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More "Fluent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unveiling of a tablet, on the wall of the little Inn of the Anchor, to the memory of Giammaria Ghedini, the founder of the art-schools of Cortina. There was music by the band; and an oration by a native Demosthenes (who spoke in Italian so fluent that it ran through one's senses like water through a sluice, leaving nothing behind), and an original Canto sung by the village choir, with a general chorus, in which they called upon the various mountains to "re-echo the name of the beloved master John-Mary as a model of modesty ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... apparently set apart for their reception, they were embarrassed at not finding their host present. But they were still more disconcerted when a tall full-bearded stranger, with a shrewd amused-looking face, rose from a chair by the window, and stepping forward, saluted them in fluent Spanish with a slight ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... "We must send Mr. Thompson himself word of our intentions; let's write a proper, tradesman-like letter! Vickers, you're the fluent, flowery one. Bottle up your metaphors and give us a page of business-like fluency! ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... December 1881, and in the following year a volume of short stories, Tooneelen uit ons dorp, originally written by him for the Cape Volksblad, was published at the Hague for the benefit of his family. A patriot, a fluent speaker both in Dutch and in English, and possessed of unbounded energy, the failure of Burgers was due to his fondness for large visionary plans, which he attempted to carry out with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the purpose of extorting money from the passengers, which he regularly spent every night in the wine-shops of Badajoz. To those who gave him money he returned blessings, and to those who refused, curses; being equally skilled and fluent in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... saluted him and sat down by him. Presently up came the lady as usual, followed by a slave girl and wearing a dress more sumptuous than before; and she saluted me without noticing Badr al-Din and said in fluent graceful speech (never heard I voice softer or sweeter), "Send one with me to take the thousand and two hundred dirhams, the price of the piece." "Why this hurry?" asked I and she answered, "May we never lose thee!"[FN524] and handed me the money. Then I sat talking with her and presently I ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Queen's English. Now of late there had come up a notion that the small party required to make up for the thinness of their members by the strength of their eloquence. Practice makes perfect, and it is not to be wondered at therefore if a large proportion of The Twenty had become fluent. But more were wanted, and of our friend O'Mahony's fluency there could be no doubt. Therefore he was sent for, and on the very day of his arrival he proved to the patriotic spirits of Dublin that he was the man for Cavan. Three days afterwards he went down, and Cavan ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... would listen to a sweet song. He became so deeply interested, too, in the subject about which he happened to be speaking, that his auditors could not help becoming interested also. He had no powers of eloquence, neither was he gifted with an unusually bright fancy. But he was fluent in speech, and his words, though not chosen, were usually appropriate. The captain had no powers of invention whatever. He used to say, when asked to tell a story, that he "might as well try to ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... time been singularly able and judicious. Although Dr. Macleod never aspired to rank as a theological writer, he has in his way been a prolific and successful author. His works may be said to have merits peculiarly their own. His graceful, easy, fluent style; his admirable capacity for illustration; his graphic delineations of scenery and character; and, above all, his unfailing use of simple, terse, homely Saxon, have combined to place him in the front rank of living writers. Among his more notable publications we may mention "The ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... sensitive, physically, that he had "a tremulous motion of the head when speaking," his intellectual force was such that he easily became a leader of popular opposition to royal authority in New England. Unlike Jefferson in being a fluent public speaker, he resembled him in being the intellectual heir of Sidney and Locke. He showed very early in life the bent which afterwards forced him, as it did the naturally timid and retiring Jefferson, to take the leadership of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Vowel-Sounds are soft, fluent, changeful, and evanescent. One passes easily into another by slight deviations of pronunciation, resulting from trivial differences in National and Individual condition and culture; like the Flesh of the animal, which readily decays from the Bony Skeleton, while the last remains ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... His muscular and well-proportioned frame was invigorated by the toils of war, and by the chivalrous exercises in which he delighted. He was one of the best horsemen in his court, and excelled in field sports of every kind. His voice was somewhat sharp, but he possessed a fluent eloquence; and, when he had a point to carry, his address was courteous and even insinuating. He secured his health by extreme temperance in his diet, and by such habits of activity, that it was said he seemed to find repose in business. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... his fluent Spanish, in a few brief statements, he laid before her the main fact that Mr. Hampton, whom she doubtless knew, was his father, and that he had come to the rescue in ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... Under-Secretary of State, later a Minister, and finally President of the Republic. True, as he himself knows, and readily admits, he is no orator; but then orators are not always the men who get on in France. Thiers was a ready and fluent speaker, but MacMahon could scarcely say (or learn by heart) twenty consecutive words. Grevy, it is true, could be long-winded, prosy, and didactic; but the powers of elocution which Carnot and Felix Faure possessed were infinitesimal. And so the idea of Emile ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... such a reassuring conversation with Sir Sydney Shippard this evening. He is a most intelligent man, and speaks with such fluent decisiveness that all he says carries conviction. I am told that Sir Jacobus's speech was a rambling, poor affair and weak; the crowd showed a restlessness that at one time threatened to become dangerous. He was fortunately pulled down by his ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... may only be biding his time, waiting an excuse to deliver you over to their insatiable maw, to be dealt with according to the rules of their society. Or, perhaps the lady who in the first flush of your acquaintance quite dazzles you with her fluent chat upon multitudinous topics, suddenly, upon finding you unguardedly expressing opinions not approved by the high priests of mediocrity, lets fall her mask, and shows herself to your astonished gaze a ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... Menelaus was taller, when they sat down Odysseus was more stately. But when they spake, Menelaus' words were fluent, clear but few; Odysseus when he spoke, fixed his eyes on the ground, turning his sceptre neither backwards nor forward, standing still like a man devoid of wit; one would have deemed him a churl ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... with a persistency that was maddening. A young French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places, kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. "Eh bien, mes belles! Vous ne finissez pas," he ended despairingly, and rushed off again to see whether he ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... fluent manner, the foregoing affidavit, which existed only in his own brain, my brother Downright desired the court to take my deposition to ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a rambling statement. He spoke the Kosnovian language with the fluent inaccuracy of his class; but Alec's alert ears had no difficulty in following his meaning. His story was that several customers of the cafe had denounced him to the proprietor as a spy in the King's service, while some ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... I sat down on a bench on which was an old European. He was reading a tattered number of "Simplicissimus," and held the paper close to his watery eyes. I said, "Good morning" and he replied in fluent though accented English. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... in black ink—the characteristic blue ink, which he was so fond of using in later years, not appearing until Hard Times was written (1854), and this continued to be (with one exception, Little Dorrit) his favourite writing medium, for the reason, it is said, that it was fluent to write ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... TheNavalChronicle does not give many details of the volunteering for the navy in 1803, though he alludes to it in fluent terms more than once. On the 11th October, however, he reports that, 'So many volunteer seamen have arrived here this last week that upwards of L4000 bounty is to be paid them afloat by the Paying Commissioner, Rear-Admiral Dacres.' At the time the bounty was L2 10s. for an A.B., ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... Princess, in exactly the same way you love Roy Garnett, and immeasurably less than you love Berkeley. That isn't what I wanted, dear. I'm a dull fellow, slow at understanding things, and I can't put my thoughts into graceful, fluent language; but I know what love is, and what I wanted you to feel is very different. Don't be unhappy about it—or me. I'll worry through the pain in time, or grow accustomed to it. It's tough, just at first, but I'll pull through somehow. It shall not spoil my life either, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... to happiness in private, life." He was tall, well-proportioned, graceful; his features were clean-cut and expressive of both intelligence and amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected; his mind was vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he was an able lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reelected, he was known as the South's ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it—soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum—fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity—slow and retentive in cases of deliberation—never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark—never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service—all things as it were with all men—ready ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Brumley became aware of an effect away between the white-stemmed trees towards the house as if the Cambridge boat-race crew was indulging in a vigorous scrimmage. Drawing nearer this resolved itself into the fluent contours of Lady Beach-Mandarin, dressed in sky-blue and with a black summer straw hat larger than ever ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... at the pictures an alcoholic breath assailed me from the region of my left ear, and a voice said in thick but fluent French, "I see, by the way you admire the paintings, that you are foreigners." He was a short, puffy man with a baldish head as ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... was peculiar to himself, much after the haranguing way; he was no stranger to the rules of art, and knew well how to make his matter subservient to the subject he handled. His diction and language was easy and fluent, void of all affectation and bombast, and has a kind of undesigned negligent elegance which arrests the reader's attention. Considering the time he lived in, it might be said, that he carried the orator's prize from his contemporaries in Scotland, and was not at that time inferior ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... speak of the Misses Hernandez, with whom you scarcely exchanged a word at dinner, and whom I invited for you and your fluent Spanish. They are charming girls, even if they are a little stupid. But what can I do? If I am to live here, I must have a few young people around me, if only to make the place cheerful for others. Do you know I have taken a great fancy to Miss ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... "To a pleasing, fluent, narrative style, Miss corner unites a nice discrimination, and never suffers matters which sully the mind to appear in ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... half an hour he returned, and reported that he was unable to find a single person who could speak a word of French. Doubtless many of the officers, who were of higher grade than any on board of the Chateaugay, were fluent enough in the language, but they were not to be found in the smaller vessels of the navy; for, whatever their rank before the war, they had all been advanced to the higher positions. Every one of the officers ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... ease of manner was a striking and agreeable-looking young man, about eight and twenty, whom Miss Belvoir introduced as Mr. Bevan Fairfield. He was fair and good-looking, very dandified in dress, and with a rather humorously turned-up nose and an excessively fluent way of speaking. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... appears to have had little ambition, and was content throughout his career to fit his saccharine melodies to whatever words the librettists of the day chose to supply. No one can deny him the possession of fluent and commonplace melody, but there ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... and fathering of little Prudence was a work by no means colourless or uneventful. The child had displayed a grievous capacity for remaining unimpressed by even the best-weighed opinions of her protector. She was also appallingly fluent in and partial to the idioms and metaphors of revealed religion,—a circumstance that would not infrequently cause the sensitive ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... to the United States in the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-two, and lectured in most of the principal cities, and at all the great colleges. He was a most fascinating speaker, fluent, direct, easy, and his whole discourse was well ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Howell, Esq. are well known as fluent examples of the best style of writing of his day, and as repositories of many curious facts and intelligent remarks. The following letter appears to be addressed to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... details, little touches of local colour, revision of choice of words, heart-rending erasions. And here, my child," I concluded, bringing out the beautiful, clean, smooth typed copy—"here is the finished work itself, light, pleasant, fluent, humorous and, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... no sooner landed in Cubia than it become nicessry f'r me to take command iv th' ar-rmy which I did at wanst. A number of days was spint be me in reconnoitring, attinded on'y be me brave an' fluent body guard, Richard Harding Davis. I discovered that th' inimy was heavily inthrenched on th' top iv San Juon hill immejiately in front iv me. At this time it become apparent that I was handicapped be th' prisence iv th' ar-rmy,' he says. 'Wan day whin I was about to charge a block house sturdily ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... nine hundred sixty-three against the Conservative total of one thousand nine hundred forty-five. Lloyd George was twenty-seven at the time of this triumph and became known as "the boy politician." There were many sneers among his opponents, who pointed out that this fluent young demagogue had now reached the end of his tether. In the environment of the House of Commons, among really clever men, he would sink to the natural inconsequence from which a series of fortunate accidents had lifted him. And indeed it was not unnatural for even the sympathetic ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... contrast in the two boys. The elder, who was about fifteen, seemed older than he was, not only from his height, but from the darkness of his complexion, and a certain proud, nay, imperious, expression upon features that, without having the soft and fluent graces of childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green shooting-dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its gold tassel set upon his luxuriant curls, which had the purple gloss of the raven's plume, blended perhaps something prematurely manly in his own tastes, with ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and going tides as he drops his inhibitory hand and speeds them in the continuous current. That is, of course, something you get in greater quantity, though not such intense quality, in a London 'block,' but there is something more fluent, more mercurially impatient, in a New York street jam, which our nerves more vividly partake. Don't ask me to explain! I would rather not!" ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... of its early monopoly of talent, the Edinburgh Review still retained Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, and it was abundantly compensated for the loss of Scott by the acquisition in 1825 of the fluent pen of Macaulay. Born in 1800, the son of Zachary Macaulay, who like many other philanthropists was on the tory side, he was early converted to the whig party. He was well fitted to be a popular writer. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... chiefly for his huge grey mustachios and for his silence. He has been willing but laconic,—taciturn, in fact. But I have felt sure he has a "glib" side. Can I find it? The stillest of men are fluent on their loved topics; there is some key to unlock every one's reserve. Can I hit upon the key to his? Which of possible interests in common will bring us ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... alert it was a sensitive medium. He dropped with crossed knees into his chair and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine times out of ten some corresponding mental warp? Bernard's fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true—it was not in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friendship into "meeting once or twice"? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was he laying a trap?—Not misled: the Laura Selincourt of Hyde's recollection was not one to stoop ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... were few abolitionists. Rufus Saxton told me that Lyon was the only one of any distinction who could be so classed among the men he knew. T.W. Sherman was like his fellows and listened impatiently to what he felt was fanaticism gone mad, but the fluent old farmer drove home his radicalism undauntedly. T.W. Sherman before the war had been a well-known figure as commander of Sherman's flying artillery, which was perhaps the most famous organisation of the regular ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Divinity her Pipe, While proud philosophy repines to shew, Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below; Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice and balancing his hands. How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain, While SHERLOCK, HARE, and GIBSON, preach in vain. Oh great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once, and zany of thy ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... understand our language well, for he immediately turned with gentle urbanity, and discerning, perhaps, something in my face which assured him of my sympathy and respect, entered into a fluent conversation with me that at once increased my admiration and awakened my pity. For I saw that his nature was strong and his feelings deep, and as the future could have nothing but shame and misery, I instinctively felt oppressed by the fate which ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... countenance so common in the Irish peasant- priest—the priest one sees every day in the streets of Dublin. He was, perhaps, of a better class, as his features were all good. A heavy man as well as a big one, he was not so amusing and so fluent a talker out of school as his predecessor, nor, as we were delighted to discover, so exacting and tyrannical in school. On the contrary, in and out of school he was always the same, mild and placid in temper, with a gentle sort of humour, and he was also very absent-minded. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... of Dryden, further crossed and dashed slightly with the peculiar music of the followers of Spenser, especially Browne and Wither) had a very strong influence both on Keats and on Shelley, and that it drew from them music much better than itself. This fluent, musical, many-coloured verse was a capital medium for tale-telling, and Leigh Hunt is always at his best when he employs it. The more varied measures and the more ambitious aim of "Captain Sword and Captain Pen" seem to me ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... point of the entertainment the Reporter of the "Oceanic Miscellany" was introduced, and to his fluent and indefatigable pen we owe the further account of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... took the advice of Suetonius Paulinus and Marius Celsus, so too in political matters he employed the talents of Galerius Trachalus.[200] Some people even thought they could recognize Trachalus' style of oratory, fluent and sonorous, well adapted to tickle the ears of the crowd: and as he was a popular pleader his style was well known. The crowd's loud shouts of applause were in the best style of flattery, excessive and insincere. Men vied with ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... quality and the amateur dilettanti bought and bound his volumes of careful poetry and cadenced prose. But Cleveland had high birth and a handsome competence—his manners were delightful, his conversation fluent—and his disposition was as amiable as his mind was cultured. He became, therefore, a man greatly sought after in society both respected and beloved. If he had not genius, he had great good sense; he did ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... magnificently soldierly, with much of manner and rich colour, magnanimously forgetful this morning of "other important duties" and affably debonair though his eyelids dropped for want of sleep, came gradually to halt in his fluent speech.—"Weally, you can't talk forever to a potht! If thilenthe be golden he ith the heavietht weight of hith time."—Jackson gathered up his reins, nodded and rode off, the troops cheering as ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... There is no artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no "babbling gossip of the air," fluent and redundant; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... recommends her Russian Nursery Governess; speaks fluent French, German; will answer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... is a rare genius. And most happily it is so; for elevated taste and high-toned morality are not, by any means, the common heritage of man. Anacreon and Burns were genuine Poets. They uttered, in fine style, many truths; and were not merely fluent in their respective languages, but affluent. But, perhaps, like some other men of mighty parts and grand proportions, better for mankind they had never been born. A Cowper and a Byron, in their whole career of song, will exert a very different ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... progress, and economic development of the people which his class are studying. He is aware that the pupil should experience something more than a kaleidoscopic view of isolated facts. He recognizes the folly of requiring four years of high school English for the purpose of cultivating clear, fluent, and accurate expression, only to relax the effort when the student comes into the history class. He knows that the precision, logic, and habit of definite thinking exacted by the pursuit of the scientific ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... spools, specially after a couple of our doughboy squad, who'd worked pneumatic riveters back home, took hold of the drills. Others fished some hand sledges and crowbars out of a tool shed and helped the work along, while Mike encourages his gang with a fluent ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... both, of the ball of the Khedive," he continued in his English, which was, though amazingly fluent and ready, a literal sounding translation of the French, which was in reality his mother tongue. "My sister thinks she can arrange that invitation. You are sure that you will be ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... mind is fluent and uncertain there is no describing it. He thought he had come to a decision last week; he found that the decision was shattered as soon as made. He had talked to the priest; he had resisted Marjorie; and yet to neither of them had he put into formal words what it was that troubled ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... weather-beaten face and toughened hands was a fluent speaker, even though she paid little attention to the latest style in dress for women. She leaned against the shaft of the wagon and plied her questions to the tourists as freely as she had plied the hickory ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... military power had numbered and ticketed every village. But what did it mean to us? War was a thing unthinkable in those days. We bicycled everywhere, climbed, mountains, bathed in waterfalls, chatted fluent and unorthodox German with everyone we met, and played ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... field,—late hours, long stories, incessant smoking, and raw spirits. There were some restless minds about me, whose funds of anecdote and jest were apparently inexhaustible. I do not know that so many eccentric, adventurous, and fluent people are to be found among any other nationality of soldiers, not ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... longest retained his glory. I saw him only about a week in a watering place, and subsequently he was able to maintain his position of hero-friend by a correspondence in which he answered my fervent ingenuousness stammered in poor German with fluent plagiarism from the classics of his romantic fatherland. All went well, until after a few years I met him again and noticed that it was not even a puppet but a skeleton that I had arrayed in a hero's armor. I was furious at him as though he had purposely deceived ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... excitement—meaning an unreasonable excitement upon any subject whatever. There can be no doubt that Mr. Clapp honestly believed such a state of agitation far more conducive than quiet to his own interest; for he was quite a fluent speaker, and very ambitious of a seat in the State Assembly. He belonged to that school of republicanism, which so completely identifies the individual with the mass, that it cannot conceive of any independent opinions, tastes, or principles; ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... hidalgo—an old friend of the child's—most polite, most accomplished, fluent in Spanish, perfect in deportment. The Senor Horncastle surely could find nothing to object to. Father Pedro was charmed with him. A man of affairs, and yet a good Catholic, too. It was a Senor Van Loo—Don Paul the boy called him, and they talked of the boy's ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... sir, it would surely be most unusual for a man like you to go to war," he began, and for quite ten minutes he proceeded to set forth in fluent and excited speech a number of reasons why the idea of Barry's going to war was absurd and preposterous to him. It must be confessed that Barry was the only one of the men who appeared to give much heed to him. They seemed to be dazed by the stupendous fact that ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Corcelle, is to me my duty, and I will sustain it in the best way in my power.... Ah! that ancient France, how one feels her grandeur here, and what a part she is known to have had in Christianity! It is that chord which I should like to have heard vibrate in a fluent writer like you, and not eternally those paradoxes, those sophisms. But what matters it to you who date from yesterday and who boast of it," he added, almost sadly, "that in the most insignificant ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... to Stukely, seeming not quite to comprehend what the white men required; and Dick noticed that after the ex-priest had spoken a little while with Phil, the latter became much more fluent and certain in his speech, so that, in the course of a further conversation of some ten minutes' duration, he contrived to make Vilcamapata clearly understand what he wanted; whereupon the old man, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... looked up to her with regard: with the result that Mr. Lien himself has, in fact, had to take a back seat (lit. withdrew 35 li). In looks, she is also so extremely beautiful, in speech so extremely quick and fluent, in ingenuity so deep and astute, that even a man could, in no way, come up ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking "Cauldstaneslap ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the whole race of the Greeks: I grant them literary genius, I grant them skill in various accomplishments, I do not deny them elegance in conversation, acuteness of intellect, fluent oratory; to any other high qualities they may claim I make no objection: but the sacred obligation that lies upon a witness to speak the truth is what that ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... manhood, huge and unaware, seemed to lie deep in them like a monster coiled up under the sea. When he looked at her he seemed to lose that heavy dumbness, that inarticulate stupidity which occasionally stirred and vexed even her good disposition; his mouth might still be shut, but his eyes were fluent—they told her not only of his manhood but of ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... Paradise Lost by heart, and thought it probable that he could rewrite Sir Charles Grandison from memory. In his books, in his speeches in the House of Commons, and in private conversation—for he was an eager and fluent talker, running on often for hours at a stretch—he was never at a loss to fortify and illustrate his positions by citation after citation of dates, names, facts of all kinds, and passages quoted verbatim from his multifarious ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... "one must daily say the eighteen prayers." R. Joshua said "a summary of the eighteen." R. Akivah said, "if his prayer be fluent in his mouth, he says the eighteen; if not, ...
— Hebrew Literature
... was a man who had seen many changes, And always changed as true as any needle; His polar star being one which rather ranges, And not the fix'd—he knew the way to wheedle: So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges; And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill), He lied with such a fervour of intention— There was no doubt ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... career. Dr. Rice is still devoting His enfeebled voice and gesture To the Gospel proclamation; Furrowed brow and locks of silver Give the glory of religion, In a portrait true and tender, Speaking fluent words and holy, Telling still the "old, old story." Every prominent position, In the gift of flock or pastor, Has been his to grace and honor, In the ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... latter proposition, as we were in no travelling kelter, and had no taste for performances on the tight rope. Having officiated for Captain V—— on several former occasions, we had the run of his "grocery" and postal arrangements quite fluent enough to take charge of all the trade likely to turn up that day; so the captain and his friends started, promising ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... long speech at such a moment, an older woman would have thought, and not over original in choice of similes and epithets, but fluent enough and good enough to serve the purpose and to turn the current of Beatrice's girlish life. Yet not much of a love-speech. Ruggiero's had been better, as a little true steel is better than much iron at certain moments in life. It succeeded very well at the moment, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... advantages can bring out in the best light all the qualities they do possess. The glow of a generous imagination, the grasp of a profound statesmanship, the enthusiasm of a noble nature,—these no practice could educe from the eloquence of Lumley Lord Vargrave, for he had them not; but bold wit, fluent and vigorous sentences, effective arrangement of parliamentary logic, readiness of retort, plausibility of manner, aided by a delivery peculiar for self-possession and ease, a clear and ringing voice (to the only fault of which, shrillness ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there to say good-bye to Ida and put her into the carriage; but it proved a difficult good-bye to say, and for once the usually fluent old lawyer was bereft of the power of speech as he held Ida's small hand, and looked through tear-dimmed eyes at the white and sorrowful face. He had intended to say all sorts of kind and encouraging things, but he could only manage ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... 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, because I often recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, after I am ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the Spider is still at table. I take away her dish. Naught remains of the Locust but his skin, hardly altered in shape, but utterly drained and perforated in several places. The method, therefore, was changed during the night. To extract the non-fluent residue, the viscera and muscles, the stiff cuticle had to be tapped here, there and elsewhere, after which the tattered husk, placed bodily in the press of the mandibles, would have been chewed, re-chewed and finally reduced to a pill, which the sated ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... a moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... social position. But the revolution swept all away. His father's property was confiscated, and young M'Gillivray took refuge with the Creeks, his heart filled with hatred of the republicans. He was brave, fluent in speech, popular with the leading men, and soon rose to the rank of head chief; and no doubt he stirred up his nation to assume an attitude ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... elocutionary defects. They have no speakers to compare with Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, or Anna Dickinson, although John Bright is without peer among his countrymen, as is Mrs. Besant among the women. The women, as a general rule, are more fluent than the men. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of Florence were there, and great was the excitement when Countess Rosali entered the ball room with an exceedingly beautiful woman—a queenly blonde—the lady about whom all Florence was interested—an English heiress, clever as she was fair, speaking French with a courtly grace and Italian with fluent skill; and when the prince stood before her he recognized in one moment the original ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... prisoners,' Ken answered with a smile, and at his fluent Turkish the man's dark eyes opened in evident surprise. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... joined the Salvation Army with her protegee (religion had all the attraction of the impliedly forbidden to the Madigans), and was discovered by Francis Madigan one evening on C Street, putting up a fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo—an excellent imitation of the semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... feeling. They have been men of affairs first, with large practical ability, but with a deep strain of the man of letters which in this generation has outshone the other faculties; strong-headed and hard-working students, with powerful memories and fluent ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... think any more are needed. The best thing to do now is to get those we have together and summon our solicitors here. Then our friend Kenyon, who is a fluent speaker, can lay ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... metrist. Neither in his sonnets, nor in his various stanzas composed of heroics, nor in what may be called his doggerel metres—the fatally fluent Alexandrines, fourteeners, and admixtures of both, which dominated English poetry from his time to Spenser's, and were never quite rejected during the Elizabethan period—do we find evidence of the want of ear, or the want of command of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... it developed, was a fluent and persuasive talker, a man of the broadest worldly experiences and wit. He was younger than Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... been too saved, I see, Too rescued; fear too dim to me That I could spell the prayer I knew so perfect yesterday, — That scalding one, "Sabachthani," Recited fluent here. ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... in a Billet-doux that should be understood at the Bank, than in gross Money; But as to stubborn People, who are so surly as to accept of neither Note or Cash, having formerly dabbled in Chymistry, I can only say that one part of Matter asks one thing, and another another, to make it fluent; but there is nothing but may be dissolved by a proper Mean: Thus the Virtue which is too obdurate for Gold or Paper, shall melt away very kindly in a Liquid. The Island of Barbadoes (a shrewd People) manage all their Appeals to Great-Britain, by a skilful ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... queenly and indifferent to him than ever, but never displayed pique or asperity. Yet, however badly she treated him, he quite deserved my title of a "tame cat:" he bore every reverse patiently, and indeed at times displayed an absolute heroism in the face of her indifference, going on in fluent recital of something he believed would interest her while she utterly ignored him and his subject. However, Thorpe was a good actor, and could play his part, and do it well, in spite of his audience. I sometimes fancied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... good-for-nothing, and a thief, all of which opprobrious language he bore with the best temper (having no idea what it meant), and was in the most ignominious manner escorted to steam-boats and public carriages, to be got rid of, talking all the while, like a cheerful and fluent Briton as he was, with Mother ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... without a sound. His face had none of the immobility so frequent with very aged persons; on the contrary, waves of mood were always sparkling across his features, and leaving nothing stationary there except the narrow, high, and strangely receding forehead. His language, very fluent and easy, had an agreeable touch of the soil, an occasional rustic note in its elegant colloquialism, that seemed very pleasant and appropriate, as if it linked him naturally with the long line of sturdy ancestors of whom he was the final blossoming. In connection with his poetry, I think it would ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... about to tell me, my Sister," Saxham said, in his smooth, fluent French, "when you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... make it. We determined that we would really know what we did feel and what we did not. We would not be lightly scared away from our friend, but neither would we any more allow our judgment to be talked down by that fluent tongue of his; he should have justice from us, he and his biographer, as far as it lay with us to discern justice and ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... can here alone be mentioned. A thorough naturalist, though saturated with the mannerism of the Umbrian school, Pinturicchio was not distracted either by scientific or ideal aims from the clear and fluent presentation of contemporary manners and costumes. He is a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, who brings us here and there in close relation to the men of his own time, and has in consequence a special value for the student of Renaissance life. His wall-paintings in the library of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... endorsed Peggy's plan. The summer days were all very delightful, but the presentation of the little play promised that agreeable variety without which all pleasures pall. Indeed, Lucy's expression of gratitude, fervent if not fluent, rendered Priscilla ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... these nations are reflected also in their methods of presentation. The style of the English philosopher is sober, comprehensible, diffuse, and slightly wearisome. The French use a fluent, elegant, lucid style which entertains and dazzles by its epigrammatic phrases, in which not infrequently the epigram rules the thought. The German expresses his solid, thoughtful positions in a form which is at once ponderous and not easily understood; each writer constructs ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... or two she was badly frightened. Then, watching him, she suddenly came to the conclusion that she had nothing to fear—that he was telling her something he wanted her to know. She listened, trying hard to catch some word in the flood of fluent foreign speech, and twice she thought she made out the name of Ram Das. Then he finished abruptly with almost the one word of Hindustani she knew, since it was one the old hawker had taught her. "SUMJA," ("Do you understand?") ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... kneel down, Peace began a prayer that lasted twenty minutes. He prayed for himself, his family, his victims, Mr. Littlewood, society generally, and all classes of the community. Mr. Littlewood described the prayer as earnest, fervent and fluent. At the end Peace asked Mr. Littlewood if he ought to see Mrs. Dyson and beg her forgiveness for having killed her husband. Mr. Littlewood, believing erroneously that Mrs. Dyson had already left the country, told Peace that he should direct ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... also well known from practical life that some men can easily go on dictating to a stenographer while they are affixing their signature to several hundred circular letters, or can continue their fluent lecture while they are performing experimental demonstrations. With others such a side activity continually interrupts the chief function. Then some succeed better than others in securing a certain automatism of the ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... others lay in a trundle-bed across the room; and the three were getting out of sleep all that there is in it for tired, healthy children. In the room below, her father and the eldest boy were resting; and through the rafters of the flooring she could hear them both: her father a large, fluent, well-seasoned, self-comforting bassoon; and her brother a sappy, inexperienced bassoon trying to imitate it. Wakefulness was a novel state for Pansy herself, who was always tired when bedtime came and as full of ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Pietro indulged in some rather emphatic language, but being in the Italian language, in which he was more fluent, it fell unregarded upon the ears ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... deputation, one after another. Learned princes who had the gift of speech were themselves fond of discoursing in Latin or Italian. The children of the House of Sforza were trained to this exercise. The boy Galeazzo Maria delivered in 1455 a fluent speech before the Great Council at Venice, and his sister Ippolita saluted Pope Pius II with a graceful address at the Congress of Mantua (1459). Pius himself through all his life did much by his oratory to prepare the way for his final elevation to the Papal chair. Great as he was both as scholar ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... {C}, {LISP}, and {Perl}. Nearly every hacker knows one of C or LISP, and most good ones are fluent in both. C, despite some serious drawbacks, is generally preferred to other object-oriented languages (though in 1996 it looks as though Java may soon displace it in the affections of hackers, if not everywhere). Since ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... smile, she seated herself; and, discovering that I was an American, began to talk bad English to me. I may say execrable English; for it is a habit your Frenchwoman often has, to abandon her own facile and fluent vernacular, which she speaks so charmingly, in order to show off a wretched smattering she may have acquired of your language,—from politeness, possibly, but I rather think from vanity. In the mean time Arachne busied her long agile fingers with some very appropriate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... attitude, and minimizing the change in present angle or point of view. His fertile mind played about it, strengthening it, building it up, polishing and perfecting; and in time he began to write, at first slowly, but soon with fluent ease. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... remained a mystery to the rest. Nevertheless an old story now and then well told by Mr. Ormsby, a new joke now and then well introduced by Mr. Gay, some dashing assertion by Mr. Rigby, which, though wrong, was startling; this agreeable blending of anecdote, jest, and paradox, kept everything fluent, and produced that degree of mild excitation which is desirable. Lord Monmouth sometimes summed up with an epigrammatic sentence, and turned the conversation by a question, in case it dwelt too much on the same ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... and the daily exhibition of his strength caused him to grow handsome in her eyes because most of those feats were performed for her comfort or pleasure. In the meantime he talked incessantly, and to his admiration, he presently found her manner of speech wonderfully like his own, both fluent and ungrammatical. ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... reigns of Claudius and Nero. He is author of an agricultural work, "De Re Rustica," in which he gives, in smooth and fluent, though somewhat too diffuse a style, the fullest and completest information on practical agriculture among the Romans in the first century of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and with Dick and Henry for audience made an impassioned speech in defence of vested interests and the sacred rights of property. Never in his life had he been so fluent or so inventive, and when he wound up a noble passage on the rights of the individual, in which he alluded to Sam as a fat sharper, he felt ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... true of the most fluent talkers on occasions when the exact vocal formula desired does not at once suggest itself, or is unsatisfactory without assistance from the physical machinery not embraced in the oral apparatus. The command of a copious vocabulary ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... Herr Schulz—and this time his English was faultless and fluent—"Shut that door behind you, Mr. Greve, and shoot the bolt—that's it just below the knob! Sit down, sit down, and while I mix you a drink, you shall ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... lady, of commanding presence and sternly handsome, entered the room. She wore robes—robes; not clothes—ample and fluent. In her eye could be perceived the lambent flame of genius and soul. In her hand was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an umbrella that also seemed to wear a robe, ample and fluent. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... we speak of the Misses Hernandez, with whom you scarcely exchanged a word at dinner, and whom I invited for you and your fluent Spanish. They are charming girls, even if they are a little stupid. But what can I do? If I am to live here, I must have a few young people around me, if only to make the place cheerful for others. Do you know I have taken a great fancy to Miss Rogers, and have asked her ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... at her mother, and in the momentary silence Lucie came in and asked what madame wanted for the evening, and Adelaide in her fluent French began explaining that what she really desired most was that Lucie should not make so much noise in her room that monsieur could not sleep. In the midst of it she stopped ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... glad to see the noble Athenian in his own city. His fame for eloquence and prudence is already in Tyre and Babylon," spoke the stranger, never taking his steel-blue eyes from the orator's face. The accent was Oriental, but the Greek was fluent. The prince—for prince he was, whatever his nation—pressed his hand closer. Almost involuntarily Democrates's hand responded. They clasped tightly; then, as if Lycon feared a word too much, the unknown released his hold, bowed with inimitable though silent courtesy, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... a penetration of mind altogether unique." The children of the fanatics of the Cevennes, while in their supposed prophetic ecstacies, spoke the purest dialect of French, and expressed themselves with singular propriety. The same facility of speaking in a fluent and exalted style while in the divinatory ecstacy, was remarked of old in the case of the Pythian priestess. "Though it cannot be divined," says Plutarch, in his "Inquiry," "why the Pythian priestess ceases to deliver her oracles in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... them, and floating with the coming and going tides as he drops his inhibitory hand and speeds them in the continuous current. That is, of course, something you get in greater quantity, though not such intense quality, in a London 'block,' but there is something more fluent, more mercurially impatient, in a New York street jam, which our nerves more vividly partake. Don't ask me to explain! I would rather not!" he said, and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest; 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... all the fluent conversation and compliments, the gossip and jokes he had been saving up to tell her, died away on his lips. He saw she had been crying. He sat down further away than ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... of that day, Peter and myself sat alone beneath the oak. We fell into conversation; Peter was at first melancholy, but he soon became more cheerful, fluent, and entertaining. I spoke but little; but I observed that sometimes what I said surprised the good Methodist. We had been silent some time. At length, lifting up my eyes to the broad and leafy canopy of the trees, I said, having ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... liar, and a fluent liar therewith— He spoke of the heat of India as the "Asian Solar Myth"; Came on a four months' visit, to "study the East," in November, And I got him to sign an agreement vowing to stay ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Mahbub Ali had incautiously driven home the sharp-edged stirrup. (He was not the new sort of fluent horse-dealer who wears English boots and spurs.) Kim drew his own conclusions from ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... has better served—it has served all: Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek; Served in building the buildings that last longer than any; Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee; Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi—served those whose relics remain ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... on a new guise. He affected to be enraptured with Spartan manners, cropped his hair, lived on black broth, exercised diligently, and by his fluent tongue made himself a favorite in that austere city. But at length, by an idle boast, he roused Spartan enmity, and had to fly again. Now he sought Asia Minor, became a friend of Tissaphernes, the Persian satrap, adopted the excesses of Persian luxury, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... man in New England is a theologian." I have already intimated that Webster dissipated his strength, and it is only fair to state the facts in the light of the conditions under which he lived. In the unorganized and fluent state of society there was little room for a specialist; or, to change the phrase for a more exact one, there was too much room. Every educated man was called upon to occupy himself with a great variety of tasks. The demand made by the republican experiment was very great. People had ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... thoughts did not long hold their place. She was an honest young woman, and she readily confessed that fluent manners and the air of the cavaliere servente were things she did not love. Carelessness suited well with a frayed jacket and the companionship of a hill burn and two ragged boys. So, comforting her pride with proverbs, she returned to Glenavelin to find the place deserted ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... work of all kinds "et voila tout." Every generation, every country, has its Catulle Mendes. Robert Buchanan is ours, only in the adaptation Scotch gruel has been substituted for perfumed white wine. No more delightful talker than Mendes, no more accomplished litterateur, no more fluent and translucid critic. I remember the great moonlights of the Place Pigale, when, on leaving the cafe, he would take me by the arm, and expound Hugo's or Zola's last book, thinking as he spoke of the Greek sophists. There were for contrast Mallarme's ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... who acknowledged the honour in fluent Melanesian, was understood to say that he had only done his duty, that he was speechless with gratitude and that he would always regard Lord READING as a brother. A recherche vegetarian luncheon was then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... Miss Mary C. Francis (O.) from the standpoint of a practical newspaper woman. Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, made the last address, taking for a subject Eternal Justice. The Constitution said: "As a rapid, logical and fluent speaker it is doubtful if America ever has produced one more gifted, and the suffrage movement is fortunate in having so brilliant a woman for ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... were realised by the archdeacon's speech, which went round in a circle, as if he could not find his way out of it. Lord Cosham was fluent, but a great many words went to very small substance; and no wonder, thought Ethel, when all they had to propose and second was the obvious fact that ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... equal eminence; and his enthusiastic friends insisted that never, either in single conflict or when receiving the assault of the senatorial leaders of a whole party, had he been discomfited. His style was bold, vigorous, and aggressive; at times even defiant. He was ready, fluent, fertile in resources, familiar with national and party history, severe in denunciation, and he handled with skill nearly all the weapons of debate. His iron will and restless energy, together with great personal magnetism, made him ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... all one, so any thing is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original groundwork of character remains. He feels more at home with Fulke Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George Herbert, and Browne, than with his modern English cousins. He is nearer than John, by at least a hundred years, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... under their escort, stiff and perspiring in his full official regalia, before Mr. Brewster; then before his daughter, whose solemnity, presently breaking down before his painfully rehearsed English, dissolved in fluent French, setting him at ease and making him her slave. Poor penitent Von Plaanden even apologized to Carroll, fortunately not having heard of the American's threat, and made a most favorable impression ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... explain this Mr. Clinton. He was a speculator, and above all a setter on foot of rotten speculations, and a keeper on foot a little while of lame ones. No man exceeded him in the art of rose-tinting bad paper or parchment. He was sanguine and fluent. His mind had two eyes, an eagle's and a bat's; with the first he looked at the "pros," and with the second at the "cons" ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... he has dreamed out at last the troubled dream of life. Sighs of unavailing grief ascend to Heaven. Panegyric, fluent in long-stifled praise, performs its office. The army and the navy pay conventional honors, with the pomp of national woe, and then the hearse moves onward. It rests appropriately, on its way, in the hall where independence was proclaimed, and again under the dome where ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... role, and, choosing a few passages, read into them all of their hidden meaning, with the fluent ease and clearness which had gained for him the reputation of a fascinating reader. Silvia listened with ever increasing surprise, and at last exclaimed: "Ah, sir, you are the author of the piece, or else the devil." He assured her with a smile that he was not ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... come to that period of wo, let me say one word on the temper of mind which so fluent and serene a current of prosperity may be thought to have generated. Too common a course I know it is, when the stream of life flows with absolute tranquillity, and ruffled by no menace of a breeze—the azure overhead never dimmed by a passing cloud, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... at the apex of the spit, the sand as it sinks tints the verge of the sea, while the lighter spoil, leaves and wisps of seaweed, trip off on independent voyage. The current from the south pares the spit, preserving its shapeliness. The ebb from the bay maintains the fluent inner curve. The dry wind, the current with its northerly set, and the ebb in conjunction, push the spit to the north, and as the sand advances, vegetation consolidates the work. Then comes the season of northerly winds, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... often united the functions of solicitor and counsel. As a result of this double life, the attorney acquired the peculiar intellectual defects of the barrister, and retained the heavy responsibilities of the attorney. He grew talkative and fluent, and lost his lucidity of judgment, the first necessity for the conduct of affairs. If a man of more than ordinary ability tries to do the work of two men, he is apt to find that the two men are mediocrities. The Paris attorney ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... by a cheerful smile to be extremely prepossessing. The same remark might apply to the figure, which—thanks to the same pensiveness—lost all the undulating grace which movement and animation bestow on the fluent curves of the feminine form. The figure was a good figure, examined in detail—a little thin, perhaps, but by no means emaciated—with just and elegant proportions, and naturally light and flexible. But that same unfortunate pensiveness gave the whole a character of inertness and languor; ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... develop as had been hoped, the temper of mind fostered was not entirely what had been desired. The conscientious accuracy that was to come of measuring a millimetre and weighing a milligramme was disappointing, and also the fluent readiness to give an account of observations made, the desired accuracy of expression, the caution in drawing inferences. The links between this teaching and after life did not seem to be satisfactorily established. The Board of Education showed the first ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... did more: for he wrote two solid quarto volumes, published at Paris in 1756—"avec approbation et privilege du Roy," as the title page says—in which he related all that he could learn about previous voyages to the south, and pointed out, with generous amplitude, in limpid, fluent French, the desirableness of pursuing further discoveries there. Incidentally he coined a useful word: to Monsieur le President Charles de Brosses we owe the name "Australasia."* (* De Brosses, Histoire des Navigations aux Terres ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... never saw a look in the face of one of them which indicated that he was not profoundly interested. I was in their meeting last Sunday, and I told them about Sui Chung. Most of these Chinese can read. Some of them are very fluent talkers, and some are very intelligent. I suppose we have a thousand or fifteen hundred in this city, and a very large proportion of them, they tell me, can read the ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... was easy and his tongue fluent. Beatrice had only to lean her head back and smile faintly from time to time. The General suddenly paused—so suddenly that Beatrice looked up and noticed the sudden pallor of his ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... consonant evaded after the Polynesian habit) was sent by Bishop Dordillon to South America, and there educated by the fathers. His French is fluent, his talk sensible and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in-chief, he is of excellent service to the French. With the prestige of his name and family, and with the stick when needful, he keeps the natives working and ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... honour. During his course he had managed to read an amazing amount of English literature, and no man was readier or had a keener taste in such things than he. He had a pleasing personal appearance, a fluent and persuasive manner, an unblemished character. Every morning he came to his office from one of the most pleasant little cottage homes in the world; and if you had opened the little front gate, and gone up through the shrubbery to the house, you would have seen a ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... was of so ultra a quality; his revenge was so fiery, and his tongue so fluent; that I began to suspect he had other motives than the insulted laws of hospitality. I reached this discovery, too, in time. The declining health of his partner had made him speculate on the chances of survivorship. He certainly was no longer young, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... indicated, when I had become a young practitioner at the bar, a certain vixenish old beldam was put upon trial for the offence of maintaining this ill reputed establishment. Her demeanor was singularly exceptional; for she did not scruple to interrupt the proceedings with the most fluent billingsgate, and upon receiving sentence berated the presiding judge in language betokening an extraordinary depth of desperate hardihood. Inquiry revealed the fact, that her solitary house, standing ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... He had been sent down alone. Hence there had been great scrambling to gather together on the Zone men enough who spoke Spanish—and with no striking success. Most noticeable of my fellow-enumerators, being in uniform, were three Marines from Bas Obispo, fluent with the working Spanish they had picked up from Mindanao to Puerto Rico, and flush-cheeked with the prospect of a full month on "pass," to say nothing of the $4.40 a day that would be added to their daily military income of $.60. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... cannot all your fluent witt interpret Why she procastinatts your promisd match? By this light, her daughter would be married tomorrow If her mother and I had concluded ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... of determination I kept on bearing up toward the top, but it was always quite labour in vain, through my want of skill, as the smaller stones being more fluent, I found myself still sinking down more and more with every step, till, mingled with the peculiar rattle of the gliding stones, came the roar of the river foaming and dashing amongst the rocks, and into which I expected to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... could believe myself necessary to you at any time!" Philip is beginning, with fluent sentimentality, when, catching sight of Tedcastle, he stops abruptly. "Here is Luttrell," he says, in an injured tone, and seeing no further prospect of a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... mind was alert it was a sensitive medium. He dropped with crossed knees into his chair and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine times out of ten some corresponding mental warp? Bernard's fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true—it was not in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friendship into "meeting once or twice"? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was he laying a trap?—Not misled: ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... discovered before 1730 appears in volume two (1711) of a three-volume translation of Boileau's works. This, however, is not the same translation as the one accompanying Harte's Essay; it is noticeably less fluent and lacks (as does the French) the subtitle "arraigning persons ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... falls fainting; another halts for love or pleasure or indifference. Some stop to lift or help the fallen, others press by unheeding. The certain sad fatality of the concept is relieved of its pang by the light and fluent beauty of treatment. The idea is perhaps a little grim, but the handling is pleasant and the impression agreeable. The beauty of both the colonnade fountains is enhanced by the lines of the water in the cascade stairway. In the Fountain of El Dorado this effect is increased by a line of ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... scoffed Dick. "How fluent your year of journalism has made you! What a great thing it is to be a serious-minded young man with eye-glasses, engaged, while yet in youth, in molding public opinion through the mighty agent of the press! And Madeline is another of the ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Mr Ernest to deliver an address: 'Women in Politics,'" I said, "that is his particular subject. He is a most fluent speaker, and loves speaking in public, ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... was there, with his lady. He is a young-looking man, of agreeable manners, and fluent in conversation. This I gather from Mr. S., with whom he conversed very freely on our historians, Prescott, Bancroft, and especially Dr. Sparks, his sharp controversy with whom he seems to ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... may have been caused simply by his unfortunate constitution; for everybody sees in the disease of his own liver a disorder of the universe; but it was also intensified by the natural reaction of a powerful nature against the fluent optimism of the time, which expressed itself in Pope's aphorism, Whatever is, is right. The strongest men of the time revolted against that attempt to cure a deep-seated disease by a few fine speeches. The form taken by Johnson's revolt is characteristic. His nature was too tender ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... addle-witted crew Conceded by the Hangman's League to you, The fool (his dam's acquainted with a knave) Whose fluent pen, of his no-brain the slave, Strews notes of introduction o'er the land And calls it hospitality—his hand May palsy seize ere he again consign To me his friend, as I to Hades mine! Pity the wretch, his faults howe'er you see, Whom A ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... none of them properly qualified," said the Bishop. "If there be any superiority among them your son has it. He is not without natural talent, Mr. Finnerty; his translations are strong and fluent, but ridiculously pedantic. That, however, is perhaps less his fault than the fault of those who ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... was merely this—that she had been writing to an old friend, and her manner for the time, as well as her expression, was affected by her mental proximity to that friend;—so plastic—so fluent even—was her whole nature. Indeed Alec was not long in finding out that one of her witcheries was, that she was never the same. But on this the first occasion, the alteration in her ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... disinterested in his friendships. To friend and foe he was alike cordial and generous. He possessed an open mind, not so eloquent as Van Ness, and less brilliant, perhaps, in conversation; but the fluent splendour of his speech and the beauty of his person and manners went as far toward the attainment of his ambition. He had been elected clerk of the Assembly continuously since 1803, until his popularity among the members, whom he served with uniform politeness and zeal, seemed proof ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the Kaiser's blue-and-white-uniformed gunner in every function of his body and every corner of his soul, waking and sleeping, dying and dead, with fluent Scriptural curses. The crowded faces about her went white. Some of the women were crying, others shook ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... here: he kept up with the rest by dint of solid hard work. Harry flung scholarship to the winds of course, but made a special career for himself which won him more admiration from everybody except the faculty than any amount of legitimate industry. He was a fluent and ready debater; he wrote for the college journal; his high animal spirits brought everybody about him, and his mind seemed ever eager and poised for flight: he was ready in wit; decried trifling subjects, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... festivities. A true Christian he translates the Psalms of David; a tender and passionate heart, he rhymes the sonnets of Astrophel to Stella; enamoured of chivalry and great exploits, he writes, with fluent pen, his "Arcadia," where he imitates the style made fashionable in Europe by Montemayor in his "Diana"; a lover of belles lettres, he defends the poet's art in an argument charming from its youthfulness, vibrating with enthusiasm, which holds in English literature the place filled in French ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... interpreter. I had a case the other night when a man I know brought in a friend for consultation—a youth of the round-headed, flaxen, Teutonic type, rather rare here, who came from a village still more remote from the world than this one. Not one word of his fluent and frequent speeches could I understand. It was largely a question of intonation I believe—but ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... men make of us,' she replied. 