"Shifting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sudden flashes of fire and candle light that followed revealed always some white, fearful face thrust out into the black night, in the hope of hearing the shouts of the home-coming men. Joan could not keep away from the door; and the yawning of Denas, her shifting movements, her uncontrolled sleepiness, irritated Joan. In great anxiety, companionship not perfectly sympathetic is irritating; mere mortals quiver under its infliction. For Denas could not perceive any special ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... ought to be particularly solemn. Well, the lion sniffed and sniffed, beginning at my ankle and slowly nosing away up to my thigh. I thought that he was going to get hold then, but he did not. He only growled softly, and went back to the ox. Shifting my head a little I got a full view of him. He was about the biggest lion I ever saw, and I have seen a great many, and he had a most tremendous black mane. What his teeth were like you can see—look there, pretty big ones, ain't they? ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... and her it was, Cornelia, the daughter of a man who had been four times consul, that Csar was required to divorce: but he spurned the haughty mandate, and carried his determination to a triumphant issue, notwithstanding his life was at stake, and at one time saved only by shifting his place of concealment every night; and this young lady it was who afterwards became the mother of his only daughter. Both mother and daughter, it is remarkable, perished prematurely, and at critical periods of Csar's life; for it is probable enough that these irreparable ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... not their concern; its means of livelihood was not their anxiety. Their preoccupations, good and bad alike, related to frontiers and nationalities, to the balance of power, to imperial aggrandizements, to the future enfeeblement of a strong and dangerous enemy, to revenge, and to the shifting by the victors of their unbearable financial burdens on to the ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... world, had been exposed by the combination of French with Russian schemes of aggrandizement. If Canning, left without an ally in Europe, had called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old, his Whig successors might well look with some satisfaction on that shifting of the weights which had brought over one of the Great Powers to the side of England, and anticipate, in the concert of the two great Western States, the establishment of a permanent force in European politics which should hold in check the reactionary influences of Vienna ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... The only place that I know of on the road is Lawrenceburg. That is about forty miles from here, and I have heard that the Yankees are on the line from there right and left. I believe our troops are at Florence; but I am not sure about that, because both parties are constantly shifting their position, and I hear very little, as you may suppose, of what is being done. Anyhow, I think we cannot do better than go on until we strike the railway, keep along by that till we get within a short distance of Mount Pleasant, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... work shifting the big aluminum barrels from trucks into Building B. Carrying the wooden crates and the paper-wrapped parcels up the ramps and to the side of the building facing the big secret structure labeled A. They worked until five o'clock. Then they filed ...
— The Stowaway • Alvin Heiner
... was in a vortex of wonder, grief and speculation. It was the first great lesson of his life, and he would learn it well, the more that it was so severe and incomprehensible. But sleep and fatigue overcame Hubert at length. The light from the fire no more danced with his shifting curls, but settled down in a steady golden glow over the mass that mingled its yellow-brown with the black beard of the stricken man. For the father would not lay away his sleeping child. He held him close, as the something, the all that was left to him of his lost love. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... escape. For an instant his hand shot towards his sword-hilt, but his reason told him that he could scarce expect to fight his way past us. Then he glanced round, but any retreat would lead him back to the men whom he had betrayed. So he stood sullen and stolid, with heavy, downcast face and shifting, restless eye, the very type and symbol ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lawyer, my dear. You have a clever trick of evading an awkward question, and shifting the blame from your own shoulders. You will excuse me if I say that I can scarcely consent to discuss my own conduct with a girl of your years. The point I mentioned was your own conduct in ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and the nice fat roll of money you just stole from the Three Towers teacher," Chet went on, his glance shifting from the man to the pocketbook with the money stuffed hastily in it where the man had left it on the ground. "You thought it was easy, didn't you? Well, you didn't know you had me to reckon with." Chet was boy enough to want to strut a little. Never ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... the trial. As the sun rose and the day became warm, their breathing grew quicker; and the sweat rolled off their faces as they ran across the rough prairie sward, up and down the long inclines, now and then shifting their heavy rifles from one shoulder to the other. But they were in good training, and they did not have to halt. At last they reached stretches of bare ground, sun-baked and grassless, where the trail ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... discussion of any idea a term may get its meaning slightly changed. In that slight change of meaning lurks the error illustrated here, ready to lead to false reasoning and weakening of the argument. Certain words of common use are likely to such shifting meanings—republic, equality, representative, monarchy, socialistic. Any doubtful passage in