As we approached the Square, he looked down at me, and slipped my hand from his arm into the clasp of his warm fingers. Through my glove he felt the ring, and gave the hand a little, ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... polish but full of common sense; would have been a good companion for Tim Bobbin in his better moments, and for Sam Slick in his unctuous periods; cares more for thoughts than grammar; likes to rush out in a buster when the spell is upon him; can either shout you into fits or whisper you to sleep—is, in a word, a virtuous and venerable "caution." He is the right kind of man for humble, queer-thinking; determined, sincerely-singular Christians; is just the sort of person you should hear when ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... Guardsman, shedding slippers around him as his long legs bent to their task. He might just as well have attempted to catch the Scotch Express; but, as he returned to me dripping, he began to realise what the heat of Jamaica can do. All the remainder of that day the Guardsman remained under the spell of the entrancing beauty of his new surroundings, and I was dragged on foot for miles and miles; along country lanes, through the Hope Botanical Gardens, down into the deep ravine of the Hope River, then back again, both of us dripping wet in the fierce heat, in spite of ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... The music of the "Good Friday Spell" from Wagner's opera "Parsifal" given by the Symphony ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee

... British birds, the great bittern, is reported to have been seen in the Eastern counties during the recent cold spell. In answer to a telephonic inquiry on the matter Mr. POCOCK, of the Zoological Gardens, was heard to murmur, "Once ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various

... again rose, and bade them welcome. There were some fifty or sixty of them, but Ned and his friend had no fear of any treachery, for they were evidently under the spell of a sense of amazement greater than that which had been excited among those they first met; and this because they first saw this ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... decorations. It was soon found that to be really pretty, the table trimmings would have to be made by the hostess herself, so Mary Jane set to work. From the advertising sections of magazines she cut letters about an inch high. Letters enough to spell everybody's first name and last initial. She had to have the last initial because two of her guests had the same first name. These she sorted very carefully and put in envelopes; one envelope for each person and just the right letters in that envelope ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson

... slight resting spell for the nations to trade with each other and make secret preparations to finally kill ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... word. Then I press them in such a way as to put them in contact with the battery. At the same instant, my correspondent sees these different letters carried in the same order toward the electrified balls at the other extremity of the wires. I continue to thus spell the words as long as I judge proper, and my correspondent, that he may not forget them, writes down the letters in measure as they rise. He then unites them and reads the dispatch as often as he pleases. At a given signal, or when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... fancy takes me, as it's like enough it may, For to smell the old ship-smells again an' taste the salt an' spray, I can take a spell o' pearlin' or a tradin' cruise or two Where there's none but golden weather an' a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various

... a little spell Of absence changed that heart of thine; And I, who know the change full well, Have found another place for mine. No more such fair but fickle she Shall find me her obedient; And, flighty shepherdess, we'll see Which of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... conscience strove to assert itself. She was under the spell of a nature infinitely stronger than hers; she saw and ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... fainting spell several minutes long, the Captain was the first man to return to consciousness and the full recovery of his intellectual faculties. His first feelings were far from pleasant. His stomach gnawed him as if he had not eaten for a week, though he had taken ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... black, thick, rooty thing, like a big tater as had been stretched. Andy said as no fellow as had brains in his head ought to starve out in a foreign land; and that's useful to know, Mr Poole and Mr Burnett, sir. Come in handy if we have to do the Robinson Crusoe for a spell.—Keep it up, young gents," he whispered; "the lads like to hear us talk.—'That's all very fine, Andy,' I says," he continued, aloud, "'but what about water? Whether you are aboard your ship or whether you are in a strange land, you must have plenty of water in your casks!' 'Find a river,' ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... of her furs swept his face. There was a delicious pang in being thus caught back to life; and as the sled stopped, and he sprang to his feet, he still glowed with the sensation. Bessy too was under the spell. In the dusk of the beech-grove where they had landed, he could barely distinguish her features; but her eyes shone on him, and he heard her quick breathing as he stooped to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... of the Mill—self-consciously at first; yet when he found that Estelle ignored the past, and understood spinning, he forgot himself entirely for a time under the spell ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... spectre stood—but from the porch Of life, the lip—one kiss inhaled the breath, And the mute graceful Genius lower'd a torch. The judgment-balance of the Realms below, A judge, himself of mortal lineage, held; The very Furies at the Thracian's woe, Were moved and music-spell'd. