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More "Fluency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much in the same strain with his officer. The contrast between the two was very considerable. The captain, Don Hernan Escalante, was a refined, highly-educated man. His knowledge on most matters was extensive, if not profound; he spoke several languages, and among them English, with a fluency few Spaniards attain. Few Spaniards indeed of that day were equally accomplished. His first lieutenant, Pedro Alvarez, was every inch a seaman, and like many seamen despised all who were not so. Again the captain stopped before the chart, and placing his finger on it, observed: "Here ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... in a larger sense," murmured Mrs. Markham, "the habit of courtesy alone preserves the fluency of the heart." ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... this language surprized, and continues to surprize me every day the deeper I get into it. Every thing is proper in it; nothing borrowed, as amongst us. Here are no auxiliary verbs. The prepositions are in great number. This it is that gives great ease, fluency, and richness to the expression of whatever you require, when you are once master enough to join them to the verbs. In all their absolute verbs they have a dual number. What we call the imperfect, perfect, and preter-perfect tenses of the indicative mood, ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... him, the stubborn sensation of furtive dislike within Artois increased, and he consciously determined not to yield to the charm of this younger man who was going to interfere in his life. Artois did not speak much English, but fortunately Delarey talked French fairly well, not with great fluency like Hermione, but enough to take a modest share in conversation, which was apparently all the share that he desired. Artois believed that he was no great talker. His eyes were more eager than was his tongue, and seemed to betoken a vivacity of spirit which he could not, perhaps, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of Sweden, and the grandson of the renowned Gustavus Vasa. He was a precocious child, and it is told (though it appears rather incredible) that at the age of twelve he spoke Latin, French, German, Dutch, and Italian with great fluency, besides having a superficial acquaintance with Polish and Russian. There can be no doubt, however, that he was well taught, and that he possessed a remarkable facility in acquiring languages. For all that, he was far from being a bookish boy. In ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the success of the armies of Rome is not fully accounted for, until one takes into account the constitution of this military body. It united, in an incomparable degree, the different advantages of fixity and fluency. Moderate in size, yet large enough to give the effect of mass, open in texture, yet compact in form, it afforded to every man room for individual prowess, while it left no man to his individual strength. Each soldier leaned and rested upon the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... remark that he was "blessed if he didn't believe that the gemman had been takin' lessons in language hof a cab-driver, and set up o' nights to learn." But the ingenious American is not one whit behind the vigorous Londoner in "de elegant fluency of sass," as darkies term it, and it moves my heart to think that, after thirty years, and after the marvellous experiences of men who are masters of our English tongue which the editor of the Century must have had, he still retains remembrance of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... very little reading since he came to New York, and, if called upon to read aloud, would have shown the effects of want of practice, in his frequent blunders. But the daily lessons in reading which he now took began to remedy this deficiency, and give him increased fluency and facility. It also had the effect of making him wish that his education had not been interrupted, so that his Cousin Charles might not be ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... spoke French with remarkable fluency and a calm disregard of accent and inflections, was well pleased to entertain the French gentleman, and at her house I had the happiness to make his acquaintance, greatly, as it proved, to my future ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... account in the career of public service to which he devoted himself, and in which he has remained pure and unblemished in the midst of a corrupt class. From the first he was destined to the European legations, on account of his fluency in speaking and writing both English and French; and he is one of the few who have employed their time usefully in the capitals of the Old World. Flexible by nature, honourable by education, and expeditious in business, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... As promptly as parliamentary forms and mysteries would allow, there was a bill under the astonished noses of honorable lawgivers, removing the seat of legislation from Slowburg and centring it in Fastburg. This bill Mr. Thomas Dicker supported with that fluency and fiery enthusiasm of oratory which had for a time enabled him to show as the foremost man of his State. Great was the excitement, great the rejoicing and anger. The press of Fastburg sent forth shrieks of exultation, and the press of Slowburg responded with growlings of disgust. The two capitals ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia; and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice of discreet and seasonable silence. With these powers of eloquence, Mahomet was an illiterate Barbarian: his youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... not given her the best education. I believe she was a bit of a thief, and she could tell fibs with fluency and precision. The woman was a sinner; but her wild, strong affections were true, and her heart was not ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in spite of his learning and industrious painstaking, he used to cut a poor figure at the bar; for being, though a lawyer, an exceedingly modest and bashful man, he failed to acquire the habit of addressing either court or jury with ease, fluency, or force. On the other hand, Squire Talcott, as he soon came to be called, was a young man of fine appearance and good address, in no wise troubled with an undue degree of doubt touching the excellence of his own abilities. His first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... constituencies, were carried forward with redoubled energy. In the Tudley End division, Aldous Raeburn was fighting a somewhat younger opponent of the same country-gentleman stock—a former fag indeed of his at Eton—whose zeal and fluency gave him plenty to do. Under ordinary circumstances Aldous would have thrown himself with all his heart and mind into a contest which involved for him the most stimulating of possibilities, personal and public. But, as these days went over, he found his appetite for the struggle flagging, and was ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Redgrave's request, the position of lady of the house pro tem., and described the "change of plans," as she called it, which led to their transfer from the St. Louis to the Astronef with an imaginative fluency which would have done credit to the most enterprising of ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... Grammaticus; a tenth, Medicus; an eleventh, Physiologus; a twelfth, Politicus; a thirteenth, Moralis. They have but one book, which they call Wisdom, and in it all the sciences are written with conciseness and marvellous fluency of expression. This they read to the people after the custom of the Pythagoreans. It is Wisdom who causes the exterior and interior, the higher and lower walls of the city to be adorned with the finest ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... numbers in every age and place, where the truths of the Gospel are generally known. Such men are more conspicuous than humble believers, but their profession will not endure a strict investigation-(Scott). Reader, be careful not to judge harshly, or despise a real believer, who is blessed with fluency ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... remnants of the crab—the bony bud of a tail—stood erect and firm. Then the pitying spectators seized Dilly Boy, and, holding him, unlocked the pinchers. He rolled over—it was the only easeful attitude—as he cursed all gins, crabs, and dynamiters with wondrous fluency. And may the potency of those coloured curses rest ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... hours, Roger Mifflin was a prompt riser. It is only the very young who find satisfaction in lying abed in the morning. Those who approach the term of the fifth decade are sensitively aware of the fluency of life, and have no taste to squander ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... brother—were all philologists, and extremely fond of the study of language. Grammar was favorite light reading, and the philosophy which lies at the root of human speech a frequent subject of discussion and research with them; but they none of them spoke foreign languages with ease or fluency. My uncle was a good Latin scholar, and read French, Italian, and Spanish, but spoke none of them; not even the first, in spite of his long residence in French Switzerland. The same was the case with my father, whose delight in the dry bones of language was such ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of a man of Clifton's cultivation being so dull and diffuse in a natural condition. Yet, as the message wore on, it cannot be denied that a strange influence was at work. The words followed each other with greater fluency and in richer abundance. The meaning, to be sure, was still vague enough; and whenever some commonplace truth or plausibility protruded from the general washiness, it was seized upon and beaten and stretched to the last degree of tenuity. Phrases upon phrases ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... stature, compact and symmetrical figure, and rather dark complexion. His conversation and deportment denoted the cultivation, delicacy, and graceful poise of an accomplished gentleman; and he delivered his English with a correctness and fluency very noticeably free from the peculiar spasmodic effort that marked his royal brother's exploits in the language ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... members of the Committee. In order to be more at his ease, Yoga Rama removed his turban. I placed it under a table which stood on the stage. I then had a good look at him. I found he was a black man with short crisp curly hair. From his appearance and the fluency with which he speaks English, I came to the conclusion that he is not an Abyssinian, but an American ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... think me a very bad sort of fellow,' he said. And then, as she made no answer, he plunged at once into his declaration. He was a cold lover on the stage, but practice had at least given him fluency, and now he was very much in earnest—he had never known till then all that she was to him: there was real passion in his voice, and a restrained power which might have moved ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... mental characteristics known to arise from traceable hereditary sources may be mentioned factors in musical ability, artistic composition, literary ability, mechanical skill, calculating ability, inventive ability, memory, ability to spell, fluency in conversation, aptness in languages, military talent, acquisitiveness, attention, story-telling, poetic ability; and, on the other hand, insanity, feeble-mindedness of many types, epilepsy. These are suggestive of the inheritability of many other ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... attention. He qualified himself for an able execution of it, by unremitted application to every branch of profane or sacred literature connected with it. He was, a perfect master of the Italian, Spanish, and French languages. The last he spoke and wrote with fluency and purity. He was also perfect master of the Latin and Greek languages. At an advanced period of his life he mentioned to the editor that he could then understand the works of St. John Chrysostom as easily in the original as in the Latin interpretation; but that the Greek of Saint Gregory Nazianzen ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... his mother lost her reason and was removed to the asylum at St. John's. The child was almost destitute of clothing, and covered with vermin. He has the face of a seraph, and a voice that lisps out curses with the fluency of a veteran trooper. Ananias is David's shadow; he follows him everywhere, and echoes all his words as if they were gems of wisdom, far above rubies. Indeed, when David has ceased speaking, one waits involuntarily for Ananias to ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... thought I should be so strong in this line. I had not foreseen such copiousness and fatal fluency. Never again will I tap these deep dark reservoirs in a character that had always seemed to me, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... spoken to some extent in the United States," he answered gravely. He did not evince the least surprise at her fluency. ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... may have noticed, great abilities, but I have received an excellent education. To say nothing of those soi-disant accomplishments with which we adorn and sometimes weary society, my dear mother had me well grounded in languages and history. Without being eloquent, I have a certain fluency, in which, they tell me, even members of Parliament are deficient, smoothly as their speeches read made into English by the newspapers. Like yourself, Miss Dodd, and all our sex, I am not destitute of tact, and tact, you know, is 'the talent ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... impressive words were still ringing in the ears of his conscience-stricken accusers, Edward O'Meagher Condon commenced to speak. He was evidently more of an orator than either of those who had preceded him, and he spoke with remarkable fluency, grace, and vigour. The subjoined is a correct report of his spirited ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... impetuosity of his speech and the earnestness of his voice and manner were so impressive, that they forced conviction upon his hearers even when his arguments did not reach their judgment. Such was the fluency and animation of his language, whether written or spoken, that though it was sometimes coarse and defective in taste, it was always, as will be seen from the examples quoted in this ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... principal towns, remaining three or four months at each, the idolized guest of the dilettanti of the place. Rossini's idleness and love of good cheer always made him procrastinate his labors till the last moment, and placed him in dilemmas from which only his fluency of composition extricated him. ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... and foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest; and if he was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... meet the purpose. Facility in speech grows out of enthusiasm in speaking. Every recitation is a lesson in English, and should be used for this purpose; nor should the aim be correctness only, but ease and fluency as well. ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... guess-work which even to me carried no conviction, I saw that again he was not attending. After this, by boldly skipping each difficulty as it arose I managed to cover a good deal of ground with admirable fluency. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... upon her spirits like friction upon a glass globe: her face gleamed with resentment, and every pore seemed to emit particles of flame. She replied with incredible fluency of the bitterest expressions: he retorted equal rage in broken hints and incoherent imprecations: she rejoined with redoubled fury; and in conclusion he was fain to betake himself to flight, ejaculating curses against her; ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... consistent with the best breeding. Indeed it was almost a proof of standards and touchstones other than the vulgar: he must be so sure the vulgar would be first on the ground. He wasn't a man of easy assurance, who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he was critical of himself as well as of others, and, exacting a good deal of others, to think them agreeable, probably took a rather ironical view of what he himself offered: a proof into the bargain that he was not grossly conceited. If he had not been shy he wouldn't ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... at MILL'S table: "The host said to him at dessert that Grote, who was present, would like to hear him explain one or more of his views about the equilibration of molecules in some relation or other. Spencer, after an instant of good-natured hesitation, complied with unbroken fluency for a quarter-of-an-hour or more. Grote followed every word intently, and in the end expressed himself as well satisfied. Mill, as we moved off into the drawing-room, declared to me his admiration of a wonderful piece of lucid exposition. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... widow. I think that without vanity, I may pretend to know as much of the female world as any man in Great Britain, though the chief of my knowledge consists in this, that they are not to be known.' WILL immediately, with his usual fluency, rambled into an account of his own amours. 'I am now,' says he, 'upon the verge of fifty' (though by the way we all knew he was turned of threescore). 'You may easily guess,' continued WILL, 'that I have not lived so long in the world without having had ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... close, and to him gave his orders. With some degree of fluency—for in the months Beatrice and he had spent in the Abyss they had acquired much of the Merucaan ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... be said in general that the chief is a man who, by his fluency of speech and by his penetration and sagacity in unraveling the intricate points of a dispute, by his personal prowess, combined with sagacity and fair dealing, has won influence. Personal prowess appeals to the Manbo, so that in time of hostility the warrior ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... understanding and a larger respect for the positions of the opponent. The men who would be selected as leaders or speakers to enforce the contentions of the party, would have to possess some reasoning faculty as well as oratorical fluency. The voters, instead of being shut in with one group of arguments more or less reasonable, would be brought into touch with the arguments of other groups of citizens. I can conceive of no better method for bringing representative government ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... possession of the ninth electorate. He had nearly restored tranquillity to his country, when he died (1711) of the small-pox—a victim to the ignorance of his physicians. He was a lover and patron of the arts, and spoke several languages with elegance and fluency. But he had the usual faults of absolute princes; was prodigal in his expenditures, irascible in his temper, fond of pageants and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... a lifetime. Now they were busy with their Saturday evening businesses—cooking sparrows over the gas with rusty nibs; brewing unholy drinks in gallipots; skinning moles with pocket-knives; attending to paper trays full of silkworms, or discussing the iniquities of their elders with a freedom, fluency, and point that would have amazed their parents. The blow fell without warning. Stalky upset a form crowded with small boys among their own cooking utensils, McTurk raided the untidy lockers as a terrier ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... narrow line already agreed upon in Canada was watched for—here by the French and {124} there by the English—as eager dogs watch a rat hole; a snap on one side might have provoked a snap on the other and put an end to the concord. He stated and argued the case with cool ready fluency, while at the same time you saw that every word was measured, and that while he was making for a point ahead, he was never for a moment unconscious of any of the rocks among which he ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... done. Rain, snow, or shine, the committee is on hand at the station—the natives, of course, call it the "deepo"—to consume borrowed tobacco and to favor Providence with its advice concerning the running of the universe. Also it discusses local affairs with fluency and ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... from female weakness, and she is endued with a masculine power of application. No apprehension can be quicker than her's, no memory more retentive. French and Italian she speaks like English; Latin, with fluency, propriety, and judgement; she also spoke Greek with me, frequently, willingly, and moderately well. Nothing can be more elegant than her handwriting, whether in the Greek or Roman character. In music she is very skilful, but does not greatly delight. With ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... things that she knew clearly and well, without effort or attitude. She had been to New York and Boston for two winters; she had spent the previous summer at Newport; it might have been her whole youth for the fluency, accuracy, and familiarity of her detail, and the absence of provincial enthusiasm. She was going abroad, probably in the spring. She had thought of going to winter in Italy, but she would wait now until her sister was ready to go with ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... Mirobolant, et qu'il donnoit sa parole comme un gentilhomme qu'il ne l'avoit jamais, jamais—intende," said Pen, who made a shot at a French word for "intended," and was secretly much pleased with his own fluency and correctness in speaking ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the musical structure of "Hansel und Gretel" in the Wagnerian manner, but has done it with so much fluency and deftness that a musical layman might listen to it from beginning to end without suspecting the fact, save from the occasional employment of what may be called Wagnerian idioms. The little work is replete ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... them, for they had made it twice previously. Beyond liking change, as was natural at their age, they cared not whether they were at their English or at their French home, as they spoke both languages with equal fluency, and their life at one castle differed but little ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... TO DOCK THE ENTAIL.—The English reader may perhaps be surprised at the extent of Thady's legal knowledge, and at the fluency with which he pours forth law-terms; but almost every poor man in Ireland, be he farmer, weaver, shopkeeper, ox steward, is, besides his other occupations, occasionally a lawyer. The nature of processes, ejectments, custodiams, injunctions, ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... they had with them were unable to find food, and began to utter violent threats against Julian, mingled with fierce cries and reproaches, calling him Asiatic, Greek, a cheat, and a fool pretending to be wise. And as it is commonly the case among soldiers that some men are found of remarkable fluency of speech, they poured forth such harangues ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... history he was telling, according to all the changes of their fortune. This man was one of those who are called Improvisatori—persons who, in Italian towns, go about reciting verses or telling stories, which they are supposed to invent as they go on speaking. Some of these people speak with great fluency, and collect crowds round them in the public streets. When an Improvisatore sees the attention of his audience fixed, and when he comes to some very interesting part of his narrative, he dexterously drops his hat upon the ground, and pauses till his auditors have paid ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... style is clear, vigorous and epigrammatic; his arguments are characterized by strength of logic, and, like those of other patriots, are, as the dispute advances, based less on precedent and documentary authorities and more on "natural right.'' Although he lacked oratorical fluency, his short speeches, like his writings, were forceful; his plain dress and unassuming ways helped to make him extremely popular with the common people, in whom he had much greater faith than his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... accomplishments, was a born linguist, and could speak with fluency in several languages, even the dialect of the Mosquito Indians. He was once captured by the Spaniards, and taken to Havana, but escaped with a few other prisoners in a canoe, seized a piragua, and with this captured a sloop ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... brilliant or learned orator, Mr. Powell Williams had the gift of fluency, and he could generally be reckoned upon to get up at a moment's notice and make an effective speech. He could also do a little fighting if it came in his way, and in the course of his Town Council career he had one or two pretty bouts with some of ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... him; and, as soon as he could speak it to any degree, he began to read the Church Service every Sunday to the garrison, with a printed sermon from an English divine, until he had obtained sufficient fluency to preach extempore. At first, the place of meeting was a large room in an old building, but he afterwards persuaded them to build themselves a church capable of holding from 1,500 to 2,000. His facility ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... unchristian words she had written in the letter that was by that time passing through the hands of the weary night-shift of mail-clerks down in the General Post-office. And when she did read it in print, she was so pleased and proud of the fluency of her own diction, and so many of her nephews and nieces said so many admiring things about what she might have done if she had only gone in for literature, that it really never occurred to her at all to think whether she had been any more just and charitable than the poor ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... compliments the other bade him hold his tongue, and keep his noise to himself, and laid upon him many similar injunctions, with great fluency of speech and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... grave, sweet wisdom of my father's suggested lessons,—tended to feed a passion for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to read with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed for the less ambitious ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... word, my Lords, the paragraphs are delightful. Observe, in this translation from the Persian there is all the fluency of an English paragraph well preserved. All I can say is, that these people of Benares feel their joy, comfort, and satisfaction in swearing to the falseness of Mr. Hastings's representation against himself. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... valet, tells her so every day, taking to himself no little credit for having taught her, as he thinks, something of Parisian manners. Many are the conversations she holds with him in his mother tongue, for she has learned to speak that language with a fluency and readiness which astonished her teachers and sometimes astonished herself. It did not seem difficult to her, but rather like an old friend, and Marie at first was written on every page of Ollendorff. But Marie ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... talked so well that the girl wondered why Mrs. Heeny had found her lacking in conversation. But though Undine thought silent people awkward she was not easily impressed by verbal fluency. All the ladies in Apex City were more voluble than Mrs. Fairford, and had a larger vocabulary: the difference was that with Mrs. Fairford conversation seemed to be a concert and not a solo. She kept drawing ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... such observations that he found it intolerably difficult to fix his attention on the talk. Jasper's fluency seemed to ripple senselessly about ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... was the daughter of a small farmer, had, in her youth, received the elements of a good English education. She could read with tolerable fluency, and had taught her children this important branch; but though, when a child, she had learned to write, want of practice and varied duties connected with her toilsome condition, had almost erased the power from memory; and it was with deep regret at her own neglect, that she found her ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... acquaintance, and his dread of anything approaching to meanness or servility rendered his manner somewhat decided and hard. Nothing perhaps was more remarkable among his various attainments than the fluency, and precision, and originality of his language, when he spoke in company; more particularly as he aimed at purity in his turn of expression, and avoided, more successfully than most Scotchmen, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... and he accomplished much; but he could not master the field as any man whose profession was literature might easily do. Consequently, in comparison with Coleridge or Lowell, his critical work seems dry and bare, with neither the fluency nor the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and sofas are fresh and elegant, and there is a fine Erard piano. The master of the house is confined to his room by illness, but will be happy to see us. His son and daughters speak English with fluency. They inform us, that the epidemic colds which prevail in Cuban winters are always called by the name of some recent untoward occurrence, and that their father, who suffers from severe influenza, has got the President's Message. We find Don Jose in a bedroom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... aforesaid, who lectured and preached, rather than conversed. Few subjects were untouched by his eloquence; he spoke with equal ease on a difficult point in theology, and on the conformation of the sun. He lectured on politics, astronomy, chemistry, and anatomy with great fluency and equal incorrectness. In describing the circulation of the blood, he said, "It's a purely metaphysical subject;" and the answering remark, "It is the most purely physical," made him vehemently angry. He spoke of the sun by saying, "I've studied the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... roads of the earth? That fine melodiousness, which is one of Spenser's signal characteristics, may be perceived in his Eclogues, as also a native gracefulness of style, which is another distinguishing mark of him. Perceivable, too, are his great, perilous fluency of language and his immense fecundity of mind. The work at once secured him a front place in the poetical ranks of the day. Sidney mentions it in his Apologie for Poetrie;{5} Abraham Fraunce draws illustrations from it in his Lawyers ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... midday when I was coming back one old half-blind man spoke to me in Gaelic, but, in general, I was surprised at the abundance and fluency of the ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... of rage, the Jewess kept her eyes steadily fixed upon Burrell, and held her hand within the bosom of her vest. When he paused, she addressed him at first in broken English, and then finding that she could not proceed with the eagerness and fluency her case required, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... time; whether all children in a state of innocence are masculine. Such debates made remarkable theologians and metaphysicians, developed precision in defining terms, accuracy in applying the rules of deductive logic, and fluency in expression. As a result, later scientists were able to reason more accurately and express themselves ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... natural growth. Such perfect virtuosity in dufferdom can be acquired only by constant practice. But how comes it to be practised? I can only repeat that the English are a naturally silent race. They are apt to mistrust fluency. 'Glibness' they call it, and scent behind it the adventurer, the player of the confidence trick or the three-card trick, the robber of the widow and the orphan. Be smooth-tongued, and the Englishman will withdraw from you as quickly ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... descent being appointed chief of an important mission, except myself, Baron Carl von Werther, Canitz, and Count Max Hatzfeldt (who had a French wife). Foreign names were at a premium: Brassier, Perponcher, Savigny, Oriola. It was presumed that they had greater fluency in French, and they were more out of the common. Another feature was the disinclination to accept personal responsibility when not covered by unmistakable instructions, just as was the case in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... society, they have had no experience, consequently they can form no judgments. By imprudently endeavouring to turn the attention of children to conversation that is unsuited to them, people may give the appearance of early intelligence, and a certain readiness of repartee and fluency of expression; but these are transient advantages. Smart, witty children, amuse the circle for a few hours, and are forgotten: and we may observe, that almost all children who are praised and admired for sprightliness and wit, reason absurdly, and continue ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... few weeks in London; and had then come out to the East, where he had been for some years trading and speculating in the various islands. He now spoke Dutch, French, Malay and Javanese, all equally well; English with a very slight accent, but with perfect fluency, and a most complete knowledge of idiom, in which I often tried to puzzle him in vain. German and Italian were also quite familiar to him, and his acquaintance with European languages included Modern Greek, Turkish, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... reply. Remembering his recent conversation with Mrs. Archibald, he believed that, if they had quietly gone away, there was a better reason for it than Miss Raybold's fluency of expression. It was possible that something might have happened after he had retired from the scene the night before, for when he went to sleep Raybold was still walking up and ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... anything or nothing that can be at the moment invented, are likely to be mischievous. Thought suggests expression, and exact thought will find fit form. Sound thinking is the main thing. Practice for mere fluency tends to the habit of superficial thinking, and produces the wearisome, endless talker. In this connection emphasis may be laid upon the point of ending a speech when its purpose is accomplished, and that as soon as can be. Many speeches are spoiled by the ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... to Rome, where he grew familiar with the most valuable remains of antiquity, applying himself particularly to the knowledge of medals, which he gained in great perfection, and spoke Italian with so much grace and fluency, that he was frequently mistaken there for a native. He returned to England upon the restoration of King Charles the IId, and was made captain of the band of pensioners, an honour which tempted him to some extravagancies. In the gaieties of that age (says Fenton) he was tempted to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... reverent desire to present the original in its purest form. The care and conscience with which the work had been performed were so apparent, that I now state with reluctance what then seemed to me to be its only deficiencies,—a lack of the lyrical fire and fluency of the original in some passages, and an occasional lowering of the tone through the use of words which are literal, but not equivalent. The plan of translation adopted by Mr. Brooks was so entirely my own, that when further residence in Germany and a more ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... almost every night at Hall & Pemberton's Faro Palace on Pennsylvania Avenue, a place noted for its famous restaurant. It was here that he met Colonel Howle and learned to like him. He was a man of talent, cool and audacious, and a liar of such singular fluency that he quite ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... acquainted with the names of the other candidates on the same mysterious ticket who were mentioned. Whereupon he girded up his loins and went forth and preached the word of Jacksonian Democracy in all the farmhouses roundabout, with such effect that Samuel Todd and others were able to talk with some fluency about ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury, and immortalize every step of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... vernacularly termed) trailing Mrs. Dent; that is, playing on her ignorance—her trail might be clever, but it was decidedly not good- natured. She played: her execution was brilliant; she sang: her voice was fine; she talked French apart to her mamma; and she talked it well, with fluency ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... very innocent. Mrs. Pearce listened with her head on one side and with something of the air of a sparrow who doesn't feel well. She complimented him sadly on the fluency of his English, and told him with a sigh that in no cottage would he ever again find the comforts with which Baker's was now ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... able to converse with fluency, and having learned the caution necessary to be observed in his intercourse with strangers, began to accompany Imlac to places of resort, and to enter into all assemblies, that he might make his ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... wrote. The poet followed on the heels of the journalist, and borrowed, it must be owned, not a little of his methods. If any poem of Browning's may be compared to versified special correspondence, it is this. He tells the story, in his own person, in blank verse of admirable ease and fluency, from which every pretence of poetry is usually remote. What was it in this rather sordid tale that arrested him? Clearly the strangely mingled character of Miranda. Castile and Paris contend in his blood; and his love adventures, begun on the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... and fallen asleep; but was awakened by one of them, about three o'clock in the afternoon, who told me that they had been seeking me in every hole and corner, and insisted that I should join their party and drink with them. He talked English with such fluency, as left me wholly unable to account for the singular and even ludicrous incorrectness with which he spoke it. I went, and found some excellent wines and a dessert of grapes with a pine-apple. The Danes had christened me Doctor Teology, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... talk, whereupon "Nitch," who had ideas of his own, began to talk also with a fluency which was not customary, for he was naturally a taciturn man. They both forgot the dinner. "Nitch" never knew how long ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... had become more and more rare, and two months of constant conversation with Malcolm and others had enabled Ronald by this time to speak with some fluency in the French tongue. None of the soldiers paid any attention to the newcomers, whose dress differed in no way from that of Frenchmen, as after the shipwreck they had, of course, been obliged to rig themselves out afresh. Malcolm stopped before an old sergeant ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... Malinal, for Aguilar could turn Spanish into Maya, and Malinal could turn Maya into Mexican. This means of communication, round about though it might be, was at once established. The intervention of Aguilar soon became unnecessary, for Malinal presently learned to speak pure Castilian with fluency and grace. She received instruction from the worthy priests who accompanied the expedition and was {124} baptised under the name of Marina, and it is by that name that she is known in history. Her eminence is even greater than that ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... arms?" said Bang, as he continued with great fluency, but little grammar; "ayez le ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... observing me from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a good fluency but an ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to guide it, it does not obey its own laws, and gives little impression of real power. Art is not the prize of luck or the effect of chance, but of conscious combination of vital elements. Mr. Hirst, though he does give evidence of Keats' fluency of fancy and expression, has really produced a finer work of art. We think it is so important that a poem, to be altogether worthy of the name, should be deeply meditated and carefully finished, that we hazard this last opinion at the expense ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... ask you a few questions," I continued. "The public is naturally interested in the personality of so widely read an author. May I know how you obtained your amazing command of words? Your fluency?" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... that country; their complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry, and far more active. They all speak the English language with fluency, and in their gait and demeanour are easy and graceful; in both points standing in striking contrast with the peasantry, who in speech are slow and uncouth, and in ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Magnus, his state of sullen fury made him indifferent even to threats of punishment. He swore with a determination and fluency worthy of a better cause. For myself, I could not endure his neighborhood. It seemed to me I could not live through the days that must intervene before the arrival of the Rufus Smith in the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... came from her extreme surprise, not only at the extraordinary doctrine enunciated, but at the experience, new to her, of hearing convictions spoken of in ordinary conversation. The workman took it, however, for a mocking comment on his sudden fluency. He gave a whimsical grimace, and said, as he began picking up his tools, "Ah, I shouldn't have given in to you. When I get started I never can stop." His expression altered darkly. "But I hate all that sort of ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... opening lines to herself, then turning the page began to translate from the Greek with great ease and fluency: ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... do not be in a hurry. A little hesitation has a better effect than too much promptness and fluency, and a little stammering or hesitation, it may be added, will have no bad effect. In beginning, your manner can without disadvantage be altogether lost sight of, and if you have something to say the substance of which is good, and has been carefully prearranged, you will be able to give ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... paid the Vice Roy, his suit of carriages were ordered to attend the British officers, and Monsieur le Font, the Surgeon-General, who spoke English with ease and fluency, shewed us every mark of politeness and attention on the occasion, in carrying us through the principal streets, then visited the public gardens, built by the late Vice Roy, and laid out with much taste and expence. All the extremity of ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... thing, sahib,—not easy to explain—but I, who have achieved some fluency in English and might therefore have admired his gift of tongues, now began to doubt him in earnest—hating myself the while, but doubting him. And Gooja Singh, who had talked the most and dropped the blackest hints against him, now began to ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... be much worse occupations certainly," Flint began; but he saw that Winifred's attention had been diverted by the keeper, who had already begun to mount the stairs, talking, as he moved, with a fluency which denoted a long restrained flow of sociability. Winifred was glad to be saved the trouble of replying, for the unceasing climbing put her out of breath, and she felt that she might have been dizzy, but for the railing under ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... to talk, and in his care-free fluency he opened up many vistas to the interested Mr. Penzance, who found himself, so to speak, whirled along Broadway, rushed up the steps of the elevated railroad and struggling to obtain a seat, or a strap to hang to on a Sixth Avenue train. The man was saturated ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... French literature. Accordingly, we never recollect his referring for any purpose, either of argument or illustration, to a French classic. Latin, from his regular scholastic training, naturally he read with a scholar's fluency; and indeed, he read constantly in authors, such as Petrarch, Erasmus, Calvin, &c., whom he could not then have found in translations. But Coleridge had not cultivated an acquaintance with the delicacies of classic Latinity. And it is remarkable that Wordsworth, educated most negligently ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... return to head quarters. Edith, being of an enquiring turn of mind, acquired a great deal of information respecting the natives' character, their castes, customs and ceremonies, and by the aid of a Moonshee soon learned to speak with ease and fluency the Hindostan language. This she turned to account in the ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... face talked louder than her tongue, but that also gained fluency as he looked back at her and nodded. "Stunts!" she repeated his word bitterly. "I didn't expect you to come back asking me to do stunts. I hated it all so—working out things like a calculating machine!" ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... spoke their tongue as easily as he spoke any other that came to the post, naturally and with quiet fluency. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... gazing at her. Apparently forgetful that even the very best of their glasses could no more see the Projectile than angulate Sirius, the officers held them fast to their eyes for five minutes at a time, and then took them away only to talk with remarkable fluency on ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning. I wish I was the electric fluency,' muttered the bewildered Grinder. 'I'd have a shock at somebody, that would ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... not, as you may have noticed, great abilities, but I have received an excellent education. To say nothing of those soi-disant accomplishments with which we adorn and sometimes weary society, my dear mother had me well grounded in languages and history. Without being eloquent, I have a certain fluency, in which, they tell me, even members of Parliament are deficient, smoothly as their speeches read made into English by the newspapers. Like yourself, Miss Dodd, and all our sex, I am not destitute of tact, and tact, you know, is 'the talent ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... marvelous songster, in speaking of whom it is difficult to avoid superlatives. He is not so conscious of is powers and so ambitious of effect as the white-eyed flycatcher, yet you will not be less astonished and delighted on hearing him. He possesses the fluency and copiousness for which the wrens are noted, and besides these qualities, and what is rarely found conjoined with them, a wild, sweet, rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced. I shall not soon forget ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... increased, and he consciously determined not to yield to the charm of this younger man who was going to interfere in his life. Artois did not speak much English, but fortunately Delarey talked French fairly well, not with great fluency like Hermione, but enough to take a modest share in conversation, which was apparently all the share that he desired. Artois believed that he was no great talker. His eyes were more eager than was his ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... first place (we speak it with due respect for the sex), she is guilty of a fault which is somewhat too common among them; and having very little, except prejudice, on which to found an opinion, she makes up for want of argument by a wonderful fluency of abuse. A woman's religion is chiefly that of the heart, and not of the head. She goes through, for the most part, no tedious process of reasoning, no dreadful stages of doubt, no changes of faith: she loves God as she loves her husband—by a kind of instinctive ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... representative in the modern Albanian; but in the time of Justinian, the language of the higher classes in the cities was Latin, and there can be no doubt that Belisarius spoke both Latin and Greek with equal fluency. As far as race was concerned, it seems, however, tolerably certain, that he was more closely allied in blood to Scanderberg and Miaoulis than to Scipio or Epaminondas. As he was a man of rank and family, he became an officer of the imperial guard at an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... he had vigorously prosecuted his studies, and thus possessed the invaluable blessing of a highly cultivated mind. Fond of the languages, he not only wrote and conversed in the Latin tongue with fluency and elegance, but was quite at home in all the languages of his extensive domains. Notwithstanding the immense cares devolving upon the ruler of so extended an empire, he appropriated a portion of time every day ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... turned the conversation to lighthouses, a subject upon which he discoursed with considerable fluency until the meal was finished. Miss Drewitt, who had a long memory and at least her fair share of curiosity, returned to the charge as he smoked half a pipe preparatory to accompanying her for ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... What they remembered of this vernile licentiousness, constituted the staple of their talk in such situations. And the horrible illustrations left even by the most accomplished and literary of the Roman orators, of their shameless and womanly fluency in this dialect of unlicensed abuse, are evidences, not to be resisted, of such obtuseness, such coarseness of feeling, so utter a defect of all the gentlemanly sensibilities, that no man, alive to the real state of things ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... verses on that pedestrian occasion (of course I never make any when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a certain language once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly forgotten from disuse, with fluency. Of both these phenomena I have such frequent experience in the state between sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so ready. The readiness is not imaginary, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... and, as soon as he could speak it to any degree, he began to read the Church Service every Sunday to the garrison, with a printed sermon from an English divine, until he had obtained sufficient fluency to preach extempore. At first, the place of meeting was a large room in an old building, but he afterwards persuaded them to build themselves a church capable of holding from 1,500 to 2,000. His facility ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... metropolis, she has early imbibed superb ideas of the perfectibility of man, and of the "science" of conversation, on both which subjects you will not be long at Court ere you hear her descant; demonstrating by the brilliancy of her ideas the possibility of the one, and by the fluency of her language her acquaintance with the other. She is much younger than her husband, and, though not exactly a model for Phidias, a fascinating woman. Variety is the talisman by which she commands all hearts and gained ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... sentiments and opinions by which, at any given moment, they shall be guided. Such people were sufficiently numerous at Rome and the other cities and provinces of Italy. Demagogues, therefore, who were not without ability and possessed fluency of speech, found it no very difficult task to fashion as they had a mind, for these classes of citizens, any amount of political principles and programmes. Those even who were fairly imbued with constitutional ideas, but whose minds were not wholly ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... admitted that in offering these explanations he was out-stepping the line of his situation. Topics of a far more agreeable nature were suggested by the special business of the day. He dwelt with great fluency on the advantages of agriculture, and dilated on the importance of independent tenants and an industrious peasantry. "You," he observed, "are to consider yourselves as the column of a lofty pillar; but, depend upon it, a tenantry form the pedestal,—a virtuous, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... as low to Nancy, who held her mother's dress and said nothing, keeping one finger in her mouth. All began emptying the wagon quickly, and tins of baking-powder, with rocking-chairs and flowered quilts, lay on the hill. Wild-Goose Jake worked hard, and sustained a pleasant talk by himself. His fluency was of an eagerness that ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... and smiled, and in a few moments was by his side. Maltravers, meanwhile, had gone in and lighted his meerschaum, for it was his great inspirer whenever his thoughts were perplexed, or he felt his usual fluency likely to fail him, and such was the case now. With this faithful ally he awaited Alice in the little walk that circled the lawn, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had such Instructions, and acquired such Accomplishments, as might be instilled into such good natural Capacities. Nevertheless thro' their quick Apprehension, they have a Sufficiency of Knowledge, and Fluency of Tongue, tho' their Learning for the ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... eyes glittered with sparks; his golden curls fell low on his white forehead; and from his lips, shaded by a tiny mustache, the words came out with increasing boldness and fluency, and more thickly intermingled ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... affection for Jasmine, Tu and Wei were unlike in everything else, which probably accounted for the friendship which existed between them. Wei was the more clever of the two. He wrote poetry with ease and fluency, and his essays were marked by correctness of style and aptness of quotation. But there was a want of strength in his character. He was exceedingly vain, and was always seeking to excite admiration among his companions. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... admirable he was in the guise of that noble, brave, frolicsome, impetuous young gentleman. The intense vitality, the glancing glee, the intrepid spirit—all were preserved; and the brilliant text was spoken with faultless fluency. It is difficult to realise that the same actor who set before us that perfect image of comic perplexity, the bland and benevolent Dean, in Dandy Dick, could ever have been the bantering companion ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... obscurity. Possessing military genius of a high order, with extraordinary personal bravery, he was the last of the paladins and the crusaders. His accomplishments were also considerable, and he spoke Italian, German, French, and Spanish with fluency. His beauty was remarkable; his personal fascinations acknowledged by either sex; but as a commander of men, excepting upon the battle-field, he possessed little genius. His ambition was the ambition of a knight-errant, an adventurer, a Norman ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... must also have self-possession; a double current of impulse and deliberation; a free stream of ideas spontaneously obeying a sense or order, harmony, and form. Eloquence in the informal discourse of the parlour or the country walk did not mean in Diderot's case the empty fluency and nugatory emphasis of the ordinary talker of reputation. It must have been both pregnant and copious; declamatory in form, but fresh and substantial in matter; excursive in arrangement, but forcible and pointed in intention. No doubt, if he was a sage, he was sometimes a sage in a frenzy. He ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... long speech. Voluble as Osterman himself, he, nevertheless, had at his command a vast number of ready-made phrases, the staples of a political speaker, the stock in trade of the commercial lawyer, which rolled off his tongue with the most persuasive fluency. By degrees, in the course of his speech, he began to insinuate the idea that the wheat-growers had never expected to settle their difficulties with the Railroad by the work of a single commission; that they had counted upon a long, continued ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the oceans and the life that is lived on them—a knowledge and appreciation born in him through a long line of seafaring ancestry and fostered by his own love for the sea—he has a powerful style of writing. Vividness is perhaps its distinguishing characteristic, though fluency and a peculiar feeling for ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... had more knowledge of the language," she replied; "I read it very easily, but cannot speak with any fluency." ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... perfectly consistent with the best breeding. Indeed it was almost a proof of standards and touchstones other than the vulgar: he must be so sure the vulgar would be first on the ground. He wasn't a man of easy assurance, who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he was critical of himself as well as of others, and, exacting a good deal of others, to think them agreeable, probably took a rather ironical view of what he himself offered: a proof into the bargain that he ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... a different type. He was frowning over the pages of Bagot's Italian Lakes, and he wasn't making much headway. He was Italian to the core, for all that he aped the English style and manner. He could speak the tongue with fluency, but he stumbled and faltered miserably over the soundless type. His clothes had the Piccadilly cut, and his mustache, erstwhile waxed and militant, was cropped at the corners, thoroughly insular. He was thirty, and ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... is a writing that preserves a close affinity for the round regular hand of the average school-boy, with the difference that while the characters are formed on regular copybook model, the hand is written with considerable fluency and firmness. It is generally only a little out of the perpendicular, ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... evidence in support of a theory which chronically surprised him. Then he turned away and looked down over the vast untrodden tract of Africa that lay beneath them. He kept his eyes fixed there, after the manner of a man who has no fluency ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... ire, and that minister's County Government Bill was fiercely denounced as the "crowning dishonour to Tory principles," and the "supreme violation of political honesty." The audacity of Lord Randolph's attitude, and the vituperative fluency of his invective, made him a parliamentary figure of some importance before the dissolution of the 1874 parliament, though he was not as yet taken quite seriously. In the new parliament of 1880 he speedily began to play a more notable role. With the assistance of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... together, even as the dragoon whose chief agent is his sabre, yet takes care to provide himself with pistols, that may finish what the other weapon has begun. Nor did I content myself with the mere acquisition of the necessary knowledge. Knowing how much depends upon voice, manner and fluency, in obtaining success before a jury, I addressed myself to these particulars with equal industry. My voice, even now, has a compass which your unexercised lungs, though quite as good originally as ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... will show House how all these qualities may be combined in one man. Does it by the tiresome twenty minutes, the lamentable half-hour; popping up on every question with comically judicial air; talking on with fatal feeble flatulent fluency, whilst GILL sits nursing his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... the war that has yet been written. It is a plain soldierly narrative of what the writer actually did and saw, set down in unvarnished language, yet in English which it is a pleasure to read for its straightforward fluency.'—St. James's Gazette. ...
— Mr. Edward Arnold's New and Popular Books, December, 1901 • Edward Arnold
... He in Spanish, which He had already learnt to speak with fluency and correctness. 'While you were with the Baron, I watched the moment when Dame Cunegonda was below stairs, and mounted into the chamber over that of Donna Agnes. I sang as loud as I could a little German air well-known to her, hoping ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... that I always liked you," he said with an effort, in curious contrast to his habitual fluency. "You won't believe it—some day. But it is true.... Perhaps I'll prove it, yet.... My father used to say that everything except death had been proven; and there remained, therefore, only one event ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... half-way, their talk lapsed, and lapsed, and lapsed. The breaks became more numerous and lasted longer. Condy began to wonder if he was boring her. No sooner had the suspicion entered his head than it hardened into a certainty, and at once what little fluency and freshness he yet retained forsook him on the spot. What made matters worse was his recollection of other evenings that of late he had failed in precisely the same manner. Even while he struggled to save the situation Condy was wondering ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the exterior seems to have no effect on the "inner man." "In the Prince's conversation I found the same talent, the unrivalled esprit. The fluency and elocution, so entirely his own, were as graceful, and the memory was as perfect, as at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... in a stiff, high-backed arm-chair, with a small round table, containing a desk and a work-basket on one side of her, and her little boy on the other, who stood leaning his elbow on her knee, and reading to her, with wonderful fluency, from a small volume that lay in her lap; while she rested her hand on his shoulder, and abstractedly played with the long, wavy curls that fell on his ivory neck. They struck me as forming a pleasing contrast to all the surrounding objects; but of ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... a Gregorian chant or a popular song there remains no room for further consideration of the shape of the work. Hence, quite apart from their expressive power and their value in teaching composers to attain harmonic fluency under difficulties, the canonic forms played the leading part in the music of the 15th and 16th centuries; nor indeed have they since fallen into neglect without grave injury to the art. But strict canon soon proved inadequate, and even dangerous, as the sole regulating ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... eyed my husband for a minute, half sulking, half pleased at the implied compliment on his skill, and, walking off to the engine, discussed the management of it with considerable fluency, and from that time treated us with perfect respect. He was evidently struck with my husband's reply to his question, put in a most discourteous tone, "Pray, what makes a gentleman: I'll thank you to answer me that?" "Good manners and good education," was the reply. "A rich man ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... moved when I think that that which we otherwise look for and rarely find in the far distance of favored antiquity lies so close to me in you. You need no longer be astonished that there are so few who are capable or worthy of understanding you. The wonderful naturalness, truth, and fluency of your description hide from the common herd of critics every thought of the difficulty, of the grandness of your art, and those who are capable of following the artist, who perceive the means by which the effects have been produced, will ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... children, in whose welfare you take so kindly an interest, are making most favourable progress. The eldest, "Pussy" (the Princess Royal at three years of age), is now quite a little personage. She speaks English and French with great fluency and choice of phrase.... The little gentleman (the Prince of Wales) is grown much stronger than he was.... The youngest (Princess Alice) is the beauty of the family, and is an ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... watched his partner scrambling down the steep trail. It was not easy for him to converse, and he therefore never uttered a word unless the situation demanded the sacrifice. He could swear, however, with considerable fluency, but just now even that relief seemed inadequate. Finally, the older man disappeared behind the scrub, and, except for those more distant figures about the dump of the "Independence," the blond giant remained apparently alone. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... mordents, etc., until the difficulty with the left hand was remedied; after that I am sure I could make a real clavier player out of her. It is a pity; she has so much genius, reads respectably, has a great deal of natural fluency and plays with a great deal ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a white-gloved hand gave a signal, Mr Helder's hands descended on the keys, and at the same instant from between Claire's pursed-up lips there flowed a stream of high, flute-like notes, repeating the air with a bird-like fluency and ease. She had chosen the old-world ballad, "Cherry Ripe," the quaint turns and trills of which lent themselves peculiarly well to this method of interpretation, and the swing and gaiety of the measure carried the audience by storm. Looking down from her platform Claire could see the indifferent ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and the least are interesting, but they must not be confounded. There is the glib tongue and cool self-possession of the salesman in a large shop, which, as is well known, overpower the prudence and resolution of housekeepers of both sexes. There is a petty lawyer's fluency, which is sufficiently impressive to him who is devoid of that talent, though it be, in so many cases, nothing more than a facility of expressing with accuracy and speed what everybody thinks and says more slowly, without new information, or precision of thought,—but the same ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... because it was me she was talking to. Insists that as I can go to the Plain of Fire where the Sidhe live I ought to be able to find a way of curing you. She has expressed that idea to me many times, with a fluency and wealth of illustration that would make a bard envious. Here she comes now. I'll just slip out and see if the horses are being ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... gone out, had returned with a supply of palm leaves, and sat down to make a hat, while Lord Reginald opened one of the books, and with considerable fluency translated a portion of its contents. Dick listened attentively while he plaited away at the hat, stopping every now and then to ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... to her in his silence: it was a part of her long European discipline that she had learned to manage pauses with ease. In her Frisbee days she might have packed this one with a random fluency; now she was content to let it widen slowly before them like the spacious prospect opening at their feet. The complicated beauty of this prospect, as they moved toward it between the symmetrically clipped limes of the lateral terrace, ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... at attention with our hats on while Sir Arthur, who, as we have seen, is a linguist of great distinction, delivered to the sovereign, a most charming and graceful speech in Persian with an oriental fluency of flowery language that ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... absolute fluency but with a foreign accent. His hands were busy with the bandages, dexterous, clawlike hands that looked as if they were ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... flattery to say that in dress, attitude, inflection, manner, she was a thorough Parisienne. There was an elegant superficiality and a superficial elegance about her that I can never forget, nor yet her extraordinary volubility in a foreign language,—the fluency with which she expressed her inmost soul on all topics without the aid of a single irregular verb, for these she was never able to acquire; oh, it was wonderful, but there was no affectation about it; she had simply been a kind of blotting-paper, as Miss Monroe says, and France ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... child cower in his presence as if constantly expecting a blow; and this cowering was so evident in my bride's demeanour, that, after trying for a couple of hours to coax her into confidence and unreserved feminine fluency, I began to feel almost impatient. It was fortunate that, just as my tone involuntarily betrayed to her quick and watchful ear some shade of annoyance, just as I caught a furtive upward glance that seemed to ask ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... of some low fellow, and with other advantages. But the point is, to be cool in danger and embarrassments, which, if a man cannot be, let him go into The Great Desert at his peril. It was for the same reason I would not bring with me an European servant from Tripoli, whose fluency in Arabic might have been attended with the greatest danger to us both instead of assistance. Said is pestered with questions about me or my affairs; but at times Said is stupid enough, and people get tired of asking him questions. I must mention, however, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... could turn Spanish into Maya, and Malinal could turn Maya into Mexican. This means of communication, round about though it might be, was at once established. The intervention of Aguilar soon became unnecessary, for Malinal presently learned to speak pure Castilian with fluency and grace. She received instruction from the worthy priests who accompanied the expedition and was {124} baptised under the name of Marina, and it is by that name that she is known in history. Her eminence is even greater than that unfortunate Florinda, whose father, to revenge her mistreatment ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... incapable of transmitting his knowledge. He lacks the gift of expression. He has not cultivated it—for it can be cultivated. The man whose desire or vocation forces him to make the effort to speak will train himself in methods of communication, until he arrives at comfort and fluency. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... post at Delhi; and, as soon as this was granted, he was all eagerness to leave Calcutta. But he had used the time well in one respect: he had acquired the power of speaking Persian with ease and fluency, and this stood him in good stead in his dealings with the princes and the peasants of the northern races, whose history he was to influence ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... was his remarkable simplicity of language, whatever the topic of conversation might be, and this not the simplicity of the great mind bringing itself down to the level of the ordinary individual, but his customary mode of expression. I have heard him say that he felt the need of the fluency of speech which Huxley possessed, as he had to cast about for the expression that he wanted. This may have been the case when he was lecturing, but I certainly ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... intended to illumine than that which is to be found in the choral parts of Handel's oratorios. Handel was the greatest master of counterpoint the world has ever seen, and this power enabled him to give musical expression to written words with an ease and fluency which can only be described as marvellous. Yet it is not its marvellous character which strikes us when we hear his work for the first time so much as its oneness with the subject it portrays; we feel that it is like some grand painting, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... and persistent, and patient, and had never respected his brother one half as much as when he was stammering over the German pronunciation, which he could not well master. But he learned to read with a tolerable degree of fluency, and to speak a little, too, while he could understand nearly all ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Mormons entered Utah. In every settlement of the saints you will find from two to a dozen young men who wear their black hair cut in the Indian fashion, and speak all the surrounding dialects with native fluency. Whenever a fatly provided wagon-train is to be attacked, a fine herd of emigrants' beeves stampeded, the mail to be stopped, or the Gentiles in any way harassed, these desperadoes stain their skin, exchange their clothes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... languages she spoke excellently, and I am certain that if a dozen persons of different nationalities had been present she could have talked to them in their various dialects with the same ease and fluency. Of her beauty I could not judge, for she wore a bonnet with a thick veil, which covered her ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... face and a tongue that worked easily in the socket, and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis thirty-four years and had never been across the river during that period. Then he wandered into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic names and allusions, which was quite wonderful for fluency until the fact became rather apparent that this was not the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth, that the speech had been delivered. He was a good deal of a character, and much better company than the sappy literature ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which gifted minds exert their influence, and, as such, is worthy of all consideration and cultivation. I remember hearing an English traveler say, many years ago, on being asked how the conversational powers of the Americans compared with those of the English—"Your fluency rather exceeds that of the old world, but conversation here is not cultivated as an art." The idea of its being so considered any where was new to the company; and much discussion followed the departure of the stranger, as to the desirableness ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... life, pleased with his own fluency, and not a little surprised at it. In half an hour she knew his story since the day he left the Francis Cadman, with certain judicious reservations and emendations. Aurora's name did not appear once in the narrative. This suppression ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... absence of these intenser qualities did not make Robespierre's speeches less effective for their own purpose. On the contrary, when the air has become torrid, and passionate utterance is cheap, then severity in form is very likely to pass for good sense in substance. That Robespierre had decent fluency, copiousness, and finish, need hardly be said. The French have an artistic sense; they have never accepted our own whimsical doctrine, that a man's politics must be sagacious, if his speaking is only clumsy enough. Robespierre more than once showed himself ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... join a local debating society, where you will have excellent opportunity for practise in thinking and speaking on your feet. Many distinguished public speakers have owed their fluency of speech and self-confidence to early practise ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... he was a hearer of Antiochus of Ascalon, with whose fluency and elegance of diction he was much taken, although he did not approve of his innovations in doctrine. For Antiochus had now fallen off from the New Academy, as they call it, and forsaken the sect of Carneades, whether that he ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... when I say that I am sincerely delighted," returned the General, who had now, to a certain extent, recovered his senses; and inasmuch as, when occasion arose, he could speak with fluency, gravity, and a certain effect, he set himself to be expansive in his remarks, and went on: "We have been so dismayed and upset by the news of your indisposition! We had received such hopeless telegrams ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ardent temperament of unconquerable youth. Though not large in person, he is tall and erect, with a fine, soldierly form. His address is quick, and nervous to such a degree as to deprive him of even the ordinary fluency of speech. His want of words to express the thoughts that evidently burn within him, together with a remarkable diffidence among strangers, renders him incapable of making an impression, at first, proportionate to his real merit. He has, however, always enjoyed great popularity among his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... power again. She was planning the order of exercises for the meeting, which was as it should be; but it was not as right that she was leaping forward in her thoughts to the criticisms which the girls would make upon the part she should take, the hope that they would admire her fluency and spirituality, and say to her when they were ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... works. Want of means alone prevented her from executing her productions in marble. She was also familiar with the literature, not only of her own nation, but of the Latin, Spanish, Italian, and English languages, which she spoke with fluency and correctness, a rare accomplishment for a French woman. During the Empire and the Restoration she was intimate with Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael, and for penetration and readiness of mind and charm of manners was not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... study. He was of opinion that it was improper, and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready plenty of words; and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and sent to him. He answered, and I replied. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... among the young men of the Junior Class. And little more was known of him when he left America on the day his class graduated. His connections with the other students had been very slight. He had never cared to acquire that fluency in retailing the thoughts of others upon which college-rank depends. An access to the library was all that he seemed to value in his connection with the institution. And here he busied himself, not with the openings to the solid and rational sciences, but with the bewildering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... little scene from the immortal story of "Babes in the Wood." Jamie and Pokey came trotting in, hand in hand, and, having been through the parts many times before, acted with great ease and much fluency, audibly directing each other from time to time as they went along. The berries were picked, the way lost, tears shed, baby consolation administered, and then the little pair lay down among the brakes and died with their eyes wide open and the toes ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... all that as faithfully as might be desired we cannot tell, but he addressed himself to the task with a genial fluency that at all events had the desired effect, for after Nazinred had translated it to the Eskimos, it was found that they, as well as the Indians, were quite disposed to fall in with the eccentric trader's views. Arrangements were accordingly ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... moment Tom is at his father's side. What need to describe the sacred joy of those first few minutes, even if it were possible? But unrestrained tenderness between man and man, rare as it is, and, as it were, unaccustomed to itself, has no passionate fluency, no metaphor or poetry, such as man pours out to woman, and woman again to man. All its language lies in the tones, the looks, the little half-concealed gestures, hints which pass themselves off modestly ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of laws and rules and exceptions; not as a system whereby the little children of the Ghetto, and the offspring of Pittsburgh millionaires, and the spectacled infant elect of Beacon Hill may all be raised to the point where they can write with acceptable fluency the chiseled phrases of Matthew Arnold, the cadenced Latinity of Sir Thomas Browne, the sonorous measures of Bolingbroke or the distinguished and resonant periods of the King James Bible. Such an aim as this will always result ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... dissipation of his life, possessed of "much learning, wit, knowledge of books in general, discrimination of character, and original humour." He spoke with Dr. Charles Burney, the distinguished scholar, quoting Homer in Greek with fluency; he was a first-rate critic in music, and a capital mimic. "Had we been in the dark," said Doctor Burney, "I should have sworn that Doctor Parr and Kemble were in the room." Hence, the same judge ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... commercial hand, and also acquire, as soon as possible, a very thorough knowledge of the French language. For these you should employ the best teachers that can be found. Your wife can help you in many ways. She has learned to spell correctly, to read with fluency and expression, and to play quite well on the piano. You will find it very profitable to read good books aloud to each other. I advise you not to go to places of amusement oftener than once a fortnight, and always to choose such places as will be suitable ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... run amuck in human society. A similar fear might well visit the conscience of one who should dream that he had divulged to the world at large what can be done with language. Of this there is no danger; rhetoric, it is true, does put fluency, emphasis, and other warlike equipments at the disposal of evil forces, but style, like the Christian religion, is one of those open secrets which are most easily and most effectively kept by the initiate from ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... one should resort to constant practise by doing so aloud in private, or preferably, in the presence of such persons as know good reading when they hear it and are masters of the melody of sounds. It was Dean Swift's belief that the common fluency of speech in many men and most women was due to scarcity of matter and scarcity of words. He claimed that a master of language possessed a mind full of ideas, and that before speaking, such a mind paused to select the choice word—the phrase best suited ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... with her usual kindness, prefaced the special matter of her application to Tom by making various inquiries about his mother and his own temporary change of situation. Thus far Tom was able to meet her questions with tolerable fluency, and no more embarrassment than was inseparable from the novelty of his situation. But, when she proceeded to question him about his knowledge of Captain Edward Nicholas, Tom faultered and betrayed the greatest confusion. ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... our only possible course. So, date after date, and incident after incident, were elicited in the most natural way. As we talked I was astonished to find how little there was that was worth concealing, and heartily thankful that we had decided on candour. My fluency gave me the lead, and Davies followed me; but his own personality was really our tower of strength. I realized that as I watched the play of his eager features, and heard him struggle for expression on his favourite hobby; ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Their range of interests is wider than would be expected from their grade of education. (c) Their perceptions are better than the average. (d) They are nimble witted. Their oral and written style is above normal in fluency. (e) They exhibit faultiness in the development of conceptions and judgments. Their judgment is sharp and clear only as far as their own person does not come into consideration. It is the lack of any self criticism combined with an abnormal egocentric ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... heard more than two or three clergymen who preach extempore (that is, who trust to the moment for the words entirely, for the illustration mainly, and for the thought in some degree), declare that they have sometimes felt quite astonished at the fluency with which they were able to express their thoughts, and at the freshness and fulness with which thoughts crowded upon them, while actually addressing a great assemblage of people. Of course, such extemporaneous speaking is an uncertain thing. It is ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... was naturally so flexible that executive difficulties were always easy to her, and, before she had attained her ninth year she could execute a prolonged shake with fluency. Her father not being prosperous at the time, it became a necessity for him to look for support to his little Adelina, who had shown such remarkable promise; and, accordingly, she began to take singing lessons—not, as is stated ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... such a company of grenadiers as her warlike sons formed. The whole race were at free quarters in the little castle nigh to Bruxelles which Frank had taken; rode his horses; drank his wine; and lived easily at the poor lad's charges. Mr. Esmond had always maintained a perfect fluency in the French, which was his mother tongue; and if this family (that spoke French with the twang which the Flemings use) discovered any inaccuracy in Mr. Simon's pronunciation, 'twas to be attributed to the latter's long residence in England, where he had married and remained ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... continual influx of Western ideas and Western culture. The exclusively French culture in vogue at the Court of Catherine assumed a more cosmopolitan colouring, and permeated downwards till all who had any pretensions to being civilises spoke French with tolerable fluency and possessed at least a superficial acquaintance with the literature of Western Europe. What chiefly distinguished them in the eye of the law from the other classes was the privilege of possessing "inhabited estates"—that is ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... in a roar with his quaint sayings, and his local satires in the shape of impromptu doggerel; and he would also repeat snatches of orations which he had heard in Washington when Judge Wornum was a member of Congress. But his chief accomplishments lay in the wonderful ease and fluency with which he imitated the eloquent appeals of certain ambitious members of the Kockville bar, and in his travesties of the bombastic flights of the ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... the table. Lord Lackington was telling scandalous tales of his youth to a couple of Foreign Office clerks, who sat on either side of him, laughing and spurring him on. The old man's careless fluency and fun were evidently contagious; animation reigned around him; he was the spoiled child of the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was awakened by my fellow-travellers, and accompanied them to the caravanserai of the Turning Dervishes. A somewhat lengthened residence in the northern provinces of Persia, where a Turkish idiom is spoken, had given me a tolerable fluency in that language, and I was thus enabled to act as interpreter to my friends. The cicerone of the hotel conducted us to a circular building situated in the midst of a small garden, whither was hurrying a crowd composed of Greeks, Armenians, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... the Emperor, perfectly willing to admit that his navy is closely modelled on that of Great Britain. Moreover, in addition to a thorough knowledge of his profession, he is able, in two cases out of three, to converse with useful fluency in English, French, and in some ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... Belwick to-day,' she began, sitting very close to Mrs. Waltham, whose lap she kept touching as she spoke with excited fluency. 'I've seen Mrs. Yottle. My dear, what do you think she ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... fitting out of his new vessel. Our hero made good progress during the few months that he remained at the pension, and when McElvina returned to take him away, not only could speak the French language with fluency, but had also made considerable progress in what Sir W. C—- used to designate in his toast as "the three ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... uncertain what to do. Two or three deep-eyed, long-lashed Monegasque men smiled at her kindly, as Monegasque men and Italians smile at all children. She had learned to lisp French with comparative fluency, during the months she and "Angel" had spent in Paris; and now she asked where the people went who had come in on ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... Julian, mingled with fierce cries and reproaches, calling him Asiatic, Greek, a cheat, and a fool pretending to be wise. And as it is commonly the case among soldiers that some men are found of remarkable fluency of speech, they poured ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... not rank among the famous masters of what is usually considered especially a woman's art. She was too busy in serious work to have leisure for that most delightful way of wasting time. Besides that, she had by nature none of that fluency, rapidity, abandonment, pleasant volubility, which make letters amusing, captivating, or piquant. What Mr. Cross says of her as the mistress of a salon, is true of her for the most part as a correspondent:—'Playing around many disconnected ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... proved, however, I could not have been in better hands. He was highly intelligent, and he interpreted my statements with a fluency and accuracy which were astonishing. Only now and again did he stumble and hesitate. This was when he was presented with an ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... their fortune. This man was one of those who are called Improvisatori—persons who, in Italian towns, go about reciting verses or telling stories, which they are supposed to invent as they go on speaking. Some of these people speak with great fluency, and collect crowds round them in the public streets. When an Improvisatore sees the attention of his audience fixed, and when he comes to some very interesting part of his narrative, he dexterously drops his hat upon ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... command of language; though, in my opinion, it has not in every respect the highest elegance.' BOSWELL. 'Do you think, Sir, that Burke has read Cicero much?' JOHNSON. 'I don't believe it, Sir. Burke has great knowledge, great fluency of words, and great promptness of ideas, so that he can speak with great illustration on any subject that comes before him. He is neither like Cicero, nor like Demosthenes[600], nor like any one else, but speaks as well as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... several examples of heredity in song have been vouchsafed to us. The younger Hood had his father's fluency, but, apparently, very little of his imaginative power. Philip Bourke Marston was, in the lyric vein, as successful, perhaps, as Dr. Westland Marston had been in the dramatic, and it is probable that he will ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... deposited. This gentleman, the most active investigator of Homer since the days of the good bishop of Thessalonica, bespatters you with more learning in a minute than others communicate in half a year; quotes Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, etc., with a formidable fluency; and drove me from one end of the room to the other with all the thunder of erudition. Syllables fell thicker than hail, and in an instant I found myself so weighed down and covered, that I prayed, for mercy's sake, to be introduced, by way of respite, to a Laplander whom he leads about as ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... was dedicated "To him to whom I owe all that in me is of worth,—Charles Liversage Spence." It was an attempt, as she explained to me, to return to the rational style and improving tone of Jane Austen, whose novels were sound educators as well as sources of amusement. From Miss Kingsley's natural fluency and sprightliness I expected something "racy," to quote Paul Barr, and I was disappointed to find "Moderation" dull and didactic. It was however heralded and published with a great flourish of trumpets; ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... of the Reverend James McVean, who was born near Johnstown, New York, in 1796. He was a graduate of Union College in 1813, and of Princeton in 1819. It was said that he spoke seven languages with fluency and that the chair of Greek at Princeton was always open to him. He came to Georgetown about 1820 and married Jane Maffitt Whann in 1828. For twenty years he was the principal of a classical seminary for boys in Georgetown, the same one founded by Dr. David Wiley. There a large number ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... she did not speak a word of either English or French. Her husband, tall and fat too, was a good fellow, and, unlike his wife (who possessed only Turkish, Greek and Armenian), spoke in addition French, Italian and English with great ease and fluency. Indeed, the Armenians are the best of the different nationalities of Asia Minor and Syria: diligent in business, moderately honest, good linguists and accountants, they have more dignified manners and stability than the Fanariot Greeks, and more brains than the Turks. They ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... once she had been run away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack of thieves on her brother's camp; had seen justice administered with long sticks, in the open under trees; could speak Urdu and even rough Punjabi with a fluency that was envied by her seniors; had altogether fallen out of the habit of writing to her aunts in England, or cutting the pages of the English magazines; had been through a very bad cholera year, seeing sights unfit to be ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... drifted across Bobby's life afterwards in a shadowy way, seeming to have nothing special to do, but to know a great many people and to take life as a sort of a joke. He talked lightly and cynically about serious things, and used foreign expressions with great ease and fluency. It was characteristic of him that since the War he made frequent use of German idioms, and when conversation turned upon passing events he professed a complete contempt for English ideas, habits, and methods, and a great admiration for those of ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... for, while his speech lacked in the characteristic fluency of other speeches, while the shock and pain caused his argument to be somewhat labored, yet it was with a soldierly firmness and iron determination, which more than all things in Roosevelt's career discloses to the country the real Roosevelt, who at ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... Fluency is all. If the boy has a good ear, he will speak with a good accent; but his accent is a point about which really he needn't care a jot. So is his syntax. Not with these will he win the heart of Mme. Chose, not with these the esteem of M. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... several times of the eloquent way in which the tiger spoke, and admired his fluency of speech. But still his thirst was not quenched. So he let down his vessel again, which was now caught hold of by the serpent, who addressed him thus: "Oh, my protector! Lift me up. I am the king of serpents, and the son of Adisesha, who is now pining away in agony for my disappearance. Release ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... select the more interesting and significant masses of detail, and properly to cooerdinate them, has not been an easy task. The minor incidents were conditioned by the scale of the book; the result, I hope, is fluency and a more evident ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... I was, I could not help being amused at the tempestuous rage of a tall, fine-looking and well educated Irish Sergeant of an Illinois regiment. He poured forth denunciations of the traitor and the Rebels, with the vivid fluency of his Hibernian nature, vowed he'd "give a year of me life, be J—-s, to have the handling of the dirty spalpeen for ten minutes; be G-d," and finally in his rage, tore off his own shirt and threw it on the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... It was not the pain and burden to me that it had been. I often whistled at my desk, and wrote with far more fluency than before. I accomplished my tasks impatiently, as anxious to be off to my helpful retreat as a drunkard is to ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... to preside in peace and war. As for his learning, it is extensive beyond what could be expected from double the number of his years. He speaks most of the European languages with the same ease and fluency as if each of them were the only one he knew; is a perfect master of all the different kinds of Latin, understands Greek very well, and is not altogether ignorant of Hebrew; history and philosophy are his darling entertainments, in both which he is well versed; the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... a complication view, My country's honour and repute Demands that I translate for you The letter which Tattiana wrote. At Russ she was by no means clever And read our newspapers scarce ever, And in her native language she Possessed nor ease nor fluency, So she in French herself expressed. I cannot help it I declare, Though hitherto a lady ne'er In Russ her love made manifest, And never hath our language proud In correspondence ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... extremely fond of the study of language. Grammar was favorite light reading, and the philosophy which lies at the root of human speech a frequent subject of discussion and research with them; but they none of them spoke foreign languages with ease or fluency. My uncle was a good Latin scholar, and read French, Italian, and Spanish, but spoke none of them; not even the first, in spite of his long residence in French Switzerland. The same was the case with my