which such an error is suspected should be reduced to its syllogistic form to be ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... and Mr. Bayley and 'no one else.' George is invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter and 'no one else'—just those words. The 'absolu' (do you remember Balzac's beautiful story?) is just you and 'no one else,' the other elements being mere uncertainties, shifting while one looks ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... met; his shifting, beady eyes were held forcibly with many a twitching, by her gray eyes. For two awful seconds they stood ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... sounds from many a tongue, Telling of Argos' steeds, Mycenaes's gold. For me stern Sparta forges no such spell, No, nor Larissa's plain of richest mould, As bright Albunea echoing from her cell. O headlong Anio! O Tiburnian groves, And orchards saturate with shifting streams! Look how the clear fresh south from heaven removes The tempest, nor with rain perpetual teems! You too be wise, my Plancus: life's worst cloud Will melt in air, by mellow wine allay'd, Dwell you in ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... that we could not keep dry in the vessel below, for it leaked there as if it were open, or not much better. We had an English minister on board, who had been called to the English church at Rotterdam. He lay and prayed, and groaned, as hard and loud as if he would die of fear.[471] The wind shifting to the southwest we ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... a house," said the Master, "But not on the shifting sand, Mid the wreck and roar of tempests, A house that ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... Adriatic weds in vain, [21] And Death sits brooding o'er Campania's plain; O'er Baltic shores and through Hercynian groves, Stirring the soul, the mighty impulse moves; Art plies his tools, arid Commerce spreads her sail, And wealth is wafted in each shifting gale. The sons of Odin tread on Persian looms, And Odin's daughters breathe distilled perfumes; Loud minstrel Bards, in Gothic halls, rehearse The Runic rhyme, and "build the lofty verse:" The Muse, whose liquid notes were wont to swell To the soft breathings ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
... when Chance comes round collecting the properties, are silly enough to sulk and protest, as tho they were being robbed of their own instead of only returning loans. You know the kind of thing on the stage—tragic actors shifting as the play requires from Creon to Priam, from Priam to Agamemnon; the same man, very likely, whom you saw just now in all the majesty of Cecrops or Erechtheus, treads the boards next as a slave, because the author tells ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... up in cloud-land Trail their fringes over all, Shifting shadows gray and purple, Which ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... stunted palms have every appearance of having remained as they now are for centuries. The hills are huge groups, some single ones, glaring in sun above the rest, and others pyramidical. The sand at times is also very firm to the camel's tread. Shall I say a terra firma in loose shifting sands? But for the water of Mislah it is extremely brackish, nay salt. I had observed between the sand-hills small valleys, or bottoms, covered with, a whitish substance which I now find salt. Both men and camels are alike condemned to drink this water. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... strength to strength; whilst those others whose devotion is confined to the overseeing eye and to studious thought, she makes more manly, rousing them with cock-crow, and compelling them to be up and doing in many a long day's march. [5] Since, whether in city or afield, with the shifting seasons each necessary labour has its ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... fear of running into anything in their march through the darkness across the shifting sands. And only an occasional flash of the emergency light to check the compass was necessary to keep them moving in the ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... as we were on the same bluff-level as Dalles City, we met no lofty precipices. We were constantly in view of the river, separated from its Oregon brink at the farthest by about half a mile of the dreariest dunes of shifting sand ever seen by an amateur in deserts. The most arid tracts along the Platte could not rival this. The wind was violent when we left Dalles City, and possessed the novel faculty of blowing simultaneously from all points of the compass. It increased with every mile of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... looked as if he would fall, he suddenly charged in again. But his powerful strength restored, Astro stepped back and waited for an opening. Coxine threw a whistling right for Astro's head. The Venusian ducked, shifting his weight slightly, and drove his right squarely into the pirate's face. His eyes suddenly glassy and vacant, Bull Coxine sank to the deck, ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... the ship softly to rest close to where Chet lay, then placed the limp form on the self-adjusting floor of the control room. There must be no shifting of the body as the pull of gravitation ceased. Soft blankets made ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... neighborhood of the two countries the relations which exist between Mexico and the United States are just cause for gratification. We have a common boundary of over 1,500 miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific. Much of it is marked only by the shifting waters of the Rio Grande. Many thousands of Mexicans are residing upon our side of the line and it is estimated that over 40,000 Americans are resident in Mexican territory and that American investments in Mexico amount to over seven hundred million dollars. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... when he had filled his pipe. "You boys are in trouble. What is it?" he asked, shifting and twitching in his seat—refusing an ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... starting up from an easy posture which he had secured for himself after fifteen minutes shifting and changing. "A girl! You, Dacres, spooney! A fellow like you, and a ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... habits of living are paralleled by changing habits of thought. Old ideas are jostled by new every hour of the day. At the table, on the street, in office or store, at the theatre or church the currents of thought are different. Social contacts are more numerous, relations are more shifting, intellectual affinities and repulsions are felt constantly; mental interactions are so frequent that stability of beliefs and independence of thought give way to flexibility and uncertainty and openness to ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... bait, to which he clings with such selfish obstinacy that he sacrifices his liberty and his life. However, the lady soon shows the same grasping tendency, and their deserted tenement is filled by the shifting sands. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... tried it honestly, and have not been contented with the superficial cleaning up of outsides, which consists in shifting the dirt into another place only, not in getting rid of it, I know what met you almost as soon as you began, like some great black rock that rises in a mountain-pass, and forbids all farther advance—the consciousness that you were not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... expedition which cost England so many lives, ignorantly and needlessly sacrificed to ministerial disregard of physical laws and its consequences,—lessons which, unfortunately, seem to have but little effect on cabinets, owing to their shifting personelle, England following up the disasters of Carthagena with the still greater blunder of the Walcheren expedition, where, out of England's small available physical war material, nearly forty thousand men were either left to fatten the swamps ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... double life at once and become his own self in reality; failing to do that he would meet madness. He recognised this. No man's brain could stand what he had been going through for long; had he been left to himself he might have adapted his mind gradually to the perpetual shifting from Jones to Rochester and vice versa. The woman had brought things to a crisis. The horror that had now suddenly fallen on him, the horror of the return of that awful feeling of negation, the horror of losing himself, cast all other ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... you had left him in London!" retorted Mrs. Glenarm, shifting suddenly from tears to temper. "I was a happy woman before I met your brother. I can't give him up!" she burst out, shifting back again from temper to tears. "I don't care if he has deceived me. I won't let another woman have him! ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... five years of my life," said Hatteras, in a rage, "to be up north. I know no more dangerous passage. To add to the difficulty, the compass is no guide at this distance from the magnetic pole: the needle is constantly shifting its direction." ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... the roof. This he leaned against the wall, mounted it, and slid back the hatch, which ran in wooden grooves. The ladder creaked beneath him as he swung his long body forward and gripped the edges of the opening. Until he had made sure of his hold he did not leave the ladder; then swung clear, shifting his hands one by one into better position, and raised himself slowly, by sheer practised strength of wrist and arm, until his head and shoulders rose above the opening. With quick effort, then, he flung himself forward upon the roof, writhed ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... face of Razumihin, who looked him boldly and inquiringly in the face without rising from his seat. A constrained silence lasted for a couple of minutes, and then, as might be expected, some scene-shifting took place. Reflecting, probably from certain fairly unmistakable signs, that he would get nothing in this "cabin" by attempting to overawe them, the gentleman softened somewhat, and civilly, though with some severity, emphasising ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... shades, beneath these shifting skies, Where fancy sickens, and where genius dies; Where few and feeble are the muse's strains, And no fine frenzy riots ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... child, which Ruhe was, and yet would not live with him. He thought Baraka's determined obstinacy on this could only be caused by the influence of the head man of the village, and threatened that if Baraka did not come to visit him at once, he would have the head man beheaded. Then, shifting round a bit, he thought of ordering his subjects to starve the visitors into submission, and said he must have a hongo equal to Ruhe's. To all this Baraka replied, that he was merely a servant, and as he had orders to stop where he was, he could not leave it until ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... large one. If it represents what Coleridge seriously expected from Wordsworth, it also suggests that he was unconsciously wandering into an exposition of one of the gigantic but constantly shifting schemes of a comprehensive philosophy, which he was always proposing to execute. To try to speak of Coleridge adequately would be hopeless and out of place. I must briefly mention him, because he was undoubtedly the most conspicuous representative ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... direction of the floor. At least not directly. It was slanting off at a bias to the southeast, leaving a long, lean, wedge-shaped gap between it and the last strip. I pulled it off and started again, shifting the angle. But I overdid the thing. This time it went biasing off in the other direction and left an untidy smudge of paste on Westbury's nice, clean strip. I reflected that this would probably dry out—if not, I would hang a picture over it. Then I gave the strip I was hanging a little twitch, ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... king