'How you fool us to the top of our bent; and of all men you clergymen are the most fluent of your honeyed caressing words. Now look me in the face, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... balcony was maintained an evenly sonorous monotone of drubbing, as if innumerable fairy carpenters were nailing on the shingles. The invalid water-spout had a hard time of it; it was racked, shaken, and bullied, and continually choked itself with the volubility of its fluent utterances, which were instantly swallowed up in the bottomless depths of the waste-barrel. A strong, cool, earthy odor rose from the garden, and was wafted past the professor's nostrils, and into the heated house. The moist ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... intent may be imagined. Again, a man who has sincerely devoted himself to gaining the esteem of his charges does not like to hear himself described, even at a distance, as "Popularity Prout" by a dark and scowling Celt with a fluent tongue. A rumor that stories—unusual stories—are told in the form-rooms, between the lights, by a boy who does not command his confidence, agitates such a man; and even elaborate and tender politeness—for the courtesy wise-grown men offer to a bewildered child was the courtesy ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... now, in a moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and conscious ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and flutter and fascinate! Faith, it's so killing you are, you assassinate— Murder's the word for you, Barney McGee! Bold when they're sunny, and smooth when they're showery— Oh, but the style of you, fluent and flowery! Chesterfield's way, with a touch of the Bowery! How, would they silence you, Barney machree? Naught can your gab allay, Learned as Rabelais (You in his abbey lay Once on the spree). Here's to the smile of you, (Oh, but the guile of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... as his good angel had prophesied, his one word of English met every requirement and he got the assignment. Since that time, I might add, he has acquired a fluent command of the English language. Francqui has always been willing to take a chance ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... village tailor, is taken in our part of the country by the hemp-dresser and the wool-carder, two professions which are unusually combined in one. He is present at all ceremonies, sad or gay, for he is very learned and a fluent talker, and on these occasions he must always figure as spokesman, in order to fulfil with exactitude certain formalities used from time immemorial. Traveling occupations, which bring a man into the midst of other ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... European clothes and turbans, surrounded Domini with offers of assistance. One, the dirtiest of the group, with a gaping eye-socket, in which there was no eye, succeeded by his passionate volubility and impudence in attaching himself to her in a sort of official capacity. He spoke fluent, but faulty, French, which attracted Suzanne, and, being abnormally muscular and active, in an amazingly short time got hold of all their boxes and bags and ranged them on the counter. He then indulged in a dramatic performance, which he apparently considered likely to ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... who had been listening open-mouthed to the other's fluent and tranquil speech, reddened at the allusion to himself and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the other happened to be deficient. Tall, slender, elderly, with a fine bald head, a mild countenance, a most insinuating address, and a general air of faded gentility, Mr. Thomas Long was exactly the foreman to give respectability to his employer; whilst bold, fluent, rapid, loud, dashing in aspect and manner, with a great fund of animal spirits, and a prodigious stock of assurance and conceit, respectability was, to say the truth, the precise qualification which Mr. Joseph ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... Mahony's periods were fluent and florid, and the words chosen occasionally rather for their grandeur and melody than for their exact connexion with the context or bearing upon his meaning. The consequence was a certain gorgeous haziness and bewilderment, which made the task of translating his harangues ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... grades of probation and preparation by which the Jesuit is trained for his arduous work, and was ordained priest in the year 1825. Being a ripe scholar, well versed in literature, ancient and modern, an able theologian, a fluent and impressive speaker, he soon took a foremost place amongst the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... afterwards of the Jacobite's Journal; "Tom Jones," his masterpiece, appeared in 1749, and three years later "Amelia"; journalism and his duties as a justice of the peace occupied him till 1754, when ill-health forced him abroad to Lisbon, where he died and was buried. Fielding is a master of a fluent, virile, and attractive style; his stories move with an easy and natural vigour, and are brimful of humour and kindly satire, while his characters in their lifelike humanness, with all their foibles and frailties, are ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Perhaps he went a little too far when he claimed to have found inaccuracies in Froude's transcripts from the Simancas manuscripts without knowing a word of Spanish. But he was seldom so frank as that. It was not often that he forgot his two objects of holding up Froude as the fluent, facile ignoramus, and himself as ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... table plentifully furnished[470], the satisfaction of which was heightened by a numerous and cheerful company; and we for the first time had a specimen of the joyous social manners of the inhabitants of the Highlands. They talked in their own ancient language, with fluent vivacity, and sung many Erse songs with such spirit, that, though Dr. Johnson was treated with the greatest respect and attention, there were moments in which he seemed to be forgotten. For myself, though but a Lowlander, having picked up a few words of the language, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... what you would call an eloquent or fluent speaker: his Somersetshire brogue was at times difficult of comprehension. He certainly was not fluent when he said to Mrs. Oldtimes: "Why thic—there—damn un Mrs. Oldtimes if he beant gwine and never zeed zich a thing in ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... manners—one of those beings of whom people say the hand of God is upon them. He had the same business as my father and Nastasa: he was also a private "agent" and commissioner, but as he had neither an imposing exterior nor a fluent tongue, nor much self-confidence, he could not make up his mind to act independently, and so formed a partnership with my father. His handwriting was wonderful, he had a thorough knowledge of law, and was perfectly at home in all the ins and outs of lawsuits and office-practice. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... liked to stand, One leg before him, leaning on one hand, Pour forth two hundred verses in an hour, And think such readiness a proof of power. When like a torrent he bore down, you'd find He left a load of refuse still behind: Fluent, yet indolent, he would rebel Against the toil of writing, writing WELL, Not writing MUCH; for that I grant you. See, Here comes Crispinus, wants to bet with me, And offers odds: "A meeting, if you please: Take we our tablets ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... that there has never been in Europe a fluent script so beautiful and legible as that of our very best English writers of to-day. But their aesthetic mastery has come from loving study of the forms that conscious artistry had perfected, and through a constant practice ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... the ambition—it was one of several ambitions—to become a courier. The Morning Post advertisements of couriers who professed to be fluent in a number of languages and were at the disposal of invalid aristocrats desiring to take extensive (and expensive) trips abroad, aroused the most romantic visions in my mind. A courier's was the life for me. I saw ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... beautiful body, and, thus disguised, wins the love of Juliet, and all ends happily. Mrs. Shelley's short stories[124] reveal a stronger sense of proportion than her novels, and are written in a more graceful, fluent style than the books on ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... anything which is not true, you may interrupt me if you will, and say 'that is a lie,' though my intention is to speak the truth. But you must not wonder if I speak any how as things come into my mind; for the fluent and orderly enumeration of all your singularities is not a task which is easy to a man in ...
— Symposium • Plato
... struggling upon the arched hump of the back. Here they tore and gorged and quarreled till, some fifteen minutes later, their last foothold sank beneath them. Then, with dripping beaks and talons, they all flapped back to their cliffs; and slowly the fluent sand smoothed itself to shining complacency over the tomb of the diplodocus, hiding and sealing away the stupendous skeleton for half a ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... more; although, why it should do so, he could not really understand, for it was no affair of his. He heard that Mayor Brenchfield had been invited—and had accepted the invitation—to attach himself to the Royce Pederstone party in order to give the candidate the support of his fluent tongue ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Mac, suitably adorned, sitting on a bench at Helmeih Station having his boots and bandolier polished by four jabbering, disreputable "Gyppie" youngsters, who swore glibly the while the most lurid English oaths. Incidentally, they often terminated an exceptionally fluent flow with "Eh, Mistah Mickkenzie?" the usual mode of native address to New Zealanders after the High Commissioner's visit, which sometimes ruffled Mac's dignity, but more often amused him. His toilet was cut short by the arrival of the train, so, seizing bandolier and spurs and dropping ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... With all his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think on his feet. And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the "Spectator" essays he said, with more or less truth, "The fluent orator, ready to speak on any topic, is never profound, and when once his thought is cold it will seldom repay examination—it was only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Prince of Wales, now openly hostile to the "great man," was the titular head of an Opposition numbering almost all the men of wit and genius in the kingdom. Lyttelton, Fielding's warmest friend, had become secretary to the Prince, and was recognised as a fluent leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. Another friend, John Duke of Argyll, had joined the ranks of the Opposition in the Lords. On the whole the author of Pasquin, may well have hoped for a speedy fall of the "Colossos," with "its Brains ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... ballad, and we feel that it gives but a faint and discordant echo of the music welling in Toru's brain. For it must frankly be confessed that in the brief May-day of her existence she had not time to master our language as Blanco White did, or as Chamisso mastered German. To the end of her days, fluent and graceful as she was, she was not entirely conversant with English, especially with the colloquial turns of modern speech. Often a very fine thought is spoiled for hypercritical ears by the queer turn of expression which she has innocently given to it. These faults are found ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... replied my friend, "that your confidence in smooth features and fluent accents should have ended long ago. Till I gained from my present profession some knowledge of the world, a knowledge which was not gained in a moment, and has not cost a trifle, I was equally wise in my own conceit; and, in order to decide upon the truth of any one's pretensions, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Cape Colony. He died at Richmond in that colony on the 9th of December 1881, and in the following year a volume of short stories, Tooneelen uit ons dorp, originally written by him for the Cape Volksblad, was published at the Hague for the benefit of his family. A patriot, a fluent speaker both in Dutch and in English, and possessed of unbounded energy, the failure of Burgers was due to his fondness for large visionary plans, which he attempted to carry out with insufficient ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... strong upon him. His face was sufficiently made up to baffle recognition; but there remained his voice. To dissemble this he had availed himself of the fact that Figaro was a Spaniard. He had known a Spaniard at Louis le Grand who spoke a fluent but most extraordinary French, with a grotesque excess of sibilant sounds. It was an accent that he had often imitated, as youths will imitate characteristics that excite their mirth. Opportunely he had bethought him of that Spanish student, and it was upon his speech that to-night ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... yet once more, for "St. Raphael," who spoke fluent Finnish, at once secured the only cart to take our things over the ferry to the railway station about ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... Billet-doux that should be understood at the Bank, than in gross Money; But as to stubborn People, who are so surly as to accept of neither Note or Cash, having formerly dabbled in Chymistry, I can only say that one part of Matter asks one thing, and another another, to make it fluent; but there is nothing but may be dissolved by a proper Mean: Thus the Virtue which is too obdurate for Gold or Paper, shall melt away very kindly in a Liquid. The Island of Barbadoes (a shrewd People) manage all their Appeals to Great-Britain, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... have,... and it is one which will be properly appreciated by any student of languages. They are, by common consent of all competent authorities, the genuine productions of native minds, cast in the idiomatic forms of the native tongue by those born to its use. No matter how fluent a foreigner becomes in a language not his own, he can never use it as does one who has been familiar with it from childhood. This general maxim is tenfold true when we apply it to a European learning an American ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... to observe that very few men of science are unacquainted with the literature of their country, whether for seeking in it pleasing relaxation, or for borrowing from it a magic style, a fluent elocution, a harmony, a pomp of expression, with which the most abstract meditations can no longer dispense to be received favourably by philosophers and men of taste. Very few literati, on the other hand, are unacquainted with philosophy and the sciences, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... warpaint of soot and vermilion wore thinner, to thaw into what (for an Indian) might pass for geniality. After a successful rat-hunt he would even grow loquacious, seating himself on the bank and jabbering while he skinned his spoils, using for the most part a jargon of broken French (in which he was fluent) and native words of which Barboux understood very few and John none at all. When he fell back on Ojibway pure and simple, it was to address Muskingon, who answered in monosyllables, and was sparing of these. Muskingon ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... being done, the watch below was called, came on deck, and received a greeting unequalled in every sense, but especially in its spirituous effusiveness. The faithful James was in great demand, and after a prolonged search he was found coiled up under the long-boat; an outburst of fluent profanity indicated that his condition did not warrant him being entrusted with any commission of grave, secret intricacy, so he was expeditiously stowed away in the galley for the remainder of the night, and the port watch that had just come on deck were ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... No, a very clever and, interesting novel from the pen of Lord Normanby. His writings evince great knowledge of the world, the work-o'-day world, as well as the beau monde; yet there is no bitterness in his satire, which is always just and happily pointed. His style, too, is easy, fluent, and polished, without being disfigured by ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... of many tongues, (All over tongues, like rumor) This tributary verse belongs To paint his learned humor. All kinds of gab he knows, I wis, From Latin down to Scottish— As fluent as a parrot is, But far more Polly-glottish. No grammar too abstruse he meets, However dark and verby; He gossips Greek about the streets And often Russ—in urbe. Strange tongues—whate'er you do them call; In short, the man is able To tell you what o'clock in all The dialects ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... said Lucian, in reply to the fluent, incorrect English of the Italian, "appearances are against you. However, you can prove yourself innocent, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Lovinggood is a good scholar, a fluent speaker, and an earnest Christian. He was a delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago in 1900. He is quite popular with the preachers and the people wherever he goes. A bright future is before him and the young school of which ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... out comes the ghost and prowling about espies the heap of yams and taro. At sight of the devastation wrought in his field he flies into a passion, and curses and swears in the feeble wheezy whisper in which ghosts always speak. In the course of his fluent imprecations he expresses a wish that the miscreants who have wasted his substance may suffer so and so at the hands of the sorcerer. That is just what the men in hiding have been waiting for. No sooner do they hear the name of the sorcerer ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... bitter ingredients are good to imbalm and preserve dead bodies, yet these were such as might indanger to kill a living name, if Malice be not brought in with an Antidote. And the tongues of those times, more fluent than my Pen, made every little miscarriage (being not able to discover their true operations, like smal seeds hid in earthy Darknesse) grow up, and spread into such exuberant branches, that ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... wretch, Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some; To him indifferent whether grief or joy. Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks, Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks Fast as the periods from his fluent quill, Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains, Or nymphs responsive, equally affect His horse and him, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the three towns of Villoria in Castilla, and professed in the Dominican convent of San Pablo at Valladolid. On going to the Philippines he was sent first to the mission of Bataan, where his labors were uninterrupted and severe. He became fluent in the Tagil language, after Which he was assigned to the Chinese mission near Manila; and he composed and published several devotional treatises in both those languages. He was elected prior of Manila, but before ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... my situation were soon disclosed to the father and daughter; and the former seeing how entranced we were with each other's company, like a prudent parent, left us to ourselves. My French was much purer and more grammatical than hers, hers much more fluent than mine. Yet, notwithstanding this deficiency on both sides, we understood each other perfectly, and we had not been above two hours together alone, before I told her that I loved her for her very ignorance, and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... limit the work at first to melodies which do not modulate to the relative major. Later on, when the children are fairly fluent, they can take these. At first they will have to make use of 'bridge-notes' at the modulation, but, with a little practice, they will soon be able to sing ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... hurried to occupy his seat. In the wings there was no one save the author and three or four of his friends. The opening scenes were received as usual with indifference; the following ones with a little more cordiality; the versification was fluent and polished, and, as you know, the public appreciates sugar-coated phrases. At last the moment arrived for Clotilde's entrance, and a faint murmur of curiosity and expectation ran through the audience. She spoke her lines discreetly, but without much warmth; it was easy ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... developed, was a fluent and persuasive talker, a man of the broadest worldly experiences and wit. He was younger than Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks with a tinge of purple about his ears. Drawing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... things, however, in this work which we could have wished somewhat different from what they are. Mr. Parton's fluent and forcible style sometimes degenerates into flippancy. We could cite many instances of felicitous expression, some, also, of bad taste, and some of hasty assertion. "Clubable" is hardly a good enough word to bear frequent repetition. "This question was a complete baffler" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... down beside her. His friends anticipated a distinguished Parliamentary career for John; he could make anything sound reasonable. Miss Bussey was fascinated by his suave and fluent narrative of what had befallen Mary and himself; she could not but admire his just remarks on the providential disclosure of the true state of the case before it was too late, and sympathized with the picture ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... bench, to enforce that very liturgy which they condemned. He was the chief speaker for the Presbyterians at the famous Savoy Conference, summoned to advise and consult upon the Book of Common Prayer. His antagonist was Dr. Gunning, ready, fluent, and impassioned. "They spent," as Gilbert Burnet says, "several days in logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who looked upon them as a couple of fencers, engaged in a discussion which could not be brought to an end." In themselves considered, many of the points at issue seem ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... principle," remarked Doctor Hilary approvingly, "and one I should advise you to adhere to. Your accent is all right, but your—your speech is a trifle fluent, if I may make ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... love rather than from convenience, a wife puts kindred before husband, her affection remaining chiefly where it was before marriage. But if the moralist desires yet more solid virtues, he need only inquire of the first Sevillan he meets, who will give at shortest notice, in choice and fluent language, a far more impressive list than ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... conversation altogether light and mirthful. There were at times bursts of high enthusiasm, at which he would himself laugh heartily a moment afterward—there were touches of passing romance and poetry blending in an under-current with his fluent mirth; and, above all, there was an evident strain of right feeling, of appreciation of all that was great and generous and good, predominant above romance and wit, perceptible ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... in fluent and perfect French, is one of the best that we have of Gibbon. Deyverdun answered promptly, and met his friend's advances with at least equal warmth. The few letters that have been preserved of his connected with this subject give a highly favourable idea of his mind ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... so mysteriously in Dizful—and refusing to call on me, but occasionally calling on nomad chiefs. I confess that you don't look to me like a spy. Spies are generally older men than you, more cooked, as Gaston would say, more fluent in languages. It does not seem to me, either, that even an English spy would go about his affairs quite as you have done. Still, I regret to have to repeat that I dislike your idea of a lark. And not only because you upset nomad chiefs. You upset other people ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... During the following August and September, Robert and two or three chosen companions made a delightful journey through Italy, the young man preparing himself by studying Latin, in which he became so fluent that he could translate poems from one language to ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... perfectly!" cried Pixie, gesticulating assent. She found none of the difficulty in settling what to talk about which handicaps most people under similar circumstances, but poured forth a stream of commonplaces in such fluent, rapid French as showed that she had good reason for boasting of proficiency. When she finished, the lady looked at her husband with a triumphant ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... swells, and the foes of the Republic tremble. His name is Danton; his violence is a poor cloak to his odious moderatism, and his base corruption is manifest at last. The conspirator, the agent of the foreigner is that fluent stammerer, the man who clapped the first cockade of revolution in his hat, that pamphleteer who, in his ironical and cruel patriotism, nicknamed himself, 'The procureur of the Lantern.' His name is Camille Desmoulins. He threw off the mask by defending ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... this was attended with rather an awkward result. 'Leading the public life they did, in which they were exposed to every sort of society, the natural morality of the birds was so far lost, that they had become fluent in every term of reproach and indecency; and thunders of applause were elicited among the crowd of passengers by the aptness of their repartees.' In India, the taste is the same, but the habits different; a sketch of which we furnish from our Old Indian. The carpenter, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... the soft air along, While fluent Greek a vowel'd undersong 200 Kept up among the guests, discoursing low At first, for scarcely was the wine at flow; But when the happy vintage touch'd their brains, Louder they talk, and louder come the strains Of powerful ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Shannon is presumed to have obtained, in abundance, the gift of that "civil courage" which makes an Irishman at ease and unconstrained in all places and under all circumstances; and he who has kissed the Blarney stone is assumed to be endowed with a fluent and persuasive tongue, altho it may be associated with insincerity; the term "Blarney" being generally used to characterize words that are meant neither to be "honest ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... according to the custom of the missionaries at that period, religious service morning and evening, and school for three or four hours during the day—the heart of the youthful missionary was much cheered by noticing the regular attendance of the chief. Although not a fluent reader, the New Testament became his constant companion, and a change passed over him apparent to all. The lion at whose name many trembled became a lamb, and the love of Jesus Christ filled his heart. He who was formerly like a fire-brand, spreading discord, enmity, and war among the neighbouring ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... swearing alone is practised, and you have to offend a man very grievously to get him to disgorge his treasure. In this country, except among ladies in comparatively humble circumstances, anything like this fluent, explicit, detailed, and sincere cursing, aimed, missile-fashion, at a personal enemy, is not found. It was quite common a few centuries ago; indeed, in the Middle Ages it was part of the recognised procedure. Aggrieved parties would issue a father's curse, an orphan's curse, and so ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... which his class are studying. He is aware that the pupil should experience something more than a kaleidoscopic view of isolated facts. He recognizes the folly of requiring four years of high school English for the purpose of cultivating clear, fluent, and accurate expression, only to relax the effort when the student comes into the history class. He knows that the precision, logic, and habit of definite thinking exacted by the pursuit of the scientific subjects should not be laid aside when the student attempts to ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... noticeable so far chiefly for his huge grey mustachios and for his silence. He has been willing but laconic,—taciturn, in fact. But I have felt sure he has a "glib" side. Can I find it? The stillest of men are fluent on their loved topics; there is some key to unlock every one's reserve. Can I hit upon the key to his? Which of possible interests in common will bring us ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... old soul, with a taste for fine clothes and fine dinners, fond of court festivities, and heart and soul devoted to royalties, we promote him. If he speak French tolerably, we make him a Minister; if he be fluent, an Envoy Extraordinary. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... her what he had against Stuyvesant Carter she could explain it satisfactorily. Her flattered little head was almost turned at this time with the adoration she had received. She thought she knew almost everything that Stuyvesant Carter had ever done. He was a fluent talker and had spent many hours detailing to her incidents and anecdotes of his eventful career. He had raced a good deal and still had several expensive racing cars. There wasn't anything very dreadful about that except, ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... estimate of Froude. Perhaps he went a little too far when he claimed to have found inaccuracies in Froude's transcripts from the Simancas manuscripts without knowing a word of Spanish. But he was seldom so frank as that. It was not often that he forgot his two objects of holding up Froude as the fluent, facile ignoramus, and himself as ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... from the fellowly shrines, No demagogue beat the pulpit-drum In the Age of the Antonines! The sting was not dreamed to be taken from death, No Paradise pledged or sought, But they reasoned of fate at the flowing feast, Nor stifled the fluent thought, We sham, we shuffle while faith declines— They were frank in the Age ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... all seed Out of its proper climate, thrives but ill. And were the world below content to mark And work on the foundation nature lays, It would not lack supply of excellence. But ye perversely to religion strain Him, who was born to gird on him the sword, And of the fluent phrasemen make your king; Therefore your steps have wander'd from ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... simply, Love is blind. We might go further and say, Love is deaf. That would be a profound and obvious truth. We might go further still and say, Love is dumb. But that would be a profound and obvious lie. For love is always an extraordinarily fluent talker. Love is a wind-bag, filled with ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... refused to do or say anything but grunt, as The Pilot said to me afterwards, in a rage. It is true, Williams, the storekeeper just come from "across the line," did all the talking, but no one paid much attention to his fluent fatuities except as they represented the unexpressed mind of the dour, exasperating little Scotchman, who sat silent but for an "ay" now and then, so expressive and conclusive that everyone knew what he meant, and that discussion was at ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... you to call on me," she said, in fluent and precise French, although with a somewhat foreign accent and manner of speech; "I should not have done it were you not the only trustworthy person from whom I can learn the necessary particulars of the terrible Rossberg accident. ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... his own people. He is tall, rather corpulent, and has more of the negro feature than common, but has large eyes. He is very dark, and his people swear by "Black Sechele". He has great intelligence, reads well, and is a fluent speaker. Great numbers of the tribes formerly living under the Boers have taken refuge under his sway, and he is now greater in power than he was before the attack ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... at 1.15 A.M. after one of the most strenuous days which Scott could remember: and that meant a good deal. Simpson's face was a sight! During his absence Griffith Taylor became meteorologist-in-chief. He was a greedy scientist, and he also wielded a fluent pen. Consequently his output during the year and a half which he spent with us was large, and ranged from the results of the two excellent scientific journeys which he led in the Western Mountains, to this work during the latter half of September. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... practitioner at the bar, a certain vixenish old beldam was put upon trial for the offence of maintaining this ill reputed establishment. Her demeanor was singularly exceptional; for she did not scruple to interrupt the proceedings with the most fluent billingsgate, and upon receiving sentence berated the presiding judge in language betokening an extraordinary depth of desperate hardihood. Inquiry revealed the fact, that her solitary house, standing upon ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... the History of Civil Society (1767), which in a quarter of a century went through six editions, was thought by Helvetius superior to Montesquieu, though Hume himself, as always the incarnation of kindness, recommended its suppression. At least Ferguson read enough of Montesquieu to make some fluent generalities sound plausible. He knows that the investigation of savage life will throw some light upon the origins of government. He sees the folly of generalizing easily upon the state of nature. He insists, probably after conversation with Adam Smith, upon ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... men suspect how much mere talk fritters away spiritual energy,—that which should be spent in action, spends itself in words. The fluent boaster is not the man who is steadiest before the enemy; it is well said to him that his courage is better kept till it is wanted. Loud utterance of virtuous indignation against evil from the platform, or in the drawing-room, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... of the Discourse that I have discovered before 1730 appears in volume two (1711) of a three-volume translation of Boileau's works. This, however, is not the same translation as the one accompanying Harte's Essay; it is noticeably less fluent and lacks (as does the French) the subtitle "arraigning ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... the reason why these shapes are not popularly used is that hanging committees cannot dispose of them with other pictures. The attempt in the majority of compositions, however, is to fit the picture proper to the fluent lines of the circle or oval. In "Huntsman and Hounds," a picture which is introduced because the writer is able to speak of points in its construction which these principles necessitated, the pyramidal form of composition is apparent, and around this a circuit is described by the hand, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... had come on the second occasion of her going with Minna to see Dr. Dieckel. Minna, as they were walking quietly along together had suddenly begun in a broken English which soon turned to shy, fluent, animated German, to tell about a friend, an apotheker, a man, Miriam gathered—missing many links in her amazement—in a shop, the chemist's shop where her parents dealt, in the little country town in Pomerania which was her home. Minna was so altered, looked so radiantly ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... was not yet prepared to part with the book. He proceeded instead, in fluent speech and not inappropriate language, to set forth, not the power of the poem—that he both took and left as a matter of course—but the beauty of those phrases, and the turns of those expressions, which particularly pleased him—nor failing to remark that, according ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... letter of dedication, which I suppress, because, though it contained something relating to you which every one had been glad to hear, yet there was too much about politics, and poesy, and all things whatsoever, ending with that topic on which most men are fluent, and none very amusing—one's self. It might have been re-written—but to what purpose? My praise could add nothing to your well-earned and firmly-established fame; and with my most hearty admiration of your talents, and delight in your ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the situation, Pine turned to his friends and spoke at length in fluent Romany. He informed them that he had some business to transact with the Gentile lady who had come to the camp for that purpose, and would leave them for half an hour. The man evidently was such a favorite that black looks were cast on ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... the Maori race has returned four members to the House. They usually speak through an interpreter. In spite of that, when discussing native questions they often show themselves fluent and even eloquent. Outside local and private bills, nearly all important legislation is conducted by Government. Private members often profess to put this down to the jealousy and tyranny of Ministers, but the truth is that Parliament, as a whole, has always ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... deformed into the day—to give words and intelligible symbols to that which was never imagined or expressed before! It is as if the dumb should speak for the first time, as if things should stammer out their own meaning through the imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such store of words to cover the want of ideas, could lend their art to this writer. If he, 'poor, unfledged' in this respect, 'who has scarce winged from view o' th' nest,' could ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... superior metrist. Neither in his sonnets, nor in his various stanzas composed of heroics, nor in what may be called his doggerel metres—the fatally fluent Alexandrines, fourteeners, and admixtures of both, which dominated English poetry from his time to Spenser's, and were never quite rejected during the Elizabethan period—do we find evidence of the want of ear, or the want of command of language, which makes Wyatt's versification ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... road, and an extra allowance for expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants. He thus describes his feelings: "It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee-House, and, the Bristol mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine fluent motion of the mail soon laid me asleep. It is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on the ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... thee." The Caliph looked at Miriam and saw that she was slender and shapely of form and stature, the handsomest of the folk of her tide and the unique pearl of her age and her time; sweet of speech[FN19] and fluent of tongue, stable of soul and hearty of heart. Thereupon she kissed the ground between his hands and wished him permanence of glory and prosperity and surcease of evil and enmity. He admired the beauty of her figure and the sweetness of her voice and the readiness of her replies ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... strange incidents and feelings, and then turning for consolation in his perplexities to the enchanting vision on which he still could gaze. Nor was Miss Temple either in her usually sparkling vein; her liveliness seemed an effort; she was more constrained, she was less fluent than before. Ferdinand, indeed, rose more than once to depart; yet still he remained. He lost his cap; he looked for his cap; and then again seated himself. Again he rose, restless and disquieted, wandered about the room, looked at a picture, plucked a flower, pulled ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... and, interesting novel from the pen of Lord Normanby. His writings evince great knowledge of the world, the work-o'-day world, as well as the beau monde; yet there is no bitterness in his satire, which is always just and happily pointed. His style, too, is easy, fluent, and polished, without being disfigured by the slightest affectation ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... the resolution adopted at our last meeting and which you have heard read. In presence of so many distinguished persons, several of whom have made their mark, at the Bar—or on the Bench—the forum—in literature—in the bank parlor or in the counting house,—with so many fluent speakers here present and prepared to applaud, with all the graces of oratory and fervour of patriotism,—the distinction conferred on French Canada, by the highest literary tribunal in France—convinced ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... is fluent and unforced; the description of character well limned; and the pictures of scenery forcible and felicitous. There is a natural conveyance of incidents to the denouement; and the reader closes the volume with an increased regard for the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... variety of his art which most addresses itself to the passions; and, strange as it may seem, men are oftener and more easily led by those who do little else than promise, than by those who actually perform. A lying and fluent tongue becomes a power of itself, with the masses; subverting reason, looking down justice, brow-beating truth, and otherwise placing the wrong before the right. This quality the Weasel possessed in a high degree, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... combination of many pleasing qualities, rather than the possession of any commanding one, that created his influence. He certainly was not a wit yet he was always gay, and always said things that made other people merry. His conversation was sparkling, interesting, and fluent, yet it was observed he never gave an opinion on any subject and never told an anecdote. Indeed, he would sometimes remark, when a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire from the world. And yet Pinto rarely opened his mouth ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Carvels assembled in their sitting-room, and we went to dinner. I could not help looking from time to time at Paul's mother, who surprised me by her fluent conversation and perfect self-possession. With the exception that she was present and that Professor Cutter was absent, the dinner was very much like the meals at Carvel Place. I noticed that Paul was placed between Mrs. Carvel and his mother, while Hermione was on the opposite side ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... discourse ran on books and on men; he turned from one to the other and mixed up the two with a ready familiarity. He went much into London society, and though entirely serious and without having, so far as I know, a gleam of humor, he was a fluent and entertaining talker. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... presence, lost her fluent speech and no longer dared mention personal matters to her guests. Both Mary Louise and her grandfather tried to lead Alora and Jason Jones to speak of themselves—of their life and future plans—but the man evaded ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... third arrival, is a very different person. His sermons are eloquent; he is a fluent speaker—too fluent, some say, for words and phrases come so easily to him that the lack of thought is not always felt by this preacher, although noticed by his flock. Now, a sermon for Dutch Protestants is a difficult thing; it has to be long enough to fill nearly a whole service ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... to Charlie's surprise, spoke fluent English, enjoyed his cigar as much as did the explorer, and was not as swarthy as their Italian captain. He sat quietly beneath the awning, his wide hat shading his face, and would easily have been taken for a German or Boer, with his flowing beard and European clothes. Most of the Arabs on board ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... books. The lad's Uncle Benjamin, in England, who was very fond of composing rhymes which he called poetry, sent many of his effusions to his favorite nephew, and opened quite a brisk correspondence with him. Thus Benjamin soon became a fluent rhymester, and wrote sundry ballads which were sold in the streets and became quite popular. There was a great demand at that time for narratives of the exploits of pirates, the doom of murderers, and wild love adventures. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... his position to a nicety. His fluent adaptability was in its right place. Little Captain von Wegstetten would have no non-commissioned officer under him better calculated to satisfy his desires than Gustav Weise. If he had remained a social-democrat, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... His face was one not to be forgotten; it indicated sweetness of disposition, benevolence, intelligence, and refinement. His mental operations were not rapid, and it was only by great patience and long continued thought that he achieved his objects. He was not fluent in conversation; his hesitancy of speech, however, was not so great when with friends as with strangers. The tendency of his mind was toward the practical in knowledge; his study was to simplify science, and to make it accessible ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... disappointing though they were, these missives helped him through the days; but he looked forward to them rather as a pretext for replies than for their actual contents. Undine was never at a loss for the spoken word: Ralph had often wondered at her verbal range and her fluent use of terms outside the current vocabulary. She had certainly not picked these up in books, since she never opened one: they seemed rather like some odd transmission of her preaching grandparent's oratory. ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Seen from behind round a conjurer Doing his pitch in the street. High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, narrow ones, Round, square, and angular, serry and shove; While from within a voice, Gravely and weightily fluent, Sounds; and then ceases; and suddenly (Look at the stress of the shoulders!) Out of a quiver of silence, Over the hiss of the spray, Comes a low cry, and the sound Of breath quick intaken through teeth Clenched in resolve. And the Master Breaks ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... pass into Venetia's grasp; and stood, irresolute and ashamed, her fluent tongue stricken dumb, her intent to wound, and sting, and outrage with every vile, coarse jest she knew, rendered impossible to execute. The purity and the dignity of her opponent's presence had their irresistible influence, an influence too strong ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... when Red awoke, arrows of gold were shooting through the holes in the old barn, and outside, the bird life, the twittering and chirping, the fluent whistle and the warble, the cackle and the pompous ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... everyone hurried to occupy his seat. In the wings there was no one save the author and three or four of his friends. The opening scenes were received as usual with indifference; the following ones with a little more cordiality; the versification was fluent and polished, and, as you know, the public appreciates sugar-coated phrases. At last the moment arrived for Clotilde's entrance, and a faint murmur of curiosity and expectation ran through the audience. She ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... friend of the child's—most polite, most accomplished, fluent in Spanish, perfect in deportment. The Senor Horncastle surely could find nothing to object to. Father Pedro was charmed with him. A man of affairs, and yet a good Catholic, too. It was a Senor Van Loo—Don Paul the boy called him, and they talked of the boy's studies in the old days as if—indeed, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... were no more delicately veiled defensive tactics against Burt, and now her face was full of frank admiration of his skill as an angler and of interest in the wild scenes described. Burt had spent more time in society than over his books while at college, and was a fluent, easy talker. Webb felt that he suffered in contrast, that he was grave, heavy, dull, and old—no fit companion for the girl whose laughing eyes so often rested on his brother's face and responded to his mirth. Perhaps ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Nolan and his friends were saying, and who speedily would have scorned it could they have understood, for at five o'clock another speaker took the stand, a man of the people he called himself, a foreigner long on our shores, yet fluent in the language of the Slavs, and in ten minutes the torrent was turned. With terror in his eyes, a man who had long worked with Nolan, a foreigner, too, came running to the silent, anxious little group of Anglo-Saxons. "Nolan—Nolan," he cried. "He ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... circle, and he held forth. It would be no easy matter to describe a discourse which lasted a couple of hours, or indeed to say very precisely what it was about. It was a rambling, desultory reference to his travels and adventures in fluent and sometimes eloquent language, and not without an occasional dash of humour and drollery. He illustrated the truth of the Scriptures by examples drawn from his personal observation and the habits, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... arms. "Oui, assez de musique," repeated Panshin gaily, and at once he dropped into a chat, alert, light, and in French. "Precisely as in the best Parisian salon," thought Marya Dmitrievna, as she listened to their fluent and quick-witted sentences. Panshin had a sense of complete satisfaction; his eyes shone, and he smiled. At first he passed his hand across his face, contracted his brows, and sighed spasmodically whenever he chanced to encounter Marya Dmitrievna's eyes. But later on he forgot ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... despite the testimony of the Janissaries and the entire Turkish Empire, I cannot doubt that in your early youth you frequently kissed the Blarney Stone, hence your fluent tongue and your gallant proposition to becomingly decorate with ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... ocean, at times, has what is called its sea and its trough of the sea; but it has neither rivers, woods, banks, towns, nor mountains. In mild weather it is one hammered plain. Stratagems, like those of disciplined armies—ambuscades, like those of Indians, are impossible. All is clear, open, fluent. The very element which sustains the combatants, yields at the stroke of a feather. One wind and one tide at one time operate upon all who here engage. This simplicity renders a battle between two men-of-war, with their huge white wings, more ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... a man who had seen many changes, And always changed as true as any needle; His Polar Star being one which rather ranges, And not the fixed—he knew the way to wheedle: So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges; And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill), He lied with such a fervour of intention— There was no doubt ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... parc de Bougainville I sat down on a bench on which was an old European. He was reading a tattered number of "Simplicissimus," and held the paper close to his watery eyes. I said, "Good morning" and he replied in fluent though ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... blots; and it does not seem that the poets worked for anything except to teach the beauties of painting, and what ought to be avoided or done in it, with all their suavity and music of verses, and with so many just and fluent words that I do not know how I can repay them. Now one of the things in which they put the most study and work (I speak of the famous poets) is in painting well or in imitating a good painting; and this is due to the accuracy which, with the ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... the final consonant evaded after the Polynesian habit) was sent by Bishop Dordillon to South America, and there educated by the fathers. His French is fluent, his talk sensible and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in-chief, he is of excellent service to the French. With the prestige of his name and family, and with the stick when needful, he keeps the natives working and the roads passable. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is noted for its excellent arrangement and for a style easy and fluent yet not diffuse. "It is a succession of historical tableaux," of which the following extract presents one ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... brute behind the grating said, Rex couldn't hear, but Sir Griffin burst out with a roar, "Damnation!" that made everybody jump. Then he stuck his head as far as he could get it in at the little window and shouted — in fluent German, awfully pronounced — "Here! You! It's enough that you're so stupid you don't know what you're about. Don't you try to be impudent too! Hand me those letters!" The official bully handed ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands, How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... unattractive suite our first proceeding was to elect a Captain of our barrack. Selection fell upon Mr. K——, as he was an ideal intermediary, being fluent in the language. We turned in, the majority being too tired to growl at their lot, but there was precious little sleep. During the day, the heat at Sennelager in the summer is intolerable, but during ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... reader turns over page after page of the historical recollections and personal anecdotes which are associated with the various localities described by Mr. Jesse, he will doubtless be well content to trust the accuracy of a guide whom he finds so fluent and so intelligent, and approve rather than lament the absence of those references to original authorities which are looked for in graver histories. The work is written after the style of Saint Foix' Rues ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various
... that it gives but a faint and discordant echo of the music welling in Toru's brain. For it must frankly be confessed that in the brief May-day of her existence she had not time to master our language as Blanco White did, or as Chamisso mastered German. To the end of her days, fluent and graceful as she was, she was not entirely conversant with English, especially with the colloquial turns of modern speech. Often a very fine thought is spoiled for hypercritical ears by the queer turn of expression which she has innocently given to it. These faults are found ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more fluent than elegant or precise—his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in Massachusetts, on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission to ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... whether he had ever seen the man before, or whether the face only seemed familiar because it was the type of a class of faces all more or less alike, all intensely respectable and not without refinement, expressing a grave reticence that did not agree with the fluent speech, and a polite reserve at odds with the inquisitive nature that ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... when Garry's monumental fit of sulks bordered close on the ridiculous, but the needed triviality which would have precipitated the whole fabric to a terra-firma of absurdity failed to materialize. He cursed the rain, cursed it with his fluent precision which already had earned Fat Joe's admiring comment. He complained, querulously, like a half-aged boy, over the treacherous footing which the flooded alder brakes afforded. And once when he had felled a tree and narrowly missed being pinned beneath it, in spite of Steve's quick ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... word, he listened to the fluent tide of her speech, a strange, mocking light in his eyes, whose ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... readiness. The operative then shot the beam into the galley of the pirate's lifeboat, suggesting that they should be allowed to live there. For some time the argument of arms and fingers raged—though not exactly a fluent conversation, both sides managed to convey their meanings quite clearly. Nerado would not allow the Terrestrials to visit their own ship—he was taking no chances—but after a thorough ultra-ray inspection ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... that day, Peter and myself sat alone beneath the oak. We fell into conversation; Peter was at first melancholy, but he soon became more cheerful, fluent and entertaining. I spoke but little, but I observed that sometimes what I said surprised the good Methodist. We had been silent some time. At length, lifting up my eyes to the broad and leafy canopy of the trees, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... over and danced round it impotently. Littimer had never seen him in such a raging fury before. The language of the man was an outrage, filthy, revolting, profane. No yelling, drunken Hooligan could have been more fluent, more luridly diffuse. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... the pictures an alcoholic breath assailed me from the region of my left ear, and a voice said in thick but fluent French, "I see, by the way you admire the paintings, that you are foreigners." He was a short, puffy man with a baldish head ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... and a fluent liar therewith— He spoke of the heat of India as the "Asian Solar Myth"; Came on a four months' visit, to "study the East," in November, And I got him to sign an agreement ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... spoke—haltingly. Fluent speech upon any subject very dear to him had always been difficult. He could talk glibly enough about ordinary topics; his sense of humour, his retentive memory, made him welcome even in the critical society of Eaton Square, but you know him as a creature of unplumbed reserves. The matter ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... when talking in a company with fluent vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who were present; a German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself, as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, 'Stay, stay,—Toctor Shonson is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... down and in his fluent manner discussed the day's developments and their preparations for the future; and he was still talking when, fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Matilda entered. Her face, of late so often ashen, was ashen as though ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... is not easy to say what a panegyrist of that period intended by 'a complete knowledge of Greek,' or 'fluent Greek writing,' in a Prince. I suspect, however, that we ought not to understand by these phrases anything like a real familiarity with Greek literature, but rather such superficial knowledge as would enable a reader of Latin books to understand allusions and quotations. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... American lady (married to an Italian count) plied him with numerous questions in fluent French, spoken with an atrocious accent. Finally, she wished to hear the Abbe's views upon Melchisedech! In the midst of other questions and answers, the kindly little man managed to turn round to her with a cheery "Ah, Madame la Comtesse! pour le Melchisedech—nous reviendrons tout ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... fall in slack twisted piles. One of those machines is printing off a long letter from Berlin, another is registering news from Vienna, and by a third news from Paris comes as easily and rapidly as from Shoreditch; subdued men take the tapes, expand and make fluent the curt, halting phrases of the foreign correspondents, and pass the messages swiftly away to the printers. From America, Australia, India, China, the items of news pour in, and are scrutinised by severe sub-editors; and those experts calculate to a fraction of an inch what space ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... tyranny really had grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country lodgings, where the most ordinary things of design and decoration have sifted down and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal and leaf—the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by rote—are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all imaginable rooms, which is ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... a short quarter of an hour with your excellency," said Count de Lacy, in very fluent German, but with the hard foreign accent of a Hungarian. "After a battle won, I know nothing pleasanter than to recall with a comrade the past danger, and to revel again in memory the excitement ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... celebration. But there is small need now to speak of what has left, to one of the few survivors, only the sadness of remembering that all who made the happiness of it are passed away. There was Talfourd, facile and fluent of kindliest speech, with whom we were in constant and cordial intercourse, and to whom, grateful for his copyright exertions in the House of Commons, he had dedicated Pickwick; there was Maclise, dear and familiar friend to us ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... coward fumbled at the string. With all his fluent will he longed to resist, but the compelling eyes that met his so steadily were not to be resisted. Slowly he unwrapped the paper and took the lid from the little box, inside of which was coiled up a thin gold chain ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... and, choosing a few passages, read into them all of their hidden meaning, with the fluent ease and clearness which had gained for him the reputation of a fascinating reader. Silvia listened with ever increasing surprise, and at last exclaimed: "Ah, sir, you are the author of the piece, or ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... same fluent oratory, which in his place in Parliament he had so often practised—"I sat for an hour or more by Lord Steyne's bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his intention of demanding a meeting. I pointed out to him that the circumstances ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deep, world-wise, and fluent man had now become to Hogarth like manna, or rather a vice, like opium: for in those grey eyes of the cleric was hinted anon the baleful glint of ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... amendment the Doctor made what was unquestionably the most noteworthy speech of his life—a speech which a well-known writer[263] has pronounced to be without a parallel in the annals of Canadian Parliamentary debate. Its copiousness and felicity of illustration, its fluent and harmonious elegance of diction, could not have failed to stamp it as a great effort if it had been delivered before any audience in the world. No higher praise can be awarded to it than to record the simple ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... beard, a kind of Thersites, who is understood to have established, from the days of Abdelkader and "for certain reasons," his headquarters at Gafsa, where he sips absinthes past all computation, exercising his wit upon everybody and everything with a fluent and rather diverting pessimism. "You will probably perish on the road to ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... (chiefly of the past) as to be almost capable of verbatim reproduction, even at the present short interval after his death. If they were to be reproduced, they would be found to cover two hundred pages of the present volume, and to be so easy, fluent, varied, and wholly felicitous as to style, and full of research and reflection as to substance, as probably to earn for the writer a foremost place for epistolary power. Indeed, I am not without hope that this accession of a fresh reputation may result ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... expedient my father found out for this was, that in my infancy, and before I began to speak, he committed me to the care of a German, who since died a famous physician in France, totally ignorant of our language, and very fluent and a great critic in Latin. This man, whom he had fetched out of his own country, and whom he entertained with a great salary for this only one end, had me continually with him; he had with him also ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest; 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... their use as a school-book a circulation much out of proportion to their merit. Their chief interest is as the last survival of the urbanus sermo in Latin poetry. They are written in iambic senarii, in the fluent and studiously simple Latin of an earlier period, not without occasional vulgarisms, but with a total absence of the turgid rhetoric which was coming into fashion. The Fables are the last utterance made by the speech of Terence: it is singular that this intimately Roman style ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... gather all thy powers, And wreak them on the verse that thou dust weave, And in thy lonely hours, At silent morning or at wakeful eve, While the warm current tingles through thy veins, Set forth the burning words in fluent strains. ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... 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, because I often recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... on shrieking with a persistency that was maddening. A young French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places, kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. "Eh bien, mes belles! Vous ne finissez pas," he ended despairingly, and rushed off again to see whether he ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... paled again, and he gazed at Robert in a sort of dazed fashion. The imagination of young Lennox was alive and leaping. He had found what seemed to him a happy solution of a knotty problem, and, as usual in such cases, his speech became fluent and golden. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... negress, "Aunty, I would like for you to do a little washing for me." The old creature was glad to get it, as I agreed to pay her what it was worth. Her name was Aunt Daphne, and if she had been a politician, she would have been a success. I do not remember of a more fluent "conversationalist" in my life. Her tongue seemed to be on a balance, and both ends were trying to out-talk the other—but she was a good woman. Her husband was named Uncle Zack, and was the exact counterpart of Aunt Daphne. He always sat in the chimney corner, his feet in the ashes, and ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
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