"Flytting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... denied that birds often do serious damage through their food habits; but the great mistake that has been made in man's treatment of birds has been in hastily deciding that if birds are seen flitting about fields of grain they are destroying the crop. A better knowledge of their food habits will lead to proper measures for destroying the harmful kinds and protecting ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... fish hawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the country. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as I hear, was put out ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... weeks all but two days! And here he was, wasting the last sight of her! He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly on the heels of the straggling children. She turned her head, he saw her hand make a little flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the trailing family blotted her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Mr. Huxley less actively interested in the domestic affairs of the Society. In 1873 the whole establishment was translated from the building subsequently occupied by the Royal Academy to that which it now inhabits in the same quadrangle; a flitting of library stuff and appurtenances involving great responsibilities on the officers for the satisfactory re-establishment of the whole institution. In 1874 a very important alteration of the bye-laws was effected, whereby that which gave to Peers the privilege of being proposed for election ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... There were other doctors and nurses, I believe, but it all seemed confusion to me now; but poor, broken hearted Nannie I remember. She stood at a distance. Not a sound was uttered, and I took up my watch with the others, to watch that precious life ebbing away. The soft flitting backward and forward of nurses, a word now and then from the great man who held not only the life of Sara in his hands, but, it seemed to me, the life of my beautiful Diana, only broke the intense silence. The night came on ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... am safe here in my own home. I have lunched divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light and the telephone will be in working order before very long—and it is all due ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... these things—serious or trivial—a terrible yearning over Katherine and her baby—the new, little, human life which was his own life, and which yet he would never know or see. And through all these things also, the perpetual, heavy ache of those severed nerves and muscles, flitting pains in the limb of which, though it was gone, he had not ceased to be aware.—He dozed off, and mortal weakness closed down on him, floating him out and out into vague spaces. And then suddenly, once more, he felt a horse under him and gripped it with his knees. He was ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... prodigies. Marriage is the subject most thought of, most talked about. Around it cluster all the other events of life. Rejoice, then, O 'romantic' youth and maiden, now in the days of thy youth; for this flitting romance—so soon interrupted by care and grief, by shop and kitchen and nursery, by butcher, baker, tailor, milliner, and cordwainer—is about the most genuine experience you will have in this world. Therefore, say I, cultivate romance. Devour a goodly number of the healthier novels. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... a prolonged one. During this time Antoinette had been promenading the walk in front of the house, inhaling the jasmine-perfumed air, pouring out her heart to the night and to the stars. Her happy reverie was troubled only by the presence of a bat, flitting incessantly from one end of the terrace to the other, flapping its wings about her head. The loathsome creature seemed to be especially in quest of her, circling around and above her with obstinate persistency, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... tall; she was thin and slender, but delicately shaped. She had pretty feet, more remarkable for the grace of her instep and ankle than for the more ordinary merit of slenderness; her gloved hands, too, were shapely. There were flitting patches of deep red in a pale face, which must have been fresh and softly colored once. Premature wrinkles had withered the delicately modeled forehead beneath the coronet of soft, well-set chestnut hair, invariably wound about her head in two plaits, a girlish coiffure which suited the melancholy ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... and after paying his fare, sat down to watch the progress of the boat. By-and-by the moon sank, and it was dark; the chilly dawn soon came, and then long rows of sparkling lights appeared; the tall spires of the town; the masts of the shipping; the flitting ferry-boats, each with its green or scarlet blaze of lantern; rows of house-tops; docks; wharves; flag-staffs; sheds. This, then, was the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ways of dining more delicious than out in the open air under the vines in the cool of the afternoon, with Lucette, in her whitest of aprons, flitting about, and madame garnishing the dishes each in turn, and there may be better bottles of honest red wine to be found up and down this world of care than "Chateau Lamonte, '62," but I ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... people, and before the week is over the very beggars at the church-doors seem to have gone to the expense of a domino. When you meet these specimens of dingy drollery capering about in dusky back-streets at all hours of the day and night, meet them flitting out of black doorways between the greasy groups that cluster about Roman thresholds, you feel that a love of "pranks," the more vivid the better, must from far back have been implanted in the Roman temperament with a strong hand. An unsophisticated ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... time he had done with these reflections, for while he sat half-dazed and more than half-frozen the miles had been flitting by, and now the team knew they were not very far from home. Little by little their pace increased, and Winston was almost astonished to see another bluff black against the night ahead of him. As usual in that country, the willows and birches crawled up ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... these subdued but still audible demonstrations of sympathy and satisfaction did not cease on his arrival, the colonel promptly sent for his entire force of assistants to conduct the inspection already ordered. Already one or two "bull's-eyes" were flitting out from the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... high-walled garden of the great house on the hill, the night-moths have spread their broad, soft wings, and are flitting among the flowers, and the little girl with the small feet lies on her silken bed, half asleep. She, too, thinks of the lake and the lilies, but she knows nothing about Pen-se, who lives ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... what to do. The man looked like Newman, but he did not act like him. I had half a mind to pursue his flitting figure. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... hardly any use asking, because all of the lads had by then discovered the flitting forms of half a dozen boys about their own age, who must have piled up plenty of ammunition, to judge from the reckless way in which they were hurling snowballs in the direction of ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Hollingshead, had gone away, taking their biplane along; and it was said that they expected to do wonderful stunts with their airship somewhere in the South. But our two boys were too deeply interested in their own fortunes to give more than a passing thought to the flitting of their rivals. Besides, it would not seem that there could be one chance in a thousand that they would ever run across Puss and Sandy in all that great country, lying south of the Caribbean Sea, and ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... railway refreshment-room, he had breakfast, eating with some appetite; then he drove to the terminus of another line. The streets of Paris, dim vistas under a rosy dawn, had no reality for his eyes; the figures flitting here and there, the voices speaking a foreign tongue, made part of a phantasm in which he himself moved no less fantastically. He was in Paris; yet how could that be? He would wake up, and find himself at his lodgings, and get up to go to business ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... few days there have been some queer goings on over the road,—out of the common queer, I mean, for goodness knows that they always have been queer enough. That Arab party has been flitting about like a creature possessed,—I've seen him going in and out twenty ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... plausibly advanced and confidently maintained. It was reserved for Newton to produce a revolution in the mode of treating this branch of knowledge, as well as that of physical astronomy. Not despairing of the truth, he sternly put away "innumerable fancies flitting on all sides around him," and by searching observation and experiment, brought his mind directly into contact with things themselves, and held it steadily to them, until the clear light of truth dawned. The consequence was, that the dreams of philosophy, falsely ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... being would have floundered over head and ears, and at last it went over the edge of the fosse, where the fall would have broken any mortal's neck to a certainty. But lo! before I could look round, there it was again flitting right past me in a whirl of snow, and with a blast that swept me clean off ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... life was cold and stern as the February weather, but it had its flitting gleams of grace and beauty in brief words or passing looks exchanged with Judith Lisle. He was no lover, to pine for more than Fate vouchsafed. It seemed to him that the knowledge that he might see her was almost ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... the parrot screamed, And "Pretty Poll," repeated I, The while I stole a merry glance Across the room all on the sly, Where some one plied her needle fast, Demurely by the window sitting; But I beheld upon her cheek A multitude of blushes flitting. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... none ever loved thee more! Fair queen, I'll meet woe's fearfulest frown—and smile; If mid the scene severe Thou'lt drop on me one tear, And let thy flitting form sometimes beguile The present of its ills—I'll ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... have a picture of it in such a play as Moliere's Misanthropist, where we see a section of the polished life of the time—men and women making and receiving compliments, discoursing on affairs with easy lightness, flitting backwards and forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and among them one singular figure, hoarse, rough, sombre, moving with a chilling reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. But the shadows were all in all to one another. Not a point of conduct, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... beyond, and the faraway pale blue mountains on the northern horizon. There was a schooner with all sails set coming down the bay from a white village that was sprinkled on the shore, and there were many sailboats flitting about it. It was a noble landscape, and my eyes, which had grown used to the narrow inspection of a shaded roadside, could hardly ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the days of his youth, and, after an adventurous career, mainly in Afghanistan, had inherited enough money to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life. He had thereupon left the service, and now spent most of his time flitting from one spot of Europe to another. He had been dashing up to Scotland on the day when Mike first became a Wrykynian, but a few weeks in an uncomfortable hotel in Skye and a few days in a comfortable one in Edinburgh ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... and oyster Their two shells did roister, Like castanets flitting; While limpets moved clearly, And rocks very nearly With ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... cupboard, she wanted no more, for her diet had never been luxurious. Into every corner of the house she intruded her small freckled nose, pulling down from shelves all sorts of odds and ends that had been left behind as worthless at the flitting. ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... right down in her chair and not make any trouble. Don't you like those roses I brought you, Jewel?" he added awkwardly, hoping to make a diversion. He was successful. She lowered her face, a fleeting April smile flitting over it. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... institution. He was, besides, a meddlesome, inquisitive man, who poked his nose into everything. This was why the news of the fresh "miracle" performed by Father Zossima reduced him to extreme perplexity. Alyosha remembered afterwards how their inquisitive guest from Obdorsk had been continually flitting to and fro from one group to another, listening and asking questions among the monks that were crowding within and without the elder's cell. But he did not pay much attention to him at the time, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... were nearing the surface of the lake. The distance was a thousand feet; now eight hundred. Did he see shadows flitting across the ice? At five hundred feet he was sure that he did. He said nothing. So intent on landing was he that no risk seemed too great. At three hundred feet he saw them distinctly—gray streaks scooting across the ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... suddenly become rich. Thinking there was no good reason why she should not herself be equally fortunate, she washed clothes at the pool, keeping a sharp lookout for birds until she managed to hit and maim one of a flock that was flitting over the water. She then took the disabled bird home, and treated it with care till its wing healed and it flew away. Shortly afterward it came back with a seed in its beak, laid it before her, and again took flight. The woman quickly planted ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... young man moved uneasily, the more so as he saw the look of disdain and scorn flitting over the pretty face ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... HALL, MARCH YE IX. We were sat this morrow all in the little chamber at work, and I somewhat marvelled what was ado with Mother, for smiles kept ever and anon flitting across her face, as though she were mighty diverted with the flax she was spinning: and I guessed her thoughts should be occupying somewhat that was of mirthful sort. At last ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... had passed since Maddy's flitting. The skimped delaine was sadly rusty,—Miss Wimple very poor. The profits of the Hendrik Athenaeum and Circulating Library accrued in slow and slender pittances. A package of envelopes now and then, a few lead pencils, a box of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... restaurant with cold beef, an ancient chicken, hard-boiled eggs and sponge cakes under glass domes in the window; everywhere about her were dim doors, glimpses of twisting stairs, dusty windows and figures flitting up and down, in and out as though they were