and the emperors how to emp. Returning to the United States he placed his hand in state politics. Fingers were badly burned. When it came time to elect another president, R. was tired of scene shifting and yearned for the bouquets of the audience. He girded up his loins with the robes of sanctity, placed an international Harvester Trust halo over his head, and proclaimed himself a second Moses who was destined to lead the children of America ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... There is hardly a grave that has not its little inclosure planted with shrubbery; and a thick mass of foliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, as the branches rise and fall upon it,—the occasional note of a bird among the trees, and the shifting of light and shade upon the tombs beneath, have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether any one can enter that inclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of so many great and good men, without feeling the religion ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... foam-streaked grey-green of leaping Northern seas; in the glass shone a hot ruby that seemed the very heart of the South, beating for him who had courage to respond to its pulsation. The twin lights, the shifting grey and the steadfast red, mastered the Water Rat and held him bound, fascinated, powerless. The quiet world outside their rays receded far away and ceased to be. And the talk, the wonderful talk flowed on—or was it speech entirely, or did ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... the Mastodons, where he received a royal welcome. But his heart had become attuned to the real theater—to the hum of its shifting life, to the swift tumult of its tears and laughter. The excitement of the drama, and all the speculation that it involved (and he was a born speculator), were in his blood. He heeded the call and went back to the Madison ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... and Herod respectively; and between them passed messengers on horseback. The plays contain occasional stage directions—e.g., "Here Herod shall rage on the pagond." We find also rude attempts at scene-shifting, of which an illustration occurs in the Coventry ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... down, or off, as the case might be, And lo! the rest of the crew were simple girls, like me, Who all had fled from their homes in a sailor's blue array, To follow the shifting ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... it in parts of the Punjab, and it is common throughout the North-west. It is a wary, restless little beast, and requires good shooting, for it does not afford much of a mark. When disturbed they keep constantly shifting, not going far, but hovering about in a most tantalising way. Natives it cares little for, unless it be a shikari with a gun, of which it seems to have intuitive perception; but the ordinary cultivator, with his load of wood and grass, may approach ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... that I have scarcely said anything about this great and famous capital, which in my opinion is built on somewhat precarious foundations. No one but Peter could have thus given the lie to Nature by building his immense palaces of marble and granite on mud and shifting sand. They tell me that the town is now in its manhood, to the honour of the great Catherine; but in the year 1765 it was still in its minority, and seemed to me only to have been built with the childish aim of seeing it fall into ruins. Streets ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... original copy of the writing is ready moisten the surface of the hectograph slightly with a sponge, lay the copy face down upon it and smooth down, being careful to exclude all air bubbles and not shifting the paper. Leave it nearly a minute and raise one corner and strip it from the pad, where will remain a ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Sloping down the upland wild, Where she walked with Allan Archer, Light of spirit as a child! All her young heart wild with rapture And the bliss that made it beat— Not the golden wells of Hybla Held a treasure half so sweet! But as oft the shifting rose-cloud, In the sunset light that lies, Mournful makes us, feeling only How much farther are the skies,— So the mantling of her blushes, And the trembling of her heart, 'Neath his steadfast eyes but made her Feel how ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... fling his terrible navaja at her without moving a muscle, now grouped themselves closely together so as to effectually prevent the soldiers from pursuing her. The fracas that ensued gave Chiquita time to reach the carriage of the Duke of Vallombreuse—which, taking advantage of the stir and shifting in the throng, was slowly making its way out of the Place de Greve. She climbed up on the step, and catching sight of de Sigognac within, appealed to him, in scarcely audible words, as she panted and trembled—"I saved your ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... amusements of the evening. It is not pleasant to behold in the salons of the President of the French Republic an accurate reproduction in miniature of the departed glories of Baden-Baden and of Homburg—the shaded lamps, throwing a lurid light on the "board of green cloth," the piles of gold, the shifting cards, the intent faces of the players, and the groups of gazers looking on in silence. Vast sums are, I am told, often lost and won in this manner during a single evening. This, at least, is a reproach ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... upon the mind of a cool observer was of a covey of unsubstantial jabbering minds drifting over a series of irrational economic cataclysms, prices and employment tumbled about like towers in an earthquake, and amidst the shifting masses were the common work-people going on with their lives as well as they could, suffering, perplexed, unorganized, and for anything but violent, fruitless protests, impotent. You cannot hope now to understand the infinite want of adjustment in the old order of things. At ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and