Uncle Tom’s Cabin vocabulary

[...] I added, thinking how I'd left [the turtle skull] in Whit's hermitage as a talisman [...].

Sue Monk Kidd. The Mermaid Chair, p.203 (2005)

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the mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever live to spend it.

Herman Melville. Moby Dick

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“Trust me,” he says; which in itself has never been a talisman, carries no guarantee.

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They felt that words and phrases had some talismanic power, and charmed themselves asleep by repeating “liberty,” “all men equal before the law,” “dictates of conscience,” “free speech” and all manner of such incantation to exorcise the spirits of the night.

Ambrose Bierce. The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 1