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More "Twinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dinner. Coming out of this small den, and passing a fine large house, opposite the grand palace of the Prince of Valmontone, behold an Italian acquaintance of Caper's standing in a balcony with a very handsome woman; another moment, and Caper was invited in, and passed from poverty to wealth in the twinkling of an eye. Rooms full of guests, tables covered with damask linen, silver, flowers, crystal glasses, delicate food (too late!), good wine (just ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fer stayin', Tommy? I kinder cal'lated you'd weaken when the time come. Ain't goin' ter think better of it, huh?" The old man, smiling through a cloud of tobacco smoke, contemplated Tom with shrewd, twinkling, expectant eyes. "Fun's jest about startin' naow, Tommy. 'Member what I told yer baot them critters. Daont yer go back ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... girl when her handsome and idolized brother David scandalized the family by marrying an actress and himself taking to the stage. But she had seen the bewitching "Miss Arnold" at the theatre in Baltimore—had, with fascinated eyes, followed her twinkling feet through the mazy dance, had listened with charmed ears to her exquisite voice, had sat spell-bound under her acting. To her childish mind, the stage had become a fairy-land and Miss Arnold its presiding genius. That brother David should love and marry ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... pursue. Going first himself, he allowed his horse to follow the path which his own instinct dictated; and by so doing, in the course of an hour the hoofs of his animal once more trod hard ground. In a short time afterwards a twinkling light appeared, far brighter, however, than the "will o' the wisp" which had before deceived them, and they rode up to the very inn which Jack had hoped to reach. The landlord was well pleased to see two well-equipped cavaliers arrive at his humble hostel, and under took to supply them with ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... crashing in the brushwood. Like a flash, five deer leaped into view, rushing across a small opening. They saw the boys and were out of sight again in a twinkling, before a gun could be raised ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... feet up in the night was a gleaming ship. There were rows of portholes that shone twinkling against the black sky—portholes in multiple rows on the side. The craft was inconceivably huge. Formless and dim of outline in the darkness, its vast ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... trek! He waved the twinkling-eyed, curious landlord back, and went up into the foremost waggon, drawing the canvas close. He faced the truth in there, and realized with a throe of mortal anguish that the burial must be soon—very soon. To prison what remained of her in a hastily ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... if perhaps some might not yet be found there, or if all had been wasted and lost. And while he yet pondered a rubicund little man, with leathern apron dark with wine-stains girded about his portly waist, stood at his side looking up at him with twinkling eyes. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... came also the resurrection of the dead.... 50. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. 51. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, (for the trumpet shall sound;) and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54. So when this corruptible shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... a beautifully fine, clear, starlit night, without the faintest suspicion of a cloud anywhere in the soft, velvety blue-black dome of the sky; and presently, when the professor's eyes had grown accustomed to the dim, mysterious radiance of the twinkling constellations, he was able to see the landscape steadily unfolding around him like a map, in a rapidly widening circle, as the great ship steadily attained an ever-increasing altitude in the breathless atmosphere. For some ten minutes the scientist remained thoughtfully ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... misery of a bloody calamity. You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for your effort, and that effort might have been unavailing; but to have risen to the level of such an effort would have rescued you, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to your ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... health, and in her freedom, and she bounded along over the hard, glittering snow, full of a mere irresponsible animal pleasure, such as moves the young chamois in his bounds from rock to rock. Darkness had come like a blot upon the earth before she had done half the distance, but now she had the twinkling lights and the reddish haze of Dawson before her. Her own eyes brightened as she caught sight of them, and she hastened her steps. By the time night had fairly settled down she came into the side streets of the town. Dawson is an all-night town, and things ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... of the rebel on guard had given the alarm to several others, and in a twinkling Larry and the old Yankee tar found themselves confronted by an even more determined crowd than that encountered on the road. With the water behind them, escape was out of the question, for a jump back into the river would have courted a fire ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... men saw a great convex surface on which lay narrow ribbons of silver, winding veinlike through dark areas that were in some places lit by little clusters of twinkling lights. As they watched, the distances on the surface shrank in on themselves; they could see the outline of a great circle. The sight stimulated the exhausted men. In a hushed and awestruck voice, Jim Wilson ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... a long mile and a half from Pierre Chouteau's house to Dr. Saugrain's, and it was a frosty December evening. It was only five o'clock, but the stars were out, and through the leafless trees I could see lights twinkling from the houses as I passed. Faster and faster I walked, as my thoughts grew more and more bitter toward mademoiselle, and by the time I had reached the cheery living-room, with its blazing lightwood fire, I was in such a glow from exercise and indignation as made the ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... we must take the baby home," said Maurice, signing to the boy. In the twinkling of an eye the human rag called Gustave was lifted into a chair, clothed in his topcoat and hat, dressed and spruced up, pushed down the spiral staircase, and landed in a cab. Then the prestidigitateur returned and performed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that we think up here on the earth's surface in the cheerful light of day—clothing ourselves with elemental sparks, and shooting with fiery speed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, from hemisphere to hemisphere, far down among the uncouth monsters that wallow in the nether seas, along the wreck-paved floor, thorough the oozy dungeons of the rayless deep; the last intelligence ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... minutes, when, on the friendly interference of the Consul, the offended and the offender shook hands, and all went on prosperously until midnight, at which hour we took leave of our kind host, some with their eyes twinkling and others seeing double. A few mornings afterwards the Governor asked me to breakfast at six o'clock. I found him taking his coffee on the terrace of the house, where he had one of Dollond's large telescopes, the view from which was magnificent and rich; but before I had been half an hour with ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... everything before him, in spite of the barricades which had been hastily erected by the Papists. The assault was over in a few moments; the priests and their flock fled by one door, while the Reformers entered by another. The building was in the twinkling of an eye adapted to the new form of worship: the great crucifix from above the altar was dragged about the streets at the end of a rope and scourged at every cross-roads. In the evening a large fire was lighted in the place before the cathedral, and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the round specks of dew That hung upon the azure leaves did shew Like twinkling stars that sparkle in ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... East dancing with delight. Tom goes in in a twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows, and gets away again before the slogger can catch his wind; which when he does he rushes with blind fury at Tom, and being skillfully parried and avoided, over-reaches himself and falls on his face, amid terrific ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... to hire fussing, if you've a big family," said Aunt Milly, her eyes twinkling behind the gold-bowed spectacles. "You'll keep on with ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... was a silence. Perhaps we were both impressed by the scene. In front lay the river, a band of silver, with here and there the twinkling, swaying lights of a crossing boat upon it. All around was the great city, and from the distance there came a murmuring hum of voices, like waves lapping upon a far-off shore. Around us, towering above ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... fields and gardens that topped the hill beyond. The world turned gold and amber, shining beneath a turquoise sky. There was a rush of flaming sunsets, one upon another, followed by great green moons, and hosts of stars that came twinkling across barred windows to his very bedside ... that grand old Net of Stars he made so cunningly. Cornhill and Lombard Street flashed back upon him for a second, then dived away and hid their faces for ever, as he passed the low grey wall beside the church where first he had ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... He ran at me ere I could draw, like the coward he is, sink him, and had me through the shoulder in the twinkling ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... an uncertain turn, as if thinking to seek safety in flight but doubting which way to choose; and the movement struck panic into the minds and hearts of his fellows. In a twinkling all were on their feet. But before one could move a step the lamp in the ceiling winked out, the room was left in darkness unrelieved, and the accents of Number One were ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... my heart leapt to days, when, a careless boy, 'Mid scenes of ambrosial Autumn roaming, The diamond gem of the Evening Star, Twinkling amid the pure South afar, Was gazed on with gushes of holy joy, As the cherub spirit that ruled the gloaming With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... or to cover up damaged reputations. He knew both the heating and the cooling processes of time. I remember when, about 1890, after he had finished making a set of scrap-books of soldiers' letters, reminiscences and newspaper reports of the battles of the war, how heartily he laughed when, with twinkling eyes, he remarked on the tendency of some old soldiers "to remember a good deal that never happened." As his experience with the pen deepened, he became more rigid in his requirements as to the quality of the information which his books gave. Those who ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... twinkling the weight of a score of years slipped like a cloak from Paul's shoulders. With a wild, choking cry he leaped to his feet, and stretching both his arms above him, "My ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... he had lived among a tribe of blacks in Africa; at another been a member of a party of exiled Russians, on tramp to the mines of Siberia. He was telling of an exciting adventure he had had among the Arabs when the twinkling lights in a train crossed the trestle caused him to come ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... meeting to protest; whereupon the father of all the dragon-flies, a magnificent warrior in a steel- blue armour, saw that a conspiracy was afoot, and swept into the midst with a whirr and a snap, a turn here and a flash there, that scattered the host in a twinkling of a ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... book and received a pleasantly appreciative reply. "I always like," wrote Holmes, "to hear what one of my fellow countrymen, who is not a Hebrew scholar, or a reader of hiero-glyphics, but a good-humored traveler with a pair of sharp, twinkling Yankee (in the broader sense) eyes in his head, has to say about the things that learned travelers often make unintelligible, and sentimental ones ridiculous or absurd .... I hope your booksellers will sell a hundred thousand copies of your travels." A wish that was realized in due time, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... presents himself. His sedan chair, that had been hidden, is planted before the Marechal. He cries aloud, he is shaking on his lower limbs; but he is thrust into the chair, which is closed upon him and carried away in the twinkling of an eye through one of the side windows into the garden, La Fare and Artagnan each on one side of the chair, the light horse and musketeers behind, judging only by the result what was in the wind. The march is hastened; the party ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... all about him: in the blue brightness of the afterglow, in the haze of the meadow stretches, and in the elusive woodland scents that vanished as he caught them;—she was in the rosy vapour wreaths on the high horizon, in the laughter of children playing somewhere in the darkness, in the twinkling of the lights that began to show—for now she was wherever a lover finds his lady, and that is everywhere. He went over and over their talk of the morning, rehearsing wonderful things he would say to her upon the morrow, and taking the liberty ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... one and all, his gold half-moon earrings twinkling in his evident satisfaction with himself and ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... and at work before the sun, Mr. Leach," said the captain, speaking clearly, but in a low tone, as they approached the camel. The head of the animal was tossed; then it seemed to snuff the air, and it gave a shriek. In the twinkling of an eye an Arab sprang from the sand, on which he had been sleeping, and was on the creature's back. He was seen to look around him, and before the startled mariners had time to decide on their course, the beast, which was a dromedary trained to speed, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... more, was rushing on to us. It was on the break—the moon shone on its crest and tipped its foam with light. On it rushed beneath the inky sky, driven by the awful squall behind it. Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, I saw the black shape of the whale-boat cast high into the air on the crest of the breaking wave. Then—a shock of water, a wild rush of boiling foam, and I was clinging for my life to the shroud, ay, swept straight out from it like ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... chuckled behind his great beard when he saw Jerome's alarmed eyes. "Hullo," said he, "who have we got here?" Eben Merritt had a soft place in his heart for all small young creatures of his kind, and always returned their timid obeisances, when he met them, with a friendly smile twinkling like light through his bushy beard. Still, like many a man of such general kindly bearings, he could not easily compass details, and oftener than not could not have told ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... entered, she bolted the entrance door from within and said to me, "Sit here till I go in to the slave-girls and cause them enter a place whence they shall not see me." "'Tis well," answered I and sat down: whereupon she entered and was absent from me an eye-twinkling, after which she returned to me, without a veil, and straightway said, "Arise and enter in the name of Allah." So I arose and went in after her and we gave not over going till we reached a saloon. When I examined the place, I found it neither handsome nor pleasant, but desolate and dreadful without ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... horrible faces glared upon me from the walls—faces ever changing, and displaying new and still more horrible features; black bloated insects crawled over my face, and myriads of burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly. At one moment the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as the charnel house. I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... moor; below was a wide valley with a river twinkling in the moonlight, and beyond ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... bird-like way of skimming her ground that took her over it with wonderful swiftness; all the tassels, and ribbon knots, and sashes with which her uniform was rendered so gay and so distinctive fluttering behind her; and her little military boots, with the bright spurs twinkling, flying over the earth too lightly for a speck of dust,—though it lay thick as August suns could parch it,—to rest upon her. Thus she went now, along the lovely moonlight; singing her drinking song so fast and so loud that, had it been ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... a paternal despotism and the calm existence of a Russian or Asiatic. He showed me a picture of Faraday, which is wonderfully fine: I am almost inclined to get it: it has a curious likeness to Keble, only with a calm, earnest look unlike the latter's Flibbertigibbet, fanatical, twinkling expression. ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his pistols over the rest of him. He was small, lean, and wiry, with dark, sharp face and deep-set twinkling eyes. One moment's glance gave us to know ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... loose and rush away like a wild river, and now subsiding as suddenly, and allowing them to recover themselves and stand upright, with tones and motions of indignant expostulation. There was just one cold bar of light in the west, and the east was one gray mass, while overhead the stars were twinkling. The grass and all the ground about the trees were very wet. The time seemed more dreary somehow than the winter. Rigour was past, and tenderness had not come. For the wind was cold without being keen, and bursting ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... after, when she was in a particularly Corso-Carnival mood. She wandered helplessly about, restless and full of desire to be down at the balcony with the rest. And such a strange thing is the human heart, that it was Norman Mann's face she saw before her constantly, and she found Miss Rae's little twinkling sort of eyes far more haunting than those ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... moment of sensational suspense was brief. In a twinkling the doorkeeper's vengeful hands were on ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... into the woman's small twinkling eyes. 