fluttering, and glittering, but constant: the light of them as the light ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which had withstood the gale. The steamer was nowhere in sight; but other vessels of the shattered fleet could be seen, some near, and some half below the horizon, far out at sea. The waves, white-capped, green-streaked, ceaselessly shifting, with dark blue hollows and high-curved crests all bursting into foam, came chasing each other, and passed on like sliding liquid hills, spurning the schooner from their ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... farewells echoed along the river and died away in the dark forest on either hand. Harris and Reed settled back in their canoe and yielded to the fascination of the slowly shifting scene. Carmen chose to occupy the same canoe with them, and perforce Rosendo acted as patron. They therefore took the lead. Between his knees Reed held the rifle upright, in readiness for any animal whose curiosity might bring ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... more words she might say before the time she allowed herself had expired, and she found courage to go on, striving to explain to the shifting knot of people that the battle which now threatened civilisation was the terrible and final fight between Order and Disorder and that, under inexorable laws which could never change, order meant life and survival; disorder chaos and death for ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... the Stephenson shifting-link pattern (see fig. 27), a simple and dependable motion used extensively in this country between about 1850 and 1900. The author believes that this is the original valve gear of the Pioneer, since the first mention ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... tricolored cockade, students, artists, workmen, blanchisseuses, and nursery-maids in picturesque costumes tending prettily dressed children, made a moving panorama I never tired of. Even the great palaces and the wonderful works of art scarcely interested me as did this shifting kaleidoscopic picture, and I looked back at life in my native town on the banks of the Delaware as belonging to another world, incomparably tame and ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid's features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving betwixt the dead ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not lacking to add dismay to discouragement. Such thoughts were but wretched company, and they brought with them a vague conception of her own vain egotism in imagining the possibility of other outcome. She tried to sleep again, but could not. What mattered it though, by some shifting of hours, her day had become night and her night day! She must arise and talk with some one, if it were only the host whom ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... with the same view. We took passage together on one of these floating houses, with the arrangements of which I had now become familiar. I was charmed with the Ohio; with its scenery, which was every moment shifting to the eye; and with the incidents of such a novel voyage. Off Wheeling we made fast to another ark, from the Monongahela, in charge of Capt. Hutchinson, an intelligent man. There were a number of passengers, who, together with this commander, added to our social circle, and made it more agreeable: ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Through the shifting smoke clouds we could see them advancing on a run,—an ugly, motley line, part blue, part gray, part everything,— yelling as they swept forward like a pack of infuriated wolves, their fierce faces scowling savagely behind the rifles. It ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... city of Manila are many Indians who are liable to duty, both in service and in other employments, who are continually shifting— so that, out of the three thousand tributarios that there should be, not more than five hundred tributes are collected for his Majesty. To administer the sacraments and give Christian instruction there is one parish priest for the Indians, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... these two now moved down to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they remained until Billy was eight years of age. In 1868, the family made their home at Silver City, New Mexico, where they lived until 1871, when Billy was twelve years of age. His life until then had been one of shifting about, in poverty or at best rude comfort. His mother seems to have been a wholesome Irishwoman, of no great education, but of good instincts. Of the boy's father nothing is known; and of his stepfather little more, ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... done its very utmost in clearing up the grounds upon which it rests its decisions—after it has multiplied its rules to any possible point of circumstantiality—there will always continue to arise cases without end, in the shifting combinations of human action, about which a question will remain whether they do or do not fall under any of these rules. And the best way for seeing this truth illustrated on a broad scale, the shortest way and the most ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... both father and son. For several weeks before her visit at Northfield Alice had experienced an unaccountable sense of being watched, and often in her walks met a strange man with familiar, furtive, shifting glances. Fully determined forever to end this unwelcome affair, Alice gladly accepted Esther's invitation to visit Northfield. In the sweet infatuation of the past few weeks Alice almost had forgotten her former distresses, and was ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... aside; But when his glance of youthful pride Rested upon the warriors gray Who bore his lance and shield that day, And the long line of spears that came Through the far grove like waves of flame, His forehead burned, his pulse beat high, More darkly flashed his shifting eye, And visions of the battle-plain Came ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Never was there a nurse more tender, more patient, more attentive. I