marionettes pulled by invisible strings ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... hands upon her, Fledra had gone down the plank. From the small boat-window Lem could discern the little figure flitting among the hut bushes; in another moment she had crawled through the open ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... Chris lightly and kindly, Charley was not elated over his unsought leadership. Vague suspicions were flitting through his mind, and his new responsibility was weighing heavily upon his young shoulders. As the evening wore on he still sat silent, buried in thought. The captain was reading aloud from an old newspaper he ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... aware of the subtle, penetrating, and not wholly unpleasing scent which Furneaux had attributed to the burning of a joss stick, but his mind was focused on the detective's words, which suggested a queer discrepancy between certain vague possibilities already flitting through his brain and the terrible drama as it presented ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... the flitting sprite Passed their huts in the misty light, Bearing a turret huge and black, And said, "The old sea serpent's back Carting away, By light of day, Uncle Sam's fort ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... fellows who, in their excitement and activity, resembled good-humoured, brown demons, there were many other figures in English dress moving about, directing and encouraging, running from point to point, flitting to and fro like wills-o'-the-wisp, for all bore lights, and plunged ever and anon out of sight in the trench. Between three and four o'clock the work was completed; tests were taken, the portion of cable was pronounced perfect, and communication was thus established between the cable-house ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... on; and a strange flitting light, from the form which was before him, lightened the darkness of the valley, so that he could pass on quickly; the meadow, also, was smooth and even, and there was a rustling breeze, which played around him: so that he got on faster than he had ever done upon the ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but astonishment and dismay. They filled his voice. He was afraid some one would see Cissie in his room. His thoughts went flitting about the premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... Every word he spoke went down like a weight of lead into my soul. I had, indeed, been conscious of a tender hand soothing my pillow, of a lovely form flitting through my dreams, of a breath and magnetic touch of love infusing warm, sweet life into me,—but it had always seemed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... he said. 'It was a simple thing this flitting with the hangings and the clothes and the pot rolled in bales and hung upon my horse. Upon my horse! But what is not simple is that simple folk of Normandy should have learned the arts of subtlety and drugging of wines. Mark that!' He pointed a ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... the very picture of himself! Poor Walter! Well, I wonder what has been done with him; I had a great mind to ask, but there is something about him, that, were he never a Protector, one would just as soon not make free with." As Robin thought thus, his eyes were fixed on the light and flitting clouds, and he was longing to be free and abroad in the moonbeams, that entered his cell only to smile on his captivity; when some opaque body stood between him and the light, so that he was for a moment almost in darkness. About three minutes after, the same effect occurred; and presently a ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... foolish ant saw this, she was greatly puffed up with Pharisaical conceit. "How thankful I ought to be," said she, "that I am industrious and prudent, and not like this poor grasshopper. While he was flitting about from flower to flower, enjoying himself, I was hard at work, putting by against the winter. Now he is dead, while I am about to make myself cosy in my warm home, and eat all the good things that I have ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... in his smile there seemed to be a certain mysticism. One could not tell, indeed, whether it came from some pleasant thought flitting through his brain, or whether it was that the idea itself was so strange ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bacchanalian frenzy of triumph. Yet I smiled grimly, for their clamor was no more than the ancient fool's shout, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Great Christ has had his day since, but he in turn is dead; dead in man's intellect, dead in man's heart, dead in man's life; a mere phantom, flitting about the aisles of churches, where priestly mummers go through the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... So he packed up his goods and began to move off. Then a neighbour came up, and said, "So, Georgey, you're leaving the old house?" "Yes," said the farmer, "the boggart torments us so that we must go." Then a voice came out of a churn, saying, "Ay, ay, Georgey, we're flitting, ye see." "Oh!" cried the poor farmer, "if thou'rt with us we'll go back again;" and he went back.—Mr. Tennyson puts this story into his poem ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... success, fortunately, it is not for him to judge—to keep undeviatingly within his immunities. The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. It is a legend prolonging itself, from an epoch now gray in the distance, down into our own broad daylight, and bringing along with it some of its legendary mist, which the reader, according to his pleasure, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the light to play fantastic tricks upon these mighty monarchs. The closing day is tender, bringing sacrifice and oblation; but the day of flitting clouds and frequent showers riots in changing joys. Every subordinate eminence that has arrogated to itself the sublimity of the distant mountain, against whose rocky sides it lay lost, is unmasked by the vapors that gather behind it and reveal its low-lying ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... with his burden, Dick stood a few moments looking back at the camp. The dusk had fully come, but the fires were not yet lighted, and he saw only the shadowy forms of the wagons and flitting figures about them. But much talked reached his ears, most of it coarse and rough, with a liberal sprinkling of oaths. Dick sighed. His regret was keener than ever that Albert and he were in such company. Then he looked the other way out upon the fathomless plains, ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... I tell you," stammered Joe. "It's been with me two days. I couldn't bring myself to speak of it—thought you'd only laugh. I saw it a couple of times, flitting through the bush like. Once ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... before Yva came, but at last she did come. I caught sight of her far away beyond the temple gate, flitting through the unholy brightness of the pillared courts like a white moth at night and seeming quite as small. She approached; now she was as a ghost, and then drawing near, changed into a living, breathing, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... peasants know their birds better. The reason of this is not far to seek; every bird, not excepting even the "temple-haunting martlet" and nightingale and minute golden-crested wren, is regarded only as a possible morsel to give a savour to a dish of polenta, if the shy, little flitting thing can only be enticed within touching distance of the limed twigs. Thus they take a very strong interest in, and, in a sense, "love" birds. It is their passion for this kind of flavouring which ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... resume our seats, and the competition of comedy is begun. Scene succeeds to scene and competitor to competitor: the day wears on, and flitting clouds from time to time obscure the dome, bringing out the glare of the footlights that have been burning all day in a singularly effective manner. Of the nineteen competitors, the deepest impression is made by M. Barral, who plays a scene from L'Avare ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... with his party, moved to Swansea, and thence to Tremadoc, where they agreed to take a house named Tanyrallt, and then they moved on to London to meet Godwin, who, in the meanwhile, had paid a visit to Lynmouth just after their flitting. Here Shelley had the delight of seeing the philosopher face to face, and now visits were exchanged, and walks and dinners followed, and, among other friends of Godwin, Shelley met Clara de Boinville ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... woman, agreeable, motherly, comfortable as she might be, wasn't his affair; that child with the mop of black hair who combined so magically the charm of mouse and butterfly and flitting bird, who was daintier than a flower and softer than a peach, was no concern of his. Good heavens! what were ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... holes, and breeches verify their name, and a knock at the door knocks at the heart—the fixed resolution of such a man to strike a bold stroke, for the sake of his home, is worthier of attention than the flitting fancy of boy and girl, who pop upon one another, and skip through zigzag vernal ecstasy, like the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... strain that was kept upon him. Presently I saw a shadowy, unsubstantial something just emerge from the black depths, then vanish. Then I saw it again, and this time the huge proportions of the fish were faintly outlined by the white facings of his fins. The sketch lasted but a twinkling; it was only a flitting shadow upon a darker background, but it gave me the profoundest Ike Walton thrill I ever experienced. I had been a fisher from my earliest boyhood. I came from a race of fishers; trout streams gurgled about the roots of the family tree, and there was a long accumulated ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the Staff secretaries. They are a part of the H.Q.—Headquarters—that is to say, a sort of General's suite. When they're flitting, they lug about their chests of records, their tables, their registers, and all the dirty oddments they need for their writing. Tiens! see that, there; it's a typewriter those two are carrying, the old papa and the little sausage, with a rifle threaded through the parcel. They're in three offices, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. A little flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out of my wood pile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery phe-be from the wood-side. They were so familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and pecked at ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hurried forth the way to trace With youth and valour's eager pace. On sped he by the path he found Dug by his uncles underground. The warder elephant he saw Whose size and strength pass Nature's law, Who bears the world's tremendous weight, Whom God, fiend, giant venerate, Bird, serpent, and each flitting shade, To him the honour meet he paid With circling steps and greeting due, And further prayed him, if he knew, To tell him of his uncles' weal, And who had dared the horse to steal. To him in war and council tried The warder elephant ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... is it, S.W.?—is it W.W.? We mucked up Lawn Tennis, soaked Henley Regatta, nearly spoilt the German EMPEROR's visit, ruined all the al fresco functions of the Season—slap!—flooded Society out of London, only to deluge them in their flitting till they wished they were back again, intensified the Influenza ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... white eyes of them The wind springs up anew, It blows upon the trembling heart, And bull and deer renew Their flitting life in the dim past When that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... unquestioning obedience I attempt what you require, although many records and documents are wanting which should have been kept, had I anticipated your command. But when in Kansas, I no more thought of appearing in history, than the butterfly flitting from flower to flower thinks of being dried and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... wine-cellar, he found them not so empty, but peopled with the vague and shifting images of the many beings, young and old, who had filled the house with life in brighter days. Then, if ever, did noise of creaking stair or sound as of human breath, or, perchance, momentary vision of flitting face against the dark, betray the present ghost of some old-time habitue of ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... light, shadowy form, hovering near the sylvan couch of Claud, like some unsubstantial being of the air; now advancing, now shrinking away, and now again flitting forward to the head of the youthful sleeper, and there pausing and preventing the light from longer revealing his features? Yes, what is it? would ask a doubting spectator of this singular night-scene. A passing ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the "carriage ladies and gentlemen" who disport themselves in Newport during the summer months, yachting and dancing through the short season, then flitting away to fresh fields and pastures new, realize that their daintily shod feet have been treading historic ground, or care to cast a thought back to the past. Oddly enough, to the majority of people the past is a volume rarely opened. Not that ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... of shouting from the shore ceased as the workmen beheld her flitting out along the steel causeway. They ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... shrouding mantle she wore could not disguise the exquisite symmetry of her graceful form, and the thick brown veil could not dim the luster of her flashing Assyrian eyes. She smiled back, before flitting away, at the dark, bright, sparkling ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... in the course of their seeking, even of that the telling must be brief, flitting from one event to another, even as the small Peter-bird flits from the top of one wave to the top of another, nor wets foot or feather in the marbled sea between; else would the story of the seeking linger out the full ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... have a business proposition!" Thornly folded his arms. "I've had an inspiration. During the three-quarters of an hour that you lay upon the sands, I saw you, not only as I saw you then and caught you, but I saw you flitting through several pictures. I even named the pictures, Spirit of the Dunes. I advise you for your own good, Miss Janet, do not struggle to learn to make daubs! It never pays. It's hard enough to make the best go. But you can help me, and together ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... to the ditch; and forget-me-nots were growing there, and meadow-sweet; and a very little way off was a hedge of whitethorn, and elder bushes grew there, too, and bindweed with white flowers. Gay colors were to be seen here, and a butterfly, too, was flitting by. The Toad thought it was a flower which had broken loose that it might look about better in the world, which was quite a natural ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... flowers of the begonia-vine made large patches of color. Innumerable epiphytes covered the limbs, and even grew on the roughened trunks. We saw little bird life—a darter now and then, and