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More "Omen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... port would allow the vessel to enter for fear of contagion, and so she still wanders about the sea with her phantom crew, never to rest, but doomed to be tossed about for ever. She is now a spectral ship, and hovers about the Cape of Good Hope as an omen of bad luck to mariners who are so unfortunate ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... an omen the most favourable he could hope. He now seated himself by the bedside, and determined not to quit her till the expected crisis was past. He gave the strictest orders for the whole house to be kept quiet, and suffered no one in the room either to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... fanciful play, 'If I want a rose,' I demurely said, 'I must look for an omen to point the way, And I must look for it ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... having violated his daughter-in-law, Rambha. This lustful wretch is not able to violate any woman by force. Thy husband will soon come, protected by Sugriva and with the intelligent son of Sumitra in his train, and will soon take thee away hence! O lady, I have had a most terrible dream of evil omen, indicating the destruction of this wicked-minded wretch of Pulastya's race! This night wanderer of mean deeds is, indeed, most wicked and cruel. He inspireth terror in all by the defects of his nature and the wickedness of his conduct. And deprived ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... "there is not. The St. Elmo's light, or St. Elmo's fire, is frequently seen in tropical seas, though rarely as far north as Cape Hatteras; and as it is generally accompanied by cyclones or hurricanes, sailors have come to regard it as an omen of evil. It is not always followed by evil consequences, however, and to believe that it foretells death is as idle and foolish as superstitions of all kinds ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... WOMAN. It is a good omen. I have not seen a dead man for twenty years, save those that died of sickness and old age. When shall we have the good old times when men killed each other with swords? I feel that it is coming. When shall we fall upon the four kingdoms, and ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... and I could have an ambo, I should not win on a single number unless it came out first, whereas, if I did not specify their positions, my two numbers might come out anywhere and if they did I should win about 250 francs. Angelo accepted as a good omen the fact that neither of my numbers exceeded 90, and next morning we called on his cousin and put a franc on ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... lucky omen, but varied according to the alteration of circumstances—"[Greek: Ton ptarmon hoi men eisin ophelimoi, hoi de blaberoi]," "Some sneezes are profitable, others prejudicial"—according to the scholiast upon the following passage ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... fury of 'Canterburie's Doom.' With this political aspect of his life we have not now to deal; what Lambeth Chapel brings out with singular vividness is the strange audacity with which the Archbishop threw himself across the strongest religious sentiments of his time. Men noted as a fatal omen the accident that marked his first entry into Lambeth; the overladen ferry-boat upset in the crossing, and though horses and servants were saved the Primate's coach remained at the bottom of the Thames. But no omen brought hesitation to that bold, narrow mind. His first action, he tells us himself, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Kilmarnock was spared only to taste much more deeply of the pangs of death than if he had met it in battle. His fate had, indeed, been anticipated by the superstitious; and it was considered a rash instance of hardihood in the unfortunate nobleman to resist an omen which, about a year before the rebellion had broken out, is said to ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... noticed the mistake, and when she laughingly called the emperor's attention to it, they both took the back seat without a suspicion that this little error was a bad omen. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... an Assignation then. Ha, my Heart springs with Joy, 'tis a propitious Omen. My dear Marplot, let me embrace thee, thou art my ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... aught of evil omen save that which signifies some evil thing? Cowardice is a word of evil omen, if thou wilt, and meanness of spirit, and lamentation and mourning, and shamelessness. ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... Chambers's two versions in Pop. Rhymes of Scotland, pp. 66-8, "Rashie Coat," though Miss Cox assimilates them to Type B. Catskin; and (10) a variant of Dr. Blind's version, unknown to Miss Cox, but given in 7 Notes and Queries, x., 463 (Dumbartonshire). Mr. Clouston has remarks on the raven as omen-bird in his notes to Mrs. Saxby's Birds of Omen in Shetland (privately ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... venerable matron sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, was suddenly transformed into a blooming maid, whom his own hands adorned with all the symbols of imperial greatness. The monarch awoke, interpreted the auspicious omen, and obeyed without hesitation the will of Heaven. The day which gave birth to a city or a colony was celebrated by the Romans with such ceremonies as had been ordained by a generous superstition: and ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... preservation. As he pronounced this last word, one of the soldiers near him happened to sneeze.[41] Immediately the whole army around shouted with one accord the accustomed invocation to Zeus the Preserver; and Xenophon, taking up the accident, continued—"Since, fellow-soldiers, this omen from Zeus the Preserver has appeared at the instant when we were talking about preservation, let us here vow to offer the preserving sacrifice to that god, and at the same time to sacrifice to the remaining ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... waking and sleeping, when some new, pleasant thing has happened, or is to happen on the morrow, which the memory is too drowsy to present distinctly. Of this pleasant, indistinct promise that auroral cloud seemed somehow the omen or symbol, and watching it he fell asleep again. When he next awoke the sunlight of mid-forenoon was flooding the chamber, and he heard his mother's voice below stairs as she sat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... than to the two triumphant figures on the other side of me, overwhelmed and defeated me. I bent my head; I felt a shame, a degradation as though I should have crept into some shadow and hidden.... I would not mention this were it not that afterwards, in retrospect, the moment seemed to me an omen. After all, life is not always ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... safety, sometimes led to their sacrifice. A party, preparing to surround and capture them without bloodshed, would move with quiet steps, without giving notice to the aborigines; but just when all was prepared for the last movement, some cur of ill omen would start up, and rouse them. They would seize their spears and attempt to flee; and the whites, now disappointed of a bloodless capture, would ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... but though we had not spoken of his majesty, we certainly alluded to the crew; and whether D——, their representative, bears any affinity to that mighty potentate, I have never heard; yet certain it is, the said D——, with a countenance of ill omen, came into the cabin, and regretting that he should disturb us at such a ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Velasquez had left our camp to visit Narvaez, the drum beat to arms, and our little army set forwards on our march for Chempoalla. We killed two wild hogs on our way, which our soldiers considered as a good omen of our ultimate success. We halted for the night on the side of a rivulet, having the ground for a bed, stones for our pillows, and heaven for our canopy, and arrived next day at the place where the city of Vera Cruz is now built, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... were now fairly clear of the shore. The wind freshened. "The Curlew" dashed forward, rising and falling with the swells. The whole east was reddening. The dark spar of the bow-sprit rose and fell through it. It seemed a good omen to be going toward the light. Ere the sun met us on the sea, we were twelve ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... and I would have given anything to celebrate it with some lucky event, although I was at a loss to think of anything lucky that could have happened to me there. Indeed, I began my new year badly—much worse even than I expected. That was an ill-omen to me. First of all there was a terrible row among my men in camp. They had taken to their rifles. They wanted to shoot the cook. The man deserved punishment, perhaps, but not quite so severe a one. After a great deal of arguing I quieted them and got them to lay down their weapons. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... out of the window, and feel how deliciously fresh and cool it is!" commanded Winona. "Look at that bright planet! I think it must be Jupiter. I take it as a good omen for to-morrow. The storm will have cleared your brain, and your star's in the ascendant. ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... which effigies of the god made of earth and corn were buried. When these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had sprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the grain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be "hailed as an omen, or rather as the cause of the ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... his orders. The water being too hot for him to get into the bath at once, he took down from the shelf his copy of Suetonius. He wished to read how Seneca had died. He opened the book at random. 'But dwarfs,' he read, 'he held in abhorrence as being lusus naturae and of evil omen.' He winced as though he had been struck. This same Augustus, he remembered, had exhibited in the amphitheatre a young man called Lucius, of good family, who was not quite two feet in height and weighed seventeen pounds, but had a stentorian voice. He ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... everything as an omen. He was delighted with the sun—it rose out of a sack and grew brighter and brighter in the course of the day. It was never lucky for the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... said the master, "and I wouldn't take that as a bad omen. Think: nearly ten years ago, when you were a ne'er-do-well and I started you going right, how hard it was for you to do better, and how little faith you had in the possibility that everything would turn out right. But ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... neighbors, who gazed on the festal scene with an impressive curiosity that can not be described. Pale-faced, wide-eyed, statuesque, their presence, interpreted by a vivid imagination, might have been regarded as an omen of impending misfortune. They stood on the outskirts of the wedding company, gazing on the scene apparently without an emotion of sympathy or interest. They were there, it seemed, to see what new caper the townspeople had concluded to cut, to regard it solemnly, and to regret it ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... isle near Berber, but there is an old tradition that the future ruler of the Soudan will be from that isle. Zebehr Rahama knew this, but he fell on leaving his boat at this isle, and so, though the Soudan people looked on him as a likely saviour, this omen shook their confidence in him. He was then on his way to Cairo after swearing his people to rebel (if he was retained there), under a tree at Shaka. Zebehr will most probably be taken prisoner by the Mahdi, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... her brothers-in-law of that crime, she knew that in them she had two implacable enemies. This journey to a little town, this abode in a lonely castle, amid new, unknown neighbours, seemed to her of no good omen; but open opposition would have been ridiculous. On what grounds, indeed, could she base resistance? The marquise could only own her terrors by accusing her husband and her brothers-in-law. And of what could she accuse them? The incident of the poisoned cream was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his mantle to redeem a lamb from the butcher. He taught the people not to be afraid of the strange, ugly creatures which the light of the moving torches drew from their hiding-places, nor think it a bad omen that approached. He tamed a veritable wolf to keep him company like a dog. It was the first of many ambiguous circumstances about him, from which, in the minds of an increasing number of people, a deep suspicion and hatred ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... bundle," he said mendaciously. "Too bad! And I might have to search an hour before laying my hands on the right one. I evidently wasn't intended to bore you with any of my ancient mariner tales this evening. This is distinctly an omen." He lifted his brows slightly and significantly to Kitty, and she who ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... he sprung lightly to the shore, and was lost to her sight. At the moment of his disappearance, a cloud passed over the face of the bright moon, obscuring her blessed light. The maiden, deeming it an inauspicious omen, sat down upon the green bank, and, leaning her head upon her hand, suffered the tears to stream through her slender fingers. But vain was the presage—idle were her fears. The cloud has passed away from the face of the pale orb, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... lingering punishment of being marooned on the mainland, there to meet a cruel death at the hands of the savages. These two blood-stained criminals were the first Europeans to leave their bones in Australia, an unhappy omen of the future. According to the instructions issued to Tasman, on his second voyage, he was directed to "enquire at the continent thereabout" (i.e., the neighbourhood of the Abrolhos) "after two Dutchmen, who, having by the enormity of their crimes forfeited their ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... that an omen!" said Carlo, with forced cheerfulness. "This time, princess, I am the fatum which has alarmed you! It is my own fault that this string broke. It was already injured and half broken this evening when I tuned the guitar, but I hoped it ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... of evil omen. We went to Gorizia, that pretty Austrian spa that was taken by the Italians last year, and has suffered from the war as much as Udine, its neighbor across the old frontier, has prospered. In the heart of the town its old castle towers up ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... of the flickering lamp which threw its light upon the picture, Agnes thought surely the placid face brightened to a tender maternal smile, and her enthusiastic imagination saw in this an omen of success. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... healing powers of the well and the mercy of God, Khan Shereef and his now dismounted followers offered up prayers for success. Suddenly a huge mass of rock detaching itself from the mountain side thundered down the steep; it was hailed by all as a good omen, and the Moollah declaring that "now or never" was the auspicious moment, the child was taken from the arms of the now trembling nurse and immersed in the turbid waters. Hope elevated the breasts of the father and of the attendants, nor was that feeling ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... another kind, from DUNBAR BARTON. Most promising maiden speech delivered in present Parliament; of good omen that best parts were not those prepared in leisure of study, put the earlier passages evoked by preceding debate, and necessarily impromptu. As for SAUNDERSON, he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... old tiger, Muley Abul Hassan, lay couched within the Alhambra, and the walls and gates of the city were strongly guarded by his troops. Boabdil shook his head at these tidings. He called to mind the ill omen of his breaking his lance against the gate of Elvira when issuing forth so vaingloriously with his army, which he now saw clearly had foreboded the destruction of that army on which he had so confidently relied. "Henceforth," ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... and always devoted to the good of his wife. Arundhati insulted even the wise Muni amongst the (celestial) seven. In consequence of such insulting thoughts of hers, she has become a little star, like fire mixed with smoke, sometimes visible and sometimes invisible, like an omen portending no good (amongst a constellation of seven bright stars representing the seven Rishis). I look to thee for the sake of children. I never wronged thee, like Vasishtha who never wronged his wife. Thou hast, therefore, by thy jealousy behaved towards me like Arundhati of old towards ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... sweetest flowers that deck'd The sunny bank, he gather'd for the maid, Nor she disdain'd the gift; for VICE not yet Had burst the dungeons of her hell, and rear'd Those artificial boundaries that divide Man from his species. State of blessedness! Till that ill-omen'd hour when Cain's stern son Delved in the bowels of the earth for gold, Accursed bane of virtue! of such force As poets feign dwelt in the Gorgon's locks, Which whoso saw, felt instant the life-blood Cold curdle in his veins, the creeping flesh Grew stiff with horror, and the heart forgot ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... to your arms, Nor ever be subdued, but by your charms; May your soft thoughts for him be all sublime, And ev'ry tender vow be made for him; May he be first in ev'ry morning thought, And heav'n ne'er hear a prayer where he's left out; May every omen, every boding dream, Be fortunate by mentioning his name; May this one charm infernal powers affright, And guard you from the terror of the night; May ev'ry cheerful glass as it goes down To William's health, be cordials to your own: Let ev'ry song be chorust with his name, And music ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... with a laugh on my side, and our second with one on yours. I accept the fact as a good omen. Your friend seemed in trouble; allow me to atone for my past misdemeanors by offering my services now. But first let me introduce myself; and as I believe in the fitness of things, let me present you with an appropriate card"; and, stooping, the young man ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the Middle Ages, was falling stone by stone, man by man. The ominous green weed which the sea washes and kisses at the foot of every palace, was in the Prince's eyes, a black fringe hung by nature as an omen of death. ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... The caul is a, thin membrane, about the consistence of very fine silk, which sometimes covers the head on a new-born infant like a cap. It is always the omen of great good fortune to the infant and parents; and in Ireland, when any one has unexpectedly fallen into the receipt of property, or any other temporal good, it is customary to say, "such a person was born with a 'lucky caul' on ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... was generally of an excellent soil, well watered and fit for all purposes of cultivation, with partial exceptions of stony and brushy ridges. Many hills and elevated flats were entirely clear of timber, and the whole had a very picturesque and park-like appearance. I hailed Erskine River as a good omen of ultimate success: it was the first stream we had met with falling from the eastward, and was a proof to me that the Macquarie was the natural reservoir or channel for the waters from the north-east, as I knew ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... sunshine came into the room. "Look! how bright and propitious for our plans. Dear Ruth, it seems like an omen ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and again ventured out into his presence—he even changed the position of his feet to give them scope. That same kindly eye, one glance of which we all loved so much to catch in after-life, beamed only the more warmly as the creatures frisked in greater confidence around him. It was to me an omen for good. He who could enjoy thus the innocent gamble of these guinea-pigs could not fail to be accessible for good when occasion required. It was the first flush of that largeness of heart which afterwards appeared in all I ever heard ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... burnt in many farm-houses and kitchens in England, particularly in the north, and there are several superstitions connected with it among the peasantry. If a squinting person come to the house while it is burning, or a person barefooted, it is considered an ill omen. The brand remaining from the Yule-clog is carefully put away to light ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... time "coortin" one another, "the bachelor," which in Ireland means a suitor, generally contrives to bring his friends and those of, his sweetheart together. The very fact of their accepting the "thrate," on either side, or both, is a good omen, and considered tantamount to a mutual consent of their respective connections. This, however, is not always so; for it often happens that a match is broken off after many a friendly compotation has been held "upon the head of it," which means upon that subject. Let the reader ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... he would quietly take one by the arm and lead him into the thickest of the enemy's fire, as calmly as though he were taking him in to dinner. Once, when his men wavered under a hail of bullets, Gordon coolly lighted his cigar, and waved his magic wand; his soldiers accepted the omen, came on with a rush, and stormed the defense. He was wounded once only, by a shot in the leg, but even then he stood giving his orders till he nearly fainted, and had ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the highest point of the roof, and here Balbi contrived to lose his hat, which rolled down the roof, failed to lodge in the gutter, and fell into the canal below. The poor fellow grew desperate, and said it was a bad omen. Casanova soothed him, and left him seated where he was, while he himself went to investigate, his faithful tool ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... around, And high of soul, receive each fatal wound: 40 Dragg'd from his throne, and hurry'd o'er the plain, The wretched monarch swells the captive train; With iron grasp, the frantic prince they bear, And bless the omen ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... is, as it were, opening before us, and when we celebrate the birth of that divine and blessed Teacher, who took the highest knowledge into the humblest places, and whose great system comprehended all mankind. I hail it as a most auspicious omen, at this time of the year, when many scattered friends and families are re-assembled, for the members of this institution to be calling men together from all quarters, with a brotherly view to the general good, and a view to the general improvement; as I consider that such designs are practically ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... last is scarcely heard, pausing a moment or two betwixt every note, and you will have some idea of the moaning of the goatsucker of Demerara. You will never persuade the native to let fly his arrow at these birds. They are creatures of omen and of reverential dread. They are the receptacles of departed souls come back to earth, unable to rest for crimes done ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... and St. Paul, there is sufficient depth of water close to the shore to admit of landing by means of a plank only. This proximity led a pair of swallows to mistake our frigate for a building upon terra-firma, and to the infinite delight of the sailors, who regarded it as a lucky omen, they deliberately built themselves a nest close to my cabin. Undisturbed by the noise in the ship, the loving pair hatched their brood in safety, fed their young ones with the tenderest care, and cheered them with joyous songs. But when on ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... equally ardent advocates of Reform, join the cry on foot. The frightened geese with coroneted heads represent, of course, the peers, who had offered such determined opposition to the measure, while the old apple woman rolling in the mud is no other than poor Lord Eldon. The bird of ill-omen foretelling disaster is Mr. Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty. Later on the same year (1832), we find his Majesty represented as Mazeppa bound to the grey steed Reform, several of the Conservative members of either houses of Parliament doing duty ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... a very odd dream last night, and take it as an ill omen, for I don't expect that the book will meet a better fate. I thought I had one of the proofs of the new poems from London, and after looking at it awhile it shrank through my hands like sand, and crumbled into dust. The birds were singing in Oxey Wood at six o'clock this evening as loud ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... they were, behind the row of books. After a minute or two the Medium looked up and said, 'I don't know whether I can get any communication from this Spirit,' a remark which a long experience with Slate-Writing Mediums has taught me to regard as a highly favorable omen, and as an indication that they have read the question and are now about to begin the little game, in which I always take much interest, of experiencing great difficulty in obtaining the 'rapport,' as they ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... accosted him and said, "O my lord, ask a blessing for me." Said the Shaykh, "O my son, may our Lord suffice thee against all would work thee woe and may He ever forefend thee from thy foe."[FN565] And the youth was gladdened by the good omen of the Shaykh's words. But when the Sultan had sought his Harem he said, "By Allah, he who hath wedded the damsel is a beautiful youth: oh the pity of it that he should die! Indeed I dissuaded him, saying so-and-so shall ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... wiped away. Each party carefully ascertained that it could not proceed from any of the individuals present; and the phenomenon was so frequently repeated that Henry, as he averred, at once amazed and disturbed, declined to persevere in the pastime, considering the circumstance as an evil omen.[154] Whatever may be the opinion of the reader as to the actual cause of this apparent prodigy, it is at least certain that it was verified by subsequent events, as well as the extraordinary and multiplied prophecy that the King himself ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... purpose of negotiating a lease. As he sauntered through the dusky labyrinth of the great market, thinking how to achieve a rapid success, he suddenly came, in the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, upon a rare chance, and one of good omen, with which he resolved to regale Cesar on the morrow. Soon after, while standing about the door of the Hotel du Commerce, at the end of the Rue des Deux-Ecus, about midnight, he heard, in the far distance of the Rue de Grenelle, a vaudeville chorus sung by Gaudissart, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... he went to his shop, which stood near the house, and worked until dusky evening released him from labor. A light shining through the little chamber windows was the first object that attracted Joe's attention on turning towards the house: it was a good omen. The path led him by this windows and, when opposite, he could not help pausing to look in. It was now dark enough outside to screen him from observation. Maggie lay, a little raised on the pillow with the lamp ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... what is called sharp or lively. He was always gentle, peaceful, taciturn, never saying a word, and never playing at any of those little pastimes that we call children's games. It was found most difficult to teach him to read, and he was nine years old before he knew his letters. A good omen, I used to say to myself; trees slow of growth bear the best fruit. We engrave on marble with much more difficulty than on sand, but the result is more lasting; and that dulness of apprehension, that heaviness of imagination, is a mark ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... than any one can tell you. He went straight on, and carried off our twelve bullets. Captain Fomitch here, and in fact all my officers, are ready to swear that the deer is enchanted, and they have all been crossing themselves against the evil omen. Such a thing was never heard of before, for being such crack shots, all of us, of course there can be no doubt about our each having hit the stag when it was not more than a hundred yards away at the outside; but come in, ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... thus immersed in pleasure and in repose, it was reported to him, one morning, that the preceding night, a disastrous omen had been discovered, and that bats and hideous birds had drunk up the oil which nourished the perpetual lamp in the temple of Odin. About the same time, a messenger arrived to tell him, that the king of Norway ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... spun rapidly round, fearful sounds filled the building, thousands of ravens and birds of ill omen croaked loudly and flapped their wings, and all the doors opened with ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... remote antiquity, and the wild and lonely Goonhilly Downs, that formed the centre of the promontory, as dreary a spot as could well be imagined, had a legend of a phantom ship that glided over them in the dusk or moonlight, and woe betide the mariners who happened to see it, for it was a certain omen of evil! ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... sitting up—almost a panic is created in our street by a screaming of cats;—and long after the creatures have been hunted out of sight and hearing, everybody who has a relative ill with the prevailing malady continues to discuss the omen with terror. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... enormous and excessive masses of archive were brought into play. The Italian Revolution opened tempting horizons. In 1864 Doellinger spent his vacation in the libraries of Vienna and Venice. At Vienna, by an auspicious omen, Sickel, who was not yet known to Greater Germany as the first of its mediaeval palaeographers, showed him the sheets of a work containing 247 Carolingian acts unknown to Boehmer, who had just died with the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... excitement throughout Europe as well as France, at the courts of Madrid and Rome as well as in the park of Plessis-les-Tours. A very serious blow for Philip II., and a very bad omen for the future of his policy, was this alliance between Henry de Valois and Henry of Navarre, between a great portion of the Catholics of France and the Protestants. Philip II. had plumed himself upon being the patron of absolute power in religious as well as ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... part upon cocoa-nuts, which served me both for meat and drink. On the eighth day I came near the sea, and saw some white people like myself, gathering pepper, of which there was great plenty in that place. This I took to be a good omen, and went to them ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... auction. But Tonsor, the lucky agent, kept his counsel. Daily he attended the sales at the Board, with apparently exhaustless resources, bearing pitilessly, triumphantly, until the unlucky bulls came to think the sight of his face was an ill omen. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... fallen, and was surrounded as soon as he appeared. Keeping silence, and turning his eyes on all sides, he fixed them for a moment on Blecourt, then looked in another direction, as if seeking some one else. Blecourt interpreted this action as a bad omen. The Duc d'Abrantes feigning at last to discover the Count d'Harrach, assumed a gratified look, flew to him, embraced him, and said aloud in Spanish, "Sir, it is with much pleasure;" then pausing, as though to embrace him better, he added: "Yes, sir, it is with an extreme ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... beyond the telegraph, at the mouth of the Oby River,—because it occurred to me, that, under the catalogue rules of Panizzi and the lamented Jewett, we should be indexed and catalogued at "Few." I did not think that a good omen. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... to yourself the form and fashion of your sweet and cheerful country from Thames to Trent, north and south, and from the Irish to the German Sea, east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert the omen of our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation. Extend your imagination a little further, and then suppose your ministers taking a survey of this scene of waste and desolation. What would be your thoughts, if you should ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that. But she couldn't, you know, even though she was held up. Mother couldn't help thinking the scene was a good omen, though.' They both look at the ceiling again. ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... burning of a huge log, which had to last through the night, otherwise it was considered a very bad omen indeed. The charred remains of this log were carefully collected, and treasured up for the purpose of setting fire to the log ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... went on warming myself, and I thought, 'Won't he soon go to bed now?' for, to tell you the truth, I was overcome with fatigue. All these details, Fritz, are still present in my memory. Scarcely had the bird of ill omen croaked its unearthly cry when the old clock struck eleven. At that moment the count turns on his heel—he listens, his lips tremble, I can see him staggering like a drunken man. He stretches out his hands, his jaws ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... with Benjamin Franklin, the first great American, the first man born on this side of the water who was "meant for the universe." His mere existence was a sort of omen. It was absurd to suppose that a people which could produce a man of that scope, in character and intellect, could long remain in a condition of political dependence. It would have been preposterous to have had Franklin die a ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... impurities remain upon the surface, the putrid matter will sink to the bottom (sputum fundum petens), and the indications are fatal. Likewise sharpness of the nose, hollow eyes, slender nails, falling hair, flattened temples and diarrhoea are of evil omen. These patients converse while dying, and die conversing (moriendo loquentur, sed loquendo moriuntur). Gilbert, of course, supplies a formidable array of remedies for the disease, but tells us that the "very latest" is cauterization over the clavicles (Novissimum autem consilium ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... distressed at this news, looking on it as a kind of omen of misfortunes to come, was often heard to murmur in querulous tones, "that he had gained nothing except the fate of dying amid greater trouble ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... greatly fancied and some of the best judges looked to him to win the Blue Riband for Lord GLANELY. The fact that Lord GLANELY drew his own horse in the Baltic Sweep was not to be sneezed at either, said some one. That's an omen if there ever was one! And it knocked out Lord ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... son," said the archbishop to this bird of ill-omen; "thou speakest unwisely. 'Tis not for us to adjudge the displeasure of Heaven upon slight testimonies. He trieth our faith, when the dark cloud overshadoweth His mercy. But let us not dishonour this good cause, and weaken our hands by indulging ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Lansdowne. There, he gently detained her, and explained, how that ancient salute of welcome to the guest and the stranger, when uttered by her lips, had thrilled his heart; how it had been treasured there as an omen of good for the future, and how the memory of it now emboldened him to speak the words he was about to utter. There, within sight of Vesuvius and with the fiery memories of Miramichi hanging upon the hour, he renewed the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... and putting other things aside, I am almost as much interested in your affairs as you are yourself," she said with determination. "I cannot bear this sort of thing any longer. I see that abominable man, Mr. Quest, continually hovering about here like a bird of ill-omen, and I cannot bear it; and I tell you what it is, father, if you don't tell me the whole truth at once I shall cry," and she looked as though ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... ago, the appearance of so large a comet as is now interesting the astronomical world, almost contemporaneously with our victory in Egypt, would have been looked upon as an omen of great portent, and it is a curious coincidence that the first glimpse Sir Garnet Wolseley had of this erratic luminary was when standing, on the eventful morning of September 13, 1882, watch in hand, before the intrenchments of Tel-el-Kebir, waiting to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... entreat him to come to-morrow or next day, for perhaps I have not many days or hours to live. I want to ask a favour of him, if I find myself worse, that I shall beg of you if in this wrestling I come off conqueror. My spirits are fled. It is a bad omen; do not weep, my dear lady. Your tears are too precious to be shed for me. Bottle them up, and may the cork never be drawn. Dearest, kindest, gentlest, and best of women! may health, peace, and happiness prove your handmaids. If I die, cherish the remembrance of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... those they have to deal with? The terms, as against us, must be such as imply a full security against a treacherous conduct,—that is, such terms as this Directory stated in its first declaration, to place us "in an utter impossibility of executing our wretched projects." This is the omen, and the sole omen, under which we have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Haq and Mir Hussein Ali and many men and servants, among whom was the body-servant, the boy Moussa Isa Somali, he set forth, a little depressed that we heard not the cry of the partridge in the fields of Mekran Kot as we started—not exactly a bad omen, but lacking a good one. And sure enough, ere we won to Kot Ghazi, his eyes became red and inflamed, very sore and painful to use. So, he put the tail of his puggri[23] about his face and rode all ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... events, I'll try my luck in the same way, and see whether I am to be in jail: I shall take the blue pigeon as my bad omen, as ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... parasitic bee] in the form of a highly colored pupa, or even in that of the full grown insect. The Osmia, still more precocious, though dating from the same period, shows herself exclusively in the adult form, a bad omen for my investigations, for what the Anthrax demands is the larva and not the perfect insect. The fly's grub doubles my apprehensions. Its development is complete, the larva on which it feeds is consumed, perhaps several weeks ago. I no longer doubt but that I have come too late to see what happens ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... our horses into the woods, which were very thick at that point, and tied them. My beast, however, lay down and rolled, saddle and all, thus breaking my mirror—a most unlucky omen—and the bottle of olive oil which we had brought along for mayonnaise dressing. Tish is fond of mayonnaise, and, besides, considers olive oil most strengthening. However, it was gone, and although Aggie comforted me by suggesting ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... movement, and the open air fan the flame. They had muttered a word to one another, they had wondered, they had reasoned. And though the silence of their guards—from whose sour vigilance the keenest question drew no response—seemed of ill-omen, and, taken with their knowledge of the man into whose hands they had fallen, should have quenched the spark, these two, having special reasons, the one the buoyancy of youth, the other the faith of an enthusiast, cherished the flame. In the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the pagans maintaining themselves in the temple-fortress. In the dead of night, Olympius, it is said, was awe-stricken by the sound of a clear voice chanting among the arches and pillars the Christian Alleluia. Either accepting, like a heathen, the omen, or fearing a secret assassin, he escaped from the temple and fled for his life. On the arrival of the rescript of Theodosius the pagans laid down their arms, little expecting the orders of the emperor. He enjoined that the building should forthwith be destroyed, intrusting ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... much engrossed with her own affairs during her only visit to Miss Thomson to observe Peggy's birds, but she drew a good omen form the coincidence of Miss Thomson's assistance being given so frankly to two women both in distress ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... taking his station before the tribe, and drawing his blanket over his face, in expectation of the fatal shot, the Chief stepped forward and presented some water to him, as a token of pardon, when he was permitted again to join the party. They consider it also as a very bad omen in common with the Tartars, to cut a stick that has been burnt by fire, and with them they consign every thing to destruction, though it be their canoe, as polluted, if it be sprinkled with the water of animals. And it is a remarkable fact, that the laws of separation ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... Elector, and the answer was invariably a shrug of the shoulders, and "I will give you an answer presently, but—I have not yet made up my mind." My kind friends here quite agree with me in thinking that this hesitation and reserve are rather a favorable omen than the reverse. For if the Elector was resolved not to engage me, he would have said so at once; so I attribute the delay to Denari siamo un poco scrocconi [we are a little stingy of our money]. Besides, I know for certain that the Prince likes me; a buon canto, so we must wait. ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... at the smouldering fire, a slender spire of flame shot up from the log that had blazed so cheerily, and shone upon her as she went. A good omen, gratefully accepted then, and remembered often in the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... his tea presages an unlooked-for visitor, and the guttering of a candle is a sign of impending death. All this he believes firmly, and acts upon, although he would candidly acknowledge his inability to explain the principle supposed to underlie the sequence between the omen and its fulfilment. It is the irrationality of the belief that constitutes its superstitious character, the contented acquiescence in some inconceivable and impossible law, whether physical or metaphysical, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... certain old oracular answer, that it was always the privilege of the family of the Scipios to conquer in Libya, either to show his contempt of Scipio as a general by a kind of joke, or because he really wished to have the benefit of the omen himself (it is difficult to say which), he used to place this Sallutio in the front of the battles as if he were the leader of the army; for Caesar was often compelled to engage with the enemy and to seek a battle, there being ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... the inspired air rushing into and distending the air vesicles. When the lungs are perfectly healthy, these are breezy and almost musical. During the pre-tubercular stage they become drier and harsher; qualities of evil omen that continue to increase as time passes, if properly directed means be not adopted to correct the evil; but so far none of the symptoms that indicate the slightest deposit of tubercle can be detected, but the breathing capacity of such persons is never up to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... entangled mass of rotting cones and branches, with its little tail cocked upwards. The cheucau is held in superstitious fear by the Chilotans, on account of its strange and varied cries. There are three very distinct cries: One is called "chiduco," and is an omen of good; another, "huitreu," which is extremely unfavourable; and a third, which I have forgotten. These words are given in imitation of the noises; and the natives are in some things absolutely governed by them. The Chilotans ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... no more fitting time," replied Professor Valeyon. The old gentleman's heart was full; he shifted the reins to his right hand, and laid his left upon Bressant's, which he pressed with much feeling. Perhaps it was of bad omen thus to seal a bargain with the left hand, but no misgivings of the sort troubled the professor. He felt more at ease than at any time since his pupil first sprang up the steps of ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... "we are not a party of terrified old women to shiver on the edge of a worn-out omen! Fill your glasses, signori! More wine, garcon! Per bacco! if Judas Iscariot himself had such a feast as ours before he hanged himself, he was not much to be pitied! Hola amici! To the health of our ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the ribs being constituted by the corselet and its back-piece. The shield represented an owl with its wings spread, a device which was repeated upon the helmet, which appeared to be completely covered by an image of the same bird of ill omen. But that which was particularly calculated to excite surprise in the spectator, was the great height and thinness of the figure, which, as it arose from the ground, and placed itself in an erect posture, seemed rather to resemble an apparition ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... have not sent for you that you should grow presumptuous, because I was unmaidenly enough to dream of so badly behaved a person as yourself. It—it was because it—I thought you should know, so that the omen might be expiated." ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... what opprobrium I heap upon you—you, the most pointless things imaginable, saucy apes, brewers of odious contrasts, haunting birds of ill omen, mocking echoes, unseasonable reminders, oft-returning vexations, skeletons in my morris-chair, jesters in the tomb, death's-heads at the wedding feast, outlaws of the brain that every night defy the mind's police service, thieves of my Hesperidean ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... catching a parting glimpse of her retreating form, but the ivy-encircled cleft, through which she seemed to have flitted, looked as though it had not been disturbed for centuries, and as he tried to force his way to the gloomy cavern below, a crowd of bats and owls and other foul birds of evil omen, aroused from their repose, rose upwards, and, amidst dismal hootings and fearful cries, almost flung him backward with the violence of their flight. He spent the remainder of the afternoon in search of the lost one, but without success. At the ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... cried aloud, in rapture. It was her wedding day; a year ago the sun had shone as warmly and benignantly as he was shining now, and the same haze had risen, like an exhalation, from the hills. She saw a special omen in it, and felt herself the child of happy fortune, to be so mothered by the great blue sky. Then she ran in to give David his breakfast, and tell him, as they sat down, that it was their wedding morning. As she went, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... hand and eye, uprose in his stirrups and clove Bohun's helmet, the axe breaking in that stroke. It was a desperate but a winning blow: Bruce's spears advanced, and the English van withdrew in half superstitious fear of the omen. His lords ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... had to think of was the matter of the men whom I had seen condemned yesterday; and even of that I did not know much more than of the packet. His Majesty had not spoken of them, except to ask questions at the beginning; and this seemed as a bad omen to me. Yet I had the King's word on it that they should not suffer; and, when I considered, there was no obligation or even any reason at all that he should talk out the matter with myself. Yet, though I presently put this affair too from my mind, since I had no certain ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... drifting vapor, furnishing a lurid gleam of brightness to the dull aspect of the heavens. Within the bosom of the encircling hills, an impenetrable darkness had already settled; and the plain lay like a vast and deserted charnel-house, without omen or whisper to disturb the slumbers of its numerous and ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... bitterly, after comforting his uncle as well as his very moderate acquaintance with the law permitted, of anything like intimacy between himself and the girl whose face had fascinated him so strangely, it was gone now: that bird of evil omen had baulked his hopes as effectually as its ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... O'Donoghue has been cherished by successive generations with affectionate reverence; and it is believed that at sunrise, on every May-day morning, the anniversary of his departure, he revisits his ancient domains: a favoured few only are in general permitted to see him, and this distinction is always an omen of good fortune to the beholders; when it is granted to many it is a sure token of an abundant harvest—a blessing, the want of which during this prince's reign was never felt ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... perceptible features will give to this imaginary object an air of greater reality. I would go so far as to give her a name; I would say, smiling. Let us call your future mistress Sophy; Sophy is a name of good omen; if it is not the name of the lady of your choice at least she will be worthy of the name; we may honour her with it meanwhile. If after all these details, without affirming or denying, we excuse ourselves from giving an answer, his suspicions will become certainty; ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... came I into a certain field Where the devil's paint-brush spread 'Mid the gray and green of the rolling hills A flaring splotch of red,— An evil omen, a bloody sign, And a ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... the man, holding it out. "And," he added, speaking words of evil omen in his master's ears, "the person waits for ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... but another body of cavalry, riding at equal speed, though at a great distance behind. The three people from New York as yet neither saw nor heard anything of these horsemen dashing down from the north. Yet the major's spirits sank lower and lower, as if he had an omen of ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... American mind that no power could possibly dislodge it. In accordance with this suddenly acquired respect, it was decided to move the huge bulk to the more conspicuous location of the Town Square. When it was lifted from its prehistoric bed, it broke, and this was hailed as a propitious omen of the coming separation of the Colonies from the mother country. Only the upper half was dragged up to the Town Square—a process which took twenty yoke of oxen and was accompanied by wild huzzahing. ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... tail cocked upwards. The cheucau is held in superstitious fear by the Chilotans, on account of its strange and varied cries. There are three very distinct cries: One is called "chiduco," and is an omen of good; another, "huitreu," which is extremely unfavourable; and a third, which I have forgotten. These words are given in imitation of the noises; and the natives are in some things absolutely governed by them. The Chilotans assuredly have chosen a ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... distress, she had come to be self-appointed nurse to the whole neighbourhood. She was always due at the house of affliction and, with her kindly heart and a certain skill in nursing, she proved a sort of melancholy blessing. Her predilection for disaster caused her to be regarded as a bird of ill-omen, for where Mrs. Fraser was, there would calamities be gathered together, and to see her issue from the big gate on the brow of the south hill with her ominous-looking black bag was sufficient to raise apprehension in every heart. Indeed, Mrs. Duffy, ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... market-place as if seeking for a habitation, and at last turning back, struck directly down among the ruins of the former kitchen fireplace; it seemed as if it had selected the hearth for its abiding home. This was regarded as the happiest omen, and no sooner had the Judge conducted his daughter home, than he returned in order to remove his bees to a convenient resting-place; Gabriele following him with Baron L——'s treatise on the management of ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... a woman!" cried the captain, and stamped with fury. "Not without reason have I been trembling and in fear of her from the first time I saw her! It must have been a warning of fate that I stopped playing ecarte with her. It was also a bad omen that I passed so many sleepless nights. Was there ever mortal in a worse perplexity than I am? How can I leave her alone without a protector, loving her, as I do, more than my own life? And, on the other hand, how can I marry her, after all ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... wanted to deliver it personally. However, it is all the same now, I suppose, whether I send it or not. I always knew that our destinies would lie apart, though she was once temporarily under a cloud. Her momentary inspiration to write that "Cancelled Words" was the worst possible omen for me. It showed that, thinking me no longer useful as a practical chance, she would make me ornamental as a poetical regret. But I'll send the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... great joy: silent on the part of Mrs. Dodd and Julia; but Mr. Hardie, who saw in this a good omen, Heaven recognising his penitence, burst out: "She knows me; she speaks; she will live. How good God is! Yes, my darling child, it is your own father. You will be brave and get well, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... church is built on rising ground, and set round by trees in which rooks have built; clamorous and noisy, they fly round and round the old grey tower morning and evening. When the October gales are tossing the trees, and the rain-clouds are gathering on the hills their cawing has a sound of ill-omen, which makes them seem the unresting and malignant spirits of those fierce lords of the Dark ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... found in other newspapers, and indeed it went about Great Britain later and found its way to the Colonies. "An Oriental Omen" it was headed, and Madame's only regret appeared to be that it could not be held to be distinguished by the quality of absolute truth. But there it stood in print, and there was the name of Hilbert and Co., the ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... 4th of August; she had become a low fellow's mistress on the 4th of August. On the same day of the year she had married me; on that 4th she had lost Edward's love, and Bagshawe had appeared like a sinister omen—like a grin on the face of Fate. It was the last straw. She ran upstairs, arranged herself decoratively upon her bed—she was a sweetly pretty woman with smooth pink and white cheeks, long hair, the eyelashes falling like a tiny curtain on her cheeks. She drank the little phial of ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... that the English—who could not be so numerous as the French forces in the town—had been suffered to make these great works unmolested, he could only reply with a shake of the head, and with words of evil omen. ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... depends upon attention to what are called trifles—nay, how much both human taste and human happiness are promoted by care regarding trifles, they will not appear unimportant. The existence of schools to teach library science, and of manuals devoted to similar laudable aims, is an auspicious omen of the new reign of refined taste in those nobler arts of life which connect themselves with literature, and are to be hailed as authentic evidences of the onward ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... a mystery indeed," said my uncle, bending his brows over the note. "What should he be doing at that house of ill-omen? And why does he sign himself 'him whom you knew as Jim Harrison?' By what other style should I know him? Harrison, you can throw a light upon this. You, Mrs. Harrison; I see by your face ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... [146] "Evil Omen," a nickname applied by the friars to General Joaquin Jovellar, who was governor of the Islands from 1883 to 1885. It fell to the lot of General Jovellar, a kindly old man, much more soldier than administrator, to attempt the introduction of certain salutary reforms tending toward progress, hence ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the baby business. In the region dominated by the Forminiere it is no infrequent thing to see three or four children in a household. A woman who bears twins is not only hailed as a real benefactress but the village looks upon the occasion as a good omen. This is in direct contrast with the state of mind in East Africa, for example, where one twin is ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Carunculatus). This is a beautiful black bird with a chestnut band across the back and wings; it has also a fleshy lappet on either side of the head. The tieki is considered a bird of omen: if one flies on the right side it is a good sign; if on the left, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Douglas badge is indeed a heart—but it is a bleeding heart. God avert the omen, and keep this young man safe—for though many love him, there be more that ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... essential that the head should be severed with one blow. As soon as the head was cut off there was a rush on the part of the sacrificers to see in which direction the head faced. If the head faced towards the north or west, it was considered an evil omen; if it faced towards the south or east, a good omen. The east is a lucky quarter amongst the Assamese also. The people ended up the proceedings by giving a long-drawn-out, deep-toned chant, or kynhoi. Immediately after the ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... through the current noiselessly; but when he had come within forty feet of the rowboat its lone occupant had turned suddenly, as though scenting danger, and Joe, after waiting for a few seconds to see what might happen, considered the absolute silence an omen of danger and had dived under water, staying there as long as he could, and coming to the surface at an entirely ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... "As I recall it, all that went on that list was the names of people who were slated to have their heads chopped off by Ko-Ko. Better watch your step, Shorty. It may be a back-handed omen. Maybe all those workers you're puttin' ticklers on to pump them full of adrenaline so they'll overwork without noticin' it will revolt and come out some day choppin' for ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... planted in a big South Sea plantation run by ex-English officers - A LA Stewart's plantation in Tahiti. There is a strong undercurrent of labour trade, which gives it a kind of Uncle Tom flavour, ABSIT OMEN! The first start is hard; it is hard to avoid a little tedium here, but I think by beginning with the arrival of the three Miss Scarlets hot from school and society in England, I may manage to slide in the information. The problem is exactly a Balzac one, and I wish I ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pleasure to themselves or to others. Consequently every golfer, no matter whether he accepts the hypothesis of Spencer or that of Weismann concerning the inheritance of acquired characteristics, should rejoice to see his large family in the links as a good omen for the future of this game, although there be some other reasons that also justify ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... fear," answered Lord Ulswater, with a slight smile, "that we can deduce no omen either from the cloud or the star: would, indeed, that Nature were more visibly knit with our individual existence! Would that in the heavens there were a book, and in the waves a voice, and on the earth a token of the mysteries ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... design'd to take. The old Captain I intended to take along with me to be my Guide as well as Adviser; for I saw so many Perfections in him, which the ungrateful World had neglected, That I judg'd it would be an honourable Omen in one that was beginning the World, not to let him leave the Stage of Life unrewarded: But as his Years had render'd him incapable to attend me in my Rambles, so Death came in to release him, and this worthy Person was taken from ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... after refused to go farther, and he was forced to renounce the prize. On his way back he doubled the Cape, which, from his former experience, he called the Cape Tempestuous, until the king, showing that he understood, gave it a name of better omen. Nevertheless, Portugal did no more for ten years, the years that were made memorable by Spain. Then, under a new king, Emmanuel the Fortunate, Vasco da Gama went out to complete the unfinished work of Diaz, lest Columbus, fulfilling the prophecy of Toscanelli, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... to surrender, and it yielded without firing a shot. The Tory Colonel Rugely and 112 men whom he had collected in the place were made prisoners. This inconsiderable event elated Greene's army and was considered by them as a good omen of success ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... to the fortune-teller must have transpired, for Louvois had considered her arrest as an ill-omen for the Countess de Soissons. Not only for Olympia, however, was the arrest of Catherine a calamity, for she was the trusty counsellor of many a noble lady who, before suspicion had sullied her name, had been the dear and intimate associate of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... divisions; and the great room was lighted only with a single taper and the shining of the fire. Close in the chimney sat two men. The one that was wrapped in a cloak and wore boots, I knew at once: it was the bird of ill omen back again. Of the other, who was set close to the red embers, and made up into a bundle like a mummy, I could but see that he was an alien, of a darker hue than any man of Europe, very frailly built, with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by their flight."(1) Another method of augury was performed by the feeding of chickens specially kept for this purpose. This was done just before sunrise by the pullarius or feeder, strict silence being observed. If the birds manifested no desire for their food, the omen was of a most direful nature. On the other hand, if from the greediness of the chickens the grain fell from their beaks and rebounded from the ground, the augury was most favourable. This latter augury was known as tripudium solistimum. "Any fraud practiced by the 'pullarius'," writes the Rev. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... the legend which connects every misfortune of the House of Habsburg with the appearance of this bird of ill omen: the flight of ravens at Olmuetz, the raven of the ill-fated Maximilian at Miramar, the raven of the Archduchess Maria Christina on the eve of her departure for her future kingdom of Spain, the raven which came to the Empress Elizabeth on the afternoon before the day of her assassination,—all ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... diaphragm, and hiccup is often persistent. There is at first retention of urine, followed by dribbling from overflow, and sugar is sometimes found in the urine. Priapism is common. The pulse is slow (40 to 50) and full; and the temperature often rises very high—a symptom which is always of grave omen. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... omen. And yet as Head-nurse said proudly when they got back to the rooms that had been given them in a frowning bastion of the palace, Baby Akbar had once more ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... Raven from a wither'd oak, Left of their lodging, was observed to croak. That omen liked him not; so his advice Was present safety, bought at any price; A seeming pious care, that cover'd cowardice. To strengthen this, he told a boding dream 480 Of rising waters, and a troubled stream, Sure signs of anguish, dangers, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the mantel for support. Fongereues had heard Arthur utter the name of Fanfar, and shuddered at the ill-omen. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... Mariette, Madame du Coudrai, Madame du Ronceret, and through them the whole town, remarked that Madame du Bousquier entered the church /with her left foot/,—an omen all the more dreadful because the term Left was beginning to acquire a political meaning. The priest whose duty it was to read the opening formula opened his book by chance at the De Profundis. ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... former by the ear, the latter by the eye. If, however, these observations have for their object men's words uttered unintentionally, which someone twist so as to apply to the future that he wishes to foreknow, then it is called an "omen": and as Valerius Maximus [*De Dict. Fact. Memor. i, 5] remarks, "the observing of omens has a touch of religion mingled with it, for it is believed to be founded not on a chance movement, but on divine providence. It was thus that when the Romans were deliberating whether they ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Goruinuich, the many-headed Snake, who in Russian storyland is represented as the type of all that is evil. But in the actual Russia of to-day, snakes bear by no means so bad a character. Their presence in a cottage is considered a good omen by the peasants, who leave out milk for them to drink, and who think that to kill such visitors would be a terrible sin.[140] This is probably a result of some remembrance of a religious cultus paid to the household gods under the form of snakes, such as existed of old, according ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... themselves have not only judged unlawful, but (to express it in their own terms) to be no less than a Mortal Sin, should ever be heard of. Were it not that the coming of Christ to judge the Earth draweth near, I should think that such Practices are an unhappy Omen that the Devil and Pagans will get these dark Territories into their Possession again: But that I may not be thought to have no reason for my calling the impleaded Experiment into Question, I have these things further ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... the Lord Scales, in a somewhat affected intonation of voice, "the conjunction of the bear and the young lion is a parlous omen, for the which I could much desire we had a wise ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his strong names, (their term for titles of honour,) and sing songs in his praise. These scenes are likewise enlivened by a number of people engaged in a savage dance round the scaffolds; should the foot of one of these performers slip, it is considered an ill omen; the unfortunate figurante is taken out of the ring, and his head instantly struck off, whilst the dance continues without interruption, as if nothing ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... highest military science; and where, in the name of all, could Butterfield have acquired it? I am certain Butterfield is not even aware that staff duties are a special science. All this is a very bad omen, very bad, very bad. Literally they laugh at me; now they hurrah for Hooker. May they not cry very soon on account of Hooker's staff. When I warn, Senators and Representatives tell me that I am very difficult to be satisfied. We ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... no longer awaits, with folded arms, the chance for superhuman effort; for he feels that he exists in every act that is human. He no longer requires that death, or friendship, or love should come to him decked out with garlands illusion has woven, or escorted by omen, coincidence, presage; but they come in their bareness and simpleness, and are always sure of his welcome. He believes that all that the weak, and the idle, and thoughtless consider sublime and exceptional, that the fall equivalent for the most heroic deed, can ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... my husband first," she answered coldly, and Larssen took it as an ill omen. He offered her a chair again, and seated himself so ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... Eastern wave, Where now their Day-God's eye A look of such sunny-omen gave As lighted up sea and sky. Nor frown was seen thro' sky or sea, Nor tear o'er leaf or sod, When first on their Isle of Destiny Our great ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... surprise to find, as he gnawed, in the mouth of each fish a piece of silver! Some one had read the story of Saint Peter to a purpose. Young Bach looked in vain for a person to thank, but perceiving no one he took it as the act of God and an omen that his pilgrimage to hear the great organist should ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... is almost as much a matter of good luck as of method.... That potatoes should be planted only during the crescent moon, that near the sea people are born at high tide and die at low tide, that a comet is an omen of danger, that bad luck follows the cracking of a mirror," all these are the results of common-sense observation. Matters of common knowledge are thus not ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... of rhetoric against ascertained fact: mere dogged resistance to cogent argument evidently avails less and less; and the readiness of the more prominent representatives of the older thought to consider opposing arguments, and to acknowledge any force they may have, is certainly of good omen. The concessions made in Lux Mundi regarding scriptural myths and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... "Of ill omen—for a gentleman? Certainly not, Monsieur le Comte," replied Porthos, nobly. "I have simply come to say that you have seriously ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... happened that during the night, when my companions were asleep, the cap fell into the road. The coach, drawn by six vigourous horses, was going at top speed. I did not dare have it stopped and so I lost my cap. A bad omen! But I was to suffer far worse things in the terrible campaign which we were about to undertake. This incident upset me a good deal, but I said nothing about it for fear of being chaffed about the way the new soldier ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... their arms beyond the rampart. That if deceived, they would rather endure any consequence which chance may bring, than show contempt to the Tarentines, the advisers of peace." The consuls said that "they embraced the omen, and prayed that the enemy might continue in the resolution of not even defending their rampart." Then, dividing the forces between them, they advanced to the works; and, making an assault on every side at once, while ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... In England here—they have been as yet, as far as I can see, nothing but blessings: but I have my very serious doubts whether they are likely to be blessings to the whole human race, for many an age to come. I can conceive them—may God avert the omen!