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... her, her reticence, the muttered insinuation dropping from the unguarded lips of Murphy, merely served to render her the more attractive, while her own naive witchery of manner, and her seemingly unconscious coquetry, had wound about him a magic spell, the full power of which as yet remained but dimly appreciated. His mind lingered longingly upon the marvel of the dark eyes, while the cheery sound of that last rippling outburst of laughter reechoed in his ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... commenced as if the spell of the parting was upon him. "He was too tired," he said, "to make a short speech. Some one asked Walter Scott why he didn't put a certain book of his into one volume instead of five. And he said he hadn't time. It took five weeks to ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... and think they are made of different sizes for that purpose; but no fast fellow was ever yet detected in looking into one of them, to see whether there was any thing inside. Such as have been taught to spell, employ part of the Sunday in deciphering the smutty jokes of the Satirist, and pronounce the jokes "d—d good," and the paper "a d—d honest paper." If they happen, by any chance, to come into contact with one of the slow school, or any body ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... were switched on again and they rose to go out, Georgina was so deeply under the spell of the play that it gave her a little shock of surprise when Belle began talking quite cheerfully and in her ordinary manner to her next neighbor. She even laughed in response to some joking remark as they edged their way slowly up the aisle to the door. It seemed to Georgina ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... McHale. "Depends on how you look at it. I ain't goin' to resist to speak of; I'm just lyin' low for a spell. I reckon I'll pack old Baldy with a little outfit, Casey. 'Bout two days from now you'll find him out by Sunk Springs if ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... The spell that held them broke, and the bustle began. A mumble filled the room, followed by moments of animated discussion. Neighbor spoke to neighbor in terms of approval or plied him with questions menacing and entreating. Anderson maintained his composure to allow ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... disappointed. "Mr. Jerry said she was under the spell of the wicked witch, Independence," she insisted. "Wasn't it good of him to take George Washington to board? It's such a relief to have found a pleasant place so near. I'm sure they'll be ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... dead, just as he had been left behind there gazing at the Divan-kapi-iskellesi. M. —— felt a sort of flesh-shivering at this undeniable proof of the wizard's power; he remained for better than a minute in the position he was, when the tall African first struck his eye, spell-bound as it were, with one foot on the edge of the boat, and the other on the edge of the quay; but recovering himself, he drew up his hinder leg, and then crossing himself like a good catholic, and salaaming his acquaintance, like a polite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various

... Now while he stands enchained within the spell I'll to Rosalia's room and don his cloak And cap, and sally forth to meet the duke. 'Tis now the hour, and if he come—so ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... then, that I was in love with her? Was it any wonder that those wonderful dark eyes held me beneath their spell, or those dark locks that I sometimes stroked from off her fair white brow should be to me the most beautiful in all the world? Man is but mortal, and a beautiful woman ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... before, Lurindy had gone to Salem and worked in the mills. She didn't stay long, because it didn't agree with her,—the neighbors said, because she was lazy. Lurindy lazy, indeed! There a'n't one of us knows how to spell the first syllable of that word. But that's where she must have got acquainted with John Talbot. He'd been up at our place, too; but I was over to Aunt Emeline's, it seems. But one night, about this time, I thought he ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... it too," Charley answered, "and I do not think we can do better than start our search there, if it proves to be an island. We will be there in an hour at this rate. I wish I could spell you, Walt, but it don't seem right for you to be doing ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... condition of mental disorder, known as 'possession by the fox,' is a common belief, bringing crowds of devotees to Inari's temples, either to pray for the exorcism of the demoniac influence, or to avert the danger of falling under the dreadful spell." (Macmillan's Magazine, December, 1904, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various