was not at all so ill as to require constant watching, but she hovered about my bed, applying remedies, tempting me with dainties, changing my pillows, shifting the blinds so as to keep the room cheerful, yet save my burning eyes from the light. She would not be coaxed away from me even for an hour. Mrs. Hill, though kind and sympathetic herself, in a different way, was dissatisfied, ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... argue in this manner are perpetually shifting the question, having begun with objecting, in order to give a fair and public color to their scheme, to a toleration of those opinions as subversive of society in general, they will surely end by abandoning the broad part of the argument, and attempting to show that a toleration of them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tight grip, held considerable lands. When we note their position in the Iliad, high above the nameless host, can we imagine that they did not hold more land than the simple, perhaps periodically shifting, "lot"? There were "lotless" men (Odyssey, XL 490), lotless freemen, and what had become of their lots? Had they not fallen into the hands of the [Greek: gerontes] or ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... with their respective properties. The fire also was an old friend. He had occasionally tried to touch it, but a high bright fence always came in between. For ten months he had never spent a day without making experiments on this shifting universe in which he alone remained firm and stationary. The experiments were chiefly conducted out of idle amusement, but he was serious on the subject of food. Lately the behaviour of the universe in regard to his food ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... stir intellectually the artists found that the old Byzantine model did not look like nature. They began, not by rejecting it, but by improving it, giving it slight movements here and there, turning the head, throwing out a hand, or shifting the folds of drapery. The Eastern type was still seen in the long pathetic face, oblique eyes, green flesh tints, stiff robes, thin fingers, and absence of feet; but the painters now began to modify and enliven it. More realistic Italian faces were introduced, architectural and landscape ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... thoughtfully in the room. The theory on which his inquiries had proceeded thus far had failed to produce any results. His experience warned him to waste no more time on it, and to return to the starting-point of the investigation—in other words, to the letter. Shifting his point of view, he turned again to Lady Lydiard, and tried his ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... me what I was about there. I politely exhibited my drawings, and took infinite pains to make him understand my purpose. The rude brute kept rolling his head, and turning first to one side and then to the other, shifting himself upon his legs, and twirling his enormous moustachios; then he drew his cap down over his eyes and roared out: "Zounds! deuce take it! I can make nothing of this rigmarole." At last the animal ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... must evidently, at some point in the working out of his theme, visualize the stage-picture in considerable detail; and we find that almost all modern dramatists do, as a matter of fact, pay great attention to what may be called the topography of their scenes, and the shifting "positions" of their characters. The question is: at what stage of the process of composition ought this visualization to occur? Here, again, it would be absurd to lay down a general rule; but I am inclined ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... out of her house and wandered for a long time upon the shore. She looked up and down the bay, at the sails that gleamed on the blue water, shifting in the breeze and the light; they were a source of interest to her that they had never been before. It was a day she was destined never to forget; she felt it to be the saddest, the most wounding of her life. Unrest and haunting fear ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... it all to-day, the shifting of the stock; You'd think you see the caravans that loaf behind the flock, The little donkeys and the mules, the sheep that slowly spread, And maybe Dan or Naphthali ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... yelled, and his two eyes transfixed me like bayonets. Oh, those dreadful eyes, shifting from grey to blue, like steel in the sunshine. I can see them now when ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the human mind there are two strata. One superficial, of which men are conscious, the other deep down, of which they are unconscious.[3112] The former unstable and vacillating like shifting sand, the latter stable and fixed like a solid rock, to which their caprices and agitation never descend. The latter alone determines the general inclination of the soil, the main current of human activity necessarily following the bent thus prepared for it.—Certainly embraces have been interchanged ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... mostly to the right of the pike, but with heavy fringe of cavalry extending past us as far as the ravine. From my point of vantage it all formed an inspiring picture, dully monotonous in color, but alive with action; the long dust-covered lines, the rifle barrels shining, the constant shifting of columns, the regiments hurrying forward, the swift moving of cavalry, and hard riding of staff officers, sent the hot blood leaping through my veins. And all this was no dress review. Just ahead they were at it in deadly earnest—barely beyond ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... the noon hour we laid perdu in the hollow, no wiser for our watching. Then I saw a number of riders debouch from the camp, and at once trained the glasses on them. At first I couldn't distinguish any particular face among so many shifting forms, but presently they split in two bodies, and these again subdivided; and in the bunch coming toward us I recognized three men, Lessard, unmistakable in his black uniform, Hicks, and Bevans. I turned the glasses ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... just sufficient to make the boy feel uneasy. He could discern objects, although indistinctly, nearly a hundred yards away, and where the character of the gorge was continually shifting to a certain extent there was abundant play for ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... purple and gold trapping, upon a dais sheltered by striped canvas. In the booths at each side the members of the Court took their places; while comely pages ran hither and thither bearing the royal commands. 