'Wait a little,' she said; 'what are you going to give me for delivering this great ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... stout spar overhanging the tide, and thence along a vessel's deck, empty, glimmering in the moonlight; upon mysterious coils of rope; upon the dew-wet roof of a deck-house; upon a wheel twinkling with brass-work, and behind it a white-painted taffrail. Her eyes were travelling forward to the bowsprit again, when, close by the foremast, they were arrested, and she caught ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... climbed the sleigh with shout and din, To bind his hands and feet; A hundred strong they clambered in Our good old Kris to meet. He sat quite still, with twinkling eyes, Then seized his mystic wand, He raised it up, and waved it round Stilled was ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... eyes of his young teacher twinkling from between the slats of the window-blinds, and he spoke up with a ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... Hubert, "drew a good bow at the battle of Hastings, and never shot at such a mark in his life—and neither will I. I might as well shoot at the edge of our parson's whittle, or at a wheat straw, or at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white streak which I ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... annoy, The word for it is Joy, just simple joy: The joy of life; The joy of children and of wife; The joy of bright blue skies; The joy of rain; the glad surprise Of twinkling stars that shine at night; The joy of winged things upon their flight; The joy of noonday, and the tried, True joyousness of eventide; The joy of labor and of mirth; The joy of air, and sea, and earth— The countless joys that ever flow from Him Whose vast beneficence doth dim The lustrous light ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... strength than sense. My turn will soon come. When the job is finished we shall see to whom all this belongs." When the work was completed and they had pronounced all things good, in stepped the Devil, and in the twinkling of an eye rendered imperfect all that they had so labored to create perfect;'turning everything topsy-turvey, seducing the first pair of human beings, sowing the seeds of original sin, and at one stroke securing the wholesale damnation of our race. What were they about, to let him do ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... moving very fast towards the lands of the Shawanos. One was just as high as the other, and they were both as high as the goat-sucker flies before a thunderstorm. At first they were close together, but as they came nearer they grew wider apart. Soon our people saw, by their twinkling, that they were two eyes, and in a little while the body of a great man, whose head nearly reached the sky(9), came after them. Brothers, the eyes of the Great Spirit always go before him, and hence nothing is hid from his sight. Brothers, I cannot describe ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... man actually lives and moves before our eyes. The veracity of the picture is destroyed by no final inconsistency. What Numa is, Numa will be. Daudet never descends at the end of his novels like a god from the machine to change character in the twinkling of an eye, and to convert bad men to good ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... toward his revolver, but stopped before they reached it. There must be no shooting so near the enemy trench. A horde of Germans would be upon him in a twinkling. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... picking up the other white cat, he began a gentle massage that stimulated her purring, apparently at the expense of her color and size, for in a few moments she also dwindled until she became a very small, coal-black kitten, changing in a twinkling to a blackbird, when he cast her carelessly toward the ceiling. It was well done; in all India no magician could have done it more cleverly, ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... March, we sat in the verandah looking still over the blackened unlovely prospect, but now cheerfully and with hope; for the eastern sky was piled up range beyond range with the scarlet and purple splendour of cloud-land, and, as darkness gathered, we saw the lightning, not twinkling and glimmering harmlessly about the horizon, as it had been all the summer, but falling sheer in violet-coloured rivers behind the dark curtain of rain that hung from the black edge of a ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... been broken or was born so, clever mobile mouth, and blue-grey eyes with a humorous twinkle in them and crow's-feet at the corners. Only to us youngsters, as we soon discovered, that humorous face and the twinkling eyes were capable of a terrible sternness. He was loved, I think, by adults generally, and regarded with feelings of an opposite nature by children. For he was a schoolmaster who hated and despised teaching as much as children in the wild hated ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... have one to return to you. I heard some one say that you had 'the rare gift of an absolutely direct mind.' That you were like George Washington: you couldn't tell a lie—that truth had its home in your eyes." Her eyes were twinkling. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Beecher, his eyes twinkling, "let's have it out. My people say that Plymouth holds more people than the Tabernacle, and your folks stand up for the Tabernacle. Now which is it? What is ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... longer the road the more happiness you can find along the way, my dear!" Merry Chuckle replied, quick as a wink, his little eyes twinkling brightly. "If you look up at the blue sky and the beautiful sunshine and sing with the birds as you run along you'll find the road seems too short and you'll be back before you notice it. Just ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... thinking of sleeping till we get our message delivered. I was wondering whether we should be lucky enough to get so far that after dark, if we climbed up high enough, we might be able to see our people's watch fires twinkling like ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... Betty, twinkling, "it's mighty lucky for Frank that there aren't any young men of marriageable age on the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... the twinkling stars; Watch no more the chalky bourne; Lady, from the holy wars Never will thy love return! Cease to watch, and cease to mourn; Thy lover ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... to gaze upon a naked man; that the nature of the wolf is such that if the man sees him first, the wolf is deprived of force and vigor, but if the wolf first sees the man, his power of speech will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Furthermore, there were curious ideas current concerning the mystic power of precious stones, and many were the lapidaries which were written for the edification of the credulous world. The diamond was held in somewhat doubtful esteem, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... intricate and rhythmical figures, while the other young men stood around in a circle and clapped their hands, keeping time. Then Odysseus said to Alkinoos: "Truly, no one excels the Phaeacian princes in dancing. I see the twinkling of their feet ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... took the floor in couples. The men did double-shuffles and cut pigeon wings, moving faster and faster as the fiddler quickened the tune till they gave up at last exhausted. Their partners performed as vigorously, the moccasined feet twinkling in and out so fast ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... quick leap, and the Belgian felt a heavy body hurtle onto the rump of his terror-stricken mount. The horse, snorting, leaped forward. Giant arms encircled the rider, and in the twinkling of an eye he was dragged from his saddle to find himself lying in the narrow trail with a naked, white ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... precious things of by-gone days. The splendid universe around me seemed no more upheld by the hand of God—no more a majestic marvel; it was to me but an inflated bubble of emptiness—a mere ball for devils to kick and spurn through space! Of what avail these twinkling stars—these stately leaf-laden trees—these cups of fragrance we know as flowers—this round wonder of the eyes called Nature? of what avail was God Himself, I widely mused, since even He could not keep one woman true? She whom I loved—she ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the next few minutes. It was growing dark; the hills had faded to blurs of shadows, and the moor ran back, a vast, dim waste. Then a twinkling light moved toward them up the ascending road. Bland ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve, and then ran home ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... was behind us. For eight miles it had shut out the sight of our goal, but now, directly in front of us, was spread a great city of dirty tents and grass huts and Red Cross flags—the neutral camp—and beyond that, four miles away, shimmering and twinkling sleepily in the sun, the white walls and zinc roofs ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... Raven and I suddenly been caught up out of that little coast village and transported to the far East on a magic carpet, to be set down in the twinkling of an eye on some Oriental threshold, we could scarcely have been more surprised than we were at the sight of that bland, smiling countenance. For the moment I was at a loss to think who and what the man could be; he was in the dress of his own country, a neat, close-fitting, high-buttoned ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... distinct, now looming in the mist, sketchily, with uncertain outlines, and all the fascination of the fabrics, innocent of detail, that confront the dreamer in enchanted woods, or lure him to the edge of fairy lakes with twinkling lights all multiplied by their own reflection in the water. Beth had rolled in that direction in luxurious carriages often, and never joyed in the scene, her mind being set on other things—things prosaic, such as what she should wear, or whether she was late, scraps of society gossip, conversations ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Gibbon River the cataracts have proved to the trout an impassible barrier; but, strangely enough, its despised associate, the sluggish, chunky blob, the little soft-bodied, smooth, black tadpole-like fellow, with twinkling eyes and a voracious appetite—a fish who cannot leap at all—has crossed this barrier. Hundreds of blob live under the stones in the upper reaches of the stream, the only fish in the Gibbon waters. There he is, and it is a standing puzzle even to himself to know how he got there. We might ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... eye; then show how the twinkling of a star is really in the eye and why one star should twinkle more than another, and how the rays from the stars originate in the eye; and add, that if the twinkling of the stars were really in the stars —as it seems ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... a gorgeous kite, the giant butterfly of childhood, twinkling with gilding, and soaring to the sky? The children forget the string that holds it, some passer-by cuts it, the gaudy toy turns head over heels, as the boys say, and falls with terrific rapidity. Such was Esther as she listened ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... on like a man, Bob. We've got a man here drowned or half-drowned; and we want to get him on the wharf in a twinkling." ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... for worlds have resigned, now tingled, now chilled my blood. At last, climbing a stony hill, the skies lay beneath me reddening with the flame of camps and flaring and falling alternately, like the beautiful Northern lights. I heard the ring of hoofs as I looked entranced, and in a twinkling, a body of horsemen dashed past me and disappeared. A little beyond, the road grew so thick that I could see nothing of my way; but trusting doubtfully to my horse, a deep challenge came directly from the thicket, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... with his eyes twinkling with the same delight which infused his companion, who rolled on the deck in ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... swiftly down the mountain. Once past the petrified forest, I could see the Nautilus's beacon twinkling like a star. The captain walked straight toward it, and we were back on board just as the first glimmers of dawn were whitening the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... was produced in a twinkling from one of the saddle holsters of the men, and with great dignity the lieutenant weighed out the full amount, and ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... all had partaken of Senor Montenegro's enforced liberality, we repaired to the launch, accompanied by almost the entire population of Misamis, and amidst a shrill chorus of "Hasta la vista," and "Adios," we steamed back to the Burnside, whose twinkling lights shone out dimly against ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... in 1853, he had an extremely difficult problem before him. By a custom extending through two centuries, each astronomer was to a large extent the master of his own work. Leverrier undertook to change all this in a twinkling, and, if reports are true, without much regard to the feelings of the astronomers. Those who refused to fall into line either resigned or were driven away, and their places were filled with men willing to work under the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... the Panjab, however, Captain Temple ascribes to children marvellous power of telling tales, which he states they are not slow to exercise after sunset, when the scanty evening meal is done and they huddle together in their little beds beneath the twinkling stars, while the hot air cools, the mosquito sings, and the village dogs bark at imaginary foes. The Rev. Hinton Knowles' collection was gathered in Cashmere apparently from men and boys only; but all classes contributed, from the governor ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... I'm sure. Aw dedn't knaw Crows had another passenger to-night." A husky voice spoke unseen. "'Taint often it 'appens." There was the splutter of a match, and as it flared up Barrant saw a pair of twinkling grey eyes regarding him from a brown and rugged face. "Old Garge never reckons on haavin' passengers back by th' laast wagonette, so 'e never lights up inside. I'll make a light now, then we'll be more comfortable." He struck another ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... On the twinkling grass, Rain-awaken'd flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... go away for the present, but would return for him in a few days in a carriage drawn by four grey horses. He told her to 'be aisy,' and not speak like that to him. 'I have paid dear for you for the last three nights,' he said, 'if I have to part with you now;' but in the twinkling of an eye she had disappeared. He did not know what to do with himself when he saw that she was gone, but before she went she had given him a little rod, with which he could, when he pleased, waken the men who had been sleeping there, some ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... colours of the earth, Ere nun-like frost Lay her hard hand upon this rainbow mirth, With twinkling emerald crossed. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... like the feeling he would have if, sitting in a hammock, someone sat down beside him. Immediately following this came a terrific explosion, numbing in its intensity, and a wall of maddened water leaped past the rail for a hundred feet into the air. In a twinkling Tim dragged him through the door, as a shower of debris came down upon the place where they had been sitting. The huge smoke funnel crashed to the deck, scattering soot in all directions, then balanced an instant, and plunged ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... there! Mr. Nipper, clap a canister of grape over the round shot in the bow gun, give it to him." "Ay, ay, sir!" gleefully rejoined the boatswain, forgetting the augury, and everything else, in the excitement of the moment. In a twinkling the square foresail—topgallant—royal and studding-sail haulyards, were let go on board the schooner, as if to round to. "Rake him, sir, or give him the stern. He has not surrendered. I know their game. Give him your broadside, sir, or he is off to windward of you, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... at the blue sky. Perhaps it was because he thought it was Charley's home. He watched every evening for the moon, with her silvery light, and for the twinkling stars. ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... The twinkling eye, the humorous accent, which had won Piers' affection, soon allayed his disquietude at being in this house. He spoke of his own recent excursion, confessing that he better appreciated London from ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... for their cars. Vidac continued to look at Astro, a thin smile tugging at his lips, his eyes twinkling. "You stay here with me, ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... attempt a strolling minstrel visited the kingdom of the Emperor. One evening he was playing his one-stringed instrument outside a dark wall. It was a summer's evening, and the sun had sunk in a glory of dusty gold, and in the violet twilight one or two stars were twinkling like spearheads. There was an incessant noise made by the croaking of frogs and the chatter of grasshoppers. The minstrel was singing a short song over and over again to a monotonous tune. The sense of it was something ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... her face laughing with a show of cheek-dimples, an arching of finely sketched brows and the twinkling of large blue-gray eyes. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... God—the centre and source of good—is every where radiant with beauty. From the shell that lies buried in the depths of the ocean, to the twinkling star that floats in the more profound depths of the firmament—through all the forms of material and animated existence, beauty, beauty, beauty prevails! In the floral kingdom, it appears in an infinite variety—in an unstinted and even a richer profusion ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... out over far olive-yards and gardens, and the bright roofs and basins of the Piraeus, and the broad blue sea, with the purple peaks of Aegina beyond all.... And a dark-eyed boy, with his arm around her neck, pointed laughing to the twinkling masts in the far harbour, and called her sister.... The dead soul woke within her; and with a wild cry she recoiled from him in an agony of shame, and covering her face with both her hands, sank ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... decorations, the wreaths, the gauze, the tinsel, and paper angels, suspended by invisible wires over the counters, and all glittering and shining and twinkling with light, a strong whiff of evergreen fragrance came to her, and the aroma of fir-balsam, and it was to her the very breath of all the mysterious joy and hitherto untasted festivity of this earth into which she had come. She felt deep in her childish soul the sense of a promise of happiness ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... you ought to be if you're jogging round the country together," said the other, her eyes twinkling. "But if you're not, take warning, padre. A girl that talks about corsets in public isn't respectable, especially as she doesn't wear them herself, except in the evening, for the sake of other things. Or she used not to. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... ached with the strain of her position; but her fingers lacked cunning to solve the secret; and in the end, when on the point of climbing down to fetch matches, she heard a sound that chilled her heart and checked her breath in a twinkling—an odd, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... that he should be witty, and of a woman that she should be entertaining. The world of the boulevards—with its cafes and restaurants and theatres—was the accepted rallying point of the authors and poets, the painters and musicians, and the lights twinkling in the theatrical and journalistic firmaments, the men in velveteen jackets and peg-top trousers, the women in flounced skirts and shawls and elastic-sided boots. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of time] Instantaneity — N. instantaneity, instantaneousness, immediacy; suddenness, abruptness. moment, instant, second, minute; twinkling, trice, flash, breath, crack, jiffy, coup, burst, flash of lightning, stroke of time. epoch, time; time of day, time of night; hour, minute; very minute &c, very time, very hour; present time, right time, true time, exact correct time. V. be instantaneous &c adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... did not know, several doctors, one of them a fat little army doctor who had often been a visitor to our Otriad. The latter greeted Nikitin warmly, nodded to me. He was a gay, merry little man with twinkling eyes. "Noo tak. Fine, our hospital, don't you think? Plenty to do this night, my friend. Here, golubchik, this way.... Finger, is it? Oh! that's nothing. Here, courage a moment. Where are the scissors?... scissors, some one. One moment.... One ... moment. Ah! there ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... yellow skin, two inches wide, down the center—a gridiron with a spoke broken out; and some with the entire face discolored with the popular mortification tint, relieved only by one or two thin, wavy threads of natural yellow running across the face from ear to ear, and eyes twinkling out of this darkness, from under shadowing hat-brims, like stars in the dark ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... embankment, where he stripped off his overcoat and wrapped it about her. But she was hardly conscious of what he was doing, for suddenly everything seemed to be spinning round her. The lights of the torches bobbed up and down in a confused blur of twinkling stars, the sound of voices and the trampling of feet came faintly to her ears as from a great way off, while the grim, black bulk of the piled-up coaches of the train seemed to lean nearer and nearer, until finally it swooped down ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... turn or term of his life, has longed for supernatural powers and a glimpse of Wonderland. Here he is in the midst of it. Here he sees mighty spirits summoned to work the human mite's will, however whimsical; who can transport him in an eye-twinkling whithersoever he wishes; who can ruin cities and build palaces of gold and silver, gems and jacinths; who can serve up delicate viands and delicious drinks in priceless chargers and impossible cups, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Then Drona struck Vasudeva with five arrows. And he struck Arjuna with three and seventy arrows, and his standard with three. Then, O king, the valorous Drona getting the better of his disciple, within the twinkling of an eye made Arjuna invisible by means of his arrowy showers. We then beheld the shafts of Bharadwaja's son falling in continuous lines, and his bow also was seen to present the wonderful aspect of being incessantly drawn to a circle. And those shafts, countless in number, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the river late that evening, and after watering, grazed until dark and camped for the night. But it was not to be a night of rest and sleep, for the lights were twinkling across the river in town; and cook, horse wrangler, and all, with the exception of the first guard, rode across the river after the herd had been bedded. Flood had quit us while we were watering the herd and gone in ahead to get a draft cashed, for he was as moneyless as the rest ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... to touch the cod's disgusting head; It was because the weather was too warm To hide the horror in the refuse-bin, And too intense the perfume of its form, My wife commanded me to do the sin, To take and cast it in the twinkling Thames— A practice which the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... the road to Wasen, and some twinkling lights and a huge crimson eye at the entrance to the great tunnel told us that we had done the ten miles to Goeschenen. No one stirred in the streets of the village, and, gliding cat-like past the station, Jack put the car at the beginning of the real ascent of the famous St. Gothard Road. The ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... man, with a foreign air, and quick, restless manner. His features were small, a heavy beard and mustache covered his face, his brow was low, and his eyes black and twinkling. A sharp, furtive glance which he gave at Brandon attracted the attention of the latter, for there was something in the glance that meant ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the lights of Boma could be distinctly seen, twinkling silently over the bay of the town. They dropped anchor among a score of other vessels; and the long ocean trip became a ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... the small, fleet hand was dashed across the twinkling, tearful eyes of this April day of a middle-aged man of the world—this modern Mercutio—merry and mournful at once, as if there were two sides to his every mood, like the famous shield of story. When we reached ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... would sarve mun but he must be a drummer; and one of the drummers took up with mun and taught mun almost so soon as he was big enough to hold the sticks, and it was wonderful to see how quick he learned. It was pretty, too, to see his little hands a-twinkling, for very soon he could beat so well as any of mun. So he became a bit of a favourite, for he was a sweet pretty boy, and the officers took notice of mun, and the tailor he made mun a little coat and breeches and ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... have been content still to look and to listen, down in the hidden tiny ways of the marshland, but for the fading light that warned us homeward. What would night be among the sedges with the wandering rivulets full of twinkling stars, with the soft calling of wakeful birds, and with the skurrying of little creatures in ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... sate goodly Shamefastnesse, Ne ever durst, her eyes from ground upreare, Ne ever once did looke up from her desse,[149] As if some blame of evill she did feare That in her cheekes made roses oft appeare: And her against sweet Cherefulnesse was placed, Whose eyes, like twinkling stars in evening cleare, Were deckt with smyles that ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... little man, - for he is, as it were, chubby all over, without being stout or unwieldy, - but yesterday his alacrity was so very uncommon that it quite took me by surprise. For could I fail to observe when he came up to me that his gray eyes were twinkling in a most extraordinary manner, that his little red nose was in an unusual glow, that every line in his round bright face was twisted and curved into an expression of pleased surprise, and that his whole countenance was radiant with glee? I was still more surprised to ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... very superb indeed. For the whole building was dressed in red; and the sinking sun, streaming in, through a great red curtain in the chief doorway, made all the gorgeousness its own. When the sun went down, and it gradually grew quite dark inside, except for a few twinkling tapers on the principal altar, and some small dangling silver lamps, it was very mysterious and effective. But, sitting in any of the churches towards evening, is like ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... replied, his eyes twinkling; "once I fell off my boat at the mouth of Bear Creek, and, although I'm an expert swimmer, I guess I'd be there now if it hadn't been for my crew. You see the water was just deep enough so's to be over my head when I tried to wade out, and just shallow ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the fruit of which this keen-eyed Blackbird made up his mind to regale himself at no very distant period. Altogether, his day, which had begun so unpromisingly, was a decided success, and that night, as he fluttered to rest in the ivy, and saw the little silver stars peeping and twinkling at him through the warm green curtains of his canopy, he thought of all the little Robin's wise words. It was with a chirp of sincere thankfulness that he tucked his head ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... him, which was lighting itself up for the night, for the abominations of that accomplice night which, like fine dust, was little by little submerging the expanse of roofs. And the hateful monstrosity of it all howled aloud under the pale sky where the first pure, twinkling stars were gleaming. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... In the twinkling of an eye the scene was changed, the Vernons with their peculiarities were consigned to the limbo of forgotten things, while boys and girls squatted on the rug scrambling for nuts out of a paper bag, and cracking them with their teeth ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to love you. I am sorry, on your account, you should employ these talents in a work which is so little worthy of them. A few months ago the Duke de Richelieu commanded me to make, absolutely in the twinkling of an eye, a little and bad sketch of a few insipid and imperfect scenes to be adapted to divertissements which are not of a nature to be joined with them. I obeyed with the greatest exactness. I wrote very fast, and very ill. I sent this wretched production to M. de Richelieu, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... against the sky; the stars came out in twinkling myriads and the dash and roar of the river was an accompaniment to their ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... had darted through the line like a bullet. Without slackening speed or veering from his course, he scooped up the ball as he fled toward the Yale goal-line. It was done and over within a twinkling, and while the Yale team stampeded helplessly in his wake the devastating hero was circling behind the goal-posts where he flopped to earth, the precious ball apparently embedded in his stomach. It was ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... to all she had ever heard of his Indian-like stealth, had left her side unabashed and unafraid—living, laughing, paying bold court to her even when she stubbornly refused to be courted—and had made himself in the twinkling of an eye a part of the silence beyond—the silence of the night, the wind, the stars, the waste of sand, and of all the mystery that brooded upon it. She would have welcomed, in her keen suspense, a sound of some kind, some reminder that he yet lived and ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... said Smith, releasing the driver. But the man's terror was too much for him. Throwing the reins on the horse's back, he sprang from his seat and fled, a vision of bare brown legs twinkling ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... weary, whereas the said messenger had gotten him from a forester some six miles away in the wood that morning, so the nag answered to her call for speed, and she went a great gallop into the wood, and was hidden in a twinkling from any eyes that might be ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... or more, And she had heard gay comets talk in just this way before. And by and by there came an end to this gay comet's fun - She went a tiny bit too far—and vanished in the Sun! No more she swings her shining trail before the whole world's sight, But quiet stars she laughed to scorn are twinkling every night. ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... brunettes in the twinkling of an eye?" laughed Leila, her blue eyes resting very kindly ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... endureth but the twinkling of an eye, and in his pleasure is life; heaviness may endure for a night, but ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... you remember seeing it sometimes at night from Saint Win's? Yes; and those lights twinkling far-off are Saint Win's. Those must be the school lights; and those long windows you can just see are the chapel windows. They are in chapel now, or the lights wouldn't be there. Perhaps some of our friends—Power, perhaps, and Eden—are praying for us; ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... in her chair, and sat nursing her knees, regarding Darsie with a twinkling eye. "Big eyes, long neck, neat little feet—you'd make an adorable Alice in Wonderland, with ankle- strap slippers, and a comb, and a dear little pinny over a blue frock! And your friend can be the Mad Hatter. Look well, wouldn't she, with a hat ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... "whenever I look back into the past, every thing seems to me covered with a gray mist, through which only two stars and two lights are twinkling. The stars are your eyes, and the lights are the two days I alluded to before—the day on which I saw you for the first time, and the day on which you arrived in Berlin. Oh, Louisa, never shall I forget that first day! I call it the first day, because it was the first day of my real life. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... and extra ringing, shouting, commanding, rushing up the gangway and rushing down the gangway. The clerks, sitting behind tables on the first deck, were plied, in the twinkling of an eye, with estimates, receipts, charges, countercharges, claims, reclaims, demands, questions, accusations, threats, all at topmost voices. None but steamboat clerks could have stood it. And there were throngs ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... gave a roar like that of a baby bull when he saw Prince Melga standing before him, and in a twinkling he had caught up a big club that stood near and began whirling it over his head. But before it could descend, the prince ran at him and stuck his sword as far as it would go into the corrugated body of the giant. Again the monster roared and tried to fight; but the sword ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... living thing! then life's ugly, slimy beginnings; then the conscious soul's fitful dream stretching forth to endless time and space; then the final sleep in abysmal night with its one star of hope twinkling before the all-hidden throne of God, in the shadow of whose too great ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... is. Just as if your hens couldn't hatch ducks' eggs. Now you just wait till one of your hens wants to sit, and you put ducks' eggs under her, and you'll have a family of ducks in a twinkling. You can buy ducks' eggs a plenty of old Sam under the hill. He always has ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you won't have 'em," replied Life. Reaching up his long right arm, and grasping the man by the throat, he dragged him from the animal in the twinkling of an eye, pitching him on the ground as though he had been a piece of carrion; and he lay there looking at the stalwart form of the Kentuckian, not much inclined to ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... find in the Upper House, he was assailed with as much fury of vituperation as if he had betrayed the State. A country that was preparing to rejoice at his return to power lashed itself into a fury of indignation at his exaltation to the peerage. In the twinkling of an eye men who had been devoted yesterday to Pitt were prepared to believe every evil of Chatham. His rule began in storm and gloom, and gloomy and stormy it remained. The first act of his Administration roused the fiercest controversy. A bad harvest had raised the price of food almost ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and twinkling reflections flashed from the water; the boat rocked to and fro, and the cold was horrible. This feeling of bitter cold or else the stupefied sensation brought on by exhaustion seemed to keep me from thinking, and it ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... treasure; so, when he heard the genie's speech to his mother, he hastened to take the lamp from her hand and said to him, "O slave of the lamp, I am hungry; my will is that thou bring me somewhat I may eat, and be it somewhat good past conceit." [286] The genie was absent the twinkling of an eye and [returning,] brought him a great costly tray of sheer silver, whereon were twelve platters of various kinds and colours [287] of rich meats and two silver cups and two flagons [288] of clarified old wine and bread whiter than snow; all which he set before him and ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... the Indians flayed fibre to make snares for small game, but what use the beetles put it to except for a displaying ground for their gay coats, I could never discover. The white butterfly crop comes on with the bigelovia bloom, and on warm mornings makes an airy twinkling all across the field. In September young linnets grow out of the rabbit-brush in the night. All the nests discoverable in the neighboring orchards will not account for the numbers of them. Somewhere, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... But no matter! Then I'll run straight back here and a quarter of an hour later, on my word of honour, I'll bring you news how he is, whether he is asleep, and all that. Then, listen! Then I'll run home in a twinkling—I've a lot of friends there, all drunk—I'll fetch Zossimov—that's the doctor who is looking after him, he is there, too, but he is not drunk; he is not drunk, he is never drunk! I'll drag him to Rodya, and then to you, so ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... serpent was entering port. She butted her way into the standing harbour ice as far as she could get, and promptly began discharging cargo. Teams of dogs sprang up seemingly out of the snow-covered earth, and in a mere twinkling our frozen and silent harbour was an arena of activity. The freight is dumped on the ice over the ship's side with the big winch, and each man must hunt for his own as it descends. Some of the goods ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... towards the lands of the Shawanos. One was just as high as the other, and they were both as high as the goat-sucker flies before a thunderstorm. At first they were close together, but as they came nearer they grew wider apart. Soon our people saw, by their twinkling, that they were two eyes, and in a little while the body of a great man, whose head nearly reached the sky(9), came after them. Brothers, the eyes of the Great Spirit always go before him, and hence nothing is hid from his sight. Brothers, I cannot ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... active and at times violent courtship about my grounds. I could not quite understand the meaning of all the fuss and flutter. Both birds of each pair were very demonstrative, but the female in each case the more so. She followed the male everywhere, lifting and twinkling her wings, and apparently seeking to win him by both word and gesture. If she was not telling him by that cheery, animated, confiding, softly endearing speech of hers, which she poured out incessantly, how much she loved him, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Cournet, "I have placed scouts in the blind alley who will fall back and warn us if the regiment penetrates thither. The door is narrow and will be barricaded in the twinkling of an eye. We are here, with you, fifty armed and resolute men, and at the first shot we shall be two hundred. We are provided with ammunition. You ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... grinned; one of them filled up the tea-pot, and then Strachan said "Go!" and all three lower boys vanished in a twinkling to ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... perhaps the poorest of all extant men. 