... Mohawk tribe an' his name is High Horse. General Putnam gave him this knife fer doin' some thin' or other one time, an' High Horse gave it to me 'cause I shared powder an' bullets with him when he was out, an' durin' the war at that. Seems t' me naow, tew, that I pulled him through some sick spell or somethin'. Any haow he give me the knife. If ye see him tell him ye know me. I heerd that he was livin' up some ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... cluster of some strange date, With a subtle and searching tang That seemed, as you tasted, to penetrate The heart like a serpent's fang; And back you fell for a spell entranced, As cold as a corpse of stone, And heard your brains, as they laughed and danced And ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... set tasks to his divine faculty, which is much the same as trying to make Jove's eagle do the service of a clucking hen. Throughout The Prelude and The Excursion he seems striving to bind the wizard Imagination with the sand-ropes of dry disquisition, and to have forgotten the potent spell-word which would make the particles cohere. There is an arenaceous quality in the style which makes progress wearisome. Yet with what splendours as of mountain-sunsets are we rewarded! what golden rounds of verse do we not see stretching heavenward with angels ascending and descending! what ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... had come to the end of its earth-hall joys. By it there stood the stoups and jars; dishes lay there, and dear-decked swords eaten with rust, as, on earth's lap resting, a thousand winters they waited there. For all that heritage huge, that gold of bygone men, was bound by a spell, {39e} so the treasure-hall could be touched by none of human kind, — save that Heaven's King, God himself, might give whom he would, Helper of Heroes, the hoard to open, — even such a man as seemed to ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... She sat spell-bound, watching for the event of the contest, which had now begun between the two in real earnest. The people encouraged now the one and now the other. At this moment it seemed probable that the new man, Lucius, would be the winner; at that moment the tide ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... I melt this wax, with the god to aid, so speedily may he by love be molten, the Myndian Delphis! And as whirls this brazen wheel, {13} so restless, under Aphrodite's spell, may he turn ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... thought came to me on my pillow. I thought that I was dead. This took such possession of me that it shut out every other thought, and being able to think only that one thought, I must have been dead. It seemed but a moment's time when the spell of the thought was broken by an alien deep voice from the void of nothing about me, calling me by name, calling me to wake and see the day. With that came floods of my own old thoughts, like molten streams from AEtna, that ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson

... all been the work of one moment, and relief came in the next with the entrance of Colonel Rolleston. Cecil, feeling as if delivered from a spell, got out of the room, and entrenched herself in her own, where her ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... in the race long ago. What matters a little name or a little fortune? There is no fortune that a philosopher cannot endure. I have been not unknown as a scholar, and yet forced to live by turning bear-leader, and teaching a boy to spell. What then? The life was not pleasant, but possible—the bear was bearable. Should this venture fail, I will go back to Oxford; and some day, when you are a general, you shall find me a curate in a cassock and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had spoken during all this time. Both felt the magic of the place so strong upon them that speech seemed profanation. The flight of the little birds, however, loosened the spell. Hildegarde spoke, but softly, almost under her breath. "Captain! Do you see the lizard? Look at him, on the log there! The greenness of him! soul of ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... the sail of the Phaeakian ship in which Odysseus lay asleep as in the dreamless slumber of the dead. The wild music of the waves rose on the air as the bark sped on its glistening pathway, but their murmur reached not the ear of the wanderer, for the spell of Athene was upon him, and all his cares and griefs were for a ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... mystery, as it is the main curse of time. The idea of it—of its exceeding sinfulness—haunted and oppressed him. He used to say of John Foster, that this deep and intense, but sometimes narrow and grim thinker, had, in his study of the disease of the race, been, as it were, fascinated by its awful spell, so as almost to forget the remedy. This was not the case with himself. As you know, no man held more firmly to the objective reality of his religion—that it was founded upon fact. It was not the pole-star he lost sight ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... at the rude thrust. While under the spell of Richard's voice a cord in his own soul had vibrated as does a glass globe when it responds in perfect harmony to a note from a violin. He too had a Lenore whose loss had wellnigh broken his heart. This in itself ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... apostolical and evangelical theologians. But in all his books Owen labours under the fatal drawback of a bad style. A fine style, a style like that of Hooker, or Taylor, or Bunyan, or Howe, or Leighton, or Law, is such a winning introduction to their works and such an abiding charm and spell. The full title of Dr. Owen's great work runs thus: The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers—a title that will tell all true students what awaits them when they have courage and enterprise enough to address themselves to this supreme and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... initiation, though all "THE IDOLS" must be left behind in its stages; who would never stop until it stopped in that new cave of Apollo, where the handwriting on the wall spells anew the old Delphic motto, and publishes the word that "unties the spell." ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... the root of the trouble, of the joyless American face. The worst of all demons, the demon of unrest and overwork, broods in the very sky of this land. Blue and clear and crisp and sparkling as our atmosphere is, it cannot or does not exorcise the spell. Any old man can count on the fingers of one hand the persons he has known who led lives of serene, unhurried content, made for themselves occupations and not tasks, and died at last what might be ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... sure these nations could Brave the whole world as one. Then as the prince of Eastern lore With mirthful mischief rife, Comes Harry pressed by love to kiss The princess back to life; The eyes soon ope beneath his touch; The maids in glad surprise See the prince break the fairy spell, And claim his willing prize. Little Red Ridinghood comes next, Crying in sad despair: O grandma, what long teeth you've got! What eyes! what shaggy hair! In this case happily the wolf Ne'er moved or spake a word; Perhaps he was too much ashamed To have his gruff voice heard. Then to my wondering ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... tell, and was quite quality, always wanting to come into the sitting-room. And it would curl down at Aunt Hetty's feet like a dog. She saved the wool every year, and spun it, and laid it away until she had enough. But I don't believe it went to school, although it could spell one word." ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... off into another wild spell of laughter, but Polly began to quiet now that she heard her friend making such a disturbance. The ungoverned laughter attracted Mr. Ashby who had just entered ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... melodies, a few remarks may be offered. The genius of our mountain land, as if prompted alike by thought and feeling, has in these wrought a spell of matchless power—a fascination, which, reaching the hearts both of old and young, maintains an imperishable sway over ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... dealt, mother, By the child thou lov'st so well; The prayers have circled round her path; And 'twas their holy spell Which made that path so dearly bright; Which strewed the roses there; Which gave the light, and cast the balm ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... get rid of as many cattle as we can, provide for the rest so they'll have plenty of water in the dry spell, and then fight the ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster

... the resolution of kings. His trust in the deepening impression made by the fall of Moscow was fostered by negotiations begun by Kutusoff for the very purpose of delaying the French retreat. For five weeks Napoleon remained at Moscow as if spell-bound, unable to convince himself of his powerlessness to break Alexander's determination, unable to face a retreat which would display to all Europe the failure of his arms and the termination of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... fingers like many another confiding youngster but, all the same, he did wonder as he knelt there and watched this fair girl, who somehow reminded him of a rich rosebud bursting into bloom, how long it would be possible to live in the same house with her without falling under the spell of her charm and beauty. Then he began to think of Jess, and of what a strange ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... wait for him, and there's his heart broken. And I ready to glorify her for a saint! And now she must have loved the man, or his title, to change her religion. She gives him her soul! No praise to her for that: but mercy! what a love it must be. Or else it's a spell. But wasn't she rather one for flinging spells than melting? Except that we're all of us hit at last, and generally by our own weapon. But she loved Philip: she loved him down to shipwreck and drowning: she gave battle for him, and against her father; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... with magic spell to roll The thrilling tones that concentrate the soul! Breathe through thy flute those tender notes again, While near thee sits the chaste-eyed maiden mild; And bid her raise the poet's kindred strain In soft impassion'd ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... that plagued box, that's all; and after limping around for a spell thought I'd better come back and put some witch-hazel on the bruise," explained the other, turning down his trousers' leg, and scrambling to his feet to ascertain how well he ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen

... already forgotten, and people from other places began to build houses in the enchanted city. The monkey-prince was always watching for an opportunity to catch a beautiful girl who should break the spell that kept him in his miserable condition. Soon a church was built near the foot of the tree in which he lived. He had already succeeded in capturing two ladies, but they had died of fear. After incalculable suffering ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... my dear boy. If you give your attention to your book and feel anxious to learn, you will soon get on. Spell over these words for me and let me see what ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland

... sacred thought that we live there with some one else. It is "our" home. The home is a tryst—the place where we retire and shut the world out. Lovers make a home, just as birds make a nest, and unless a man knows the spell of the divine passion I hardly see how he can have a home at all. He only rents ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... they ran out into earthy plains. We had understood that the creek along Gregory's track was continuous; and finding that all these creeks ran out into plains, Mr. Burke returned, our camel being completely knocked up. We then intended to give the camel a spell for a few days, and to make a new attempt to push on forty or fifty miles to the south, in the hope of striking the creek. During the time that the camel was being rested, Mr. Burke and Mr. Wills went in search of the natives, to endeavour to find out how the nardoo grew. Having found their camp, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... 'spell,'" she retorted one day, when Katherine laughingly commented upon her conchological, geological, ichthyological "research." "It has got to have its 'run,' like some other beliefs that aren't so good; ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... after its dreadful languors, its excruciating agonies, know once more a rapturous emotion? So lately sunk into despondency; so lately pondering on obstacles that rose before me like Alps and menaced eternal opposition to my darling projects; so lately the prey of the deepest anguish: what spell diffuses through my frame this ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... spell of Abel's mourning was one of ill-fortune for Deinol, the master of which was grown careless: hay rotted before it was gathered and corn before it was reaped; potatoes were smitten by a blight, a disease fell upon two cart-horses, and a heifer was drowned in the sea. Then the farmer felt embittered, ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans

... is lazy. The only exercise he ever takes is to occasionally produce a Revolution. When his feet begin to swell and there are premonitory symptoms of gout, he "revolushes" a spell, and then serenely returns to his cigarette and hammock under ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... conscious that she was under the spell of intense shame. "What's there in this to be ashamed?" she continued, "You needn't besides breathe a word! All you have to do is to follow ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... includes it. His sense of fitness is dwarfed or paralyzed. We in the community come to regret that he is so "visionary," with all his talent; so we accommodate ourselves to his unfruitfulness, and at the best only expect an occasional hour's entertainment under the spell of his presence. This certainly is not the man to ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... here; I'm a main good hand with plants and flower things, and I could help around generally." Then, earnestly, "Let me stay, sir—it won't cost—I wouldn't think of taking a cent from you, captain. Just let me act as your orderly for a spell, sir. I'd sure give ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... next? Kosciusko, [Footnote: The Polish patriot and leader, 1756-1817.] cured of his wounds, simple in his manners, like all truly great men. We met him at the house of a Polish Countess, whose name I cannot spell. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... next morning the sun came out once or twice but gave it up, and clouds with rain sprinklings kept on. We had struck a long spell of wet; it was very trying, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... such truth of detail and such grace in the manner of telling, that I finished the long manuscript almost at a sitting, with a pleasure rarely, almost never experienced in voluminous communications which one has to spell out of handwriting. This was from a correspondent who made my acquaintance by letter when she was little more than a child, some years ago. How easy at that early period to have silenced her by indifference, to have wounded ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... hour, and Thornton felt its spell, speaking out at last, and asking Anna if she would be his wife. He would shield her so tenderly, he said, protecting her from every care, and making her as happy as love and money could make her. Then he told her of his home in the far-off city, which needed only ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... her suddenly. "Bon Dieu! Do you know how beautiful you are?" he murmured. But the sound of his voice seemed to break a spell that had kept her dumb. She struggled again ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... rather like oil thrown on the fire. Pleading her delicate health, she hinted that his unkindness would kill her, and that, when she was gone, her sweet face would haunt him. Muttering something about one consolation, ghosts couldn't speak till spoken to, and he was sure he wouldn't break the spell of silence, he picked up his hat and strode out of the house, slamming the door after him. For a while, Mrs. Jones was struck with consternation; she felt somewhat as the woman must have felt who, in attempting to pull up a weed, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... radius of his father's house, an enchantment fell upon him, so that his knees waxed weak, his greatness departed, and he again felt himself like an overgrown baby under a perpetual cloud; but then he was not often at Elmhurst, and as soon as he left it the spell was taken off again; once more he became the fellow and tutor of his college, the Junior Dean, the betrothed of Christina, the idol of the Allaby womankind. From all which it may be gathered that if Christina had been a Barbary hen, and had ruffled her feathers in any ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... demand for his own supplies. If he was betrayed into an error, he quickly retrieved it. He could live upon nothing and consequently could travel anywhere in search of such things as he desired. He could barely read and write, and could not spell, but he was daring and astute. His untaught brain was that of a financier, his blood burned with the fever of but one desire—the desire to accumulate. Money expressed to his nature, not expenditure, but investment in such small ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... actual dread of such an occurrence