He may have been singing about the ominous portent of being born during an unfavorable astrological alignment, but the classic tune became a standard of the blues.
Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.
Still, now and then, I received a damping check to my cheerfulness; and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on the region of doubts and portents, and dark conjectures.
Martha remembers a time long ago when the only warning of hurricanes, other than natural portents plain to the wise, was the whistle of the train four miles away at the village.
A new portent had appeared in our economic life, a phenomenon that was destined to affect not only the social and business existence of the every-day American but even his political and legal institutions.
Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this event, at least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a fore-shadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged.
'He is-uncanny, ' Lavinia said, unhappily. 'There is no other word. You wait and watch for the next thing he is going to do, as if it were-as if it were a sign, or a portent, or a revelation, or something'.