'Hissed at by the people of Versailles,' he drives forth to Jardi; southward to Brienne,—for recovery of health. Then to Nice, to Italy; but shall return; shall glide to and fro, tremulous, faint-twinkling, fallen on awful times: till the Guillotine—snuff out his weak existence? Alas, worse: for it is blown out, or choked out, foully, pitiably, on the way to the Guillotine! In his Palace of Sens, rude Jacobin Bailiffs made him drink with them from his own wine-cellars, feast with them from ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... all appeals to the "critical faculties," advance "lightly equipped as Priestley himself," making my appeal to the "spiritual faculty." I cannot say that the result was at all what "spiritualism" promises. On the contrary, Harrington parried all such appeals in a twinkling. He said he did not admit that he had any "spiritual faculty" which acted in isolation from the intellect; that religious faith must be founded on religious truth, and even quasi-religious faith on quasi-religious truth. That the intellect and the moral and spiritual ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... What's this?" Bruce stood up in the car when the little group on the steps caught his eye. In a twinkling he was out of the automobile and bending over the groaning boy, while Bob and George and Betty told ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... the mountain tops were enveloped in bright and transparent clouds, from which gushed limpid streams, which, wandering down the steep hill-sides with pleasant harp-like murmur emptied themselves into the twinkling blue bays. The valleys were open and free to the ocean; trees loaded with leaves, which scarcely waved to the light breeze, were scattered on the green declivities and rising ground; all was calm and bright; the pure ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... moonlight, and it went out as he stepped from the door into the middle of the room, his finger tips brushing the ceiling above him. And Andrew, peering through that shadow, saw two little, bright eyes, like the eyes of a beast, twinkling out at him ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... the strangers with a nod, and the old man sitting down beside them, and looking at the figures with extreme delight, began to talk. While they chatted, Mr. Short, a little merry, red-faced man with twinkling eyes, turning over the figures in the box, drew one forth, saying ruefully to his companion, Codlin by name: "Look here, here's all this Judy's clothes falling to pieces again. You haven't got needle and thread, ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... infinitely more attractive. She was small, but beautiful in form; and she sprang from her horse with the grace of a kitten. Her face was not so white as her companion's, but its color was entrancing. Her expression was animated, and her great brown eyes danced like twinkling stars on a ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... he'll attack here too. The only reason why he has not switched on our anaesthetic is that the wind isn't quite right for this bit of the line. I think it is going to be a general push. Bobby, have a look through this sniper's loophole. Can you see any bayonets twinkling in ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... one who had not tasted food for twenty-four hours. Captain Cumberland smiled, but with becoming dignity, at the greediness of the guest, before whom the whole slice of ham and half a brick loaf disappeared almost in a twinkling. The steward appeared with a pot of coffee, in time to cut off another slice of ham, which the waif attacked with the same voracity as before. When it was consumed, and the young Norwegian glanced wistfully at the leg before him, as though his capacity ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... home was lovelier far Than all the stranger homes where I have been; It seem'd as if each pale and twinkling star Loved to shine out upon so fair a scene; Never were flowers so sweet, or fields so green, As those that wont that lonely cot to grace If, as tradition tells, this earth has seen Creatures of heavenly form and angel race. They might ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... heads throughout the day; and silently he dipped behind the western desert in a glory of crimson and orange, green and purple; and without an interval of twilight, in a moment, all the land was dark, and the stars leapt out, not twinkling as in our damper climate here, but hanging like balls of white fire in that purple southern night, through which one seems to look beyond the stars into the infinite abyss, and towards the throne of God himself. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... guiding and controlling the ordinary forces of nature, how impotent and insignificant it appears in the presence of such a transcendent disaster! It is well nigh inconceivable that a great section throbbing with populous towns, and resonant with the hum of industry, should be wiped out in the twinkling of an eye by a mighty, raging torrent, more consuming than fire and more violent than the earthquake. The suddenness of the blow and the impossibility of communicating with the scene add to the terror of the event. The sickening spectacle of ruin and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... heart beat audibly, but he did not lower his eyes, and for not doing so, seemed to himself infinitely bold. A host of confused feelings bore down upon him, well-nigh blotting out the light; but, in a twinkling, all were swallowed up in an overpowering sense of gratitude, in a large, vague, happy thankfulness, which touched him almost to the point of tears. As it swelled through him and possessed him, he yearned to pour it forth, to make an offering of this gratefulness—fine ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the sunshine, Fairer still the moonlight, And all the twinkling starry host; Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer Than all the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... done in the twinkling of an eye', said the Smith, 'for I have just learnt a new way to shoe; and a very good way it is when ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... thought; but the Wind turned quite round, and left them on the strand, and just where they were, except in opposition which is declared to be at an end. Enigma as all this may sound, the key would open it all to you in the twinkling of an administration. In the mean time we have family reconciliations without end. The King and the Duke of Cumberland have been shut up together day and night; Lord Temple and George Grenville are sworn brothers; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... went up, and I followed, till we came at a golden gate. Then he knocked; and when they within had opened, the man went in, and I followed him up to a throne, upon which one sat, and He said to me, Welcome, daughter. The place looked bright and twinkling, like the stars, or rather like the sun; and I thought that I saw your husband there. So I awoke from my dream.[134] But did ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... many spectres, or that, in the more exposed glares and openings of the wood, stretched their long naked arms to the sky. A light breeze went rustling through the withered grass; and I could see the faint twinkling of the falling leaves, as they came showering down on every side ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... that period terribly infested with brigands. Garcia was not lucky enough to escape these outlaws. They pounced on the little cavalcade, and the hard-earned wealth of the singer, amounting to nearly a hundred thousand dollars, passed out of his possession in a twinkling. The cruel humor of the chief of the banditti bound Garcia to a tree, after he had been stripped naked, and as it was known that he was a singer he was commanded to display his art for the pleasure of these strange auditors. For a while the despoiled man sternly refused, though threatened with immediate ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... Sarrazin smartly replied. "I romp with my own children—why not with Kitty? Can I do anything for you in London?" he went on, getting a little nearer to the door; "I leave Edinburgh by the next train. And I promise you," he added, with the spirit of mischief twinkling in his eyes, "this shall be my last confidential interview with your grandchild. When she wants to ask any more questions, I transfer her ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... spoke uncomfortably. She was aware that his twinkling eyes were on her throat. His look made her feel unclean. She tried to think of some question which would lead the conversation to the less exclamatory subject of crops. They were on a curving shelf road beside a shallow valley. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... could be better or kinder than mine," said Lulu, twinkling away a tear; "and yet I have been so passionate and disobedient that he has told me that ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... always a great comfort to me. Above the gun-flashes or the bursting of shells and shrapnel, they would stand out calm and clear, twinkling just as merrily as I have seen them do on many a pleasant sleigh-drive in Canada. I had seen Orion for the first time that year, rising over the broken Cathedral at Albert. I always (p. 144) felt when he arrived for his winter visit ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... queer old buffer, the boss, isn't he?' asked Walter, his eye twinkling again as he jerked his thumb towards the door. 'They say he's awful rich, but he's a miserable old wretch. I'd rather be myself ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... together with the softer virtues, the purity and talents of the Indians? Are they of the Tartar race? Their complexion, "the shadowed livery of the burning sun," might be offered in evidence; they have not the flat head, the angular and twinkling eye, nor the diminutive figure of ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... them; that a viper fears to gaze upon a naked man; that the nature of the wolf is such that if the man sees him first, the wolf is deprived of force and vigor, but if the wolf first sees the man, his power of speech will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Furthermore, there were curious ideas current concerning the mystic power of precious stones, and many were the lapidaries which were written for the edification of the credulous world. The diamond was held in somewhat doubtful esteem, inasmuch ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain person, who, on the instant, approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him literally in a twinkling, and cried, "Welcome home, old fellow! welcome ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... smiled. He brushed back his hair with a characteristic gesture, and his twinkling blue eyes bored into those of the I. F. P. special officer. The colonel wore the regular uniform of the service; his little skullcap, with the conventionalized sun symbol denoting his rank, was on the table before him. He put out ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... remained noteless, and finally, at some odd evasion of his, accomplished by a monosyllable, I laughed outright—and he did, too! He joined cachinnations with me heartily, and with a twinkling quizzicalness that somehow gave me the idea that he might be thinking (rather apologetically) to himself: "Yes, sir, that old Beasley man is ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... party," returned the young man, "will catch the next trolley for New York. Oh! Here labors the trusty henchman across the green. Right you are, Jim! No, the lady is not to come down. I'm to go up." And go up he did, in the twinkling of an eye, and in less than another the rose-wreathed hat and the young man's gray cap had disappeared from ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... go, she looked really pretty. Her long lashes were wet with a twinkling moisture, like meadow-grass after a shower; and there was a softened, childlike expression stealing over the careless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... level with the window-sill was a niche in the masonry, perhaps three feet square, and looking to be the depth of the wall itself. The back of it seemed to be made of a dark substance—darker than the bricks—through which shone twinkling glimpses of daylight. ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... He vouchsafed no word of reply, but went into the room where he had slept to get some article he had left. A sudden thought struck Mr. Sandford. He followed Charles into the room, and in a moment after returned,—but so changed! Imagine Captain Absolute at the duelling-ground turned in a twinkling into Bob Acres, Lucy Bertram putting on the frenzied look of Meg Merrilies, or the even-tempered Gratiano metamorphosed into the horror-stricken, despairing Shylock at the moment he hears his sentence, and you have some notion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... kind, something which would give Miss Rutherford the impression that he had kindly undertaken the care of Priscilla during the day in order to oblige those ordinarily responsible for her. A curious smile, which began to form at the corners of Miss Rutherford's lips and a sudden twinkling of her eyes, ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the air in a twinkling. As they went up, Ted brought down his quirt with all his strength. It was time the ugly animal was taught that its enemy could strike a blow ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... had come to Grande Pointe. From such a day Sidonie could not be spared. She was to say a piece, a poem, an apostrophe to a star. A child, beholding the little star in the heavens, and wondering what it can be, sparkling diamond-like so high up above the world, exhorts it not to stop twinkling on his account. But to its tender regret the school knew that no more thereafter was Sidonie to twinkle in ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... a level with one of the windows, which happened, very conveniently, to have been left wide open: so in flew the pheasants, car and all, and alighted on the hearth-rug. 'Jump out—be quick!' cried the Fairy. The cat did not wait to be told twice—she was out in a twinkling; but before she could turn her head round, car, Fairy, and pheasants had vanished, and she was left alone in the strange room. 'To be sure,' she exclaimed to herself, 'was there ever anything so extraordinary?' What an adventure! And what a room it was! It was so large, that ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... possession had still preserved my attachment to her unabated. Emily I had heard of, and still loved with a purer flame. She was my sun; Eugenia my moon; and the fair favourites of the western hemisphere, so many twinkling stars of the first, second, and third magnitude. I loved them all more or less; but all their charms vanished, when the beauteous Emily shone in ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Opera by Mrs Skewton, he said he very seldom went there, for he couldn't afford it. It seemed greatly to delight and exhilarate him to say so: and he beamed on his audience afterwards, with his hands in his pockets, and excessive satisfaction twinkling in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... time the sun shone out from behind the gray cloud. In the twinkling of an eye all the snowflakes were gone. 'Strange, strange!' thought the people of the Summer Land. 'What has become ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... began slowly, and with a look of unusual merriment twinkling in his eyes, "It has taken a long time you see for this surprise to come, but it was worth the trouble of waiting. May be you think that at fifty years all the romance has died out of a man's life, but I am going to show you that such is not the ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the papers in his pocket and looked with comic gravity at her, as if to judge the effect she would be likely to have on his friend. Then, his eyes twinkling with ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... myself now, seated in the omnibus and trundling over the plain to the cadets' dancing-rooms. The very hot, still July night seems round me again. Lights were twinkling in the camp, and across the plain in the houses of the professors and officers; lights above in the sky too, myriads of them, mocking the tapers that go out so soon. I was happy with a little flutter of expectation; quietly enjoying meanwhile the novel loveliness of all about me, along with ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was livid with rage, and his countenance expressed the fell intention of his heart. But Arrowhead was too quick for him; with a wild glance of the eye the Tuscarora looked about him; then thrust a hand beneath his own girdle, drew forth a concealed knife, and, in the twinkling of an eye, buried it in the body of the Quartermaster to the handle. As the latter fell at his feet, gazing into his face with the vacant stare of one surprised by death, Sanglier took a pinch of snuff, and said in ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the lights and sat out on the little balcony. The moonshine was glorious. So dense was the earth-blackness that the few lights twinkling here and there were more like fallen stars. Presently she heard a sound. It was her father, returning as silently as he could. She heard him fumble among the knickknacks on the mantel, and then go away again. By and by she saw a spot of white light move hither and thither among the grape arbors. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... will lay on the floor, the general's wife kneeling on it, as on a prayer carpet, in an attitude of prayer, her clasped hands on the window sill, her wet eyes fixed on a faintly twinkling star, as though calling heaven to witness her inconsolable grief ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... though I've twenty years to go, I see myself quite plain, A wrinkling, twinkling, rosy-cheeked, benevolent old chap; I think I'll wear a tartan shawl and lean upon a cane. I hope that I'll have silver hair beneath a velvet cap. I see my little grandchildren a-romping round my knee; So gay the scene, I almost wish 'twould hasten to arrive. Let others ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... proceeded to arrange their camp for the night. They first laid out the protection- wires, setting them while the sun still shone. Next they built a fire and prepared their evening meal. While they ate it, twilight became night, and the fire-flies, twinkling in legions in the neighbouring valley, seemed like the lamps of a great city. "Their lights," said Bearwarden, pointing to them, "are not as fine as the jelly-fish Will-o'-the wisps were last night, but they are not so dangerous. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... already? What is to become of class distinctions if you are just going to hobnob with anyone who may happen along?" he asked, his eyes twinkling with fun, for he was quoting from her ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... against a background composed of a gambling chorus and the wild whirl of the furlano, which ends abruptly with organ peals and a pious canticle—an effect repeated since in "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Tosca." In the second act in the twinkling of an eye, Gioconda is transformed from a murderous devil into a protecting saint; in the third Laura's accents of mortal woe commingle with the sounds of a serenade in the distance, and the disclosure of a supposed murder ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... In a twinkling the entire family was settled in the city, "just as though we'd never been away," Peggy declared. Then two days later Barbara ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... do all the fussy things in travelling—taking the tickets, and counting the luggage, and all that—they're such big men, aren't they?" said Denny, with mischief in her twinkling green eyes. ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth
... amid much laughter that the carriage moved on again. Down the long avenue they went, under that glowing arch, spangled as if with stars, and every friendly old locust held up all its twinkling lanterns to light them on their way. Half-way down the path the band began to play "My Old Kentucky Home," and, leaning far out of the carriage, Eugenia and Joyce looked back once more to wave a loving good-bye to ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... crowded, and how brilliant! You see, for instance, an immense array of jewelry, and pause to have a look. You begin at the end nearest you, and, after gazing a moment, take a step to run your eye along the dazzling display, when, presto! the trays of watches and diamonds vanish in a twinkling, and you find yourself looking into the door, or your delighted eyes suddenly bring up against a brick wall, disenchanted so quickly ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... so fast? And how black and cold the river looked! She never remembered to have seen it quite so cheerless and gloomy before. A thick white fog was rising from the marshy lands, and she could not see the friendly twinkling lights upon the bridge. Despite her exertions, which were great, she felt chill and shivery; and when at last she heard the sound of a lusty shout behind her, her heart seemed to stand still with ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... unobserved, added torches to the fire; the wind ceased to sound in the pines; the flame rose evenly, with a slender point toward the stars, which were twinkling in a clear sky. Having mentioned the death of Christ, the old man talked now of Him only. All held the breath in their breasts, and a silence set in which was deeper than the preceding one, so that it was possible almost to hear the beating of ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... victory triumphing? Where is now Dives, in dishes so dainty? Where is now Tully, in eloquence exceeding? Where is now Aristotle, learned so deeply? What emperors, kings, and dukes in times past, What earls and lords, and captains of war, What popes and bishops, all at the last In the twinkling of an eye are fled so far? How short a feast is this worldly joying? Even as a shadow it passeth away, Depriving a man of gifts everlasting, Leading to darkness and not to day! O meat of worms, O heap of dust, O like to dew, climb not too high! To live to-morrow thou canst not trust, Therefore ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... vapors, as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidly across the stars. It was bitter cold; and by a common optical effect, things seemed almost more definite than in the broadest daylight. The sleeping city was absolutely still; a company of white hoods, a field full of little Alps, below the twinkling stars. Villon cursed his fortune. Would it were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... ever in front of them. Huge clouds of smoke veiled the northern sky, for the Boers had set fire to the dry grass, partly to cover their own retreat, and partly to show up our khaki upon the blackened surface. Far on the flanks the twinkling heliographs revealed the position of ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Channel with the wind North-east, Our ship she sails nine knots at least; Our thundering guns we will let fly, We will let fly over the twinkling sky— Huzza! we are homeward bound, ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... we sat in the verandah looking still over the blackened unlovely prospect, but now cheerfully and with hope; for the eastern sky was piled up range beyond range with the scarlet and purple splendour of cloud-land, and, as darkness gathered, we saw the lightning, not twinkling and glimmering harmlessly about the horizon, as it had been all the summer, but falling sheer in violet-coloured rivers behind the dark curtain of rain that hung from the black edge ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... flee in every direction; the strong, the youthful, those who care only for their lives, escape. The amphitheatre is emptied in the twinkling of an eye and none remain in it but the dead gladiators. But woe to those who have sought shelter in the shops, under the arcades of the theatre, or in underground retreats. The ashes surround and stifle them! Woe, ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... was quite sick with delight! stirred beyond bearing with its furious agitations within me, and gorged and crammed, even to a surfeit. Thus I lay gasping, panting under him, till his broken breathings, faultering accents, eyes twinkling with humid fires, lunges more furious, and an increased stiffness, gave me to hail the approaches of the second period: it came... and the sweet youth, overpowered with the ecstasy, died away in my arms, melting a flood that shot in genial warmth into the innermost recesses ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... concussions. Thus the afternoon passed. Sunset approached, yet the fight raged. Slowly the great luminary of day sank in the west, and twilight, cold and calm, threw its shadows across the waters; yet still the fight raged. The stars came out, twinkling sharp and clear, in that half tropical sky: yet still the fight raged. The hum of the day had now subsided, and the cicada was heard trilling its note on the night-air: all was quiet and serene in the city: yet still the fight ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... cause for dread. Should the swarm come on, and settle upon his fields, farewell to his prospects of a harvest. They would strip the verdure from his whole farm in a twinkling. They would leave neither seed, nor leaf, nor ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... spiked, Lanyard began to breathe more freely. "It is not too late to make up that loss, monsieur." Liane Delorme was actually chuckling in appreciation of his readiness, pleased with him even in the moment of her own discomfiture; her eyes twinkling merrily at him above the fan with which she hid a convulsed countenance. "Surely two people so possessed with regret at never having known each other should lose no time improving their acquaintance! Dear Athenais: do ask us to sit ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... own room, slipped on some clothes, and went to the door. Far up on the hillside a lantern was twinkling ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... fancy how surprised I was. I looked round, and there was that Lembke woman at her tricks, and that cousin of hers—old Drozdov's nephew—it was all clear. You may be sure I changed all that in a twinkling, and Praskovya is on my side again, but what ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... is the evening air, and loth to lose Day's grateful warmth, though moist with falling dews Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none; Look up a second time, and, one by one, You mark them twinkling out with silvery light, And wonder how ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... up from puppyhood to doghood with these children without knowing what tracks led to school and home, and what to the wonderful realm of play and fancy. Moreover, his anticipations were always aroused when Elizabeth changed her habit, and he had seen in the twinkling of his eye that she was bare-legged and bare-headed and provided with a pole. So he barked joyously and scampered away upon that ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... twilight was falling, rain and wind rising and falling with it, the street lamps twinkling ghostily through the murky gloaming, the pavement black and shining. Belated pedestrians hurried along with bowed heads and uplifted umbrellas, the stages rattled past in a ceaseless stream, full to overflowing. The rainy night was ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... a public house. Soon after breakfast, or even before, the tradesmen sneak round for their pick-me-ups. Then the housewives go for their jugs of ale and stout. Some people never enter the Alexandra except by the back way. They march down the Gut as if on important business; then, in the twinkling of an eye, they are gone within. One worn little woman, who wears a loose cape and a squalid sailor hat, walks up and down the Gut till it is completely clear, then jumps into the door, and closes it very quietly. When she comes out again it is as a rabbit comes from a bolt-hole when a ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... not. They would rather go to her without an intermediary, and take a scantier measure of food from her hand, but flavoured as she only can flavour it. Widen your cage, naturalist; replace the little twinkling lustres with sun and moon and milky way; plant forests on the floor, and let there be hills and valleys, rivers and wide spaces; and let the blue pillars of heaven be the wires of your cage, with free entrance to wind and rain; then your little captives will be happy, even ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... September mornings, and I hurried away, thinking the cloudless blue arch, the twinkling sea, and the crisp air might serve to soften my aunt's displeasure at her hostile reception. From the conservatories I caught a glimpse of a woman on the beach—a slender, agile woman throwing a ball for the amusement of a fox-terrier. She threw ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... With my companions I gazed on the scene from the entresol of the Cafe Mazarin. It was the first affair of the kind I had ever witnessed, and for that reason impressed itself more vividly on my mind than several subsequent and more serious ones. In the twinkling of an eye all the little tables set out in front of the cafes were deserted, and tragi-comical was the sight of the many women with golden chignons scurrying away with their alarmed companions, and tripping now and again over some fallen chair whilst the pursuing cavalry clattered noisily along the ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... they just fit. They slip down in the tube, and as the lowest planchet slides from under the tube, two small steel arms spring out and grasp it and lay it on the die. At the same instant, the upper die descends with a quick thump, and the silver counter, stamped in a twinkling on both sides, falls into a box below. In an instant, another takes its place, and thus they go on dropping under the swiftly moving rod, and turning into coins in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the dawn-light revealed a black spot on the low horizon. A speck that grew larger, with twinkling, fin-like flashes along each side, and in due time it proved to be a galley like their own bearing down straight for them. Nobody stopped to ask any questions. That was not sea-style then. But just as naturally as two men now in a lonely journey would shake hands on meeting, ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... night had fallen and was thick with stars, and the festal lights were twinkling like other stars among the trees of the park, and from the happy crowds at play there floated the sounds of laughter and joyful voices, their Graces and their guests sate or walked upon the terrace amid the night-scents ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rooms, haunted with memories of the splendid "anonyma" whose reign is yet visible, he dreams of his wasted past, his lonely future. Can he repair it? Enveloped in smoke wreaths, from his portico he surveys the thousand twinkling city lights below. He is careless of the future movements ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... continually louder and louder the pattering of geta over the bridge. It is a sound never to be forgotten, this pattering of geta over the Ohashi -rapid, merry, musical, like the sound of an enormous dance; and a dance it veritably is. The whole population is moving on tiptoe, and the multitudinous twinkling of feet over the verge of the sunlit roadway is an astonishment. All those feet are small, symmetrical—light as the feet of figures painted on Greek vases—and the step is always taken toes first; indeed, with geta ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... dusk when I reached the foothills of the Swaziland mountains. Far off, as I approached, I could see the twinkling lights at the kraals on the high ledges. I camped at the foot of a very high, naked peak of granite, which was almost sheer on the side facing me. This peak turned out to be densely populated by, baboons. At intervals, all night long, pandemonium ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... I wasn't listening—forgive me!" he said one day, when, with a spark of real anger, Julia had begged him to make his calls at the settlement house a little less frequent and less conspicuous. "What was it?" And with twinkling eyes he caught up the hand that lay near him on the table and ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... in his gigantic hands, seized the old Judge's other leg, and pressed his foot immovably to the stone floor; while his senior, in a twinkling, with a masterly application of pincers and hammer, sped the glowing bar around his ankle so tight that the skin and sinews smoked and bubbled again, and old Judge Harbottle uttered a yell that seemed to chill the very stones, and make the iron ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... me, somehow. The creek was beginning to pinch out, this high up the gulch, and a fire would jump it in a twinkling. And if anything should happen to us, down there,—one of us hurt himself, you know, in hurrying,—we should be in a trap as the fire swept across. Out of the timber was ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... are, your eminence; famous beauties of pure Circassian descent; each originally cost five thousand piastres, and they surpass the remainder even as the mighty sun doth the twinkling stars." ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Cottrell, his eyes twinkling with the fun of the situation. "This is all very well for you country people, Miss Sylla; but we poor Londoners have come down for rest after a spell of hot rooms and late hours, preparatory to encountering fresh dissipations. Is it not so, Lady Mary? Did you not promise ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... responded Maskull with twinkling eyes. "But first of all, to dine. I can't remember having eaten all day. You seem to have been hunting to some purpose, so we won't ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... word!" objected Captain Bonnet, his accents severe but the bold eyes twinkling. "We are loyal servants of the King, sworn to do mischief to his lawful enemies,—to wit, all ships and sailors of Spain. For such a young gentleman adventurer as you, Master Cockrell, there is a berth in the Royal James. Will ye rendezvous at ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... face and caught his lungs. Beyond the fence-rail protection to the side of the platform he thought he saw the suggestion of a broad reach of snow, a distant lurking forest, a few shadowy buildings looming mysterious in the night. The air was twinkling with frost and the brilliant stars ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... might go and see them all! I could tell in a twinkling the real state of things." She spoke with a ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... neck, and greenish hat coming into sight at intervals. For a moment he paused to glance into the show window of a tobacconist and pipe-seller's store. A Chinese woman passed him, pattering along lamely, her green jade ear-rings twinkling in the light of a street lamp, newly lighted. Vandover looked after her a moment, gazing stupidly, then suddenly took up his walk again, zigzagging amid the groups on the asphalt, striding along at a great pace, his head low and swinging ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... hands with swift cordiality, followed in succession by Jack and Miles, and the three big brothers stood beside the sofa, looking down on their guest with kindly scrutiny. Pat's twinkling smile was an augury for future friendship; Miles's air of angelic sympathy was as good as a tonic; while the rapt gaze of Jack's fine eyes seemed to imply that never, no never, had he beheld a girl who so absolutely fulfilled his ideal of womanhood! ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Manhattan's spires Glint back the sunset's latest beam; The bay is flecked with twinkling fires; Or is it ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... up Castle Richmond. But, nevertheless, without a hope, and in obedience solely to what he felt that prudence demanded in so momentous a matter, he did prosecute all manner of inquiries;—but prosecuted them altogether in vain. And now, O thou most acute of lawyers, this new twinkling spark of hope has come to thee from a source whence ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... his merry eyes twinkling against his deep space tan. "It's mighty good to see you boys. Come on in the house. I got a mess of fatfish just pulled out of the stream and some of the most delicious biscuits you ever ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... off my coat, was in a chair in a twinkling, and he was clipping softly at me as Doltaire's hand turned ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bought a little pig with the money my daughter had paid her in the winter for spinning, and the poor woman kept it like a child, and let it run about her room. This little pig got the mischief, like all the rest, in the twinkling of an eye; and when my daughter was called it grew no better, but also died under her hands; whereupon the poor woman made a great outcry and tore her hair for grief, so that my child was moved to pity her, and promised her another pig next time my sow should litter. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... flickering light of the campfire. The wild desert dogs, with their characteristic insolent curiosity, were baying men round a campfire. Gale proceeded slowly, halting every few steps, careful not to brush against the stiff greasewood. In the soft sand his steps made no sound. The twinkling light vanished occasionally, like a Jack-o'lantern, and when it did show it seemed still a long way off. Gale was not seeking trouble or inviting danger. Water was the thing that drove him. He must see who these campers were, and then decide how to ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... well woven shirts that were slightly oiled. The girls were crowned with garlands, while the young men had daggers of gold that hung by silver baldrics; sometimes they would dance deftly in a ring with merry twinkling feet, as it were a potter sitting at his work and making trial of his wheel to see whether it will run, and sometimes they would go all in line with one another, and much people was gathered joyously about the green. There was a bard also to ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... was assailed with as much fury of vituperation as if he had betrayed the State. A country that was preparing to rejoice at his return to power lashed itself into a fury of indignation at his exaltation to the peerage. In the twinkling of an eye men who had been devoted yesterday to Pitt were prepared to believe every evil of Chatham. His rule began in storm and gloom, and gloomy and stormy it remained. The first act of his Administration ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... dark-circled with fatigue, her face streaked with soft coal soot, while the wrinkled riding skirt in which she had slept was soiled and torn. Her fleece-lined canvas coat was buttoned to the throat, and she leaned negligently against the rail, watching from under the broad brim of her Stetson the twinkling ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Ca'line Siner. If she wants me to visit her, let her send ten dollars to cover that and back debts, and I'll—" The end of his sentence was lost in the closing of his door. The light he carried declined from a beam to a twinkling here and there, and then vanished in blackness. Dr. Jallup's house became dead again. The little porch light in its glass box might have been a ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... a clear night, brilliant with stars. In contrast with the twinkling and pure lights of the heavens, there were dim reds and greens and yellow-white lights on the surface of the ocean. These lights rocked and oscillated and tossed as the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... like the stage. My sister, no doubt, invented the word. Well, no matter. Would you like to come home with me now? My village is about ten miles off. I have some excellent horses who will get us there in a twinkling. You could stay the night and the morning, and I could bring you back by three o'clock tomorrow. Will ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... around our patient, and after a couple of hours the tiny little stranger came into the world. It had been necessary to have a great fire in order to have light, so as soon as we got Baby dressed I opened the door a little to cool the room and Molly saw the morning star twinkling merrily. "Oh," she said, "that is what I will call my ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidly across the stars. It was bitter cold; and by a common optical effect, things seemed almost more definite than in the broadest daylight. The sleeping city was absolutely still: a company of white hoods, a field full of little Alps, below the twinkling stars. Villon cursed his fortune. Would it were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went he must ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ask only one thing of you, young man," he began, his shrewd little eyes twinkling. "Just let me know when you are going to get out, so I can pull through without having to take ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... my glass empty. The last drop had tasted like vinegar. Always one has to fight, and for a while I sat in silence before my table piled now with dishes of fruit. My hands gripped the sides of my chair, my eyes were fixed upon a twinkling light which had shot out from the distant hillside. Always one has to fight for the things worth having—and ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is a-wing; he has heard the call of spring; And a dozen times this morning I have heard a robin sing; But I know a sign that's surer, and I see the twinkling feet Of a score of little children at the corner ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... of the salon—the same great dusky fresco in the concave ceiling. The daughter is not rich, I suppose, any more than the mother. The furniture is worn and faded, and I was admitted by a solitary servant, who carried a twinkling taper before me up the ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... his full, broad face perfectly unmoved, and Cavaliere Trenta, who watched the scene nervously with troubled, twinkling eyes, placed themselves on either side of Count Nobili. Ser Giacomo had already slipped round behind the sofa, and seated himself at a table placed against the wall, the marriage-contract spread out before him. There was an awkward pause. Then Count Nobili ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... at the falls lowered the boat into the water in the twinkling of an eye, and the two officers dropped the oars into the water as soon as it was afloat. They pulled like men before the mast, and went astern of the schooner, whose head had been thrown up into the wind to enable the officers to embark in safety. French was now in ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... his field-glass, looked at the battle, and said, 'All goes well.' One of those plumed busybodies, who plagued him considerably and followed him everywhere, even to his meals, so they said, thought to play the wag, and took the Emperor's place as he rode away. Ho! in a twinkling, head and plume were off! You must understand that Napoleon had promised to keep the secret of his compact all to himself. That's why all those who followed him, even his nearest friends, fell like nuts—Duroc, Bessieres, Lannes—all strong as steel bars, though he could bend ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late—and when the old bookseller, with some grumbling, opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home wishing it were twice as cumbersome—and when you presented it to me; and when we were exploring the perfectness ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... dear fellow," cried Connal, "what savage cut your hair last?—It is a sin to trust your fine head to the barbarians—my hairdresser shall be with you in the twinkling of an eye: I will send my tailor—allow me to choose your embroidery, and see your lace, before you decide—I am said to have a tolerable taste—the ladies say so, and they are always the best judges. The French dress will become you prodigiously, I foresee—but, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... maidens; and he said, "Bring me seven baskets of cotton-bolls," and they brought him seven baskets of cotton-bolls; and he taught the seven maidens to weave a magical fabric from the cotton, and when they had finished it he held it aloft, and the breeze carried it away toward the firmament, and in the twinkling of an eye it was transformed into a beautiful full-orbed moon, and the same breeze caught the remnants of flocculent cotton which the maidens had scattered during their work, and carried them aloft, ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honor of its being Christmas-eve, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... I walked up and down on the Pont des Bergues, under a clear, moonless heaven delighting in the freshness of the water, streaked with light from the two quays, and glimmering under the twinkling stars. Meeting all these different groups of young people, families, couples and children, who were returning to their homes, to their garrets or their drawing-rooms, singing or talking as they ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a dream, and through the little opening of your eyelids I shall slip into the depths of your sleep; and when you wake up and look round startled, like a twinkling firefly I shall ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... girl's identity, and the reason for the tears which every one declared had flowed so copiously from the purple eyes that might have been stolen from the dead woman who lay upon the high, violet-strewn catafalque, surrounded by a ring of twinkling lights. Yet no one in that eagerly sacrilegious throng had the luck to perceive the most dramatic figure in the church: the shabbily dressed, middle-aged man who, hidden in the shadow of a chapel-pillar, stood watching his ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... almost unbelievable power of simulation, which relates solely to the pigmentation of its skin. In electrical mechanics we pride ourselves on our ability to make over one brilliant scene into another in the twinkling of an eye, and flash before the gaze of an onlooker picture after picture, which appear and disappear as we look. The directive control of Mycteroperca over its appearance is much more significant. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... falls on the earth, the sea From east to west lies twinkling bright With shining beams from beacons high, Which send afar ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... you, old fool?" answered Katinka. "It is none of your business where I came from or whither I am going." She plunged into the forest. January frowned and raised his staff above his head. In the twinkling of an eye the sky was overcast, the fire went out, the snow fell, and the wind blew. Katinka could not see the way before her. She lost herself, and vainly tried to retrace her steps. The snow fell and the wind blew. She called her mother, she cursed her sister, she cursed God. The ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... some one of the sterner sex to cheer her," said Alice, mischievously, her eyes twinkling. "Don't ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... save once in an evening-walk near Salerno. The sense of utter solitude and unbroken silence within these gloomy woods was truly awful. From time to time, as I advanced, a casual opening in the branches exhibited a momentary glimpse of the sky, with all its thousand twinkling fires; and shooting-stars of intense brilliancy were darting across its dark, blue depths in almost as great frequency as in those celebrated days of August and November, when the path of our earth crosses the thickest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... hedge; and the Swami leaped into attention with the swift motionlessness of a wild animal. Lena roused herself heavily and blinked about. There was no Swami to be seen. His turban lay on the table, but he himself had disappeared in a twinkling. She heard a rush of feet and voices raised in excitement and then a sharp command. Even while she listened, confused, a blue-coated starred man appeared at the opening in the hedge and over his shoulder she saw Mr. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Bryan, with a twinkling glance at the rest of his committee. "We have a party down at my house Friday ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... rosy-crowned Loves are seen On Cytherea's day, With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures, Frisking light in frolic measures; Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet: To brisk notes in cadence beating Glance their many-twinkling feet. Slow-melting strains their Queen's approach declare: Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay: With arms sublime that float upon the air In gliding state she wins her easy way: O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move The bloom of young Desire ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... himself down upon the other end of the hearthrug quite in the native manner, and seemed perfectly at his ease, while Frank sat watching them both with his eyes twinkling in his delight. ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... as night, floated over Walter's reeling brain; darkness, pierced by a thousand gleaming, twinkling lights, brilliant as stars, then came a void and nothingness. Slowly at last he felt himself struggling up out of the void, battling, fighting for consciousness, then came a delicious sort of languor. If this was dying, it was very pleasant. Forms ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... shadowy river meadow reaching back for a great distance to the second rise and fringed about its edge by even blacker shadows. And above it danced a million fire-flies weaving ceaselessly to and fro, waving their soft lanterns. They hung, a cloud of twinkling radiance, upon a soft ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... that name, for in the sunbeam it shineth more clear than gold or silver. And this metal is more noble than other metals. And hereof are three manners of kinds. The third manner is made of three parts of gold, and of the fourth of silver: and kind electrum is of that kind, for in twinkling and in light it shineth more clear than all other metal, and warneth of venom, for if one dip it therein, it maketh a great chinking noise, and changeth oft into divers colours as the rainbow, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... long their nets they threw To the stars in the twinkling foam, Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, Bringing the fishermen home; 'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed As if it could not be, And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed, Of sailing that beautiful sea; But I ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... he ejaculated enthusiastically, when the black dome was filled with twinkling stars. He leaned for a long time against the parapet, listening to the music from the streets below, and watching the flying-machines with their vari-colored lights rise from the little parks at the intersection of the ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... existence usually in the water, but a life in the open air has no terrors for it: it leaps out on the bank, climbs trees without much difficulty, finds a congenial habitat on the banks of mud exposed by the falling tide, and basks there in the sun, prepared to vanish in the ooze in the twinkling of an eye if some approaching bird should catch sight of it. Pelicans, herons, cranes, storks, cormorants, hundreds of varieties of seagulls, ducks, swans, wild geese, secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... in short cloaks and elaborate ruffs. But the lad saw little of them, for the splendour of the lords and knights that followed eclipsed them altogether. The knights came first, in steel armour with raised vizors, the horses too in armour, moving sedately with a splendid clash of steel, and twinkling fiercely in the sunshine; and then, after them (and Anthony drew his breath swiftly) came a blaze of colour and jewels as the great lords in their cloaks and feathered caps, metal-clasped and gemmed, came on their ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... thin man; the other a red-faced specimen with rotund outline. The third and biggest was smoking a briarwood pipe. He was a heavily built man with immense shoulders square jaw, and low, wrinkled forehead; deep under his bushy eyebrows were two close-set, twinkling gray eyes, which were turned on the visitors ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... winding itself. Clucking and chuckling, they concealed themselves in an undergrowth of coral-strung buck bushes, little scrub cedars, and dried oak leaves, and I could hear them holding a council of war that sounded as if they were to depart forever to parts unknown. In a twinkling of an eye I saw my future fortune literally take wings, and in my extremity ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... while Orion and Aldebaran and their neighbours were scattering apart. Flashing suddenly out of the darkness there came a flying multitude of particles of rock, glittering like dust-specks in a sunbeam, and encompassed in a faintly luminous cloud. They swirled all about me, and vanished again in a twinkling far behind. And then I saw that a bright spot of light, that shone a little to one side of my path, was growing very rapidly larger, and perceived that it was the planet Saturn rushing towards me. Larger and larger it grew, swallowing up the heavens behind it, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the time when "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... house, and Lucia did not realize it at the time, but he slowed up the car. Presently a young girl came out on the stone terrace and waved to him. She was like a prairie flower. "Red" Giddings became another man in the twinkling of an eye. A flush mounted to his cheeks, and a smile as broad as a fat man's belt all but encircled his countenance. He took one hand from the wheel and waved until they were out of sight down ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... very thing!" interrupted the boys; and the old chair was dragged out in a twinkling, and carried down to the river. Then away went the merry party, laughing and shouting, on the smooth road between the snowy hills, while Gyp followed, frisking and barking, and seeming to enjoy the fun as much ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... the detective stopped laughing, and lifted the cage. The man in the well threw the leg across the cellar, and turned swiftly to go down into the well; but the officers were too quick for him, and had him out in a twinkling. Whilst they held him, dripping upon the floor, the inspector jerked his thumb in the direction of the offending leg, and the landlord, having harpooned it with one of the pitchforks, ran with it upstairs and so into the ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... and they fell with a velocity which showed they were considerably heavier than the atmosphere. When the most elevated station in the country where this was observed was ascended, the webs were still to be seen descending from above, and twinkling like stars in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most incurious. The flakes of the web on this occasion hung so thick upon the hedges and trees, that basketsful might have been collected. No one doubts (he ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... the distant spire, To cheer the gloom so deep, Nor twinkling star, nor cottage fire Did thro' ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... his sword. Then came out a tall, dark man, with coal-black eyes and hair and melancholy visage, and made a furious sweep at Sculloge with the flaming blade. But the Druidic beast sprang back over the wall in the twinkling of an eye and rescued his rider, leaving, however, his tail behind in the court-yard. Then Sculloge returned in triumph to his father-in-law's palace, and the night was ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... and the boy doubled up with misery. He couldn't let his one chance go like this. He felt for his breast pocket and crackled Nils' letter to give him courage. He didn't want Nils to be ashamed of him. The train stopped. Suddenly he remembered his brother's kind, twinkling eyes, that always looked at you as if from far away. The lump in his throat softened. "Ah, but Nils, Nils would understand!" he thought. "That's just it about Nils; ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Judgment Trumpet had sounded, France was changed in the twinkling of an eye. And added to that subconscious terror that lurked in every American soul of another revolution—a terror that was dispelled after the third day when France reached out her long arm and mobilized her people into a strong component whole ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... Fraddam's cave I saw a twinkling light, and on coming up to its mouth I saw the bent form of ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... us something we do not expect," said Santiago to Rezanov, whose eyes were twinkling. "The other girls dance El Son and La Jota very gracefully—yes. But Conchita dances with her head, and the musicians and the partner, when she takes one, have all they can do to follow. She will choose ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... did not look disturbed by the banter of their friends. Lister was embarrassed, for Ruth's sake, until he saw with some surprise that she studied the others with amused curiosity. Looking down he met her twinkling glance and thought it something like a challenge. His embarrassment got worse. One could not talk because of the noise and to shout was ridiculous. He must stand in a cramped pose and try not to fall against Ruth when the cars rocked. He admitted that his proper background ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... world, that when with us it is winter, in the contrary circle it is notwithstanding summer; for in India and Saba there falleth or setteth a sun, so that it is so warm, that they have twice a year fruit; and, gracious lord, I have a swift spirit, the which can in a twinkling of an eye fulfil my desire in anything; wherefore I sent him into those countries, who hath brought this fruit as you see;" whereat the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... and I were inspecting the church, Mrs. Cole and Hephzy were making a tour of the house. They met us at the door. Mrs. Cole's eyes were twinkling; I judged that she had found Hephzy amusing. If this was true it had not warped her judgment, however, for, a moment later when she and I were ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... on the main deck in the twinkling of an eye. My chief and the third mate and nearly all the men were safe. They had discovered their danger when it was too late to pull out of the way; then, when the great guards overshadowed them a moment later, they were prepared and knew what to do; at my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... massa, dat's my name—yah, yah,' and he turned his face, wet with merry tears, and distended in an uncommonly broad grin, up to mine. In a moment, however, his eye caught Preston's. His broad visage collapsed, his distended mouth shrank to a very diminutive opening, and his twinkling eyes assumed a peculiarly stolid expression, as he added, in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... catch a glimpse of your figure. My father and all his court delight in nothing so much as to see a stranger trying to yoke them in order to come at the Golden Fleece. It makes a holiday in Colchis whenever such a thing happens. For my part, I enjoy it immensely. You cannot imagine in what a mere twinkling of an eye their hot breath shrivels a young man into ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... not the sun His daily course so proudly run? The moon in her nocturnal race, With sweet and tender, smiling face? The stars in pale but beauteous light, Twinkling, shining all the night? Stupendous ocean, wild and free, Bold image of eternity? The mountain cliff that checks the storm, And sheds its tears on valley farm? Poor soul twice dead indeed must be, And plucked up ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... looking up, I saw the sky above me: a star was twinkling just above my head. Had I been wide awake, and had the cow stopped bellowing for just one minute, I should have guessed that somehow or another I had got into a chimney. But as things were, the wonder and the mystery of it all appalled me. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" would have appeared to ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... and secret way, and he began to wonder; for he was inquisitive, as most birds are. He sat quite still on his rose-bush and watched and watched. Presently out of the hole popped a black head, bigger than Whitebird's, with two wise little twinkling eyes. ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... drinking!" retorted the person thus addressed, while he raised the cup, looked into the wine with his twinkling eyes and lifted it slowly to his nose—a long, well-formed and slightly aquiline ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... what thou hast done for us, accept me as thy husband"; then he turned himself toward the east and toward Mecca. Three times the storks bent their long necks toward the sun, which, by this time, was rising above the distant hills: "Mutabor!" they exclaimed. In a twinkling they were changed, and in the delight of newly restored life, master and servant were laughing and weeping in each other's arms. But who can describe their astonishment as ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... me heaven, to whom I call for right, And you fair twinkling stars that crown the night; And hear me woods, and silence of this place, And ye sad hours that move a sullen pace; Hear me ye shadows that delight to dwell In horrid darkness, and ye powers of Hell, Whilst I breath out my last; I am that maid, That yet untainted Amoret, that plaid The ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... wand fell. A clear shrill trumpet pealed. The heralds bounded back in a twinkling. In that twinkling the combatants leaped into each other's arms. A short grapple; again a sand cloud; and both were rising from the ground. They had fallen together. Heated by conflict, they were locked again ere the heralds could proclaim a tie. Cimon saw the great arms of the Spartan ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... fierce fight for possession of luckless Ken. Both sides were linked together by gripping hands. Ken was absolutely powerless. His clothes were torn to tatters in a twinkling; they were soon torn completely off, leaving only his shoes and socks. Not only was he in danger of being seriously injured, but students of both sides were handled as fiercely. A heavy trampling roar shook ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... stranger cross the street. Then the fellow happened to step on the icy slide and in a twinkling he went down on his back, his hat flying in one direction and a bundle he carried ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... my chambers; I used to make one at my Lord Treasurer's levee; I had even got Mr. Army-Secretary Walpole to take a hundred guineas as a compliment: and he had promised me a majority: when bad luck turned, and all my fine hopes were overthrown in a twinkling. ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cibot's heart. To will is to act with women of her stamp. Let them see the end in view; they will stick at nothing to gain it, and pass from scrupulous honesty to the last degree of scoundrelism in the twinkling of an eye. Honesty, like most dispositions of mind, is divided into two classes—negative and positive. La Cibot's honesty was of the negative order; she and her like are honest until they see their way clear to gain money belonging to somebody else. Positive honesty, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... not know how to begin, but found the way in which doctors helped one was wonderful. In three minutes he had the story, and was twinkling at her with cheery interest, though as far as he was concerned it was the oldest, ordinariest story in the world, which invariably ended by calling him out of bed in the middle of some wet night, after ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... last journey to Fort Lawrence, as the beautiful view of Colchester had just opened upon me, and as I was contemplating its richness and exquisite scenery, a tall, thin man, with hollow cheeks and bright, twinkling black eyes, on a good bay horse, somewhat out of condition, overtook me; and drawing up, said, "I guess you started early ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... vessels, gray and brown and rusty black, which contrasted oddly with the mantle of gorgeous purple velvet he was at that moment trying on. His little freckled face was wrinkled into a hundred shrewd puckers, and his eyes were two twinkling pin-points of sharpness. He seemed to thrust their glance into Alwin, as he advanced to meet his visitors; and the men who were helping him paused and looked at the ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... into a brass tube, which they just fit. They slip down in the tube, and as the lowest planchet slides from under the tube, two small steel arms spring out and grasp it and lay it on the die. At the same instant, the upper die descends with a quick thump, and the silver counter, stamped in a twinkling on both sides, falls into a box below. In an instant, another takes its place, and thus they go on dropping under the swiftly moving rod, and turning into coins ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... our windows, during Lent, booths were set, and countless flat pancake-looking pieces of dough were caught up by a white-capped and aproned cook, with a long-handled spoon, and fried in olive oil placed in a caldron at the booth's door, to be served to passers in the twinkling of an eye. I watched this process until I grew to regard Lent as a tiresome custom. Having tested the cakes, I found them to be indistinct in taste, for all their pretty buff tint, and the dexterous twist of the cook's wrist as he dumped them and picked them up. If they had been appetizing I should ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... in his head and smiled. It was a particularly good-looking head, with twinkling brown eyes, and a very ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... saw that my father, who had watched Roger Hamlin with twinkling eyes ignore my greeting, was chuckling in great amusement, I bit my lip. What if Roger was supercargo, I thought: ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... deck suddenly heaved upward—very much like the feeling he would have if, sitting in a hammock, someone sat down beside him. Immediately following this came a terrific explosion, numbing in its intensity, and a wall of maddened water leaped past the rail for a hundred feet into the air. In a twinkling Tim dragged him through the door, as a shower of debris came down upon the place where they had been sitting. The huge smoke funnel crashed to the deck, scattering soot in all directions, then balanced an instant, ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... of the mountains, dwarfed by the gigantic tree, ridiculous, despicable in the face of Nature, like the human life it sheltered. From its every window poured a flood of yellow light that was drunk up in a twinkling by the vastness of ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... sense. My turn will soon come. When the job is finished we shall see to whom all this belongs." When the work was completed and they had pronounced all things good, in stepped the Devil, and in the twinkling of an eye rendered imperfect all that they had so labored to create perfect;'turning everything topsy-turvey, seducing the first pair of human beings, sowing the seeds of original sin, and at one stroke securing the wholesale damnation of our race. What were they about, to let him do all this ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... Please don't think that! But it's a little hard to believe in active evil when all around is so beautiful." He helped her to mount and walked to the top of the mound at her stirrup. "Tell me, is there any charm or incantation, in case——?" His eyes were twinkling, but she shook ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... assisted the stranger into one of the chambers I saw that he was of medium height, spare in figure, but tough and sinewy. He had a swarthy complexion, and small, black, twinkling eyes that gave the impression of good-humour. His right arm, evidently broken, was carried in a rough, hastily-made sling; his doublet was bloodstained, and his forehead had been scored by the ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... they prepared for our amusement?" asked Hugh, his dark gray eyes twinkling with merriment. "I trow it is one that you and I need ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... after all, for the dainty damsel was in distress. She stood poised on a stone in midstream, like a bird desiring, yet not daring, to fly. A long leap was needed to land her on the next stone, and she paused, perplexed, evidently mindful of her eggs. Gilbert came quickly down the bank, his eyes twinkling. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... indignant and to rage all the way thither, still, at the same time, athwart all these evil, hostile feelings there forced its way the memory of that wondrous face which he had beheld only for the twinkling of an eye.... He even put to himself the question: "Why did not I answer her when she demanded from me at least one word?"—"I did not have time," ... he thought.... "She did not give me a chance to utter that word.... And what would I ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... full o' disapp'intments to a romantic soul like me and not half so inter-esting as a good nov-el. Now if you'd only 'appened to be a murderer reeking wi' crime an' blood—but you ain't, you tell me?" he questioned, his keen eyes twinkling more ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... reel with the same serious earnestness she gave to her tidying or her knitting. Daintily she tripped the twenty-four steps of that intricate, ancient dance of the Celt people, whirling, balancing, poising, snapping her fingers, and twinkling her feet in the true Highland style, till once more her father's face smoothed out its wrinkles, and beamed like a harvest moon. Hughie gazed, uncertain whether to allow himself to admire Jessac's performance, or to regard it with a boy's scorn, as she was only a girl. And yet he ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... the presence of the "Camberwell Beauty," a rare and beautiful species of butterfly, of which he was determined to take home a specimen. In later days he was fair to see with his hat thrown back on his brow, his net in his hand: and his stout legs twinkling in their haste to come ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... rather rough inn, but I had been in many worse. Seated in the chimney-corner after dinner, and sending the smoke of my pipe to join the sparks of the blazing wood up the yawning gulf where the soot hung like stalactites below the calm sky and twinkling stars, I had a long talk with the aubergiste, who told me that he had been taken prisoner at Sedan, and had, in consequence, spent eight months in Germany. He considered that he had been as well treated by the Germans as a prisoner could expect to be. He had always enough to eat, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... and overtaken by wintry blasts. Alone with nature, she warbled as unrestrainedly as the birds who listened to her quavering crescendos; and more than once she had become so absorbed in this forest practising, that twinkling stars peeped down at her through the fringy canopy of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... hermit's candle," said Petruccio. A twinkling light showed deep in the trees. "There was a most excellent miracle there—the Blessed Virgin in a tree. Two girls saw her and thought she was a kite entangled. But they fetched a priest from Abano, and he knew better. So then ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the yards, the dawn—which comes with startling rapidity in those latitudes—had risen high into the sky ahead, and spread well along the horizon to north and south, causing the stars to fade and disappear, one after another, until only a few of the brightest remained twinkling low ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... thus turned inwards upon himself, in an affectionate criticism of his vocabulary, to show the utter detachment of his interest from the pathetic exit of Edgar Doe. For now Doe had reached the door, which he opened, passed, and slammed. In a twinkling I had opened it again, and was looking down the corridor. There was no sign of my friend anywhere. The moment he had slammed the ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... as yesterday, since on those stars, Which now I view, the Chaldean shepherd gazed, In his mid watch observant, and disposed The twinkling hosts, as fancy gave them shape; Yet, in the interim, what mighty shocks Have buffeted mankind; whole nations razed, Cities made desolate; the polished sunk To barbarism, and once barbaric states, Swaying the wand of science and ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... little girl, twinkling with excitement; then, catching sight of my face, she said once more with eager insistence, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... near the southwest corner of Missouri, lost the trail, and the party found themselves, at nightfall, in an immense plain, which showed no signs of any habitation. Riding southward in the darkness, they saw, at last, a light twinkling in the distance, and, directing their course toward it, they discovered that it proceeded from the window of a lonely cabin. Knocking at the door, a man of singularly repulsive appearance responded to the summons—invited them in. Three ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the direction of the sound, and perceive a detachment of armed men, one of those that were out in search of them. The servants take to flight; but Lampagie, too weary, cannot follow them, nor can Abi-Nessa abandon Lampagie. In the twinkling of an eye they are surrounded by foes. The chronicler Isidore of Bdja says that Abi-Nessa, in order not to fall alive into their hands, flung himself from top to bottom of the rocks; and an Arab historian relates that he took sword in hand, and fell pierced with ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Richard collapse and drop sullenly into the sea. The "machine-guns" had ceased firing and Bronson was regarding him with a smile. The boatman's face was crusted with salt and his eyes were twinkling. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... placed too near the windows, and was instantly in flames. Some persons made ineffectual efforts to extinguish the fire by tearing down the drapery and smothering the flames with their hands; but in the twinkling of an eye the curtains, papers, and garlands caught, and ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... an o'ersea look, with a long dark beard inclining to grey; his abundant hair, flowing down from his cowl, was also clouded and streaked with the kithings of the cranreuch of age. There was, however, a youthy and luscious twinkling in his eyes, that showed how little the passage of three-and-fifty winters had cooled the rampant sensuality of his nature. His right leg, which was naked, though on the foot was a slipper of Spanish leather, he laid o'er Mistress Kilspinnie's ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... not thinking of sleeping till we get our message delivered. I was wondering whether we should be lucky enough to get so far that after dark, if we climbed up high enough, we might be able to see our people's watch fires twinkling like stars in ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... annihilation. The life of the soul is not extinguished like the flame of a lamp. Existence is not that lingering, twinkling spark which it seems to be in the moments preceding death. To be absent from the body, for a Christian, is to be present with the Lord; to die is gain; to depart, and be with Christ, is far better. When the dust returns to the earth as it was, the spirit ascends to God, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... sat resting, a light she espied, And a Glow-worm came twinkling by. "Dear me!" exclaimed he, with a gasp and a sob, "I don't ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice
... each other in despair, and it was terrible to each, in this dire emergency, to meet only the beautiful eyes of perfect strangers, instead of the merry, friendly, commonplace, twinkling, jolly little eyes of ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... thereupon, that his faithful servant might be restored to life, together with all his high-minded family; and the goddess Devi in the twinkling of an eye fetched from Patala, the regions below the earth, a vase full of Amrita, the water of immortality, sprinkled it upon the dead, and raised them all as before. After which the whole party walked leisurely home, and in due time the king divided ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Were there no corrective, it is clear that in a few years the face of the earth would be eaten bare as by locusts. But at this season Nature by the simplest stroke—the flush of a commonplace cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace hand—in a twinkling redresses the balance. Forthwith the ideal devourer of crops and herbs not only loses his appetite, but arising, smacks the earth with a hoe till the clods fly and the fields laugh with harvest. Thereon he mops ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... to stroke the head of her Siberian hound, crouching on the velvet rug at her feet; then she frankly met the twinkling black eyes that peered ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources. No matter what imprudent haste in my career; I am permitted to be rash. Gulfs are bridged in a twinkling, as if some unseen baggage-train carried pontoons for my convenience, and while from the heights I scan the tempting but unexplored Pacific Ocean of Futurity, the ship is being carried over the mountains piecemeal on the backs of mules and lamas, whose keel shall plough its waves, and bear me to ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... thou sun, great source of light! Mourn, empress of the silent night! And you, ye twinkling starnies bright, My Matthew mourn! For through your orbs he's ta'en ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Toc," said Adams, eyeing the lad with a twinkling expression, "d'ye know, I have heard it said or writ somewhere, that brevity is the soul of wit. If that sayin's true, an' I've no reason for to suppose that it isn't, I should say that that observation of yours ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... something of a quandary. I am sweeping along at the irresistible velocity of a mile an hour, and wondering how far it is to the other end of the swampy road, when thrice welcome succor appears from a strange and altogether unexpected source. I had noticed a small fire, twinkling through the darkness away off in the swamp; and now the wind rises and the flames of the small fire spread to the thick patches of dead tuile. In a short time the whole country, including my road, is lit up by the fierce glare of the blaze; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... groves; Each by her pine the Wood-nymphs wave their locks, 420 And wondering Naiads peep amid the rocks; Pleased trains of Mermaids rise from coral cells, Admiring Tritons sound their twisted shells; Charm'd o'er the car pursuing Cupids sweep, Their snow-white pinions twinkling in the deep; 425 And, as the lustre of her eye she turns, Soft sighs the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... sheer unexpectedness of her action had gained the day! Her heart gave a great leap of triumph as he took his hand away. But the next instant it stood still. For in the twinkling of an eye he had taken her by ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... coming! Here's a tent, and some mattresses and pillows. Hurry! Help me down, quick! Oh, slow-coach! Keep out of the way and I'll jump! Give me the letter. I can run faster than you can.' And before the vestige of an idea had penetrated Philip's head, nothing could be seen of Polly but a pair of twinkling heels and the gleam of a curly head that caught every ray of the sun and turned it ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a senora," translated Dade, his eyes twinkling, "but his rifle; and the ninos are ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... garden when, suddenly, I saw near the arbour two hideous little devils dancing with surprising agility on a barrel of lime, in spite of the heavy irons attached to their feet. At first they cast fiery glances at me; then, as though suddenly terrified, I saw them, in the twinkling of an eye, throw themselves down to the bottom of the barrel, from which they came out somehow, only to run and hide themselves in the laundry which opened into the garden. Finding them such cowards, I wanted to know what they were going ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... afternoon and Gladys danced for her amusement. The girls gasped with wonder and delight, for they had never seen anything like it. She was as light on her feet as thistledown and as graceful as a swaying rose. Nyoda watched her with keen pleasure, but it was not her twinkling feet, nor the artistic posing of her limbs that held her attention, but the new expression on her face. The old selfish, blase' look was gone, and her features were lit up by an eager smile that sparkled in her eyes and curved ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... Only for that reason, then, because Night turns thy servants from thee, didst thou scatter in the wide expanse of space the shining stars, to make known thine omnipotence and thy return, during the periods of thine absence? More heavenly than those twinkling stars seem to us the everlasting eyes which Night has opened within us. Farther they see than the palest of those numberless hosts; not needing light, they fathom the depths of a loving heart, filling a higher space ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Majesty, who is at peace with the King of England. Already you have told me more than it is good for me to know. I will endeavour to forget it, and I will ask you, sirs," he added, glancing at his officers, "to forget it also." But he winked into the twinkling eyes of Captain Blood; then added matter that at once extinguished that twinkle. "But since Diego cannot come to me, why, I will go ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... he was aware of something dark against the stars that tossed, and a light below, and a brightness of the cloven sea; and he heard speech of men. He cried out aloud and a voice answered; and in a twinkling the bows of a ship hung above him on a wave like a thing balanced, and swooped down. He caught with his two hands in the chains of her, and the next moment was buried in the rushing seas, and the next hauled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... confidently awaited results. A sound like the snort of a steam-engine followed, and presently flames were seen bursting from the top of the chimney-like trunk. The dry mould and dust of ages that had collected inside this shaft had now caught fire, like so much tinder, turning the whole tree in a twinkling into ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... the soldiers had grouped themselves in musical knots, chanting a sweet and solemn chorus of religious gravity. Above the trees was floating a red cloud, intensified by the dusk—a reflection of the still burning village. Afar off were bonfires of farms and homesteads, twinkling in the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... beholds all things, and by his own adventures, and by dangers so great. Being believed {by her}, he immediately received some enchanted herbs, and thoroughly learned the use of them, and went away rejoicing to his abode. The next morning had {now} dispersed the twinkling stars, {when} the people repaired to the sacred field of Mavors, and ranged themselves on the hills. In the midst of the assembly sat the king himself, arrayed in purple, and distinguished by a sceptre of ivory. Behold! the brazen-footed bulls breathe forth ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... days like these, I get a sudden gleam of bliss. "Not on some sunny day of ease, He'll come . . but on a day like this!" And, in the twinkling of an eye, These tiresome things ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... very conveniently, to have been left wide open: so in flew the pheasants, car and all, and alighted on the hearth-rug. 'Jump out—be quick!' cried the Fairy. The cat did not wait to be told twice—she was out in a twinkling; but before she could turn her head round, car, Fairy, and pheasants had vanished, and she was left alone in the strange room. 'To be sure,' she exclaimed to herself, 'was there ever anything so extraordinary?' What an adventure! And what a room it was! It was so large, ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... especially hard for Freddie because he could see the gay lights of the Fireflies twinkling through the dark. ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... he felt, perhaps, for Matthew's stolid face and small, twinkling eyes were not pleasant. He muttered something, and then went grumbling across the yard towards a wall, from behind which emanated an odour which required ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... Fairer still the moonlight, And all the twinkling starry host; Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer Than all the angels heaven ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... with darting radiance, in thin, unwavering shafts of splintered fire. The moon, coldly brilliant, sharp-edged and flat like a disk of silver paper, touched the twinkling aspens with a pallid glow and stamped a distorted silhouette of the low-roofed ranch-buildings on the hard-packed earth. In the corral the shadow of a restless pony drifted back and forth. Chance, chained to a post near the bunk-house, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... that the chapters of a novel bear a certain resemblance to those pleasing illusions known as dissolving views, where one scene glides almost imperceptibly into another. The reader has been gazing mentally on woods, landscapes and water in the South of England, when lo! in the twinkling of an eye, the busy haunts of men in the world's great capitol, London, stands unveiled before him. It must, however, be admitted that, so far as scenic effect is concerned, the change is at times less pleasing than the one just fading from view. Yet ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... blouse's query. The tassel of the cotton night-cap nodded, interrogatively, toward the object on which the twinkling ex-mariner's eye had fixed itself—on Charm's slender figure, and on the yellow half-moon of hair framing her face. There was but one verdict concerning the blonde beauty; she was a creature made to be stared ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... can mark Each light and shadow of the scene below. The placid glistening pools, the streams that flow Through the red earth, left by the hurrying tide; The ridge of mountain on the farther side Shewing more black for many twinkling lights That come and go about the gathering heights. Below me lie great wharves, dreary and dim, And lumber houses crowding close and grim Like giant shadowed guardians of the port, With towering chimneys ...
— Poems • Sophia M. Almon
... to VERA] Ah, Miss Revendal—what a pity you refused that invitation! It was a fairy scene of twinkling lights and delicious darkness—each couple had their own gondola to sup in, and their own side-canal to slip down. ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... will see finer things than most children will tonight. Steady, now, and do just as I tell you, and don't say one word whatever you see," answered Nursey, quite quivering with excitement as she patted a large box in her lap, and nodded and laughed with twinkling eyes. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... Truls, let the doors shut agen; I, do your heads itch? I'le scratch them for you: so now thrust and hang: again, who is't now? I cannot blame my Lord Calianax for going away; would he were here, he would run raging among them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye: ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... head with the butt of his revolver. The soldier sank down with a moan, and Calhoun sprang out over his prostrate body, only to meet and overturn another soldier who was just ascending the steps. The force of the collision threw him headlong, but he was up again in a twinkling, and disappeared in the darkness, followed by a few ineffectual ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... he had come to Grande Pointe. From such a day Sidonie could not be spared. She was to say a piece, a poem, an apostrophe to a star. A child, beholding the little star in the heavens, and wondering what it can be, sparkling diamond-like so high up above the world, exhorts it not to stop twinkling on his account. But to its tender regret the school knew that no more thereafter was Sidonie to ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... among a group of wealth owners. They may be competing fiercely as in the case of a group of local banks, department stores, or landlords, but let a common enemy appear, with a proposition for currency reform, labor legislation or land taxation and in a twinkling the conflicting interests are thrown to the winds and the property owners are welded into a coherent, unified group. This is the beginning of a wealth cohesion which develops rapidly into ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... thought he was going to die. The sun was down. A green hue rose from the horizon half-way to the zenith, but a pale yellow lingered over the vanished sun, like the gold at the bottom of a chrysolite. The stars were twinkling small and sharp in the azure overhead. A cold wind blew in little gusts, now from this side, now from that, as they went steadily along. The horses' hoofs rang loud on the hard road. The night got hold of him: it was at this season, and on nights like ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... and, though usually nothing but a large brook, it was now high, and unpleasant from its rapidity and the large boulders over which it flows. Little by little, night and heavy rain came on, and right glad were we when we saw the twinkling light on the terrace where the hut was, and were thus assured that the Irishman, who had been left alone and without meat for the last ten days, was still in the land of the living. Two or three coo-eys soon made him aware that we were coming, and I believe he was almost ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... was on my way, who should come across me but Dr. Sangrado, whom I had not seen since the day of my master's death. I took the liberty of touching my hat. He knew me in a twinkling. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Jess Hardy,' he said, with his eyes twinkling as though he were giving an Apostolic benediction at a Vanderbilt wedding, 'if you'll bring me your four-fifty we'll ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... Harryman, turning in his comfortable wicker chair toward Webster and looking at him half encouragingly with twinkling eyes. ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... something of a hurry?" she asked, her eyes twinkling. She had felt for a moment like a soldier surprised without weapons. But now, once more, she felt herself ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... to this schoolboy kind of man, who romped with dogs and lay on his stomach, and was so charmingly afraid of his wife. His contempt began to melt as he looked at him and saw those wise twinkling eyes, and strong humorous mouth, and remembered once more who he was, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... almost reached her destination. A few steps farther on rose a little white-washed cottage, with sloping roof, and two large china-trees embowering it in front. As she arrived at the small trellis-work gate, a light met her eye, faintly twinkling through the dark foliage of an intervening bough, and reflecting a ruddy glare upon the side-walk that lay entombed in shadow. She opened the gate, followed the narrow foot-path leading to the front door, and found herself in a dark ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... frosty autumnal evening, and the fire on the hearth was decaying. Mr. Joseph bustled about most energetically, throwing down the tongs, and shovel, and bellows, while he pulled the fire to pieces, raked out ashes and brands, and then, in a twinkling, was at the woodpile, from whence he selected a massive backlog and forestick, with accompaniments, which were soon roaring and crackling in ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... firefly?" said Rob, after a few minutes' silence, and he pointed to a soft, golden glow coming up the river five or six feet above the stream, and larger and more powerful than the twinkling lights appearing and disappearing among the ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... picturesquely coloured houses; the molo and the fishing-boats lie just beneath the castle. There is one point of the descending carriage road where all this gracefulness is seen, framed by the boughs of olive branches, swaying, wind-ruffled, laughing the many-twinkling smiles of ocean back from their grey leaves. Here Erycina ridens is at home. And, as we stayed to dwell upon the beauty of the scene, came women from the bay below—barefooted, straight as willow wands, with burnished copper bowls upon their heads. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... into the bay just as the sun was rising in splendour behind the cliffs of Table Mountain. The houses of the town which fill the space between the hills and the sea were still more or less in shadow, picked out here and there by twinkling lights. On the summit rested a fleecy cloud which concealed the pointed crags and hung from the edges of the precipice like a border of fine drapery. On the right, groups of buildings stretched onwards to Sea Point, where the surf was breaking ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... felt cool and pleasant to his bare little feet as he crossed to the door. He had almost reached the head of the stairs when, looking up, something so pretty met his eyes that he stopped to admire. It was a star, shining against the pure sky like a twinkling silver lamp. It seemed to beckon, and the ladder to lead straight up to it. Almost without stopping to think, Dickie put his foot on the first rung and climbed nimbly to the top of the ladder. The star was just as much out of reach when he got there as ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... fire!'" "It seemed to me," says Taylor, "like the tolling of the clock of destiny. And when at 'Number six, fire!' the roar throbbed out with the flash, you should have seen the dead line, that had been lying behind the works all day, come to resurrection in the twinkling of an eye, and leap like a blade from ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... with the grandeur of Diocletian's palace, are denied to the traveller; Lesina, proudly calling itself the Nice of Austria; Curzola, whose mighty Venetian bastions stand out into the sea, and many another delightful little town and island, only show a twinkling light or two in the darkness as the steamer ploughs by. At daybreak we are nearing Gravosa, Ragusa's modern port. As we leave again, and round the peninsula of Lapad, glorious in a mass of semi-tropical vegetation, Ragusa bursts upon our view. Seen on a sunny morning it is a sight ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... awful lightning blaze granite flows like water and big steel rails are welded in the twinkling of an eye.... The interior of Mount Pelee, whose fiery blast destroyed St. Pierre in a moment and crumbled its buildings into dust, would be cool compared with this temperature of 5400 deg. It would melt the White Mountains into rivers of liquid fire. Nothing could withstand ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
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