as has since happened came to oppress my solitude during the long months which now intervened. I was as yet too much under the spell of her charm to allow anything calculated to throw a shadow over her image to remain long in my thoughts. But when, some time in the fall, a letter came to me personally from Mr. Clavering, filled with a vivid appeal to ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... a feller who had a job forecastin' the weather for a noospaper, and he'd allus say right out positive whether it 'ud rain or shine—it was allus goin' to be bright and clear or dark and stormy—and along come a spell o' weather and every day for a week he said it was going to rain, and I'll be singed if there was a cloud in the sky all through them seven days—and the feller lost his job. Now the way I look at the game is this: we got a big chance to win and we got a big chance to lose, and if we ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... manners or contemplate our ideals, or care for our refinements. We shall have to read again the fairy stories where the prince has been changed by evil enchantment into some uncouth and repulsive monster, but was redeemed to human form by sympathy. The evil spell was of our working, and it behooves us to overcome it. No one ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... left. They all shared the feeling that it would be too painful to look upon the traces of the fire that without doubt had levelled with the soil the house they had toiled over, and it was not until Griggs spoke that something like a spell which had hung ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... Reddin! Jack Reddin! You've put a spell on me!' she moaned. 'I want to be along of Ed'ard, and you've bound me to be along of you. I dunna like you, but I canna ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... had now arrived when the mystery of my wife's manner oppressed me as a spell. I could no longer bear the touch of her wan fingers, nor the low tone of her musical language, nor the lustre of her melancholy eyes. And she knew all this, but did not upbraid; she seemed conscious ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Zanoni, tenderly; "she who placed this round my neck deemed it indeed a charm, for she had superstitions like thyself; but to me it is more than the wizard's spell,—it is the relic of a sweet vanished time when none who ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... when you wear a form I know so well, A form so human, yet so near divine; 'Tis then I fall beneath the magic of your spell, 'Tis then I know the vantage is ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... unfinished because love knows not how to make an end. To the monks it was a page in the history of the life of the Order, written in stone, blazoned with beauty of the world's treasure; a page on which each generation might spell out a word, perchance add a line, to the greater glory of God and St Benedict. They were always at work on it, stretching out eager hands for the rare stuffs and precious stones devout men brought from overseas, finding a place for the best of every ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... you, and every glance would seem full of thoughts, or she would sit with tears in her eyes, scarcely saying a word, apparently rapt in musing. Those musings of hers are so profound that you fall under the spell of them; on me, at least, she has the effect of a cloud overcharged with electricity. One day I plied her with questions; I tried with all my might to make her talk; at last I let fall a few rather hasty words; and, well—she burst ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... foolish, you will skim the bubbling froth of life and seek crowded diversion in the lighter follies, the passing shows, and l'amour qui rit. And you will probably return to the big things of war tired but mightily refreshed, and almost ready to welcome a further spell ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... to a little drawing-room, out of which another opened; over the simple furniture of which my mother's hand had thrown a spell of grace. And luxurious enjoyment too; that belonged to her. A soft rug or two lay here and there; a shawl of beautiful colour had fallen upon a chair-back; pictures hung on the walls, - one stood on an easel in a corner; bits of statuary, bronzes, wood-carvings, trifles ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... of the Midlands and the north, are a young and comely race. Their slight or rounded figures among the forest of machines, the fair or golden hair of so many of them, their grace of movement, bring a strange touch of beauty into a scene which has already its own spell. ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... manners. The pleasure was a passive one. There was no deep thinking to perplex, no subtler beauties to pause upon; the feelings were stirred pleasantly, but not deeply; the effect was on the surface. The spell employed was novelty—or, at most, wonder—and the chief emotion aroused was breathless interest in the progress of the story. Carlyle said that Scott's genius was in extenso, {247} rather than in intenso, and that its great praise was its healthiness. This is true ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... a feeling of terror, and commenced dragging upon the rein; but, before I could pull up, I was carried into the midst of the prostrate herd. Here my horse suddenly stopped, and I sat in my saddle as if spell-bound. I was under the influence of a superstitious awe. Blood was before me and around me. Turn which way I would, my ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... he made strenuous efforts to do so. The mate observing him, said, "Lie down, Walter; you are less accustomed to long watches than I am. Get some sleep, my lad; and when I think you have had enough of it, and should the weather continue moderate, I will call you, and you can take a spell at the helm." ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... Shakespeare's reasons for painting him a hero. But for two much more reasonable reasons. One that he said, "I myself am indifferent honest"—oh, the humanity of Hamlet!—and the other that, when under the spell of her beauty and in the tentative, interested stage when he cared for her all but enough to ask her to marry him, he had the wit to discover that she was a fool. Imagine the calamity of Hamlet married to Ophelia! That would have ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... satisfaction in the pragmatic accomplishment, and—" he was saying when we came out of the woods onto the southern slope, where lie the long rows of peas, which are making Sam's fortune. He got them in by working two days and all one night in a bright spell in mid-February, and nobody for twenty miles around has any, while he has more than he can gather to market at a top price; that is, more than he can gather himself with Byrd's assistance, he explained to us, as he showed us just how to snap the pod ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... strike, a murder, football, bodies found; vociferation from all parts of England simultaneously. How miserable it is that the Globe newspaper offers nothing better to Jacob Flanders! When a child begins to read history one marvels, sorrowfully, to hear him spell out in his new voice ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... firing had been carefully instructed that steadiness and accuracy made the most merciful way of doing their unwelcome duty. The surgeon made his official inspection of the body, which was placed in the coffin and removed in the ambulance. The drums and fifes broke the spell with quick marching music, the regiments took their arms, sharp words of command rattled along the lines, which broke by platoons into column and moved rapidly off ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... knee, and having eaten a large share of what was going, raised itself to its full height, flapped its wings, and gave utterance to a cackle of triumph! A burst of laughter followed—and Tilly gave a shriek of delighted surprise that at once dissolved the spell, and induced the horrified fowl to seek refuge in ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... Leland, his heavier voice drowning the girl's words. "If your father does a thing which your untrained, woman's brain cannot rightly understand are you the one to judge and condemn him? Because a lying Shandon has cast his cursed spell over your romantic fancies are you to leap to these ridiculous conclusions? Am I the man to do a dishonourable thing? Ask other men out in the world where my dealings are an open book. Ask your mother. If, to you, who have gone hungering for lies to a man amply competent to tell them to you, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... know what some folks think so well as I know what some fools say,—rejoined the Little Gentleman.—If importing most dry goods made the best scholars, I dare say you would know where to look for 'em.—Mr. Webster could n't spell, Sir, or would n't spell, Sir,—at any rate, he did n't spell; and the end of it was a fight between the owners of some copyrights and the dignity of this noble language which we have inherited from our English ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... pretty picture that Malcolm stood quite spell-bound: the crimson dais was such a rich background to the soft creamy white of the girl's dress, while the poppies held so carelessly added to the effect; even the sunshine filtering through the partially drawn curtains gilded the fair hair until it shone like gold. Malcolm was ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... The spell was broken. "W'y, gorblimey!" said Hardy, "Ain't that queer?—that's jes' wot I wos a-thinkin' . . . Well, Gawd 'elp Sorjint Slavin now!" With which cryptic utterance ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... thank her for her pains? She wanted to talk to Burnaby. She was missing most of his visit. She wanted to talk to Burnaby so greatly that the thought made her cheeks burn faintly. She began to hate Pollen. Mary Rochefort's cool, young voice broke the spell. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... "that's a howlin' shime, and no mistike. The fact is that we was all dead tired with sweatin' at them infernal pumps. I meant to ha' come along and took a spell at water-grindin', but in w'itin' for them swines to all go to sleep I went to sleep myself, and never woke up ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... taken down and hugged. She knew it, knew the mission-school that had seen her first and only real Christmas, knew the gentle face of her teacher, and the writing on the wall she had taught her to spell out: "In His name." His name, who, she had said, was all little children's friend. Was He also her dolly's friend, and would He know it among the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... well. There was always work of some sort to be had about the villages. And when winter set in, and the frost began to bind, he would either take a turn of woodcutting in the forests or lie idle for a spell, till something else turned up. He'd no big family to look after now, and the morrow, no doubt, would look after ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... himself winning. Already the spell of the room was lifting, and he no longer felt the cloud of sandalwood smoke like a veil ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... by such names, well may we then, Though dwindled sons of little men, Essay to break a feeble lance In the fair fields of old romance; Or seek the moated castle's cell, Where long through talisman and spell, While tyrants ruled, and damsels wept, Thy Genius, Chivalry, hath slept: There sound the harpings of the North, Till he awake and sally forth, On venturous quest to prick again, In all his arms, with all his train, Shield, lance, and brand, and plume, and scarf, Fay, giant, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... dark Jerry had sensed the hypnotic spell of unseen eyes. Visible, they held him in a rigid, unreasoning terror. Unreal, unthinkable, this serpentlike horror, tremendous and ghastly in its loathsome whiteness. A dweller in the dark, used by the priests ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... and crossed themselves in terror. On one ear it fell with a sense of agony almost equal to that from whence it came; the mother recognized the voice, and feeling, sight, hearing, as by an electric spell, returned. She looked forth again, and though her eye caught the noble form of Nigel Bruce yet quivering in the air, she shrunk not, she sickened not, for its gaze sought her child; she had disappeared from ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... evil by witchcraft or sorcery." In some parts of Western Africa, when a man returns home after a long absence, before he is allowed to visit his wife, he must wash his person with a particular fluid, and receive from the sorcerer a certain mark on his forehead, in order to counteract any magic spell which a stranger woman may have cast on him in his absence, and which might be communicated through him to the women of his village. Two Hindoo ambassadors, who had been sent to England by a native prince and had returned to India, were considered to have so polluted themselves by contact with ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... and mimic pleasure — Winged Anacreon of the South! Listen! dearest, etc. "Bird of music, wit and gladness, Troubadour of sunny climes, Disenchanter of all sadness, — Would thine art were in my rhymes. O'er the heart that's beating by me, I would weave a spell divine; Is there aught she could deny me, Drinking in such strains ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... compound that would destroy the magic spell of the Liquid of Petrifaction and restore my wife and Unc Nunkie to life," said he. "It may be hard to find the things I need to make this magic compound, but if they were found I could do in an instant what will otherwise take six long, ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... Rest!" And while Gurnemanz is still occupied with restoring Parsifal, she slowly walks, as if powerfully drawn and intensely resisting, toward a tangled copse. She appears struggling with inexpressible weariness; the music gives a hint of something unnatural and evil in the spell of sleep falling leadenly upon her, expressing at the same time an irresistible element in it of attraction. The dark, wild-haired messenger of the Grail, the despised subordinate, suddenly assumes to our sense a much greater importance ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... carrying the unconscious body of a comrade to safety, not sure yet if he were alive or dead, and stroking that comrade's head as he went, saying over and over, "Did you think I would leave yer?" We are more demonstrative, we spell things out which it is the way of the English to leave between the lines. But it is all there! Behind that unconciliating wall of shyness and reserve, beats and hides the warm, loyal British heart, the most constant heart ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... spell-bound dwelling presented the same aspect of neglect and deterioration. Ulysses found the poet thin and yellow, with a long white beard, with one eye almost closed and the other very widely opened. Upon seeing the young officer, broad-chested, vigorous and bronzed, Labarta, who was ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... gayly spreading On a long-nursed household tree, What unwonted spell is shedding Thought of grief on ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... Lord Tankerville's in Northumberland, and at one point in the south-west of Scotland, had a similar instinct for regulating the fury of their own attack; but it was understood that when the final circle had been woven, the spell was perfect; and that the herd would 'do business' most effectually. As respects the Homeric case, 'I,' (says Mr. Mure,) 'am probably not the only reader who has been puzzled to understand the object of this manoeuvre' (the sitting down) 'on the part of the hero. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... not only over men that Frances Stuart cast the spell of her witchery. One of her earliest and most ardent admirers was none other than my Lady Castlemaine herself, who alone claimed to hold her Sovereign's heart. So secure she thought herself of her supremacy that she not only took the French beauty into favour, but actually ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... June, and the spell of warmth in which Robert Elsmere had arrived was still maintaining itself. An intelligent foreigner dropped into the flower-sprinkled valley might have believed that, after all, England, and even Northern ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Spell" :   duty period, spoken language, whammy, mean, piece, conjuration, mental state, spell-checker, patch, incantation, hyphenate, take turns, fascination, spell out, speech, relieve, mental condition, while, curse, snap, write, psychological condition, jinx, trance, possession, enchantment, cold snap, shift, hyphen, speech communication, language, oral communication, unspell, witch, time, recite, magical spell



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com