'Twas a lordly sight, I ween, this shifting of proud courtiers, flashing of jeweled fans, and commingling of bright ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees, The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly And sway like masts, against a shifting breeze. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... improvement on the old-fashioned anti-macassar, as it is not liable to be displaced. A border is added to the front of it, the pattern of which is made in beads (in the style of the bassinet quilt, page 24). This, from its weight, serves to keep the anti-macassar from shifting, and is finished with a handsome fringe. Spotted muslin, or any similar material, may be used for the back of the anti-macassar, instead of crochet, for those who would prefer saving themselves the trouble of working ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... alluring; she went out to watch the strange army of shadows shifting and intermingling against a wall ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... uncovered, in reverence of the sublime picture, which could only come from the hands of the Creator, and with unalloyed enjoyment of the bland tranquillity of the hour. Exclamations of pleasure had escaped them, as the exhibition advanced; for the view, like the shifting of scenes, was in a constant state of transition under the waning and changing light, and each had eagerly pointed out to the others some peculiar charm of the view. The sight was, in sooth, of a nature to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... them until she had three and a half feet of water in her hold. A portion of her diminished crew was sent to the pumps, while every officer, man and boy, was employed in fishing the masts and spars, knotting and splicing the rigging, and shifting the sails. The two ships lay close together, drifting with the tide. The prize was won, but it was a question whether she would be kept. They were close in with the French coast; and should any other of the enemy's ships be in the ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... was silent for a moment, shifting himself slowly from one leg to another as he watched the surveyor. After a pause he said, "There don't seem to be much show in this world for boys o' my size. There don't seem to be much use for 'em any way." This not bitterly, but philosophically, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... plan is consistently preserved by a rearrangement of the true chronology of events and by the introduction of purely traditional episodes. The shifting of historical values may be due to the fact that when the poem was composed, about 1150, the power of the Moor had really been broken by the conquests of Ferdinand I, Alphonso VI, Alphonso VII and Alphonso VIII of Castile and alphonso I, the Battler, ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... fierce gale was blowing from the westward, shifting now from the south-west, now from the north-west, and creating a heavy cross-sea. The fishing-vessels took different directions. Some stood to the north, some towards the south, endeavouring, as best they could, to beat up against the gale; but they were ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... lettuce, red with stacks Of liquorice; shattered walls, and gaping caves: Beyond, the shifting sands; the jackal's tracks; The dirging ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... he hurried Gulo heard, far, far behind in the forest, the faint, distant whir of a cock-capercailzie—the feathered giant of the woods—rising. It was only a whisper, almost indistinguishable to our ears, but enough, quite enough, for him. Taken in conjunction with the mysterious shifting of the elk and the red deer and the reindeer and the wolf, it was more than enough. He increased his pace, and for the first time fear shone in his eyes—it was for the first time, too, in ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... art, Pants for the vulgar praise which fools impart; Here vanity assumes her pert grimace, 275 And trims her robes of frieze[32] with copper lace; Here beggar pride defrauds her daily cheer, To boast one splendid banquet once a year; The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws, Nor weighs the solid worth of ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... heard them still, like music; and as he watched the shifting fortunes of this game he felt the blood course through his veins with ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the current of his sympathy. "As one grows old one clings to the known, the proved. That passion at least increases while so many others fade away, the passion for all that is faithful in a shifting world, for all that is real, that does not suffer corruption, disintegration! How adorable is ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... before the Indians were driven into their barren cage to the north, white adventurers had penetrated the basin and it became, with the shifting of possession, a region for men of hard repute. Its traditions have been bad and few in the Falling Wall country have felt concern over ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... the old man, shifting the tobacco in his cheek. "She's been a rare comfort to me and mine. She'd be a blessing to your home, Master Bernard. Take an old chap's word for it, an old chap as knows what's what. That young lady'll be the joy of some man's heart some day. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... turning disappear in another cloud of it. The fog parts again and a white top wagon, with four horses, is seen toiling slowly along. The driver cracks his whip and the sea of mist slowly rolls over him again. Another shifting, and a little farmhouse appears, with a man riding from under the trees. He rides into the mist and the farmhouse disappears. A railroad train rushes out of a bank of white wool and into another, in ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... that, love being the solar passion of the race, she naturally is involved. Rather does it mean fiction's recognition of her as the creature of the social biologist, exercising her ancient function amidst all the changes and shifting ideas of successive generations. Whatever her superficial changes under the urge of the time-spirit, Woman, to a thoughtful eye, sits like the Sphinx above the drifting sands, silent, secret, powerful ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or betrayed in his conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in him by some severe experience which he had gone through since the epoch of Mr. Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... toward Mrs. Ansell. She was almost the embodied spirit of the world he dreaded and disliked: her serenity, her tolerance, her adaptability, seemed to smile away and disintegrate all the high enthusiasms, the stubborn convictions, that he had tried to plant in the shifting sands of his married life. And now that Bessy's death had given her back the attributes with which his fancy had originally invested her, he had come to regard Mrs. Ansell as embodying the evil influences that had come between himself and ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... well," said he, "we may talk of that hereafter, when you shall resolve which part of the world you will make your settled residence in." Here he talked very handsomely to me, and for a good while together; how it had been his lot to live all his days out of his native country, and to be often shifting and changing the situation of his affairs; and that I myself had not always had a fixed abode, but that now, as neither of us was very young, he fancied I would be for taking up our abode where, if possible, we might remove no more; that as to his part, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... the dance to begin. There stands calm Dena in snuff-colored silk, looking so immeasurably the superior of her partner, who, I fancy, rather feels that she is the better man of the two, from his nervous way of shifting from one foot to the other, without saying a word to her. Nettie, in lilac and white, stands by the mantel laughing undisguisedly at her partner, rather than with him, yet so good-humoredly that he cannot take offense, but rather laughs with her. Lackadaisical ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... despite his illness, was indeed working out of the back door of his yellow trundle bed at the moment, and looking anxiously about. But the engineer stood pale and quiet, coolly studying the flustered growler, and when Burleigh's shifting eyes sought that young scientist's face, what he read there—and Burleigh was no fool—told him he would be wise to change the tune. The aid had pushed out in front of the troop and was signaling to Dean, once more in saddle and scanning through his glass the big band afar ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... half-high, suspend Their shifting vapours, and contend With rocks that suffer not defeat; And snows, and suns, and mad winds meet To battle where the cliffs defend At Crow's ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... captain, who had just risen and opened a chink of the rude door of the hut in order to look out. "I see that the keel of the boat is all fast and the planking beside it. The coral rock shelters it just now; but if the wind goes on shifting I fear it will stand ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... "He caught it on the fly! It must have been an accident. Here——" And he struck the ball into the air again. It went high—twice as high as the house—and again Gammire "judged" it; continuously shifting his position, his careful eyes never leaving the little white globe, until just before the last instant of its descent he was motionless beneath it. He caught it ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... weather. The next morning being on the edge of the gulf stream, we were witness to a strange struggle between the warmth of the current, and the coldness of the surrounding ocean and atmosphere: the stream actually smoaked like a caldron! We ran as far to the south as latitude 38, when the wind shifting to the S. W., in a few hours we found a wonderful change of climate: the degree of heat was, at least, equal to that of a usual summer day in England, without the disagreeable pressure experienced from a thick atmosphere. The air was ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... badger? I am badgered by him, and will blame him, ay, ban him, for he is my curse, my bane; why should I not curse him as Noah cursed that foul whelp Canaan? Beshrew him for a block-head, a little black-browed beetle, a blot of ink, a shifting shadow, a roving rat, a mouse, yes, sir, a very mouse, that creeps in and out of its hole when the old cat is away. Away, Mr. Notary, away; go, good Monsieur Veuillot. There are more conceptions in man than he has yet expressed either in statutes or in testaments. Go; you are a deed-drawer; ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... must have been the shifting of a log on the fire," said the other, in a similarly ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... garden's spreading fruit trees, the little gentlewomen of Elfgiva's household were amusing themselves with the flock of peacocks that were the Abbey's pets. In a shifting dazzling mass of color—blended blue and green and golden fire—all but one of the brilliant birds were pressing around Candida, who scattered largess from a quaint bronze vase, while the one whose vanity was greater even than its appetite was furnishing sport for Dearwyn ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz |
