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Roving   /rˈoʊvɪŋ/   Listen
Roving

adjective
1.
Migratory.  Synonyms: mobile, nomadic, peregrine, wandering.  "The nomadic habits of the Bedouins" , "Believed the profession of a peregrine typist would have a happy future" , "Wandering tribes"






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"Roving" Quotes from Famous Books



... Night has a Thousand Eyes" Francis William Bourdillon "I Saw my Lady Weep" Unknown Love's Young Dream Thomas Moore "Not Ours the Vows" Bernard Barton The Grave of Love Thomas Love Peacock "We'll go no More a Roving" George Gordon Byron Song, "Sing the old song, amid the sounds dispersing" Aubrey Thomas de Vere The Question Percy Bysshe Shelley The Wanderer Austin Dobson Egyptian Serenade George William Curtis The Water Lady Thomas Hood "Tripping Down the Field-path" Charles Swain Love Not Caroline Elizabeth ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... century, the connection between Great Britain and her Australian possessions has been one of growing interest; and men of the highest eminence have foreseen and foretold the ultimate importance of that vast continent, over which, within the memory of living man, the roving savage held precarious ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... guess why the hot, intrepid blood inherited from the roving sires of his Somersetshire mother remained cool amidst all this frenzied fanatical heat of rebellion; why the turbulent spirit which had forced him once from the sedate academical bonds his father would have imposed upon him, should now remain quiet in the very midst ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... I have been roving over the country, as the farm[76] I have taken is forty miles from this place, hiring servants and preparing matters; but most of all, I am earnestly busy to bring about a revolution in my own mind. As, till within these eighteen months, I never was the wealthy master of ten guineas, my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... occasion. De Charnise received orders from Louis to arrest De la Tour; but a little preliminary to the arrest was the possession of the fort of St. John, and this he could not obtain, although be sent all his force against it. Taking advantage, however, of the absence of De la Tour, who had a habit of roving about, he one day besieged St. John. Madame de la Tour headed the little handful of men in the fort, and made such a gallant resistance that De Charnise was obliged to draw off his fleet with the loss of thirty-three men,—a very serious loss, when the supply of men ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... fifty men. Beyond these a band of Assiniboins of four hundred and fifty men, and called the Big Devils, wander on the heads of Milk, Porcupine, and Martha's rivers; while still farther to the north are seen two bands of the same nation, one of five hundred and the other of two hundred, roving on the Saskaskawan. Those Assiniboins are recognised by a similarity of language, and by tradition as descendents or seceders from the Sioux; though often at war are still acknowledged as relations. The Sioux themselves, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... a dozen Indians, the roving gypsies of the West, dressed in warm and comfortable clothing and wrapped in red or blue blankets, ride into town on good horses. They belong to the Sacs and Foxes, a friendly, well-disposed remnant of people who live half a day's ride to the north-east of this place. They ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... free play of the country! They were pressed into labour, were saddled with the labourer's heavy burden. Since then, it had been an endless roving after work, from one farm to another, with his ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... the resurrection surrounding him he must have his part—that in him as well as in the earth the spirit of life must move and put forth in gladness. A flock of swallows passed suddenly like a streak of smoke on the blue sky overhead, and as his eyes followed them the old roving instinct pulled at his heart. To be up and away, to drink life to its dregs and come home for rest, were among the impulses which awoke with ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... with Marna! That's the life for me! Wandering with the wandering wind, Vagabond and unconfined! Roving with the roving rain Its unboundaried domain! Kith and kin of wander-kind, ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... public notification and celebration, by means of a grand processional entry into the capital, stretching for upwards of a mile; and in January 1816, the late king, now formally deposed, "a stout, good-looking Malabar, with a peculiarly keen and roving eye, and a restlessness of manner, marking unbridled passions," was conveyed in the governor's carriage to the jetty at Trincomalee, from which port H.M.S. Mexico conveyed him to the Indian continent: he was there confined in the fortress of Vellore, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... maintaining his lineage pure as its representation had descended to him than the most superb of his predecessors. But owing, it was said, to an early disappointment, he led, during youth and manhood, a roving and desultory life, and so put off from year to year the grand experiment matrimonial, until he arrived at old age, with the philosophical determination to select from the other branches of his house the successor ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that came not from moon nor star, From the sun, nor the roving wind afar, Said, Man, I am with thee—rejoice, rejoice! And man ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... settle down anyhow," his father responded. "The old French spirit of roving and adventure has had its day with you, and now you will begin ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... said his name was Crannish, and he spelled it for the captain, who examined the crew list to verify him. He said that he was known as "Long Jim" by his mates. He did not seem to take the murder as a serious matter, but answered Captain Riggs's questions calmly, his eyes roving over the interior of the saloon, taking us ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... it as high as she could reach. A little distance away she placed the second and then the third. The objects came nearer and sick with disappointment she saw that they were bats. Crouching in the damp swamp grasses, without a thought of snakes or venomous insects, she waited, her eyes roving from lantern to lantern. Once she thought a creature of high flight dropped near the lard oil light, so she arose breathlessly waiting, but either it passed or it was an illusion. She glanced at the old lantern, then at the new, and was on her feet ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... a faithful husband to Isabella of Bourbon but her death seemed to make little difference. Neither she nor Margaret of York had the actual significance enjoyed by Isabella of Portugal as consort to Philip the Good with his notoriously roving fancy. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... wall, and—he is among them. They are seated about a small table, on which is a plan of the prison. One is about forty-five,—a tall, thin man, with a wiry frame, a jovial face, and eyes which have the wild, roving look of the Arab's. He is dressed after the fashion of English sportsmen, and his dog—a fine gray bloodhound—is stretched on the hearthrug near him. He looks a reckless, desperate character, and has an adventurous history.[D] In battle he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... the garden's queen, Yon peach-tree charms the roving sight; Its fragrant leaves how richly green! Its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... I saw the Boy roving about here wrapped in his flaming discontents. There was flash on flash against the clouds, and rush on rush of shadows down the valley till the shaws were full of his hounds giving tongue, and the ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... of earth, using (as he saw occasion) both menace and conciliation, asked his friends (about the circumstance). But they too did not know anything. Seeing that the army was distressed owing to the obstruction of the calls of nature, and also finding her father aggrieved, Sukanya said, "Roving in the forest, I lighted in the ant-hill here upon some brilliant substance. Thereupon taking it for a glow-worm I neared it, and pierced it (with thorns)." Hearing this Saryati immediately came to the ant-hill, and there saw Bhrigu's son, old both ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... "That was my first voyage. I sometimes wish that I had lived comfortably on shore, and made it my last, but I got accustomed to a roving life, and having no regular business or tie, when circumstances compelled Mr Griffiths—who married my sister—to come to sea again, I ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... steeped in lemon-juice and dried; in this way the juice is preserved from evaporation. Essnousee had just lost his wife. "Have you any other wives?" I said. "Oh yes," he replied, "one here and one in Ghat." Many of the merchants, like the roving tar who has a sweetheart at every port, have a wife at every city of The Desert and Soudan where they trade. Several of the children now in Ghadames were born either ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... first part of their journey over the fertile but then unbroken prairies, the only inhabitants they met were the roving Indians and Half-breeds, whose rude wigwams and uncouth noisy carts have long since disappeared, and have been replaced by the comfortable habitations of energetic settlers, and the swiftly moving ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... on mossy couch to sing A Spanish roundelay, And see my sweet companions Around commingling gay,— A roving band, light-hearted, In frolicsome array,— Who 'neath the screening parasols Dance down the merry day. But more than all enchanting At night, it is to me, To sit, where winds are sighing, Lone, musing by the sea; And, on its surface gazing, To mark the moon so fair, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... favor of a daughter of the House of Saxe-Gotha, but it is said that fear of a disease hereditary in the family overruled her wishes. Then, according to the story, a Colonel Graeme, a Scotch gentleman upon whose taste Lord Bute placed great reliance, was sent on a kind of roving embassy to the various little German Courts in search of the ideal bride. The lady of the quest was, according to the instructions given to Colonel Graeme, to be at once beautiful, healthy, accomplished, of mild disposition, and versed in music, an art to which the King was much devoted. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... aspects of Canada, where a rigid scion of the old European tree was set to grow in the wilderness. The military Governor, holding his miniature Court on the rock of Quebec; the feudal proprietors, whose domains lined the shores of the St. Lawrence; the peasant; the roving bushranger; the half-tamed savage, with crucifix and scalping-knife; priests; friars; nuns; and soldiers,—mingled to form a society the most picturesque on the continent. What distinguished it from the France that produced it ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... where she dwelt had escaped comparatively free from the ravages of war, but the approach of roving bands of Burgundian or English troops frequently spread terror through Domremy. Once the village had been plundered by some of these marauders, and Jeanne and her family had been driven from their home, and forced to seek refuge for a time at Neufchateau. The peasantry in Domremy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... purpose to deprive me of an heir, and now you are impatient to drive me out of the world. Whither, O whither would you go wandering about, wasting your life? And why leave your house, your hearth, your home? You know not what toils and peril he brings on himself who goes rambling and roving. Let this whim pass, my son; be sensible, and do not wish to see my life worn out, this house fall to the ground, my ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... which sometimes were the most distasteful to them and from which they suffered to repletion. Just as the romance of adventure sang its siren song in their ears and whispered vague messages of strange lands and lusty deeds, so the delicious mysteries of home enticed 'Frisco Kid's roving fancies, and his brightest day-dreams were of the thing's he knew not—brothers, sisters, a father's ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London