—the instruments of a more crushing executive centralisation, of a more utter oppression of the bodies and souls of men, than the world has yet seen. I can conceive—may God avert the omen!—centuries hence, some future world-ruler sitting at the junction of all railroads, at the centre of ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... into the woods, which were very thick at that point, and tied them. My beast, however, lay down and rolled, saddle and all, thus breaking my mirror—a most unlucky omen—and the bottle of olive oil which we had brought along for mayonnaise dressing. Tish is fond of mayonnaise, and, besides, considers olive oil most strengthening. However, it was gone, and although Aggie comforted me by suggesting that her boiled ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... newly-married, if a deer or a gazelle, or a moose-deer utters a cry at night near the house in which the pair are living, it is an omen of ill—they must separate, or the death of one would ensue. This might be a great trial to an European lover; the Dayaks, however, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... breakfasted, A fresh breeze was blowing from the N.E. which took us rapidly down the channel, and our prospects appeared to be as cheering as the day, for just as we were about to push from the shore, a seal rose close to the boat, which we all regarded as a favourable omen. We were, however, shortly stopped by shoals; it was in vain that we beat across the channel from one side to the other; it was a continued shoal, and the deepest water appeared to be under the left bank. The tide, however, had fallen, and exposed broad flats, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... to his feet as if moved by an electric shock. A second shot, and then through the depths of the quarry rang the cry, quivering on the wings of the bird of ill-omen, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... lady, so that he also faced the reporters' gallery behind her. Lincoln amiably glanced over her head, caught sight of an acquaintance among the newspaper men, and winked to him as she made the reference to the so-esteemed omen. Next day he ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... good performance all round. But the night specially memorable as being the first appearance of Miss GRACE DAMIAN on the stage of the Royal Italian Opera anywhere. It is a good omen for her that she appeared in Signor PONCHIELLI's Opera, the composer being a distant connection of the great ancient Italian family of the PONCINELLI, of which Mr. Punch is now the chief universal representative. It is a remarkable fact, too, showing the strong force of canine ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... forbids saying all that the heart prompts of friends.... In November, 1869, a delegate convention was held in Cleveland, Ohio, and a society organized, called the American Woman's Suffrage Society. Its work is yet to be done. The crowning act of 1869, and the one which gave an omen for the year that was approaching, was the enfranchising of the women of Wyoming and Utah. For these acts of justice we are ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... whose rein he now rode, endeavouring to remove her terrors, which, though she uttered no words, were manifestly overpowering,—"singular that the girl should look so glad and fearless, while we are, I believe, all horribly frightened. It is, however, a good omen. When one so timorous as she casts aside fear, there is little reason for ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... who are the most regular attendants, and most qualified to conduct its business. Publicity in its accounts and proceedings is, from the magnitude of its funds, more essential to the Zoological than to any other society; and it is rather a fearful omen, that a check was attempted to be given to such inquiries at the last anniversary meeting. If it is to be a scientific body, the friends of science should not for an instant tolerate ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... him and her beloved princess. She no longer looked upon him as a being of a higher order; but the happiness of the noble pair seemed to her an embodied omen of happiness for Nefert's love—perhaps too for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with unspeakable bravery, appeared in the utmost dangers, and at last was wounded." Marlborough's victories were sneered at, his new palace of Blenheim was said to be not only ill-built, but haunted by signs of evil omen. ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... as the natives supposed it, occurred. Among the presents offered by the king was ajar of honey; this one of the servants upset without breaking the pot. Had it been broken, the omen would have been unfortunate; as it was, the governor was highly pleased, and ordered the poor to be called in to lick up the honey. They rushed in, squabbling among themselves. One old man, having a long beard, came off with ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... regenerate one, whence is this wind? It behoveth thee to tell me everything about the conduct of the Wind.—Hearing this question of Suka, Vyasa became filled with amazement. He answered Suka, by telling him that an omen which indicated that the recitation of the Vedas should be suspended.—'Thou hast obtained spiritual vision. Thy mind too has, of itself, become cleansed of every impurity. Thou hast been freed from the attributes of Passion and Darkness. Thou stayest now in the attributes of Goodness. Thou beholdest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... arousing the same eager excitement among the players and the public. The day which had started bright grew dark; for a long time there were threatenings of a thunder-storm; but none looked on this as an evil omen. All were inclined to cheery views. The courtiers displayed their zeal with all the ardor, the passion, the furia francese, which is a national characteristic, and appears on the battle-field as well as in the ante- chamber. The French fight and flatter ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... whether this was a good or a bad omen, for any one who had taken and refurnished the cottage might have bought the old clock and kept it as ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... broke out amongst the crew, and no port would allow the vessel to enter for fear of contagion, and so she still wanders about the sea with her phantom crew, never to rest, but doomed to be tossed about for ever. She is now a spectral ship, and hovers about the Cape of Good Hope as an omen of bad luck to mariners who are so ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... of the Lord Apollo and forbade him on the pain of a mighty cursing to do reverence to it. Nevertheless he had been wont to doff his cap when he passed it, for he respected a god that lived in the woods instead of a clammy church. Now the sight of the ancient thing seemed an omen. It linked up the past and the present. He waved a greeting to it. "Hail, old friend," he said. "Bid your master be with me, whoever he be, for I go ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, was suddenly transformed into a blooming maid, whom his own hands adorned with all the symbols of imperial greatness. The monarch awoke, interpreted the auspicious omen, and obeyed without hesitation the will of Heaven. The day which gave birth to a city or a colony was celebrated by the Romans with such ceremonies as had been ordained by a generous superstition: and though Constantine might omit some rites which savoured too strongly of their pagan origin, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... for the last time, and was haunted by horrid visions of my child ill and suffering, and the very first thing I met on entering London was a child's coffin and funeral. You can better judge than I can express how this sort of omen affected my imagination; and in this frame of mind I went through our last representation of "The Hunchback," and did not reach home till the white face of the morning was beginning to look down from the ends ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... communicates directly with the heart. So universal is the custom of wearing the wedding ring among Jews and Christians that no married woman is ever seen without her plain gold circlet, and she regards the loss of it as a sinister omen; and many women never remove it. This is, however, foolish, and it should be taken off and put on several times at first, so that any subsequent removal or loss need not ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the queenly Wiwst stood Alone in the moon-lit solitude, And she was silent and he was grave. "And fears not my daughter the evil spirit? The strongest warriors and bravest fear it The burning spears are an evil omen; They threaten the wrath of a wicked woman, Or a treacherous foe; but my warriors brave, When danger nears, or the foe appears, Are a cloud of arrows,—a ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... the attack with only ten horsemen, against whom as many Portuguese were detached, who fired with so much exactness, that nine of the Moors fell, and the tenth with great difficulty made his escape. This omen of good fortune gave the soldiers great encouragement; the action grew hot, and they came at length to a general battle; but the Moors, dismayed by the advantages our men had obtained at first, were half defeated before the fight. The great fire of our muskets and artillery ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... scriptural and historical, rising up between the gushing jets of water. A pretty servant-maid was just filling her pails, and she gave Knud a refreshing draught; and as her hand was full of roses, she gave him one of the flowers, and he accepted it as a good omen. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... ready for our great war." The Birzhevije Viedomosti said all was ready in March. To find Dr. Dillon, an avowed partisan of Russia, in company with a correspondent of Birzhevije Viedomosti, supporting Essad in Durazzo, was a sinister omen. He protested Essad's innocence to me, but had no proof to offer save that Essad was in bed when arrested, and that no documentary evidence was found. The first proved only that the rising was not ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... lay buried. I closed with him. When I went to his solicitor to sign the deeds, I felt a cavern-like chill in the dark office that made me shudder; it was the same cold dampness that had laid hold upon me at the brink of my father's grave. I looked upon this as an evil omen. I seemed to see the shade of my mother, and to hear her voice. What power was it that made my own name ring vaguely in my ears, in spite of the clamor ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... as much as I learned afterwards of what it meant to be "taken up" by Mrs. Minchin, I might not have thought the comparison a good omen for my friendship with Matilda. To be hotly taken up by Mrs. Minchin meant an equally hot quarrel at no very distant date. The squabble with the bride was not slow to come, but Matilda and I fell out first. I think she was tyrannical, and I know I was peevish. My Ayah spoilt me; I spoke ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... still together when word was brought, two hours later that Mabel had fallen into a profound sleep—a good omen, the doctor said. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... call that an omen!" said Carlo, with forced cheerfulness. "This time, princess, I am the fatum which has alarmed you! It is my own fault that this string broke. It was already injured and half broken this evening when I tuned the guitar, but I hoped it would suffice ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Christmas Day. I had got up early in the morning in better spirits than usual. The old women tell you that always presages misfortune, but I was as far then as I am now from making my happiness into an omen of grief. But this time chance made the foolish belief of good effect. I received a letter and a large packet from Paris; they came from Manon. I opened the letter and I thought I should have died of grief ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rash standing out; but most frequently they occur when there is little or no eruption, or when it fades, becomes livid, or disappears altogether. A sudden disappearance of the rash, before the sixth day, commonly increases the typhoid symptoms, and must be considered a bad omen. Also the invasion of the larynx, which is happily of ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... of the year, when a new time is, as it were, opening before us, and when we celebrate the birth of that divine and blessed Teacher, who took the highest knowledge into the humblest places, and whose great system comprehended all mankind. I hail it as a most auspicious omen, at this time of the year, when many scattered friends and families are re-assembled, for the members of this institution to be calling men together from all quarters, with a brotherly view to the general good, and a view to the general ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... him a manifest signal which of those children should come to the government; being very desirous to leave it to his son's son, but still depending upon what God should foreshow concerning them more than upon his own opinion and inclination; so he made this to be the omen, that the government should be left to him who should come to him first the next day. When he had thus resolved within himself, he sent to his grandson's tutor, and ordered him to bring the child to him early in the morning, as supposing that God would permit ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... with good fortune," said the stranger, and went off. Arrived at the market, the cattle-buyer discovered the loss of his purse, and he had to return home to provide himself with other money. He again set forth on his journey, but this time he took another road to avoid the stranger of ill omen. To his amazement he met an old man with whom he had precisely the same adventure as with the first stranger. Again he had to return home to fetch money. By this time had learned his lesson. When a third stranger questioned him about the object of his journey, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... it is over! over! For the winds and the waters surcease; Ah! few were the days of the rover That smiled in the beauty of peace! And distant and dim was the omen That hinted redress or release. From the ravage of life, and its riot What marvel I yearn for the quiet Which bides in the harbor at last? For the lights with their welcoming quiver That through the sanctified ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... today with great crashing waves, then everything grew calm under a golden sunset. I take this as a good omen. I feel happier already. The infinite peace of Nature is quieting my soul. I love the sea. I can almost say ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... perilous emergency to which he was reduced, Oglethorpe took, for the King's service, the merchant ship of twenty guns, called the Success,—a name of auspicious omen,—commanded by Captain Thompson, and manned it from the small vessels which were of no force. He also called in the Highland company from Darien, commanded by Captain McIntosh; the company of rangers; and Captain ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... Riverius tells us, that, according to Hippocrates's Doctrine, Deafness is a very dangerous Symptom in the Beginning of acute Disorders, though it be a good Omen, and portends Health, when it does not appear till the Height of Fevers, especially those of a malignant Kind; and adds, that he himself has a thousand Times observed, that those labouring under this Fever have recovered, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... Parliament (so called as retaining some few rotten members of ye other) being dissolv'd; and for joy whereoff were many thousands of rumps roasted publiqly in ye streets at the bonfires this night, with ringing of bells and universal jubilee. This was the first good omen.' ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... adhesion [60] to what he could accept at all in the philosophy of Aurelius, added a strange pathos to what must seem the writer's mistakes. What, after all, had been the meaning of that incident, observed as so fortunate an omen long since, when the prince, then a little child much younger than was usual, had stood in ceremony among the priests of Mars and flung his crown of flowers with the rest at the sacred image reclining on the Pulvinar? The other crowns ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... appears, with beak, and monstrous eyes; "Spoil'd of his shape, with yellow feathers cloth'd: "Large grows his head; bent are his lengthen'd nails; "Scarcely he moves the pinions which are shot "Light from his lazy arms. A filthy bird "Becoming;—constant presager of woe; "An owl inactive; omen dire to man. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... consulted the omen, but it was not favorable, and they were starting home when the brother-in-law asked Lumawig to create some water, as the people ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... the direction of Hamath, Damascus, and the Phoenician seaboard, towards those countries of Israel and Judah which were nearly coterminous with far-off Egypt. The rapidity of the victories which he had just succeeded in winning at the foot of Mount Taurus and Mount Amanus must have seemed a happy omen of what awaited his enterprise in the valleys of the Orontes and the Jordan. Although the races of southern and central Syria had suffered less than those of the north from the ambition of the Ninevite ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... lighted: her cheery voice sounded like a welcome ringing through his future years. It was a good omen, coming from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... his machine had burst into flames, as the escaping petrol caught fire. Jack considered that a good omen for their side. ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... beareth the name of a female, one no longer capable of taking care of one's self, one who hath only a single son, or one who is a vulgar fellows,—with these I do not like to battle. Hear also, O king, about my resolve formed before. Beholding any inauspicious omen I would never fight. That mighty car-warrior, the son of Drupada, O king, whom thou hast in thy army, who is known by the name of Sikhandin, who is wrathful in battle, brave, and ever victorious, was a female before but subsequently ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... he rode forth, skirting the cliffs, examining every bit of rock which showed the slightest mineral stain. Scarcely a moment of the daylight was wasted in this search. His mysterious guide no longer touched him, and this he took to be a favorable omen. "I'm ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... with men of war, nomads in way of life, and whose civil polity was like our discipline in war-time. Therefore, as one who by God's help shall to-morrow conquer—nay, conquer again if needful (for I would say nothing of bad omen) I commit to thee the care of my children: for it is fitting that thou, their uncle, shouldest carry ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Garibaldi; and thus the watchword originated which will endure written in blood on the Bitter Mount and on the Plain of Nomentum. Who raised it first? Perhaps some humble Sicilian fisherman. Its haunting music coming he knew not whence, sounding in his ear like an omen, was what wedded Garibaldi irrevocably to the undertaking. It was the casting interposition of chance, or, shall it be said, of Providence? Like all men of his mould, Garibaldi was governed by poetry, by romance. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... horrible abyss of torture beneath, such should be the all concentrating anxiety to secure safety that there would be neither time nor taste for any thing else. Every object should seem an altar drenched with sacrificial blood, every sound a knell laden with dolorous omen, every look a propitiatory confession, every breath a pleading prayer. From so single and preternatural a tension of the believer's faculties nothing could allow an instant's cessation except a temporary forgetting or blinking ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... or Sea of Stars,) informed the Princess that it was the usual way, in which the friends of those who had gone on dangerous voyages offered up vows for their safe return. If the lamp sunk immediately, the omen was disastrous; but if it went shining down the stream, and continued to burn till entirely out of sight, the return of the beloved object ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... not strange that the Romans of the age of Leo X. should have been so much terrified at some misinterpreted storms as to require the exhortations of a scholar, who arrayed all the learning on thunder and lightning to prove the omen favourable; beginning with the flash which struck the walls of Velitrae;, and including that which played upon a gate at Florence, and foretold the pontificate of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... in all directions, came running back to me, calling out, "Peace! peace! you will finish all your work in spite of these people, and in spite of everything." Like them, I took it as an omen of good success to crown me yet, thanks to the "Almighty Preserver ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... it Carthage—a name that in the Phoenician and Hebrew languages, [which have a great affinity,] signifies the "New City." It is said that in digging the foundation, a horse's head was found, which was thought to be a good omen, and a presage of the future warlike genius of that people. Carthage had the same language and national character as its parent state—Tyre. It became at length, particularly at the period of the Punic War, one of the most splendid cities in the world, and had under its dominion 300 cities ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... He was always gentle, peaceful, taciturn, never saying a word, and never playing at any of those little pastimes that we call children's games. It was found most difficult to teach him to read, and he was nine years old before he knew his letters. A good omen, I used to say to myself; trees slow of growth bear the best fruit. We engrave on marble with much more difficulty than on sand, but the result is more lasting; and that dulness of apprehension, that heaviness of imagination, is a mark of a sound judgment in the future. ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... of unity in England which made the Norman Conquest possible. If Harold's own brother, Tostig, had not turned traitorously against him, or if the north country had stood squarely by the south, Duke William might have found his fall on the beach an omen full ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... great throb and then grew still, for Edith had stumbled upon the very thing uppermost in his mind. What made her? Surely, there was a Providence in it. 