kingfishers flitting from perch to perch. At long intervals we passed a ranch. At one the large, red-tiled, whitewashed house stood on a grassy slope behind mango- trees. The wooden shutters were thrown back from the unglazed windows, and the big rooms ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... into her splendid rooms. Tired at length with the gay scene around her, she had strolled off alone into the conservatory, and leaning against a pillar watched from a distance the giddy whirl of the waltz—the waving of feathers, the flashing of jewels, and the flitting of airy forms through those magnificent apartments. A few moments before she left the crowd, she had observed a stranger of very dashing air attentively regarding her, and then joining a friend of hers appeared to request an ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... closet door, Missy read the stanza a second time—a third. And, back again at her work, fingers dawdled while eyes took on a dreamy, preoccupied expression. For phrases were still flitting through her head: "we pass and speak one another".. . "then darkness again, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Wait joyfully on the morning. Ten thousand beset me And their spears ache for my heart. They will crush me and grind me to mire, So that none will know the man that once was me. But at the first light I shall be gone, Singing, flitting, o'er the grey waters, Outward, homeward, To thee, the Preserver, Thee, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... long ceased to dine at home, in despair; and now we resolved to take another house, in which there were other servants. But even then, it was a sore struggle to part with the flower of serving- women, who was set over the vacated house to put it in order after our flitting, and with whom the imprudent Paron settled the last account in the familiar little dining-room, surrounded by the depressing influences of the empty chambers. The place was peopled after all, though we had ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... which roused his curiosity. Hardly a mile away he observed a single Indian coming toward him on foot. It may be said the stranger leaped into view, for Deerfoot was looking over a certain spot at the country beyond when a peculiar, flitting movement caused him to depress his glass to ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... up. Eileen's face shows her despair at this. Simms weighs her and gives the poundage in a low voice to Stanton. Eileen steps down mechanically, then hesitates as if not knowing where to turn, her anguished eyes flitting from ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... should not be forgotten. Donning an old suit of clothes, you can roam where you will, threading your way through brier and bush, wading the bog or the shallow stream, dropping upon your knees, even flinging yourself upon the ground, to spy upon a wary bird flitting ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... and darker, till at length we might have been lost in a London fog. The dense masses of the people looked like banks, and the archers, flitting to and fro as they made ready, might have been shadows in Hades. Once or twice lightning flashed and was followed after a pause by the distant growling of thunder. The air, too, grew very oppressive. Dense silence reigned. In all those multitudes no one spoke or stirred; even Sammy ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... for the purpose or affording a landmark to direct our course, all the lesser objects are entirely concealed by the distance. We must beware lest, in straining to get a glimpse of the invisible, we should mistake the flitting shadows that the unnatural effort sets afloat in the humours of our own eyes for the veritable objects ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... apparitions we are lastly given to understand that his life was so strange that its details would be incredible. What these incredible details may have been, I have no means of knowing. It is enough that he was a strange unsubstantial being, flitting uncertainly about in the twilight regions of society, emerging by fits and starts into visibility, afflicted with a general vagueness as to the ordinary duties of mankind, and generally taking much more opium than was good for him. He tells us, indeed, that he broke off his over-mastering ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of night-riders who came and went swiftly and mysteriously; and of a dusty, shuffling herd that wound its slow way across the desert, hazed by a flitting band of armed riders who continually glanced back as though fearful of pursuit. Suddenly the dream changed. He was lying on a bed in a long, white-walled room, dimly lighted by a flickering gas-jet, and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... gayety which partook of excitement. In ten minutes he went his way, drawing her musing eyes after him. Until he had reached his own door and turned it at the Casa Blanca the two girls on Struve's veranda were silent. Florrie's thoughts were flitting hither and yon, bright-winged, inconsequential, fluttering about Jim Galloway, deserting him for Roderick Norton, darting off to Elmer Page, coming home to Florrie herself. As for Virginia, conscious of a sort of dread, she was oppressed ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... fluctuating shadows in tumultuous confusion were seen flitting to and fro across the windows: ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... then follow the shiftings, the scramblings, and the fruitless struggles to succeed, where success is impossible. His farm is not half tilled; his crops are miserable; the gale-day has already passed; yet, he can pay nothing until he takes it out of the land. Perhaps he runs away—makes a moonlight flitting—and, by the aid of his friends, succeeds in bringing the crop with him. The landlord, or agent, declares he is a knave; forgetting that the man had no other alternative, and that they were the greater knaves and fools too, for encouraging him ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... I am listening," said the canon of Toledo, to Lucien's bewilderment. "I am an old priest; you can tell me everything, there is nothing to fear. So far we have only run through our patrimony or squandered mamma's money. We have made a flitting from our creditors, and we are honor personified down to the tips of our elegant little boots. . . . Come, confess, boldly; it will be just as if ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... flitting, white-fire insect Little, dancing, white-fire creature, Light me with your little candle, Ere upon my bed I lay me, Ere in sleep I ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... primitive, utterly un-modern type, it was strikingly clear. To see her there made it impossible to imagine her again in civilisation. I lost all recollection of how she looked in a town. The memory somehow evaporated. This slim creature before me, flitting to and fro with the grace of the woodland life, swift, supple, adroit, on her knees blowing the fire, or stirring the frying-pan through a veil of smoke, suddenly seemed the only way I had ever really seen her. Here she was at home; in London she became some ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... resuming, not yet through with his tributes. His eye flitting over the shouting crowd had fallen upon ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... were soon flitting like fireflies all over the garden, but no trace of the fugitive was found. Peter entered into the search with profound interest, being as yet utterly ignorant of the method of escape devised by his sister. Suddenly one of the slaves discovered ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... again to consciousness he lay for