... them, to right and left, as he walked through the long, barn-like building, and took in with other glances the inadequate decorations of the graceless interior. His roving eye caught the lettering over the lateral archways, and with a sort of contemptuous compassion he turned into the ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... incapable of civilization. But this is only one type of the native inhabitants of the land. Those of the South were very different. Instead of being rude savages, like their Northern brethren, they had made some approach to civilization; instead of being roving hunters, they were settled agriculturists; instead of being morose and taciturn, they were genial and light-hearted; and instead of possessing only crude forms of government and religion, they ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... fountain of Blandusia, The dogstar's hateful spell No evil brings unto the springs That from thy bosom well; Here oxen, wearied by the plow, The roving cattle here, Hasten in quest of certain rest And quaff ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... and was about to run away with her newspaper and cane; but her eyes, in roving wildly about, fell upon grandpa Parlin and all the rest of them, in a pew very near the pulpit. Then she thought it must be all right, and, taking courage, she marched slowly up the aisle, swinging ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May

... but the eleventh man had the art and cunning to deliver the land from the assaults of the venomous serpents. He said to his brothers, "One of the serpents is a woman. I know it by her eyes, which are very bright, and beguiling, and roving, and treacherous. I know it by her sputtering, if all does not go right, and her frequent viewing herself in the waters of Lake Canandaigua, and the noisy chatter she is continually making about nothing. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... leaving Rome for a few days. Under existing circumstances the chances of his arrest were not worth considering. His cousin was eager to show him all the sights; and the freebooter was glad of a little relaxation from his roving life, glad to forget for an instant that his country was his squadron, his rights at law were his cutlass. Moreover, he had taken a vast liking to Agias; deeply dipped in blood himself, he dared not desire his cousin to ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... there have been roving bands of insurgents in existence, causing the authorities more or less serious trouble, leading them at times to make serious attempts at their entire suppression. But the mountains and half-inaccessible forests of the eastern department still serve to ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... and Thomas Cottrell, having acted as ringleaders in the movement, were dismissed, and being thrown on their own resources, set up a foundry of their own in Nevil's Court, Fetter Lane. Of the two Jackson proved far the more skilful, but seems to have been of a roving disposition. After working for a year or two with Cottrell he went to sea, leaving Cottrell to carry on the business alone. This he did with a fair measure of success, though his foundry was never at any time a large one. After a few years' absence Jackson returned to England ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... hiding-place ransacked. David Owen and the two youths were of the army. The family was noted for its patriotism, and had offered no objection to the search, yet he showed that he was reluctant to give up. He stood meditatively before the fire, his hands clasped behind him, his glance roving about the room. Suddenly he started forward, and an excited "Ah!" ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... little sister, little sweetheart, 'ade! ade!' My little sweetheart, your meadow is half-way up the mountain; it's such a green spot on the eyeballs of a roving boy! and the chapel just above it, I shall see it as I've seen it a thousand times; and the cloud hangs near it, and moves to the door and enters, for it is an angel, not a cloud; a white angel gone in to pray ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to get away and bury himself and his grief in new surroundings. Then his eye was caught by one of the Admiralty recruiting posters in the window of a Whitehall post office. It conjured up a vision of a roving, care-free life . . . of illimitable spaces and great healing winds. . . . A life of hard living and hard drinking, when ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... sea. The scions of Montezuma's low-browed race Perhaps have seen that knotted, thorn-clad tree; Or sucked the cactus apples growing there. All these have passed, and passed the immigrants, Who bore the westward fever in their brain, The Norseman tang for roving in their veins; Who loved the plains as sailors love the sea, Braved danger, death, and found a resting place While traveling on ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... stood with fierce eyes roving to and fro about the clearing. At last they halted for a second time upon the girl. A low growl rumbled from the lion's throat. His lower jaw rose and fell, and the slaver drooled and dripped upon the dead face ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... day! How brightly the morning dewdrops twinkled on the leaves, like a sprinkling of liquid diamonds! Every flower seemed to greet him with silent laughter: "Aha, you've been playing truant, have you? Straying into alien precincts, roving in search of something newer and gaudier than anything you have here? Sunlight palls on you; gas is so much more festive! The scents of the fields are vulgar; finer the hot smells of the playhouse, more meet for a cultured nostril!" Of course Austin made all this nonsense up himself, but ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... The dog-star's hateful spell No evil brings unto the springs That from thy bosom well; Here oxen, wearied by the plough, The roving cattle here, Hasten in quest of certain rest ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... St. Lawrence, around the Bay of Quinte, and along the Niagara frontier, were occasional little clusters of log cabins. In the interior, except at the old French settlement in the western part of the Province, there was absolutely nothing that could properly be called a white settlement. Roving tribes of Indians spread their wigwams for a season along the shores of some of the larger streams, but the following season would probably find the site without any trace of their presence. A few representatives of the Six Nations had been settled ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... whose name had set her thoughts roving was handsome, as the glance at him already given might have foreshadowed. But