'Twas an omen of good, boding success to his suit, and after a moment ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... communicated to us by the indisputable authority of one of the bride's-maids, that Miss Walsingham, as it was discovered after the ceremony, was actually married with her gown the wrong side outwards. Whether this be an omen announcing good fortune to all the parties concerned, we cannot take upon us to determine; but this much we may safely assert, that never distinguished female in the annals of fashion was married under more favourable auspices than the amiable Lady Hunter. And it is universally ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was 'a sign' that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... by me with baby all the evening. I couldn't believe they were all Virginians, and fighting against each other too. The next morning was clear and sunny. Jinny came in, and opened the window, and said, 'Isn't such a clear day a good omen?' But I hadn't courage to laugh with her, I was so tired; I had to lie still on a settee there was there. Captain Williams came in, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... ill, with what superstitious people would think a bad omen. My mistress remained late in her room in the morning, amusing herself by looking over her clothes, and by setting to rights some drawers in her cabinet which she had not opened for some time past. Just before luncheon we were startled by hearing the drawing-room bell rung ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... for Hero and seeks to divert her service from the celestial Venus to the earthly. She scorns his offers of love, and he leaves her with threats of vengeance. Filled with forebodings, she seeks an omen in the voice of a sea shell which had been placed on the altar of Aphrodite, the Sea-born. The words are charming, and the occasion prettily prepared for a vocal show piece. She invokes the shell as the cradle of Aphrodite, hears in its murmurs the song of the sea nymphs, the humming ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... with him next morning; Grenville explained off and on two or three times, the Scotch laughed, the opposition roared, and the treasury-bench sat as mute as fishes. Thus ended that wise Hudibrastic encounter. Grenville however, attended by every bad omen, provoked your brother, who had not intended to speak, by saying that some people had a good opinion of the dismissed officers, others had not. Your brother rose, and surpassed himself: he was very ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... a couple are newly-married, if a deer or a gazelle, or a moose-deer utters a cry at night near the house in which the pair are living, it is an omen of ill—they must separate, or the death of one would ensue. This might be a great trial to an European lover; the Dayaks, however, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... word which kept on returning, the thought too, that for a month past she had been busying herself for a corpse, quite froze her, brought her to the very depths of despair, like an omen of the cold death into which she herself must soon descend, in the shroud of her last passion. And, meantime, Pierre, despite himself, smiled bitterly at the atrocious irony of it all. Ah! that lame and halting Charity, which proffers help when ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... she seemed to have flitted, looked as though it had not been disturbed for centuries, and as he tried to force his way to the gloomy cavern below, a crowd of bats and owls and other foul birds of evil omen, aroused from their repose, rose upwards, and, amidst dismal hootings and fearful cries, almost flung him backward with the violence of their flight. He spent the remainder of the afternoon in search of the lost ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... evil omen. We went to Gorizia, that pretty Austrian spa that was taken by the Italians last year, and has suffered from the war as much as Udine, its neighbor across the old frontier, has prospered. In the heart of the town its old castle towers up from an isolated ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... and benevolence, invited me to dinner and to spend the evening, and treated me generally with a friendliness which astonished the old Turkish element, who considered me the devil of the island. (In fact, my appearance was considered the omen of trouble, and the Mussulmans said when they saw me, "Are we going to have another war?") It was easy to see, however, that the elements of trouble in the island had not been eliminated by the appointment of a Christian governor or the concessions which had ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... alternative—the extirpation of the seceding member, or the never-ceasing struggle of two rival confederacies, ultimately bending the neck of both under the yoke of foreign domination, or the despotic sovereignty of a conqueror at home. May Heaven avert the omen! The destinies of not only our posterity, but of the human race, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... went first to the Canary Islands and thence due west across the Sea of Darkness, as the Atlantic was called. The voyage was delightful, but every sight and sound was a source of new terror to the sailors. An eruption of a volcano at the Canaries was watched with dread as an omen of evil. They crossed the line of no magnetic variation, and when the needle of the compass began to change its usual direction, they were sure it was bewitched. They entered the great Sargasso Sea and were frightened out of their wits by the strange expanse ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... seem over great to any god or man, I pray that such jealousy may be appeased by my own loss rather than by the damage of the State." But as he turned him after making this prayer he stumbled and fell. And this omen was judged by them that interpreted it by the things that followed, to look first to the condemnation of Camillus by the people, and second to the great overthrow of the city at the hands of the Gauls; both of which things will be ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... of the wine-god, and he is given due official prominence; but as soon as we penetrate anywhere near the heart of the festival, Dionysus and his brother gods are quite forgotten, and all that remains is a great ritual for appeasing the dead. All the days of the Feast were nefasti, of ill omen; the first day especially was es to pan apophras. On it the Wine Jars which were also Seed and Funeral Jars were opened and the spirits of the Dead let loose in the world.[17:1] Nameless and innumerable, the ghosts are summoned out of their tombs, and are duly feasted, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... answered Stas without any hesitation, for he understood in a moment that those savage and superstitious men regarded the appearance of a reptile as an evil omen and an announcement that ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Urquhart, tried to prevent the signing of the bill by working on the governor's superstitions. He dipped the pen in oil, thinking that when Matthews came to write with it, and found that the ink refused to flow, he would take it as an omen that the bill should not be signed. The governor was startled, when, after several efforts, he found the pen would not write; but he was not a man to let so trifling a matter stand in his way. He directed his secretary to make another pen, and with this he made the land-steal bill a ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... but the sick are sitting up—almost a panic is created in our street by a screaming of cats;—and long after the creatures have been hunted out of sight and hearing, everybody who has a relative ill with the prevailing malady continues to discuss the omen with terror. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... in its omen of destruction. Only too well Stern realized the meaning of the swift, strong current, the roar—now ever increasing, ever deepening in volume—the high and shifting vapor veil that ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... being too hot for him to get into the bath at once, he took down from the shelf his copy of Suetonius. He wished to read how Seneca had died. He opened the book at random. 'But dwarfs,' he read, 'he held in abhorrence as being lusus naturae and of evil omen.' He winced as though he had been struck. This same Augustus, he remembered, had exhibited in the amphitheatre a young man called Lucius, of good family, who was not quite two feet in height and weighed seventeen pounds, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... dire deity of misfortune, by voluntarily breaking the fearful chain of prosperity, and led some of them to weep and groan when the gems thus sacrificed were afterwards brought back to their hand by simple fishermen, who had recovered them in the intestines of fishes—a portentous omen, which was interpreted into a sorrowful indication that the deity thus answered the propitiatory appeal, and made solemn proclamation that he had rejected it]— whether, I say, it were this spirit of jealousy awaked ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... which clothed the limiting hills, seemed almost magical, the foreground being occupied solely by the graceful curve of the dome of the church-tower, glittering with intercepted rays, and forming a bright omen for the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... and sister were still together when word was brought, two hours later that Mabel had fallen into a profound sleep—a good omen, the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the sailors felt at seeing a living creature after the days in which they had seen "nor shapes of men nor beasts," they had a special pleasure in welcoming the albatross because it was regarded as a bird of good omen. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... as a dog would. But what was his surprise to find, as he gnawed, in the mouth of each fish a piece of silver! Some one had read the story of Saint Peter to a purpose. Young Bach looked in vain for a person to thank, but perceiving no one he took it as the act of God and an omen that his pilgrimage to hear the great organist should ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... together. And what right had I to happiness?' She felt terror at the thought of her happiness. 'What, if that cannot be?' she thought. 'What, if it is not granted for nothing? Why, it has been heaven... and we are mortals, poor sinful mortals.... Morir si giovane. Oh, dark omen, away! It's not only for me his life ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... and a political programme. But so immersed were the Allies in the absurd illusions which ascribed disorganization to Germany and discord to the two imperial Governments, that Burian's appointment was read by many as an omen that Austria-Hungary was already scheming for a separate peace. Events soon showed that the disorganization was not in Germany nor the discord on the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... what was to be. There were other fires besides and imperial possessions were burned especially often during his reign,—a thing which in itself has always been regarded as of ill omen; but the fact that it seemed to have overthrown the horse-race of Vulcan had a direct bearing upon the emperor. This accordingly gave rise to a feeling that something out of the ordinary was in process ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... Breda by a ruse (seventy men hidden beneath a covering of peat making their entrance into the town and opening the gates to their comrades outside) was a good omen for the campaign that was planned for 1591. For the first time Maurice had an opportunity for showing his genius for war and especially for siege warfare. By rapid movements he took first Zutphen, then Deventer and Delfzijl, and relieved the ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Absit omen! And what, indeed, can there be common between Goths and Greeks of the Lower Empire, who lived thirteen hundred years ago, with the good Catholic subjects, and the quiet Catholic city of our Holy Father the Pope, in the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... yesterday to Do, and was about to continue with a letter to you when a telegram called me subitissimo back to Rome. The thread of my ideas has not been broken on the journey, and I resume our conversation, a trois, on the long gestation—omen of abortion—of the ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... of the bolts and bars as they were severally drawn by the trembling hand of old Trapbois, as an omen that the senior did not mean again to revisit him in the course of the evening, and heartily rejoiced that he was at length to be ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... very father of our folk, and I the man that was to come after him to carry on the life thereof. But when he saw the hauberk and touched it, then was his love smitten cold with sadness and he spoke words of evil omen; so that putting this together with thy words about the gift, and that thou didst in a manner compel me to wear it, I could not but deem that this mail is for the ransom of a man and the ruin ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... people of this great and growing city, who meet together, without distinction of party, and presided over by your chief officer, for the purpose of expressing respect to the memory of the man who was the leader of the Confederate armies in the late war between the States. It is in itself the omen of reunion. I am not surprised at the spectacle presented here. Throughout the entire South one universal cry of grief has broken forth at the death of General Lee, and in a very large portion of the North manly and noble tributes have been paid ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... whatever occurred, Justina was capable of construing it into a good omen. Somebody must have suggested to these girls that their father meant to make her his second wife. What if he had done it himself? Of course, under the circumstances, her intelligence could not fail to interpret aright those downcast ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... hand, resting upon a pocket hidden at his hip, sought support from the hilt of a pistol secreted there. Was this the meaning of the sullen and ghastly determination glaring from his eyes? Yes, love and death were almost mated; and so in every busy Congress do the spectres of temptation and ill-omen lurk in wait. ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... experience was this. She believes herself to have encountered in the library the specter of a man; a specter with a gaze so terrifying that it impressed itself upon her as an omen of death, or some other dire disaster. What have your ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... voice on the edge of the throng, and the news was passed along from man to man until it swept up the steps, through the lobby and to the dining room upstairs where the football men of the Varsity team were impatiently awaiting lunch. "A good omen," said ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... while threshing the corn. Moreover certain sorcerers were wont to ensnare the mother bird with her young during incubation, and to employ them for the purpose of securing fruitfulness and good luck in bringing up children: also because it was held to be a good omen to find the mother ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... courage was of so strange a quality, that he was ready, if jay or magpie did not cross him, to fight for Spartan or Persian. Plato, whom thou esteemest much, and knowest somewhat less, careth as little for portent and omen as doth Diogenes. What he would have done for a Persian I cannot say; certain I am that he would have no more fought for a Spartan than he would for his own father: yet he mortally hates the man who hath a kinder muse or a better milliner, or a seat nearer the minion of ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... with some impatience at his door, pressing for admittance, and reproaching his want of spirit and ambition. Astonished and perplexed, he addressed his prayers to the great Jupiter, who immediately signified, by a clear and manifest omen, that he should submit to the will of heaven and of the army. The conduct which disclaims the ordinary maxims of reason, excites our suspicion and eludes our inquiry. Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... notwithstanding his promises of payment, passed away without hearing from my brother. I had never laid any stress upon the promise, but drew a bad omen ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... character, roll into the ashes, and felt Warwick's hold tighten as if he echoed the emphatic word uttered when the ineffectual gift was first bestowed. Superstition flowed in Sylvia's blood, and was as unconquerable as the imagination which supplied its food. This omen startled her. It seemed a forewarning that endeavor would be vain, that submission was wisdom, and that the husband's charm had lost its virtue when the stronger power claimed her. The desire to resist began to waver as the old passionate longing ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... should be I who am fated to tell you. For a year you will rule as a god in this city of Tenoctitlan, and except for certain ceremonies that you must undergo, and certain arts which you must learn, none will trouble you. Your slightest wish will be a law, and when you smile on any, it shall be an omen of good to them and they will bless you; even my father Montezuma will treat you with reverence as an equal or more. Every delight shall be yours except that of marriage, and this will be withheld till the twelfth month of the year. Then the four most beautiful ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... and so soon as the clouds broke away and the sun shone forth it was observed that it had rained blood. That which fell upon the ricks of the other labourers soon dried up, but what Thorgunna had wrought upon remained wet with gore. The unfortunate Hebridean, appalled at the omen, betook herself to her bed, and was seized with a mortal illness. On the approach of death she summoned Thorodd, her landlord, and intrusted to him the disposition of ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... to his name, and in an unknown handwriting. Opening it, he found a pretty racing-jacket embroidered with his colours of pink and white. This was a perplexing circumstance, but he fancied it on the whole a happy omen. And who was the donor? Certainly not the Princess Lucretia, for he had observed her fashioning some maroon ribbons, which were the colours of Sidonia. It could scarcely be from Mrs. Guy Flouncey. Perhaps Madame Colonna to please the Marquess? Thinking ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... within the walls of Byzantium. The tutelar genius of the city, a venerable matron sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, was suddenly transformed into a blooming maid, whom his own hands adorned with all the symbols of imperial greatness. The monarch awoke, interpreted the auspicious omen, and obeyed without hesitation the will of Heaven. The day which gave birth to a city or a colony was celebrated by the Romans with such ceremonies as had been ordained by a generous superstition: and ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... attempt to obscure all distinct views of the public good, to overwhelm all patriotism and all enlightened self-interest, by loud cries against false danger, and by exciting the passions of one class against another. I am not mistaken in the omen; I see the magazine whence the weapons of this warfare are to be drawn. I hear already the din of the hammering of arms preparatory to the combat. They may be such arms, perhaps, as reason, and justice, and honest patriotism cannot resist. Every effort ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... to the king's highway between Madrid and Seville—that road on which Dick thriftily planned his quick service of automobiles for passengers and market gardeners; but to-day there was none of that excitement of the chase to which we were accustomed. I was depressed despite the good omen of the goats, and an encounter with a mule who had four white feet—a sign of some extraordinary piece of luck, according to Pilar's Dream-Book. The gently undulating, olive-silvered country, with its occasional far-off hamlets and fine church spires did not interest me, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads,— The crowd is hurrying faster,— Out from the Millpond's purlieus gush The streams of white-faced millers, And down their slippery alleys rush The lusty young Fort-Hillers— The ropewalk lends its 'prentice crew,— The tories seize the omen: "Ay, boys, you'll soon have work to do For England's rebel foemen, 'King Hancock,' Adams, and their gang, That fire the mob with treason,— When these we shoot and those we hang The town will come ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... her hand. "You out of place here? No! no! you are at home on the ramparts of Quebec, quite as much as in your own drawing-room at Tilly. The walls of Quebec without a Tilly and a Repentigny would be a bad omen indeed, worse than a year without a spring or a summer without roses. But where is my ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... he finish'd, when o'er rock and dell A sudden stream of yellow splendour fell, As if a star, with sunlike lustre crown'd, Dropp'd instantaneous thro' the blue profound. His heaving breast the joyful omen cheer'd, And now thro' parting clouds the ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... desire? She scarcely knew then. But she knew that she wanted a light to be shining for her when she neared home—longed for it, needed it specially that night. If San Francesco's lamp were burning quietly amid the fury of the sea in such a blackness as this about them—well, it would seem like an omen. She would take it as an omen ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... twenty years to acquire to conceal the emotion with which I heard this name. Less than half an hour had passed since I had warned Lord Bedale that the Princess would be the most formidable enemy in my path, and now, on the very threshold of my enterprise, her name confronted me like an omen. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... yet; nor was I greatly frightened at the time. That omen bodes unhappiness to him or her who sees it, and I was ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Vavasor did a very memorable thing. He dined at home with the view of welcoming his future son-in-law. He dined at home, and asked, or rather assented to Alice's asking, George and Kate Vavasor to join the dinner-party. "What an auspicious omen for the future nuptials!" said Kate, with her little sarcastic smile. "Uncle John dines at home, and Mr Grey joins in the dissipation of a dinner-party. We shall all be changed soon, I suppose, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... leaves blown about the garden, I had seen a flock of birds rise above the half-denuded poplars and wheel in the darkening sky. I had felt there was a mysterious meaning in that moment, and in that flight of dim-seen birds an augury of ill-omen for my life. It was a mood of Autumnal, minor-poet melancholy, a mood with which, it had occurred to me, I might fill out the rhymes of ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... were the great birds of prey—hawks, "Apollo's swift messengers," and eagles, "the birds of Zeus." It was a good omen if the birds flew from left to right, a bad omen if ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... his imagination with a sort of poetical superstition, as he, more than once, recurs to the circumstance in his journals. Thus, "Going to the fountain of Delphi (Castri) in 1809, I saw a flight of twelve eagles (H. says they were vultures—at least in conversation), and I seised the omen. On the day before I composed the lines to Parnassus (in Childe Harold), and, on beholding the birds, had a hope that Apollo had accepted my homage. I have at least had the name and fame of a poet during the poetical part of life ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... us self-conscious and awkward; but German fidelity to Nature, and Latin precision and clear reason, and Celtic quick-wittedness and spirituality, we fall short of. Nay, perhaps, if we are doomed to perish (Heaven avert the omen!), we shall perish by our Celtism, by our self-will and want of patience with ideas, our inability to see the way the world is going; and yet those very Celts, by our affinity with whom we are perishing, will be hating and upbraiding us ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... broken long ago, the aged reprobate thrived, and threatened to infest the land for years to come. Now, he greeted the girl casually enough, made a purchase, and took his departure. He seemed quite unsuspicious, but Plutina felt that his coming on her thus was an evil omen, and, for a moment, she ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... hear any further as to the sort of omen it was, and what it foreboded. But, somehow, a sense of fear and of sadness crept into her mood, and it was humiliating to feel that an absurd tale should disturb her beloved fancies, and should ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... of ill omen," said the raven. "Some people think that I bring bad luck. Others think I eat too much of their corn. No one likes me. No ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... which opposed his authority, but the promulgation and practice of such a system had an opposite effect to the one intended. "The hearts of the Hollanders were rather steeled to resistance than awed into submission by the fate of Naarden." A fortunate event, too, was accepted as a lucky omen for the coming contest. A little fleet of armed vessels, belonging to Holland, had been frozen up in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam. Don Frederic on his arrival from Naarden, despatched a body of picked ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... known then as much as I learned afterwards of what it meant to be "taken up" by Mrs. Minchin, I might not have thought the comparison a good omen for my friendship with Matilda. To be hotly taken up by Mrs. Minchin meant an equally hot quarrel at no very distant date. The squabble with the bride was not slow to come, but Matilda and I fell out first. I think she was tyrannical, and I know I was peevish. My Ayah spoilt me; I spoke very ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... moment there appeared to me to be something more than ordinary about Norma's terror, as though it must be supernatural; and as though she felt, just as I did myself, that this reptile was connected with some mysterious secret, some fatal omen. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... usual spirits. The ill-omen had affected him more than could have been believed, and he who formerly was never half an hour without speaking, now fell into long reveries from which Nadia found it difficult to arouse him. The kibitka rolled swiftly along the road. Yes, swiftly! Nicholas no longer thought of being ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... lord the great Cid of Bivar, when from Alcocer he went, The Moors both men and women made lamentation sore. He lifted up the standard, forth marched the Campeador. Down the Jalon he hastened, on he went spurring fast. He saw birds of happy omen, as from the stream he passed. Glad were the townsmen of Terrer that he had marched away, And the dwellers in Calatayud were better pleased than they. But in the town of Alcocer 'twas grief to all and one, For many a deed of mercy unto them ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... the sun. If in the raw morning hours a donkey brays, the men are very much perturbed, for they know that the poor beast has seen a djin. They will remain ill-at-ease until, somewhere in the heights where Mediunah is preparing for another day, a cock crows. This is a satisfactory omen, atoning for the donkey's performance. A cock only crows when he sees an angel, and, if there are angels abroad, the ill intentions of the djinoon will be upset. When I was travelling in the country some few years ago, it chanced one night that the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... storm today with great crashing waves, then everything grew calm under a golden sunset. I take this as a good omen. I feel happier already. The infinite peace of Nature is quieting my soul. I love the sea. I can almost say my prayers to ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... promise; and Josephine augured all manner of happy eventualities from the fact that her future step-daughter had yielded so sweetly on the first difference of desire between them, and had let herself be kissed with becoming patience. It was a good omen for the beginning of things; and all brides are superstitious—Josephine perhaps more so than most, in that she was more loving and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... word for a wise man. "Perhaps from Maori verb tohu, to think." (Tregear's 'Polynesian Dictionary.') Tohu, a sign or omen; hence Tohunga, a dealer in ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the land, which was another favorable omen; and it was reported that the coast-guards had seen that morning the Manx fishing-fleet about twelve ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... far as the conception of a Raven, the bird of ill-omen, monotonously repeating the one word "Nevermore" at the conclusion of each stanza in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of the object supremeness or ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... room. He hadn't cared to reply. He feared, as it was, that he had let slip his increased self-doubt. He put on his coat and hat and left the house. The raw cold, the year's first omen of winter, made his blood run quicker, forced into his mind a cleansing stimulation. But almost immediately even that prophylactic was denied him. With his direction a matter of indifference, chance led ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... most glorious omen," said Henri, jumping up; "I look on success as certain when predicted by Charles, for he is the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... was made, and a vote passed, at your last [1] meeting, on a subject the substance whereof you had al- ready accepted as a By-law. But, I shall take this as a favorable omen, a fair token that heavy lids are opening, even wider than before, to the light of Love—and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... the motionless orator, and thinking of God and the security of the Government in that hour. As the boiling waters subside and settle to the sea, when some strong wind beats it down, so the tumult of the people sank and became still. All took it as a divine omen. It was a triumph of eloquence, inspired by the moment, such as falls to but one man's lot, and that but once in a century. The genius of Webster, Choate, Everett, Seward, never reached it. What might have happened had the surging and maddened mob been let loose, none can tell. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... right to be amiable and say pleasant things to me, for I need them badly to-night. I am sad and weary; the darkest visions come before my mind. I think it is the storm which makes me feel so. How doleful this thunder is! It seems to me like an omen of misfortune." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... little house, so slight a suggestion of the presence of man amidst the majestic dominance of nature; here, to the right, across the savage gorge, with its cliffs and with its currents in the deep trough, the nearest slope of the mountain, with the great gaunt bare space showing that face of ill omen, sibylline, sinister, definite indeed,—he wondered how his eyes were holden that he should not have discerned it at once; and in the immediate foreground the equestrian figure of the mountaineer, booted and spurred, the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... word ahmak seems to signify the vulture, "who pecks out the eyes," "who makes deep holes;" while Dr Brinton maintains that the Quiche ahmak means "the master of evil," referring to the owl, which is esteemed a bird of evil omen and bad fortune. The Pipil tecolotl also denotes "the night bird ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... group, like the great stone figures of the Aztecs, or some of the hideous Indian gods. Seen under the glare of the Eye, they formed a background of horrible omen. In a flash it dawned upon Jim that these hideous figures might ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... Say, who knew better, in 1879. It serves M. Rouvier, who, perhaps, does not know better, in 1890. The new Chamber met on November 12, 1889. A fortnight had hardly passed when M. Rouvier, as Minister of the Finances, the 'Minister of ill-omen' as M. Amagat calls him, rose in his place and, without a blush, affirmed that the budget for 1889 showed an excess of receipts over expenditure of 'forty millions of francs!' This bold statement was promptly telegraphed ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... pick the waxen mystic blossoms, thinking to herself that they were like some beautiful dead thing; and then she came upon a delicate flush on the side of their clear, translucent pearl, and wondered if it were an omen. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... words when the neighing of Rocinante fell upon their ears, which neighing Don Quixote accepted as a happy omen, and he resolved to make another sally in three or four days from that time. Announcing his intention to the bachelor, he asked his advice as to the quarter in which he ought to commence his expedition, and the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... his bow case. Taking the first piece that came to hand he started to place it in the case, when struck by its smoothness he looked at it and found he had a weatherbeaten old Indian bow in his hand. It seemed like a sign, a good omen,—for we playfully indulge in omens in these romantic ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... you what we'll do, little wife: we'll present one of these to the boy, and then you and I will eat it in honor of his birthday, unless, indeed, there may be some bad omen in this, even. You know the juice of the grape may, under certain circumstances, ...
— Three People • Pansy
... accepted it as an omen of success when about 8 o'clock in the morning of May 22, 1916, six captive balloons stationed over the right bank of the Meuse exploded, thus depriving the German batteries of their observers on whom they counted ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the precursor of a fiercer and a mightier struggle, and the volunteers of the Confederacy, enduring all things and sacrificing all things, the prototype and model of a new army, in which North and South shall march to battle side by side. ABSIT OMEN! But in whatever fashion his own countrymen may deal with the problems of the future, the story of Stonewall Jackson will tell them in what spirit they should be faced. Nor has that story a message for America alone. The hero who lies buried at Lexington, in the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... by the means of my ode, and three times had I awaked by some horrible dream, that fled my memory with my slumbers. I could draw no omen from it, for my mind could not bring it out sufficiently distinct to fix a single idea upon it. However, as I found my sleep so much more miserable than my watchfulness, I got up, and, putting on a portion of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the well and the mercy of God, Khan Shereef and his now dismounted followers offered up prayers for success. Suddenly a huge mass of rock detaching itself from the mountain side thundered down the steep; it was hailed by all as a good omen, and the Moollah declaring that "now or never" was the auspicious moment, the child was taken from the arms of the now trembling nurse and immersed in the turbid waters. Hope elevated the breasts of the father and of the attendants, nor was that feeling fallacious, for ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... that, Lorna?" queried Lane, curiously puzzled at her, and darkly conscious of the ill omen ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... trumpets in their hands. The shepherd took one of these martial instruments from the hands of its possessor, laying aside his own, and began to sound a charge—which is a signal for a rapid advance—and to march at the same time over the bridge. "An omen! a prodigy!" said Cesar. "Let us march where we are called by such a divine intimation. The ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... noiselessly; but when he had come within forty feet of the rowboat its lone occupant had turned suddenly, as though scenting danger, and Joe, after waiting for a few seconds to see what might happen, considered the absolute silence an omen of danger and had dived under water, staying there as long as he could, and coming to the surface at an entirely different point ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... employer—that will be the beginning of surrender. But as long as I keep a free pen and speak as I believe for what I hold as right and against what I hold as wrong, I can afford to leave the advertising policy to those who control it. It isn't my responsibility.... It's an omen, Io; I was waiting for it. Marrineal and I are at a deadlock on the question of my control of the editorial page. This ought to furnish a fighting issue. I'm ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... pretty sure who would be put on shore, if a vote were taken by officers and crew; but he was too wise to say anything upon this point, and contented himself with positively refusing to send southward any news of the evil omen. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... drained of all available troops, and Sebastian the Manichee, the old enemy of Athanasius, was placed in command. Gratian hurried Thraceward with the Gaulish legions, and at last Valens thought it time to leave his pleasant home at Antioch for the field of war. Evil omens beset his march, but no omen could be worse than his own impulsive rashness. With a little prudence, such a force as he had gathered round the walls of Hadrianople was an overmatch for any hordes of barbarians. But Valens determined to storm the Gothic camp without waiting for ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... sped through them like a sea-gull that has the harbour to itself, and was not long in reaching the theatre. How desolate the play-bills looked that had been so companionable but three or four hours before! And there was her photograph! Surely it was an omen. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... ever be subdued, but by your charms; May your soft thoughts for him be all sublime, And ev'ry tender vow be made for him; May he be first in ev'ry morning thought, And heav'n ne'er hear a prayer where he's left out; May every omen, every boding dream, Be fortunate by mentioning his name; May this one charm infernal powers affright, And guard you from the terror of the night; May ev'ry cheerful glass as it goes down To William's health, be cordials to your own: Let ev'ry song be chorust with his name, ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... gaily illuminated is this darkness by yonder belt of moving lights. It seems like the gorgeous preparation for a funeral. Above us and behind it is silent and dark. These show like the torches of the approaching mourners. The gods grant there be no omen in this.' ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... of my prophetic power and knowledge of divination in your eyes, my prediction will justly claim to be believed. Well, then, the prophecy I now give you does not rest on the flight of a bird nor the note of a bird of good omen on the left—according to the system of our augural college—nor from the normal and audible pattering of the corn of the sacred chickens. I have other signs to note; and if they are not more infallible than those, yet after all they are less obscure or misleading. Now omens as to the ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... It was an omen of ultimate success, and Dick took heart. No, they'd never beat the grim, unconquerable tenacity of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... Dhritarashtra, and finding him alone he saluted him with reverence and distressed at (the sight of) the partiality of the citizens for Yudhishthira, he addressed the monarch and said, 'O father, I have heard the parting citizens utter words of ill omen. Passing thee by, and Bhishma too, they desire the son of Pandu to be their king. Bhishma will sanction this, for he will not rule the kingdom. It seems, therefore, that the citizens are endeavouring to inflict a great injury on us. Pandu obtained of old the ancestral kingdom by virtue ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... he said, like "shaking hands with himself," the reaction had been so great, and Bob's news so satisfactory. It might be looked at as an omen of good luck for the momentous occasion. Surely a day that had opened in such a glorious manner for Big Bob, and the team in general, could not have bitterness and gall in store for those gallant Chester fellows who expected to improve upon their work in Marshall, ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... CONWAY, the Apostle of Altitude, as he has been recently denominated, welcomed the appointment of Bishop TALBOT as a good omen for the campaign which he is so ably conducting. "Nothing," he remarks, "has impressed me so much in the works of TENNYSON as the line, 'We needs must love the highest when we see it.' Mountain or building or man, it is all the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... love of Bruennhilde, and the flaming fire following each other in rapid and brilliant succession through the measures of the picturesque description. As the song dies away, two ravens, messengers of ill-omen, fly across the stage. The curse motive sounds gloomily through the orchestra. Hagen springs to his feet and suddenly and treacherously plunges his spear into Siegfried's back, then sullenly leaves and disappears among the rocks. The hero falls to the earth and dies, breathing Bruennhilde's ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... fearful sounds filled the building, thousands of ravens and birds of ill omen croaked loudly and flapped their wings, and all the doors opened with ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... answer was invariably a shrug of the shoulders, and "I will give you an answer presently, but—I have not yet made up my mind." My kind friends here quite agree with me in thinking that this hesitation and reserve are rather a favorable omen than the reverse. For if the Elector was resolved not to engage me, he would have said so at once; so I attribute the delay to Denari siamo un poco scrocconi [we are a little stingy of our money]. Besides, I know for certain that the Prince likes me; a buon ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... I ask but at times to see, to hear thee! Stranger, talk not to me of others. Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart, reject the not unworthy gratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come not always to me as an omen of grief and trouble. Sometimes have I seen thee in my dreams surrounded by shapes of glory and light; thy looks radiant with a celestial joy which they wear not now. Stranger, thou hast saved me, and I thank and bless thee! Is ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... realise, to a people stricken with consternation. Their trust in the Temple was shaken—they were not delivered!(308) In the circumstances they did their feeble best by raising to the vacant throne Josiah's son, Shallum, as Jehoahaz, the Lord hath taken hold. But the new name proved no omen of good. In three months Necoh had the youth in bonds at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem, and afterwards took him to Egypt. Of this fresh sorrow Jeremiah sang as if it had drowned out the sorrow ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... two had died in a Temple house. The younger, six months old, was still with her father. On Christmas Eve our informant arrived in the compound with his usual unexpectedness. The father was near, but would not come nearer because the following day being Friday (a day of ill-omen), he did not wish to discuss matters concerning the child; he would come on Saturday. On Saturday he came, carrying a dear little babe with brilliant eyes. She almost sprang from him into our arms, and we saw she was mad with thirst. She was fed and put to sleep, and ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... beseech you, lay this to heart that you cannot thus use the Godlike being that you possess without bringing down upon your heads miseries and unrest. The raven, that black bird of evil omen, went out from the ark, and flew homeless over the weltering ocean. The souls that seek not God fly thus, strangers and restless, through a drowned and lifeless world. The dove came back with an olive branch in its beak. Souls that are wise and have made their nests ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... speak but could not find his voice, and was chagrined at his failure, which Elodie preferred to the most eloquent greeting. She noticed also and looked upon it as a good omen, that he had tied his cravat with more than ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... "It's an omen, almost, that we'll always have the good, comfortable, common things to fall back upon, if our marriage should not prove quite all we've dreamed it. It's been so perfect up to now; it must drop down out ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... they saw what had been unnoted before, that day had broken, and that the sun, emerging from a single dark cloud, was shining, full-orbed, into the apartment with a light that, reflected from myriads of snowy crystals, was doubly luminous. Nevertheless it seemed to them a good omen, an earnest, an emblem of the purer, whiter light into which the cleansed and pardoned spirit had entered. The snow-wrapped prairie was indeed pure and bright, but it was cold. The Father's embrace, receiving ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... head boatman, Mashauana, stopped the canoe to tell us, namely, that a water-turtle which, in trying to ascend a steep bank to lay her eggs, had toppled on her back, thus enabling us to capture her, was an infallible omen of good luck ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Thenceforth the tribes, Who round were scatter'd, gath'ring to that place Assembled; for its strength was great, enclos'd On all parts by the fen. On those dead bones They rear'd themselves a city, for her sake, Calling it Mantua, who first chose the spot, Nor ask'd another omen for the name, Wherein more numerous the people dwelt, Ere Casalodi's madness by deceit Was wrong'd of Pinamonte. If thou hear Henceforth another origin assign'd Of that my country, I forewarn thee now, That falsehood none beguile thee of the truth." I answer'd: "Teacher, I conclude thy words ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... northwest of Babylonia, in the district between the Bay of Iskenderun and the Euphrates. The capture of the statues of the patron gods points to a great humiliation which Babylon must have encountered. Upon receiving a favorable omen from the sun-god, Agum undertakes the task of bringing Marduk and Sarpanitum back to their seats. Their temples, too, at Babylon appear to have suffered damage during the invasion of the city, and accordingly the statues are placed in the temple of Shamash pending the restoration ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... glad," she said. Then she became serious. "Say, do you believe in omens?" She was gazing out at the great antlers. "I don't guess you do. Only Indians worry with omens. Not folks of sense. Still, I kind of fancy that feller set up that way is our omen. He's going to hand us good luck in plenty. We'll get a great 'catch' where we're going, and we'll get back-safe. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the Parliamentary army had been given to the Earl of Essex, and he and all his officers were proclaimed traitors by the king. Charles I. assembled an army at Nottingham in 1642 to chastise them, and it was considered an evil omen that when the royal standard was set up on the evening of the day of assemblage, a gale arose and it was blown down. Charles moved west from Nottingham to Shrewsbury to meet reinforcements from Wales, and then his army numbered eighteen thousand ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... utterly regardless of the demonstrations of Hooker on the Lower Rappahannock. This is a good omen; for no doubt the demonstrations are designed merely to arrest his advance. Lee has, perhaps, 70,000 fighting men with him—leaving some 15,000 behind ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... raising poetical produce, by means of bounties, from soil too meagre to have yielded any returns in the natural course of things. The plan for the cultivation of Dartmoor has, I hear, been abandoned. I hope that this may be an omen of the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... exclaimed gaily, "Lady Rosamond, a coincidence—the cross followed by an anchor!" producing at the same time a costly ornament in the form of an anchor. "Have no fear, your cross is outweighed by the anchor Hope in the end. What a beautiful encouraging omen!" ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... is over! over! For the winds and the waters surcease; Ah, few were the days of the rover That smiled in the beauty of peace, And distant and dim was the omen That hinted redress or release! From the ravage of life, and its riot, What marvel I yearn for the quiet Which bides in the harbor at last,— For the lights, with their welcoming quiver That throb through the sanctified river, Which girdle the harbor ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Rupert said almost peevishly, 'you don't seem to have thought of things. I don't want to be a wet blanket, or a prophet of evil omen, or any of that sort of thing; but there may be accidents, you know, and miscalculations, and failures even, and things may go wrong with this enterprise, no matter ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... do—Woman of evil omen, you who stir up man's courage with your scent of blood, whence do you come and where do you lead me? I loved you before I saw you, for I trembled when I heard them speak of you. And when I saw you in the doorway, your soul poured itself into mine. And when you left, I could still feel your presence ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... after Velasquez had left our camp to visit Narvaez, the drum beat to arms, and our little army set forwards on our march for Chempoalla. We killed two wild hogs on our way, which our soldiers considered as a good omen of our ultimate success. We halted for the night on the side of a rivulet, having the ground for a bed, stones for our pillows, and heaven for our canopy, and arrived next day at the place where the city of Vera Cruz is now built, which was then ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... When they came to tell of the beauty of the Princess of Root-Valley, the wooden heart of Prince Nutcracker, as he listened to their description, warmed so, that a sound shot through it as if a deal board were cracking and splitting in a room suddenly heated. This sound he regarded as an omen; this and no other Princess was to be his Queen. He therefore resolved instantly to go with all his People to where the Princess lived, and sue ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... now ceased raining and the clouds were breaking. Mary Isabel thought that a good omen. She and the doctor watched Tommy from the window. They saw Louisa come to the door, take the note, and shut the door in Tommy's face. Ten minutes later she reappeared, habited in her mackintosh, with her second-best ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and gems, and with a brilliant golden fringe. Pao-yue promptly received it from her, and upon minute examination, found that there were in fact four characters on each side; the eight characters on both sides forming two sentences of good omen. The similitude of the locket is likewise then given below. On the face ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... matter of the men whom I had seen condemned yesterday; and even of that I did not know much more than of the packet. His Majesty had not spoken of them, except to ask questions at the beginning; and this seemed as a bad omen to me. Yet I had the King's word on it that they should not suffer; and, when I considered, there was no obligation or even any reason at all that he should talk out the matter with myself. Yet, though I presently ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... furniture arrived, together with the other things we had bought, and the men who brought them over from the steamboat landing had the brightest, merriest faces I ever noticed among that class of people. Euphemia said it was an excellent omen to have such cheerful fellows come to us on the very ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... acute Frenchman remarked during the Franco-German War, that Prince Bismarck had taken Cavour's conception without what made it really great—liberty. Possibly that word may still prove of better omen to the rebirth of a nation than "Blood ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... reflections by the discovery, in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and neatly-trimmed beard of Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something almost bridal in his own aspect: his large white gardenia had a symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen. After all, seen in an assemblage of his kind he was not ridiculous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which brings out the oddities ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in a day, my ground was barren and my bed-rock swept clean by that unseen hand which I always felt but could never avoid. I leased proven properties, only to find that the pay ceased without reason. I did this so frequently that owners began to refuse me and came to consider me a thing of evil omen. Once a broken snow-shoe in a race to the recorder's office lost me a fortune; at another time a corrupt judge plunged me from certainty to despair, and all the while my time was growing shorter and I was ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... hands of the children of Montreal, and the Province of Quebec generally, will be for the good of the Dominion. Certainly the attitude of the people as shown in the packed and ecstatic streets of Montreal was a very good omen. ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... fanciful imaginings, when suddenly over that extended prospect the faint distant tolling of a bell rang sadly out and died. It was the Angelus. Father Jose listened with superstitious exaltation. The Mission of San Pablo was far away, and the sound must have been some miraculous omen. But never before, to his enthusiastic sense, did the sweet seriousness of this angelic symbol come with such strange significance. With the last faint peal his glowing fancy seemed to cool; the fog closed in below him, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... was brought out, and no more auspicious omen could have been furnished Mrs. Halliday than the fact that, except in several unimportant details, Sally could have put it on and worn it, just as it was. Not only did it fit, but the intervening years had brought back into style ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... it with superstitious feelings, but whether as an omen of good or evil she would not tell. On all matters connected with her religious notions she was shy and reserved, though occasionally she unconsciously revealed them. Thus the warnings of death or misfortunes were revealed to her by certain ominous sounds in the woods, the appearance ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... frequently, because the coach made me travel-sick, it so happened that during the night, when my companions were asleep, the cap fell into the road. The coach, drawn by six vigourous horses, was going at top speed. I did not dare have it stopped and so I lost my cap. A bad omen! But I was to suffer far worse things in the terrible campaign which we were about to undertake. This incident upset me a good deal, but I said nothing about it for fear of being chaffed about the way the new soldier was ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... rustle in the breeze. Only once or twice in a lifetime does the forest dweller see poplar leaves curl up and die like that, baked to death in the summer sun. It is Kiskewahoon (the Danger Signal). Not only the warning of possible death in a holocaust of fire, but the omen of poor hunting and trapping in ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... or heard of in Wrangell. Some wakeful Indians, happening to see it about midnight, in great alarm aroused the Collector of Customs and begged him to go to the missionaries and get them to pray away the frightful omen, and inquired anxiously whether white men had ever seen anything like that sky-fire, which instead of being quenched by the rain was burning brighter and brighter. The Collector said he had heard of such strange fires, and this one he thought might perhaps be ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... poorly dressed and pushed about as I was. When the surge again gave him footing, he spoke beside me. "'Now that this is over, they might do some great, worthy thing!' Very true, friend, they might! I take your words for good omen." The throng shot out an arm and we were parted. The same action brought back to me Diego Lopez. Speaking to him later of the tall man, he said that he had noticed him, and that it was the Italian who would go to India ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... fortune of the Roman people seem over great to any god or man, I pray that such jealousy may be appeased by my own loss rather than by the damage of the State." But as he turned him after making this prayer he stumbled and fell. And this omen was judged by them that interpreted it by the things that followed, to look first to the condemnation of Camillus by the people, and second to the great overthrow of the city at the hands of the Gauls; both of which ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... from my chains with evil omen did I come; now I perceive that with like ill omen to my bonds I must ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... forth From south to north, No longer let your iron tongues be dumb: Up to the rafters swing, Make all the country ring An omen of a Happy ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... watched alone. Willet, although weary, was in high spirits. They had come marvelously through many perils, and Tayoga's achievement in rescuing Grosvenor, he repeated to himself, was well nigh miraculous. After such startling luck they could not fail, and an omen of continued good fortune was the fact they had encountered the trail of Black Rifle. He would be a powerful addition to their little force, when found, and Willet did not doubt that they would overtake him. The only problem that really worried him now was that ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rapidly round, fearful sounds filled the building, thousands of ravens and birds of ill omen croaked loudly and flapped their wings, and all the doors opened with ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... A third strangely significant omen was the election of Prince Louis Napoleon, by five different French Departments, as a deputy to ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... onward—seems, Like precipices in our dreams,[267] To stretch beyond the sight; And here and there a speck of white, 610 Or scattered spot of dusky green, In masses broke into the light, As rose the moon upon my right: But nought distinctly seen In the dim waste would indicate The omen of a cottage gate; No twinkling taper from afar Stood like a hospitable star; Not even an ignis-fatuus rose[268] To make him merry with my woes: 620 That very cheat had cheered me then! Although detected, welcome still, Reminding me, through every ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... thought, for as I drew nearer, still concealing myself behind the ridge, I saw that thick bars of iron covered the windows, while the old door was slashed and plated with the same metal. These strange precautions, together with the wild surroundings and unbroken solitude, gave an indescribably ill omen and fearsome character to the solitary building. Thrusting my pipe into my pocket, I crawled upon my hands and knees through the gorse and ferns until I was within a hundred yards of my neighbour's door. There, finding that I could not approach nearer without fear of detection, I crouched down, and ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... does not care much for our democratic levelling tendencies; she loves only old families, and despises the parvenu or the nouveau riche. When more than one banshee is present, and they wail and sing in chorus, it is for the death of some holy or great one. An omen that sometimes accompanies the banshee is '. . . an immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headless horses driven by a Dullahan.' A Dullahan is the most terrible thing in the world. In ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... 'A bad omen,' said Wilhelmine; 'I strike a chord and I achieve dissonance and wailing.' She threw back her head and pressed her fingers on the keyboard: this time a thin flute-like chord came forth, and Wilhelmine lifted ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Charenton; for it is mightily to be feared that whoever thinks to get to heaven under the auspices of so foul a guide will be a whole world awry in his calculations. Woe to that church (only God avert the omen!) where such ministers please, mainly by tickling the ears,—ministers whom the Church, if she would truly be called Reformed, would more fitly cast out ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... introduction you have so happily obtained from her weighs more with me than any other that you could have had. Let me welcome you to your own home, as it were. But see, your hand is bleeding, where the burr pricked you. Is this an omen, also? If our first meeting brings bloody wounds, I fear you ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... was looking at, the ill-favoured thing that was hanging from my old love's hand, was none other than a flag of evil omen—a pirate's flag, the barbarous piece of bunting that they call the Jolly Roger. There could be no doubt of that—no doubt whatever. I had heard of that flag and read of it, and now I was looking at it with my own eyes; and a light seemed to be let in upon my mind, and ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... care. For many a day Thurston had not come thus far out of himself, and his doing so now was hailed as a happy omen by ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... about the house all winter. Whenever the door was opened, they would fly to the little girl. The parents feared that this might be a bad omen, and that the little ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... woods one day found a great nest of Indian pipe. She bent listlessly to pick the waxen mystic blossoms, thinking to herself that they were like some beautiful dead thing; and then she came upon a delicate flush on the side of their clear, translucent pearl, and wondered if it were an omen. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... birthday. I am superstitious by nature, and I would have given anything to celebrate it with some lucky event, although I was at a loss to think of anything lucky that could have happened to me there. Indeed, I began my new year badly—much worse even than I expected. That was an ill-omen to me. First of all there was a terrible row among my men in camp. They had taken to their rifles. They wanted to shoot the cook. The man deserved punishment, perhaps, but not quite so severe a one. After a great deal of arguing I quieted them and got them to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... sudden flash of light through the cells of my brain reminded me of that scene of love and death in the vision of the artist's studio when the name 'Cosmo de Medicis' had been whispered like an evil omen. The murderer in that dream- picture had worn a collar of jewels precisely similar to the one I now saw; but I could only keep silence and listen with every nerve strained to utmost attention while Santoris took the ornament in his hand and looked at it with an intent earnestness in which ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... was forced to renounce the prize. On his way back he doubled the Cape, which, from his former experience, he called the Cape Tempestuous, until the king, showing that he understood, gave it a name of better omen. Nevertheless, Portugal did no more for ten years, the years that were made memorable by Spain. Then, under a new king, Emmanuel the Fortunate, Vasco da Gama went out to complete the unfinished work of Diaz, lest Columbus, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the exchange, and regard the transaction in the light of an omen, an epoch. I have been craving for something different from the facts of Bordereau, who has been my companion all these days. A solid little piece of work, by the way, which often set me wondering whether our British public would ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Spaniards suffered a heavy loss in men and munitions of war. Belgrano, then in turn advanced and made once again for Salta. In the neighbourhood of this town the Argentine flags were carried into battle for the first time, and their presence was welcomed as a favourable omen, for the victory remained with the patriot forces. Belgrano showed himself generous as a victor by liberating the great majority of his prisoners on parole, which, it is regrettable to state, large ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... open door. The tents lay silent in the moonshine, but wayward lights flickered in the sumptuous dusk, and the quiet of the hills hung like a canopy over the bivouac of the little army. No token of misfortune came out of this peaceful encampment, no omen of disaster crossed the long lane of drowsy fires and huge amorous shadows. The sense of doom was in the girl's own heart, not in this deep cradle of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was one of evil omen to the hapless garrison. It came from General Webb, and repeated that, until reinforced from the provinces, he could do nothing for the garrison of Fort William Henry; and advised Colonel Monro to make the best terms that he could with the enemy, ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 'Very good.' How can we legislate about these consecrated strains without incurring ridicule? Moulds or types must be first framed, and one of the types shall be—Abstinence from evil words at sacrifices. When a son or brother blasphemes at a sacrifice there is a sound of ill-omen heard in the family; and many a chorus stands by the altar uttering inauspicious words, and he is crowned victor who excites the hearers most with lamentations. Such lamentations should be reserved for evil days, and should be uttered only by hired mourners; and let the singers not ...
— Laws • Plato
... that "the raven or crow transfixed by an arrow is the crest of the coat-of-arms of the name of Leland, or of my own. I sincerely trust that Bussli, the first who bore it, did not acquire the right to do so by shooting a clergyman." As a single crow is an omen of ill-luck, so the same transfixed signifies misfortune overcome, or the forcible ending of evil influences by a strong will. It is a common belief or saying among all the Lelands, however widely related, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... quitted her sister, went past many doors—which had been thrown open after sunrise—hastily returning the greetings of many strange as well as familiar faces, for all glanced after her kindly as though to see her thus early were an omen of happy augury, and she soon reached an outbuilding adjoining the northern end of the Pastophorium; here there was no door, but at the level of about a man's height from the ground there were six unclosed windows opening on the road. From the first of these the pale and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... those highspirited youths who a few months before had eagerly volunteered to march against the Western insurgents should now be with difficulty kept down by sword and carbine, these were signs full of evil omen to the House of Stuart. The warning, however, was lost on the dull, stubborn, self-willed tyrant. He was resolved to transfer to his own Church all the wealthiest and most splendid foundations of England. It was to no purpose that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of all sorts, with long thorns and hooks, hanging from all the branches. Mysterious flames seemed to be bursting forth, wavering and flickering in the dark recesses of the forest, while amid the boughs flew birds of evil omen, night-owls, and ravens, and bats, and other winged things of hideous form, with harsh and croaking voices. Within this forest, so Saint David had learned, stood the ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... of good omen," he returned. "From this moment I shall forget Christie Maclaire, and remember only Miss Hope. All right, Neb; now turn over a chair, and sit your man up against it. He will rest all the easier in that position ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... processes with a power of a thousand millions; C will discover the commencement of the Millennium, and D the {193} termination of Ersch and Gruber's Lexicon,[336] as mere physical phenomena. Against this glorious future there is a sad omen: the initials of the forerunner of this ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... when General Walker was attacking the Costa-Ricans in Rivas, the dog entered the plaza ahead of the rest, and, finding there one of his own species, he forthwith seized him, and shook him, and put him to flight howling,—giving an omen so favorable, that the greasers were driven out of the town with ease by the others. Even his every-day life was sublime, and elevated above the habit of vulgar dogs. He allowed no man to think himself his master, or attach him individually by liberal feeding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... law.[529] Barlow had been openly preaching that purgatory was a delusion; that a layman might be a bishop; that where two or three, it might be, "cobblers or weavers," "were in company in the name of God, there was the church of God."[530] Such ill-judged precipitancy was of darker omen to the Reformation than papal excommunications or imperial menaces, and would soon be dearly paid for in fresh martyr-fires. Latimer, too, notwithstanding his clear perception and gallant heart, looked with bitterness on the confiscation of establishments which his mind ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... is natural at the beginning of most enterprises, and there were some who dreaded a "hitch" with superstitious fear, as if it would be a bad omen. But ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... apparatus of the compass dashed to pieces upon the deck; on which one of the young mates, emphatically regarding it for a moment, cried out with the emotion so natural to a sailor under such circumstances, "What! is the Kent's compass really gone?" leaving the bystanders to form, from that omen, their own conclusions. One promising young officer of the troops was seen thoughtfully removing from his writing-case a lock of hair, which he composedly deposited in his bosom; and another officer procuring paper and pens, addressed a short communication to his ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... remember Egypt," he said in the very eye of that French battery playing through us. And the next omen was that he was struck off his horse, and fell on his back to the ground. I remembered Egypt, and what had just happened too, so thorough well that I remembered the way over this wall!