some time looking about him, moving only his eyes and very slowly his head. He took in the canvas walls and roof of the big hospital marquee, the scarlet-blanketed beds, the flitting figures of a couple of silent-footed Sisters, the screens about two of the beds; the little clump of figures, doctor, orderlies, and Sister, stooped over another bed. Presently he caught the eye of a Sister as she passed swiftly the foot of his bed, and she, seeing ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... The great sweep in front of the terrace and entrance stair was black and covered with mosses; the once trim flower-beds rank and weedy. Shutters were up along almost the whole line of the house; the great hall-door was unbarred after much ringing of the bell; an individual in ribbons was seen flitting up the black oak stair, as Horrocks at length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawley and his bride into the halls of their fathers. He led the way into Sir Pitt's "Library," as it was called, the fumes ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are, and probably have always been, innocent of the whole of it. It is an event of extreme rarity to see a gipsy in a court of justice, and we have reason to believe that it has come to pass that farmers entertain a belief that the tent of the wanderer, with its nightly blaze and its dark shadows flitting about it, is a protection to their property. There is every probability in favour of the justice of this character. The life of the gipsy is not unlucrative: his wants are few and coarse, and the calls upon him are scarcely any. He pays no rent: he is exempt from taxes: he spends nothing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... There, flitting round the door, or occasionally peering through the windows of the tap-room, with pipes in their mouths and perchance a tankard in their hands, were seen the elders of the village, boatmen, and habitans, making use, or good excuse, of a rainy day for a social gathering ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... forms the bulwark of the Green Isle against the waves of the Atlantic. Alone and silently I trod the deck, now turning to look towards the shore, where I thought I could detect the position of some well-known headland, now straining my eyes seaward to watch some bright and flitting star, as it rose from or merged beneath the foaming water, denoting the track of the swift pilot-boat, or the hardy lugger of the fisherman; while the shrill whistle of the floating sea-gull was the only sound save the rushing waves that broke in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... near which his type-case stood he saw the squirrels scampering over trees and roofs, heard the birds singing in the branches, caught dissolving views of Br'er Fox flitting across the garden path, and breathed in beauty and romance to be exhaled later for the enchantment of ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... night when they rode into the wooden town. Here and there a window was flung open; but the night was thick and dark, and there was little to see but the dust that whirled about the dimly flitting forms. That, however, was nothing unusual, for of late squadrons of stockriders and droves of weary cattle had passed into the town; and a long row of shadowy frame houses had been left behind before the fears of any citizen were aroused. It was, perhaps, their silent ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... address rich in historic background, and not without solicitude for the future of his favorite humanistic studies—a solicitude, some will think, only too well justified. "Cambridge at all times is full of ghosts," said Emerson. But no ghost from the past, flitting along the Old Road from Elmwood to the Yard, and haunting the bleak lecture-rooms where it had recited as a careless boy and taught wearily as a man, could wear a more quizzical and friendly aspect than Lowell's. He commonly ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... gossip. The mornings may be ever so full of meadow larks, the woods moistly sweet and carpeted with spring's frail and dainty blossoms, but no one dreams of letting the furnace go out or their base burner get cold until they see Fanny Foster flitting about town at all hours of the day and behold the array of shiny armchairs standing so invitingly in front of ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... fact that nearly all very successful men have made a life work of one thing, we see on every hand hundreds of young men and women flitting about from occupation to occupation, trade to trade, in one thing to-day and another to-morrow,—just as though they could go from one thing to another by turning a switch, as if they could run as well on another track ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... next hour after the lights went out, strange, flitting figures slipped through the halls and down-stairs into the front room, where the giant hemlock stood. And the very last one of all was clad in a bath robe ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... other rooms, bound one to the other like links in a chain. From the third of these came the penetrating voices of the American ladies, descanting unhesitatingly upon the pictures; while in the second the two artists could be seen flitting from one canvas to another with ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... truth in it to prove very conclusively to the bold minds of the age that tremendous profits—"purchases" they called them—were to be made from piracy. The Western World is filled with the names of daring mariners of those old days, who came flitting across the great trackless ocean in their little tublike boats of a few hundred tons burden, partly to explore unknown seas, partly—largely, perhaps—in pursuit of Spanish treasure: Frobisher, Davis, Drake, and a score ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... all this to the longing of the Canadian for the nightly howl of the kangaroo and the song of the wombat flitting among the blue-gums in his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... means. I shall be writing; and you will be lonely if you stay. But I must see my girls; for I caught glimpses of certain surprising phantoms flitting by the door." ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... oases are! Those who know and love "Pauline" will remember the passage where the poet, with that pantheistic ecstasy which was possibly inspired by the singer he most loved, tells how he can live the life of plants, content to watch the wild bees flitting to and fro, or to lie absorbent of the ardours of the sun, or, like the night-flowering columbine, to trail up the tree-trunk and through its rustling foliage "look for the dim stars;" or, again, can live the life of the bird, "leaping airily ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the end of our day's journey, when I caught sight of a black figure flitting among the trees in the distance. Presently another, and another appeared. They did not come near us, but were apparently moving in the same direction ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... some young and ardent lover of art, in the days when Pythagoras taught under those glittering colonnades of Croton, when the fleets of Metapontum swept the blue Ionian and Sybaris taught the world how to live a life of ease—I can almost see this youth," he pursued enthusiastically, "flitting from a hot palace on the plain towards those breezy heights and, inflamed with an all-absorbing passion for the beautiful, carrying up with him one or two, just one or two, of those beloved bronzes from which he could not, and would not, be parted—no, not even ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... sidelong look at her, and then adjusted his cravat