father, whose delight in the dry bones of language was such that at near seventy he took the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... assumed, at Redgrave's request, the position of lady of the house pro tem., and described the "change of plans," as she called it, which led to their transfer from the St. Louis to the Astronef with an imaginative fluency which would have done credit to the ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... was Sergeant Bates, of the Criminal Investigation Department. He stepped into the box with the same ready, business-like air as the other officer, and, having been sworn, proceeded to give his evidence with a fluency that suggested careful preparation, holding an open notebook in his hand but ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... gentleman whom I had previously noticed at church) rose up with a strangely beaming look and broke out in a discourse of sounds that were wholly unintelligible. You need not smile. It was a true language, I am confident; it flowed forth with a moving warmth and fluency; and the gestures which accompanied it were earnest and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... French and Spanish—were not forgotten, for, before Donna Maria was eight years old, she spoke the latter tongue with fluency. The very learned Maestro Pietro Vettori, when he joined the household of the Duke as teacher of Greek and philosophy to Don Francesco, was greatly struck by the young girl's attainments, and so charmed was he by her sprightly manner, that ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... this cascade of smooth fluency, Valerie, still with her deepened color, here murmured that she, too, cared for the truth, but the current bore her on. "I don't think you see it, mama, else you could ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Tartar-physiognomied boy of fifteen, whose intellects, with fostering, if not great, might at least have been respectable, had he not lost all confidence in his own powers from the constant jeers and mockeries of those who had a greater fluency of speech without perhaps so much real power of mind. Although slow, what he learnt he invariably retained. This lad's name was Gossett. His father was a wealthy yeoman of Lynn, in Norfolk. There were at the time but three other midshipmen in the ship, of whom it ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... his classrooms, he gave most of his time and attention to the matters that could not be supervised at "long range." He found out how the pupils were improving in their reading, and especially in oral expression, in its syntax, its freedom from errors of construction, its clearness and fluency. He listed the common errors, directing his teachers to take them up in a systematic manner and eradicate them, and he did not fail to note at his next visit how much progress had been made. He noted the condition ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... to your inquiries respecting my progress in the Mandchou language, I have to observe that for some time past I have taken lessons from a person who was twelve years in Pekin, and who speaks Mandchou and Chinese with fluency. I pay him about six shillings English for each lesson, which I grudge not, for the perfect acquirement of Mandchou is one of my most ardent wishes; as I am convinced that it is destined by providence to be the medium for the spiritual illumination of countless millions of ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... knowledge of the language, and as the French soldiers were quite glad to beguile the time away by talking with their captives, he succeeded at the end of the journey, which lasted nearly a month, in being able to chat with a certain amount of fluency. Verdun was one of the four places in which British prisoners were confined. At that time France had fifteen thousand prisoners, England forty thousand. By an agreement between the governments these were held captive in certain prisons, so that they could, when occasion offered, be exchanged; ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... days, her eyes flash and words flow from her with a fluency equal to that of any youngster. Much of her speech is hard to understand as she reverts to the early idiom and pronunciation of her race. Her head, tongue, arms and hands all move at the same time ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... short noon-hour, Sylvia and Judith went to sit on their father's knees, while he put an arm about each and, looking from one serious expectant face to the other, began his explanation. He cleared his throat, and hesitated before beginning, and had none of his usual fluency as he went on. What he finally said was: "Well, children, you've stumbled into about the hardest problem there is in this country, and the honest truth is that we don't any of us know what's right to do about it. The sort of thing that's just happened in the Washington Street ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... mistaken for him. His figure, however, was better than Cicero's, who is reported to have had a long neck and rather slender legs. He resembled Cicero in his refined tastes, his admiration for great writers his command of language, his tact, fluency, fiery invective, and in the anti-climax of his career. If he had prepared his speeches for a body of men like the Roman senate, he might have been more nearly Cicero's equal. He used to wear a high-crowned soft felt hat, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... fluent," Mary answered, looking down at the queer little dots and spirals on her paper. "I daresay we'll have to prune it before it's printed. But it is a good fluency, a rich fluency. To me it is irresistible—like a spring freshet, like the sap rushing madly through all the veins ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... line already agreed upon in Canada was watched for—here by the French and {124} there by the English—as eager dogs watch a rat hole; a snap on one side might have provoked a snap on the other and put an end to the concord. He stated and argued the case with cool ready fluency, while at the same time you saw that every word was measured, and that while he was making for a point ahead, he was never for a moment unconscious of any of the rocks among ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... oratorio, opera, and symphony, down to pianoforte variations, rondos, and dances, and in none of them did he fail to be pleasing and intelligible, not even where, as especially in his sacred music, he made use—a sparing use—of contrapuntal devices, imitations, and fugal treatment. The naturalness, fluency, effectiveness, and practicableness which distinguish his writing for voices and instruments show that he possessed a thorough knowledge of their nature and capability. It was, therefore, not an empty rhetorical phrase to speak of him initiating his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... down heavily in a chair and buried his face in his hands. James began to talk, and as he talked his fluency came ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... that the girl wondered why Mrs. Heeny had found her lacking in conversation. But though Undine thought silent people awkward she was not easily impressed by verbal fluency. All the ladies in Apex City were more voluble than Mrs. Fairford, and had a larger vocabulary: the difference was that with Mrs. Fairford conversation seemed to be a concert and not a solo. She kept drawing ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... contingency, and asked her if she meant to stay in South Australia, according to agreement. Mrs. Peck was willing to say anything, to swear anything, and to sign anything, for his satisfaction on this point, but her very fluency made him suspicious. ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... Parson and I went on deck, and read ordinary print as rapidly as by daylight. It took some ten seconds to get accustomed to the light, being fresh from the glare of the kerosene lamp; but afterwards we read aloud to each other with entire ease and fluency. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Thomas Hunt, the author, was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, and was esteemed a person of quick parts, and of a ready fluency in discourse, but withal too pert and forward. He was called to the bar, and esteemed a good lawyer. In 1659 he became clerk of the assizes at Oxford circuit, but was ejected from the office at the Restoration, to his great loss, to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... opportunity of revisiting in the capacity of a transient the scenes of his former idleness; and the holiday-task set him by his large-hearted patron was to prove in as few folios as possible that China ought to be a Monarchy and not a Republic—a theme on which every schoolboy could no doubt write with fluency. Consequently Dr. Goodnow, arming himself with a limited amount of paper and ink, produced in very few days the Memorandum which follows,—a document which it is difficult to speak of dispassionately since it seems to have been deliberately designed to play ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... England, and he had an English tutor for some time in Cairo. He then went to school in Lausanne, and from there passed on to the Theresianum in Vienna. In addition to Turkish, his mother tongue, he acquired fluency in Arabic, and a good conversational knowledge of English, French and German. He was still at college in Vienna when the sudden death of his father raised him to the Khedivate; and he was barely ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... dark, but not disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry, and far more active. They all speak the English language with fluency, and in their gait and demeanour are easy and graceful; in both points standing in striking contrast with the peasantry, who in speech are slow and uncouth, and in manner dogged ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... taught, and it is not more than two or three years since it was invented. A few hours of instruction are sufficient for a Cherokee to learn to read his own language intelligibly. He will not, indeed, so soon be able to read fluently: but when he has learned to read and understand, fluency will be acquired by practice. The extent of my information will not enable me to form a probable estimate of the number in the nation who can thus read, but I am assured, by those who had the best opportunity of knowing, that there is no part of ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... simple fluency in Hindustani, with her manner of not realising that she was speaking to a foreigner who could not understand her. What she explained was that, having heard that Jane's Mem Sahib came here to meditate on account of the stillness, she herself had formed ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... better and better. He had seen Queen Helen face to face, and other women now seemed unimportant. Whether or not he got into the graces of this Hamadryad did not greatly matter, one way or the other: and in consequence Jurgen talked with such fluency, such apposite remarks and such ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... talk. He has an air, that brigand; he can cock his head so as to deceive a bailiff; he can wear a certain nobility of countenance; and with it all he can importune like a beggar. He has a horrid and plausible fluency; he is deaf to denials; he drugs you with words and robs you before you recover consciousness. He had got the length of quoting my own verses to me, and I felt myself going, when deliverance arrived. A stout man paused on the pavement, surveying us both, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... kindness once, and I do not intend to talk any more about it!" he is still more clearly delivered into the enemy's hands. He lays himself open to a charge of ingratitude, and the charge is pressed home with relentless fluency. Then, as to the doleful one's influence on children—the general modern tendency is towards making children happy, but the doleful one is a survival from some bad type, and takes a secret malign delight in wantonly inflicting pain on the minds or bodies of the young. Some dense ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... they both wanted come a little easier, he invented an errand over on State Street and nodded Rodney farewell. For the next half-hour he cursed himself with vicious heartfelt fluency for a fool. Mightn't he have known what little ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the hardest of the quartette, but Issy made the most fuss about it. Labe, who had chosen the holiday season to go on one of his periodical vacations, as rather white and shaky and even more silent than usual. Mr. Price, however, talked with his customary fluency and continuity, so there was no lack of conversation. Captain Zelotes was ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... seldom continued half that space. The stories we told were, as Sir Walter has said, interminable—for we were unwilling to have any of our favorite knights killed. Our passion for romance led us to learn Italian together; after a time we could both read it with fluency, and we then copied such tales as we had met with in that language, being a continued succession of battles and enchantments. He began early to collect old ballads, and as my mother could repeat a great ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... gives way to softer emotions; all they do and say breathes the utmost frankness and sincerity. One circumstance which I cannot help remarking is, that after living so many years in this sequestered retreat, they speak French with equal fluency and purity. I was likewise much struck with the little resemblance there is between them. Lady Eleanor has a charming face, embellished with the glow of health; her whole appearance and manner announce vivacity and the most unaffected gaiety. Miss Ponsonby has a fine countenance, but pale ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... her fluency of manner. "You're a bit unstrung, that's all. Look in at your club or ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
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