his features had a graver impress than his age seemed to account for, and the sober tone of his letter to Susan implied that something had given ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... yet he could never bring himself to confess the fact, for he dreaded the blame of his townsmen, the anguish of the dead man's parents, the hate of his betrothed. It was believed that the killing was a murder, and that some roving Indian had done it. After years of conscience-darkened life, in which the face of his dead friend often arose accusingly before him, the unhappy wretch vowed that he would never again look his fellows openly in ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... that one is approaching the Orient appears in the semi-Oriental costumes. of the peasantry and roving gypsy bands, as we gradually near the Servian capital. An Oriental costume in Eszek is sufficiently exceptional to be a novelty, and so it is until one gets south of Peterwardein, when the national costumes of Slavonia and Croatia are gradually merged into the tasselled fez, the many-folded ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... for then it was that she felt the indescribable bliss of sharing our pleasures with those we love. What heart of sensibility has stood and coldly gazed on a scene over which the eye, that it loves to admire, is roving with delight? Who is there that has yet to learn, that if the strongest bond to love is propinquity, so is its tenderest tie, sympathy? In this manner did our lovely heroine pass a day of hitherto untasted ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... services and abilities. But I cannot help smiling at a sentence which I found in the account of him given in the "Dictionary of National Biography." It refers to his duties during the Franco-German War, and runs as follows: "The irritation of the Germans against England, and the number of roving Englishmen, made his duty not an easy one, but he was well qualified for it by his tact and geniality, and his action met with the ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... landscape take a Flemish interior. The home of the Borrows had been removed in the meantime, in accordance with the roving traditions of the family, from Norman Cross to Edinburgh and from Edinburgh ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... instructed. No man is so weak that he is ashamed to learn of, and is less ashamed to confess it; and he finds many times even in the dust, what others overlook and lose. Every man's presence is a kind of bridle to him, to stop the roving of his tongue and passions: and even impudent men look for this reverence from him, and distaste that in him which they suffer in themselves, as one in whom vice is ill-favoured and shews more scurvily than another. An unclean jest shall shame him more than a bastard ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... always a roving nature herself. She never would settle down quiet and take a husband from these parts. She was maid to our squire's lady then, and went to foreign parts with her; but folks say she's steadied down now wonderful. ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... every scholar, that all the true literature of the country—that which has life, and freedom, and humour—comes from the Pariahs. And was it different in those days, when Rabelais, and Von Hutten, and Giordano Bruno were, in their wise, Pariahs and Gipsies, roving from city to city, often wanting bread and dreading fire, but asking for ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... more we meet in yonder bowers; Absence has made me prone to roving; [iv] But older, firmer hearts than ours Have found ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... little towards my lady deferentially, his head just a little on one side, lending her an ear. By the gait of him he is looking another way. Yes; for now my lady turns, he turns too, and they halt front to front; his pallid visage half averted from her observation, his glittering eyes roving with bold stealth over the populous garden, and his thin-lipped, scarlet mouth working and twisting incessantly in the covert ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... have been in his roving life," he said, "here's one thing certain—he's spent a lot of time in Mexico and Central America. And—what was the name he told you to use as a password once you met his man, Hugh—wasn't ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... the faculty of wonder is so thoroughly infused, that it has inoculated the entire system, and forms an inherent, inexplicable, and almost elementary part of it. These persons sail about in their pleasure yachts, on roving expeditions, under a pretended 'right of search,' armed to the teeth, and boarding all sorts of crafts to obtain plunder for their favorite gratification. They are most uneasy and uncomfortable companions, having no ear for commonplace subjects of conversation, and no ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Sabbath, instead of wishing, as before, to stay at home, or to spend the day in roving about the fields, rivers, and forests, they choose statedly and punctually to attend public worship. In a word, their whole deportment, both at home and abroad, is improved, and to a greater extent than any, without witnessing ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... the far south-east a higher culture was brewing. By steps that have not yet been accurately traced legions of herdsmen and farmer-folk overspread our world, either absorbing or driving before them the roving hunters of the older dispensation. We term this, the earliest of true civilizations, 'neolithic', as if it mattered in the least whether your stone implement be chipped or polished to an edge. The real source of ...
— Progress and History • Various

... different ploy; he must stand stark against all encountering, nor cry a parley even with the lance at his throat. Oh, man! man! I had a delight in it in my time for all its trials. I carried claymore (so to name it, ours was a less handsome weapon, you'll observe), in the ranting, roving humour of a boy; I sailed and marched; it was fine to touch at foreign ports; it was sweet to hear the drums beat revally under ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... journey. Her lunch bag was on her back, her birch-bark hat on her head, and the goat horn which Peter had given her hung on a string around her neck. In her hand she carried a stout stick. Within the saeter inclosure the cows and smaller animals were roving back and forth from fence to fence impatiently. They knew that Bufar day had come, for along the wall of the saeter hut, in a row, stood the horses' packs, filled with butter tubs, cheese tubs, and cheese boxes; ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud

... from the Spaniards. These encounters frequently took place at the eastern entrance of the San Bernadino Straits, where the Dutch were accustomed to heave-to in anticipation of the arrival of their prizes. In this manner, constantly roving about the Philippine waters, they enriched themselves at the expense of their detested adversary, and, in a small degree, avenged themselves of the bloodshed and oppression which for over sixty years ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... shut them, every fool Can conjure up a world arriving somewhere, Resulting in what he may call perfection. Evil must soon or late succeed to good. There well may once have been a golden age: Why should we treat it as a poet's tale? Yet, in those hills that hung o'er Arcady, Some roving inebriate Daimon Begat him fair children On nymphs of the vineyard, On nymphs of the rock:— And in the heart of the forest Lay bound in white arms, In action creative a father Without a thought for his child:— A purposeless god, The forbear of men To corrupt, ape, inherit and spoil ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... responsible business, itself sufficient to occupy a man,—when divided with the oversight of his farm, overtasked his powers, and left him no leisure for poetic work, except from time to time crooning over a random song. Then the habits which his roving Excise life must have induced were, even to a soul less social than that of Burns, perilous in the extreme. The temptations he was in this way exposed to, Lockhart has drawn with a powerful hand. "From the castle to the cottage, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... the incident as fresh evidence of Walter's objectionable habit of roving, and nothing more. They felt no ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... lived a roving and non-religious life, although possessing no little tenderness of conscience. He was neither intemperate nor dishonest; he was not a law-breaker; he explicitly and indignantly declares:—"If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were hanged by the neck till ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... other, with a laugh. "Why, that idea was knocked on the head when the map was burnt. Even Chalk wouldn't go on a roving commission to dig over all the ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... from the treasury of the colony; and each had a magnificent lookout from his solitary sentry-box. Monadnock is in plain sight to the east, and Haystack to the north from the site of Fort Shirley and the Hoosacs to the west and Greylock overtopping them greeted the roving gaze of George Hall from the picketed ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... Snipers have a roving commission. They move from one part of the line to another, sometimes firing from carefully concealed loopholes in the parapet, sometimes from snipers' nests in trees or hedges. Often they creep out into the tall grass of ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall

... and trembling hand of which she complained were the first beginnings of a serious fit of illness. She went to bed that same afternoon, and did not leave it again for two weeks. Cold had taken violent hold of her system; fever set in and ran high; and half the time little Ellen's wits were roving in delirium. Nothing however could be too much for Miss Fortune's energies; she was as much at home in a sick room as in a well one. She flew about with increased agility; was upstairs and downstairs twenty times in ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... roving ceaselessly, we made our way towards the two silent ships. It seemed a quiet, peaceful world: an unlikely place for tragedy. The air was fresh and clean, although, as Dival had predicted, rarefied like ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... sort of self-constituted roving commission, to carry into effect a long-projected intention to make a week's tramp in "Dickens-Land," for purposes of health and recreation; to visit Gad's Hill, Rochester, Chatham, and neighbouring classical ground; to go over and verify some of the most important localities ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... to sixteen "slivers" are run together and the fibers drawn out in several stages until the soft rope is about an eighth of an inch in diameter, called "roving." This tends to get rid of any unevenness and makes the fibers all parallel. From this machine the roving is wound on a bobbin ready for ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... such as I, fine gentlemen," she said, and her sharp eyes were roving busily about the schooner, appraising values like a veritable pirate. "Keep thy courtesies for ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... his seventh hot biscuit with freshly churned butter that made his mouth water, "but eating houses and hotels, Mrs. Fairbanks, make a roving, homeless fellow like me desperate, and if a third helping of that exquisite apple sauce isn't out of order, I'll have another ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... views. A yellow-haired boy, being of paler wit, will suck his thumb upon a question. A touzled black exhibits a sulky absorption in his work. An indifferent brown, at best, runs for an answer to the kitchen. But red-haired and freckled lads are alive at once. Whether or not their roving spirit, which is the basis of their deeper and quicker knowledge, proceeds from the magic of the pigment, the fact yet remains that such boys are surer than a signpost to direct one to adventure. This truth is so general that ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... that we are not, in these days of alleged enlightenment, committing out of mere stupidity and thoughtlessness, the crime which Charles the Second perpetrated for his own amusement. He gave large tracts of England to his mistresses because they pleased his roving fancy. Now the power to dispense wealth has passed into the hands of the people, who buy the goods and services produced, and so decide what goods and services will find a market, and so will enrich their producers. Are ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... be out of place to remark, that being one of a party in the winter of 1830, travelling overland from Smyrna to Ephesus, we reached a place just before sunset where a roving band of Turcomans had encamped for the night. On nearing these people we observed that the women were preparing food for their supper, while the men were employed in branding with a hot iron, under the camel's upper lip, their own peculiar mark,—a very necessary precaution, it must be allowed, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various

... My four Sons calmly asleep in the North-Western rooms, my two orphan Grandsons to the South; the Servants, the Butler, my Daughter, all in their several apartments. Only my affectionate Wife, alarmed by my continued absence, had quitted her room and was roving up and down in the Hall, anxiously awaiting my return. Also the Page, aroused by my cries, had left his room, and under pretext of ascertaining whether I had fallen somewhere in a faint, was prying ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott

... out by hanging on Edm. Wyld, Esq., living in Blomesbury near London, on James Carle of Abendon, whose first wife was related to him, and on Sr Joh. Aubrey his kinsman, living sometimes in Glamorganshire and sometimes at Borstall near Brill in Bucks. He was a shiftless person, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased. And being exceedingly credulous, would stuff his many letters sent to A. W. with folliries and misinformations, which would sometimes guid him into the paths of errour." This example of bad English, and worse taste, was written after ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... what the roving and unsettled bands are called by white folks. Those that are on reservations and earning their own living, or a part of it,—for the Government helps them out considerably,—are called town Indians; those that live in wigwams, or tepees, and rove from place to place, subsisting on ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... arguers on slavery, race, etc., were only aware of the fact that such people as the primitive Greeks, or the ancestors of classical Greeks, that the ancestors of the Latins, that even the roving, robbing ancestors of the Anglo Saxons, in some way or other, have been anthropophagi, and worshipped fetishes; and even as thus called already civilized, they sacrificed men to gods,—could our great pro-slavers know all this, they would be more decent ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... as mysteriously as he came. "In Liberty County," says history, "there lived during the Revolution a man by the name of Robert Sallette, distinguished for his opposition to the Tories. It is not known with certainty to what particular command he was attached. He appears to have been a sort of roving character, doing things in his own way." Here is the mystery of romance to begin with. Here is the wanderer,—the character so dear ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... the Bantu are once more roving where European dwellings used to stand. And when the question is asked—why all this has happened? Why the heroic children of an heroic race, to which civilisation owes its most priceless blessings, should lie murdered there in that distant quarter of the globe? An invisible ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... not be idly spoken. It had become a sacrilege to mention carelessly the name of any departed one, especially in matters of disputes over worldy possessions. The unfortunate circumstances of her early childhood, together with the lack of written records of a roving people, placed a formidable barrier between her and her heritage. The fact was events of far greater importance to the tribe than her reincarnation had passed unrecorded in books. The verbal reports of the old-time men and women of the tribe were varied,—some were actually contradictory. ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... Des," he said, his weary eyes roving out over the turgid, yellow stream, "and she has been kind to you, though, God knows, you have played a man's part in all this. She has placed in your possession something for which at least five men have died in vain, something that has filled my thoughts, sleeping and waking, for more ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... and a navy had returned unpaid, and sore with defeat. The town was scoured by mutinous seamen and soldiers, roving even into the palace of the sovereign. Soldiers without pay form a society without laws. A band of captains rushed into the duke's apartment as he sat at dinner; and when reminded by the duke of a late proclamation, forbidding all soldiers coming to court in troops, on pain of hanging, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... only groan. To his mind it seemed that they must be keeping open house for all the roving creatures at large in that section of the country. And besides, who could say what manner of men these two with the trained bear might turn out to be? For his part, the one who talked so well, looked very suspicious, to say the least; and why should an educated man be tramping ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... appointed a second lieutenant in the regular Army. Often I have heard him tell of the wearisome march across the plains to California with his regiment, long in advance of civilization and railroads, when most of that journey through the desert was made perilous by roving bands of hostile Indians. Retiring from the Army, he married and settled at the historic White House, in lower Virginia. There he was the typical Southern country gentleman of refinement and culture, taking an active interest in agriculture and the public affairs of his community. When ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various

... the ancient local temples, the wild myths of the local legends, the sacra which were the exclusive property of old-world families, Butadae or Eumolpidae. These are clearly survivals from a stage of Greek culture earlier than the city state, earlier than the heroic age of the roving Greek Vikings, and far earlier than the Greek colonies. They belong to that conservative and immobile period when the tribe or clan, settled in its scattered kraals, lived a life of agriculture, hunting and cattle-breeding, engaged in no larger ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... narrow ravines of the Rocky Mountains which open out into the rolling prairies of the Saskatchewan there stood some years ago a log hut, or block-house, such as the roving hunters of the Far West sometimes erected as temporary homes during the inclement winter of ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... Megara lifts a noble cone. It is an old friend, Acro-Corinthus. The plain within the hills is sprinkled with thriving farmsteads, green vineyards, darker olive groves. The stony hill-slopes are painted red by countless poppies. One hears the tinkling of the bells of roving goats. Thus the more distant view; while at the very foot of the hill of vision rises a temple with proud columns and pediments,—the fane of Demeter the "Earth Mother" and the seat of her Mysteries, renowned ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... seen how in his anxious quest for the child who is to kill him, Kansa has dispatched his demon warriors on roving commissions, authorizing them to attack and kill all likely children. Many children have in this way been slaughtered but Kansa is still uncertain whether his prime purpose has been fulfilled. He has no certain knowledge ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... the sound of the Mohawk war-cry. Westward, the population thinned rapidly; northward, it soon disappeared. Northern New Hampshire, the whole of Vermont, and Western Massachusetts had no human tenants but the roving ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... ship," replied the second mate, with a slightly sarcastic smile. "These men have taken a fancy to lead a free, roving life, and to make me their captain, and I am inclined to fall in with their fancy, and to ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... to sail in a clipper with a jolly crew and a roving commission; take your prizes, share and share alike, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... streams were reduced to a trickle among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The second growth of stunted timber, showing everywhere the scars of the wasting rapacity of man, stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving life, from the cattle to the woodchucks and even the field mice, had moved down to hide itself in the thicker growths near the water courses or had stolen away into the ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... great monolith; beginning, brave hearts, another of the few stages which still lay between them and the guillotine. Then in the cottage there remained only Michel and Jeanne. She sat by the dying embers, silent, and lost in thought. He leaned against the wall, his eyes roving ceaselessly, but always when his gaze met hers it fell. Barbaroux had conquered him. It was not until Jeanne had risen to close the door, and he was alone, that he wrung his hands, and muttered: "Five crowns! ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... yet the wind was howling in the woods, The roving thunder bellowing in the clouds, Before the dawn had risen in ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... in the street seemed not disturbed by his rapidly swelling audience. He stood in the place he had selected, his insolent eyes roving over the assembled company, his thin, expressive lips opening a very little to allow words ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... up and down he goes, his weakly head bent upon his chest, his fierce eyes roving restlessly to and fro. He is still invalid enough to prefer the chair to the more treacherous ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... night air with considerable severity, "I don't know what to make of you. You might have caught your death of cold, roving out at such an hour. But there," he continued, more indulgently; "wipe your feet on the mat and come in. You're ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington

... Herman's roving disposition, and a desire to support himself independently of family assistance, soon led him to ship as cabin boy in a New York vessel bound for Liverpool. He made the voyage, visited London, and returned in the same ship. 'Redburn: His First Voyage,' published ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... Dr. Taylor on the same day:—'I came back last Tuesday from France. Is not mine a kind of life turned upside down? Fixed to a spot when I was young, and roving the world when others are contriving to sit still, I am wholly unsettled. I am a kind of ship with a wide sail, and without an anchor.' Notes and Queries. 6th S., ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... clamoring for telephone systems, and one after another they failed. Frederick A. Gower was the first of these. He was an adventurous chevalier of business who gave up an agent's contract in return for a right to become a roving propagandist. Later he met a prima donna, fell in love with and married her, forsook telephony for ballooning, and lost his life in attempting to fly across the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... Nottingham, roving far afield. The Sheriff of Nottingham had become angered at the impudent robberies of late, and now all of his foresters had spread themselves about Sherwood in the hope of making such a capture of the outlaws as would please their master and bring substantial reward ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... that it was the grave of a white man. It is impossible to describe the rush of mingled feelings that filled the soul of the young hunter as he leaned on the muzzle of his rifle and looked at this solitary resting-place of one who, doubtless like himself, had been a roving hunter. Had he been young or old when he fell? had he a mother in the distant settlement who watched and longed and waited for the son that was never more to gladden her eyes? had he been murdered, or had he died there and been buried by his sorrowing comrades? ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... that I know, indeed, are unanimously of the opinion that no girl in her right senses has ever been actually seduced since the world began; whenever they bear of a case, they sympathize with the man. Yet more, the normal woman of lively charms, roving about among men, always tries to draw the admiration of those who have previously admired elsewhere; she prefers the professional to the amateur, and estimates her skill by the attractiveness of the huntresses who have hitherto stalked it. The iron-faced suffragist ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... and trickled stimulants down her throat. Then sat like statues of grief about the bed; only every now and then eye sought eye, and endeavoured to read what the other thought. Was there hope? Was there none? And by-and-bye, so roving is the mind, especially when the body is still, these statues began to thrill with thoughts of the past as ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Messiah, this is not well of you! but whose utters a word, I will throw her and truss her up with her own girdle[FN161]!" He kept walking in the direction of the sound and when he reached the further side he looked and behold, a stream was gushing and flowing, and antelopes at large were frisking and roving, and wild cattle amid the pasture moving, and birds expressed joy and gladness in their divers tongues, and that place was purfled with all manner flowers and green herbs, even as a poet described it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... Charles L. Eastlake, the able Keeper of the National Gallery. From 1859 to the autumn of 1862 Mr. Eastlake contributed eight-and-twenty articles of importance, one of them in verse, and the majority headed "Our Roving Correspondent." "Jack Easel on the Continent" and "The Royal Academy Exhibition" were the subjects of many of them, and their note was lively enough to cause his papers to be looked forward ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... and also on the Black Hills road, running off stock, the Fifth Cavalry was sent out to scout the country between the Indian agencies and the hills. The command operated on the South Fork of the Cheyenne and at the foot of the Black Hills for about two weeks, having several engagements with roving bands of Indians during the time. General Wesley Merritt—who had at that time but lately received his promotion to the colonelcy of the Fifth Cavalry—now came out and took control of the regiment. I was sorry that the command was taken from General Carr, because under him it had made its ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... very gladly pay you liberally for any damage done. I am an officer in the Confederate service, and the breaking down of our horses compelled us to take refuge here in order that this lady might not be exposed to danger from roving gangs of guerillas. The dog attacked us in the dark, and we killed him in order ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... thus stifled in its birth in the capital, but from this time it began to spread in the country, and when, at last, Rosalino Pilo landed near Messina on the 10th of April, he found that several armed bands were already roving the mountains, as yet almost unperceived by the Government, which had gone to sleep again after its exhibition of energy on the 4th. Events were, however, to awake it from its slumbers, and to cause it to renew its vigilance. It required all Rosalino ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... purpose which has been seeking and waiting for the opportunity. This feature of the crime not only makes it the most fiendishly brutal, but it adds to the terror of the situation in the thinly settled country communities. No man can leave his family at night without the dread that some roving Negro ruffian is watching and waiting for this opportunity. The swift punishment which invariably follows these horrible crimes doubtless acts as a deterring effect upon the Negroes in that immediate neighborhood for a short time. ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... her fettered youth. He had bought this old Spanish estate, with its near vineyard and its outlying leagues covered with wild cattle, partly from that strange contradictory predilection for peaceful husbandry common to men who have led a roving life, and partly as a check to her growing and feverish desire for change and excitement. He had at first enjoyed with an almost parental affection her childish unsophisticated delight in that world he had already wearied of, and which he had been prepared ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... because their land force was unable even to hold its own against the neighbouring states, while with a powerful fleet they could both beat off the barbarians and make themselves masters of the whole of Greece. Thus, as Plato says, instead of stationary soldiers as they were, he made them roving sailors, and gave rise to the contemptuous remark that Themistokles took away from the citizens of Athens the shield and the spear, and reduced them to the oar and the rower's bench. This, we are told by Stesimbrotus, he effected after quelling the opposition ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... husbands get inflated. Of course if there are children there are complications, but a woman generally attends to complications. Haven't you ever noticed the way a first-year widower walks? In his own eyes he's a target, and those eyes are always roving to see who is looking his way. He's right, for a good many women look. Men have a large capacity for loving, and many of them deserve ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... Minneapolis. He was the first Sioux chief to welcome the Protestant missionaries among his people, and a well-known character in those pioneer days. He brought us word that some of the peaceful sugar-makers near us on the river had been attacked and murdered by roving Ojibways. This news disturbed us not a little, for we realized that we too might become the victims of an Ojibway war party. Therefore we all felt some uneasiness from this time until we returned ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... velvety material; a white, loose blouse, and what seemed a dark blue skirt. Round her neck hung an old-fashioned link of coral beads. Her brow was low but broad, and her hair, brushed back from the forehead, was bunched large behind, but not below, the head. Her roving eyes, gradually overcoming the clinging gloom of the place, were dark brown and unnaturally bright. Half open in an empty smile, her lips disclosed white but somewhat irregular teeth. Seen plainly in such surroundings, she was—to me—a pitiable and undesirable ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... is the sign of health in temperament, provided it be not due to mere callousness. From that horrible quality Diderot assuredly was the furthest removed of any one of his time. Now and always he walked with a certain large carelessness of spirit. He measured life with a roving and liberal eye. Circumstance and conventions, the words under which men hide things, the oracles of common acceptance, the infinitely diversified properties of human character, the many complexities of our conduct and destiny—all these he watched playing freely around him, and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... people have preserved their character, customs, morals, and speech as unchanged through centuries as the Arabs, and have done so in spite of the most manifold changes in the world at large. They were nomads, shepherds and hunters roving over little-known deserts, while Egypt and Assyria, Greece and Persia, Rome and Byzantium rose and fell. And then, inspired by one idea, these same nomads suddenly rose in their turn and for a long time became the masters of the most beautiful valley of the old world, and were the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... Was hanging her head through the long golden hours; And early one morning I saw her tears falling, And heard a low gossiping talk in the bowers. The yellow Nasturtium, a spinster all faded, Was telling a Lily what ailed the poor Rose: "That wild roving Bee who was hanging about her, Has jilted her ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... slowly along. They were in holiday attire and the bright colors of the kimonos and obis made a bewildering and brilliant picture. At intervals booths had been erected, decorated with lanterns, where refreshments were sold, and nearby a roving band of musicians and dancers were entertaining ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes

... saw the promoter enter from his car. At almost the same instant the roving eyes of the Senora seemed to catch sight of him. He came over and spoke to the de Moches, standing with them several minutes. I fancied that not for an instant did she allow the gaze of any one else to distract her in the projection of whatever weird ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... Eliot has reminded us, the baptism of passion is by aspersion rather than immersion. Something he must have known of love, or he could not write as he has done; but it is the superficial gallantry of a flirt rather than the impassioned self-surrender of a lover; of a gay bachelor, with roving critical eye, heart whole yet fancy free, too practised a judge of beauty to become its slave. Without emotion, without reverence, but with keen relishing appreciation, he versifies Pyrrha's golden curls, and Lycoris' ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... travelled and the untravelled kind. The travelled, formerly rare, is now dreadfully common in these countries. The old travelling bore was, as I find him aptly described—"A pretender to antiquities, roving, majestic-headed, and sometimes little better than crazed; and being exceedingly credulous, he would stuff his many letters with fooleries and misinformations"—vide a life published by Hearne— Thomas Hearne—him to whom Time said, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... hoe with the last stroke around the last hill of corn, a fat fishing-worm wriggled under his very eyes, and the growing man lapsed swiftly into the boy again. He gave another quick dig, the earth gave up two more squirming treasures, and with a joyful gasp he stood straight again—his eyes roving as though to search all creation for help against the temptation that now was his. His mother had her face uplifted toward the top of the spur; and following her gaze, he saw a tall mountaineer slouching down the path. ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... this further expansiveness of our lady's empire. But Benham knew that no aristocrat can be jealous; jealousy he held to be the vice of the hovel and farmstead and suburban villa, and at an enormous expenditure of will he ignored Amanda's waving flags and roving glances. So, too, he denied that Amanda who was sharp and shrewd about money matters, that flash of an Amanda who was greedy for presents and possessions, that restless Amanda who fretted at any cessation of excitement, and that darkly ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... irresistible with Sophia. But his personality had paled before the tremendous drama into which the poor romance-loving soul was so suddenly plunged, and in which in spite of all her woe she found an awful kind of fascination. Failing to read any depth of admiration in her roving eye, Rupert promptly abandoned grandiloquence, and resuming his usual voice and manner, he dropped his orders upon her heat of agitation like a cool relentless stream under which her last protest ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... expedition. The common people regarded, not merely with apathy, but with terror, the prospect of a voyage, that was to take the mariner from the safe and pleasant seas which he was accustomed to navigate, and send him roving on the boundless wilderness of waters, which tradition and superstitious fancy had peopled with innumerable ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... the inhabitants of the moon, by these means, had arrived at such a command of their energies, such an enviable state of perfectibility, as to control the elements, and navigate the boundless regions of space. Let us suppose a roving crew of these soaring philosophers, in the course of an aerial voyage of discovery among the stars, should chance to alight upon this outlandish planet. And here I beg my readers will not have ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... marvelous revolution in his affairs; he, who hitherto had not one town, market, or seaport in his possession, who had nothing for the subsistence of his men but what he pillaged from day to day, who had no place of retreat or basis of operation, but was roving, as it were, with a huge troop of banditti, now became master of the best provinces and towns of Italy, and of Capua itself, next to Rome the most flourishing and opulent city, all which came over to him, and submitted ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... conditional liberty. I never succeeded in extracting from him a chronological account of his travels, but I could gather from his occasional remarks that he had wandered over a great part of European Russia. Evidently he had been in his youth what is colloquially termed "a roving blade," and had by no means confined himself to the trade which he had learned during his four years of apprenticeship. Once he had helped to navigate a raft from Vetluga to Astrakhan, a distance of about two thousand ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... the storms are threatening, The cavern doth mutter, the greenwood moan! Billows are breaking, the damsel's heart aching, Thus in the dark night she singeth alone, He eye upward roving: ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... State of Maine," said Mr. Butters, slowly, his eyes roving about the sunlit garden; "take it when it's good—when it is good—it's good, sometimes! Not but what I've thought myself I should like to see furrin parts before I go. Don't want to appear ignorant where I'm goin', you understand. Mis' Tree to ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... hath a roving eye, Palest blue—a candid feature Which informs the passer-by Phyllis is a flighty creature; Golden locks and fair complexion Also point ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... in roving weather, when we found him shifting pack on a steep trail, that I observed certain of his belongings done up in green canvas bags, the veritable "green bag" of English novels. It seemed so incongruous a reminder ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... and his eye, roving the deck for a means of escape, lit on the brig's boat, which the pirates had tied astern after reboarding the sloop. She was trailing at the end of a painter, her bows rising and falling on the choppy waves. He waited only long enough to see that the Captain succeeded in freeing Jeremy, then ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... last week, and immediately decided to invite her to Fletcher's Hall. For, Constance, let me whisper it, the old ladies—bless their hearts!—are killing me. This person, Ida Seymour by name, is a spinster of some forty winters, a kind of roving, charitable star, from what I gather, who spends her life visiting from place to place with a trunkful of fancy work, pious books, and innocent sources of amusement,—a fairy godmother to old ladies, pauper children, and bazaars. My vanity ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema

... bear about me; wherefore (saving only my good friend Nicholas Frant who ... perished) I have ever been a solitary man walking alone and distrustful of my fellows. For, Martin, I have here the secret of a treasure that hath been the dream and hope of roving adventurers along the Main this many a year—a treasure beyond price. Men have sought it vainly, have striven and fought, suffered and died for it, have endured plague, battle, shipwreck, famine, have ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... rarely joined us, we were often wont to hold our evening revels in this spot; and the high cliffs, circling either side in the form of a bay, tolerably well concealed our meetings from the gaze of the vulgar. It is true (for these cliffs were perforated with numerous excavations) that some roving peasant, mariner, or perchance smuggler, would now and then, at low water, intrude upon us. But our London Nereids and courtly Tritons were always well pleased with the interest of what they graciously ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is a collection of picturesque short stories of the romantic Creoles of New Orleans. Jean-ah-Poquelin, the story of an old recluse, is most artistically told. There are few incidents; Cable merely describes the former roving life of Jean, tells how suddenly it stopped, how he never again left the old home where he and an African mute lived, and how Jean's younger brother mysteriously disappeared, and the suspicion of his murder rested upon Jean's shoulders. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... below who had been alive only minutes earlier had been close friends of his; Shann had never known anyone but acquaintances in his short, roving life. Most people had ignored him completely except to give orders, and one or two had been actively malicious—like Garth Thorvald. Shann grimaced at a certain recent memory, and then that grimace faded into wonder. If young Thorvald hadn't purposefully ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... old fellow, for many a time we would have some pretty hard knocks and duckings in our business on the rivers and railroads; but I was well and hearty—and then I was of a roving disposition, and enjoyed the life I was leading—so I said: "Bill, you go up there and take a rest just as long as you like; but for me, I could not think of settling down on a wharf-boat, with nothing but cow-boys to break the monotony. I'll stick ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... cause to lament this unhappy condition of things; scarce one that has not personally suffered, from the inroads of the savages. I might speak of houses pillaged and burnt; of maize-fields laid waste to feed the horses of the roving marauder; of sheep and cattle driven off to desert fastnesses; bah! what are all these? What signify such trifling misfortunes, compared with that other calamity, which almost every family in the land may lament—the loss of one or more of its members— wife, daughter, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... ready to make his home in Kentucky; and accident at last seems to have thrown one man into that country, whose story, upon his return, made some anxious to go there. This was John Finley, a backwoodsman of North Carolina. He was in the habit of roving about and trading with the Indians. In the year 1767, he, with certain companions as fearless as himself, led on from place to place by the course of trade, wandered far into Kentucky. Here he remained for some time. It was a very ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip

... in Keighley, my roving nature again asserted itself, and I set off on a tramping expedition, with two companions, in to Lancashire. Going over The Moss we were overtaken by a severe thunderstorm, and were soon drenched to the skin by ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... European sense, and decorative to the superlative degree, on Greek vase and sculptured wall. Here in rhythmic curves, she dandles lovely Cupid on her toe; serves as vestal virgin at a woodland shrine; wears the bronze helmet of Minerva; makes laws, or as Penelope, the wife, wearily awaits her roving lord. She moves in august majesty, a sore-tried queen, and leaps in merry laughter as a care-free slave; pipes, sings and plies the distaff. Sauntering on, down through Gothic Europe, Tudor England, the adolescent Renaissance, ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... guardian angel. She remained with them until the evening of their masterly retreat, and until the wounded men of the corps in the hospitals were all safely across. While she was in Fredericksburg, after the battle of the 13th, some soldiers of the corps who had been roving about the city, came to her quarters bringing with great difficulty a large and very costly and elegant carpet. "What is this for?" asked Miss Barton. "It is for you, ma'am," said one of the soldiers; "you have been so good to us, that we wanted ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... and looked over. Did the light show through the tarpaulin? Alack!—there must be a rent somewhere—for he saw a dim glow-worm light beyond the cliff, on the dark rib of the mountain. It was invisible from below, but any roving eye from the top would be caught by it in an instant. In a second he had raced along the edge, dived in and out of the blocks, guiding his way by a sort of bat's instinct, till he reached the rocky stairway, which he descended at imminent ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... dazzling doctrine that to be is to last, or rather to feel oneself endure. This is a hypostasis of "true" (i.e. immediately felt) duration. In a sensuous day-dream past feelings survive in the present, images of the long ago are shuffled together with present sensations, the roving imagination leaves a bright wake behind it like a comet, and pushes a rising wave before it, like the bow of a ship; all is fluidity, continuity without identity, novelty without surprise. Hence, too, the doctrine of freedom: ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... a song; but the music, Though simply pure and sweet, Brought back to better pathways The reckless roving feet. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... his plan to attract attention to himself. No one, however, appeared to notice him. The pool-players were noisily intent on their game, the same crowd of motley-robed Mexicans hung over the reeking bar. Gale's roving glance soon fixed upon the man he took to be Rojas. He recognized the huge, high-peaked, black sombrero with its ornamented band. The Mexican's face was turned aside. He was in earnest, excited colloquy with a dozen or more comrades, most of whom were sitting ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... was standing in the doorway of the eating place, his eyes roving about as though looking for somebody, but Jack did not know him, nor did the stranger show any sign of interest in the pony ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster

... particularly that unmeaning look which the eye "bent on vacuity" has, resembling the inexpressive glare of the glass eye of a wax figure; that indefinite sweep of the eye which ranges from one side to the other of an assembly, resting nowhere; and that tremulous, roving cast of the eye, and winking of the eyelid, which is in direct contrast to an open, collected, manly expression ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... many instances the homesteads were left to the old men, women and children. The excitement of the chase and the wild freedom of the plains had a fascination that many could not resist, so much so that the king had to promulgate an edict, to stop, under heavy penalties, this roving life of his Canadian subjects, as their nomadic tendencies interfered with the ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... barren spot for headquarters. Either a hermit, anxious to escape all intercourse with humanity, or some outlaw hiding from arrest, would be likely to select so isolated a place in which to live. To them it would be ideal. Away from all trails, where not even widely roving cattlemen would penetrate, in midst of a desert avoided by Indians because of lack of game,—a man might hide here year after year without danger of discovery. Yet such a one would not be likely to welcome their coming, and they were without arms. But Keith was not a man ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... thread; and before this can be done, it must pass through three other machines. The first, or "slubber," gives it a very slight twist, just enough to suggest what is coming later, and of course in doing this makes it smaller. The cotton changes its name at every operation, and now it is called "roving." It has taken one long step forward, for now it is not coiled up in cans, but is wound on "bobbins," or great spools. The second machine, the "intermediate speeder," twists it a very little more and winds it on fresh ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan

... launch neared the mouth of the river a yawl-rigged craft with an auxiliary engine had just entered it. Her captain was sitting on deck with his right hand grasping the wheel, his body leaning forward, rigid as bronze, while his roving eye scanned water and sky, reefs, banks and keys. A roll of the wheel, and the launch darted toward him. When within a hundred yards the whir of the big engine and the chugging of the two-cycle motor of the yawl stopped, and as the boats were ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... than he could have jumped across. It was a narrow arroyo or gully, varying in width from twelve to twenty feet, and averaging fifteen feet in depth. It ran almost due north and south for a distance of five miles, through a bare, level prairie tenanted only by roving cattle and horses—if one excepts rabbits, prairie dogs, rattlesnakes, owls, lizards, and scorpions. There was no vegetation except grease-wood, cactus, and sagebrush. In heavy rains or during sudden meltings of the snow back on the mountains, each of several ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... don't mind Nick. He's got some sense. But I won't have Max, Allegro. He is not to come near me. I've found him out, and I hate him!" The deep voice suddenly grew deeper. A flame of fierce resentment leaped up in the roving eyes. "I know now exactly why he has been so attentive all this time. I thought—I used to think—he was in love with me—like other men. But I know now that he was only making a study of me, because he knew that I was going mad. Bruce ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... the extravagance of a romantic attachment; but are the unhallowed fruits of cheap and vulgar prostitution, the inspiration of casual amours, and the chorus of habitual debauchery. He is at pains to let the world know that he is still fonder of roving, than of loving; and that all the Caras and the Fannys, with whom he holds dalliance in these pages, have had each a long series of preceding lovers, as highly favoured as their present poetical paramour: ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... Little Rock were reviewed by Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, late of the Army of the Potomac. He lost a leg at the battle of Gettysburg, which incapacitated him for active service, so President Lincoln gave him a sort of roving commission to visit and inspect all the western troops. In conducting the review at Little Rock, on account of his maimed condition he rode along the line in an open carriage. The day was exceedingly hot, the troops on our side of the river were reviewed on low grounds where the air was stifling, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... coffee brown, with the lean lithe grace of youth garbed in the picturesque regalia of the vaquero, Flandrau was a taking enough picture to hold the roving eye of any girl. A good many centered upon him now, as he sauntered forward toward the Cullison box cool and easy and debonair. More than one pulse quickened at sight of him, for his gallantry, his peril and his boyishness ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... A roving war-party stumbled upon one of Boone's companions and killed him, and the others then left Boone and journeyed home; but his brother came out to join him, and the two spent the winter together. Self-reliant, fearless, and ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt



Words linked to "Roving" :   travel, travelling, rove, drifting, unsettled, traveling



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