and considered the effect of the blue roses on his vest. Was a vision flitting before his eyes of the wagon drawn by gayly-caparisoned steeds and bearing in gilt letters on a red ground the legend, "Dr. Pingree's Pain-Exterminator, Humanity's Friend,"—of his own face, beautified by art, adorning fences and walls above this proud inscription, "The Renowned Inventor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... to make, we chose all we had been taught to dread and despise. Why? I wonder. For the same reason as Eve ate the apple, I suppose. I would, if I had been Eve. I almost wish I could go back now, for a day, to the cool white rooms, to see the nuns flitting about like black and white ghosts, with only a jingle of beads to warn one of their coming, see the blue sky through the great bare windows, and the shadows of the trees lengthening on the cold flagged floors, hear the bells going ding-dong, ding-dong, and the murmur of the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... maw Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim To wild uncertainty and shadows grim. There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before, And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore The journey homeward to habitual self! A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf, Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar, Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire, 280 Into the bosom of a ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... the white feather!" shouted Pastiri. "You're flitting about like a grasshopper. Off with you, my boy! You're in for it! If you don't get out right away you'll be feeling a palm's length of steel in ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... preparations the Emperor was making his adieux to her Majesty the Empress, or taking a few moments of repose; but at the appointed hour he rose, was dressed, and entered his carriage. Soon after everything was silent in the chateau, and only a few isolated persons could be seen flitting about like shadows; silence had succeeded to noise, solitude to the bustle of a brilliant and numerous court. Next morning this deep silence was broken only by a few scattered women who sought each other with pale faces and eyes full of tears, to communicate ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... night other planes from near-by sectors began flitting in here, there, until, with the planes already at the aerodrome, there must have been at least fifty of the various types of battle and scouting planes on hand. Many of the airmen were French, many British, not a few Americans, ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... a pause.] And what became of all my youthful dreams? Like flitting summer clouds they disappeared, Left naught behind but sorrow and remorse;— Each daring hope in turn fate ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... Their anguished cries as the stones and earth fell on them are still to be heard echoing through the scrub there; and sometimes it is said one, keener sighted than his fellows, sees their spirit forms flitting through the Budtha bushes, and hears again their tragic cries, as they disappear once more into the ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... summits to the very path under our feet there is nothing but rock, rock, rock! It is as if we were passing where the foot of man had never trod before, so solemn is the stillness here in the midst of the "everlasting hills." To see one solitary bird flitting fitfully from point to point only makes the loneliness seem greater, and it is absolutely touching to find in a place like this the lovely little Ranunculus alpestris and Ranunculus glacialis forcing a way between ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... was the old photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing over him once more ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... and a red woollen skirt, the Horned Osmia, was visiting the flowers, dipping into each pink eye in search of a honeyed tear. A very small and very modestly-dressed Halictus, much busier and in far greater numbers, was flitting silently from blossom to blossom. Official science calls her Halictus malachurus, K. The pretty little Bee's godfather strikes me as ill-inspired. What has malachurus, calling attention to the softness of the rump, to do in this connection? The name of Early ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... during the hours of his tardy convalescence, when he had been lying alone, crushed by the sense of weariness and oppression which illness brings to one so little accustomed to it, he had been roused by the sound of light footfalls in his room; he had seen a graceful form flitting about, bringing lightness and beauty in her wake, and leaving it behind when she left. The vision of a sweet, small face, and the lustrous dark eyes which had haunted him at intervals through the long years of his ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... away during times of ceremony; but she had her back to them and to the door, and was engrossed in the talk as well as in the stocking fabric upon her needles. Jemima and Walter were still talking unrebuked in a low key. Perchance this flitting could be accomplished without drawing down either notice or remark. To please Jacob, Keziah would have done much, even to running the risk of a scolding from her aunt. She had none of saucy Cherry's scorn of the big boorish fellow with the ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in the old man's eyes as he watched Alma, all enthusiasm, flitting hither and thither, and ordering and planning like an experienced general, while it was plain to Pelle that she was as yet but a novice in the mysteries of gardening. He did venture to hint modestly that it was late—the middle of July—to ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... composed from earth's materials"; a world where imagination gathers fresh life and vigour from breathing the air of reason's serenest sky, and where it builds the higher and nobler, that it rests on a deep and solid basis of humility, instead of "revolving restlessly" around its own airy and flitting centre. The Shakespearian Drama works in the order and spirit of this principle; so that what the Poet creates is in effect historical, has the solidity and verisimilitude of Fact, and what he borrows has all the freedom and freshness of original creation. Therewithal he often combines ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... they now approached, they discovered a form, apparently human, but of a size much less than ordinary, which moved slowly among the large grey stones, not like a person intending to journey onward, but with the slow, irregular, flitting movement of a being who hovers around some spot of melancholy recollection, uttering also, from time to time, a sort of indistinct muttering sound. This so much resembled his idea of the motions of an apparition, that Hobbie Elliot, making a dead pause, while his hair erected itself upon ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... his keen sight, which he did not fail to use continually, noticed some flocks of birds of prey flitting ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... beside him: rich was he in fields; In wide extent no lands with his could vie; Nor equal his in hoarded heaps of grain. Obliquely in his groin, the missive spear Stuck deep,—a mortal spot: his Bactrian foe His rolling eyes beheld, and dying breath In sobs convulsive flitting, and exclaim'd;— "This spot thou pressest, now of all thy lands, "Possess,"—and turning left the lifeless corse. Avenging Perseus hurls at him the spear, Torn from the smoking wound; the point, receiv'd Full in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... these