—Captain Hardinge, who was close to him, jumped off his horse, and he and one in the ranks lifted him, and ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... first night that will be when the Right Reverend Dr. WILLARD and the Reverend HENRY AUTHOR JONES find that some play has been produced in the presence of an audience composed entirely of Dissenters! Absit omen! This may never happen if only serious persons in orders, or rather with orders, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... impulse seized the drummer boy. He glanced at his torn sleeve, from which the badge had been shot away, and thought there was something besides accident in what appeared so much like an omen. If it meant any thing, was it not that his place was elsewhere than in ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... along with his books, have made his name known in all the civilised countries of the world. Some of Eucken's most important works have already appeared in half a dozen languages. The demand for them increases everywhere. This receptivity is a good omen of better days. The world is beginning to get tired of the mechanism and shallowness of our age, and is once more on the point of turning to the spiritual fountains of life. Where can it find a better guide to lead it to the waters of life than ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... ostentation, parade, pomp, splurge. Show, exhibit, display, expose, manifest, evince. Shrink, flinch, wince, blench, quail. Shun, avoid, eschew. Shy, bashful, diffident, modest, coy, timid, shrinking. Sign, omen, auspice, portent, prognostic, augury, foretoken, adumbration, presage, indication. Simple, innocent, artless, unsophisticated, naive. Skilful, skilled, expert, adept, apt, proficient, adroit, dexterous, deft, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... that in the midst of dinner in the hall, on the Sunday, the 5th of February, the meine of the Castle were startled by the arrival of Mr. Beale, the Clerk of the Council, always a bird of sinister omen, and accompanied by a still more alarming figure a strong burly man clad in black velvet from head to foot. Every one knew who he was, and a thrill of dismay, that what had been so long expected had come at last, went through all who saw him pass through the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring at the door, or to call out. He must steal into his house, as he had stolen ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... sickening the terror of it which their own wretched experience had implanted in their minds, that during Ascott's childhood and youth his very fractiousness and roughness, his little selfishness, and his persistence in his own will against theirs, had been hailed by his aunts as a good omen that he would grow up "so unlike ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... Rodolphe. "Our meeting with the poet who has sung of love so well is a good omen, and will bring luck to ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... out their usual contribution of steers and cows, consigned to the care of the firm, which was now giving more attention to quality than quantity. The absence of the men from the Northwest at the cattle convention that spring was taken as an omen that the upper country would soon be satiated, a hint that retrenchment was in order, and a better class of stock was to receive the firm's attention in its future operations. My personal contingent of steers would have ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... ELLEN,—I return the note, which is highly characteristic, and not, I fear, of good omen for the comfort of your visit. There must be something wrong in herself as well as in her servants. I inclose another note which, taken in conjunction with the incident immediately preceding it, and with a long series of indications whose ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... to indicate that the corpse they bore—owed, his death to a deed of murder. The circumstance of the sun glancing his rays upon the coffin was not unobserved by the peasantry, who considered it as a good omen to the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... draw not Your hand away, Count Piccolimini! Not on my own account alone I seized it, And nothing common will I say therewith. [Taking the hands of both. Octavio—Max. Piccolomini! O savior names, and full of happy omen! Ne'er will her prosperous genius turn from Austria, While two such stars, with blessed influences Beaming protection, shine above ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... his scouting boats were constantly on the look-out. They could always communicate with Togo's flagship by wireless telegraphy. And now currents passing through the air announced that the Russian fleet was in sight, and was in the square numbered 203. This number was considered a good omen by the Japanese, for the fate of the fortress of Port Arthur was sealed when the Japanese took a fort called "203-metre Hill" (Port Arthur, which lies on the coast of the Chinese mainland, had fallen into the hands of the Japanese on ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... will you? There's a light in the shanty! What do you think of the meanness of that? After we've come all the way up here just to keep to ourselves, then to find somebody camping on the ground! Shucks! It makes me feel as if it was a bad omen, and right in the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... that glowed with richest tints of purple and amethyst and rose, in the level light of afternoon. And Quita, being in a fanciful mood, saw in this "good gigantic smile" of the rain-soaked earth a happy omen; an assurance that so would the mists rise from her own life, and the sunlight prevail. A sudden recollection of the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... joyously. "Such weather as this is a good omen. How do you do, Miss Glazzard? Here is Lilian all excitement to see you; she would give her little finger to go to ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... John that the shadow of sorrow was suddenly removed from him, and as though a weight of care had been lifted from his heart. He could not account for the alteration, but he felt no longer sad. Was it an omen? Was this New Year going to fulfill some great thing after all? A divine peace fell upon him, and then a pleasant sensation of sleep, and he turned out the lights and went softly to his room, and ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... cry, the omen is not thine, Thou aged priestess of fell doom, and fate. It is not blood: thy gods are making wine, They spilt the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... bud and leaf Dorothy Thornton looked out of her window with a psychological anxiety. If the first hint of life that came to the great tree were diseased or marked with blight, it would be an omen of ill under which she did not see how she could face her hour, and with fevered eyes she searched the gray branches where the sap was rising and studied the earliest tinge ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... had remembered her shrewd mother's hints, and her own later fears, concerning the insecurity of his position: and had studied his tired and worn face for an equivocal sign. But this smile, self-confident and firm, was not the smile of a ruined man; and his flashing glance seemed to be an omen of ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... bursting into leaf, contributed much to establish me in this frame of mind. The hateful mist, which had so greatly depressed us, had disappeared; leaving the face of the country visible in all the brilliance of early spring. The men who rode before us, cheered by the happy omen, laughed and talked as they rode, or tried the paces of their horses, where the trees grew sparsely; and their jests and laughter coming pleasantly to our ears as we followed, warmed even madame's sad face to a ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... as an omen. He was delighted with the sun—it rose out of a sack and grew brighter and brighter in the course of the day. It was never lucky for the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... return home." I was weeping like a child. "Jatinda's callous departure is an ill omen. This trip is doomed ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... profound admiration; but they do not know his nephew, nor have they ever been brought into any relations whether of trade or diplomacy with France. Moreover, the words, "ally," and "protector," have become almost words of ill-omen in the Caucasus, from the fact that the Russians, like the Persians and the Turks before them, have always used these terms to mask their designs of interference and ultimate conquest. The wily Imam therefore distrusts the Franks though dona ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... of death to see a flower blossoming out of season, as, for example, a rose in the fall. This has proved a true omen in several cases, according to the experience of a lady who believes in these signs. In consequence of this belief, when she has such a a flower, she will pick it off the stem and throw it away, without mentioning the incident to any one. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... ill omen accompanied the commencement of the new reign (B.C. 405). The inauguration of the monarch was a religious ceremony, and took place in a temple at Pasargadae, the old capital, to which a peculiar sanctity was still regarded as attaching. Artaxerxes had proceeded ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... general change of weather with a tendency towards rain. If Dr. Forster's theory be true, it is decidedly one of the minor instances, as far as London weather is concerned.—It will take a good deal of evidence to make us believe in the omen of a Saturday Moon. But, as we have said of the Poughkeepsie Seer, the thing is very curious whether true or false. Whence comes this universal proverb—and a hundred others—while the meteorological observer {323} cannot, when he puts down a long series of results, detect ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the spot and watched the R.F.C. extract the pilot and parts of the machine, which was deeply embedded in the hole. For hours the wreckage remained the centre of attraction to many visitors. The General hailed the burnt relics, not inappropriately, as a lucky omen. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... till they sold like damaged goods at a sheriff's auction. But Tonsor, the lucky agent, kept his counsel. Daily he attended the sales at the Board, with apparently exhaustless resources, bearing pitilessly, triumphantly, until the unlucky bulls came to think the sight of his face was an ill omen. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... solemn music a funereal dirge, Wild and most sorrowful. His cheek is pale, The worm that prey'd upon thy youthful bloom It canker'd green on his. Now lost he stands, The ghost of what he was, and the cold dew, Which bathes his aching temples, gives sure omen Of speedy dissolution. Mary, soon Thy love will lay his pallid cheek to thine, And sweetly will he sleep ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... incoming lower class of superstitious Germans, Irish, Sicilians, and others—he became an omen and embodiment of public and private ill-fortune. Upon him all the vagaries of their superstitions gathered and grew. If a house caught fire, it was imputed to his machinations. Did a woman go off in a fit, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... hill at the entrance of my native village, whence I had looked back to bid farewell, and forward to the pale mist-bow that overarched my path, and was the omen of my fortunes. How I had misinterpreted that augury, the ghost of hope, with none of hope's bright hues! Nor could I deem that all its portents were yet accomplished, though from the same western sky the declining sun shone brightly in my face. But I was calm and not depressed. Turning to the ...
— Fragments From The Journal of a Solitary Man - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... explained the whole difficulty years before, by reporting a conversation of his with Lord Grenville, in which they had hoped that when the Whigs came into power they would be more grateful to Sydney than the Tories had been to Swift. Sydney's acuteness must have made him wince at the omen. For my part I do not see why either Harley or Grey should have hesitated, as far as any scruples of their own went. But I think any fair-minded person must admit the possibility of a scruple, though he may not ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... cleft, through which she seemed to have flitted, looked as though it had not been disturbed for centuries, and as he tried to force his way to the gloomy cavern below, a crowd of bats and owls and other foul birds of evil omen, aroused from their repose, rose upwards, and, amidst dismal hootings and fearful cries, almost flung him backward with the violence of their flight. He spent the remainder of the afternoon in search of the lost one, but ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... a turn in the creek left him out of sight. That danger was safely passed, and Fred Ashman drew a sigh of relief, accepting it as a good omen of their future. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... defenders of your country, accompanied with every auspicious omen; advance with alacrity into the field, when God himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much interested in your success not to lend you her aid. She will shed over your enterprise her selectest influence. While you are engaged in the field, many will repair to the closet, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... was open war with the Jesuits for which those stouthearted sailors longed. All were afraid of secret mischief. The diplomatists—who were known to be flitting about France, Flanders, Scotland, and England—were birds of ill omen. King James was beset by a thousand bribes and expostulations to avenge his mother's death; and although that mother had murdered his father, and done her best to disinherit himself, yet it was feared that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... certain sorcerers were wont to ensnare the mother bird with her young during incubation, and to employ them for the purpose of securing fruitfulness and good luck in bringing up children: also because it was held to be a good omen to find the mother ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... silent and preoccupied, it robbed the days I had spent of half their brightness and roused me into dark meditations in the silence of the night. And as I stood and watched Evesham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro—those birds of infinite ill omen—she stood beside me watching me, perceiving the trouble indeed, but not perceiving it clearly her eyes questioning my face, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her face was grey because the sunset was fading out of the sky. It was no fault of hers that she ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. Anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme Being, and, mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... fruitful year. At present I should scarcely think there is an individual who believes in such superstitious stuff. But they still, as in days of yore, kindle fires upon the mountains on this night, and still look upon it as a bad omen, if any common or ugly-formed creature, whether beast or man, makes its appearance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... as Clara continued to indulge in his hilarity, it was evident he had obtained the permission asked for. At all events, Don Cornelio and Costal regarded his behaviour as a good omen. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... March arrived, and with it the end of Lincoln's blundering. One good omen for the success of the new Administration was the presence of Douglas on the inaugural platform. He had accepted fate, deeply as it wounded him, and had come out of the shattered party of evasion on the side of his section. For the purpose of showing his support of the administration ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the first book of his History, and again in Book 5 he narrates how 'when after the taking of auguries the Capitol was being cleared, Juventas [Youth] and Terminus would not allow themselves to be moved.'[110] This omen was welcomed with universal rejoicing, for they believed that it portended an eternal empire. The youth is useful for ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... been too much engrossed with her own affairs during her only visit to Miss Thomson to observe Peggy's birds, but she drew a good omen form the coincidence of Miss Thomson's assistance being given so frankly to two women both in distress ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... discharged and conveyed up the country. Admiral Puke had also ordered three of the largest merchant ships to be fitted as block ships for the additional defence of Carlshamn, which was considered as a bad omen. ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... correct, it is almost as much a matter of good luck as of method.... That potatoes should be planted only during the crescent moon, that near the sea people are born at high tide and die at low tide, that a comet is an omen of danger, that bad luck follows the cracking of a mirror," all these are the results of common-sense observation. Matters of common knowledge are thus not infrequently matters ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... for the sugar to melt. The tones of the organ seemed to haunt me, and the wedding of Emma and Louis recurred to my mind. I dressed; the hairdresser called me "Madame" too, and arranged my hair so nicely that I said, I remember, "Things are beginning well; this coiffure is a good omen." I stopped Marie, who wished to lace me tighter than usual. I know that white makes one look stouter and that Marie was right; but I was afraid lest it should send the blood to my head. I have always had a horror of brides who looked as if they had just got up from ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... while you are kissing your child to say with a lisping voice: To-morrow you will die; and to a friend also: To-morrow you will go away or I shall, and never shall we see one another again? But these are words of bad omen—and some incantations also are of bad omen; but because they are useful, I don't care for this; only let them be useful. But do you call things to be of bad omen except those which are significant of some evil? Cowardice is a word of bad omen, and ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... intervening opens his eyes to see the gods aiding the Greeks (712-756). AEneas regains his home. Anchises obstinately refuses to flee, until a halo is seen about the head of Ascanius (757-828), whereupon he accepts the omen and yields. The escape.—In a sudden panic Creusa is lost (829-900). AEneas, at peril of his life, is seeking her throughout the city, when her wraith appears and bids him away. "She is dead in Troytown: in Italy empire awaits him." ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... through suddenly receiving orders to take a circuitous route through the city. On former occasions they had marched out by the Via di Borgo Santi Apostoli, and the campaign had been unsuccessful. It was clear that there was some bad omen connected with the exit through this street against Pisa, and consequently the army was now led out by the Porta Rossa. But as the tents stretched out there to dry had not been taken away, the flags—another bad ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... lets down her veil, The white fog creeps from bush to bush about, The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright, And in the scatter'd farms the lights come out. I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night, 165 Yet, happy omen, hail! Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale deg. deg.167 (For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep The morningless and unawakening sleep Under the flowery oleanders ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... a man kisses his child, said Epictetus, he should whisper to himself, "To-morrow perchance thou wilt die."—But those are words of bad omen.—"No word is a word of bad omen," said Epictetus, "which expresses any work of nature; or if it is so, it is also a word of bad omen to speak of the ears of corn being reaped" ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... clap of thunder shook the solid walls of the cavern. This was immediately followed by a torrent of rain, the plashing of which outside suggested that all the windows of heaven had been suddenly opened. The incident was natural enough in itself, but the anxious youth took it as a bad omen, and trembled as he had never before trembled at the disturbances of nature. One glance, however, sufficed to relieve his mind. The dying woman was young. Delicate of constitution by nature, long exposure to ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... spirit which now seized this poor, fugitive remnant of the Tribe of the Little Hills. The speedy and spectacular triumph over a foe so formidable as the giant bull urus was unanimously accepted as an omen of good fortune. ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... universally reverenced, as the warnings of the guardian spirits of the tribe. There is in that country a sparrow, of an uncommon species, and not often seen. This bird is called in the Shawnese dialect by a name importing "kind messenger," which they deem always a true omen, whenever it appears, of bad news. They are exceedingly intimidated whenever this bird sings near them; and were it to perch and sing over their war-camp, the whole party would instantly ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... Monsieur, no; that is not to be thought of! If you have no better proposals to make, it is not worth while talking.' These words were accompanied with threatening gestures and marks of great anger;" considerably staggering to the Two Diplomatic British gentlemen, and of evil omen to Robinson's phantasm of a compliance. Robinson apologetically hums and hahs, flounders through the bad bit of road as he can; flounderingly indicates that he has more ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... spread to right and left of the South Carolinians. Behind and everywhere except in the cleared space before them gathered the people, a vast mass through which ran the hum and murmur of expectancy. Overhead, the sun leaped out and shone for a while with great brilliancy. "A good omen," many said. And to Harry it all seemed good, too. The excitement, the enthusiasm were contagious. If any prophet of evil was present ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... worst of weather; but there was the usual style of coming on, with lips and steps at the sides, and cords of running toward the middle. Quite enough, at any rate, to make the trout jump, without any omen of impending drought, and to keep all the play and the sway of ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... otherwise be continual jars, and broils, and mad doings, if want of wit only did not at the same time make a contented cuckold and a still house; if the cuckoo sing at the back door, the unthinking cornute takes no notice of the unlucky omen of others' eggs being laid in his own nest, but laughs it over, kisses his dear spouse, and all is well. And indeed it is much better patiently to be such a hen-pecked frigot, than always to be wracked ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... eventual and complete settlement. In any case it is clear that the mere fact of a proposal to extend the franchise having been made by the Government, thus frankly recognizing the need to deal with the subject, will be hailed as a good omen and a good beginning ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... spoilers. Cast out sin, and you cast out sorrow. So he first earns his new name of Jerubbaal ('Let Baal plead'), and is known as Baal's antagonist, before he blows the trumpet of revolt. The name is an omen of victory. The hand that had smitten the idol, and had not been withered, would smite Midian. Therefore that new name is used in this chapter, which tells of the preparations for the fight and its triumphant issue. From his home among ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... This was an omen the most favourable he could hope. He now seated himself by the bedside, and determined not to quit her till the expected crisis was past. He gave the strictest orders for the whole house to be kept quiet, and suffered ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
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