climes; and her reflection was still flitting backward and forward across the white window-blinds as Royston Keene came home from the Cercle. He knew the room, or guessed who the shadow belonged to; and as he moved away, after pausing a minute or two, he waved his hand toward it, with a ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... already betraying itself in cat-calls and stampings from the sixpenny places, and Mrs. Carteret, flitting like a sheep dog round her flock, arranged them in couples and drove them before her on to the stage, singing in chorus, with a fair assumption of hilarity, "As ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... swarmed, the ground is horrible with lumps and clusters; and a strange sight, and a beautiful, to see the fleet put silently out against a rising moon, the sea-line rough as a wood with sails, and ever and again and one after another, a boat flitting swiftly by the silver disk. This mass of fishers, this great fleet of boats, is out of all proportion to the town itself; and the oars are manned and the nets hauled by immigrants from the Long Island (as we call the outer Hebrides), who come for that season only, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strand of hair, the wave of a white hand, the flutter of a garment's edge? He could not tell, but it did not belong to any of those sights which he had seen so often in that place. It was neither the glancing of a moth's wing, the nodding of a wind-touched blossom, nor the noiseless flitting of a bat. It was a gleam merely, faint, elusive, impossible of definition, an intangible agitation, in the vast, dim blur ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... in the Southern States, when setting out on an excursion by night, as soon as they hear the Mocking-Bird sing, know that the moon is rising. He quotes a writer who supposes that it may be fear that operates upon the birds when they perceive the Owls flitting among the trees, and that they sing, as a timid person whistles in a lonely place, to quiet their fears. But the musical notes of birds are never used by them to express their fears; they are the language of love, sometimes animated by jealousy. It must be admitted that the moonlight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... approach of this mysterious object. Was it merely some inanimate substance, held in suspense in the attenuated atmosphere of the globule, or was it an animal endowed with vitality and motion? It approached, flitting behind the gauzy, coloured veils of cloud-foliage, for seconds dimly revealed, then vanishing. At last the violet pennons that trailed nearest to me vibrated; they were gently pushed aside, and the form floated out into the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... glance upon him, then, as he passed, in a vain attempt to read the sombre expression of his inscrutable face grown five years older in the last five days, I shuffled after the girl now flitting before me down Broome Street. As I did so, I noticed her dress to its minutest details, somewhat surprised to find how ragged and uncouth it was. That Mr. Blake should stop a girl wherever seen, clad in a black alpaca frock, ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... she observed shadowy figures flitting around the light in a curious and grotesque way. She was in greater doubt than ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... feathered tribes were of most brilliant plumage, and of marvelous variety and deafening noise. The isacus, a graceful sort of dove with gray feathers streaked with white, and the yellow cardinals, were flitting about in the trees like moving flowers; while overhead pigeons, sparrows, chingolos, bulgueros, and mongitas, were flying swiftly along, rending the air ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... I had it at last, this establishment to which I had for so long looked forward. And yet that evening, as I hesitated in the hall, I somehow was unable to grasp that it was real and permanent, the very solidity of the walls and doors paradoxically suggested transientness, the butler a flitting ghost. How still the place was! Almost oppressively still. I recalled oddly a story of a peasant who, yearning for the great life, had stumbled upon an empty palace, its tables set with food in golden dishes. Before two days ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The flitting cloud passed again over the face of St. Luc, but he did not allow any change to show in his manner. He returned the splendid belt to Dubois, who folded it carefully and put it ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... shaped itself for me, as I walked through the frowsy, faded rooms, with a touching insistence. This bedroom had never been used since Miss Eleanor died—and I could fancy the poor, little, timid, precise life flitting away among the well-known surroundings. This had been Miss Jackson's favourite room—it was so quiet—she had died there, sitting in her chair, a few weeks before. The leisurely, harmless routine of the quiet household rose before me. I could imagine Miss Jackson writing her ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the same squalor, the same turmoil and noise, the same general characteristics, in every corner; in the best and the worst alike. The whole place seemed restless and troubled; and the people were crowding and flitting to and fro, like the shadows in an ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... awaiting a fair wind to carry her into the port of London. This collier (a schooner) was named the "Butterfly," perhaps because the owner had a hazy idea that there was some resemblance between an insect flitting about from flower to flower and a vessel sailing from port to port! Black as a chimney from keelson to truck, she was as like to a butterfly as a lady's hand is to a ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... float against the blue; For tender green of far-off upland slopes; For fringing forests and far-gleaming spires; For those white peaks, serene and grand and still; For that deep sea—a shallow to Thy love; For round green hills, earth's full benignant breasts; For sun-chased shadows flitting o'er the plain; For gleam and gloom; for all life's counter-change; For hope that quickens under darkening skies; For all we see; for all that underlies,— We thank ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... second man, and after him a third, a fourth, and a fifth stealing across the narrow open space and darting into the shelter of the brushwood. Nine-and-seventy Alleyne counted of these dark figures flitting across the line of the moonlight. Many bore huge burdens upon their backs, though what it was that they carried he could not tell at the distance. Out of the one wood and into the other they passed, all with the same crouching, furtive gait, until the black bristle of trees had ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... happiness, where, oh where does it reside? Has it taken up its abode with unconscious ignorance or with the high-wrought mind? Is it the offspring of thoughtless animal spirits or the dye of fancy continually flitting round the expected pleasure? ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... I, havin' one of my thought-flashes, "wait a minute. We might—do I understand that the flitting hubby's ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... would be too great. The soul so used to ease and luxury, fine linen and soft couches, delicate appetites, indolent habits, intellectual pursuits and graces, to be put in rough harness of business at once, would be cruel, nay, worse, like chaining humming-birds to a dray-wagon. And Irene, flitting like a butterfly through elegant salons, how would she be content with ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas |
